Robin Jarvis-Jax 01 Dancing Jax (5 page)

The tattooist grudgingly opened his well-padded wallet. “Here’s forty,” he said, handing the notes over to Tommo. “But I want change!”

“Give him more,” Jezza told him.

“That’s plenty for beers and a cheap bottle of voddy!” Howie protested.

“It’s not for the booze.”

“Takeaways?” Miller suggested hopefully.

Jezza took Howie’s wallet off him and handed it to Tommo. “I want about thirty big bags of charcoal,” he said.

“Barbecue stuff?” Tommo asked.

“That’s right, we’re having a great big luau.”

“On the beach? Cool.”

“No, not on the beach, and it’ll be anything but cool.”

Howie grabbed the wallet back and removed all his plastic, except the Clubcard, then returned it. “Make sure you use that,” he informed Tommo. “I want the points.”

“Points?” Jezza scoffed. “You really think they’re doing you some sort of favour and actually rewarding you for being loyal? Were you born half an hour ago? Wake up, brother. What they’re doing is building up a detailed profile of everything you buy, every time you use that and every other card you’ve got. They know what you eat, what you wear, what you read, where you travel to every day and where you’re likely to be at any given time. They know what music you listen to, what TV you watch, what websites you visit and what you download, what turns you on and what makes you laugh on YouTube. They know what your politics are – it’s all on your file now and who’s merrily filled it in for them? You have, like the good little lemming consumer you are.”

Howie shrugged, “I still get money off,” he said.

“Peanuts,” Jezza snorted. “They’re conning you into building up a comprehensive database about yourself and paying you in half-price spaghetti hoops to do it. There’s a computer somewhere that can calculate how often you take a dump because it knows precisely how much aloe vera impregnated bog roll you buy and when you buy it. They know everything about you, my son. But you, and millions like you, aren’t even slightly disturbed by that. You’re just happy to get your reduced Hovis and bargain garibaldis.”

“Jammie Dodgers,” Howie corrected.

“Are we going or what?” Miller interrupted.

Tommo laughed. “Don’t talk about food when the gasworks here hasn’t eaten for a whole four hours.”

Jezza inclined his head – the sermon was over for now – and he herded them through the door.

“So where we having this barbie?” Tommo asked.

Jezza beckoned them round the side of the building and gathered everyone in the yard at the rear. Then he gestured to the alien landscape of the immense container port.

“In there,” he announced.

No one said anything. They each gazed at the wide prospect of stacked metal containers in the distance.

“You really have lost it this time,” Howie eventually said. “You’re out of it! Totally out of it. Why in there?”

Jezza’s eyes remained on the mountainous gantry cranes on the horizon. “Because the reception will be best,” he said enigmatically. “And you’ll be safer.”

“It’s a mad idea!” Tommo crowed. “And I love it! Let’s go rock that place!”

Howie tore at his beard in exasperation. “You’re both loonies!” he cried. “For one thing, you’d never get inside in a million years – the security is tight as an airport nowadays.”

“Then isn’t it lucky we know Tesco Charlie and his big shiny lorry?” Jezza answered. “He’s in and out of there all the time.”

The tattooist spluttered. “You’re not serious!” he shouted. “Do you know the heavy crap you’ll get into when you’re caught? And you will be caught! They’ve got their own police unit in there. Those guys are all ex-military, there’s no one under six foot five. They don’t play nicey-nicey and accountable like the town regulars. They’ll rough you up, crack your head open – and then throw you in the nick.”

Jezza put a calming hand on his shoulder. “The port’s pigs will be otherwise engaged tonight,” he informed him. “A lovely diversion has been arranged and they, and the fire crews, are going to be so very busy to even notice li’l ol’ us.”

“What?” Howie cried. “Even if you could arrange to get rid of them for a while, which I don’t believe, they’ve got top-of-the-range CCTV in there. Those cameras can zoom into bedroom windows across the water in Harwich!”

Jezza continued to stare at him. “Let this fear go, man,” he said. “Come on, don’t be so uptight. Live a little – or are you really going to miss out on this and stay trapped in your pinball boundaries with your loyalty cards and gas bills? It’s a once in a lifetime offer, Jimmy Boy – come join me. Leave all that just for tonight and follow me… Beyond the Silvering Sea, within thirteen green, girdling hills, come – be a part of something amazing. I promise, tonight will blow your mind.”

The tension in Howie’s shoulders eased and he nodded slowly. “OK,” he agreed. “But I must be even madder than you.”

Tommo whooped and grabbed Miller’s hands and the pair of them danced back to the camper van.

Howie and Jezza followed, leaving Shiela standing alone in the yard, silhouetted against the distant lights that were already coming on over the container terminal. To her, the giant cranes looked like titanic sculptures of giraffes.

“And me?” she called out. “What’ll I do?”

Jezza glanced over his shoulder and gave her an empty smile. “You got the most important job of all, doll,” he declared. “You’ve got to guard the books till we get back.”

“Here, on my own?”

“But you’re not on your own,” he answered in earnest. “The Dancing Jacks are with you.”

It was growing dark when the camper van pulled up the overgrown drive for the third time that day.

“Creepy as hell!” Howie exclaimed, staring up at the louring building. “Who lived here then, the Munsters or the Addams Family?”

“You raaaaang?” Miller droned in his ear.

“If I see a hand running along the floor,” Howie informed them, “I’m stamping on the bugger and breaking its bloody fingers.”

He studied the large house critically. It must have been expensive even back in the day, but it could never have been a handsome building. From a design perspective, it was simply hideous. Still, he knew several goths who would happily spend their holidays here and read gloomy poetry by candlelight.

“Inside,” Jezza said.

Slabs of shadow covered the large hall. Miller’s skin prickled as he entered.

“Don’t tell me,” Howie said, “designed by Tim Burton.”

“You’ve seen nothing yet,” Miller whispered. “You should go out back. It’d turn Alan Titchmarsh’s hair white.”

Jezza crossed to the stairs. Howie moved to follow him, but Miller hesitated.

“Stay there, both of you,” Jezza commanded. “Wait for me and don’t go wandering. This old place can be … dangerous in the dark.”

Miller shivered. He knew Jezza wasn’t talking about rotten floorboards. He suddenly wished he had stayed behind with Shiela. Besides, he’d like to read more of that book…

Jezza’s wiry figure disappeared up the stairs, into the impenetrable shadow of the first-floor landing.

In the spacious hall the two men waited.

Minutes ticked by.

“Who’s up there with him?” Howie asked.

Miller did not answer. He too had heard a muffled voice speaking in one of the rooms above, but he preferred not to mention it. Neither of them could make out what was being said up there, the voice (or was it voices?) was too remote and the creeping darkness seemed to soak up the sound like a sponge.

“I thought this place was empty,” Howie said.

Miller looked uneasy. “No one lives here,” he muttered.

“So is he talking to himself up there?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“What’s up with our fearless leader today? He’s been acting weird since you turned up with them first three boxes.”

“I think it’s going to get a lot weirder,” Miller predicted. He had never been more right in his life.

Suddenly there was a deafening crash. A tremendous, clanging weight had toppled to the floor over their heads.

Miller almost jumped out his skin and grabbed hold of Howie.

“What the hell?” the tattooist cried as plaster flaked from the ceiling and rained on top of them. “Did someone drop twenty pianos?”

“I’m gone!” Miller declared, heading for the front door.

Then a different sound commenced: a slow, scraping noise. Something unbelievably heavy was being dragged across the floor. Miller paused and lifted his face upwards. They could hear Jezza’s grunts and shouts as he strained and pulled whatever it was on to the landing.

“OK,” Howie murmured. “I’m officially freaked now – and this close to soiling myself.”

“I think I already have,” Miller breathed.

The scraping continued – down the length of the landing, to the top of the stairs. They heard Jezza struggling and swearing with exertion. Then there was a calamitous din that echoed through the house and shook the banisters.

Something large came smashing down the staircase, thudding and banging with a dull metal clash, like the chiming of a huge leaden bell. It slid like an avalanche of old bedsteads down to the small landing where Miller had experienced terror earlier that afternoon and thundered into the wall beneath the partially boarded window.

The two men stared, open-mouthed, and waited for the echoes, that were bouncing through every room and vibrating the broken glass in the window frames, to ebb away.

Then Jezza’s sweating, ghostly-white face appeared over the banister above and he laughed softly.

“Dear God!” Howie gasped, pointing at the great shape that had crunched into the wood of the half-panelled wall. “What the hell is that?”

Chapter 6

A
nd when the Dawn Prince was in exile, he sent neither message nor sign back to his Kingdom. So, whilst the Ismus and his subjects waited, they filled their days with merrymaking and happy pleasures. But every party has to end when the revellers grow weary, yet still the throne remained empty and no word came to Mooncaster… O how they longed for tidings.

“I’
VE HAD MY
identity stolen!” Carol yelled at Martin Baxter as soon as he opened the front door.

“Who are you now then?” he asked.

“Some scumbag has been using my credit card details to get flights to Barcelona, a huge flat-screen TV, a tumble dryer and God knows what else in Comet – and a massive shopping spree in Homebase. The best part of four grand they’ve rinsed me for!”

“Hello to you too,” he greeted her.

“I’m furious!” she seethed, brandishing a statement she’d printed out from her online banking.

“And I’m Martin. Shall I go out and come in again?”

The woman glared at him for a moment, then wilted and managed a smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m covered anyway, so I’ve not really lost that money. It’s so bloody annoying though. I was on the phone for over an hour trying to sort it out. Can you believe these people? How dare they?”

“There’s a lot of scum in the world,” he said. “It’s mad, isn’t it? You’ve got to shred every trace of who you are on every letter, bill and envelope before you throw them away, otherwise they’ll have you. Destroying yourself before someone else does. You wouldn’t believe my day, by the way. Where’s Paul?”

She pointed upstairs.

“Daft question really,” Martin said.

Carol went over to him and welcomed him home properly, with a hug and a kiss. “I’ve already heard a bit about your day,” she said. “Got a call from my mum who’d heard all from some neighbour or other. Sounded bad.”

“It was! Good job you picked Paul up today to take him to Gerald’s. It was mental.”

“I was just going to get changed. My shift starts at nine. We left you some lasagne. I’ll nuke it for you.”

“Thanks – I am starved.”

He took his jacket off and hung it in the narrow hallway before following her into the kitchen. Carol Thornbury was a pretty woman, seven years his junior, with dark brown hair and a feisty personality. If there was one word to describe her, it would be ‘capable’. But then, as a nurse, she’d have to be. Whatever life threw at her, she dealt with it in her usual efficient manner. She might have a bit of a rant to begin with, but she quickly applied her common sense to whatever the problem might be, without any unnecessary fuss or drama. When her husband had walked out on both her and their five-year-old son, she had been as organised at sorting out that mess as with everything else in her life. She had managed perfectly well without a man for several years until her path crossed Martin’s. Sometimes he felt that she had even organised getting the two of them together. If she had, he was thankful.

“You got a parcel today,” she said, waiting for the microwave to ping. “I think I see more of that postman than I do you. Wouldn’t mind if he was remotely dishy, but he looks like Fungus the Bogeyman’s uglier brother.”

Martin’s face lit up and he hurried into the lounge where a medium-sized parcel stood on the coffee table.

“Bless you, eBay!” he cried, snatching the package and dashing upstairs with it.

“What about the lasagne?” Carol called.

“In a bit!” he answered. “First things first.”

Carol rolled her eyes. “We’re going to need an extension at this rate,” she told herself.

It was a three-bedroom semi, but only two of those were ever slept in. Whenever guests came to stay, they were compelled to sleep on the sofa downstairs. The third bedroom was Martin’s own private sanctuary. Somewhere he could escape the grinding rigours of teaching at a modern High School and the Emma Taylors of this world. A place filled with things that his pupils would hang him out to dry for if they ever found out about them.

“Paul!” he shouted, knocking on the box-room door as he passed by. “It’s here!”

The maths teacher took a shallow breath before entering his own ‘inner sanctum’. Then strode inside.

The few visitors who were ever privileged to be ushered in here were always lost for words. There was too much to see, too much to take in straight away to be able to formulate any coherent sentence, so they always made the same sort of exclamations.

“Oh, wow!”

“Amazing!”

“Blimey!”

Only Carol’s mother had ever been practically minded enough to come out with, “How do you dust it all?”

Martin Baxter, the cynical, down-to-earth maths teacher who took no nonsense from any of his students, was a monumental, dyed-in-the-wool, sci-fi and fantasy geek – with a capital G.

His special room was crammed from floor to ceiling with all manner of merchandise: DVDs, costumes, props, limited-edition prints, toys, action figures, models, replicas, books, comics, magazines and framed photographs of himself meeting the stars of his favourite films and television shows. There were busts of just about every character in the Lord of the Rings movies and daleks of every dimension, from the tiny ‘Rolykins’ version up to life-size (a particularly extravagant, pre-Carol present to himself). Spaceships from diverse universes flew in formation from the ceiling – followed incongruously by Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. There were Star Fleet uniforms, complete with a selection of various comm badges and tricorders, and even a genuine phaser from the first season of the Next Generation (another expensive present to himself in his bachelor days).

A preposterously long, multicoloured scarf festooned a hatstand, an Alien egg with the face-hugger just crawling out of it, a bottle of Tru:Blood, a prop business card used in the 1957 movie Night of the Demon by the black magician Julian Karswell – with the silver warning written on it – the Clangers, together with the Soup Dragon, Iron Chicken and froglets, a lamp housed within the golden head of C-3PO, several magic wands in display cases, a chunk of Kryptonite that glowed in the dark, a top-of-the-range lightsaber which made movie-accurate sound effects and many more objects which had taken Martin years to accumulate. One of his most prized acquisitions, however, was also one of the smallest – an actual authentic Liberator teleport bracelet from Blake’s Seven. Now that had been expensive!

Even with his mathematical skill, Martin had given up trying to calculate how much it had all cost him, but he knew it was far, far more than the sum Carol’s identity thieves had stolen from her account.

He set the parcel on his crowded desk and began tearing off the packaging. A young face appeared around the door behind him.

“Let’s see!” Paul cried.

Paul Thornbury was eleven. He had curly, fair hair and was small and slight for his age. He shared Martin’s love of fantasy though and the two of them could spend hours together glued to a DVD or poring over comics or discussing the latest monster in Martin’s all-time favourite show. Was it as good as the Zygons, or was it as dismal as the Myrka? During such conversations they spoke in a language that Carol, quite frankly, didn’t understand. She had no use for science fiction and fantasy. She preferred real life, but was more than delighted to leave them to it, while she sat in front of Casualty or House with a glass of white wine. Martin could never understand why she watched those programmes. Didn’t she have enough of that at work? Carol would always nod, but added that she enjoyed laughing at the mistakes.

Paul stood beside Martin and watched him pull the bubble wrap and newspaper out of the adapted cardboard box. He had found this for Martin. He had entered it as a special search in eBay and had been checking it for the past seven months, without success. Then, a few weeks ago, one had come up and now here it was.

Martin tore the last piece of packing from it and turned the glass object in his hands so that it caught the light. It was a fresnel lens. Quite hard to come by nowadays, but essential if Martin was going to build the full-size Police Box he had always wanted. It would be nothing without the lamp on top.

“Mum’ll go spare,” Paul chuckled.

This was their big conspiracy. They had been keeping it a secret from her for ages, ever since they discovered a website giving instructions on how to build one. When they had moved in, Carol had consigned all of Martin’s ‘toys’ to the one room and not even the mugs or fridge magnets were allowed in the rest of the house. If so much as an X-Files coaster appeared anywhere, it was swiftly returned to the inner sanctum with a Post-it note attached, on which she’d drawn an exclamation mark.

“We’ll just have to outvote her,” Martin said. “How good will one of these be in the garden?”

“Most excellent!” Paul agreed.

Martin rubbed his hands together gleefully then hid the lens inside an accommodating R2-D2.

“She’ll come round,” he said hopefully. “We’ll get it started one weekend when she’s working and she won’t be able to stop us.”

“What happened after school?” Paul asked. “I heard Mum talking on the phone.”

“Good job you had your piano lesson and weren’t there,” Martin told him. “Two very nasty fights. The Head is furious.”

“Wish I’d seen it,” the boy said, disappointed. Then he added, “She put too much salt in the lasagne again.”

Martin returned downstairs and discovered that for himself. Back in his own room, Paul surveyed the beginnings of his own crazy collection. His shelves were already full of fantasy figures and graphic novels. He was glad his mum had found and teamed up with Martin.

An email alert sounded from his computer and Paul hardly heard Carol shouting goodnight to him as she left for work. It was going to be a very busy, traumatic night in the hospital.

Paul frowned at the email. He didn’t recognise the sender. It was just a number, 7734, but it didn’t appear to be an advert for Viagra or a phoney bank scam and there weren’t any dodgy attachments.

“Tonight at Nine!” read the title.

He opened it.

“Weird,” Paul said. He had no idea who would send him anything like that. It wasn’t any of his Facebook friends. Not even Anthony Maskel or Graeme Parker, his closest friends at school, would have sent him something like that. Usually they sent him links to daft things they’d found on YouTube.

He thought about the Landguard for a moment. It was the huge old fortress down on the peninsula, dating back hundreds of years. It always struck him as strange that such a historic building should be slap bang next to the modern, industrial container port.

Paul rushed downstairs to tell Martin. The man laughed. He wasn’t the slightest bit interested in something like a flash mob and had looked forward to a quiet night of escapism in front of a DVD.

“But it’ll be huge!” Paul said. “Cameras and famous people. The email said so!”

Martin sighed. “You know,” he said. “The Internet is fantastic for stuff like eBay, but I think I preferred the world when it was simpler. When I was your age, the most new-fangled piece of kit we had was a pocket calculator and…”

“This isn’t the breast thing, is it?”

“Have I said this before?”

“You and your friends,” the boy recited wearily, “used to key in the number 5318008, then turn the calculator upside down and snigger.”

Martin chuckled. “Happy days,” he said.

“Ummm… whatever,” Paul muttered with a baffled grimace. He liked Martin, but sometimes he really did say some daft things for a forty-three-year-old maths teacher.

“Oh, go get your coat on,” the man told him. “I can watch the universe being saved again tomorrow night.”

Paul was already in the hallway zipping up his fleece.

“There’ll be no one else there, you know,” Martin said. “We’ll be stood there like two trainspotters without a station.”

In Felixstowe that evening, every young person under the age of twenty received that very same email. Afterwards, when the tragedy was being investigated, nobody could ever trace where it had originated.