The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (14 page)

‘And
years?’ Norman asked. ‘Do you think you could help me out of all this rubbish?
I’m stuck fast.’

‘Rubbish?’
The loon bobbed up and down. ‘That’s not rubbish, that’s evidence that is. I’ll
have my day in court, you just see if I don’t.’

‘I’d
like to very much,’ said Norman. ‘But I have important business to attend to.
Please help me out.’

‘Come
on then.’ The ancient took Norman by the shoulders and dragged him from the
mouldering mound.

‘Thank
you very much,’ said Norman. ‘I didn’t like that at all.’

‘What
did
you
do then?’ asked the white-bearder. ‘Clerical error was it,
clerical error?’

‘In a
manner of speaking.’ Norman dusted garbage from himself ‘Found out something
you shouldn’t have, I’ll bet.’

‘Yeah
well, maybe.’

‘All
here,’ crowed the loon. ‘All the evidence. What he’s been up to, what he’s up
to now. He dumps it all down here to taunt me. Because I found out.’

‘Who
are you?’ asked Norman.

‘I’m
Claude,’ said Claude. ‘Claude somebody, just keeps escaping me.

‘What
are you then?’

‘What
am I? I’m the bloody controller. That’s what I am.’

‘You’re
the controller? I don’t understand.’

‘I
found him out,’ said the controller. ‘Found out what he was up to. Caught him
at it. And he got me and he threw me down here and he threw all the evidence
down here on top of me and he bolted the bloody door.
Bastard!’
the
ancient shouted up the shaft. ‘You fit bastard! I’ll get you!’

‘You
mean that the controller up there isn’t the real controller? That you’re the
real controller?’

‘You
thick or something, sonny? What did you think I’ve been saying?’

‘I’m
sorry,’ said Norman. ‘I’m somewhat confused.’

‘So was
I. So was I. Kept seeing his name coming up again and again. Thought it was a
clerical error. Tackled him over it. But he got me and he threw me down here
and—’

‘Yes,
you said all that. But who is
he?’

‘He’s a
bastard, that’s who he is.’

‘Surely
that’s
what
he is.’

‘Don’t
tell me my business, sonny. I caught him at it. I know who he is and what he
is. And I’ve got all the evidence and—’

‘You’ll
have your day in court?’ Norman asked.

‘I told
you I would, didn’t I?’

‘What
evidence have you got?’

‘All
this. Piles of it. And you’ve made a mess of it, filling into it.’

‘Sorry,’
said Norman. ‘But I didn’t fill, I was pushed.’

‘Pushed
by him, I’ll bet.’

‘Yes,’
said Norman. ‘Show me whatever this evidence is. Please.’

‘It’s
all here. Dates, facts, cross—references, births and deaths. All
his,
over
and over again. There’re four of him down there this very minute, you know.’

‘Down
where?’

‘Down
on the Earth, you silly fool. Four of him exactly the same. Cloned himself, he
did, and just goes on and on, getting cleverer and cleverer and more dangerous
every time.’

‘You
mean there’s someone down there who somehow manages to get reincarnated as
himself again and again? Is that what you’re saying?’

‘Not
reincarnated, pre-incarnated. That’s what he does. He fixed it for himself, you
see. Every time he dies his soul, or one of them, seeing as he’s now got four,
goes back into the system and gets reallocated to himself again on his original
birthdate.’

‘What,
reincarnates in the past?’

‘Pre-incarnates.
That’s what I said. Souls can do that kind of stuff. They’re not tied to
physical laws. Time don’t mean nothing to souls.

And he
found that out. Smart bugger, so he is. He just keeps getting born again and
again on his original birthday. Never makes the same mistake twice, I can tell
you. Knows it all, see. What’s going to happen. Bastard! I’ll have him though.
I’ve got all the evidence right here, I’ll have my—’

‘Day in
court. And quite right too.’ Norman knelt down and picked up a pile of mouldy
old papers. ‘And all this lot refers to just one man?’

‘Same
man, many lifetimes though. But all the same lifetime, as fir as anyone else
knows. Some scam, eh? Immortality, that’s what that is. Cloned himself, did I
tell you that?’

‘You
did mention it. How did he do that?’

‘Got
himself born as quintuplets one time is my guess.

‘Quintuplets?
But I thought you said there are
four
of him down there.’

‘Four
down there, that’s what I said. And one up here. The bloody fake controller!
Same bloke! Bastard! Don’t you ever listen to what’s told you, sonny?’

‘I’m
trying,’ said Norman. ‘But it’s quite a lot to take in at one go. You’re
saying, now let me make sure that I’ve got all this straight, you’re saying
that this man pre-incarnates again and again on his original birthdate. And
that he remembers — is this right? — all the things he’d done when he was alive
the first time and so does them better the second time, better still the third
time and so on and so on.’

‘You’ve
got it. Knows it all, does it all, goes everywhere, knows everyone. Always in
the right place at the right time. Bastard!’

‘Yeah,’
said Norman. ‘Bastard. But if he does
that.
If you could do
that.
Well,
blimey. You’d be—’

‘The
most amazing man who ever lived,’ said the ancient one. ‘And that’s not all
you’d be. You’d be something more than that.’

‘Which
is?’

The
oldster fixed Norman with a wild and glittering eye. ‘You’d be the very Devil
himself,’ said he.

14

The most amazing man of
several parts had been out of the picture for quite some time. But here he was
back in it now.

Ensconced
was he in the best that Skelington Bay had to offer. Far less than what he
might have wished for. But the best he was going to get here.

The
Skelington Bay Grande.

The
e
had been added to Grand by the new owner who felt that it gave the place a
bit of class. Much in the way that putting reproduction coachlamps on your
gateposts that light up when your car drives in gives the place a bit of class.
Or having personalized number-plates on your mini, or making a really
interesting name for your bungalow by taking the first part of your wife’s
first name and adding it to the first part of your first name and coming up
with something like RON-DOR.

And
things of that nature.

But
what is ‘a bit of class’ anyway? Can it really be defined? Or is it like
‘style’ or ‘good taste’, a relative and unquantifiable something-or-other? Is
it ‘a bit of class’ to have your house and your family photographed for
Hello!
magazine, as did a certain horror fiction writer who must remain forever
nameless to those who do not purchase that publication?
[10]

Or is
it not?

We must
draw our own conclusions.

I know
I’ve drawn
mine!

The
present owner of the Grand had drawn his, and he had added the
e.
The
present owner’s name was Kevin and his wife was loved as Lynne. He had retired
from a successful career as an ASDA sales representative. She, from a career of
equal success, as a
Dominatrix,
whose calling-card advertised that
‘naughty boys get bottom marks’. They had moved from their bungalow with the
lighty-up coachlamps and were ‘making a go of the Grande’.

But now
the Grande was not so grand as once the Grand had been. Time and ill-attention
had conspired to wear its so-proud lustre all away.

All
gone its court of potted palms’ where bright young things had danced till dawn
and taffeta kissed court shoes in the foxtrot.

Sadly
gone. The Beckstein and the Lloyd loom chairs, the standard lamps with
tasselled shades, the jardinières, the mirrors in their gilded frames. All
gone.

Out with the old, they cry aloud.

And inward with the new.

Down with that dividing wall.

And knock the bugger through.

Bring forth the patterned carpet tiles,

The Draylon three—piece suite.

Raise fitted units all about,

Cor, don’t it look a treat?

Thank you.

Hugo Rune had taken for
himself the entire top floor of the Grande.

When it
came to having ‘a bit of class’, Rune had it, and then a bit more.

A great
deal more. And then some.

He
stood now, nobly framed by the long mock-Georgian UPVC replacement window of
the KEV-LYN suite, the last sunlight of the day catching the sum of his
prodigious parts to perfection.

His
exaggerated shadow, cast in many fashionable places, now spread over many
patterned carpet tiles.

‘I
believe that our company is incomplete,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘In fact, I know this
for a certainty.’

Beyond
the shadow of the man, a group of well-dressed persons sat about an occasional
table that failed to rise to the occasion of Rune’s presence.

‘We are
one short,’ dared one more daring than the rest.

‘A
foreign entity,’ said Rune. ‘Of no small importance in the present schema.’

‘If you
say so.’

Rune
turned and raised a hairless eyebrow.

‘If you
say so,
Mr Rune.’

‘We
shall begin without him. Who carries the suitcase?’

He-that-did-the-suitcase-carry
rose up and offered it to Rune.

‘And
does it fit-to-burst with money notes as we agreed?’ the great man asked.

‘It
does.’

The
other hairless eyebrow.

‘Mr
Rune.’

The
unwholesome eyes beneath the baldy brows took in the company of men. Four in
number. Very well-turned out. Three of middle years and one quite young (more
daring than the rest). Whitehall types. Bespoke. Shoes polished. Known to Lynne
in her professional pre—retirement capacity.

Rune
took the suitcase, felt its weight and tossed it to the floor. ‘Out there,’ he
said, gesturing to some point beyond the UPVC. ‘Out there. Tell me what you
see.

The
young and daring one took himself over to the window. ‘A clapped-out seaside
town, a pair of superannuated piers.’

‘And
what?’

‘The
sea?’

‘The
sea is all you see?’

‘The
sea, that’s all.’

‘That’s
all. You see the sea, but Rune sees more.’

‘What
do you see then,
Mr Rune?’

‘I see
gold,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Much gold. Much, much, much, much, much gold.’

‘Some
sunken wreck then, is it?’

‘No, my
dear fellow, no sunken wreck. In the sea itself is the gold.’

‘I
don’t think I follow you there.’

‘This
comes as no surprise to me.’ Rune joined the daring young man at the window and
stood looking out at the bay. Lights were beginning to twinkle upon the twin
piers. Holiday folk strolled the promenade. The sea sucked at the shoreline.

‘In the
water itself,’ said Rune. ‘A cubit mile of sea water contains, on average,
$93,000,000 worth of gold and $8,500,000 worth of silver
[11]
.’

‘You’re
kidding,’ said the daring young man.

‘It’s
absolutely true, you can look it up
[12]
.’

‘I know
of this,’ said a middle-aged, less daring fellow, from the rear of the room.
‘But then
I
went to public school, so I would.’

‘I know
of it
too,’
said another middle-aged fellow, who hadn’t been to public
school, but did know of it too. ‘But no agency exists to extract this gold. If
it did—’

‘If it
did’, said Hugo Rune, ‘then the man who knew of this agency and could affect
such an extraction, be it only of a small proportion of the whole, would
become—’

‘The
richest man on Earth,’ said the daring young man.

‘And
then some,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘But it
can’t be done,’ said the fellow who had been to public school. ‘There is
nothing that
can’t
be done,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Only things that haven’t
been done
yet.’

The
public schoolboy felt urged to ask whether Rune had got that from a Christmas
cracker, but he lacked the daring so to do.