Young, Gifted and Deadly

by William Stafford

  Everyone ignored him.

  “There’s this thing they used to do, where they’d tie someone to a wheel and-”

  Harry’s exposition was interrupted yet again, this time by the telephone. Brough answered. The others heard at once the far-from-dulcet tones of Chief Inspector Wheeler. Brough had to hold the receiver away from his ear in order to prevent damage to his hearing.

  The team listened to Wheeler’s irate monologue, punctuated with swearwords rather than intakes of breath. At long last, Brough hung up.

  “Well,” he addressed the others, “you heard the lady. Let’s get our ‘fucking arses’ down to the Dedley Eye. Harry, it looks like there might be something in this wheel idea of yours. Good man!”

  Harry Henry gushed. His glasses fell off.

  The Serious team filed out. Miller hung back, waiting for Brough.

  “Oh, I don’t need a lift, Miller; it’s only around the block.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  At the door, she turned back. “You’m up to something, aren’t you, David Brough? I can see your mind working from here.”

  Brough smirked. “I do have a smidgeon of an idea, yes. And, on second thought, you can give me a lift, Miller, but not to the Eye. There’s something I need to collect.”

  17.

  Dennis Lord bunged the night-watchman a handful of fifty-pound notes and instructed him to piss off out of it. The man didn’t need to be told twice. The boss was the boss. He handed Mr Lord the keys and skittered away, heading for the off-licence and the takeaway on his way home for an unexpected night off.

  Dennis Lord laughed to himself, feeling like a child sneaking downstairs on Christmas Day to open his presents before the rest of the household got up.

  Tomorrow would be the unveiling. The Mayor would be there, the local paps - Dennis Lord had his speech all ready already. Never a patient man, he wanted to make sure that the first bum on any of those seats was his. And so, a little test drive was called for. In fact, it made bloody good sense. He needed to familiarise himself with the controls and the machinery so he wouldn’t look a complete tit when he started it up in front of the crowd.

  The ‘it’ in question was a gigantic Ferris wheel of slender, white tubular steel, for the moment shrouded from view by tarpaulin sheets. He had had it shipped over from Paris at his own expense - that was what he was telling people but he was secure in the knowledge that his accountants would have more than covered the outgoings with tax loopholes and the like.

  My gift to the town that whelped me, he was planning to announce as he cut the ribbon with an overly large pair of scissors. It would attract visitors. And visitors meant income. And a giant supermarket that had leached the lifeblood from the town centre would rake in the extra cash...

  Dennis Lord’s eyes glinted as he imagined the sound of old-fashioned cash registers ringing in his ears.

  He unfastened the padlock on the chain that held the temporary wire-frame fence together. The fence encircled the foot of the wheel and would be gone before the crowds assembled in the square.

  It was funny, he reflected, the last time this paved patch of ground had seen any action was four or five years back when it had hosted a beer festival in a tent. That had gone tits-up, he seemed to recall, when somebody had got himself murdered.

  He shivered. Perhaps on this very spot...

  Nah, couldn’t happen again, he told himself.

  He slipped through the fence and tugged at a rope. The sheets of tarpaulin slid from the wheel, revealing it in all its glory - he would pay somebody to put it all back again first thing in the morning. When you have enough money, you can get anybody to do anything.

  At least he knew the rope worked. It would be a dramatic moment.

  He found a flat, square-headed key and inserted it into a control panel on the base of the wheel. He twisted it by ninety degrees and a chunky red light came on. He only had to push that glowing button and the Dedley Eye would begin to turn...

  Dennis Lord’s only problem was how to start the machine when he was sitting in one of the observation pods. Damn it; shouldn’t have paid off that night-watchman until I was up in the air.

  On the verge of succumbing to despair, Dennis Lord cast around. The streets that bordered the square along two of its edges were deserted. The pub on the corner was boarded up and forgotten, like so many hostelries in these days of cheap supermarket booze - Only got myself to blame, he thought bitterly. Nah, fuck it; I’ve made a fucking fortune from 2-for-1 deals on plonko collapso.

  As luck would have it, a youth ambled into view. Bespectacled and wearing a hooded jacket - he looks like a softy trying to look hard, Dennis Lord sneered. Back in his day, he would have flushed the likes of this specky git down the bog. Once he’d relieved him of his dinner money, of course. Oh, well. He would have to do, he supposed.

  “Oi, mate!” he beckoned the kid over. “Want to earn a swift tenner? Nothing pervy, mind.”

  The specky git, it turned out, didn’t take much persuasion. It seemed he was heading directly toward the loudmouth supermarket mogul waving cash about.

  Callum Phillips stood in front of Dennis Lord and made eye contact.

  “Here, take it!” Lord brandished the banknote. Callum Phillips ignored the cash and continued to stare. Dennis Lord found the boy’s gaze unsettling.

  “I said nothing pervy,” he stammered, his throat suddenly dry.

  One of Callum’s eyebrows raised above the frame of his glasses as he watched the Goat Man sneak up behind their next victim. The Goat Man dropped a noose, a loop of washing-line around Dennis Lord’s neck and pulled it tight before Dennis Lord registered what was happening. Startled, Lord clutched at the line, his eyes already starting to bulge.

  “Don’t struggle,” breathed a voice in his ear. “It won’t strangle you if you don’t struggle.”

  ***

  Logger and Dogger were knackered from lugging bin bags of horse manure around the borough and now to the town centre.

  “I thought we were going to spread all this shit at CostBosters,” Dogger whined.

  Logger shook his head. “We tried making a mess of the supermarket, remember. Didn’t work. Boss wants us to go for the main man himself.”

  “He called and told you that, did he?”

  Logger squirmed. “Words to that effect. Any road, Bonk says he’ll be in the square, playing with that fucking wheel.”

  “The Dedley Eye!” Dogger declaimed dramatically.

  “Dedley fucking Eyesore, more like,” said Logger. “I mean, what will you see when you get to the top? Still this fucking shithole! And then the wheel brings you down again - literally and - whatsit - figuratively, and plonks you back in the shithole. All it does is remind you you live in a shithole. Nothing but shithole as far as the eye can see.”

  “Coo,” Dogger marvelled. “You’m a bit of a brainy git at times, ain’t you, Log?”

  Logger scowled and made a fist. “You tell anybody and I’ll-”

  “Hold up,” Dogger interrupted Logger’s threat. “Something’s up.”

  They had reached the square. The wheel was uncovered and gleaming - an impressive sight, close up - if you like that kind of thing. A framework of white tubing crisscrossed against the sky.

  “Is that - it is!” Dogger gasped. “It’s Callum!”

  “Ssh!” Logger urged. “Let’s hang back and see what he’s up to.”

  But it was too late; they had been seen. Callum extended his arm to point them out. The youths cowered, frozen in fear, as a tall figure with the head of a goat stalked toward them, silhouetted against the brightness of the wheel.

  ***

  “Fucking hell!” Stevens stopped in his tracks. Pattimore, at his elbow, echoed his words. Before them, the Dedley Eye, fully illuminated, cast a web of sh
adows across the square. At the ten and two o’clock positions, two figures were tied by their arms and legs to the brackets of a couple of the observation pods. At the base, a third figure was lashed to a perpendicular strut.

  “It’s Dennis Lord!” said Pattimore. “I recognise him from the papers.”

  “And them two look like the kids from the supermarket CCTV,” said Stevens. Pattimore was impressed.

  “Good eye,” he said.

  “Dunno until I’ve had a ride on it,” Stevens sniffed.

  “Well, I’ll be blown!” Harry Henry joined them. “What’s this then? A rehearsal for tomorrow’s unveiling?”

  “I wouldn’t think so,” said Pattimore. “Considering how the star performer appears to be covered in horseshit.”

  Harry Henry took this on board. “Um, we should do something, perhaps?”

  “Too bloody right!” said Stevens. He marched toward the wheel. “This is the police! Come down from there at fucking once, you fucking hooligans.”

  “We can’t!” cried Logger. “We’m tied up.”

  “I want my mom,” said Dogger.

  Stevens turned his attention to the man at the base. “You, mate; can you get them kids down?”

  Dennis Lord glowered at the idiot detective. “I’m a bit tied up myself, you fucking shithead.”

  “Steady!” said Stevens as he waved his i.d in Dennis Lord’s face. “I didn’t get this in a box of bongo puffs from your fucking shop. Now, if I push this button, the wheel’ll go round and the kids’ll come down, right?”

  “NO!” Dennis Lord screamed. “Keep the fuck away from that button!”

  Stevens’s moustache curled in amusement. “Why?”

  “I’m begging you!” Dennis Lord sobbed. “Look! Look at me! Don’t press that button!”

  Pattimore approached. “Shit. See, his legs are tied to the strut, his arms and his neck are tied to the rim of the wheel.”

  “And?” said Stevens, his fingertip dangerously close to the inviting red light.

  “If the wheel goes around, he’ll be - torn apart!” Pattimore gasped. He knocked Stevens’s hand away and gave the detective inspector a shove for good measure.

  “Thank you, thank you,” Dennis Lord gasped in relief.

  “Um, guys?” Harry Henry called for their attention. He was pointing at the roof of Dedley’s art gallery and museum, a building clad in red tiles, visible through the spokes of the wheel. A pentagram had been scrawled on it by aerosol paint. “He’s here! Baphomet!”

  “Don’t be so fucking saft,” Stevens rounded on him. “There ain’t no such thing.”

  “Um,” said Harry Henry, backing away. “I think you’ll find there is.”

  “Ben...” Pattimore tugged a tan leather sleeve.

  Stevens pulled his arm free of Pattimore’s clutches and was about to give the detective constable a mouthful when he saw where his colleagues were pointing.

  From behind the base of the Dedley Eye, a horned figure emerged, tall and bedraggled. The boys above and Dennis Lord below all cried out in terror.

  “It’s him!” Dennis Lord stammered. “It’s him!”

  “Fuck me,” said Stevens.

  The horned man held his arms aloft. The detectives flinched. The horned man threw back his head and laughed.

  “Welcome, new acolytes! You are just in time to bear witness to the offering I make.”

  “I didn’t think he’d speak English,” whispered Pattimore.

  “They always do in the films,” said Stevens. “And they’m always scared to death of Latin. Shout a bit of Latin at him; go on!”

  “I don’t know any,” said Pattimore. “You, Harry?”

  Harry Henry shrugged. “Quattro staggione?”

  “That’s a pizza, you prat,” said Stevens. “Hoi, you horny goat bastard. Get them kids down off of that wheel.”

  The horny goat bastard paid Stevens no heed. He turned slowly and gestured to his disciple, a young man in a hoodie and spectacles. Hands together, Callum bowed and stepped toward the red button.

  “NO!” cried Pattimore. “Don’t do it! Step away from the button!”

  Callum hesitated.

  “Continue, my boy,” said the Goat Man in even tones. “All shall be well.”

  “This is the police!” shouted Pattimore. “Move away from the button.”

  “Help me!” cried Dennis Lord, his eyes wide and fixed on the hooded boy.

  There was a roll of thunder. Everyone looked at the sky, which was clear. Another roll.

  “Fucking hell!” cried Logger, trying to point over their heads. “What the FUCK is that?”

  Behind the detectives, on the top of the wall that bordered the other two sides of the square, another hooded figure had appeared. A monk in long habit, his face hidden in the cowl, gestured to the Goat Man.

  “Brother,” said the monk in sonorous tones, “you have done well.”

  The Goat Man brimmed with pride and bowed his head in deference.

  “But you must let these people go. Release them at once!”

  “Never!” the Goat Man bleated. “The offering must be made.”

  “And so mote it be,” said the mysterious monk. “Release these people and accept me in their place.”

  The Goat Man thought about it and seemed to come around to the idea. The sacrifice of a holy man would rack him up more brownie points with the Dark Master.

  “So mote it be!” he cried. He nodded to Callum who, with the assistance of Stevens and Pattimore untied Dennis Lord. Pattimore pressed the button and the great wheel began to turn. When each boy was within reach, he stopped it again, so Dogger, and then Logger, could be set free.

  “That was well cool,” Dogger enthused. “Apart from the being in danger of our lives and all the rest of it.”

  “Prick,” grumbled Logger.

  “Don’t go anywhere, lads,” Pattimore advised them. “We’re going to need to talk to you. Harry, keep an eye on this pair.”

  “Pleasure,” said Harry Henry. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

  Logger and Dogger slunk over, having the good sense to look downcast.

  “Now,” the Goat Man appealed to the monk who, in the interim, had come down from the roof and joined the others in the square. “Take your place.”

  Pattimore, rumbling what was going on, caught the monk by the cuff. “No, Davey; don’t do it.”

  Brough didn’t reply. He pulled himself away and stepped toward the wheel.

  “Fucking hell, Jason,” said Miller, surprising him with her sudden appearance. “You’m not going to let him do it, am you?”

  She shoved a sheet of metal at him; he recognised it as something used to create the effect of thunder in stage plays. Miller drew a gun and levelled it at the bloke with the horns.

  “Don’t you move a fucking muscle!” she insisted.

  The bloke with the horns laughed derisively.

  “I’m warning you,” Miller shouted, her voice more than a little shrill.

  “It’s all right, Mel,” the monk turned to look at her. “Where the fuck did you get the gun?”

  Miller rolled her eyes. “Where the fuck did you get the fancy dress?” she snapped. “Sir.”

  Brough nodded. He’d picked up the habit and the thunder sheet from the DICWADS, courtesy of their hip-hop production of Murder in the Cathedral and so he assumed Miller had helped herself to a prop of her own.

  “But that’s not even a real-” he stopped himself. Miller took another step toward the Goat Man.

  “Get your hands up, mother fucker,” she said. She’d seen it in a film but in her Dedley accent it lacked the appropriate menace.

  All the same, the Goat Man backed away. He raised his hands again, b
ut this time with an air of surrender.

  Callum Phillips sprang forward. “The offering must be made!”

  He looped the washing-line around the Goat Man’s legs and lashed him to the strut only recently vacated by Dennis Lord.

  “That’s it, kiddo,” Dennis Lord cheered him on, “See how he likes it.”

  “My boy!” the Goat Man stammered. “What are you doing?”

  “The offering must be made,” urged Callum Phillips a second time. He pressed the red button. The wheel began to turn.

  “No!” everyone shouted.

  The wheel turned unhindered. Accordion music played softly and a pre-recorded voice said “Sur la gauche vous verrez la tour Eiffel”.

  “Bloody cheating Frog bastards!” cried Dennis Lord. “No wonder the fucking thing was so cheap.”

  The Goat Man, who had ducked when the mechanism was activated, stood tall and laughed with relief.

  “It is a miracle!” he exclaimed.

  “No!” cried Callum. “The offering-”

  He stopped. He gaped in horror as the Goat Man’s horns were caught in the rim of the wheel.

  “Help!” the Goat Man bleated in panic. “Help me! Someone!”

  Brough rushed forward, lunging for the red button. He pressed it and pressed it several times but the wheel would not stop.

  “French bastards,” muttered Dennis Lord.

  The Goat Man screamed but his scream was short-lived. He fell silent when his head was torn off and carried up into the air. Miller and the boys screamed too. Stevens threw up on his own loafers.

  The wheel spun faster and faster, shaking on its moorings.

  “David!” Miller yelled. “Get away from there!”

  But Brough kept pressing the off switch, to no avail.

  The struts began to strain as the wheel, now a spinning blur, picked up more and more speed. Rivets began to pop and fly across the square.

  “Davey!” cried Pattimore. He launched himself at Brough, and tackled him to the ground, pinning him there while the wheel threatened to break free. The Goat Man’s head was thrown clear, flying from the scene to land in someone’s garden two miles away.