Ned Beauman - Boxer, Beetle

Along with trimethylaminuria I also have asthma, eczema, cystic acne, mild irritable bowel syndrome and half a dozen other absurd non-terminal diseases. I have come to see my body as a sort of Faulknerian idiot man-child which I must drag along groaning behind me wherever I go. Stuart is convinced that within the next fifty years it will be possible to upload one’s brain into a computer and live on as nothing more than sparkles on a hard disk, and I long for that day of rapture. (Funnily enough, though, Stuart himself suffers from a sort of electronic trimethylaminuria, the sheer obnoxiousness of his emails and messageboard posts ensuring that I am the only person left in the internet Nazi memorabilia collecting community who will talk to him. He once tricked several of his enemies into watching a nine-minute video clip, loosely of the pornographic genre, called ‘Three Girls, Two Cups’; at least one victim has reportedly not approached a computer since.) But until that day, I will just have to go on smelling like unwashed cunt.

Consequently, you might expect that I would take excellent care of my flat in Holloway, since I so rarely feel motivated to leave it. But several months have passed since Maria quit, and things have got to the stage now where I worry that, without all the dirty socks, takeaway cartons and semen-stiffened tissues like crude artificial roses, the place might actually feel a bit empty and weird. I’m not someone who minds a bit of mess. Also, even if it were spotless, the trimethylamine smell would still be intolerable to anyone but me. Sometimes I like to think of it as a mutant power but the truth is I don’t think I’d fit in with the X-Men.

When I got home from Zroszak’s flat at about one in the morning, I woke my computer and wrote a post on the largest of the collectors’ forums.

Subject: Philip Erskine?

From: kevin (Posts: 1,267)

Time: 1:11 GMT

does anyone know anything about a scientist and possible acquaintance of Hitler called Philip Erskine?

I opened my chat program. Stuart, as usual, was still online. He doesn’t sleep much.

KEVIN: i saw a dead body today

STUART: dig her up yourself? lol.

KEVIN: i’m serious

STUART: where, then?

KEVIN: i can’t tell you

STUART: well aren’t you mysterious

hey, what’s this about ‘Philip Erskine’?

Stuart has a browser extension that immediately alerts him to every new post on every relevant forum so that he doesn’t have to click ‘reload’ every ten seconds.

KEVIN: just something i came across

STUART: to do with the dead body?

KEVIN: no

STUART: come on

KEVIN: no nothing to do with it

STUART: oh for fuck’s sake, don’t hold out on me like this

KEVIN: i’m not

STUART: so two unrelated exciting things happened to you in one night? right.

Guiltily I clicked away to another window and ran a search for ‘Philip Erskine’. A motivational speaker, a history teacher, a town planner, a few others, but no scientists. I went back to the forum. To my surprise, someone had already replied to my post.

Subject: Philip Erskine?

From: nbeauman (Posts: 17)

Time: 1:14 GMT

> does anyone know anything about a scientist and possible

> acquaintance of Hitler called Philip Erskine?

anything to do with Seth Roach, the boxer?

Remembering that Grublock had mentioned that name, I wrote:

Subject: Philip Erskine?

From: kevin (posts: 1,268)

Time: 1:15 GMT

> anything to do with Seth Roach, the boxer?

yes. what else do you know?

and waited, fidgeting, for five minutes, but there was no further response. I went to nbeauman’s profile to see his sixteen prior posts: just short, routine contributions to a few forum arguments, some of which I’d actually read at the time without noting his name.

I spent the next half-hour running more searches on ‘Philip Erskine’ and ‘Seth Roach’, from which I didn’t learn much, while debating with Stuart whether Unity Mitford could really have had Hitler’s baby and whether the new two-disc special edition DVD of Capricorn One was worth the money. At about two in the morning, I went to bed. At about five, something woke me. I opened my eyes. There was a man in my room.

He sat, because there was nowhere else to sit, on the low chest of drawers by the door. He was lean and muscular, dressed in black, and held a black semiautomatic pistol with a long silencer.

‘Get up and stand beside the bed, please,’ he said. ‘Don’t move unless I ask you to, and you won’t be hurt.’ He had a faint Welsh accent. I did as I was told. ‘Hands at your sides. Thank you.’ He did not lower the gun. ‘I need you to tell me what you found at the detective’s flat.’

‘A letter from Adolf Hitler to Philip Erskine, dated 1936, in condition “Fine” to “Very Fine”,’ I said quickly. I wanted to lie but I was too scared.

‘That is of no use to me, I’m afraid. I’d hoped it might be something more substantial. What else do you know about Philip Erskine?’

‘Nothing.’

‘The truth, please.’

‘You killed Zroszak.’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you work for the Japanese? A consortium?’

‘You were on the subject of Philip Erskine.’

‘I need to go to the toilet,’ I said, my voice cracking.

‘Wait, please.’

‘You can’t imagine the smell if I piss myself,’ I said. In truth, it could hardly get any worse than it already was: I sweat so much when I panic that I turn into a minor airborne toxic event.

He looked at me for a second and then said, ‘Where’s the toilet?’

‘Off the living room.’

‘Go.’

He followed me out of the bedroom into the living room. He flipped on the light, and I glanced back to get a better look at him. I knew I should probably study his calm face, but all I could look at was the gun in his hand, its shape familiar from dozens of computer games, and that was when I noticed the tattoo on his wrist: a hunting dagger atop a rounded swastika.

‘You’re from the Thule Society,’ I whispered.

‘Hurry up, please,’ he said. As I went into the bathroom he added, ‘Don’t close the door.’

I didn’t. But his view of the sink was blocked by my body. With one hand I tugged my penis out of my pyjama bottoms, and with the other I picked up my toothbrush mug. I pissed into the mug until it was almost full. Coming back out of the bathroom, I held the mug behind my back and with my free hand pointed at the letter from Hitler on my computer desk. ‘There it is,’ I said. ‘What I took.’ The Welsh Ariosophist reached to pick it up, and I threw the mug of hot piss in his face.

Trimethylamine in high concentrations starts to smell more like ammonia than fish, and is vilely corrosive to the mucuous membranes. Like a bethylid wasp who squirts venom at her enemy as she flees from a fight, it was only a distraction; but as the Ariosophist coughed and retched and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, I had time to grab my car keys from my desk and get out of the flat.

I slammed the door behind me, and heard two gunshots no louder than the punch of a big stapler. I ran down the stairs, dodged a few post-nightclub drunks who stood smoking outside Happy Fried Chicken, and got into my car. It had rained through the night, and the street lamps glistened off the tarmac, grainy golden light spreading under my wheels like daffodil blood oozing up through the earth. A helicopter buzzed in the distance.

Zroszak might just as well have been murdered by the Whig Party, I thought, as I careened down Camden Road on the way to Grublock’s penthouse near Battersea Bridge. As far as I knew, the Thule Society hadn’t operated for at least eighty years.