by Nev Fountain
Table of Contents
The Mervyn Stone Mysteries 2: DVD Extras Include: Murder
Copyright
Dedication
Author's Note
Extract from the Vixens from the Void Programme Guide
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
CHAPTER FORTY
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
CHAPTER FIFTY
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
CHAPTER SIXTY
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
CHAPTER SIXTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SIXTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
CHAPTER SIXTY-SEVEN
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
CHAPTER SEVENTY
CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO
CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
THE MERVYN STONE MYSTERIES 2
DVD EXTRAS INCLUDE:
MURDER
NEV FOUNTAIN
First published in November 2010
by Big Finish Productions Ltd
PO Box 1127, Maidenhead, SL6 3LW
www.bigfinish.com
Project Editor: Xanna Eve Chown
Managing Editor: Jason Haigh-Ellery
With thanks to: Matthew Griffiths and Lisa Miles
Copyright © Nev Fountain 2010
The right of Nev Fountain to be identified as the author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. The moral right of the author has been asserted. All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any forms by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information retrieval system, without prior permission, in writing, from the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
For Nicola
Thanks to… Nicola Bryant, for her creativity. She knows what I mean. She knows which murder she was behind. Not mine, thank God. Thanks to her for squandering a romantic weekend in Tylney Hall by talking through the knottier plot points in this book. Thanks for listening to me read out the whole thing even when she had a raging toothache. Thanks for being Nicola.
Big Finish Towers. Jason Haigh-Ellery, for buying a drink and three novels, David Richardson, Nick Briggs, Paul Wilson and Alex Mallinson for being so positive and for their attention to detail.
Jonathan Morris, for getting me a very interesting book for my birthday.
The police guarding David Cameron, parked on our street corner covered with guns and flak jackets, for their invaluable advice on police procedure.
Andrew Beech, for showing me a DVD commentary being recorded, and Lis Sladen, Barry Letts, Terrance Dicks, John Leeson, Linda Polan and Eric Saward for allowing me to sit there while they talked about old television shows. No one got murdered that time, thank goodness.
Simon Brett and Jon Culshaw for their encouragement.
John Banks, Tom Jamieson, David Tennant, Rob Shearman, Peter Ware and Ann Kelly for their help and time.
Xanna Eve Chown and God, for their patience.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I love murder mysteries, and I love ploughing through entire ranges of murder mystery books. There’s nothing more satisfying than discovering one grisly murder and knowing there are plenty more bodies piled up just around the corner.
There’s one thing I don’t love. One thing that pulls me out of a story is that clunking artificial line that inevitably occurs in crime book ranges. You know the line. It usually goes something like: ‘Hastings! Do you not recall the case of the Silent Parrot we solved last year? When that murderer whom we both knew, but shall not name or attach a masculine or feminine pronoun to, did all those notorious murders? What an unforgettable unspecific murderer that person was!’
To this end, I am warning you, fluffy reader, that you will not get anything like that here.
This book takes place one year after Geek Tragedy. Because it had such a momentous effect on Mervyn’s life and the ripples are felt within this book, the identity of ‘Geek Tragedy’s murderer is discussed freely.
If you haven’t read Geek Tragedy yet… Well, I wouldn’t want to be a spoiler…
Extract from the Vixens from the Void Programme Guide, originally printed in the fanzine Into the Void #49.
THE BURNING TIME (Serial 4J)
Transmitted: 9 November 1989
Recorded: Studio: BBC Television Centre 6-7 March 1989
Location: Betchworth Quarry 13-16 February 1989
Cast:
Medula: Tara Miles
Arkadia/Byzantia: Vanity Mycroft
Professor Daxatar: Brian Crowbridge
Tania: Suzy Lu
Velhellan: Jennifer McLaird
Elysia: Samantha Carbury
Excelsior: Maggie Styles
Yelack:Sid Needham
Vizor: Roger Barker
Officer Tovey: Vicky Bacon
Acolyte Guard: Amanda Kyle
Archaeologists: Robert Frend and Malcolm Smith
Production Design: Paula Marshall
Writer: Marcus Spicer
Script Editor: Mervyn Stone
Director: Leslie Driscoll
Producer: Nicholas Everett
Synopsis:
PROFESSOR DAXATAR is excavating
some ruins on the legendary planet HERATH, the Origin World, when he finds a book that dates from before the Burning Time. It alarms the religious head of Vixos, EXCELSIOR, and attracts the interest of ARKADIA. Arkadia lands on the planet with ELYSIA (unknown to Arkadia, Elysia and Daxatar are lovers). Daxatar shows Arkadia the book and they both investigate the excavation site further, discovering an underground crypt. Its contents have the potential to turn the whole belief system of the Vixen culture on its head. Arkadia toys with releasing Daxatar’s findings and risking a religious war with Excelsior. Ultimately it is decided that the cost of destroying their civilisation is too high, and it is Elysia who kills Daxatar, burning his research along with him. But the precious book (called ‘the Bible’) survives…
Notes:
This story is notorious for being the most controversial episode of Vixens from the Void. On the night of broadcast the BBC switchboard was jammed with complaints from Christian groups.
The idea of the Vixens’ religion being an inversion of the Christian faith was a neat one, the premise being that all trace of Christianity was burned away by some kind of atomic war, leaving only statues of the crucifixion and the Virgin Mary behind. It gave the shattered survivors of the war the distorted impression that women were meant to be dominant over men, and men were there to be punished—essentially creating the Vixens’ culture and empire.
The concept would have probably passed without comment had not the director made quite so much of the visual imagery in the script. One scene outside the Vixens’ spaceship, where men were sacrificed to the Allmother by being strapped to crosses and whipped by leather-clad women until they passed out, was particularly graphic and seen by many as blasphemous.
Questions were asked in the House of Commons. Conservative MP Michael Barnet was particularly vocal, demanding that the licence fee be removed, because encouraging such behaviour was not part of the BBC’s public service remit. He would have gone further, had it not been revealed that Mr Barnet enjoyed being strapped to crosses and whipped by leather-clad women until he passed out as well.
The fact he claimed for these experiences as expenses sealed his fate, as his words were gleefully repeated back to him in the press about such practices ‘not being a public service’.
Writer Marcus Spicer defended the episode stoutly on radio and television, and his robust exchanges with outraged Christians sparked a long and successful career as a prominent humanist writer and polemicist. His books The Serpent on the Mount and The Last Sucker sold millions.
He has to date become the only Vixens from the Void writer to make a name for himself in an area other than science fantasy. Even though Spicer has argued he is still writing ‘science fantasy’ to this day.
CHAPTER ONE
It was a glorious September morning in Shepherd’s Bush. The leaves on the trees were curling and transforming themselves into a blazing orange. The windows of the buses were misting up with the heat of the passengers inside. Shutters rattled upwards as the few shops that didn’t stay open all hours prepared themselves for the first custom of the day.
Mervyn emerged from Shepherd’s Bush tube station and headed off towards Television Centre. White City tube was much nearer, but he fancied a stroll. He felt very virtuous, forsaking the padded comfort of a BBC car for a tube ride and a bracing walk; a chance to smell the morning air, stiffened by the exhausts of a thousand badly-maintained minivans; to hear the innocent laughter of the drug dealers as they played in the park.
And, of course, to look at girls.
September was Mervyn’s favourite time of year. It was warm enough for young, attractive women to persevere with their skimpy clothes for a few more weeks, unwilling to pack away the summer for another year, yet cold enough for nipples to punch enterprisingly through thin T-shirts and fragile cotton blouses, bulging unfettered from their bra-less bosoms in much in the same way as Mervyn imagined his eyes bulged as he beheld them.
Mervyn didn’t think of himself as a dirty old man. Oh no. In his book, a D.O.M. was the type of bloke normally found on park benches or shopping centres, fiddling furiously in his pockets whenever a luckless woman of any age, size or description went past. He wasn’t nearly dirty or old enough for that.
Yet.
Perhaps there was a reason he hadn’t ended up as a grunting old geezer waiting in Hyde Park for a shapely pair of tracksuit bottoms and a sports bra to chug past. Fortunately for him, he’d managed to find a less furtive way to enjoy the female form in all its wobbly glory.
* * *
There was certainly a murky and libidinous corner of his mind that prompted him to propose Vixens from the Void to the BBC in the mid 80s. It was an idea for a science fiction TV drama that depicted an intergalactic empire with females as the dominant gender. It heavily featured nubile young women wearing skin-tight lycra and thigh-length leather boots, striding through spaceships and ordering people about. To his delight, the BBC fell for it, and for eight glorious years he script-edited and wrote for the show; inventing more and more implausible planets, monsters and ways for the cast to get their costumes torn off during torture.
His time working on Vixens from the Void was the reason why he was striding along Shepherd’s Bush Green. He was on his way to BBC Television Centre to record a DVD commentary for that very show, an episode from season four called ‘The Burning Time’—a notorious episode that many fans thought the finest example of Vixens and that even many self-confessed ‘TV experts’ found a thought-provoking piece that straddled the line between television melodrama and proper, ‘literate’ drama. It had even been shown at MOMI one year. More importantly, it was 50 minutes of shouting, spaceships and very tight costumes.
Yes, it was going to be a good day.
* * *
As he turned into Wood Lane, he noticed a small crowd of people clustered around the Television Centre entrance. From this distance they looked very excitable, huddled together in a tight group and talking animatedly. They seemed familiar to him… Were they autograph-hunters?
For moment an insane notion frolicked round his head. Were they waiting for him? But then he remembered he was a script editor of a long-gone and profoundly dead cult TV show, and the notion stopped frolicking, clutched its chest and collapsed with a terminal coronary.
Silly man. Hero-worship of a deluded old fool like him only happens inside the confines of science fiction conventions. They had probably got a tip-off that Robbie Williams was appearing on the National Lottery or something.
When he got closer he heard the chanting. He saw placards. He heard angry words crackling through loudhailers.
That’s more plausible, he thought. Another loony pressure group trying to claw its way into a news bulletin by picketing the BBC…
It was only as he got nearer that he was able to read the placards. ‘Original Vix-sin’ was one. ‘Worship, not spaceships’ was another hilarious effort.
With a shock, he realised they were waiting for him—or, to be more precise, they were there to protest about ‘The Burning Time’ and its imminent release on DVD.
Mervyn toyed with the idea of slipping in one of the side entrances, but he knew it was futile. His BBC pass had long expired. There was only one way into the building, and that was through the wall of sensibly dressed protesters.
Grimly, he braved the god-mob and entered the solid wall of duffle-coats and scarves, meeting the chanting head-on. He was brushed, rubbed and jostled from all sides. It was like going through a knitted carwash.
‘NO DVD! NO BLASPHEM-EE!’
Not bad for a protest chant, thought Mervyn. It even scans.
CHAPTER TWO
He found himself on the other side of the protest and inside the huge revolving doors with surprising ease. Once he’d taken a leaflet they left him alone. He went up to the front desk and announced his presence to the chirpy girls on reception.
In the reception area, there were banks of TV sets showing the myriad channels the BBC chucked on to the a
irwaves with gay abandon. Mervyn noticed that one had News 24 on it and was covering the mêlée outside. He sat down to watch. There was a BBC correspondent gabbling urgently into the camera while the protesters stomped behind, waving their placards over his shoulder. It switched to a studio, and to a newsreader. Well, Mervyn assumed she was a newsreader. She was young, heavily made-up and insanely pretty, with ‘Look at me, I’m supposed to be clever’ glasses, and a blouse that gaped open a perilously long way down. All in all, she looked to Mervyn like an actress from an adult movie unconvincingly made up as a news presenter.
Mervyn’s fast-coalescing fantasies withered when the camera cut to a wide shot, showing the news presenter joined at her desk by a man with a smiley moon-face, shiny slicked-back hair and unblinking eyes which darted around the studio. It was obvious that he wasn’t used to being on television; he was dressed conservatively in brown tweed with a handkerchief poking primly out of his pocket. His hands were balled into fists and looked welded to the tabletop.
The BBC had put CEEFAX subtitles on, so word-by-word, the interview slammed across the bottom of the screen in fat black blocks.
Lewis Bream, chairman and spokesman for Godbotherers UK, joins me. Mr Bream—it is a rather unusual name for your organisation, isn’t it? Most people would think that Godbotherers is a rather derogatory name for Christians.
When any group is oppressed and spat upon, as we in the Christian faith are, they tend to appropriate terms of abuse and use them as a weapon against the oppressor. Just as the word ‘nigger’ was embraced by rap groups in America, so we embrace this term too, we are Godbotherers. We are right to bother God and he is right to be bothered—about the way we live, the way we behave, the sin we immerse ourselves in—
So you took the term for yourself and made it your own.
Yes, that’s right.
In much the same way, of course, the word ‘queer’ was adopted by the gay community.
The man rose about a half-inch in his seat, as if his buttocks had suddenly locked in the ‘clench’ position.
Well I wouldn’t put it in those terms like that, exactly. We do not regard homosexuals as an oppressed minority, as such—
