Sour Alba

Note: This crime novel is a cross between a post-Great War Lovecraftian horror and near-future SF noir. It’s definitely one for grown-ups.

Flow my tears, the…

As long as I live I never want to repeat that trip. It was bad enough that I had to spend time with Tarquin but being trapped with him in the confined space of his bumping, wrenching ornithopter while off my nut made my guts turn over so much I quite forgot the blood.

[Just the worst time of year for a journey, and such a journey]

Getting out of the Insurgent and Ferret had been a nightmare. Only that man could turn a simple task like “exit building” into a life-threatening crisis.

Tarquin had bustled through the busy bar with the arrogant swagger of “a business leader”. Unfortunately, on his way, he had bustled over the pints of one of the few groups of  squaddies hard enough to scare off the roughnecks. As they rushed up the stairs after him, they didn’t seem impressed by his smooth, corporate air, nor by his protestations that Forbes had named him one of the UK’s “50 Big Thrusters”.

The staff at the Insurgent know me well thanks to a couple of misunderstandings and some apologetically large tipping. They very quickly responded to the raised voices and sounds of breaking table from the minaret. Sadly, the first bouncer on the scene was Tarquin’s new friend “Sanchez”. Seeing who I was trying to save, he pulled me out of the melee and hissed: “Let’s leave them to sort this out themselves.”

Looking back, it’s a good job Goatboy hadn’t spent any money on plastic surgery for his face because the red-haired squaddie’s first punch would have done thousands of pounds worth of damage. As hunched on the floor, cupping his spurting nose, Tarquin suddenly noticed “Sanchez” and called to him for aid.

Sadly, my pranks developed a dreadful unintended momentum of their own at this point. Tarquin had incorrectly identified “Sanchez” as Spanish when it fact he was from Newcastle. Nobody ever called him “Sanchez”. I just made that up to get Tarquin to accuse the world’s hardest bouncer of indulging in what the more respectable news blogs call “a certain scatalogical sex act”.

Things now took a turn for the worse. As boots crunched into his ribs, Tarquin searched for Spanish words to call for this man’s help. Sadly, what he came out with was “compieza de mierda”. I’d once told him it was Spanish for “head waiter” when we were dining at the very trendy high-end restaurant Las Tapas Tarantula Mucha.

What are the odds that a Geordie skinhead with a penchant for kick-boxing would have a ready grasp of Spanish colloquialisms?

Then, just when things had begun to get ugly, they suddenly got very very ugly. Ugly as in “73-year-old crack-whore with face like a bucket of smashed crabs” ugly.

As boots and fists and bottles rained down on Nuppy’s weeping form, sinister black figures appeared on the small, crowded balcony. I could have sworn they simply melted out of the walls in a silent pulse of violence. I staggered back as they lashed out at all and sundry with thin black batons. The air crackled with the pzzzt of stun guns and acrid gas began to envelop us all. I heard an official-sounding voice shouting something about contravention of the Security and Order Act. Sprays of blood and screams began to spurt out of the green cloud.

Actually, I was so blitzed that at first I experienced it as a fantastic spectacle – if it was real. My head spinning from too much stimulation – both external and chemical – and I sat back to watch with a big, stupid grin on my face. Then I got tasered in the old Acar maracas and I began to see things in a more critical light.

Somehow, riot police had stormed the minaret and were in the process of turning all and sundry into blancmange. I could tell they meant business by the distinct lack of any numbers or identifying information on their uniforms. That and the fact they were hammering seven shades of shiatsu out of anything that moved. And then, when it stopped moving, leathering it some more. [Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight.]

Holding my microwaved Niagaras I crawled over to Tarquin through a surging maze of flying boots. He was in a bad way. I looked up and saw one policeman standing in the doorway. I guessed he was in charge and made my way towards him with my hands in the air. He stared at me like I was less than nothing when I reached him. “Help,” I cried, as he drew his baton, which I could tell had already seen some intense use. “I’m a private investigator. That man there is my client. They attacked us.”

“QUIET,” he shouted. I froze. And so did all other action on the balcony. I slowly looked round. The only people standing were police officers. Everyone else was flat on the ground, the luckier ones were moaning. The policeman dragged me over to Tarquin. It was only about ten steps but during the fighting it seemed to take hours for me to cover that distance.  My boss was lying face-up, very pale, very battered and surrounded by blood. He seemed to be conscious, though.

The office turned to me: “Let’s see some identification. Fast. And it better be real, gumshoe boy.”

With horrific clarity I suddenly knew what Tarquin was going to do next. It was karma for all my cruel japes and all his horrific character traits. We had transgressed – me by action and him by existence – and now we would pay a painful price of my devising and his delivery. As I quickly presented my ID to the dubious police officer, Tarquin raised his head from the sticky pool of gore it had formed on the floor. His mouth started to move.

“Do… Do…,” he stammered. “Do you want…”

“You rest, old friend,” I interrupted. “I’ll sort things out with the officer.” But he kept mumbling, some part of his brain clearly seeking to end the awful fact of his continued presence on this Earth.

I tried to talk over him: “Now, officer, here’s my ID card, my personal investigation licence clearance and…”

Taqruin gamely tried again: “Do you want to…”

“Hush, pal, let me handle this,” I said in a soothing voice, surreptitiously treading on his fingers.

“Sorry, officer, he took one hell of a beating there. He has a profound respect for the forces of law and order and is always willing to help them. Even when he should just remain quiet and wait for the ambulance. Quietly.” I emphasised this last word with more downward pressure on Goatboy’s shattered digits.

But stupidity will out and the officer pressed his bloodied truncheon against my lips as if to say “Shhhhh” but with more than a hint of “Shut it or I’ll quadraplegic you.”

In a quiet voice that brooked no argument, the policeman hissed: “Your friend’s got something to say, let him speak. His statement might be valuable evidence.”

The officer then knelt down close to Tarquin’s head, his thick body armour squeaking with the movement. He prodded Goatboy’s chin with his much used baton. “What are you trying to say?”

Time crawled as my boss replied. I could see Tarquin’s lips reflected in the mirrored visor as he uttered the words that would surely kill us both.

“Do you want to cyber?”

[he do the policeman in three voices]

For a handful of picoseconds I considered the old: “Oops, officer, I’ve made made a dreadful mistake, I’ve never seen this man before in my life” gambit but some part of my tattered conscience vetoed that – eminently sensible – idea.

Instead, I quickly jumped between the prone Nuppy and the suddenly raised batons of a dozen beserk riot police.

“Please wait,” I babbled. “He’s concussed, He doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t know what he’s saying even when he’s not concussed. He didn’t mean it. He doesn’t even know what cybering is. He’s an idiot. He’s not worth bothering with. Please ignore him and let me take him off to hospital.”

“You’ve got five seconds to step out of the way, sir, or we’ll be forced to restrain you as well, sir.”

When they called me “sir”, I knew we were in deep trouble. I silently bade farewell to my appendages and desperately tried to make a mental not of what my face looked like.

“5.”

“No, no, no. I’m a private detective. This is my client.”

“4.” (So much for the appeal to the brotherhood of law enforcement professionals.)

“Stop. Contact DCI Holmes at Mudchute nick. He’ll vouch for me.”

“3.” (OK, so I made DCI Holmes up.)

“Are you on the level? Can you tie a bow?”

“2.” (Trust me to find the only police in London who weren’t Masons.)

“I’m a friend of Madame Zsa.”

Two minutes later, I was bumping Tarquin down the tight staircase of the minaret. Gratitude poured from my lips and the policeman’s firm and somewhar rude instructions echoed in my ears.

“Yes, officer, I’ll tell him. Yes, every ten minutes. Yes, I’ll use those very words, regardless of where we are or who we’re with. Yes, especially that word. Loudly. Every ten minutes for the rest of his life. And, yes, you’re right, I’m one too. And my mother. Yes. Thank you, officer, thank you.”

When we got to the bottom, I heaved Tarquin onto my back, stepped over the body of Sanchez and fled through the fire escape. Relief flooded through me even as I wondered how to get my severely injured boss to hospital. He was in a very bad way. I was certain he’d broken several ribs. His nose was definitely bust, and his jaw. It was probable he’d suffered a fractured skull. His right arm had been snapped above the elbow. I suspected serious internal injuries as well.

And then it hit me. Not the immense load of alcohol and narcotics in my system, that came later. Nor was it the aftermath of adrenal terror. No, what hit me was a petrol bomb. Right in the chest. Mercifully, the burning rag had dropped out somewhere in flight or we’d have been barbecued.

I finally understood the sudden arrival of all those riot police in the pub. There were lots of riot police about because – duh! – there was a riot going on outside. Flames were dancing, smoke was billowing, bricks were flying and the heavy scuff of rubber bullets filled the air. The sting of X-CS gas caught in my throat.

I looked to my left along the narrow lane we were in. There was the police line. By the way they were lashing out at an old lady in front of them I guessed they weren’t amenable to letting anyone through.

I looked to my right. There was an advancing line of rioters, all balaclavas and flaming bottles. They were systematically setting fire to the vehicles parked in the lane. 

And in the middle was: me.  Oh splendid.

I quickly checked my news feed to see if I could work out the size of the melee and find a way out of it. Apparently it was the largest incidence of civil disobedience that London had ever seen, stretching for miles in every direction. The body count was unusually high. Once again, splendid.

As more bottles flew, news blogs started to message me offers for live coverage. BlogNews: £25 for text, £50 for images, £100 for video. OnTheHoof: £30 for text, £30 for images, £75 for vidz. BBC: 15p for anything. Tits, Ass and Explosions: $5,000 for a death on camera. I shut the feed off and made a mental note to disable the location notifier that told these jerks where I was.

Tarquin muttered something in my ear, “No,” I spat back. “I don’t want to cyber. Oh, and the nice policeman wants me to tell you you’re a…”

My words were drowned out by the roar of an engine nearby. A very expensive Aerial SUV spluttered to life in front of us. Even as certain fiery urban death bore down of us I had to admire this wonderful machine, It was low, sleek and black and looked like a cross between a luxury yacht and a dragonfly.

Tarquin muttered again: “Doors open. Code 4.”

The black, triangular vehicle’s doors and wings swung open. “Put me in the driver’s seat,” Tarquin hissed with surprising strength.

“Are you sure?”

“Can you fly an ornithopter? I don’t think so. Hurry. They’re getting closer.”

He groaned loudly when I slid him into the front seat. I then flung myself in the back as it started to rise into the foul air. We went straight up for about 100 metres, then hovered. Tarquin, who should not have been able to move at all given his injuries, turned round and said: “Let’s sort ourselves out. Pass me the first aid kit, it’s under the back of my seat.”

I passed him the box and a dark tinted window came down between us. “This is it,” I thought. “I’m going to die here and now trapped in this plush coffin with that idiot slumped unconscious at the wheel.”

I stared at the glass,  trying to make out what was going on, wondering if I could punch my way through it if – no,  when – Tarquin collapsed. I couldn’t see a thing and the clatter of projectiles hitting the thopter was a trifle distracting. But then, I saw a glowing flicker from the front. It was about ten centimetres high and seemed to be moving about. For a few seconds I thought that this was Tarquin’s spirit leaving his body, then I wondered if it was a toxin-induced hallucination after my binge of epic proportions.

Then I dimly saw that the figure was a goat dressed as a chauffeur . Of course, it was the user interface for the thopter – an avatar. Trust our boy to choose a goat, eh? I took on different costumes as Tarquin scrolled through various options. If flashed through several uniforms: mechanic, jockey, soldier, Egyptian high priest (huh?) before it became a nurse – a truly unsettling image given what I knew.
 
I turned away and watched the riot. It was huge and very, very violent. It seemed to be a coming together of various aggrieved groups. I saw banners calling for the free distribution of anti-flu drugs, placards demanding dry land, food and water and several huge flags insisting on the nationalisation of the oxygen industry in the most intemperate terms. I saw messages in English, Welsh, Farsi and a dozen other languages. Quite a turn-out. The police were obviously not impressed though. They weren’t holding back. Still, at least I made $10,000 and 45p for five minutes filming, which isn’t bad.

The glass screen opened.

I don’t know what was in that first aid kit but it wasn’t just aspirin and plasters because when Tarquin opened the window ten minutes later he looked like he’d spent an evening at a health spa.

The bloody contusions and abrasions were gone. The puffy swelling was gone – well, the puffy swelling that wasn’t usually part of his obnoxious face. His chest didn’t crack or gurgle when he turned round. And his right arm was fine. There was no sign of a break, no splint, no bandage, no plaster.

I was profoundly unnerved.

“You’re drunk,” Tarquin said with disgust. [I am na fou sae muckle as tired] (What on earth does that mean?) “Take these.” He threw a couple of tablets at me.

As they flew towards me, my body ran out of andrenaline and remembered the toxins I had filled it with. I was instantly completely wasted once more. The pills bounced off my nose and into the deep black shag pile of the floor.

“They’re Revenant Antitox Plus, Special Editions. Take them now. I need you straight for this job.”

I scrabbled on the floor, for the first time in my life unable to instantly lay my hands on pharmaceuticals. Eventually I found them and gulped them down.

Then I remembered how Revenants straighten you out. They don’t stop you being drunk and high. They make you more drunk and high, boosting your metabolism to burn the toxins out of your body in a handful of minutes. It is a universally horrible experience, with all the bad bits of being wasted amplified a hundredfold. And absolutely none of the good bits.

“We’re late. Here’s a sick bag.”

Knowing what was coming, I held the paper on my face like a hideous inversion of a horse’s feedbag.

Tarquin kicked the ornithopter forward with what I felt was unnecessary vehemence. Then I remembered what my humour had put him through and realised I was getting much less than I deserved.

The aSUV performed a gut-wrenching hand-brake turn 50 metres over the riot. Nausea erupted blocking out all other sensation save from the realisation that Tarquin was a truly awful driver.

Note: This crime novel is a cross between a post-Great War Lovecraftian horror and near-future SF noir. It’s definitely one for grown-ups.

The wind under the door

The fog of late luncheon was creeping through the rich rooms of the Old Alexandrianists Club. It crept through the legs of sleeping colonels. Its tendrils slipped into the noses of retired judges. Its soft caresses tickled the fancies of bored baronets. It sinuously seeped out into Pall Mall to bask in the late summer of 1920.

The fog consisted largely of cigar smoke and brandy, though trace elements of soporific grandeur were also present.

It crept through the billiard room and the piano room and the cloakrooms and into the dining room (the ladies having been banished at 2.37pm sharp). As it crept into these territories it drove out thoughts of responsibilities and duties and appointments. Among those acquainted with the OA, its power was legendary. Countless young men had popped in there for a spot of lunch before urgent business and emerged hours – sometimes days – later, dazed but somehow happy. Young Buffy Smythe-Dramforth, the oldest member, frequently claimed that the fog had kept him inside the Club since the death of the last Empress.

Its lair was, naturally, the smoking room. This was the very centre of one of the most exclusive gentlemen’s clubs in London, which is to say the world. One did not join the Old Alexandrianists, one did not apply. There was nothing so vulgar as a membership committee. One simply became a member when it was decided one was of the right sort. That meant the right family, the right school, the right views and the right clubbiness.

Among such as these the fog found its form and built its strength. This fine afternoon – and all other afternoons, mornings and nights – its beating heart was the conversation carried on by an indeterminate number of tweed-clad figures in the middle of the wood-panelled room. From blood-red leather armchairs, wreaths of smoke mingled with belched port and discussion of the uppitiness of sundry “darkies” in far-flung parts of the Empire. This led to a discourse from one of the younger members – a lawyer of some sort – about the threat Bolshevism posed to Great Britain and her territories, specifically its appeal to “feckless wogs”.

There was a snort from one armchair. The ruddy, jowelled face of a brigadier, Haye-D’Uise by name, lurched out over his brandy: “It’s not the grass-skirt wearing colonials we need to worry about, boy, it’s the rebels.”

“The rebels, sir?”

“Yes, the bloody rebels. Got a taste for killing Brits in the 1770s and haven’t bloody stopped since.”

It was at this point that the lawyer of some sort wished that he had paid a bit more attention to 18th century history at school. Damn! It had taken 14 years of hard crawling to get into this club and now he was to be undone by a bit of scholarly trivia. After trawling through what little he could recall, he decided to play for time.

“1770?, sir?” he ventured.

“Yes, 1770, man. Throwing tea in harbours and all that nonsense.”

“Are you perhaps referring to the United States of America?”

The brigadier viewed the young pup with barely contained fury, his white lush moustache twitching aggressively. “Of course, sir. Of course, I mean the Americans. Who else would I mean?”

The young lawyer started to tentatively suggest that the Americans had been our allies in the Great War but wiser heads intervened. One did not disagree with the Brigadier. When angry, which was constantly, he was apt to behave like he was still in Mafeking and start ordering that dissenters be shot. No-one was quite sure whether the Brigadier had actually been in Mafeking and certainly no-one was about to ask him.

Meanwhile, the Brigadier was warming to his theme, describing how the “arriviste colony” had lowered the tone of the whole war and changed it into a grubby commercial enterprise. “War, gentlemen,” he intoned, “is a noble endeavour and should not be polluted with trade. And those uppity deserters from the Empire should be watched carefully in case they start getting ideas above their station.”

He then sank back into the smoke, grunting indignantly. The hum of reactionary discourse slowly filled the room once more, seeping from the brandy glasses to the hiss of smouldering tobacco.

It was then interrupted by a further eruption from the Brigadier’s chair, its polished red leather – as smooth as a baby’s skin – shuddering as the old man’s chin thundered.

“It’s the dreadnoughts, I tell you. The damn Bolshies will collapse within a year. The Empire will last for ever. After the last bally mess, the next damn war will be fought at sea. And it will be fought against the Americans. They will come for us soon, mark my words. We are vulnerable after leaving the flower of English manhood strewn across the Low Countries.”

He paused to gulp his brandy. “Yes, across the Low Countries. And across France – the lowest country.”

Brigadier Haye-D’Uise then thrust his face into the middle of the room and roared with laughter. “The lowest country, what? France. The lowest country, ha!”

The howls of laughter and slaps of thighs that greeted this bon mot owed much to the audience’s relief that an hour and a half of enraged shouting seemed to have been averted.

One of the sharper members – an earl – sought to steer the conversation to the less choppy waters of cricket by asking if Plum Warner would make an impact with Middlesex that season. This led to a long lecture from Haye-D’Uise about how there was no point in having a Country Championship any more, Kent had the whole thing sewn up and, in any case, cricket was not the game it had been when he was young. Had he ever mentioned that he had witnessed WG Grace’s first “great” match against an All England Eleven? He and Fizzer Digby had bunked off from The School to spend a week carousing in the provinces. On their return, they were, of course, thrashed to within an inch of their lives – and rightly so – but it had been worth it. The meticulously planned adventure had begun with an escape to Waterloo Station. The intention had been to visit a gleeful krypteia upon the yokels…

As the brigadier’s oft-repeated narrative unwound in familiar fashion it gave the assembled listeners a chance to stretch, inhale deeply, order more brandy – and possibly sleep. They could all relax for the next hour or so as the old soldier held forth on various scrapes with farmers, station porters, provincial police constables and the irate fathers of milkmaids.

Littered throughout the story were references to The School. Like nearly all the members of the Old Alexandrianists Club who mattered, the Brigadier was an Old Alexandrianist. The Alexandrian College was one of the Empire’s finest institutions, the building being mentioned in the Domesday Book and its pupils coming from only the very finest stock. From the age of three up, The School subjected its charges to manly rigours, austere discpline and reverential study of the classics in extensive grounds dominated by the white, crumbling grandeur of the main school building, jovially known as The Tomb by the boys.

The old warhorse was just launching into an account of a jape involving breaking into The Tomb at night when disaster struck. Most of the members were still enjoying the soporific peace of Haye-D’Uise’s monologue – if he was droning on at least he wasn’t shouting at anybody – but a tremendous clang and crash and ting and splintering noise shattered the reverie.

The explosion of noise tore through the comforting fog, tearing away the postprandial comfort blanket that had enveloped them all.

“Damn it all, McKay, what are you playing at?” The voice belonged to one of the Outer Members (not an alumnus of The Tomb but still “of the right sort”), a pushy lawyer called Cawker or some such thing. He was flapping at his leg while one of the staff fussed round him in a most awkward way.

“I do apologise, sir.”

“You’ve covered my leg in port, McKay.”

“I’m sorry, sir, I will clean up the mess right away.”

“How, pray tell, do you propose to clean my blasted trousers? No, don’t even try. Having seen the mess you’ve made of serving a drink I wouldn’t dare let you near my lower body.”

“I really do apologise, sir,” stammered the hapless waiter.

“I mean, can’t you control your arms, man?”

Something crept into the waiter’s demeanour, something inappropriate. In an extraordinary show of cheek, he snapped to attention and saluted in a very clumsy manner with his right hand. “McKay, Gordon. Corporal, 17th Batallion, Highland Light Infantry. 240416. Lost my hand at Passchendaele, sir. Still not got the hang of the wooden one, sir. I will clean this up, find you some more trousers and get you another drink immediately, sir. Was it Warre’s 87, sir?”

The lawyer was unsurprisingly put on the back foot by this backchat, but seemed too embarrassed to challenge the man’s outburst: “Yes, yes. And be quick about it.”

Still apologising, the waiter hurried off.

“Damned cheek,” the lawyer spat. “I didn’t ask the damn fool for his service history. If the man was idiot enough to get in the way of a bullet then I’m surprised the club employs him.”

A languid voice wafted across the room from the window. “Did you not have the opportunity to serve then, Mr Cannkerr?”

The voice came from a young man, perhaps 20. He was draped behind a lowered copy of The Times. He was sitting where he always sat, in a green chair by the open window looking out to Horse Guards Parade. Cannkerr had never really paid him attention. The other members rarely spoke to him but nor were they beastly about him behind his back. He was an unknown quantity to a peripheral member and therefore best not trifled with. But rain or shine he always sat with the window open, doing what he always did, not reading The Times and sinking large whiskies.

Cannkerr’s afternoon was becoming somewhat nightmarish. First, his drink’s demise interrupted the major, then a servant’s insubordination had wrong-footed him and now he was to suffer further humiliation. This young man had found his weak spot and had exposed it. “No, I am afraid I did not serve, when I tried to sign up I was told I had an irregular heart beat and …”

As he reeled off his usual form of words on this topic Cannkerr realised how weak they sounded. He tried valiantly to change the subject. “I don’t believe we’ve met, Mr …?”

The young man stood up and walked over to shake his hand. Mercifully he appeared to have the full complement of limbs. “Paulet-Efford. Charles Paulet-Efford.”

Some further pleasantries were thus teed up. Cannkerr could see light at the end of the tunnel of endless faux pas. Light that was snuffed out when – horror of horrors – the Brigadier intervened. “He is not Mr Paulet-Efford. He is not Mr anything. He is Captain Paulet-Efford. Captain Paulet-Efford MC, to be exact.”

Cannkerr had not thought that his heart could sink any lower but it did. The Brigadier continued: “There is nothing conveniently wrong with Captain Paulet-Efford’s heart. He would have one of the finest military records this club has ever seen if he had joined a proper regiment instead of the Hampshires.”

As the Brigadier spoke, Paulet-Efford’s expression had not changed but his eyes seemed to Cannkerr to have softened. Their harsh mocking look had become something more thoughtful as the Brigadier heaped praise on him.

Cannkerr started to explain how hard he had tried to join up and how much he wished he had gone.

Paulet-Efford stopped him and said kindly: “I am glad you did not get your wish, Mr Cannkerr. It was a bloody stupid mess. You were better off out of it. We all were.”

After he spoke, he turned to go back to The Times. As he went, he looked round and said: “Try to forgive McKay. He’s a good sort even if he’ll never keep wicket for England.”

There were polite chuckles all round and private prayers of thanks as Paulet-Efford’s bonhomie eased the conversation back on a track that would temper the Brigadier’s explosive tendencies. As more theories about the Empire’s enemies emerged from the smoke, Charles returned to his seat. He raised the newspaper and gazed out of the window while he tried to put off taking another gulp of Scotch for as long as possible.

He lasted 11 seconds and sighed deeply. What could have been a tear dampened his right eye and he muttered quietly: “It’s about time, isn’t it?”

The men behind him exploded. A fiery blast of flesh, bone and upholstery splattered the back of his chair. Other men would have been surprised by this turn of events but the Captain had known it was coming. Hot gusts of choking smoke followed and Charles was thrown forward onto the blood-soaked ground. He sank face down into foul mire, with bitter black fluid forcing itself into his mouth and nose and ears. His eyes were blind. He could not see. “I have not got my specs with me,” some part of his mind gibbered. He could not breathe. He tried to lift his head but a dreadful weight was pressing him down into the muck. He tried to wriggle free but his legs wouldn’t work. He tried to scream but merely sucked filth into his lungs. He managed to turn his head slightly. There was a brightness somewhere. Then with horror he realised that something was entwining itself round his legs.

As his eyes slipped into the gloop, he started to cry, his tears pressed back by the filth. He was there again. It was so hot. It was so loud. It was so cold and quiet.

Read Chapter 3 of The Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory.

Note: This crime novel is a cross between a post-Great War Lovecraftian horror and near-future SF noir. It’s definitely one for grown-ups.

Re: Please Use Inappropriate Headers

It’s 3am and the sky is getting light again. I’m picking up speed.  I’m very high. I’m very drunk. And I’m naked.

Whisky is raging through my rushing veins and the two wheels of my Norton are donkey-punching this dark lonely road between the mountains and the sea. The mushrooms are kicking in nicely, adding giggles to the ice I’d snorted earlier. I’m hitting 90mph on a single-track that holds the equal promise of starlit exhilaration and oncoming fish lorries. Life and death wrestle behind each blind corner as the white light of my headlight slashes the dark surface of the road. It’s very Yin and Yang and so far the flow of the Tao has kept to the sunny side of the street.

I’m speeding through the dark on the knife edge between life and death. To cap it all, I’m laughing like a child at Christmas.
 
I love midsummer. I love this country. I love this bike. And I love the reason for this mad dash. I ran five miles from a campfire on a silent beach to get to my Commando Production Racer. I flowed across the peat bogs and heather. Now this throbbing motorbike is flowing along the tarmac stream that will carry me to the closed shop outside Kinochbervie where I will somehow buy skins to roll the joint back on the beach that will woo those two horny surf chics into making the beast with three backs with me.

Life is good.

Or rather it isn’t. It’s brutal and violent and nasty. It’s also extremely short and when good things come you should weigh the moment before letting them go. I am not normally the kind of person to risk dying headfirst in a consignment of haddock, or indeed to do something so profoundly stupid as to drive drunk after taking too many hard drugs simultaneously or to indulge in random troilism with anonymous surf chics, no matter how eye-poppingly hot they are.

On the other hand, I’m not usually the kind of person who hides out on remote Scottish beaches with a military-level arsenal, 300 kilos of the finest drugs money can’t buy and some baked beans.

The things I’ve been through have changed my outlook somewhat and I’m taking this opportunity to experiment with new experiences and most definitely not being anywhere near a city.

There is a time for caution and safety but now is the time to ride high and ride naked in the plunging dark.

*******

If you were going to be killed, it was perhaps fitting to be killed at night. The ending of the day, the passing of the light, the coming of the long dark and all that.

It was an odd thought to have after being shot, but the soldier had had an odd day. And now, it turns out, it was his last day. The impossible had happened,

With his animated-reactive camouflage and his noise-damping feedback, the enemy should not have even realised he was on the battlefield, let alone find him. His “head in display” should have shown him every nearby enemy’s arc of fire. His micro body armour should have repelled even mortar rounds without him being aware of more than a slight bump.  Finally, his own peculiar facility for dodging bullets was totally effective.

Sadly, the insurgent who shot the soldier had not got that particular memo. The terrorist had very efficiently killed him. And the shooter would be a terrorist – in a war on terror the enemy is always, by definition, a terrorist even if he is just a farmer with a shotgun or a teenager with a rock. In any case, this particular terrorist’s bullet had struck the soldier’s pelvis just inside his right hip, spinning him like an ice dancer. It had fragmented and sent shrapnel burning into his liver. Lumps of flesh flew out of his back. There was a sudden, massive loss of blood. Had it not been for his combat suit’s in-built medikit with its auto-tourniquet function, he would have lost consciousness immediately. It was a mortal wound. The soldier knew that instantly. Frankly, he could have done without it. He had plans. He had some leave coming up and …

Green lines of light stabbed through the darkness as the solider lay in the dust. The PsychOps guys said the lasers did not need to be green but they were to unnerve the enemy. Apparently 17 years of research on gorillas proved this. Of course, PsychOps being PsychOps being part of Military Intelligence (everyone’s favourite oxymoron) the truth was probably that the lasers did in fact have to be green and they gave their own side arse cancer.

Not that that would be a worry for the soldier. His helmeted head was in the dirt. A very definite kind of pain was gnawing at his gut. His consciousness was swimming, despite the drugs.

Smoke and sand blew across the blackened arid hilltop. Dust and fire whirled from two huddled adobe buildings – the terrorist base that was their target. According to the briefing this was the base of a “small team of amateur insurgents lightly armed with…”  Actually, sod all that. He had been shot. And it was a mortal wound.

As he writhed on to ground, his rifle and body armour automatically sent information about where the shot came from back to his HQ. Flashes erupted in four places in front of his position. There was a scream from one of them – he didn’t care which – so at least his killer was having a rotten time as well. Good.

For “small team of amateur insurgents lightly armed with substandard weaponry” his killer and the bastard’s buddies seemed to have an awful lot of fire-power. Yet again, military intell…. Actually, sod all that. Half of the soldier’s unit had been killed. More to the point, he had been shot. And it was a mortal wound.

The pain was getting worse. He could hardly move now. He couldn’t see. This was not good. Death was a matter of minutes away. His face sank into the dirt. Only, it wasn’t dirt. It was dung. He then remembered through the fog and confusions that the “lightly defended” base was on a farm.

What a bloody stupid way to die. Face down in the shit in the dark on a secret mission so obscure no-one would ever know or care about it. Who were they fighting anyway? Ragheads? Settlers? Seekers? He couldn’t remember anymore.
  
He was supposed to be invincible. This raid was supposed to be like all the others – so many others – lightning strikes against foes who never stood a chance, who didn’t know he and his mates were coming, who couldn’t see them and couldn’t fight back.

The pain was unbearable now. The solder screamed into the ground and put his hand to the wound in a desperate attempt to ease the pain. Christ, it hurt. He took his hand away.
 
There was no blood.

Terror struck the soldier. Then grief. If he was not mortally wounded then another of Us had been hit. It was their death pains he felt.
 
And that was far far worse than dying himself.

*******

The best seats in the Insurgent and Ferret are to be found up in the old minaret. It’s a tight squeeze up the winding staircase, alternately decorated with old Hezbollah banners and hardcore pornography, but it’s worth it. The three tables on the balcony, far above the brawling roughnecks and squaddies in the repurposed mosque, offer a uniquely charming view of East London.

On this November evening, the temperature outside is pleasant, a cool 30C. And because the minaret is above the acid fog I can actually sit outside, as in really outside, as in not in an oxygen bubble. From up here the yellow vapours look soothing and pretty, especially when the rays of the setting sun are turning them into clouds of candy floss.
 
Tonight I am drinking the house speciality so I would probably be seeing candy floss anyway, among other things. My right hand clasps the frosted glass of a nice tall Suicide Bomber – absinthe, homemade potato vodka and SS-20 Super Skunk. Ice, no fruit. If I arrange my fingers correctly I can block out the government health warning. In the case of this drink a warning is definitely required. Two of these in a night will induce psychosis, paranoia, palpitations, partial paralysis and possible incontinence. Three will see the unwary wind up in an evil brawl, a strange bed, a casualty ward and, possibly, a foreign war zone.

This one’s my fourth. It’s been was that kind of day. It has to be said that nearly every day is that kind of day these days. Drinking too much too fast is not big and not clever but it is fun. Well, not fun exactly, more numbing. So numbing, in fact, that when I order another drink I can barely key in my electronic signature on the disclaimer waiving my right to sue the alcohol producer or vendor for any ill-effects, present or future, that may result from my consumption of their product. 

I drink for many reasons, boredom, guilt, disappointment. But mostly I drink to block out thoughts. Not my thoughts, you understand, other people’s. And, ye gods and little fishes, aren’t they achingly dull? Dull, empty and facile. No wonder the world’s gone to hell in a chocolate handbasket.

How I ended up in this predicament is a long, long story and by the time I reach the middle I’ll have forgotten the beginning on account of these four – make that five, cheers – cocktails. Basically, thanks to my old place of employ, my brain’s been rigged up with a hardwired jack to allow constant access to online communication without any need for gadgets or servers or those stupid multimedia spectacles that make you look like a cross between Joe 90 and the Borg.
 
It seemed like a good idea at the time and it worked. But it worked too well. In addition to the truly wireless, direct connection to the net whenever I thought about it I also started to get spontaneous random access to the things people nearby were doing online. Before I realised what was going on this things got very confusing and difficult. It all came to a head when I answered an email before it was sent. Unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to for me. It was an email from the Head of Security of the UK Orbital Customs And Excise Service (my then employer) to MI5 about an upcoming state visit by the President of the United States.

Oops. Cue five months of very detailed questions in Camp X-Ray XV, followed by a very large pay-off and a series of explicit threats about the kind of medical procedures that could be used – without aneasthesia – to reverse the implant if I did not prove silent and trustworthy.
 
I have since been silent and trustworthy.
 
But my world is far from silent. I am constantly bombarded with unwanted emails, websites, chat, video, which I have to make a conscious effort to close out. It’s like 24-hour spam in my head. Most of the time I can handle it, but every now and then, it really gets to me. Take the time I was standing on the Tube, packed in as usual, shoulder to shoulder as usual, ankle-deep in water as usual, pressed against a crowd of nuns when some idiot nearby started watching a very high quality, very provocative skinflick. That took some explaining…
 
However, it’s the poetry I can’t stand.

Somebody who seems to be within range far too often has a taste for whimsical poetry. And they dog my footsteps. Wherever I am, whatever I’m doing, I will suddenly be assailed by a stanza, line or haiku. And that really gets under my radar. I sometimes can’t tell the difference between this and my own thoughts.
 
There are benefits, though. As well as getting spammed with others’ reading and viewing material I sometimes get what must be a sense of their history – the other things they’ve accessed, sometimes even if they are not online right now. This gives me a quasi-sixth sense about some people. A fifth-and-a-half sense, if you will.
 
I find this a real advantage in my line of work. I’m a private investigator – and knowing things about people they don’t want me to know is my business.
 
It’s not foolproof by any means. Once I was called in to help find a girl who’d disappeared three days previously. I stood in her bedroom for an hour and then, in a revelationary moment, was hit suddenly by a strong sense of a rural setting, clouds and a bank of yellow flowers. I was just asking her parents if they were familiar with any such location when she walked in the front door with her boyfriend. Apparently they’d run off to Wigan to get married (no accounting for taste, I suppose). I was lambasted for being a complete fraud and laughed out of the house. It was only later, when I checked my access log, that I realised that my poetry-loving chum had chosen the exact time of my revelationary moment to post some bloody Wordsworth.

At least they weren’t reading Lycidas or I’d have told the parents their poor girl had drowned. (And yes, I know Wordsworth didn’t write Lycidas – a piece of information I did not possess before the implant and without which I was really very happy.)

That’s when it all gets too much and when it all gets too much I hit the recreational chemicals hard. That’s what I’m doing in the Insurgent and Ferret. It gives me a holiday from consciousness – mine and others’. In the preceding 17 hours, I’ve consumed something like seven wraps of speed, two joints of AK-47, two tabs of ZX-80 LSD, a couple of lines of coke, a mug of shroom tea, a K-hole express, some crystal and a dozen screamers and laughers. Oh and a decaf, skinny cappuccino with a shot of hazelnut syrup – the only item on the above list to require a disclaimer and another bloody health warning. [I cried for madder music and for stronger wine]
 
There! There, it happened again. I haven’t had any wine. And I never mentioned music. Get me another drink quick.
 
However, there’s another reason why I am larging it today. I have the pleasure of meeting my boss. I use the word “pleasure” in its widest sense, bearing in mind that some people define pushing broken glass into every nook and cranny of their genitals as “pleasure”.

His name is Tarquin and he is quite the most loathesome toad you could ever have the misfortune to meet.

He is a straight-down-the-middle, bottom-line MBA monkey. The worst kind of degenerate corporate drone, never happier than whoring his soul and his ass for a profit margin. Greed and avarice are the highest virtues he can imagine. Even though he is no longer employed by a large corporation, he still uses the verbal analingus that gets one ahead in those temples to Mammon and Dullness. He is so far gone he could actually use the expression “deliver on our objectives moving forward” without then apologetically committing hara-kiri in a bid to end the empty madness. [Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.]

Worst of all, he no longer has to work.  Somehow he had remembered enough long words to write a motivational business book. Tarquin being Tarquin, this was based on Leni Riefenstahl’s “Triumph of the Will”. It instructed the aspiring entrepreneur on how rise above the adoring, unquestioning hordes in order to impose the Will of the Market. Instead of being scourged with barbed wire and vinegar in front of a firing squad for crimes against taste, Tarquin was, unbelievably, feted by the business community for this vile text. His sodding Nazi-fest of trite jargon sold like hot cakes, he has obscene quantities of money and now, for him, employment is something “the little people do”.

I am one of the little people and I have the terrible misfortune to work for him, specifically for the small detective agency – Insoluble Solutions (Tarquin thought of the name, of course) – he runs as a hobby, well more as an exercise in screwing maximum profit out of little people’s efffort.

Shorn of charm, personality or culture, Tarquin has used his mighty wealth unwisely. He’s had too much expensive and ill-advised plastic surgery. Unfortunately, he has not yet got round to having his face done. He is toned from the neck down but his round, ruddy face face looks like Billy Bunter’s evil twin after a hard night on the lard pies. He resembles nothing more than a pink tadpole. He also dresses like a rich artistocrat: badly and expensively.

He does have one good quality, however. Among his social circle of toffs, bankers and socialites, he is known to be resolutely, determinedly discreet. And that’s why I do jobs for him – he has access to clients I could only dream of. Rich, easy clients who are more concerned with avoiding scandal than getting results. In turn, he employs me because my service with Her Majesty’s Orbital Customs And Excise Service has a whiff of neo-space-age glamour about it, which impresses these unthinking yahoos.

He also knows I have an uncanny knack for the unexpected and am very uncoventional in my approach. Instinctively, he hates these qualities but he knows he can use them. In his portfolio, Tarquin has different specialists for different tasks. Industrial espionage goes to Persephone Sisters. Tarquin gives domestic disputes and custody cases to Bongo Laius. He turns to Ramdam Hughes for anything involving organised crime or violence. He has a handful of employees for subcontracting general police work. And me? Tarquin uses me when he’s desperate.

I like that. It puts me in a strong bargaining position.

As I slurp down another drink and the walls start to melt, I begin to dread his attempts at the “personal touch”. Instead of just behaving like the soulless greedhead he is, he insists on an empty charade of personal chit-chat. Lines like “How’re the children?” (I don’t have any) trip from his lips with all the joyless pretence of a porn star’s kiss.

Speaking of porn, I know something about him that others do not. Something that he would like to keep secret. Sitting beside him one night listening to a very nice old posh lady describing her lost jewellery I got a sudden flash in my head of what he was looking at on the web through his expensive contact lens screens. Remaining calm, I asked the lady about how many internet connections came into the house. There were four. Quickly, using a useful widget I found somewhere I shouldn’t, I checked if they were active. They were not. I then mentally checked the direction of the connection’s signal. It was definitely coming from Tarquin. He was still online, pretending to listen to this delightful old woman in her tasteful chintz living room. In fact he was paying no attention to her or me. He was pursuing his online hobby.

And that hobby was … drum roll … scatalogical goat porn. Nice.

I told no-one. [Must we not pay a debt to pleasure too?]

Tarquin once told me he was known to his friends as Nuppy. But as he has no friends that I know of everyone calls him “that two-faced dung-thirsty goat-muncher”. (OK, the statement “I told no-one” might not conform to normal standards of “no-one”.)

I always introduce him to others as “a man of wealth and taste” and, because he is shorn of any and all cultural references, he thinks this is a compliment. Thanks to this complete ignorance of slang, popular culture and anything sexual that does not involve barnyard animals and slurry there is some sport to be had with him. I’ve told him that “do you want to cyber” was a police term for “do you want my electronic business card”. Sadly, he hasn’t had cause to use it yet but I am optimistic.
 
Then there was that time we’d met in the restaurant of a notorious sex club (as with tonight he’d let me choose the venue, the sucker). Madame Zsa’s Tangerine Parlour is not a place to be trifled with. The naive have no place there. In fact, the just mildly twisted have no place there. Thinking about, people who define themselves as “very twisted” would find it daunting.  With vampiric drapes and sound-proofed, wipe-clean surfaces, it is a den of the utmost depravity. There is no perversion too extreme to be found there, no orifice too obscure to be violated. It feels like an ante-chamber to the second circle of hell and it probably is one. You have to watch your language there. A misplaced oath along the lines of “bugger me sideways with a badger” could lead to a lot of pain, confusion and dry cleaning bills.

I should point out at this stage that I am not a member nor, for that matter, an employee. Madame Zsa herself (or himself or itself depending on how things are going) once hired me as an IT contractor to help him or her or them with some security issues. As well as the standard environmental barriers to keep out the weather, terrorists and the flu, the establishment had … special requirements to do with privacy and identity. You see in that kind of place nobody wants to know who anybody is but, on the other hand, they don’t want to be bumping masked uglies with just anybody. That could be socially embarrassing. Also, nobody wants to ask after anybody’s sexual health but neither do they want to come down with a nasty case of exploding pubic lice. Madame Zsa needed somebody who could run discreet checks on certain facts about every member (as it were). As that would violate their privacy, and in some cases break the Official Secrets Act, it was quite illegal.

Obviously I would never be involved in anything like that…

As a reward for my efforts, I received a huge sum of money, some amazingly well-connected contacts and an open invitation to visit. And, oddly, I find myself at Madame Zsa’s now and then, but only in the restaurant. My intimate tastes are too vanilla for the pastimes on offer in that place. In fact, the Marquis de Sade’s tastes are too vanilla for that place.

However, the restaurant is worth checking out for the unique people watching opportunities and because the chef does a mean steak tartare, though it’s best not to think too hard about why. As we sat down to dine that fateful night, Tarquin was distracted by the bevy of naked girls, bankers and fondues at the next table. It is a rule at Madame Zsa’s that you do not stare at the other customers but this was quite a scene. The bankers were mostly men, City types, expensive suits coked out of their minds. The girls were pricey sex-worker pretty, attractive but looking like they were churned out of a pneumatic Barbie factory. They were also being covered in bits of melted cheese, and other things.

One of them looked back at me when I glanced across. [Fair nymphs, and well-dress'd youths around her shone, But ev'ry eye was fix'd on her alone.] She had the most beautiful blue eyes but they were totally, totally dead. She stared at me and time seemed to freeze. I was captivated by those deep azure pools and then suddenly was horrified at the lack of life behind them. In my line of work you encounter lots of lost souls, some of them addicted to mind-wiping drugs, some of them too far gone in their own psychoses to relate to anything outside of their own hallucinations, some of them dead. Every single one of them, even the corpses, had more life in their eyes  than that girl. Then one of the City boys did something filthy under the table with a skewer and she turned to smile at him with all the adoration of a freshly killed puppy.

It made me quite lose my appetite and it made me want to take some kind of vengeance on these self-serving miniplutocrats and their kind. As the rage built within me, I turned my head and – lo – there was Nuppy the Randy Goatboy beside, trying to puzzle his way through the complex task of choosing something to eat. Of course, he was one of them. And he was here in my power.

A plan began to form in my head when I noticed that one of Madam Zsa’s most voracious and sadistic employees was working the restaurant that night, taking a break perhaps from the exertions of the basement levels. I beckoned him over with a haughty wave, something that I knew would irritate him. At first he ignored me, but I kept waving and clicking my fingers until he eventually stormed towards the table, with a look of fury on his face.

As the BDSM professional fumed towards us, I murmured to my very suggestible boss: “I’m just popping to the loo but here comes our waiter. It’s not on the menu but I hear the ‘Detroit steamer’ is … memorable.”

Ahh, happy times.

And any minute now Tarquin would be arriving downstairs and asking the violently homophobic doorman if he was “Dirty Sanchez”, hopefully followed by: “Do you want to cyber?”

Oh crap, then I’ll have to talk to him. Another drink methinks. The room swims I try to stay focused by dipping into the news blog but it’s all a swirling whirl of celebrity gossip and techy tittle-tattle and conspiracy theories. After much searching I found the rump BBC, which is reporting about the elections being delayed again because of the war but it messes with my mind.

Just then a flustered looking Tarquin lurches to the top of the stairs, sweating into his expensive “smart but casual attire”. My guts tense for the inevitable onslaught of faux bonhomie and his weak jokes.

“Move it,” he barked. “We’ve got a job.”

Read the second chapter of The Grand Unified Conspiracy Theory.

Much has been written about the death of the headline. Search engines, RSS feeds and news aggregators rely on short, descriptive, factual headlines that quickly convey the essence of the story to a busy reader.

But what about the whimsicial, humorous headers that provide our news with unique character, that define events through near-poetic wordplay. What of them? In this age of identical bland media products news organisations that want to differentiate themselves should not sacrifice uniqueness in the name of SEO. They should preserve clever headlines in some way – perhaps as sub-heads – while at the same time deploying the more utilitarian version.

But there is a third way. The headline that both boldly seizes the imagination and also tells the whole story in a few words. And it is here that I doff my cap to whoever wrote the bills at the Glasgow Daily Record on the night of 3 July. John Smeaton, aka the real John McClane, had given an interview about tackling one of scumbags who had attempted to carbomb Glasgow airport.

This is interesting enough in itself, but the bill (the poster outside the newsagent that tries to get you to buy the paper) took headline writing to new heights. It gripped the reader. It caught the breath. It told the whole story but left you wanting to read more.

The headline? Well, thanks to a picture taken by Februus, I can show you it in all its perfect beauty:

Wonderful, isn’t it? I think I’m going to cry.