Zeroth Law: You must play the game.
First Law: You can’t win.
Second Law: You can’t break even.
Third Law: You can’t quit the game.
– Ginsberg’s Theorem a.k.a. The laws of thermodynamics
The man lived at the top of a very tall building. The bedsit assigned to him on his conditional discharge from the hospital was on the 19th floor of a decrepit council tower block. It might have seemed foolhardy to house a former mental health service user so close to an easy means of suicide. But for once social services had done their homework. At times a danger to others, the man was not and never had been considered a suicide risk. The pills reduced his danger to others and no one thought he would ever get access to a high-powered rifle with telescopic sights. The man liked his tiny one and a half room flat. He liked the views. He liked the pigeons that would sleep on his window ledge. He liked the relative peace, up here isolated from the noise of the city. Best of all, he felt was closer to God.
Eric had investigated the hit and run. Despite his blasé attitude to the many death threats he received and his gleeful excitement at the ram raider attempt on his and/or Smith’s lives, Eric had been sufficiently interested in who might have done it. And after trawling his memory through a long list of his possible enemies he could not think who might be behind it. So he had hired a little known but well staffed and highly respected firm of private investigators, Vernon Associates.
God knows how they did it but they tracked down the man responsible. (I could at this point invent some reason and could bore you with a long explanation of the native cunning and hi-tech computer wizardry able to reconstruct a composite facsimile image of the man as he left the scene of the crime from camera footage, and then at tedious length connect up the trail that led them to him. But it would interrupt the flow of what I want to get to: the meeting of Eric and the man. Besides by this stage in the book I feel that I have made enough creative input and so would prefer it if you invented your own way for them to find out that the man, former bus driver and more recently former mental patient was behind the wheel of the Routemaster in question. Do not worry if you cannot or will not think of a reason either. There is no right answer and it is not as if it matters anyway. None of this is real. It is all made up. But if you simply have to know email me caspar@onemonkey.org and I will tell you how it worked.)
They had traced the man and let Eric know what they knew. He let them know that he hoped they knew that he would prefer it if they did not let the police know what they knew. But they knew that already. That was the way it usually went in top end private investigations.
The police naturally had not discovered any of this for themselves as yet. Although both cases had made the front pages of several national newspapers, separate teams in the areas involved were still handling them. As far as the police were concerned, one was a traffic accident in the borough of Westminster, the other an arson attack in Herne Hill. Even though, after each incident, the deputy Metropolitan police commissioner had been forced to hold a small press conference at New Scotland Yard. Once the brief flurry of interest had died down, the cases sat unprioritised on separate desks in separate divisions in separate boroughs.
Duffled up against the weather and recognition, Eric had Dave drive him there, in a spare Mercedes. He climbed the stairs to the man’s apartment.
Eric Hayle had never backed away from a fight in his life. More than once, he had crossed the globe to get into one. His philosophy had always been the best defence is pre-emptive violence. That there is no problem so complex that it cannot be simplified by violent confrontation. Now he was standing at the door of a man whom his investigators informed him was a schizophrenic with a history of violence. A man who had already tried to kill him once and Smith twice. There had been lightness in Eric’s step as he bounded up the nineteen flights of stairs to the man’s council-provided one bedroom flat. He had rung the bell merrily.
Eric had read Vernon Associates’ report on the man. He had been disappointed because he saw instantly that it was John Smith, not him, who was the man’s target. The extensive report had listed his times in secure mental wards, sectioned following violent attacks motivated by delusional religious mania. With Smith being denounced by Reverend Cake and other religious loudmouths, it did not take a genius to work out that this man might jump on the bandwagon. Especially this man.
Much as he hated all things to do with religion, Eric was an enlightened individual. He understood the complexities of mental illness. He knew that the man could not help the way his mind malfunctioned. So Eric had refrained from sharing his valuable information with the authorities and chose to handle this in his own way.
Moreover, his wartime experience in counter-espionage had taught him that every crazed lunatic was a potential recruit. He had decided to pay the man a visit. But Reckless Eric was not being entirely reckless. He had a gun in his overcoat pocket.
When the man opened the door, he was wearing a trilby coated in silver foil. He was highly suspicion of Eric, as Eric knew he would be. But knowing enough of the man’s history from the medical files that Vernon and company had ‘obtained’, Eric knew how to appeal to the man’s mania and indulge and extend his delusions. He told the man that he had a dream that he should come here. He said he knew the man had a mission but he did not know what. But he had been told he must help the man complete it. He also hinted that he was not all that he seemed. (This much at least was true, although not in the way that it seemed.)
The man had not had anyone believe and support his worldview before. Occasionally, in his time on the wards, other patients would go along with him a little of the way, but mostly they were wrapped up in their own complex confusions. Besides they were crazy. The man was completely taken in by this tall, extremely elegant white haired figure, who had been sent to help him. Eric was rapidly absorbed into the man’s Grand Scheme of Things.
Welcoming Eric into his worldview, the man had explained, in a highly disjointed and incoherent fashion (for his condition was getting worse) that he was God’s Avenger. His Holy mission was to stop the False Prophet, the Anti-John. Eric hinted that he knew this, and indeed, it did confirm what he had surmised. The man told him how Reverend Cake’s sermon had made it clear that the Non-John must die. The man told that he must end the False One’s rise and then he would be recognised for what he was.
Eric reiterated that he was here to help. All this time, they had been standing in the chaotic kitchen but now the man left and went into the other room. He returned carrying an armful of spiral bound notebooks. He brushed the dust of a thousand dead Rice Crispies onto the floor and laid the notebooks out on the kitchen table. He began flicking through them, seemingly at random, to find certain passages and diagrams that explained everything in greater detail. Eric indulged him.
The man’s plan to kill Smith was as ingenious as it was unhinged. It could not possibly work but it might have been entertaining to watch him try. It involved breaking into the British Museum to steal a special sword, helmet and breastplate, which been revealed to him as the Righteous Artefacts of his Manifest Destiny. The sword, a twelfth century Crusaders broadsword, was the only thing that could kill John Smith, protected as he was by ‘THEM’, dark forces that had yet to reveal themselves. The helmet, a bronze centurion’s helmet from the time of Emperor Constantine, that would shield his thoughts from ‘THEIR’ mind-satellites and allow him to get close to Smith without ‘THEM’ realising. The breastplate was a ceremonial golden breastplate that once belonged to one of Charlemagne’s infantry commanders. Somehow its shiny golden brilliance would reflect light and prevent people from noticing him. Thus, would this unbalanced and unwashed man sneak up on the unsuspecting Smith and pierce his black heart with pure and Holy Crusader’s steel. When Smith was dead, the man would remove his Righteous Protection and reveal himself. All this had been revealed to him in a gardening column, a gig review and the commodities report in the Scum, the Guardian and the FT respectively.
Eric listened to all this patiently. He even made a few suggestions along the way. But once the man had finished, Eric had an alternative to suggest. He sympathized with the man’s aims but not with him methods or motives. In fact, Eric saw the situation exactly in reverse to the man. Black to his White. Lucifer to his Gabriel. He agreed with the need for Smith to die, but he had different reasons why. If John Smith were killed by this lunatic Angel of Death, then Eric would benefit twice over. The church would be embarrassed and humiliated and the late John ‘Now and Then’ Smith would become a martyr. A modern secular martyr, an instant and enduring cult figure, whose message was exactly one by which Eric lived his own long, long life.
Eric did not want to found his own religion. What would be the point of that? He would not be around long enough to enjoy the fruits. (He gave himself only about another ten or twenty years at his current pace.) He was not definitely interested in founding a cult. For one thing it would require hard work, the crystallisation of fluid ideas into rigid dogmas and the setting up of a hierarchy to enforce and oversee everything. That could have been fun. But Eric did not like the limelight. He preferred shadows, dark corners and dingy basements. He was a creature of the night. He was doing this because he believed what Smith had said. That life passes most people by. All he wanted was people to wake up and take notice. To see life as it really is.
Granted, Smith would be dead and maybe the man might not survive either. In fact, that might need to be seen to. But as Bomber Harris used to say, you cannot make an omelette without smashing a couple of chicken embryos, beating them together and burning the bodies in hot oil.
Eric removed the pistol from his pocket. It was wrapped in an oil cloth. It was a Luger P-09, standard issue to officers in the Schutzstaffel. Eric had had this one since 1943 when taken this one from the still warm hand of Sturmbannführer Müller. A friend and colleague of his from Hamburg who, for complicated reasons, he had been required to kill. Eric had other guns, of course. But, for some reason, this one was the one he had picked out as his gift to the man. Perhaps he was getting sentimental in his old age. He placed it on the kitchen table.
When the man first saw the evil black gun, he had become frightened and paranoid. But Eric’s soothing reassurance convinced him to pick it up. Holding it in his hand, the cold, heavy and slightly oily texture of it brought him completely into the present. He had never completely believed his own plan. He could see there were aspects of it that he had not worked out properly. Which item should he get first; the helmet to evade them? the breastplate to hide? or the sword to cut the other items free from their alarmed glass cases? Holding this gun in hand, he cut the sword from this plans. He could see a new way. He let Eric explain to him how to use the Luger.
But he would still need the helmet and breastplate. Eric had an answer to this too. He explained the man the principles of camouflage. At least as they related to their particular problem. Anything more abstract would be beyond the grasp of the man’s crippled mind. Eric showed him how he could put the tin foil on the inside of his trilby. He explained slowly and diplomatically that the best way to become invisible was to look normal. To blend into the crowd. Maybe he could have a bath? And a shave and a haircut? And wear clean clothes, that matched?
Eric was kind, patient and understanding as they plotted the murder of John Smith.
The man had just about followed all these new things that his Guardian Angel had told him. He had to write a lot of it down so he would not forget. The Angel had left and now he must wait for the Angel to arrange the time and the place.
Eric went away, well pleased with his day’s work. The whole thing was coming together better than he had ever expected. It was almost too perfect. As if someone had planned it. Which let’s face it, I did!
Eric had never broken a bone in his body. At least, never by accident. He had once had two of his fingers broken for him. It was one of those terribly frustrating conversations were the other chap had kept repeating the same thing over and over again. “All we need from you is a name” etc. etc. He had said it a few times in German, and then felt he had to repeat the question in English. Even though Eric had already replied in very good accentless German that “Ja, he understood the question” and “Nein, he did not know the name.” After forty minutes of this tedious rigmarole, they had broken one of his fingers. This did not help him remember a name that he had not known in the first place but they persisted. When it started to look like he was in for another forty minutes of the same, Eric had broken a second finger himself to hurry things along. It did the trick, the shocked interrogator quickly came to believe that Eric really did not know the name. Perhaps somewhat foolishly he had also believed many of the other things Eric went on to tell him and shortly after that Eric was working for both ‘THEM’ and ‘US’.
In comparison, pretending to be a Angel had been easy.