Laugh Out Dead

by Rupert Harker

  “Very true,” he mused. “At least, not while she is refusing to have her cataracts treated.”

  I shook my head in wonderment. By removing his Eton tie, rotating his cap 180 degrees and lapsing into the vernacular, he had rendered himself unrecognisable.

  “And what, pray tell, is this charade in aid of?” I asked.

  “Ah, Rupert. You are not the only one to walk the walk of shame this fine morning. I myself have only just returned from a cocaine-fuelled liaison with the inimitable Clara.”

  I confess that I was somewhat taken aback. “You mean to say that they let you into the club dressed like that? I shall have to speak to the management.”

  “Calm yourself, Rupert. I would no more lower the tone of your local watering hole with this wretched outfit than I would refuse one of Mrs Denford’s delicious liver and strawberry soufflés. No, I chose to take a more circuitous route to the young lady’s boudoir. However, before I regale you with my wondrous tale, we have more pressing matters. Have you seen today’s news?”

  “Can’t say that I have, actually. Had my hands full. Something up?”

  He indicated with a tilt of his head. “Join me the kitchen, I have today’s Sunday Romp.”

  We relocated to the kitchen, and Urban-Smith passed the newspaper for my inspection. The front page was dominated by a picture of a pasty, dark-haired female, whom I vaguely recognised from various tabloids and gossip magazines. ‘Pushing up Dayzee,’ was the headline.

  Urban-Smith proceeded to fire up his laptop while I perused further.

  ‘Grammy Award-winning singer-songwriter, Dayzee-Jayne Cutter, better known as Dayzee, yesterday became the latest victim of the dreaded LOL curse that has already claimed two lives in the last few weeks. The 23-year-old, whose third album, ‘Baby Slap,’ has sold more than five million copies, was giving a press conference to promote her autobiography, ‘Fresh as Dayzee,’ when she collapsed in front of shocked journalists.

  Several gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Press fought one another valiantly for the opportunity to perform chest compressions on the legendary songstress before being restrained by security personnel. Sadly, paramedics were unable to revive her, and she was pronounced dead on her arrival at St Badger’s Hospital.

  Full story and pictures, page 7.’

  “Here, Rupert, take a look. It’s all over the net.” Urban-Smith clicked a link with his mouse and rotated his laptop so we could both observe the proceedings.

  Dayzee sat at a long table, flanked by her manager and press agent. Hanging behind her was a huge mockup of the cover of her forthcoming autobiography (a book which I suspect she had neither read nor written), her sullen, monochrome face leering out from beneath the title, ‘Fresh as Dayzee.’

  Whilst Dayzee’s manager and agent took turns answering questions from the assorted journalists, the singer sat silently chewing gum and staring into the middle distance, a glazed expression on her round face, and her large bosom straining against the fabric of her white tee-shirt, a stark contrast to the multi-coloured tattoos that ran from shoulder to wrist on each arm.

  The camera panned in on Dayzee’s pallid features and tiny pupils, and I watched fascinated by her slow mastication, her thick jaw rolling hypnotically while the bright lights and camera flashes glinted from the golden hoops which passed through her earlobes and flat nose.

  “All that is required is a farmer leaning against a five-bar gate, and the picture would be complete,” said Urban-Smith.

  For a few minutes, questions were asked and questions were answered until Dayzee’s attention was attracted by a tinny warbling that I recognised as one of her songs. She slowly raised her mobile telephone to her ear and said hello. Seconds later her entire body began to tremble, and a low chuckle forced itself up from her ample chest to her scarlet lips. The room fell silent, all eyes fixed upon Dayzee as the chuckle became a guffaw and the singer rocked backwards and forwards in her seat, a maniac’s grin plastered across her face. Suddenly, Dayzee stiffened and her arms flew to each side, sending her telephone hurtling skywards as she slid from her chair and out of sight behind the table. There were panicked shouts, and journalists and security staff rushed to help.

  Urban-Smith closed the movie file.

  “This is a sad day for aficionados of mononymous ruminants everywhere,” he proclaimed solemnly.

  “This certainly puts the bull amongst the china,” I said. “There’ll be outrage. Russian diplomats and prestigious academics are one matter, but an anaemic, drug-addled, alcoholic singer is quite another. The public will never stand for it.

  “By the way, Fairfax, did you notice how she became rigid and threw her head back and her arms to the side?”

  “I did. That is presumably the decerebrate posturing that you spoke of.” Urban-Smith sighed and ran his hand through his uncombed hair. “I think recaffeination might be in order.” He filled the kettle and prepared two mugs with coffee.

  “Come now, Fairfax,” I said, “disgorge the legumes. Tell me how you came to wend your way into the fair maiden’s bedchamber.”

  “Firstly, Rupert, it may come as something of a revelation to you, but The Blue Belvoir is not merely a purveyor of imbibements and exotic dancing. I have learned that it is also the front for a very exclusive escort agency, the stage show acting as an advertisement of the available wares.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat, for Urban-Smith’s words were far from a revelation; a customer loyalty card, entitling me to a ten percent discount for services rendered, had resided in my wallet for several months.

  “Is that a fact?” I said, trying to sound surprised. “I had no idea.”

  “Hmm,” Urban-Smith murmured suspiciously. “Anyhow,” he continued, “much as I am loath to plumb the depths of my libido to exploit an opportunity, it seemed the only practical option.

  “To use the language of the streets, here is how it, ‘went down.’”

  *

  Dig, if you will, the picture of Urban-Smith engaged in a ruse. He combs out his hair to make it hang down over his brow and takes off his shirt and Eton tie, replacing them with a plain tee-shirt and hooded top. He removes his twills and pulls on a pair of jeans, then rummages through his drawers until he finds his baseball cap and places it on his head. He fastens his training shoes, and with a quick twist, the cap is rotated and the deception begins.

  He entered his personal chambers twenty minutes ago as Fairfax Urban-Smith, detective, author and paranormal researcher and investigator; he leaves them now as Drayton ‘The Buzz’ Buzzard, a drug-dealing Daddio, a hip hep-cat, a hard-as-nails homeboy, a ghetto groovester…

  *

  “Do get on with it, Fairfax, there’s a good chap.”

  “Sorry, Rupert. Right, where was I?”

  *

  It is Saturday night, ten o’clock, and The Buzz is rolling down the Spawn, looking for some action. He bumps into a business associate known only as ‘Turkish.’ Money changes hands, and a few moments later, the Buzz is on his way, pockets chock-full of Charlie.

  Behind The Blue Belvoir, a fire door disgorges dancing girls at regular intervals, and The Buzz boogies on round to wait for Clara to emerge.

  At eleven, the door opens and Clara totters out, rubbing at her nose with the back of her hand. The Buzz smiles because he has what she is looking for.

  “Hey there, foxy lady. Wanna toot on my nose-flute?”

  She is slender and tall, and her dress is so tight that The Buzz wonders if she needed a shoehorn to put it on. Her eyes are bloodshot and her eyeliner is smeared, but she is still a knockout.

  Clara sidles over to The Buzz.

  “Hey there, big guy. Whatcha got for me?”

  “The Buzz has more snow than a Colombian nativity scene. Do you want him to dust your broom?”

  “Awww,” she says. “I don’t have no money.”

  “Don’t sweat the money, Honey,” says The Buzz, looking her up and down. “Perhaps we can come to some other arrangement.”


  *

  “We hailed a taxi on the Spawn and were soon in her flat, naked and snorting cocaine from each other’s buttocks. Tell me, Rupert; have you ever had a call girl blow cocaine into your rectum with a straw?”

  “Absolutely not,” I lied.

  “Ah, Rupert; you are so virtuous and pure, it makes me weep. Returning to Clara for the moment, she is, as you have yourself observed, moderately adorned with piercings and tattoos. On her left ankle, she sports a flower with a humming bird in attendance, and at the top of her thigh is the all-hearing apple. As one flips her over, one is greeted by a tattoo in the small of the back which she believes to say, ‘love will conquer all,’ in Mandarin, but actually says, ‘now wash your hands.’”

  “You can read Mandarin?”

  “Ha! Of course not. I texted a picture to a friend of mine who hails from Hong Kong. He also informs me that the tattoo on her shoulder reads, ‘cook from frozen,’ and not, ‘see no evil,’ as was originally intended.”

  “I believe that we may have drifted a little off topic, Fairfax. What was the story behind the apple tattoo?”

  “As you can doubtless imagine,” said he, “Clara services the accounts of many of the city’s more discerning gentlemen, one of whom sported that particular tattoo on his arm. She was very taken with it.”

  “What did Clara say about this man?”

  “She could remember nothing of him except the tattoo.”

  “So the whole endeavour was fruitless,” I sighed, discouraged.

  “Not entirely. On the way home, I sold the residual cocaine to a group of errant youths, leaving me ten shillings richer than when I left.”

  “Where do we go from here?” I asked.

  “I propose that each of us retires to bed for the day and that we consolidate our leads tomorrow. In the morning, I shall contact Ulysses and pursue the sound file, and you will learn whether Beefy has received a response to his e-mail. Additionally, I am hoping to hear from Kenneth Badgerton. He has a mind like no other. His capacity to find a connection between seemingly unrelated events, coupled with an insatiable fascination with modern conspiracy theory, makes him an invaluable asset in cases such as these.”

  I rose from my chair and stretched languidly.

  “It’s alright, Fairfax. You had me at, ‘bed.’”

  ◆◆◆

  18. DEM PHONES, DEM PHONES

  Monday 13th November

  I slept until Sunday teatime and, after a hearty supper, adjourned to the front room with an illustrated journal of the female glandular system. I retired to bed again at around eleven, but further sleep eluded me for several hours, and it was after five when I finally drifted off.

  I was woken at ten by the ringing of my mobile telephone. It was Danny, the mortuary attendant, enquiring as to my whereabouts. I promised to be in attendance after lunch and, once I had crawled out of bed, I shaved, took a leisurely shower and made my way downstairs for brunch.

  It appeared that Urban-Smith had been of much the same disposition and was still dipping his soldiers as I stepped yawning into the kitchen. Mrs Denford had gone shopping for groceries, so I had to construct my own breakfast and found myself feeling slightly aggrieved at having to do so, a measure of how accustomed I had become to her exemplary domestic skills.

  “Is that today’s Scrump?” I asked.

  Urban-Smith grunted and passed me the newspaper. Evidently the creative juices of the Scrump’s editorial staff were in full flow. The front page carried a picture of a pin-stuck mobile telephone resting beside a pile of bloodied chicken bones, all beneath the day’s headline, ‘Dem Phones, Dem Phones.’

  “Utterly inspired,” I murmured.

  The news was dominated by commentary relating to the tragic death of Dayzee Cutter, a recap of the two previous LOL curse deaths, and public and political reactions to the developing crisis.

  Once again, representatives from the mobile networks were keen to stress the safety of their product, citing statistics that showed using a telephone to be safer than travelling by aeroplane, motor car or elevator.

  I read the paper from cover to cover (excluding the sections pertaining to sports, horoscopes, letters to the editor, television listings and advertisements) in less than fifteen minutes and could find no earthly reason for the whole affair.

  “Fairfax. Did you see anything in this newspaper to advance our cause?”

  “Nothing at all.” He looked up from the remains of his breakfast. “I thought you were going in early to catch up with paperwork.”

  “The best laid plans and all that. I’ll just have to stay late this evening.”

  *

  There was a light drizzle as I arrived at St Clifford’s and wended my way through the hospital to the Forensic Pathology Unit. My first stop was the office of Dr Carlton ‘Beefy’ Stockford, Senior Forensic Pathologist.

  “Rupert!” he thundered as I entered. “Bit of a late one, eh?”

  “Afraid so, Beefy. Sorry about that.”

  “Did you bring home the bacon?”

  “A gentleman never tells,” I replied with a grin.

  “Your smile says more than enough. Good show! What can I do for you this afternoon?”

  “I was wondering if you had any answer to that e-mail.”

  “The one about the thalamic haemorrhages? No, none.”

  I could scarcely believe it. “None at all?”

  “Not a sausage. Sorry, old fruit.”

  As I wandered onwards to the mortuary, I pondered Urban-Smith’s assertion that there must have been a trial run of the LOL curse. It did seem odd that the killer should leave it to chance that the telephone call to Professor Gorshkov would prove fatal, but there it was; they had obviously been confident of a hole-in-one.

  As there was no work for me in the mortuary, I spent the afternoon dictating reports and preparing for a court appearance later in the week. I finished at around six and was back at number sixteen, Chuffnell Mews by half past. Mrs Denford had left a portion of steak and kidney pie warming for me in the oven, and I was ardently packing my crop when Urban-Smith ambled into the kitchen.

  “I have just received an e-mail from my brother, Ulysses,” said he. “He has analysed the sound file. It is apparently constructed from three separate signals, each of which oscillates rapidly between ten and thirty hertz. The interaction of these frequencies produces harmonics, and he believes that it is these which cause the damage to the victims.

  “According to Ulysses, the mathematical formula to construct this interactive pattern of vibration would have to be incredibly sophisticated; he likens it to the ripples on a pool when three children are paddling in it. His associate, the acoustics expert, has never seen anything like it. They are going to pass the data on to his colleagues in the Faculty of Mathematics.”

  “How does that help us?” I asked.

  “Well, for one thing, Ulysses says it is safe to listen to each of these signals separately; it is the combination of the three that carries the danger. For another, as we know that the signals are between ten and thirty hertz, I should be able to set the parameters on my Wavebreaker software to omit that frequency range. We can use my laptop to filter out the injurious vibrations from our incoming calls.”

  “Will that remove the harmonics?”

  “Yes.”

  “When my anti-virus software neutralises a threat, it sends me a message to inform me of its endeavours. Will Wavebreaker do the same?”

  “No. It simply eliminates the offending signal.”

  “So we would hear nothing.”

  “Not a thing,” confirmed Urban-Smith.

  “Then how do we know whether we are under attack or whether the caller is merely in an area of poor reception?”

  “That is an excellent point, Rupert, and one that I shall have to address in due course.”

  By this time, I had decimated the steak and kidney and was pondering some dessert.

  “Mrs Denford,” I cried.


  “Yes, dear?” she called from the living room, where she was tidying away Urban-Smith’s scattered brushes and paint tubes.

  “Do we have any more of that delightful sago and ginger pudding?”

  “In the fridge, dearie. Bottom shelf.”

  Urban-Smith regarded me with a keen eye as I inserted spoonful after delicious spoonful of pudding.

  “Have you plans for the evening, Rupert?”

  “Indeed I do. I am meeting the lovely Nell at The Spade and Coffin in Covent Garden at eight o’clock.”

  “Please pass on my compliments.”

  “Oh!” I cried, almost dropping my spoon, “I had forgotten. I spoke to Beefy. Most extraordinary, there were no responses to his RSVP.”

  “None at all?”

  “Nary a one.”

  “How singular. Perhaps you and I could co-author a monograph on this hitherto undocumented phenomenon.”

  “Fairfax.” Mrs Denford was at the kitchen door. “Kenneth Badgerton is on the telephone.”

  “Oh, good show! Frightfully good chap is Kenneth. An old Etonian of course, though a little before my tenure.” He accepted the handset from Mrs Denford. “Kenneth, how are you? And Mrs Badgerton and all the young badgers and grandbadgers? Splendid.

  “No, I am afraid I missed today’s parliamentary news. Slow down, Kenneth, I need to put you onto speakerphone.”

  He turned on the telephone’s loudspeaker and rested the handset on the table. “Okay, Kenneth. I have my friend and colleague, Dr Rupert Harker with me. You may speak as freely in front of him as you would to me.”

  “What I was saying is that a motion has been tabled for additional funding to be allocated to TISAC to allow it to urgently investigate the LOL curse.”

  There was a pregnant pause while Urban-Smith and I gazed blankly at each other.

  “What is TISAC?”

  Badgerton grunted into the telephone.

  “For heaven’s sake, Fairfax. It stands for the Telecommunications Industry Security Advisory Council. It is the government department responsible for responding to threats against the telecommunication infrastructure. It comprises representatives from telephone companies, internet service providers, the regulatory bodies and so forth.”