Serial Killer Chapter 44
In which Mr Cooper the newsagent finally gets a Fourpenny One.
Mr Cooper was putting the squeeze on Dave. But he just couldn’t face writing for Laarf! anymore, even though the alternative was starvation. He was already living on his sweet box and instant meals, whose cardboard packaging had more nutrients. Perhaps he’d do what hungry kids did in the past: look at vast, delicious repasts in comics, and imagine he was eating them. It was the origins of the famous ‘big feed’ final picture in comics. In the depression of the 1930s, comic publishers had discovered that starving kids loved looking at pictures of slap-up feeds. They could at least dream of filling their bellies. Fleetpit and Angus, Angus and Angus had been happy to help them, as long as they had the price of a comic.
A new chapter of Serial Killer drops every week – sign up for free so you don’t miss it!
If you’re new to Serial Killer, start at Chapter 1.
Dave dug out some Angus, Angus and Angus comics and decided to try it. He would treat himself to a feast for the eyes. He began with a vast, gravy-dripping, steaming deer pie, with antlers sticking out of the crust, as favoured by Knuckles Duster. He followed it with Wee Cheeky’s favourite food: a mountain of delicious bangers and mash. Then he joined Scratch and Sniff for some huge, mouth-watering bowls of jelly and custard and endless plates of cream cakes. And finished off his imaginary repast with a six-foot-high ice-cream cornet, as supplied by Cap Puccino, the crazy Italian.
He stared and stared until he couldn’t stare anymore. He discovered his eyes were definitely bigger than his stomach.
‘D’you know? It seems to work,’ he told his mother. ‘I actually feel full-up.’
‘Perhaps you should try the same thing with families?’ she suggested.
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, to make up for all the traumas, the cruelty, and losses in your childhood,’ she explained. ‘Why not look at some pictures of happy families to make you feel better?’
‘You mean look at pictures of a perfect Ladybird-book mother, a sober father and a big sister who didn’t ignore me, to feed my voracious, desperate need for a happy family?’
‘Yes. That’s the idea.’
‘I’d just want to throw darts at them,’ said Dave.
Dave, Joy and Greg gathered after work in The Hoop and Grapes to talk about future plans for Aaagh!, three weeks before its launch on Saturday March 13th. It was also the launch date of Everlasting Love, although no one talked about it, in case Joy cracked up again. Greg and Joy were excited, but Dave was uncomfortable with the thought of success.
Greg and Joy were also fired up because they had been to see the Sex Pistols at the Marquee the week before; the support band for Eddie and the Hot Rods. Dave had declined to join them because he said he was too old to be going to gigs anymore. But they saw Aaagh! as being a punk comic: another sign the old order was about to be swept away.
Dave noted Greg’s new punk look: his hair messed up, a jacket with lots of zips, and a T-shirt featuring two cowboys with their penises hanging out.
‘So you’ve climbed on the latest bandwagon, Greg,’ he sneered. ‘You don’t think you’re just a little old to be a punk …?’
‘You’re never too old, Dave,’ interjected Joy. ‘Even you could wear a T-shirt with ‘I hate Pink Floyd’ scrawled on it.’
Dave watched Greg light a Sobranie Cocktail. ‘Pink cigarettes. Definitely queer.’
‘I like to stand out from the crowd,’ shrugged Greg.
‘Punks smoke roll-ups,’ Dave said reprovingly.
‘I have no brand-loyalty,’ smiled Greg.
‘I know. You have no loyalty.’ Dave switched his attack. ‘So what happened to the big literary breakthrough?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Joy’s launch party. Barbara, the hotshot agent who was going to read your novel?’
‘Ah. Yes.’ Greg avoided looking at them. ‘We didn’t really … It didn’t quite … you know …’ He grasped hold of his pen for reassurance.
‘You’re clicking your pen, Greg,’ observed Dave. ‘Do I detect signs of agitation? Did something, perhaps, go amiss with your all-nighter?’
‘Well … for some reason …’
‘Was it … hard?’ asked Joy innocently.
‘I was … tired,’ said Greg defensively, not quite sure where this was going and wondering how Joy could possibly have known about his erectile dysfunction. Assuming that was what she was getting at.
‘You didn’t … connect?’ suggested Joy.
‘You drooped a bit?’ suggested Dave.
‘Come on, Greg,’ said Joy, ‘Out with it.’
‘No, no,’ said Dave hastily. ‘I don’t want to see his sex pistol.’
‘We need to know, Greg,’ insisted Joy.
‘Yes,’ agreed Dave. ‘Did you or did you not punk-tuate Barbara?’
‘Unfortunately,’ said Greg, avoiding the question and possibly dangerous fallout from Joy, ‘Barbara said I wasn’t famous, so the agency couldn’t take me on.’
‘Well, if you can’t break through the glass ceiling, at least you can spit at it now,’ Dave reassured him. He leered at Greg’s T-shirt. ‘By the way. Is that meant to be you and Bernie? I know you were a couple of cowboys.’
‘What did I tell you?’ said a grinning Joy to Greg. ‘It really annoys him, so you got it right.’
‘Yes!’ laughed Greg, punching the air.
Joy smiled at Dave, ‘You really should buy more clothes.’
‘Oh, I can’t afford it, Joy.’
‘What do you spend your money on?’
Dave shrugged nervously. Cooper had increased the rent to £30.00 a week in line with inflation. He didn’t want his shame shared with Joy and Greg.
‘No. Don’t tell me,’ said Joy, putting a hand up. ‘I know it will be something weird.’
‘Anyway,’ said Dave, ‘I’m hoping what I’m wearing will see me out.’
He was preoccupied, trying to switch off Bob Marley’s “Get up, Stand up”, which had been endlessly playing in his head ever since they entered the pub. He knew his mother was responsible, but had no idea why she chose this track.
‘How was the TV ad?’ asked Greg.
‘I regret to say it was very good,’ admitted Dave, always more comfortable with failure.
He had just seen the commercial for Aaagh! at the advertising agency offices. ‘Geiger counters at max! We’re radioactive!’ the advert proudly declared to a generation of kids living in the shadow of the bomb. ‘Great free gift with Issue One: The Super Nuker. The Red Terror from the skies.’
It showed exciting flash images of Panzerfaust, White Death, Black Hammer, The Damned and Deathball, all to cries of ‘Aaagh!’, and ended with the Super Nuker hurtling towards the viewer.
‘Yes,’ said Dave. ‘There are 250,000 Super Nukers waiting for take-off at a warehouse near Dartford, more than the combined airforces of the Warsaw Pact.’
‘They had to do something with them after the plan to give them away with The Spanker was cancelled,’ said Greg.
‘Yes, I’m afraid it looks like The Spanker is not long for this world,’ said Dave grimly.
‘Mary Whitehouse will hate Aaagh!,’ said Greg gleefully. ‘She lives in Colchester and was sitting opposite me on the train scowling at my T-shirt.’
‘I can’t imagine why,’ laughed Joy.
‘So I wrote in some extra blood and gore in a script; had Street blasting old Etonian traitors, as I muttered, “This one’s for you, Mary.” ’
‘I’m looking forward to the episode where Street breaks into Buckingham Palace,’ said Joy.
‘The “We’ve come for you, Queenie!” scene,’ grinned Greg.
‘After I’d seen the ad,’ Dave continued, ‘I asked if I could see it in black and white.’
‘Course,’ said Joy.
‘You know what the Suit said to me?’ Dave imitated the Suit’s snooty accent. ‘ “The majority of homes in Britain now have colour televisions.” ’
‘What did you say?’ asked Joy.
‘ “Good point. Who gives a fuck about poor people with black and white tellies.” ’
‘You see?’ said Joy, ‘You’re a punk, Dave. You just don’t realise it.’
‘Oh, no, Joy,’ said Dave shuddering at Greg and his new image. ‘I despise exhibitionism.’
‘Look at the way you’re proud to have been in the workhouse,’ she insisted.
‘And not just any workhouse, Joy,’ Dave said smugly. ‘The West Ham Union Workhouse.’
And then Mr Cooper staggered over with an attractive, brassy woman, her arm in a sling. Dave was startled to see him. Firstly, because The Hoop and Grapes was the journalists’ pub and the browncoats’ pub was up the road. Secondly, because he was drunk, doubtless on Dave’s money.
‘How are you, Quasi? Aren’t you going to introduce me then …?’ slurred Mr Cooper.
The Liquorice Detective shook his head. Too afraid even to speak to the monster who was still ruining his life.
‘All right. I’ll introduce meself. Stan Cooper. I work over in the Fleetpit vaults. But me and Dave go back a long way.’
‘You’re not Cooper the newsagent?’ asked Joy.
‘That’s right. Dave’s talked about me, has he?’
‘Oh, aye,’ said Joy grimly.
‘We had a laugh in those days, didn’t we, Dave?’ Cooper indicated his partner’s sling. ‘Slipped on the ice. Bandy old cow, aren’t yer? Very accident-prone.’ His partner looked down miserably at the floor. ‘Cheer up,’ said Cooper. ‘Still got the other arm. Still push a hoover.’
‘What happened to your wife?’ asked Joy. She was looking for a cue to nut him.
Greg shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. He might look like a punk now, but he didn’t like to be seen drinking with a browncoat. It was one thing for him to talk about the injustice of what happened to Simon Dee, while Billy Cotton’s super-yacht was moored in Poole harbour, but it was quite another for him to mix with the lower orders himself.
‘Oh, she disappeared one day, you know?’ replied Cooper. ‘Never even took her handbag. Steaming cup of tea on the table and no dinner in the oven. Cheeky mare. Like the Marie Celeste in my kitchen. The police were baffled. I often think of her when I’m out on the allotment. Probably ran off with a darkie.’
He winked knowingly at Dave. ‘They often do, you know? How’s the fur coat, by the way?’
Cooper must have listened to the gossip, thought Dave. ‘I can see where you’re coming from,’ Cooper said. ‘Fur coats don’t answer back. I wish I’d thought of that meself. You’re a smart little bleeder, aren’t you?’ He was talking to Dave as if he was eight years old, which is how old he felt.
Cooper turned his attention to Joy. ‘You all right, doll? He doesn’t give you too many backhanders?’
Cooper grinned at Dave. ‘Looking at your one, I should sleep with your wallet under the pillow if I was you. I used to.’
He looked back at Joy. ‘No offence, darlin’. But you birds are all the same.’
‘What about your shop?’ she enquired coldly, closing in on him.
‘I’m out of the newsagent business now, love. Pakis took it over. I had a bit of bother with the police. I probably shouldn’t talk about it. Anyway, we used to have a laugh every Saturday, didn’t we, Dave?’
‘N-n-no,’ stuttered Dave.
‘Come on. No harm was done.’
‘I … I …’ Dave managed to force out the truth. ‘I … hated you!’
‘Now that’s no way to talk, son,’ warned Cooper, clenching his knuckles, reminding Dave he had the power. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it again. Just for old time’s sake.’ He turned to Joy, Greg and his companion. ‘Watch, everyone. This’ll have you in stitches. It did him.’ He turned back to Dave. ‘Now … what was it you used to like, Dave?’
Greg was about to catch his train, but this looked too good to miss. Dave was about to be seriously humiliated, and he lingered expectantly.
‘Come on,’ said Cooper, stroking his clenched knuckles in preparation. ‘What was your favourite comic?’
‘A Fourpenny One,’ snarled Dave, smashing his fist into Cooper’s face as “Get up, Stand” up exploded inside his head.
It was a punch Carstairs the Fag-Master, would have admired. It was Dave’s Popeye moment, but liquorice wasn’t his spinach. Rather, it was his mother who had awoken the man inside the boy.
‘You’ll pay for that,’ said Cooper, blinking away the shock, and wiping the blood from his split lip. His age hadn’t limited his appetite for violence.
Dave grabbed him by the lapels. ‘Yeah? Yeah? Yeah …? Come on then, you bastard. Come on!’ He slammed the storeman back against the wall, towering over him. ‘Let’s be having you!’
For the first time, Dave knew what he was capable of, and Cooper knew it, too. His face went ashen. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right. Calm down, Dave. Calm down, mate. Easy, big fellow. Easy.’
‘And that’s the last money you’re getting out of me,’ growled Dave. ‘If you tell anyone about me living over the road, I will have you. I mean it. Do you understand?’
‘Yeah. Yeah. Sure, Dave. Message understood. Your secret’s safe with me, mate.’
‘Because I will kill you,’ warned Dave. ‘Understand?’ Cooper was too terrified to speak. Dave banged the ex-newsagent’s head back against a wall. ‘I said … do you understand?’
‘W-won’t breathe a word, mate.’
‘It will be your last if you do.’
‘We … we were just having a laugh, that’s all,’ said a craven Cooper to Joy and Greg as he staggered towards the door with his companion.
Dave pursued him and hissed viciously in his ear. ‘Yeah, and I reckon you killed my mother.’ He stabbed his finger into the storeman’s chest. ‘Your card is marked, pal.’
A terrified Cooper didn’t answer; instead, he just slunk away into the night.
Dave turned back into the pub.
‘Respect,’ said Joy admiringly.
She reminded Dave so much of his mother, and he suddenly realised that must be why he was attracted to her. Both were beautiful; not interested in him; and violent.
‘Yeah … respect,’ said Greg, grudgingly, hiding his surprise, disappointment and jealousy.
“Get up, Stand up” was playing louder than ever inside Dave’s head.
Cooper was now higher on the list of suspects, with his near-admission he had done away with his wife, whom Dave had always liked. So it could be the ex-newsagent, along with the Canon, with other possibilities being the Knights of St Pancras, their Grand Master, the Blackout Strangler – whoever he was – or even his long-suffering father. Any one of them could be his mother’s murderer.
‘I think this calls for a choky sherbet to celebrate,’ said Dave. He produced one from his pocket, sucking up the white powder through the liquorice straw.
‘You’re not still on the sherbet, Dave?’ said a concerned Joy. ‘It’s really bad for you.’
‘Almost at the bottom of the sweet box,’ he confided. ‘Just one last hairy gobstopper to go.’ And then collapsed into a coughing fit as the sherbet did its work. Washing it down with a pint of bitter, he was soon his usual self again.
‘That’s a pity,’ leered Greg. ‘I was looking forward to carrying out the Heimlich manoeuvre on you … giving you some abdominal thrusts …’ He grabbed Dave from behind and lewdly demonstrated what he had in mind.
‘Get off me, you bummer,’ said Dave, shoving Greg back.
‘What’s the problem?’ said Greg.
‘The Heimlich manoeuvre,’ said Dave primly. ‘Sounds German, so I’d have to refuse it. I’m a post-war baby-boomer, you see?’
‘Even if meant The End?’ asked Greg.
‘What would your last words be, Dave?’ enquired Joy.
‘Fourpenny One,’ said Dave triumphantly.
Serial Killer by Pat Mills & Kevin O’Neill is the first book in the Read Em And Weep series and is on sale digitally or as paperback.