Watching the Wheels Come Off Read Free Page A

sound?’
    Turpin’s pleas, growing fainter and fainter, and more and more distorted, then start to sound like a wind-up gramophone winding down: ‘Whasssss gooooing onnnnn?’ screams Reg.
    ‘Get the fuck out, you prick!’ screams Mark.
    ‘Pwwwiiiccck? Noooobeehoddy cawwws meehheee a pwwwwickkkk!’
    Prick? Nobody calls me a prick! Such are the famous last words of Reg Turpin. The hacks scribble them down with new-found professional zeal. Other unfathomable, but definitely angry, noises emerge from the deep. Although nobody can decipher them, it’s generally agreed that they concern the retribution Reg intends to exact on Mark when he returns to the surface. For the hacks, long-time marinated in alcohol, purple prose and clichés, this factual gap in the narrative poses no problem. A big news story has just broken before their astonished eyes.
    All eyes shift to the two seamen manhandling a red buoy overboard, intending it to identify the spot where the trunk was last seen. Mark looks helplessly at the approaching rollers as they swell up like a huge sea serpent passing beneath them, and somehow finds it within himself to talk positively.
    ‘Reg can escape in two minutes flat.’
    Dickenson checks his watch and can’t resist a quip. ‘Come in, Reg Turpin, your time is up.’
    Nobody laughs.
    In a futile attempt at intimacy with his client, Markmoves away from the group, whispering into the mike: ‘Reg? Reg, I’m sorry. Really sorry.’ The hacks close around him, listening to his pleas. ‘Reg, please forgive me, Reg. I really didn’t mean it. Let me make it quite clear that you are not a prick…. Reg? Reg, for God’s sake, speak to me.’ The hacks turn like sunflowers towards the tannoy: but it remains silent.
    The scene on deck could be a burial at sea.
    Crew and hacks alike silently contemplate eternity as represented by the vastness of the ocean and the red buoy marking the exit point of the recently departed.
    A seagull lands on it and defecates.
    Sudden activity breaks the spell as a crew member, clad in a wetsuit and diving paraphernalia, stumbles from the wheelhouse. Albert Dingle is a big man in every department except intelligence. Lugosi attends to him as he now struggles to remove the rubber mouthpiece.
    ‘What’s up, Albert?’
    ‘The key.’
    ‘Key? What key?’
    ‘To the trunk.’
    ‘Oh, Jesus!’
    Lugosi finds it and Dingle tucks it into his belt pocket. He looks apprehensively at the huge swell passing under the ship, and crosses himself.
    The captain yells from the wheelhouse, ‘What the fuck are you waiting for, Albert?’
    Dingle scales the ship’s rail. Unfortunately, as he’s just about to plunge in pursuit of the escapologist, one of his
    flippers gets tangled with a cable lying on the deck. As a consequence, his projection into the deep is not as intended. Instead he finds himself dangling upside down against the ship’s rusty hull. The Promised Land sighs as another hefty wave gently lifts her skywards.
    Dickenson smiles another unpleasant smile, directed at Mark.
    ‘You organise this junket?’
    ‘Not the nautical logistics. Only the PR.’
    Dickenson licks the end of his pencil and writes something beside the 3.30 race at Lincoln. He shows it to Mark. ‘PR…ICK! That’ll be tomorrow’s headline. Has a wonderful symmetry about it, don’t you think?’
    The two seamen now have hold of Albert Dingle’s free leg while Lugosi extricates the flipper, finally allowing the diver to slide, with little dignity or elegance, into the water. He executes a painfully inept jack-knife dive and finally vanishes into the deep.
    Mark cheers up, ‘Quite a character, Reg. Probably on his way up even now.’
    Dickenson won’t let that pass, ‘Fourth fathom: mermaid’s lingerie, yellow submarines and diving bells.’
    The hacks snigger yet again.
    But Mark is a bubble that refuses to be popped. ‘Reg is like a cork. He always bobs up.’

four
    T he Grand Atlantic Hotel is ablaze with