DVD Extras Include: Murder (The Mervyn Stone Mysteries, #2)

by Nev Fountain

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Did you make it back okay?’

  ‘What? Who is this?’

  ‘From Hambley Hall. I hope your encounter with Lionel wasn’t upsetting.’

  ‘Who is this?’

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself, I am Graham Goldingay.’

  ‘How did you get this number?’

  ‘I know a lot of things. Phone numbers are the merest tip of my information iceberg.’

  ‘I don’t know how you got this number, but I’m putting the phone down. Please don’t call again, or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hang up if I were you. I’m ringing to inform you that I have opened the red briefcase.’

  ‘Red briefcase? What red briefcase?’

  ‘I think you know what red briefcase. The one Mervyn Stone and I found in the locker of a squash club in Kensington. The same locker that was opened by a key hidden inside a statuette of the Virgin Mary and Child. Stop me when you work out what red briefcase I’m talking about.’

  Silence.

  ‘I made a deal with Mervyn Stone that he would be the first person I would ring when I got it open. That I would tell him what was inside.’

  ‘And did you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘When I got the briefcase open, I thought better of it. I thought I should contact you and ask you if you wanted it.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And do you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you’d say yes. I think we should meet somewhere private.’

  ‘Where do you suggest?’

  ‘I have a production company. The BBC leases me rooms and equipment for certain projects. I have a room booked tomorrow which would otherwise not be used.’

  ‘And where is this room?’

  ‘I think you might find it amusingly apt.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  In Recording Suite 4, everything was exactly as it had been on the day of the DVD commentary. Bowls of chocolates were placed enticingly on the table.

  And there were bottles of water; a dozen of them on a silver tray, all in rows like soldiers standing to attention.

  Marcus Spicer’s murderer came in.

  ‘Hello?’

  The room seemed empty. The murderer walked up to the table. Picked up one of the bottles. Put it down again.

  ‘Hello?’ the murderer said again, wandering into the studio.

  Mervyn’s head popped up.

  ‘Hello there!’ Mervyn said.

  ‘Mervyn?’ said the murderer.

  ‘Sorry, you were expecting to meet Graham Goldingay, weren’t you?’ Mervyn grinned. ‘That was a bit of a fib. Sorry. I’m getting better at impersonating him, I think. Practice makes perfect.’

  ‘What’s all this about?’ said the murderer.

  ‘The bit about him having the red briefcase wasn’t a fib. Graham has got it, as far as I’m aware. I don’t know if he’s got it open yet, but I don’t really need to know what’s inside. I’ve got a pretty shrewd idea anyway.’

  The murderer looked puzzled, suspicious. ‘Look, what’s going on Mervyn? It wasn’t easy for me to get in today.’

  ‘Oh don’t get me wrong. I’m really glad you could make it. I know you’re busy. I’ve arranged another DVD commentary recording. I want you to help with it, you’re my special guest. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Did you go to the toilet before you came in? I wouldn’t want you to be uncomfortable before we start.’

  ‘Seriously, Mervyn, if you don’t explain yourself, I’m leaving.’

  ‘I’ll do better than explain myself. I’ll show you.’

  ‘Show me what?’

  ‘Marcus Spicer’s killer, in the act of murdering him.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just put the headphones on.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  The murderer looked nervous, scared. ‘Because I don’t want to.’

  ‘You want the murderer caught, don’t you? Then this will clear it up.’

  The murderer backed to the door, but Mick appeared from nowhere. She shut the door and leaned back on it, arms folded.

  ‘No way, cupcake.’

  Trevor appeared too, from the recording suite. He looked cold and angry, not a cringing apologist at all.

  ‘Sorry, but you’re not going anywhere,’ said Trevor. ‘Just a few words of advice. While you’re watching the screen, try not to just describe what you’re seeing. We can all see what’s on the screen. Use what you see to remind yourself. If you have any anecdotes, keep it light and friendly.’

  The murderer looked very afraid.

  Trevor continued, a hint of menace creeping into his voice. ‘Don’t worry about revealing how it’s going to end. You’re not spoiling it for us, because we’ve seen it before.’

  ‘Bollocks to this,’ said the murderer. ‘I’m leaving now. Get out of my way.’

  ‘So keep the chat going, keep the energy up, and don’t swear or make defamatory remarks,’ said Trevor. ‘You are being recorded, remember.’

  The murderer tried to get past Mick, but she wasn’t moving.

  ‘Get out of my way!’

  Frustrated, the murderer tried to prise Mick’s hand from the door handle.

  ‘Give it up, Ironside,’ said Mick. ‘You’re not going anywhere.’

  ‘Cheryl, please…’ said Mervyn, sadly. ‘The police have the recording too. You might as well talk me through what you did and why.’

  Cheryl smiled; a dead humourless smile. She walked up to Mervyn, who was sitting at the desk in front of the screen. It was such an odd feeling, Mervyn thought, to be staring up at Cheryl’s face.

  She put her hands on her hips. Mervyn proffered a spare pair of headphones.

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ she said.

  ‘Humour me. You played me like your own personal detective. You put me in a hamster wheel and made me run full speed on the spot. It’s only fair. You owe it to me to tell me.’

  She sighed, and took the headphones. ‘Okay Mervyn. For old time’s sake. I’ll play it your way. Now what are we going to watch? As if I didn’t know.’

  Cheryl and Mervyn put on their headphones. Mick and Trevor assumed their positions on the other side of the glass. Mick crossed her arms just like Joanna had before, a fearsome genie from a dark fairy tale.

  Trevor pressed some buttons on the console in the studio, and the screen in front of them flickered into life. On it was a steady image, like a CCTV camera picture. The camera was high up, showing an aerial view of the inside of a toilet cubicle.

  Cheryl nodded. ‘Lionel’s recording. I might have known. I’m going to appear any moment, aren’t I?’

  Trevor’s voice buzzed in their headphones. ‘Don’t describe what’s on the screen, and don’t get ahead of yourself.’

  Despite herself, Cheryl laughed. So did Mervyn.

  Sure enough, someone appeared, creeping stealthily. A figure buttoned up inside a trenchcoat, a wide-brimmed hat.

  The figure locked the cubicle door, but did none of the usual things people did when they were inside. The figure stood on the toilet and wrestled with the grille in the roof. Long manicured fingernails scraped against the grille, pushing it up. After some nudging and scraping, it was edged to one side. The figure reached into the hole and brought down a small dusty hip flask.

  ‘So, Cheryl,’ said Mervyn. ‘The floor is yours.’

  ‘Okay, this is me putting cyanide in Marcus’s hip flask. The hip flask he stashed in the roof. The hip flask at the moment is full of vodka. Marcus always said he’d given up the drink, but of course he hadn’t.’

  On the screen, the figure opened the lid of the toilet and poured the contents of the flask away. Then she fished in her shoulder bag, took out a clear plastic bottle, and poured all of it into the flask until it was full again.

  ‘Like a l
ot of alcoholics, Marcus was a secret drinker,’ she continued. ‘First, he hid booze all over the house; in pot-plants, books, under floorboards. But of course, being Marcus, he got more ambitious. He hid bottles everywhere he went. He hid them in Joanna’s office, at the gym, in his club… And he hid them in the toilets of the BBC, as you can see.’

  Mervyn looked at the screen sadly. ‘He loved parading his secret alcoholism in front of other people, pouring vodka into his orange juice at the BBC club. I never realised how extreme it had got.’

  Cheryl gave a cold smile. ‘He knew it was naughty, Mervyn. He knew he wasn’t supposed to, but he loved to do it. He loved the deceit. He loved the idea of walking out of the house knowing he’d have a “secret supply” everywhere he went. So when I decided to kill him, I went around all his haunts doing a little treasure hunt, looking for his secret flasks in their secret places, replacing his booze with liquid cyanide. I nipped into the BBC using Joanna’s pass, which I nicked. The flask was easy to find. Marcus was so predicable.’

  Mervyn shook his head in admiration. ‘It was a stroke of genius. It was just a matter of time before he pulled out a flask from one of his hiding places, drank the cyanide, and you would be nowhere near him at the time. A perfect alibi—because you, as the murderer, had the perfect accomplice. The victim himself.’

  ‘It was a perfect crime, Mervyn. Shame about Lionel and his filthy little toilet camera. You wouldn’t have worked it out without this bloody recording.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I did work it out,’ said Mervyn, tetchily. He was stung at being dismissed so casually. ‘I worked it out just before I saw this footage, actually, and I did it with the help of the commentary of “The Burning Time”.’

  ‘That bloody thing.’

  ‘Yes, that “bloody thing”. On the recording of the commentary, the sound of Marcus opening the bottle was really loud, like a collection of pistol shots. It was so loud Robert had to stop the commentary.’

  He cued Trevor, who pressed a button. Marcus’s final seconds echoed through their headphones .

  ‘…those are the stakes we’re playing for… And I for one don’t want to be tied to one just yet…’

  KLAK-LAK-LAK-LAK-LAK

  ‘Sorry, just opening my water.’

  Mervyn picked up a bottle from the table. ‘I’ve opened two of those Estuary English bottles since Marcus’s murder. I saw Joanna open one in this very recording suite, and I saw Mick over there open one last night… And each time they all sounded like this…’

  He twisted the top, and a timid click-click-click-click emitted from the bottle.

  ‘But Marcus’s bottle sounded exactly like this…’

  He took out a bottle of pills and twisted the childproof lid.

  KLAK-LAK-LAK-LAK-LAK.

  ‘That was another nice touch of Marcus’s,’ said Mervyn. ‘Very him, showing off his own cleverness. Actually using the noise of the pill bottle he’d got in his pocket to make it sound like the water bottle’s seal was breaking; to make it look like he hadn’t opened the bottle in the toilet beforehand and filled it up with what he thought was vodka. He made it look like a miracle.’

  ‘A bloody miracle,’ spat Cheryl. ‘It was bloody annoying.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Isn’t it obvious? I didn’t plan it to be a bloody miracle. I just thought he’d pull out a flask from a hidey-hole and neck it down straight away. I didn’t expect the bugger to wander into a crowded room and poison himself in front of everybody. I’d spent weeks waiting for that phone call, to hear about him being found dead in some corner of a room with a flask of cyanide in his hand; I had a ready-made forged suicide note, all sealed and ready to send off to Joanna in the post; Marcus complaining about the pressures of being a fraud. Of living a lie. Admitting that I’d written all his books and he’d taken all the credit.’ Cheryl smiled sadly. ‘And I would come forward—reluctantly—as the real author of his books, and carry on the legacy.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-THREE

  ‘I should have realised,’ said Mervyn. ‘I should have realised that someone like Marcus would never have the dedication or concentration to even read a novel, let alone write one.’

  ‘I was young and keen,’ sighed Cheryl. ‘And in love. Marcus was making a name for himself on the chat show circuit, but he wasn’t capitalising on it. He wasn’t thinking of the future. I could see what needed to be done, so I just rolled up my sleeves and wrote the books.’

  ‘And Marcus let you?’

  ‘Of course he did. He was lazy.’

  ‘And you let him?’

  ‘Of course I did. I was in love.’ Cheryl rubbed her forehead. ‘But Marcus and I had a deal. An agreement.’

  ‘You agreed that you would do all the work, and he would take the credit.’

  She laughed. ‘Yeah, I suppose that’s right too. That’s why he called me his “Little Mary”. Not after Mary the Madonna; after Mary Magdalene. The woman who did the work, but got no credit. The one that got airbrushed out of history. Marcus thought that was very amusing.’

  ‘Marcus would.’

  ‘But we had an agreement. I forced him into it, while he was pissed. We agreed that if one of us became ill or died, then we’d come clean to the world. And I would get my moment of recognition.’

  ‘And then you got cancer. And Marcus had second thoughts.’

  ‘Of course he did. He dithered, he argued, he persuaded me that the time wasn’t quite right. He took long trips away. I had a nasty feeling that he was waiting for me to die.’ Her face hardened. ‘And then I became sure of it. All my notes. All my research, all evidence that I’d written the books disappeared from the house overnight, while I was away in hospital having chemo.’

  ‘I presume he put all the notes in a red briefcase with gold clasps?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose. He did have one like that. It was then I finally woke up to the fact that I would never get the credit for my books.’

  ‘So you decided to kill him.’

  ‘I knew that spineless bastard wouldn’t have the courage to destroy my notes. He’d need them some day, if he was interviewed by a newspaper, and the poor sap needed to be reminded of what he was supposed to have written.’

  ‘Crib notes. Like the summaries they give us for DVD commentaries.’

  ‘If you like. So I just had to work out where he’d put them. Another little hiding place to find. Once I’d worked that out, I could kill him.’

  ‘And then the statuette got stolen.’

  Cheryl nodded. ‘And then the statuette got stolen. He went frantic. He spent more time looking for that fucking statuette than we’d spent together during our fake marriage. He sent Aiden out to every bring-and-buy sale in the country. He was about as subtle as a fucking brick. When my spies in Stoneleigh, Parsons and Williams told me I’d been cut out of his will and replaced by that congenital airhead Samantha Carbury, everything slipped into place.’

  ‘What slipped into place?’

  ‘Haven’t you worked out why he did that, Mervyn? I realised the instant I heard.’

  ‘Please enlighten me. It’s fascinating.’

  ‘Thanks, I will. My darling fake husband, as you can probably guess from his photo displays, his ridiculous Spicer Institute and his silly tricks with his will, was a man obsessed with his legacy. He wanted to be known as Mr Best-selling Novelist and Godhater-In-Chief long after he’d died and ascended to a non-existent heaven. Everyone has a Jesus complex to some extent, Mervyn; to be remembered after we’re gone. It’s why you and me, we’re both writers. It’s why I wanted credit for my work, after all these years. It’s why you do these DVD commentaries.’

  Mervyn said nothing. He didn’t have to.

  ‘Everyone has a Jesus complex, and Marcus had a bigger Jesus complex than most.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘He knew there was the tiniest chance that I might outlive him. Not a huge chance, but the teeniest tiniest chance that I might. He got death threats
all the time. It wasn’t beyond the realms of imagination that a religious freak might stab him through his minuscule heart with a sharpened crucifix.’ She looked at him with her huge green eyes. ‘So what happened if he’d died and the statuette got recovered? It would come right back to me of course.’

  ‘Or worse, your brother.’

  ‘That would have been bad, too, for Marcus. I’m not an idiot, and he knew I wasn’t an idiot. Obviously, the statuette was important to him in some way. If I ever got it back, I’d examine it. My brother certainly would. He’d smash it to bits with his hammer first chance he got. So Marcus transferred everything he owned to Samantha, with some bullshit justification that she was his first love blah blah blah. What he was thinking was, if the statuette got recovered, it would get sent off to some dizzy cow who always left her front door open because she wanted positive spirit energy to flow up her skirt. Easy for Aiden to burgle.’

  Despite himself, Mervyn choked up a smile. Cheryl shook her head disbelievingly. ‘It was so idiotic of Marcus. The fool. He took away the inheritance. The fact I wouldn’t get any money took away the most obvious motive to kill him and gave the motive straight to Samantha. He practically signed his own death warrant. Arsehole.’

  ‘I would imagine that Marcus gave Aiden instructions to find the stolen statue, get hold of the key, get hold of the notes and destroy them. He didn’t stop carrying out his master’s orders, even though his master was dead. Did you think Aiden knew Marcus was a fraud?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I don’t think so. Aiden’s a simple soul. He can’t stop being loyal to his master, like a dog sleeping by his dead owner. I’m certain Marcus wouldn’t have told Aiden what the notes actually were. Marcus would want to keep it between himself and poor little me, his dying wife.’

  ‘So that was your plan. Marcus dies from apparent self-poisoning, a suicide note is discovered, Marcus confesses he’s a fraud by letter, you find the proof that you wrote the books and emerge as the real Marcus Spicer.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘But things didn’t go quite as planned.’

  ‘Too bloody right,’ she snapped. ‘Marcus’s quiet little “suicide” becomes the Vengeance of the Lord and the world’s press goes mental. Not that I didn’t think it was funny, the God squad having a collective orgasm over his death, but it turned it into a murder hunt. So, before his death I was hunting for the notes to prove I wrote the books… Now I was hunting for the notes to shred them. To make sure no one knew I had a motive to kill Marcus.’