by Nev Fountain
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
Detective Inspector Eric Preece wasn’t a science fiction fan. He found the names confusing, the costumes ridiculous, and the guns effeminate and unsatisfactory. He preferred late-night cop shows and movies, where everyone dressed in sharp suits, unless they were drunk, and were called Steve or Jim or Harry. He liked shows with guns that went ‘bang’ instead of ‘zap’, and you could see the blood flying when the baddies were shot.
He was not impressed by Mervyn’s CV. He did not care that Mervyn was Script editor for Vixens from the Void from 1986 to 1993.
Not one bit.
Mervyn looked insolently around the interview room. ‘So, this is nice. I like the grey walls. They really set off the grey ceiling, and they complement the grey floor nicely. Why am I here?’
‘Just general enquiries, sir.’
‘It doesn’t feel very general. You’re recording me for a start.’
‘Recording you is just normal procedure.’
‘That’s probably what Lionel Bickerdyke said.’
From the expressions on the faces of Preece and the constable, they did indeed read the papers, and they knew about Lionel.
Preece looked frosty. ‘We are talking to you because you happened to be present when two murders happened. Funny that.’
‘Well I wasn’t the only one. I want to know why I’m here and Brian Crowbridge isn’t. Or Samantha Carbury. Or Joanna Paine. Or that bodyguard, Aiden, for that matter.’
‘We’ve already talked to them, sir.’ Preece didn’t bother addressing Mervyn directly. Pen-pushers the world over were taught to inspect things on their desks, to exude a too-busy-for-the-likes-of-you attitude. Mervyn suspected that when the policeman had talked to the others, it wasn’t in a room like this with a tape recorder humming. This treatment had been reserved for him.
‘And what about Lewis Bream? He’s the one who’s claimed credit for the death of Marcus, and I’m willing to bet he couldn’t wait to add Robert to his list of credits.’
‘We take his “confession” as seriously as we possibly can sir, but it’s difficult to reconcile his admission with the fact he had no access to the crime scene on both occasions.’
Preece flipped the case file open. Mervyn noticed with a little amusement that the ‘o’s and the ‘e’s were all filled in using brightly coloured crayons.
‘Insurance companies may accept “acts of God”,’ he droned, deadpan, ‘but we in the police cannot have that luxury.’
‘You think I had something to do with Marcus and Robert’s deaths.’
‘We don’t think anything.’
‘Obviously.’
‘Do you want a solicitor, sir?’
‘Do I need one?’
‘Not at this stage.’
‘Then I will take your sage advice.’
‘For the benefit of the tape, I’m showing Mr Stone exhibit EP 2, a plastic water container.’ Preece pushed a plastic bag across the table. Inside it was a typical water bottle, with ‘Estuary English’ written on it. ‘Now,’ he leaned forward. ‘Is this the bottle which Mr Spicer drank from?’
Mervyn barely looked down. He glared at Preece.
‘Well, how should I know? A bottle is a bottle is a bottle. Yes. Probably. I don’t know, do I?’
He was about to make a closer examination when Preece snatched the bag back. ‘That’s enough.’
Mervyn started picking chunks out of his polystyrene cup, putting the fragments in a neat little pile. ‘I take it there’s a point to this little charade?’
‘There were three sets of fingerprints on that bottle,’ Preece said. ‘Mr Spicer’s and Mr Trevor Simpson’s were there. Understandable, of course. Mr Simpson put the bottles there, and Mr Spicer picked this one up and drank it. But the third set of fingerprints on this bottle…’
I can see where this is going, thought Mervyn. I can see where I’m going if I’m not careful.
‘A bit of a mystery, as we’d fingerprinted the BBC staff present and it wasn’t them. We were just about to round up the…ah…celebrities. Would you call them “celebrities”, Sherwin?’
The constable grinned from his place by the door. ‘Just about, sir.’
‘We were just about to ask for some celebrity fingerprints, but first we ran it through our database and—hey presto!—your name pops out.’
‘There must be some mistake.’
‘Our computer’s very reliable Mr Stone,’ Preece said acidly, ‘It’s a proper one you know. It’s not just a big cardboard box sprayed silver. It’s real and it’s proper and it does its job. Properly.’ Mervyn couldn’t be sure, but he swore he heard Preece mutter ‘Our guns work too,’ under his breath.
‘I’m not doubting your computer, Inspector,’ Mervyn hissed, rapidly losing patience. ‘I’m just a little confused as to why you have my fingerprints stored inside your computer. I’m a law-abiding citizen. Last time I looked this wasn’t a police state.’
Preece glanced down at his notes. ‘Do you, by any chance, remember a certain incident in 1989 in Soho, where you smashed the window of The Happy Pagoda Chinese restaurant?’
‘Ah, well…’
‘It doesn’t say in our records that you were actually in a “police state” at the time…’
‘Yes.’
‘Just a state.’
‘All right, all right,’ said Mervyn hurriedly. ‘So you’ve got my fingerprints. So what?’
‘Would you care to tell me how they got on the bottle, Mr Stone?’
Mervyn’s brain had started to sink slowly into the mire, but suddenly it spied a passing branch, and grabbed for it. A smile clicked on to his face.
‘Yes, actually. I fiddle.’
‘You fiddle.’
Mervyn pointed down, indicating the pile of polystyrene chunks that used to be a cup. ‘When I’m nervous, I fiddle. I was nervous about doing the commentary, and I was fiddling with the bottles, turning them so their labels faced the same way. I’m sure if you check the other bottles, they’d all have my fingerprints on them too.’
Mervyn could tell it sounded sickeningly plausible to Preece. The Inspector’s eyes narrowed. His eyes were lasers. ‘That’s as may be, but it isn’t the point.’
‘Then what is “the point”, Inspector?’
The Inspector zapped him.
‘The point being that raised voices were heard; a heated conversation between you and Mr Spicer in the toilet not more than 15 minutes before his death…’
But how do they…? The answer collided with the question before it had barely formed in Mervyn’s head. Joanna Paine. Of course. It had to be. She’d gone to the toilet at the same time, she must have been right next door. She couldn’t have failed to overhear our little head-to-head.
Preece continued. ‘Another point being that a witness has mentioned that you were visibly tense and irritable the moment Mr Spicer arrived.’
Bloody Brian as well, fumed Mervyn. With friends like these… I suppose he can’t be blamed for blabbing. He’s been on so many couches and at so many support groups he feels he’s got to confess everything.
Mervyn took a deep breath, and marshalled for a counter-attack. ‘Yes. All this is true. I did quarrel with him. I was annoyed at him.’
‘Why?’
‘Professional reasons. Nothing more. Old writers’ arguments. Nothing serious.’
‘Nothing serious?’
‘No.’
‘You see, we know a lot more than you think, Mr Stone. We know that you once had a relationship with Mr Spicer’s wife, before their marriage.’
What?
‘Mr Spicer took her from you, Mervyn. Did that hurt? Did that eat away at you?’
How did he know?
‘Did you resent him, Mervyn?’
Mervyn had nothing to say.
‘And what about Robert? Mervyn? Was he getting close to Mrs Spicer? Was that why you killed him?’
WHAT?
‘For the benefit of the tape, I am playin
g Mr Stone exhibit EP 3, a message left on the answering service of his mobile phone.’
He clicked a switch on a smaller, hand held tape recorder.
‘Hello Detective Stone, 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—aaaaaaaghh!’
Preece clicked the machine off. ‘For the benefit of the tape, Mr Stone is staring at me with his mouth hanging open.’
‘This is just bonkers. You are so barking up the wrong tree. You’re barking up a tree which isn’t a tree, which is just a pole…with “tree” written on it. That’s what you’re barking up.’
‘It’s not looking good for you, Mr Stone. You have motive, you were present on both occasions so you had the opportunity…’
‘Opportunity? You still haven’t explained to me quite how I managed to get the poison in the bottle. Or the marks on Robert’s hands. Or how I got him to explode, come to that. It all sounds pretty impossible to me.’
‘Mr Mulberry had a pacemaker. Which overloaded due to a massive electrical charge. There was no alchemy involved. And as for the poison in the bottle… I’m sure the great detective of…’ he scrutinised his notes. ‘Convix 15 wouldn’t let a little thing like “impossible” stop him.’
How did he know all this?
‘Yes, well, you’re talking to an ex-script editor here, and I can easily see the myriad holes in your little narrative; you can frisk me if you like, but you’ll find I don’t carry a giant electric hand buzzer around my person, or a miniature chemistry set which turns water into cyanide.’
Preece just looked at him. Did the detective just say ‘zap’ under his breath? Mervyn must have imagined it.
‘Look, I’ve had a lovely day, and I thoroughly enjoyed the coffee you got me out of your excellent machine, but this is all utter make-believe and you’ve concocted a preposterous story that would shame Andrew Jamieson.’
‘Who?’
‘He was a Vixens from the Void writer. And that’s not a compliment. Can I go home now?
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The hooded man watched Mervyn leave the police station.
It was dark now, and difficult to see, but the hooded man recognised Mervyn’s distinctive slouchy walk.
He was worried that the police might have asked about the statuette. He sat in his car, tapping the steering wheel in irritation, not knowing what was going on.
He had to find out what they had talked about. He made a call.
‘Hello?’
‘Hi Eric. How’s it going?’
‘Oh, usual shit. Some smart-arse writer giving me a load of backchat.’
‘Mervyn Stone?’
‘You guessed.’
‘Did he kill them?’
‘You should know. You were there. Tell me how he did it. Let me in on the secret.’
‘Can’t help you, mate. Sorry.’
There was a withered sigh from the phone. ‘Oh well. Just thought I’d ask.’
* * *
Mervyn was allowed to go home. Eventually.
He had been kept in the police station for hours, and it was now dark. The last tube meandered back to Uxbridge, containing only Mervyn and a very smelly tramp, who followed him from carriage to carriage with his dirty hand outstretched.
Mervyn finally put his key in the door on the stroke of midnight. Slumping on to his ugly, inherited sofa with a thankful sigh, he switched on the television set to watch News 24, and was greeted by the vision of Lewis Bream standing on a platform talking to a crowd of people. Lewis looked much better now. He had regained his confidence and his customary artificial grin.
‘They have seen the vengeance of the Lord once more,’ he barked. ‘They did not take the Godbotherers’ warnings seriously, and now look what has happened. This DVD must never be released, and any existing copies of old videos and masters of the episode must be destroyed, or the Lord’s vengeance will be terrible to behold.’
The news item cut to small groups across the country making up piles of old videos on waste ground. Old copies of ‘The Burning Time’ which were promptly burnt, to cheers from the crowds clustered around the bonfires.
Mervyn rubbed his face wearily. Well at least destroying all the old videos should help sales of the DVD, he thought. It’s not much of a silver lining…
The purloined bottle of water was still on the table, where he had left it. He felt like ripping it open and drinking it, to show the world he wasn’t going mad. But no, he had to be strong.
He slowly became aware that something was poking into his bottom. It was the CD Robert had given him earlier that day, so very very long ago.
He decided he would do something positive; he would listen to the DVD commentary leading up to Marcus’s death. He would examine it once again for clues as to how the poison got into Marcus’s water.
He put the CD into his aged stereo, and pressed play. And was rewarded by a dull thumping and clicking sound. And an ‘ERR’ glowing on the digital readout.
It’s not even going to play for me. I don’t believe it. Someone up there’s got it in for me…
This had not been a good day.
He threw the CD across the room.
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
‘Is that Mervyn Stone?’
‘Yes, who’s this?’
‘Wait one moment. I’m putting you through.’
There was a click and then a familiar voice came on the line.
‘Hello Mervyn.’
‘Oh. Hello Joanna.’
‘I was hoping you’d kept the same mobile.’
‘I have.’
‘I’ve not rung you in a while.’
‘No.’
‘No reason to.’
‘I suppose not.’
‘Are you okay? Or is this call the only phone call you’re allowed?’
‘I’m not in prison. The police just wanted a chat.’
‘Well that’s policemen. They do get lonely.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘Well that’s the small talk out of the way. Look, I have to talk to you.’
‘What about?’
‘I’m not telling you over the phone, you idiot. The tabloids have all sorts of funny listening devices these days. Come to the agency. I have a lunch scheduled for one, before I go to the reading of Marcus’s will. You can listen to me while I eat.’
* * *
‘Paine Staking Literary and Theatrical Agency’ was just off Tottenham Court Road, perched on top of a bookshop. He pressed a button and was buzzed up, entering a dingy hallway and picking his way up a rickety staircase as if to a shifty assignation with a West End working girl.
He once joked about it to Marcus when they paid a visit, way back when they were young writers starting out.
‘Don’t be fooled by appearances,’ Marcus had said, a little patronisingly. ‘It’s the location these little agencies pay for, mate, not the building. They can afford to occupy a whole three-storey block in Archway for the rent they’re paying for these few rooms—but who wants to rent a block in Archway?’
Marcus was patronising and snobby that day, recalled Mervyn. Not that he wasn’t exactly right.
It looked a little better once he reached the top of the stairs, where there was a crowded office filled with young people making calls and tapping into keyboards.
He was asked to wait in Joanna’s office, and a chair and a coffee was provided for him. He sat there, drumming his fingers on a box file and feeling self-conscious. The minutes stretched and he thought about making a discreet exit, but every time he began to leave, one of several secretaries appeared from nowhere and on the way to somewhere, offering him coffee or water as they passed, cutting off his escape. Once again, he was imprisoned by his own cringing Englishness.
Joy of joys, he spied a pile of out-of-date Spotlight books in Joanna’s wastepaper bin. He could indulge in
one of his favourite pastimes, flicking through actors’ professional photos and working out how many decades ago they were taken.
He fished it out, and it immediately flopped open at an actor he recognised—a venerable whisky-sodden thespian called Roddy Burgess, who had been a regular on Vixens. It was a photo that pre-dated even his time on the show, some 20 years previous. The dark-eyed chiselled face topped with lustrous black hair bore little relation to the bewildered craggy lunatic he knew; the photo had clearly been taken when dinosaurs still walked the Earth.
It always amused him, how actors could convince themselves they were able to get away with such blatant fraud. He wondered if producers were fully wise to what they were getting, that when they picked a square-jawed thirty-something from these pages, they fully expected a bald, half-blind creature in a wheelchair, carrying his bladder around in a suitcase.
He thoroughly enjoyed himself, flicking through the book. The Bs gave way to Cs, and sure enough, up popped Brian Crowbridge, his impossibly young face engulfed in shadows. (Mervyn smiled: were they ‘artistic’ shadows, or was the photographic studio lit by candles due to Edward Heath’s three-day week?) He sported a thin moustache that looked like it had been drawn on with an eyebrow pencil, and a clearly manufactured kiss-curl bounced playfully from his hair and rested over a quizzically raised eyebrow.
He picked up another volume, and allowed the pages to run through his fingers, letting the book fall open at a natural place.
It rested in the Ss, at a page which had been folded over, tucked into the spine. He flipped it out and, of course, there were more photos of actors; staring into the middle distance stroking their stubbly chins, leaning on trees, trying to look thoughtful and Shakespearean.
One of the photos was interesting. It was just a standard moody snap of a middle-aged thespian trying to age down—a Lear trying to look like a Hamlet or a Romeo. It was marked with a red pen, and the words ‘NOT A VIC!!! RING MARCUS?’ written along the side, an arrow sprouting from the words and pointing to the actor’s face.
This wasn’t unusual in itself—there were other notes and numbers scrawled around the pictures. It was a very old copy of Spotlight after all; but Marcus’s name alerted him.
