Mystery City

by Alistair Lavers

  ‘Is this gonna take long, the pubs are open in ‘alf an hour?’

  ‘Ian, you’re a soldier of the revolution,’ said Mary earnestly.

  ‘Yeah, sorry. Just looking forward to a few beers.’

  ‘This has taken weeks of planning.’

  ‘Soz Mary.’

  ‘Just be quiet everybody and listen. Can everyone see now?’

  Brian and Dave Drake decided to go for a Chinese takeaway on their way home to Bader Drive on the Neatsfield Estate, after a manic day at the shop.

  ‘I thought that prat Phil Kennedy might have been in for his gear today. Are you gonna have Peking duck again?’

  ‘Not tonight. I’ll have the chicken curry and boiled rice. I need some stodge to soak up all the brandy coffee and the saturated fat from Corfe’s caff. Did any of the others come in while I was at the library?’ asked Brian wearily.

  ‘Just the two bouncers from Mystery City. And Jocky from Vicky’s. Dean says there was a big scrap inside the Orange Tree last night and someone clocked Kennedy. Might be why he’s staying in until his black eye settles down, so he probably won’t come around until late Monday.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘How’s the rhino book?’

  ‘I don’t know. I haven’t had chance to look at it yet. I’ll have a butcher’s at bedtime.’

  ‘Another two days of mayhem. Dean’s done sixty LPs today – and we’ve sold all them picture discs.’

  ‘And we’ve run out of Twisted Sister t-shirts?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Shit…’

  Chapter Eight

  Boldwood’s Excursion

  The worst possible kind of light shone down through Lindsay Boldwood’s bathroom window, just as he stepped into his steaming bath to pull the curtains aside and raise the sash window. Although the moon was now waning over Cloughton, Boldwood had already transformed for the first time – and could now bring on the wolf at will after sundown. His low mood could also cause the change subconsciously after too much stress, even as the moon waned – and he had had more than enough aggravation from his younger staff earlier in the day to start another night of carnage.

  His skin began to prickle and darken suddenly as the virus rushed from its hiding place in the tiny gland behind his eyes, though at least on this particular night he was in the bath and not on the toilet, as he had been when it had first come upon him the previous Tuesday. Boldwood’s flannel and duck were the first victims of his second hormonal eruption, torn to shreds by his soapy claws as the man-wolf tried to extract himself from the huge roll-top bath, nails skating in panic and rage on the slippery bubble-covered porcelain. Finally, a soaking wet werewolf flopped panting onto the bath mat and sniffed its slippers, then shook itself dry, growling at the Sooty and Sweep toilet roll covers as he approached the open sash once more.Through the gap between the bath and the wall, Boldwood climbed onto the sill, hesitated for a second on the window ledge then leapt down onto the arbour frame and crashed onto the roof of the love seat, from where he dropped down onto the decking. Two of the older single male guests who had been imbibing steadily since lunchtime saw him approach one of the tables where a tray of half-eaten prawn cocktails, sausage rolls and vol-au-vents had been abandoned.

  ‘Hey Rab… have yee sheen hem ootseed? Ez that the beyst werewolf costume yew ever sheen… odd theng tee wear forra Lords an’ Ladies neet,’ remarked Nairn Thompson, glancing at Boldwood’s haunches through their window onto the yard.

  ‘Aye, therrs alluz one who’ll tunn up eynn the wrong threads… Ah thenk yon fella shudd lose a few pounds eh? There’s no gev by the sheams – ugly specimen, very real-essteck though.’ Then Rab craned forwards, over the drop-leaf table by the windowsill, leaning on their cases to get a better view and stop himself from swaying too much, whilst he re-examined the form of Mr Boldwood through the old glass window panes… ‘OH SHITE!’

  Boldwood sniffed the food, but declined the seafood pastries. The aroma of meat juices had drifted into the yard from the open doors of the Crescent Moon takeaway a hundred yards away on Pilger Street, one of the smaller lanes off Cloughton High Street; the powerful scent, floating on the breeze from the great slab of lamb turning slowly in front of a grill, made Boldwood’s coat prickle and he immediately broke into a run, chasing down the smell of the meat.

  Upon reaching the back alley behind the kitchen, Boldwood the beast slipped unseen through the open back gate. He sniffed the air cautiously, but his path to paradise was suddenly blocked when the dishwasher boy Aydin slammed the rear fire door shut, on his way to the fridge, just before the monster in the yard could leap inside. Puzzled by the ribbed steel sheet covering the door face, Boldwood turned his attention to the grate under the sink waste pipe and sniffed the iron drain cover, just as the chef poured a huge pan of boiled cabbage leaves into a mesh strainer over the sink.

  Three gallons of bitter green boiling water burst violently over the drain, splashing Boldwood’s nose and tongue. The roar from his agony caused the chef to let go of the pan handles of the rice pan and flee into the toilet in blind panic. Boldwood dashed out of the yard and ran into the fields at the back of the terrace, plunged his head in the brook to relieve his pain, then galloped off into the wood and onto the track to the old railway line to Whitby and Kettleness, guided by his knowledge of the landscape, and the dim recollections from boyhood memories of trips to Sandsend and Runswick Bay.

  He was travelling quickly now, at least twice the speed of a thoroughbred racehorse, despite his bulk, driven by an urge to test the extent of his strength and endurance. He found that he was tireless and ran on, following the railway from higher ground, as it snaked its way around the contours of the moor on its path to Whitby. For miles he ran, keeping the track on his right as he headed north towards the coast until he came to the tower of Kettleness church, overlooking the narrow lane which led down to the two farms and the small group of cottages that sat before the cliffs. Boldwood stopped and sniffed the air, stalking the edge of the churchyard beside the boundary wall, taking care to stay downwind of his prey, a small flock of ewes and lambs on the edge of sleep in the next field. He found himself a spot downwind, just behind a thinned out section of hedge in a clump of reeds, concealed himself behind the foliage and waited.

  Chapter Nine

  Lords’ and Ladies’ Night

  The Shirestones Hotel had always been full for the Easter Bank Holiday, for as long as anyone in Cloughton village could remember. It was the first of the many big paydays for the business, which began in the spring and finished with the Gold Cup Races at Oliver’s Mount, at the end of September. Since Lindsay had taken over the freehold, he had started to sell the hotel to travel companies in the bigger Scottish towns and cities, the same businesses that took bookings for the traditional annual pilgrimage south that was known as Scots fortnight. His intention was to draw down some of the same crowd for the Easter holidays and save himself time and money by securing block bookings with the least amount of effort on his part. It had worked very well and left him time to concentrate on other matters.

  To this end, Boldwood had decked out the hotel with bunting and flags to create a party atmosphere and organised three different themed nights for the Easter Weekend, in an attempt to keep his guests on site during the evening, to increase his takings. Good Friday and Easter Saturday were billed as Tarts and Vicars Night and Lords and Ladies Night respectively. Easter Sunday was billed as the Hawaii Five-0 Coconut Lounge Dance Night, with a short set by the Bingley Beach Boys, a world-class tribute band from West Yorkshire who were booked at the Paul Murray Concert Hall in Whitborough later the same night.

  Friday night had started promisingly, but thinned out a little, when a minibus arrived to whisk off some of the guests for a pub crawl in Whitby. But as soon as his regulars in the village arrived, their absence was barely noticed, until the remaining str
eetwalkers and priests disappeared in a small fleet of taxis after 9pm, driving off in the other direction after hearing about the fire on HMS Brazen, to go and gloat over the carnage. Saturday night was looking much better for Lindsay and the staff, though Boldwood had suddenly disappeared just as the buffet had finished. Fortunately, the hotel was in good hands and he was not immediately missed. The party was still in full swing when Boldwood (still on four legs) padded back into the hotel’s rear yard covered in blood at 1am.

  After an entree of lamb, followed by a prize cockerel and the savage dismemberment of two elderly ewes, Boldwood had wrapped up his murderous foray above Whitby with a main of Cycliste(s) sur Tente (al dente) x2. He also despatched a dog fox, which had hissed at him, as an impulse kill prior to his return. He was, in his own words, well and truly stuffed when he returned home in the form of his supernatural alter ego, with no room or appetite for anything bigger than a Pepperami or, indeed, a wafer-thin piece of Yorkshire Terrier. As a man, his attitude to food was to be opportunistic when it was freely available, but frugal when it was something that needed to be bought, an attitude he carried over into the wolf. So when he came across one of his guest’s tiny dogs – tied up, and waiting patiently opposite the men’s for its master – he opened his jaws and advanced for one last bite. Then the toilet door swung open and the man mountain of Glaswegian shipbuilding that was Robert Cunncliffe emerged from the washroom.

  What he saw in front of him was the last thing he had expected to see in a hotel corridor in Yorkshire or anywhere else. Wolves he had seen, not in first floor hotel corridors, or anywhere else in a domestic setting. A wolf bigger than a fully-grown male lion was a completely different kettle of fish, though Mr Cunncliffe didn’t dwell too much on the scene. His dog was in danger and he wasn’t the type of person who had ever been a bystander in an emergency or a fight. Cunncliffe looked about for a weapon, saw a suitable object, then stepped carefully to the blind side of the gigantic predator which appeared to be about to pounce, seizing one of Boldwood’s stout antique warming pans, conveniently situated on a filigree ironwork bracket below the picture rail, just within reach.

  Boldwood never heard the vicious-looking iron pan head, as it swept down onto his shaggy shoulder blades with all the force the mighty Scotsman could muster, shattering his spine, with a noise like a box of hazelnuts being crushed under a pallet of bricks. His chin hit the carpet with a loud thud. Cunncliffe added a second blow to his spinal cord, as severe as the first, then jumped on his skull and scooped up his trembling pet.

  Worried he had over-reacted and mortally injured the thing rolling in agony on the rug, Cunncliffe checked the other doors on the landing were still shut, then ran clumsily up the staircase before anyone who was sober came into view.

  Bruised, battered and badly constipated, Boldwood squirmed and whimpered in anguish until his injuries began to heal. Then he limped up the royal blue Axminster-shod stairs from the function room corridor, just as the conga was joined down below at the Lords and Ladies disco. Behind the curtains and the glass partition, lights flashed and twirled, knees jerked and legs kicked as the half-cut train of Caledonian revellers hopped and jigged to the happy trumpets and bongo beats of Modern Romance’s ‘Best Days of Our Lives’.

  Boldwood the werewolf could stand no more. Squatting on his thick muscular haunches beside the telephone table on the second floor near his rooms, the landlord clenched his teeth and squeezed, using his abdominal and pelvic muscles to best effect, forcing an enormous compacted stool of human and animal remains to the eye of his anus. Foul clouds of gas hissed past the swollen walls of his sphincter and the foul turd which had just reached the end of its journey shot from his haunches like a party streamer, accompanied by a great splash of blood slurry and semi-digested fox, just as Kid Creole’s apologetic hymn to mistaken paternity broke out from the speaker cabinets. Boldwood, now saggy-legged, but free of his tormenting blockage, began to shrink back into human form.

  Chapter Ten

  The Spy in the Cab

  Two smartly-dressed, broad-shouldered men with tough faces, carrying identical briefcases, boarded the first-class compartment of the 08.55 express to Edinburgh, from platform ten at King’s Cross Station, on the Sunday morning of the Bank Holiday weekend and took a reserved compartment in the middle of the car. Neither man spoke, until they had locked the door to their compartment. The older man, who appeared to be in his late forties, was wearing clothes of a slightly better cut, a stone Barbour mac, a vanilla shirt, Burberry tie and a mid-brown three-piece suit with Gladstone boots. The younger man was dressed in a navy Burton mac and a blue pinstripe suit, a light blue shirt, RAF tie and black Air Force-style shoes with shorter hair. He remained standing, lingering by the window onto the narrow corridor outside their partition, whilst the older man sat down and brought out a key from his pocket to unlock the padlock holding the links of a silk-covered chain to his wrist.

  ‘If the corridor’s clear Bruce, you can do the sweep now. Draw the curtains first.’

  ‘It’s two hours thirty minutes to York is it?’ asked the younger MI5 officer as he carefully checked the upholstery, trim and fittings in their compartment for bugs of the electronic variety.

  ‘One stop at Peterborough.’

  Several minutes passed before the younger man paused and turned to his colleague.

  ‘Nothing in here with us sir. Looks like the RMT/KGB stooge didn’t get wind of us.’

  ‘Perhaps the bastard is having a sickie– if he’s seen the news this morning. Control said the BBC and ITV breakfast shows were going to run the announcement about the three expulsions today. Make sure you go outside to show the ticket inspector our stubs when he comes. Don’t let anyone in here until we get to York,’ said the older man. ‘Not even the Secretary of State for Defence. Now switch this on, and put it on the seat beside you,’ he said, handing his colleague a portable radio jammer. ‘We can use this one at the B&B too, because we won’t be watching the TV in our room either.’

  ‘How many days have they given us up there – if we can get a bloody room?’

  ‘It’s a discretionary. Open-ended for MACE assignments. Don’t worry about the room, that’s the beauty of working for the Intelligence Services, we get to go where no one else can.’

  ‘MACE, sir?’

  ‘Mass casualty events committee. It’s only fallen between our section and theirs because the victims were 50/50 civilians and MOD personnel. There’s a sub-committee in the service that meets to discuss “the detection and prevention of”. This business seems to have caught the committee by surprise, which is why it’s been expanded – to spread the blame. Rule number one, on assignment: don’t be left without the best girl’s telephone number if the music stops. If we don’t find the hands that held the smoking gun in Whitborough-on-Sea, then we’re shafted. We are now MACE-affiliated Ops agents. However, there is some good news, we’ve been shunted two bands higher on the pay scale, which is permanent and irreversible – even if we fall into the back offices without so much as a fingerprint. It’s compensation– for career death, which is permanent secondment to translation duties to you and me. Personally, I’d prefer a discharge to listening to hours of small talk from a bedsitter in Prague. But that’s the worst that’ll happen.’

  ‘Oh wonderful! That’s just what I’ve been waiting to hear…’

  ‘No need to be fatalistic yet. We’ve got a couple of nights’ bed and breakfast initially. Rooms with a sea view, in a guest house called Bronte’s Rest on Long Acre. It’s near the castle, apparently; run by a chap who’s been in RAF intelligence. There’s plenty of tracks and paths around the castle’s dykes and flanks, so you’ll be able to make the most of all the fresh air when you go out for your morning constitutional. If it’s not up to scratch we’ve got plenty of time to look for something more convivial. But it looks very nice on the leaflet they sent. Some small compensation for our tr
ouble.’

  ‘They don’t take tradesmen at Bronte’s Rest do they?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that. I don’t want another night like the one in Douglas.’

  ‘Well that Libyan gun runner you put in the spirit world won’t be giving his neighbours any trouble for a while. It’s amazing what you can do with a cheap umbrella and the right sort of training. I can still see the look of agony on his face when you broke the spindle cog, slamming it past his tonsils.’

  ‘Do you know what I hate about Yorkshiremen?’

  ‘I didn’t realise you’d spent enough time there to develop such strong opinions on the inhabitants,’said Stocke, the senior man, looking at the ingrained dirt and nicotine-stained windows with disgust.

  ‘You’d feel the same if you’d had three years at Leeds University. They’re not a pleasant race, in the main. I’ve never met one that didn’t try and bulldoze me into silence and awe with their own half-baked opinions. It doesn’t matter what you happen to be talking about, you’ve got to hear what they think about it first. And the women are worse than the men. Before you’ve even got a conversation out of the front gate their mouths are open. They just love the sound of their own prattle.’

  ‘Really? Well.., if the police fit the pattern, then at least we should have a meaningful discussion. I was more concerned it was going to be one-sided, like these things usually are. I don’t know why we have such a terrible effect on people. As soon as someone I’m at ease with finds out I work for the Security Service, the conversation dries up faster than a sultana in a pizza oven – and they suddenly remember they’ve got to be somewhere else; or they develop a sudden speech impediment. It’s almost like they can see horns breaking out through the skin on your brow.’