The Man From the Diogenes Club Page 61

  ‘That photo’s in your room too?’ said Yoland.

  ‘A corporation that has never existed did not build an underground complex on Skerra in the late sixties. A small war was not fought here in February 1973. Mr Head and I did not bleed all over my third-best coat in that control room.’

  Head said nothing.

  ‘I know you’ll be thoroughly prepared,’ said Richard. ‘You’ll have a record of everyone who has set foot on Skerra between the evacuation of ’32 and our arrival this morning?’

  Onions flinched, minutely. Yoland looked at his computer screen.

  ‘I see that information is available.’

  Richard pulled Yoland’s laptop across the table.

  ‘That’s interesting,’ he said. ‘Miss Gill, when your father bought Skerra, did anyone tell him that Winston Churchill used it for anthrax experiments?’

  Miss Gill was aghast. ‘Bloody hell they did!’

  ‘Those Skerran goats must be the hardiest creatures on Earth. They were supposed to have been wiped out by bio-warfare in 1944. The spores were active and deadly in ’57, when a trawler off its course ran aground. There were deaths. The team from Porton Down who visit every ten years reported non-lethal traces in 1964 and no danger at all in 1974, 1984 and 1994. No danger from anthrax that is. In ’84, there was a fatality due to goat attack. I suppose this jaunt is incidentally supposed to take the place of the scheduled check-up?’

  Yoland nodded. ‘It’s perfectly safe now.’

  Richard scrolled down.

  ‘I see there was a naval exercise here in 1996. We must have been thinking of invading an island. No, it’s the other way about. There was a worry that Spain might take the presence of Israeli or Moroccan tourists on Gibraltar as violation of the fifth paragraph of Article Ten of the Treaty of Utrecht and pull a Galtieri. It seemed like a sensible idea to play out a “liberation scenario”. You’ll be relieved to learn we showed Johnny Spaniard he couldn’t hold the Rock for long.’

  ‘Shouldn’t the Navy have asked me first?’ protested the Droning of Skerra.

  ‘You might have a case for invoking a UN sanction against the British Crown for invading your sovereign territory, but I doubt you’d get very far.’

  ‘All this is still classified, Jeperson,’ said Onions. ‘You didn’t need to know.’

  Head stood erect, hands behind him. For a moment, he wavered.

  Something was different about his eyes. As if the taxidermist had the wrong reference.

  ‘Jeperson?’ said Onions, irritated.

  ‘Yes, where was I? History of Skerra visitations: 1944 to the present day. Got it? Now, you may be right in that we didn’t need to know about the germ warfare or the relief of the Rock, but it is certainly relevant that, far from being an unvisited and forgotten protrusion in a far Northern sea, Skerra has been only marginally less congested than Piccadilly Circus at ten o’clock on a Saturday night. You’ll have all the reports filed after the bio-weapons tests and the naval exercise?’

  Yoland nodded.

  ‘And what don’t they say?’

  Yoland frowned.

  ‘Pardon me, that’s a confusing question form. But I’ll lay you a tenner in old money that no one who trod on Skerra before Captain Vernon’s team – and I haven’t forgotten them, Adam – ever reported a dirty great underground complex in the caverns. Not that easy to miss. And don’t tell me those thorough mad science wallahs or resourceful jack tars stayed topside and never so much as peeped down the Blowhole.’

  ‘No,’ said Onions.

  ‘No, you won’t tell me? Or no, they never peeped? See, now I’m confusing myself.’

  ‘According to reports, this place wasn’t here in 1974, 1984, 1994 or 1996.’

  ‘Thank you for your directness, Mr Yoland.’

  ‘The reports must be wrong,’ said Onions. ‘It’s not impossible to suborn officials.’

  ‘Indeed it isn’t. But I’ll bet you checked out the names on the papers. Did extensive re-interviews? With persuasive methods? I’m right again, aren’t I? I could get used to this. Is it how you feel in quiz contests, Mr Head? When you know all the answers. So, to return to the impossible factor, what we have is a vast installation that evidence suggests has been here for at least thirty years but which can’t have been here as recently as 1996? Do we agree?’

  ‘Is this some sort of Omphalos argument, Jeperson?’

  ‘The benefits of a classical education. Mr Head, could you expand on Adam’s reference for those among us unfamiliar with the works of Philip Henry Gosse.’

  Head was silent. He loomed, face craning forward.

  His eyes were intense, wary, cunning. As if he had just awoken among strangers.

  ‘Come on, Swellhead,’ joshed Yoland. ‘Penny in the slot.’

  ‘The Omphalos argument,’ began Head, tone unfamiliar – not a blank recital, but impassioned, ‘was advanced in the nineteenth century by fundamentalist Christians in reaction to archaeological evidence that the world is older than the biblical date of 4004 BC. Gosse, among others, put forward the notion that God created the Earth complete with a fossil record of creatures that never existed just as He created Adam and Eve with belly-buttons – the word omphalos is classical Greek for navel – indicative of conventional birth.’

  ‘You’re saying that this place was whipped up in the last few years,’ said Yoland. ‘But faked to seem older? Pirelli calendar and all? It still doesn’t solve my problem. No matter when the complex was built, it’d have been impossible to do it in secret.’

  Head was smiling at Richard, nastily.

  The man was remembering. Something trickled inside Richard’s mind, trying to take shape.

  ‘No, this isn’t fake old,’ said Richard. ‘It was built in the 1960s and it wasn’t here until this year. Both statements, irreconcilable as they are, hold water.’

  ‘You’re raving, Jeperson. And you’re well off-topic. Next on the agenda—’

  ‘Listen to me, Adam. It’s important. This whole place is an apport!’

  VII.

  ‘As I said,’ continued Onions, ‘next on the agenda—’

  Richard tried to appeal to the others.

  ‘We’re inside a big ghost. That’s not a safe thing.’

  Yoland and Miss Gill did not seem bothered. This was so outside their experience that it didn’t sink in.

  Head was thinking.

  Richard really did not like that.

  ‘I’ve drawn up a rota,’ said Onions. ‘To keep watch for phenomena. Each should be logged and categorised.’

  ‘Phenomena!’ shouted Richard. ‘You’re sitting on a phenomenon…’ (he kicked the deckchair) ‘…under a phenomenon…’ (he slapped the umbrella) ‘…inside the fenomenoni di tutti fenomena, this whole place!’

  Richard’s outburst echoed. He was breathing heavily.

  Head walked towards the table, taking tiny steps.

  He was craning, twisting his head from side to side as if trying to work a crick out of his neck. Or trying to get his skull to fit properly onto his spinal column.

  ‘May I see that?’ he asked, indicating Yoland’s laptop.

  He took the gadget and peered at it.

  ‘Have we missed something?’ asked Yoland. ‘All the details of the visits to Skerra are in the memory. You can click on the reports and read what went into the secret files.’

  Head was not scanning the information on the screen. He held the computer as if it was the first he had ever seen, turned it over to examine the ports in the case, brushed his fingers over the keyboard.

  ‘Ingenious,’ he smiled. ‘Compact.’

  ‘If we might press on,’ said Onions.

  ‘Silence,’ said Head, firmly.

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  Head struck Onions across the face with the laptop, cracking the casing, and knocking the man from I-Psi-T out of his chair.

  Miss Gill’s mouth gaped in an O of surprise.

  Onions was astonished, and bl
eeding from the scalp.

  Head gave Yoland back his computer.

  ‘Mr Jeperson,’ said Head, quietly, politely. ‘Would you care to try to kill me now?’

  Richard knew he should. It would cut the Gordian knot.

  Sewell Head – Swellhead – opened his hands and tilted his head back. A tiny bulge in the frog-fold between his mouth and collar was his chin. A forceful blow struck below the bulge would crush his larynx and end everything.

  Long seconds stretched.

  Richard made no move. The ghost of the pub quiz champion who was content to work in a sweet shop was still before him, displaced by an apported personality but perhaps not lost for ever.

  ‘I thought as much,’ said Head, turning his back. ‘You are weak. It is why you will not win this day.’

  Swellhead was acting as if he owned the place, which – of course – he did.

  ‘Not killing people on the off chance it’ll solve a problem is just one of those habits,’ Richard remarked. ‘Maybe it’s one of the things that makes me better than you.’

  Head wheeled, eyes flashing fury.

  ‘Yes, Mr Swellhead, I said better.’

  ‘Is that a challenge?’

  ‘If you choose to deem so.’

  Head was tempted, but decided against it.

  ‘You’re a spent force, Mr Jeperson, a distraction. Momentous business is being conducted. Maybe we shall settle things later.’

  Onions got himself together and crawled back to his chair.

  Yoland and Miss Gill were lost.

  Head raised a hand in a signal.

  Other people emerged from around the courtyard. They wore white jumpsuits and faceguards, and carried H-logo weapons. They were not phantoms like the thing in the hallway, but substantial, physical beings.

  Perhaps they perceived Richard and the others as ghosts?

  Guns were pointed at them.

  ‘The place has been run on a skeleton staff,’ said Head. ‘But that will change now.’

  Miss Gill stood up and said, ‘It’s time you stopped playing silly buggers.’

  Head walked over to her. She was inches taller, but could not look him in the eye.

  ‘Who are all these people?’ she demanded. ‘And where have they been hiding?’

  Head took her hand and kissed it, bowing at the waist.

  ‘The Droning of Skerra,’ he said. ‘Miss Kill, you are my guest. Your every comfort will be seen to.’

  He made a signal. One of his jumpsuited goons brought over an attaché case.

  ‘This, my dear, is a gift,’ said Head. ‘From me to you.’

  He held the case and thumbed the catches. It sprang open, with a slight hiss.

  Miss Gill folded back some translucent paper and picked up a mask. It was wax and bore her own face.

  Richard had seen the like before, on the corpse in the sculpture garden.

  ‘Let me help you,’ cooed Head, raising the mask to her face.

  Miss Gill didn’t struggle.

  ‘It feels funny,’ she said.

  ‘Only for a moment.’

  Head took his fingers away. The mask was fixed to Miss Gill’s face. She touched it herself. The wax fitted perfectly around her eyes and mouth. She was disguised as herself, but without expression.

  ‘There,’ said Head. ‘That’s nice and tidy. You’ll always be pretty now, Miss Kill. You’ll always be a proper princess for this island.’

  A giggle leaked through the mask, somehow terrifying.

  ‘Oh, Swellhead,’ said ‘Miss Kill’, girlish and imbecilic, ‘you aren’t half clever.’

  Head stroked her stiff cheek.

  Onions was still groggy, and thus more useless than usual. Richard wondered if he could count on Yoland. The weapons inspector showed signs of open-mindedness. He was quick enough to sense changes in the psychic temperature, and ought to be attuned to rapid reassessments of dangerous situations.

  Head was busy making up to his Miss Kill, with an eye on Richard.

  He was expecting trouble from Richard. He might not have considered Yoland. If nothing else, this was all the work of a monumental solipsist, someone who considers himself alone at the centre of the universe.

  Yoland shifted, getting a good grip on his laptop, the only proven bludgeon to hand.

  Onions blinked. Head saw.

  Yoland launched himself from his seat with a war-cry. Nimbly, elegantly, Head was out of the way.

  Miss Kill kicked Yoland in the face, pirouetting like a dancer.

  Yoland grabbed his laptop and ran across the courtyard, dodging the lumbering figures in white.

  Head was mildly irritated.

  Yoland whirled up the spiral staircase and made it to the landing.

  Then a door opened and a man came out. It was de Maltby, wearing a white jumpsuit and milk-white goggles, an elaborate silver glove over his injured hand.

  The glove buzzed and passed into Yoland’s chest.

  The weapons inspector’s eyes reddened.

  De Maltby raised his arm, lifting Yoland off his feet. He dangled the twitching man over the edge of the balcony. Bloody rain pattered onto the courtyard, along with one of Yoland’s shoes.

  The pilot withdrew his gloved hand, which was lined with tiny whirring blades. Yoland slid off de Maltby’s arm and fell, landing with a thump. His body leaked.

  De Maltby produced a large monogrammed handkerchief and fastidiously wiped his mechanical hand.

  ‘Now, honoured guests,’ said Swellhead, addressing himself to Richard and Onions, ‘let me give you some ground-rules for maintaining my even temper and not abusing my hospitality.’

  Richard had heard him say that before.

  Head smiled, and nodded at him.

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ he said. ‘Here we go again.’

  ACT III: A GAME OF TIN SOLDIERS

  I.

  When Stacy and Kydd got back to the Blowhole, things were changed.

  Kydd had driven the all-terrain vehicle up from the landing site. Powerful searchlights, fitted on the roll-bar, lit up the area.

  A rumbling, grinding noise came from the Blowhole.

  Stacy peered into the cavity. Rings of jagged rock revolved at different speeds. The dangling rope ladder jounced around, shredded.

  The Blowhole was working like a giant kitchen disposal device.

  ‘A good thing that didn’t start up while we were on the ladder.’

  ‘Yes, miss,’ agreed Kydd, as unsurprised by this turn as everything else. Either the aircrewman had been more fully briefed or he’d learned to accept literally anything. It could be something the Navy put in the tea.

  Goats lurked in the dark, making low, threatening noises. She had no idea whether this was natural: she’d never seen a goat in the wild before, or even on a farm. It was about half past eight: she should either be two hours into a night shift or an evening in front of the telly. Maybe out at a film or a pub or club.

  The searchlights made the grass a vivid yellow-green. Her breath frosted like steam. Beyond the light, everything was midnight dark. No sodium-orange street lamps, passing car beams, curtained but lit-up windows, twenty-four-hour supermarkets, electric signage. Cloud cover must be thick, because there were no stars.

  This was not ideal.

  She checked her mobile. No signal and nobody to call anyway.

  Among the gear on the ATV was a communications centre: headsets for the whole party, so the team could remain in constant touch with each other. Onions should perhaps have distributed the equipment before venturing below. She’d mention it at the official inquiry.

  ‘There must be another entrance,’ she said.

  Kydd didn’t respond.

  ‘I mean, the place is huge. The mysterious They can’t just have used the Blowhole. There must be other ways in and out.’

  Skerra Landsby was underwater. Any entrances there would be flooded.

  That left the rock face.

  Stacy climbed the ATV and directed the
searchlights. White shaggy flanks were caught in beams. Goats hurried away. Kydd got into the driving seat and they bumped across a hundred yards of grass, halting a safe distance from crumbling cliff-edge.

  She wasn’t looking forward to this.

  Hopping down from the vehicle, she was surprised to find the rumbling persisted. They were well away from the Blowhole. She knelt and put her hand on the ground, pressing. The long grass was wet, cold and irritatingly scratchy. The earth was warmer and vibrating. She felt it in her fillings. A thrumm, too low for human ears but still bone-rattling, goat-maddening. A big machine, she thought, buried deep.

  Kydd unhooked the searchlights, which were on extensible flexes, and carried them to the cliff-edge. He whistled.

  Stacy joined him and looked down.

  ‘Christ on a bike!’

  ‘Yes, miss.’

  Hundreds – thousands? – of feet below, the sea churned white. Foam swirled around black rock chunks. Mad waves hammered into eroded caves and frothed out again. It looked like God’s washing machine.

  Kydd tried to play the light on the cliff itself.

  It wasn’t sheer rock face but battered and broken, with many obvious paths and handholds. It was impossible to tell which were reliable, and which dangerously loose.

  ‘There, miss,’ said Kydd, pointing.

  It was a metal door, flush with the rock. Once it had led to a natural balcony, but most of that was broken off, leaving only a vestigial ledge. The door was fastened by a chain.

  Kydd fetched a reel from the ATV and fed blue nylon rope over the cliff. At first, the rope was caught by the wind and blown almost out of his hands. He tied a three-litre plastic carton of milk to the end, threading the rope through the handle and confidently tying a seaman’s knot. That gave enough weight. The carton bumped against rock as Kydd lowered the rope.

  Stacy directed the lights, all too conscious that chunks of this cliff had been joining the seabed for millennia. Where she was standing would eventually fall, ten minutes or a hundred years from now.

  The carton bounced against the door.

  ‘Fifty-five feet,’ said Kydd. The rope had red rings every five feet.