Kevin told me the story of a staff member of IPC juveniles sleeping in the office after he was made homeless, following a marital dispute. So we adapted it to having Dave living in the attic of Fleetpit House.
The vaults of the building were full of valuable volumes of old comics and old comic artwork. Some of it was stolen and sold by brown-coated storemen like ’The Phantom’. Kevin told me the story of how a piece of renowned Frank Bellamy’s art was used to bung up a drain. And some large pages of beautiful art were cut down to fit the size of the shelves. The Fleet river - which acted as one of London’s sewers - sometimes overflowed into the vaults , destroying yet more books and art. Even in more recent times when Maxwell took over Fleetway, art was chucked into skips and burnt. Members of staff rescued some of the art and what happened to it next is anyone’s guess. They may have kept the art for their own private use or solid it to collectors.
The pipe bomb is based on a true story. A group of school boys - using a pipe bomb - blew up a tree in an abusive priest’s orchard. It was an odd and very risky thing to do. I asked my source why they would do that and met with evasive answers - ‘we just wanted to experiment with chemistry’ - and so I drew my own conclusions.
Pat
Dave intended to celebrate New Year’s Eve in The Hoop and Grapes. He had gone over there at seven o’clock, preparing for a long evening’s drinking. The trouble was, his mother was endlessly playing “Death Letter Blues” by Lead Belly in his head.
By eight o’clock it was driving him crazy. He had no idea why she was playing it. It must mean something, but he didn’t care. He was fed up with her trying to control his life from beyond the grave. Even though, thanks to her efforts, he had achieved the impossible and scored with Joy.
He figured it was really down to his own charm offensive on Joy, including treating her to a McDonalds, and owed little to his mother. It was his own pathetic personality that really clinched it. Albeit, just a one night stand. Joy had made that very clear. There was to be no encore, alas.
By nine o’clock, as his mother continued to play “Death Letter Blues”, he finally realised why. He should go through the readers’ letters. He hadn’t looked at them in a long time.
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The thought entered his mind: one of the readers was dead. Because of him. That must be it. That was what she was trying to tell him.
It was an exciting thought. One of his lethal suggestions in The Caning Commando had paid off. It was what he had always wanted and prepared for, after all. So it had finally happened. He was finally a serial killer. He hurried back across the road to check.
As he unlocked the door to the side alley alongside Fleetpit House, he was quietly observed by the Phantom of the Fleetpit. The scarred storeman had just parked his van nearby and was taking advantage of the holiday to steal the entire bound volume collection of the Boy’s Story Paper. He’d already had a good offer for them from an antiquarian bookshop in Charing Cross Road.
He watched as Dave climbed up the fire escape to his apartment in the roof. He must have had duplicate keys cut. The cheeky bugger. And he was living up there in the belfry, like Quasimodo in Notre Dame cathedral. For free.
Now he could plan his next move. He rubbed the twisted side of his face. It brought back memories from long ago. It was payback time. There would be no sanctuary for this Quasimodo.
Meanwhile, Dave had taken the readers’ letters from The Spanker office up to his eyrie and went swiftly through them, looking for any reports of the death of ‘Little Johnny’. Some parent sending in a furious accusation. Some tragic tale. Some awful newspaper account of a dreadful accident.
He was all geared up to blame the death on the Major. His face would be set in stone, this time. He would give an Oscar-winning performance of shocked innocence.
Jean Maudling watched patiently as he went through the pile. She checked her lipstick in her compact mirror, pouted her lips, and made a minor adjustment. Her blonde hair shimmered in the dim light, and her face was partly in shadow, as befitted a femme fatale.
He was almost at the end of the letter pile. There was nothing. No death of Little Johnny. False alarm. He felt strangely relieved. That couldn’t be right, he thought. Could it? What was going on?
‘You didn’t really want kids to die, did you, Dave?’ His mother interrupted his thoughts. ‘Not really?’
‘What’s with the Mary Poppins act? he growled. ‘Of course I do.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘What are you? My conscience?’
‘You tell me.’
He thought about it for a moment. ‘No, I still want to kill them. I can’t help myself. It’s something I have to do.’
‘Because of that bloody newsagent,’ she frowned.
‘D’you think it’s Stockholm Syndrome?’
‘I’m not sure what syndrome describes you, Dave.’
‘Basil Fawlty hates his guests the way I hate my readers. Maybe it’s Torquay Syndrome.’
Dave was opening his last few letters when a newspaper clipping fell out. It was from the Belstead Herald and the headline was: ‘RHUBARB CLUB LAMENTS TRAGIC DEATH OF FATHER NORTH’.
‘A group of altar boys, who called themselves the Rhubarb Club, were heartbroken by their chemistry experiment that went tragically wrong,’ the article began.
Intrigued, Dave read on. The boys had been doing some work for Father North as part of their bob-a-job week, apparently, although they weren’t actually real boy scouts. Their plan had been to blow up an old tree root in the grounds of the priest’s cottage using a pipe bomb they had made themselves.
The boys told the reporter they were very interested in chemistry and gardening, and wanted to put their talents to good use. They had left the device in Father’s car for safe-keeping while they prepared the tree.
The priest had driven off, unaware there was a bomb on board, It detonated prematurely, and he was killed outright.
The article went on to say that Father North had been very kind to the boys and had taken them on camping holidays and they often spent time at his cottage playing games. The boys deeply regretted what had happened and said they would really miss him.
It concluded with a tribute from Father North’s bishop, who said he was a ‘very holy, kind-hearted and humane priest, renowned for his intellect and moral rectitude and with a deep devotion to Our Lady.’
Attached to the article was a note from an anonymous Spanker reader written in a childish and mis-spelt scrawl.
‘North only wanted to pay us a Bob a job?! With 24% inflashun? The tight barstard He sed he couldn’t afford more and he was going to use younger alter boys in future. Thanks for showing us how to make a pipe bomb Caning Commando. We could never have done it without you! Rhubarb! Rhubarb! Rhubarb!’
Dave was shocked. ‘Father North sounded like a good man. Why would anyone want to kill him over a dispute about gardening?’
Jean looking thoughtfully at Dave but said nothing. He passed the clipping and letter over to her.
‘It certainly looks like the boys followed your instructions,’ she said after studying them.
‘To the letter,’ agreed Dave. ‘Then the priest drove off and it was “Good-night, John-Boy.”’
‘But if the boys had complained to an adult about him,’ she mused, ‘they would have been punished, never the priest.’
‘Complained about what, mum?” Dave was puzzled. ‘A bob a job?’
‘He got what he deserved,’ she said, ignoring Dave’s question. ‘I don’t like this new way of seeing kids as helpless victims. They’re often nasty, mercenary and vengeful.’
‘Like me, you mean?’ grinned Dave.
‘Yes. Although you were sneaky as well. Kids don’t always have a moral compass. It’s why they’re so scary. I wonder what the bobbies made of it?’
‘Tragic accident, I expect.’
‘That nonsense about leaving a bomb in the car for safe-keeping.’ She laughed. ‘The ones I knew would never buy that for a minute. The Soho bobbies were hard bastards.’
‘Yeah?’ Dave asked curiously. His mother rarely talked about her nightclub days.
‘They had to be. It was wartime. All those gangs and a murderer out there in the blackout.’
‘A murderer?’
‘Yes. We all had to toughen up. I carried a knuckle duster when I walked home alone from the club.’
‘I remember,’ confirmed Dave, ‘when I had a look through your chest of drawers.’
‘You were very sneaky,’ she grimaced. ‘I bet the bobbies were keen to bring a little “physical pressure” on those boys.’
‘Like when you took me to the police station and asked them to punish me when I was bad.’
‘You deserved it,’ said his mother unsympathetically. ‘And it was normal in the fifties.’
‘Locking me in a cell for the afternoon?’ Dave said bitterly.
‘Only for a couple of hours.’
‘While you went off to do your shopping?’
‘Anyway,’ continued Jean, ignoring Dave’s accusing eyes, ‘maybe they had to accept the boys’ explanation because if they investigated, they’d have turned over too many stones.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Dave was baffled.
‘The bobbies may have known about Father North’s preferences.’
‘Gardening preferences, you mean? Lawns, flower beds or a vegetable plot?’
‘And maybe had some secret sympathy with the clever little bastards. I guess we’ll never know now.’
‘I guess not,’ agreed Dave. It was his first confirmed kill. He didn’t feel guilty. Surprisingly, now he had a chance to think about it, the death of the priest made him feel rather good. He revealed this to his mother. ‘I wonder why?’
‘Because you’ve helped kids fight back against injustice, that’s why.’
Dave eyes widened. He would never have seen himself in such a heroic role. He was flattered. ‘I guess only a mother would see it that way,’ he grinned.
Jean went to the turret tower window and looked out, a sad expression on her face. ‘Back in Ireland,’ she said, ‘we were told they could never do any wrong. We thought of them like Druids, you know? They could curse you or heal you. A local priest, Father Foy, did both. We left offerings to him on his grave. Everyone believed he really could walk on water.’
‘But not Father North, eh?’ chuckled Dave.
They heard the distant chimes of Big Ben and a muted, rather half-hearted chorus of cheers from tourists. In the seventies, most Londoners celebrated the New Year at home. She turned and smiled at Dave. ‘Happy New Year, son.’
‘Happy New Year, mum.’
It was good to be celebrating New Year, just mother and son. It left him with an unfamiliar feeling of optimism for the year ahead. Growing up, his mother’s bitter sister, Aunt Maeve, would join them for New Year’s Eve and complain, even before it was one o’clock, ‘I’m sick of this year already.’ It was often said that Dave took after her.
‘Now,’ said his mother, purposefully, ‘can we get back to who killed me? And how you’re going to avenge me?’
‘Avenge you? Now wait a minute, mum … I’m no hero!’
As the bells finished tolling, the Phantom of the Fleetpit loaded the last of a hundred years’ worth of the Boy’s Story Paper into his van and smiled up at the dimly-lit window at the top of Fleetpit House. ‘I’ll be seeing you soon, Quasi.’
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.
The thought of that rich history of comic art , all thise artists blood sweat and tears being dumped in a skip is heartbreaking. I believe Bolland had a lot of originals stolen which given the prices his original art commands has left the guy many thousands of pounds out of pocket, shocking and callous
I recall you mentioned in Be Pure that some of Bisleys Horned God pages got pinched as well. On Ebay i saw the original of the Balor image from ep 2 go for 75 grand! I hope to god for Bisleys sake that wasnt one of the stolers!