The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (9 page)

He
worried at the brass machine, but it was secured to the desktop by meaty bolts.
It would not be broken.

Norman
leaned back in his chair, kicked boxfiles aside and put his feet up on the
desk. ‘I won’t do anything,’ he said. ‘Not a stroke. They won’t get any work
out of me.’

Humming
a tune of his own making he waggled his feet in time with its rhythm. ‘I’ll
doss about until the roll is called up yonder, or whatever. That’s what I’ll
do.

‘No I
won’t. Whatever am I saying?’ He removed his feet from the desk and climbed
from his chair. ‘That seems to be exactly what they want me to do: nothing.
They want me to just doss about, know only what I’m supposed to know and not
find out the rest. Well, we’ll see about that.’

Norman
took himself over to the nearest filing cabinet and pulled out the top drawer.

What a
lot of files.

He
plucked one out at random, took it back to his desk, seated himself and opened
it up. ‘Colin Scud,’ he read. ‘What kind of name is that,
Colin?’
He
perused the file of Mr Scud and read aloud his details. ‘Born 27 July 1949,
coveted fellow toddler’s blue plastic wheelbarrow at playschool (this was
underlined in red ink). Infants’ school.’ Norman turned page after page.

‘Junior
school,’ more pages. ‘Senior school.’ On and on. ‘Took job in department of
Social Security.’ On and on. ‘Interests: railways; the history of the English
canal system; member of the Model Bus Federation. Never left home. Lives with
his mum. And dies ..

Norman
read the date and consulted his multi-function digital watch, which was still
strapped onto his wrist. ‘Dies midnight the Friday after next. You poor dull
bugger, Colin. How do you meet your end?’

Norman
leafed through to the final page. ‘Receives fatal electrical discharge whilst
opening fridge door. What a bummer. Well, I wish I could help you, Colin mate,
but I can’t. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll try and find you something
really red hot for your next incarnation, porno movie star or Formula One
racing driver or something.’

Norman
went over and pulled another file. Pulled another ten, in fact, to save all the
walking back and forwards.

‘Right,’
said the lad. ‘What do we have here? Another live-already one, and another.
Wrong filing cabinet, I need the
Yet-to-be-barns.
I wonder where they’re
kept.’

It
didn’t take too long to find them. There were twenty-three filing cabinets
full. Norman dragged out an armful of files and took them back to his desk.

‘OK
then, the yet-to-be-horns. Let’s find you a good’n, Cohn me old mate.

Norman
opened one up.

At
random.

‘Here
we go, Col. A bouncing baby boy, to be born next Tuesday. Let’s see if he
becomes famous.’ Norman flicked through to the last page of what was a very
thin file. ‘Oh no. He doesn’t. That’s very sad. Dies midnight on the Friday
after next due to a short circuit in his incubator. Poor little mite. That’s a
real bummer. Let’s find you another.’

Norman
found another. ‘Here’s another. Little girl. That would make a change for you,
Colin. Bet you’d give the train-spotting a miss. Let’s see if she becomes a top
fashion model or a prime minister or whatever. Oh dear, she doesn’t. Dies due
to electrical discharge, struck by lightning in her cot. Midnight, the Friday
after next.
What is all this?’

Norman
returned to the ‘live-already’ files he’d pulled Out. All those chronicled
within came from different walks of life, had been born in different countries,
in different years, had fulfilled, or failed to fulfil, different ambitions.
But they all had one thing in common. They were all going to die at midnight on
the Friday after next, from an electrical discharge of some kind! All of them!

‘All
of them?’ Norman stumbled to the nearest filing
cabinet and clawed out as many files as he could claw.

Another
and another and another.

And all
and all and all and all.

They
all were due to die at midnight, the Friday after next.

All of
them.

The old
folks, the young folks and the yet-to-be-born folks.

The
whole damn lot.

And all
due to an ‘electrical discharge’.

‘No,’
said Norman. ‘This can’t be right. It can’t be right. Alphabetical order. Start
at the beginning.’ Norman floundered amongst the filing cabinets and began to
work his way into the As.

Suddenly
he said, ‘Oh my dad!’ Which at least meant that his surname, whatever it was,
began with an A.

‘Right
here in the Bs,’ said Norman, proving that sometimes you’re right and sometimes
you’re wrong.

‘My
dad’s file.’ He took it back to the desk and swept all else to the floor. And
his hands hovered over the file.

He
turned up a corner of the cover with a quivery thumb.

But let
it fall back again.

He just
couldn’t do it. Not look. Not see when your own father was going to die. And
how. That was really horrible. You couldn’t do
that.

‘Someone
else,’ Norman pushed the file aside. ‘Someone else I know. Someone I don’t care
about. That bloody Mr Bailey who fell into my grave. He’ll be in the Bs.’

And he
was.

Norman
flicked through the schoolmaster’s file, boggling here and there at the science
teacher’s exotic sexual activities.

‘Why
the orange?’ Norman asked himself.

Ah, but
here
it was. Right on the last page.

And
there
it was. Writ bold in letters big.

‘Twelve
midnight, Friday after next. “Short circuit in vibrating interior section of
Little Miss Magic Mouth leisure facility appliance.”’

Good
old ELECTRICAL DISCHARGE!

‘Aaaaaagh!’
went Norman. ‘They’re all gonna die!’

8

Scoop Molloy returned from
the toilet and sought out a bar stool. ‘Anyone sitting on this one?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’
said Tuppe. ‘I’m sitting on it.’

‘Oh
sorry, I didn’t see you there.’

‘People
don’t. You’re the news reporter who was at the County Court, aren’t you?’

‘That’s
me.

They
were in The Flying Swan, of course. The afternoon sun shone through different
panes than had the morning sun, but the effect was the same. Simply splendid.

The
saloon bar dwelt in the mellow amber tones, sunlight a-twinkle upon the
burnished brass of the beer engines. There was the rise and fall of glasses,
the chit-chat and merry converse of the lunch-time regulars. The sense that
here was how it should be and always would be and whatever.

Ah
Brentford.

‘Where’s
my pal Cornelius?’ Tuppe asked Scoop. ‘He should have been here by now.’

‘Murphy!’
Scoop inadvertently ordered himself a pint of that
beverage. ‘The magistrate sent him down.’

‘What?’
went Tuppe.

‘Gave
him twenty-three years,’ said Scoop.

‘What?’
went Tuppe.

‘Well
he is worth
twenty-three million quid.
I expect the magistrate was
trying to be ironic, or something. Here, where have you gone?’

‘I’m
down here,’ mumbled Tuppe, who had fallen from his bar stool and now lay on the
carpet with his legs in the air. ‘In something of a state of shock.’

And the
chit-chat and the merry converse had all died away. Twenty-three million pounds
was an indecently large amount of wodge to mention in a lunchtime drinkery.

Unless,
of course, it happened to be the Sultan of Brunei’s poolside bar.

Which
it wasn’t.

‘Allow
me to help you up.’ John Omally, drinker in residence and balcony ticket tout,
hastened to aid the millionaire’s friend back onto his bar stool. ‘No damage
done I hope.’

‘No I’m
fine, thank you. But this can’t be right. Cornelius couldn’t have lost the
case.’

‘He
did, but it was a right conspiracy. The prosecuting counsel was a coffin
dweller and the magistrate was a Hollywood bit-part player. The one who always
plays magistrates in movies and you can’t put a name to.’

‘Not
the chap out of
Plan Nine from Outer Space?’
asked Neville the full-time
barlord, presenting Scoop with his pint of Murphy’s.

‘Yeah,
that’s him.’

‘Played
the janitor in
The Savage Bees,’
said Old Pete.

‘Wore a
beard in that one,’ said Jim Pooley.

‘He was
in
Bug,’
said Norman Hartnel (not to be confused with the other Norman,
who wasn’t called Hartnel).

‘And he
played the alien’s hands in
Dark
Star,’ said Scoop. ‘Although not a lot
of people know that.’

‘Kyle
McKintock,’ said Neville.

‘Kyle
McKintock,’ agreed Jim Pooley, John Omally, Norman Hartnel, Old Pete and Old
Pete’s dog, Chips.

‘I
thought everyone knew that,’ said Tuppe.

‘Well
your mate didn’t, so he got sent down. But twenty-three years isn’t so bad.
He’ll be out in fifteen if he behaves himself. He’ll still be a young man. Go
on talk shows and be treated as a celebrity. Like that bloke who was in the
great train robbery. What was his name?’

‘Frank
somebody, wasn’t it?’ asked Neville.

‘Dave,’
said Omally.

‘It was
Pete,’ said Jim Pooley.

‘It was
never me,’ said Old Pete. ‘I have an alibi.’

‘Didn’t
Roger Daltry play him in a film?’ asked Neville. ‘Or was that Mick Jagger?’

‘I
think it was Phil Collins,’ said Scoop.

‘Yeah
that’s the fellow,’ said Old Pete. ‘Phil Coffins the great train robber. He’s
married to that actress now, what’s her name?’

‘Twiggy?’
Jim suggested.

‘Mary
Hopkins,’ said Norman Hartnel.

‘No,’
said Scoop. ‘She married someone in the music business.’

‘Phil
Collins is in the music business,’ said Old Pete.

‘I
thought you said he was a great train robber.’

‘Perhaps
he’s married to Joan Collins then.’

‘No,’
said Neville. ‘She was married to Norman Mailer.’

‘That
was Marilyn Monroe,’ said Jim.

‘That’s
her,’ said Old Pete. ‘She’s married to Phil Coffins now.

‘She’s
dead,’ said Jim.

‘Oh,
dear, poor Phil, he must be devastated. Elvis passed away too, so I’ve heard.
Not that I ever cared for him. Paul Whiteman I liked.’

‘Didn’t
he use to play with Lew Stone’s Orchestra?’ asked John.

‘No,
that was Al Bowly. Or perhaps it was George Melly.’

‘George
Melly punched me in a pub once,’ said Jim Pooley. ‘We were arguing about
Picasso.’

‘No
woman’s worth two men fighting over,’ said Old Pete wisely.

‘I
didn’t order a pint of Murphy’s,’ said Scoop Molloy.

‘I
don’t think any of this is helping much,’ said Tuppe. ‘I have to get Cornelius
out of prison and I ought to be doing it now.’

‘I
wonder what would be the best way to break your friend out of prison?’
The pitch of Omally’s voice and the manner with which he delivered the
line were sufficient to clear quite a fair—sized area about him at the bar.

Suddenly
everyone, with the exception of John, Jim, Tuppe and Scoop, were back at their
chit-chat and merry converse.

‘Do you
have something on your mind?’ Tuppe asked.

‘I do.’
Omally now spoke in whispery words. ‘You see my good friend Jim here and myself
have not been without the occasional epic adventure in our time.’

‘I’ve
read of them,’ said Tuppe. ‘But I thought you blokes had retired from all that
sort of thing.’

‘Not a
bit of it. Merely resting between engagements. And I feel that, as happy chance
has brought us together this day, the least that Jim and I could do would be to
rescue your unjustly imprisoned chum.’

‘What?’
Jim sneezed into his pint, sending froth up his nose.

‘Go
on,’ said Tuppe.

‘No,
hold on,’ said Jim. ‘Surely this kind of business would involve illegal
practices. The dynamiting of cell doors, the life-and-death fleeings from the
constabulary. Things of that nature.’

‘Not
the way I have in mind,’ said John.

‘No
fear for life or limb then?’

‘The
merest modicum. Jim, you’re not coming across here in your true heroic form.’

‘Coming
across?
What kind of talk is this? Have you taken
to viewing Sony the Hedgehog or some such?’

‘Fulfilling
your potential then.’