Million Dollar Monkey (Book One)

By E Scott

Six Million Dollar Monkey are the worst band in Scotland, according to their latest review in the Edinburgh Daily Target. The odds of them getting into the Beer in the Dark festival have just increased dramatically and they were rather long to start with. However, singer Johan Brecht has a plan, unfortunately it involves a set of gorilla suits and a moonlit trip to Edinburgh Zoo. Surely things can’t get much worse for bass player Cormack Sharp? Then, a huge hole appears in central Edinburgh, a hole which starts to attract some widespread and unexpected attention. Some people are pointing the fingers of blame in Cormack's direction but the hole has nothing to do with him. Of has it?

Million Dollar Monkey (book one) introduces Cormack Sharp, his band Six Million Dollar Monkey and the emergence of a rather large hole in central Edinburgh ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: E Scott
• Release date: Jan 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311651501

E Scott

I was born in Scotland and I’m still in Scotland! Perhaps one day they’ll let me leave. I love to write and have so many ideas for stories but I’m pretty slow at typing so things tend to take an age to get from my mind to my fingers and onto paper, or screen.Million Dollar Monkey is my first published story and it is the first in a series featuring bass player Cormack Sharp and his band Six Million Dollar Monkey. Here's a bit about it ...Cormack Sharp plays in the worst band in Scotland, according to the Edinburgh Daily Target. The odds of them getting into the Beer in the Dark festival have just increased dramatically and they were rather long to start with. However, singer Johan Brecht has a plan but it involves a set of gorilla suits and a moonlit trip to Edinburgh Zoo. Surely things can’t get much worse for Cormack? Then, a huge hole appears in central Edinburgh and some people are pointing the fingers of blame in the direction of Cormack and his less than lovely boss, Ivor.I’ve another book in the pipeline too which is going under the working title of Revenge of the Blue Men ...

Book preview

Chapter 1

Controlling Engineer Ivor

It was a Thursday night and I’d drawn the short straw which in this case was covering night-shift with engineer Ivor. I wouldn’t say I was exactly the happy-go-lucky type but I do try to look for the good in people. Engineer Ivor however, seemed to live his life under a perpetual rain-cloud and did his best to make everyone else feel just as miserable as himself.

Engineer Ivor was a short man, somewhere in his late fifties, with a ruddy red face and the look of someone who had just been caught unexpectedly in a ferocious wind-storm. His playful wisps of thinning hair had ambitions of becoming comedy performers and enjoyed nothing more than creating risqué shapes on the polished stage of his pinking scalp. These impromptu performances, when discovered, were cruelly swept skull ward with a well-practiced swipe. Ivor liked to be in control, especially when it came to his own head.

He came from a village in the far north of Scotland. It was a bleak, rain lashed place, perched near the edge of unforgiving cliffs. Countless ships had been dashed on the rocks that lurked just below the sea’s surface. There were legends of sirens living nearby. They’d sing their songs, the unlucky mariners would lose their marbles and point their vessels towards the cliffs. The last thing many of them saw was the sight of the sirens shaking their heads in disbelief at how easy it was to lead a man to his doom. Nobody had a good word to say about the place. The advice to tourists looking to stop in the area was simple: Don’t! If the rain or the cliffs didn’t get you then you may be unfortunate enough to be accosted by one of Ivor’s clan.

He always wore a short sleeved white shirt with dirty brown tie combination, along with a pair of thick black woollen trousers that were at least two sizes too big and as such were constantly playing peek-a-boo with Ivor’s most sensible white Y-fronts. Quite why he didn’t wear a belt wasn’t clear though he was spotted once, at a leaving-do that he just couldn’t get out of, sporting a pair of rather dapper silver braces. His usual look was finished off with large steel toe capped boots and his trusty yellow oilskin jacket which was never more than grabbing distance away from his person.

Ivor kept so much kit in his jacket that it could have been weaved by an experimental faction of the magic circle. It was jammed full of notebooks, site plans, measuring tapes, nails, hammers, at least three calculators and various other secret engineering devices that Ivor didn’t like to talk of. I knew for a fact that he kept a creamy white rabbit’s foot in there; I’d seen him rubbing at it on more than one occasion, usually when the pressure was getting to him and he was struggling with the little devils that liked nothing more than to unscrew the lid of his famous temper.

I’d tried my best to be civil to him but you can only beat your head against a brick wall for so long before you either see stars, break something important or wise up. He just wasn’t interested. So, I put up with him. His gruff manner; his tendency to bark unintelligible phrases at you from a distance and expect you to know what they meant; his head shaking, his you’re an idiot looks; the long drives from site to site spent in silence as he refused to get into a conversation unless it was directly to do with work.

He’d even removed the car stereo as he said it interfered with his thinking time. There was a lot going on in the inside of Ivor’s head but it was a private show with absolutely no admittance. He had next to no time for anyone he came into contact with, regardless of where they were in the work food-chain. Councillors, contract mangers, client engineers, department heads, foremen, labourers all got the gruff treatment.

I had no idea if he was married or the last of the highland hermits. He could have has six wives and lived in a castle for all I knew. He just never let on. My guess was that he lived out in the woods somewhere with a stockpile of tomato soup and salt tablets in preparation for the impending day of judgement. As for me; I was treated like his own personal mule. I often found myself being loaded up with stacks of engineering paraphernalia and told to giddy-up in a vague direction usually ten yards behind the pathfinder general as he strode off across a site to peer at something suspiciously through his level.

When people had first heard that I’d been teamed with him I had more than a few sarcastic comments; bad luck, never mind, and been nice knowing you. At that point in time I was sure that he couldn’t be all that bad. Surely, somewhere in there lurked a sweet natured old bloke who just needed coaxed out, like a wary cat that hides under a shed. I just had to find out what his saucer of milk was. Then, a possible breakthrough, a nugget of personal information about the mysterious habits of the Ivor came my way.

So Ivor, I hear that you play the fiddle, I said.

No response was the response from Ivor. Not an eyebrow was raised. If he’d been rigged up to a heart monitor then it would have continued to display activity usually only seen in creatures in deep hibernation. Not one to be easily put off, I tried again.

Do you play the fiddle then?

I looked over at him. His knuckles were turning a serious shade of white as he put the steering wheel into the early stages of the Ivor death grip.

I heard that you were pretty good, in your younger days that is.

I wondered if a small white lie might prod the old grizzly out of his conversation hibernation.

Nobody you know would know anything about that, he growled.

Success!

You’d be surprised who I know, anyway, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, I poked.

I’m not. Why are you so interested all of a sudden?

Well, I play a bit myself.

You play the fiddle?

No, it’s the bass I play

The double bass, you’re a bit small for that aren’t you?

No and no. Electric bass, actually.

Electric. Call that a real instrument do you?

Erm, yes.

I’ve no purchase with electric music.

Really. Why, how old are you?

I’m old enough to know better.

You don’t like any electric music? What about the Beatles, you must like them. Everybody likes them, don’t they?

No I don’t. I’ve no time for that kind of thing. It’ll not creep over into my space, not if I have anything to do with it.

Is that why you ripped the stereo out of the car, in case someone tried to play something on it?

It’s hard enough trying to escape it these days. I’m not going to invite it into my own house.

Where is it that you stay again?

None of your business!

Mmm. You should give it a try, you might like it, they even use the odd fiddle.

That’s not music. Electric bass indeed. Whatever next? There’s no place for electric instruments, it changes them into something that they were never supposed to be. You wouldn’t have any dealings with someone who was wired up to the mains would you, screaming and feeding back all over the place?

It’s hardly the same thing.

It’s exactly the same thing. Its electricity that swept away all the music that was handed down, hand to hand, mouth to mouth, for hundreds of years. It’s got a lot to answer for.

I’ll do you a compilation if you want and you can give them a listen.

I’d rather spend my time herding cats than waste my time on that.

I must admit that left me a bit stumped. We pulled up to the site and Ivor had his seat belt off and was out of the car faster than I could say Sergeant Pepper’s. After that, any mention of music in Ivor’s direction was brushed away with a contemptuous whuff. I was pleased that I’d managed to get him talking though. I’d just have to bide my time.

Chapter 2

The Night Shift

The night-shift drill was usually straight forward enough. The Roads Department supervised several sites in the city which were working through the night and our job was to take a tour around them and provide any engineering back-up that was needed. That part came from Ivor, of course. I was really only there to act as his pack-mule and messenger boy. If anyone was going to be getting flogged for delivering the bad news then that would be me. Ivor was the smart end of the tape; the brains of the outfit. He probably kept it in one of his many pockets.

The shift was seven to seven with the first few hours spent in the office. The real fun didn’t usually start until after midnight, when we went out on patrol. Ivor wasn’t one for wiling away his time staring into space, unlike yours truly. He spent this first part of the evening transcribing the scribbles from one or more of his site notebooks into the larger and never to be taken outside of this room notebooks. The office notebooks were then locked away in a desk drawer, only to surface on the next occasion that Ivor furnished them with a fresh batch of updates.

The sight of Ivor, hunched over this tomes, with his angle poised lamp low enough to burn a hole through the paper, scratching away with an ancient fountain pen put me in mind a monk painstakingly scratching on an ancient parchment. Ivor would have made a good monk, I thought. He wouldn’t need to speak to anyone for a start, something that he already excelled in. He’d probably derive some masochistic pleasure from growing old and withered while writing up the important knowledge of the day. It certainly did the trick in keeping those monks busy. The last thing society needs are large groups of religious types with too much time on their hands and no mundane and tedious tasks to keep them occupied. That sort of situation leads to nothing but trouble.

What are you up to Ivor? I ventured across the room. I wasn’t holding out much hope of a reply.

What does it look like? snipped a voice after a satellite delay.

Are you working on your book again?

It’s better than gazing at you own navel

How’s it coming along? Has anyone been murdered yet?

No, but the night’s still young.

Wow, Ivor was on fire tonight, he must have upped his sugar lump dosage.

Why don’t you type that up on the computer? Is it something to do with it being plugged in at the wall?

Very funny. I’d rather do it this way thanks very much. For one thing it means that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, or in front of the wrong pair of eyes.

Well, as long as no one breaks into the secret hiding place.

I’ve got all the originals safe, it can all be done again by hand if it comes to that.

It’s not exactly top-secret though is it? Measurements and notes and little doodles of men in diggers.

You don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you go back to sleep and let the big folk get on with their work in peace?

Will I put on some music?

Do you want to spend the rest of the shift knocking steel pins into reinforced concrete?

I’ll take that as a no then.

He went back to his scratchy writing. The thought of a wee nap was quite appealing, though I knew I’d never manage to drop off with all that squeaking and scraping going on across the room. I thought about going for a wander around the deserted building in search of ghosts and clandestine liaisons. Then the phone rang on Ivor’s desk.

There was something ominous about the sound of that phone. It was like a sound remembered from a dream; a star crossed ring tone full of fate. A loud group of what ifs barged into a queue in front of me. What if, I hadn’t been on the night shift that night; What if I’d been paired with another engineer, one who didn’t spend the first few hours of each shift in the office; What if the call had come in after we’d left, or before we’d turned up; What if the voice on the other end of the phone had decided to call another number; and any of an infinite number of possibilities then things would have been different. But no. All the little cogs had lined up. Everything had clicked into place out there in the ether of possibilities and the result was that I was sitting there in that room with the phone ringing on Ivor’s desk and a tingling feeling in my toes. Ivor just looked at it for a while, probably hoping that they’d give up after a few rings but it kept on ringing and ringing. The phone in question never usually rang, certainly not on a night shift. It could only be a wrong number or one of the sites wanting something urgent that involved us. Highly unlikely, I thought.

Ivor picked it up and with his telephone training topper most in his mind said What?

I watched from across the room. Ivor’s apple red cheeks drained to a polo mint white in seconds and his wayward hair took the opportunity to stand up as if he’d plugged himself into the mains. He wouldn’t have liked that in so many ways. Ivor put down the phone and stared over at me with a look of panic in his eyes. This didn’t stop him from carefully closing his big-book, putting it in the drawer, locking it and then giving the locked door a good tug, just in case it sprang open anyway and the secrets of the ancients fell into the wrong hands. He got up from behind his desk, pulled on his multi pocketed coat and for once spoke to me unprompted.

Get your coat, said Ivor.

I couldn’t help myself and cheerily replied Have I pulled?

I wasn’t surprised to see that this fell on deaf ears; Ivor had already marched past and was heading for the exit.

Chapter 3

An Arachnid Assassin

Where are we off to in such a hurry? I ventured as we sped out of the council car park at a rate of knots not usually associated with the quiet man of the North’s Sunday outing driving style. Ivor gripped the wheel like a man transfixed. I didn't like the look of him at the best of times but the emergence of this foot-to-the-floor zombie style driver was as unsettling as it was unexpected. He kept checking the rear view mirror and I was sure I could hear him humming to himself, another first. I thought about giving him that Beatles CD that I'd made for him but on consideration I decided to leave it until a time when he wasn't running with the moon.

We screeched to a stop on the junction of George Street and Hanover Street. Ivor was out of the car faster than I could say Starsky and Hutch and started marching off down Hanover Street towards Queen Street. I shook my head as I watched him stamping off into the night. What had got into him? In the distance, an almost full moon was pinned low in the skies. In lent an eerie glow to the city skyline which swept downhill towards the dark slither that was the waters of the Firth of Forth and the outline of the Fife hills beyond. For a moment Ivor’s silhouette was backlit by the moon and the scene put me in mind of one of those dark cartoons where creatures with stick bodies and oversized heads scare the bejesus out of unsuspecting town dwellers.

I almost expected the shape of an enormous spider to emerge from behind the hills of Fife, its burning red eyes looking out over the city where it would wreak its fevered revenge. A thought occurred to me: Perhaps the spider was the one controlling engineer Ivor? He never did say who had been on the other end of the phone. Had it sent out a weird signal via the phone network with all those that picked up rendered spellbound by the superior intelligence of an arachnid assassin? It was a question I'd never thought I'd ask. Could it be that at that very moment, all over the city people, were scurrying sightlessly towards a sticky web-based doom? What would become of them all? Would any of them escape or perhaps pass through in one piece? It brought a whole new angle to the practice of cold calling. Maybe I'd better not be so cheeky to them next time. I was pretty sure I was wide of the mark on this one though. There were no murderous giant spiders in Fife. I was almost certain of that. Meanwhile, Ivor had disappeared from view. I knew I should be following him like a dim but faithful dog. I was supposed to be his sidekick for the evening. Robin to his Batman. Without the shiny