Read Online Watching the Wheels Come Off by Mike Hodges - Free Book Online

ears. He stops, turns her towards him and looks angrily into her bleary eyes. ‘So what? So a reward of five thousand pounds, that’s what.’ He shivers and not just from the cold wind. ‘Enough to get Reg’s ugly relative off my back.’
    ‘Just tell him to piss off.’
    ‘And get to meet Wolfgang Amadeus next Tuesday? You’re not taking me seriously, sugar. This dude is big like King Kong, but not as lovable.’
    As they reach the Grand Atlantic Hotel, Mark rests her against the balustrade and gently pats her face.
    ‘You up for this?’
    ‘Why not?’
    ‘Count to fifty, okay?
    ‘Okay.’
    He dances up the steps and peers inside. Behind the reception desk, at the end of the dimly lit foyer, he sees Harvey, the much discussed night porter. Mark quietly revolves the revolving door and moves in like a cat burglar.
    Ursula turns to face the wind, letting it sober her up. She has agreed to sleep with him and now tries to remember why. Her lips move as she starts to count.
    Much of her life is lived by rote.
    * * *
    The only sound is the ominous tick of the wall clock above Harvey’s head. His disfigured face of warts and weeping pustules wouldn’t be out of place in the horror comic that currently engrosses him. Nor would his hunched back.
    Nature has not been kind to Harvey.
    Mark skirts the edge of the foyer, unnoticed. He ducks below the reception desk and waits. Harvey turns a pageof the comic to find that ‘the vampire, with the blood of his latest victim still dripping from his white dress shirt, has reached the graveyard just as dawn breaks.’ Mark’s timing couldn’t have been better. As the ‘ vampire sinks into his coffin ’ so Mark rises slowly into Harvey’s vision with a low moan. The night porter lifts off his stool with an awesome gasp, as Mark bangs the desk bell with his fist.
    ‘Dr Death checking in.’
    Even before Harvey’s heart is back on the beat, Mark grabs the comic from his trembling hands, riffling through its pages with evident disgust.
    ‘Studying for a Bachelor of Satanic Arts, Harvey?’
    Harvey is visibly shaking, barely able to get the words out.
    ‘You can’t stay here no more, Mr Mark. Sorry, but I got my orders.’
    ‘You snitched on me, didn’t you? What’s even more disgusting is that you did it in the staff latrine.’
    Mark spins the hotel register round to read it. There’s only one entry for that day: Alice Honey, Miami USA. She’s in Room 13.
    Harvey’s temporarily interrupted blood flow is back on course, along with his usual cringing manner.
    ‘How was I to know Mr Springer was in there?’
    ‘Because latrines are Springer’s natural habitat.’
    He turns in time to see Ursula slip from the revolving door and head into the Dining Room. Harvey, unaware of this pincer movement, is working himself into a lather, sweating and slightly foaming at the mouth.
    ‘Every sodding morning the chambermaids come tome complaining about some phantom fornicator haunting our many unoccupied bedrooms. It got to prey on my mind so bad, Mr Mark, I had to talk to somebody.’
    ‘I know what’s preying on your mind, Harvey.’
    Mark leans over the desk to a shelf underneath, lifting out a pile of soft-porn magazines.
    ‘There’s the cause of your troubled mind, Harvey. These semen-speckled pages have over-stimulated your imagination.’ He dumps them disdainfully on the desktop: ‘A mind marinated in sex. As dark and dirty as a porno flick-house.’
    He sweeps flamboyantly towards the entrance.
    ‘Adieu, Harvey. The phantom fornicator will never again grace the beds of this hotel. Good night to you, sir.’ He pauses at the door to the Dining Room, where Ursula waits in the darkness, and whispers to her: ‘Room 13.’
    She nods and goes over to the wall phone.
    Mark spins himself out into the night.
    * * *
    Harvey has abandoned his horror comic to ponder the intricacies of an orgiastic scene in one of the porn mags when the internal phone tinkles.
    ‘Reception.’