by Kim Newman
‘Your discovery?’
‘Yes.’ The bitterness turned sly. A petulant smile crept in, barely covering his teeth. ‘That’s a good way of putting it. The discovery.’
‘It must be galling to waste shots on Roget and Canberra. I mean, who’s to pay for us?’
Squiers chuckled.
‘Oh, there’s a purpose to you. Nothing goes to waste in television. I have a select company joining us for this party. But you and Professor Corri are my guests of honour. Where is she, by the way?’
‘Present,’ said Barbara.
She wore a bias-cut tangerine evening gown, with matching blooms in her hair and on her shoulder. She stood a moment in the doorway, then glided down. Squiers applauded. Richard kissed her.
‘You make a lovely couple,’ said Squiers. ‘But you’ll be lovelier without heads.’
Richard felt an itch around the neck. It was becoming quite persistent.
Barbara was wound tight. Her arm around his waist was nearly rigid with suppressed terror.
‘If you haven’t learned something by the end of the evening,’ said Squiers. ‘I’ll eat my hat.’
‘And what a fine hat it is,’ said Richard.
The room filled up. The theatre seats took up barely a quarter of the screening room, which was otherwise available for general milling and swilling. Minions in black-and-white livery weaved among the guests with trays of food: little cubes of cheese and pineapple on sticks; champagne glasses stuffed with prawns, lettuce and pink mayonnaise; quartered individual pork pies, with dollops of Branston Pickle; fans of After Eight mints; ashtrays of foil-wrapped Roses chocolates. A barman served wine (Mateus rosé, Blue Nun, Black Tower) and beer (Watney’s Red Barrel, Whitbread Trophy Bitter, Double Diamond). There had been an attempt to market a real Griddles Ale, but it had not been successful – beer connoisseurs reckoned the cold tea they drank on telly had a better flavour.
Not everyone from O’D-S was there. Richard and Barbara kept score. Anyone on this guest list was almost certainly in it with Squiers; the rest were on the outside and innocent. So far, the guilties ran to Tara (no surprise), Dudley Finn (but not his boyfriend), Jeanne Treece and a good three-quarters of the writing pack. Lionel was evidently guiltless, and so was Gerard Loss. Some people surprised you.
Squiers whizzed about, ten-gallon hat bobbing among a sea of heads, pressing the flesh, meeting and greeting. Richard saw three people come in who were his own invitees. Squiers had pause when he recognised Vanessa, but clearly had no idea who Fred was and was puzzled to see the third added guest, whom he must be dimly aware of but couldn’t put a name to. That was another black mark against Evil on the score-board.
Richard was about to make introductions when a fresh knot of outside guests appeared and Squiers barged through the crowd to welcome them, sweatily unctuous and eager.
Now Richard understood Squiers’s crack about nothing going to waste in television.
‘Good grief,’ he said, ‘we’re starring in a sales pitch!’
Squiers led his VIP guests down the aisle, towards Richard and company. Richard sensed Vanessa and Fred, dapper bookends in white matador-cut tuxedos, taking flanking defensive positions. Good move.
As Squiers grinned and got closer, Richard saw Mama-Lou and June O’Dell – as near to disguised as they could manage – slip in, and take seats hunched down in the back row, huge hat-brims over their faces.
‘Mr Jeperson, Professor Corri,’ said Squiers. ‘I’d like you to meet some people. Prospective sponsors. This is Adam Onions.’
‘O-nye-ons,’ corrected a youngish man in a blazer and polo-neck. ‘Not like the vegetable.’
He stuck out a hand, which Richard opted not to shake.
‘Hello, Barb,’ said Onions, shyly fluttering his fingers.
The Professor was furious at Onions’s presence, which she took as a personal betrayal.
Richard guessed how Onions fit in. He was from the Brighton University Department of Parapsychology. Barbara had talked to him before getting involved with the Diogenes Club. His ambition must have been piqued, along with his curiosity. He had made connections and ridden the hobby-horse.
‘I’m with a government think tank now,’ he said. ‘The Institute of Psi Technology. Pronounced “Eyesight”. We’re getting in a position to be competitive, Mr Jeperson. Your gentlemen’s club has had the field to itself for too long. Your record is astounding, but your horizons have been limited. Effort has been wasted smashing what should be measured. There are applications. Profitable, socially valuable, cutting edge.’
Richard could guess what Onions’s political masters would want to cut with their edge.
‘Heather Wilding,’ continued Squiers, indicating a woman with a ring-of-confidence smile, slightly ovoid pupils like cat’s eyes, feathery waves of honey-blond Farrah hair and a tailored red velour suit with maxi-skirt and shoulder pads. ‘She represents—’
‘I know what Miss Wilding represents.’
‘Ms,’ said the woman, who was American.
‘Private enterprise,’ commented Richard. ‘Very enterprising enterprise.’
Heather Wilding was a name Richard had come across before. She fronted for Derek Leech, the newspaper proprietor (of the Comet, among other organs) who sat at the top of a pyramid of interlinked corporations and was just becoming a major dark presence in the world. Leech was taking an ever-greater interest in television, so his representation here should not be a surprise. This woman sat on the Devil’s left hand and fed him fondue.
‘And this is General Skinner. He’s with NATO.’
The General was in uniform, with a chest-spread of medal-ribbons and a pearl-handled side-arm. Over classically handsome bone structure was stretched the skin of a white lizard, making his whole face an expressionless, long-healed scar. He was the single most terrifying individual Richard had ever met. How long had this man-shaped creature walked among humanity? Some of his medals were from wars not fought in this century. Not a lot of people must notice that.
‘Mr Jeperson,’ said Skinner. ‘You. Have. Been. Noticed.’
No response was required. A restraining order had been served. Richard was eager to look away from the shark to consider the trailing minnows.
‘Mr Topazio and Mr Maltese are—’
‘Olive-oil importers?’ Richard suggested.
The little old men with scarred knuckles and gold rings caught the joke at once – it was a reference to the legitimate business of the Corleones in The Godfather – but it went over Squiers’s head. These must be his longest-standing clients, the fellows who had interests in seeing Jamie Hepplethwaites and Queenie Tolliver out of the picture. Did they feel uneasy at the ever more high-flying company? How could their poor little organised-crime business compete with government departments out to declare psychic war, a monster with the resources of the military-industrial master-planners at his disposal or the tentacles of a hellfire-fed multimedia empire? Richard wondered if old-fashioned crims would even get bones thrown to them when Squiers took The Northern Barstows up in the world.
He had been worried about ad-men getting hold of Squiers’s voodoo. Now – though Derek Leech had his claws deep into that business too – he saw there were worse things waiting. He had a bubble of amusement at the thought of what would have to be written into The Northern Barstows if these powers took over – earthquakes in countries a long way from Northshire, economic upheavals on a global scale, mass suicides among unfriendly governments. The poor old Barstows would have to expand their field of operations, spreading misery and devastation wherever they went.
If Richard knew who Squiers’s guests were and what they represented, Squiers was still puzzling over Richard’s third extra guest.
‘Have we met?’ Squiers asked.
‘Good heavens, no,’ said Lady Damaris Gideon, casting a pink eye over the fellow. ‘Why ever should we have? On the Amalgamated Rediffusion Television board, we don’t care to deal with tradesmen.’
Maybe Squiers saw what was coming. His grin almost froze.
Lights went down and sound came up on the televisions. There was a hustle to get into seats. Richard found himself between Barbara, who held his hand fiercely, and Onions, who settled back with a prawn cocktail in one hand and a tiny fork in the other. The Barstows theme came out of all the speakers.
‘This is going out to an estimated audience of nineteen million nation-wide,’ said Squiers, over the music. ‘Five OAPs and a dog are watching the Dad’s Army repeat on BBC One. If BBC Two are putting out the test card instead of the classical music quiz literally no one will notice. Our poltergeist plot has pulled in new viewers. Under other circumstances, we’d keep Roget and Canberra on board. They’ve proved popular. However, you know what they say in writing class, “Kill your darlings.”’
In the first scene, Ben Barstow was down the Grand Old Duke, sinking pints of Griddles and blathering about the horrific events up at the Barstow house. All the extras were impressed. Bev the barmaid crossed herself.
Then, Roget and Canberra were on screen, setting up mystical equipment in the lounge – an electric pentagram, bells on strings, black-out sheets scrawled with white symbols.
Onions snorted at this arcane nonsense.
‘There’s no science in that.’
The academic was shushed from all around the room. Mavis had a ‘when I were a lass’ speech coming up.
At the end of the scene as scripted was a moment when the fraudsters let their guards slip after Mavis has left the room and chuckle over their scam. In the programme as broadcast, the end-of-part-one card came up early and the network cut to adverts.
Squiers saw at once that this wasn’t the show he had written, produced, directed, edited and handed over to ART for transmission. With VIPs in the room, he couldn’t make a fuss, but he did hurry out to try to make an urgent call. He came back ghost-faced and shaking. Fred had disabled the studio’s external telephone lines. Even the Phantom Phoner could not get out.
During the ad break, Richard looked away from the screens and was amused to notice Heather Wilding shielding her eyes, too. A wrestler known for his thick pelt plastered on the Früt and got a grip on a girl in a bathing suit – without ever having seen the advert, it had seeped into Richard’s consciousness, which ticked him off. Skinner’s strange face reflected the highly coloured images sliding across the wall of screens. Topazio was asleep and snoring gently, as Maltese tossed peanuts like George Raft spinning a coin and caught them with his mouth.
On the way back to his seat, Squiers saw June in the audience. She bent up her hat-brim and blew him a kiss. Her presence was a blow to his heart. He was unsteady on his feet the rest of the way. When he sat down, he slipped off his Stetson and unconsciously began to chew the leather.
After the adverts, the new material took over. Though she had studied The Northern Barstows from the beginning, Barbara had found it surprisingly difficult to pastiche even a few scenes of script. After hours of effort, she had come up with six typewritten pages, which June scrawled all over with her magic marker – some sort of seal of approval Richard frankly didn’t understand, but which the Professor did. Considering she was writing on and appearing in her specialist subject, she had crossed an academic line which might be hard to hop back over. They had taped their alternate scene over the weekend, using technicians bound to a vow of secrecy by Super-Golden Time wages. June, who authorised the expense in her capacity as a controlling interest in O’Dell-Squiers, participated as if it were a regular episode, while Mama-Lou fussed over the costumes. Richard had worried that sparks might combust between the three women, with unfortunate revelations to follow – but he had defused several potential mines.
On screen, Roget and Canberra began a ritual of exorcism.
Fred laughed out loud, realising he was now watching Richard and Barbara, not Leslie and Gaye. Few others in the room noticed the switch, which was a tribute to the casting. Some of the pack knew this wasn’t what they expected, but they were used to Squiers’s ‘last-minute’ changes and accepted what was being broadcast as the authentic Barstows. Squiers had a chunk of leather in his mouth and was chewing steadily. He was indeed eating his hat. His shirt was sweated through.
The ritual was nonsense, of course. If it hadn’t been, the characters wouldn’t have been Roget and Canberra as established on the programme. It was important to keep consistent, not to break the audience’s compact with unlikeliness.
The pentagram crackled and Da Barstow’s urn levitated off the mantel.
Squiers clutched his chest, choking on his hat. Apart from Richard, nobody noticed.
‘You… barstards,’ Squiers croaked.
The chanting rose, whipping up a supernatural wind in Mavis’s lounge. Mavis blundered in, eliciting a round of applause from the audience, and held hands with the ghost-hunters. June had insisted on being in the scene. It was her show, after all.
‘Chant after me,’ said Richard-as-Roget.
June-as-Mavis nodded.
‘Spectre of Evil, Spectre of Pain,’ said Richard-as-Roget.
‘Spectre of Evil, Spectre of Pain,’ echoed Barbara-as-Canberra and June-as-Mavis.
‘Begone from this house, begone from this plane!’
‘Begone from this house, begone from this plane!’
The urn wobbled a bit, but winds continued to buffet the exorcising trio, and flash-powder went off around the lounge.
‘Spirit of Darkness, Spirit of Gloom…’
‘Spirit of Darkness, Spirit of Gloom…’
‘Return to thy graveyard, return to thy tomb!’
‘Return to thy graveyard, return to thy tomb!’
The lid came off the urn and flaming ashes sprinkled.
Squiers was severely affected now, jerking and gasping in seizure, ragged-brimmed hat bucking up and down on his lap. The people sitting around him noticed. Tara ripped open his shirt, scattering buttons, and pressed his heaving chest.
On the screens, the ashes of Da Barstow – the ‘doll’ of Marcus Squiers – spewed out of the urn in a human-shaped cloud, with trailing limbs and a thickness around the head that was unmistakably a flat cap.
It wasn’t even special effects, it was an illusion, a lighting trick.
June-as-Mavis held up a silver crucifix, forged by melting down Da’s shove ha’penny champion sovereign. Richard-as-Roget raised a fetish of Erzulie Freda, on loan from Mama-Lou. And Barbara-as-Canberra pulled an old-fashioned toy gun which shot out a flag bearing the word ‘bang!’
‘You were always bloody useless, Darius Barstow,’ said Mavis, at full blast. ‘Now clear off out of it and leave decent people alone.’
‘Dispel,’ said Richard, underplaying.
The cloud of ash exploded, pelting the entire set – it had taken longer to clean up than to shoot the scene – and then vanished.
Dawnlight filtered in on a dimmer-switch. Tweeting bird sound effects laid over the settling dust.
The camera rolled towards Mavis, who gave a speech about how the nightmare was over and life in Bleeds could get back to ‘normal’.
There was a commotion around Squiers’s seat. Squiers wasn’t in it any more. He wasn’t in anything any more. All that was left was a hat on the floor, a fine scattering of grey ash and an after-the-firework-display smell.
Tara’s hands, which had been against Squiers’s chest, were withered, like an arthritic eighty-year-old’s. One of her fingers snapped off, but she was too shocked to scream.
The end titles scrolled and the screening room lights came up.
Richard thanked Lady Dee, without whom the substitution of master tapes could not have been managed. The board was pleased that the proper order of things had been restored – little companies like O’Dell-Squiers (soon to be O’Dell Holdings) might make television, but networks like Amalgamated Rediffusion owned the air-waves and decided what was fed into the boxes. Squiers had focused on working magic in the making of the show, and taken transmission
for granted, but Richard had understood the pins didn’t skewer the doll until the episode in question was watched by the believing millions.
Wilding and Skinner were gone. Not like Squiers, and leaving fewer traces behind. This hadn’t worked out, but they had other irons in the fire – which Richard, or someone like him, would have to deal with eventually.
Adam Onions wasn’t in that class yet. He was a nuisance, not a danger. The man from I-Psi-T bubbled around excitedly, scratching at everything, diagnosing a new, unknown form of spontaneous combustion. Richard was more than willing to cede the investigation to him. As he was scooping ash into a bag, Barbara stuck her tongue out at his back. She successfully overcame the temptation to boot his rump, mostly because she was wearing toeless spiked court shoes over sheer black silk stockings and reckoned permanent damage to her wardrobe not worth the passing pleasure of denting Onions’s negligible dignity.
Maltese and Topazio made themselves scarce, but Inspector Price would know where they lived.
‘Well done, guv,’ said Fred.
‘Tricky thing, voodoo,’ said Vanessa. ‘Not to be trifled with.’
On the way out, Richard nodded to June O’Dell. She and Mama-Lou sat in their seats, ignoring the fuss around Squiers’s sudden exit from this world. Richard did not doubt that the show would go on. With June wearing the producer’s hat.
Richard walked with Barbara. Fred and Vanessa flanked them. Their way to the door was barred. By the writers’ pack.
They really looked like a pack now, fangs bared, hunched over, angry at the loss of their alpha, fingers curled into claws. After all this hocus-pocus, Squiers’s followers might opt for good old-fashioned violence and rip their enemies to shreds.
Fred and Vanessa tensed, ready for a scrap.
‘Heel,’ said June, firmly.
As one, the pack looked to her.
‘You lot, there’s work to do. I’ll be taking more of an interest in the writing from now on. Porko, tomorrow you will sign Leslie Veneer and Gaye Brough on six-month contracts. Roget and Canberra will be staying in Bleeds to mop up after the Bogey. No decapitations necessary.’
