The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (27 page)

And as it reached me, I exclaimed, ‘Oh my God!’

PART II

‘Well, that was very rude,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘refusing to shake his hand. I think you quite offended him. He stormed off in a huff.’

‘But his hand,’ I said and I was shaking as I said it. ‘He has six fingers on his left hand. He sold his soul to the Devil. It is all his fault that these rock stars will die aged twenty-seven. What are we going to do?’

‘Well, I am going to order a starter. I don’t know quite what you have in mind.’

‘This is no time for food!’ I raised my voice to Hugo Rune.

‘On the contrary, this is exactly the time for food. It is eight o’clock and this
is
a restaurant.’

‘But we have to do something.’

‘Ah,’ said Mr Rune, ‘you think there is a
case
or something, do you?’

‘A case,’ I said. ‘Yes, that is it, a case.’

‘Please calm yourself, Rizla, you’re getting most upset.’

‘Well, of course I am getting upset. Look at them – Jimi and Janis and Brian, and Jim and Pigpen and Gram, and Johnny Kidd—’

‘And Kurt Cobain,’ said Mr Rune.

‘Forget him,’ I said. ‘But look at the rest of them, all sitting here, naked, in Hove, enjoying their grub. And they are all doomed to die. And all because of Robert Johnson. We have to stop it.’

‘We can’t,’ said Mr Rune.

I looked at Hugo Rune and I looked at him sternly, which even surprised myself.
‘“Can’t”?’
said I. ‘That is not a word I have ever heard you use before. Are you telling me that there is something that Mr Hugo Rune cannot do?’

‘In a word, yes,’ said the Hokus Bloke.

‘I am appalled,’ I said.
And I was.

‘They have to die,’ said Mr Rune. ‘It is preordained that they will do so. They will live fast and die young, and they will leave an exceeding legacy. Would you care to see what would happen if this did not come to pass?’

‘I do not understand,’ I said.
And I did not.

‘Pick one,’ said Mr Rune, ‘any one you like, and I will grant you a glimpse of how things would be if they were to cheat their fate and continue to live.’

‘This is not funny,’ I said. ‘You should not say such things to me.’

‘Any one,’ said Mr Rune. ‘The experience will be shocking and real, but in
real time
it will last but for a moment. Do you dare?’

‘What are you saying?’

‘That you will glimpse an alternative future, a future that will exist if any one of these rock stars were to live beyond the age of twenty-seven.’

I did not really know quite what to say. So I said, ‘Go on, then.’

And I suddenly found myself no longer unclothed in a restaurant in Hove, but somewhere else entirely.

‘Are you going to sit there dreaming, or do some work for me?’

I rose to consciousness and stared.

At Jimi Hendrix.

He was fat and bald and did not look too well.

‘What year is this?’ I cried. ‘And who is the president?’

‘I wish you would stop doing that,’ said Jimi. ‘It isn’t big and it isn’t clever. It’s nineteen eighty-four and
I
am the president.’

‘You?’

‘Don’t do this to me again, please. Since Elvis was voted out of office five years back, I have been the man at the controls.’

‘The controls?’ I said.

‘My hand is on the nuclear button.’

I tried to get a grip of myself and take in my surroundings. We appeared to be in one of those big boardrooms that you see in movies, the ones that are below ground level, deep in a top-secret bunker. They always have dramatic down-lighting and a lot of faceless fellows in black suits who nod a great deal and look like Gary Busey.

‘You
are the president?’ I said to Jimi.

Several Gary Busey lookalikes nodded at this.

‘And
your
hand is on the nuclear button?’

‘My
left
hand,’ said Jimi. ‘I always played left-handed, as you know.’

‘I am uncomfortable with this now,’ I said. ‘I think I want to go back to Hove.’

‘Ah,’ said Jimi, lowering his big fat self into the big fat chair at the head of the table. ‘Hove, how well I remember Hove, where you saved my life. I am eternally grateful, of course – if it hadn’t been for that night, I would never have given up the life of sex and drugs and rock and roll, taken to protesting and risen through government to the position that I hold today.’

‘I did not want you to die,’ I said.

‘And you did the right thing. We’ll best those Commie b*st*rds.’

‘Was that rock ’n’ roll patois?’ I asked.

‘No, I meant bastards!’

‘Oh,’ said I.

‘It’s an odd thing, isn’t it,’ said Jimi. ‘How when you are young you have all these ideas, all these things that really matter to you that you are prepared to protest about, to shout out about. Then as the years pass and you get older, they don’t seem to matter any more. Other things matter, that you’d never even thought about before. More mature things, responsible things. And so you choose. You never notice it happening – it happens bit by bit. And somehow, suddenly you’re there, as if you’ve just woken up in your fifties, saying, “Where did my life go?” And, “How fast was that?” And you’re not the same person you were when you were young. In fact, you have contempt for that foolish, frivolous person you once were, who did all those irresponsible things. So you sort of go into denial, saying “Well, what I did was okay, it didn’t matter, I was just having a good time.” And then you wake up and find that it’s now. Do you know what I mean?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’

‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Jimi. ‘I woke up, as one does at the age of twenty-eight. Up until that age, you have dreams, you are irresponsible. You rebel, you protest. But when you reach
twenty-eight, you realise where you have been going wrong. I realised that all that guitar stuff I was doing was rubbish.’

‘No, it was not,’ I said. ‘It was wonderful. Innovative. Incredible.’

‘Trivial,’ said Jimi. ‘Nothing at all.’

‘No – it was something.’

‘That rock ’n’ roll,’ said Jimi, ‘that’s the Devil’s music. I hate myself for having played it. But now I’m born again in the Lord. Now I am responsible. And that’s why those Commie bastards are going to get what’s coming to them.’

‘Which is?’

‘Nukes,’ said Jimi. ‘Lots of nukes.’

‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Do not do that. You do not know what you are doing. You were the greatest rock guitarist ever. You were The Man.’

‘I’m still The Man.
The
Man. I was voted into power by middle-aged fan boys who still believe in me. I used to believe in fans when I played. Now I know them for what they are – cattle.’

‘No!’ I cried again. And I had a right sweat on now. ‘You do not know what you are saying, or what you are doing.’

‘Wake up,’ said Jimi. ‘I woke up. Why don’t you?’

‘This is not right!’ I screamed. ‘You cannot have become this. This is all wrong.’

‘We have to grow up,’ said Jimi. ‘We have to wake up. That’s how it is. And I’d just love to go on talking to you, but I have a button to press.’

And his left hand came down upon that button. And I cried out for him to stop.

‘You cannot be this!’ I shouted. ‘It would have been better if you had died at twenty-seven …’

And then things seemed to blink and change and I was back in Hove in the company of Hugo Rune, without either clothes or composure.

‘Aaagh!’ I went. ‘Oh!’ and, ‘Eeek!’ also.

‘Nice trip?’ asked the All-Knowing One, raising his glass to me – a glass filled with Mulholland champagne of the vintage persuasion.

‘I …’ I went. ‘I mean …’ I went. ‘I saw …’ I went. ‘I mean …’

‘Not such a nice future, was it, then?’

I spied a glass that was filled with wine and poured it down my throat. ‘That cannot be,’ I said. ‘That cannot happen, surely?’

‘It is one possible future. Who can say for certain what will come to pass?’

‘And so …’ I glanced about all around me. ‘And so they all have to die?’

‘Robert Johnson did
not
sell his soul to the Devil,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Quite the contrary, in fact. You could say that he was an angel of the Lord, if you are inclined to such beliefs. Those who fell under his influence changed the world of music. Such was their gift. But had they lived longer, they would not have been remembered lovingly as rock legends; rather they would have grown in power to become something altogether else.’

‘So I could have chosen any of them?’ I said. ‘And the future would have been the same?’

‘With subtle variations. But not
that
subtle.’

I mopped the sweat from my brow with an oversized green gingham serviette. ‘I am not well at all,’ I said.

‘You’ll feel a whole lot better when you have some food inside you. I took the liberty of ordering for you whilst you were otherwise engaged in future possibilities.’

And so I dined with Mr Hugo Rune at Eat Your Food Nude, and I have to say that I enjoyed all that I dined upon.

Whether I actually met Robert Johnson, or any of the dead rock stars, I am not entirely sure. Their photographs did not turn up on the front page of the
Leader
the following day.

Although mine did, and Mr Rune’s. And it was such an unnecessary fuss. Because we
did
have free tickets, after all. Mr Rune took to a bout of coughing during the pudding course, and there was this rat bone involved, although where
that
materialised from, I have no idea.
And
there was a demand for compensation, which surprisingly was met in full and paid in cash, which
did
pay off our owings to Mr Hansord the landlord But then there was the unfortunate business of our clothes having been stolen from the disrobing area. Which required further and heavy financial compensation from the management – sufficient, in fact, to put that particular theme venue out
of business. But which nevertheless did involve Mr Rune and me having to leave the restaurant in the buff. Which
did
attract the attention of the paparazzi.

We took a final late-night drink at Fangio’s. Still in the buff, but I no longer cared.

‘Did you enjoy the Scintillating Story of the Sackville Scavenger?’ asked Mr Rune, as he drained a pint of Shell to its dregs.

‘Not in the least,’ I replied, ‘but I am looking forward to breakfast tomorrow, what with you persuading the cook from Eat Your Food Nude to come and work for us.’

‘Part of the compensation for the pilfering of our clothes,’ said Mr Rune, ‘although I found that somewhat amusing, and nothing to protest about. A good night out, I consider. We must do it again,
some time in the future.’

And then Mr Rune offered me something. It was a badge with Robert Johnson’s face upon it. ‘I thought you might care to keep this as a souvenir,’ said he. ‘A pictorial representation of the Scavenger himself. The benign Scavenger, of course.’

‘That is very kind of you,’ I said, ‘but as you can see, I have nowhere to pin it.’ And then I paused for a moment, and said, ‘And for that matter, where
exactly
have you been keeping it?’

The Foredown Man

PART I

‘He walks,’ said Hugo Rune, in answer to my question. ‘He walks, is what he does. He walks and he walks and he walks.’

My question had been, ‘Why does he do it?’

‘I know that he walks,’ I said.

It was a misty morning in September. And lest the reader feel that some kind of formula has become evident in the cases that Mr Rune
and I had so far solved, let it be said that we were
not
having our breakfast.

We had just
finished
our breakfast. Mr Rune was in his favourite chair, reading
my
copy of
Dead Dames Don’t Do Doggie-Style
(A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller) and I was looking out of the window. And it was whilst I was doing this looking out that I had seen him once more.