The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 16

by Stephen Jones

  “I certainly feel a measure of recent turmoil,” said Richard, who called himself ‘sensitive’ rather than ‘spooky’. He flexed long fingers, as if taking a Braille reading from the air. “It certainly could be a death unnatural and occult. Still, in this parish, it’d be unusual not to find a soupçon of eldritch atmos., eh? This is East of Piccadilly, mon ami. Vibes swirl like a walnut whip. If London has a psychic storm centre, it’s on this page of the A to Z. Look about, pal – most punters here are dowsing with their dickybirds. It’s not hard to find water.”

  A skinny blonde in hot-pants, platforms and a paisley halter-top sidled out of Crawford Street. She cast a lazy look at them, eyes hoisting pennyweights of pancake and false lash. Richard bowed to her with a cavalier flourish, smile lifting his Fu Manchu. The girl’s own psychic powers cut in.

  “Fuzz,” she sniffed, and scarpered.

  “Everyone’s a detective,” Richard observed, straightening.

  “Or a tart,” said Fred.

  The girl fled. Heart-shaped windows cut out of the seat of her shorts showed pale skin and a silver of marks-and-sparks knicker. Four-inch stack-soles made for a tottering, Thunderbirds-puppet gait which was funnier than sexy.

  “That said, shouldn’t this place be veritably swarming with the filth?” commented Richard. “One of their own down, and all that. Uniforms, sirens, yellow tape across the door, Black Mariahs hauling in the usual susses, grasses shaken down? All holidays cancelled, whole shift working overtime to nick the toerag who snuffed a copper while he was about his duty? And where’s the wreath? There should be one on the street, with some junior Hawkshaw posted in that alcove there, in case the crim revisits the scene to gloat and lingers long enough to get nabbed.”

  Richard had put his finger on something which had bothered Fred. One of the man’s talents was noticing things unusual by their absence. The proverbial dog that didn’t bark in the night.

  “This isn’t Dock Green, Richard. And DI Brian ‘Boot Boy’ Booth isn’t – wasn’t – George Dixon.”

  Now he thought about it, Fred wondered if Busy had even told the Yard about Booth. He might have thought giving Fred the shout was all duty, and a sense of self-preservation, required. In which case, there would be a load of forms to fill in before bed-time.

  Usually, Fred got involved in cases by Richard. They were both assets of the Diogenes Club, an institution that quietly existed to cope with matters beyond the purview of regular police and intelligence services. Last month, it had been flower children plucked from Glastonbury Tor by “bright lights in the sky” which the boffins reckoned were extra-dimensional rather than extra-terrestrial; before that, a Brixton papa loa whose racket was giving out teterodotoxincut ganja at a street festival and enslaving a cadre of zombis through the voodoo beat of a reggae number Fred still couldn’t get out of his head.

  This time, the call came directly to Fred from Harry “Busy” Boddey. Fred’s secondment to work with Richard had been extended so long he sometimes forgot he was still a sergeant in the Metropolitan Police, with space in the boot-rack at New Scotland Yard. He hadn’t seen Busy since Hendon College, which was deliberate. DC Boddey was a trimmer, a taker-of-shortcuts; the cheery cheeky chappie chatter and carved-into-his-cheeks smirk didn’t distract from ice-chips in his eyes. Through rozzer gossip, Fred heard Busy had landed his dream job.

  On the phone, Busy hadn’t sounded as if he were still smirking.

  “It’s my guv’nor, Freddo,” he had explained. “DI Booth is dead. Killed. It’s one of yours, pal. One of the weird ones, y’know. Off the books. So far off the books it’s not even on the bloody shelf. The horror shows that bring out that long-haired pouffe with the ’tache and the clothes. Booth was smashed. While sittin’ in his office. Looks like he was hit by a bleedin’ express train. Five blokes with sledgehammers couldn’t do that much damage.”

  Fred’s first reaction was to assume five blokes with sledge-hammers had outdone themselves and the regular plods could track them easily by the blood-drip trail. Gruesome, admittedly, but hardly in the same docket as time-warping Nazi demons, extra-dimensional hippie harvesting, spirits of ancient Egypt, dread-locked rasta zombies or brain-bending seminars in Sussex. Still, the Diogenes Club had nothing on at the moment and it was sunny out. No point lazing around the flat on an inflatable chair with a slow leak, with the snooker commentator on the BBC continually rubbing it in that he hadn’t sprung for a colour telly (“for those of you watching in black and white, Reardon’s coming up on the pink.”) Once Busy was off the line, Fred had given Richard a bell and arranged to meet him here, outside Booth’s Soho HQ.

  Richard arched an elegant eyebrow. “ ‘Skinderella’s’?”

  The name was up in glittery purple letters, surrounded by silver-paper suns whose points curled like two-days-dead starfish. The light of this constellation was reaching Earth well after the stars had burned out. In the star-hearts were photographs of female faces, with hairstyles and smiles from ten years before. Once colour, the snaps were bleached to a peculiar aquamarine that made the girls look drowned. The door was wedged open, but glittery streamers curtained the way in.

  Somewhere, tinny music played through maladjusted speakers. It could have been Melanie’s “I’ve Got a Brand New Pair of Roller-Skates (You’ve Got a Brand New Key)” or John Fred and His Playboy Band’s “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” or anything with that rinky-dink, teeth-scraping rhythm.

  Fred checked his note again. He guessed why Busy had given him a street address rather than just named the place.

  A board propped on an easel on the street promised TONITE’S TASTIES – HELENA TROIS, THE MYSTERIOUS ZARANA AND FREAK-OUT FRANKIE. Black and white head-shots were pinned around the names, all of women looking back over naked shoulders. In the window stood life-size cardboard cut-outs of girls who wore only sparkly G-strings and high-heels, leaning in unnatural and/or uncomfortable positions. As a token of respect to the Indecent Displays Act, coloured paper circles were stuck like grocer’s price-tags over nipples. One or two had fallen off, leaving the girls stuck with blobby glue-pasties.

  A book-rack, just like the ones in a newsagent’s or bus station, was chained to a Victorian boot-scraper to prevent theft. Paperback shapes in the wire-slots were wrapped in brown paper like a surrealist installation. The wrapping was partially torn off one, disclosing a title which caught Fred’s eye, Confessions of a Psychic Investigator. He plucked the book, skinned it and looked at the cover. A thirty-ish blonde in a school-cap and navy-blue knickers, braids conveniently arranged over her breasts, did a shocked comedy double-take as a ‘ghost’ in a long sheet ripped off her gymslip with warty rubber horror-hands. The author was a Lesley Behan.

  “Nice to see the field getting serious attention,” drawled Richard. “You should buy that. I’m not aware of Miss Behan’s contribution to the literature of the occult.”

  Also on offer were FILMS – CONTINUOUS, at a ticket price well above that charged by self-respecting Odeons or Classics; this afternoon’s ‘XXX’ triple-bill was Sixth Form Girls in Chains, Chocolate Sandwich and Sexier Than Sex.

  “Now, that’s just ridiculous,” exclaimed Fred. “How can anything be, well, sexier than sex? It’s like saying wetter than water.”

  “Perhaps a philosophical point is intended. After all, is not reality sometimes a disappointment, set against its imagined or anticipated version?”

  “One thing I guarantee is that what won’t be sexier than sex will be these films.”

  “You sound like a connoisseur.”

  “I once spent two weeks in the back row of one of these pokey little cinemas on an undercover job. We were after some nutter who liked to throw ammonia in the faces of the usherettes. In the end, they nabbed him somewhere else. All I got out of it was eyestrain. I didn’t even want to think about chatting up a bird for six months. I’ve actually seen Chocolate Sandwich. It’s about this West Indian bloke, a plumber, and these housewives . . .”

  Richa
rd made a face, indicating he didn’t want to know any more.

  Locating a panel of buttons by the streamers, Richard pressed one. A buzzer sounded inside.

  “Frederick,” Richard began, “this might seem naïve to someone au fait with the ins and outs of policing the capital, but isn’t it something of a conflict of interests that the policeman in charge of the Obscene Publications Squad should work above – not to put too fine a point on it – a strip club?”

  Fred coughed a little. The OPS was one of those embarrassments the average copper tried not to bring up if he had any intention of becoming an above-average copper.

  “Don’t hem and haw, man,” snapped Richard.

  “Have you ever heard the expression ‘one bad apple’?”

  “ ‘Spoils the barrel’? Indeed.”

  Fred found himself whispering. “You know we don’t have police corruption in this country?”

  “That’s the impression given by the patriotic press.”

  “Well, it might not be 100-per-cent true.”

  Before he could further disenchant Richard, the streamers parted. White, beringed hands reached out and fastened on Fred’s shoulders. He was pulled into warm, fragrant darkness.

  II Queen of the Nile

  When his eyes got used to the gloom, Fred found he was being held close by a tiny woman in a Cleopatra outfit. She had Egyptian eye make-up and a sprinkling of glitter on her bare shoulders. A rearing tin cobra stuck to the front of her stiff black wig prodded his chin.

  “Steady on, luv,” he said.

  “You’ve made a conquest, Fred,” commented Richard, slyly.

  Fred took the girl’s fingers off his shoulders and gave them back to her. She waved them about in the region of her brass bra, then put them behind her. He had an idea she was a bit embarrassed by her hands, which were large for her size.

  “You’re the ghost-exterminators,” she said, in broad Sarf Lahndahn tones. “Thank Gawd you’re here.”

  Richard reached behind her, took one of her hands, turned it over and kissed her palm dead-centre.

  “And you must be the Mysterious Zarana, Queen of the Nile.”

  Her eyes widened, cracking a black bar of eyeshadow. “Lumme, you really are psychic.”

  Richard smiled. “Your picture is outside,” he said.

  She was a bit disappointed. “It’s Zarana Roberts, really. Dad was out in Egypt during the War.”

  “Pleased to meet you. I’m Richard Jeperson, and the fellow you’ve enraptured is Fred Regent.”

  Fred wondered if he was blushing. It’d be too dim in here to tell.

  Zarana did something like a curtsey, with a little eyelash-fluttering smile like the one in her mug-shot.

  Then she was serious. “Busy Boddey’s goin’ spare,” she said. “Ever since the thing happened. He’s been on the blower to half the town . . .”

  Which meant there should be more police here.

  “Now he’s up outside Boot Boy’s office, keepin’ guard. None of the girls wanted to go up there. Not even before the thing. I mean, taking your knickers off in public for a livin’ is one thing, but Boot Boy Booth is another, if you know what I mean.”

  Fred had heard a few things about DI Booth. “We should take a look-see,” said Fred, trying to sound more casual than he felt.

  “Rather you than me, ducks,” said Zarana. “Fancy a cuppa? TyPhoo’s two pound to the customers, but I can get you sorted compliments of the management.”

  “That would be most welcome, Miss Roberts,” said Richard.

  “Zarana, please. No need to be formal.”

  “Thank you, Zarana.”

  “You too, Freddy Friday,” she said, prodding him in the ribs with a knuckle-ring, finding a soft spot close to his heart and grinding it. “Come on.”

  “Zarana,” he said.

  “Not so difficult, is it?”

  It wasn’t, but he thought she’d left her mark on him.

  She bustled off, “backstage” – which might have been called a cupboard anywhere else. The walls, floor and ceiling were covered with brown shag-pile. At the end of the corridor was a bar-theatre space, where a Chinese girl, spot-lit on a dais, peeled a cheongsam off her shoulders. A sparse audience kept to their shadows. Fred wondered who these folk were – it was half past three in the afternoon, didn’t they have jobs to go to? Mechanical moaning and oom-pah musak seeped from an alcove under the stairs. The basement screening room was probably a fire-trap. Booth should at least have made sure the place was up to public safety specifications.

  A proper staircase led upwards. Serried beside it were framed posters of strippers.

  “There’s your ghosts,” said Zarana, returning with tea-bag teas in an I’M BACKING BRITAIN mug and a breast-shaped tankard. She gave Richard the union jack and Fred the pewter tit.

  The posters were in different styles, going back through the years – Sunday supplement full-colour and psychedelic design giving way to black and white and blocky red lettering. It was like a reverse strip: the older the picture, the more clothed the girls. Over the years, standards had changed – at least insofar as what could be shown on the street.

  “Tiger Sharkey, also known as Theresa D’Arbanvilliers-Holmes,” said Zarana, in gossipy museum guide tones, indicating a wild-haired blonde in a Jungle Jillian leather bikini. “Married a Tory MP, she did, and pays Boot Boy a fair slice of cake every month not to have the ‘glamour films’ she used to make sent to the News of the World. I hope you don’t count that as a motive, since she’s a love, honestly. Felicity Mane, the Flickering Flayme. On the game in Huddersfield, poor dear. Trixie Truelove. Her proper name’s Mavis Jones and she’s still here, doin’ make-up and costumes. She knitted my snake-wig. Put on a bit of weight since that photo was taken.”

  Zarana had accompanied them to a landing, where she paused.

  “And here’s our founder, bleedin’ Royalty with tassels. If I’d half a crown for every cove who comes in here and says birds today ain’t fit to tie her G-string, I’d have a villa on Capri and be payin’ muscle boys to shake their bums at me.”

  The poster showed a slim-hipped blonde posing coyly, Venus-style. Even in faded black and white, she was a startler. A platinum rope of hair wound around her neck, across her breasts, about her waist and fanned out to serve as a loincloth. She had huge, sad eyes and a dimple in one cheek.

  “Pony-Tail,” said Zarana.

  Fred knew. Trev Bailey, who sat two desks along from him at school, once had a “photography” magazine with Pony-Tail’s picture on the cover confiscated by a maths master. Later, the offending article was found in the rubbish bin by the bike sheds, crumpled and suspiciously stained. The teacher was called ‘Wanker’ Lewis for the rest of his career.

  Zarana considered the poster. “You’d think she invented nudity from the way they rabbit on about her.”

  During that two-week stint in a porn cinema, the only film that had jolted Fred awake – and even slightly stirred his interest – was Views of Nudes. A scratchy black and white 1950s antique about well-spoken naked persons playing volleyball at a Torquay naturist camp, with strategically placed shrubs to save their embarrassment. It was out of place amid the bloodily-colourful socks-on couplings of randily joyless Scandinavians as Glenn Miller at the Frug a-Go-Go. Views of Nudes was booed by raincoats, until they were stunned to a hush by Pony-Tail. In a blatantly spliced-in, gloriously faded-to-pink colour sequence, she stripped in a stable, getting out of riding habit and jodhpurs (editing tricks were necessary to manage the boots) and whipping her hair about. She frightened the horses but excited the audience; the tally-ho soundtrack was soon augmented by the chink of spare change in active pockets. Fred had to admit Pony-Tail, who could look young as twelve or old as sin, had something.

  “Where is she now?” asked Richard.

  Zarana made mystic gestures. “That’s the ghosty part. Nobody knows. Or is saying, if they do. She vanished. She could write her own paycheques if she came out of retire
ment. Of course, she’ll be a crone now. Bleedin’ Pony-Tail. I bet it wasn’t even her own hair. Nice mince pies, though. I heard she might have been got out of the way, so she could really be a ghost. I think that’s why you’re here. It’s what Busy Boddey’s afraid of.”

  They looked upwards, where the stairway narrowed. Bulbs were burned out or broken. The next landing was in deep shadow.

  “I’ll stay here, if you don’t mind,” said Zarana.

  “Come on, Fred, let’s get on with it,” said Richard.

  Zarana’s fingers touched the lapel of his crombie jacket, felt the fabric and let him go. “Careful, Freddy,” she said.

  “Certainly will, Queenie.”

  Richard was halfway up, into the dark. Fred left the girl and followed.

  III Mr Sludge

  Fred saw DC Harry “Busy” Boddey was in a right state. When Fred and Richard entered the ante-chamber with him, Busy jumped off his stool.

  The inner door was smashed off its hinges.

  The “five blokes with sledge-hammers” theory looked better and better.

  Neither Fred nor Richard had so much as sipped their tea, but the stench made them raise cups to their mouths, not so much for the swallow but the strong smell.

  “See,” said Boddey, nodding at the empty doorway.

  Fred got a look into the office beyond. Something limp sat at and over a broken desk. Red splashes Jackson Pollocked over strewn papers, abused glossies, demolished furniture and pulled-down posters.

  “Stone the crows,” said Fred.

  Busy whimpered. Fred would have marked him down as one of those joke-over-dismembered-body-parts coppers, but this took things to extremes.

  Richard had his feelers out – he called them “mentacles”. He stood straight and calm, eyes fluttered shut, nose raised like a wine-taster doing a blind test, fingers waving like fronds.

  “What’s the looney up to?” asked Busy, bitterly.