Snuff Fiction

17

‘He's Richard, you know,’ said Norman.

I looked up from my pint of Death-by-Cider. We sat together in the Jolly Gardeners, Bramfield’s only decent drinking house. It was the summer of ‘eighty-five, the hottest ever on record. Outside tarmac bubbled on the road and the death toll from heat-stroke in London was topping off at a thousand a week. There was talk of revolution in the air. But only inside in the shade.

‘Richard?’ I asked.

‘Richard,’ said Norman. ‘As in barking mad.’

‘Ah,’ said I. ‘This would be that fifth generation Brentford rhyming slang that I find neither clever nor amusing.’

‘No, it’s straightforward one on one. Richard Dadd, mad.

Richard Dadd (born sometime, died later) painted pictures of fairies, butchered his old man and ended his days in the nut house.’

‘Touché.’ I smiled a bit at Norman. The shopkeeper had grown somewhat plump with middle years. He had a good face though, an honest face, which he had hedged to the east and west with a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop side-whiskers. As to his hair, this was all but gone and the little that remained had been tortured into one of those greased-down Arthur Scargill comb-over jobs that put most women to flight.

For the most part, he had grown older with grace and with little recourse to artifice. His belly spilled over the front of his trews and his bum stuck out at the back. His shopcoat was spotless, his shoes brighdy buffed and his manner was merry, if measured.

He had married, but divorced, his wife having run off with the editor of the Brentford Mercury. But he had taken this philosophically. ‘If you marry a good-looking woman,’ he said to me, ‘she’ll probably run off with another man and break your heart. But if, like me, you marry an ugly woman, and she runs off with another bloke, who gives a toss?’

Norman had been brought down to Castle Doveston to do some work on ‘security’. He was as anxious to get back to his shop as I was to get back to my conservatory. But the Doveston kept finding us more things to do.

‘So,’ I said, ‘he’s Richard. And who are you talking about?’

‘The Doveston, of course. Don’t tell me it’s slipped by you that the man’s a raving loon.’

‘He does have some eccentricities.’

‘So did Richard Dadd. Here, let me show you this.’ Norman rummaged about in his shopcoat pockets and drew out a crumpled set of plans. ‘Move your woosie address book off the table and let me spread this out.’

I elbowed my Fiofax onto the floor. ‘What have you got there?’ I asked.

‘Plans for the gardens of Castle Doveston.’ Norman smoothed out creases and fficked away cake crumbs. ‘Highly top secret and confidential, of course.’

‘Of course.

‘Now, you see all this?’ Norman pointed. ‘That is the estate surrounding the house. About a mile square. A lot of land. All these are the existing gardens, the Victorian maze, the ornamental ponds, the tree-lined walks.’

‘It’s all very nice,’ I said. ‘I’ve walked around most of it.’

‘Well, it’s all coming up, the lot of it. The diggers are moving in next week.’

‘But that’s criminal.’

‘They’re his gardens. He can do what he likes with them.’

‘You mean he can behave as badly as he likes with them.’

‘Whatever. Now see this.’ Norman fished a crumpled sheet of transparent acetate from another pocket and held it up. ‘Recognize this?’

Printed in black upon the acetate was the distinctive Doveston logo, the logo that had so upset the late Vicar Berry. The three tadpoles chasing each other’s tails.

‘The Mark of the Beast,’ I said with a grin.

‘Don’t be a prat,’ said Norman. ‘It’s the alchemical symbol for Gaia.’

‘Who?’

‘Gaia, Goddess of the Earth. She bore Uranus and by him Cronus and Oceanus and the Titans. In alchemy she is often represented by the three serpents. These symbolize sulphur, salt and mercury. The union of these three elements within the cosmic furnace symbolize the conjunction of the male and female principles, which create the philosopher’s stone.’

‘There’s no need to take the piss,’ I said.

‘I’m not. The symbol ultimately represents the union between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. Man and nature, that kind of thing. I should bloody know, I designed the logo for him.’

‘Oh,’ said I. ‘Then pardon me.’

Norman placed the sheet of acetate over the map. ‘Now what do you see?’ he asked.

‘A bloody big logo superimposed over the gardens of the estate.

‘And that’s what you’ll see from an aeroplane, once the ground has been levelled and the trees planted. The logo picked out in green trees upon brown earth.’

‘He’s Richard, you know,’ said I.

‘He worries me,’ said Norman. ‘And he keeps on about this invisible ink thing. I wish I’d never mentioned it to him.’

‘I don’t think you’ve mentioned it to me.

‘Top secret,’ said Norman, tapping his nose.

‘So?’

‘So it’s like this. He was talking to me about the colour he wanted for the package of his new brand of cigarettes. Said he wanted something really eye-catching, that would stand out from all the rest. And I said that you can’t go wrong with red. All the most successful products have red packaging. It’s something to do with blood and sex, I believe. But then I made the mistake of telling him about this new paint I was working on. It’s ultraviolet.’

‘But you can’t see ultraviolet.’ I sipped at my pint. ‘It’s invisible to the human eye.

‘That’s the whole point. If you could create an opaque ultraviolet paint, then whatever you painted with it would become invisible.’

‘That’s bollocks,’ I said. ‘That can’t be true.’

‘Why not? If you paint anything with opaque paint, you can’t see the thing itself, only the layer of paint.’

‘Yes, but you can’t see ultraviolet.’

‘Exactly. So if you can’t see through the paint, you can’t see the thing underneath it, can you?’

‘There has to be a flaw in this logic,’ I said. ‘If the paint is invisible to the human eye, then you must be able to see the object you’ve painted with it.’

‘Not if you can’t see through the paint.’

‘So, have you actually made any of this paint?’

Norman shrugged. ‘I might have.’

‘Well, have you?’

‘Dunno. I thought I had, but now I can’t seem to find the jam jar I poured it into.’

I made the face that says ‘you’re winding me up’. ‘And the Doveston would like to buy a pot or two of your miracle paint, I suppose?’

‘As much as I can produce. For aesthetic reasons, he says. He wants to paint all the razor wire on the perimeter fences with it.’

I got up to get in the pints. At the bar the landlord kindly drew my attention to the fact that I had dropped my woosie address book. ‘You still working up at the big house?’ he asked.

‘Would I still be drinking in this dump if I wasn’t?’

He topped up my newly drawn pint from the drips tray. ‘I suppose not. Is it true what they say about the new laird?’

‘Probably.’

The landlord whistled. ‘I tried that once. Had to soak my pecker in iodine for a week to wash the smell off.’

I paid for my pints and returned to my table.

‘And another thing,’ said Norman. ‘He has become utterly convinced that the world as we know it will come to an end at the stroke of midnight on the final day of this century. Says he’s known it for years and years and that he’s going to be prepared.’

‘Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.’

‘I thought up that phrase,’ said Norman. ‘He nicked it off me.’

‘Don’t you ever get fed up with him nicking your ideas?’

‘Not really. After all, he is my bestest friend.’

‘But he’s Richard.’

‘Oh yeah, he’s Richard all right. But I don’t let that interfere with our friendship.’

We drank down our pints and then Norman got a couple in. ‘The landlord said to tell you not to forget your woosie address book, it’s still on the floor.’ Norman placed the pints upon the table.

‘We’d better drink these up quickly,’ I said, ‘and get back to work.’

‘Not today. The Doveston said we are to take the afternoon off. Another of his secret meetings.’

‘Bugger. I want to get finished.’

‘Me too, but we’re not allowed back this afternoon.’

I swallowed Death-by-Cider. ‘I’d love to know what he gets up to at those secret meetings, wouldn’t you?’

Norman shrugged. ‘We could always sneak back and watch him on the closed-circuit TV.’

‘What closed—circuit TV?’

‘The one I fitted last month. There’re secret cameras in every room.

‘What? Even in my bedroom?’

‘Of course.

‘Then he’s been watching me having sex.

‘Well, if he has, then he hasn’t shown me the tapes. The only footage I’ve seen of you involved a mucky mag and a box of Kleenex.’

I made gagging croaking sounds.

‘Oh yeah, those were the noises you were making too.’

‘The bastard,’ I said. ‘The bastard!’

‘You think that’s bad. You should see the tapes of me.’

‘Of you?’

‘Oh yeah. In my bedroom. The landlord has recommended iodine.’

‘You mean there’s a hidden camera in your bedroom too?’

‘Of course there is. I installed it there myself.’

‘But..., I said. ‘If you...I mean...Why...I mean...’

‘Precisely,’ said Norman. ‘It’s a right liberty, isn’t it?’

We finished our pints and sneaked back to Castle Doveston.

Norman let us into the grounds through a hole he’d made in the perimeter fence. ‘I can’t be having with all that fuss at the main gates,’ he said. ‘So I always come in this way.’

We skirted the great big horrible house and Norman unlocked a cellar door. ‘I got this key cut for myself,’ he said. ‘Just for convenience.

Once inside, Norman led me along numerous corridors, opening numerous locked doors with numerous keys he’d had cut for convenience. At last we found ourselves in an underground room, low-ceilinged and whitely painted, one wall lined with TV screens, before which stood a pair of comfy chairs. We settled into them and Norman took up a remote controller.

‘Here we go,’ he said, pushing buttons. ‘Look, there’s your bedroom and that’s mine. And there’s the great kitchen — and what’s Rapscallion doing with that chicken?’

‘It beggars belief But there’s a hidden camera in the boardroom, is there?’

‘There is. Mind you, the Doveston doesn’t know it’s there. I just put one in for—’

‘Convenience?’

‘Bloody-mindedness, actually. Wanna see what’s going on?’

‘Damn right.’

Norman pushed a sequence of buttons and a bird’s-eye view of the boardroom table appeared on the screens. I recognized the top of the Doveston’s head; the other five heads were a mystery to me. ‘I wonder who those fellows are,’ I wondered.

‘They’re not all fellows. The bald one’s a woman. I know who they all are.’

‘How come?’

‘I can recognize them from their photographs in the Doveston’s files.’

‘Those would be the ones he keeps in his locked filing cabinet?’

‘And a very secure filing cabinet it is too. I built it myself. It opens at the back, in case you forget where you’ve put your key.’

I shook my head. ‘Can you turn the sound up, so we can hear what they’re saying?’

‘Of course and I’ll explain to you who’s who.’

Now history can boast to many a notable meeting. In fact, if it hadn’t been for notable meetings, there probably wouldn’t have been much in the way of history at all. In fact, perhaps history consists of nothing but notable meetings, when you get right down to it. In fact, perhaps that’s all that history is.

Well, perhaps.

And perhaps it was sheer chance that Norman and I happened to be looking in on this particular notable meeting on this particular day.

Well.

Perhaps.

‘That’s what’s—his—face, the Foreign Secretary,’ said Norman, pointing. ‘And that’s old silly-bollocks the Deputy Prime Minister. Those two on the end are the leaders of the Colombian drugs cartel, I forget their names, but you know the ones I’m on about. That bloke there, he’s the fellow runs that big company, you know the one, the adverts are always on the telly, that actor’s in them. He was in that series with the woman who does that thing with her hair. The tall woman, not the other one. The other one used to be on Blue Peter. The bald woman, well, you know who she is, don’t you? Although she usually wears a wig in public. In fact most people don’t even know it’s a wig. I never did. And that bloke, the one there, where I’m pointing, that’s only you-know-who, isn’t it?’

‘It never is!’ I said.

‘It is and do you know who that is, sitting beside him?’

‘Not..

‘It certainly is.’

‘Incredible.’

‘He’s having an affair with the woman who used to be on that programme. You know the one.’

‘The other one?’

‘Not the other one, the tall woman.

‘The one on the adverts?’

‘No, she was in the series. The bloke in the adverts was with her in the series.’

‘But she’s not the same woman that the bloke sitting next to you-know-who is having the affair with?’

‘No, that’s the other one.’

‘Oh yeah, that’s the other one. And who’s that?’

‘The bloke sitting opposite you-know-who?’

‘No, sitting to the right of the fellow who runs that big company.’

‘His right, or our right?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Of course it matters. You have to be exact about these things.’

‘So who is it?’

‘Search me.’

‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said to Norman.

‘What?’

‘That thing the tall woman used to do with her hair. I never thought that was very funny.’

‘I don’t think it was supposed to be funny. Are you sure you’re talking about the same woman?’

But whether I was, or whether I wasn’t, I never got to find out. Because just then the Doveston began to talk and we began to listen.

‘Thank you,’ said the Doveston. ‘Thank you all for coming. Now you all know why this meeting has been called. The harsh winter, followed by the sweltering summer has led to an economic crisis. Everywhere there is talk of revolution and there have recently been several more bombings of cabinet ministers’ homes by the terrorist organization known only as the Black Crad Movement. We all want these senseless dynamitings to stop and none of us want the government overthrown, do we?’

Heads shook around the table. I looked at Norman and he looked at me.

‘And so,’ continued the Doveston, ‘I have drawn up a couple of radical proposals which I feel will sort everything out. Firstly I propose that income tax be abolished.’

A gasp went up around the table.

‘I’ll give that the thumbs up,’ said Norman.

‘Please calm down,’ said the Doveston, ‘and allow me to explain.’

‘I am calm,’ said Norman.

‘He wasn’t talking to you.

‘As we all know,’ the Doveston said, ‘no matter how much money you earn, the inland revenue will eventually get all of it. It is damn near impossible to buy anything that does not have a tax on it somewhere. Allow me to advance this argument. Say I have one hundred pounds. I go into an off-licence and buy ten bottles of whisky at ten pounds a bottle. The actual whisky only costs two pounds a bottle, all the rest is tax. So the man in the off-licence now has the difference, twenty pounds. He uses that to fill his car up with petrol. Tax on petrol represents seventy-five per cent of its market price. So now there’s only five pounds left out of my one hundred pounds. The chap at the petrol station spends this on five packets of cigarettes. And we all know how much tax there is on fags. Out of my original one hundred pounds, the government now have all but one. And whatever the man in the fag shop spends that one pound on will have a tax on it somewhere.’

‘Yes yes yes,’ said old silly-bollocks. ‘We all know this, although we wouldn’t want the man in the street to know it.’

‘Precisely,’ said the Doveston. ‘And we’re not going to tell him. Now this same man in the street is taxed roughly one-third of his weekly earnings in direct taxation. What would happen if he wasn’t?’

‘He’d have a third more of his money to spend every week,’ said old silly-bollocks.

‘And what would he spend it on?’

‘Things, I suppose.’

‘Precisely. Things with tax on.’

‘Er, excuse me,’ said what’s-his-face, the Foreign Secretary. ‘But if everybody in the country had a third more of their money in their pockets to spend and they did spend it, surely the shops would run out of things to sell?’

‘Precisely. And so factories would have to manufacture more things and to do so they would have to take on more staff and so you would cut unemployment at a stroke. And you wouldn’t have to increase anybody’s wages, because they’d all be getting a third more in their pay packets anyway. You’d have full employment and a happy workforce. Hardly the recipe for revolution, is it?’

‘There has to be a flaw in this logic,’ I said to Norman.

‘There has to be a flaw in this logic,’ said old silly-bollocks. ‘But for the life of me, I can’t see what it is.’

‘There is no flaw,’ said the Doveston. ‘And if you increase the purchase tax on all goods by a penny in the pound — which no one will complain about, because they’ll have so much more money to spend — you’ll be able to grab that final pound out of my original one hundred. You’ll get the lot.’

All around the boardroom table chaps were rising to applaud. Even the woman with the bald head, who usually wears the wig, got up and clapped.

‘Bravo,’ cheered Norman.

‘Sit down, you stupid sod,’ I told him.

‘Yeah, but he’s clever. You have to admit.’

‘He said he had a couple of radical proposals. What do you think the second one might be?’

‘Now, my second radical proposal is this,’ said the Doveston, once all the clappers had sat themselves down. ‘I propose that the government legalize all drugs.’

‘Oh well,’ said Norman. ‘One out of two wasn’t bad. Not for a bloke who’s Richard, anyway.’

Chaos reigned in the boardroom. The Doveston bashed his fists upon the table. Chaos waned and calm returned. The Doveston continued. ‘Please hear me out,’ he said. ‘Now, as we all know, the government spends a fortune each year in the war against drugs. It is a war that the government can never win. You can’t stop people enjoying themselves and there are just too many ways of bringing drugs into this country. So why does the government get so up in arms about drugs?’

‘Because they’re bad for you,’ said what’s-his-face.

‘You are amongst friends here,’ said the Doveston. ‘You can tell the truth.’

‘I’ll bet he can’t,’ said old silly-bollocks.

‘Can too.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Can too.’

‘Go on then,’ said the Doveston. ‘Why does the government get so up in arms about drugs?’

‘Because we can’t tax them, of course.’

‘Precisely. But you could tax them if they were legal.’

‘Don’t think we haven’t thought about it,’ said old silly-bollocks. ‘But no government dare legalize drugs. Even though half the population regularly use them, the other half would vote us out of office.’

‘But what if they were legalized, but the man in the street didn’t know they were legalized?’

‘I don’t quite see how you could do that.’

‘What if you were to take all the money that is wasted each year in the war on drugs, go over to the areas where the drugs are originally grown, the Golden Triangle and so on, and use the money to buy all the crops. Ship them back to England, then market them through the existing network of pushers. You wouldn’t half make a big profit.’

‘That’s hardly the same as legalizing them, or taxing them.’

‘Well, firstly, the people who take drugs don’t really want them legalized. Half the fun of taking drugs is the “forbidden fruit” aspect. They’re much more exciting to take if they’re illegal. Only the government will know that they’re legal, which is to say that the Royal Navy will import them. You can’t imagine any drug-traffickers wanting to take on the Royal Navy, can you? On arrival here, the drugs will be tested and graded, they could even be trademarked. They will be top quality, at affordable and competitive prices. Any opposition in the shape of rival drug-importers will soon be put out of business. The profits you make can be called “tax”. I can’t think of a better word, can you?’

‘But if the rest of the world found out...?’ Old silly-bollocks wrung his hands.

‘You mean if other governments found out? Well, tell them. Tell them all. Get them to do the same. It will put the Mafia out of business and increase government revenues by billions all over the world.’

‘But the whole world will get stoned out of its brains.’

‘No it won’t. No more people will be taking drugs than there are now. And fewer people in this country will be taking them.’

‘How do you work that out?’ old silly-bollocks asked.

‘Because a great deal of drug-taking is done out of desperation. By poor unemployed people who have given up hope. In the new income-tax-free society, they’ll all have jobs and money to spend. They won’t be so desperate then, will they?’

‘The man’s a genius,’ said Norman.

‘The man is a master criminal,’ I said. ‘No wonder he’s so into security. He’s probably expecting the arrival of James Bond at any minute.’

So, what of the Doveston’s radical proposals? What of them indeed. You will of course know that direct taxation ceased at midnight on the final day of the twentieth century, when most of the government’s computer systems self-destructed. But you probably didn’t know that since the summer of 1985 virtually any ‘illegal’ drug that you might have taken in this country was imported, graded and marketed with the approval of HM Government herself.

And that a penny in the pound on all profit made has gone directly to the man who brokered the original deal with the chaps from the Colombian drugs cartel.

And this many s name?

Well, I don’t really have to spell it out.

Do I?

But I’ll tell you what. It’s not Richard.