Apologies for the late delivery of Chapter 13! To make it up to you, and because it’s a bit short, I’ve included Chapter 14 as well. I hope you enjoy them!
Stoke Basing Star August 23rd 2016.
COMIC MAY HOLD KEY TO MURDER MYSTERY
The police are examining the copy of The Fourpenny One that builder John Trigger, 48, found in the wall of the secret room where the body of Mrs Jean Maudling was discovered. It is now thought she purchased the comic for her eight-year-old son, David Maudling, around the time she disappeared.
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Police believe The Fourpenny One was in her shopping bag, found buried next to her body, and the murderer had stuffed it in the wall he built, along with old newspapers, as insulation. The comic is dated Saturday 9th March1957, three days before records show she was reported missing.
Mrs Maudling’s daughter, pensioner Annie Ryan, 71, who came forward in response to a police appeal, said, ‘I’m surprised the comic was in mum’s bag. Dave usually got it himself from the local newsagent, but, for some reason, she must have bought it for him that Saturday.’
Police are examining the fur boa used to strangle Mrs Maudling, and her shopping bag, and completing DNA tests, which they believe could identify the murderer. They expect to make an announcement soon and disclose the location of the house where the body was found.
They would also like get in touch with the victim’s son, David Maudling, 67, but his current whereabouts are unknown.
CHAPTER 14
A week after his mother had first appeared to him, they were in Selfridges together and it was going badly. Very badly. Admittedly, it was early November and the Christmas shopping crowds were out, but shopping with his mother was a stressful experience, and Dave was concerned things were getting out of hand.
At first, he had been thrilled that his mother could physically manifest herself. It was so good to see her again after all these years. And if she was an illusion, it was a consistent illusion that made him feel better about himself and his life. He was no longer alone.
He was well aware she could be a figment of his imagination, an elaborate and unknown construction of his subconscious that psychiatrists knew nothing of, some benign cousin of insanity. He told himself that writers often have imaginary conversations with their characters. It was well known that they would talk back to the writer and ‘take on a life of their own’.
But this was so much more. Once he started having hallucinations and talked about finding his mother’s killer, in the words of Mandy from Feral Meryl, where would all it end?
Because of his father, he had read everything he could about madness: R.D. Laing, Janov’s The Primal Scream, Thomaz Szasz’s The Myth of Mental Illness, as well as books on conventional psychiatry, and finally reached the profound conclusion that, whilst they might earnestly claim otherwise, no-one really had a clue about the true nature of the human mind.
His guess was as good as R.D. Laing’s, in fact, possibly better, as Laing used LSD as his ‘spiritual laxative’ whereas Dave used liquorice. And he wouldn’t describe, as Laing might well have done, that his father had ‘a shamanic journey’ into enlightenment. Peter had been manic, rather than shamanic.
But he feared that if anyone discovered he was actually seeing his dead mother and claiming she was murdered, they’d section him, fry his brains, feed him drugs and make him really crazy, like his dad.
So he had not been comfortable with his mother following him around like the ghostly partner of the detective in the TV series Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased). It was also a matter of privacy and giving him his own space. She was no longer a voice inside his head that wouldn’t leave him alone. She was now an apparition who wouldn’t leave him alone.
First up, she had told him the safari suit had to go; it was gone, and she was looking for its replacement. Replacements, plural. Jacket. Coat. Trousers. Shirts. Shoes. Everything.
‘Try that raincoat on again, Dave.’ He dutifully obeyed. She looked at him thoughtfully. ‘Let me see. Turn around. Stand up straight.’ She shook her head. ‘No.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Nothing, it looks excellent on you, sir,’ said the assistant, unaware Dave was talking to his mother and not him.
‘It makes you look like Columbo,’ said his mother.
‘I thought the idea was to make me look like a detective in preparation for my assignment.’
‘I don’t understand, sir,’ said the assistant.
‘You want to look cool as well,’ said his mother.
‘I don’t know what all the fuss is about,’ he sulked. ‘I’d have been happy with a demob mac like Ron’s.’
‘I’m not sure I know Ron, sir. Is he a regular customer here?’ asked the assistant brightly.
‘Don’t be silly, dear,’ said his mother.
‘Have you seen the prices here? They’re very silly.’
She pointed to another rack. ‘Now this one.’
He tried it on and the assistant hovered expectantly.
‘Shoulders back. Don’t slouch.’ She smiled. ‘Oh, yes. That’s nice. Your dad used to wear one just like it when he’d come to The Eight Veils.’
‘The Eight Veils? I didn’t know you were at The Eight Veils?’
‘I don’t know the Eight Veils,’ said the puzzled assistant.
‘No. Not you. I’m talking to my mum,’ explained Dave.
‘Ah. I see,’ said the assistant, looking a little worried.
‘There’s a lot about me you don’t know,’ Jean Maudling said. ‘Yes. I think this is the one. Keep it on as well.’
Dave nodded to the assistant whose pleasure in making a sale over-rode any concerns about his customer’s sanity.
They left Selfridges with Dave clutching an endless assortment of glossy yellow bags containing his old clothes and shoes.
He had complained bitterly to her about the cost of an entire new wardrobe, but she’d pointed out he had been saving up for an expensive fur coat and he was living rent free. But he would still have to write a lot of episodes of that new serial he was going to propose to Joy: Paula Never Saw The Pool, about a blind high diver.
He had to admit he looked and felt good in his Yves Saint Laurent trench coat. Her sartorial advice was certainly better than Greg’s. Even so, it was the last time he went shopping with his mum.
She regarded him critically. ‘Now we really should do something about your hair.’
‘What’s wrong with my hair?’
She looked across the road from Selfridges. ‘There’s a salon in Aldford Street. Maybe they could fit you in.’
‘That’s in Mayfair. I don’t go to hair salons in Mayfair. I go to barbers,’ he protested.
There was a cancellation and an hour and a half later he emerged with a George Carter Sweeney look. It went well with his brown corduroy jacket, cream polo neck and black and burgundy shoes.
But not so well with the liquorice pipe, even if it was a Sherlock Holmes briar. ‘Stop chewing liquorice in the street,’ she admonished.
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s not nice, dear.’
Despite, or rather because of, his mother’s positive influence on his appearance, Dave was scared. She was changing his life; his comfortable, cosy, boring, buffoonish, sedentary, rent-free, woman-free, challenge-free life. He liked having nothing to do, nothing to think about and the days and weeks and months all merging into one with nothing to remember them by. He certainly didn’t want to think about tracking down murderers from twenty years ago. It could be dangerous.
He decided he was going to refuse the quest.
And he knew just how to make her go away.
So this was why, with his mother struggling to keep up with him in her high heels, he strode purposefully to the Catholic church in nearby George Street and entered its vast, echoing, dimly-lit Gothic interior.
Inside, Dave lit a candle for his mother and put a pound note in the box. He told her it was to honour her memory.
But it was actually to exorcise her.
So her soul, or whatever was responsible for her appearance after two decades, could be at peace. And, more importantly, he could be at peace.
He could see her waiting apprehensively in the darkness at the back of the church. For some reason she seemed uncomfortable being in a church. That was a good sign. It could mean she was scared of being exorcised. Maybe she really was an evil spirit? A witch who had to be invited over the threshold? Or was she simply a figment of his fevered imagination?
Whether he was mad or haunted, either way he had had enough. She had to go.
He looked up at the altar, ‘If she’s a demon, Lord, could you tell her to be gone please? I’ve put a quid in. Is that enough?
Then he added hastily, ‘But not my regular inner demons. Not the Gadarene swine. I’m used to them. I’d miss them. They can stay.’
She clacked down the aisle and sat next to him. They stared in silence at the flickering candles for several long moments while he waited expectantly for the exorcism to take effect and for his mother to fade away back into the ether.
Nothing happened. He wondered if it was because he hadn’t said the words in Latin. Maybe it wasn’t possible to conduct a DIY exorcism. Perhaps he had to consult a professional exorcist? Finally he was forced to admit:
‘Damn. It’s not working.’
‘What’s not working?’
‘My exorcism. Your head isn’t spinning round, you’re not vomiting green bile and you’re not going away.’
‘And I don’t intend to. I need you, son.’
‘But I’m no detective, mum.’
‘I know, dear, but you’re all I’ve got.’
‘But I don’t want to do this. I’m refusing the quest.’
‘Now there’s several suspects you need to look at.’
‘You’re not listening to me. I don’t want it.’
‘I won’t let that stop me.’
‘If you’re real, then you already know who killed you.’
‘Of course I do, but I need you to know.’
‘So why don’t you just tell me?’
‘Because it doesn’t work that way. There’s all the poison that needs to come out first.’
‘How much poison?’
‘More than in your old chemistry set.’
‘That’s a lot of poison.’
An elderly priest had crossed from the sacristy to the altar and looked curiously down at the big man in the front row muttering animatedly to himself. The cleric had unlocked the tabernacle and was about to transfer the reserved sacrament, the hosts and the wine, to a small container for taking communion to the sick.
He turned and put a finger to his lips and Dave nodded obediently in his direction. ‘Sorry, father.’
‘He’s moving it to the pyx,’ he whispered to his mum.
‘How do you know it’s a pyx?’ she whispered back.
‘I used it in Scrabble and got loads of points.’
‘Dave,’ said his mother looking uncomfortably around her, ‘D’you think we could leave now? I’m really not comfortable in a church.’
‘No. I need to have a word with the priest. I want to see if he will exorcise you for me. Send you back wherever you came from.’
A sinister look crossed Jean Maudling’s face. ‘That would be a mistake, David …’ He noticed her normally soft, feminine voice was suddenly harsh, almost masculine. It must be all that smoking. ‘A big mistake …’
‘I’m sorry, mother, but you’ve got to be exorcised and there’s no more to be said.’
She looked at him with a stern expression that he remembered from his childhood when he’d done wrong, but it wouldn’t do her any good now. She was dead and he had the power.
‘I’m not in a good place right now, mum. Greg and I are doing a stretch on Laarf! It’s a living hell.’
‘Because of what happened to Blitzkrieg?’
‘Of course. The board blamed both of us for the bad publicity in the Demon Barber’s article and the comic being cancelled. We were given a three month sentence on Laarf! I just can’t handle you and working on the most unfunny comic in Britain.’
‘You did the crime, you do the time,’ she said unsympathetically.
‘And Laarf! readers love it. Can you believe it? They have zero taste.’ Dave leaned back in his pew and sighed. ‘It’s why I hate them. God, I hate them so much …’
‘Yes …Yes … Hate is good …’ agreed his mother, her voice still dark, rich and menacing.
‘It’s why they deserve to die,’ continued Dave. ‘No,’ he corrected himself. ‘No. That is unfair. It’s just one of the many reasons they deserve to die.’
‘To die …’ repeated his mother huskily to herself, savouring the words, ‘to die …’ as Dave and his inner demons ranted on.
‘Yes, I told Tom Morecambe the editor, “Tom, the right to humour lobby are pressing you hard to actually produce a funny strip. You surpassed yourself with that last issue. I put my head in the gas oven after reading it. If I’d paid the gas bill, it would have been fatal.” And you know his response?’
‘Tell me …’ Jean smiled in anticipation.
‘That hideous, whining, grizzling, mind-numbing laugh of his.’
‘Do it, David,’ she encouraged him. ‘Do the laugh.’
Her eyes stared hypnotically as she leaned over him. ‘For me, David …’
‘I can’t.’ He looked rather embarrassed and backed off, sliding along the bench away from her. ‘We’re in a church, mum.’
‘Doesn’t matter.’ She slid after him. ‘Do it, son …’ He slid to the far end of the pew. So did she. She smiled archly as she pressed up next to him. ‘You do it so well …’
‘All right.’ There was nowhere left to slide.
Dave gave a scary imitation of Tom Morecambe’ laugh. It was more like a long-drawn-out baby’s lament than a laugh. The echoing acoustics in the church made it sound even more nightmarish, giving it an inhuman, demonic resonance.
The priest turned around and angrily shushed him.
His mother smiled appreciatively. ‘Oh that’s very good … Again.’
He hesitated, she insisted, so, once more he laughed Tom’s painful, banshee, buzz-saw laugh that surely came straight from the bowels of Hell.
The priest turned again and now there was concern on his face now at such a hellish sound.
‘On Laarf!’ Dave continued, ignoring the priest, ‘the rules are: No fireworks. No playing on bridges. No bare bums. No flatulence. No drawing pins up the arse. No disfigurements. No jokes about fat people. Thin people. Any people!’ he shouted.
Grim-faced, the priest came down from the altar. He was still holding onto the chalice. There was a white silk cloth and gold platter with the consecrated hosts on top.
Dave imitated Morecambe’s hideous laugh again.
‘What is wrong with you, young man?’ the priest hissed, oblivious to the presence of Dave’s mother. ‘This is the House of God.’
A wave of fury came over Dave, a feeling of absolute shock and outrage that he had never experienced before, that stunned him with its sheer ferocity.
He was possessed.
His face was a greenish pallor in the dim light of the stained glass windows, as he grinned evilly at the old man. The priest realised that this was no ordinary intruder. ‘What … what do you want?’ he whispered fearfully.
Dave stood up so they were face to face with each other in the aisle.
‘I want a drink.’
He snatched the chalice from the priest and quaffed every last drop, discovering that, surprisingly, it was not red wine at all.
‘Mmm. South African sherry. Not worried about the boycott then?’ said Dave.
The platter and the hosts had gone flying. The priest was dismayed.
‘Five second rule,’ a leering Dave reassured him. ‘They’re still holy.’
He bared his teeth, revealing his black lips and black tongue. It had been a tough morning. He’d done a lot of liquorice.
The priest took in the black-mouthed, demonic sight.
‘Truly you are the Son of Satan!’ He was equal to the occasion and roared in a voice Max Von Sydow in The Exorcist would have been proud of.
‘By the authority of the Lord, begone, Demon! I cast you out!’
Dave smiled his black-lipped, black-toothed smile again. ‘Try it, priest.’
Then his mother stood up and pointed an accusing finger at the old man. ‘YOU!’
The cleric was unaware of her presence and her voice.
So she repeated herself, her face suffused with rage, once more stabbing a finger at him. ‘YOU!’
Once again, the priest heard nothing and carried on with his exorcism. ‘Most glorious Prince of the Heavenly Armies, Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in our “battle against principalities and powers” …’
Then she merged with Dave and he found himself pointing at the priest and repeating, ‘YOU!’
The old man heard that all right, and recoiled in horror, snarling defiantly, ‘ … against the rulers of this world of darkness, against the spirits of wickedness in the high places …’
Dave knew what the accusations and the pointing fingers were all about. After his father had smashed the TV in with a cricket bat, his sister had foolishly called the local church for help, as well as their GP. As Canon Williams hurried up the street, a tall, elegant, and rather dashing figure with his red trimmed, expensively-tailored, high-waisted black cassock swirling impressively around him, Peter had stood at his front door and pointed down at him and roared, ‘YOU!’
The Canon, an ex-military man, looked up, but was unafraid. He continued to advance, ready for trouble.
And he got it. Peter charged towards him, pointing and screaming, ‘YOU! YOU! YOU!’
He was almost upon the priest. ‘You’re going to pay for what you did. She told me. I know. YOU!’
Then Dave brought his dad down with a splendid rugby tackle; his expensive, if short-lived college education paying off. The kind of tackle Dave imagined Carstairs, the Fag-Master, star of Fags Army, performed every day.
Dave held his father down until the men in white coats came to take him away. As his dad looked back from the steps of the ambulance, he once again yelled accusingly back at the Canon, ‘YOU!’
The fear of ending up like his father brought Dave to his senses. His homicidal rage faded and, gathering his purchases, he pushed past the priest and stumbled out of the church.
Hurrying down the steps, he tried to make sense of the intense and unexpected anger that had flooded his mind. His mum’s rage? His dad’s rage? His own?
‘Hi, Dave. What were you doing in a church?’ It was Joy, looking gorgeous in her fur jacket, trouser suit and tennis shoes. Mainly in her fur jacket.
He looked at her, dazed. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘The trouser suit,’ she grimaced. ‘Ron sent me home to change.’
‘Of course,’ said Dave. ‘You live round here, don’t you?’
‘Aye. Marble Arch. Fancy a drink?’
‘Er … no thanks, Joy. I’ve already had one.’
‘I’m really pleased you’ve been to church. So you’re finally sorting yourself out.’
‘Yes, I’ve just seen a priest, Joy.’
She looked towards the church. ‘Is that him up there? He seems to be waving a cross at you.’
Dave looked back. The exorcist was framed in the church doorway and was, indeed, brandishing a cross at him.
‘No, he’s just waving goodbye.’ Dave put down his shopping bags and waved back. ‘Thank you, father. Same time next week …?’
Joy cast an appreciative eye over his new-look clothes. ‘And Yves Saint Laurent. Get you!’
‘How did you know?’ asked a mystified Dave.
‘I used to hang out in the wardrobe department on sets. I know my Burberry from my Aquascutum. I like it. And your hair. Your shoes.’ She looked him up and down in disbelief. ‘This is such an improvement, Dave. You must have a girlfriend?’
‘No, Joy. There’s still a vacancy.’
‘But how could you possibly have chosen all those cool clothes on your own?’
‘I have hidden depths, Joy.’
‘So I see. I’m impressed! Anyhoo … I’d better get going. I’ll see you later.’
She gave him a quick, appreciative smile and disappeared.
‘You see?’ said Dave’s mum, emerging from a shop doorway. ‘It was worth going shopping with me.’
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.
This is a terrific read, thanks Pat!
So, I've got to the 'Serial Killer' party late, but I've just read (and enjoyed) the first two chapters and I'm already intrigued so I will catch up.
I've asked once before (when I signed up), but would you please consider subscribing to my new music themed novel, serialised on Substack at https://challenge69.substack.com
I've got a growing band of subscribers, and the first two chapters have had some really positive reader feedback.
I hope you get a chance to take a look, as a debut novelist it would be great to find out what an experienced writer like yourself thought of my work.
Thanks,
Tim