Elric to Rescue Tanelorn - Michael Moorcock [86]
From the bed, he picked up what appeared to be a dark leather toilet case. He snapped it open to check that his needle gun was pressured. He put the gun back and closed the case.
Holding the case in his left hand, he went downstairs; nodded to the proprietor, who nodded back; and got into the newly polished Duesenberg.
He sat in the car for a moment, looking out over the grey sea. There was still a quarter of a glass of Bell’s in the clip on the dashboard. He took it out, wound down the window, and threw the glass to the ground. He reached into the glove compartment and found a wrapped, fresh glass, fixed it in the clip, and filled it half full from his bottle. Then he started the engine, turned the car around, and drove off, switching on the tape machine as soon as he was on Southquay’s main street.
John, George, Paul, and Ringo serenaded him with the old standard “Baby’s in Black” from all three speakers.
“Oh dear what can l do, baby’s in black and I’m feeling blue…”
They were still his favourite group.
“She thinks of him and so she dresses in black, and though he’ll never come back, she’s dressed in black.”
Halfway to Blackheath he stopped off at a newsagent’s shop and bought himself two Mars Bars, two cups of strong black coffee, and a pound or two of newsprint labeled NEWS SECTION, BUSINESS SECTION, LEISURE SECTION, ARTS SECTION, POP SECTION, CAR SECTION, COMIC SUPPLEMENT, COLOUR SUPPLEMENT, NOVEL SUPPLEMENT and HOLIDAY ADVERTISING SUPPLEMENT. The News Section was a single sheet and the news was brief, to the point, uninterpreted. Jerry didn’t read it. In fact, he didn’t read anything except part of the Comic Supplement. There was plenty to look at, though. Communications were taking the form of pictures more and more these days. Jerry was well catered to.
He ate his sweets, drank his coffee, and folded up his sections and left them on the table, by way of a tip. Then he went back to his car to continue the journey to Blackheath.
Apart from his pills and his sweets, Jerry had eaten nothing for almost a week.
He found that he didn’t need to eat much, because he could live off other people’s energy just as well, though it was exhausting for them, of course. He didn’t keep many acquaintances long, and Catherine was the only person off whom he hadn’t fed. Indeed, it had been his delight to feed her with some of his stolen vitality when she was feeling low. She hadn’t liked it much, but she’d need it when he eventually got her away from that house and back to normal again, if he could ever get her back to normal.
He would certainly kill Frank when they raided the house. Frank’s final needle would come from Jerry’s gun. It would give him his final kick—the one he kept looking for.
Only Mr. Lucas hadn’t arrived by two o’clock, and they gave him up, feeling annoyed with him—which wasn’t quite fair, for Mr. Lucas had been stabbed to death in Islington the previous evening and robbed of the best part of his casino’s takings by a much-embittered all-time loser who, by the following Monday, would fall downstairs and kill himself while taking his money to the bank, such being the fate of all-time losers.
Miss Brunner and Dimitri, Mr. Smiles, Mr. Crookshank, and Mr. Powys were all looking at a map, which Mr. Smiles had laid out on the table. Jerry Cornelius stood by the window smoking a thin cigarette and half-listening to them as they talked over the details of the expedition.
Mr. Smiles pointed one of his strong fingers at a cross that had been drawn roughly in the middle of the English Channel between Dover and Normandy. “That’s where the boat will be waiting. The men were all hired by me in Tangier. They answered an advertisement. At first they thought they were going to shoot Africans, but I managed to talk them round. They consist mainly of white South Africans, Belgians, and French. There are a couple of British ex-officers. I put them in charge, of course. Apart from the South Africans, they got keener when I told them that they’d be fighting mainly Germans. Amazing how some people manage to hang