One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (26 page)

The teargas having now made chillies of his eyeballs, Breakfast rested and motioned down to us for advice and encouragement. His eyes were burning red, bleeding. By now, at the foot of the TV tower, there was such a fierce battle of wills raging between the Polizia, the Carabinieri and the Mackenzie Brothers over what should be done next that I was fearful we might even be arrested. Thus, heeding Breakfast’s request for aid, I began my own hurried ascent. Soon, from my new perch up at Piano-2, I could see clearly each of the Mackenzies’ five overturned Meatburger caravans. Moreover, their combination of anger, despair and threats had even forced Mick up to the first level of the gantry – Piano-1 – approximately eight feet above the ground. Now just twenty feet below me, ye Bard screamed up that the Mackenzies were threatening to shame Leander down from there by playing the Full English Breakfast hit across the P.A. Fuck them! Meanwhile,
Leander almost twenty feet above me waxed ever more lyrical. But boy was he sounding deluded.

At this point, though Leander’s face was partially obscured from my sight by the grim protective railings, such an odd flush now overtook him that a rosy pink glow emanated through his cheeks, pulsed through his temples, bulged throughout his entire cranium. He stared ahead intently, as though receiving information from some companion nearby. And yet across the stadium tannoys still boomed the dreadful warmongery of Cro-Magnon’s bagpipers and drummers, precise and unyielding upon their savage trajectory.

And with that, Leander Pitt-Rivers Baring-Gould jerked around suddenly. Then, teetering upon the edge of Piano-3, he launched himself upwards at Hertzog with as mighty a leap as even Springheel Jack himself could not have anticipated. Like a ship’s flare arcing up into the night sky, how he sprang forth towards the great demon aloft. Up and up and … But then I heard him diving past me roaring like a pilotless Spitfire, bellowing like a Merlin engine head first towards the ground, howling like kamikaze raindrops head first into the ground. What word was he screaming, repeating it over and over again? Now, at the foot of the TV tower lay the crumpled figure of Full English Breakfast, his face impacted into the concrete, his arms and legs sticking out of his body like four Cadbury’s Flakes in a chocolate strawberry sundae. For Blessèd Leander, ever certain of his upwards Hertzogian trajectory, had hit the ground with all the confident grace of one diving straight into Olympic history, like a playground nipper affecting the swept wings of some great R.A.F. jet fighter.

But even as we collected around dear Leander’s body, so did our enemies and detractors also congregate. The chief of police arrived first, pouting and nodding grimly. Then came the
Carabinieri bosses, all three shaking their heads. Three FIFA representatives came next, each looking pointedly away from Leander’s body. Finally came our enemies to gloat: the heartless José Mackenzie walking right up to poor Breakfast’s prone, destroyed corpse, all the while nodding and grimacing in a near smile. Luis Mackenzie was even worse – fingering his collar-and-tie and clearly suppressing a smile. The more pragmatic Bugs Rabbit merely walked around the scene-of-the-crime with a look of utter smug remove.

Amidst the chaos and smoking ruins of Sant’Elia Stadium, I saw no more dear Leander Pitt-Rivers Baring-Gould. For I had, being entirely unable to accept this dire event, drifted away out of Time itself. I saw no more his stomach for the fighting. I grasped no longer the Icarus Truth of his downward flight. In his place now, I saw only the future ghost of his beautiful mother Birgitta. I saw her crouching over her dear son’s plinth – distraught, prostrate and weeping at the loss of her long-dead child.

From behind our reinforced Carabinieri patrol car windscreen, I pitched forth into the eyes of Luis Mackenzie a stare so dark that it weighed more than a small universe. Pure hatred. But still that tiny fucker grinned away at myself and ye Bard as though we’d all just spent a night gassing at Dehydrated, snivelling cuntishly away like nothing of anything had ever meant a thing. Stranger still, Luis made no attempt whatsoever to grab my door open, nor did any of those other fuckers outside – neither uniformed nor gangster. Perhaps the brazenness of our decision to appropriate the last working Carabinieri pursuit vehicle had temporarily petrified them all as they stood. Perhaps the sight of Breakfast’s broken body on the tarmac just twenty yards away was as shocking to them as it was to us. Perhaps. But I think not. Whatever, they let us take the fucking car – surrendered the Alfa right there and then. In one old high-speed banana turn, Mick reversed that Carabinieri jalopy right under the high vaulted metal arch of the RAI-TV tower in a move so sweet that, as he screeched into position beside our tractor-and-trailer, both back doors were lined up perfectly to accommodate Brent, Dean and Stu, who were still bovine and senseless atop our be-shamrocked base camp, each one wailing for dear spilt Breakfast. Catatonic with grief and disbelief, the black-clad Gary Have-a-laugh sat immobile at the huge steering wheel of our vivid green John Deere, seemingly impervious to the partly
cooked, partly soaked Meatburger matériels that were now being rained down upon us from the hordes still awaiting an international football match. Standing alone at the far covered end of the TV tower, his veiled head bowed like some Greek widow, the weeping Zoughy stood back to us all.

So grief-stricken were Stu and the twins, however, that it was only after much hectoring, cajoling and physical persuasion from myself that the three could be persuaded to enter the borrowed Alfa. And still rained down those mucal showers of Meatburger, not slapping the grey-blue Alfa paintwork then bouncing off as any true burger should, but splattering across the car’s windows, their gluey, jelly-like consistency clinging doggedly even as Mick turned the windscreen washers upon them at fullest of bores. But this vengeful action only succeeded in dragging the clogging membranes of runny, bloody Meatburger paste further into the flight path of the beleaguered Alfa’s windscreen wipers, which strained and groaned in a vain effort to snow plough through that industrial goo. Making furious hand gestures of impending forward motion through the windscreen to the unresponsive G. Have-a-laugh, Mick began – and with immediate and considerable success – to barge and bully our Alfa’s way through the rampaging painted legions. Soon, we had left far behind the shadows of the tower, and were crossing the outer precincts of the pitch itself. But our dynamic actions had utterly abandoned Gary Have-a-laugh to the turmoil of Jules Rimet’s Cauldron, and how we had dumped and dissed the Lady Zoughy still grieving in her private metal arbour.

With Deputy Sheriff Mick Goodby very much at the controls of this ornery Alfa steer, we continued to turbo-terrorise our way through the fighting hordes, slaloming in-and-out of the burning Meatburger caravans and overturned merchandise
stalls, then heading directly between the two Carabinieri armoured cars that guarded the main entrance and disappearing into the great pillar of billowing black rubber smoke caused by Party Orange commandos having set their great tractor-style tyres ablaze. But although the blackening smokescreen hid from the Sardu authorities our intended method of escape from Sant’Elia, everybody in the car started fucking choking. By now disorientated as fuck, gulping down lungfuls of black rubber smoke but knowing no other option, we continued inching under the stadium entranceway through the clouds of burning tyres. It may have been seconds, it felt like years, but suddenly out of the main gates we burst, the authorities so shocked that no one initially even gave chase as we baled up the heavily contra flowed concrete incline towards the main road at no more than 25 m.p.h., coughing our guts up and sticking our heads out of the windows like dogs. Lucky for us, it was not until we’d ascended to the summit of the stadium’s incline and were already merging on to the city centre highway that we saw the first wave of angry pursuers buzzing out through that same black inferno, motorcycle cops giving chase but at present over 600 metres behind. And right there on the skyline, even as we hightailed it past Poett Beach, that same tiny mentalist figure of Judge Barry Hertzog still presided over Cágliari Calcio, still atop the RAI-TV tower issuing inaudible orders through his loudhailer whilst being buzzed by yet another Polizia helicopter.

It was no more than twenty minutes later, however, when we discovered the seriousness of our situation. For however hard ye Bard dodged in and out of the Cágliari traffic, however fiercely
our blue light blazed, still our pursuers were never more than a couple of hundred metres behind. And throughout this jostling for position, Mick was highly unhappy with Stu’s constant attempts to piss into a polystyrene cup from his tight location behind the driver’s seat. No doubt about it, Stu’s five-foot-ten exertions were thunderous against Mick’s back.

But the extraordinary back-on-itself interlacing of the Cágliari one-way system defied all of Stu’s best efforts to stand’n’slash, and we were seeing signs for Elmas International Airport and the North before he next found the opportunity to dangle a sausage in safety. Then, as through Cágliari’s outskirts our Alfa burned impressively, suddenly disaster occurred. A farmer heading south towards us into town on an ancient, slow-moving tractor – on spotting a large parking space in front of a café on our side of the street – pulled out impetuously right across the path of the slow-moving street cleaner travelling just ahead of us. Gushing out water like some mobile municipal downpour, this 10 m.p.h. behemoth was. Unfortunately, the farmer’s selfish actions obliged the gushing street cleaner to brake harshly, then swerve radically to its left, narrowly missing an incoming convoy of airport taxis. But instead of leaving a passing space for northbound traffic along this major artery, the street cleaner’s simple-minded operative merely parked up right next to the tractor and rushed in to have a municipal go at the old yokel – thus totally blocking our path. Mick struggled first to avoid utter catastrophe up the arse of the gushing street cleaner. Next, and more by luck than
judgement, ye Bard – aided by the torrent of cascading water – swung the Alfa around clockwise 180 degrees and:
whump!
Mick banged the driver’s side of the car so hard against the tractor that the back door flew open and the unstrapped, still semi-upright Stu sailed helplessly out – flying right through the municipal torrent and headlong under the tractor! Petrified by the violence of Stu’s exit – we’d just lost another comrade for shit damned sure – we sat all four of us in silence for about 2.5 seconds as curious café clientele wandered out to investigate the commotion. Belting towards us screamed the cavalcade of cop cars – every one of them on full beams. Then rejoicing! We saw a sodden Stu stand up and rub his head. He turned around dopily and – seeing our car motionless in the middle of the blocked street – raised a revolutionary right fist high in the air. Sweet relief! Stu’s alive! Then we were off again, haring full tilt towards the cops at first, before Mick selected a nice tight-ass one-way-street to freedom. A temporary freedom. How long? Who knows?

You know the rest, Anna. From there on in, right up to our capture and incarceration in Macomér’s Fascist Cheese Factory, we four would be pursued by road, by air and ultimately by psychic attack. Stu’s miraculous escape was the beginning of our mystifying entrapment and subsequent incarceration. My long tale over at long last, Blessèd Anna and I sagged together against the sunbleached stone, hugging in mutual appreciation of the saga’s unyielding grimness. Then we unwound ourselves from one other, struggled to our feet and then both of us stretched dramatically as if on cue. Having furnished this lovely lady with all of the most grisly facts
and
all told in extremely fine detail, now we were off back down to Santa Cristina to meet her father: to set about restoring some sense of justice to this awful tale. Come on, now!