The Man From the Diogenes Club E-Book

Kim Newman

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

CAN'T ELIMINATE THE IMPOSSIBLE? Send for the man from the Diogenes Club! The debonair psychic investigator Richard Jeperson is the Most Valued Member of the Diogenes Club, the least-known and most essential branch of British Intelligence. While foiling the plot of many a maniacal mastermind, he is chased by sentient snowmen and Nazi zombies, investigates an unearthly murderer stalking the sex shops of 1970s Soho, and battles a poltergeist to prevent it triggering nuclear Armageddon. But as a new century dawns, can he save the ailing Diogenes Club itself from a force more diabolical still? Newman's ten mischievous tales, with cameos from the much-loved characters of the Anno Dracula universe, will entertain fans and newcomers alike.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Kim Newman and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

THE END OF THE PIER SHOW

MOON MOON MOON

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE MAD…

TOMORROW TOWN

EGYPTIAN AVENUE

SOHO GOLEM

THE SERIAL MURDERS

COLD SNAP

THE MAN WHO GOT OFF THE GHOST TRAIN

SWELLHEAD

Glossary

Afterword

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Also by Kim Newman and available from Titan Books

Anno Dracula

Anno Dracula: The Bloody Red Baron

Anno Dracula: Dracula Cha Cha Cha

Anno Dracula: Johnny Alucard

Anno Dracula 1899 and Other Stories

Anno Dracula: One Thousand Monsters

Angels of Music

The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School

An English Ghost Story

Professor Moriarty: The Hound of the D’Urbervilles

Jago

The Quorum

Life’s Lottery

Bad Dreams

The Night Mayor

Video Dungeon

TITAN BOOKS

The Man from the Diogenes Club Print edition ISBN: 9781781165744 E-book edition ISBN: 9781781165751

Published by Titan Books A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd 144 Southwark Street, London, SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: December 2017 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

The stories first appeared in the following venues:

‘The End of the Pier Show’ in Dark of the Night (1997) ‘Moon Moon Moon’ on Subterranean Online (2009) ‘You Don’t Have to Be Mad’ in White of the Moon (1999) ‘Tomorrow Town’ on SciFiction (2000) ‘Egyptian Avenue’ in J. K. Potter’s Embrace the Mutation (2002) ‘Soho Golem’ on SciFiction (2004) ‘The Serial Murders’ on SciFiction (2005) ‘Cold Snap’ in The Secret Files of the Diogenes Club (2007) ‘The Man Who Got Off the Ghost Train’ in The Man From the Diogenes Club (2006) ‘Swellhead’ in Night Visions 11 (2004)

Copyright © 2017 by Kim Newman. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

For Chris Roberson

THE END OF THE PIER SHOW

Icy winds barrelled in off the sea, lashing the front like an invisible tidal wave. Fred Regent shoved his fists deeper into the pockets of his yellow silk bomber jacket.

Apart from keeping his hands out of the cold blast, Fred was trying to prevent himself from constantly fingering the bee-fuzz on his scalp where he used to have hair like Peter Noone’s. If his bonce went blue, it’d look like a copper’s helmet and that’d be the end of this lark. Going undercover with the Boys now seemed a lot less like a comfortable way out of uniform than a protracted invitation to a busted mug and a cryo-dunking in the channel.

‘It’s April,’ said Jaffa, the Führer Boy. ‘Whatever happened to spring?’

‘New ice age, mate,’ said Oscar, the ‘intellectual’ of the Boys. ‘Hitler’s astrologers said it’d happen.’

The Boys clumped along the front, strutting in their steel-toed, cleat-soled Docs. They shivered as a razor-lash of wind cut through turn-up jeans, Fred Perry shirts and thin jackets. Only Oscar could get away with a duffel coat and Jaffa sometimes sneered ‘mod’ at him. The Boys were skins and hated mods; not to mention hippies, grebos, Pakis, queers, students, coons, yids, chinks, car-park attendants, and – especially – coppers.

Fred wondered if the others felt the cold on their near-exposed skulls the way he did. If so, they were too pretend-hard to mention it. Skinhead haircuts were one of the worst ideas ever. Just as the Boys were some of the worst people ever. It’d be a pleasure putting this bunch of yobs inside. If he lived that long.

The point of this seaside excursion was for Fred to get in with Jaffa. A bag of pills, supposedly nicked with aggro from a Pakistani chemist’s, had bought him into the Boys. But Kevin Jaffa, so-called King Skin, didn’t trust anyone until they’d helped him put the boot into a third party. It was sort of an initiation, but also made all his mates accomplices in the event of legal complications.

It had seemed a lot simpler back in London, following DI Price’s briefing on King Skin and the Boys, getting into the part, learning the lingo (‘Say “coon”, not “nigger”’) from a wheelchair-bound expert nark, picking out the wardrobe, even getting the haircut. Steel clippers snicking over his head like an insectile lawnmower. Now, barely two months out of Hendon, he was on his own, miles away from an incident room, with no one to shout for if he got on the receiving end of an unfriendly boot.

What was he supposed to do? How far was he supposed to go?

For the Boys, this was a pleasure trip, not business. And Fred was supposed to be stopping Jaffa’s business.

On the train down, Jaffa had taken over a compartment, put his Docs up on the seat to defy British Rail, and encouraged everyone to pitch in ideas for entertainment. Nicking things, smashing things, getting plastered and snatching a shag were the most popular suggestions. Petty stuff, day-outing dirty deeds. Fred was supposed to let minor offences slide until he had the goods on one of Jaffa’s Big Ideas, but he supposed he’d have to draw a line if it looked like some innocent was going to get hurt.

‘Everything’s bloody shut,’ Doggo whined. ‘I could do with six penn’orth of chips.’

Jaffa cuffed the smaller skin, who couldn’t be older than fourteen.

‘All you bloody think of is chips, Doggo. Set your sights higher.’

The shops along the seafront were mostly boarded up, battered by wind-blown sand and salt. Stacks of deckchairs on the beach were chained down under tarpaulins. A few hardy dog-walkers were out and about. But no one else. The whole town was shut up and stored away.

They came to the pier.

‘Let’s take a look-see,’ Jaffa suggested, climbing over a turnstile. There was a booth nearby but it wasn’t manned. The Boys trooped after their leader, clumping onto shaky boards. They fought the wind, walking towards the pagoda-like green structure at the end of the pier.

On a board in the shape of an arrow was written THIS WAY TO ‘THE EMPORIUM’, PALACE OF WONDERS, ARCADE OF EDUCATION, VARIETY NITELY. ADMISSION: 6d. There was no admission price in new money.

As he clambered over the turnstile, Fred noticed a poster on the side of the booth. A comical drunk in a long army greatcoat sat in a pub with a slinky blonde draped round him. Half the woman’s face was covered by a wave of hair; she was smoking a cigarette in a holder, the smoke forming a skull with swastika eye-sockets. The slogan was CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES. The poster might have been up since the War.

No, the colours were too bright, as if just from the printer’s. It must be part of an exhibition.

‘Come on, Fred,’ said Oscar. ‘Last one in’s a sissy.’

Seamouth wasn’t big enough to support the pleasure pier these days, but it had been a fashionable resort around the turn of the century. Seventy-odd years of decline hadn’t yet dragged the attraction into the sea. The structure projected out from the beach, struts and pillars temporarily resisting the eternal push and pull of the waves. It couldn’t stand up on its own much longer. Everything creaked, like a ship at sea.

Looking down, Fred saw churning foam through ill-fitting, water-warped boards. He thought he saw crabs tossed around in the water.

They reached the Emporium. It was turquoise over gunmetal, the paint coming off in swathes. Ingraham put a dent in a panel with his armoured toe. Freckles flew off.

‘This shed looks about ready to collapse,’ Oscar said, shaking a loose railing. ‘Maybe we should give it a shove.’

Oscar hopped from one foot to another, looking like a clog-dancer, shoulders heaving.

‘Everything’s shut,’ Doggo whined.

Jaffa sneered with pity at the kid. A three-inch orange line on the King Skin’s scalp looked like a knife scar but was a birth malformation, skull-plates not knit properly. It was probably why he was a psycho nutter. With an elbow, Jaffa smashed a pane of glass and reached inside. He undid a clasp and pulled a door open, then stood aside like a doorman, indicating the way in.

Doggo straightened himself, took hold of his lapels, and strutted past. Jaffa tripped him and put a boot on his backside, shoving the kid into the dark.

Doggo whined as he hit the floor.

Jaffa went inside and the Boys followed.

Fred got out his lighter and flicked on a flame. The Emporium seemed bigger inside than it had on the outside, like Doctor Who’s police box. There were posters up on free-standing boards, announcing shows and exhibitions that must have closed years ago, or attractions that were only open in the two weeks that passed for summer on the South Coast. Mysteries of the Empire, Chu Chin Chow, Annual Talent Contest.

‘Don’t think anyone’s home,’ Oscar said.

Fred couldn’t understand why Jaffa was so interested in the pier. There was nothing here to nick, no one to put the boot into, nothing much worth smashing, certainly no bints to shag. But Jaffa had been drawn here. The King Skin was on some private excursion in his own head.

Was there something going on?

Stepping into the Emporium, Fred felt on edge, as if something just out of sight were watching. The atmosphere was heavy, between the smell of the sea and the mustiness of damp and forgotten exhibits. There was a greenish submarine glow, the last of cloudy daylight filtered through painted-over glass.

‘I don’t like it,’ whined Doggo.

Jaffa launched a half-strength kick into the kid’s gut, curling him into a foetal horseshoe around his boot. Doggo’s lungs emptied and his face shut. He was determined not to cry, poor bastard.

If there wasn’t a Paki or a hippie or a queer about, Jaffa was just as happy to do over one of his mates. DI Price thought there might be something political or big-time criminal about the Boys, but it was just brutishness, a small-minded need to hurt someone else.

Fred’s fists knotted in his pockets. He wanted this over, and Jaffa put away.

It was getting dark outside and it couldn’t be later than seven. This was a weird stretch of the coast.

Oscar was looking at the posters.

‘This sounds great,’ he said.

HITLER’S HORRORS: THE BEASTS OF WAR.

The illustration was crude, circus-like. A caricature storm trooper with fangs, machine gun held up like an erection, crushing a map of Europe under jackboots.

He remembered the CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES poster. This looked like a propaganda show left over from the War. Thirty years too late to scare the kiddies, but too bloody nasty to get nostalgic about. Fred’s parents and their friends were always on about how it had been in the War, when everyone was pulling together. But Fred couldn’t see it. He came along too late, and only just remembered when chocolate was rationed and half the street was bomb sites.

Ingraham clicked his heels and gave a Nazi salute. He was the pretend fascist, always reading paperbacks about the German side of WWII, ranting against Jews, wearing swastika medallions. He talked about ‘actions’ rather than ‘aggro’, and fancied himself as the Boys’ master planner, the Goebbels of the gormless. Not dangerous, just stupid.

Fred’s lighter was getting hot. He let the flame shrink. The storm trooper’s eyes seemed to look down as the light went away.

There was a gushing trickle and a sharp smell. One of the skins was relieving himself against a wall.

‘Dirty beast,’ Oscar sneered.

‘Don’t like it here,’ whined Doggo.

Fred knew what the kid meant.

‘Doggo’s right,’ Jaffa said. ‘Let’s torch this shithole. Fred, you still got fluid in that lighter?’

If he helped, he’d be committing a crime, compromising any testimony he gave.

‘It’s out, chum,’ he said.

‘I got matches,’ said Ingraham.

‘Give the boy a prize,’ said Jaffa.

Ingraham passed over the Swan Vestas. Jaffa had the others scout for newspapers or anything small that would burn. After hesitating a moment, Fred started ferreting around too. Arson, he could just about live with. At least it wasn’t duffing up some shopkeeper or holding a bint down while the others shagged her. And there was something about the pier. He wouldn’t mind if it burned. By sticking out from the shore, it was inviting destruction. Fire or water, it didn’t make much difference.

They split up. Though the Emporium was partitioned into various spaces, the walls only reached just above head height. Above everything was a tent-like roof of glass panels like the Crystal Palace, painted over with wavy green.

He found a row of penny-in-the-slot machines, lit up by tiny interior bulbs. He had three big dull old pennies mixed in with the shiny toy money that now passed for small change, and decided he might as well shove them into the machines.

In smeary glass cases were little puppet scenes that played out tiny dramas. The theme of the collection was execution. A French Revolution guillotining: head falling into a basket as the blade fell on the neck of a tin aristocrat. A British public hanging: felon plunging on string through a scaffold trapdoor, neck kinking with the drop. An Indian Mutiny reprisal: rebel strapped over the end of a cannon that discharged with a puff to blow away his midriff.

When he ran out of proper pennies – d. not p. – he wasn’t sorry that he couldn’t play the Mexican firing squad, the Spanish garrotting or the American electrocution. The little death scenes struck him as a funny sort of entertainment for kiddies. When the new money had completely taken over, penny-in-the-slot machines would all get chucked out and that would be the end of that.

Round the corner from the machines was a dark passage. He tripped over something. Someone. Scrambling up, he felt the bundle. He flicked on his lighter again. The flame-light was reflected in a bloody smear that had been a face. From the anorak, Fred recognised Oscar. He was barely alive, cheeks seeping in time with his neck-pulse. Something had torn the hood of flesh from his skull, leaving a ragged line along his chin. He wasn’t a skinhead any more; he was a skinned head.

Fred stood. He hadn’t heard anything. Had Jaffa done this, somehow? Or was there someone else in here?

‘Over here,’ he called. ‘It’s Oscar.’

Doggo was the first there. He took one look and screamed, sounding very young. Ingraham slapped him.

Jaffa had a flick-knife out. Its blade was clean, but he could have wiped it.

‘Did you do this?’ Jaffa asked Fred.

Fred heard himself whimpering.

‘Fuck me,’ someone said. Everyone shouted, talked and moaned. Someone was sick.

‘Shut up,’ said Jaffa.

In the quiet, something was moving. Fred turned up the flame. The Boys huddled in the circle of light, scared cavemen imagining spirits in the dark beyond the fire. Something heavy was dragging itself, knocking things aside. And something smaller, lighter, pattered along on its own. They were circling the skinheads, getting closer.

The lighter was a hot coal in Fred’s fingers. They all turned round, peering into the dark. There were partitions, covered with more posters, and glass cases full of battlefield dioramas. Nearest was a wall-sized cartoon of a bug-eyed demon Hitler scarfing down corpses, spearing a woman on his red, forked tail.

The heavy thing held back and the light thing was getting closer. Were there only two? Fred was sure he heard other movements, other footfalls. The steps didn’t sound like shod feet. But there was more than an animal purpose in the movement.

Doggo was whimpering.

Even Jaffa was scared. The King Skin had imagined he was the devil in the darkness; now that was a shredded illusion. There were worse things out there than in here.

Fred’s fingers were in agony but he didn’t dare let the flame fall.

The Hitler poster tipped forwards, cracking down the middle. Hitler’s face broke in half. And another Hitler face – angry eyes, fleck of moustache, oiled hairlick – thrust forwards into the light, teeth bared. A child-sized figure in a puffy grey Hitler mask reached out with gorilla-length arms.

Fred dropped the lighter.

Something heavy fell on them, a living net of slithering strands.

There was screaming all around.

He was hit in the face by a dead hand.

The net cut against his palm like piano-wire. Seaweed wound between the strings stung, like nettles. A welt rose across his face.

The net was pulled away.

Warm wetness splashed on his chest, soaking in. Something flailed in the dark, meatily tearing.

Someone was being killed.

He blundered backwards, slamming into a partition that hadn’t been there, a leathery elephant’s hide that resisted a little, and shifted out of the way. His palm was sandpapered by the moving, living wall.

There was a gunshot, a fire-flash and a loud report. Fred’s eyes burned for a moment but he wasn’t hit. Someone else had taken a bullet.

In the momentary light, he’d seen things he didn’t believe. Uniformed creatures falling upon the Boys with human intellect and demon savagery. Doggo’s head a yard from his body, stringy bone and muscle unravelling between his neck and shoulders. On his chest squatted something with green wolf-eyes and a foot of lolling tongue.

Fred bolted and collided with someone.

‘Fucking hell,’ said Jaffa, gripping Fred’s arm.

They ran together, skinhead and copper, fleeing the other things. They made for a cold indraught of outside air.

Something came after them.

Jaffa pushed ahead and was first through the door.

None of the others was with them.

Fred stumbled out of the Emporium. They couldn’t have been inside more than fifteen minutes, but night had fallen. There was no light from the town, no yellow street lamps, no electric glow from homes up on the hill. The shapes of buildings were just discernible, but it was as if no one was home.

Jaffa turned to Fred, knife raised.

An orange tendril snaked out of the Emporium at chest height and brushed Jaffa’s head. It was like a squirt of living flame. The King Skin’s eyes widened and mouth opened, but the fire took hold inside his skull and poured out.

He was still recognisable, still alive. Fred ran away, encumbered by the heavy boots he wasn’t used to. Jaffa, a living candle, stumped after him. Fred vaulted the turnstile and looked back. Jaffa’s head was a pumpkin lantern, rushing forwards in the dark.

Fred tripped and fell to his knees, not believing what he saw.

‘Oi you,’ someone shouted, at Jaffa.

A man in uniform stood near Fred, shaking his fist. He had a tommy’s tin helmet, but wore blue cotton overalls. An armband bore the letters ARP. He was in his sixties, and had no chin to speak of, just a helmet strap under his lower lip.

Fred was near fainting.

The King Skin stopped, flame pluming six or seven feet above his head, and howled.

‘Oi you,’ the ARP man shouted again, ‘put that bloody light out!’

* * *

‘Then Jaffa was blown to one side, as if the wind had caught hold of his fire. He was pitched against the loose railings and went over the side, trailing orange and red flames. He hit the sea with a hiss. Then everything went completely black. When I woke, it was early in the morning. The bloke in the tin hat was gone. I hotfooted it for the station and got the first train back here.

‘There’s something not right in Seamouth.’

As he told his story, Fred concentrated on Euan Price’s cold eyes. The Detective Inspector asked few questions and took no notes. He didn’t interject exclamations of disbelief, or shout at him that he was a nutter or on drugs or just plain lying.

Yesterday, Constable Fred Regent had lived in a world with law and order. Now, there was only anarchy.

He sat at the desk in the interview room, feeling himself under the spotlight, cold cup of New Scotland Yard tea in front of him. Price sat opposite, listening. The strangers leaned on the sound-proofed walls, half in and half out of the light.

It disturbed him that Price could accept the horror story with such serious calm. Either his superior believed him, or the consultants were psychiatrists in disguise.

There were two of them, dressed like peacocks.

The woman was in her early twenties and could have been a model: seamless mane of red hair down to her waist; Italian mouth, painted silver; Viking cheekbones; unnaturally huge, green eyes. She wore a purple leather miniskirt and matching waistcoat with a blinding white roll-neck pullover and knee-length high-heeled white boots. Her only visible jewellery was an Egyptian-looking silver amulet with an inset emerald. A red scar-line cut through one fine eyebrow, a flaw to set off perfection.

The man was even more striking. He could have been anywhere between thirty and fifty. A coal-black mass of ringlets spilled onto his shoulders Charles II style, and he wore a pencil-line Fu Manchu moustache. His face was gaunt to the point of unhealthiness and dark enough to pass for a Sicilian or a Tuareg. Thin and tall and bony, he wore a fluorescent green velvet jacket with built-up lapels and collar, tight red Guardsman’s britches with a yellow stripe up the sides and stack-heeled, elastic-sided, banana-coloured boots. A multi-coloured explosion of a scarf was knotted round his neck, and his shirt was rippling mauve silk. He had several rings on each finger, a silver belt buckle in the shape of a demon face with a curved dagger thrust through its eyes, and a single gold hoop on his right ear.

As he listened to Fred’s story, he played with a wide-brimmed fedora that matched his jacket, slipping long fingers in and out of a speckled snakeskin band. He looked as if he’d be equally happy on the foredeck of a pirate ship or in a coffee bar on the King’s Road.

The contrast with Euan Price in his Marks & Sparks mac was vivid. Whoever these consultants were, they were not with the police.

Though they were the sort he had been taught at Hendon to regard as suspicious, Fred had a warm feeling from these two. They might dress strangely, but did not look at him as if they thought he were a maniac. As he went through it all, starting with his undercover job but concentrating on the happenings at Seamouth Pier, the woman nodded in sympathy and understanding. The man’s violet eyes seemed to glint with tiny fireflies.

Fred had expected to be dismissed as a madman.

After the story was done, Price made introductions.

‘Constable Regent,’ he said, ‘this is Mr Richard Jeperson.’

The man fluttered a hand and curved his thin lips into a smile. As his frilly mauve cuff flapped, Fred caught sight of tiny blue marks on his wrist. Some sort of tattoo.

‘I represent the Diogenes Club,’ Jeperson drawled, voice rich and deep as a BBC announcer. ‘A branch of government you won’t have heard of. Now you have heard of it, you’ll probably be required to sign the Official Secrets Act in blood. Our speciality is affairs like this, matters in which conventional methods of policing or diplomacy or defence come up short. I gather you are still reeling from the revelation that the world is not what you once thought it was.’

Had the man read his mind?

‘You can take some comfort from the fact that the Diogenes Club, which is a very old institution, has always known a little of the true state of things. There has often been someone like me on the lists of HM Government, a private individual with a public office, retained for circumstances like this.’

‘This has happened before?’ Fred asked.

‘Not this, precisely. But things like this, certainly. Impossible obtrusions into the mundane. Vanessa and I have pursued several of these tricky bits of business to more or less satisfactory conclusions.’

The woman – Vanessa – smiled. Her teeth were dazzling.

‘With your help, we shall see what we can do here,’ said Jeperson.

‘With my help?’

A spasm of panic gripped him.

‘You’re detailed to work with Mr Jeperson,’ Price told him. ‘Out of uniform.’

‘Topping,’ Jeperson said, holding out his hand.

Fred stood up and shook Jeperson’s hand, feeling the smoothness of his rings and the leather of his palm. This was a man who had done hard outdoor work.

Looking down, he noticed the blue marks again. A row of numbers.

‘We should probably take a spin down to the coast,’ Jeperson said. ‘Take a look at Seamouth.’

Fred was suddenly cold again.

‘It’ll be fun to go to the seaside.’

* * *

It didn’t take detective work to deduce which of the vehicles in the New Scotland Yard car park belonged to Richard Jeperson. It was a silver-grey Rolls-Royce the size of a speed-boat, bonnet shaped like a cathedral nave, body streamlined to break land speed records.

Fred whistled.

‘It’s a ShadowShark, you know,’ Jeperson said, running his fingers across the Rolls-Royce Spirit of Ecstasy hood ornament. ‘They only made five. I have three.’

Parked among the panda cars and civilian Minis, the car was a lion in a herd of deer.

‘Hop in the back, Fred,’ Jeperson said with easy familiarity, opening the rear door. Fred slipped onto soft black leather and inhaled luxury. Two fresh roses were propped in sconces. Jeperson slid beside him while Vanessa got into the driver’s seat. Fred was surprised the man let anyone else drive his precious car.

‘Vanessa’d win Brooklands if they’d let her enter,’ said Jeperson. ‘She can drive anything.’

‘I’m learning to fly a jump jet,’ she said, over her shoulder. ‘Perk of the position.’

The engine purred and she manoeuvred the ShadowShark out of the car park. Fred doubted if he’d be as blithe handling such a powerful (and expensive) car.

‘Don’t hurry,’ Jeperson told her. ‘I want to stop for a pub lunch on the way. Have a spot of rumination.’

* * *

Vanessa headed for the road to the South Coast, cruising through the thinning traffic. Fred found himself relaxing, enjoying the head-turns of other motorists. Jeperson obviously didn’t believe in blending in with the crowd.

‘A sort of uncle of mine lives in Seamouth,’ Jeperson said. ‘Brigadier-General Sir Giles Gallant. We’ll have to look him up. He sat on the Ruling Cabal with Geoffrey Jeperson.’

‘Your father?’ Fred asked.

Jeperson’s eyes were unreadable.

‘Adoptive,’ he said. ‘Picked me out. In the War.’

‘And this Sir Giles?’

‘Also with our mob, I’m afraid. Diogenes Club. At least, he was once. Retired now. You’ll find, now you know to look, that we pop up all over the board. Unless I very much miss my guess, Sir Giles will know something about your End of the Pier Show. He’s too sharp to live near an incident like this jaunt without feeling tingles in the cobweb. We’ll probably set up camp at his house.’

Everything since the events on the pier seemed unreal. Only now that he was on the road back to Seamouth did Fred realise quite how the usual pattern of his life had been broken. He had been handed over into the care of this odd stranger, almost palmed off on the man. What disturbed him most was that Jeperson actually seemed to know what was going on, to accept the insanity without question, without even registering shock or disbelief.

It would be easy to be afraid.

‘What about the Seamouth police?’ Fred asked.

‘Tell you what, I don’t think we’ll trouble them until we have to. I like to keep my involvement with the authorities limited to a few enlightened souls like Euan Price. Too many plods have the habit of not seeing what they don’t want to. No offence, Constable Regent. Your mob like to tie up neat little parcels and sometimes all we can give them is a dirty great mess.’

If he shut his eyes for a moment, Fred saw what the gun-flash had shown him on the pier. A hellish scene, impossible to understand, hideously vivid. Real, and yet…

‘What was the first thing?’ Jeperson asked, quickly. ‘The first thing that told you things weren’t in whack. Don’t think, answer.’

‘Careless Talk Costs Lives,’ he said, just seeing it.

‘And Loose Lips Sink Ships.’

‘It was a poster. An old one, from the War. But it wasn’t old, faded. It had been put up recently.’

‘Bingo, an apport!’

‘What’s an apport?’

‘Something which shouldn’t done ought to be there but bloody well just is. Mediums often materialise the fellahs, but this isn’t like that. Nothing consciously evoked. This came with the house, like wallpaper.’

‘I thought there might be an exhibition.’

‘There’s always that possibility. Prosaic, but nonetheless not out of the question.’ Jeperson seemed a little disappointed. ‘Any funny smell? Ozone?’

‘Just the sea.’

‘The sea, my dear Fred, is not in the “just the” category. It’s the oldest living thing on the planet. It abides, it shifts, it shrinks, it grows, it senses, it hints.’

They were out in the country now, bombing through winding lanes at ninety. Fred gripped the armrest on the door, reacting to the rush.

‘We have a dispensation,’ Jeperson explained. ‘Speed limits do not apply to us. We take great risks for our country, so the least the Queen can do is exempt us from a few of the pettier regulations that bind the rest of her subjects. With Vanessa at the wheel, we needn’t worry about accidents.’

They took a blind corner at speed. The road ahead was clear.

‘She has second sight, poor love.’

* * *

The country pub where Jeperson had hoped to lunch was gone, knocked down and replaced by a Jolly Glutton. Fred had been in these places before; they were popping up beside motorways and A roads all over the country. Everything was brand new but already tarnished. A big cartoon Friar Tuck was the place’s mascot and the struggling waitresses were dressed as monkettes, with hooded robes and miniskirts. The fare was flat pies and crinkle-shaped chips, hot enough to disguise the lack of taste, and tea worse than the stuff served at the Yard out of a machine.

Jeperson was disappointed, but decided to sample the place anyway.

As he looked at his Jolly Fare, the man from the Diogenes Club slumped in dejection. He lifted a sprig of plastic parsley from his wriggly chips and dropped it into the full tin ashtray on the Formica-topped table.

‘What’s the world coming to?’ he asked, eyes liquid with pain.

The Jolly Glutton catered to shabby couples with extremely loud children. In the next booth, a knot of youths with Jaffa haircuts messed around with the plastic tomatoes of ketchup, and tried to get their hands up the waitresses’ skirts.

‘I wonder what happened to the regulars? Did they find another pub somewhere? With decent beer and proper food? Or did the fat Friar have them hanged in the forest to silence their poor plaints?’

Jeperson knitted his brows, and concentrated.

Suddenly, Fred smelled beer, heard the clink of glasses, the soft grumble of rural accents, saw the comforting smoky gloom of the snug. Then, it was all snatched away.

‘What did you just do?’ he asked Jeperson.

‘Sorry,’ Jeperson said. ‘Didn’t mean to impose. It’s a nasty little knack sometimes. Call it wishful thinking.’

‘I knew what you were seeing.’

Jeperson shrugged, but the tiny glints in his eyes were not apologetic. Fred had a sense of the man’s power.

‘I don’t fancy the one with the tash,’ a voice said, ‘but ’er with the legs’d do for a shag.’

It was the skinheads in the next booth. They were propped up on the table and seats, leaning over the partition, looking down at Vanessa, who was sitting opposite Fred and Jeperson.

‘Bloody hippie,’ said the kid who had spoken. His left eye twitched. ‘Hair like a girl’s.’

Jeperson looked at the skin almost with pity.

‘You should have seen this place the way it was,’ he said. ‘It was a comfort in a cold world.’

The skin didn’t understand.

‘What are you doing with this pouf?’ Twitch asked Fred.

For a moment, he was confused. Then he remembered what his head looked like.

‘I’m taking your girlfriend,’ Twitch said.

Fred didn’t know whether the skin meant Vanessa or Jeperson.

Twitch, who was smaller and duller than Jaffa, put his hand on Vanessa’s neck, lifting aside her hair.

Jeperson nodded, almost imperceptibly, to the girl.

Vanessa reached up, swiftly, and took Twitch’s ear in a firm grip. She pulled him off his perch and slammed his face into her plate of uneaten chips.

‘You can look but you better not touch,’ she whispered into his red ear.

Twitch’s friends, an older bloke with a Rupert scarf and a wide-shouldered hulk, were astonished.

Vanessa pushed Twitch off the table and dropped him on the chessboard-tiled floor. He had maggot-shaped mashed chips all over his face.

Everyone in the Jolly Glutton was paying attention.

Twitch pulled out a sharpened screwdriver but Jeperson stepped on his wrist, bringing down a blocky yellow heel on crunching bones. The pig-sticker rolled away.

‘I’ll have that,’ Jeperson said, picking up the homemade shank with distaste. ‘Nasty thing.’

Fred was penned into the booth – these bolted-down plastic chairs and tables were traps – but Vanessa stood up and slipped out. All her movements were effortless; she wasn’t just made for show.

‘I’d advise you to pick up your friend and get back to your delicious fare,’ Jeperson said to Rupert Scarf and Shoulders. ‘My associate doesn’t want to hurt you.’

The two skins looked Vanessa up and down, and made a mistake.

Shoulders clumped forward, big hands out, and was on the floor before Fred could work out what Vanessa had done to him. She seemed to have stuck her fingers into his throat and sternum, making a cattle prod of her hand. Shoulders made a lot of noise about going down and rolled over Twitch, groaning that he was crippled.

Rupert Scarf spread his hands and backed away. The message had got through.

Shoulders, still moaning, got up on his hands and knees, snarled and made another grab at Vanessa. She whirled like a ballet dancer and stuck the white point of her boot into his ear, lifting him off the floor for a moment and laying him flat out. Her hair spun round with her and fell perfectly into place. She was smiling slightly, but didn’t seem to feel the strain.

Rupert Scarf pulled Twitch up, and together they picked up Shoulders.

‘You’re a dead dolly-mixture,’ Twitch said, retreating.

Vanessa smiled, eyebrows raised.

The skins left the restaurant. All the other customers, and the waitresses, applauded. Vanessa took a bow.

‘Three more friends for life,’ she said.

* * *

They continued by B roads. After the Jolly Glutton, Jeperson slumped into a fugue of despair. He said nothing, but his mood was heavy. Fred was beginning to sense that the man from the Diogenes Club was remarkably open. A changeable personality, he felt things so deeply that there was an overspill from his head, which washed onto anyone around him. Just now, Fred was lapped by the waters of Jeperson’s gloom. It was the loss of his beloved country pub as much as the encounter with the yobs, maybe the loss of his beloved country.

Vanessa kept away from the main road, casually driving through smaller and smaller villages. Greenery flashed by, stretches of thickly wooded land alternating with patchwork-quilt landscapes of fields and hedgerows. Brooks and stiles and tree-canopied roads. Tiny old churches and thatched cottages. A vicar on a bicycle.

This didn’t seem to be the same world as the Jolly Glutton. No Formica, no plastic tomatoes, no crinkle-cut chips.

Jeperson stirred a little and looked through the tinted window.

‘Spring seems to have sprung,’ he announced.

It was true. This was a fresh season.

The ShadowShark crested a hill. The road gently sloped down towards sparkling sea. Seamouth was spread out, sun shining on red tile roofs. Gulls wheeled high in the air. A small boat cut through the swell, tacking out in Seamouth Bay.

It was very different from the dull day with the Boys, when the sea had been a churning grey soup.

Fred saw the pier, a finger stretched out into the sea. He had another flash. Jeperson shivered.

‘Looks like a picture postcard,’ he said. ‘But we know something nasty is written on the back. There are things moving under the surface.’

Fred tried to conquer his fear.

‘Drive on, Vanessa love,’ Jeperson said.

* * *

Seamouth spread up away from the seafront onto the rolling downs, bounded to the east by the cliffs and to the west by a stretch of shivering sands. Overlooking the sea were serried ranks of whitewashed villas, at least a third of them called Sea View.

The ShadowShark attracted some friendly attention. Folks looked up from their gardening to wave and smile. A postman paused and gave a smart salute. Fred was almost touched.

‘It’s nearly four o’clock,’ he said. ‘That postie should have finished work hours ago.’

‘Second afternoon post?’ Jeperson suggested.

‘Not in this decade.’

‘I suppose not.’

Vanessa found Raleigh Avenue, where Brigadier-General Sir Giles Gallant lived. His villa was called The Laurels. Rich green bushes, planted all around, did their best to seem like trees.

The cars outside the villas were all well preserved but out of date. There wasn’t a Mini Cooper or a Hillman Imp in sight, just big, elegant machines, polished to perfection, invisibly mended where they’d pranged.

They parked in the driveway of The Laurels and got out. Fred’s legs had gone rubbery on the long drive and he stamped a bit on the gravel to get his circulation back.

‘Good afternoon,’ said a man in overalls, looking up from his spade-work. ‘Here to see the Brig?’

‘Yes, indeed,’ said Jeperson.

‘Top hole,’ said the neighbour. ‘I’m Marshall Michaelsmith. Two names, not three.’

Michaelsmith was a game old bird of perhaps seventy, with snow-white hair and red cheeks. He had been digging vigorously, turning over a flower bed. A stack of pulled-up rose bushes lay discarded on the lawn. There were a few plants left, tied to bamboo spears.

‘I’m with the Brig on the Committee,’ Michaelsmith said.

He tore up another rose bush by the roots and threw it away, momentarily sad.

‘Shame to do it,’ he said. ‘The missus loves these blooms, worked at them for years. But one has to do one’s bit. I’m putting in potatoes, cabbages, rhubarb. Dig for Victory, eh?’

The last of the roses was gone.

‘The missus has taken to her bed. For the duration, probably. Still, she’ll be up and about in the end.’

Michaelsmith stood on his ravaged flower bed.

‘The Brig’s in town, on official business. I’ll see if we can scrounge you some tea in the meantime. Come into my parlour. This way, miss.’

Michaelsmith escorted Vanessa, extending a courteous arm to steady her across the rough earth. Fred and Jeperson followed.

‘I hear you girls are doing your bit too,’ Michaelsmith said to Vanessa. ‘Before it all got too much, the missus was the same. Back to the land, girls. Jolly good show. We must all pull together, see it through. Right will prevail, my dear. Oh yes it will. Always does in the end. Never doubt it for a moment.’

Fred gathered Marshall Michaelsmith was a bit potty. Slung on the old man’s back was a khaki satchel. Fred recognised the shape. His dad had kept his gas mask well past the Festival of Britain. Michaelsmith’s looked to be in good order, ready to pull on in an instant.

* * *

Mrs MacAlister, Marshall Michaelsmith’s Scottish housekeeper, brought in a silver tea-service, and Michaelsmith poured them all cups of Lipton’s. He made a ritual of it, using a strainer to catch the leaves, apologising for the thinness of the brew and the condensed milk.

Michaelsmith talked about the half-brick in his cistern, to cut down on the water flushed away, and the line drawn in his bath to keep the level down to four inches. He seemed proud of his austerity measures.

Fred supposed the old man had got into the habit during the War and never let up.

Michaelsmith’s reception room was cosily cluttered, with a view of the back garden through french windows. There was a black-bordered photograph of a young man in naval uniform on the piano.

‘Mitch, my brother,’ Michaelsmith explained. ‘Went down at Jutland. In the last show.’

Jeperson sipped his tea.

Somehow, even in banana boots, he fitted in the room. Fred supposed he was such an odd sort that he’d do anywhere.

Michaelsmith was taken with Vanessa, and no wonder. He was explaining all the family photographs. There were a great many of ‘the missus’, following her from long-faced youth through middle-aged elegance to painful frailty.

The french windows opened and a man in uniform stepped into the room. Michaelsmith stood to attention.

‘Richard,’ the newcomer exclaimed. ‘This is a surprise. What brings you to this backwater?’

‘The usual thing, Giles.’

The man – who must be Sir Giles Gallant – was suddenly serious.

‘Here? I don’t believe it.’

Jeperson stood up and embraced Gallant, like a Frenchman.

‘The lovely Vanessa, you know,’ Jeperson said. Sir Giles clicked his heels and Vanessa demurely bobbed. ‘And this is Fred Regent. He’s the new bug.’

‘Pleased to meet you,’ Sir Giles said, inflicting a bone-crushing handshake on Fred. ‘We need all the good men we can get.’

Sir Giles must have been about the same age as Michaelsmith, but his manner suggested a much younger man. He was iron where his friend was willow. His grey hair was still streaked with black and his hawk eyes were bright. He struck Fred as a very determined man.

‘It’s your pier we’re interested in, Giles,’ Jeperson said. ‘Seems to be infested with apports. And other nastinesses.’

‘The pier?’ Sir Giles was taken aback. ‘Should have blown it up years ago. Damn thing’s a shipping hazard.’

‘But it’s not just the pier,’ Jeperson said.

‘No,’ Sir Giles said, ‘you’re quite right, Richard. I should have called Diogenes myself.’

Fred remembered Richard had said Sir Giles would know what was going on.

‘I thought I could cope on my own. I’m sorry.’

‘No apologies, Giles.’

‘Of course not.’

‘We’ll set up HQ at your place. I’ll go over the whole thing with you. Vanessa, take the worthy Fred for a walk along the seafront, would you? I needn’t tell you to stay away from the pier, but keep an eye out for oddities.’

Fred was alarmed, but at least he knew Vanessa could take care of herself. And him too, probably, though that hardly did anything for his confidence.

‘It’s a mild evening,’ Jeperson said. ‘You might go for a paddle.’

* * *

They walked towards the seafront, zig-zagging downhill through neat, quiet roads. The sky darkened by degrees.

‘Have you noticed?’ Vanessa said. ‘No one’s turning their lights on.’

Fred looked at the windows of the villas.

‘If they did, you couldn’t tell,’ he said. ‘The houses all have those thick black curtains.’

‘I knew people were conformists in these parts, but it’s beyond the bounds of probability that every Sea View should have the same curtains. Whatever happened to white net?’

They looked over rows of roofs, towards the sea.

‘There’s something missing,’ Vanessa said.

Fred saw it.

‘Television aerials. There aren’t any.’

‘Well spotted, that man.’

‘Time seems to stand still in Seamouth. I noticed it the first time I came here.’ He didn’t want to think further on that line. ‘I feel I’ve come in on the last act of the panto,’ he said. ‘How did you get into this business?’

‘Like you. I took a turn off the road, and realised things were not as they seem.’

‘Meaning?’

‘Have you ever heard of demonic possession?’

‘I think so.’

‘I don’t recommend it.’

‘Mr Jeperson is an exorcist?’

‘Not quite. He’s trickier than that. At heart, he’s a sensitive.’

‘He seems a funny bloke.’

‘He’s had a funny life.’

They were at the seafront. There were people around. The locals smiled and bade them good evening, but hurried on their way. The street lamps did not come on.

‘On his wrist…’ Fred began.

‘The numbers? They’re what you think.’

‘Concentration camp?’

‘Death camp, actually. His foster father and Sir Giles were with the unit that liberated the place. They pulled him out. He was just a kid then.’

‘Is he Jewish?’

‘Almost certainly not,’ she said. ‘He doesn’t actually know. He has no memory of anything before the camp. I’ve always assumed he was born a gypsy. But he’s as British as you can get.’

‘And this club?’

‘The Diogenes Club. They collect useful people. They’ve been doing it for centuries. Richard’s talents were obvious, much showier then than now, if you can credit it. Probably why he was in the camp. Old Mr Jeperson – he died a few years ago – adopted the boy, sent him to his old school, brought him up. Shaped him and trained him. That wasn’t easy for either of them. Richard’s no one’s catspaw. He’s a free agent.’

‘What about you?’

‘I’ve been collected too. And now, so have you.’

A chill breeze made him hug his jacket. He still wore his skinhead outfit. He was getting used to it. The Peter Noone haircut had made him look as big a prat as… well, as Peter Noone. It was time someone reclaimed the skin look from thugs like Jaffa.

They had been ambling along the front, deliberately walking away from the pier. Now, they stopped, leaned on railings, and looked out to sea.

Waves rolled in, lapping the sands. Wreaths of kelp tangled on rocks. A man in a straw hat, barefooted with his trousers rolled up to the knee, pottered among the pools, collecting sea-shells.

‘It’s an idyll,’ Vanessa said. ‘You’d never think there was a war on.’

‘What war?’ Fred asked, shocked.

‘There’s always a war, Fred.’

* * *

Back at The Laurels, they found Jeperson and Sir Giles in a book-lined study, snifting brandy from glasses the size of human heads.

‘How’s town?’ Jeperson asked.

‘Quiet,’ Vanessa commented.

‘Always the way.’

‘I’ve decided to bring the pier up with the Committee,’ Sir Giles said. ‘It’s been shut down for years. Time to get rid of it altogether.’

‘Let’s not be too hasty,’ Jeperson said. ‘Our problem may not be the pier itself, but something that happens to be there at the moment. If you get rid of the structure, the problem might deem it an opportune moment to move inland.’

Sir Giles offered Fred, but not Vanessa, a drink. He thought it best not to accept.

‘I’ll call the Committee anyway,’ Sir Giles said. ‘Best to alert them all to the danger. Shan’t be a sec.’

Jeperson smiled and sipped as Sir Giles left the room. Once the door was closed, his face shut down.

‘We must get out of this house,’ he said, serious.

Vanessa nodded, and tried the obvious exits.

The windows were fastened and barred. The study door was locked.

Vanessa handed Jeperson a hairpin. He unbent it and picked the lock of the study door. It was done in seconds. Jeperson looked pleased with himself and not in too much of a hurry to take a bow. He opened the door a crack. Sir Giles was in the hallway, on the telephone.

‘We must act fast,’ Sir Giles was saying. ‘You don’t know this man.’

Their host was between them and the front door.

Jeperson stepped silently out into the hallway.

‘Giles,’ he said, sharply.

Sir Giles turned, face guilty. He muttered something, and hung up.

‘Richard.’ He attempted a genial smile. Without much success. Brigadier-General Sir Giles Gallant was sweating and shifting.

Jeperson bent the hairpin back into shape and returned it to Vanessa.

‘We should do each other the courtesy of being honest,’ Jeperson said. ‘You of all people know how difficult it is to deceive someone like me.’

‘I would have told you,’ Sir Giles said. ‘I wanted you to hear it from the whole Committee.’

The door opened and uniformed men came in. Six of them. With guns. All middle-aged or older, but hard-faced, smart in khakis. Bright eyes and clipped moustaches. Proper soldier boys. Rifles were levelled.

‘This is for the best, Richard.’

‘Who decides?’ Jeperson asked.

‘We do,’ Sir Giles claimed. ‘We’ve earned that right.’

Fred was lost. He didn’t know who was who and who was on whose side.

Jeperson sank to the floor, knees bowing outwards as he fitted into a lotus position. The rifle barrels followed him. Fred saw the tension in his back. He pressed his palms together, shut his eyes, and hummed almost below the threshold of hearing.

Sir Giles looked torn. For an instant, Fred thought he was about to order his men to fire. Instead, he stepped forwards, raising the telephone receiver like a club, aiming a blow at Jeperson’s head.

It never connected.

Sir Giles was caught – by Jeperson’s humming? – and froze, receiver held above his head, cord dangling. His face showed a struggle.

The humming was louder, machine-like, insectile.

What was Jeperson doing?

The men with guns took their directions from Sir Giles. They were spectators. Sir Giles was fighting. He wrestled the receiver, trying to bring it down. Jeperson rose as he had sunk, unbending himself. He was projecting something from inside. Static electricity crackled in his hair.

Vanessa took Fred’s arm and tugged him along, in a cone of protection that emanated from the man from the Diogenes Club. As long as he could hear the humming, he felt safe.

They passed Sir Giles, whose face was scarlet. The old soldiers fell back to either side, lowering their weapons. There was a clear route out of The Laurels.

Jeperson seemed to glide across the carpet, eyes still shut, still radiating noise. The hum was wavering.

‘Stop them,’ shouted Sir Giles.

A rifle was raised, its barrel-end dragging up Fred’s leg. Without thinking, he knocked the gun aside and shoved its owner – the chinless ARP man – backwards.

They were on the porch of The Laurels.

Vanessa was in the Rolls, turning over the engine.

Someone fired a wild shot into the air.

The humming snapped off and Jeperson stumbled. Fred caught him, and sensed that all the strength had gone out of the man. He helped him into the car.

‘You don’t understand,’ shouted Sir Giles. ‘It’s for the best.’

‘Drive,’ breathed Jeperson.

Fred pulled the car door closed. A gun went off. He saw the muzzle-flash. He looked out of the window, and something struck the pane, making him go cross-eyed. He should have been shot in the face, but the round was stopped in a web of cracks.

‘Bullet-proof glass,’ Vanessa said.

‘Thank God for that,’ Fred said.

He was shaking.

Sir Giles’s men didn’t waste any more ammunition. The Rolls pulled away, down Raleigh Road.

Jeperson sprawled on the seat, exhausted. He seemed thinner, less substantial. Whatever resource he had summoned up was spent and its exercise had taken a toll.

‘What was that all about?’ Fred asked.

‘We’re on our own,’ Jeperson croaked.

* * *

The ShadowShark wasn’t easy to hide, so they just parked it by the road and walked away. Of course, the three of them were also pretty difficult to miss. As they walked back towards the seafront, Fred had a sense that the whole town was watching them from behind their blackout curtains, and that Sir Giles’s Committee knew exactly where their three troublemakers were. More old soldiers would be despatched after them.

Jeperson had needed to be supported for a while but soon got his strength back.

‘Giles couldn’t have managed anything on this scale on his own,’ he said. ‘He must have a powerful source somewhere. But not a first-rate one. The casting isn’t pure, or we’d have been absorbed at once.’

Fred understood maybe one word in three.

Vanessa didn’t ask questions. He decided just to go along with it all.

‘At first I thought it was your pier, but Giles’s Committee hadn’t reckoned on whatever you ran into. Whatever they’ve done here hasn’t taken in the way they hoped.’

They were in the middle of the dark town.

‘Fred, I’m afraid we’re going to have to go to the pier.’

He had known it would come. So much else had got in the way, so much else that was impossible to follow, that he had almost put it out of his mind.

Now it hit him again.

There were monsters.

‘Maybe we can get to the bottom of it all by morning.’

They were on the seafront. The pier was in sight.

* * *

Because of the lack of street lighting, it was easy to creep up on the pier. A checkpoint was set up by the turnstile. Three men in uniform manned the point. Barbed wire was strung around the admissions booth. The soldiers were smoking cigarettes. From somewhere, Vera Lynn sang ‘We’ll Meet Again’.

An aeroplane whine sounded overhead.

There was a shrill whistle.

‘An air raid,’ Jeperson said. ‘I doubt if that was part of the intended casting. It just came along with the package.’

A plane flew in from the Channel, a dark shape against black clouds, pregnant with bombs.

Jeperson signalled that they should proceed.

Fred tried to think away the painful tightness in his gut. If Jeperson and Vanessa weren’t afraid, he shouldn’t be. Of course, they hadn’t been here before.

A column of fire rose from up among the villas. It burned his eyes. Then the sound of the explosion hit. It was strong enough to make him stagger.

They walked rapidly towards the checkpoint.

The soldiers were craning, looking up at the fire.

‘Jerry blighter,’ one sneered.

‘Our ack-ack’ll bring him down,’ his mate said.

As if in reply, the crump of ground guns sounded. The earth was shaking. There were shellbursts in the sky, silhouetting the plane.

Fred was surprised by the soldiers’ faces. They were not old, like the men at the villa. They were young, familiar. The three yobs from the Jolly Glutton. Rupert still had his yellow scarf tucked into the neck of his khaki jacket. Twitch was sucking on his cigarette, eye in motion. Shoulders awkwardly unslung his rifle.

‘Who goes there?’ he barked.

Vanessa stepped forward.

‘Remember me?’

‘It’s a dangerous night to be out, miss,’ said Rupert Scarf, politely. ‘Best get down in the shelters.’

‘Are you in the theatre?’ Twitch asked, looking at her legs.

The three didn’t remember Vanessa. Fred thought they might not remember their own names, whatever they were.

‘We’re with the Ministry,’ Jeperson said, holding out a folded newspaper picked from a rubbish bin.

Rupert Scarf took the paper and looked at it.

Jeperson hummed again, a different pitch. Rupert Scarf looked at the paper and at their faces.

‘All in order, sir,’ he said, smiling, saluting.

Jeperson took back the paper and tucked it under his arm.

‘Let’s take a look at the problem then, shall we?’ he said. ‘If you could let us through.’

The three smartly dismantled the barrier.

‘Shan’t be a jiffy,’ Jeperson said, stepping onto the pier.

Fred looked at the Emporium, dimly outlined at the end of the promenade. Its glass roof had a slight greenish glow. He had a ‘Go Back Now’ feeling.

‘Are you coming?’ Vanessa asked.

‘Yes,’ Fred said, resolving.

They strolled towards the Emporium.

* * *

‘It feels as if we’re miles from the shore,’ Jeperson said.

He was right. Fred looked back. The fire up in the villas was under control. The bomber seemed to be gone. There was still a flicker from where the bomb had fallen.

‘What about those skinheads?’ Fred asked.

‘Caught up in the casting. Weak minds are prone to that. It’s like a psychic press-gang. It turns people into costume extras.’

‘I can’t say I miss the old versions.’

The sea sounded beneath them. An ancient susurrus.

The pier was such a fragile thing, an umbilicus connected to the shore.

Fred had to overcome an urge to bolt back.

‘This is definitely it,’ Jeperson said. ‘The flaw in the pattern. You can feel the atoms whirling the wrong way.’

Vanessa nodded.

They were at the Emporium. There was the dent where Ingraham had kicked. And the pane Jaffa had smashed. If it were daylight, he was sure he’d see the scorch-trail Jaffa left before he went over the side.

‘I don’t have to tell you to be careful, do I?’ Jeperson said, reaching in through the broken pane, opening the door. ‘Excelsior.’

Fred looked into the darkness. He followed Jeperson and Vanessa inside.

* * *

‘Someone’s cleared up,’ he said. ‘There should be bodies all over the place.’

Vanessa had a slim torch. She played light around the space. There were scrubbed and bleached patches on the floor. And some of the exhibits were under dust-sheets.

Jeperson looked at the storm trooper poster.

‘It’s all to do with the War,’ he said.

‘Even I’d worked that out,’ Fred said. ‘It’s been a while since anyone bombed the South Coast from the air.’

‘A lot of people liked the War,’ Jeperson said, scratching his wrist. ‘I don’t think I did, though. I can’t actually remember much of it. But it wasn’t anything I’d want to bring back.’

‘I can understand that.’

Vanessa ran torchlight across the exhibits. She spotlit a display Fred hadn’t noticed on his first visit. It was a set of caricature figures of Hitler, Goebbels and Mussolini. Hitler was child-sized and cut off at the waist, Goebbels a rat-bodied pet in Hitler’s top pocket, and Mussolini a towering fat clown with an apple-sized red head and a conical Punchinello hat.

‘These fellows, for instance,’ Jeperson said. ‘I don’t miss them one bit.’

Hitler’s mask crinkled in a scowl as its wearer escaped from the display. The creature walked very rapidly on its hands, detaching itself from the base. It was a legless torso.

Half-Hitler brushed past Vanessa, screeching, and slid through a panel. It had left Rat-Goebbels behind, rodent feet curled up, horrid little eyes glittering.

Man Mountain Mussolini quivered, a ton of jelly poured into a barrage-balloon uniform. His belly rumbled, and a falsetto laugh emerged from his circular lipsticky mouth.

Fred looked around. Vanessa moved the torchlight. Panels were sliding upwards. Boots shone. Black jackboots. Then grey-uniformed knees. There were half a dozen panels. Behind them were men – mannequins? – in Nazi uniform.

Rat-Goebbels right-sided himself and scurried towards a pair of boots, nestling between them like an affectionate pet.

The panels were above leather belts. Swastikas and Iron Crosses showed on grey chests. Luger pistols and Schmeisser machine guns were pointed.

Man Mountain Mussolini, still laughing like a eunuch, rolled back and forth on his belly. His legs were normal-sized, useless with his gut-bulk, stuck out of his egg-shaped body like broken tree-branches.

Faces showed. Faces Fred knew. The Boys. Jaffa’s nose was smudged with soot, his cheeks burned to the bone, his eyes dead under the rim of his storm trooper helmet. The others were similarly transformed. Ingraham in an SS uniform, Doggo a regular soldier. Oscar’s face was crudely stitched back on, forehead sewn to his Afrika Corps cap, skin hanging slack like a cloth mask.

Half-Hitler advanced from between two rows of Nazi skins, using its arms like crutches, inching forwards its truncated torso. Its face was not a mask, but coated in a transparent fungus that exaggerated the familiar features. The homunculus set itself down and crossed its arms, tottering back and forth a little. The storm troopers snapped off perfect Nazi salutes.

‘Sieg Heil,’ they shouted, ‘Heil Hitler.’

‘You’ll excuse me if I don’t respond in kind,’ Jeperson said. ‘But I could never stand you, you little sneak.’

He drew back his banana boot as if converting a rugby try and kicked Half-Hitler in the face. The diminished Führer tipped over backwards, outsize hands slapping the floor, and overturned completely like a chimpanzee on a trapeze, winding up face down and arms flailed out.

Safety catches clicked off. Guns fired.

* * *

Fred grabbed Vanessa round the waist and threw himself at the floor. Together, they rolled behind the row of penny-in-the-slot machines, inches ahead of the line of bullet-pocks that raked the floorboards.

The space was too enclosed for the Nazi zombies to get much accurate use of their guns. Bullets ricocheted and spanged around. Doggo took one in his face and staggered back. Black goo leaked from the hole, but he wasn’t seriously hurt.

Ingraham kicked aside the penny-in-the-slot machines.

Fred tried to put his hands up.

Ingraham raised his Luger.

The gun writhed. Its metal parts contracted as if the mechanism were about to sneeze. It was partly a gun, but infused with the life of a small rodent.