The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (10 page)

‘My
glass is empty,’ said Jim. ‘Dryness of the throat inhibits my cogitation on
matters which require a fullness of potential.’

‘Have
one on me,’ said Tuppe, producing a mighty wad of high-denomination money
notes. ‘If you could see your way clear to releasing Cornelius, I have no doubt
that he would amply reward you for your efforts.’

Omally
tried to draw his eyes away from the big brown bundle, but just couldn’t.
‘Might
I
have the same again?’ he enquired politely.

‘And
me,’ said Scoop. ‘Only different.’

‘Sure
thing.’

‘More
in this direction, Neville,’ called Omally.

The
full-time barlord hastened to oblige. ‘I trust you are not plotting sedition in
my bar, John,’ said he.

‘Not a
bit of it. Just chatting with this wee man.

‘Word
has reached my ear’, said Neville, ‘that Hugo Rune has returned to the
neighbourhood.’

‘Villain
of the piece,’ said Tuppe. ‘My chum Cornelius will sort him out though.’

‘These
words are pleasing to my ears. When he does, do you think he might broach the
subject of the bar bill Rune ran up here eighteen years ago. It still gives me
sleepless nights.’

‘I’d be
happy to. So what are we drinking?’

Omally
pushed his half-pint glass aside. ‘Mine was a double whisky,’ he said.

‘Mine
also,’ said Pooley.

‘And
mine,’ said Scoop.

‘I’ll
have a triple,’ said Tuppe.

‘This
lad has class,’ said Omally. ‘Triples all round it is then.’

In a private booth next to
the darts board, Omally spoke in low and earnest tones. He talked of wooden
horses and escape tunnels. Of the construction of kites which might bear a
fellow’s weight and be flown above a prison wall. Of bogus prison visitors,
skilled in the arts of Pelmanism, who could memorize complicated computer entry
codes and effect the premature release of a detainee by hacking into closed
systems with advanced gadgetry. And of schemes diverse and intricate,
understood by Omally alone, and requiring the up-front capital outlay of but a
few paltry thousands of pounds.

At
length, when he had finally run himself dry, he tore his eyes away from the wad
which Tuppe still clutched, to discover that the three attentive listeners to
whom he had been discoursing had now increased by a factor of one.

‘This
is fascinating stuff,’ said Cornelius Murphy. ‘Don’t stop now, I’m loving every
minute.’

9

‘This
is seriously appalling,’ Norman gnawed upon a knuckle. ‘I have to do something
about this.’

But
what?

‘Inform
somebody,’ was Norman’s decision.
But who?

‘Jack,’
said Norman. ‘No,
not
Jack.’
The Controller then.

‘No,
not
him.’ Who then?

‘Who’s
asking me these questions?’
Just you. You’re asking yourself.

‘Well
it wasn’t very clear. But I’ll have to speak to someone.’
Who though?

‘Stop
it! There’s only one person who can deal with this.’
Who? Who? Tell us.

‘God,’
said Norman. ‘I will have to speak to God.’
Cor!

‘No,
stuff that. I can’t just go bothering
Him
no matter how bad things may
appear. He knows His own business best and if He’s decided to snuff out the
entire population of Great Britain the Friday after next by “electrical
discharge”, then He won’t take kindly to me asking Him what on earth He thinks
He’s up to. He would probably take great exception to it and smite me with a
plague of boils or something.’

But
then
…

‘But
then,’ Norman continued, ‘what if he
doesn’t
know. I’ve evidently
stumbled onto exactly what I was not supposed to stumble onto here, by the
simple expedient of getting out of my chair and actually opening a filing
cabinet. Which I was
not
expected to do.

‘This
is some kind of big secret. That must have been what Jack meant when he said it
was
the best-kept secret in the history of eternity.
Somehow God doesn’t
know about this.’

It was
an interesting theory. Although the route by which Norman arrived at it, and
whether he would actually have arrived at it by this route, and whether it was
at all correct, however he might have arrived at it, were matters for debate
(or even explanation).

But it
was the theory that he had arrived at, and having arrived at it, he sought to
test it out.

By
asking God anyway.

‘And
now would be as good a time as any,’ said Norman, slipping through the doorway
and slinking off down the corridor.

If God
hung out at all in this building, he would inevitably be doing so in the
penthouse suite, or whatever its URC equivalent was, on the toppermost floor.

Norman
ducked along this corridor and that. All were equally drab, but mercifully so
were they empty. By the time he had finally located the lift though and pressed
at its button, his knees were knocking like an Eddie Floyd hit and his mouth
was dry as an author’s wit. (Hmm!)

There
was still the possibility, and far from a remote one, that the Big G knew all
about the electrical discharging and might give Norman that sound smiting for
his impudence.

There
was a little clunkity-click sound, a bell went ting and the lift doors opened.

Norman
stepped speedily in and sought the top-floor button.

‘Are
you going up?’ enquired a voice.

It was
a deep voice. It had what is called timbre to it.

Norman
nearly performed the embarrassing act which had earned him infamy when aged
five.

‘Ah,’ said
he, turning to view the owner of the voice.

He
lurked in a shadowy corner. A big man, well over six feet and broad all around
and about with it. He wore a white three-piece suit. White apparently being the
company colour, which wasn’t much of a surprise, although it did lack a certain
originality.

His
head was a big bald dome. His nose the beak of a hawk, set amongst a generosity
of jowls and dewlaps. And he was the very
doppelgänger
of somebody not
altogether unknown to some, but still completely unknown to Norman.

The
voice Norman knew though, he’d earholed it coming through Jack Bradshaw’s
intercom.

It was
the voice of the… Norman found strains of the TV theme tune from
Thomas
the Tank Engine
springing to his lips in an involuntary nervous whistle.

The
controller, for indeed it was he, viewed Norman through a pair of most alarming
eyes. Dead black, with small white pupils.

‘I
enquired whether you were going up,’ he enquired.

‘All
the way,’ said Norman hopefully.

‘To
where, one might ask? And I do.’

‘To the
gymnasium,’ Norman suggested.

‘I
think you had better come with me,’ said the controller.

‘I
think I’d better get out of the lift,’ said Norman.

But he
could not, because the lift doors had now closed, with what is known in prison
circles as the now legendary Death Cell Finality.

10

‘There is a phrase
currently in service,’ said John Omally, as he counted and recounted the
high-denomination money notes from the wad which Cornelius had insisted Tuppe
pay him, in compensation for the earnings he would have accrued had he actually
been able to spring the tall boy from prison by any of the implausible schemes
he’d outlined. ‘And this phrase is, as I understand it, “Employ a teenager
today while they still know everything.”’

‘It’s
your round I think,’ said Jim Pooley.

‘Mine
was a quadruple,’ said Scoop Molloy.

‘Ours
shall all be
Murphy’s,’
said John. ‘God speed to your man, whatever he’s
up to.’

‘What exactly
are
we
up to?’ asked Tuppe, as the glorious open-topped, electric-blue Cadillac
Eldorado left Brentford further and further behind.

‘We are
heading for adventure,’ replied Cornelius, holding down his hair with one hand
and trying to change into a pair of trousers that had two legs to them, with
the other. ‘An adventure of the rock-and-roll persuasion, which is not all
plot-led and dialogue-laden, as has been the case so far.’

‘On the
trail of your errant daddy then, is it?’

‘Nope.’
Cornelius flung his brutalized bags from the car. They caught a passing cyclist
full in the face, precipitating a front-wheel-entanglement incident, leading
to a handlebar pass—over, litter—bin encounter, Lycra shorts seam-split and
paramedic call-out situation.

‘What
do you mean, “nope”?’ asked Tuppe. ‘You’ve had a private detective hunting down
your daddy for months. And now he’s found him.’

‘So?’
said Cornelius, with a foot down the wrong leg of his replacement trews.

‘Well,
he’ll be up to something terrible, won’t he? Something that you should stop.’

‘Probably,
but as we don’t have the faintest idea of what this might be, I don’t see what
we can do about it.’

‘Oh,’
said Tuppe. ‘Fair enough then, so what
are
we up to? Or did I already
ask that?’

‘We’re
going on holiday,’ said Cornelius. ‘The zip shouldn’t be at the back of these
trousers, should it?’

‘Look
out for that baker carrying the huge tray of custard pies,’ said Tuppe.

Cornelius
swerved around the baker, narrowly avoiding a bumper-to-bum incident, leading
to tray displacement, wide area custard pie dispersal, innocent passer-by
facial impact and crap slap-stick comic cliché situation.

‘Holiday?’
asked Tuppe.

‘To
Skelington Bay,’ said the tall boy. ‘These aren’t my trousers. These are your
trousers — they’re up past my knees.’

‘You’re
dad’s on his way to Skelington Bay,’ said Tuppe. ‘Fancy you choosing
that
town.
What a coincidence.’

‘We
shall take seaside jobs,’ said Cornelius, wrestling with his groin.

‘Jobs?
What are you saying?’

‘The
fake magistrate has frozen my assets.’

‘Sounds
very painful.’

‘I
shall pretend I didn’t hear that. But we are broke once again. The millions are
no more. We’re back on the road.’

‘Just
the way it should be. Shall I turn up the radio full blast and see what happens
next?’

‘Do
it,’ said Cornelius Murphy. ‘I’ll just pull over and pick up those two girl
hitchhikers. Once I’ve made myself decent. Do you have a pair of scissors, or
something?’

They were beautiful girls,
the hitchhikers. Tanned legs, blond hair, bloom of youth on their cheeks,
high-profile nipple definition in the upper T-shirt areas. An old man’s dream
and a young man’s fancy. Political correctness? Who gives a toss?

‘Can we
give you a lift?’ asked Cornelius.

‘Sure
thing,’ said a slender beauty. ‘We’re going south.’

‘Us
too, hop in.’

The
slender beauty and her equally slender and beauteous companion tossed their
rucksacks into the back and took to hopping in.

‘My
name’s Thelma,’ said beauty number one. ‘And this is my friend Louise.’

‘Cornelius
Murphy,’ said the tall boy, battening down his hair.

‘This
is some great car,’ said Louise.

‘We
like it,’ said Tuppe.

‘Who
said that?’

‘I
did.’

‘Oh,
I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.’

‘Cornelius?’
said Tuppe.

‘Yes,
my friend?’

‘Cornelius,
I would like to put in for a discontinuance of the “I didn’t see you there”
running gag. I fear it might seriously interfere with my sex life.’

‘It’s
dropped as far as I’m concerned,’ said the Murphy. ‘We’re rockin’ and rollin’
now.’

‘I was
only joking,’ said Louise. ‘You’re very cute as it happens.’

‘So,’
said Tuppe, as the Cadillac sped along and left all of London far behind, ‘what
do you ladies do with yourselves when you’re not hitching rides?’

‘We
fly,’ said Louise.

‘You’re
air stewardesses?’ Tuppe asked.

‘No, we
fly,’ said Thelma. ‘We’re angels.’

‘Cornelius,’
whispered Tuppe, ‘we’ve loonies on board.’

‘Not
real angels,’ said Louise. ‘We’re entering the east pier man-powered flight
competition at Skelington Bay.’

‘Fancy
that, because we’re going—’