The next morning, in The Spanker office, Dave was in better spirits. He had made his peace with Joy, thanks to a craven apology he delivered over the phone to her. She was amazed that he was more interested in the fur than her, but finally, grudgingly, accepted his unlikely explanation. So he no longer needed to keep his office door locked.
He just wanted to forget his awful past. It was why he enjoyed working on The Spanker. He could be a Peter Pan his entire life and never have to grow up.
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 here at Chapter 1.
Unfortunately, Greg didn’t feel the same way. He looked up from reading the pages of The Caning Commando, The Spanker’s number one story.
‘Dave, what are we doing …? Two grown men editing The Caning Commando. It’s embarrassing.’
‘What’s embarrassing?’
‘A teacher with a cane who single-handedly defeats the Germans?’
‘You forget we won the war. So we have a right to cane them.’
‘There must be something we can do to improve it.’
Dave shook his head.
‘Changing the Major’s story requires effort, which I’m not prepared to make and our readers are not prepared to read. We could shuffle the pages in any order and they wouldn’t notice, as long as there’s caning and there’s Germans.’
Greg steeled himself to look at the story again, shuddered, and shook his head sorrowfully. ‘I’m just praying I can find a publisher for my novel.’
‘Greg, you’ve only got one unpublished novel. I’ve lined my loft with mine. I’m sorry to say you look like a lifer to me. You have a comic pallor. You’re here for the long stretch. Come to terms with your sentence. It’s always best.’
‘But we’re writers,’ Greg insisted. ‘We’ve got to keep trying.’
Dave sucked on a liquorice pipe, trying to extract imaginary smoke from the pink ‘embers’ in the bowl. ‘But what is a writer, Greg …?’ He nodded at their Imperial typewriters. ‘It’s a typist without prospects. Face it, we’re failures. In fact, we are over-qualified as failures.’
‘Don’t you ever have dreams, Dave?’
‘Wet dreams, once. But not anymore. I’m getting old.’ Dave smiled. ‘From now on, Greg, it’s a nice long slide towards the grave.’ He reflected on this for a moment and then added: ‘Actually, I’ll get to the cemetery twenty years ahead of our readers. They’ll have to endure two more decades of this shite.’
‘I know what you mean …’ agreed Greg. ‘I never tell anyone I work in comics. I always say I’m in publishing.’
‘I share your sense of shame. A chimpanzee would be ashamed of this job. At least they can organise a tea party. Our readers drink out of the teapot.’
In fact, Greg, had been secretly planning his exit from The Spanker for some months. The Fleetpit board had asked him to prepare a new, realistic war comic, but he had been ordered to keep it hidden from Ron Punch, their managing editor. Ron, a D-Day veteran, would never approve of shootings, bayonetings, and men being blown apart. Especially the real war comic Greg had prepared.
However, now all the work was done, he felt he could risk showing it to Dave. He knew Dave was sly, but he also knew there was no way he could sabotage his project now.
Greg proudly took a dummy comic out of his briefcase to show him. ‘Look. This is what we should be doing.’
Entitled Blitzkrieg!, the cover showed a German stormtrooper firing towards the reader.
Dave repeated the top line, ‘Achtung! Achtung! The Great New War Comic for Boys!’
There was a tin-foil free Iron Cross attached.
He leafed through Blitzkrieg! and the pipe dropped from his mouth. ‘German heroes!”
‘Why not …?’ grinned Greg triumphantly at the young fogey in the safari suit sitting opposite him. ‘It is the seventies, for God’s sake.’
‘Greg, you do know you live in Britain …? In El Alamein Close, Colchester? Or is it Montgomery Drive? Or Normandy Avenue?
‘Churchill Way, actually.’
‘Not Stalingrad Crescent? Von Rundstedt Lane? Or Erwin Rommel Road?’
‘I’d be honoured to live in a road named after Rommel. He was a great general,’ said Greg, deliberately provocative.
‘Ron hates Germans. He fought them for two years.’
‘Well it’s time he got over it.’ Greg said irritably. ‘The board said I don’t need his approval.’
‘But Ron was a D-Day veteran. He was younger than us when he stormed up the beaches and killed Germans.’
‘I don’t give a shit. He’s held up progress long enough. It’s time he was put out to grass.’
‘You haven’t got some secret Nazi temple at home …?’ asked Dave suspiciously.
‘Don’t be stupid. There were good Germans, too, you know,’ said Greg.
‘Not according to Ron,’ replied Dave. He handed Blitzkrieg! back. ‘He never talks about it, but I’m told he had a bad war. If I were you, I’d keep that well out of sight. You don’t want to bring out his thousand-yard stare.’
Greg took Dave’s advice and carefully slipped Blitzkrieg! back into his briefcase.
But he felt he had to explain his great vision further. He talked like an advertising man, because that was his previous job, in Fleetpit’s competitions department. ‘For the first time a British comic will have authentic war stories. It’s going to be groundbreaking.’
He leaned forward and looked meaningfully at Dave. ‘It’s time for a new broom, Dave. Time to get rid of the detritus.’
Dave didn’t like the sound of that. It reminded him of new broom Mrs Thatcher who had been elected Tory leader earlier in the year, defeating Ted Heath. Mrs Thatcher had actually waved a giant blue feather duster at the party conference, ready to sweep away the cobwebs of the past. He knew he was a cobweb, he knew he was detritus.
As Greg showed off about his creation, Dave gave no hint he was impressed.
Looking at the dramatic layouts and hard-hitting stories of Blitzkrieg!, he feared it had the makings of a hit. There were German heroes fighting on the Russian and African Fronts and one token British hero, Longest Day Logan, fighting his way out from the Normandy beaches. Compared to The Caning Commando, it had the realism young readers were desperate for; answering that question they were always asking: ‘What was it really like in the war?’
Blitzkrieg! might sell a million copies a week, compared with The Spanker’s worrying 120,000 copies a week and sinking. In fact, it was sinking so fast, it was quite likely the board would change their mind about a free gift Super Nuker issue to boost sales and the comic would be axed.
If Blitzkrieg! did top the comic charts, Greg’s rise from the ranks would be meteoric. He was disgustingly ambitious, a young man on his way to the top. That’s why he was still living at home with his parents. So he could spend all his spare time working on his novel.
Dave had no illusions what would happen if Greg became his boss. He’d already seen just how ruthless he could be: he was only dating Joy because he thought her famous journalist father could be useful to him. Dave had to find a way to sabotage the new comic, but he’d bide his time, until the right opportunity came along.
‘Blitzkrieg! is the Future!’ concluded Greg, imagining he was sitting down to thunderous applause like Mrs Thatcher, at the Tory conference.
Dave picked up the pages of Caning Commando artwork and shrugged nonchalantly, hiding his true feelings far better than Ted Heath. ‘Let’s just stay in the past for now, shall we?’ He settled back comfortably in his chair to read another cosy episode of The Caning Commando.
The picture strip story was told at frenetic speed, and began with an introductory caption:
‘Because of his legendary caning skills, the War Office recruited schoolmaster Victor Grabham to be – THE CANING COMMANDO.’
The more ludicrous the story was, the more Dave was going to enjoy it.
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.