by Nev Fountain
It was a shiny compact thing designed for portability; it was sitting on Ken’s suitcase and attached to two tiny speakers. There was a Post-it note with ‘PLAY ME’ written on it stuck on the lid. Mervyn did as he was told and pressed play. First there was silence. Then there was a
>CLICK<
and Ken’s weary voice floated into the room. A message from beyond the grave.
Oh God. I’m still here. I’m still in Cornwall. Oh God. I thought it was a terrible dream. Oh… God.
It continued. He listened in stunned disbelief as Ken described his deep hatred for Mervyn. The director recounted the ‘rehearsal’ murder, the hit and run on that poor woman and her dog, the attempts on Mervyn’s life and the growing frustration at him not being polite enough to die.
All this was shocking, but nothing compared to the spontaneous murder of poor Nick.
I saw him sitting there, and I just pushed him. I was so frustrated about not killing Mervyn. It was an impulse. Then I realised. I’ve been trying to kill someone! And I was so annoyed about NOT killing them I went and killed somebody else! I have a problem.
Okaay… I know it’s the coke. It’s the coke that did this. I’m sick. I’ve got to sort this problem out, I’ve got to end this right now.
There was another
>CLICK<
and the CD finished.
Mervyn stood there, scarcely able to believe it. He always knew Ken to be a hopeless case, a lazy, incompetent, petulant man with a temper. He was alarmed when he suspected Ken of being his mysterious assailant, but all the way through this business he’d never seriously thought of Ken as capable of doing anyone real harm.
But he had murdered someone.
Two people.
That poor woman walking her dog. Dead.
Nick. Dead.
It was the coke that did it, he said. But he said he’d been clean for two years hadn’t he? Was he lying? That’s what addicts do…
He noticed that there were no other puncture marks on Ken’s arm. Odd. Well, that didn’t mean anything. There were other ways to take coke, weren’t there? But it was odd he’d do it a different way just the one time…
Nobody seemed to be in a hurry to return, so Mervyn was left alone with Ken. What was the runner doing? It didn’t take that long to get to the car park. And what had happened to Glyn?
He sat there and waited, staring at Ken’s body. Ken seemed to be staring at the CD player. His outstretched arm, the one with the needle sticking in it, was also pointing to the spot behind the door, where the CD player was. Mervyn wasn’t given to superstition, but the body looked like it was asking him to play the CD again.
Mervyn counted to ten. No one turned up. He counted to ten again. When he still found himself alone, he went back to the CD, stood in front of it, and, very gingerly, like he was arming a bomb, pressed play again. Ken’s life-shattered voice coursed through the speakers, frail and tinny and hopeless, raging at Mervyn from beyond the grave.
There was something wrong about the CD. Something that was just…wrong. He couldn’t get any more specific than that.
Of course it’s wrong, you idiot. It’s a recording of the last desperate words of a crazed and desperate multiple murderer. You would hardly expect it to sound right, would you?
Then he did something insane and spontaneous. He pressed eject, pulled the CD out of the player and slipped it into his pocket.
As soon as he’d done so, Randall walked in.
‘What’s going on?’ Randall saw the body and jumped out of his skin, his tie flapped in alarm. ‘Jesus! Ken! My God! Why didn’t someone get me?’
‘Didn’t the runner tell you what had happened?’
‘The runner? She just…ran away. Jesus, I don’t believe it. This is insane. Has anyone called the police?’
Mervyn remembered he’d promised to do so and fished out his phone.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Mervyn felt guilty. His conscience grumbled at him.
Fancy nicking a man’s final agonised message to the world, it nagged. How ghoulish. I’m only surprised you didn’t stuff some of his clean underpants in your pocket on your way out.
Mervyn convinced himself he’d done nothing wrong. It’s just evidence that hasn’t come to light yet, he replied. I can just ‘discover’ it again in a couple of days. If I need to.
He listened to it on his laptop that night but still couldn’t hear anything wrong with it. It was definitely Ken’s voice. Old curmudgeonly Ken, still banging on about how crappy location shoots were after 20 years, still raging about actors and producers… Still hating Mervyn.
Mervyn wondered how someone could stay like that for so long.
The production team of Vixens from the Void was stunned, but nothing could actually surprise them any more.
Randall and Louise were obviously relieved. Ken had ruled himself out of launching a messy and expensive lawsuit for wrongful dismissal.
Bryony took over the filming; and aside from Chrissie disappearing without notice for a day to hold a tearful publicity conference with her footballer husband in London, everything settled down. It almost felt like a normal production again. They had a post-Ken summit meeting, where everyone looked very grave and agreed that the credits for the pilot should feature a dedication to Nick and Ken. The credits at the end of the show, of course. Not at the beginning. That might cause channel-hoppers to switch over. Then everyone forgot about Ken.
Until the package arrived.
It was bunged in an in-tray that morning, in among a huge pile of letters from fans. The post to Product Lazarus had reached epic proportions; news of the hostage situation and Graham and Darren’s subsequent arrest had been nationwide news. One 24-hour news station gleefully re-enacted the incident using a cuddly gorilla and a Homer Simpson doll. Some letters demanded the release of Graham and Darren because they were political prisoners; Darren was rumoured to be heading for a 20-year stretch for aggravated assault and sources alleged that Graham was to be given a relatively lenient 18-month sentence for trespass and threatening behaviour.
*
The letters demanding Graham and Darren’s release were in the minority; most demanded the return of this or that monster, demanded that they write for any new series that would certainly be commissioned, demanded that there should definitely be no kissing between ladies, demanded that there definitely should be kissing between ladies, and so on and so on and so on. After all that had happened, the production team were under a lot of pressure. It wasn’t surprising that the package sat there unnoticed until the afternoon.
The production office was almost empty. Everyone was on location, trying to film material to stitch together the shreds of footage they’d got in the can when Ken was at the helm. The only people in the room were Mervyn, Randall and the female runner. The runner had been delegated to open the post. She unwrapped the little Jiffy bag and found a CD inside.
She played it—and within a few seconds her knuckles were crammed into her mouth as she tried to stifle a sob. She tried to speak, but since her mouth was full of fingers Mervyn couldn’t decipher what she was saying. He guessed it was ‘Oh God. Oh fuck. Oh God.’
Ken’s recorded voice floated out into the office. By now, Mervyn knew what it was saying word for word.
>CLICK<
Oh God. I’m still here. I’m still in Cornwall. Oh God. I thought it was a terrible dream. Oh… God.
Randall was sitting in his partitioned office, looking through his emails. He heard the voice and he leapt to his feet. ‘What the hell is going on?’ he shouted over Ken’s voice.
Mervyn shushed him, and they listened to the CD in silence. He pretended that he was hearing it for the first time, and looked suitably shocked when he ‘discovered’ that Ken had killed Nick.
‘Oh Jesus. Call the police,’ said Randall. He ran his fingers wearily through his thinning hair. ‘I’m so sorry, Mervyn. I feel so bad. I employed this guy. I had no idea. I just had no idea. This guy was o
ne sick puppy. You could have been killed.’
‘Well, I wasn’t. It wasn’t your fault. No one could have known about Ken.’
‘That’s nice of you to say Merv, but the very first meeting, the moment you clapped eyes on him, you told me he was unsuitable. I should have listened to you, Merv. I should have taken your advice.’
‘Randall, it’s not like that…’
‘I should have got rid of him. It’s down to me. It’s my fault that Nick’s dead…’ Then Randall started to cry.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Mervyn went home before the police arrived. He’d met some of the constables far too many times already. It was never a good thing to end up on first-name terms with the police.
When he got home, he listened to Ken’s CD again. And again. He was in danger of becoming obsessed, he knew it. But he felt he was getting close to something important; some part of the story buried in the narrative. If he could just find it and dig it out… He felt he’d been keeping hold of the CD because he was waiting for something to happen. The arrival of the other copy of the CD in the post had been just that. But why did it happen? Did Ken know that Mervyn would take the CD out of his room? Was that why he sent a copy to the office as well?
Then there was Nick. It just didn’t make sense. The CD claimed the murder was a spontaneous act on Ken’s part, but did going up on the roof, pushing Nick off, coming back down and pretending nothing had happened really count as spontaneous? Was Ken just making excuses in his head for what was a planned, premeditated act?
It crossed his mind that the CD was a forgery, but it definitely sounded like Ken, even down to his trademark ‘Okaay’ at the end.
It’s either him, or a brilliant impression of him, Mervyn thought.
Ken was obviously distressed about the whole situation; he still hated Mervyn with a passion, just like the last time they both went on a location shoot together. He still hated working with the Styrax, and he still hated Mervyn. He hadn’t changed a bit in 20 years.
*
That afternoon he went for a final drink with Steve O’Brien; Steve was leaving for London the following morning.
‘Product Lazarus have had enough of the whole thing,’ Steve explained, cheerfully. ‘They don’t want any more publicity about this show, good or bad. They’re closing me down, and they’re closing down the DVD documentary. They’re going to bury this show so deep the cable channels will have to invent an extra hour between one and two o’clock in the morning to show it in.’
‘You don’t seem very unhappy about it.’
‘Well no, not really. I’ve got my notes, and as soon as they officially kill it I’m released from my contract and I can write a book about one of the biggest disasters in sci-fi history since Matrix Revolutions. Anyway, it was good to meet you, Mervyn. We should do it again sometime. Only without so many deaths.’ Steve paused to sip his lager. ‘The fans are going mental out there. Half of them want the production halted and the other half are so crazy to see it they’re walking round with raging hard-ons. If this doesn’t get shown, the bootleg tapes alone will be worth hundreds of thousands.’
Mervyn wondered how much the recording of Ken’s final words would fetch. Then he wished he hadn’t. ‘It sounds crazy,’ he said.
‘It always is. I tell you, the fans never know what they really want.’
‘But you do.’
Steve chuckled. ‘Ha! Nice one Mervyn! Nice come-back!’
Mervyn was mystified. He wasn’t trying to be funny.
‘Yeah, you’re right. I’m a sad fan too. Hands up, I’m guilty. Shoot me now…’
Not the best choice of words in the circumstances, thought Mervyn.
‘I had the posters on my wall, Vixens figures and annuals on my shelf… I’m such a saddo fanboy at heart, and you’ll hate me for this, but when I saw the words “Nick dies during Vixens production” on Twitter my first thought was “Who’s going to do the Styrax voices now?”’ Steve laughed into his empty glass, making a big echoey chortle. Mervyn chortled too, humouring him. Feeling stupid, as usual.
‘I don’t get it.’
‘Oh come on! Nick? Which Nick did I think of? Nick Dodd, the producer, or Nick Briggs, the Styrax voice man?’
‘Oh, I’d forgotten about the other Nick. I’d forgotten there were two Nicks on the show…’ And then something in Mervyn’s mind clicked. ‘I have to go,’ he said suddenly. ‘Sorry.’
This time Steve was bemused. ‘Okay…’
Mervyn collected his coat and bag and shook Steve’s hand. ‘Thanks. Thank you very much. I should talk to fans more often.’
‘Right…where are you going now?’
Mervyn stopped. His mind was suddenly in so many places at once, he didn’t know where he was going to start. ‘Umm…the library, I think.’
*
He knew what was going on. Everything made sense. But now he knew he had a murderer to deal with. He had to prepare.
He’d blundered into situations too many times without the facts. The murderer didn’t know that Mervyn suspected; now was the chance to gather evidence. To build a case.
In the library, he called up back copies of the local newspapers. He needed to go back a week, to the morning of the hit and run headline, the headline on the paper on the table of the location bus, back when they were filming at the supermarket.
There was the story; ‘HIT AND RUN DRIVER KILLS MOTHER OF TWO’. It was tragic and upsetting. No wonder Randall got so mad.
Everyone assumed that Ken had done it. It made sense. He’d said he knocked a woman over—the Mary Poppins figure dancing over his bonnet, the little dog. He said it to Mervyn. He said so on the CD…
Mervyn read the story thoroughly. There was no mention of any little dog. The paper claimed the woman was jogging, not walking her dog.
Okay, he thought. That doesn’t prove anything. The newspaper must have left out some details. They sometimes do that to help the police.
That was Monday’s newspaper. Reading Thursday’s newspaper proved his theory beyond a shadow of a doubt.
‘HIT AND RUN DRIVER WAS EX-HUSBAND, SAY POLICE.’
The woman’s former spouse had confessed. He had lain in wait and run her over. Just as tragic and upsetting, but Ken hadn’t done it.
Okay, Mervyn thought again. That still doesn’t prove anything. We just assumed that Ken ran over the woman in the paper. There must have been another hit and run killing, in another part of Cornwall.
But there was no other accident that even resembled the hit and run Ken described. Mervyn looked very hard. He read through all the local papers for four or five days after the incident, just in case the body hadn’t been found, but there was nothing. Then Mervyn asked for some more newspapers. What he found suggested that his theory was right. He just needed to make one more call.
*
‘Hello, Nicholas Everett speaking.’
‘Hi Nicholas, it’s me, Mervyn.’
‘Mervyn? Mervypoos! Darling! How lovely to hear from you again! I was afraid we weren’t talking any more, after that unpleasantness at the convention.’
‘Life’s too short, Nicholas.’
‘Bless you for that. What brings you to the electric telephone?’
‘Just a question about the old days, Nicholas.’
‘The only questions we get asked any more, old fruit. Fire away.’
‘Now, do you remember the location shoot, down in Cornwall, back in 1990?’
‘How could I forget? The Titanic had fewer casualties.’
‘Now think hard. When you fell off the boat that day, and landed in the water; was it an accident?’
‘Well I think it was… I assumed so… I had such a terrible bout of the dreaded lurgy afterwards I didn’t know which way was up… Which is crucial when it comes to my manly preferences, as you well know, Merv.’
‘But you’re not sure.’
‘About my manly preferences?’
‘Not that! About whether it was
an accident!’
‘Not really. I assumed I slipped. Why are you asking?’
‘Oh no reason…’
‘Oh, I know the reason! The fearless sleuth Inspector Stone is on the trail of a miscreant again!’ Nicholas affected a gruff cockney accent. ‘“That’s him officer! That’s the man, the one with the limp, I saw him through the curtains of Lady Agatha’s boudoir, standing over her slumbering form! He was painting her fingernails with strychnine because of that nervous habit of hers!”’
‘Something like that, Nicholas. Bye-bye now…’
‘Don’t forget to keep me apprised of the case, Inspector. Toodle-pip…’
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The runner who was probably called Toby folded his arms and stood in the doorway of Randall’s office (the runner with the purple hair had finally run away for good).
‘He’s not up to seeing anyone. He’s in a shocking state. He’s punishing himself over letting Ken on to the production.’
‘I’m sure he is,’ said Mervyn, ‘but I have to see him about this.’
The runner frowned, but he had no choice. He stood to one side.
Randall looked shocking. He was unshaven; grey stubble covered his chin and stretched up into his moustache. His tie hung loosely around his neck and the knot was thin and ugly. His rich tan had long since faded and he looked just as pale and unhealthy as everyone around him.
‘Yeah,’ he croaked.
‘Randall, I’d like to ask you a question about America.’
Randall’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead. ‘Okay…’
‘The drink driving laws—how strict are they? I mean, if you were involved in an accident in America, and you were drinking?’
‘We take our DUIs seriously in most of the country. It depends where you are.’
‘Los Angeles.’
Randall gave a little whistle. ‘Well, they have the most severe penalties.’
‘And let’s say the other driver was badly hurt.’
‘In LA? Then they’d almost certainly be looking at some serious jail time. Why?’