The Man from the Diogenes Club - [Diogenes Club 01]

by By Kim Newman

  No response was required. A restraining order had been served. Richard was eager to look away from the shark to consider the trailing minnows.

  “Mr. Topazio and Mr. Maltese are—”

  “Olive-oil importers?” Richard suggested.

  The little old men with scarred knuckles and gold rings caught the joke at once—it was a reference to the legitimate business of the Corleones in The Godfather—but it went over Squiers’ head. These must be his longest-standing clients, the fellows who had interests in seeing Jamie Hepplethwaites and Queenie Tolliver out of the picture. Did they feel uneasy at the ever more high-flying company? How could their poor little organised criminal business compete with government departments out to declare psychic war, a monster with the resources of the military-industrial master-planners at his disposal or the tentacles of a hellfire-fed multimedia empire? Richard wondered if old-fashioned crims would even get bones thrown to them when Squiers took The Northern Barstows up in the world.

  He had been worried about ad-men getting hold of Squiers’ voodoo. Now—though Derek Leech had his claws deep intothat business too—he saw there were worse things waiting. He had a bubble of amusement at the thought of what would have to be written into The Barstows if these powers took over—earthquakes in countries a long way from Northshire, economic upheavals on a global scale, mass suicides among unfriendly governments. The poor old Barstows would have to expand their field of operations, spreading misery and devastation wherever they went.

  If Richard knew who Squiers’ guests were and what they represented, Squiers was still puzzling over Richard’s third extra guest.

  “Have we met?” Squiers asked.

  “Good heavens no,” said Lady Damaris Gideon, casting a pink eye over the fellow. “Whyever should we have? On the Amalgamated Rediffusion Board, we don’t care to deal with tradesmen.”

  Maybe Squiers saw what was coming. His grin almost froze.

  Lights went down, and sound came up on the televisions. There was a hustle to get into seats. Richard found himself between Barbara, who held his hand fiercely, and Onions, who settled back with a prawn cocktail in one hand and a tiny fork in the other. TheBarstows theme came out of all the speakers.

  “This is going out to an estimated audience of nineteen million nationwide,” said Squiers, over the music. “Five OAPs and a dog are watching the Dad’s Army repeat on BBC 1. If BBC2 are putting out the test card instead of the classical music quiz literally no one will notice. Our poltergeist plot has pulled in new viewers. Under other circumstances, we’d keep Roget and Canberra on board. They’ve proved popular. However, you know what they say in writing class: Kill your darlings.”

  In the first scene, Ben Barstow was down the Grand Old Duke, sinking pints of Griddles and blathering about the horrific events up at the Barstow house. All the extras were impressed. Bev the barmaid crossed herself.

  Then, Roget and Canberra were on screen, setting up mystical equipment in the lounge—an electric pentagram, bells on strings, blackout sheets scrawled with white symbols.

  Onions snorted at this arcane nonsense.

  “There’s no science in that.”

  The academic was shushed from all around the room. Mavis had a “when I were a lass” speech coming up.

  At the end of the scene as scripted was a moment when the fraudsters let their guards slip after Mavis has left the room and chuckle over their scam. In the programme as broadcast, the end-of-part-one card came up early and the network cut to adverts.

  Squiers saw at once that this wasn’t the show he had written, produced, directed, edited and handed over to ART for transmission. With VIPs in the room, he couldn’t make a fuss, but he did hurry out to try to make an urgent call. He came back ghost-faced and shaking. Fred had disabled the studio’s external telephone lines. Even the Phantom Phoner could not get out.

  During the ad break, Richard looked away from the screens and was amused to notice Heather Wilding shielding her eyes too. A wrestler known for his thick pelt plastered on the Früt and got a grip on a girl in a bathing suit—without ever having seen the advert, it had seeped into Richard’s consciousness, which ticked him off. Skinner’s strange face reflected the highly coloured images sliding across the wall of screens. Topazio was asleep and snoring gently, as Maltese tossed peanuts like George Raft spinning a coin and caught them with his mouth.

  On the way back to his seat, Squiers saw June in the audience. She bent up her hat brim and blew him a kiss. Her presence was a blow to his heart. He was unsteady on his feet the rest of the way. When he sat down, he slipped off his Stetson and unconsciously began to chew the leather.

  After the adverts, the new material took over. Though she had studied The Northern Barstows from the beginning, Barbara found it surprisingly difficult to pastiche even a few scenes of script. After hours of effort, she came up with six typewritten pages, which June scrawled all over with her Magic Marker—some sort of seal of approval Richard frankly didn’t understand, but which the Professor did. Considering she was writing on and appearing in her specialist subject, she had crossed an academic line that might be hard to hop back over. They had taped their alternate scene over the weekend, using technicians bound to a vow of secrecy by Super-Golden Time wages. June, who authorised the expense in her capacity as a controlling interest in O’Dell-Squiers, participated as if it were a regular episode, while Mama-Lou fussed over the costumes. Richard had worried that sparks might combust between the three women, with unfortunate revelations to follow—but he had defused several potential mines.

  On screen, Roget and Canberra began a ritual of exorcism.

  Fred laughed out loud, realising he was now watching Richard and Barbara, not Leslie and Gaye. Few others in the room noticed the switch, which was a tribute to the casting. Some of the pack knew this wasn’t what they expected, but they were used to Squiers’ “last-minute” changes and accepted what was being broadcast as the authentic Barstows. Squiers had a chunk of leather in his mouth and was chewing steadily. He was indeed eating his hat. His shirt was sweated through.

  The ritual was nonsense, of course. If it hadn’t been, the characters wouldn’t have been Roget and Canberra as established on the programme. It was important to keep consistent, not to break the audience’s compact with unlikeliness.

  The pentagram crackled, and Da Barstow’s urn levitated off the mantel.

  Squiers clutched his chest, choking on his hat. Apart from Richard, nobody noticed.

  “You ... barstards,” Squiers croaked.

  The chanting rose, whipping up a supernatural wind in Mavis’ lounge. Mavis blundered in, eliciting a round of applause from the audience, and held hands with the ghost-hunters. June had insisted on being in the scene. It was her show, after all.

  “Chant after me,” said Richard-as-Roget.

  June-as-Mavis nodded.

  “Spectre of Evil, Spectre of Pain,” said Richard-as-Roget.

  “Spectre of Evil, Spectre of Pain,” echoed Barbara-as-Canberra and June-as-Mavis.

  “Begone from this House, Begone from this Plane!”

  “Begone from this House, Begone from this Plane!”

  The urn wobbled a bit, but winds continued to buffet the exorcising trio, and flash-powder went off around the lounge.

  “Spirit of Darkness, Spirit of Gloom ...”

  “Spirit of Darkness, Spirit of Gloom ...”

  “Return to thy Graveyard, return to thy Tomb!”

  “Return to thy Graveyard, return to thy Tomb!”

  The lid came off the urn, and flaming ashes sprinkled.

  Squiers was severely affected now, jerking and gasping in seizure, ragged-brimmed hat bucking up and down on his lap. The people sat around him noticed. Tara ripped open his shirt, scattering buttons, and pressed his heaving chest.

  On the screens, the ashes of Da Barstow—the “doll” of Marcus Squiers—spewed out of the urn in a human-shaped cloud, with trailing limbs and a thickness around the head that was u
nmistakably a flat cap.

  It wasn’t even special effects; it was an illusion, a lighting trick.

  June-as-Mavis held up a silver crucifix, forged by melting down Da’s shove ha’penny champion sovereign. Richard-as-Roget raised a fetish of Erzulie Freda, on loan from Mama-Lou. And Barbara-as-Canberra pulled an old-fashioned toy gun that shot out a flag bearing the word bang!

  “You were always bloody useless, Darius Barstow,” said Mavis, at full blast. “Now clear off out of it and leave decent people alone.”

  “Dispel,” said Richard, underplaying.

  The cloud of ash exploded, pelting the entire set—it had taken longer to clean up than to shoot the scene—and then vanished.

  Dawnlight filtered in on a dimmer switch. Tweeting bird sound effects lay over the settling dust.

  The camera rolled towards Mavis, who gave a speech about how the nightmare was over and life in Bleeds could get back to “normal.”

  There was a commotion around Squiers’ seat. Squiers wasn’t in it anymore. He wasn’t in anything anymore. All that was left was a hat on the floor, a fine scattering of grey ash and an after-the-firework-display smell.

  Tara’s hands, which had been against Squiers’ chest, were withered, like an arthritic eighty-year-old’s. One of her fingers snapped off, but she was too shocked to scream.

  The end titles scrolled, and the screening room lights came up.

  Richard thanked Lady Dee, without whom the substitution of master tapes could not have been managed. The Board was pleased that the proper order of things had been restored—little companies like O’Dell-Squiers (soon to be O’Dell Holdings) might make television, but networks like Amalgamated Rediffusion owned the airwaves and decided what was fed into the boxes. Squiers had focused on working magic in the making of the show, and taken transmission for granted, but Richard had understood the pins didn’t skewer the doll until the episode in question was watched by the believing millions.

  Wilding and Skinner were gone. Not like Squiers, but leaving fewer traces behind. This hadn’t worked out, but they had other irons in the fire— which Richard, or someone like him, would have to deal with eventually.

  Adam Onions wasn’t in that class yet. He was a nuisance, not a danger. The man from IPSIT bubbled around excitedly, scratching at everything, diagnosing a new, unknown form of spontaneous combustion. Richard was more than willing to cede the investigation to him. As Onions was scooping ash into a bag, Barbara stuck her tongue out at his back. She successfully overcame the temptation to boot his rump, mostly because she was wearing toeless spiked court shoes over sheer black silk stockings and reckoned permanent damage to her wardrobe not worth the passing pleasure of denting Onions’ negligible dignity.

  Maltese and Topazio made themselves scarce, but Inspector Price would know where they lived.

  “Well done, guv,” said Fred.

  “Tricky thing, voodoo,” said Vanessa. “Not to be trifled with.”

  On the way out, Richard nodded to June O’Dell. She and Mama-Lou sat in their seats, ignoring the fuss around Squiers’ sudden exit from this world. Richard did not doubt that the show would go on. With June wearing the producer’s hat.

  Richard walked with Barbara. Fred and Vanessa flanked them. Their way to the door was barred. By the writers’ pack.

  They really looked like a pack now, fangs bared, hunched over, angry at the loss of their alpha, fingers curled into claws. After all this hocus-pocus, Squiers’ followers might opt for good old-fashioned violence and rip their enemies to shreds.

  Fred and Vanessa tensed, ready for a scrap.

  “Heel,” said June firmly.

  As one, the pack looked to her.

  “You lot, there’s work to do. I’ll be taking more of an interest in the writing from now on. Porko, tomorrow you will sign Leslie Veneer and Gaye Brough to six-month contracts. Roget and Canberra will be staying in Bleeds to mop up after the Bogey. No decapitations necessary.”

  The chubby writer checked his colleagues’ faces and nodded vigorously. The rest agreed with him. June O’Dell was in charge.

  “Professor Corri,” she said, “we’ve had our differences, but I’d like to offer you a job as Head Writer. This is yours for the taking....”

  She snatched the school cap from one of the writers’ pockets and offered it to Barbara.

  “I’ll think about it,” said the Professor.

  Beside June, Mama-Lou smiled, eyes glittering.

  The Moo and Mistress Voodoo exerted a tug on Barbara, which Richard knew would have an effect. He was more worried about how the Professor would fare in the television jungle than he had been when she was only under a deadly curse. But she could take care of herself.

  Richard acknowledged these women of power, trusting—against prior experience—they would wield it only for good. He might have to keep watching the blasted programme to make sure they avoided the shadow of the Saturday Man.

  He helped the Professor, now steady on her feet, out of the room.

  The Rolls awaited.

  He turned to look into Barbara’s eyes, and kissed her. Her terror had passed, and new, exciting feelings were creeping in.

  “Did we win?” she asked.

  “Handsomely,” said Richard.

  <>

  * * * *

  THE MAN WHO GOT OFF THE GHOST TRAIN

  CULLER’S HALT

  “Ten hours, guv’nor,” said Fred Regent. “That’s what the timetable says. Way this half-holiday is going, next train mightn’t come for ten months.”

  Richard Jeperson shrugged. A cheek muscle twitched.

  Pink-and-gray-streaked autumn skies hung over wet fields. Fred had scouted around. No one home. Typical British Rail. He only knew Culler’s Halt was in use because of the uncollected rubbish. Lumpy plastic sacks were piled on the station forecourt like wartime sandbags. The bin-men’s strike was settled, but maybe word hadn’t reached these parts. A signpost claimed “Culler 3m.” If there was a village at the end of the lane, it showed no lamps at the fag-end of this drab afternoon.

  Fred wasn’t even sure whichcountry Culler was in.

  On the platform, Richard stood by their luggage, peering at the dying sunlight through green-tinted granny glasses. He wore a floor-length mauve travel coat with brocade flogging, shiny PVC bondage trousers (a concession to the new decade) and a curly-brimmed purple top hat.

  Fred knew the Man from the Diogenes Club was worried about Vanessa. When a sensitive worried about someone who could famously take care of herself, it was probably time to panic.

  At dawn, they’d been far south, after a nasty night’s work in Cornwall. They had been saddled with Alastair Garnett, a civil servant carrying out a time-and-motion study. In a funk, the man from the ministry had the bad habit of giving orders. If the local cops had listened to Richard rather than the “advisor,” there’d have been fewer deaths. The hacked-off body parts found inside a stone circle had had to be sorted into two piles—goats and teenagers. An isolated family, twisted by decades of servitude to breakfast food corporations, had invented their own dark religion. Ceremonially masked in cornflakes packets with cut-out eyeholes, the Penrithwick Clan made hideous sacrifice to the goblins Snap, Crackle and Pop. Bloody wastage like that put Richard in one of his moods, and no wonder. Fred would happily have booted Garnett up his pin-striped arse, but saw the way things were going in the eighties.

  Trudging back to seaside lodgings in Mevagissey, hardly up for cooked breakfast and sworn off cereal for life, they were met by the landlady and handed Vanessa’s telegram, an urgent summons to Scotland.

  Abandoning the Penrithwick shambles to Garnett, Richard and Fred took a fast train to Paddington. They crossed London by taxi without even stopping off at homes in Chelsea and Soho for a change of clothes or a hello to the girlfriends—who would of course be ticked off by that familiar development—and rattled out of Euston in a slam-door diesel.

  The train stank of decades’ worth of Benson & H
edges. Since giving up, Fred couldn’t be in a fuggy train or pub without feeling queasily envious. At first, they shared their first-class compartment with a clear-complexioned girl whose T-shirt (sporting the word “GASH,” with an Anarchy Symbol for the “A”) was safety-pinned together like a disassembled torso stitched up after autopsy. She quietly leafed throughBunty and The Lady, chainsmoking with a casual pleasure that made Fred wish a cartoon anvil would fall from the luggage rack onto her pink punk hairdo. At Peterborough, she was collected by a middle-aged gent with a Range Rover. Fred and Richard had the compartment to themselves.

  Outside Lincoln, something mechanical got thrown. The train slowed to a snail’s pace, overtaken by ancient cyclists, jeered at by small boys (“get off and milk it!”), inching through miles-long tunnels. This went on for agonising hours. Scheduled connections were missed. The only alternative route the conductor could offer involved getting off at York, a stopping train to Culler’s Halt, then a service to Inverdeith, changing there for Portnacreirann. In theory, it was doable. In practice, they were marooned. The conductor had been working from a timetable good only until September the 1st of last year. No one else had got off at Culler’s Halt.