by Nev Fountain
‘I don’t know how you put this all together, it just sounds mad to me.’
Mervyn shrugged modestly. ‘There were discrepancies… Randall couldn’t research everything. Ken’s comment about Roger Barker taking amyl nitrate was wrong. Roger doesn’t use that stuff any more. All the world and his ex-wives know he takes Viagra nowadays…
‘Once Randall got us all together on the shoot, he subtly manipulated events to match up with the account on the CD. On the first day of filming, he threw a newspaper down on the table and made a big issue about a hit and run story on the front page. The hit and run wasn’t anything to do with Ken; it was just a story Randall had picked out, but he let us make the connection that Ken had hit the woman with his car the night before.
‘Then Randall failed to pick me up one morning; which meant I was late. As you can hear on the CD, I was also late one morning in 1990 too, after Ken’s third attempt to kill me. Randall started talking up the friction between Ken and Nick, pretending that Nick was calling him all the time about Ken on your behalf. Enough to make me think Nick was riding Ken’s back quite hard. Nonsense, of course.’
Glyn grinned. ‘The friction was fiction. A fictional friction.’
‘And it was quite easy to stage a death for Nick Dodd which involved pushing; mainly because Nick went on the roof to smoke. Then after that it was off to Ken’s room to stage his “suicide” the following day.
‘It was then I put a minor spanner in the works by taking the CD from the scene of the crime. I can imagine it would have been quite frustrating for Randall to have his master plan almost complete and then the final “confession” wasn’t discovered.’
‘So Randall sent another one to the production office.’
‘Yep.’
‘And then we trapped him.’ Glyn grinned. ‘You and me. Hey, that was a scarily brilliant stroke of genius, of yours, that story you invented.’
‘What story?’
‘That story you put in about me being the one who crashed the car into Randall’s girlfriend…’
‘Right.’
‘Because you do know that Nick was driving that car, right? On Mulholland Drive? It was him that caused the accident…’
‘Ah.’
‘Just thought I’d set the record straight.’
‘Fair enough.’ There was a big awkward silence.
‘As for that nonsense you overheard in the toilet?’ Glyn made a dismissive ‘pfft’ noise. ‘Ah, Nick helped me out in lots of ways, keeping me on the straight and narrow. If he hadn’t been my Jiminy Cricket over the years I would have probably ended up in prison. You know what I mean.’
‘Yes.’
There was an even bigger awkward silence, which punched the last big awkward silence just for looking at it in a funny way.
‘Hey, we make quite a team, don’t we?’ Glyn said suddenly. ‘You and me. Perhaps we should collaborate a bit more. Work together on all our projects from now on. We could be a drama powerhouse. The next Coen brothers. The next Clement and La Frenais, the next…’
‘Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell?’
‘Exactly.’
Glyn looked at Mervyn. He was being deadly serious. Glyn was going places, Mervyn could see that, and Mervyn was going nowhere, he could see that even more clearly. It was a most incredibly generous offer. Well, it seemed like an incredibly generous offer…
He wondered if Glyn had made the same offer to Nick. What would be a better way to keep someone with an inconvenient incriminating secret close by than weld his career to yours? Engineering the destruction of one career would lead to the destruction of the other. Perhaps—irony of ironies—by killing Nick, Randall had done Glyn a favour.
Perhaps he was just being ungracious; a tad too suspicious. Even so…
‘That’s very flattering, but I’m really in the middle of my novel at the moment, and that’s currently where my head’s at, so to speak.’
‘Okay. No worries. But surely my lovely, you have to write the new episodes of Vixens from the Void with me? You just have to. How could you not?’
Mervyn weakened…and surrendered.
‘You’re right. How could I not write them with you? Of course I’d love to…’
I can’t resist. How funny. Just like Nick. I’m just as weak as Nick. He’s offering me too much. It’s every old writer’s dream to get back in the big leagues again. It’s the offer to end all offers.
Literally.
I could die, yes, but I’d least I’d die writing…
Glyn grinned, and slapped the table. ‘Excellent!’
Mervyn left the pub, wondering if he’d ever feel truly safe again.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
The pilot for the new Vixens from the Void was finally completed. It was now entitled Space Vixens because one brand manager at Product Lazarus thought the audience wouldn’t know what a ‘void’ was. Mervyn knew that the television audience would only have to meet a brand manager to fully understand what a void was.
Mervyn thought the pilot wasn’t half bad. It was slightly glib, the characters seemed a bit obsessed with throwing out one-liners when they should be running for their lives, but that was modern television for you. And the blonde one really, really couldn’t act. But essentially, when Mervyn saw it, he liked it.
Unfortunately, Mervyn was about the only one who had seen it. He’d been sent a DVD in the post from the production team and six months later there was still no sign of it on the television screens.
If there’s one thing that any TV company hates it’s uncontrolled controversy. And two murders, a suspicious death and an armed siege just about counted as controversy. Under pressure from the fans, the BBC made a coy statement to say they hadn’t yet bought up the pilot, because they couldn’t decide ‘where it fitted in the schedules’. Mervyn’s guess was either one day after the twelfth of never or whenever hell froze over. Whichever came later.
Shame really. The ratings would have been terrific.
Even if it ever got shown, and in the unlikely event a new series ever got green-lit, Louise Felcham would not be on board. One of her hairy-handed Cornishmen had got her pregnant. After a career devoted to avoiding making any product whatsoever, she was finally going to produce something that was definitively hers, and hers alone. She was thrilled (but not as thrilled as those working under her, who were salivating at the prospect of her maternity leave.)
*
In the same post as the DVD, he’d had a letter. From the US.
Dear Mervyn
I’m sorry I deceived you. As you will probably know, my name isn’t Maggie, and I’m not even English. Well, I was born in England, but I spent most of my life in the States.
You might already know I’m an actress. I’ve done stuff for a few TV shows, some off-Broadway, but nothing major. I’ve also done other stuff to make ends meet. Stuff I’m not proud of. More on that ‘stuff’ below.
I’m sure you’ve guessed most of it. Randall approached me and asked me if I could do something for him; come to England, take on a role, introduce myself to a guy, charm him, keep him entertained, make him feel like he didn’t want to leave.
‘It’s one of those murder games,’ he said. ‘The guy’s paid to have an adventure,’ that’s what he told me. ‘Excitement, death, romance…that kind of stuff. Don’t let on you’re not real. He’s in it just for the experience.’
It’s not what I wanted to do, but I was desperate to keep working, and Randall is—was—a very powerful man. You didn’t say no to Randall if you ever wanted to keep working in this town. I didn’t want to go back to that old life.
So I did ‘that kind of stuff’. I charmed this guy. I helped him on his detective role-play game. I talked through ‘the case’ with him, investigated with him, even left a clue for him to find—a note under the door.
When I ran away in Trebah Gardens? I was trying to avoid meeting Randall. The deal was, we were never supposed to be seen together.
The business
about my Mom dying? Yeah, that was scripted. I was meant to make you feel sorry for me, to comfort me. I was never meant to let it get out of hand—that’s what happens when genuine emotions creep in.
As I said, you probably guessed all that. What I’m writing to tell you is stuff you probably don’t know; I had no idea that Randall was going to murder those people. I didn’t know you were his patsy. I didn’t know you weren’t in it ‘just for the experience’ (though reading about my fearless detective Stone on the internet, I think you would have stayed without my charms!) When I realised what was going on, when you told me there had been a real murder, I realised I’d been played for a patsy too. I just got scared. I ran. I took my plane ticket and ran home.
Anyway, the cops haven’t come knocking at my door, so I’m grateful to you for not landing me in it. I’m also grateful to you for sorting out Randall. I’m guessing, if he managed to get away with what he was doing, I wouldn’t have been left alive. What do you think, Sherlock?
I’m ashamed of what I did, and I’m ashamed of what I was (unwittingly) a part of. Maybe when the guilt’s stopped eating into my heart, I’ll contact you again, and take a chance that you’ve forgiven me. Perhaps I’ll give you my real life story rather than something I memorised from a ring-binder.
Sorry Mervyn. Actresses can be a bit batty. You wouldn’t believe the things they’re prepared to do if they think it might help their career.
I really liked you Mervyn. No act. No fake. No pretend.
See you around.
‘Maggie’ x
There was no address on the letter. Mervyn considered ringing her agent, try to get a message to her. He could forgive her, he knew he could. Perhaps they could rekindle what they had in Cornwall? Have some more laughs, more breakfasts, another walk in the garden?
But no.
He thought better of it.
It was never a good idea, recreating the past.
