Still life with Volkswagens

Six. Paint Your Volkswagen

The first skinhead says, “What if we went down Brick Lane and did over a few Indian restaurants?”

“It’s definitely a possibility,” says Phelan.

“Or,” says another, “what if we went to a Jewish cemetery and, you know, knocked over a few gravestones and painted ‘em with swastikas?”

“Why not?” says Phelan approvingly. “Crude perhaps, but undeniably resonant.”

They are in a scout hut adjacent to some overgrown allotments somewhere within striking distance of the M25. Phelan is having what he calls a Mission Session. He is instructing, persuading, motivating, setting goals. His audience consists of eight skinheads, the same ones who attacked Barry at the Little Eater and who previously destroyed the New Age travellers’ campsite. He tells his charges that they are only one cell of a growing movement, but he flatters them into thinking they are his crack squad, his storm troopers. The room is brightly lit and bare. There is no stage, no podium, no backdrop of Nazi flags. Phelan believes there will be a time for oratory, for the big rally and the triumph of the will. That time is coming soon but it has not arrived yet. For now he chooses to remain low-key, makes one or two allusions to the effect that the Western world is in thrall to a cabal of ‘international bankers’, but generally remains informal, intimate, a style that is interestingly at odds with the exuberance of the skinheads, and yet he feels wonderfully safe and in control when he talks to them. He feels they are his skinheads.

“What about doing over a rap club?” one skinhead says. “I hate rap music. I hate niggers, of course, but I hate rap music even when whites play it.”

“Well,” says Phelan, “mightn’t it be more interesting to attack a club that was, say, frequented by black drug dealers? That would be morally ambiguous. That would give the liberal press something to think about.”

His audience are not the type to give much consideration to the thoughts of the liberal press, but Phelan sounds as convincing as ever.

“And maybe we could burn some crosses,” one of the skinheads shouts.

The others like this and for a while they become uncontrollably wild and exuberant. After this has died down one says, “I hear there are these things called gay centres. Fuck knows what they are, but I wouldn’t mind smashing one of ‘em up.”

Phelan smiles approvingly. He enjoys these little chats. What he likes best is the noble savagery, the instinctive correctness of these young men. He is a thinker. He has theory and ideology behind him. He knows why he wants an end to immigration, to political softness, to social and sexual divergence. The skinheads don’t, and yet they’ve come to the same conclusions as him. They have a natural, unthinking energy that he knows he is too studied to possess. But he can admire it, and he can most definitely use it.

“What about massage parlours?” one of the skinheads shouts. “I mean, all that sensual massage and hand relief that goes on, that can’t be right, can it?”

“No, I don’t think it can,” Phelan agrees.

“And what about building societies?” another yells. “I ‘ate fuckin’ building societies. And banks. I wouldn’t mind doing over a few of them.”

“Ah, usury,” says Phelan, but this rather goes over their heads.

Butcher, the gang’s driver, has been unusually silent throughout the meeting. He has been looking at his boots, chewing his already chewed-up nails. Phelan doesn’t like it when one of his boys has moods. It makes him uneasy. It makes him feel less in control.

“Why so silent, Butcher?” he asks. “Something wrong?”

Butcher remains surly, and says nothing.

“Come on, Butcher. You can tell me.”

“All right then. I think all these big ideas of yours are crap.”

“And why exactly do you think that, Butcher?”

“Because beating up nignogs and doing over graveyards is all very well, but it’s no bloody good if you haven’t got reliable transport.”

“I’m not sure that I follow,” says Phelan.

“Look, I’m bloody sick and tired of driving around in that crappy old white van. It keeps letting us down. I want a decent fuckin’ set of wheels.”

The others have never given this a moment’s thought but they immediately see that Butcher is right.

“And what do you think constitutes a decent set of wheels?” Phelan asks, suddenly the school master.

“A tasty old Jag,” someone says.

“Nah, a Ford Capri.”

“Nah, a BMW,” says another.

“Bollocks,” says Butcher with feeling. “It’s got to be a Volkswagen Beetle.”

“And why’s that?” Phelan asks, hoping he knows the answer.

“Because it’s a Nazi car, isn’t it?” says Butcher. “Because it’s the car Adolf Hitler dreamed up.”

“You know Butcher,” says Phelan, “sometimes your instinctive grasp of theory leaves me breathless with admiration.”

It is some time before Butcher is certain that Phelan isn’t taking the piss.

♦

The yellow Beetle belonging to Renata Gas well, the one that Fat Les deliberately backed into, stands proudly on the forecourt of Fat Volkz Inc. To say that it now looks as good as new would be a pathetic understatement. It looks better than it ever has, better than when it was first in the showroom. It looks magnificent, resplendent, luminous. This is not so very surprising. This, after all, is what Fat Les does with Volkswagens.

Renata stands admiring her car. Next to her is Phelan and beside him is Butcher. They too are taking great pleasure in looking at Les’s handiwork. Les, not a man burdened by extravagant modesty, receives their admiration as no more than his due.

“It’s seriously nice,” says Renata.

“It’s more than that,” says Phelan. “It’s a work of art. And it’s even nicer when it’s on the house, eh Les?”

Les grunts.

“And like I said,” Phelan continues, “this could be the start of something very big. Isn’t that right, Butcher?”

“Yeah,” says Butcher.

“Butcher and I have plans,” Phelan says. “More than that, we have hopes, dreams. You can help make those dreams come true, Les.”

“Can I?”

“Yes. You see Butcher needs transport, and so do a few of his mates. So I’d like to place an order with you for eight more Beetles.”

“Eight,” Les repeats.

“Yes. You see Butcher and his pals like to think of themselves as tough guys. You can’t see them all piling in and out of the back of Volkswagens every time they do a job, so I’d like them to have one each.”

“I see,” says Les.

“Probably you don’t, actually. Today I’m ordering eight, but that’s only a start. A time will come when I’ll want dozens, scores, thousands. You’ll be able to cope with that, won’t you Les?”

Les wonders if the guy is joking, or if he’s just raving mad. Les looks at Renata, then at Butcher, to see if they’re in on the joke, but they both look perfectly serious.

“I have a lot of friends,” Phelan says. “There are a lot of people who think the way I do. One day there’ll be millions of them, and they’ll all want Beetles. What do you say Les? Do you want to play Ferdinand Porsche to my Adolf Hitler?”

Les does not particularly want to play anyone but himself, problematic though that sometimes is. Nevertheless, business is business, and he can see there could be some nice margins on supplying a fleet of restored Beetles.

“But we don’t want any old Beetles,” Phelan says. “These eight have got to be very special. That’s where Butcher comes in. Butcher knows what he wants. Tell him Butcher.”

Butcher is not good at verbal communication but this is clearly a special occasion and he’s trying very hard indeed.

“Yeah, I know what I want. I seen one like it once. It was all black, dead black, all of it, windows, wheels, the lot. And it was dead low and wide, and it looked absolutely wicked. It was being driven by some prat at the time, but it was a great set of wheels and that’s what I want.”

“You want Enlightenment,” says Fat Les.

“We all want that,” says Phelan. “But in the meantime we’ll settle for eight wicked-looking black Beetles. Okay?”

♦

It is morning. Barry wakes up. He has spent the night sleeping in Enlightenment. The back seat is formidably uncomfortable but he feels that a little physical discomfort, a little mortification of the flesh, must be good for the inner man, even if it leaves the outer man careworn and with back ache. It was dark when he parked here and after he’s sat up and cleared away a patch of condensation from the rear window, he finds that this spot was not quite as lonely or as bucolic as he had thought and hoped. The place is rural enough, being on the edge of a forest; however, in the light of day he sees he is rather close to what looks like a gypsy encampment. There’s a group of old vans and buses, the odd ambulance and some derelict-looking but inhabited caravans. Then suddenly the music starts. Barry is not entirely sure what this kind of music calls itself, but it is relentlessly rhythmic, hard-edged, and mechanical, and it is very loud. He thinks it would no doubt be great to dance to if you were out of your head on drugs, but as music to wake up to it’s a bit excessive.

Barry is not the complaining sort. He isn’t fool enough to go and ask them to turn it down. He knows that the greatest joy of being on the road is that if you don’t like your neighbours you can always move on. A certain sort of Zen traveller would argue that ultimately all places are one, but Barry doesn’t quite see things that way. He tries to shake the sleep frorri him, tries to pull himself together and scrambles into the front seat of Enlightenment. He is about to start the engine and drive off to a quieter spot when he sees a man coming towards the car carrying a large tin mug. The man looks formidable. His head is shaved at the sides and he has a long, black top knot tied up with what looks like electrical insulating tape. His age is hard to guess, although he perhaps looks old enough to know better. He has rings through his ears and nostrils, and since he is bare chested Barry sees that he has rings through his nipples too. There are tattoos all over his arms and hands and neck; some quite finely done, of dragons and Celtic symbols, others are crudely drawn names and initials.

Barry watches as this character approaches Enlightenment, unsure what he could want. However, despite his fearsome appearance, he looks friendly enough. He comes right up to the Volkswagen and taps on the window. Barry winds it down and the man proffers the tin mug which Barry now sees contains hot, strong tea.

“For me?” says Barry, although he has to shout to be heard over the music.

“Yeah, of course,” says the man.

“Well, thanks very much.”

Barry takes the mug. The tea inside is scaldingly hot and he has to move the mug from hand to hand so as not to burn his fingers. He is no great fan of hot, strong tea but he takes a drink and tries his best to smile appreciatively, at which point the man sticks a hand of friendship in through the open window and Barry shakes it as best he can while juggling the tin mug.

“The name’s Cliff, Planetary Cliff,” says the man. The voice, far from being savage or fearsome, has an educated, well-modulated, home counties ring to it. “That’s my bus over there, the double decker with the scenes from the tarot painted on it, the one that the music’s coming from. It’s like Summer Holiday only New Age, and this is a newer bus, for one man operation, with closing doors.”

“I see,” says Barry.

“And you are?”

Barry says, “Call me Ishmael.”

“All right, I will.”

He then falls silent so Barry sips the tea again.

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” says Planetary Cliff. “In fact we’ve just made breakfast. You want to come and have some?”

Barry is never at his best this early in the morning and he doesn’t particularly want to have breakfast with this stranger, but he knows the importance of not spurning hospitality, so he accepts.

“That’s very kind of you,” he says.

“It’s what we’re here for,” says Cliff. “We know how to look after our own.”

Barry gets out of Enlightenment and follows Planetary Cliff the short distance to the camp. He isn’t very happy about this instant easy identification of himself as one of Cliff’s ilk, but he sees no reason to make a big fuss about it. He soon finds himself sitting around a smoking camp fire as part of a group of New Age breakfast eaters. Names are exchanged and Barry finds it hard to believe that these people really go around with names like Rune and Akio and Windowpane, but he knows too well to argue or to judge. A lot of children and dogs flit hyperactively around the edge of the group. A small, long-haired child of indistinguishable sex pokes Barry in the back of the neck with an old windscreen wiper, and nobody, except Barry, tells him or her to stop. The food is not wonderful. It is a form of grey porridge and it leaves Barry thinking longingly about motorway service station breakfasts.

“God, I hate society,” says Planetary Cliff. “Don’t you?”

Barry isn’t sure whether the remark is addressed to him personally or to the air. In any case he says nothing and Cliff is soon speaking again.

“The thing is, I turn my back on society because society turns its back on me. I’m an outcast. I live on the margins. I’m poor, I’m hated by society, but what can you do?”

“Well,” says Barry thoughtfully, “I suppose you could always get a job.”

Planetary Cliff looks at him fiercely and then breaks out laughing. The others round the fire join in. Barry isn’t at all sure what they’re laughing at, but at least the laughter feels quite friendly.

Planetary Cliff is still laughing as he says, “I know what you mean. People call me a dole scrounger, right? But I don’t scrounge. I do valuable work. I do a bit of fruit picking, a bit of scrap metal dealing, a bit of soft drug pushing. It’s a living, isn’t it? How about you?”

“Well,” says Barry, and he isn’t at all sure how this is going to be received, “I’m a librarian by trade.”

This information is received with a second outburst of mirth. Barry still doesn’t see what’s so funny, but he feels it’s necessary to add, “I know I don’t look much like one.”

“That’s right,” Planetary Cliff starts again. “People look at me and they say, oh yes he’s an ex-hippie, he’s a middle — class drop out, he’s one of the homeless, and all right, to a certain extent that’s true, I was middle class, I was a hippie, I am sort of homeless, but the thing is, you can’t just look at people and make assumptions, can you?”

“Well,” says Barry, “I think it might be fair to assume from looking at you that you’re not a merchant banker or a barrister or a gynaecologist.”

“Well I wouldn’t want to be any of those things would I?”

“I assume not,” says Barry.

“And people say we’re dirty, and all right, we are dirty. But so what? You’d be dirty too if you lived in a campsite on the edge of a forest with no running water.”

“They do say cleanliness is next to Godliness.”

“Well, let God try living in a campsite on the edge of a forest with no running water. How would he keep clean then?”

Barry is aware that after a night in the back of Enlightenment he probably doesn’t look his very best, but compared to his breakfast companions he looks positively spick and span. “Well,” he says, “God could always check into a travel lodge for the night and have a good scrub down.”

This is apparently the most hilarious thing he has said yet. Several of the travellers choke on their breakfast they find it so funny.

A skinny girl with a lot of tangled red hair and a jewel stuck in the middle of her forehead says to him, “You’re like one of those what you call its, aren’t you? One of those idiot savants.”

“I might be a savant,” Barry replies, “but I do my best not to be an idiot.”

They find that funny too, but something in the tone of their laughter tells him that they also find it wise and true.

“You like music?” Planetary Cliff asks him.

Barry is still well aware of the music issuing from the bus and he says, “Some of it.”

“The way I see it,” says Planetary Cliff, “the world is impelled by the Universal Sound, which is like emitted by the Original Being, and you know, it’s proliferating towards material expression, but at the same time it’s withdrawing towards chaos and noise.”

“Well, I’m very fond of Fleetwood Mac,” says Barry, and this completely brings the house down.

“Look Ishmael,” says Planetary Cliff between waves of laughter, “why don’t you join us? We need someone like you, someone with a good sense of humour. It’s good to have that when you’re travelling. We’ll soon be moving on. There’s a big shindig called the Gathering of the Tribes, sort of a New Age rave, going to happen up in Yorkshire at the end of the summer. We’re on our way there. Why don’t you come with us?”

The skinny red-haired girl smiles at Barry imploringly. He imagines there’s probably a lot of free love to be had amid the New Age travellers, certainly if the number of children is anything to go by, but no, that isn’t what he came on the road to find.

“It’s a kind offer,” he says, “but I have to say no. You see, I’m on a quest.”

“Really?”

“Yes.”

“In that case we understand. You have to follow your own impetus.”

“That’s right,” says Barry. “Also, I really dislike your music, your breakfast’s really not very good and I don’t like being laughed at all the time.”

♦

Fat Les starts to work. He works long into the night, every night. He strips down and reassembles. He reconditions and tunes up. He modifies and customises, spot welds and resprays. This is the biggest job he’s tackled in a long while and it hasn’t been easy. Getting eight donor vehicles of the required standard took some ingenuity in itself. But they’re lined up in the workshop now, coming ever nearer to completion, being rapidly improved and changed, being made mechanically special and visually wicked. He is smoothing out the wrinkles, the differences, making all eight of them as identical as possible, giving them extra performance, extra pizzazz, making them better than Ferdinand Porsche and Adolf Hitler ever dreamed they could be.

As he works he plays Wagner, and indeed there are times when he feels like a strange, dwarfish creature who is forging something mythical and magical. But more often it just feels like hard work, work that is made harder because Les refuses to let any of his underlings work on these cars. The work goes on in secret behind closed doors. This is his project and he won’t delegate this one.

Phelan proves to be a surprisingly easy employer. He is demanding but he doesn’t interfere. He tells Les what’s required and lets him get on with it. This job is not ‘on the house’. Phelan pays in advance and pays a premium.

It amuses Les that Butcher’s inspiration came from seeing a car that could only be Enlightenment. That vehicle was his masterpiece and none of these current eight machines will be nearly as special as that one. But if Butcher has seen it on the road then Ishmael must be in action again. Fat Les knows that must mean something but he isn’t sure what.

He thinks of the time when he was, briefly, on the road with Barry and he thinks of the speed, the excitement, the rumbles, the scrapes, the battles, the feeling of being an outlaw, of being completely out there; wild and dangerous and very alive. It all makes him feel very old. Fat Old Les. He wouldn’t want to be the person he was back then: and yet he knows that person wouldn’t have worked for someone like Phelan.

Les doesn’t like Nazis, whether they’re the old fashioned variety or whether they style themselves as neo. But work is work, money is money, he does have a business to run, and technology is neutral, surely. He balked a little at having to paint swastikas, iron crosses, death’s heads and SS flashes on the doors and bonnets of the Beetles, but that’s what it took to keep the customer satisfied.

Les works on using all the hours God sends. He is a man inspired, a man possessed. He puts in the hours, puts in a major effort, and eventually a time comes when all eight cars are ready, a shorter time than anybody but Les might have imagined.

He calls Phelan the moment the job is done, and although it is three in the morning, Phelan immediately comes to see the finished cars. He arrives wearing an all-encompassing black leather trench coat, a pair of jack boots and, as far as Les can tell, nothing else.

The eight Volkswagen Beetles sit in the workshop looking poised, dormant, dangerous. The black lacquered paint jobs reflect the strip lighting overhead, bending and distorting the bands of white light. Phelan surveys the scene. He is too sophisticated, too controlled, to allow himself a simple smile of pleasure, but nevertheless it is obvious that he’s delighted by what he sees. In fact he is strangely moved.

“With vehicles like these,” he says to Les, “a man might conquer the world.”

“Sure,” says Les.

“These are vehicles of the Apocalypse, make no mistake.”

“Okay, I won’t,” says Les.

Phelan moves among the cars. He touches them lightly with his fingertips. At one point it looks as though he might bend over and kiss one of them. He opens the door of the nearest of them and-moves in behind the wheel. He is a man transported.

“Les,” he says, “you’re a superman.”

♦

Barry doesn’t feel so good. He feels that life on the road doesn’t suit him nearly as well as it used to do. He isn’t sure what’s changed, whether it’s him or the road. Certainly he still enjoys the driving, the opportunity to philosophise, the sense, albeit spurious, of freedom. But there’s too much that he doesn’t enjoy. He could hardly claim to have been bored on this trip, enough has happened to stave off ennui, but most of it has seemed somehow irrelevant.

However, the real reason he doesn’t feel so good is that a fair amount of time has passed and these travels don’t seem to be getting him anywhere, any nearer his goal. He hasn’t found Charles Lederer yet, not even a trace, and he doesn’t see how he’s ever going to. He had begun by believing that instinct would get the job done, that he would find Charles Lederer because he needed to. He doesn’t quite believe that now. He no longer knows where to look for him, in fact sometimes he isn’t even sure that he’d recognise Charles Lederer even if he found him. What if he’s changed his appearance? What if he’s simply gone into hiding? He could be holed up in a hotel, in a squat, in a caravan site. All Barry’s travels will be irrelevant if the object of his quest remains still.

For a long time Barry is too proud to abandon his mission, so he drives on and on, burning fossil fuels, pumping greenhouse gases into the air, wearing down his tyres and wearing out his engine. The milometer spins like the wheels of a fruit machine. The interior of Enlightenment becomes Barry’s whole world. The dashboard, the seat, the steering wheel, the gear lever; these are the only landmarks on his mental map. The world passes before his eyes. He sees it through the windscreen, through a glass smokily, and he is completely detached and uninvolved. The world becomes something viewed on a screen, like a video or a made for TV movie.

He drives without direction and without will. Sometimes he will find himself driving down the quietest, most deserted country track at dead of the night. Sometimes he finds himself in dense, fast-moving motorway traffic in the middle of rush hour. In neither case does he have the slightest idea of where he is or how he got there. The only thing he knows for sure is that Charles Lederer is not there.

And then he hits the M25; one hundred and twenty-five miles of unbroken urban race track. There is something basic and elemental about it. He loves the symbolism, the symmetry, the fact that it is circular, continuous, endless. It seems to speak of natural cycles, of renewal, of the eternal return. Starting anywhere you would pass all possible destinations before returning to the place from which you started. Traffic revolves, comes and goes, uses the M25 as a way of avoiding London, of skirting the issues. Most drivers use only a part of its orbit, but Barry wants to go all the way.

He drives round and round the M25, and as he travels he feels less and less of anything, driving on automatic pilot, operating on pure instinct, overtaking, manoeuvring, becoming part of it all, experiencing a loss of self, an end of separation, experiencing a feeling of absolute unity, though he would be hard-pressed to say what he was becoming united with, possibly with an abstract notion of movement, with windrush, with road noise, with nothing human.

After a certain number of circuits it all becomes familiar, becomes his home territory, his motorway. The names on the road signs are his places. They read like a mantra: Swanley, Wisley, Leatherhead, Potters Bar, South Mimms. Passing through the Dartford tunnel, burrowing deep below the Thames, becomes a ritual of rebirth.

Days go by, nights go by. Barry goes on; not sleeping, not eating, not washing or shaving. He stops only to excrete and to take on fuel. He is a new man, a man possessed, a man in touch with a quite different reality.

Enlightenment eats up the miles. The pistons move in their cylinders, valves open and close, camshafts and crankshafts revolve, heat exchangers exchange heat. The wheels go round, the accelerator and clutch work in harmony. Slave cylinders and fuel lines and the wiring loom and carburettors and shock absorbers and spark plugs all operate in a state of mystical interdependence.

And then, without warning, it is suddenly all over. He crests the brow of a hill. He isn’t exactly sure where he is — though there are road signs for Heathrow Airport nearby — when all at once Enlightenment dies under him. There is a brief, undignified spluttering, a slight judder and then nothing. Barry presses the accelerator, turns the key in the ignition, moves up and down the gears, but it makes no difference. The car drifts down the hill, slowing all the time. Other traffic pulls out around him to overtake. For Barry it is like waking from a dream. Now that he is out of touch with his mechanical carapace he is given back to himself. He blinks, looks around him, sees the world through new eyes, doesn’t know what he’s looking at. He steers the car onto the hard shoulder, brings it to a halt. He switches on the warning lights. He feels empty. He feels as though he is peering into some bottomless well. He slumps over the steering wheel, spent and hollow and exhausted. He falls into weird, edgy dreams about Marilyn; she is riding a Volkswagen trike, eating raw fish, transforming into a vampire, being chased by skinheads.

He is awoken abruptly some time later, though he doesn’t know how much later, by a rap on the side window of Enlightenment. He is disoriented. Someone is looking at him through the window, a young black man who is saying, “Need any help, man?”

Barry cannot deny that he does. He wonders if this stranger belongs to the police or is an AA man, but now he sees the car he’s driving, and it’s a metallic turquoise and peppermint green Beetle with suicide doors, not a vehicle much favoured by the AA or the police.

“My name’s Zak,” says the young man. “You want me to take a look at the car for you?”

“Well, yes, that would be very kind of you.”

Zak looks at the engine, tries to start it. He plays with this and that. After the briefest inspection he is able to tell Barry that he’s run out of fuel. Barry looks surprised.

“Maybe you’ve got a leak,” says Zak. “When did you last fill up?”

“I can’t really remember.”

Zak looks at the state of Barry, at his half-closed eyes and his weary manner and says, “When did you last get any sleep?”

Barry can’t remember that either. Then Zak asks where he’s going, and that’s the hardest question of all.

Zak says, “I can give you some petrol, but you’ve got to promise me you’ll get off the motorway and have a rest.”

Barry nods helplessly and puts himself in Zak’s hands. Zak siphons petrol from one Beetle to another. As he works he says, “I always stop if I see a fellow Beetle-owner in trouble. And these days I find myself stopping more and more.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. They always seem to be breaking down.”

“Not this one,” says Barry. “This one’s different.”

“Well it looks different, that’s for sure, but underneath they’re all the same, aren’t they? Sometimes I think I’ve had enough of mine really. I keep thinking I’m going to sell it. I think about taking it to one of those big Volkswagen meetings and selling it there. There’s a big one coming up soon. Maybe you’ll be there.”

“I don’t know where I’ll be,” says Barry.

After Zak has finished putting petrol into Enlightenment, they shake hands and continue their separate journeys. As he goes, Zak tells Barry to get some rest, but Barry has no intention of doing that. Now that the spell has been broken he realises he’s been on a wild goose chase all along. He has been heading in the wrong direction. It has been a detour to nowhere. He realises that it no longer matters to him whether or not he finds Charles Lederer. It doesn’t matter if a few Volkswagens explode. All that matters is love. All right, so he hasn’t achieved his goal of finding her father; but that’s no reason for Marilyn to spurn him. Goals can be changed. Itineraries can be revised. He will go to her, admit defeat, throw himself at her mercy, and if she’s the woman he hopes she is, then she’ll take him to her bosom and love him as he loves her.

Charles Lederer attempts to wander the roads of England. He is angry. He is mad. With his shaved head and his torn clothes he cuts a strange and disturbing figure, invoking, in some, both fear and compassion. He certainly doesn’t look like the sort of person you’d want to give a lift to.

He stands at the roadside with his thumb held out but he no longer has high hopes. Hours pass, traffic passes, night falls. He continues to stand motionless. There is an awe-inspiring, almost religious stillness about him, yet inside his head there is turmoil. The mental images of exploding Volkswagens have receded. They’re now on the far edge of his field of vision. The foreground is full of images of slaughter, violent death, dismemberment. The hatred of Volkswagens set him on the right path, but now he knows who’s really behind his confusion and pain. It’s Ishmael. He is the engineer; the designer of this misery. If Ishmael can be found and destroyed then Charles Lederer knows that everything will be just fine. His life, he trusts, will then reform itself, be made whole again.

He continues to wait, looking for a sign, something that will draw him across distance and history, deliver him to his fate. It arrives in the form of a lift in a double-decker bus painted with scenes from the Tarot. Who else would stop? Who would offer Charles Lederer a lift except someone who saw himself as an outsider, as a maverick? It is Planetary Cliff, and he stops for the old man. The doors open, Charles Lederer steps up and gets in without saying a word. He moves into an unfamiliar space, one of old leather and dirty curtains, of ancient wisdom and masses of amplifiers and speakers, one that smells of dogs and marijuana and petrol fumes.

The driver of the bus introduces himself as Planetary Cliff.

He might once have appeared an appalling individual to someone of Charles Lederer’s station and life experience, but things have changed. They both have partly shaved heads. They’re both ragged and dirty. Planetary Cliff smiles and Charles Lederer smiles back. In some strange way the two men see each other as kindred spirits.

Some time later on a patch of waste ground between a scrap metal dealer and a secondhand tyre lot, at the travellers’ latest camp, Charles Lederer is fed and given drink and a leather jacket to wear. The zip of the jacket is broken and one of the arms is falling off, but it suits him. He looks rather good in it, like some old, cherished witch doctor.

The travellers are at home here on the edge, on the margins, in a place of both waste and reclamation, of dispersal and recycling. They sit around a fire, though the night is not cold and the rainy spell is over. There are too many travellers for Charles Lederer to keep track of, so many children, so many dogs. He can’t work out the relationships between people. There seems to be nothing so concrete as couples or families. They all appear to be friendly enough but nobody talks to him except Planetary Cliff.

“You feeling better?” Cliff asks.

“Yes, I am, actually.”

“You look like you’ve been in the wars.”

“Do I? I suppose I have.”

“We know the feeling.”

“Do you? I thought you young people would be terribly anti-war.”

“Oh sure. You try living in peace and see where it gets you. A lot of people feel threatened by the likes of us wanting to live in peace. That’s why they try to kick the shit out of us.”

“Do they really?”

“Yeah. Like I’m into music as a shamanistic ritual, right? So I say to people, hey, harmony is a balanced fusion of all energies. It’s a hermaphroditic power which acts as a central focus for the polarities which save us from the Abyss. But they just don’t want to listen.”

“I see.”

Planetary Cliff hands his guest a can of lager. Charles Lederer chokes it down. He has never tasted anything quite like it. He wonders how long it is since he last tasted a good malt whisky. Years.

“Where are you headed for?” Planetary Cliff asks.

“I’m looking for someone.”

“Anyone in particular?”

“Yes. One of my old constituents.”

Planetary Cliff laughs at his use of the word ‘constituent’. Charles Lederer doesn’t want to tell lies. He feels curiously free to be honest with these new people.

“I used to be in politics,” he explains.

“Of course you did. Everyone’s involved in politics. You can’t avoid it.”

“That’s true.”

“Why do you want to find this person?”

“Well, it’s complicated, but I think basically I want to kill him.”

Planetary Cliff laughs nervously.

“I mean it,” says Charles Lederer, and Planetary Cliff can see that he does.

“It might be just as well if you don’t find him, then,” says Planetary Cliff.

“Oh no, I’ll find him all right.”

“What’s he done wrong, this bloke?”

“Everything. You name it. For instance he drives a Volkswagen.”

Planetary Cliff can’t help laughing at this strange, though distinctly oddball character he’s picked up. “Oh well,” he says, “in that case.”

♦

At the end of the evening the travellers return to their various tents and vans and buses. Charles Lederer feels wide awake. He sits by the fire, still looking serene and sage-like, still, by his own account, with murder in his heart. Planetary Cliff doesn’t really think he’s a wanton killer about to murder them all in their beds in the middle of the night, but the old guy is definitely weird and he’d rather have him where he can keep an eye on him. There’s an ancient graffiti-daubed caravan at the corner of the site. It’s full of waste paper, old magazines and newspapers that they have collected to sell for recycling, but there’s just enough room left for one person to sleep in it. Planetary Cliff directs Charles Lederer there and once the old guy’s inside, Cliff locks the door so he’s secure in there till the morning.

Charles Lederer goes in willingly enough but he still doesn’t want to sleep, so he starts looking through the old newspapers and magazines. He has been out of touch for a long time, so that the pictures he sees and the articles he reads are like bulletins from another world; somewhere very strange and unwelcoming. The faces of the politicians, the names of the personalities, the newsworthy items, the language, the range of interests and obsessions are alarmingly unfamiliar to him. He feels a little frightened.

He picks magazines at random from the piles, browses through colour supplements, tabloids, women’s magazines, until suddenly he finds that he has in his hands a copy of a periodical called Volkswagen Universe. He can barely believe that such a thing exists. It is a document of horror. It contains everything he hates and fears; page after page, photograph after photograph of Volkswagens in all their many appalling forms; lovingly, pruriently presented, in garish colours and fetishised states; the worst kind of pornography. His first urge is to burn the magazine but he keeps turning the pages, hypnotised by the thing he loathes. And then things get a lot worse.

He comes to an article about some famous Volkswagen collector, someone by the name of Carlton Bax. There are pictures of his house and his garage; room after room of the Volkswagen and all its terrible works; actual cars, models, representations, memorabilia, images and replicas, the whole sick, disgusting business. It makes him want to scream. And then things become intolerable. Right in the middle of this article, photographed right in the middle of one of these hideous rooms of Volkswagens, is his own flesh and blood, his own daughter, Marilyn. The caption reads, “Zany weather girl Marilyn Lederer, Carlton Bax’s other half says, ‘Volkswagens most definitely R us’.”

When Planetary Cliff comes to the caravan in the morning, he sees that a superhuman effort, a hideous strength, has been used to break open the lock, and Charles Lederer is long gone.

♦

Dawn. The sky is the colour of a washed out white T — shirt. The air is still, the day peaceful. There is a roaring sound: intense, fierce, but very far away. If you stand still and watch the horizon, the source of the noise will eventually appear, though not for a while. First the roaring becomes louder and more distinct, and reveals itself not to be a single sound, but an amalgam of eight similar though distinct noises; engine noises, a harsh metallic din of eight flat-four air-cooled engines, throbbing inside eight all-black, wicked-looking Volkswagen Beetles, not that you would know that yet. It is a sound modified and processed by silencers and sports exhausts, changed and distorted by harsh gear changes and wild over-revving.

Soon they appear; in a haze of pale azure exhaust smoke, tyre noise and violent oversteer. They arrive at your premises, at your shop, your forecourt, at your warehouse or bakery or pub or restaurant. If you’re lucky you’ll still have time to run, to get the hell out of there.

They stop in a frenzy of skid and brake squeal and handbrake turns. The engines are not switched off but the drivers’ doors are thrown open and eight adrenalin-charged skinheads lumber out. They are armed with crowbars, baseball bats, home-made Molotov cocktails. They are here to rob you, certainly, but also to terrorise, to create havoc and panic, and not just to you alone.

They are not entirely discriminating. They undoubtedly prefer it if the shop is run by Turks or Cypriots, if the warehouse contains saris, if the bakery is Jewish, if the pub is full of West Indians, if the restaurant has a gay clientele. But they don’t allow themselves to get bogged down in ideology. They will attack white folks too if they don’t like the look of them. They might say, if they were articulate, that they hate deviance from the racial and political status quo, but you know how it is when the feeling’s on you, any port in a storm, beggars can’t be choosers. If they’re in the right mood they’ll attack anything and everything, including each other.

After their raids and forays they return to Phelan with their loot and their stories. For Phelan it is a dream come true. His boys are now mobile and in action; tough, hard, clean-living lads driving across the country in the supreme flowering of Nazi technology. Phelan admires their capacity for improvisation. For example, after a raid on an Indian-run off-licence in semi-rural Sussex, they find themselves driving beside a village green on which a cricket match is being played. Without debate, as though with a single mind, they leave the road and perform various driving stunts across the centre of the cricket pitch, leaving it rutted with deep swirling tyre tracks. Phelan finds that wonderfully inventive, even if not entirely politically consistent, cricket, after all, being a beloved piece of the English heritage.

Butcher is enjoying his new lifestyle. It’s all so much better since he stopped driving that poxy van, and especially since he doesn’t have seven other drunken skinheads falling around in the back and distracting him. He has money, not serious money, but enough to pay for some new boots and new tattoos. But more importantly, now that he spends much of his time alone at the wheel of his own vehicle he feels so much sharper, more in control, so much more in touch with who he is.

♦

Zak is filling up the petrol tank of his metallic turquoise and peppermint green Volkswagen when he sees the eight Nazi Beetles, or rather when the eight skinhead drivers first see him. Zak can see there’s something familiar about the cars. They look very much like that Beetle he stopped to help on the M25. But he thought that was a complete one-off. How come there are now eight exactly like it? There’s something sinister and alarming about them, particularly about the way he can’t see in through the smoked windows, can’t see the drivers, and there’s something positively threatening about the fact that they all pull into the petrol station and park behind, in front and beside him, so that he can’t possibly drive his own car away. And he doesn’t like the way none of the drivers has got out. The cars just sit there, engines revving, poised and predatory.

The tank of Zak’s Beetle is now full. He clanks the nozzle back into its holder and goes into the office to pay. Perhaps, he thinks and hopes, by the time he’s paid, everything will be all right, the other Beetles will have gone, or at least will have moved so as to give him room to make an exit.

It is not to be. When he returns to his Beetle, the other cars are still there, right where they were before, but the eight skinheads have now got out, and their appearance immediately tells him that things are anything but all right. They have not stopped for petrol, and in fact they are examining his Beetle with close attention. They’re now scrutinising the exhaust system, looking underneath at the floorpan, checking out the wing mirrors, the doors, stroking the paintwork to feel its smoothness. Zak doesn’t like this at all. They don’t look like typical Volkswagen fans. They don’t look like the kind of boys you can discuss technical tips with. He fears they might be planning to steal his car, or worse still vandalise it. He hardly relishes confronting a gang of skinheads but he doesn’t see that he has any choice. He has to say and do something. He takes a deep breath.

“Hi,” he says in as unconfrontational way as he can manage.

Nobody returns his greeting but one of the skinheads says, “We’re just admiring your motor.”

“Well thanks.”

“Some work went into this. And some money.”

“I’ll say.”

“I’m surprised you can afford it,” says Butcher.

“Well you know how it is…”

“Well no,” says Butcher, “I don’t. Because basically you’re not the type of person we like to see driving a car like this.”

“Huh?”

“We tend to think that people like you aren’t worthy to drive the Führer’s car.”

“Hey,” says Zak, “just let me get in my car and I’ll be on my way.”

“No you won’t.”

One of the skinheads blocks his path. Another grabs his arm, another thumps him in the kidneys. Before they’ve finished with him he’s been kicked, punched, robbed and pissed on. They don’t touch his car.

“I know why you’re doing this,” he shouts after them as they walk away to their cars. “It’s because I’m black, isn’t it?”

“Too bloody right,” says Butcher as he gets into his Beetle and drives away at the head of his dark convoy.

♦

Davey has just about had enough. He’s been on the road for a long time now and it looks as though he could arrive at the end of the summer without having made any friends at all in the New Age traveller community. It seems all too likely that he’s never going to take Ecstasy, never going to dance in a field till dawn, never going to feel a sense of cosmic unity and an awareness of his place on mother earth. He’s well cheesed off. Maybe he’ll sell the van, get his old job back, then next year he can go on one of those singles holidays where everybody spends the whole time drinking and shagging, though with his luck he’ll probably not make any friends there either.

He’s sitting alone in a picnic area on the edge of Clumber Park eating a Cornish pastie and a tin of potato salad when he hears the unmistakable sound of approaching Volkswagen engines. They get louder and louder, unnaturally loud, and when he sees eight black Volkswagens weaving towards him through the trees, he knows that something is very wrong indeed.

He is extremely familiar with Ishmael’s Enlightenment. He has even driven it. It was a great car. The eight Beetles he sees before him now appear to be strange, savage parodies of that vehicle. They have the form but not the essence. They park in a V formation not far from where he’s sitting, but it’s a while before any of the drivers get out. The moment one does, Davey knows it is time to get in his van and go. He has no reason to believe that the skinheads driving these Beetles are the same ones who attacked the New Age travellers in the lay-by at the beginning of his travels, certainly he doesn’t recognise any of them, but they still make him feel very uncomfortable. They lurch and tumble out of their cars, shouting and swearing at each other, throwing litter, spraying beer into the air. They look like people adept at finding and creating trouble.

Davey edges towards his van, hoping they haven’t noticed his presence, but it’s too late. They’ve caught sight of him and they’re suddenly very interested. They’re heading towards him and something tells him things will be even worse if he tries to run. He quickly shoves the last of the Cornish pastie into his mouth so as to be ready for the inevitable confrontation.

“Nice van,” says Butcher, who arrives first, a little ahead of his cronies.

“Yes,” Davey says through his full mouth.

“You live in it?”

“Sort of.”

“Like a gypsy or something?”

“Well, a bit,” Davey admits.

“We don’t like gypos,” says Butcher. “We think we’d be better off without them.”

“Yeah,” says another skinhead who has now joined the conversation. “We reckon they’re fuckin’ parasites.”

“Well no, I’m not a real gypsy,” says Davey, swallowing hard. “I’m more of a traveller. I’m more of a tourist actually.”

“Are you really?” asks Butcher.

“Yes, yes I am.”

“Well, let’s put it this way,” says Butcher, “if you were a real gypsy, or a Jewish gypsy or a Paki gypsy or a nigger or a queer gypsy, you’d seriously be in trouble right now. But as it stands, since you’re more of a tourist, you’re only slightly in trouble.”

Davey looks blank. “What am I supposed to have done?” he asks.

Butcher dismisses it as an irrelevant question. “Nothing,” he says. “That’s why we’re not going to knock three kinds of shit out of you.”

“That’s right,” says another. “We’re just going to knock three kinds of shit out of your van.”

“Please, please don’t do that.”

“We won’t be doing too much damage,” says Butcher, “because after all it is a Volkswagen of sorts, but let’s face it, it’s not much of a Volkswagen. It’s just a van. It doesn’t have that authentic Adolf Hitler flavour to it.”

“No, please,” says Davey again. “Why are you doing this?” But even Davey knows that’s a stupid question. They’re doing it because this is what they do. Two of the skinheads grab him, one by each arm, and they keep hold of him while the others get to work on the van.

They use chains and hammers and iron bars and cans of spray paint. They dent and scratch and smash every panel of the van. They spray obscenities all over the back and sides. The headlights are shattered, several windows have cracks like spiders’ webs, engine oil is splashed furiously all over the roof and windscreen. Then the skinheads start rooting around inside the van, turning out the food cupboards, pouring milk, breakfast cereal and instant coffee granules all over the seats and floor, smearing margarine over the dashboard, handbrake and steering wheel.

Davey is forced to watch as his beautiful van is made ugly and wretched. He knows he can’t fight these skinheads. He can’t even break free of the grip of the two holding him. It doesn’t take long for them to completely besmirch his van, at which point, well satisfied, they let him go. He walks towards the wreckage, tears rolling down his cheeks, his body shaking with misery and impotent rage. Butcher observes this and finds it a bit pathetic. “Hey friend,” he shouts, “don’t be a pansy,” and he kicks Davey in the stomach. Davey falls over, and is still there on the ground, still trying to get his breath back, long after the skinheads have departed.

Time passes. Davey’s misery does not, but he knows he can’t stay there forever, so at last he begins very slowly, very painfully to clean up his van. He knows it could have been worse. They could have beaten him to a pulp and set his van on fire for instance, but that isn’t much consolation. The sense of invasion is total but he does what he can. He sweeps up and he wipes down, but the damage requires more than just a bit of cleaning. His pride and joy has been wounded. His van is all fucked up. How’s he ever going to be able to get it back to its previous state of grace? Even a genius like Fat Les would have his work cut out to restore it now.

But oddly enough it’s still drivable. The engine starts and the gears engage and even though it has no lights and is an obscene-looking, graffiti-splattered thing, and even though there’s crud all over the seat and the steering wheel, he eventually drives it away. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he needs to be somewhere else. As he drives, he knows that other drivers must be looking at him with alarm, and surely it can only be a matter of time before some passing police car spots him, pulls him over and arrests him for being in charge of an unroadworthy vehicle. Maybe that could even be for the best.

Then an extraordinary thing happens. Davey is still shaken, so he’s driving a little slowly and unsurely along a quiet stretch of dual carriageway when he becomes aware of an unusual vehicle closing rapidly from behind him. He expects the vehicle to overtake but instead it slows right down and starts tailgating him.

“Oh God no,” he thinks. “Not more trouble.”

The vehicle is a double-decker bus painted with scenes from the Tarot, and it begins flashing its lights, and the driver waves for Davey to pull over. Davey can see that the driver’s a wild, dangerous-looking character, pierced and tattooed, bare chested, with a top knot and the sides of his head shaved. Strange as it may seem, he looks a little familiar, though Davey can’t quite place the face. Then he realises this is one of the New Age travellers who declined to offer him hospitality. Now, however, the driver looks decidedly friendly, and Davey pulls in at the nearest lay-by. The bus pulls in behind him and Planetary Cliff leaps out.

“Hey! All right!” he shouts to Davey enthusiastically. “What a great looking van.”

Davey looks at him suspiciously, thinking he must be mocking him.

“Yeah,” Planetary Cliff continues. “The moment I saw it I knew you were one of us. Are you on your way to the Gathering of the Tribes? Why not come and join us?”

Davey looks at Planetary Cliff’s rough but open face and sees that he really means it. Once again tears stream down Davey’s face, but this time they’re tears of joy.

♦

The first problem the police have with serial murders is determining what constitutes a series. Boy meets girl, boy gets her in his car, boy takes her to some lonely spot, beats her over the head, strips her, rapes her, mutilates her; so far so commonplace. So far this is an everyday story. The fact that more or less similar events are happening all the time in any number of locations is not enough to suggest that a pattern is taking shape. Before police are prepared to admit that a serial killer is on the loose they want something a little more concrete, more decisive, a particular quirk, an idiosyncratic way of working, the fact perhaps that the murderer has a taste for handcuffs, has a savage way with a speculum, or even perhaps that he drives a Volkswagen Beetle.

♦

Here is Ted Bundy, comparatively early in his life of crime. He is an accomplished shoplifter, though in general he is fastidious about stealing only what he has use for. But today he is in a garden centre in Seattle, Washington and suddenly he gets an uncontrollable urge to steal an eight foot tall potted Germanica plant that is for sale and is positioned tantalisingly close to the exit. So he simply picks it up as though he owns it, walks out of the garden centre and heads for his car, a light brown Volkswagen Beetle. So far so good. But he’s still got to stash the plant in his car and make his escape. How’s he going to get an eight foot plant into a Volkswagen? Dead easy actually. The car’s a 1968 model, the kind with the canvas sun roof that peels right back. He inserts the plant through the roof so that it rests in the passenger seat and Ted Bundy drives away unchallenged.

It must have been an unusual sight, seeing this Volkswagen bowling along the freeway with three feet of Germanica foliage sticking out of the sun roof, but people who drive Bugs are the sort of people who do that kind of thing. They’re fun guys, individuals, mavericks. Nobody bats an eyelid.

“Christ,” says Ted Bundy to himself, “I love this car.”

♦

Here is Ted Bundy at Sammaville Beach in Seattle, Washington. It’s a holiday afternoon and the place is crowded with people. He’s dressed in all white sports clothes and he’s got his arm in plaster. He cruises the beach, stopping girls from time to time with a line that goes something like, “Hey babe would you help me lift my sailboat onto the roof of my Volkswagen? You can see I’ve injured my arm. How about it?” So they go to the car park. The Volkswagen’s there but the boat isn’t. “Oh, I forgot to mention,” he says, “my boat’s up at my parents’ house, just a few miles up the coast. Get in the car and I’ll take you there.”

Ted tries this line on a lot of girls. Most of them don’t fall for it, but three do. Later they are raped, violated, murdered.

It is said that Bundy had college boy good looks, that he was charming, intelligent, and a law student. On the one hand this is supposed to explain his ability to pick up girls. On the other it is supposed to surprise us; how strange that a good-looking, charming, intelligent law student should be the one to murder thirty or more young women. Wouldn’t it make life easier if people who are serial killers advertised the fact a little more?

But what did the girls think, the ones who agreed to drive up the coast with this stranger? Certainly they might have thought that he didn’t ‘look like a murderer’, and perhaps they thought that a man with an injured arm wouldn’t be able to attack them. But more than that, it seems somehow likely that they thought a sex killer would be driving a dirty old pick up truck, or a beat up muscle car, or one of those vans with the murals and the padded interior and the bed with the mirrors. Maybe they thought that only nice guys drive Volkswagens.

♦

And here is Ted Bundy in Utah in 1975. He has a dozen or so killings under his belt by now. He is stoned on marijuana and is driving his Volkswagen for the sheer hell of it, noticing how sharp and clear all the sounds and colours are tonight. And perhaps he’s too stoned to notice that he’s driving well over the speed limit, and too stoned to notice that there’s a police car behind him. And perhaps he doesn’t even see the red stop light that he drives through, but the officer in the car certainly does, and the siren starts sounding and there’s a brief chase before Bundy is forced to come to a halt in a gas station.

The officer gets Bundy out of the car and checks his ID, which appears to be perfectly in order. However, he looks into the car, sees there’s no front passenger seat and that there’s a jemmy lying on the floor. The officer calls for help. More police arrive. They search the car and find an ice pick, a mask made from silk stockings and a pair of handcuffs. Bundy is hauled in, and a more thorough investigation of the car’s interior takes place. They gather up all the dirt and fibre and debris, and send it off for analysis. Eventually they will discover a human hair from the head of one of the murder victims, and, curled at the base of the gear lever, a pubic hair belonging to another dead girl.

But all this takes time. Initially all they can charge Bundy with is the possession of tools that might be used in a burglary. Bundy is let out on bail and one of his first acts is to sell his Volkswagen. It must have broken his little heart.

♦

The police are gradually putting two and two together. With Bundy in the frame they have the opportunity to see if there is evidence to link him to the murders. They find a girl whom Bundy tried to lure to her death. She identifies him. The charge changes from possessing tools to aggravated kidnapping. Bundy is in trouble, the heat is dosing in, but he is determined to go down in a blaze of blood, death and car theft.

Here is Ted Bundy managing, on two separate occasions, to escape from jail. Here he is hiding in the hills, stealing cars; a Cadillac, an MG, a Toyota, a Dodge van. Here is Ted Bundy the fugitive stalking the corridors of the Chi Omega sorority house, committing two more murders and numerous acts of brutal mutilation. It’s the real thing for Ted, but it’s not the same without a Volkswagen.

On Sunday February 12th in Tallahassee, Florida, he finally gets lucky. He’s walking down the street looking for another car to steal and he comes across a Beetle sitting there with the keys inside. He gets in and drives a few miles. But the car is heavily customised, all fancy body work and dressed up and chromed, and Ted, a Republican at heart, fears the modifications may have impaired the car’s essential reliability. So he ditches it.

And then he finds another Beetle. This is a stock 1972 model, painted orange. He decides it’s the car for him. This too turns out to be a clunker. If he drives over fifty miles an hour the wheels shake as though they’re about to fall off, but he decides he’d better stick with it.

It’s real film noir stuff by now. He steals credit cards, tries to use them for food and accommodation but they’ve already been reported stolen. Ted drives up a dirt road to lie low for a while and finds himself on an airforce base, then the wheels of his Volkswagen get stuck in the soft earth. Bundy tries to steal handbags in a shopping mall and is bounced by the security guards. Finally the police recapture him, not because they recognise him as Ted Bundy the serial sex killer, but because he’s at the wheel of a stolen Volkswagen.

♦

In January 1979 the trial of Ted Bundy begins. He is found guilty of murder, and on January 23rd 1989 he will eventually be executed.

While on Death Row he receives a lot of mail. There are a lot of love letters, women who want to marry Ted Bundy, give him their love, have his children. There are packages containing all kinds of tokens both of love and hate. One contains a bottle of barbecue sauce for when Bundy is ‘fried’.

But the oddest of all comes from a man who bought Ted Bundy’s Volkswagen, the one he sold after his first arrest. The writer of the letter says he hates Bundy and he’ll never drive a Volkswagen again. He’s had the car taken to the scrapyard, but he’s kept the gear lever as a grim souvenir and now, for reasons he only dimly understands, he wants Bundy to have it back.

Of course, the prison authorities open all Bundy’s mail and if they consider the contents unsuitable then Bundy never gets to see them. They never give Bundy the gear lever of his old Volkswagen but it is often rumoured that it found its way into the collection of Carlton Bax, one of the items kept in the famous locked room.