The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (6 page)

‘It is c*bblers,’ I remarked.

But Mr Rune continued, unperturbed. ‘Father Ernetti demonstrated the Chronovision before Pope Pious the Twelfth. This is a fact; it is recorded in Vatican records. The Chronovision was tuned to the correct frequency and the Pope viewed the crucifixion of Christ upon the Chronovision’s screen. He was amazed. But he soon became horrified.’

‘I would have thought that he would have been chuffed,’ I said, ‘to
know for certain that there had been a Jesus Christ, I mean. Not that I think I really believe in—’

‘Silence,’ said Mr Rune. ‘The Pope was filled with horror because he understood the Chronovision’s potential – what would happen should it fall into the wrong hands.’

‘So what would happen? Surely if this were true, it would be the greatest scientific discovery of this or any other age. A Nobel Prizewinner for the scientific monk. To actually view the past, to see the events of history – every home should have a Chronovision, surely.’

‘Absolutely not! The Pope understood the ramifications. Father Ernetti had tuned the Chronovision to the resonant frequency of the Pope; as a result of the succession of Popes, their lineage goes right back to Saint Peter, who walked with Christ, and who was present at the crucifixion. The image upon the screen was the one seen through the eyes of Saint Peter.’

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but I still do not see the problem.’

‘The Chronovision can be tuned to anyone’s personal frequency. We each have a unique resonance. If it was turned to your frequency, it could replay events that you witnessed and took part in three weeks ago.’

‘Brilliant,’ said I. ‘Then I would know who I am.’

‘Not brilliant,’ said Mr Rune. ‘If you can tune the frequency to the resonance of
any
individual on the planet, then you can see that person’s past. That person can have no secrets from the man who tunes the Chronovision. Do you understand now?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You mean that should some dictator gain possession of it, he could uncover everything about the past of any individual on Earth. Any individual – is that correct?’

Mr Rune nodded. ‘The Pope understood this and the terrible implications of it. He ordered the Chronovision dismantled, packed into boxes and placed under lock and key in the vaults of the Vatican, alongside the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail.’

‘Easy now,’ I said. ‘But if this is all really true – and I do agree that there is something about it that almost has me believing you – then the Chronovision is safely stashed away and that is that.’

‘Would that it were so.’ Mr Rune tasted further port and shook his great head sadly.

‘It was stolen,’ said I, ‘from the Vatican vaults – that is it, is it not?’

Mr Rune nodded grimly. ‘More than a year ago. It would never have come to my attention – indeed, the Chronovision’s existence would never have come to my attention – had not the Pope and I been out on the razz and he, having imbibed too freely as is his habit, spilled the entire business out to me.’

‘You
know the Pope?’ I said.

‘We are the greatest of friends.’

‘This is ludicrous.’

‘What? Do you think that the Pope has no friends?’

‘I am not saying that, but I find it difficult to believe that you are one of them.’

‘And why might this be?’

I stared at Mr Rune.

And do you know what? For the very life of me, I could not think of a single reason as to why it might not be.

‘You are a chum of the Pope’s?’ I said.

‘Probably his bestest friend. It was me who suggested that he join the priesthood. He wanted to become a professional football player, but between the two of us, he had a weak left foot.’

I shook my head. ‘So, hold on,’ I said, ‘are you presently being employed by the Pope to retrieve the Chronovision from whoever stole it?’

‘Absolutely not. He did not recall in the morning that he’d told me anything about it. When I have located the Chronovision, I will destroy it. And then my work will be done.’

‘Incredible,’ I said. ‘Ludicrous, but also incredible. But I fail to understand how finding a lost dog is going to help this noble cause of yours.’

‘The dog is the tip of the iceberg, as I have told you, several times.’

‘You told me, but I still fail to understand.’

‘That map there, on the wall.’ Mr Rune pointed. ‘I have seen you peering at it many times. Have you fathomed it yet?’

‘No,’ I said. ‘I have not. It appears to be a large-scale map of Brighton, but it has all kinds of figures drawn all over it, following the patterns made by the roads. A bat, a cat, a horse – I think.’

‘And the head of a dog,’ said Mr Rune, ‘in the Hangleton area of
Brighton. You will observe that the house we visited was in Tudor Close, in the very eye of the hound.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘And that is significant, is it?’

‘Most,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Entirely. This map is the means by which I will discover the Chronovision’s location and achieve my goal – its recovery and destruction. If the Chronovision is the single most significant discovery of this century, then what is drawn upon that map must rank as number two.’

‘So what is it?’ I asked.

‘It is my discovery, young Rizla. The figures you see traced on to that map are the Carriageway Constellations, the work of a Victorian magician who influenced the Brighton Borough Town-Planning Committee to lay out the roads and byways of Brighton to a particular pattern, one that would later be discovered by myself. There are twelve figures, you see. Each represents a case or conundrum that we together must solve in order to acquire the Chronovision. What you see before you on that map, young Rizla, is the Brighton Zodiac.’

Mr Rune paused, awaiting applause.

I raised my glass and said, ‘Can I have another drink?’

PART II

All right. I was not impressed. Perhaps I should have been, but after the tale of the television set that enabled its viewer to witness scenes of the past, the Brighton Zodiac seemed a bit of a disappointment. And, you might think, hardly something upon which to end a chapter.

But then, this is
my
account of the events that occurred and if
I
feel that that is where the chapter should end, that is where the chapter will end! And in the light of events that were soon to occur, please be assured that I know what I am talking about.

After all,
I was there!

‘The Brighton Zodiac,’ I said. ‘Well, blow me down.’

‘You are singularly unimpressed,’ said Mr Hugo Rune, ‘but then you have yet to understand its significance.’

‘Well.’ I shrugged. ‘I suppose I will have to take your word for it.’

Mr Rune sighed mightily. ‘I am confiding in you matters,’ said he, ‘that I have never confided to another soul. I am doing so because in a future time, indeed, a far future time, you will write these matters down, indeed, compose them into a book that will become a bestseller.’

‘Do you really think so?’

‘I have no doubt of it. The past and the future are one and the same to me. I am Rune, whose name is legend. Rune who fathoms the unfathomable. Rune who makes the impossible a strong probability. Rune—’

‘I hate to interrupt,’ I said, ‘but about this Brighton Zodiac—’

‘Ah yes. The key to it all. Allow me to explain.’

‘Please do.’

‘Back in the nineteen twenties, there existed a notable lady by the name of Kathleen Maltwood. She was a native of Glastonbury and also a visionary. She had the gift of overview: she could see beyond the everyday, glimpse the bigger picture – a gift that I possess to overabundance. It was her conviction that imprinted upon the landscape about Glastonbury was a great zodiac, formed from the rivers and hills, the roads and the natural features. She studied aerial photographs of the area and she joined the dots, so to speak. She discovered the Glastonbury Zodiac.
^*

‘Ten years ago, another lady, one Mary Caine, put forward her belief that if the Glastonbury Zodiac existed, then so too should the Kingston Zodiac, surrounding the area where the ancient Celtic kings were crowned. She studied the Ordnance Survey maps of the surrounding territories and she, too, found her zodiac.
^†

‘I am Hugo Rune,’ said Mr Rune, ‘and so it was inevitable that I, too, would find
my
zodiac.’

‘But what does your zodiac have to do with the Chronovision?’

‘Good question,’ said Mr Rune, and he savoured more port and stared through the window to where Brighton was going about its business.

‘Go on, then,’ I said. ‘Tell me.’

‘Shan’t,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Not right now anyway, for I have told you enough. More than enough.’

‘There is one other thing,’ I said.

Mr Rune yawned and blew upon his fingernails. They had recently been manicured at a local beauty boutique. I had seen the unpaid bill upon his desk.
‘Hand job £10’,
it said. Quite expensive, for a manicure.

‘About the Chronovision,’ I said. ‘Do you even know in which part of the world it might be at present?’

‘Of course I do.’

‘Would you care to enlighten me?’

‘Young man,’ said Mr Rune, ‘enlightenment is my middle name. From the Vatican vaults I tracked its journey across Europe. It is presently here, right here in Brighton.’

‘If you know this much, then why not seek it out straight away? All this piecing things together through a series of cases seems somewhat long-winded and overly circuitous.’

‘You have no understanding of the situation. The felons who brought the Chronovision to Brighton are dead. They died in a freak accident involving concrete and deep water. But I shall have it. I shall have it before—’

‘Before what?’ I queried.

‘Before
he
can lay his evil hands upon it.’

‘Now
who
would this
he
be?’ I queried further.

‘My arch enemy. Holmes had his Moriarty and I have him. He is probably the most evil man who has ever lived and were he to gain control of the Chronovision, then—’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Doom and gloom and the end of Mankind as we know it.’

‘And things of that nature generally.’ Mr Rune had somehow finished the bottle of port now, without giving me a second glass. ‘He is the most evil man who has ever lived. His name is Count Otto Black.’

The sun went in behind a cloud and a dog howled in the distance.

‘The Hound of the Hangletons,’ I declared.

‘Buffoon,’ said Mr Rune.

‘All right, all right.’ I rose from my chair and sought out the case of
lager that I had secreted behind the sofa. ‘Just let me get all this straight in my mind. A Benedictine monk invents a kind of television set that can tune into events in the past. He demonstrates it to the Pope. The Pope panics and has it locked away in the Vatican vaults. It is stolen. You track the thieves to Brighton, but they die in mysterious circumstances involving concrete and water and the present whereabouts of the Chronovision is unknown. But you are certain that it is still in Brighton and that through solving certain cases connected with the figures of a zodiac that you have discovered, you will be able to locate the Chronovision and destroy it before your archenemy, Count Otto Black, aka The Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived, gets his claws upon it and brings about the overthrow of Mankind.’

‘As near as makes no odds,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Toss me over one of those cans of lager, if you will.’

‘I will not,’ I said. ‘I am taking them with me.’

‘Where to?’

‘Anywhere but here,’ I said. ‘To use the popular parlance of the day, you are doing my head in, Mister Rune.’

‘And so you are thinking to depart?’

‘I am not thinking about it, I am doing it.’

‘And our contract?’

‘Sue me,’ I said. ‘You never know, I might turn out to be the son of a noble household. Perhaps even a prince or something.’

‘Mostly likely a
something,’
said Mr Rune. ‘But if that is your decision, then do what you must. I will be here when you return, in—’ he drew out his golden pocket watch and perused its face ‘—precisely three hours.’

‘I will not be back,’ I said.

‘You will,’ said Mr Rune.

‘Will not,’ said I.

‘All right,’ said Mr Rune, ‘I’ll make a deal with you. If you do come back—’

‘Which I will not,’ I said.

‘But if you do, then you must swear to assist me throughout all the cases that I have to solve in order to retrieve the Chronovision.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said. ‘Then I will tell you this: if I do come back here, I promise, on my life, that I will do so.’

‘Then it’s a deal,’ said Mr Rune. ‘You will return and the case of the Hound of the Hangletons
will
be solved. All in three hours.’

‘I will not be back,’ I said, and went off to pack what few belongings I possessed into a pillowcase.

‘I really will not,’ I repeated as I rejoined Mr Rune.

‘Not me,’ I said as I made for the door.