Geek Tragedy (24 page)

Astonished, Mervyn took the blackmail note out of his pocket and held it against the papier-mâché. One article was from the
Daily Mail
and one was from
The Daily Telegraph
. They were both crumpled with age and glue, but they both had the same smiling wedding photos.

‘What does it mean?’ puzzled Stuart.

‘It means that the insides of the Styrax were padded with papier-mâché made from old newspapers from 1986,’ said Mervyn slowly. ‘Which means I know what this weird blackmail note is. It’s a photocopy of the insides of a Styrax.’ He paused. ‘And I’d be willing to bet real money on which one.’

‘The one you fell on,’ said Stuart.

‘In my investigations, Stuart, I’ve discovered that Simon blackmailed Bernard. He claimed that he had proof that Bernard stole that Styrax. Proof that was
written inside it.
’

‘Oh wow. And you’re thinking that something else written on the inside of the other Styrax was proof of…something else? Something you could be blackmailed for?’

‘But what?’ Mervyn stared at his blackmail note again in frustration, Vanity’s daughter momentarily forgotten. ‘Why does it say SAFE? What do those numbers
mean
?
Is it a safe combination? A compass bearing? A date? A password? A code…?’

‘The galactic co-ordinates for a planet…?’

Mervyn threw him a look. ‘Yes. Quite.’

‘Well I did have a suggestion… Sort of why we came here. We could use the computers.’

‘You’re not going to show me more of your “improved” bits of
Vixens
are you?’

‘No. Suppose we put the numbers into Google or something?’

Mervyn smiled. ‘Stuart, that is a brilliant idea!’

Stuart glowed with the compliment. ‘Thanks.’ He went to the nearest computer, put in a password, and his hands skittered over the keys. ‘Right. Here we go. Google. What are the numbers again?’

Mervyn looked at his blackmail note. ‘376…229…22.’

Stuart put them in and pressed return. Mervyn looked over his shoulder.

Stuart shook his head ‘Most of it’s all gibberish. Just websites full of numbers. I’ll go on to the next page.’ He pressed a key and scrolled down. ‘Nothing.’ And again. ‘Nothing.’ He did it again. ‘I think this is going to turn into a long—’

‘Wait… Look at that!’ Mervyn’s finger jabbed the screen. Halfway down the fourth page it had a link for the Wikipedia entry on the UK general election 1987. ‘My God!’ He leaned over Stuart’s shoulder and clicked the link. ‘General election 1987—the results were… Conservatives 376, Labour 229, SDP-Liberal Alliance 22! Of course!’

‘I don’t understand…’

‘Oh Stuart, Stuart, Stuart! Don’t you get it?’

‘What?’

‘And I thought you were an expert in all things
Vixens
.’

‘What? What?’

‘The 1987 general election happened the day before our last day of filming on series two! The day Bernard stole the Styrax! The day described in Chapter 13 of Vanity’s book! The day she had her wicked way with Smurf in the back of a Mini Metro covered in fibreglass!’

Stuart clapped his hands over his mouth, and gasped.

‘The Day… Of the Styrax!’

‘But what does it all mean?’ said Stuart.

‘Buggered if I know.’

Mervyn wandered over to the corner of the ‘suite’ and rested his arms on a ledge. He looked down, thinking.

Then something caught the corner of his eye.

Another panel session was finishing downstairs; fans were cascading out of the hotel ballroom. The suite’s huge glass walls overlooked the foyer, and Mervyn could see a thin-faced girl clad in a pink cardigan, holding an armful of pens and photos.

Vanity’s daughter.

She opened a loose-leaf file and scribbled something officiously in a margin. Snapping it shut, she tucked it under her arm. She pulled her pink fluffy cardigan across her scant chest, stretching the woollen bunny rabbits and ducklings on it into obscene positions. Her head twitched about, up and down the corridor, presumably looking for the lifts.

And then suddenly she was looking up at him.

She didn’t just catch his eye, or flick a glance at him; she appraised him with a detached interest, as if Mervyn were a painting and she was an artist assessing whether he were finished. And her eyes…

Staring, unblinking, pale and grey.

And then, when she finished looking at him, she kept on walking.

Mervyn dashed to the door of the business lounge. ‘Excuse me, Stuart, I’ve just remembered, I’ve got to be somewhere.’

‘What about the numbers? What about the 1987 general election?’

But Mervyn was gone.

He ran downstairs. He couldn’t see her.

No—there she was, at the other end of corridor. She was just about to turn into the dealers’ room.

The dealers’ room was the designated area for the sale of merchandise. Large hairy men who looked like they’d come out of prison only moments before smiled wolfishly as they took huge amounts of money off young people for—as far as Mervyn could see—no particularly good reason. It was like a funfair, but without the unpleasantness of going on the rides.

The place was very busy. He could see Morris moving around with a video camera, getting all the dealers to say ‘Hi’. Most of them were surreptitiously removing the ‘unofficial’ merchandise from their stalls, making sure that Morris’s footage didn’t end up on
Crimewatch
.

Mervyn looked around and spotted her. She wasn’t hard to spot; she was the only pink woolly thing in a sea of leather and crushed velvet. He watched her from the other side of the room as she flitted from table to table, examining bits and pieces with a leisurely lack of interest. He went up to a stall, trying to act casual by examining the T-shirts, models, keyrings and books, all the while keeping an eye on her.

‘Take a good look,’ the man sitting behind the table cackled, waggling a pair of caterpillar eyebrows.

He was large man; the bits of him that weren’t covered with hair were covered with metal. There were so many studs protruding from his body the police could have thrown him across roads to stop joyriders.

Mervyn looked down and was surprised to discover a statuette of Arkadia in his hand, his thumb resting neatly over her left breast.

‘She’s completely anatomically correct, you know.’

‘Really?’ said Mervyn, concentrating on keeping the girl within his peripheral vision.

‘Yep,’ said the man, ‘all the figures here are home-made and accurate down to the last detail,’ he scratched a spiky chin. ‘Which is ironic really…because four years ago I got cancer of the willy and had to have a penectomy.’ He gestured at his array of little plastic men and women, arranged in a semi-circle as if waiting for the encore in a musical. ‘So you see, I’m the only one at this table without any genitals.’

Mervyn made the kind of noise people made when they knew they should respond to someone talking, but had absolutely no idea how.

‘Go on, have a peep.’

‘What?’ flinched Mervyn, expecting the man to stand up and unzip his flies.

‘Have a look at her,’ grinned the man, in the manner of a pantomime villain selling new lamps for old.

‘I don’t really…’

‘Go on! Tell me what you think.’

Determined not to be intimidated, Mervyn turned it over. The figurine was dressed in a toga-like costume, so the material bunched up, leaving two plastic legs sticking up in the air.

‘Oh yes. That’s very, um, very. Um.’

The man winked. ‘I bet you can’t find anything wrong with that.’

A voice came from behind them. ‘Oh dear, sir, I’m afraid you’ve asked the wrong man.’

Mervyn turned around. It was Andrew Jamieson, craning over his shoulder and peering down Arkadia’s dress.

‘This man, sir,’ Andrew said to the vendor, slapping Mervyn on the shoulder, ‘is the world expert on all matters Mycroft. Why, I can tell just by glancing at Professor Stone’s aghast face that he is mortally offended at being subjected to such a blatantly inaccurate representation of the derriere.’

The man’s off-white smile faded. ‘Really? I did research. I bought the magazines specially.
Mayfair
, volume 28, number 6, June ‘93—“Space Slut Special.”’

‘Pfff! Hopelessly out of date, as Professor Stone will tell you. Her left buttock is entirely wrong. It now has a tattoo of a dancing hippo on it. And as for the frontal area…’

The vendor snatched it off Mervyn and peered up its skirt, absent-mindedly scratching the area where his penis used to be.

‘What’s wrong with it? It ain’t that bad, surely? I had a bit of a problem with getting the materials. I used the grass underfelt they use for model railways and I sprayed it black—’

‘Hopeless. If you’d only read Professor Stone’s papers on the subject, Ms Mycroft is the proud bearer of a Brazilian these days. All the most successful actresses have them. And you know why? Tell him, Professor.’

‘Well, I really wouldn’t know,’ said Mervyn impatiently.

‘They’re neat, tidy, and most importantly they look like “Welcome” mats.’

Mervyn had had enough. He placed a hand over Andrew’s mouth. ‘Excuse my friend. He’s on day-release from an asylum and I’m his doctor. He’s under the insane delusion that he’s funny and I have to humour him to stop him killing again.’

The vendor looked uncertainly at both of them.

Mervyn left the stall, Andrew waddling after him. ‘What are you doing following that girl? I thought you had enough balls in the air without another one. Anyway, I wouldn’t have thought she was your type.’

Mervyn spun Andrew round until they were nose to nose. He dropped his voice to a low and urgent murmur. ‘She
isn’t
my type. What do you know about Vanity Mycroft’s daughter?’

Andrew grinned. ‘I thought it was only a matter of time before you’d ask. She’s a bit of a nutcase, frankly, so men—beware! Trouble at boarding school… Pushed a teacher through a plate-glass window, or something. Mum put her in the Territorial Army to teach her discipline. All she learned was how to strip a rifle and blind people with her thumbs. She only started coming to conventions in the last few years. Mummy finally convinced her there might be a few decent men in amongst the genetically challenged.’ Andrew winked.

‘Do you think she’s capable of murder?’

‘What kind of question’s th—’

Out of the corner of his eye, Mervyn saw a cardigan festooned with bunnies and ducklings vanishing through the doorway.

‘She’s going,’ he hissed. ‘Can’t stop. I want to see where she goes.’

‘Merv! Wait a minute!’

But Mervyn was gone.

Mervyn hurtled up and down the length and breadth of the hotel, sure he had lost her.

…But she had gone all of ten yards to sit in the hotel bar.

He sat down in the other side of the bar to keep an eye on her, partially obscured by a sad-looking miniature palm tree, and tried to look inconspicuous. He realised after half an hour that the girl was never going to do anything exciting or remotely interesting. Ever.

He also realised that attempting to look inconspicuous in the middle of a convention where people had paid to see him was pretty futile.

‘Afternoon, Stone…’

Roddy slumped down on a chair, next to him, neatly blocking his view of the girl. Roddy was a crumpled pile of tweed and paisley. He looked pale and unshaven.

‘You okay, Major?’ Mervyn was desperately looking over Roddy’s shaggy white mane to see what the girl was doing.

‘Couldn’t be better, Stone. Working on strategy at the moment. Tactics. Getting a good measure of the enemy.’

‘What enemy is that, Major?’

‘The robots of course.’

This caused Mervyn to snap his attention back to Roddy. ‘The robots? What robots?’

‘They’re after us. Crafty buggers. Picking us off one by one.’

‘The Styrax.’

Roddy nodded furiously, his little glasses jumping on his nose. ‘Josh owned them, and the little chaps steered ‘em. Now they’re all gone. You see what I mean, old chap? Josh. Gone. Both dwarf fellas. Gone. What’s their plan? What’s their robot strategy, I hear you ask?’

‘What’s their robot strategy, Major?’

‘Good question that man. Haven’t the foggiest. But they planned it all along, didn’t they?’

‘Who?’

‘The robots. The Styrax. With Josh and the dwarves dead…that means they’re free…free of their masters…free to do what they bally well want…with us!’

‘Really?’ Mervyn unconsciously edged his chair an inch or two away from Roddy. ‘And what do they want to do with us?’

‘Who’s to say, old boy…who’s to say? But I’ll tell you this for nothing. They’ve killed me once. They’re not going to do it again…’ He popped his glass down on the table. ‘I’ll make sure of that…’

Mervyn looked up.

She’d gone!

He twisted his head around frantically, looking for her.

Roddy noticed Mervyn looking in all directions. ‘Oh don’t worry. They won’t make their move just yet. They’re biding their time.’

Where was she now?

The ladies’ toilets. The door was still swinging, back and forth. An opportunity.

Mervyn headed for her table. There was a bag tucked under one of the seats; large, denim, covered with beads in an elaborate pattern. ‘M. Mycroft’ was stencilled untidily on the flap.
Right. Here we go.

He opened the bag and looked inside, shaking it to see all the odds and ends. Hairbrush, lipstick, bottle of Chanel No. 5, presumably borrowed from Mum… Among the usual feminine clutter, he saw a book of autographs. Now that looked familiar…

‘What are you doing?’ trilled a voice at his elbow.

Mervyn flinched in surprise. It was Minnie. He was sort of hoping he wouldn’t have to see her again this weekend; her demonstrative displays of affection in public were becoming a little embarrassing. ‘How are things?’ he asked.

‘Not good. I’m bearing up. Trying to keep busy. Morris has me patrolling the back of the hotel, in case any reporters try to get in through the kitchens.’ She was still staring at the bag in Mervyn’s hands.