Boxer, Beetle by Ned Beauman Read Free Book Online Page A

fuck’s sake, don’t hold out on me like this
KEVIN: i’m not
STUART: so two unrelated exciting things happened to you in one night? right.
    Guiltily I clicked away to another window and ran a search for ‘Philip Erskine’. A motivational speaker, a history teacher, a town planner, a few others, but no scientists. I went back to the forum. To my surprise, someone had already replied to my post.
Subject: Philip Erskine?
From: nbeauman (Posts: 17)
Time: 1:14 GMT
>
does anyone know anything about a scientist and possible
>
acquaintance of Hitler called Philip Erskine?
anything to do with Seth Roach, the boxer?
    Remembering that Grublock had mentioned that name, I wrote:
Subject: Philip Erskine?
From: kevin (posts: 1,268)
Time: 1:15 GMT
>
anything to do with Seth Roach, the boxer?
yes. what else do you know?
    and waited, fidgeting, for five minutes, but there was no further response. I went to nbeauman’s profile to see his sixteen prior posts: just short, routine contributions to a few forum arguments, some of which I’d actually read at the time without noting his name.
    I spent the next half-hour running more searches on ‘Philip Erskine’ and ‘Seth Roach’, from which I didn’t learn much, while debating with Stuart whether Unity Mitford could really have had Hitler’s baby and whether the new two-disc special edition DVD of
Capricorn One
was worth the money. At about two in the morning, I went to bed. At about five, something woke me. I opened my eyes. There was a man in my room.
    He sat, because there was nowhere else to sit, on the low chest of drawers by the door. He was lean and muscular, dressed in black, and held a black semiautomatic pistol with a long silencer.
    ‘Get up and stand beside the bed, please,’ he said. ‘Don’t move unless I ask you to, and you won’t be hurt.’ He had a faint Welsh accent. I did as I was told. ‘Hands at your sides. Thank you.’ He did not lower the gun. ‘I need you to tell me what you found at the detective’s flat.’
    ‘A letter from Adolf Hitler to Philip Erskine, dated 1936, in condition “Fine” to “Very Fine”,’ I said quickly. I wanted to lie but I was too scared.
    ‘That is of no use to me, I’m afraid. I’d hoped it might be something more substantial. What else do you know about Philip Erskine?’
    ‘Nothing.’
    ‘The truth, please.’
    ‘You killed Zroszak.’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Do you work for the Japanese? A consortium?’
    ‘You were on the subject of Philip Erskine.’
    ‘I need to go to the toilet,’ I said, my voice cracking.
    ‘Wait, please.’
    ‘You can’t imagine the smell if I piss myself,’ I said. In truth, it could hardly get any worse than it already was: I sweat so much when I panic that I turn into a minor airborne toxic event.
    He looked at me for a second and then said, ‘Where’s the toilet?’
    ‘Off the living room.’
    ‘Go.’
    He followed me out of the bedroom into the living room. He flipped on the light, and I glanced back to get a better look at him. I knew I should probably study his calm face, but all I could look at was the gun in his hand, its shape familiar from dozens of computer games, and that was when I noticed the tattoo on his wrist: a hunting dagger atop a rounded swastika.
    ‘You’re from the Thule Society,’ I whispered.
    ‘Hurry up, please,’ he said. As I went into the bathroom he added, ‘Don’t close the door.’
    I didn’t. But his view of the sink was blocked by my body. With one hand I tugged my penis out of my pyjama bottoms, and with the other I picked up my toothbrush mug. I pissed into the mug until it was almost full. Coming back out of the bathroom, I held the mug behind my back and with my free hand pointed at the letter from Hitler on my computer desk. ‘There it is,’ I said. ‘What I took.’ The Welsh Ariosophist reached to pick it up, and I threw the mug of hot piss in his face.
    Trimethylamine in high concentrations starts to smell more like ammonia than