Waiting for Godalming by Robert Rankin Read Free Book Online Page A

greatest case of my whole career. The Big One. You gotta help me, Fange. What am I gonna do?”
    “Well.” The fat boy scratched at his gut. “We might come to some arrangement.”
    “What?” I kept my what small this time.
    “We’re old pals; I might be prepared to do you a favour.”
    “Go on then,” says I.
    “Well,” the fat boy scratched at his gut again, “I don’t think you’ll find that it has to be a dame that does you wrong who bops you on the head. It could be anyone.”
    “Anyone?”
    “It could even be me.”
    “You?
You
would bop me over the head? But why would
you
want to bop me over the head?”
    “Like I say, we might come to some arrangement. Lend us your ear and I’ll whisper.”
    I lent Fangio my ear and he whispered. “That’s outrageous,” I exasperated, once his whispering was done.
    “That’s my offer. Take it or leave it.”
    I sighed deeply. “I’ll take it,” says I.
    “Look out behind you,” cried Fangio.
    I turned and then something hit me from behind.
    And I was falling.
    Tumbling down.
    Down. Down.
    Deeper and down.
    Into a deep dark whirling pit of oblivion.
    Yes siree.
    By golly.

4
    If Icarus Smith had been sitting on the other side of the Station Hotel’s scarlet bar and diner, the side that faced to the lower end of the high street, he would have seen Mr Cormerant leaving Fangio’s bar, after his meeting with Lazlo Woodbine.
    He would have seen Mr Cormerant muttering to himself and dabbing at his nose with an oversized red gingham handkerchief. He would have seen Mr Cormerant stumbling across the street, narrowly avoiding death beneath the wheels of a speeding Ford Fiesta.
    And finally he would have seen Mr Cormerant struggling into the back of one of those sinister long dark automobiles with the blacked out windows, which are positively
de rigueur
with the upmarket criminal fraternity, to be ferried back to the Ministry of Serendipity.
    But as Icarus was sitting on the other side of the bar, he saw none of those things.
    Had he seen them, and indeed had he been able to follow Mr Cormerant back to the Ministry and stick his ear close to the door of a top secret chamber, he would have heard Mr Cormerant get another sound telling off for losing the briefcase, before being complimented for his good sense in employing the world’s greatest private eye to search for it. He would then have heard Mr Cormerant being informed that
certain agencies
had already been despatched, to seek out the petty criminal who had apparently lifted the case from Stravino’s and see to it that he came to a most unpleasant but suitably spectacular end. But Icarus did not hear any of these things. Which may, or may not, have been for the best.
     
    With a trembly hand, Icarus Smith removed the cassette tape from the Dictaphone. Having managed, with some difficulty, to slide it into the top pocket of his jacket, he snatched up the Dictaphone, flung it back into the briefcase, closed and locked the lid. And then sat at his table, quivering somewhat and staring into space.
    Now Icarus knew the scenario, every moviegoer did. It had been used again and again on the big screen in crime thrillers and science fiction thrillers and even science fantasy thrillers, in fact in pretty much every kind of thriller that there ever was. It was simple and succinct, and this is how it went.
    Petty criminal steals something really important without realizing that it is. Case of drugs, or money belonging to gang-lord, advanced military microchip, mega-dangerous virus, Ford Fiesta with alien corpse in the boot. Tick where applicable.
    Then, early on in the plot, the petty criminal comes to a most unpleasant but suitably spectacular end, before the hero, in the shape of the detective, arrives on the scene in search of the stolen something.
    It was hardly an original scenario, but it had been tried and tested and found to work very well indeed.
    Icarus recalled the movie version of
Death Wears a Blue