Goodnight, John-boy: Chapter 28
‘But you’re setting a bad example, Dave, so children will stop trusting figures of authority.’ ‘I think that’s a good thing, Quentin. There are a lot of questionable adults out there.’
Welcome to Book Two of my dark comedy thriller series, Read Em And Weep.
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If you’re new to the Read Em And Weep series, start with Book One: Serial Killer.
Could it mean something else? Could it be a joke? A mistake? No, not really. The message was crystal clear.
Could Keen have written the note? Dave wondered, his head in a spin. No, it couldn’t be. Fab would have been instantly recognisable in Fleetpit House, in his Nehru suits. Could he have sent an assistant? But how could they have set him up to find that note in the photocopier? Whoever it was must have been following him. But that didn’t make sense. Keen couldn’t possibly know he shot the Canon. He was too careful. He’d worn the werewolf mask.
There was only one explanation. One of his past Caning Commando crimes had caught up with him. Someone had figured it out: just like Detective Inspector ‘Fiddy’ Ferguson.
But it’s not meant to be like this, lamented Dave to himself. They’re meant to be the perfect, hero-free crimes. Killing by remote control, with no comebacks. That’s the whole beauty of them.
In a state of shock, he was barely aware of Ron entering The Spanker office to tell him that Quentin Cowley would be interviewing him tomorrow for Newshound. Cowley wanted to question him about Aaagh! Ron assured him it would not to be a problem. Aaagh! was a big seller so he had the board’s full support.
‘Just keep batting his criticisms back with bland, safe replies. Like “Well, that’s your point of view, Quentin.” And “I’m sorry you feel that way.” Or, if he goes on about violence in comics, remind him of all the war films they show on Sunday afternoons. Remember, Dave, Newshound is live, so they can’t edit stuff out like they usually do. So you can make them look pretty stupid.’
‘Okay, Ron,’ said Dave, in a daze.
Ron looked surprised and pleased that Dave agreed to the interview without any of his usual resistance. He headed for the door. ‘Good man. The telly blames everything on comics. Soccer hooliganism: comics’ fault. Illiteracy in kids: comics’ fault. Devalue the pound – comics’ fault.’ He turned back at the door. ‘And they fucking stole our readers, too. Worse thing that ever happened to comics was fucking television.’
‘Okay, Ron,’ said Dave, still in a daze.
‘So … you’re going on Newshound, eh?’ said Greg, not yet sure if this was good or bad for him, or for Dave.
‘Okay, Ron,’ said Dave.
‘It’s Greg. Hello? Hello?’ Greg clicked his fingers in front of Dave’s face. ‘Is anyone at home?’
‘Sorry. I was far away,’ said Dave. ‘What were you saying?’
‘Newshound. Quentin Cowley. The man with the tank tops? I nearly appeared on it myself, you know? Did I ever tell you the story? But thank fuck I managed to get away.’
Dave decided to ignore the threat in the photocopier and it might just go away. Maybe it was just a lone nutter, who wouldn’t really do him any harm? Yes, forget about it. That was the best thing to do. Concentrate on the here and now. Greg wants to tell some fucking boring story about Newshound. Listen to it. Block everything else out.
‘You nearly appeared on Newshound? With Quentin Cowley – the guy who wears those awful tank tops? That sounds really intriguing, Greg. Do tell.’
‘Are you sure you want to hear it? You always say “intriguing” when you mean something is actually shit.’
‘I meant to say, it sounds fascinating, Greg.’
‘Okay. But it is a story about one of my great conquests and I know, well, you haven’t been getting any lately.’
‘You are correct, Greg. I’m seeing less action than a convent mattress and my vital fluids are all intact, whereas you’re like an uncapped oil well. But that’s why I love to hear stories of your sexual exploits, so I can live vicariously through them.’
‘Okay,’ said Greg uncertainly. ‘Well,’ he continued, shaking his curly locks, ‘It was three years ago …’
He doesn’t know that I shagged Leni, thought Dave. I’ll keep that to myself until I can find the right time to reveal it and humiliate the smug bastard.
‘She was gorgeous. Looked like Susan George. Seventeen years old. Annabel. The Commanding Officer’s daughter. I met her at the Officer’s Mess Summer Ball.’
‘You were at a Summer Ball?’
‘As a waiter. My dad got me the job.’
‘Ah.’
‘She fancied me more than all those Hooray Henries. But she was strictly off limits. If the CO had found out, he’d have gone spare; dad would have lost his job. Maybe even our house. Who knows? That’s what made it so exciting. Forbidden fruit.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘I was screwing her all that summer. It was amazing. She just couldn’t get enough. She used to like …’
‘Can we just get to the Newshound bit?’
‘Woolworths got burnt down.’
‘I remember. It was on the news. Police thought it was a bomb.’
‘They thought it was the IRA. Only it wasn’t. But they didn’t know that then. So Newshound, Quentin Cowley, came to interview Annabel’s dad. Get the army angle. In his house. Problem was, I was upstairs with Annabel and she was meant to be at college.’
‘Shit.’
‘So the CO comes up the stairs to see if she’s ill, and I shin down the drainpipe.’
‘That must have been tricky.’
‘Not really. I’m used to that sort of thing. Only guess who’s waiting at the bottom? Howard the Newshound dog!’
‘The bloodhound with the big soulful eyes who follows Quentin everywhere?’
‘That’s the one. So I’m about to make my getaway and Howard starts making that strange baying they make. “Roooooo!” He must’ve thought I was a burglar.’
‘Howard attacked you?’
‘No. They’re watchdogs. But he wouldn’t stop howling. Calling for help. So I had to shut him up, didn’t I?’
‘Oh, no, you didn’t, Greg?’
‘Well, I had to, Dave.’
‘You actually kicked Howard, the legendary Newshound dog, loved by millions of kids, and with his very own fan club?’
Greg squirmed. ‘Just once. Okay, once or twice. Had to stop him following me. Then I legged it before Cowley came round with his camera crew to find out what was going on.’
‘So you didn’t pay the wages of sin, Greg.’
‘No way,’ smirked Greg. ‘Got away with it. Had my wicked way, and was on my way.’
‘But do we all pay for our sins in the end?’ speculated Dave.
* * *
‘All right,’ said Ron. ‘Now don’t hang up. Okay? Now before you go out on the ledge, I want you to keep your phone off the hook. And close to the window. Okay? ’Cos I want to hear your scream when you jump.’
The line went dead. Ron winked at Dave as he replaced the receiver. ‘Another cross line with Cross Line. Works every time.’
‘Good to know you’re still offering the comfort of the Lord to troubled souls, Ron,’ said Dave.
Quentin Cowley, who was just setting up with the Newshound crew, came over to them. ‘That’s not it, is it? It couldn’t be? It’s not … The Desk?’ said Quentin excitedly.
Ron said nothing, just puffed away on his cigarette as he removed his racing papers. The legendary glass-topped desk had once belonged to the creator of Homework: the Reverend Julius Cambridge. But to Ron, the desk, with its school shield and Latin motto: Deo patriae litteris – ‘For God, country and learning’ – was not a proud memento, but a scalp, the spoils of victory when Fleetpit took over Homework.
Quentin lovingly stroked the desk. ‘The famous Homework desk. I can feel the history. Homework made me who I am today. I based my life on Dan Darwin, commander of the spaceship Beagle, with his mission to understand the evolution of life on alien planets.’
‘I do a lot of homework here meself,’ said Ron. ‘Always studying form. Perusing tables.’
‘Tales from the Blackboard ...’ continued Quentin, lost in his own memories. ‘The Boyhood of Bertrand Russell … So you think you could be a … Magistrate? ... Lives of the Great Headmasters …’ He smiled at the two of them. ‘A young boy is a knowledge sponge. He can’t soak up enough.’
‘I agree,’ said Dave. ‘I received a subscription to Homework as a punishment. I was shitting logarithms for a week. If it had been today, I’d report my parents to Social Services. It’s a crime against trees. What did they do to deserve this abuse?’ Whenever Dave was nervous, he got manic and aggressive, and he was particularly nervous now there was mysterious maniac threatening to kill him, plus a hostile interviewer like Quentin Cowley.
‘You might as well have called it, Homework, incorporating Detention,’ continued Dave. ‘That’s about as much pleasure as it gave me.’
Quentin had never met anyone quite like Dave before, so he just ignored him. He turned to Ron. ‘You must feel so honoured to sit behind it?’
‘Actually, Quentin,’ Dave intervened, ‘Ron was the man who closed down Homework when Fleetpit took it over.’
Quentin looked aghast at Ron, who sat back in his chair, whisky glass in hand, fag hanging from his lower lip.
‘It was the first thing he did.’
Ron nodded, ‘Merged it with Scarper and Blimey. We kept Toffee Nose and chucked the rest of the magazine away.’
Toffee Nose – a know-it-all kid spouting boring facts – had finally ended up in The Spanker after it merged with The Fourpenny One. Dave would sometimes recite Toffee Nose’s facts to send himself to sleep at night.
Quentin looked horrified. ‘Doesn’t this desk mean anything to you?’
‘I’m in comics, son,’ replied Ron. ‘Not the second-hand furniture business.’ And casually flicked his cigarette ash onto the desk.
‘I loved the smell of Homework,’ Quentin reminisced. ‘My parents would never let me read comics. They thought they were rough and crude, like the dreadful Fourpenny One.’
They had chosen Ron’s office for the interview with Dave. Dave was looking rather sharp in an Aquascutum suit, thanks to the insistence of his female fashion police: his mother and Joy. By contrast, the TV crew were wearing paisley shirts with long collars, dungarees and platform shoes. Quentin himself wore one of his famous tank tops. He also had a badge with Howard depicted on it, the symbol of Newshound. His beloved dog sat quietly snoozing at his feet.
Dave was mic’d up and took his place on the other side of the desk to Quentin. Quentin carefully removed from a plastic folder the number one issue of Homework and placed the large, glossy, juvenile educational to one side, next to the latest issue of Aaagh!
Dave leant forward. ‘By the way, Quentin, if I may so …?’
‘Yes?’
‘I’d like to compliment you on that particularly fine tank top you’re wearing.’ Dave nodded his sarcastic approval at the garment.
‘Thanks, Dave,’ said Quentin, mystified but flattered.
‘Nearest he’ll get to a tank,’ muttered Ron. ‘Good luck, chum.’ He sat down out of camera range and was joined by Greg who had just slipped in in time and was keen to hopefully enjoy Dave making a prat of himself on live television.
The cameraman gave a signal. ‘On in ten.’ Quentin turned to the camera and his speech pattern suddenly changed. He spoke slowly, enunciating every word, in a patronising manner as if his youthful audience were deaf and was lip-reading him, or were complete imbeciles.
‘Good afternoon, Newshounds. Today, I have with me Dave Maudling, editor of this children’s comic.’
He held up the copy of Aaagh! The cover showed a kid from The Damned shooting the hated Insinerators who had made rock music illegal. The Insinerators were meant to be wearing black uniforms, but ‘Deep Throat’ had coloured them blue so they looked like cops. Which was unfortunate.
‘Aaagh!, a comic that made headlines with its shocking images of a great white shark eating the President of the United States. A comic that caused questions to be asked in the Houses of Parliament about a scene where Her Majesty the Queen is depicted thrown over the shoulder of a shotgun-wielding lorry driver called Street, and carried through the sewers beneath Buckingham Palace. Then she’s thrown in the boot of his car with the words, “Calm down, your Maj, don’t get your knickers in a twist.” ’
Dave interrupted: ‘He had to put “Her Maj” – Her Majesty – in the boot so he could get her past the army checkpoints. Street’s a freedom fighter. Against a military take-over in Britain, which is a real possibility today. Maybe the Houses of Parliament should think about that.’
Quentin ignored him. ‘It’s also a comic that features a corrupt policeman taking bribes from villains.’
He turned to Dave. ‘Dave, what do you say to the accusation that your comic is violent, disrespectful to religion, the monarchy and authority, and is actually encouraging children to commit crimes?’
‘I would say that’s not true. In Bent, we make it clear an A10 police officer is pursuing the corrupt cop.’
‘But you’re setting a bad example, Dave, so children will stop trusting figures of authority.’
‘I think that’s a good thing, Quentin. There are a lot of questionable adults out there.’
‘And Carjacks? Where you actually show children how to steal cars?’
‘Harmless fantasy. Like Cowboys and Indians.’
‘But children can’t run out and actually kill Indians, can they? And you have a war story: Panzerfaust. You do know the war has been over for over thirty years?’
‘Tell that to my dear old Nan who had her false teeth blown to Hounslow by a doodlebug,’ said Dave.
Quentin sniffed. ‘If I can draw your attention to a recent line from Panzerfaust. Faust says, “God won’t help us, so I call on the Devil!” This sounds like black magic to me.’
‘It loses something in your delivery. Perhaps if a man was saying it.’
‘Then there’s Micky’s Mutants, about the hideous survivors of a nuclear war.’
‘What’s wrong with that? It’s hilarious.’
‘So you find nuclear war amusing?’
‘We’ve grown up with the threat of the Bomb. You’ve got to laugh at it, haven’t you?’
‘Have you? And Deathball? Killing as a sport?’
‘After White Death, it’s our most popular story.’ Under so much pressure, Dave was unaware that he had taken a liquorice pipe out of his pocket and put it in his mouth.
Quentin held up the cover of the latest Aaagh! ‘And The Damned, which shows a boy actually gunning down policemen!’
‘Colouring error. Those cops are meant to be fascists.’
‘I see. A “colouring error”… cops depicted as fascists,’ sneered Quentin.
He held up the number one issue of Homework. The free gift was still attached to the front: a plastic protractor. There were cover lines on the magazine. ‘Make your own school report. How to revise over Christmas.’
‘Let’s compare it with a periodical that reinforced moral values. This is the number one issue of Homework that I swapped with a young viewer for a Newshound reporter’s clipboard.’
Quentin leafed through its glossy pages. ‘A magazine every responsible parent recommended. It was rich in mentally nourishing ideas.’ He carefully enunciated every word. ‘A paper university.’
‘I remember it well.’ said Dave. “Treasure Island in Latin begins inside.” ’
At Quentin’s feet, Howard stirred. His beloved master droning on usually sent him to sleep. But now something was nagging him. A scent from long ago. He looked suspiciously around the room and made eye contact with Greg.
Quentin picked up the copy of Aaagh! again. ‘It compares with this appalling, illiterate, juvenile delinquent comic that has been pumping out its vile content, like raw sewage, onto the children of Britain.’
‘A simple “I don’t like it” would suffice,’ said Dave.
Quentin flicked through the comic and stopped at an image of a furious Black Hammer attacking racist thugs on the terraces. ‘A comic that actually encourages soccer hooliganism,’ he announced.
That was it. Criticising the Black Hammer. His hero. Dave bit through his pipe.
Quentin held the comic up for the cameras. ‘On behalf of all responsible parents, I feel a duty to do this to your disgraceful publication.’ With pursed lips, he precisely tore Aaagh! in half.
‘I see,’ said Dave.
He picked up the copy of Homework. ‘On behalf of the bored kids of Britain, I’d like to do this.’
To Quentin’s horror, he violently ripped it in half. ‘Goodbye “Boyhood of Patrick Moore”. Goodbye “Cecil Rhodes, Africa’s Saviour.” Goodbye “Cutaway of a stapler”.’
The ash from Ron’s cigarette curled over and fell to the ground. Greg looked on, open-mouthed, at what Dave was doing. While Howard continued staring intently at Greg, the hound’s body now tense, and his tail high and stiff.
Dave quoted imaginary scenes from Homework as he continued to rip it into smaller pieces. ‘Goodbye “Your Royal Betters”… “How the Bible was brought to hotel – a drawer-by-drawer guide”… “Africa: lining your pockets made easy. How to strip-mine a country. What every boy should know.” ’
‘You ignorant oaf!’ snarled a livid Quentin and took a savage swing at Dave. But Dave was ready for him, and gave the presenter a resounding fourpenny one, instead.
At the same time, Howard leapt on Greg and sank his teeth deep into his ankle. Screaming with pain, Greg tried to shake the bloodhound off, but there was only one way to make him stop: by booting him off.
He sent Britain’s most loved dog yelping and flying across the office. On live TV.
Goodnight, John-boy is the second book in the Read ‘em and Weep series and you can buy it digitally or as a paperback.