The Quorum (55 page)

He walked towards the house, so concerned for Harry Lipman that he forgot to be scared for himself. That was a mistake.

They came from an underpass and surrounded him. He got an impression of Union Jack T-shirts and shaven heads. Studded leather straps wrapped around knuckles. They only seemed to hit him four or five times, but it was enough.

He turned his head with the first blow and felt his nose flatten into his cheek. Blood was seeping out of his instantly swollen nostrils and he was cut inside his mouth. He shook his head, trying to dislodge the pain. They stood back, and watched him yelp blood onto his chest. He was still wearing his convention tag.

Then one of them came in close, breathed foully in his face, and put a knee into his groin. He sagged, crying out, and felt his knees going. They kicked his legs, and he was on the ground. His ribs hurt.

‘Come on, P,’ one of them said, ‘’e’s ’ad ’is. Let’s scarper.’

‘Nahh,’ said a girl - the one he had talked to on the telephone? - as she stepped forwards, ‘es not properly done yet.’

Greg pressed his nostrils together to stanch the blood and realised his nose wasn’t broken. There was a lump rising on his cheek, though. He looked into the girl’s face.

She was young, maybe fifteen or sixteen, and there was blonde fur on her skull. Her head was lumpy and the skinhead cut made her child’s face seem small, as if painted on an easter egg. He had seen her the last time he was here. She wore Britannia earrings, and had a rare right-way-round swastika tattooed in blue on her temple.

‘Come on...’

P smiled at him and licked her lips like a cat. ‘Do you need telling any more, Mr Artist?’

The others were bunched behind her. She was small and wiry, but they were like hulks in the shadows.

‘Do you get the picture?’

Greg nodded. Anything, just so long as they let him alone. He had to get to Harry.

‘Good. Draw well, ’cause we’ll be watching over you.’

Lights came on in a house opposite and he got a clearer look at their faces. Apart from P, they weren’t kids. They were in the full skinhead gear, but on them it looked like a disguise. There were muffled voices from the house, and the lights went off again.

‘Kick ’im, Penelope,’ said someone.

P smiled again. ‘Nahh, Bazzo. ’E knows what’s what, now. We don’t want to hurt ’im. ’E’s important. Ain’t ya, Mr Artist?’

Greg was standing up again. There was nothing broken inside his head, but he was still jarred. His teeth hurt and he spat out a mouthful of blood.

‘Dirty beast.’

His vision was wobbling. P was double-exposed, a bubble fringe shimmering around her outline.

‘Goodnight,’ said P. ‘Be good.’

Then they were gone, leaving only shadows behind them. Greg ran across the walkway, vinegar-stained pages of the
Comet
swirling about his ankles. Harry’s front door was hanging open, the chain broken, and the hallway was lit up.

Greg found him in his kitchen, lying on the floor, his word processor slowly pouring a long manuscript onto him. The machine rasped as it printed out.

He helped Harry sit up, and got him a teacup of water from the tap. They hadn’t hurt him too badly, although there was a bruise on his forehead. Harry was badly shaken. Greg had never seen him without his teeth in and he was drooling like a baby, unconsciously wiping his mouth on his cardigan sleeve. He was trying to talk but couldn’t get the words out.

The phone was ripped out of the wall. The printer was scratching Greg’s nerves. He sat at the desk and tried to work out how to shut it off without losing anything. He wasn’t familiar with this model.

Then he looked at the continuous paper. It was printing out a draft of the first month of new Dr Shade scripts. Greg couldn’t help but read what was coming out of the machine.

It wasn’t what he had been working on. It wasn’t even in script form. But Harry had written it and he would be expected to draw it.

Unable to control his shaking, Greg read on.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Harry. ‘It was Him. They brought Him here. He was here before Donald started writing Him. He’ll always be here.’

Greg turned to look at the old man. Harry was standing over him, laying a hand on his shoulder. Greg shook his head and Harry sadly nodded.

‘It’s true. We’ve always known, really.’

Beyond Harry was his hallway. Beyond that, the open door allowed Greg to see into the night. The shadowman was out there, laughing...

...the laughter faded into the noise of the printer.

Greg read on.

He thought for a moment before selecting the face he would wear tonight. The Chambers identity was wearing thin, limiting him too much. These were troubled times and stricter methods were required. He considered all the people he had been, listed the names, paged through their faces.

Sitting behind the desk at the tip of the glass and steel pyramid, he felt the thrill of power. Out there in the night cowered the crack dealers and the anarchists, the blacks and the yellows, the traitors and the slackers. Tonight they would know he was back.

The press baron was a useful face. It had helped him gain a purchase on these new times, given him a perspective on the sorry state of the nation.

He thought of the true patriots who had been rejected. Oswald Mosley, Unity Mitford, William Joyce, Donald Moncrieff. And the false creatures who had succeeded them. This time, things would be different. There would be no bowing to foreign interests.

He fastened his cloak at his throat, and peeled off the latest mask. Smiling at the thin-lipped reflection in the dark mirror of the glass, he pulled on the goggles.

The private lift was ready to take him to the Shadowshark. He holstered his trusty airgun.

Plunging towards his destiny, he exulted in the thrill of the chase. He was back.

Accept no pale imitations. Avoid the lesser men, the men of wavering resolves, of dangerous weaknesses.

He was the original.

R
EX
C
ASH
,
The Return of Dr Shade
(1991)

Greg was at his easel, drawing. There was nothing else he could do. No matter how much he hated the commission, he had to splash the black ink, had to fill out the sketches. It was all he had left of himself. In the panel, Dr Shade was breaking up a meeting of the conspirators. African communists were infiltrating London, foully plotting to sabotage British business by blowing up the Stock Exchange. But the doctor would stop them. Greg filled in the thick lips of Papa Dominick, the voodoo commissar, and tried to get the fear in the villain’s eyes as the shadowman raised his airgun.

‘Did you hear,’ P said, ‘they’re giving me a chance to write for the
Argus.
The Stamp of Truth, they’ll call my column. I can write about music or politics or fashion or anything. I’ll be a proper little girl reporter.’

Crosbie told him Derek Leech was delighted at the way the strip was going. Dr Shade was really taking off. There was Dr Shade graffiti all over town, and he had started seeing youths with Dr Shade goggles tattooed around their eyes. A comics reviewer who had acclaimed
Fat Chance
as a masterpiece described the strip as ‘racist drivel’. He hadn’t been invited to any conventions recently, and a lot of his old friends would cross the street to avoid him. Greg’s telephone rang rarely, now. It was always Crosbie. To his surprise, Tamara had cut herself out of the 10 per cent after the first week of the
Argus
and told him to find other representation. He never heard from Harry, just received the scripts by special messenger. Greg could imagine the writer disconsolately tapping out stories in Donald Moncrieff’s style at his Amstrad. He knew exactly how the other man felt.

He had the radio on. The riots were still flaring up. The police were concerned by a rash of airgun killings but didn’t seem to be doing much about them. It appeared that the victims were mainly rabble-rousing ringleaders, although not a few West Indian and Asian community figures had been killed or wounded. Kenneth Hood, a popular vicar, had tried to calm down the rioters and been shot in the head. He wasn’t expected to live and two policemen plus seven ‘rioters’ had died in the violent outburst that followed the attempt on his life. Greg imagined the shadowman on the rooftops, taking aim, hat pulled low, cloak streaming like demon wings.

Greg drew the Shadowshark, sliding through the city night, hurling aside the petrol-bomb-throwing minions of Papa Dominick. ‘The sun has shone for too long on the open schemes of the traitors,’ Harry had written, ‘but night must fall... and with the night comes Shade.’

Early on, Greg had tried to leave the city but they were waiting for him at the station. The girl called P and some of the others. They had escorted him home. They called themselves Shadeheads now, and wore hats and cloaks like the doctor, tattered black over torn T-shirts, drainpipe jeans and steel-toed Doc Martens.

P was with him most of the time now. At first, she had just been in the corner of his vision, watching over him. Finally, he’d given in and called her over. Now, she was in the flat, making her calls to the doctor, preparing his meals, warming his single bed. They’d pushed him enough and now he had to be reassured, cajoled. He worked better that way.

Derek Leech was on the radio now, defending the record of his security staff during the riots. He had pitched in to help the police, using his news helicopters to direct the action and sending his people into the fighting like troops. The police were obviously not happy, but public opinion was forcing them to accept the tycoon’s assistance. Leech made a remark about ‘the spirit of Dr Shade’ and Greg’s hand jumped, squirting ink across the paper.

‘Careful, careful,’ said P, dipping in with a tissue and delicately wiping away the blot, saving the artwork. Her hair was growing out. She’d never be a
Comet
Knock-Out but she was turning into a surprisingly housewifely, almost maternal, girl. In the end, Shadeheads believed a woman’s place was with her legs spread and her hands in dishwater.

In the final panel, Dr Shade was standing over his vanquished enemies, holding up his fist in a defiant salute. White fire was reflected in his goggles.

The news was over, and the new Crüsaders single came on. ‘There’ll Always Be an England.’ It was climbing the charts.

Greg looked out of the window. He imagined fires on the horizon.

He took a finer pen and bent to do some detail work. He wished he had held out longer. He wished he’d taken more than one beating. Sometimes, he told himself he was doing it for Harry, to protect the old man. But that was bullshit. They hadn’t been Reggie Barton and Hank Hemingway. Imaginative torture hadn’t been necessary and they hadn’t sworn never to give in, never to break down, never to knuckle under. A few plain old thumps and the promise of a few more had been enough. Plus more money a month than either of them had earned in any given three years of their career.

Next week, the doctor would execute Papa Dominick. Then, he would do something about the strikers, the scroungers, the slackers, the scum...

A shadow fell over the easel, cloak spreading around it. Greg turned to look up at the goggled face of his true master.

Dr Shade was pleased with him.

MEMO

From:
Tiny Chiselhurst, producer/creator

To:
April Treece, junior researcher

Re:
Untiled Docusoap/Gameshow Pilot

Here’s the final draft of the flyer. Every word approved by Dr Wendel and Miss Lark as calculated to reach the cross-section of personality types we need.

EVERYDAY MEGASTARS WANTED

Is this you? 18-45, sexy, extrovert, killer body, unconventional, tagged ‘difficult’ by lesser mortals, ambitious, unattached, competitive, ‘bonkers’, up for anything?

Apply: Mythwrhn Productions

Box 101, Leech Pyramid Plaza, London Docklands.

As a classified ad, this is to go into the following periodicals:
Big Bazookas,
the
Sunday Comet,
the
Nazi Atrocities
part-work,
Young Offender, Pop Hitz
and
Shy Girl Monthly.
As a flyer, it is to be distributed via inner-city clubs, comic shops, student union buildings, social security offices and police stations. We agree that we should target especially the waiting rooms of probation officers and court-approved psycho-therapists, the business places of drugs and weapons dealers, abortion and VD clinics, all-night casualty wards, Young Conservative meetings, and pubs that cater to the motorcycle, rugby football, slag-on-the-pull and stockbroking communities. Word from the top of the Pyramid is that Cloud 9 (Derek Leech!) is really hyped on this project, so let’s get things moving.

[NB: this is for sending to the applicants only, and should under no circumstances be confused with the real series proposal, which is available on an eyes only need-to-know basis to security-cleared insiders at mythwrhn and cloud 9 - Tiny]

SERIES PROPOSAL

This seven-part (initial run) series combines three of the most popular (and, let’s face it, economical) TV formats of the last ten years: fly-on-the-wall docusoap, slags-on-holiday mock doc and sci-fi/adventure gameshow. A group of charismatic, sexy young chicks and chaps, strangers to each other, are brought together in a luxurious, Bond-style environment (country estate, mountaintop hunting lodge, beach house) and have to spend a week together. Cut off from civilisation, the contestants (subjects, stars?) are in contact with a host - we think we can get US smartmouth obonxio-comic Barry Gatlin, but other options are Ruby Wax or someone off
Star Trek
- who communicates via video-link each evening and sets tasks and competitions, which range from puzzle-solving exercises through treasure hunting on the grounds of the luxury retreat and harmless combat games to how-low-can-you-go? gross-out or endurance dares. Meanwhile, the stars are on camera day and night; we trust that days of strenuous competition will be followed by evenings of unwinding in wild, entertaining and provocative manners. Over the course of the week, we will see how each contestant scores, in every imaginable way.