by Nev Fountain
Everyone looked relieved, but no one looked more relieved than Mervyn.
‘Aww, that’s a shame,’ said Samantha, ‘you have such a lovely voice, darling.’
Mervyn would have taken issue with that observation, which was about as wrong as it could get; he knew his voice was nasal and fringed with hopelessness, like a man apologising for still having a head cold three weeks after catching it. But he was far too alarmed by the ‘darling’.
Mervyn knew how actresses said ‘darling’, and Samantha had not said it like that. She said it how ordinary people said ‘darling’. They’d had sex, and as far as Samantha was concerned, they were now a couple. Mervyn hated himself for it, but he was really starting to resent Samantha.
The credits rolled once again, and once again, they were treated to the same bright jazzy clips; all the loudest and most expensive bits of the series glued together with music.
Once again, Samantha said: ‘Gosh, is that woman running from the explosion really me?’
‘Yes,’ snapped Mervyn.
‘Well Marcus was very fond of this episode…’ Cheryl spoke suddenly, in a clear authoritative voice. ‘But fond of it like he was fond of the runt of a litter, or an injured bird. He saw it as his early work. He always looked back on it and thought it a bit clumsy…’
Mervyn bristled.
‘Ooh look, there’s me, looking young,’ said Brian, brightly.
Cheryl carried on, ignoring him, speaking like a bored lecturer. ‘As you can see from the objects on the table, the statuette of the Virgin Mary…’
Brian chipped in. ‘Didn’t Marcus call you his “little Mary”? When I went to the AA meetings with him, he always said how his “little Mary” was so supportive.’
Cheryl shrugged. ‘I once had a blue headscarf, and he thought I looked like Mary. That was Marcus for you. Always into his religious imagery, as you can see here. But at this early stage of his writing, the imagery is thrown in quite crudely. I think by the time he got on to writing his books his work had become a lot more mature…’
Brian didn’t speak much after that. He didn’t want to interrupt her. Samantha stayed silent too, save for an occasional ‘Oh’, or ‘That’s very interesting, Cheryl’.
Cheryl spoke largely uninterrupted for 20 minutes, and every time she opened her mouth she pulled the script apart in new and clinical ways. Moreover, she was right. About every detail. She correctly pinpointed everything that was rubbish about ‘The Burning Time’.
And Mervyn could not defend it; he couldn’t shout down a freshly-minted widow. He couldn’t say anything.
He was in hell, if such a thing existed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
They stopped for a break, and Brian disappeared into the BBC to get refreshments. Mervyn instinctively guessed he was going to buy water from the café, because he was never going to touch the bottles on the table. Not in a million years.
Samantha hung back, looking at Mervyn imploringly. ‘Are you coming, Mervy?’ Once again she was the sixth-form girl pleading for her dishy teacher to come and eat lunch at her table.
‘No, I’ll think I’ll stay here, thank you.’
With one last anguished glance, Samantha disappeared.
Joanna grabbed hold of the handles of Cheryl’s wheelchair and spun her towards the door.
‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll take you to the bathroom.’
Aiden interposed himself between Joanna and the wheelchair. ‘I’ll do that, Miss Paine. My job, I believe.’
‘I think your job stops at the door of the ladies, Aiden sweetheart.’
Aiden glared at her. He looked like he was about to take a gun out of his jacket and shoot her stone dead.
Cheryl grabbed her wheels and propelled herself out of their grasp. ‘I’m quite capable of going for a piss on my own, thank you very much.’ And off she trundled.
‘Bitch,’ muttered Joanna under her breath, and stomped out. There was obviously some tension there. Did Cheryl say Joanna had had an affair with Marcus? Or did I imagine that? thought Mervyn.
Aiden stayed, moodily picking at the bowl of chocolates.
Before Mervyn could talk to Robert, he dodged past him and out of the door. Mervyn poked his head into the corridor. ‘Robert, wait!’
But Robert was already running down the corridor.
‘Can’t stop Mervyn,’ he shouted. ‘The game’s afoot!’
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
There was a self-service restaurant on the second floor, smaller and cosier than the white-walled BBC canteen. Mervyn decided to make the journey and pick up a baguette. He kept a watchful eye out in case he accidentally bumped into Samantha, but thankfully she must have gone to the canteen.
Sitting on a metal chair and munching on a cheese ploughman’s, he stared at the television fixed to the restaurant wall. It was on News 24, and Mervyn couldn’t help letting his eyes gravitate towards the screen. The BBC was once again covering the demonstration at its gates. The sound was on, and an on-the-spot reporter (who must have walked all of 50 yards from his desk to get on the spot) was talking into the barrel of the camera.
‘…Somewhat good-natured, but there is an undercurrent here. After Marcus Spicer’s unusual death last week, there’s almost an expectation that something is going to happen, some divine intervention…’
Mervyn knew what he meant. Ever since Robert had told him he was playing detective and declared Samantha the murderer, he had a sick feeling that something nasty was waiting just around the corner.
The camera cut to the newsreader in the studio. This time it was a grey-haired man who looked very serious.
‘And is Lewis Bream encouraging this expectation?’
‘Oh certainly. He’s been working the crowd all morning. Leading the chants, reading from the Bible…’ The reporter craned his neck round ‘But after the crowd turned ugly against Marcus Spicer’s widow, he made himself scarce. He seems to have disappeared…’
Brian entered the restaurant and claimed a jacket potato for himself—as well as a bottle of water, of course. Mervyn waited until he ambled from the till and then waved.
Brian walked up to Mervyn’s table, his eyes fixed on the television. ‘There they go again,’ he sighed. ‘Those Godbotherers, eh? At it again. They do go on, don’t they?’
Mervyn smiled.
The television cut to a sea of protesters, a melange of angry people with sandwich boards and semi-naked women.
‘I don’t know how they’ve got the nerve, shouting and screaming like that. It’s hardly Christian is it? It’s hardly turn-the-other-cheek stuff, is it?’
There was another close-up of a pretty young Godbotherer in stilettos, fishnets and a corset, with a jerry-built placard saying: ‘I am a Vix-Sin from the (spiritual) Void’.
‘I don’t know about that… If she turns around, we’ll see her other cheeks.’
‘Be serious, Mervyn.’
‘I am being serious.’
‘It’s hardly right is it? Dressing like that?’
‘Well you can bring it up the next time you speak to Lewis Bream.’
Brian flinched. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Nothing.’
‘No… You meant something. I want to know what you mean.’
‘I know about your little secret, Brian.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Brian’s eye started to twitch again.
Gotcha.
‘I saw you entering a certain building in Berwick Street.’
Brian’s fried-egg eyes sizzled in surprise. ‘You saw?’
‘When did you join the Godbotherers?’
‘What? I wouldn’t have anything to do with that lot!’
‘But…you are a Christian.’
‘What a thing to say!’ growled Brian, suddenly angry. ‘Are you the kind of person who thinks everyone in a hijab is a terrorist? I don’t count the Godbotherers as Christian. My God is a God of love, of grace. Not a homophobic hate-monger who smites anyone w
ho disagrees with him…’
‘I’m very sorry I assumed you were a Godbotherer, but it wasn’t just because you were a Christian. I saw you enter the Godbotherers’ building.’
Brian’s expression crumpled in puzzlement. He thought for a while and then his expression cleared as he realised. ‘Oh, I wasn’t going to see them! I was going to Dorothy, on the second floor. The gay magazine. Well, I thought I’d “Put my house in order,” so to speak. I thought they might want to print my story of failure and redemption in their magazine. I wanted to tell my story without having to garnish it with some tacky tabloid sensationalist froth. And they’re very interested. It looks like they’re going to publish it in the new-year edition.’
‘Well, congratulations.’
‘Thanks.’
Mervyn slapped Brian warmly on the back, toasted him with his bottle of apple juice and looked very pleased.
But it was just pretend. Brian was lying. If what Lewis Bream had said was true then the magazine had folded. There was going to be no edition in the new year.
Why was Brian lying to him?
Mervyn reached in his pocket (his fingers brushed the CD he’d been given by Robert) and found his phone. He had forgotten to switch it back on, and as soon as he did so, it sprang into life and rumbled across the table. He’d got a message.
Mervyn listened. It was Robert.
‘Hello Detective Stone,’ he said, his voice small and echoey, like he was sitting in a giant bucket. ‘Robert here. Yes, just thought I’d call you and tell you everything’s under control. You don’t have to get your magnifying glass out for Cheryl, I’ve sorted everything for her. I’m just going to push—’
There was a terrific scream, and a split second later an unearthly voice came on the line. ‘Sorry your call has been disconnected. Please try again later. Sorry…’
Mervyn looked at his phone, then at Brian. ‘Something’s happened to Robert.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. It sounded serious.’
‘Well…where is he?’
‘I don’t know.’ Mervyn redialled and listened. ‘I’m just getting the answering service.’
‘Shall we go back to the recording suite? He might be there.’
‘It didn’t sound like he was in the recording suite. It sounded echoey. Like he was in a stairwell, or…’
‘Or what?’
‘Let’s get back. I’ve got a suspicion…’
CHAPTER FORTY
Robert was in the men’s toilets near the recording suite. He was lying on the floor. Quite dead.
He was stretched out, palms upraised, like a man holding up an invisible door that had fallen on top of him. His phone was lying near him, a black smudge of molten plastic.
Brian stared in disbelief, leaning over the petrified figure. ‘My…my God… My sweet Lord… Look at his hands.’
Mervyn looked at what was on Robert’s hands. It was difficult to miss them.
Brian knelt down to look closer. ‘Do you know what they look like?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘They look like, well they do…’
‘I’m way ahead of you.’
‘They look like stigmata…’
Mervyn had to agree. There were two circular red marks in the centre of Robert’s palms. Angry little dots. Dead centre. Exactly where nails penetrated the palms of a certain religious figure, Mervyn thought.
‘Jesus Christ,’ muttered Brian.
Exactly.
Brian straightened up and joined Mervyn, as though if they both looked at Robert’s body from the same angle it might make some kind of sense.
‘We’d better do something,’ said Mervyn hollowly. ‘Raise the alarm, get the authorities, just…do something.’
‘Yes,’ said Brian, dazed. His head was convulsing. His left eyelid was fluttering like a wounded insect.
Neither of them seemed able to move their legs.
Brian finally spoke. ‘Well…the business with the water bottles might have been a clever trick… But this…’
‘…This is something else,’ Mervyn finished Brian’s sentence for him.
‘Indeed. I think the Godbotherers are going to make a meal out of this.’
‘A meal? It’s going to make the incident with the loaves and fishes look like an open sandwich.’
‘Absolutely, Merv. This is bad. It’s difficult to see how it could be worse.’
‘Can you smell something?’ said Mervyn suddenly. ‘Like cooking, or a barbecue, or…’
Robert’s body erupted in flames.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Brian screamed in pure unvarnished terror and his body crumpled to the floor, cowering by the sink.
Robert’s shiny bald head was engulfed in fire and became shrivelled and blackened like a spent match. His torso was a fountain of flame that leapt angrily into the air, as if the devil was manifesting right in front of them, surging towards them with hot clawlike fingers, tickling the hand-dryers and igniting the paper towels inside the dispenser.
Brian didn’t seem to have any intention of moving. He looked paralysed. The flames weren’t near enough to do them harm, but the smoke was filling the toilets, making the air smudgy. Mervyn looped his arms around Brian’s waist and dragged him to the door. He pulled Brian through it (not without difficulty, because the door opened inwards, and Brian wasn’t helping at all) and deposited him on the floor. Then he ran along the corridor, found a fire alarm and smashed the tiny window pane in the front.
Nothing happened.
Mervyn’s brain gibbered. More bad luck? Or does God not want me to raise the alarm? Does he want the entire BBC to burn to the ground? Is this his comeback tour? Sodom, Gomorrah, Shepherd’s Bush?
A security guard appeared.
‘What’s happened?’
‘There’s a fire,’ said Mervyn. And a murder too, but one thing at a time… ‘The fire alarm won’t work.’
The security officer punched another one and alarms blared out.
‘You have to break two,’ he yelled. ‘Nothing happens if you just do one. It’s designed to stop troublemakers and accidents.’
‘Have you told anyone about this?’ Mervyn screamed.
‘No.’
‘Well I think you bloody well should!’
The security officer gave Mervyn a look, as if to say Don’t be a troublemaker. ‘Where’s the fire?’
‘In there.’
The security officer ran into the toilet, and ran out against almost instantly, clutching the wall for support. ‘Jesus!’ he shouted. ‘Did you do that?’
‘We just found him like that. Well not like that. He was dead, but he wasn’t on fire.’
‘He was just lying there on the floor!’ shouted Brian, both eyes twitching. He was screaming himself hoarse above the noise of the alarm, but he gave the impression he’d still be screaming even if the alarm weren’t ringing. ‘He had marks on his hands! Stigmata! The crucifixion wounds of Jesus! And then he just started burning…like…like…like a bush! Like a burning bush!’
‘Brian, get a grip,’ shouted Mervyn. ‘He’s not a burning bush! The burning bush stopped burning eventually, and it was completely unaffected by the flames… I doubt the same thing’s going to happen to Robert!’
The security officer was goggling at Brian. ‘I think you’d better sit down and take a breath, mate.’
But Brian had snapped. It was all too much for him. He was already starting to whimper.
* * *
The evacuation of the BBC couldn’t have come at a worse time. As the staff assembled out the back of TV Centre, which adjoined the entrance to the BBC car park, a couple of the more wily protesters were hanging around the area. The car park was protected by a flimsy gate which opened and closed with arthritic slowness.
When some BBC employees, inevitably bored by standing around and waiting for the all-clear, decided to nip across the road to the shopping centre, the Godbotherers were ready for them.
>
Half a dozen of them squeezed through the gate as it was opening, and before anyone realised, they’d clambered over the inner gates and into TV Centre. They dashed into the building, pursued by angry red-faced security officers, already harassed by the evacuation.
By the time they were caught, they’d run security ragged by sheer force of their numbers. The walls inside the BBC had been spray-painted with chapters and quotes from the Bible. Godbotherers pamphlets adorned every desk. They’d even managed to crawl out to the broken BBC clock and hang the banner ‘ JUDGEMENT DAY IS AT HAND’ under it.
* * *
Mervyn and Brian went back to their fellow DVD commentators who had gathered outside the BBC. None of them were aware that the fire alarm had anything to do with their DVD recording, or that Robert was a greasy spot on the toilet floor. Cheryl, Joanna, Aiden and Samantha were waiting patiently by the gate. Trevor had managed to join them at last, and was of course apologising profusely for being so late.
Mervyn broke the news of Robert’s death and spontaneous posthumous combustion, to horrified gasps of disbelief. Aiden groped inside his jacket towards a non-existent shoulder holster. Mervyn was sure that he wasn’t allowed to carry a gun, but there was still that instinctive reaction that betrayed the training of an ex-soldier. Or ex-policeman? Mervyn wasn’t sure.
‘One of these days, we’re going to finish this bloody DVD commentary,’ muttered Joanna, in typical brutal fashion.
Brian leaned against the wall, looking queasy.
Cheryl stayed silent in her wheelchair.
Mervyn looked at Samantha closely. She seemed just as horrified as the others; her hands twisted the strap of her bag, she bit her lip, and a few tears oozed down her cheeks. She looked at him as if to say Comfort me please.
But Mervyn didn’t. Not this time.
* * *
The police turned up, and Mervyn made himself known to them. He explained that he’d discovered the body with Brian, and what had happened when they entered the toilet.
And then the police arrested him.
