The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01] Page 4

  They passed Sir Giles, whose face was scarlet. The old soldiers fell back to either side, lowering their weapons. There was a clear route out of The Laurels.

  Jeperson seemed to glide across the carpet, eyes still shut, still radiating noise. The hum was wavering.

  “Stop them,” shouted Sir Giles.

  A rifle was raised, its barrel-end dragging up Fred’s leg. Without thinking, he knocked the gun aside and shoved its owner—the chinless ARP man—backwards.

  They were on the porch of The Laurels.

  Vanessa was in the Rolls, turning over the engine.

  Someone fired a wild shot, into the air.

  The humming snapped off and Jeperson stumbled. Fred caught him, and sensed that all the strength had gone out of the man. He helped him into the car.

  “You don’t understand,” shouted Sir Giles. “It’s for the best.”

  “Drive,” breathed Jeperson.

  Fred pulled the car door closed. A gun went off. He saw the muzzle-flash. He looked out of the window, and something struck the pane, making him go cross-eyed. He should have been shot in the face, but the round was stopped in a web of cracks.

  “Bulletproof glass,” Vanessa said.

  “Thank God for that,” Fred said.

  He was shaking.

  Sir Giles’ men didn’t waste any more ammunition. The Rolls pulled away, down Raleigh Road.

  Jeperson sprawled on the seat, exhausted. He seemed thinner, less substantial. Whatever resource he had summoned up was spent, and its exercise had taken a toll.

  “What was that all about?” Fred asked.

  “We’re on our own,” Jeperson croaked.

  * * * *

  The ShadowShark wasn’t easy to hide, so they just parked it in the open and walked away. Of course, the three of them were also pretty difficult to miss. As they walked back towards the front, Fred had a sense that the whole town was watching them from behind their blackout curtains, and that Sir Giles’ Committee knew exactly where their three troublemakers were. More old soldiers would be despatched after them.

  Jeperson had needed to be supported for a while but soon got his strength back.

  “Giles couldn’t have managed anything on this scale on his own,” he said. “He must have a powerful source somewhere. But not a first-rate one. The casting isn’t pure, or we’d have been absorbed at once.”

  Fred understood maybe one word in three.

  Vanessa didn’t ask questions. He decided just to go along with it all.

  “At first I thought it was your pier, but Giles’ Committee hadn’t reckoned on whatever you ran into. Whatever they’ve done here hasn’t taken in the way they hoped.”

  They were in the middle of the dark town.

  “Fred, I’m afraid we’re going to have to go to the pier.”

  He had known it would come. So much else had got in the way, so much else that was impossible to follow, that he had almost put it out of his mind.

  Now it hit him again.

  There were monsters.

  “Maybe we can get to the bottom of it all by morning.”

  They were on the front. The pier was in sight.

  * * * *

  Because of the lack of street lighting, it was easy to creep up on the pier. A checkpoint was set up by the turnstile. Three men in uniform manned the point. Barbed wire was strung around the admissions booth. The soldiers were smoking cigarettes. From somewhere, Vera Lynn sang “We’ll Meet Again.”

  An aeroplane whine sounded overhead.

  There was a shrill whistle.

  “An air raid,” Jeperson said. “I doubt if that was part of the intended casting. It just came along with the package.”

  A plane flew in from the channel, a dark shape against black clouds, pregnant with bombs.

  Jeperson signalled that they should proceed.

  Fred tried to think away the painful tightness in his gut. If Jeperson and Vanessa weren’t afraid, he shouldn’t be. Of course, they hadn’t been here before.

  A column of fire rose from up among the villas. It burned his eyes. Then the sound of the explosion hit. It was strong enough to make him stagger.

  They walked rapidly towards the checkpoint.

  The soldiers were craning, looking up at the fire.

  “Jerry blighter,” one sneered.

  “Our ack-ack’ll bring him down,” his mate said.

  As if in reply, the crump of ground guns sounded. The earth was shaking. There were shellbursts in the sky, silhouetting the plane.

  Fred was surprised by the soldiers’ faces.

  They were not old, like the men at the villa. They were young, familiar. The three yobs from the Jolly Glutton. Rupert still had his yellow scarf tucked into the neck of his khaki jacket. Twitch was sucking on his cigarette, eye in motion. Shoulders awkwardly unslung his rifle.

  “Who goes there?” he barked.

  Vanessa stepped forwards.

  “Remember me?”

  “It’s a dangerous night to be out, miss,” said Rupert Scarf, politely. “Best get down in the shelters.”

  “Are you in the theatre?” Twitch asked, looking at her legs.

  The three didn’t remember Vanessa. Fred thought they might not remember their own names, whatever they were.

  “We’re with the Ministry,” Jeperson said, holding out a folded newspaper picked from a rubbish bin.

  Rupert Scarf took the paper and looked at it.

  Jeperson hummed again, a different pitch. Rupert Scarf looked at the paper and at their faces.

  “All in order, sir,” he said, smiling, saluting.

  Jeperson took back the paper and tucked it under his arm.

  “Let’s take a look at the problem then, shall we?” he said. “If you could let us through.”

  The three smartly dismantled the barrier.

  “Shan’t be a jiffy,” Jeperson said, stepping onto the pier.

  Fred looked at the Emporium, dimly outlined at the end of the promenade. Its glass roof had a slight greenish glow. He had a “Go Back Now” feeling.

  “Are you coming?” Vanessa asked.

  “Yes,” Fred said, resolving.

  They strolled towards the Emporium.

  * * * *

  “It feels as if we’re miles from the shore,” Jeperson said.

  He was right. Fred looked back. The fire up in the villas was under control. The bomber seemed to be gone. There was still a flicker from where the bomb had fallen.

  “What about those skinheads?” Fred asked.

  “Caught up in the casting. Weak minds are prone to that. It’s like a psychic press-gang. It turns people into costume extras.”

  “I can’t say I miss the old versions.”

  The sea sounded beneath them. An ancient susurrus.

  The pier was such a fragile thing, an umbilicus connected to the shore.

  Fred had to overcome an urge to bolt back.

  “This is definitely it,” Jeperson said. “The flaw in the pattern. You can feel the atoms whirling the wrong way.”

  Vanessa nodded.

  They were at the Emporium. There was the dent where Ingraham had kicked. And the pane Jaffa had smashed. If it were daylight, he was sure he’d see the scorch-trail Jaffa left before he went over the side.

  “I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I?” Jeperson said, reaching in through the broken pane, opening the door. “Excelsior.”

  Fred looked into the darkness. He followed Jeperson and Vanessa inside.

  * * * *

  “Someone’s cleared up,” he said. “There should be bodies all over the place.”

  Vanessa had a slim torch. She played light around the space. There were scrubbed and bleached patches on the floor. And some of the exhibits were under dust-sheets.

  Jeperson looked at the storm-trooper poster.

  “It’s all to do with the war,” he said.

  “Even I’d worked that out,” Fred said. “It’s been a while since anyone bombed the
South Coast from the air.”

  “A lot of people liked the war,” Jeperson said, scratching his wrist. “I don’t think I did, though. I can’t actually remember much of it. But it wasn’t anything I’d want to bring back.”

  “I can understand that.”

  Vanessa ran torchlight across the exhibits. She spotlit a display Fred hadn’t noticed on his first visit. It was a set of caricature figures of Hitler, Goebbels and Mussolini. Hitler was child-sized and cut off at the waist, Goebbels a rat-bodied pet in Hitler’s top pocket, and Mussolini a towering fat clown with an apple-sized red head and a conical Punchinello hat.

  “These fellows, for instance,” Jeperson said. “I don’t miss them one bit.”

  Hitler’s mask crinkled in a scowl as its wearer escaped from the display. The creature walked very rapidly on its hands, detaching itself from the base. It was a legless torso.

  Half-Hitler brushed past Vanessa, screeching, and slid through a panel. It had left Rat-Goebbels behind, rodent feet curled up, horrid little eyes glittering.

  Man Mountain Mussolini quivered, a ton of jelly poured into a barrage balloon-uniform. His belly rumbled, and a falsetto laugh emerged from his circular lipsticky mouth.

  Fred looked around. Vanessa moved the torchlight. Panels were sliding upwards. Boots shone. Black jackboots. Then grey-uniformed knees. There were half a dozen panels. Behind them were men—mannequins?—in Nazi uniform.

  Rat-Goebbels right-sided himself and scurried towards a pair of boots, nestling between them like an affectionate pet.

  The panels were above leather belts. Swastikas and Iron Crosses showed on grey chests. Luger pistols and Schmeisser machine guns were pointed.

  Man Mountain Mussolini, still laughing like a eunuch, rolled back and forth on his belly. His legs were normal-sized, useless with his gut-bulk, stuck out of his egg-shaped body like broken tree-branches.

  Faces showed. Faces Fred knew. The Boys. Jaffa’s nose was smudged with soot, his cheeks burned to the bone, his eyes dead under the rim of his storm-trooper helmet. The others were similarly transformed. Ingraham in an SS uniform, Doggo a regular soldier. Oscar’s face was crudely stitched back on, forehead sewn to his Afrika Corps cap, skin hanging slack like a cloth mask.

  Half-Hitler advanced from between two rows of Nazi skins, using its arms like crutches, inching forwards its truncated torso. Its face was not a mask, but coated in a transparent fungus that exaggerated the familiar features. The homunculus set itself down and crossed its arms, tottering back and forth a little. The storm-troopers snapped off perfect Nazi salutes.

  “Seig Heil,” they shouted, “Heil Hitler.”

  “You’ll excuse me if I don’t respond in kind,” Jeperson said. “But I could never stand you, you little sneak.”

  He drew back his banana boot as if converting a rugby try and kicked Half-Hitler in the face. The diminishedFührer tipped over backwards, outsize hands slapping the floor, and overturned completely like a chimpanzee on a trapeze, winding up facedown and arms flailed out.

  Safety catches clicked off. Guns fired.

  * * * *

  He grabbed Vanessa round the waist and threw himself at the floor. Together, they rolled behind the row of penny-in-the-slot machines, inches ahead of the line of bullet-pocks that raked the floorboards.

  The space was too enclosed for the Nazi zombies to get much accurate use of their guns. Bullets ricocheted and spanged around. Doggo took a hole in his face and staggered back. Black goo leaked from inside him, but he wasn’t seriously hurt.

  Ingraham kicked aside the penny-in-the-slot machines.

  Fred tried to put his hands up.

  Ingraham raised his Luger.

  The gun writhed. Its metal parts contracted as if the mechanism were about to sneeze. It was partly a gun, but infused with the life of a small rodent.

  The gun-thing coughed. Fire belched. Slow enough to see, a bullet squeezed out of the barrel and sped towards them, a blob of flaming jelly.

  It spattered against his chest, stinging through his shirt. He brushed the fiery glop away, feeling the flames curling around his fingers, and scraped it off on to the floor.

  Ingraham’s pistol growled at them.

  Jaffa came over. He held Jeperson by one arm twisted playground-bully-style up behind his back. A silver-bladed dagger was held at Jeperson’s throat, steel quivering with a life of its own. The zombie indicated Fred and Vanessa should surrender. Fred stood up, trying to keep his body in front of Vanessa.

  Jaffa smiled. His burned lips made an expression Fred remembered from when the Nazi was King Skin.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you, Kevin?”

  In the burned-out eyes anger glowed.

  Half-Hitler scuttled over, and bit Jeperson’s leg like a terrier. Its teeth couldn’t get through the banana boot.

  At a nod from the Führer, Fred was pulled away. The Nazi homunculus looked Vanessa over, little black eyes excited. She tried not to show disgust.

  “Eva,” Half-Hitler breathed, besotted.

  Man Mountain Mussolini rolled over to look. Other fascist freaks came out of the shadows. A pig-faced Goering, warty wings folded over his Luftwaffe tunic. Himmler-and-Hess Siamese twins, joined at the waist, heiling with all available arms. A snake-bodied, fork-tongued Martin Bormann. An armoured Rommel, bony tank-plates coating his body, desert camouflage smearing his face. A werewolf Heydrich, cheeks and hands pierced by dozens of hooks.

  They all gathered, looking at Vanessa.

  Half-Hitler crawled around her legs, as if inspecting a horse. Vanessa looked down at the little creep. It retreated and barked an order.

  The Nazi Boys raised their machine-guns. Fred opened his mouth to protest. Guns chattered, pouring liquid fire out of hosepipe barrels. It washed against Vanessa, burning swatches of her clothing, hanging around her hair.

  Where the fire burned, she was transformed. A cloak of flame enveloped her. White boots became black. Straps grew around her chest. A jeweled swastika hung at her throat. Her hair, a living thing, coiled into a braid, clinging to the back of her head like a cap. She twisted as she turned, resisting the metamorphosis, but the zombies kept pouring the changing fire at her.

  Half-Hitler’s eyes shone.

  The light went out in Vanessa’s face. The flame fell away from her. She was the same woman, but turned into a Nazi pin-up.

  Jeperson was mumbling furiously, trying to call up some counter-charm.

  Half-Hitler gave another order.

  Eva-Vanessa uncoiled a short whip and struck Jeperson in the face, breaking his concentration. The Nazi monsters laughed. Jeperson went limp, and Jaffa dropped him.

  Half-Hitler jumped up and down on its waist-stump, chortling with glee. Eva-Vanessa picked it up as if it were a child, and hugged it. They kissed. Fred felt sick.

  “Today the pier,” Goebbels snickered; “tomorrow the world.”

  Jeperson got up onto his knees. As he fell, he had snatched something from Jaffa’s belt. Now he opened his hand. It was a grenade. He opened his other hand. There was the pin.

  Time froze.

  Then everyone was scrambling out of the way.

  Jeperson let the grenade roll on the floor.

  Fred was kicked about by Nazi boots. He found himself behind the execution machines again.

  The grenade didn’t so much explode as suck light and matter in from all around. It gathered into a heavy black ball and fell through the floor.

  Fred saw the dark sea frothing below. Jeperson stood over the lip of the hole and stepped into it, plunging towards the water.

  Gunfire raked the room.

  Fred followed Jeperson, without thinking.

  He tumbled badly and hit the sea as if it were a tossing sheet of iron. Cold water slammed him in the face and tried to shove him under.

  * * * *

  He woke up on the beach, with water being forced out of his lungs. His mouth was full of the sick taste of too much salt. And he was as cold as he
had ever been, racked with spasms of shivering.

  “Welcome back,” Jeperson said. “Thought you’d upped stumps for a minute.”