DVD Extras Include: Murder (The Mervyn Stone Mysteries, #2)

by Nev Fountain

  Mervyn wasn’t thirsty, but he still stretched his hand out, hovering between the bottles like a man invited to play Find the Lady.

  ‘Thanks.’ His hand reached to the bottle on the right, moved away at the last minute, picked the left one up, broke the seal on the cap with a muted click-click-click sound and defiantly swigged from the bottle.

  He drank it all, plonking the bottle down and wiping his mouth with an exaggerated gesture, using the back of his hand.

  ‘Very refreshing,’ snapped Mervyn. ‘I didn’t realise how thirsty I was.’ He picked the other bottle up. ‘You don’t mind if I have this one as well? For later.’

  ‘Oh of course.’ Lewis spread his fingers on the wooden table, as if trying to heal the dead tree within. ‘Water is the greatest of God’s gifts to us, don’t you think?’

  He’s playing with me, thought Mervyn. He knows something or he might know nothing; there’s no difference. Whatever he knows, he’s planning to squeeze every bit of mileage he can possibly get from this. And do you know something? I don’t blame him.

  He stowed the bottle away in his satchel, and stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry to have wasted your time,’ he said. ‘No—on second thoughts, I’m not sorry to have wasted your time. I’m sorry to have wasted mine.’

  * * *

  Lewis accompanied Mervyn to the lift.

  ‘Manufacturing miracles is hardly easy, Mr Stone. That’s why they’re called “miracles”. If they were easy they’d be called “parlour tricks”.’

  ‘Oh… I don’t know if manufacturing miracles is that hard. I thought seeing Christ’s face in food was meant to be a miracle. If you sculpt it in in cinnamon using a machine in a ruddy great factory. Well…isn’t that cheating?’

  ‘Seeing His face in nature is a miracle to some, perhaps, those that crave evidence of His existence, and that’s fine for them… But for those of stronger faith, who do not need such things, He manifests himself through us and for us. He rewards us with His divine love, and punishes our enemies with divine retribution.’

  ‘That wasn’t some divine retribution, Mr Bream,’ said Mervyn sharply, munching on another biscuit. ‘This was murder. A man was killed because he drank water that had been poisoned.’

  ‘But how was this done?’ The grin brightened. ‘How was the water poisoned? How? How on earth could a random water bottle find its way—of all the places it could have travelled to—into your studio? With your blasphemous subject matter? And into the throat of the worst blasphemer of all?’

  ‘I was hoping you could tell me.’ Mervyn was very angry now.

  Lewis looked like a triumphant chess player; he had obviously been waiting for Mervyn to ask that very question.

  The lift finished its painfully slow ascent, and the glass doors slid open.

  ‘Well… Let’s not forget shall we?’ said Lewis. ‘It was He who showed us the miracle of turning the water into wine…’ He leaned forward, his eyes aflame, and hissed in Mervyn’s ear. ‘It would hardly be beyond Him to turn the water into something else entirely, wouldn’t it?’

  Mervyn stepped into the lift.

  ‘Goodbye Mr Stone. It’s a slow journey from us, but at least it’s down all the way. Just another little joke.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Despite the brightness of his surroundings, Mervyn was in a black fury. He felt that Lewis either knew something or was just using Marcus’s death as a PR opportunity. He couldn’t decide which was worse.

  To exhume the cliché, some of his best friends were deity-worshipers. He knew and respected people of many faiths, even though he was a devout non-believer in everything—even himself.

  As an ex script-editor, Mervyn knew there was no place in a writer’s life for concepts that were fixed and immutable—he only had to see how his writers ignored the fixed and immutable deadlines he used to give them to know that was the case. Most writers thrived under a comfort blanket of vagueness, and knew that most problems in life came from people who were Certain. Those with fixed views and who Knew They Were Right; censors, programme commissioners, producers, directors, critics, actors, awards judges… The list went on.

  He never knew how to cope with people who were Certain. He believed that because they were so certain about things, they were probably wrong. But as he was so uncertain about the things he believed in, he never believed with any certainty that they were certainly wrong.

  Damn them and their certainty.

  As if on cue, an angelic voice fluted in from nowhere, and told him something with incredible certainty and with no room for doubt.

  ‘Third floor.’

  Mervyn was incandescent with rage that he’d forgotten to press the lift button. He pressed ‘G’, and the voice told him in no uncertain terms that he was going down. The pointless lift began its long and tedious journey down to the ground floor.

  On the other side of the foyer, the other equally pointless lift began a stately journey to the top of the building. The two lifts inched slowly past each other, and he almost came nose to nose with a very familiar face.

  Wait a minute… Wasn’t that?

  Mervyn pressed himself into the far corner, burying himself into the sleeve of his jacket so the occupant of the other lift wouldn’t notice him; and, more importantly, wouldn’t recognise him.

  As his lift touched down, Mervyn leapt from it and ran to the middle of the foyer, looking upwards, but the man had disappeared. Now why was he here?

  Why on Earth would Brian Crowbridge be here?

  As he walked down Berwick Street, dodging punters furtively scuttling out of sex shops with their heads low, and circumventing a drunken group of lads laughing and pushing each other into the doorway of Raymond’s Revue Bar, Mervyn remembered the conversation he’d had with Brian in the BBC club.

  He remembered the leaflet Brian had produced out of his pocket.

  He has to be.

  Brian’s a Godbotherer.

  He decided to go back and wait for Brian to leave the building. He retraced his steps, found a handy coffee shop to monitor the comings and goings at the Godbotherers’ building, and sat in the window, dipping his lips into the froth of a cappuccino and nibbling a jam thing with almonds on it.

  Twenty minutes later, and the coffee and its froth had gone, and a second and third coffee had followed it. They’d gone on a tour of his intestines, seen the sights, had a lovely time, and were queuing up by the exit. The coffee shop was too small to have a toilet, and the waitress was eyeing his empty cup, ready to snatch it.

  Mervyn gave the Godbotherers’ building a final anguished look. It had either been a very short meeting and Mervyn had missed him leave, or a very long meeting and still ongoing. And Mervyn hadn’t the bladder control or the inclination to sit there and drink another coffee.

  Either way, an opportunity missed. Damn.

  He nipped into a McDonalds to have a pee, and was contemplating going back into the building and asking Lewis straight out what he had to do with Brian. It went against every cringing instinct he had, but he felt fired up about things.

  His mobile phone rang. The screen read ‘Unknown number’. Expecting it to be some bank asking him if he was happy with his bank account, he warily pressed ‘Accept’.

  ‘Hello, is that Mr Mervyn Stone?’

  ‘Um…yes. I think.’

  ‘I’m Tim Parsons of Stoneleigh, Parsons and Williams. We represent the estate of Mr Marcus Spicer.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘We would like to commiserate with you on the loss of your dear friend Marcus, and ask you if you would be prepared to attend the reading of his will on Thursday week.’

  ‘Well, I am awfully busy…’

  ‘It would be incredibly helpful to us if you could attend. The conditions Mr Spicer laid out in his will were very precise, and your presence was specifically required. The will cannot be read out until all stipulated parties are present.’

  ‘Well, if you put it like that, I’d be glad to
come.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  The hooded man watched Mervyn get up from his table. It was very easy to watch him; Mervyn was staring intently, refusing to allow his eyes to move from the Godbotherers’ building.

  The hooded man watched Mervyn in the café for a long time. It was getting boring. He entertained himself by flicking the button on his tape recorder on and off.

  Mervyn’s voice erupted from the tiny speaker.

  ‘Did you say that that statuette got stolen?’

  ‘Yes. We had a burglary a couple of months ago and it was among the things that got taken. It was a prop from “The Burning Time”. A fan gave it to him at a literary festival, years ago, and it amused him to put it in pride of place on the mantelpiece. He said he was being ironic.’

  ‘Of course! He mentioned it on the commentary. He was talking about it being stolen just before he—well, just before…’

  ‘Do you believe it?’

  ‘Of course I do. I hardly think you’re hiding it for the insurance money.’

  ‘I’m not talking about who nicked the bloody statue. I’m talking about my husband’s death.’

  The hooded man clicked it off, pressed rewind, allowed the recorder to gabble for a few seconds, then switched it on again.

  ‘Did you say that that statuette got stolen?’

  ‘Yes. We had a burglary a couple of months ago and it was among the things that got taken.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Mervyn went home, making the agonising crawl back to Uxbridge along the Metropolitan Line.

  London was the place where Mervyn had worked for the best part of three decades. He didn’t particularly mind the city. So, it was unfriendly, untidy and haphazardly designed? Well so was he.

  But he resented having to shelter under its petticoats in order to eke out any kind of career. His token rebellion was to live as far out as he possibly could while still having access to the capital via public transport. This was why Mervyn was pacing the carriage of a filthy tube train that ambled through about 183 stops, making a journey in the same amount of time it took bearded English eccentrics to hike to the South Pole and back.

  Finally, he reached what he loosely called home. Anyone visiting his modest little house would understand what ‘loosely’ meant. Mervyn didn’t move into any place with any degree of conviction; he doubted his commitment to places as much as he doubted his commitment to people. This flat was a prime example; eight years he’d inhabited this place like a rat in the wainscot, and he hadn’t even redecorated.

  The flat was filled with echoes of the previous occupants; a well-to-do Indian family who’d moved up to Birmingham to look after their parents. Their past lives mingled with his. The deep red wallpaper was theirs, as was the heavy bead curtain strung up between kitchen and living room, the sturdy pine furniture and the heady smell of exotic spices.

  He liked it this way; he felt it gave his home a different, unknowable dimension, as if he lived with creatures that hid in the walls and cooked and took tea and loafed around the house while he slept. He reasoned that, if he’d decided on every last thing that went into where he lived, the wallpaper, furniture and carpets and ornaments, it would be so predictably him, and he’d wake-up every morning feeling hemmed in by his own extremely narrow tastes in things.

  The small things, the knick-knacks were his; the certificates and photos on the walls; the odd, cheap-looking awards designed and dreamt up by fans to give to him at conventions and a huge bookshelf that dominated one wall, filled with DVDs, volumes of reference and an impressive collection of books (liberated from Oxfam and waiting patiently to be read)—Agatha Christie, Leslie Charteris, Ian Fleming, Ellery Queen and Dan Brown were just some of the names the eye glided across.

  On one sideboard, the two worlds of the flat’s different occupants collided in a multi-coloured accident. The Indian family had left it burdened with shelves of beautiful ornamental plates that had birds etched on them; they hadn’t even contemplated trying to take these, probably assuming that the plates were very unlikely to survive the journey. Their delicate designs alternated with Mervyn’s own more utilitarian crockery, which he kept in the gaps; cheap yellow plates from a warehouse clearance and bowls decorated with the Rice Krispies goblins displaying evil grins, waving their spoonlike weapons menacingly. The whole effect looked like an ad hoc draughts game where the players had lost most of the pieces.

  Mervyn went straight into the living room and placed the spare bottle of water on the table. He plonked himself down in his favourite chair, and stared at it.

  It was a symbol, he decided. The bottle of water was a symbol. It stood for all that was rational. It stood against hysteria and superstitious nonsense. He would drink that bottle of water when he solved the case; and when he did there would be no choking and falling to the floor; no agonising death, no vengeance from some supernatural power.

  Six hours later, he went to bed. The bottle of water was left on the table, intact. Mervyn was determined to prove the death of Marcus was no miracle. It had to be a trick; he just had to find out what it was.

  There was an obvious place to start.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  ‘Gus?’

  ‘Yes? Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Mervyn. Mervyn Stone.’

  ‘Mervyn? Really? How are you, Mervyn?’

  ‘I’m great.’

  ‘I can’t believe it. It must be, what—at least four years?’

  ‘Nearly five.’

  ‘Wow. Has it?’

  ‘I’ve got a meeting in Hammersmith with someone from Endemol. I wondered if you fancy a drink this afternoon in the BBC club?’

  ‘That sounds great.’

  ‘Excellent. It’s a date.’

  ‘But let’s not go to the club. It’s a place where depressives go to die.’

  ‘Erm…’

  ‘Seriously, there’s a nice little pub near Shepherd’s Bush Green, it’s much nicer. Good food, too.’

  ‘Well… I was just thinking of you, Gus. Aren’t you working on that new daytime panel game at the Beeb?’

  ‘Litterbuffs, that’s right. It’s a show where people are asked questions about the contents of their own rubbish bins.’

  ‘Thing is, I’m afraid I can’t see you before two…’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘…And I imagine you’ve got a technical rehearsal in the afternoon.’

  ‘You’re dead right. Best to have a quick one in the club.’

  ‘Look forward to it. How do I get in?’

  ‘Call me on my mobile when you get to reception. I’ll sign you in.’

  ‘Will do. See you at two.’

  ‘Looking forward to it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Mervyn felt quite guilty about using Gus just to get a guest pass into the BBC.

  Even though that was his prime objective, he liked Gus, and enjoyed the half-hour they shared, recalling horror stories about shows they’d worked on; laughing about inept scene-shifters, mad make-up ladies, incompetent producers who didn’t realise they were in charge and cocky production runners who thought they were. As the alcohol hit his brain, Mervyn felt very warm and fuzzy towards his friend, and convinced himself he would have probably met up with him even if he hadn’t needed to slip furtively into TV Centre.

  Probably.

  Eventually, they waved each other goodbye; Gus to go back to Studio 6 and Litterbuffs and Mervyn to sneak back to Recording Suite 4 to have another poke around the scene of the crime.

  The recording suites were all quiet and empty, but crumpled crisp packets and polystyrene cups of cold coffee suggested that it was being used. Someone had gone to fetch some tapes or to get a snack. Whatever the reason, he didn’t have much time.

  Everything from the other day had been taken away, of course. The bottles of water, the nibbles, the chocolates. Mervyn got down on his hands and knees to examine the spot where the poisoned bottle had landed, but there was nothing t
o see.

  It wasn’t a completely wasted journey, because it certainly refreshed his memory. He looked at the table, and his mind conjured up phantom bottles of water standing in regimented rows. He remembered that they were divided into two clusters, still and sparkling. Had that helped the murderer? Did the killer know that Marcus liked his water with or without bubbles in it? Was that how he or she steered Marcus’s hand to the Drink of Death? Mervyn couldn’t see how it was possible, but then he was rubbish at seeing how magic tricks worked.

  He left the studio and went into the adjoining room that housed the mixing desk, where Joanna had scowled with arms crossed, Trevor had sat and twiddled his knobs and Robert had offered his encouraging thumbs-up.

  He didn’t know why it was worth looking in there; but he hit the jackpot.

  There was a CD on the table, labelled ‘Burning Time commentary’.

  He couldn’t believe it. Of all the things to be sitting there—in plain view!

  He put it in the player, and heard himself say: ‘Hello, this is the commentary for “The Burning Time”. I was the script editor for this show—also here is Brian Crowbridge who played Professor Dax—’ A pause. ‘Didn’t I? Damn. Sorry.’

  Mervyn struggled on, and Mervyn cringed with him. ‘Come on Mervyn!’ he hissed at the CD. ‘Turn it around…’ Thankfully, they moved on.

  ‘And we did so much research.’

  There was laughter from the others, and Mervyn could feel palpable relief washing over him, even a week later. Mervyn listened to the commentary unfold, his hand poised over the ‘Off’ switch.

  He couldn’t help himself; he had to keep listening. He told himself he was investigating. Examining the conversation on the CD was just as important as examining the carpets in the recording suite. Both contained vital evidence.

  Probably.

  ‘Hey, I had that thing on my mantelpiece! That thing there, right in shot! That statue of Mary! It got stolen last month—bloody burglars. I’ve been searching high and low for the damn thing.’