The Strange Case of Jaklyn Hyde

By Bob Leaver

“Wanda had often told anyone within earshot that she intended to die young and leave a beautiful corpse. In the event, she had done neither. She was forty-odd if she was a day. And her remains were hardly in pristine condition if Detective Sergeant Tickleman’s vivid description was anything to go by...”

A shocking turn of events cast a long shadow over a second division Drama College, a faculty of eccentrics, their equally unconventional student body and one determined, amateur sleuth – the eponymous Jaklyn Hyde.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Sep 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9781483436852

Book preview

Chapter 1

JAKLYN HYDE SUCKED PURPOSEFULLY ON THE STEM OF HER MEERSCHAUM PIPE. After a suitably long pause, she extracted it from between the grip of pearly white teeth and exhaled with an equally dramatic flourish. For the past half-hour she had not so much paced as minced up and down the hospital carpark; the heels of her spanking new, multi-coloured Doctor Martin boots chaffing the ratty plasters which barely covered two ripe blisters.

Pausing now under a streetlamp, she replenished the pipe bowl with premium shag from her rhinestone encrusted tobacco pouch as a light drizzle began to fall. From above, the amber streetlight cast a ginger tinge over her dirty-blond Ziggy Stardust fright-wig. Too much slap. Pancake face and panda eye make-up rounded off with blurred lips - like a huge white plate sporting two meat pies with a slash of cheap ketchup.

Cher hit the nail on the head... Jaxx puffed again, sighed and exhaled meaningfully into the cold night air. If I could turn back time... Alas time only went in one direction – in this dimension at least. To live life forwards but to understand it backwards was a sad reality and one that was, for the most part, better viewed through beer goggles in Jaxx’s estimation.

Mawdlin Hospital loomed large behind her. A 1960’s monstrosity framed against a starless sky heavy with the portent of rain; a prefabricated warren of concrete and pebbledash. Born of some architect’s distinct lack of imagination it was, to all intents and purposes, a triumph of financial considerations over design. Somewhat inappropriately, the main block towered overhead like a giant tombstone, whilst at ground level, a maze of outbuildings housed the likes of the Casualty department and set at a discrete distance, naturally, lurked the unmentionable though indispensable clap clinic. 

Of course, she knew she couldn’t stay outside in the car park all night, with the storm leaden sky above being the least of her worries. Eventually she would have to march up to hospital reception and enquire whether her fellow drama student and friendly acquaintance, Lesley B. Presley, was alive or dead. Yes, Jaklyn would have to face the music however dour or 80s but, either way, she consoled herself with the certain knowledge that, whilst culpable, she was not responsible. The distinction somehow made all the difference and whilst there had indeed been occasions when Jaxx had herself felt like throttling Lesley, though mostly during the rehearsal process, she had always managed to stifle the urge. Alas, her own innocence was cold comfort, for if she hadn’t done the diabolical deed herself then someone else surely had. But who? she exclaimed and, in the moment, felt like some character in a crap American made-for-TV thriller.

The hall phone had first rung at eight in the evening. It rang again at nine and then again at ten. On and on it rang without a murmur being heard from any of the other bedsits in the three-storey, South East London townhouse she called home. No surprise there then. Much to her chagrin she seemed to be regarded as their personal answering machine. Resist it as she may, no one else had bothered to answer the incessant ringing so Jaklyn finally threw aside her textbook and pen, ventured out onto the landing and clomped downstairs.

Brattersea Dogs & Cats Home. How can I help you? she demanded, irritably as she grabbed the receiver.

The timorous voice of fellow ingénue, Lesley Presley, had piped out of the earpiece. Jaxx? It’s me... It’s Les! Jaxx, I’m desperate... I’ve got BIG problems... I... 

Jaxx cut her short, Can I just stop you there. Is Jaxx a dog or a cat? C’mon speak up!

There followed an uncomfortable silence. Jaxx was not impressed.

Well...

Sorry we don’t do other species.

As soon as she slammed down the handset Jaxx recognised her cruel, childish stunt for exactly what it was, threw her head back and laughed until the laces on her basque threatened to snap under the strain.

To be fair to Jaxx, she wasn’t normally such a grump. Indeed, she prided herself on the fact that she wasn’t the type of person who took the liberty of inflicting their bad temper upon others unless absolutely forced. Ah, but today... Today it had felt not only necessary but essential. Today had been the bad hair day to end all bad hair days. Tresses that began at waist-length at breakfast had been transformed into a Louise Brooks bob by noon and a K. D. Lang quiff by tea-time. By suppertime she looked like a cross between a Tibetan monk and a coconut. In a vain attempt to stem her mounting hysteria, she had locked herself out of harm’s way. Her game plan had been to channel her anger into her dreaded third-year, student dissertation. Sad to say, switching off her mobile had solved nothing for there was to be no escape from interruption and Les’ intrusion was not only unwanted, but it was also ill-timed. Jaxx felt she had enough big problems of her own without playing personal tutor to a desperate Les - sister student or no.

Still, Lesley never could take a hint, so Jaxx wasn’t at all surprised when the hall phone had rung again after it had gone twelve. It was impossible to ignore. The stairwell acted like an echo chamber which made the bell sound like an air raid siren on red alert. Jaxx finally threw aside her text book and pen yet again, stomped down the three flights in an attempt to cause maximum disruption to her fellow housemates but with no discernible effect as she trounced once again into the entrance hall.

What now? she snapped - only to yank her ear from the receiver as the sonic boom of another fellow student, Viva España, exploded out.

Jaxx! Jaxx! Something terrible has happened!  It’s... long pause for dramatic effect Les!  She’s...

Thus, Jaxx was to learn that Lesley had been found swinging violently from the light fitting in the hallway of her bijou residence; hoisted aloft by her favourite black lace brassiere. Viva trumpeted on that had she not looked through the letterbox and used her friend Cleo to batter the door down precisely when she had then Les would have been a goner for sure. As it was, her life still teetered in the balance. Viva was distraught and savouring every moment of it as she blathered on about foul play and expounded on a host of conspiracy theories. Jaxx found that she couldn’t help but be reminded of the conclusion she had reached many moons ago. Somewhere down the line, Viva had definitely dropped one tablet too many.

Yet the idea that Les would willingly attempt suicide struck Jaxx as ludicrous – especially via the method in question. Not least because Lesley’s fear of heights was so marked that she got dizzy just climbing up from the pavement onto the bus and would, in fact, frequently embarrass her cronies by asking the driver to lower the gang plank just to accommodate her irrational fears. The possibility of her climbing a step ladder without an electric cattle prod up her posterior was, therefore, almost unthinkable.

But who would solve the mystery? Not the police, that was certain. As if they would waste valuable police time considering the possibility of foul play. The Boys in Blue were hardly renowned for their defence of those who lived on the fringes of society - like students or artists - amongst whom Jaxx and people of her stripe could be numbered. No point involving the media either. The News of the Screws would doubtless muse: TIT’S A MIRACLE!! Wonderbra saved my life!! Or conversely: TIT’S A CATASTROPHE!! One boob too many!!

It would be a case of tomorrow’s chip wrapper on sale today. Jaxx could hardly bear to think about it but think about it she must. She had failed Les in her hour of need even if she’d had more important things to concentrate on. Now she must be her champion.

Lost in thought, Jaxx was caught off-guard as the automatic doors of Accident and Emergency suddenly flew open in a blaze of fluorescent light and Viva España and her big-boned gal-pal, Cleopatra Sneedle, tottered down the access ramp from Mawdlin’s Casualty department as quickly as their sky-high platforms would carry them. Triumphant above the clatter rose Viva’s high-pitched screech - ranting on about born-again Evangelicals and Leviticus. Cleo, meanwhile, suffered in silence. Indeed, she seemed to be suffering more so than usual as her arm was in a sling and her head was a mass of bandages that were draped around her bushy, back-combed ginger afro.

To say they made a strange pair was an understatement. Viva was four foot eleven inches and beyond pale with a lank, black fringe and shoulder-length hair which, on this occasion, was scrunched back with a bobble tie into a lack-lustre ponytail. Her leopard skin print combo of smock coat, frock and bag failed to match and were clearly not modelled on the same animal skin whilst the woolly, black tights and pink patent leather platforms were at odds with the rest of her curious ensemble. Cleopatra, poor thing, stood a foot and a half taller in her purple plastic mac, mauve crimplene pant suit and silver, thigh-length, zip up moon boots. If the pair had been hoping to make a fashion statement, then they could hardly have made a more offensive one.

Fortunately, Bad and Ugly had yet to spot the Good. Jaklyn ducked down behind a concrete bollard and hid herself successfully until the gruesome twosome squeezed into a pre-ordered mini-cab and sped off into the night in a pungent cloud of exhaust fumes.

Jaklyn emerged from her hiding place, but any sense of relief at her lucky escape was quickly replaced by foreboding as she made her way towards the bright lights beyond the automatic doors to A&E. As she drew close, they held shut as if by the ghostly hands of the grim reaper. She started to say, Sod this for a game of soldiers... but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion she had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or the lateness of the hour, she gave the doors a swift boot in frustration with a well-placed toecap and they parted company upon contact. She crossed the threshold with no idea of what fate awaited her on the other side.

(The following is a vintage article from the archives of a local free newspaper.)

ROTHERTHORPE FREE GAZETTE - June 23rd, 1992

PAPERBOY FAILS TO DELIVER

Hundreds complain of not receiving their copy of the Rotherthorpe Free Gazette as paperboy goes missing.

Mystery surrounds the disappearance of Rotherthorpe Free Gazette paperboy Darcy "Dolly’ Levi (17) and the first alarm was sounded by you - our readers! 

A barrage of complaints flooded our Glasscock Street offices on Tuesday last when the residents of the Haggard and Smellie Estates, in the North of the city, failed to receive their weekly delivery of the Rotherthorpe Free Gazette.

Rotherthorpe Free Gazette’s ace reporter, Walter Mountjoy, was the first to follow up on the lead. He discovered that Levi had collected his stack of copies for delivery as per usual but, uncharacteristically, had asked for his wages in advance. He had then disappeared like Harry Houdini, the famed music hall escapologist of yesteryear. His paper-bag was later discovered abandoned and fully stuffed on a fly-tip adjacent to the motorway slip road heading southbound.

Police have expressed concern for his welfare, which is more than can be said for his parents. Both have refused to comment since they were first informed of his disappearance by Rotherthorpe Free Gazette’s very own Walter Mountjoy who had been waiting patiently on their doorstep until they returned home from the pub. Shockingly, in a random act of unnecessary aggression, Mr and Mrs Levi then manhandled Walter out of their porch and slammed the door so fast behind them that his big toe was severely bruised.

Numerous sightings have been reported over this past week but these were mostly of UFOs in the Outer Hebrides and nothing to do with young Darcy. And so a heartfelt message goes out to him from all the staff here at the offices of the Rotherthorpe Free Gazette:

"Dolly’, we are told you not only delivered but also were an avid reader of the Rotherthorpe Free Gazette. So, on the off chance that you are reading this as usual, we beg you - come home! Your customers need you! We all need you!

And rest assured, dear Reader, the Rotherthorpe Free Gazette will continue to keep you posted in more ways than one.

Chapter 2

LESLEY B. PRESLEY HUNG ONTO LIFE BY A THREAD. Jaklyn sat at her hospital bedside and practised her concerned expression in the meagre light of the bedside lamp and all on the off chance that Les would miraculously recover. Turning her head, she checked out her reflection in the picture windows. She could only thank her lucky stars that there was no audience to see how hurriedly she had dressed. Applying lipstick whilst making her way down three flights of stairs hadn’t been a wise idea either.

Fortunately, the intensive care facility was otherwise unoccupied. Just Lesley in her metal framed cot, Jaxx on her moulded plastic chair and a row of empty beds. A lonely vigil with nothing to be done other than just be there. Now and again Jaxx would cast a false eyelash on the limp figure that lay in the hospital bed and tut sympathetically. Scrubbed of makeup and wigless, Jaxx couldn’t help but chortle when she thought of how Les had often declared how she would rather be seen dead than without her slap. Oh, the irony! You had to laugh. Anything was better than the blip blip blip of the heart monitor. It was aggravating Jaxx’s headache – a hangover from her dissertation - and was driving her to distraction.

Lesley didn’t notice, she was off with the birds. Almost imperceptibly, she was breathing a film of moist air into the oxygen mask that was perched just above her chin and purple neck. As the monitor continued to bleep, Jaxx flicked the clasp on her clutch bag and delved around for something to relieve her migraine. Thus distracted she was too preoccupied in wrestling with the child-proof cap on her drug of choice to notice the flicker of Les’ eyelids. She further failed to notice Les’ twitching lips for, at that precise moment, the screw top lid flew off, scattering a hundred Ibuprofen to the four corners of the room. No, it was only as Jaxx crawled under the bed to retrieve the last of them that she experienced the rude awakening. Lesley Presley sat bolt upright in bed, ripping the mask from her face, whilst shrieking, No! No! Don’t do it!  Don’t....

Jaxx’s head clanged against the chipped, white enamel of the metal bed frame as she sprang to attention but by the time she had adjusted her fright-wig, Les had collapsed back in a heap, unconscious once again.

The heart monitor then went ballistic and, as Jaxx brushed the detritus from her knees, sirens wailed and lights blazed as a state of emergency erupted. A nursing crew appeared suddenly out of the lavatory in a haze of cigarette smoke and sprang into action. Their first job was to hurl Jaxx unceremoniously out into the corridor. Feathers well and truly ruffled, she stomped off for a puff on her meerschaum to calm her nerves.

It was with a heavy heart that Jaxx headed home and cold comfort that the door to her bedsit aka the Fleapit stubbornly refused to budge when she twisted the knob and pushed against it. It was always the same. At the first whiff of damp weather, the doorjamb swelled to obstruct her entrance. Consequently, she didn’t so much enter as explode through the doorway having had to hurl herself against it with full force. She skittered across the linoleum. The far wall broke her momentum as she crashed against it and thereby narrowly missed an abrupt exit through the sash window. Collapsing to the floor, she clutched her knees whilst gasping for breath and could not help but reflect on the sad fact that her martial arts training was the only thing she could rely upon to welcome her home on such cold and rainy nights.

Still, she took comfort from returning to her private domain. Here it was that Ziggy played guitar and Marc Bolan boogied across the wilting sunflower wallpaper of her unusually spacious studio abode. Had the decor turned Jaxx retro or was she simply that way inclined? A bit of both, probably. At thirteen she had discovered the glam guitar hero Mick Ronson in the bargain bin of Vinyl Goldmine and had never been the same since. Her tendency towards Glam in all its myriad manifestations was to all intents and purposes bred in the bone. She was a glam gal and truly a woman born out of her time.

Striking a household match, she lit a gas ring under the calcified kettle and peeled off her fishnet tights. Beyond the blackout curtains, dawn began its inevitable rise as she applied fresh plasters to her tender yet firm and shapely ankles. Thankfully, inside it was always night. Jaxx had been fortunate to furnish her windows, together with a large portion of her eclectic wardrobe, due to the closure of a council run Library Theatre. It had been a rare example of local authority cuts benefiting, if not all the community, then at least one of its members. The curtains had been the pièce-de-resistance. They had been a snip at three pounds fifty pence plus VAT and a small price to pay for her emotional well-being. Now, without distraction, she could focus on the mystery at hand and, having once savoured and drained a mug of loose-leaf Assam, she set to the task with gusto and a dustpan and brush. Multi-tasking was not only expedient, but it was also essential.

On the subject of housework, Jaxx recalled, some old dirt-bag had once famously remarked that after the first four years the dust doesn’t get any worse.

Who would want to emulate that filthy trollop? thought Jaxx as she flicked a feather duster over her breakables. Someone should have told the grubby old tramp that cleanliness is next to godliness.

Housework, in Jaxx’s considered opinion, built character. It was cheaper than therapy and eminently more productive. She could ponder life’s iniquities while she buffed and polished and at least there was something to show from the exercise at the end of it.

Thanks to a squeaky clean flat, inspiration finally hit around noon with one last thrash of a Turkish rug. Cogs that had been ceaselessly turning finally cracked the code and clicked into sequence. The door to Jaxx’s secret stash flung wide their open doors revealing the bleeding obvious.

Something was missing. What was it? Of course! Rip! Rip was missing. Rip von Winckler was Les’ erstwhile paramour and had been strangely absent from her bedside. In fact, he had been strangely absent, full stop. No one could recall ever having seen him. Others, perhaps unkindly, thought he was nothing more than a figment of Lesley’s fertile, if not disturbed, imagination. Whatever. Lesley had painted a vivid portrait of her "Big German Sausage Man’ in the depth of feeling she effused in the love ode composed in his honour:

Rip is German, fit as fuck.

Blond, blue-eyed and built like a truck.

Protruding teeth with gaps between

Chipped and stained with nicotine

Frame his beery breath.

I love him to death

Perhaps, never a truer word thought Jaxx.

She reflected back to the times when Les would wax lyrical about her Winckie-baby and cursed herself for not paying more attention. Sadly, it had been a case of in one ear and out the other except that most of it hadn’t even gone in to come out. Les did have a tendency to prattle on whilst Jaxx had developed the enviable ability to appear engaged when she was actually vacant. What had Les prattled on about? How far had she got before Jaxx switched off? Five minutes into the prologue?

Their meeting had been memorable, or so she now recalled Les telling her before the shutters came down behind Jaklyn’s eyes and she entered her own personal twilight zone. She’d said that they had first met on the alternative cabaret circuit when they had appeared on the same questionable bill. Rip was a semi-pro male stripper with a sideline in balloon sculptures whilst Les had done her funny turn. Over drinks at the lock-down bar, he had impressed her with his arm wrestling skills and it was there that they had discovered they shared the same management – Big Beastly Bruno. Les had reckoned it was just a lucky happenstance whilst Rip had teased that he’d been stitched up by his manager.

Stitched up by Bruno, indeed? That would be Big Beastly Bruno Fortuno the notorious Artists’ Manager and legend in his own machinations. How interesting, thought Jaklyn upon reflection and it now stood clearly to reason that her first port of call should be Fortuno’s Pool Hall on the trail of the elusive Rip. The Pool Hall was Bruno’s base of operations. An unconventional place for a theatrical manager to use as a HQ to be sure but then again Bruno’s style of management was anything but conventional. He was a man with more fingers in more pies than he had fingers for.

Ever protective of his 15%, Bruno was sure to know of Rip’s whereabouts if, indeed, Rip existed at all. But it could wait a while longer. Jaklyn Hyde was exhausted by her domestic efforts and nobody needed their beauty sleep more. She crawled under the duvet for a well-deserved snooze and slept the sleep of the redeemed.

(The following is a transcript from a national newspaper article.)

NEWS OF THE SCREWS – 26th January, 2003

TIT’S A MYSTERY!

Could the answer be written in the bra-s? Astrologist offers a prediction.

Police are said to be bra-struck by the controversy surrounding what at first appeared to be simply a perverse suicide attempt.

Lipstick Lesley B. Presley (27) was discovered suspended by the neck from a black-lace Wonderbra that had been wrapped around the crystal chandelier in her South East London flat on Friday last.

Close personal friend and astrologist Viva España (25) wept openly at the press conference she had hurriedly assembled in an ante room of the Lewisham Spiritual Collective. Claiming that her finely attuned sixth sense had prompted her to call around last Friday evening to Presley’s flat in Lewisham, South East London, she had found her suspended from the ceiling - swinging on a bra.

It was me what found her, thank the gods. It was me who cut her down with my pocket penknife— España wailed,—and I’m convinced she was stitched up. I only saw Les the day before and she was the happiest I’d ever seen her. She was deeply in love with her new German boyfriend and claimed she was finally prepared to sacrifice her successful cabaret career, move to Potsdam and be a good German Hausfrau.

Lipstick Lesley B. Presley is notorious throughout the twilight world of alternative cabaret. Her act, incorporating mime, massage, hip-swivelling and baby lotion is infamous – and, some would say, downright peculiar. Viva explained, "She’s Elvis mad. She based her stage persona on the King and calls herself the Queen.