Geek Tragedy (22 page)

Vanity’s head drooped to one side in mock-sympathy. ‘Oh you poor darling. Can’t she get over the fact you’d been with me first? That’s a shame. I can understand how it must be upsetting for her. After all, once the understudy, always the understudy.’

‘Don’t say anything against her.’

‘Of course, she was bound to end up with a midget. With her career, she’s got to be used to small parts.’

He hurled a quivering finger in her direction. ‘For the last time… I’m warning you… You’d better—’

Vanity had had enough. She stubbed her cigarette out, squishing it into a saucer with grim resolve. ‘Better
what
, darling? What should I do? Rewrite my book? Stop it going out? Not possible, darling. Too late. The presses have rolled. There are a hundred thousand copies stashed in a grotty warehouse in Leavesden.’ She looked condescendingly down at his angry face. ‘So sue me! I’m hardly accusing you of rape or murder, darling, simply of being a jolly good shag and a fertile little munchkin. The publicity alone will generate enough extra sales to offset any costs…’ She sashayed to the door and opened it. ‘So if that’s all… If you’re a very lucky little boy I’ll send you a free copy.’

‘You don’t know who you’re messing with, you bitch. I’m going to get you—my way.’

‘You’re not going to bite my ankles are you, darling?’

‘No, really, I’m serious. I’ll sue. I’ll take a DNA test and I’ll sue. You do this to me, you’ll be sorry. I sorted Sheldon out, and I’ll do it to you.’

Mervyn almost fell through the wardrobe doors.
Sheldon? What did he just say about Sheldon?

‘Is that a threat?’

‘Definitely. He crossed me. I got rid of him—’

Got rid of him?

‘—and you’ll be just as sorry. Remember what happened to Sheldon. That’s your last warning, and don’t you forget it.’

‘Threats don’t work on me darling. I’ve been threatened by aliens, robots and at least four ex-boyfriends; including an East-End gangster and a middleweight boxer. Empty threats from one of Santa’s little elves aren’t going to interrupt my beauty sleep.’

Smurf’s feet pattered across the room. ‘You’ll be sorry. Just wait. Sheldon was sorry. You’ll be too.’

Mervyn mind was spinning. Investigating one murder, had he just heard a confession to
another
one? One that everyone presumed was a tragic accident?

Is this what it’s all about?
he thought wildly.
Was Simon blackmailing Smurf too? About something he did in the past?

‘Why does it have to be
me
?—all the blokes you’ve—why do you have to
invent
shit like this? Why can’t you just pull someone else out of your bloody closet? Someone like Mervyn, for example…’ As he said this, he illustrated his point by gesturing towards the wardrobe; he pulled open the doors, revealing Mervyn sandwiched between two coats that Vanity had yet to pack.

Smurf stared at Mervyn, open-mouthed. ‘Mervyn?’

Mervyn waved, feebly.

‘Jesus Christ! Mervyn?’

Smurf slammed the wardrobe shut again and stormed out. The room shuddered as the door banged shut. The wardrobe doors were immediately flung open with the force.

‘The coast is clear, darling…’

Mervyn expected to get yanked out by his lapels. Instead, Vanity slipped into the wardrobe and snuggled up to him.

‘Well this is cosy… Mmm.’ Mervyn felt something wet and slimy wriggle into his ear.

Mervyn wasn’t in the mood. ‘Vanity, what did he mean?’

‘Mean what, dear?’

‘What did he mean by “sorting out” Sheldon?’

‘I don’t know Mervy, I don’t know what the nasty man was talking about, I’m not cwever wike you.’ She was putting on her baby voice now; an ominous sign that sex was imminent.

‘He must have meant something by it…’

‘Who cares? He’s like all little men—big temper, big talk, no action. He’s harmless.’

Mervyn wasn’t so sure. ‘I have to go and talk to him.’

Mervyn tried to escape, but an arm lassoed his neck and dragged him back in. ‘Not yet darling. You haven’t persuaded me to stay yet…’

There was a sound; a ‘harrumph’ noise. Someone close by had cleared their throat very loudly and very meaningfully. Mervyn and Vanity both looked in the direction of the noise.

At the other end of the wardrobe, separated from Mervyn by Vanity’s coats, was an attractive young man clad only in a shirt and boxer shorts, holding a pair of shoes, trousers and a jacket. Mervyn thought he looked familiar. He mentally dressed him, put a jacket and bow tie on him, and realised it was one of the younger receptionists. The young man gave a feeble smile and an even feebler wave.

Vanity was truly surprised. Her eyes were wide and her mouth had formed a perfect circle, as if she was auditioning to model for her own sex doll. ‘Oh balls,’ she said. ‘I’d forgotten about you, darling. Mervyn, meet Jeremy, Jeremy meet Mervyn.’

‘Hi.’

‘Hello.’

‘Jeremy’s very good. Always willing to do that bit extra for favoured guests… He gave me a room with a
lovely
view.’

Jeremy and Mervyn both made their excuses and left.

Mervyn should have used the opportunity to ask Jeremy for a better room, but it didn’t seem sporting to take advantage of a man running down the corridor with his shirt hanging out and his shoes in his hand. Besides, he wanted to talk to Smurf.

He saw Smurf in the hotel lift, jammed his foot between the doors and slipped inside.

‘You traitor!’

‘Smurf, calm down!’

‘
Et tu
, Mervyn!’

‘I wasn’t having sex with her!’

‘You’ve got scratches on your cheek!’

‘That wasn’t her. That was her coat-hangers.’

‘Oh yeah?

‘I was investigating!’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘She was confessing something very private.’

‘Stop digging the hole, Merv, you’re looking shorter than me.’ The lift doors opened and Smurf strode out, heading for the room where he kept his Styrax.

‘Smurf when I was in the wardrobe—I
heard
you.’

‘What?’

‘I heard what you said.’

‘So? Do you blame me? She libels me in her book, and her daughter sends nasty threatening letters to me. Of course I said that stuff.’

‘No. What you said about Sheldon.’

‘What about Sheldon?’

They walked past another queue of expectant fans, waiting to have their photos taken with the star of
Vixens from the Void
wearing his Styrax costume. At the front of the queue was Hefty Helen, looking at her
Star Trek
watch and sighing. ‘At last!’ she hooted.

Mervyn was not to be deflected. ‘You said you’d “got rid” of him.’

‘Too right I got rid of him. Served him right. You know what he kept calling me? He was half an inch taller than me. Half a bloody inch! You know what nickname he had for me? “Small fry”!
Small fry
!
The toffee-nosed half-pint fascist called
me
small fry! How can you be sizeist
and
a dwarf?’

The Styrax was set up in the corner of the room, a ‘GONE TO LUNCH’ sign hanging round its neck. A vulgar diorama of stars and planets was suspended behind it.

Morris was in the room, checking his camera. His massive head swivelled upwards. ‘All right, Smurf. Mervyn… Stand anywhere, but don’t go near the Styrax.’

‘That joke’s never going to get old,’ muttered Mervyn.

‘Shall I start letting them in?’ droned Morris.

‘Yeah, okay. Mervyn, if you’ll excuse me… I’m working here.’ Smurf took the sign off, and opened the Styrax with slightly too much force. The hatch bounced open and wobbled dangerously on its tiny hinges.

‘But what did you mean by it?’

‘What do you think I meant?’

‘I don’t know.’

Hefty Helen had entered the room, and was standing pointedly behind Mervyn, clearing her throat like a dying bull elephant. ‘Excuse me!’

Smurf clambered into the Styrax.

‘I don’t know, so tell me. Did you get rid of him?’

‘Yes.’

‘So, what, you killed him?’

‘What?’ The back slammed shut.

‘Are you saying you killed him?’

‘Of course I didn’t kill him.’ Inside the Styrax, his voice was blurred and distorted, like someone speaking into a plastic cup. ‘It was an accident. A fire at his house. Faulty wiring—plain and simple…’

‘Can we get on?’ thundered Helen. ‘I’ve got photos with Bernard Viner and the Styrax Superior on the other side of the hotel. I’ve got to be there in ten minutes.’

‘…accidental death. Tragic accident. Poor bastard…’ There was an angry scuffling from within as Smurf wriggled around in the Styrax. ‘Look, wait a sec. Mervyn are you still out there?’

‘Yes.’

The back opened again and Smurf leaned out. ‘Are you doing your detective thing again?’ He gave a big grin. ‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick, mate. Look, when I said I got rid of him, I didn’t “get rid of him”. Not like that. What I mean was I “got rid of him” from the show. I was the one that shopped him to the BBC and got him sacked. You see, he hadn’t taken his medical. He said the BBC was a socialist bureaucracy and that medical tests were Stalinist. Or was the BBC a Stalinist bureaucracy and medical tests were socialist? Whatever. You know how he went on. So he paid another dwarf to go along to do the medical for him… And guess who that was?’

‘You?’

‘Yep.’

‘And they fell for it?’ Mervyn remembered the horrors of his own medical—all that coughing and grabbing and standing there trouserless—and wished he could have found a similarly crumpled writer to have stood in for him.

‘Mervyn mate, there are
some
advantages to being like me and Sheldon. If someone three foot tall walks into your surgery and says they’re Sheldon the Midget, you don’t ask for their bloody driving licence. Anyway, spin forward a few years, and he’s got a bit full of himself, a bit, y’know…’

‘Big for his boots?’

A tobacco-stained chuckle came from within. ‘That’s a pretty nasty insult for us dwarves. We don’t do big in boots. Anyway, he started dropping hints to Nicholas about me keeping booze in my Styrax. I mean! God, it was just one tiny bottle of whisky because it was so bloody cold in that quarry, but that bastard looked like he was going to shop me. Anyway, I thought, if he’s prepared to do that, I’d better get in there first. It was him or me. So I grassed him up, and he got sacked. I got let off with a reprimand, cos Nicholas pleaded on my behalf, cos when it came to midgets to work the Styrax Sentinels, Nick was a bit short.
Short
, get it? In fact, I was the only midget he had left when Sheldon got the boot—he couldn’t afford to lose both of us. So I stayed and he went. Sheldon would have understood. Him being a Tory. Survival of the fittest and all that…’ There was another faint chuckle from knee height. ‘Silly old Merv. Who’d want to murder him? Bloody hell, who’s been fiddling with this? Why is my seat so low?’

Helen sighed impatiently. There was a hideous noise as Smurf began adjusting his seat. SQUEAKsquee. SQUEAKsquee. SQUEAKsquee. The lights of the Styrax switched on, and one of the clamps on the front extended and flexed itself.

‘Did the claws wiggle just then?’

‘Just the left one,’ rumbled Morris.

‘Bollocks. I thought as much.’

SQUEAKsquee. SQUEAKsquee. SQUEAKsquee. The single clamp wiggled again. SQUEAKsquee… SQUEAKsquee…

‘If anyone interferes with my Styrax again, I’m
really
gonna to kill someone, and for the benefit of Mervyn out there, that’s hyperbole. I’m not
really
gonna kill someone. All right, Morris, I’m ready.’

Helen stood sullenly by the Styrax. Morris readied his camera.

‘Now smile…’ said Morris. ‘There’s going to be a flash, so try not to blink…’

And then the Styrax exploded.

Mervyn was showered in bits of Styrax and, he realised, bits of Smurf.

He screamed, but couldn’t hear his scream because he had no hearing left. He could see the vast rump of Helen poking over a shattered table and Morris lying awkwardly on the ground, still clutching his camera.

The Styrax was gone. Smurf was gone. Only the base of the Styrax remained, engulfed in flames. Foul-smelling smoke filled the room and the air turned grey and greasy.

‘Smurf!’ He hoped he’d said ‘Smurf’, but he didn’t know for sure. He needed someone to lip-read his own mouth and report back to him.

The plumes of smoke were swamped by a big black cloud which surged into the air like an evil genie. Morris’s huge body stood over him, filling his eyeline. Morris gallumphed over to Helen, yanked his ConVix T-shirt out of his jeans, bunched it in his fist and pulled it up to his face, revealing a generous role of belly fat carpeted with black hair. He buried his nose in the T-shirt with his left hand, reached out with his right and flipped Helen over his shoulder with surprising ease.

There was a greasy smell.

Like…

Like the smell at a barbecue.

Mervyn felt sick.

Then Mervyn watched the ceiling come towards him, and he watched it glide past. Morris was carrying him on his back.

He put Mervyn gently down outside. Mevyn lay there, dazed, and the big man knelt down and silently mouthed ‘Are you all right?’ to him, while humming a high-pitched note that never stopped.

Mervyn was going to answer, but he was staring disbelievingly past Morris’s shoulder.

Through the carnage, through the burning, charred wreckage, the smoke and dying flames, he saw someone walking towards the inferno. Mervyn thought he was hallucinating, but there he was.

A man from the hotel holding a little bucket of sand.

The man upended his little bucket of sand on the raging carcass of the Styrax, and mopped his brow.

‘Bugger,’ he said. ‘We’re going to need a bigger bucket.’

CONVIX 15 / EARTH ORBIT TWO / 4.00pm

EVENT: A PRODUCER’S STORY—NICHOLAS EVERETT

LOCATION: Vixos Central Nerve Centre (main stage, ballroom)