RAIDERS OF THE LOST CAR PARK.

Robert Rankin.

AS IF YOU HADN'T GUESSED.

We are not being told all of the truth.

There are truths. And there are Truths. And then there are ULTIMATE TRUTHS.

Allow me to explain.

If you have ever attempted, in the spirit of scientific discovery, to glue a rectangular map of the world onto a sphere of the same scale, you will soon have realized that it cannot be done. There is simply too much map.

Now, why should this be?

Well, the greybeards of The Royal Geographic will spin you a lot of jargon about 'orth.o.m.orphic map representations' and 'parallels and meridians' and 'scale being exaggerated in increasing proportion to the lessening proximity with the equator'.

But then, they would say that, wouldn't they?

That would be what they call a truth.

But it's not a Truth. And it's certainly not an ULTIMATE TRUTH.

The Truth of the matter is that the map can be made to fit. All you have to do is increase the size of your sphere by one third.

The ULTIMATE TRUTH is, that the entire planet is really a great deal larger than we have been led to believe. And a considerable amount of it still remains uncharted.

At least by the human population, that is!

Allow me to explain.

There exists, right here, in our very midst, a race of evil beings that secretly manipulate mankind.

They plunder its wealth, screw up its progress and nick its Biros. In short, they control the world as we know it.

This dark, malignant and altogether bad-a.s.sed bunch have, throughout history, infiltrated every level of our society. They lurk, unseen, unsuspected and seemingly unstoppable. Growing ever in number, bent upon the ultimate downfall of the human race and ruled over by a merciless tyrant, known to his minions as the Hidden King of the World, and his gofer, Arthur Kobold.

Their pest holes are everywhere; hundreds across London alone. Each stacked high with a boundless fortune in stolen booty. But you won't find the locations on any atlas or street directory. They are well concealed.

Because these vile beings inhabit all those bits and pieces you had to snip off your rectangular map of the world to make it fit onto the sphere.

They inhabit the FORBIDDEN ZONES.

And that is an ULTIMATE TRUTH!

The discoverer of this ULTIMATE TRUTH, and of many more besides, was a most remarkable man. His name was Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune.

He was a mystic, magus and master of the arts magickal. Poet, painter and prophet. Guru to gurus and best-dressed man, of 1933.

Hardly anyone remembers him today.

When at the height of his celebrity, between the wars, Rune was lionized by high society and held the ear of princes and popes. He could be found dancing the night away with Greta Garbo. Fly-fishing with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Sharing a joke with Haile Sela.s.sie, or leading the conga line at a Buck House garden party.

But for all this, Rune was ever a man with a mission.

Having discovered the existence of the FOR-BIDDEN ZONES, he set out to enter them, to expose the truth about the beings that dwell within, to liberate the plundered wealth of ages, to free mankind from its secret oppressor and would-be destroyer, and to raise upon high his banner ofULTIMATE TRUTH.

But he did not succeed.

Although, with the aid of his acolyte Rizla, a compa.s.s and a tape measure, Rune plotted the location of every FORBIDDEN ZONE in London; and even formulated a means of breaking into them by playing certain 'restricted' notes on a reinvented ocarina, he did not succeed.

On a dark and stormy night some eighteen years ago, Rune and Rizla set forth upon a heroic mission. Fearlessly they penetrated to the very heart of the FORBIDDEN ZONES, there to beard the evil lion in his den. To confront The Hidden King of the World.

Exactly what happened on that fateful night may never be known. Rizla escaped, a broken man.

Hugo Rune was never seen again.

INTRODUCTION.

Cornelius Murphy is the Stuff of Epics.

He is seventeen years of age, a tall boy with big hair, a quick wit and an astonishing sense of smell.

He is also the illegitimate son of Hugo Rune.

Cornelius has just returned from an epic adventure. He was employed by a certain Mr Arthur Kobold, to seek out certain missing chapters from a certain missing book.

The Book of Ultimate Truths. Penned by a certain Hugo Rune.

During the course of his epic adventure, Cornelius, accompanied by his best friend Tuppe (who is also the Stuff of Epics, although to a somewhat lesser degree), and travelling in a suitably epic nineteen -fifties Cadillac Eldorado, discovered his true parentage.

He also learned of the existence of the Forbidden Zones and that Rune is still alive and kicking, held captive inside one of the Zones by the stinkers that dwell within.

Being an epic adventure it was naturally fraught with peril and Cornelius found himself risking life and limb on numerous occasions. As might well be imagined, the Hidden King of the World, deter-mined to destroy any threat to the security of his secret kingdoms, was prepared to go to any length to prevent the tall boy pa.s.sing on what he had learned.

As well as being fraught with peril, the epic adventure was not without complications. There was a Scotsman, the Campbell, who was not really a Scotsman at all, but a malevolent chimera. Part man, part something-else-entirely. And there was a train, THE TRAIN OF TRISMEGISTUS, which wasn't really a train at all, but a Satanic-style agency of despatch, unleashed by The Hidden King of the World.

Cornelius did not return from his epic adventure altogether unscathed. He lost a good deal of his big hair in a life-and-death struggle with the Campbell. Had his Cadillac Eldorado mashed to pieces by falling masonry. And was tricked out of Rune's missing chapters by Mr Arthur Kobold, writer of dud cheques, eater of cake and evil cat's-paw of The Hidden King.

But if you are the Stuff of Epics, then you just have to take this sort of thing in your stride. And if, like Cornelius, you find yourself at the end of it all in possession of Rune's annotated A-Z and the plans for his reinvented ocarina, then the way ahead is clear.

You must enter the Forbidden Zones.

You must free your father.

You must wage war upon the Hidden King of the World and expose the truth about the evil beings who secretly control mankind.

You must become a warrior in the cause of ULTIMATE TRUTH.

And if you happen to come across any of that boundless wealth stored up inside the Forbidden Zones along the way..

Well, that wouldn't go amiss either.

1.

There are exactly twenty-three really wonderful things in this world, and to be in the right place at the right time is one of them.

Happily this still leaves twenty-two others for the rest of us to share. And amongst these is Rock 'n'

Roll.

Now Rock 'n' Roll may not be to everyone's taste. Some speak highly of Cla.s.sical Music. In fact, some speak highly of Cla.s.sical Music and say things like, 'Of course, Cla.s.sical Music was the Rock 'n'

Roil of its day.' Which is frankly a load of old tucket. Cla.s.sical Music was the Cla.s.sical Music of its day.

Bawdy ballads were the boogie. Let me make the ballads and who will may make the laws, wrote Andrew Fletcher in 1703. And two hundred and fifty years later Jerry Lee Lewis would drink to that.

And so today would Mickey Minns. Not that Mickey needed too much of an excuse to up-end a pint pot. Mickey was an old rocker and the downing of large quant.i.ties of beer, went, as they say, with the territory. He'd once jammed with Jeff Beck at The Marquee and had Mickey been in the right place at the right time he would have played ba.s.s on 'Hi Ho Silver Lining'. But he wasn't, so he did not.

Minns had been draped across a saloon bar counter during the recording of that particular Rock Anthem.

And he was currently draped across one now. Different counter, different decade, but the song remains the same.

Back in the Sixties he'd had a full head of hair and a twenty-eight-inch waist and he'd owned a guitar shop. He still owned a guitar shop. It was situated just off the high street and called Minn's Music Mine. Mickey had considered changing the name on many occasions over the years. But the way he saw it, fashions come and fashions go, yet the British still love a shop with a stupid name. And his was slightly less stupid than most.

The part-time barman called last orders for the lunch-time session and Mickey raised his head from the counter to order another. He didn't have to rush back. Not now he'd got the new a.s.sistant and everything.

The new a.s.sistant's name was Anna Gotting and she was a rare beauty. Blond of hair. Blue of eye.

Independent of spirit. Seventeen years of age and five foot eight of height. Valid arguments against the inclusion of such a being in the list of the twenty-three really wonderful things have yet to be heard.

Mickey Minns, for one, could find none against employing her. He considered Anna ideal for the position. Ideal indeed for any number of positions, several of which sprang immediately to his lecherous mind. After all, it was just remotely possible that the teenage siren might harbour a secret pa.s.sion for balding old musos with beer bellies and bad breath. Well, almost anything was possible. Almost.

But the tank top of stupidity did not hang in the crowded wardrobe of Mickey's failings. He had a teenage daughter of his own. And he had a business to run. In Anna, he saw a valuable a.s.set. She'd only been with him a month and the weekly takings had already doubled. Never had so many guitarless young men purchased so many plectrums.

Mickey sighed inwardly, belched outwardly and stumbled away to the Gents whistling 'Beck's Bolero'.

He was blissfully unaware that this parting pee and that postscript pint were about to cost him very dearly indeed.

Because at Minn's Music Mine, the first link in a fantastic chain of events was about to be forged. A chain which would lead from the mundane to the miraculous. From the humdrum to the phan-tasmagoric.

From taedium vitae to terra incognita. From the crambe repit.i.ta ... and so on and so forth. The way some of them do. And it would all begin with the tuneless ting of Mickey's old shop doorbell.

Now it must be stated fairly and squarely, that Minn's Music Mine was a proper guitar shop. A guitar shop in the grand tradition. The genuine article. If asked to describe itself to some young and impressionable customer-to-be and suddenly finding itself with the wish and the ability to do so, it might well have said something like this. In a rich American accent, no doubt.

'Hi there. My name's Minn's Music Mine and I'm a guitar shop. Like me to show you around?Don't be shy. Step right up.

'OK. So this is my door. Note the steel cage bolted across it. And the signs. See these signs?

"Stolen guitar? No thanks!" and "Shoplifting is theft! We always pros-ecute!" and "Beware guard dog! Got the b.a.l.l.s to break in? You won't have 'em when you break out!" See all those exclamation marks? I am a security-conscious establishment!

'Now. Let's step inside. Mind the step there. OK. Allow me to draw your attention to the carpet.

Note the cunning arabesques woven into its quality fabric. These are musical notes. A carpet not dissimilar to this once featured on Six Five Special. You never heard of Six Five Special? You weren't even born? No, I guess not. Never mind.

'And you can't see any musical notes anyway? They're there. Under all the stains and the cigarette, burns and stuff They're there! I'm telling you. Now see here, these, to your right. Amplifiers. And speakers. Lots of speakers. The tall ones are WEM Vendettas. You've never heard of WEM Vendettas? Yeah, well, they're quite old. They're on special offer. Have been for some years.

'But these are new. See these? j.a.panese guitars. You get the whole works for less than 100. Axe, strap, lead, plectrum, amp, speaker, play-in-a-day hand-book. The whole works. Bottom of the range, these guys. We sell plenty. They're c.r.a.p as it happens.

'What? Your mate has one? He says it's "ex-cellent"? Fair enough.

'OK. Now, careful where you stand, or you might step in a saucerful of cigarette b.u.t.ts. You'll see quite a lot of those in here. All the saucers are, you will 'note, full. And lying all around and about amongst them, see these? Coffee mugs. And in them. Precisely one quarter of an inch of congealed black gunk. No more, no less. That's the way we do business.

'Why? Why what? Why all the full ashtrays and the coffee mugs with exactly one quarter of an inch of congealed black gunk? Why? You're asking me why? Well, that's what you have in guitar shops.

That's why. It's a tradition, or an old charter. Or something.

'Look, forget about the ashtrays. Come and see these. Here. All over this wall. Polaroid photos.

Rock stars. Rock stars past and present. Mostly past, I guess. But they've all been in here. You can see my owner, Mr Minns, in many of them too. There's one of him with Charlie Watts. He bought a practice pad in here once. Watts. Charlie Watts. You never heard of Charlie Watts?

'Never mind. Now. Guitars. Do we have guitars. The racks here. These are your "Spanish beginners". Boxwood. Narrow necks, so kids can get their little fingers around them. And the rack up on the wall. Your 200-plus acoustics. Up out of the way where the b.l.o.o.d.y kids can't get their fingers around them. And right up there. Top of the world, Ma, as we say, is an original Les Paul Sunburst. The pride of my owner's collection. He'd never sell it, of course. Check out the patina. And the frets. See these frets? Tasmanian porcupine quill. And the inlay on the linger-boards. Mother-of-pearl. You can almost taste the sustain. A Les Paul original. Les Paul. Les Paul? You're standing in a guitar shop and you have the gall to ask who is Les Paul? For Chrisakes, fella, I can put up with so much and then no more! You have a crack at my carpet! You snub my saucers! You poo-poo my polaroids!

'But Les Paul! What the h.e.l.l did you come in here for anyway?

'The Who? There's a polaroid over there of Mr Minns being beaten up by Keith Moon. Not that Who. What who then?

'Oh. I see. The who with the blue eyes and the blond hair. The Gandhi's Hairdryer World Tour 93 T-shirt and the tight blue jeans. The who sitting on the stool playing the Stratocaster.

That who. Ah yeah. That who.'

'That who' was practising her guitar licks. If you're going to work in a guitar shop, you must know your licks. And your riffs, of course. Your licks and your riffs. If you can't wield your axe and blast out a pa.s.sable 'Stairway to Heaven' or 'Sunshine of your Love', then forget it. Take the checkout job at Tesco's.

Anna's licks were greatly admired locally. As were her riffs.

And so, on this particular day, the lunch-time guitar fanciers having purchased their plectrums and drifted back to their checkouts at Tesco's, Anna had the shop all to herself. So she cranked up thevolume and let riff.