Robert Rankin - The Brightonomicon

'Bog troll,' said Mr Rune. 'Trust me on this. I am, after all, a magician.'

'The bog troll, then. His brother was found dead upon the Sussex Downs inside a platypus-pelt crab costume. The police are baffled; they say it was death by misadventure. And not only that, the police refused to release the body to Bartholomew for burial. They said it was too badly decomposed, a health hazard, and they had it cremated. But Bartholomew says that his brother had only been missing for a day. It all sounds very strange and I thought it might interest you.'

'It does indeed,' said Mr Rune. 'Pop behind the bar and set us up with drinks, would you?' 'Where is Fangio?' I asked. 'Upstairs, nursing his bruises and sulking.' 'Oh, right then.' And I shinnied over the bar.

'Naturally I read of the case,' said Mr Rune, when I had presented him with a bottle of Scotch and returned to the punters' side of the bar. 'Most curious business. Body of a man found all alone upon the Downs encased within a platypus-pelt crab costume. Naturally, I could conceive of at least a dozen reasons for him being there in such a guise, but as to his demise, I do not consider that death by misadventure quite filled the platypus bill, as it were.' 'The bog troll thinks he was murdered.'

'I shall have a word with this fellow.' And Mr Rune rose from his barstool and set off for the gents' excuse-me, taking the bottle of Scotch with him.

I sat and twiddled my thumbs, as one is apt to do when lost for some other way to pass the time. I have never fully acquired the knack and sometimes it has taken me almost an hour to untwiddle my thumbs again.

Happily, they were not too inextricably twiddled by the time Mr Rune returned. 'The case is ours,' he said, 'and the game is afoot.'

'I have never been sure exactly what that means,' I said, as I deftly (and, I think, through luck rather than design) untwiddled my thumbs. 'What does it mean?'

'It means, my dear Rizla, that I have saved the patrons of the Palace Pier from an unexpected pillaging – or at least will do once the case is solved and the murderer brought to justice. And there will be a profit in it for the both of us.' 'The bog troll is going to pay you?'

'For bringing his brother's murderer to book, the galleon that the ship-builders at the marina are presently constructing for him will become mine. I had him sign a contract to this effect.' 'In blood?'

Mr Rune cast me a certain glance. 'How else?' he asked. 'How else?' We did not visit the circus that day, but as Fangio's tickets were for the following week, this mattered not. We travelled instead to Moulsecoomb.

And we travelled in a taxicab that I hailed for our conveyance.

The taxi driver's name was Ralph, and he was an avid supporter of Chelsea Football Club. To which, he promised us, 'I offer my allegiance and will continue so to do until the Rapture comes and the good are carried bodily to Heaven.'

He then went on to expound his views upon the gift of prophecy. 'What folk don't understand,' he told us, 'is that prophets aren't blessed by God. It's just that they are able to see the peaks. Time doesn't travel in a straight line, you see. Time is like light, it comes in waves. You can chart it, like a hospital chart of a patient's heartbeat.'

I cared not for talk of hospitals, what with my recent experience in one and everything, but the taxi driver continued, 'So time comes in waves, peaks and troughs, like on a chart, and your prophet, he can see from one peak to the next – like a mountaineer, if you will. He can see what's on the next peak. And on the last one, but prophets never predict the past, you notice. They always look forward. And do you know why they do that?'

Well, J never learned why. Because by that time we had reached our destination, which was within the gates of Moulsecoomb, for cabbies were allowed entry. And there was some unpleasantness regarding the matter of the fare. And I turned away once more. 'Widdicombe Way,' said Mr Rune. 'A rather insalubrious neck of the woods.'

'This is a most unsavoury neighbourhood,' I said. 'We will be murdered here for certain. And most likely eaten also.'

'Plah!' cried Mr Rune, 'no man dines upon Hugo Rune.' The Lad Himself brandished his stout stick. 'I am a master of Dimac,' he continued, 'personally tutored by Count Dante himself.' 'A chum of Count Otto?'

'Another count entirely. But have no fear for your safety, young Rizla. Hugo Rune will protect you.'

'Then I will have no fear,' I assured him. 'But what are we doing here?'

'I wish to gain an overview of the situation. We are going to visit the house of the deceased.'

'I see,' I said and I followed Mr Rune as he paced on ahead. And I have to confess that I marvelled at the man when I did so. Not because he was pacing on ahead – anyone could do a simple thing like that. No, it was something much more than that. Mr Hugo Rune had a way about him, something that signalled him as being above the everyday and the everyman. He was an enigma, a riddle wrapped around an enigma and tied with a string of surprising circumstances. He appeared to inhabit his own separate universe, where normal laws – and I do not mean those of the legal persuasion – did not apply. Who he was and what he was, I know not to this day. But he was certainly someone. 'Pacey-pacey, Rizla,' Mr Rune called back to me. "The worm of time turns not for the cuckoo of circumstance.' And how true those words are, even today. I did not like the look of the house we stopped at. I did not like the look of the gun emplacements in the front garden, nor the rocket launchers on the roof. And I did not take kindly to the garden gnomes. 'What are those three gnomes doing?' I asked Mr Rune. And he told me. 'The house seems quiet,' said the Cosmic Dick. 'Too quiet, in fact. Follow me.' And I followed him. The front door was made of steel and fortified with many rivets, but it was not locked. 'Suggestive,' said Mr Rune. 'Of what?'

'Of many things, but none of them auspicious.' And he pushed upon the door, which swung open soundlessly. 'Also suggestive,' he said. 'I suspect foul play.'

The hallway smelled of something. I think it was Bird Puller. Mr Rune sniffed at the air and said, 'Suggestive,' once again. 'Search for clues,' said he. 'See what you can come up with.' I shrugged and went off searching.

I did not take much to the hallway. The floor was of mottled linoleum and the walls were papered with a drab floral print. Photographs hung upon these walls – military group photographs. I gave them a bit of perusal. There was the face of Bartholomew – or more probably, on reflection, his brother – grinning along with a bunch of hard-looking soldier boys. I read what was printed beneath this photograph: The Queen's Own Electric Fusiliers. I had never heard of that regiment before and I headed into the lounge.

I did not much take to the front lounge. It was furnished with a sofa and chairs of the style known as hideous. Their horizontal surfaces resembled the flight decks of aircraft carriers and the vertical ones the north face of the Eiger. There was a preponderance of tweed, and a severe lack of cotton. I am no connoisseur of fabrics, although I do know when to call a spade a spade and when to avoid doing so, lest I cause offence. But there was nothing even vaguely spade-like here and I was lost for an answer to that eternal question: Why?

There were medals in a glass case on the wall, big important-looking medals with strange sigils and planetary signs upon them. I shrugged my shoulders at these medals and moved on. There were maps on the walls also, maps of the surrounding area with crosses marked variously upon them. A wall calendar, also with markings – rings about certain days. One, I noticed, about today's date. I moved on.

A desk stood by the window, a desk cluttered with papers through which I nosed. I examined one of several letters: 'Dear Prime Minister' it began, and beneath that there were lots of crossings out. The other letters all looked the same. There were many books to be seen on shelves, books of philosophy and religious matters.