Watching the Wheels Come Off (18 page)

M
ark, striding purposefully towards Springer’s office, stops when he hears his name called. He turns in a daze to see Harvey manning the reception desk.

‘Not now, Harvey.’

‘It’s important. A message from a Mr Snazell.’

‘That little shit!’ Mark turns an angry red. ‘Where is that fucking bastard?’

‘Room 11. He says go on up.’

‘Does he, now.’

Mark takes the stairs three at a time.

A
Do Not Disturb
sign dangles from the door handle of Room 11. Mark pauses to recover his breath before knocking.

‘Snazell?’

There’s no answer.

He knocks louder.

‘Snazell, are you in there?’

Silence.

He tries the door and it opens. He enters cautiously, closing the door quietly behind him. The curtains are drawn so it takes him a moment to adjust to the darkness. A crack of light comes from under the bathroom door.

‘Snazell? Are you in there?’

‘Out in a jiffy, Mr Miles. Sorry about this, but nature must take its course.’

‘If it’s a laxative you need, I’m your man.’

‘Even seeing
you
won’t help. I’ve eaten nothing but sandwiches these past few days.’

Mark eases back the curtains till light pours into the room. The dressing table and desk are stacked with recording equipment. It’s sophisticated state-of-the-art stuff. There are radio receivers, back-up recorders, spare miniature microphones, a tangle of leads with each source identified on gaffer tape. Several pairs of headphones lie on the back of the chair facing the desk.

‘Shit!’

Mark feels like he’s sleepwalking. He sees a stack of used tapes, neatly numbered and packaged, lying on the bed. Beside them is Snazell’s handgun with the silencer fitted. Mark’s hand hovers above it, fearful of touching it, yet, as the anger swells up inside him, sorely tempted to pick it up and use it.

‘You bastard! You set me up, didn’t you?’

‘Afraid so,’ says Snazell, breezily.

‘Was Reg in on it?’

‘Of course not. Don’t be so paranoid, Mark.’

‘Paranoid? Even Sigmund Freud would be paranoid if he’d been through what I’ve been through, you arsehole.’

‘Language, Mark. Remember what I said about coarse language?’

‘Fuck you!’

Mark’s hand touches the gun, then pulls back sharply, as if scalded.

‘What about Reg’s brother-in-law? He was certainly in on it. Presumably you paid that fucking gorilla to finger me?’

‘Absolutely correct.’

Mark is almost crying as he trawls through the events that have brought him to this room. He peers at the gun through welling tears, hardly believing that he’s ever thought of using it. Choking on his own embarrassing contribution to this farce, he still can’t comprehend its
raison d’être
.

‘Why me?’

‘Because you, Mark Miles, have the personality of a windsock.’

‘Thank you.’

‘And someone had to do it.’

‘Do what?’

‘Expose Herman and his monstrous Institute.’ Snazell chuckles: ‘It certainly wasn’t going to be
me
. If you check that ridiculous name tag around your neck, you’ll see there’s a microphone stuck to the chain.’

Mark does, and there it is, just the size of a full-stop.

‘It amused me, using your tag to tag you.’

‘You shit!’

‘Don’t be like that, Mark. Put it down to experience. After all, your name will be in all the newspapers. You’ll be the man who uncovered two deaths, possibly murders, while attending, of all things, a
self-improvement
course. The media will love it. You’ll be famous, which is what you’ve always wanted. The telly talk-shows will be clamouring for you.’

Mark reels. He should have known the
raison d’être
was money. It usually is.

‘My God, you’ll sell the story. You’ll clean up.’

‘Too right, I will.’

‘What’s in for me?

‘A nice onyx and marble mantel clock with a
battery-operated
pendulum.’

Snazell is laughing so much that Mark doesn’t hear the first knock. The second he does hear – and Biff’s voice coming from the corridor: ‘Mr Snazell?’ Mark freezes, grabs the package of tapes, darts into the bathroom, slams and locks the door.

Squatting on the lavatory seat is Snazell, content as a broody hen. He lets out a furious squawk when he sees Mark. ‘You dirty pervert!’

Mark claps his hand over the man’s mouth, whispering in his ear: ‘Shut the fuck up for Christ’s sake. Biff and the others are out there.’

They hear Biff knock again.

‘Mr Snazell? Is Mark Miles in there with you? The hall porter says he is, Mr Snazell.’

Biff tries the door and it opens. Snazell and Mark listen as the instructors case the room uttering expletives.

‘Herman had better see this,’ says Randy.

‘I’ll go get him,’ says Rip.

The door on to the corridor opens and closes.

‘Shit, Biff, see that .32 on the bed?’

Sounds of the gun being cracked open and the cylinder spun percolate into the bathroom.

‘Loaded. What shit is this guy Snazell into?’

‘There are no goddamn tapes here, Biff. He must have them with him,’ says Randy.

Somebody tries the bathroom door. It won’t open.

‘Okay, come out, Mr Snazell.’

Silence.

Then the pummelling begins.

The door groans and creaks but doesn’t succumb. Snazell is beside himself with indignation, yelling with unexpected force: ‘Is there no such thing as privacy any more?’

Mark throws open the frosted window by the bathtub: ‘Let’s go.’

Although alarmed, Snazell doesn’t budge: ‘I haven’t finished yet. You know you should never force it.’

The ruckus suddenly ceases and an eerie calm follows. They both look at the door.

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Whoosh!

Three small holes appear around the lock. Water spurts from the cistern as Snazell slumps forward.

Mark gasps: ‘Oh shit!’ which seems somewhat
inappropriate. He watches, horrified, as Snazell topples from the toilet. The triple puncturing of his torso is now clearly visible.

Biff uses his shoulder to sever the door from the lock, but Snazell’s stocky body prevents the door from opening fully. Biff’s face, purple with rage, glares at Mark through the gap as he climbs out of the window on to a narrow ledge and sidles away.

Celia Cox is brushing her blind husband’s hair. She does it every night before dinner. Reflected in the
dressing-table
mirror, she’s startled to see a man appear behind her. At first she thinks he’s actually in the room, and only when she turns does she realise that he’s right outside the window.

Mark, clutching the tapes, is balanced precariously on the sill. Years ago, he’d paid a hypnotist to cure his vertigo. It hadn’t worked, although, curiously enough, he did stop smoking. With nothing to grip, Mark is literally petrified, barely able to tap the window pane and encourage Celia to open up. Sadly for him, Celia is a no-nonsense person when dealing with tradesman: polite but firm, she says, ‘Not today, thank you.’

And she closes the curtains.

Two chambermaids prepare a guest’s room for the night, drawing the curtains, folding away the coverlet, turning back the top sheet and placing a chocolate on the pillow.

Outside, Mark, clinging to the wall like a barnacle, finally reaches the darkened window. He manages to grip an adjacent downpipe. It creaks and a shower of rust breaks away as he slowly bends to stash the tapes on the ledge, before trying to lift the frame. It won’t budge.

The chambermaids stop chattering and listen.

‘What was that, Edina?’

Edina opens the curtains. Light from the room floods on to a blurred falling figure. The figure’s fingers clutch momentarily at the sill before they, too, slip away in the direction of the esplanade below.

‘Who was that?’ says Edina.

‘Don’t know. He was off like sodding Batman.’

‘You don’t think it was…?’ She pauses so they can say it together: ‘…the Phantom Fornicator?’

Both rush to the window and throw it open.

‘I saw him first.’

Looking down they can see the same figure clinging to the Personal Improvement Institute banner which is still stretched above the hotel entrance. They watch
open-mouthed
, like kids at the circus. It’s then that Edina notices the sound tapes resting on the sill, picks them up and examines them.

‘Probably his memoirs.’

It’s some time before Mark realises he’s dangling plum in the centre of the word ‘Personal’. Desperate to take the weight off his arms, he kicks his legs towards ‘Improvement’, in an attempt to piggyback the banner. He fails.

An unpleasant growl adds to his misfortune. Randy waits below, like an angry bulldog.

‘Come on, sweetheart. Come to baby.’

His tattooed arms are beckoning.

Mark again tries to propel himself up and over. This time the rope at one end parts company from the ring clamped in the wall. Gravity now takes charge: Mark swings, pirate-fashion, into Randy. The stunned instructor goes over like a skittle, rolling down on to the esplanade.

Touching down gracefully on the steps, Mark calculates that even with Randy still lying sprawled on the pavement, his escape route towards the town is cut off. He runs back into the hotel foyer, only to find Herman, Biff and Rip coming down the staircase. Veering away from them, he piles into the Resident’s Lounge.

Afternoon tea is being served so the lounge is full.

Every seat is taken.

Heads, shrivelled and lined like old apples, rest against every antimacassar in the room. These guests literally come out of the woodwork at teatime. Mark can see Temple and his instructors conferring in the foyer and realises that only a bold gesture will save him.

He moves to the centre of the lounge and screams: ‘Murder!’

There’s no reaction.

It’s as if they’re all hard of hearing and, indeed, most of them are. An agitated head waiter, new to the job and unaware that the lunatic in their midst is the hotel’s marketing director, hurries across, but not before Mark shouts again: ‘Wake up, for fuck’s sake!’

That does the trick.

The f-word still registers on the Richter scale with this generation. So he lets them have some more, at the top of his voice: ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’

It’s like waking the dead.

Major Jellicoe’s monocle falls with a loud plop into his cup of tea. Harvey, now waiting on Madge Trafalgar, looks around at the commotion and inadvertently pours milk into her lap. She screams and jerks her mechanised wheelchair into reverse. It careers off at speed, sending tables flying and causing Freddie Mason, a retired judge, to suffer a heart attack. His face plummets into a plate of trifle and stays there. Jellicoe lets out a savage cry as the wheelchair careers over his desert boots, while the head waiter, now distracted from apprehending Mark, trips over Lucy Turret’s stick and collides with the cakes-and-dessert trolley. This vehicle now takes off at speed. It heads straight for the swing-doors just as a late arrival opens one, stands aside in astonishment and watches it sail out into the foyer.

The jellies and blancmanges ripple as the trolley rolls past Temple, Biff, Randy and Rip, all standing in the foyer. The quartet are as still as a display in a wax museum. A porter, unaware of the approaching puddings, opens the front door to welcome a guest. This accidental choreography is like that
of a silent movie. The trolley passes neatly through the open door, and bounces down the steps on to the esplanade.

The trolley finally comes to a rest in front of a weather shelter. Inside sits a tramp with a white shovel-shaped beard. He lowers his tattered newspaper and can’t believe his eyes.

Nor can Ace, watching from his office.

He begins to shake, not just his hands but all over, when he sees the tramp stick a dirty finger into a towering gateau and lick it. Springer sinks his latest brandy, wondering if this heralds the onset of delirium tremens. ‘Steady on, old boy.’

If he retains any doubts, they’re blown away when Avril bursts into the office, screaming: ‘For Christ’s sake, get the police! Number 11’s been murdered.’

The tramp scoops a large piece of cake into his mouth and idly looks out to sea. Unnoticed by him, three liquorice-black Cadillacs with mirror windows, returning from London to collect ‘Dr Temple and Party’, glide on to the far end of the esplanade and proceed towards the Grand Atlantic Hotel.

T
he atmosphere, after Herman and his platoon leave the Dining Room, is one of desolation. The students look stunned. Some hold their head in their hands; others contemplate the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean and think they can see, on the horizon, the tip of the torch of the Statue of Liberty.

It’s only a mirage and they know it.

Alice sits in a catatonic state, unchecked tears pouring down her carefully blushed cheeks, her dream of becoming the fourth Mrs Temple on hold while she considers her next move. Loreen and Marjorie watch her closely, trying to look concerned but unable to contain the delight bubbling in their eyes.

‘Alice ain’t in Wonderland no longer,’ whispers Loreen.

‘Shame. She’d have made such a lovely First Lady,’ whispers Marjorie.

Unfazed by recent revelations, Roger Buckle finishes off a third helping of trifle. Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he stands up, lovingly rubs his belly and guffaws: ‘Hey, everybody, I feel
personally
improved – and that’s the
truth
.’ His Falstaffian laugh shatters the dam of built-up resentment and recrimination.

‘Shut up, fatty.’

‘You
haven’t
fucking improved.’

‘Have
any
of us?’

‘Why did we come on this dumb course, anyway?’

‘They told me I was like “an oil field with vast hidden reserves of success-power lying untapped”.’ Several students recognise the pitch. They nod their heads, muttering the mantra like pilgrims: ‘Success-power!’

‘They said you can’t expect to just “stumble” on these hidden reserves.’ The same students collectively chime in: ‘“You need expert guidance.”’

Silence.

They look lost and confused.

‘You don’t think we’ve been indoctrinated, do you?’

‘You mean like suicide bombers?’

‘If we have, how would we know it?’

Paranoia takes them into its sweaty hands. Suspicious eyes dart about like fireflies, never stopping anywhere long enough for fear of revealing that they were, in fact, programmed to some alien channel.

Silence again.

Roger, back at the buffet, calls over his shoulder: ‘What the hell got into us?’ He’s piling some cake remnants on to his plate, when Alice bangs the table.

‘You wanna know what got into you, Buckle, you fat lump? Herman P. Temple got into you.’ She stands up, roughly wipes the tears away and stares at Loreen and
Marjorie. ‘And I want you two bitches to know Herman sure didn’t get
into
me!’

Loreen and Marjorie, initially taken aback, explode with laughter. Alice ignores them as she strides towards the foyer. She’s still convinced it’s all a mistake.

It must be.

Herman is briefing his men as she approaches.

‘Herman, we have to talk.’

‘No, we don’t,’ snaps Herman. ‘Right now I got more important things to do, sweetheart.’

Mark, watching every move from the Lounge, sees Herman involved with Alice and decides to make his move. He runs past them to the revolving doors, which spin him out on to the esplanade. Biff and Randy start to give chase but Temple stops them.

‘Forget him. Bring the cars to the back. Load our friend Snazell into the casket. We’ll dump him on the way to the airport.’

‘Wally’s already in the casket, boss,’ says Biff.

‘Then find a laundry basket.’

Biff, Randy and Rip make off, leaving Herman and Alice alone. She’s distressed and angry as the truth bites closer to the bone. ‘Herman, I put myself on the line for you about Claudio. I lied to save you the embarrassment of having to explain his death. And you promised never to crucify another student. You promised me, Herman.
You promised that, from then on, the cross was only for display purposes.’

‘Honey, it wasn’t me. Biff and the boys did it while I was indisposed, remember?’

Alice stamps her foot with rage. ‘Why didn’t you tell me Wally Straw had died? And who the hell is this Snazell? My God, it’s like working in a mortuary.’

Uncontrollable tears start to run down the courses already cut into her make-up. Herman’s torn between soothing her and escaping. ‘Not now, honey-pie. We have to move on.’ She stares at him like a little girl who’s just been touched up by Father Christmas.

‘Herman, I
believed
in you.’

‘Of course you did, sugar. And rightly so. Don’t you realise it’s Satan up to his old tricks again? Satan is just testing your belief in me. That’s why it’s imperative we get out of here. Other flocks are waiting for us, Alice.’

He takes her hand, but she pulls it away. Her eyes are popping out with incredulity. ‘You don’t really think people are going to fall for your stuff again? Not when all those stiffs start to surface?’

Temple turns on her, outraged, indignant, hurt at her lack of faith.

‘Are you kidding? Look at all those preachers on TV. They get caught fucking hookers, embezzling, using drugs – you name it, right? Within days they’re back on the zombie box creaming contributions from their congregations. Right? Alice, sweetheart, people like what I have to say. They believe in me. We’ll come up
with a different name, and start all over. Like the Nazis did.’

Alice’s tears have dried up along with her dreams.

‘Not with me, you won’t!’

She swings away from him like a drum majorette, sexed-up and proud. Okay, so she’ll have to go back to being a dental assistant or airline cabin staff, or maybe she’ll become a lap dancer. Why not? She likes driving men crazy. Revenge is a dish to be eaten
hot
.

It’s Temple’s turn to weep, as he watches her beautiful, bouncy butt retreat. And his tears are genuine, for once. He knows he’ll never find another woman with such perfect specifications as a sex object.

Alice Honey is no airbrush job. She’s real: exactly what every red-blooded American male is conditioned to desire.

He can’t let her go that easily. ‘Alice, they need us. Jesus Christ, we’re the
leaders
, remember? Alice! Alice! You’re walking out on the next President of the United States of America.’

‘Up yours, Herman.’

She doesn’t even look back.

The only thing he remembers of her departure is her index finger.

Mark is still running.

The esplanade is crowded with people taking the air on this crisp, sunny Sunday evening. Dodging and weaving, he
looks back several times but can’t see his pursuers among the promenaders. Scared witless and not taking any chances, he doesn’t let up until he hears the approaching police cars. A slew of them, tyres squealing and sirens screaming, speed past him towards the Grand Atlantic Hotel.

Mark reaches the farthest point of the esplanade. There are no buildings and no people. His throat is burning, his lungs bursting, his heart pumping, his body sweating. He collapses on to a wrought-iron bench.

Looking up, he yells at the clear blue sky. ‘Jesus, I’m not even worth following.’

And he laughs like a madman.

Unaware of the drama being played out in the foyer, Celia Cox and her blind husband sit in the Lounge in their usual armchairs facing the sea. While waiting for the dinner gong she reads, as always, from his favourite book: ‘“And who are you?” asked the Caterpillar.”’ A cacophony of police sirens draw closer but Celia never falters: ‘“Alice replied: I hardly know, sir, just at present – at least I know who I was this morning, but I think I must have changed several times since then.”’

Even Celia has to look up when the police cars slam on their brakes at the entrance to the hotel. Smoke and the smell of burning rubber waft through the open windows.

Mark walks determinedly back towards the Grand Atlantic. With the police now on the case, he feels safe, excited even. He’s anxious to retrieve those tapes from the windowsill. Like Snazell said, they could be the key to a financial killing. He idly wonders if he should edit out the sex scene with him and Jack Lovett, but decides against tampering with evidence.

His mind is dancing again.

It abruptly performs a perfect jeté when he spots three Cadillacs proceeding at speed along the esplanade towards him. It’s like a horrible mirage. He flings himself over the railings on to the beach, head down, scared that they’ve seen him, listening lest they stop.

They don’t.

He hears the three cars swish past in quick succession.

Sitting up, he brushes sand off his hands and face. It is then he notices the waves breaking over some object a stone’s throw out at sea. He knows it isn’t a rock, having spent much of his childhood on this beach. Mark stands up to get a better view, but is again instantly distracted. The sound of police sirens starts up at the other end of the esplanade, by the Grand Atlantic, and it careers closer and closer. He watches the cars grow from small dots to large thundering projectiles, flashing blue streaks of light as they hurtle past. The sight strangely moves him. For the first time since he was a small boy, he feels proud to be British.

When he turns back to the object disturbing the wave pattern, his heart gives a leap. It looks like the top of a trunk but he can’t be certain. A small, dark cumulus cloud
briefly obscures the sun. When it clears there’s a sudden flash of gold. It’s a stencilled RT on the lid of a trunk.

The
trunk.

Mark crashes into the water, ploughing his way towards it. The tide is coming in fast and he has to struggle to keep going. Reaching it, he closes his eyes and starts praying, before looking down. The lock lies open: even so he feels sick. He shivers fearfully, muttering madly to himself. ‘Dear God, may he
not
be inside it.’

His hands shake as he rests them on the lid. Taking a deep breath he flings it open and peers inside. His cry rends the heavens, soars above the sound of the waves, rings across the beach, time and time again. His gales of relieved laughter break like squalls among the seagulls circling above. Inside the trunk there’s only a canvas bag, a padlock and a length of chain.

Marks looks up at the blue sky and hears Reg’s voice carried in from the ocean by the wind. It must have circled the planet many times since he’d tempted fate with his immersion in the Atlantic Ocean:
‘Bind me in your strongest chains. Lock me in your strongest prison. Strip me naked. Search my body. I will escape. For no power on earth can hold me!’

Reg was right.

He had escaped.

But so had
he
, Mark Miles. He knows that he’s just been blessed with the mysterious mark of celebrity. Like that famous finger on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, it has come to rest on him. Within hours he’ll be on every
television network, radio station, website, and in every newspaper and magazine. He can now market
himself
, make that elusive fortune.

He can start again.

With a brand new accent.

Walking back along the beach is, for Mark, like the last scene in a movie. The hero silhouetted against the skyline, footsteps in the sand, clouds scudding overhead. He can even hear the music, mawkish and treacly – music composed to wring tears from audiences, music laced with that sentimentality peculiar to the cinema, and much treasured in box offices around the world.

As Mark approaches the Grand Atlantic Hotel he sees Alice Honey, hidden behind massive black shades and a cloche hat, hurrying to a taxi. He waits for his heart to miss a beat, but it doesn’t. Even his cock shows no sign of interest. The taxi pulls away.

He’s in such a daze, he hasn’t noticed how deserted the esplanade is. The crowds previously there, when he left in such a panic, are now on the beach looking out at something floating in the sea. Two people have waded out and are pulling it in,
whatever it is
.

By the time he reaches the arc of onlookers and eases himself close to the front,
whatever it is
has been dragged on to the shore. His first glimpse of
whatever
it is
only happens when people at the front turn away in horror and a gap between them opens.

Mark sees a human arm, deathly white and bloated, with elaborate tattoos stretched obscenely out of shape.
He thinks he recognises them. Somebody else up front moves aside and he knows that he
does
recognise them. This fresh gap has revealed Reg Turpin’s disintegrating face. Through the eye sockets, tiny crustaceans wave their limbs as if saying goodbye.

Mark slams his eyes shut, reeling away in disgust, fighting his way through the crowd, running across the beach. He starts to retch, seemingly forever. When the bile runs out and the pain subsides, he collapses on to the sand, sobbing. Sobbing is not unusual for Mark. What
is
unusual is that he’s not sobbing for himself. For the first time in his life he’s sobbing for everybody else: Reg, Ursula, Wally, Alice, Buckle, Snipe, Ace, Avril, his mother… even for Snazell, Hare, Biff, Randy, Rip and Temple. He’s sobbing for the whole human race.

Mark knows his maggot is already at work. He also knows that there is one inescapable fact:
one reality that even his maggot cannot eliminate
. He buries his head in the sand to stifle the scream that comes along with this awful realisation. The sobbing slows, then stops.

He rolls on to his back and screams at the gods, for all to hear, ‘Once you’re born, there’s no escape!’

The crowd on the beach watch from a distance, motionless, grim-faced. Mark’s curse hovers above them like a vulture, ugly and brutal, coming in to land. They, too, have to face this undeniable truth.

The dead escapologist is living proof.