by Nev Fountain
Mervyn could see the Styrax very clearly now, its huge wedge-shaped bonnet distorted a hundred times over, reflected in the windows of the hotel. Running back here had seemed like a good idea at the time, but now Mervyn wasn’t so sure. Stuart didn’t care about concealing his crimes any more; in his present state of mind he could see him crashing the Styrax right through the fascia of the hotel and ploughing into the reception desk.
He staggered about (not acting now) half running, half crawling to the glass doors that revolved invitingly. He was half hoping there would be steps up to the doorway, Styrax didn’t do steps. But no, it was just a flat plain of flagstones; there was nothing to stop Stuart pursuing Mervyn up to the doorway and beyond. His addled, panicked brain cursed all disabled and wheelchair users for their insistence on removing all impediments to the menace of the Styrax.
Disaster. His shoe caught the edge of a paving stone and he went sprawling, flat on his belly, the tips of his fingers brushing the edge of the revolving door as it swept past his head. His mind immediately switched from wheelchair-hater to that of injured victim, concocting a plan to sue the hotel for their dangerously uneven flagstones. He cursed his brain for dwelling on such nonsense in the last seconds of his life.
Someone was standing over him. He craned his head up…
It was Roddy Burgess, gun in hand, staring at the Styrax. It was bearing down on them both, lights flashing and guns unfolding from its carapace. From the look on Roddy’s face, it seemed that all his worst nightmares had come true.
‘I knew sooner or later you’d come for me, you robot fiend.’
He levelled the gun, and pumped every bullet it held into the Styrax Superior. It veered, hit a potted palm and hurtled into the air, colliding and landing on a BMW and a Mondeo. Mervyn hoped they were owned by the bastards who had been revving their engines the other day. Finally, the Styrax came to rest, teetering upside down on the BMW.
Mervyn didn’t know what Bernard had done to the Styrax Superior to ‘augment’ it, but it must have been something flammable.
Because it burst into flames.
Roddy and Mervyn were engulfed by a tidal wave of Vixens fans, running and screaming past them. Some of them saw the gun in Roddy’s hand, but ignored him as they rushed to save the most priceless piece of Vixens from the Void memorabilia ever.
But it was too late. The last of the Styrax was no more.
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
It is said by many experts that in the event of nuclear armageddon, the only thing left would be cockroaches.
But if those experts also survived the impending holocaust, crawled out of their bunkers and examined the eight-foot tall cockroaches lumbering around the remnants of civilisation, really looked at them closely, really, really closely, and looked through the little hole in the mouth…
…They would find a science fiction fan sweating away inside the costume. Because fans survive.
Stuart survived. He was thrown clear. His face and body were horribly burnt, and it took several months in hospital, but he was finally given a new face by the doctors. He called the doctors his ‘restoration team’. Stuart was delighted with the results, and proclaimed his new face ‘much improved’.
Mervyn attended the trial, of course. He was a key witness.
It was one of the more interesting murder trials. Nicholas’s lawyer was very creative, and soon got all of the murder charges against the ex-Producer dismissed. Moreover, he argued that the lesser charge of ‘attempted murder’ did not apply because simply thinking about murdering someone, having a half-hearted go and just giving up was hardly a criminal matter—otherwise every hen-pecked husband who bought rat poison, briefly considered sprinkling it on his wife’s food before dismissing the notion and using it to kill rats should also be in the dock. It wasn’t Nicholas’s fault that someone came along after and ‘finished the job’. All charges against Nicholas for the deaths of Simon, Smurf and John the Stalker were eventually dismissed.
There was the matter of Sheldon’s death back in 1987—and even Nicholas’s wily lawyer could not get around that. But he could helpfully point out Sheldon’s willingness to work on the show, knowing full well the risks to his health. Sheldon was hardly an unwitting participant in his own demise.
Nicholas was charged with criminal negligence and sentenced to six months in prison—which he’d already spent inside, waiting for the trial to start. He emerged blinking in the sunlight to waiting Vixens fans, baffled at finding himself released but incredibly glad to be free to start writing his memoirs.
To tell the truth, Nicholas’s wily lawyer was considerably helped by Stuart.
Stuart insisted on attending the trial in costume. He also insisted on taking the credit for all the murders, much to his lawyer’s despair. He claimed that, even though the initial ideas had been down to Nicholas, the success of the murders was down to him. He was sentenced to 30 years.
He had already been asked by Morris if he could attend a future convention and share some anecdotes about his murder spree. He had been pencilled in for ConVix 45.
The book about the serial killer at the science fiction convention—called Geek Tragedy—had sold extremely well. It eclipsed the sales of Vanity Mycroft’s autobiography, outselling it three to one. It hovered on the outer fringes of the WHSmith bestsellers chart for a good year and a half, made the author a lot of money and gave him a stepping stone to a successful writing career, creating dramatic accounts of real-life murders.
The only trouble was the author happened to be Andrew Jamieson.
After the dust had settled and the murderer convicted, he’d seen an opportunity, and in a rare burst of energy actually produced a book in six weeks, handing it into the publishers well before the deadline.
Mervyn had a feeling he should have done that. Better hurry up and finish his novel.
Nevertheless, Andrew’s book had made Mervyn a minor celebrity. He’d enjoyed being the centre of attention for a change. He’d done some talks, got interviewed by Radio 4 arts shows and even went on Alan Titchmarsh. This time it was his photo staring out of The Telegraph media supplement, leaning on a (fake) Styrax with ray gun in hand.
Inevitably, however, the media’s attention started to turn elsewhere; to other murders, other scandals, other books. The interviews and speaking engagements slowly dried up. All except Vixens from the Void of course. Vixens was eternal.
Surprisingly, he didn’t mind one bit. Perhaps it was the fact that fate had granted him a rare spurt of good fortune, but what seemed claustrophobia-inducing a year ago was now a reassuring corner of continuity. The eternal devotion of the fans.
CULTFEST O9
TIME SEGMENT TWO (VFTV)
4.00pm
EVENT: MERVYN STONE, Geek Tragedy—Remembering Convix 15
LOCATION: Excelsior’s Shrine (Main Hall)
AUTOGRAPH PANEL—VANITY MYCROFT, ROGER BARKER, PETRA DE VILLIERS
LOCATION: Medula’s Throne Room (Room 4B)
DIRECTING VIXENS—Ken Roche, Guy Hollis
LOCATION: Daxatar’s Workshop (Room 4F)
‘FUGITIVES FROM SPACE’—Episode Screening
LOCATION: The Arena of Magaroth (Room 12J)
WHY ‘VIXENS FROM THE VOID’ IS BETTER THAN ‘DOCTOR WHO’ (PANEL) with Graham Goldingay,
Fay Lawless, Craig Jones, Darren Cardew
LOCATION: Hyperion Engine Room (Lounge Bar)
CHAPTER SIXTY
Another place, another time…
Another convention.
Cultfest ‘09 to be exact. In Birmingham. Or was it Stoke?
Mervyn was on stage, being interviewed by a bespectacled man. He’d just been asked a question from the audience. He was enjoying himself. He was also trying not to glance towards the female steward, who was looking murderously at him from one of the exits. Oh dear.
‘Well, I think I first suspected something was afoot when I found the second suicide note on the floor of the Styrax. I think it’s somewhere in the first third of
Andrew’s book…’
‘Chapter 14,’ someone in the front row blurted out. There was a spasm of laughter from the crowd.
‘Yes… Thank you for that. Of course, that was Stuart’s first mistake. He thought that Nicholas was so shoddy he hadn’t even bothered leaving a faked suicide note, so he obligingly wrote one for him, not noticing Nicholas’s own terrible effort lying under the seat.’
‘Unfortunately you forgot about it.’
‘Oh yes!’
There was more laughter.
‘But that was lucky in a way. If I had chosen to mention my discovery to Stuart, he might have realised his elementary mistake, decided the game was up and that he couldn’t play detective with me any more. He would have cut his losses and my throat in the process.’
The interviewer scanned the darkened hall. ‘Any more questions?’
A hand shot up. ‘Who’s got the suicide notes now?’
Mervyn shrugged and looked helplessly at the interviewer. The interviewer leaned in to his own microphone. ‘I believe they were sold at auction to Graham Goldingay. Any other questions?’
‘Following on from that suicide note… Is there anything that you look back on now and think, “Oh, I should have picked up on that…”?’
‘Oh, loads of things,’ said Mervyn cheerfully. ‘The whole fancy dress competition for example. It was themed the “Sheldon Ellis Memorial Fancy Dress Contest”. The whole thing was designed so Simon could communicate to Nicholas and me that he knew Sheldon had died in mysterious circumstances, and he was ready to meet with us both. Unfortunately, I had no idea I was about to be blackmailed for something I knew nothing about!’
Laughter.
‘There’s just time for one last question… Anybody?’
A final hand glided up.
‘About William Smurfett…’
‘Yes?’
‘I think we can all agree it’s a sad loss…’
There was a low rumble of agreement from the audience.
‘Yes?’
‘Um… I wondered whether, did he mention if he’d recorded any more DVD commentaries?’
‘Um, what? I don’t know. You’ll have to ask the people who organise the DVD commentaries that.’
‘Because there are several stories that haven’t been released yet, and he did have a lot of anecdotes that were pertinent to those stories, and I was thinking—there were rumours. Did he give any hint before he got exploded that…’
‘No. No he didn’t mention that.’
The air seemed to escape out of the room. Mervyn knew murder and carnage was all very well, but it would always take a dimly lit backseat to what was really important; which was that the conveyor belt of merchandise thundered on.
The interviewer chipped in. ‘The DVD production team have a panel tomorrow morning. You can ask Robert Mulberry then.’
Slightly reassured, the audience filed out of the hall.
*
He was back in his room, folding his black corduroy jacket and putting it in his suitcase beside his other black corduroy jacket, when he heard a click—which seemed to come from his door.
He barely looked up when the door opened and Minnie slid through it. She was wearing a bright orange sweatshirt with Cultfest ‘09 stamped across it. Keeping her back to the door, she pushed it closed with her bottom, all the while keeping her eyes fixed on him. She tapped her nose knowingly with a piece of square plastic.
‘I wondered where my spare pass key had gone,’ said Mervyn.
‘You are so careless, Mr Stone Ranger; you have to keep an eye on your jacket at all times. There’s no telling what dangerously unbalanced fans are about…’
‘You don’t have to tell me that.’
She sashayed towards him, pulling her jumper over her head.
‘I think you owe me, Mr Stone, for saving your life.’
‘So I do.’
Her head disappeared inside her T-shirt and her breasts and belly button popped out the other end.
‘I see you got your bra back.’
‘Yes, Mum did give it back. Of course, she wouldn’t speak to me for a week after…’
Mervyn smiled. ‘You save me from being shot, I organise it that your mum doesn’t speak to you for a week. I think that’s quits, isn’t it?’
She laughed, and unfastened her bra, unleashing her breasts like attack dogs. ‘Sorry I blanked you in the hall earlier today, but I had to pretend I was cross at you, for Mum’s sake.’
‘I see.’
‘I knew she wouldn’t approve of me seeing you after all that’s happened, so I had to convince her I never wanted to see you again.’
‘Very convincing.’
‘That’s not the least of my talents.’
‘I am packing to go.’
‘You’ve still got half an hour left on your room. I checked.’
‘My taxi is due any moment.’
‘I cancelled it.’
‘Oh. Well there’s no reason why I can’t hang out for a bit…’
‘Yes, you “hang out”. They have paid for the room, after all.’ She walked towards him. ‘Did you know that this convention was set up using the money they got selling Simon Josh’s memorabilia?’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘Then I’m definitely sure he’d want you to get his money’s worth. Here.’ She pulled his shirt out of his trousers and started to unbuckle his belt. ‘Let me help you unpack.’
His trousers were settling around his knees when his hotel phone rang. He skipped out of his trousers and answered it while Minnie slipped into bed and removed her jeans.
‘Hello, Merv darling. What did you think of my performance?’
‘Vanity?’
‘Sorry I had to attack you so hard at ConVix, and sorry I’ve not spoken to you since, but I had to make it look good in front of darling daughter. She’d go crazy ga-ga if I even contemplated crawling back under you after all that’s happened. Had to allay her suspicions before I went behind her back, darling.’
‘Vanity…’
‘We’ve still got a half hour left on our rooms, darling, and my meter’s running…’
‘Vanity—’
‘I’ll be up in five minutes.’
Mervyn looked helplessly at the receiver, and then at Minnie, who gave him a saucy wink.
He could only imagine what was going to happen any minute now.
But that’s another story.
