Serial Killer Part II: Chapter 23
In this chapter, there’s a great sequence that comes from Kevin. We had talked about writing another story featuring collectors of science fiction toys and that’s where it originated. Neither Kevin or I were that way inclined but we were both fascinated by rabid collectors. I found Kevin’s words particularly amusing and it seemed a shame to lose them forever, so they were easily adapted to fit Joy, who was an obvious science fiction toy collector.
So this is all pure Kevin dialogue below with just the odd addition from me – inspired by a collector I know who keeps his Japanese robot toys – with original packaging – in darkness in a special room with the door locked and the curtains firmly drawn! I was only allowed to enter the Holy of Holies once, and when I asked to make a repeat visit he claimed he had lost the key!
Now Dave had a chance to look around her flat, he began to see what the problem was between Joy and Greg and why their relationship had gone so badly wrong. She had every imaginable toy from Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Doctor Who to Star Trek. Many still in their boxes. The reason her bedroom was in darkness became clear now: it was so the sunlight didn’t fade the packaging. The object he had barged into at the entrance to her bedroom was, in fact, Godzilla’s enormous clawed foot, ‘liberated’ from a film set when Joy was in Japan. It was resting on a treasured square of carpet from the USS Enterprise.
‘You’ve got to have a McGuffin: a shared interest,’ Dave explained to Greg. ‘But you were only interested in her because of her dad.’
‘It’s normal to network in this business.’
‘But she’s into toys and you’re not.’
‘Tell me about it. She’s gone ahead and signed the lease for her Time Machine shop.’
‘Whereas the only plastic you’re interested in is American Express and Barclaycard.’
‘I don’t get it. I don’t know why she wants to piss away her money on plastic retard figures,’ said Greg bitterly.
‘I had noticed it was like a giant plastic playpen in the bedroom.’
‘It put me off.’ Greg shook his head. ‘I thought it was just us guys who were anoraks.’
‘It’s the seventies, man. Everything’s changing.’
‘I would have said to her it’s me or Godzilla,’ confided Greg, ‘but I know who she’d have chosen.’
‘You’re being plastic-whipped, Greg. You could wake up with a Space 1999 Eagle spaceship shoved up your arse.’
‘To be honest, Dave,’ and Greg lowered his voice to a whisper as he rinsed the plates, ‘sex between us wasn’t actually very good.’
Dave nodded sympathetically. ‘She probably preferred pleasuring herself with a Dalek.’
Greg paused from his washing up and stared out the window. ‘I’m sure you’re right. I think she even keeps condoms in their original packets.’
‘Sounds like a used one would be a collector’s item?’ said Dave who was doing the drying.
‘Oh, no. I always disposed of them,’ said Greg fearfully. ‘In case they ended up in her fridge.’
Kevin also told me the lift girl story below. There really was a lift girl at Fleetway Publications in the 1960s and she really was sacked because journalists kept molesting her.
She had seemed her usual self when he last saw her on the 23rd. She had just coped admirably with the perils of the Fleetpit lift, always a danger for young women and particularly at Christmas. An ornate Edwardian cage lift, it was common for predatory journalists to trap girls in it between floors.
In the sixties there had been a young, uniformed lift girl, but she had been subjected to so much sexual harassment, the company had to dismiss her and now everyone operated the lift themselves.
I added to this story with my own recollections of a comic art editor known as ‘Deep Throat’, who trapped women in the lift at Christmas, exactly as the story describes. This goes to show that sadly, things hadn’t changed very much by the end of the 70s.
Elliot dropped Dave off outside Joy’s. Greg had told him all about her amazing flat. It was an anorak’s paradise and he was looking forward to checking it out. His costume would be very appropriate, he felt, and he figured he’d make quite an entrance.
He pressed the doorbell but there was no response. So he called up at her first floor window, which was a little ajar, ‘Joy! Joy! It’s me. Dave.’ But there was still no answer.
Then he threw pebbles at the window and waited expectantly for it to open and Joy to appear at her Juliet balcony and lower the keys down on a string as agreed.
The pebbles came from a pretty garden of winter pansies in the basket of a trade bike parked permanently outside Joy’s house. It was designed to look rather cool next to the blue Georgian front door and black iron railings. Dave, however, didn’t think the trade bike was cool. Despite his fur suit, he shuddered at the sight of it.
He hated trade bikes even more than he hated Christmas.
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Trade bikes reminded him too much of the past. When he’d ridden one as an errand boy. After his dad could no longer afford the fees and he was forced to leave school prematurely at the tender age of fifteen. It was the only job his dad could find for him.
Dave was always on the lookout for his ex-school chums, in their posh blazers, who would take a short cut through the dock on their way to cross the river to his old school. They would spot him in the distance and wave to him. He would keep his distance, pretend he hadn’t seen them, and pedal away furiously, disappearing into the grain storms swirling around the dock as the ships were loaded up from the wharf-side mills.
But even if they had seen him, they might not realise he was an errand boy, he figured, because it wasn’t a real trade bike. Not like his friend Ivan’s, who worked for International Stores. It didn’t have a front stand or a side panel with ‘M&R Pell, Seed Merchants’ inscribed on it.
No, it was just a bike with a big basket on the front.
Even so, he preferred rainy days, because then he could disguise himself in his yellow rain poncho with the hood up, so they’d never see it was their old school friend.
But this was not the full extent of his humiliation. It was his job as an errand boy to hand-deliver letters and seed samples to local businesses and organisations, for which a signature was required. Mr Pell, the treasurer of the Knights of St Pancras, also had important packages that required delivery to his fellow knights, such as his brother-in-law Mr Czarnecki, the solicitor and coroner, and Canon Williams.
It was hard, constantly meeting these people from his church congregation, who smiled pityingly at the college boy whose mother had deserted her family, supposedly running off with a lover.
He liked to open packages that looked interesting, especially those marked ‘Private’. He used one of the alcoves below the derelict Old Custom House as his ‘office’. He would peel open the large envelopes down the side, where the glue was not so strong. Disappointingly, there were never any great revelations within. After perusing the documents, he carefully placed them back in their envelopes and resealed them, using a little amber-glue dispenser he always carried with him, that would leave no trace of his intrusion.
Reading confidential letters made him feel he had power over all these important, successful people. And he always felt that one day he might find something important in the letters, something he could use to his advantage.
Standing around by the trade bike, waiting impatiently outside Joy’s house, Dave was starting to get hungry. Joy had promised him turkey with all the trimmings. It would be a big improvement on his planned Vesta curry and Angel Delight. But still not getting any response from Joy, there was nothing for it.
Hanging his overnight bag around his neck, he carefully climbed on the trade bike. A foot on the chain guard and a grab at the crumbling brickwork to pull himself up. Then balancing with one foot on the crossbar and the other in the pansies. The bike creaked, but stayed firm. He then hauled himself up to Joy’s balcony.
It took some skill, but certain simian talents were expected of him as he was wearing a gorilla suit. But this was a gorilla suit with a difference. Dave had turned it inside-out, so he could have the warmth and comfort of fur next to his skin. Consequently it was its pink, polyester backing that was on display. Dave had also reversed the latex face mask, adapting it so he could eat and drink out of it.
He climbed over the balcony and stared, King Kong-like, into Joy’s bedroom. She was lying asleep wearing a long silk nightdress (part of her friend Sofia’s haul from Biba) that Fay Wray would have admired. There was no sign of Greg. He knocked again, but Joy was too spaced out to respond. He tried to open the window further, but it was stuck.
He knocked insistently on the glass, ‘Joy! Joy! Wake up. It’s me. Dave.’
Joy stirred in her slumbers, opened her eyes for a moment, and regarded the ape with alopecia staring into her bedroom. ‘Of course it’s you, Dave,’ she said. ‘Who else would it be?’
Then she turned over and went back to sleep.
‘Joy! Joy! Let me in, Joy,’ he demanded, knocking again on the glass. But she was gone.
He still couldn’t get the window open, so he reached a paw through and grasped one of the legs of her Victorian bed and dragged it towards him to get her attention. She slowly came to her senses as her bed reached the balcony. ‘Dave, will you please let me get some sleep?’
Realising he wouldn’t, she got up, stumbled to the window and they opened it together. King Kong climbed in.
‘Where’s Greg?’ he asked.
‘Who cares? Fetch me a glass of water. Turn the turkey. Put the sprouts on in half an hour. Make sure you wash them first. And put little crosses in their bums. Wake me in an hour.’ Then she passed out again.
Earlier, she had smoked too much Thai Stick, her special Christmas treat to herself. She had also drunk rather a lot of champagne, and had promptly had a whitey: a booze and dope-induced funny turn. With the world spinning and nausea rising, she’d retreated to bed to recover.
Dave stumbled through her darkened bedroom, barged past some huge object in the doorway, and out into the hall.
A shivering Greg was in the living room, wrapped up in his Wehrmacht leather trench coat, his gloves on and a scarf around his face. He looked alarmed and backed away as Dave entered.
‘What the hell …?’
‘It’s me. Dave.’
‘God. I might have known.’
‘I kept ringing the door bell,’ the ape growled. ‘Why didn’t you answer?’
‘You can’t hear it at the back. What are you doing in fancy dress?’
‘Only the uninitiated call it fancy dress, Greg. It’s my day suit for relaxing in.’
‘You do know you’ve got it on inside out?’
‘Of course. Sherlock Holmes liked to relax in his silk smoking jacket, I like to relax in my fur suit.’
‘Well, thank God, you’re here, man. You’ve got to help me.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Everything. Joy’s having a nervous breakdown.’
‘Joy? Cracking up?’
‘It’s really bad.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps I should leave,’ said Dave, making for the front door.
‘No! You’ve got to stay,’ said Greg, grasping hold of the rubbery primate. ‘And Boxing Day, too. I’m going to say I have to go home tomorrow to spend it with my mum.’
‘Perhaps I should go home and spend it with my mum, too.’
‘You can’t. Your mum’s dead.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘‘Cos I need you here, Dave, so she has a shoulder to cry on. I daren’t leave her on her own.’
‘What about her parents?’
‘Dad’s in Australia with his new wife. She’s going up to Glasgow for Hogmanay to see her mum. She’s desperately unhappy, Dave. She’s been crying and swearing. Well, mainly swearing.’
‘Why? What’s the matter with her?’ asked Dave.
‘I guess she just can’t handle our relationship being over. I had no idea I meant so much to her. But I just have this effect on women, it seems.’
‘You dumped her?’ enquired the ape. ‘That was brave of you. And rather ungallant at Christmas. Congratulations, Greg. I see you’re competing with me in the Complete Shit stakes.’
‘Well, no. No,’ said Greg nervously, pacing about trying in vain to get warm. ‘I didn’t actually tell her it was over.’
‘You didn’t tell her it was over?’
‘No,’ said Greg furtively. ‘Not exactly. Well, not in so many words. But I did drop a strong hint.’
‘What sort of strong hint?’ the ape asked suspiciously.
Dave took off his mask and felt just how cold the air was around them.’It’s bitter in here.’ He looked over at the empty fireplace. ‘No heating.’
‘Tell me about it,’ said Greg, his teeth chattering.
‘Her girls don’t like it, you see.’ explained Dave.
Greg still hadn’t answered his question.
‘Well, come on, Greg! What sort of strong hint?’
Reluctantly Greg told him. ‘No sex. I didn’t deliver.’
Dave looked aghast. ‘You do know what happened to the last person who didn’t deliver?
‘Yes,’ said Greg wincing.
‘The drug dealer who took her money but didn’t come up with the goods.’
‘I know. I know,’ said Greg miserably. ‘She got some heavy friends to dangle him over the side of King George V bridge.’
‘By one leg,’ added Dave.
‘Normally,’ grimaced Greg, ‘when I stay over, we do it three times a night. So I rather suspect she knows, Dave.’
‘I rather suspect she does,’ agreed Dave. ‘This is not good, Greg.’
‘It’s not good,’ confirmed a desperate Greg.
‘However,’ pondered Dave, ‘she may conclude you’re queer. As I do. Joy is ‘ideologically sound’ so she’d never attack someone for being queer. Don’t you see?’
‘What?’
‘It’s your perfect exit strategy. Time to come out of the closet, Greg.’
Greg rolled his eyes. ‘Dave, I am not gay.’
‘It’s the seventies, Greg. It’s okay. After all, Joy has a boyish figure and short hair, which doubtless turns you on. From behind, I imagine there’s not that much difference between her and Bernie. No womanly hips to put you off, right?’
Greg ignored the taunt. ‘I just want to get shot of her.’
Dave thought about it and make a quick decision. ‘In that case I really think I should go. I’d only be in the way. Of flying cutlery.’
He turned to depart but Greg held onto him.
‘No, I want you to be in the way, Dave,’ he insisted, his frosty breath visible in the air. ‘In case something terrible happens.’
‘To you? Or, more importantly, to me?’
‘To her.’ Greg lowered his voice as he fearfully explained. ‘Dave, I definitely heard her say, “I’m going to slit my wrists.”’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s bad. We should stay out of this, Greg. Best leave it to Cross Line, eh?’
‘I rang them, but they’re permanently engaged.’
‘Of course. Christmas. The time for the misery of families.’
‘We have to be there for her, Dave. And we have to humour her,’ Greg insisted. ‘Don’t say anything that could push her over the edge. Okay?’
‘Okay …’ said Dave, taking in these strange developments.
Dave was surprised to learn Joy was in such a bad way.
She had seemed her usual self when he last saw her on the 23rd. She had just coped admirably with the perils of the Fleetpit lift, always a danger for young women and particularly at Christmas. An ornate Edwardian cage lift, it was common for predatory journalists to trap girls in it between floors.
In the sixties there had been a young, uniformed lift girl, but she had been subjected to so much sexual harassment, the company had to dismiss her and now everyone operated the lift themselves.
Joy had encountered ‘Deep Throat’ Barclay, art editor of The Spanker, who regularly rode up and down in the lift with a piece of mistletoe, asking female journalists for a Christmas kiss. Trapped inside the cage with him, they often reluctantly agreed to a quick peck, only to find his tongue halfway down their throats as his hands wandered all over them and he insisted, ‘It’s Christmas. It’s just a bit of fun.’
When ‘Deep Throat’ foolishly tried this ploy on Joy, she retaliated with a headbutt and a sharp knee to the groin.
Dave witnessed the scissor gates opening and ‘Deep Throat’ curled up on the floor of the lift in agony, as a smiling Joy stepped over him and reassured him, ‘It’s Christmas. It’s just a bit of fun.’
* * *
Later, Joy got up and, despite her depression, completed the Christmas repast. It lived up to Dave’s expectations. He didn’t let her gloomy manner put him off his food. She was wearing a Gothic Biba velvet maxi dress with balloon sleeves, which should have looked beautiful on her, but now seemed more appropriate for a funeral. She was oblivious to the cold. Dave, too, was toasty in his suit. Only Greg was suffering.
For Greg, even with his leather coat, it was colder than the Russian Front, but there was nowhere else for him to go. The Underground had shut down, so he couldn’t warm himself down there. He was trapped. He was starting to feel as bleak as Joy. He had nervously brought up the subject of her lack of fire and Joy had scowled, ‘You English wimp,’ so he didn’t dare pursue it further.
And his career was going nowhere. The writer’s plans for self-advancement had worked in Sunset Boulevard, so why couldn’t it work for him? He was ready for his casting couch. His character, Panzerfaust, fighting on the Russian Front, makes a pact with Satan, and sells his soul in order to succeed. Greg was fully prepared to sell his soul. Trouble was, no one was buying.
Dave wondered whether talking about the story Joy was writing for JNP66 might raise everyone’s spirits. They had to do a story about a great white shark. Jaws was due in the cinemas tomorrow and everyone already knew it was going to be a mega hit. So Joy had asked to write her version, White Death, because she’d gone sea fishing with her father in Australia. She had witnessed a great white attack at Coffin Bay, so she was perfect for the job. But if they talked about Australia, the subject of her dad’s new young wife was bound to come up, so maybe it was wise to leave it alone.
So Dave tried other conversational gambits. ‘I was actually going to tell you about my childhood in the West Ham Union Workhouse.’
There was no response.
‘Perhaps this is not the right time?’
Again, no response.
Finally Joy spoke. ‘I just want to die,’ said Joy, lost in her own dark, sad thoughts.
‘We all get like that sometimes,’ reassured Dave. ‘Even me. I shall be 27 next year and they tell me that is the right time to go. I’m looking forward to my death. I shall be in good company: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and … Dave Maudling.
That didn’t seem to help, so Dave tried again to make light conversation. ‘You know, Joy, when you come back from Glasgow, you might want to bring back more firewood on the plane? Because firewood is actually cheaper in Scotland?’
‘Aye,’ agreed Joy, momentarily enthusiastic. ‘Why pay exorbitant London prices, when I pick it up in Scotland for a fraction of the price?’
‘And then you could have a fire, Joy.’
Later, Dave and Greg did the washing up while Joy lay on the sofa, drinking and smoking dope and staring blankly ahead of her, lost in her ever-deepening depression.
Now Dave had a chance to look around her flat, he began to see what the problem was between Joy and Greg and why their relationship had gone so badly wrong. She had every imaginable toy from Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Doctor Who to Star Trek. Many still in their boxes. The reason her bedroom was in darkness became clear now: it was so the sunlight didn’t fade the packaging. The object he had barged into at the entrance to her bedroom was, in fact, Godzilla’s enormous clawed foot, ‘liberated’ from a film set when Joy was in Japan. It was resting on a treasured square of carpet from the USS Enterprise.
‘You’ve got to have a McGuffin: a shared interest,’ Dave explained to Greg. ‘But you were only interested in her because of her dad.’
‘It’s normal to network in this business.’
‘But she’s into toys and you’re not.’
‘Tell me about it. She’s gone ahead and signed the lease for her Time Machine shop.’
‘Whereas the only plastic you’re interested in is American Express and Barclaycard.’
‘I don’t get it. I don’t know why she wants to piss away her money on plastic retard figures,’ said Greg bitterly.
‘I had noticed it was like a giant plastic playpen in the bedroom.’
‘It put me off.’ Greg shook his head. ‘I thought it was just us guys who were anoraks.’
‘It’s the seventies, man. Everything’s changing.’
‘I would have said to her it’s me or Godzilla,’ confided Greg, ‘but I know who she’d have chosen.’
‘You’re being plastic-whipped, Greg. You could wake up with a Space 1999 Eagle spaceship shoved up your arse.’
‘To be honest, Dave,’ and Greg lowered his voice to a whisper as he rinsed the plates, ‘sex between us wasn’t actually very good.’
Dave nodded sympathetically. ‘She probably preferred pleasuring herself with a Dalek.’
Greg paused from his washing up and stared out the window. ‘I’m sure you’re right. I think she even keeps condoms in their original packets.’
‘Sounds like a used one would be a collector’s item?’ said Dave who was doing the drying.
‘Oh, no. I always disposed of them,’ said Greg fearfully. ‘In case they ended up in her fridge.’ He finished the washing up.
‘You didn’t want to risk the patter of tiny Gregs?’
‘Definitely not.’ Greg shuddered at the thought. ‘Because we have nothing in common, Dave.’
‘You see, Greg? You see? No McGuffin, no nothin’,’ said Dave as he finished, too.
They put the crockery away.
‘But you, Dave, you’d be fine.’ Greg looked at Dave’s bizarre inside-out suit. ‘Because you seem to live in a giant playpen as well.’
‘Thank you,Greg. Yes. This is true. Godzilla in the bedroom is really not a problem for me,’ said the man in the ape suit.
Even Dave could feel the cold now. So, as they rejoined Joy, he put his inside-out gorilla mask on again.
Joy was now sitting slumped in the wheelchair from Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It was not a good sign. Dave and Greg sat down on the sofa next to the mannequin Stella Jeanne, whom Joy had brought back from the office to deal with her skin problem. The cracking hands had forced her to dress around them, so she was holding gloves rather than wearing them. Her best friend, Stella Louise, watched from an adjoining armchair.
And then Joy hit them with the reason for her depression.
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.