Cursed Among Sequels (The Mervyn Stone Mysteries, #3)

by Nev Fountain

  By the time he’d finished, most of the left side of her script was crammed with Mervyn’s painstakingly capitalised words. He drew a circle round what he’d written, and an arrow pointing to the circle that originated from the offending ‘I knew it’ line. He handed it back to her. ‘There, read from line 112.’

  She frowned, and then started reading aloud. ‘“I knew you were an android spy all along, I knew it from the start, the moment you came back from the Voidlands. I know how robots move, remember?”’

  ‘I would cut that bit about “I know how robots move”. That’s a bit weak. Okay, now up there,’ Mervyn pointed to his written note. She followed his arrow and kept on reading.

  ‘“I wasn’t completely certain at first, so I did my self-patented sure-fire test for android detection. I had sex with you. You were too damn good, so I’d like to thank you for that while I remember. You were a very tender lover, but I’m afraid Elysia isn’t. She likes to bite. And another thing; your legs were lovely and smooth. Elysia’s aren’t. Scientists have managed to create robots that look exactly like humans, down to their retinas and hair follicles, but they haven’t managed to do cellulite yet.”’ The dark-haired one laughed and read on. ‘“I knew you were a robot, but I didn’t know if you were friend or foe. So when we were stuck in the ship I pretended I still had air in my helmet to see what you would do. If you admitted you were a robot, told me you didn’t need to breathe and saved us both, I’d know you were a probably just one of Excelsior’s droids keeping an eye out for me. But you didn’t. So from that moment on I knew you were up to no good…”’ The dark-haired one looked up from the script, face shining with delight and relief. ‘Hey, this is good. This is really good. It sorts it all out…’

  ‘And it makes Medula the clever one,’ pointed out Mervyn. ‘It makes you look like you’ve been thinking everything through all along.’

  ‘Yeah it does, doesn’t it?’

  She impulsively threw her arms around him and hugged him. Inside Mervyn’s prehistoric pants, his penis stirred and unrolled. She disengaged, very pleased with life, and skipped back to her trailer.

  Louise came huffing up. ‘I can’t find Glyn. Where’s she gone? What’s up?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ said Mervyn nonchalantly. ‘She’s happy. I’ve sorted it.’

  For the first time in two days, Louise looked directly at Mervyn. With utter disbelief.

  *

  ‘Okaay,’ Ken said. ‘This is your pitched battle with the henchman of the Styrax, the Gonks.’

  The blonde one frowned and looked at her script. Then she looked at the huge hairy thing with the horns on its head, standing off set and drinking a cappuccino through a straw. The thing waved cheerily.

  ‘The Gonks? I thought they were the Gorgs.’

  ‘Close enough. I want you to run down the corridor…’

  ‘It’s not a corridor, it’s an aisle.’

  ‘Okaay, I want you to run along the aisle, then.’

  ‘Which aisle?’

  He checked his notes. ‘Aisle seven. I want you to run along aisle seven, aim your gun into aisle eight and run along aisle nine firing at stuff as you go. Turn the corner, go into aisle ten, stop in front of the big green screen and say the line “By the saggy tits of the Allmother.” Okay?’

  ‘But… I don’t know which aisle is aisle seven.’

  ‘Okaay…’

  He called over the production designer. ‘Peter, can we have some kind of label above the aisles, so that Miss…the actress can know which aisle to run down? Something high up, out of shot. Do you think you can do that?’

  The Production Designer looked oddly at Ken, then looked back at the pile of supermarket signs, stacked neatly in the corner. The ones he had taken down at 4am and stacked neatly in the corner. He looked incredibly anguished. The sensible thing was to put up all the signs again. But he’d been asked by the executive producer to take them down. And he knew that it was the executive producer who really gave him his orders, not Ken.

  Production halted for 45 minutes while he and his team painstakingly made makeshift versions of the signs stacked neatly in the corner and hung them exactly where the signs stacked neatly in the corner were hanging at 3.30 that morning. And every morning before that for the past eight years.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The makeshift signs went up, but they didn’t help.

  The blonde one ran up aisle eight, aimed her gun at aisle seven, forgot to fire in aisle nine, got lost, went back to aisle seven, and ended up in aisle five, near the cereals.

  Ken was getting increasingly short-tempered and his edginess was making the blonde one nervous. It didn’t help that after each ruined take he just read out the stage directions from the script in the same exasperated manner, slightly quicker, and it was obvious to everyone that the girl wasn’t taking any of it in. She ended up further and further away from the green screen and probably would have ended up outside with the shopping trolleys if they hadn’t shouted ‘Cut!’

  Ken slumped incredibly low in his chair. He was almost horizontal. If it weren’t for his huge square head, he would have oozed out of the hole in the back and on to the floor.

  After six depressing takes, an enterprising props guy ran up to Ken and hissed in his ear. ‘Mr Roche, you know those coloured lines you get on hospital floors?’ Ken moved his head slightly further into his neck. He seemed to be trying to nod. ‘If I stick down her route with a line of masking tape, then she could follow it.’ Ken moved his head again and filming halted for another 15 minutes while the props guy set to work.

  Take seven, and the blonde one managed to run where she was supposed to—but she forgot to fire her gun. Filming stopped for another ten minutes while the set dresser put down helpful little ‘X’s and arrows to denote when she should fire her gun and in which direction. With the floor of the supermarket now resembling the tactics board in a football team’s dressing room, take eight began.

  The blonde one ran dutifully down aisle seven, aimed her gun into aisle eight, ran up aisle nine firing as she went, into aisle ten, turned to the green screen, said ‘By the saggy tits of the Allmother!’ and froze into position; the location manager yelled ‘Cut!’ and the blonde one—and everyone else—breathed a sigh of relief. Something was in the can, and only an hour and a half behind schedule.

  On to the next part of scene 83. The dark-haired one and the ugly one were waiting to take their places in aisle 11.

  ‘Okaay… Let’s run through the dialogue before we go for a take,’ said a defeated voice from somewhere near knee-height.

  The blonde one acted shocked. ‘There’s a Styrax battle fleet out there! Five hundred ships at least!’

  ‘I know.’

  The dark-haired one pointed her gun at the ugly one.

  ‘What are you doing? Why are you pointing your gun at Elysia?’

  ‘Because she’s a robot.’

  ‘Don’t be stupid. Medula, you’re making a mistake.’

  ‘She can’t be.’

  ‘I’ll prove it… Okay, bang, I shoot you, your arm comes off…’

  ‘By the Allmother, it’s true!’

  ‘I knew you were an android spy all along, I knew it from the start, the moment you came back from the Voidlands. I wasn’t completely certain at first, so I did my self-patented sure-fire test for android detection. I had sex with you…’

  The other two Wagz were looking at each other in confusion. The dark-haired one carried on. She had only been given Mervyn’s rewrite two hours ago, and she was word perfect. It had taken them days to learn the lines they already had.

  ‘Scientists have managed to create robots that look exactly like humans, down to their retinas and hair follicles, but they haven’t managed to do cellulite yet. I knew you were a robot, but I didn’t know if you were friend or foe—’’

  ‘Well this sounds like a lorra fun.’ A voice broke in to the flow. It was a familiar voice; hard, northern, grating. It belonged to an angry Mancun
ian playwright Mervyn had seen on Newsnight review last week. ‘Are we making another show on the quiet, lads? Because I don’t recognise this bit at all.’

  Mervyn turned, and was astonished to find that the voice really belonged to Glyn. He really has got a knack for mimickry, thought Mervyn. If he wasn’t a writer he’d make a fortune as an impressionist.

  Glyn was standing behind the camera, arms crossed. There was an unmistakable air of menace to him.

  ‘It’s a rewrite,’ said the dark-haired one flatly.

  ‘Really? Not mine. Not that I’m aware of.’

  ‘He did it,’ she pointed to Mervyn.

  Glyn’s eyes turned to him, as did the gaze of everyone else. He felt like a luckless peasant, accused by a village maiden of cavorting naked with her by moonlight and worshipping the devil.

  ‘Oh Mervyn, Mervyn, Mervyn!’ Glyn advanced on him. ‘My trusty right-hand man. Thanks and all for filling in, geezer, with huge dollop of grateful on the side.’

  ‘Thanks. I didn’t mean you to hear it like this. I hoped we’d go through it before we got on set.’

  ‘Let me ask you something very simple, Mervyn. Take your time to answer, it’s not a trick question… Now don’t you think the audience will have gone to sleep while she’s saying all this crap you’ve put in?’

  ‘I…well…’ He rallied. ‘Not really. It feels important. It’s tense and funny.’

  ‘To take all your points in order, Mervyn my son. Unimportant, flaccid and about as funny as my mum’s cancer.’

  Mervyn was stung. ‘There are much longer speeches in the script.’

  ‘But this is not a speech, Mervyn. This is fat footnote at the bottom of a very boring book. An entry in the Encyclopaedia Shitannica. A collage of words that sit there and don’t do anything.’

  ‘They explain the plot.’

  ‘No, my lovely. They slow down the climax of my script with stuff that no one cares about. Television’s come a long way since your day… It’s not theatre any more. No more standing in sets, talking for hours on end about the weather and what they’re having for dinner…’

  Mervyn felt his teeth grind together.

  ‘Well… I take your point. It is a bit wordy. It could be trimmed a little, I grant you…’

  ‘Trimmed a little! This rewrite is a spin-off series in its own right! Perhaps you can release it as a novel.’ He laughed; not a nice laugh. ‘Anyway, I’ll just pick the bits of my work off the floor where you left them. You were a script editor for a long time, my lovely, perhaps you forgot what it was like to be a poor struggling writer, getting his art shredded by some anonymous pen-scratcher who thinks he knows best…’ Glyn’s good-humoured facade was crumbling and behind it was pure white-hot fury.

  Mervyn’s self-confidence was meanwhile bleeding to death. Like a series of blobs which when stared at magically became a 3D picture of a dolphin, his ‘expert rewrite’ was morphing in his head and becoming rubbish. He was a fool. The lines were clunky and forced in with no finesse or respect for the pace of the scene. He tried to be conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry Glyn. It wasn’t my place… I know that. I shouldn’t have gone behind your back… But you weren’t around, and the actress was worried about the scene.’

  ‘She’s probably more worried about her poor tongue getting worn to a frazzle, making her say all those irrelevant words.’

  ‘Leave him alone.’ The dark-haired one had had enough. ‘The script made no sense and you weren’t around. Mervyn fixed it.’

  ‘You say fixed, I say ruined, girlie. Let’s work out which one of us is the writer. Ooh, I think it’s me isn’t it?’

  ‘You patronising bastard. I like it. It’s good. I like what he’s done.’

  ‘Well you would,’ snapped the blonde one. ‘It gives you an extra bit to say.’

  ‘It’s not like that at all,’ said the dark-haired one.

  ‘Where does it say I have cellulite? My script doesn’t say that,’ said the ugly one.

  ‘It’s exactly what it’s like,’ the blonde one retorted. ‘You’re always counting your lines.’

  ‘At least I can count.’

  ‘Fuck off.’

  ‘No you fuck off.’

  ‘Oh just admit it Chrissie, it’s push, push, push with you. You won’t be happy until you’re doing all the acting.’

  ‘I’m already doing all the acting. Cos I’m the one who can act, Gemma.’

  ‘Oh piss off, you arrogant bitch.’

  ‘Why have I got cellulite?’ said the ugly one.

  ‘No, you piss off. Slag.’

  ‘Fuck you, I will.’ The blonde one ran off.

  ‘Aaah, fuck it,’ said the dark-haired one, biting her lip. ‘This isn’t good.’

  ‘Why do I have cellulite in the story?’

  ‘Because you do in real life, so shut up whining, you fat cow.’

  The ugly one’s mouth trembled, and she ran off crying.

  ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck!’ said the dark-haired one, wondering which one to follow first. She started in the direction of the blonde one, realised she’d forgotten something, then came back and stuck her finger in Glyn’s face. ‘Take out that fucking bit he wrote…’ she snarled, pointing at Mervyn, ‘…and I’m walking. And those two are as well. And don’t think I can’t make them.’ And then she ran off to glue the fragments of her girl band back together.

  Glyn gave a rueful smile to himself, and then sauntered away, patting Mervyn companionably on the shoulder as he did so.

  ‘Good work, my lovely,’ he said.

  Mervyn felt like he’d been marked for death.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The day continued. Sort of.

  Ken shredded his schedule and tried to salvage the day by recording tiny ten-second scenes of Gorgs grunting at each other and looking confused.

  More reports came in to the set during the day. Glyn was sulking in his trailer, refusing to come out. Nick was hovering round his door, frightened to knock. Louise had disappeared with Randall, presumably urging Randall to kick Mervyn off the project.

  The ugly one cried in her trailer for an hour and then emerged, enabling Ken to record some ten-second scenes of her grunting and looking confused. She didn’t seem worried about the shouting, screaming and crying emanating from the blonde one’s trailer. She assured everyone this was perfectly normal; Gemma and Chrissie usually did this, and they would definitely be the best of friends in a few hours. Mervyn stayed on the set, sitting in a corner and watching the filming from a safe distance. Avoiding the gaze of everyone. Ken didn’t look at him. No one did.

  The day was yawning its way to the afternoon, and a caffeine craving was creeping up Mervyn’s throat and nibbling his brain. He knew he could get a coffee from the location bus, but that meant he had to walk. It was the principle of the thing. The female runner walked by. He cleared his throat. Nothing. He watched her take orders from the actors on set. He walked a few tentative steps away from his chair towards her, but then she disappeared, so he sat wearily back into his place.

  She got coffees for the producers. Okay, they were all very important people, so they and the actors, they were first. She obviously had a system. He didn’t want to throw her system into chaos by badgering her for coffee at a delicate moment. Then she got coffee for the script supervisors, the cameramen, the set dressers, the make-up teams, even getting some for other bloody runners. He was dead certain that the last tray of lattes that sailed by were destined for a bunch of guys down the street who had nothing to do with the production, but just had nice faces.

  He was already thinking that he’d destroyed the project single-handed; now his ego imploded. He felt humiliated and depressed. The fact that she wasn’t getting coffee for him was absolute and undeniable proof that he had officially been ostracised by the production.

  Luckily, he had his own perfect remedy for those times when he was depressed; it never failed. Unfortunately, it involved having a huge bloody coffee.

  The runner was coming
closer to Mervyn. Finally. She was definitely getting closer. She was making straight for him. His heart would have been pounding with anticipation, but it was so starved of caffeine that it could only plod slightly faster than normal. Yes, I want a coffee right now. Right now. Just inject it into my eyeball and put a cinnamon patch on my arm.

  ‘Randall wondered if you’d like to see the new Styrax and give him your thoughts,’ said the female runner. ‘There’s one in the back of the delicatessen if you want to take a look.’

  ‘Oh. Fair enough.’

  Not what he had in mind. But it sounded like he’d been forgiven, and it was quite flattering to be asked his opinion on something, at last. He got directions from the runner, walked through dried fruits, canned goods, condiments and spices, past the bakery and through the delicatessen. He pushed his way through the hanging tongues of plastic and felt a blast of cold air. He found himself in the warehouse; there were props for the show, guns, bits of equipment. But no Styrax.

  He noticed an open door. There was a note with ‘Styrax’ written on it in felt tip. He went inside.

  It was the freezer locker. Nothing more than a windowless room about five metres square. Metal trolleys stood along the walls crammed with boxes of ice creams, frozen curries and pizzas. The trolleys looked like evil robots themselves, dormant, silent. Waiting to come to life and deliver death to all mankind using saturated fats.

  But in the middle of the room was the new Styrax. It was slightly larger, fatter with a dark grey finish. Mervyn was impressed. It actually looked like a piece of space-age transportation that had evolved into an evil robot race, rather than the ‘bubble car with attitude’ the original series budget had conjured up. It had that gritty sturdiness that the original lacked.

  Then there was a rumble and a clang, and Mervyn was left in darkness.