Mystery City

by Alistair Lavers

  ‘PISS OFF BARRY!’shouted a wag in the crowd.

  ‘My name’s Darren,’ protested the DJ, still grinning, though the corners of his smile had gained some tautness, and he was starting to look more and more uncomfortable in front of the less than adoring crowd.

  ‘PISS OFF GORDON!’ yelled another wit.

  ‘GORDON IS A MORON! GORDON IS A…’

  ‘EH NOW! A BITTA RESPECT IN THE CHEAP SEATS… WE’RE VERY LUCKY TO HAVE YORKSHIRE COASTAL FM HERE TO SUPPORT THIS EVENT. SO SHOW SOME BLOODY MANNERS…’shouted Ted, slapping down the hecklers, though it only seemed to increase their irritation and impatience.

  ‘WAYNE!’

  A large gang of sharply-dressed new wave teens began to sing, leading in the rest of the audience. ‘GET YER MULLET OFF THE STAGE, GET YER MULLET OFF THE STAGE – IF YA WON’T GET YER MULLET OFF THE STAGE, WE’LL TELL THE COPS YER BIRD’S UNDER-AGE!’

  ‘SAD BASTARD!’

  ‘Trying his best to smile and laugh – like he was in on the teasing – Ted put his hands together and gave the audience a slow clap, returning his microphone swiftly to his chin before anyone launched another verbal barb. ‘RIGHT DARREN, WHO’S THE SECOND ACT FOR THIS BUNCH OF TWATS?’

  ‘THE SECOND ACT is… THE CARD CHEATS.’

  ‘WELL LET’S GET ‘EM UP ‘ERE, THREE CHEERS EVERYBODY! FOR THE CARD CHEATS! THANK YOU DARREN! GET ‘EM ON!’

  The two hosts rushed off into the safety of the wings, and then turned back to watch the second band pick up their instruments.

  ‘I thought you said you’d done this before,’ said Ted sharply, looking down on his protégé while he counted out a wad of notes in a brown envelope.

  ‘Of course I have! But they’re all punks and greasers, bloody smart arse students and Goths. They’re not my audience, I play the Top 40.’

  ‘You play the same shite as Radio One you mean. What’s the point of that? You could be playing The Everlys or the Beach Boys, Elvis, Hank Williams. Now that’s REAL music. An’ I don’t care if they’re not your audience. A professional copes with any crowd. You gave up after the first heckle. You do that in the clubs, and you’re dead. Where’s your mettle? You’re as wet as a friggin’ turbot, ‘an about as limp. Just stay out the bloody way until you can keep it up.’

  ‘People are generally friendlier to me on the radio. At the very least they’re polite. I’m not a damn comedian. What do you mean – keep it up?’

  ‘Too bloody right you’re not… What were they shouting about your girlfriend?’

  ‘She’s seventeen – we’ve known each oth…’

  ‘SEVENTEEN? You dirty bastard. You can keep it up for a bloody teenager can’t ya?’

  ‘I’m twenty-two!’

  At the front of the stage, the first band on the bill, the Card Cheats, were plugged in and taking up position. Simon, the drummer, tested his cymbals; then the singer and guitarist Jesse struck the strings of his Telecaster to prime the crowd. Cassandra, their bass player counted in the first song then kicked a plastic pint glass of stale water in the direction of two brothers who were trying to look up her tartan miniskirt.

  ‘WE’RE THE CARD CHEATS. WE DO POP SONGS IN A PUNK STYLE. This is our first number. Rah Rah RASPUTINNN! Get the bloody beers in…’

  Outside on Rope Walk, the queue was growing down the seagull-soiled pavements.

  ‘Can’t come in wi’chips…’ said Ian Dowson, one of Barnett’s weekend doormen, manhandling a woozy-looking youth with shaggy hair aside from the front entrance, guiding him onto the kerb to test his balance.

  ‘YOU SELL CHIPS INSIDE!’ he half-shouted, stumbling backwards off the pavement, dropping some of his food in the road.

  ‘Dump ‘em or eat ‘em then piss off. Ya barred!’ said Ian, as the young man sloped off, sulking, zigzagging unsteadily down the old flagstones that covered the narrow back road from the club.

  ‘Can I take this in?’ asked another young girl timidly, offering a half-eaten pitta bread for inspection.

  ‘No kebabs inside luv.’

  ‘There’s no meat in it – I’m a vegetarian…’

  ‘No kebabs. They get trod in t’carpets. Finish it off then you can come in. NEXT!’ he shouted, moving the girl aside into the ‘corral’, a roped-off area for people wanting some fresh air and quiet or respite from the smoky, raucous crush of bodies inside.

  ‘Move along, steady. Keep moving.’… ordered Simon Akin, Ian’s partner on the door, ushering more youngsters onto the edge of the vestibule. ‘Get yer money out!’

  ‘Can we get student discount?’asked Connor Knowles, holding up his Student Union card for the withering eyes of the doormen.

  ‘KIOSK…’ groaned Ian, pointing a meaty finger at Martine in the admittance booth. ‘See Martine or Paula,’ he added brusquely, avoiding any further eye contact.

  Outside the utility, where the door staff went to smoke and loiter, Brandon Kirk, Barnett’s head doorman, took another mouthful of Clausthaler alcohol-free lager and pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth, as he tried to form an opinion of its flavour. Sweetie, Mary Shipley’s misbehaving donkey, kicked out from her hiding place, hidden in an alcove of empty beer kegs and pallets, cracking the flux seal on the gas main.

  ‘All right then! Who’s in the second-class shaggers’suite?’ shouted Brandon, at the source of the noise, expecting to find a couple of sheepish teenagers with their trousers around their ankles.’

  ‘EEEAWWWWWWW!’

  ‘The donkey charged, just as Brandon stepped forwards, taking the doorman by surprise, knocking him off his feet as she trotted off towards the scent of the night air drifting in from Rope Walk.

  Chapter Twenty

  Tuesday Morning

  Lindsay Boldwood had finally elected to visit his local surgery in Scalby to try and identify the cause of his lost evenings, once he had visited the Job Centre in Whitborough to leave a card for the new staff vacancies. He had no more bookings in the week after Easter, which offered him a short window of opportunity in which to interview potential replacements– in time for the summer season. His formerly loyal young helpers had suddenly resigned and fled to the comparative safety of their respective college towns, never to return. There were five GPs on duty on the day of his visit, and as he didn’t have a particular favourite, being a very rare visitor to the surgery, he elected to see the first doctor available, Doctor Waller. Their conversation was brief but cordial and went exactly like this:

  ‘I think I’ve had a blackout…or blackouts.’

  ‘Oh? What makes you think that?’

  ‘Well, I was indoors and…’

  ‘At your hotel?’

  ‘Yeah, at the hotel. I remember feeling really hot and itchy – this funny feeling I’ve been getting. It just comes on me all of a sudden; then I seem to have some kind of swoon. The next thing I know, I wake up with no memory of what I’ve done. Sometimes, I’ve woken up without my clothes on. I’ve ripped them all off,’ he said, twisting the truth.‘It’s hard to describe…’

  ‘You have no memory of taking them off?’

  ‘No I don’t. It happened late afternoon, well, early evening, on two consecutive nights, at the end of the month.’

  ‘All your clothes?’

  ‘Aye,’ said Boldwood cautiously.‘I don’t particularly relish waking up in the buff in my profession – for obvious reasons. I’m not running a nudist colony.’

  ‘Is there any history of sleepwalking in your family?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have we ever taken your blood pressure Lindsay?’ asked Waller, attempting to displace his anxiety.

  ‘No, I know it was high for a while…’

  ‘Well we can do that today. If you’ve got no objections?’

  ‘No. I’ve got no objections Doctor.’


  ‘Any history of epilepsy, fits?’

  ‘EPILEPSY! I bloody hope not!’

  ‘Well…as your doctor, I have to consider everything. But it’s far more likely – if it is your blood pressure – that it’s low enough or high enough to cause you to swoon, though that still wouldn’t explain the torn clothing of course. You can develop epilepsy at any time in life, but it’s not the end of the world if you do. You’d just have to adjust to your new circumstances; it’s just one possible explanation Lindsay.’

  ‘Can you give me something for it… if I have it, that is?’

  ‘Yes, we can prescribe sodium valproate. It’s not a cure, but it should reduce the frequency or likelihood of any further attacks.’

  ’All right… I know my blood pressure is, or was, a little higher than it should be, but here’s the odd thing. It’s gone right down. I can’t understand it.’

  ‘So you’ve checked it yourself recently?’

  ‘Yes, I have. But the funny thing is, I used to be out of breath by the time I’d got to the second floor of the pub; my ticker used to be racing by the second landing. Now, I can skip up the stairs, as nimble as a cat, and hardly break sweat. That can’t be normal, can it?’

  ‘Are you taking any kind of drug – any stimulants… amphetamines?’

  ‘Do I look like that sort of person…?’

  ‘I have to ask, I’m sorry.’

  ‘No’s the answer. No I bloody DON’T.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m sorry Doctor… I’m not normally snappy. I’m just a bit out of sorts.’

  ‘That’s all right Mr Boldwood, you’re not the first person to swear in here, and you certainly won’t be the last. We’ll just forget that shall we? Are you taking any kind of medication at all? Any over the counter medicines, or natural remedies?’

  ‘I took some Milk of Magnesia Doctor, that’s all, but only recently. I’ve had an upset stomach and the chemist recommended it, the one in Whitby by the taxi rank. I still get the odd migraine too, not that many, but my blood pressure meant I couldn’t take that stuff. Imi…’

  ‘…gran?’

  ‘Yeah, the prescription stuff.’

  ‘And how much time passed, do you think, between you losing and regaining consciousness?’

  ‘Well, seven or eight hours at least. Sometimes more. It’s very unsettling.’

  ‘SEVEN HOURS?’

  ‘Aye… What are you looking at me like that for?’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  An Amputation at the Vet’s

  ‘Ducky duck..?’

  Several miles from Doctor Waller’s examination room, Maureen Moment’s insubordinate tan and white terrier Bert stood stiffly to attention, hackles raised, on the slippery white examination table in the vet’s at Aveyou Nympton. He was stubbornly ignoring the tatty plastic mallard, which his mother was trying to push in between his stained teeth, in an attempt to distract his attention away from the vet, who was getting himself into position in readiness to examine the agitated mongrel’s back passage.

  ‘Aww… there, there darling! Who’s Mama’s bwave liddle boyyy?’ she cooed, trying her best not to register any sign of having heard the snarl, which had just risen menacingly in his throat.

  ‘I think perhaps we’d all be more comfortable if you’d put his lead on and hold him tightly, Mrs Moment,’ suggested the vet, ‘just until we’ve checked him over. Otherwise, we may need to sedate him and I wouldn’t want to add to your bill, just for the sake of something that may only take a few moments. It wouldn’t be fair on Bert, either.’

  Despite the four fingers curled snuggly around his collar, the old dog twisted around and glared at the rubber-gloved hands that were about to go where no hands had gone before.

  ‘Sorry – he just doesn’t like it when there’s someone strange standing behind him,’ she added apologetically.‘He gets agitated.’

  ‘There’s a good boy,’ said the vet without much conviction, keeping his hands at a safe distance. Another slow snarl filled in the gap in the awkward silence.

  ‘He’s been turning round on himself for a few days now, and he keeps dragging his little bum cheeks on my carpets,’ explained Maureen nervously, trying to talk down the tension in the empty room.

  ‘Do you worm him regularly Mrs Moment?’

  ‘Yes, just last week actually.’

  ‘Mmmm. You say he’s been eating a lot of grass in the last few days?’

  ‘It might be because he ate a coin by accident a few days ago. It was just a small wee thing, but it worked its way out soon enough,’ she said, lying easily but watching the vet’s eyes for any hint of doubt.

  ‘In that case, he’ll not need an X-ray Mrs Moment, if you’re sure it’s come out. His lead’s secure is it?’

  ‘Yes!’ She said breezily.‘It’s fastened now.’

  ‘We won’t rule anything out at this stage. I suspect it could be his glands that need some attention, but if they’re not the cause of his discomfort it could be some kind of parasite.’

  ‘Goodness! I hope not!’

  ‘Don’t worry Mrs Moment. Catching a parasite isn’t the worst thing that can happen to a dog. I’ll be as quick as I can, a few seconds is all we need to check his glands,’he said, putting some alcohol gel onto his gloves. ‘You’ll have to hold him quite firmly now– ready?’

  ‘Ready when you are, Mr Reynard.’

  Bert, whose eyes were fixed on the clutch of brown spotted sausages near his hindquarters, was readying himself for the moment when they were close enough for him to make his move, although the sausages were in fact the pudgy sunburnt fingers of Mr Reynard the vet, squeezed into semi-opaque latex gloves, that were almost indistinguishable from the meaty sausages of his fantasies.

  The terrible scream from the examination room took everyone in the building by surprise. So sincere and heartfelt was Dr Reynard’s vocal expression of agony that his shouts caused two small girls in the waiting room to burst into tears. Laslo, a very nervous Great Dane, already on the edge of a panic attack, knocked down a display tower for Fur and Feather magazine then bolted for the exit, pulling his owner upright so swiftly he appeared to take flight like a water-skier snatched from a jetty. Two of the practice nurses rushed into the observation room as Maureen ran out, screaming at the receptionist to call for an ambulance as Mr Reynard chased Bert around the skirting boards, trying to retrieve his index finger from the jaws of the dastardly terrier.

  ‘Stop that bastard dog!’ roared the vet, running down the canine finger thief, as Bert streaked along the longest length of skirting towards the red leather settee.

  ‘THE WINDOW!’ yelled Maureen, realising the sash above the settee was wide open. ‘BERT! NO!’

  Next door to the doctor’s surgery, stood the Marine Biology Research Unit and a photographic laboratory, shared by the local Technical College and Whitborough Photographic Society, who leased rooms in the building for scientific research. There was also an annexe of Leeds University’s Biology department, inside which an autopsy was being conducted by a visiting Professor of Entomology, on a very unusual insect.

  ‘Have you ever seen one of these Chris? It’s a type of parasitic fly,’explained the professor to the lab technician next to him.‘One of a sample the pest controller’s recovered at the Gay Cavalier and the Technical College last week. Not a specimen native to the British Isles, it’s safe to assume, though I haven’t been able to identify the correct genus just yet. It’s not in any of the reference library’s source books.’

  ‘Why’s it here, in this country Prof?’

  ‘I daresay it came over in a food container from the tropics or one of the equatorial regions– one of those destined for the supermarket depots probably. A female probably laid its eggs in some of the produce and the larvae probably hatched at som
e point during the journey.’

  ‘It’s very… metallic. Two-tone, like them trousers that mods wear.’

  ‘Striking isn’t it? If you swatted one of these it would certainly ruin your wallpaper wouldn’t it? Have a look at the mouth parts under the microscope if you like… it’s perfectly harmless now.’

  ‘It’s dead is it?’ asked the technician, biting into an apple.

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Mmm– meaning..?’

  ‘Mmm –meaning very probably. It hasn’t shown any signs of life for some time – and it is pinned through the thorax.’

  ‘Just a straight “yes, it’s dead” will do. It’s not going to come back to life if I stick my face next to it is it Prof?’

  ‘That’s highly unlikely…’

  The technician leaned over the huge white microscope and grunted.

  ‘Eurgh!.. It’s got fangs on its gob!’

  ‘I think they might be barbs for holding onto sugar cane possibly, or reeds. That’s my best guess. Its physiology is quite remarkable in some respects.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘It doesn’t appear to have an anus.’

  ‘No anus? A mouth – but no arse?’

  ‘It’s indicative of organisms with a short lifespan, twenty-four hours at most.’

  ‘So they die off by themselves then?’

  ‘Yes. Typically, these insects would have completed the biological imperatives of their life cycle in that time, then expired of natural causes, becoming a food source for other animals.’

  ‘What kind of animal would want to eat one of these things?’

  ‘A great range of creatures I would imagine. If they aren’t consumed they’d degrade within the environment.’

  ‘They’d rot?’

  ‘They’re not immortal. They rot down like any other creature.’

  ‘Blumming ‘eck!’