Death Of A Devil
This edition first published 2017 by Fahrenheit Press
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www.Fahrenheit-Press.com
Copyright © Derek Farrell 2017
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F 4 E
Death Of A Devil
By
Derek Farrell
The Danny Bird Mysteries
Fahrenheit Press
For Veronica Scott.
A strong, proud and brave woman, who I loved, and who loved me.
I wouldn’t be here today without her, and neither, I suspect, would Danny.
And for Helen Cadbury.
Who welcomed me to the fraternity with open arms, a cheeky smile and an off-colour joke. Her generosity of spirit and of talent will stay with me ever.
And for Michael Hardman,
Who was always a wonderfully generous host, an oasis of calm, and a true friend, and who – I hope – will forgive me for moving a gangster into his home. Miss you, Mr H.
And also, as always, for my father, with all my love.
“Now I know the things I know,
And do the things I do;
And if you do not like me so,
To hell, my love, with you!”
-Dorothy Parker
ONE
Ali gestured across the packed bar. “I’m cutting off Carmen Miranda,” she stated, turning her attention to the twin barmen working beside her. “She’s shitfaced. If she makes it back to the bar alive, you two are serving her nothing stronger than Ribena.”
Dash squinted into the heaving throng. “She looks alright to me,” he said, frowning in his attempt to spot whatever it was that his hugely more-experienced manager had seen.
“Dash, she’s just pulled one of the apples off her hat and tried to eat it,” Ali said, and as the realisation dawned that the apple in question was plastic, Dash’s confusion eased.
“Everything alright here?” I asked, shrugging my cape to one side.
Ali turned, smirked, said, “We’re managing, thanks, Little Lord Fauntleroy,” and – before I could explain that, actually, my costume was Dracula – scuttled off to the other side of the bar to serve the three witches from Macbeth.
“She knows,” Caz said, coming up behind me. “She knows exactly who you are.”
My best friend had come dressed as Elsa Lancaster in The Bride of Frankenstein, her wig towering a good two feet above her immaculately made-up face. She eyed me up and down once more, reached out to adjust my cape, and smiled, pleased with her work. “It’s perfect, my Prince of Darkness. Now, go and mingle.”
The Marquess of Queensbury public house had been under my management for a little less than a year, and tonight we were celebrating with what I’d feared we might optimistically have declared The First Annual Halloween at The Marq.
The posters had been up around the neighbourhood for a month, and the website that Dash’s twin brother Ray had built for us was a carnival of virtual cobwebs and coffins. But I’d been worried. “Are people really going to dress in costume and come to the pub?” I had wondered aloud, receiving, for my concern, a pitying glance from Caz.
“It’s a gay bar, Daniel. People have been dressing up to go to them since the dawn of time. And it doesn’t have to be Halloween either. Relax, sweetest. If you build it – and festoon it in pumpkins, candlewax and fake webbing – they will come.”
And they had.
The room was heaving, and I mentally calculated that I might, after all, be able to make enough money tonight to pay Chopper Falzone his entire month’s cut.
Chopper was the local gangster. He ran every chop shop, knocking shop and pound shop in the neighbourhood, and virtually every pub too. Although I was technically running this boozer, it was on his say-so, and the cost of his say-so was a defined pay-out every month, regardless of whether I’d made enough to cover it or not.
But tonight, as I ventured out into the crowd to smile and glad-hand the punters, my money worries were – for once – abated.
I passed two young men, one dressed in a cowl and skeleton mask, his scythe propped at the bar, while the other was dragged up as a not entirely unconvincing schoolgirl, a sulky pout in place. It took me a moment to realise: Death and the Maiden.
“Well Larry didn’t get it,” the Maiden was saying, at which point Death heaved a heavy sigh.
“But sweetheart,” Death drawled, “Larry’s so stupid it’s a miracle he can breathe unaided. I mean, he thinks dog grooming is when a paedo says he’s got puppies in the van.”
Moving on through the crowd, I passed a couple of Kardashians, a Frankenstein with scarily-realistic bolts, a gaggle of zombies, another Dracula (not so convincing as mine, I thought, and remained smug until I was several feet from him and realised he was actually a Quentin Crisp) and a tall broad man wearing a leather peaked cap, a leather-studded harness that framed hugely-extended nipples pierced with what looked like a pair of curtain rings, a red leather codpiece, black leather chaps and biker boots that gleamed even in the dim light of the pub.
The odd thing was his companion, who was being dragged on a lead through the crowd.
“I mean, for chrissakes, Colin, what were you thinking?”
Colin, who seemed to be dressed as a rather short and depressed King Kong shrugged his shoulders, and the black fake fur gorilla suit he was wearing jiggled appropriately. “I couldn’t really hear you,” he explained through his monkey mask. “I mean, I did think it was odd.”
“Odd?” The leather queen stopped, turned to the hapless Colin and opened and shut his mouth as though he were trying – and failing – to find the words to express his outrage at Colin’s stupidity. “Odd? Colin, you’re dressed as a fucking monkey. Who comes to a gay bar on Halloween dressed as a fucking monkey?”
“Well it was a bad line, Chris,” Colin attempted, once again, to justify his costume choice. “I thought you said, ‘Get a Chimp suit.’”
“Gimp, Colin. I said, ‘Get a Gimp suit.’ Christ almighty,” Chris tugged on the lead and led his simian companion towards the bar. “My mother was right. I need a fucking drink.”
I watched them go, and at that moment Caz sidled up to me. “They’re heeeere,” she sing-songed in my ear, much as the unfortunate child in Poltergeist had done all those years ago.
Except that poor cursed child had only been announcing the arrival of ghosts and demons from the nether world, and the opening of the hell mouth.
Caz was announcing worse. Much worse.
TWO
When the local council’s health officer – the man designated with the authority to decide which places offering entertainment and especially catering facilities should be allowed to remain open, and which should be closed on account of the fact they’re basically salmonella factories – asks if it would be okay if he and some of his ‘like-minded’ friends visited your establishment on a particular Saturday night to take part in, ‘Something we like to do when we get together,’ one doesn’t really like to say no.
And when the venue in question is a rough gay boozer, one assumes that the public servant is simply trying to rustle up a private booth and a complimentary bottle of prosecco so he and his mates can get mildly drunk before retiring to a Holiday Inn for a night of no-holds-barred health-officer-on-clerical-assistant action.
But no, that wasn’t what Mr Tavis
tock had had in mind at all.
What he’d really wanted was to bring a bunch of his mates round my pub on one of the busiest nights of my year, and look for ghosts.
Ghosts.
The gang were some sort of spirit hunting team. “We’re quite well-known in South East Ghost-Hunting circles,” Tavistock had said, which had made me wonder just how big the South East Ghost-Hunting circle actually was.
I mean: Was there a whole subculture of spook spotters I’d been unaware of? Were they hanging around like the illuminati in cagoules waiting for the appearance of a wisp of smoke that might signal the arrival of Anne Boleyn? Had I been missing out on something?
I, of course, wanted to tell him that no, it would not, sadly, be possible for he and his spirit-stalking mates to trawl through my gaff in search of the wandering souls of the Kray Twins.
Ali had been happy to go one step further: “Tell him to fuck off. Fucking weirdo. As if we haven’t got enough to deal with, without the bloody Ghostbusters crawling all over the sodding place.”
Then I’d remembered that the Krays had been active in East, not South, London and that the man in question could visit – and close me down – at any time.
And the same day, the chest freezer in the kitchen – a huge deep box that had been in situ so long that the once white plastic casing had faded to a yellow-beige redolent of the varnish on an old master painting – had started to make a funny noise.
It was like a high-pitched whine at first but, over a couple of hours, the whine had turned into a constant steady clatter, as though something inside was desperately banging to be let out.
“It’s a bit Edgar Allen Poe,” Caz had noted on arriving to be greeted by the news that the freezer was on the fritz.
“Death rattle,” Ali had pontificated, nodding from the other side of the kitchen at the white good in the same way that an ICU visitor might nod sadly at, say, a vague acquaintance with a bad case of Ebola. “That freezer,” she intoned sonorously, “is fucked.” And so saying, she’d left us to return to her place behind the bar.
I’d taken that moment to inform Caz of Tavistock’s request that I provide the venue for his Halloween Spooktacular
“You’re turning him down, obviously,” Caz had said, taking two Waterford Crystal champagne flutes from her handbag, setting them on the table and reaching back in to the bag to extract a magnum of Veuve.
“What?” She frowned at my look of disbelief. This, even for Caz, was somewhat extreme. “I won the residents’ association raffle.”
“Jesus,” I shook my head. “Where I grew up, if you won the residents’ association raffle, you got a joint of beef.”
“Ah, but you didn’t live in the Fulham-Chelsea borders,” she responded, expertly uncorking the bottle so that only the merest hint of a sigh escaped.
“So,” she turned back to me and offered me a glass, “how exactly are you going to tell Gollum to sling his proverbial?”
“Well that’s the thing,” I said. “I’m not. Not now.”
Caz, the glass halfway to her mouth, froze, blinked like someone who’s just been told that their Gainsborough painting was actually knocked up in a garage in Dagenham last week, and, having finally processed my answer, swigged the glass down in one.
“Are you out of your mind?” she asked, topping the glass back up.
“No,” I sighed, “but I am out of money.”
“Ah,” a flicker of understanding blazed briefly behind her eyes, “and he’s offered to pay. How much?”
My friend was nothing if not focussed. Caz has always had a heart of gold, but – as she once said to me – a heart of gold without the cash to back it up is as much use as a title from the Holy Roman Empire.
Sadly, she was as skint as me most of the time.
“He’s not,” I answered glumly. “Well, that is, he hasn’t offered to.”
“So what’s the state of your finances got to do with the proposed visit from The Undead Inspectors?”
“That.” I nodded at the freezer, which, at that very moment let out a burp and went silent.
Caz and I looked at each other. “Do you,” she whispered in tones which suggested she’d read a few too many Stephen King novels in her day, “think it’s dead?”
And, in answer, the freezer clicked and began to make the high-pitched whine again.
“Thing is,” I answered, “I’ve got no money to fix that.”
“So?” she asked, topping us both up, dipping into her bag and extracting a selection of Fortnum pâtés and a demi baguette. “Help me out here, Daniel, because you’re making about as much sense as the lovely Ali on a bad day. Is it Stockhausen syndrome?”
“Stockholm,” I corrected her, thus adding to her confusion.
“You need the money to go to Sweden? Ah,” she nodded sagely, “is there a man involved. Only ever since you and the pretty policeman broke up…”
“No,” I shook my head, waved aside her offer of a Brussels pâté on baguette, “I’m not going to Sweden. That’s the syndrome you were getting at; and there is no man; and Nick and I have not broken up. We’re just…” I paused, searching for the right word, and failed, “we’re just on a break.”
“I see,” she said through a spray of crumbs, then she nodded, swallowed her pâté, washed it down with fizz and gave me the gimlet stare that Caz always used on me whenever she felt I wasn’t being entirely true with myself. “Not broken up. Just on a break. Seriously, Daniel – what is actually occurring with you and Nick?”
“Nothing,” I answered her, as the freezer began moaning like a warped Enya record on the wrong speed. “We’re good,” I said, “we talk from time to time, we might go for a drink next week, or the week after.”
“Lord,” Caz drawled, “you’re basically a middle-aged straight couple. Only duller. Life, Daniel, is passing. I mean, you do know that, right?”
I sighed. “Yes, Caroline, I do know that.”
“So how do you feel about him?”
“Feel?” I was puzzled.
“Yes, feel. I know I’ve spent my life repressing all my feelings, but that doesn’t mean I am completely unaware of them. Or of how important they are to the lower orders. So: How. Do. You. Feel. About. Him?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know.”
“Not good enough,” she answered. “Not at all good enough. When you think of him, what’s the first thing you think of?”
“His smile,” I said instantly. “It’s just – when he smiles it’s like his whole body smiles. Like he finds all the joy in the world at that exact moment, and just amplifies it.”
“Oh dear,” Caz hoisted the bottle and filled our two glasses to the brim. “You’ve got it bad, haven’t you?”
“It’s—” I searched for the word.
“If you say ‘complicated,’ I shall brain you, Mr Bird,” Caz said.
“Difficult,” I settled. “Nick’s married.”
“It’s a marriage of convenience,” she replied. “One he entered for genuinely altruistic reasons.”
“It’s a sham marriage to a woman who would – otherwise – be an illegal immigrant. And he’s a copper. The whole thing is a mess, and one that could lose him his job – and get him charged with breaking the law – if it gets discovered. And, as if that weren’t enough, the immigration mob are now sniffing around them looking for a crack in the story.”
“So he keeps the façade going a little longer, and then – when everything’s sorted and wifey can safely move on, on her own – they get a nice clean divorce, and he moves you in.”
I shook my head ruefully. “Caz, if I take that approach, I get to be a guilty secret in the background – someone to be shamefully shuffled in and out of back doors. And I don’t think I can do that.”
“Oh sweetest,” she refilled our glasses, toasting me, “you’re only a guilty secret if he – or you – feels guilt. Otherwise, you’re doing what people the whole world over do every day. People with less idealism but mor
e pragmatism than you – you’re living your life; making the best of an imperfect situation. There’s no guilt, no shame in that. And I’ll tell you one other thing, Mr Nick Fisher – the pretty policeman, whose smile lights up his whole body and makes you – even in the remembering – light up, loves you, Mr Bird. Don’t let idealism stop you loving him back.”
I stared at her open-mouthed. “When did you get so good at reading me?” I asked.
Caz smiled at me like a mother smiling at a slightly slow child. “Sweetest, you’re basically The Ladybird book of Lovelorn Gay Best Friends. I just try most of the time to avoid pointing out what a shambles you are emotionally. Glasshouses and all that, innit,” she said, making ‘innit’ sound like something Shakespearean, before winking at me and pecking me on the cheek.
The room was suddenly rent with a loud banging again as though Lenora herself was trying to bust her way out of her coffin, and Caz let out a small shriek, splashed a little champagne on her blouse, shot the freezer a filthy look (the waste of good champagne being about the only sin Caz could simply not accept), and, as she dabbed at the spot on her Westwood, jerked her head at the offending item of kitchen furniture.
“So what has this got to do with you letting Tavistock and his pals in here?”
“Because,” I said, “if Tavistock comes here unannounced, on – say – an official visit, and finds out my chest freezer is on the fritz, I will be shut down. Inability to chill prepared foods, or to keep frozen ingredients at a safe and consistent temperature. No more ‘Kitchen at The Marq.’”
“Ah.” The light dawned. “Whereas if we invite him in, we can more easily manage where he goes and what he sees.”
“Exactly,” I said. “So long as he doesn’t sense the spirits of the dearly departed in that bloody thing.”
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