“He looked a bit rough, but he looked just like he did in the old war footage.”

“And you don’t think that a bit strange?”

“No,” said Russell. “That’s the whole point.”

“It’s not the whole point. It didn’t occur to you that he might have looked a bit older? Like fifty years older? Like he should have been at least one hundred years old?”

“Ah,” said Russell.

“Exactly, ah. This is where Sid’s slipped up. Hitler was dying anyway at the end of the war, he had all sorts of stuff wrong with him. Yet the Hitler you saw was no older. What did he do then, drink the elixir of life? The water of life?”

Russell let out a further groan as the image of a Perrier bottle swam into his mind, followed by certain other images of an erotic nature, some of them actually involving a Perrier bottle. “So it wasn’t really Hitler?”

“Could it really have been Hitler? Ask yourself, could it really have been?”

“I suppose not,” said Russell.

“I’m sorry, Russ, er, Russell. You’ve been had.”

Russell made a very miserable face and turned his eyes towards the floor. “I’ve made a bit of a prat of myself, haven’t I?” he said.

“It’s not your fault. That Sid’s getting a bit sneaky. Perhaps the competition’s getting too strong. Perhaps they’ve installed a Lord Lucan in a shed behind The New Inn. It’s a good wheeze.”

“It didn’t half look like Hitler,” said Russell. “But I suppose you must be right. It was a wind-up. It couldn’t really have been him.”

“Still,” said Morgan. “Look on the bright side, Russell. You actually had a bit of an adventure. It doesn’t matter that it was all baloney. I bet it got your adrenalin rushing about.”

“It certainly did that.”

“So you’ve lived a little. For a brief moment you weren’t reliable old Russell, who nothing ever happens to. For a brief moment you were actually having an adventure. And it felt pretty good, didn’t it?”

Russell raised his eyes from the floor and for a brief moment, a very brief moment, they really glared at Morgan.

“I’m going back to the office,” he said. And back to the office he went.

6

Back to The Führer

Of course Morgan had to be right, there was no possible way Adolf Hitler could really be in Brentford in the nineteen nineties, looking just like he did in the nineteen forties. Especially with him being dead and everything.

No possible way.

It’s a big statement though, “no possible way”, isn’t it?

There’s always some possible way. It might be an improbable way, or a way considered impossible, or implausible, or something else beginning with im.

For instance, one possible way springs immediately to mind and “immediately” begins with im. If we return once more to the contents of box 23. And had we been given access to the one on the chief constable’s high shelf in Brentford police station in May, nineteen fifty-five, we would have been able to read a statement placed there by a certain constable Adonis Doveston, which read thus:

I was proceeding in an easterly direction along Mafeking Avenue at eleven p.m. (2300 hours) on the 12th inst at a regulation 4.5 mph when I was caused to accelerate my pace due to cries of distress emanating from an alleyway to the side of number sixteen. I gained entry to said alleyway and from thence to the rear garden of number sixteen. And there I came upon Miss J. Turton in a state of undress. This state consisting of a brassiere with a broken left shoulder strap, a pair of camiknickers and one silk stocking. She was carrying on something awful and when I questioned her as to why this might be, she answered, “Why lor’ bless you, constable, but wasn’t I just whipped up out of me bloomin’ garden by a bloomin’ spaceship and ravished by the crew and when they’d had their evil way with me, then didn’t they just dump me back here without a by your leave or kiss my elbow.”

I later ascertained that this statement was not entirely accurate, in that Miss Turton had in fact had her elbow kissed, also her eyeballs licked and the lobes of her ears gently nibbled. I accompanied the lady into her back parlour, took off my jacket to put about her shoulders and was comforting her, prior to putting the kettle on, when her father returned, somewhat the worse for drink.

Would it be possible for me to have the Saturday after next off, as I am to be married?

A straightforward enough statement by any reckoning, a simple case of alien abduction, no doubt.

Or was it?

Behind this statement was stapled another statement and on this was scrawled a few lines, these being Miss Turton’s description of the alien crew:

Tall and blond, wearing grey uniforms with a double lightning-flash insignia and black jack-boots.

A description that would fit the dreaded storm troopers of Hitler’s Waffen SS. Those known as The Last Battalion.

Significant?

Not significant?

Well, it’s bloody significant when viewed in the light of a certain scenario I am about to put forward, concerning how Adolf Hitler could turn up in Brentford in the nineteen nineties looking exactly the same as he did in World War Two.

You’ll kick yourself afterwards for not seeing how obvious it is.

It is a fact well known to those who know it well, that towards the end of the Second World War, the Nazis had all sorts of secret experimental research laboratories, working on all manner of advanced weaponry. And had they been able to hold out for a few more months they would have completed certain dreadful devices to wreak utter havoc upon the Allies.

One of these was the sound-cannon. A sonic energy gun constructed to project a low frequency vibrational wave that could literally shake apart anything within its path. Another was the Flügelrad (literally flying saucer), a discoid aircraft designed by Viktor Schauberger, powered by electromagnetic energy and capable of speeds in excess of 2000 km/hr.[13]

Let us take a trip back to one of those secret establishments, New Schwabenland in Antarctica, “somewhere due south of Africa”. The year is 1945 and a fleet of U-boats has just arrived, having come by way of Argentina. On board are crack troops known as The Last Battalion, a number of the highest ranking Nazi party members and a certain Mr A. Hitler esquire.

They enter a vast hangar affair where several Flügelrads and other state-of-the-then-art craft are in various stages of completion.

It is a little after tea-time.

Adolf Hitler enters first, he is limping slightly, due to chilblains acquired on the long voyage, allied to his verrucas and athlete’s foot. He speaks.

HITLER: Someone get us a bleeding armchair, me Admirals[14] are killing me.

GOERING: And some sarnies, my belly’s emptier than a Führer’s promise. (Laughter from the officer ranks.)

HITLER: (Adjusting his hearing aid.) What was that?

GOERING: I said, praise the fatherland, my Führer. (Further laughter.)

HITLER: You fat bastard.

Now before we go any further with this particular drama, it might be well worth identifying the principal players, explaining a little bit about them and a few things that are not generally known about the German language.

Firstly Hitler. Well, we all know about him, don’t we? Sold his soul to the devil at an early age, the rest is history.

Hermann Goering. One of Hitler’s original henchmen, drinking buddy from their old bierkeller bird-pulling days. In charge of something or other pretty big, it might have been the airforce. What is known is that although he was a fat bastard, a really fat bastard, he was also a fop who used to change his clothes as many as five times a day. He probably sweated a lot and this was before the invention of underarm deodorants.