Ruin Nation (17 page)

“And I stepped
unto the breach once more,” seeps that terrible voice, as his sepulchral skull oozes through the torn partition. “And I made all the right noises. And I promised to hand over power as soon as free and fair elections took place. But, you see, I didn’t. I synthesized democracy instead. I rigged up a government from my own stooges. Clever, yes?

“But this is the
really
clever part: not even
they
know! They’re all such dissipated dreamers, they don’t suspect a damn thing! They think the daily achievement of nothing is normal!”

“Parliament’s just a pantomime performance for the public,” Calamari explains. “The military runs this country.”

“And I run the military,” Malmot laughs.

“Impressive,” I say.

“Impressive? Yes. I’m proud of my achievements. But interesting? Well, I’m afraid not. I’m sick of staging parliament, Jupiter. I’m a soldier not a playwright. I don’t care about story arcs; I don’t give a damn about character motivation for ethnic minority candidates in Kent. I’m not Shakespeare. The pen may be mightier than the sword, but what about the tank? I find heavy artillery the most direct form of communication, don’t you?”

“It does what it’s meant to do, Sir.”

“It does what it’s
designed for
,” Malmot replies. “And a democracy, for all its much-vaunted, high-minded intentions, does not. Dictatorship is a simple and honest system. Straightforward and efficient. Democracy is like running a cookbook through a shredder and expecting the wastepaper to make a recipe. It’s a jumble sale jigsaw with half the pieces missing.”

“But people like freedom of choice, Sir.”

“What makes you assume they have it? However, point that out and they don’t take kindly to it. So we’re not going to. We’re going to make them believe they’ve chosen dictatorship themselves, that they’re a part of it. And once they’ve tried it they’ll love it. Give a man a flag and a gun and he’ll follow you to the ends of the earth. And I don’t care what anyone says – there’s not a woman out there who wouldn’t trade two good husbands for a mean-eyed bastard in a black uniform.”

Have you heard of ‘Wernicke’s disease’? It affects heavy drinkers. A deficiency of vitamin B1, or thiamine, leads to a blurring of consciousness and damage to the optic nerves. I’m suspecting I’ve got it. More worrying though, the DT’s have hold of me and I’m feeling increasingly odd.

Delirium tremens last between three and ten days. Sufferers experience both visual and auditory hallucinations with a fatality rate of between one and twenty percent. So, looking on the less-than-bright-side, there’s a one in five chance that I might
die. And whilst I’m staring Death in the face, shaking and sweating, my head full of blue devils and pink elephants, my stomach trying to crawl out of my mouth, Malmot chooses to tell me that the dead man we’ve reanimated is former Prime Minister Bactrian. We’re to take him on a campaign tour – part propaganda mission and part test to see if our drunken nation notices anything odd about him. If not, well, the plan is to slaughter all the Opposition and Independent Members of Parliament and make their robotised corpses behave so badly they disgrace British democracy forever. I take all this as calmly as I can. I vomit for an hour solid.

I’m left with Calamine, who instantly becomes tolerable again.

“So we’re to part ways,” he says.

“Good,” I reply, “because you never stick up for me when he’s around.”

“I’ve been too busy watching my own back to watch yours. Haven’t you noticed? I’m not exactly Mr Popular these days. Seems they don’t like independent thought.”

“Planning a Night Of The Long Knives, is he?”

“When
isn’t
he?”

It occurs to me that Calamine might be plotting something himself. I’d like to know what. But he won’t be drawn on the subject. Not straight away. He returns to the matter in hand.

“Now this is the situation: you and your fat, mental friend are to complete former Prime Minister Bactrian and then report to Calamari at this address.” He hands me a business card. It seems to be for a brothel. “In between, you’re to pick up two suits from
this
address,” another business card, “and make yourselves presentable. You’ll be going on tour with Calamari and assisting with maintenance and operation. Always refer to former Prime Minister Bactrian as ‘former Prime Minister Bactrian’. Not, ‘The Dead Guy’, ‘Old Coffin Bollocks’, or anything of the like. ‘Former Prime Minister Bactrian.’ Understand?”

“I understand,” I say, less than graciously. “Do we have to take Elton?”

“I thought he was your assistant?”

“He's a human
hemorrhoid. I'd rather he stays here until we're suicidal enough to need him.”

“Okay. That's fine. Now, Women. We can provide you with women along the way. We run things on military lines and understand necessity. However, I will level with you and tell you that we can’t guarantee the quality. So, if you choose to remain faithful to whoever, I would suggest that you ride her before reporting. You won’t be coming home for a while.”

“You’re a cunt,” I tell him. I would add ‘insensitive’ but it sounds so wet liberal.

“I’d call myself a pragmatist. It’s a mindset that exists outside of standard romantic notions of honour and decency. If you have any common sense you’ll follow my example.”

He throws me something.

“Officer's stripes? I was never an officer?”

“I thought all army doctors were officers?”

“Not me. I was generally referred to as 'Hey, you!'.”

“Well, be something greater than yourself,” he says. “Or, at least, fake it until you can. Trust me, you'll need all the rank you can get when we bury democracy.

These are the other things Calamine tells me:

1: The infantile bickering of the petit bourgeois will never advance society.

2: Complete freedom means the time, space and opportunity to complicate your existence with irrelevant crap.

3: Dictatorship is just a derogatory term for a one party system. A one party system need not be corrupt.

Although, let’s be realistic…

4: It always is.

So…

5: Let’s build civilisation on our own terms, rather than those of
genocidal mad men. Meaning…

6:
Malmot.

And so…

7: I’m to report to him secretly.

Remember...

6: Don’t get found out.

7: Don’t get killed.

And lastly...

8: This is not as weird as it gets. By
any
stretch of the imagination.

I don’t know why Calamine seems to trust me. I wouldn’t say
I
trust
him
. I think he assumes I have principles.

* * *

Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. What they don’t tell you is that a little power corrupts stupidly. Case in point: Geoffrey Durham. Short, round body, thin head and gaunt face. How do you get that kind of combination? Well, I don’t know, but he’s got it. Imagine a Prussian helmet with feet.

He’s a mass of dangling objects, from the luxuriant moustache to the half-lampshades that jut from his rounded shoulders. He calls them epaulettes. I call them ridiculous. But they complement the gold brocade nicely, as does the vainglorious patchwork of military ribbons that span his pigeon chest.

Clothes
maketh the man, they say, and Durham seems to think so. In fact, let’s check out his wardrobe. There’s the usual collection of sensible tailored whatnots and then, if you look to the left, you’ll see the rolled-up sleeping bag he wears when pretending to be a caterpillar. And there’s the butterfly costume he puts on before leaping out of it. But his pride and joy is his black, semi-articulated dung beetle exoskeleton. If it weren’t for the inconvenience of his day job, you’d be hard pressed getting him out of it.

So you’ll be wondering what kind of job this fine specimen holds down. Well, as I think I may have mentioned earlier, Geoffrey Durham is a man of responsibility. He’s the Chief of Police.

We’re down in the depths of Police Headquarters. Durham stands up from behind his outsized mahogany desk, paces the length of the dank, grey dungeon he calls his office, ducks beneath a heavy oak lintel and disappears up a windy, stone staircase to attend to whatever’s troubling his horrid mind. Watch his feet. See those tiny and incredibly shiny shoes jerking up and down in a clockwork goosestep. Even the sound of his footsteps is pompous.

Further, past the cells we go, to plaintive protestations of innocence from within and heel-clicks and salutes from corned beef-faced subordinates in bad brown shirts without. Down a staircase and the stone
blockwork melds into excavated rock. Did I mention the corridors? The place is littered with them, stygian tunnels of varied depths and materials, all fetid with male stench. Because standard premises aren’t enough for a man of Durham’s vaulting ambition. And so he’s got teams of convict labour burrowing deep beneath London, carving out secret passages and subterranean caverns.

What he’ll do when his underground lair is completed is anybody’s guess. I doubt it’ll be pleasant though.

London:
crapitall shitty of England; full of movers, shakers, fakers, bakers, thieves, conmen, conwomen, catwomen, thickos, sickos, Marxists, racists, unemployed bassists and women called Mercedes with penises. And I’m seeing them all as I prowl Dirtygirl Street, hunting for the brothel on Calamine’s card. I’m not alone, I’m afraid. My expensive new suit’s attracting attention and I’ve a trail of at least a dozen prospective companions, all touting for my business. I don’t know what to tell them. Folk get so offended when you refuse sex that I’ve given up explaining. I just sigh and tell them to join the back of the queue. I say ‘queue’, but it’s more of a parade now, a kind of whore convoy. And I’m leading them on a wild goose chase around Soho, looking like a crazed gangbanger with eyes bigger than his stomach.

Well, I find the place I’m searching for, a classy-looking establishment with frightening security. I wave farewell to my travelling companions because, as the gorilla on the door insists, you wouldn’t bring fast food to a restaurant, would you? And it’s equally plush inside – all high ceilings, soft furnishings and staggeringly pornographic paintings. In fact, very reminiscent of Aunt Salome’s place, where I was paid to provide general security and to bring cups of tea to the rich sadomasochists chained in the dungeon.

I find a clothed woman. She turns out to be the Madam. She has no idea who I am but recognises Calamari’s description, so I set off round the rooms to find him. But I’m out of touch with brothels and unsure what the current etiquette is. Is it still  rude to stare? Perhaps it’s ruder not to? I don’t want anyone to think I’m judging them. On any criteria. So I force myself to make eye contact. But this doesn’t work, because for every pretty girl I smile at, there’s one of Malmot’s goons hanging out her back-end and jigging away like a clockwork automaton. Then a thought occurs to me: do I really want to see Calamari on the job? I’ve a head rammed with disturbing memories. One more trauma might tip me over the edge. So I figure I’ll take myself downstairs and see if the Madam has any filthy anecdotes. And she does.

When the goons have all reached their suitable conclusions, they assemble in the largest room. There’s no Calamari, I notice. Roll call reveals another absentee and the cry goes up to extract him from his convincingly affectionate paramour. She shouts encouragement as he struggles, semi-dressed across the landing and then falls down the stairs with both feet wedged in the same trouser leg. Everyone laughs.

We’re all armed, myself included. But, whereas my companions carry pretty hefty-looking handguns, I’ve been issued with a wooden truncheon. This is hilarious, apparently. I take it in good humour and the head goon rewards me with a pistol, albeit a weedy revolver. There’s some kind of plan, but clearly no-one thinks it worth telling me about it. Not that I’m bothered. The less I know, the less I have to take responsibility for. I decide to keep my head down and allow myself to be ferried into a large black vehicle. I’m told we’re going to pick someone up.

“Bactrian? I mean,
Former Prime Minister
Bactrian,” I say, correcting myself.

“Who gives a fuck?” says the head goon. “We don’t.”

I soon realise I’m travelling with maniacs. Good company, but maniacs all the same. And I get the feeling they’re paramilitary.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“Oh,” someone answers, “just a bit of hired muscle.” And they all laugh.

I don’t get to find out anymore. We soon arrive at somewhere or other. And there’s Calamari. And  shoehorned into his wheelchair, looking about as dead as it’s possible to get to my newly sober eyes, sits Former Prime Minister Bactrian.

“No one’s gonna fall for this,” I say. “Nobody’s
that
stupid.”

“Have a little faith,” says Calamari. “This
is
England!”