A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE...

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CHAPTER ONE - The Black and Vengeful Heart of Mister Jollytoes

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“But Mister J sir, I’m not sure I have it in me to actually murder someone,” said Morfudd Pickles nervously.

  “Nonsense my dear, you’ll love it once you get going,” replied Mister Jollytoes, his coal-black eye gleaming with sinister intent.

Morfudd pursed his thin lips, unconvinced, and continued trudging, as he’d trudged for the past hour, down a maze of narrow city streets, wet with drizzle from a low and oppressively dark sky. His grimy black trench coat was buttoned up against the weather, and – because it was absolutely essential for the horrible deed he was about to undertake – he had on one of his cunning disguises. A broad brimmed floppy hat, big bushy walrus moustache and large false eyebrows covered his clean shaven, slightly pointed skull and dapper Errol Flynn moustache.

  His eyes stared ahead, sleep deprived and searchingly intense. Morfudd Pickles was an awkward, skinny young man who bemused adults and scared small children.

  Eventually he stopped outside a ramshackle old pub called The Black Cat. Its wooden beams were crooked, the paint was flaking and most of the windows were cracked. It stood down the bottom of a gloomy alleyway, staring out at the world like a tired and grumpy old man.

  “Tonight is the most important night of your life,” said Mister Jollytoes into Morfudd’s ear. “The three most foul and despicable creatures in all the universe, they who have stolen away your one true love, will no doubt be inside warming their undeserved bones by the fire. You must take a deep breath, stand up straight, gird your loins and do the terrible thing I ask.”

  “But Mister J sir, I couldn’t be party to some horrible bloodbath!” said Morfudd, with an imploring look that was totally lost on Mister J, mainly because it was hidden behind the bushy eyebrows.

  “Calm yourself, my dearest! If we are to succeed then you must listen to my words, stay focused, and do as I say without getting all trembly and jittery. Remember all your training? Now is the time for action. Those three gruesome beasts must die!”

  At heart, Morfudd was a gentle soul with a delicate nature. He put his thin white bony hands over his ears and closed his eyes, hoping to shut out Mister J’s voice. “But there must be some other way, a nicer way. My love will be in there with them and I could never let her see me do such terribly naughty things. She’ll think I’m some sort of deranged crackpot.”

Morfudd was referring to a buxom young woman called Morgana Petit-Fleur. She was the great love of his life; a shining beacon of gentle perfection in his dark and cruel world; a goddess who had blessed his life with her presence. She was his saviour and religion, his balm for the soul, his liberation, his constant and depraved sexual fantasy as he lay in his lonely bed each night. She had ignited in him the inexpressible joy of unbounded love and drove his frenzied creativity to undreamed of heights of brilliance. But she had also made him suffer the agonies of a constant and crushing anguish – because his obsessive affections were totally unrequited.

  “Don’t worry about her my dear. She won’t know a thing. I suppose you’re right about the great big frenzied attack. A bloodbath in the boozer’s a little too showy for us.”

  “We’re not showy people.”

  “I mean it would have been jolly entertaining, all that screaming and slashing and stuff, but not in front of dear sweet Morgana, you’re right about that. Instead, you’ll be cunning and unseen, lurk in the shadows, and do them one at a time, when they least expect it.”

  “Morgana cannot see me, not under any circumstance. It might ruin a potentially nice romantic moment if I’m caught busy knifing someone in the head.”

  “As I said, we shall do our dirty deeds unseen. Now then, who’s first for the chop?”

  Morfudd considered his three foes, like a child choosing sweets in a shop. “But they’re all so damnably evil it’s hard to decide. I suppose Barrington Bumble’s a pretty evil chap. He’s got such a terrible temper and doesn’t mind using it.”

  Morfudd tried to recall his Bumble related experiences but found it difficult to dredge up details. He’d mentally locked up all the unpleasant memories in what he called the Bumble Room. It had thick stone walls and a heavy wooden door. Morfudd was scared to open that door, so Mister Jollytoes sprang forward, turned the key and pulled the cast iron door knob. The door opened a fraction and released a fragment of memory…

  Morfudd saw himself hiding, peeping into a grimy window. He was investigating something, a mystery with Morgana at its heart.

  “To save my love from some ghastly situation,” said Morfudd a little unsurely, “I had to become a detective. But it was a very dangerous case, so dangerous in fact that I …” Morfudd flinched as his mind recoiled some half-remembered event.

  The door to the Bumble room slammed shut and Morfudd let out a shudder.

     “Well how about Dilly Talbot then?” said Mister Jollytoes. “For what that horsey-faced fool’s done to you, he deserves a bit of filleting…”

  “I’m not sure I could kill even a horsey-faced fool, just yet.”

  Morfudd tried to recall the evil that was Dilly Talbot. He put an imagined ear to the heavy wooden door of the Talbot Room and reluctantly tried to absorb some essence of memory. All he could glean was that degradation and humiliation of the highest order were somehow involved. He concentrated as hard as he could and managed to recall flashes of incident: an ugly, jeering crowd; the intense blue flame of an oxyacetylene torch about to do something horribly damaging to something important and soft. But he struggled in vain to bring these ghostly recollections into focus.

  “Never mind him,” said Mister J. “What about Mister Fish?”

Morfudd thought about his third potential victim and shuddered violently. He was in no doubt as to which of the trio was the vilest.

  “But Johnny Fish is definitely the most evil villain of all. It was he that brought about the... the...” he stuttered, finding it had to utter words he so dreaded, “The Unmentionable Thing.”

  The Unmentionable Thing had happened quite recently, only four months ago, and was undoubtedly the oddest and most disturbing event of his odd and disturbing life. Its terrible force popped up every so often from the darkest recesses of his brain and hit him like a herd of wildebeest stampeding over softly yielding genitalia.

  Morfudd found it impossible to describe just how bad The Unmentionable Thing actually was – worse than anything that could be called vile, disgusting or depraved; or at least he guessed so, because what was really strange about The Unmentionable Thing was that he couldn’t actually remember anything about it. There it lurked, like some foul beast at the back of his mind, too big and fierce to be shut up in a room, hiding behind a murky fog of recollection – just out of reach but ready to leap out and devour him if he got too close. Part of him wanted to go into the mist and confront it, but another part, the more dominant part, felt the hidden horror that had put it there and made him want to run away and hide under the nearest bed.

  “Not Johnny Fish, not him, not Fish. Anything but -”

  “Okay, okay! We’ll do Mister Fish last, when you’re a little more desensitised.”

  “And Dilly will somehow make me look pathetic even as he’s being killed.”

  “So that settles it then, my lovely boy. We’ll do Barrington Bumble tonight. Yes, Barrington is definitely our man. Even a nun would have no qualms topping off someone like that. Now gird your loins, young man, and do what must be done. The bugger’s inside.”

Morfudd moved his trembling hands away from his ears and reached towards his groin, feeling for the thick leather sheath strapped to his thigh. He fondled it for a few seconds, enjoying its oddly phallic symbolism, then reached under his coat and pulled out a long shiny hunting knife. He studied the sharp serrated edge with a kind of morbid fascination – his intensely brooding, red rimmed eyes reflected in the blade. It was a lethal looking thing that could slice a deer hide with ease, so would have absolutely no trouble at all, Morfudd reasoned, sorting out an obnoxious artist’s much more delicate hide.

  “Barrington Bumble, oh evil Barrington Bumble,” he said in a strangulated voice with a hint of a stutter, “this lovely blade’s going to hurt you so very much. But not as much as you’ve hurt me.” Morfudd sniffed and his lower lip trembled.

  “Stop blubbing!” said Mr. Jollytoes in a firm voice. “Put that blade away and pull yourself together this instant young man. Self-pity does no one any favours.”

  “Sorry Mister J sir. You’re right … as always.”

  Morfudd stopped sniffing, put the knife way and walked through the pub door into smoky warmth and enthusiastic chatter.

*

The landlady of the Black Cat pub was a brassy, vivacious old goat called Nora Barnacle, who’d transformed the place from a dusty old dump ripe for demolition into somewhere you could drink without fear of catching a disease. She’d white washed the rough walls, varnished the oak beams and made every room candle-lit, which improved the atmosphere, hid the damp patches and saved on the electricity bill.

  She had also done something that made dozens of student artists and their friends from the nearby art college, Saint Peter’s, flock to her establishment. Nora was an art lover who was prepared to write off modest bar bills for paintings she liked the look of – so the walls were covered with dozens of pictures. Nora had terrible taste and knew nothing about collectability so none were really worth any money but she hoped her pictures, bought with cheap shorts and fizzy beer, would one day become her retirement fund.

It was Saturday night and each of the battered wooden tables packed into the warren of rooms heaved with young artistic types chattering away by candlelight. Nora had put on a little discordant experimental jazz, hoping to enhance the bohemian atmosphere.

The students loved what Nora had done, calling the place an artists’ paradise, a place to adopt as their own. They proclaimed themselves enraptured by its gothic medieval charm, felt good that they were supporting an obsequious art loving owner and not some big brewery chain, but in reality most of its appeal came from the cheap booze, Nora’s willingness to buy their stuff, and the fact that it was within staggering distance to all the grotty student accommodation in the area.

  Morfudd crept nervously around the pub glancing at the pictures stuck up on every available wall space. They were of spots and stripes, funny looking pieces of string glued to bits of wood, splashes of paint and photos of holes. He despaired at what he was seeing and longed for some darkly-lit and dignified Flemish-style portraits, lush Hay Wainesque landscapes or melodramatic bible scenes with cubby cherubs and a plaintive Jesus. He wanted to see works of delicate beauty, charm and grace – anything but this shabby old tat.

  Morfudd had a deep and abiding hatred of abstract art; but what really irked him was the fact that Morgana – his very own beautiful and wondrous Morgana – loved all this conceptual crapness. She spent all her time with abstract artists. She had sordid sexual relations with abstract artists. She was a conceptual art groupie. She was a slut for surrealism, randy for readymades, foxy for Futurism.

How could a woman so beautiful be so misguided? How could he love someone who revelled in all the things he despised? He wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her hard until all her stupid opinions fell out. He wanted to tell her how she should be admiring his pictures and posing for him exactly how he wanted her to pose … how about naked in his bed, licked all over like a toffee? What a stupendous painting that would be!

  Morfudd stopped himself going any further with his wondrous fantasy. He knew the prospect of a well-licked Morgana was just an impossible dream. The absolute truth about him and Morgana was he hadn’t actually spoken to her for four months, one week, three days, two hours and – he checked his watch – sixteen minutes. It was all so frustrating! Maybe he should just pounce on her one day soon and do something reckless behind the bushes? But he knew she would never forgive an unprovoked attack.

Then Morfudd suddenly saw something that stopped his musings and made him go very pale. He’d just spotted the fiend Mister Jollytoes had told him to murder! There was Barrington Bumble, sitting all alone at one of the tables. He was an ape-like, muscular man with a bull neck, severe crew cut and brutal looking face, made odd by large rubbery lips. He was also a slave to fashion so wore a tight pink shirt with diamante hearts on the chest.

  Morfudd thought about Barrington’s work with a burning sense of disdain. He called himself a hip young artist who specialised in "radically revealing” photography. This involved taking snaps of very minor celebrities or sportsmen pulling strange faces in moments of anguish and blowing up the photos onto great big sheets of paper. He said he wanted to capture that special moment when the facade of slick celebrity was temporarily forgotten, revealing the anguished child within.

  “Where’s the artistic sensibility in that?” said Morfudd.

  “The funny faces he snaps are nothing more radical than the funny faces everyone pulls when they’re having trouble going to the toilet,” said Mister Jollytoes.

  “And he’s far too friendly with my beloved Morgana.” Morfudd glared at Barrington’s piggy eyes and gritted his teeth; but was trembling all over. “Why do I fear him so much? I need to know.”

  “Let me show you something,” said Mister Jollytoes, “but try not to get too upset, my dear.”

Morfudd felt his bear doing something in his head. The door to the Bumble Room was suddenly flung open and he was forced to recall the most terrible incident. Barrington had done something that made sweet Morgana utter the wickedest words ever spoken. They were in a stranger’s house…

  Morfudd faced Morgana with tears in his eyes and made his desperate declaration of love.

  Morgana replied flatly: “But darling, you’re the most repulsive creature I’ve ever met.”

  The door to the Bumble Room slammed shut.

  Morfudd winced as he recalled these words. Their painful barb forced him out of his complacency. Bumble had done something to make Morgana reject him. He fondled the long leather sheath strapped to his thigh and eyed up Barrington. Fear was a thing of the past. Fear had turned to rage. For whatever Evil Mister Bumble had done he was going to get a big blade right in the head, no doubt about it.

  “I know exactly what he did,” said Mister Jollytoes into Morfudd’s ear, “and let me assure you, death’s too good for that flea infested rat. There are bullies in this world who take great pleasure in kicking a weaker man. You shall do more than kicking!”

  Morfudd hated violence but knew he could trust Mr. Jollytoes’ advice. The little chap always knew what to do for the best. ‘Stick that bloody big knife right into his head’ were his orders and Morfudd had to admit, practicing on a photo of Barrington in his flat had certainly let off a bit of pent up steam. When the time was right he was going to do the same thing to the real Barrington Bumble’s head. The cold hard immutable edge of steel would ensure that justice was served. Morfudd felt himself getting quite worked up. He’d suffered terrible indignities long enough. Finally, after all the humiliation, vengeance was close at hand. Ha ha! Oh yes… such a delicious idea from Mr. J. ... a knife stuck in Barrington’s head would perk him up no end.

  “Revenge!” he said, “for all the pain you’ve doled out to me. Soon your real head will feel my steel.”

  Morfudd edged forward, creeping like a stalking cat, and sat down at the nearest table he dared.

  Suddenly one of the other planned victims, Dilly Talbot, walked right past and sat down at Barrington’s table. Dilly had long wispy blonde hair, buck teeth, and was reminiscent of a slightly surprised horse. He was dressed entirely in black, wore square glasses and a disdainful look – like he’d just smelt something bad.

  “I can’t kill two of them at once!” said Morfudd.

  “Calm down my dear. As we agreed, Bumble is tonight. We shall get to Dilly Talbot in good time.”

  Morfudd nodded unsurely. His two enemies started chatting, so he strained his ears to listen in on their conversation. It was all about Saint Peter’s forthcoming graduate exhibition. This was extremely prestigious and known as the Monet prize. Barrington and Dilly both had works in the show and both were desperate to win.

  “What you putting forward?” said Barrington.

  “One of my best pieces,” said Dilly with a smug smile, “an unofficial royal portrait.”

  “Oh that. It’s a bit, what do you call it?” said Barrington with a curl of his rubbery lips, “passé”

  “Passé? Don’t talk rot, Barrington. I’ve shaped the dung into a total likeness of King George V and sat it on a horse’s skull. You can’t get much more futurist or cutting edge than that. It’s the skull that stops it being safe-middle-class-pooter-fodder. Makes it hard and tough.”

  Dilly had a thing for skulls. All of his dung sculptures sat on some sort of skull. Princess Anne was quite large and so required a horse skull. But he’d done Prince Albert so small a mouse skull had sufficed. His ambition was to one day do a massive, magnificent Queen Victoria on an elephant’s skull painted pink. But he’d always had trouble getting one of one of those. Elephants live for such a long time.

  “Wow,” said Barrington. “I have to admit, you are the greatest artist working in dung today. The dung-meister.”

  Morfudd let out a badly suppressed chortle. But he didn’t want to draw any attention to himself, so turned up his collar and skulked slightly.

  Dilly failed to notice Barrington’s sarcasm. He grinned a bucktoothed grin. “I won’t be modest, yes I am. The dung is from an old lion that’s as grand as the king. It’s a perfect synergy of royal family member and regal beast.”

  Morfudd thought about Dilly Talbot’s work. He was a radical young artist working exclusively in the medium of manure. He said he used dung to transform a thing that was reviled by society, namely faeces, into an artistic creation that was revered by society. Morfudd thought his dung sculptures were better left as plain old dung. He was also far too friendly with his beautiful Morgana.

  “That crapulous crap merchant is going to pay,” said Mr. Jollytoes, “the ultimate price my dear.”

  Morfudd wiggled the big bushy moustache. “But let’s get the piggy eyed one sorted first.”

  Barrington curled his lip insouciantly at Dilly. “Wait until you see my entry.”

  “What you got?”

  “Footballers doing great things.”

  “Like what?”

  “Spitting, cursing at the ref, pulling funny faces when they’re hammering the ball, that really funny look of childish joy when they score a goal. I am capturing an essence of truth and humanity in the slick public face of our nation’s football stars.”

  Morfudd pulled a sour face and shook his head.

  “If done by a real talent that idea could be monumental,” said Dilly with a horsey smirk.

  “One of my favourites is an awesome face shot of Frank Soo, a star of Stoke City, blown up as big as I can manage. It was taken when he’d never been so snotty; a ton of the stuff hanging right out of that pert Chinese nose. That gunky hooter’s a truly awesome sight.”

  “You’ve an amazing nerve,” said Dilly, “to show everyone that.”

  “And your dung also, may I say, has a certain quality.”

  Both thought their own work brilliant and radical. It showed the world that they were a force to be reckoned with. But what really rankled was the fact that Johnny Fish was the favourite to win the Monet Prize with his historic home installation. This involved building a fake house, dressing up as a school boy from the period and playing out scenes from early life. People watched through hidden windows. He said he wanted to reveal the archetypal aspects of a shared cultural upbringing.

  “But Johnny’s got his stupid entry,” said Dilly. “Let’s set fire to it!”

  Barrington grinned at the thought of burning Johnny’s installation. “He did three historic home installations when he was at college. All he bloody does is historic home installations. How un-cutting-edge is that?”

  Morfudd’s blood ran cold at the mention of the despicable Johnny Fish. He felt a stomping of the beast’s hooves that was The Unmentionable Thing rumble out of some dark corner of his mind.

  “Never forget, my dear, that you are the one holding the blade,” said Mr. Jollytoes sympathetically. “He won’t be quite so keen on his little tricks with the necessary parts missing and a punctured head.”

  As Dilly and Barrington sat and indulged their professional jealousies, and Morfudd considered the splicing and dicing he was expected to perform, Johnny Fish himself came into the pub with Morgana Petit-Fleur on his arm.

  Morfudd gasped when he saw the radiance of his one true love. Her buxom figure was shown off in a low cut, crushed velvet dress and her long black hair was tied up to reveal a slender pale-skinned neck and shoulders. To Morfudd she was nothing short of female perfection, a goddess come to life – but she was spottier, more brazen and somewhat flabbier than his love-soaked brain could perceive.

  She didn’t seem too happy as she sat down with her back to Morfudd. His red rimmed eyes shone as he gobbled up her every movement. His moustache bobbed up and down as he licked his lips. He sniffed ravenously at air contaminated by her sickly perfume. He desperately wanted to go and lick the nape of that delicate neck, but he shifted around in his chair, with a flustered look, and managed to force himself to settle down.

  “What ho!” said Johnny Fish with a grin. He wore a natural wool suit and bright orange waistcoat, in an effort to cultivate a bright-young-thing 1920’s style of dress. This, he mistakenly thought, made him look like he was doing some serious research for his latest historic home installation, taking style tips from flapperish, modish 20’s films and books.

  Morfudd despised Johnny Fish more than anyone had ever despised anyone else in the history of humankind. Firstly, he was Morgana’s current boyfriend. That was obviously the perfect reason for making him the most hated man ever. Secondly, Morfudd knew that he was somehow involved, centrally and diabolically, with The Unmentionable Thing. If only he could remember what it was! It was so frustrating! Johnny Fish had done something so unbelievably despicable that his addled brain refused to let him in on it. He wondered if Mr. Jollytoes knew anything.

  “Best not to even think about that, my dearest. He’ll be sorry for what he did. He’ll be begging for mercy and apologising for his terribly depraved act when you shove something sharp were the sun don’t shine.”

  “He’s dead meat!” said Morfudd in a tentative voice, still trying to remember what he’d actually done wrong.

  As the three men and Morgana chatted, Morfudd studied his three future victims with bewildered disdain. He knew them very well indeed. He did, after all, go to art school with them. He shared their classes, their tutors and their lectures. But they never invited Morfudd into their circle. In fact, they made it clear that he was something of a pariah. Morfudd tried everything he could to be part of their group, not because he wanted to befriend them but because Morgana was at its centre.

From that magically romantic moment when he saw her at Fresher’s Fair he knew she was the love of his life, more lickable than an ice-cream cone. She had even been quite friendly, in a polite-to-strangers sort of way, when they’d first spoken; making Morfudd so excited he thought he was going to explode. But soon after, she’d been captured and was guarded by Johnny Fish, Barrington Bumble and Dilly Talbot – and he was excluded forever...

  The three men had considered Morfudd a real loser. They were disparaging of his work, asking, with biting sarcasm, why he could only paint traditionally – like some pavement artist or amateur weekend watercolour dabbler. They considered themselves avant-garde, cutting edge, pushing the boundaries. They proclaimed themselves the stars of their generation, the favoured few with dazzling talent, the beautiful people, the students who’d, quite rightly, go on to make a huge splash with their artistic careers. They were smug, confident in their own abilities and looked down on talentless fools like Morfudd.

  He felt sure that if he’d somehow got Morgana alone, away from those three devils, romance would have blossomed. He became convinced that they whispered lies about him and told her things that made him look like some sort of freak, poisoning her mind. Morgana was a pure and noble spirit who would have loved him with all her heart, had she not been corrupted and spoiled. That was the only explanation as to why she treated him so badly.

  “How could they take her away like that?” said Morfudd glumly.

  “Just do as I ask my dear. Dispatch those three filthy worms. Slice open their guts and dance a little jig on their entrails. Chop their heads off and kick them around like a football. Fillet them like a fish. Be creative! Consider it a favour for your lovely Mr. J.”

  “But I’m just a weak little man. I’d have to be so brave-”

  “Let’s have none of that! This is the new you, the assertive you who fights for justice!”

  “But-”

  “If you do as I ask then you shall have your heart’s desire. I promise you on my one remaining eye that she will give herself gladly.”

  “Really?”

  “You shall have her! She shall forget those three and declare her undying love.”

  The thought of Morgana giving herself gladly sent a wave of sexual excitement over his entire body so intense that he worried about a change of underwear. Morfudd was sure he wasn’t fit to lick Morgana’s delicate feet – but just imagining this naughty act made him wallow blissfully. Mr. J. said he could have more than just her feet. He could also have the rest of her and she’d be only too happy! His greatest fantasy – one that had sustained him though many a lonely night – was imagining what it would be like to go on a proper date with Morgana, to spend a whole day with her. He had it all planned: surprising her with flowers, a hand-in-hand stroll around the park, a candle-lit dinner in a cosy bistro, soft words, laughter, gentle whisperings into each other’s ear, then back to his flat for a night he’d never forget. And now Mister J said there was a possibility he could do it for real. What an exciting day that would be!

  “I can really have her? And she’ll really want me?” Morfudd’s tongue played around his lips like a hungry cat.

  “I am a very special creature, a magician come back from the dead to bring you love. If you do as I say then I guarantee you shall have Morgana’s tender heart.”

  Morfudd frowned and though hard. He hated brutality. But those scumbags really did deserve a bit of filleting and slicing. Violence was abhorrent and so against his gentle nature, but he knew deep down inside that he’d do absolutely anything to win Morgana’s heart.

  Absolutely anything…

  He could feel the tightly bound straps of the long sheath strapped to his thigh and listened with nervous enthusiasm to Mister Jollytoes outline Stage One of the campaign: to follow Barrington Bumble home and plunge the great big knife right into his smug little brain. But he wasn’t sure if he could actually do such a wicked thing. He couldn’t even kill the spiders he found lurking in his flat.

  “Of course you can, dearest boy,” said Mr. J. with conviction. “The first of your enemies is going to die – this very night!”