Cursed Among Sequels (The Mervyn Stone Mysteries, #3)

by Nev Fountain

‘Are you all right?’ asked Nick.

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said in a dull monotone.

  ‘No you’re not. You’re shaking. You’ve got delayed shock.’

  ‘Okay, not so fine,’ he moaned.

  ‘You need to get to bed.’

  ‘No, I’m all right.’

  ‘No, you need to get to bed, seriously. I’ve seen this happen before…’

  Louise sighed. ‘Yeah yeah, cos you had this big a shock once…’ she intoned, ‘…and it took you weeks to calm down, your hair fell out in lumps, and you were on all these anti-depressants…’

  ‘Shut up, Louise…’

  ‘…And after the trial, you flew straight back to England with Glyn, who looked after you, and that’s why you’ll never be apart. I’ve heard it all before. Sooo many times.’

  ‘Just shut up for a minute and help me with him.’

  ‘I’ve had a long day,’ snapped Louise, ‘and it ends now. You help him. I’m going home.’ She picked up her bag and vanished into the ladies.

  Nick pulled Mervyn up and tried to carry him out. A man saw him struggling and helpfully grabbed Mervyn’s other arm.

  ‘Had a bit too much, has he?’ said the man.

  ‘He’s from London,’ explained Nick.

  *

  Nick leaned him up against the wall.

  ‘Now just breathe deeply.’ He nipped back inside to get their bags.

  Mervyn breathed deeply and tilted his head back, staring up at the stars. How weird to see them so clearly; artificial light didn’t fill the sky and overwhelm their twinkle. He wondered if there would be a point in the future when the only stars kids saw would be computer-generated lights on silly science-fiction shows.

  He clutched his head. His brain was screaming at him to do something; to tell someone about Ken. Then something else was screaming at him. Outside his head. A real scream, long and loud.

  It was Louise. She was in trouble. He staggered upright, lurched around the corner of the pub. There were the toilets, quaintly situated outside the pub, in the corner of the car park. Then Mervyn stopped dead, as if he’d been punched in the mouth. What he saw filled his vision, and he recoiled.

  Louise was jammed up against the wall of the women’s toilet, a young unshaven man wearing a leather jacket and jeans around his knees had skewered her on the brickwork. Her hands were gripping him hard, scarlet fingernails decorating his shoulders like epaulettes. ‘Oh! Oooh! Oh! Fuck me hard Jim, you rough hairy bastard! Fuck me till I fart!’

  Mervyn hurriedly crept away. No good would come of the situation if either of them saw him. Nick came out with the bags and heard the noise. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘That’s Louise!’ He moved to the corner, but Mervyn grabbed his arm.

  ‘She’s not in any trouble. Well, not in any physical danger. She’s fine.’

  Nick stopped, realising what he was listening to. ‘Oh.’

  ‘It seems Louise has found a way to have true Cornish blood pulsing inside her.’

  Nick handed Mervyn his satchel and together they hurried out of the pub car park, Louise’s lustful moans echoing into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  It was only after they’d been walking for five minutes that Mervyn asked the question he’d been burning to ask since they hit the cold Cornish air.

  ‘Where’s your car?’

  Nick looked at him, surprised. ‘I’m in a hotel a mile away, on the outskirts of Truro. I didn’t drive in today, I walked.’

  Now he tells me, Mervyn thought, relocating his penis for 218th time. They’d walked out of town and Mervyn didn’t know where he was.

  ‘I’d better go back to the town centre. Get myself a cab.’

  ‘Come back to my hotel. You can ring for a cab from there.’

  ‘Ah… Okay.’

  They walked in silence across the pedestrianised roads and past the ghostly orange shape of the cathedral. They huffed up the hill, until the lines of big brightly-lit shops with comforting names like Carphone Warehouse and Dorothy Perkins gave way to small shops with strange names that were either dark or had closed down. The edge of town was quiet and dead, and soon they could see nothing but cones of light spilling onto the pavements from the streetlamps.

  Mervyn had calmed down now. He could deal with Ken. He would confront Ken tomorrow morning, and felt sure that Ken would break down and confess all and the Cornish police would turn up on their bicycles, licking their pencils and stroking their huge moustaches, and take him away. He felt much more serene about things.

  ‘So what about Louise, eh? She seems to have got over the events of today pretty quickly.’

  Nick laughed. ‘She likes a bit of rough. I was told that.’

  ‘Did Glyn tell you that?’

  ‘No,’ he gave a flaky laugh. ‘And before you say anything, she’s not his type.’

  ‘I thought everything was his type. If it’s got a pulse…’

  ‘No!’ Nick was stung. ‘No it isn’t. Leave him alone.’

  ‘Okay, okay, fair enough. No need to be defensive. I get the message. Glyn’s a good guy.’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Glyn’s been a good friend to you, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, he has.’

  ‘Louise said he had been a good friend to you. When you had that bad shock.’

  ‘Yeah. I was pretty bad, really shook up. My hair started falling out from the stress. I lost three stone. He looked after me, because the doctors wouldn’t.’

  ‘No medical insurance?’

  ‘I didn’t even get an aspirin. I was skint.’

  ‘But Glyn pulled you through it.’

  Nick laughed. ‘He pulled me out of it, too.’

  ‘He sounds like a good friend.’

  ‘He has been. He looked after me when I got the shakes.’

  ‘Oh, the shakes! Don’t remind me. That happened to me when I crashed my car too.’

  ‘You too? I swear my hands were like rubber. I couldn’t even open the…’

  He tailed off.

  ‘You couldn’t open the car door?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Glyn pulled you out. Out of what? The car?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Were you grateful to him? Did you do something for him in return? Something that kept Glyn out of prison?’

  ‘You conniving sod. You’re just talking to me to get to Glyn. That’s all you care about. You bloody conniving sod.’

  Nick turned and ran, full pelt up the road, and disappeared around a corner.

  ‘Nick. Wait!’

  Mervyn was alone, in the dark, with no idea where he was.

  Good move, Mervyn.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  He started walking, looking for a cab; of course there were none. He was idiotically still thinking like a Londoner, expecting to see dozens of orange taxi lights clustering like fireflies along the streets.

  He kept walking, up a vertiginous hill crowded with terraced houses. He missed a few turnings and found himself slightly more lost; he was no longer surrounded by picturesque seafront buildings but plain council boxes stretching to the edge of town. There was nothing for it, he was going to have to admit defeat and turn back. That was all he needed; his penis was flopping around uncomfortably in his trousers and his bottom felt numb with cold.

  Then he saw them.

  They were hanging outside the back of a particularly unkempt property with a scrappy garden that grew nothing but rusty buckets and children’s trikes. Hidden between a pair of nasty cheap knickers and a baby’s T-shirt which said ‘007 months old: Licensed to spill’.

  Underpants.

  A pair of the biggest, greyest nastiest underpants he’d ever seen.

  There was a hole in them. ‘ALRITE MOI LUVVER!’ was stencilled on the front. ‘CORNWALL 4 EVER’ was stencilled on the back. But they were clean. And probably warm.

  Could he? Should he? Dare he?

  He was sure that,
if the owner of the underpants knew of Mervyn’s dire need, he’d happily donate them to a worthy cause.

  Or perhaps he wouldn’t. Perhaps he’d be very cross that someone had stolen his underpants.

  Sod it. Just look at the state of them! They were ancient! The owner probably bought them with shillings and sixpences. It was about bloody time whoever it was got a new pair. Mervyn was doing him a favour.

  It was very late. There were no lights on in the house. The washing line was tied to its back wall and the other end to a post in the middle of the garden. Stepping over the low garden wall, Mervyn reached as far as he could, stretched out his hand, plucked the pants from the line, pushed them frantically into his trouser pocket and sauntered away, whistling, into the night.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  Mervyn finally got back to his room. He wearily sank on to his bed, his eyes resting on pictures of lobster pots and fishing nets, cheery bewhiskered fisherman chuckling on their clay pipes. He needed to prepare for tomorrow. He needed to screw up enough courage to do something about Ken. It was already very late. He had to get to bed.

  There was a knock on his door.

  ‘It’s me.’

  The voice was muffled, but it was definitely Maggie. He opened the door and she came in.

  ‘Hello there,’ he gabbled. ‘Sorry about the other day. I’m didn’t mean to spook you…’

  He allowed his voice to drain away. Something was up.

  Maggie smiled at him, a bright smile; but there was something not quite right about it, like a pretty picture that had been hung on the wall slightly crooked.

  ‘Mum’s dead,’ she said, simply.

  ‘Oh God. Oh I’m sorry.’

  Her smile grew brighter, too bright. ‘No it’s fine. It’s really fine. She’d been in pain a long time. It’s a good thing. I’m happy about it, really…’ She walked into the centre of the room, arms wrapped round her body as if to hold herself together. Mervyn felt like a lumberjack at the foot of a tree, waiting for the moment to shout ‘Timber’.

  ‘She was a good woman, a jolly giving person who gave everything of herself to everyone she loved… And she had a great life. Now the pain’s gone. She’s happy now, wherever she is…’ The last three words came out as a high-pitched wail, because her composure finally collapsed. Her face folded in despair, and so did her body, doubling over, expelling the pent-up grief as great mucus-filled gasps wrenched her throat.

  Mervyn instinctively went to comfort her, but she was juddering and quivering, a moving target, difficult to embrace. He moved this way and that, circling her like a clown in a rodeo trying to distract the bull.

  She solved his problem by launching herself at him, grabbing at his jacket and holding on grimly. The sobs grew muffled.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m not normally like this,’ he thought he heard her say. ‘I’m normally the one that keeps it together. I’d be the one in the death camp organising the bring-and-buy sale and looking after the coffee kitty.’

  He could feel his shirt getting damp. He wondered how long she wanted to stay there; the small of his back was starting to ache. Her head was almost trying to burrow into his neck. Her lips were resting on his Adam’s apple.

  Her face was warm on his neck. She smelt nice.

  ‘You smell nice,’ he said, feeling he ought to say something.

  ‘I’m not wearing anything. It’s my shampoo.’

  ‘Fair enough. It’s still nice.’

  ‘It’s herbal. Honey and orange blossom. For normal hair.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call your hair normal.’

  ‘I wouldn’t call your hair normal, either.’

  ‘Thanks. I think.’

  There was a half-sob under his chin which Mervyn took to be a damp giggle.

  Her lips started to move. They walked their way up his neck, under his chin, on to his cheek. He felt her tears there, her lips on his lips. He responded slowly, but she plunged her tongue into his mouth, her nostrils stretching and contracting as her breathing quickened. Suddenly, his belt was undone, and she was tugging at his flies. He was steered toward the bed.

  Mervyn didn’t want to let the lady take all the initiative; he was too much of a gentleman. He tugged the tail of her blouse from her skirt and pushed his hand inside, snaking up her back, exploring the catch on her bra strap. Thank God—it fell open at his first touch, without the embarrassing tugging and fiddling women had usually had to endure at his hands.

  She tore her blouse off without undoing the cuffs, hurling it and her bra behind her. She pulled his face into her breasts and forced his mouth on to her nipples. They had blossomed like roses, wide and large and angry. She screamed, almost with rage, as his mouth enveloped her. He worked her with his tongue, moving from one to the other. She pushed him harder against her, unzipping and pulling down her skirt, knickers too, revealing a beautifully manicured bush of pubic hair.

  Mervyn was surprised at this; he didn’t expect Brazilians from British women, not any over the age of 25 at any rate. They normally looked like swarthy unkempt Mexicans down there. He appreciated the effort, and showed his appreciation by inserting his fingers into her; she moaned and started biting his neck with terrifying ferocity.

  They collapsed on Mervyn’s bed. Now it was his turn to tear his clothes off; pulling off his jacket, shirt and jumper and hurling them into a corner. Then she was kissing and nibbling the area around his belly button, licking and tracing the tiny trickle of hair that meandered from the navel and joined the estuary of his groin.

  Now for the difficult part. He had to get his trousers off without revealing the appalling underpants he’d stolen less than an hour ago. The pair he was wearing were definitely not of broadcast quality, as they said in television, and if she carried on the way she was going Maggie would get the full 3D experience of them, with high definition thrown in for good measure.

  What to do? He could make his excuses and go into the bathroom, but no, that would ruin the moment. Many was the time he’d comforted some young production assistant in the tearful aftermath of a freshly-shredded love affair and disappeared off to the bathroom only to return in his shirtsleeves and find the PA lying in bed with the covers firmly welded into her armpits, an apologetic what-were-we-thinking? smile on her face.

  There was only one thing for it. He tried to take them off inside his trousers while kneeling on the bed, which was a physical impossibility. He knew it was a physical impossibility. Every man knew that.

  But Mervyn was reckless in the bedroom. When he was in the throes of passion, he often tried doing things that were a physical impossibility, and at his age he almost always regretted it.

  Like now.

  He couldn’t maintain his balance. No man could. He fell backwards, off the bed, hitting the wall. The badger was dislodged from its lofty perch and descended, hitting Maggie square on the forehead and knocking her to the floor.

  ‘Maggie?’

  Maggie didn’t move.

  ‘Maggie?’

  He refastened his flies and rushed over to her.

  Oh my God, Mervyn thought. I’ve killed her. Her mother has just died and now I’ve killed her.

  He felt her neck. There was a slow throb of a pulse. She was unconscious. Just unconscious. Thank God. There was no alternative. He’d have to call an ambulance. There was an unconscious woman in his bed with a head wound and he’d have to get her to hospital. His mind rushed to the darkest corners of his imagination and he envisaged angry mobs outside his house, screaming in estuary accents, throwing stones and waving badly-spelled placards saying ‘Prevert Go Home’, ‘Our kids will be next’ or ‘No sex pests in our nayborhood’.

  For a few silly seconds he contemplated bundling her up in his carpet, carrying her back to her room, leaving her tucked up in bed and hoping she’d wake-up with a nasty headache and complete amnesia. But no. That would be an appalling thing to do. And if she didn’t get better? If she had a skull fracture and died there?

>   He worked out his story, and called the front desk. ‘Hello, Mr Stone here, room 34. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of an accident here. I was sharing a glass of wine with a friend of mine in my room, when this badger fell off the wall and struck her on the head. She’s been knocked cold.’

  There was a noise of resignation from the other end of the phone, a clattering sound like cutlery falling on a plate, and eventually a woman’s weary voice in Mervyn’s ear. ‘Oh bugger. Not again. How many times is this going to happen before Clive throws the bloody thing out? We’ve got casualty on speed-dial here. They’ll be here in ten minutes, going by their usual run time.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You’d better get her decent, in case the other residents look out their windows.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Oh. I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean. Well… It’s over the bed isn’t it? The badger. The others were all… Um. Well, it’s where the badger lands. About halfway down the bed. You wouldn’t have your head there unless… Well, I’d think she’d appreciate it if you dressed her.’

  ‘Actually, we were just sitting on the bed sharing a bottle of wine when it hit her. And for your information, she is dressed.’

  ‘Of course she is.’ The woman sounded like she didn’t believe it for a second.

  Mervyn put the phone down and looked at Maggie, stark naked save for stay-up stockings, earrings and a necklace.

  Nine minutes. Bugger.

  He frantically went to work, trying to dress her to the best of his ability. Naturally, what seemed so easy when driven by hormones was a damn sight more difficult driven by sheer blind panic. Her knickers were a nightmare; trying to lift Maggie’s dead (don’t even think it, Mervyn) weight and slide them up her legs was so back-breakingly frustrating he was almost crying by the time he slipped them over her hips.

  Five minutes. Shit.

  He knew that bloody bra came off too easily—it was saving itself for the rematch, when it was time to go back on. He almost had it attached when the demonically-possessed piece of elastic pinged off and bit him, snapping on his fingers. The sudden surprise of pain made him let go of her, and she fell backwards, her head thudding on the carpeted floor.