Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘I really have lost the plot,’ I said. ‘Would you care to explain?’

‘All in good time, young Rizla. But see – an unattended cab. I think you will find that your key fits the lock. Mornington Crescent, please. And as fast as you can.’

I halted the cab outside the Lyons Corner House, wherein lay the lift to the underground Ministry. I made to leave the cab, but Mr Rune said no.

‘Stay here, Rizla, and keep the engine running. And be prepared to drive at speed the moment I return.’

And with that said Hugo Rune left the cab and vanished into the Lyons Corner House. I sat idly brumming the engine and tinkering about with things that did not belong to me. This tinkering led to me opening the glove compartment and finding to my joy not only gloves, but a service revolver as well. I twirled this dangerously on my finger and did aimings and the mouthings of phrases such as, ‘Take a roadside rest, Fritz,’ and, ‘Cop this, Adolf, kapow kapow kapow.’

And then suddenly Hugo Rune returned, jumped into the rear seat and shouted, ‘The cab up ahead, the one just leaving the corner, after it!’

‘You would not care to explain?’ I asked.

‘After it, Rizla!’ cried Mr Hugo Rune.

And so I gave chase. And clearly I was giving chase, because the cab across the street took off at speed and, with ne’er a care for a passing cleric on a bike, did swervings and acceleratings too.

‘Faster, Rizla, faster. We can’t let this blighter escape.’

‘I would really like it if you told me what is going on,’ I said. But Hugo Rune cried, ‘Faster!’ so I put the hammer down. Well, pressed my foot to the elegantly designed accelerator pedal anyway.

We passed around Piccadilly Circus, through Leicester Square, Trafalgar Square and up the Royal Mall towards the palace.

‘Faster, Rizla, faster and run him off the road.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘I cannot,’ I said.

‘Just do it!’ shouted Hugo Rune.

And I put my foot down as far as it would go and my cab drew level with the other cab. And would not you know it, or would not you not, that other cab was being driven by Hugo Rune’s arch-enemy, the ever evil bad Count Otto Black.

And in the back of that cab sat Mr McMurdo, wearing a fearsome expression.

‘Off the road with them, Rizla,’ shouted Mr Rune. ‘Grind them into a tree.’

So I took a deep breath and swung the wheel and our cab struck their cab a devastating blow. There were showerings of sparks and grindings of metal and the cabs’ running boards and wheel arches got sort of locked together, which caused them to leave the road and hurtle towards a very large tree indeed.

And yes, things really do seem to happen in slow motion in situations such as this. And what I saw surprised me all the more because it happened as if so slowly.

The entire front part of the other taxicab detached itself from the rest of the vehicle and rose into the sky.

It was the count upon his flying motorcycle. The rear section of his now driverless cab continued on at speed and ploughed into the tree. A terrible explosion occurred that freed the cab that Mr Rune and I were travelling in and allowed it to grind to a halt some hundred yards beyond. With both of us mostly unscathed.

And when I felt myself able to speak again, I raised my head from between my legs and managed to blurt out a, ‘What was that all about?’

‘Infamy and trickery,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘And Mr McMurdo,’ I said. ‘Oh dear. Was Count Otto kidnapping him? He was still in the cab, he must surely be-’

‘Put completely out of service,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘I was going to say “killed”,’ I said.

‘You cannot kill what has never lived,’ said Mr Hugo Rune.

‘And that is a statement I would really like explained.’

‘And so it shall be, Rizla. You performed sterling work today and you will have the nation’s thanks for it.’

‘I could do with a beer,’ I said. ‘And a great deal of explanation.’

‘Then let us return to Brentford and I will buy you a beer. But not I think in The Purple Princess. Brentford, please, Rizla, and don’t spare the horsepower.’

THE MOON

‘You really will have to explain,’ I said, ‘for I am most confused.’

‘Energy fools the magician,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘As an explanation, that fails on so many levels,’ I told the magician, but raised my glass to him all the same as I did so.

We were in the saloon bar of The Four Horsemen, which was under new new management. Jack Lane, former Brentford team captain and centre forward, and the man who hammered in three goals when Brentford won the FA Cup in nineteen twenty-seven, now stood behind the bar. Bald and bandy-legged, he had hardly changed at all since that famous day of glory.

‘My suspicions were originally aroused by the healthsome state of the ghastly Mr McMurdo,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Believe me, Rizla, it would take more than any Harley Street quack has to offer to set that fellow to rights. And then all that nonsense about putting me out to pasture. Me out to pasture? Me?’

‘Quite so,’ I said. ‘Go on,’ I also said.

‘The second exploding cab confirmed my suspicions that something untoward was occurring. One cab, fair enough, Spontaneous Cab Combustion does happen once in a while. But two, I think not. You will note that I repaired to the Gents. Did you not think that was strange?’

‘Well, I thought-Well, never mind,’ I said.

‘I felt that I needed to check the contents of the briefcase and so I slit the bottom and took a little peep inside.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said, intrigued.

‘A bomb, Rizla. Small and of advanced design and timed to go off precisely at three.’

‘To kill you and George Cole, oh no!’

‘Oh yes.’ And Hugo Rune drank ale. ‘It is not altogether unpleasing, this,’ he said. ‘What did you say it was called?’

‘Apple Chancery,’ I said. ‘But as a running gag, having all the beers named after typefaces never really gained its legs at all, did it?’

‘There may be a bit of life left in it. But, as I was saying, a bomb of advanced design. I disarmed it, of course.’

‘Of course,’ I said. ‘So what about the speech for the prime minister to read out?’

‘I will get to that,’ said the Magus. ‘I had you drive me at speed to Mornington Crescent. There I found what I expected to find: dead and dying, precious files destroyed, computers wrecked, all lost. The Ministry had been infiltrated. My worst fears were founded.’

‘Oh dear,’ I said. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’

‘Quite so.’

‘And then you had me chase after that cab because Count Otto was kidnapping Mr McMurdo.’

‘Count Otto was not kidnapping him. Because that was not McMurdo. I found McMurdo’s body at the Ministry – by the looks of him he had been dead for several days.’

‘You did an awful lot of looking around down there in a very few minutes,’ I said. ‘But tell me please, for I do not understand – the McMurdo who tried to blow you up with a bomb in a briefcase was not the real McMurdo? So was he an actor like the one who plays Winston Churchill?’

‘He was not a man, Rizla. Which was why he would not shake my hand. He was a robot, a construct, a mandroid, call it whatever you like.’

‘Oh come on,’ I said to Hugo Rune. ‘I saw the robot at Bletchley Park, a proper nineteen-forties robot, all rivets and eye slits and clockwork. Nothing like what we saw in that office – a robot that can look and sound so convincingly like a human being – is likely to exist for hundreds of years yet, surely.’