“He doesn’t need feeding. I spray him with insecticide once in a while. Bluebottles lay their eggs in him. The maggots eat out through the skin. See, his left ear’s gone and some of the back of his head.”
Russell felt vomit rising in his throat. “This is inhuman,” he gasped. “Why? Tell me why?”
“You know why. He took my wife, my beautiful wife. Left me to grow old alone. But I’m converted now. Good for another four hundred years at least. And I’ll spend them with him. He’ll have time to muse upon his evil.”
Russell turned his face away. No man deserved such a terrible fate, not even one so vile as Hitler.
“Go upstairs,” said Russell. “Go upstairs now.”
“You can poke him with my pointy stick if you want. But don’t trouble yourself to have a go at his ball. I had that off years ago. I’ve got it upstairs in a jar.”
“Go,” said Russell. “As quick as you can now.”
Mr Fudgepacker spat towards the cripple in the chair, then slowly turned and hobbled from the room.
Russell listened to the shuffling footsteps on the stairs and then the creaking of the floorboards overhead.
With a pounding heart and popping ears, Russell sought a means towards an end. He selected a length of iron pipe that lay against the wall and tested its weight on his palm. And then he walked back over to the figure in the chair.
Russell looked into the unfocused eyes. He saw there the flicker of life. He saw the slime-caked lips begin to part and the dry tongue move within. And Russell knew the words that would come.
“Help me. Help me.”
Russell spoke a prayer and asked forgiveness. Then he swung the heavy pipe and put Adolf Hitler out of his misery.
Upstairs in the vestibule, Ernest Fudgepacker stood, nodding his head stiffly to a rhythm only he heard. Russell’s knees were almost giving out, but he forced himself to walk as naturally as he could.
“Did you give him a bit of a poke?” asked Ernest.
“A bit of a poke. Yes.”
“Will you come back again?”
“I don’t think so. Goodbye.”
“Not so fast,” said the ancient. “I haven’t given you what you came for.”
Russell’s brain was all fogged up. All he wanted was to get out. To get away from this place. “What I came for?” he asked.
“You came for these, didn’t you?” Mr Fudgepacker produced two black leather belts with complicated dials set into the buckles.
“What are those?”
“For your journey home. To get you back safely.”
“The time devices.”
“Modern technology,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “An improvement on the old Flügelrad. I designed them myself.”
With whose, or what’s, help? thought Russell. As if I didn’t know.
“Just set the time and press the button,” said Mr Fudgepacker. “But they’ll only work the one way and that’s backwards. Time isn’t for fooling about with, Russell. It’s best left alone.”
“Goodbye then, Mr Fudgepacker.”
“Goodbye, Russell.”
It is often the case that after experiencing unspeakable horror, people unaccountably burst into laughter. It happens in wartime and my father told me that when he served as a fireman during the blitz, he often came upon people sitting beside the burned-out shells of their houses, laughing hysterically. He said that he was never certain whether it was simply through shock, or something more. A burst of awareness, perhaps, that they were alive. That they had survived and were aware of their survival, probably aware of their own existence for the first time ever.
As Russell left the Emporium and walked back along the track that had once been the Kew Road, he began to laugh. It started as small coughs that he tried to keep back but it broke from him again and again until tears ran down his face and his belly ached.
Russell had this image in his mind. An image both farcical and absurd. But he couldn’t shake it free. It was a newspaper headline, splashed across a Sunday tabloid.
It read:
ASSASSIN CONFESSES:
“I SHAGGED HITLER’S GIRLFRIEND”
20
Aryan 3
Russell returned to the Schauberger Memorial Mall, but he did so via a different entrance, purchased several items from one of the gift shops and slipped these into an inner pocket of his sharp black jacket. Then he strode at a brisk pace towards the electrical store and Julie.
Julie wasn’t there.
Russell checked his watch, he was rather late. But she’d have waited, surely? She’d have had to wait. Russell looked up and down the shopping mall, no sign of her.
What to do? Go back to The Flying Swan? See if he could tease where to go next from Jim Pooley? Stay here? Wait outside?
Wait outside, Russell decided. This place depressed him anyway. Wait outside it was. Russell walked down the arcade, under the big golden arch and out through the glass revolving doors.
“Russell!” A harsh stage whisper.
“Julie?”
“Over here.”
Russell turned, Julie’s hand beckoned to him from behind one of the chromium portico columns that flanked the entrance.
Russell wandered over. “Why are you hiding?” he asked.
“Why are you late?” was Julie’s reply. “I’ve been waiting for an hour.”
Russell began with the first in a series of carefully rehearsed lies. “I was held up,” he said. “I was only able to acquire one time belt.”
Julie didn’t seem unduly miffed by this. “Only one? Well, give it to me, give it to me.” Altogether far too eager. Her glance met Russell’s. “I mean, well done, Russell. I knew you could do it.”
“It wasn’t easy. There’s all the big celebrations going on.”
“Celebrations? What celebrations?”
“For the return of Hitler. He must have come in the Flügelrad. He materialized in Berlin an hour ago. There’s huge rallies and firework displays. I saw it on a TV in one of the shops.”
Julie looked as bewildered as Russell had hoped she would. “That isn’t right,” she whispered. “He’s not due until tomorrow.”
“Sorry?” said Russell. “I didn’t catch that.”
“Nothing. Nothing. Give me the programmer.”
“We’re supposed to do this outside the electrical store, that’s the way it was done in the movie.”
“Well, this isn’t a movie. Give me the programmer.”
Russell took the programmer from his pocket. Julie dug into a carrier bag and brought out the gift box.
“Here, let me put it in,” said Russell, taking the box from her hands. “I can pack it in the way I remember it being packed when I unwrapped it. If you know what I mean.”
“I do, but just hurry.”
Russell turned away and fiddled about.
“Are you done? Come on, give it to me.”
Russell turned back and presented Julie with a neatly wrapped parcel. “There,” said he. “Done.”
“And the time belt?”
“Yes, of course.” Russell took one of the time belts from his jacket pocket. Julie strapped the belt around her slender waist. “How does it work?” she asked.
“I’ve set the time and the co-ordinates. You know what to do, go back to the date and the time. I will be in The Ape of Thoth with Morgan. Give the programmer to me and let me do the rest.”
Julie looked up at Russell and for one terrible moment Russell thought she was going to ask the obvious question: why are you doing this? Russell did have an ingenious answer worked out. But he was not called upon to use it.
“What are you going to do?” Julie asked.