Geek Tragedy

by Nev Fountain

  The desk sergeant ran up to them with a piece of paper. ‘Excuse me, sir. Are you Mervyn Stone?’

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’

  ‘There’s a woman who’s turned up at the front desk, says…’ he checked his bit of paper as if he didn’t believe it the first time. ‘Says she’s your alibi for last night.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘She says…’ he ‘ahemed’ like an old fashioned bobby from an Ealing comedy, ‘…that she and you were “at it like rabbits on Viagra-flavoured carrots all night, so there’s no way you had the opportunity or the energy to murder…um…that little tick, Simon Josh.”’ Another ‘ahem’. ‘And there’s other details she’s mentioned. A costume of some description. And other things consented to, in a room in the Happy Traveller hotel.’

  ‘Where is she?’

  ‘She’s just gone to the ladies on the first floor,’ said the desk sergeant. ‘She should be down in a sec.’

  They waited.

  ‘You see what you’ve done?’ Mervyn glared at Stuart’s stricken face. ‘That’s one of the stewards up there. A charming girl. Because of you she’s interrupted her day and come here to rescue me. Because of you she’s had to admit to a night of passion with an old fossil like me because she thinks I’m under arrest. I can’t imagine what I’m going to say to the poor girl about why I’m really here…’

  The doors to the lift opened with a huge piping fanfare.

  Classic FM had got to the famous bit.

  ‘Darling!’ said Vanity Mycroft.

  ‘Agh?’ said Mervyn and Stuart.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Vanity surged forward and hugged Mervyn. His face was impaled on her cheekbone, and he could feel his ear being scorched by the tip of her cigarette. She pulled away and looked searchingly into his shocked face like a mother checking a son for chocolate smudges.

  ‘Darling, you look like a ghost. What have the bastards done to you?’

  Mervyn just stared at her numbly.

  She glared at the desk sergeant. ‘Listen darling, I’m not leaving without him. I’ll chain myself to the railings if I have to.’ Vanity leaned on the front desk, a long finger jabbing at the woodwork.

  ‘We haven’t got any railings, madam.’

  ‘Then I’ll chain myself to you.’

  The desk sergeant looked most alarmed at the prospect.

  ‘It’s all right, Ms Mycroft. It’s all a misunderstanding,’ said Stuart hastily. ‘He’s free to go.’

  Vanity didn’t even recognise Stuart. Because he hadn’t fancied her, he’d completely slipped under the Mycroft radar.

  ‘Hah! Come on sweetie, the car’s outside. Let’s get back to the hotel.’ She bundled Mervyn towards the exit. ‘Is that it? Are you done with him?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Stuart, cringing into a corner.

  She rounded on the desk sergeant. ‘He doesn’t need bail, at all? Aren’t you going to tell him he can’t leave the country or something?’

  The sergeant looked her up and down. ‘I wouldn’t dream of denying him that option, madam.’

  *

  ‘Well?’

  ‘What?’

  Vanity’s sports car roared around the M25 and back to the hotel. The top was down and the noise of the engine was deafening.

  ‘Did you like my surprise?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘My surprise, darling!’

  Vanity’s hair was gripped by the wind, and it leapt crazily in the air as it struggled for freedom. Mervyn’s normally al fresco hairstyle was blasted behind him into a severe back-comb.

  ‘Oh yes! Very good. What surprise?’

  ‘Darling! Me in your hotel room dressed in my old costume! What other surprise could I be talking about?’

  ‘Oh yes!’ he muttered. ‘Very good!’

  ‘Romping around hotel rooms with dear old Mervyn, like many a location shoot of old. You certainly took me back, darling…’ She smiled wickedly at him, taking her eyes off the road for a handful of heart-stopping seconds. ‘Well, not just back. You took me in every direction you could think of, you naughty man…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you can’t hear me Mervy, I thought the costume held up rather well. A couple of frayed edges here and there and a torn lining… But at our age one expects a few frayed edges and torn linings, doesn’t one, darling?’

  They approached the turning. Her hand gripped the gear stick, fingered it, and with little warning or clutch, wrenched it back with unbearable force. There was a groan of pain from the gearbox, and the engine responded. I know how it feels, thought Mervyn.

  ‘Just as well I was with you. I could see them mentally slapping the cuffs on you. Thank your lucky stars I was waiting to pounce on you last night. I said to that oaf Morris, “Bollocks to my fucking panel,” I told him. “I’m off to the police. There’s a man’s liberty at stake,” I said. “Let Katherine fill in for me; let her tell her single anecdote 200 times until they can all recite it backwards.” The car screeched into the hotel car park, narrowly missing Bernard’s backside as it poked out of the Styrax Superior, and ploughed into a parking space. The engine died, shuddering gratefully as it did so. ‘Right. I’d better hop into the shower. I can still smell you on me, darling.’

  Mervyn’s face squirmed with embarrassment.

  Waiting for them in front of the hotel doors was the thin-faced girl in the cardigan. The one who went around with Vanity. The one who always went around with Vanity. The girl was starting to make Mervyn feel uncomfortable.

  Vanity slammed the car door closed with incredible force. ‘It’s a bit disappointing to be honest. I was hoping they’d admit me for evidence. Dust me for fingerprints or something like that.’ She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Anyway, don’t worry. Your alibi is completely watertight.’ They entered the hotel and she turned to him with a grin. ‘Unlike the costume. Another challenge for the dry cleaners.’

  Mervyn was left in the foyer, dazed.

  A question was sliding around his brain. Why did Vanity assume he’d been called to the police station as a murder suspect?

  The answer was simple.

  Only because she’d never believed it was ‘suicide’ for a second.

  Only because she’d instantly assumed Simon had been murdered.

  CONVIX 15 / EARTH ORBIT TWO / 11.00am

  EVENT: INSIDE THE CRAB. INTERVIEW—PAUL CHESTER-ALLEN

  LOCATION: Vixos Central Nerve Centre (main stage, ballroom)

  EVENT: ‘THE MADNESS OF MAGAROTH’ EPISODE SCREENING

  LOCATION: The Catacombs of Herath (video lounge—room 1024)

  EVENT: AUTOGRAPH PANEL—MERVYN STONE, ANDREW JAMIESON, BOB AND BARBARA BRAINTREE

  LOCATION: Arkadia’s Boudoir (room 1013)

  EVENT: HOW TO BLOW UP EVERYDAY OBJECTS 1—WORKSHOP, BERNARD VINER

  LOCATION: Hyperion Bridge (room 1010)

  EVENT: PHOTOS—VANITY MYCROFT

  LOCATION: Transpodule Chamber (room 1030)

  EVENT: VIXENS FROM THE VOID: WHAT MAKES A MONSTER—EXPERT PANEL with Graham Goldingay, Fay Lawless, Craig Jones, Darren Cardew

  LOCATION: The Seventh Moon of Groolia (room 1002)

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Mervyn was almost having a nice time.

  Things had settled down in his brain and, to his profound surprise, he’d managed to meet lots of fans who were very normal; polite, intelligent, friendly folk who just happened to like an old TV show and had come along for a good time and see friends. He’d forgotten how fun some aspects of conventions were, and how he’d missed people asking him intelligent questions about his work. He even shared a drink with one or two, as he expounded in great detail about why he thought modern television was rubbish. He laughed as memories of the show popped back into his head, and because his drinking buddies had studied every aspect of the history of Vixens they were able to laugh along with him. It was a very civilized way to spend a long weekend. He could only guess what would happen if football fans trie
d to hold conventions. For a start, the hotel wouldn’t just be worried about Blu-Tack coating their fixtures and fittings…

  He remembered something that had slipped his mind during his seven years away. It was so often the guests who gave the impression that they were superior, more mature than the fans that clustered around them, but in fact it was the fans who had more perspective about examining the entrails of a long-dead TV show. It was the guests who deluded themselves into imagining themselves still huge stars. It was the guests who, more often than not, used conventions as an excuse to regress into behaving like infants.

  Cue Andrew Jamieson.

  ‘You did what?’ Andrew shrieked. The fan who’d just asked for his autograph jumped in surprise.

  Initially, Mervyn felt profound shock at the realisation he’d accidentally slept with two women in the one night. Then testosterone-fuelled exhilaration flooded through him; he was soon desperate to tell someone (anyone) who might appreciate his conquests. Unfortunately, as that required finding someone both male and heterosexual, the candidates were few.

  ‘Seriously?’ spluttered Andrew Jamieson.

  That was the last thing Andrew said for five minutes, as he couldn’t draw breath for giggling. Mervyn knew he’d made a mistake in telling him.

  ‘It’s an old story,’ Andrew said at last, wiping his streaming eyes. ‘You go to bed with a gorgeous young piece of skirt and wake-up with some raddled old baggage. Happens all the time when I’m out on the piss.’

  ‘She’s not exactly raddled.’

  ‘Well, yes, I admit she’s not exactly smelling of catfood and wee yet, but it’s only a matter of time—’

  ‘Of course!’ Mervyn slapped the table with the flat of his hand.

  ‘What?’

  ‘It makes sense. There was a smell last night, when she was in the room, I just couldn’t place it…’

  ‘Catfood and wee?’

  ‘Mothballs,’ said Mervyn. ‘From the costume she was wearing. It’s her old costume. I knew I smelt it from somewhere.’

  ‘Very well deduced Mervyn—still got your detective mojo, I see.’ Andrew placed his hand on Mervyn’s shoulder. ‘I want you to promise me something…’ He looked directly in Mervyn’s eyes with mock sincerity. ‘If you do ever decide to tell La Mycroft you’d shagged her and didn’t even realise…’ His pudgy face twinkled with mischief. ‘…but the only way you might have deduced it was from the stink of mothballs…’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Please, please, please let me be there.’ Andrew plunged back into uncontrollable giggles.

  Apart from Andrew’s choked titters, the writer’s autograph session (Mervyn, Andrew, and the scarily chirpy husband-and-wife team of Bob and Barbara Braintree) was a quiet affair. It reminded Mervyn of the study rooms from his university days; hushed and deserted, with only dry coughing and the lonely scratching of a pen to puncture the silence.

  ‘Hi.’

  He looked up. It was Minnie.

  Again.

  Oh dear.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘I can’t stop, I’m stewarding Bernard Viner’s “How to Blow up Everyday Objects” workshop,’ she burbled breathlessly. ‘Just thought I’d say hi…’

  ‘So you said. Hi.’

  She leaned over the table and hugged him. As she was standing and he was sitting, he found his face embedded in her bosom. Instead of being aroused, Mervyn felt awkward, compromised. He was being laid claim to in public by a virtual teenager. He felt like a teacher who’d had an unwise affair with a demonstrative pupil and was paying for it at a parent’s evening. Minnie didn’t seem aware of his discomfort.

  ‘Oh shit, have you heard about Simon? I can’t believe it. I mean, I thought he was a dickhead, but even so…’

  ‘Yes, it’s really terrible. Minnie, you remember saying something about Simon…’

  ‘Sorry, gotta go. If Bernard blows himself up and I’m not there, we might get fined by the hotel.’ She pushed her face onto his and gave him a clumsy kiss on the cheek. It brought home to Mervyn once again how young she was. She hissed into his ear in a conspiratorial way. ‘I’ve left my bra in your room. I’d better go and get it back sometime…’ She stood up and raised her voice. ‘See you at lunch?’ And then she was gone.

  Now that was embarrassing. Some of the autograph-hunters were grinning at him. He wondered if they’d shared her bed too. He felt as if an invisible wall between him and the fans had been switched off and anyone could get to him.

  Mervyn didn’t want to stay in this miserable room any more. Sod it. He hadn’t signed a thing in 20 minutes. He was going. Let Morris dock his fee, if he wanted.

  He looked across to see Andrew, whose eyes were bulging with amusement. Andrew gave a huge cartoon wink, and held two thumbs aloft.

  Back in his room, he wrote a list of whys.

  WHY

  …would anyone kill Simon?

  …would Bernard sell Simon his beloved Styrax?

  …was Roddy so scared of Simon?

  …did someone leave me Vanity’s autobiography?

  …did Vanity assume Simon had been murdered?

  He looked at it long and hard. He hadn’t made a ‘why list’ since…

  Oh yes.

  Since he’d been the script editor of Vixens from the Void.

  He used to make a ‘why list’ in the margins of scripts (usually Andrew Jamieson’s coffee-stained efforts. Reading his drafts was a unique experience. His characters barely kept the same motivations, the same names—or even stayed the same sex—throughout the script). He found it the best way to understand what was going on, to order his thoughts and get his mind to worry away at a story until it made sense in his head.

  What he had in front of him was a story; a story that his script editor’s mind told him didn’t make sense. There was something about what had happened earlier that morning that seemed…wrong. Like it didn’t fit. But he couldn’t work out what.

  Oh yes. And there was what he found in the Styrax. That was odd too. He took it out of his pocket and wrote:

  …were there TWO suicide notes?

  The note he had found on the floor was quite different to the one the police had taken away in their evidence bag. It was crude, rushed. It said:

  It’s when your memories are at their happiest that it’s time to say goodbye.

  Below it was a signature—barely. It was so illegible it was more like a spasm. But Mervyn could make out an ‘S---’ and a ‘J---’ at the beginning of the two squiggles purporting to be a first name and surname. But it was a completely different signature to the one on the letter he’d found on the dashboard.

  The special constable was a bit over-zealous, perhaps. But it didn’t mean he was wrong about Simon’s death. And if Mervyn did look into it as well, well…it might make the convention a bit more bearable, wouldn’t it?

  He hadn’t been a writer for ages; he knew that, deep down. The manuscript on his computer was just an electronic placebo that helped him feel better, to help him convince himself that his artistic integrity was alive and well. No, he knew he wasn’t a writer. What shocked him was the realisation that he was no longer a script editor either. Years of fans applauding his yarns and asking him to sign Vixens scripts, books and video sleeves didn’t make him a script editor; it just made him feel like he was still a script editor.

  All the stories he’d worked on, they were all old. He’d finished them off long ago; trimmed, finessed, shaped and nibbled at them with his typewriter until they made sense. And not just the mouldering Vixens scripts that had been made, broadcast and largely forgotten by the wider world. The behind-the-scenes anecdotes too, had been sorted and polished until they shone with immaculate structure, tone, pace and coherence.

  Old stories.

  He was slowly becoming aware that, at long last, a new story was forming under his very nose. One that wasn’t shaped or polished or finessed yet. There were bits missing; there were huge parts that weren’t clear or plain didn’
t make sense.

  It doesn’t have a final act, said Mervyn, it isn’t even half-finished; it’s just a beginning with footnotes.

  What a script editor needed was a new story to sort out.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said out loud to himself. ‘If this all goes well, I might even get a book out of it.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When Mervyn entered the convention’s makeshift office on the ground floor, Morris was sighing deeply. The source of Morris’s annoyance was obvious. It was large and smelly, and filled most of the tiny office.

  ‘Vanity Mycroft didn’t turn up to the celebrity breakfast,’ droned John the Stalker.

  ‘I’m sorry to hear that. I hope she’s not ill,’ droned Morris back.

  ‘Yes. I hope she’s not ill too.’

  ‘So if there’s nothing else…?’

  ‘I didn’t get what I paid for.’

  ‘What didn’t you get?’

  ‘The celebrity breakfast.’

  ‘But you went to the breakfast.’

  ‘Yes I did. Vanity didn’t turn up.’

  ‘So you got what you paid for.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘But you had the breakfast?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So…’

  ‘Vanity Mycroft didn’t turn up to the celebrity breakfast.’

  The conversation had obviously been chugging round in circles for some time. With Morris’s low, rumbling voice alternating with John the Stalker’s flat monotone, it sounded like an ordinary argument but played at half-speed.

  ‘I’ve told you, we don’t do refunds if one of the stars can’t make it. You still had two celebrities on your table. We can’t guarantee a specific celebrity will turn up. I’m really sorry about that.’

  ‘That’s all right. I’m sure she had her reasons.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘But she didn’t turn up.’

  ‘Yes. You said. Quite a few times. I can’t do anything about that now.’

  ‘No. You can’t. Because the breakfast is finished.’

  ‘It’s now midday, yes. I guess it’s finished.’