Watching the Wheels Come Off Read Online Free

eyes; oysters delicately tinged with cayenne pepper.
    ‘Where can I find a Mr Mark Miles?’
    Springer points a shaky hand towards the Residents’ Lounge. With uncanny synchronicity one door opens and a white rabbit hops out. Haunted as he is by a fear of delirium tremens, his drinking arm begins to vibrate like a tuning fork whilst trying to guide the brandy into his expectant mouth. The arm misses, emptying the glass down his shirt front.
    ‘Shit.’
    His nerve steadies when a magician immediately pursues the rabbit, pounces on it, and pops it into a voluminous inside pocket of the kind much beloved by his profession. Phalanxes of his colleagues now roll through the double doors into the foyer. Hare struggles against this tide towards his target.
    Springer focuses with some difficulty on Eric Wand, now approaching among the flock of penguin suits.
    ‘One of your chaps missing, eh, Mr Wand?’
    Initially Wand seems hypnotised by Springer’s nose; it’s like a map of veins leading only to cirrhosis of the liver.
    The manager ploughs on, ‘Bad show. Nil desperandum . I remember during the war –’
    Ward has had enough. ‘Turpin was not one of our chaps, Mr Springer.’ He clicks his heels sharply, turns and makes for the stairs. Springer sways as he regards the vanishing magician.
    ‘Must be a bloody Kraut. Damned fellow should be sawn in half.’
    His attention is taken by angry shouts, and at first he can’t locate their source. Then his bleary eyes settle on the swing-doors of the Residents’ Lounge.
    * * *
    Hare is bellowing with rage.
    ‘You calling me a liar?’
    His encounter with Mark Miles had started pleasantly enough. The big man had introduced himself as Reg Turpin’s brother-in-law. ‘So?’ was all Miles had replied but it was enough. The eruption was sudden and volcanic. Hare’s face and eyes turned into molten lava, his voice became louder than Vesuvius.
    ‘You fucking, septic turd. Lola – my beloved wife and Reg’s sister – is a very sick woman, and all you can give me is lip? She’s already in the grip of terrible angina and Reg’s demise will, as sure as night follows day, finish her off. Listen closely, you pile of vomit, if she crosses to the hereafter because of this, you, too, will soon be meeting the Grim Reaper. Get me? Now, what’s the update on Reg?’
    ‘Update?’
    Mark has by now retreated behind the grand piano in the corner. His eyes dance in their sockets, as if trying to escape, only settling as his tongue comes to the rescue.
    ‘Reg was merely following in the steps of the late greatHarry Houdini. Harry performed the same amazing act in New York Harbour.’
    ‘With one big fucking difference: Harry Houdini escaped. Reg didn’t – at least, as far as we know. Did the diver find the trunk?’
    ‘No. We have another diver going down tomorrow, at first light.’
    ‘He’d better find that fucking trunk - or you’ll be as dead as the late and not-so-great Reg Turpin. You know the cunt borrowed off his sister to finance this fiasco?’
    ‘Really?’
    ‘Yes, really. Five thousand pounds, to be precise.’
    Mark is close to fainting. As he steadies himself against the grand piano, Hare bangs the support away from under the lid, so it crashes on to Mark’s hands. His scream hits top C with ease, and rises even higher as the big man puts his full weight on the lid.
    ‘You’re in deep shit, sonny boy.’
    Hare eases the lid up, and then picks out a tune with his free hand. Mark is in no state to recognise ‘My Way’, but that’s what it is.
    ‘Reg told me he handed the money over to you.’
    ‘That’s not true.’
    Mark’s not a quick learner.
    Hare bangs the lid down and up, like a snapping crocodile. While Mark howls, he changes his one-finger exercise to perform a funeral march.
    ‘Well, I ain’t allowing my wife’s savings to be wasted on having her brother buried at sea.’
    Mark foolishly tries to reason with him, ‘What about the cost of the trunk?