
THE JASON ZODIAC FILES

VOLUME ONE

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THE JASON ZODIAC FILES

VOLUME ONE

BY JAMIE CARTER

The Jason Zodiac Files

Copyright © 2015 Excalibur Books

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed "Attention: Permissions Coordinator," at the address below.

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Published by Excalibur Books (An imprint of Winston Saint Press)

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Nishi-Tokyo-shi

Tokyo

202-001 4

www.excalibur-books.com

Book formatting by Write Into Print

Front and back cover design and artwork by Mizuho Takahashi

About Jamie Carter

Carter started his career in music journalism at the age of twenty-two, with the Pop column for the Sheffield Evening News. In his career, he has written for the _New Musical Express,_ London listings magazine _City Limits,_ style magazine _The Face, Mojo, Uncut_ and _Esquire_. He is also the author of _Cold Snaps_ , documenting northern England's music scene.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

With thanks to Mimi at _Fugue_ Magazine for editorial supervision, Simon for the title and managerial guidance, Roger and everyone at the BBC for all their hard work, and my wife and two kids for their love and support.

This book is dedicated to Jon Butterworth.

"The greatest friend I have in life

Has brought me here to dwell

Awhile among your green green hills

All by the watery well

The water from that wondrous well

Has made my eyes to see

And loosed my tongue to sing with joy

That such a friend can be..."

\- from _"Greatest Friend,"_ Incredible String Band.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

PART ONE

1967: THE FOOL ON THE HILL

1968: TURN ME ON DEAD MAN

1972: CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

1976: GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

1979:  LONDON CALLING

1980: LOVE WILL TEAR US APART

1988: ENERGY FLASH

1988: LAND OF CONFUSION

PART TWO

The Banana Sundial Discography Part One:

Lyrics to "A FISTFUL OF SILENCE"

from: The Confessions of a Psychedelic Saint by Pete Dervish

"The New Adventures of Jason Zodiac: The Engulfed Cathedral"

THE END OF VOLUME ONE

INDEX OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Cover design and art: Mizuho Takahashi.

All internal artwork by "Grasshopper", unless otherwise indicated.

PART ONE

Poster for 1970 Glastonbury Festival (artist unknown).

1968: "CARTER'S DREAM".

1969: "GANESHA ON MARS"

1972: "DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD"

1976: "JASON'S BREAKFAST"

1979: "CROPPER SHOPPER CTHULHU"

1980: "T360 – KENNIES"

1988: "MAKHNO SPECIAL ISSUE"

1988: "SOUL SURVIVOR"

PART TWO

Cover image: GOD? # 4 – artist unknown.

THE BANANA SUNDIAL: "ANGELS AND INTERCHANGE" – album cover design and artwork by DKN Productions.

Story and art of "THE ENGULFED CATHEDRAL": Glen Ponder.

##  PART ONE

##

##  1967:

THE FOOL ON THE HILL

I had a weird dream the night before my interview with Screaming Lord Smith. I dreamt I was standing in a desert, maybe somewhere in North Africa, with great sand dunes towering around me. I don't often remember my dreams these days, but this one was vivid. The colors of the sand dunes and the sky were glowing reds and purples and browns, and I smelt smoke and exotic fruit on the wind. And the singing...there was a high-pitched, beautiful singing all around me, no words, just voices raised in harmony.

I wasn't alone. Someone stood in front of me, the figure of a man, his skin dark, his features in shadow. One hand pointed down at the ground and I knew there was something buried there. I fell to my knees, plunging my hands into the desert, sweeping away the sand to dig a hole.

It was slow work, the painfully slow effort of moving within a dream, the sand sliding in to fill the hole I was fighting to make. The sand was coarse, glittering with the sheen of old gold, scorching my hands with the desert heat. I kept digging.

I buried my arms in the ground up to my elbows, my fingertips at last finding something solid, trying to get purchase. My face pressed against the surface, the hot sand threatening to blister my cheek. The voices in my head – was something beneath me singing, or was it the sand itself?

I found a solid grip on the object, and pulled it upwards, wrenching it free, the sands boiling upwards as it rose. The whiteness of bone. Dark, hollow eyes, sand dripping out of the sockets. Elegantly curved, sharp horns. The skull of a goat. I lifted it up, its face to my face. The bone was smooth, slippery to the touch, and in the cracked shining surface of the forehead I could see my own reflection –

Waking up. The music still in my ears, strumming guitars, ethereal vocals, droning sitar. Of course. _The Sky-Vendor's Crown_ , one of The Banana Sundial's biggest hits. The song was coming to an end; it must have kicked off my dream. Why, today of all days, would Kiss FM take a break from their usual R&B and indie shite to play something from 1967? And why The Banana Sundial?

Which echoed the question that had been in my head for the last few days – whatever happened to Jason Zodiac?

My wife Katy helped me fix some ham and toast for breakfast. My son Nick called in on the way to work, like he often does. He's a good lad, always helps around the house, often comes to watch the football with me, more like a good mate than a son. Not exactly a rock and roller, though. I taught him guitar, and he had his own band for a while, but these days he's happy to be an electrician. Maybe I'm the only person who's a little sad about that, but then I'm fifty-six years old, and kind of retro. Everyone jokes about it. It's why I got this job at Fugue magazine.

I took the M5 Southbound past Bristol, to Junction 23 – and Glastonbury. I was due to meet Matt Mackenzie on top of the Tor at eleven o'clock, and it was best to get an early start as the roads are always shite. Why Glastonbury Tor? Well, Matt always did have a flair for the dramatic. That was his real name. Matt Mackenzie. The man who played Screaming Lord Smith, member of the T-Service.

As the cult TV buffs out there will remember, the BBC drama series _The T-Service_ ran for three seasons between 1967 and 1969. It was a sci-fi horror comedy thriller about a super-team backed by the British Government, a group of eccentric characters saving the world from a different threat each week. It was pitched as the BBC's answer to the colorful psychedelic spy shows that ITC were putting out, like _The Avengers_ and _The Prisoner,_ and a companion show to _Doctor Who._ The 'T' in the T-Service stood for Terror. The star of the show was Jason Zodiac, a flamboyant swinger with a command of occult magical arts and a knack for pulling dolly birds. The other regular characters all had their own back stories and super powers too: Screaming Lord Smith, Tangerine, Uncle Jack, Camera Obscura, token American liason the Someday Man, all led by the scientific genius Doctor Chess, and receiving their assignments from a shadowy government contact known only as The Minister.

Great names. They don't make TV like that any more, eh?

One reason why The T-Service had gained such notoriety is that it had fallen victim to the BBC video-wiping purge in the early 1970s, and only a handful of episodes actually existed. The stories where The Beatles and Mick Jagger had co-starred were still around, of course, but classic stories like _The Unexpected Question, The Camelot Run, Death by Chocolate_ and _Festival of the Damned_ were lost forever.

Or so we thought, until Matt Mackenzie contacted Fugue magazine, claiming to have unearthed an 8mm film copy of 'Festival of the Damned'.

I got to the Tor just before eleven, parked the car, and trudged up the hill to the famous artificial mound, with its signature spiral path winding toward the beautiful stone tower on its crown. A cold February wind scythed across the fields, but I'd wrapped up warm in quilted jacket, scarf, sweater and gloves, so it wasn't too bad.

When I got to the top of the hill Matt was standing by the stone tower waiting for me. I recognized him from his publicity shots; he'd put on weight and lost a bit more hair, but his face was still the craggy, lined, handsome face that had got him the part on the show. Screaming Lord Smith's super-power was a jacket that emitted psychedelic blasts of colored light that confused, blinded or hypnotized the baddies. Which is pretty funny when you remember that the first T-Service series was filmed in black and white. Today, though, there was nothing psychedelic about him; he wore a long black wool coat that almost stretched down to his feet.

"Good morning, Mr. Smith," I said. "Or can I call you Screaming Lord?"

He laughed. We shook hands. "Hello, Mr. Carter."

"Call me Jamie."

We stood on top of the Tor, buffeted by the wind but with the solid reassuring presence of the tower behind us, and we looked out across the rolling Wiltshire countryside. The stubby hedgerows, the scattered farm buildings, the roads carrying their ceaseless loads of traffic.

"I'd forgotten how far away the Tor is from the town," Matt said.

"Yeah, it's quite a way. Have you been back here since the filming?"

"I went to the Glastonbury Festival a couple of times in the Seventies. Saw Pink Floyd headlining one year and Thin Lizzy the next."

"Me too. I saw Pink Floyd here," I said, thinking there was not much I could remember about it. Most of it was the sheer paranoia of having my stash stolen or being arrested. Ah, youth.

Matt pointed across the fields. "We filmed _Festival of the Damned_ down there. The director put down flat wooden supports for the cameras, because he wanted to recreate the effect of filming in studio. Several cameras filming the action at the same time, from different angles. Cameras and arc lights moving across the wooden planks on wheeled tripods. All the cameramen had headphones on so the director could speak to them."

"That episode had quite a strong opening scene, I remember."

"Yeah, that got quite a reaction. The first thing you saw was Agent Teapot being chased across those fields by the Morris Dancers from Hell."

"Agent Teapot?"

"All the spies from that department had tea-service code names. Agent Sugar, Agent Milk, all that stuff. Teapot sends off a message in Morse code before he's murdered by the Fool with an exploding pig's bladder on a stick."

I remembered watching it with my own mum and dad on Saturday teatime when I was a kid. It was a scene pretty scary and graphic for the time, and most people agree it was an influence on the writers of the classic 1971 Doctor Who story _The Daemons,_ where menacing Morris Dancers almost burned Jon Pertwee at the stake.

"I never looked at Morris Dancing the same way after that," I said.

"Shame," he said. "I was going to ask you to nip down there and join me for a dance."

"I think I'd rather have a pint."

We both laughed.

We carried on the interview at the King Arthur (Matt's idea of a joke, considering all the legends surrounding this place), a nice comfortable pub on Benedict Street in Glastonbury town center. Matt opted for the ploughman's lunch, but after being out in that wind, I needed something piping hot. I finally chose the steak and kidney pie in gravy with a non-alcoholic beer to wash it down.

"Here it is," Matt said, taking a videocassette wrapped in a plastic Sainsbury's bag out of his attaché case. "The long-lost episode."

I took it from him and peered at it, all kinds of thoughts going through my head. Front covers of Fugue magazine. DVD releases. Behind-the-scenes specials.

It had been a long-standing mystery in TV circles why _The T-Service_ had never had the classic status it deserved. The shows that existed had never been repeated on TV and never released on video or DVD, and were never shown abroad. One theory is that Mary Whitehouse, the head of the TV censorship group at the time, had angrily reacted to what she had called the 'Satanist' elements of the series. She had even claimed in an interview that Jason Zodiac had conducted a real Black Mass on-screen, but I couldn't remember ever seeing that.

I talked it over with Matt, as well as the curious fact that all the cast of The T-Service had left the acting profession after the show was finally cancelled. The actor who played Uncle Jack died in the late Seventies and Someday Man passed away in the mid-Eighties. Gabrielle Brough, who played Tangerine, had set up a film company, and Matt McKenzie himself had gone into record production; in fact, not many people know he was the producer on The Blobs' best-selling debut album, _We Are The Blobs._

"But what you really want to know," Matt said with a sly grin, "is where is Jason Zodiac."

Now we were getting down to it.

In the T-Service series, Jason had basically played himself – a larger-than-life character with a mysterious past and dodgy reputation. I knew that he started off as a rock star, a lead singer with psychedelic rock band The Banana Sundial. The Jason Zodiac persona he adopted as the frontman of the band was the same character in the TV series – a bit like David Bowie assuming the mantle of Ziggy Stardust. Mimi, my editor, had suggested that I start with his TV work first; we'd done glossy specials on Pink Floyd and Grateful Dead recently and she wanted to put Jason's musical side on the back burner for the moment.

"There was never any argument that Jason was the star of the show," Matt said, as he scooped up the last of the Branston pickle with a finger of Cheddar cheese. "He looked the part, and acted the part, both on stage and off. He knew everyone in 'the scene', as we used to call it. Jason told me once that after a heavy smoking session, he wandered around one morning looking for munchies, and he found himself on Primrose Hill. You know who he bumped into?"

I shook my head.

"Paul McCartney! He just met Paul completely by accident, and started up a conversation with him! They became good pals after that. Crazy, innit? Let me tell you something else. One day someone turned up on location and hung around when we were filming. At the lunch break he managed to wangle his way into the private area and sat down at the same table with me and Jason. Said he was a big fan of the Banana Sundial. Also said he owned a farm with a bit of land he wanted to turn over for public events, like open-air rock concerts, and he wondered if Jason was interested. His name was Michael Eavis."

I stared back at him, my pint halfway to my lips. "The bloke who set up the Glastonbury Festival?"

"That's right. The Banana Sundial were the first band to play the very first Glastonbury Festival – in September 1970."

"Are you sure?"

"Well, it was more of a pre-gig party, before Stackridge went on. The point is, Jason had the face, the luck, the charm. And he really believed in that stuff, you know."

"What stuff?"

"Occult stuff. He wasn't a Satanist, or a Wiccan, and he didn't have anything to do with Crowley's Thelema religion as far as I knew, but he believed magic was real. I think talking about it was the only time he stopped joking and got serious."

I finished off my pint, and while I was buying another round, I went through my mental files for what I knew about Jason. The notorious Jason Zodiac, real name unknown. Musician, actor, magician. More than just a weekend rainforest messiah or one-hit wonder, Jason was an underground living legend. He'd been accused at different times of being a vile influence on the nation's youth, a purveyor of smut, a drug dealer, an occult charlatan, a politically subversive anarchist, even a terrorist. In one of his rare interviews in the Seventies, he was on the record as stating;

"Many of these allegations are badges I wear with pride, but I don't trade in terror and I'm no charlatan."

Jason Zodiac. Alleged author of the 1967 _Sonic Warriors Cookbook_ (still banned today in seventeen countries), Jason was the man responsible for setting dogs howling for eight days straight in 'the great canine protest of Westminster' in 1977, an event that led to the temporary enforcement of a thirty-mile radius mongrel-free zone, a prohibition on the use of home speaker systems and the infamous 'I, Zodiac' arrests at Piccadilly Circus.

This was his reputation. And Matt Mackenzie had spent three years with the man...

I brought the pints back to the table and sat down. "Could you tell me how you found this missing episode, Matt?"

He picked up the glass and raised it in a salute. "Thanks to Gerald Moore."

I blinked. "The actor who played Doctor Chess?"

"That's right. He called me up out of the blue last week and said he had some news for me. He's been a recluse for years and years, but apparently he still has some contacts with the BBC. Some cans of 8mm film turned up in a warehouse in Wapping, and they were some episodes of The T-Service that everyone thought had been deleted. He gave me that copy of _Festival of the Damned_ , and said there's more where that from."

"More," I said faintly.

"Not just that. I think Gerald actually knows where Jason Zodiac is."

I sat, stunned, contracts for Celebrity Big Brother flashing before my eyes.

"I'll be quite happy to do a longer interview for you. Maybe even a series of interviews, because there was a lot going on that the public never knew about."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, that episode was all about the supernatural, right? And there were creepy things going on during the recording. Things that got people saying the show was...well...haunted."

"Go on," I said, checking my recorder was still running.

"The sound recording over on the fields by the Tor had quite a few problems. Sometimes voices would appear on the tapes after a take, voices that didn't belong to the cast or crew. Once we left a tape recorder running on set, overnight, as a kind of experiment. Nobody went up there at all. But in the morning, we could hear several people talking on the tape when we played it back. One voice in particular was very clear; it was a man's voice saying ' _It is said we are dead men – everyone who has the mark will live._ ' Spooky, eh?"

Despite myself, and I'm ashamed to say this, I shivered, and the beer in my stomach turned into an ice-cold lump.

"And that's not all. In one scene we were filming at night – you remember, it was the scene where Someday Man fights the living scarecrows – and suddenly all the electricity cut out. The arc lights, the heaters, the cameras, the wind machine, everything. We were left in total darkness and Gabrielle was freaking out. Then about two minutes later the power came back on by itself."

"By itself." I sat, thinking for a moment. "You know...if I remember rightly...the creature in the story is never really identified as Satan, is it?"

"No. We were all holed up in the church tower when this strange cloud rises up from the graveyard. Jason communicates with it, and makes a deal so it will leave the human race alone. Then it rises up into the sky and disappears among the stars. What exactly was it? That was left up to the viewers' imagination. 'A paradigm shift in TV scriptwriting from resolved closure in endings to a more ambiguous approach,' one of the critics said, and I'll always remember that. But watch it yourself. The first person in forty years to see it – apart from me and Gerald!"

We finalized the details for payment, I picked up the tab for lunch, and then went out to the car park. "Let me know what you think," Matt said, and then went off to his car.

I climbed into my own car and just sat thinking for a while. Then I picked up my mobile to call the Fugue office.

"Jamie, Where the hell have you been?" was the first thing I heard Peter say. Shout, rather.

"What? You know where I've been!"

"Have you had any problems over there?"

"What do you mean, problems?"

"The computers went down. For a while it looked like we'd lost everything."

"What? All the computers in the office went down?"

There was a kind of gasp while Peter paused to regain his breath. "I mean all of the computers _in London_ went down. For about two minutes. Then they just came back on by themselves, like nothing had happened."

I stared out of the windscreen at nothing. "All the data's been lost? It was some kind of virus?"

"No, thank God. Everything's there and nothing's been deleted, so maybe it wasn't a virus, or at least, no virus we've ever seen. It's just that...for about two minutes, the computer files, the Internet...they just _didn't exist_."

I put down the cell phone with numb fingers. Peter was still talking but I couldn't hear him. I turned my head, and looked down at my notebook lying open on the passenger seat, and I stared at the one sentence written there, a sentence I couldn't remember writing:

It is said we are dead men...

##

##  1968:

TURN ME ON DEAD MAN

Paul McCartney died in a car crash on Wednesday 9th November, 1966, at five in the morning. Most people reading that won't have a clue what I'm going on about, but many will snicker and say, "Ah, yes. The Paul Is Dead conspiracy."

It was a series of clues almost as clever, baffling and insanely detailed as the Jason Zodiac mystery.

My name is Jamie Carter and I work for Fugue magazine, and my articles can – maybe charitably – be called 'retro culture'. I wasn't really surprised when the managing editor asked me to do a series of pieces on Jason Zodiac. Not surprised, but I was disturbed. I mean, Jason was like J. D. Salinger, Lord Lucan and Richey Edwards all rolled into one person – what light could I shed on the mystery?

Jason was the lead singer of the Banana Sundial and star of the cult TV series _The T-Service_ , a show that ran on BBC TV for three series, 1967-1969. The actor Gerald Moore, who'd played the character Doctor Chess in the series, had agreed to be interviewed on the subject, and today was the day. In fact, he'd rung me the day before to confirm it, and seemed quite agitated about something. He asked me for a favour – to watch the _T-Service_ original episode, _The Elephant's Eye,_ before the interview.

That wasn't a problem, because I'd bought _The T-Service_ DVD box set a week before, as research for the articles. The synopsis for _The Elephant's Eye_ on Wikipedia filled in the gaps in my memory. The story kicked off with Silver Pickaxe, leader of a cult of particularly nasty Thugee assassins, stealing a bunch of experimental jetpacks from an Indian Army research centre. The villain was planning on using them to steal an artifact known as the Eye of Shiva, while it was being moved from a museum back to its rightful temple home. The theft had been ordered by Silver Pickaxe's evil, shadowy masters (and also the T-Service's arch-enemies) – The Church With No Name. Jason and his teammates used more jetpacks to follow the Thugee across India – leading to a climactic showdown in the Himalayas.

This was the season finale for Season 2, and the end of the Eye of Shiva story arc – at a time when the concepts season finales and story arcs were unknown, I hasten to add. The main claims to fame of _The Elephant's Eye_ were that it had cameos from John Lennon and George Harrison in an incredibly rare TV appearance; and also the dense, confusing nature of the script, which leaned heavily on Hindu mythology and mysticism. There was a lot of talk about the story's subtle references to Tantric sex – particularly in the scene where Jason goes to two shamanesses called the Suvasini Sisters for their help interrogating a Thugee prisoner.

In one interview in my files Archie Baker, the actor who played Uncle Jack in the series, had gone on record as saying: " _The Elephant's Eye_? They should have called it the Elephant's Arse if you want my opinion. Nobody on set had a clue what was going on. Load of pretentious bollocks."

_The Elephant's Eye_ was written by Pete Korner – the pseudonym of Jason Zodiac himself and the show's co-creator, Victor Lansdale, who passed away in 1991. The night before the interview I settled down to watch it with my wife Katy and our son Nick. Our daughter, Liz, had popped around earlier – she lived with her boyfriend, John, in another part of Brentwood.

"You don't expect me to actually watch this?" she said. "All that hippy rubbish?"

"Isn't this the one where the Thugee are chasing him because he's wearing some kind of magical ring?" John said.

"No, you're thinking of _Help!_ That was the second Beatles movie, and Ringo Starr wore the ring. They are kind of similar, though. This is where the T-Service first met one of their deadly arch-enemies, Silver Pickaxe, leader of the Thugee."

"Well, I warn you, I'm watching _Britain's Got Talent_ first. The new season's starting tonight. Have you ever thought what Simon Cowell would make of your precious Jason Zodiac?"

Actually, I was wondering what Jason would have made of Simon Cowell. But I didn't say it.

THE T-SERVICE:

"THE ELEPHANT'S EYE"

_by_ VICTOR LANSDALE

_and_ PETE KORNER

_first broadcast –_ 18th June 1968

_running time –_ 49 min 54 sec

SCENE 38. TUNNEL INTERIOR.

Tangerine is pushing Dr. Chess, in his wheel chair, along the smooth rock floor, with Uncle Jack, Screaming Lord Smith, and Camera Obscura behind them.

TANGERINE: These tunnels just keep going on forever. How on Earth are we supposed to find them?

DR. CHESS: Ed's signal is coming from down this way.

From a cave opening nearby, a glowing tiger, a snake, and a black-skinned humanoid dwarf appear. They advance threateningly upon the two heroes.

TANGERINE: Oh, what a drag! Doc, can't you zap them with your zapper or something?

UNCLE JACK: Step aside, love, I've got a better idea.

Moving incredibly quickly (the camera is speeded up) Uncle Jack runs across the width of the tunnel, drawing a number of long bamboo poles out of his Gladstone bag and sticking them into the cave floor. He next pulls out a stack of china plates and puts one each on top of the poles and sets them spinning, so the poles are swaying slightly but perfectly balanced.

UNCLE JACK: 'Ere's a little trick I picked up when I was playing the Alexandra wiv the Spinning Santorini Brothers!

The giant snake tries to slide between the poles, but is sucked up into the vortex caused by the plates, and its long body is tied into a knot around one of the poles.

UNCLE JACK: I think 'e's got a lot on 'is plate _– boom, boom!_

SCREAMING LORD SMITH: Jack's the lad! Let's go!

Camera Obscura (the team's stop-motion puppet) strides down the tunnel with a loud series of mechanical clicks. The tiger stares at him curiously – and then advances upon Dr. Chess.

DR. CHESS: Hungry?

He pulls a chess piece from his inside pocket and holds it in the palm of his hand. CLOSE-UP: The piece is a Knight. PULL BACK: The tiger rears up, pounces, then vanishes in a flash of light. CLOSE-UP: We see once more the chess piece. Instead of a horse's head, the Knight now has the head of a tiger.

Behind Dr. Chess, Tangerine performs a double somersault, and then a flying kick, knocking the dwarf square in the chest.

DR. CHESS: Thanks, Tangerine.

TANGERINE: That's just dolly!

SCENE 39: INTERIOR OF SUBTERRANEAN TEMPLE INNER SANCTUM.

The Someday Man is chained to a wall. In front of him, Silver Pickaxe is taunting the helpless man, and waving the eponymous weapon in his face. In the centre of the sanctum, the Eye of Shiva – a glowing, ornately carved crystal – is resting on a dark stone plinth.

SILVER PICKAXE: With the power of the Eye of Shiva, we shall throw off the slave religions of India's conquerors, and restore the true faith – the Goddess of the three faces, Kali, Bhavani and Shakti! Bhavani shall drink the blood of the Sahibs, and Kali shall wear a garland of their skulls!

SOMEDAY MAN: Empty promises, you Thug. You were stopped in Gwalior in 1948, and we'll stop you now.

SILVER PICKAXE: I think not! You won't live to see the rising of Mother Kali! We shall kill you in the ancient Phansigar rite of execution – slow strangulation by garrote, and then the breaking of your spine and thighbones, so we can fold up your corpse so tightly it will fit inside a suitcase!!

SOMEDAY MAN: Suitcase, buddy? Don't get carried away.

A shadow is cast from a nearby side opening.

JASON: Silver Pickaxe!

SILVER PICKAXE: Zodiac. Didn't I kill you?

JASON: Didn't you hear the story of the blind god Andhaka?

SILVER PICKAXE: Do not blaspheme! Do not soil the names of the Gods with your heathen tongue!

Jason ignores him. He closes his fist, places it above the Eye of Shiva, and water begins to pour from his hand.

JASON: A tear fell into the Eye of Shiva, a single tear, and from it was born the blind demon-child Andhaka. To stop his destructive rages, Shiva and Parvarti held him – directly in front of the light of the Eye of Shiva.

The water strikes the surface of the crystal, and a blinding beam of light shines forth, enveloping Silver Pickaxe in a brilliant white flare. Fade to white.

SILVER PICKAXE: Aaaaahhhhhhhh!!!

FADE IN

CLOSE-UP: On the cave floor, Silver Pickaxe's clothes lie discarded – black sandals, robes, turban and ornamental mask – next to a naked, crying baby.

FADE OUT

Well anyway, at least one person in the room enjoyed the story. Even if I was just reliving my childhood, like Katy said.

*

Gerald Moore, otherwise known as Doctor Chess, retired from acting in the late Seventies. According to the Fugue magazine files, he currently ran a record shop over in Wandsworth for collectors of rare vinyl. I parked the car near Putney Bridge tube station and walked the drab, windswept streets to a shopfront with faded album covers in a dusty, rain-stained window. A faded wooden sign above the door named the shop: Stillness and Motion.

The first thing that hit me when I entered was the smell of patchouli. The second was the reverential church-like air of the place, the rows and rows of vinyl records in their specially designed display cases, the glazed look on the faces of the two male punters who were shuffling through the racks as I came in. The sound of a sitar and tablas floated through the incense from the speakers mounted on the wall.

Gerald Moore stood behind the counter. I recognized him from the show straight away, despite the years of aging. His beard was now streaked with grey.

I looked behind him to the records decorating the wall, sealed in their protective plastic envelopes. _Beggar's Banquet_ by the Rolling Stones, _Electric Ladyland_ by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, _The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter_ by The Incredible String Band.

"Original copies?" I asked.

"Yes, worth about $1,500, $500 and $400 respectively. You must be Mr. Carter."

"Pleased to meet you."

"Let's go into the study." He called a youth – "Roger!" – and told him to take care of the shop.

We went up a flight of dark, narrow stairs to a landing. Moore pushed open a door and swept his hands through a clattering bead curtain, and we both entered a room of warm, glowing primary colours, the glinting of light on brass, and more incense – sandalwood, this time.

From a shadowed alcove in the corner dark gnomish figures watched me enter the room. Bulbous, elephantine heads, curved tusks, each figure with far too many arms than should be natural.

"I see you like my little pets, Mr. Carter," More said. "They were carved to my own specifications by an Indonesian friend of mine. That one is Ganesha in...shall we say...his less than fortuitous aspect."

I glared at the dark wooden statuette he gestured to. It glared back.

"I can only offer you sherry," Moore said.

I shrugged. "It'll keep the chill out."

He busied himself getting a bottle of Harvey's Bristol Cream and two dainty glasses from a well-stocked cabinet across the room. He indicated a sofa with a gorgeous-looking throw draped over it, next to the bead curtain screening the door, but I was more interested with studying the walls, the framed prints of blue-skinned figures with multiple limbs, jewels in their foreheads, diamonds studding their noses.

In the corner stood a brand-new Apple Power Book, and above it on the wall hung a framed photograph of a Sadhu holy man, his body plastered in blue-gray mud, his hair twisted into long dreadlocks.

"The Festival of Diwali takes place this month on the banks of the river Ganges," Moore said as he poured, "the most sacred time in the Hindu calendar. And this is also the time Ganesha has chosen to favour you, Mr. Carter."

I turned around and gave him a smile I like to think of as my conspiratorial, I-know-your-secrets smiles. "Is it really?"

"Ganesha is the remover of obstacles, and among his many other duties, he is the protector of writers."

I glanced back at the alcove. "Interesting."

Moore took an album out of its sleeve and reverently placed it on the turntable. Shabid Parvez, "The Art of the Sitar". The elegant drone of the Indian instruments rose out of the speakers as he sat down next to his desk, booting up his computer, and I sat down on the offered sofa. It was as soft and comfortable as it looked, and it had the redolent odor of years spent soaking up incense. I took a sip of sherry and put the glass down on the coffee table.

"How did you find me?" Moore asked.

"Matt McKenzie."

Moore let out a surprised sound somewhere between a laugh and a cough. "I should have guessed it was him. Did you offer him money?"

"Yes, I did, but he's not exactly desperate. There's still a big cult following for The T-Service, and you know the sort of money that can be made in conventions and guest signings. Haven't you thought of appearing?"

"The late Leonard Nimoy once memorably said, I am not Spock. So let me paraphrase that and say, I am not Doctor Chess. That's all in the past, and now I simply sell records."

"Yes, but years after that Nimoy said he regretted that statement, and the second volume of his autobiography was called _I Am Spock_. Are you sure you won't reconsider?"

Moore shook his big, shaggy head. "Don't butter me up, laddie, it's not really me you're after. It's Jason."

"Matt said you might know where he is."

"I do and I don't."

He looked at me blankly, and I gave him another smile, my you-don't really-mean-that smile.

"The thing about Jason," Moore said, "is that he could be the sweetest, softest, most considerate man you've ever met, and the next day he could be a nasty piece of work. It's no wonder the girls were obsessed with his hair and his clothes; he had this beautiful, narcissistic presence."

"And that glamour was his magic?"

"No. Beneath the glamour was the _real_ magic." Moore paused, took a sip of his sherry. "The management always tried to keep us apart, and we found out why during the show's second season. Jason was getting paid five pounds more than the rest of us."

"I imagine that didn't go down well with the rest of the cast," I said.

"No. Especially not with Archie Baker, because he was one of the old school Billy Cotton light entertainment crowd. So the atmosphere got a bit fraught during rehearsals. Most days, we'd skip the discussions and get straight into arguments."

Moore took a framed photo from his desk and passed it to me; a black and white picture of six smiling young men, beards, glasses, flowers draped around their necks.

"In early 1968 John Lennon invited Jason to India to see the Maharishi. They'd been good friends for a while; Jason was impressed by John's resentment of what he called the 'pop machine'. And Jason made quite an impression on the Maharishi."

"I thought it would be the other way around."

"Not at all. The Maharishi said Jason had an aura about him; he was one of the children of the sun, and he had a special part to play in the future."

"You didn't go with them, did you?"

"No, but I realized my mistake years afterwards. I went to India in the mid-Eighties," he said, taking out a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses and carefully putting them on. "I'd given up my acting career, and I'd had more than enough of Thatcher's Britain. I took what my friends and family called the Hippy Route, and bought a plane ticket to New Delhi. I traveled the country, taking on manual jobs when the money ran out, and settled in Goa. I was there when the psychedelic trance movement started, and I saw Jason Zodiac perform a DJ set on the beach. A Full Moon party. The entire beach off their heads on mushrooms, acid or Ecstasy. It was...an experience impossible to put into words, Mr. Carter, I'm sorry."

"Acid House kind of revived Jason's musical career, didn't it?"

Moore glared at me. "That's like saying the Beatles concerts were 'mildly interesting'. It was a transformational event, Mr. Carter. Nothing has been the same since."

I fidgeted on the sofa, drained my sherry. "Why don't you call me Jamie? Anyway, Matt said that you had this reunion in Goa, that you spent a few days together with Jason and his girlfriend Zena. That was news to me, because I thought Jason lost touch with his TV colleagues in the early Eighties, when he became almost a recluse. Could you, eh..."

Moore was shaking his head again and chuckling at me softly. "You want to be impressed, don't you? You want to have your pop-culture post-modern scoop for the fanboys. Well, the thing is, Mr. Carter, as a verse in chapter four of the Bhagavad Gita says... _Truly in this world, there is nothing so purifying as knowledge."_

I crossed my legs, said nothing, just waiting for him to either stop chuckling or refill my sherry glass.

"In Goa," Moore resumed, "Jason told me what he was trying to do."

"Which is?"

"I don't know..." Moore sighed and turned to his computer screen. "I don't know where to start, or how to make you understand."

"Maybe with this," I said, taking out the email I'd printed out. "You mentioned the Paul Is Dead hoax, and I don't see the connection."

"Ah, yes!" Moore looked suddenly animated – even alarmed.

"You don't seriously suggest that the current Paul McCartney is an imposter, that he's really...er..."

"He's really a man called William Campbell? No. What I wanted to tell you is that all the clues, the clues on the covers of _Sergeant Pepper_ and _Abbey Road_ and _Let It Be_ , are all a smoke screen to confuse people and to stop them discovering the _real_ conspiracy."

Okay, I thought, trying not to let my doubts show on my face.

"Have you ever heard of backmasking?" he said.

"Of course. Backmasking, or backwards masking, is putting something on the grooves of a vinyl record in reverse, so that you'll hear the information properly only if you play the record backwards. The rumours say that if you play certain records backwards, you'll hear secret messages. They said bands like The Beatles and Led Zeppelin put them on the grooves in their albums...or something like that." The rumors also said that they were messages telling kids to worship Satan, because they were mostly spread by right-wing God-Squad parents, but I didn't mention that.

"Listen to this." Moore opened a file on his laptop and clicked 'play'. A slurred, garbled voice began to hiss through the speakers, on a continuous loop. "I put the needle on the Beatles' _Revolution 9_ track backwards and then digitally transferred it to the computer. Apparently John's saying 'Turn me on, dead man'. Most people believe he's referring to Paul."

I listened. I could just about hear what he meant, but to me, the sample sounded more like, _something something dead men_. Moore closed the file and opened another one – a longer sample of garbled speech.

"Time, turn back! Time, turn back! Turn back!"

"Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, even ELO," Moore said, "they all put secret messages on their albums. Messages there for people who knew to look them."

"But what's the point? What do they mean?"

"I don't know yet." He paused, and then added: "But I know who put them there."

I waited. "So...who put them there?"

His eyes flicked towards the photo above the computer. "Who do you think?"

I closed my eyes, just for a second. "You mean Jason? He's responsible for all the backmasked messages?"

"Why not? Jason knew them all – John Lennon, Syd Barrat, Jimmy Page, Jeff Lynn, and he was in and out of their recording studios whenever he felt like it. Nothing is outside his abilities, Mr. Carter!"

He took a slim plastic folder filled with photocopies of different magazine pages, and handed it to me. "That's just a sample of the evidence I've compiled. There's an image of Aleister Crowley on the Sergeant Pepper album cover – and Crowley had written, as long ago as 1913, that listening to reversed phonograph music is a form of occult training for the mind. Jimmy Page -"

"Just a minute," I said, holding up my hand. "If that's the case, did Jason put any backwards messages on his own band's records?"

"Ah. Yes. Now you're talking." Moore grinned at me, his eyes getting all distant and glittery. He turned back to the keyboard, his fingers tapping away, opening audio files. "This is hidden in the grooves of the first Banana Sundial album, _Angels and Interchange_."

I listened. A male voice croaked through the speakers, a deep, throaty whisper. Despite myself, despite the central heating in that warm flat filling up with incense smoke and the sensual slap of the tabla drums against the droning sitar, my skin suddenly felt chilled.

"What's he saying?" I asked.

Moore tilted his head, staring into space. "As far as I can make out, he's saying, 'Call the Zengineers'."

"Zengineers? That's not even a proper word."

Moore shrugged, and turned back to the keyboard. "This is from their second album, _The Empire of Velvet_."

The voice that came out of the speakers was clearer this time, louder, and somehow more confident. Within seconds, I was sweating heavily, and I had this horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach.

"Everyone who has the mark will live. Everyone who has the mark will live. Everyone..."

I sat up straight, taking in several slow deep breaths before. I'd heard the sentence before, recently. and the overpowering smell of sandalwood and the chiming of sitars and tablas, which had that moment chosen to a phase of furious activity, was making me feel distinctly ill. I closed my eyes, let the sweat chill my suddenly blood-engorged skin.

The voice stopped, replaced by Gerald Moore's.

"This is from their third album, _Sunday Afternoon Teatime in the Labyrinth of Empty Spaces_. I think you'll find this is the most mysterious of the lot."

A one-note electronic drone, like a sitar but played on a synthesizer, and a drawling, slowed-down male voice: _"Gooooo tooooo theeee wiiiiindoooow...goooo toooo theee wiiiindooooow..."_

"In this world," Moore said, as the otherwordly chant continued, "there are sacred sites where the barriers between this world and others are particularly weak. They can be used as portals between dimensions. I think this is what the message means. On the other hand, perhaps there is a certain building, a temple or a shrine perhaps, in India or Afghanistan, which in ancient times was known as The Window. I haven't been able to locate it yet, but..."

"Or it could just mean go to the window," I said.

Moore shot me a dirty look, but the need for fresh air was getting urgent. I stood up, walked across the room to the window, and looked out, across the terraced rooftops to the orange east London sky, and down into the courtyard of the brewery next door.

Someone waved back at me.

Someone with long hair and clad in biker's leather, but unmistakably male. He wore sunglasses against the rays of the slanting winter sunset, and was leaning back against a large, powerful motorbike. I saw tanned skin and a sharp nose and a crafty smile as he returned my stare. And waved.

Over his leather jacket was a denim cutoff with two bold yellow designs on each side – a banana moon cartoon face, grinning, strumming an electric guitar. And at that second I knew – I _knew_ – his bike was a Triumph Bonneville.

I had no intention of turning my eyes away but a ridiculously large crash from behind made me twist around with an involuntary cry of surprise. God knows what he was trying to do, pour some sherry I suppose, but Moore had managed to overbalance himself and knock over the tall, thin table holding the drinks. None of the bottles smashed; but he righted himself, and sat on the carpet, looking at me in outrage. "What?" he shouted.

I turned around and looked out of his finger-stained window with its peeling, draughty casement. The figure, of course, had gone, but I'd heard no sound of the bike revving up and driving off.

"Did you set this up?" I asked him.

"Set what up? What did you see?"

I couldn't stay. I picked up my bag, clattered through the bead curtain and down the stairs, out through the rows of vinyl and into the street. I sprinted around the corner into the brewery's back yard.

I looked down, the breath misting in front of my face, trying to see if there were any tire marks or patches of motor oil on the scabby concrete. Pointless, of course. I had no idea how to identify them even if they'd been there.

I should have gone back to Moore's shop, but I couldn't bring myself to return to that incense-filled room with its backwards voices chanting nonsense over and over again, and that big bearded lunatic staring at me as if he was about to show me the true face of God. I wandered the streets around Putney Bridge station, taking in deep gulps of crispy February smog heavy with kebab smells and curses in a dozen languages. I'd left my coat in his shop; but I had the folder he'd given me, stuffed into my briefcase, which I'd grabbed on the way out.

That night, alone in my study after dinner, I looked at the contents of his folder. One photocopied page in particular struck me, and I read it and reread it several times. It was from the notorious fanzine _Top Hat_ , published in the early Nineties, and written by someone called Nick Banshe. Half of it was an interview with an anonymous roadie who claimed to have accompanied the Beatles on their travels in India.

The article said that everyone who'd gone into the caves of Rishikesh on that trip had been markedly different after they came out. George Harrison had gone deeper into mysticism, pursuing the truths held by Vishnu and Shiva; but Paul and Ringo had turned away, and John had become cynical, almost nihilistic, going on to create the angry, intense _White_ album. The roadie claimed that he'd actually been there when the six of them emerged from the darkness into the blinding, merciless Indian sun. The Maharashi looked visibly shaken, and he'd said – "Who is this Jason Zodiac? How can he possibly do these things?"

And John had just turned to him and snarled, "Well if you're so bloody cosmic then you'll know, won't you?"

##

##  1972:

CHILDREN OF THE REVOLUTION

JASON ZODIAC ITV SPECIAL:

"THE TOMORROW STRAIN"

_by_ PETE KORNER

_first broadcast –_ Dec 26th 1971

_running time –_ 85 min 56 sec

SCENE 1 EXTERIOR – JODRELL BANK

_Sunset. Long shot of the radio_ _telescopes at Jodrell Bank._

SCENE 2 INTERIOR – JODRELL BANK CONTROL ROOM 1

Interior. Inside a small, claustrophobic office, two white-coated TECHNICIANS are bent over a monitor screen.

FIRST TECHNICIAN: Look! We've got another one!

SECOND TECHNICIAN: You'd better get the Captain, quick.

First Technician leaves. Close-up on Second Technician as he picks up a paper and pencil and frantically makes notes.

The door opens and the First Technician returns, followed by CAPTAIN PRICE. He is wearing a British Army uniform, and the letters S.I.D. can be read on his cap badge.

PRICE: Are you sure?

SECOND TECHNICIAN: Yes, sir. It's another message. A series of radio pulses from a point near the star Alpha Centauri, and it's the same binary code as the last one.

PRICE: Right, I want a full press blackout, same as before. Have you decoded it yet?

SECOND TECHNICIAN: Yes, sir...

Close-up on Second Technician as he turns slowly to the Captain, shock and confusion on his face.

TECHNICIAN: It says planet Earth is blue...and there's nothing we can do...

SCENE 3 EXTERIOR – ALDBOURNE, WILTSHIRE

A sleepy village church at sunset. Flowers are in full bloom in the vicarage gardens. Birdsong.

SCENE 4 INTERIOR – VICAR'S OFFICE

REVEREND LOVEGROVE is writing a sermon. He is a tall, thin, balding man of about 60, who wears thick black NHS spectacles. The VERGER enters.

VERGER: I've watered the petunias, Vicar, and dusted the stalls. I'll be off now. Er...Vicar...I'm taking my wife to the GP tomorrow, you know, it's her old trouble...so I'll be in Tuesday morning.

LOVEGROVE: Thank you, Maurice. Give my regards to your wife.

The Verger leaves. Beat. Rev. Lovegrove stands up, walks to the outer door, and locks it. He then goes to the other door and enters the church.

SCENE 5 – INTERIOR, CHURCH.

Close-up on the cross above the altar. Rev. Lovegrove mounts the steps to the pulpit, his footsteps echoing around the church. He stands in the pulpit, closes the open Bible on the lectern, and spreads his hands.

REV. LOVEGROVE: Dearly beloved...

Long shot of the nave. Shadowy, hooded figures are materializing in the stalls.

REV. LOVEGROVE: We are gathered here today...

The shadowy figures stand, all turned expectantly towards the vicar.

REV. LOVEGROVE: We are gathered here today to witness the dawning of a new age. The bastions of civilization will fall; we, The Church With No Name, shall lead the human race to meet its new masters, its new Gods. It is time to rise – to reveal the glory of the true Church – and destroy our enemies, Rocket Man and Jason Zodiac!

Moving as one, the shadowy figures reach up with bony hands and pull back their hoods. They all have black, featureless heads, and over each blank face is pasted a monochrome, negative image. The X-ray of a skull.

*

It was the strumming of the iPhone alarm that eventually woke me up. A melodic, four-chord, five-second guitar strum that I quite liked. When I lifted my head from the pillow, though, I immediately knew that something was wrong.

The bedroom was in full daylight. Katy wasn't there. The house was quiet. When I picked up the iPhone, I could see both the time (almost nine-thirty) and who was calling (Mimi, the features editor at Fugue magazine, AKA my boss). "Oh, bollocks," I croaked.

"Jamie?" Mimi's voice was loud, too loud. "You've forgotten we had a meeting, haven't you?"

"No, I haven't. I'm on my way."

The offices of _Fugue_ magazine are in Shoreditch. Leaving my car outside Brentwood station, taking the train to Liverpool Street station and then walking through the streets to its office near Brick Lane, takes about an hour and a half. Travelling outside rush hour, as I was on that day, it took a little longer.

Of course, that didn't matter to Mimi. Everyone knew she was a ball-breaker, and things had got to the stage where a lot of the staff had stopped bothering to even pretend to be polite to her face.

So there we were, in Meeting Room One with its view of Brick Lane, with my line manager Mimi, also Jill from Photography, and Peter in charge of the overall meeting. At least Peter was on my side.

Usually.

"Thank you for finally getting out of your steaming pit and making the effort to be here," Peter said.

I raised the last of my takeout café latte in its tall-size paper container and saluted him. "Well, believe it or not, you're responsible, because I was working for most of last night."

"Working?" Mimi echoed.

I took the sleeve from the T-Service DVD box set and laid it on the desk. "I've now seen all the existing episodes of this show. Seasons 1 and 2."

"So you claim you were late, because watching DVDs until you fall asleep on the sofa is actually work?" Jill said with a snigger.

"It's a hard job, but someone's got to do it," I replied, glaring at her.

Peter caught my eye. "Word to the wise, son. Don't try to claim overtime."

I shrugged. "So that's the Sixties done, and today I'm going to start on 1972. Jason Zodiac's Glam Rock stage."

Jill snorted out a humorless laugh. "Brickies in eyeliner tottering around on platform heels? Oh, yes, well, good luck with that."

"You're going to be investing in some Flying Saucers and Sherbert Dips, eh?" said Peter with a grin. "Don't have too many, that sherbert will make your head explode."

"No, actually, I'll be investing in a copy of _The Tomorrow Strain_. I drained the thick creamy dregs of my coffee and cleared my throat, ready for the little speech I had rehearsed. "In 1971 ITV released a Christmas one-hour solo Jason Zodiac special. The recording was lost."

"And your point is?"

I grinned. "I now have a source that may be able to locate existing film of that recording."

"Get it," hissed Mimi. "I'll make the deal with Sky Channel."

"I don't want to question anyone's authority," Peter drawled, "but I'm not exactly sure we're doing the right thing here. I mean, don't you think we're killed the nostalgia thing now? There's _I Love 1981_ and annual repeats of all the Morecombe and Wise Xmas Specials and Dad's Army never off the screen – I mean, don't you think even the Baby Boomers are sick of it all by now?"

"That's not the point we're trying to make." Mimi took a sip of her mineral water and turned to him. "We're digging up these people not just to make money out of them. We're digging them up to laugh at them. Don't you remember Bez on _Celebrity Big Brother_? All that talk about the show resurrecting his career? What bullshit. The viewers didn't watch because one of the original Happy Mondays had returned to shock and surprise the world. They watched because they wanted to see some aging E-head get in the video confessional and make a _total twat out of himself_."

"That's all well and good," I said, to the chorus of knowing, throaty giggles that went around the table, "but I don't think that's a good example. Jason actually meant something – I mean, he stood up for something, and there's a long list of urban legends going back..."

"Oh darling, am I upsetting you?" She put down her glass of water and beamed at me. A full, pearly-toothed expensive dental-work smile. "Am I spoiling your image of Jason? Is he your new hero now, Jamie, are you dressing like him yet?"

Oh, shit. I stopped talking. When Mimi was sarcastic, she was at her most dangerous.

"Yes, Jason is an old hippy, or an old punk, or an old crusty raver, or whatever you want to call him," she continued, "and there's a lot of mystery surrounding his name. So let's take that mystery and rip it to shreds and feed it to the public. Because the public are pigs, basically. They'll eat anything that we give them, even if it's their own shit wrapped up in thirty-year-old tinsel."

I stared back at her. Even Jill and Peter looked a bit shocked.

"Why?" I said eventually.

Mimi was now going through her handbag, and she looked up at me blankly. "Well, why not?" She pulled out a stick of gum and unwrapped it angrily. She'd never really recovered from the London smoking ban. "There's no God, the Prime Minister is a rich sadistic idiot, the Archbishop of Canterbury is a pervert, everyone on TV is either a cokehead or gay. Or both. Remember all those people you looked up to in your childhood? They were kiddy-fiddlers, darling. There are no heroes any more, because the public doesn't want heroes. They want shallow, fucked-up celebrities so they don't feel so shallow and fucked-up themselves. _Do I have to read your job description to you?_ "

Outside in the corridor, Peter stopped me before I slunk back to my desk with my metaphorical tail between my legs. "Listen, Jamie, that wasn't very clever, pissing off Mimi like that."

"Yeah, sorry mate, it's just that when she's in one of her moods I feel like...like emptying one of her bottles of Evian over her head."

He chuckled. "If that was me, I'd dump something much worse than that over her. But seriously, Jamie, why didn't you tell her where you're getting this lost recording from?"

"I didn't tell her because I don't know."

His eyebrows seemed to be trying to climb over his glasses. "An anonymous tip?"

"An anonymous email, actually."

"Interesting." He gave me a smile that maybe was supposed to be sly but just made him look like yet another pervert. "I'd love to have a Deep Throat."

So back at the cluttered desk, I called up an old friend at _Melody Maker_ and got him to send me some scanned pages from the archives.

I had my notes on Jason Zodiac and I'd seen all the existing episodes from the original series of _The T-Service_. I'd watched the missing episodes that Matt McKenzie and Gerald Moore had given me. Matt was quite blasé about the whole thing, but Gerald's telephone calls were getting increasingly...eccentric. There'd been quite a few coincidences since I'd started writing these articles, but that's the thing about coincidences – they're around you all the time, you just don't see them until you're looking for them. Then there was The Big Glitch – that's what the media was calling it – one month ago. My computer had been fine for the last month, but I'd installed some new anti-virus software, just in case.

Then there was the matter of the...hallucination.

I thought I had actually seen the missing Jason Zodiac, while looking out of Gerald Moore's window into the car park below. For days my mind had refused to deal with the visual message, dismissing it as simple wish-fulfillment.

"Everything's normal except me," I muttered to the computer. "I'm going around the bend, on a Triumph Bonneville."

If that was how this assignment was going to affect me, maybe I should turn it down, I thought. Get Mimi to put me on something else, like Graham Norton's checkered past or the Nolan Sisters revival, and finish the Jason series right here and now.

But...no. My blood was up. There were things I wanted to know, but I couldn't explain why.

In 1972, I was seventeen, just discovering girls, booze, and music. Good music, which in those days I considered to be Led Zep, Black Sabbath and Lynard Skynrd. Swanning about Brentwood with my Afghan cut-off and arguing with Mum and Dad every time _Love Thy Neighbour_ was on the telly.

I bought the T Rex singles but I never called myself a Glam Rocker because it just seemed too poofy. Not for me the likes of The Sweet, or Chicory Tip, or Slade, thank you, because they were all over the radio like chickenpox.

But then there was Bowie. And Jason Zodiac. And Jerome Jerome Smith.

Jason Zodiac had left the BBC when _The T-Service_ series came to an end, but in 1971, he drew up a deal with ITV – and he turned up on the kid's TV show Magpie, saying he was planning a comeback. He starred in _Children of the Revolution_ , the 1971 solo Jason Zodiac Christmas special, and in 1972 he went on tour with his new band – the Pale Angels – to promote their first and only studio album, _Space Voodoo_. Unlike his old band The Banana Sundial, he wasn't the vocalist/guitarist, this time. He was the manager. The face of the band and the star of The Pale Angels was...Jerome Jerome Smith.

How can I describe J. J. Smith? A sequined footnote in history, a treasure lost down the back of the big fake-leather sofa of pop culture?

Even for the standards of the time, he looked weird. In press appearances, he always had the same pale face glittering with painted stars. He had no eyebrows, just finely sketched black lines filled in with red eye shadow. He tottered around with long, skinny legs on platform boots under huge bell-bottoms, a feather boa wrapped around his alabaster neck. Strangest of all, he had deformed hands; he seemed to be missing a few joints in his long, thin fingers, which made people at the time wonder if he'd ever picked up a guitar in his life before.

The copy-fax machine hummed and I stood up to collect the pages. Scanned copies of _Melody Maker_ for 22nd January 1972.

The typeface was too small, the paper had stained brown with age, but it was still readable. This was the longest press interview J. J. Smith ever gave, at Jason Zodiac's own studio in Notting Hill, with Jason standing behind him the whole time. The interviewer's choice of words baffled me until I realized that Kubrick's _A Clockwork Orange_ had come out a couple of years before. The interviewer was speaking in Nadsat – the artificial language invented by Anthony Burgess for the novel.

MM: I was there at the Hammersmith Odeon and I viddied all the little devotchkas horning and lubbilibbing backstage. Horrorshow, Mr. Valentine, horrorshow bolshy. Can you pony why The Pale Angels are such a choodessny band right now?

JJS: Yeah, it's about cosmic energy, you know, cosmic laws. Your life is mapped out at birth and the universe knows what your life will be, but only when the time's right, mama. Stop it, mama. Everything's connected to everything else, each part of your body is connected to an element, a metal, a planet, and...(looking behind him and sniggering) part of the Zodiac, man. Glam rock, spaceships dock, boys are girls and girls are boys, man. It's all one. Opposites attract and opposites get together, man. I wish I knew.

MM: Were you surprised at so many droogs kapetting your debut single?

JJS: Oh, it was a gas. We can't be confortable being an underground act, you know, we want everyone to hear our music, oh, we want to do concert tours. Help me out here, mama. There are Chinese poets who spend five years writing one poem and when they've finished, the poem is just three lines long. Three lines, and the world explodes, mama. Who gave it to him? Who gave it to him?

MM: So, where do you get all those ideas in your gulliver?

JJS: I don't know, man, to tell you the truth – the truth is, I've always felt like I'm a vehicle for someone else. Something else. Oh, please let me up, please shift me.

MM: I think everyone's had that bezoomy feeling.

JJS: That settles it, yeah. They feel they're not just here for themselves, and they turn to the Bible and it's Jesus or Buddha, you know, heavy. Please help me out – it's all probabilities, I can see everything, I can see everything happening at the same time and I try to draw them in, I try to draw them in for him.

MM: For who?

JJS: For _him_. I pick different eras and I go back and I pick out things that happened in the War, in the Empire, and I push them through to 2001 and see what happens. Please, mother, it's all psychic coordinates.

MM: Are you govoreeting about...computers?

JJS: I'm just a rock and roll star, man, I don't get involved with computers. Look out! It's like, null and void, I believe in rock and roll and my own theory of probability. The computers, they'll just come up with different answers, man. _(Shouting)_ Nervous ducks! Nervous ducks! The egg is in the incubator and the eagle, the eagle is going to eat its own wings.

MM: Er...interessovat! And what about your plans for the coming tour?

JJS: Didn't you hear me? I said I don't really understand what I'm talking about. I'm just assembling points, I've got to puzzle through it, and they turn it into music, they turn it into songs, and people who listen to the songs have got to take all they can from it. I'm not feeling well. It's information, that's all, it's information, assemble the data and see if it fits in with the information I have. Please! I need coordinates! I'm finished here, I'm so tired!

I sat back from the computer screen and took a swig of tea.

To paraphrase the reporter, at this point J. J. became visibly distressed, and had trouble breathing. Jason went out and came back with a cylinder of oxygen and a mask, and began applying it to J. J.'s face. That was the signal to end it.

So much for the interview. What about the concerts?

After reading half a dozen reviews online – reviews that ranged from ecstatic hyperbole to reactionary outrage – I tried to find something on their only TV appearance, the guest appearance of The Pale Angels on the Granada TV music show, _The Final Programme_ , 5pm Saturday February 19th 1972.

Nothing. I took a deep breath, tried to ease the stiffness out of my shoulders, and then handed the job over to the memories stacked up in my back brain.

Saturday afternoon teatime. Cheese and Branston Pickle sandwiches followed by Battenburg cake. Dad watching the football results on Grandstand, and getting lulled to sleep by Len Martin's mesmeric voice – "Sheffield Wednesday, one; Wolverhampton Wanderers, nil". Me getting up to stealthily change the channel. Tony Bastable, the hippy-looking bloke from Magpie, introducing the Pale Angels.

Camera close-up on the band, Jason in a silvery one-piece jump suit, wraparound shades and Flying V guitar, and J. J. Smith center stage in a quilted green three-piece suit, yellow waistcoat, and huge red plastic boots.

Jason started playing. The first chords of their new single. J. J. picked up the microphone to sing –

And the picture disappeared, shrinking into a tiny white dot, as the TV, the living room, the whole house, sank under the weight of the heavy dark curtain thrown over it.

Power cuts. The miner's strike, electricity shortages, a country in crisis. Edward Heath and the three-day-week. Of course. Dad woke up totally confused, mumbling about the WWII blackout, and Mum got the candles out.

J. J. Smith was never seen again. He vanished from both the public eye and pop history. There were some news reports of police turning up at the Granada TV offices at the time of the broadcast – apparently, as crowd control for the hysterical fans outside.

I looked at the email again. The last line read – _Ziggy Stardust, the Motion Picture: Track 16, 0:00-00:23 seconds. Listen._

I got my coat and told Elaine on reception I was off for some research. Then I went home. There was nobody in the house; Katy was still at work. I sat down in my armchair for a moment, gathering my thoughts, and then went upstairs to my CD collection.

Today had brought back a lot of memories, and one more came back to me as I put the CD in the stack system and picked up the remote control. Someone I'd met once at college, someone in the mid-Seventies who I got so stoned with I couldn't remember his name afterwards. The unknown dopester had told me that he'd been at the final Ziggy Stardust Hammersmith gig, when Bowie announced that he was 'retiring' his alter ego Ziggy. When they started playing the final number, _Rock'n'Roll Suicide_ , a sound came through the speakers – a sound like nothing he'd heard before, a deep, hypnotic thrum that got right inside the mind and the body. Suddenly everyone was stripping off their own clothes and grabbing each other, kissing, stroking and hugging each other, falling to the floor in one long, massive, collective orgasm. An orgy that went on until the theater was cleared and everyone was out on the streets, weeping, exhausted, all filled with the sense that something wonderful was over. Something wonderful...had died.

Track 16. _Rock'n'Roll Suicide_. I pressed the button for 'play'. The sound of Bowie's voice, in the cavernous acoustics of the Odeon, filled my living room. "Not only is this the last concert of the tour...but...it's the last concert we'll ever do."

Cue the cries of shock and disbelief from the crowd. I leant forward to put my ears closer to the speaker.

There. How come I'd never noticed before? A man's voice, howling;

"J. J. Smith, you are avenged!"

##

##  1976:

GOD SAVE THE QUEEN

If the psychedelic movement of the late Sixties was a revolution of the head, then the Punk movement of the middle Seventies was a revolution of the body. Piercing with safety pins, scarification with razor blades, Sid Vicious mutilating himself on stage: these transgressive and transformative rituals were a direct challenge to the dominant culture of the United Kingdom. This was a self-administered rite of initiation for British youth, in a society that lacked any meaningful transition from child to adult, and lacked any credible role models to guide the youth into a spiritually aware world in which they meant something.

\- R J Black, "The Mad Parade," p. 234.

There are still a few people who remember exactly where they were when they heard JFK had been shot. There are many of us who remember exactly what they were doing when they heard Princess Diana was dead. For me, I can remember with absolute clarity where I was when I first heard the Sex Pistols' _God Save The Queen._

I was in a tiny record shop in Sheffield, blowing my student allowance on vinyl like I usually did. The crashing drums and the sawing guitars bawled out of the shop's loudspeakers, and when Johnny Rotten snarled the first line, I froze, breaking out in a cold sweat.

You know in the movies when soldiers walk across a battlefield and step on a landmine, there's an audible click? They stop moving, because they know that within the next few seconds, their world is going to explode, rip them apart, and spread their body parts over the surrounding area. That's how it felt. I couldn't move, because I knew I was in the presence of something utterly explosive and dangerous. By the time the band had got to their final chorus of screaming "No Future", the land mine had gone off and I'd been blown apart. I was about to be picked up and put together again with the parts fitting in new, unexpected, ways.

It's easy to be cynical about Punk now, but nobody at the time had any doubt about the movement's sincerity. The UK had sunk into mass lethargy and despair, riddled with unemployment, and inflation. Britain was culturally and politically bankrupt.

At a time like that Jason Zodiac was busier than ever.

My name is Jamie Carter, and I work for Fugue magazine. The first three installments of _Whatever Happened to Jason Zodiac?_ had so far got a pretty good reaction from the readership, and – more to the point – a thumbs-up from the editor-in-chief.

So here I was, on an April Wednesday night, London switching between hours of sunshine and rain and blustery wind as if the British Isles suffered from multiple personality syndrome, on my way to a meeting with an old colleague, someone who'd met Jason Zodiac on several occasions back in the day. Back in the heady days of Punk, when for a brief while music was actually subversive again. Robert James Black was the founder of the notorious Queer Street fanzine, writer for the NME during the late Seventies, and author of _The Mad Parade_ , perhaps the best work on the subject of Punk after Jon Savage's seminal _England's Dreaming._

Not to mention being an occasional drinking buddy of mine.

Of course, with 1977 being the year of the Royal Jubilee, the Empire tried to put on a show of glory and tradition, pomp and circumstance. Bunting and Union flags and pictures of Her Majesty hanging outside Brutalist post-war council houses. To maintain the façade of grandeur, the lie that Britain was still a country worth living in, the Empire had its defenders. The police. The Sun and the Daily Mail. The BBC. The revived version of _The T-Service_ drama series.

It's easy to dismiss the 1976/77 version of the show (renamed _The World Service_ ) as formulaic and by-the-numbers, but at the time it was hyped as a radical and original re-interpretation of the original show. The first episode was screened on the tenth anniversary of the original series, and the BBC persuaded two original cast members to return, the actors who played Tangerine and Jason Zodiac, along with four new characters.

The new team leader was the American agent Lee Anderson, AKA the Stainless Steel Man; an ex-marine with robotic arms and legs to replace the limbs he'd lost in the Vietnam War. The Caber was a giant masked Scotsman in a kilt with the strength of ten men. Vodyanoi was a female water-breathing Russian agent meant to be a liason with the Soviets, but later turned out to be the sole survivor of a lost aquatic civilization. Mr. 33 was a British agent who could change his physical appearance by pressing the buttons on the wristwatch permanently grafted to his left wrist. The interesting thing about him was that you never saw Mr. 33's true face; he was played by one or two different guest stars every show, which led to some interesting cameos (Ian Ogilvy and Leonard Rossiter were natural fits for the show. Bruce Forsyth? Frankie Howerd? Not so much).

The series was hailed as a darker, grittier and more realistic version of the original show, but it quickly degenerated into the usual runaround involving mad scientists and alien invaders. It was a moderate ratings success but things went pear-shaped when production started for the second series, in March 1977. The cast went to Shepperton studios to film the sixth episode of the second series, _Night of the Coccinellidae_ , a tale of a swarm of carnivorous insects (inspired by the 1976 drought and plague of ladybirds). Reports say that Jason took one look at the main villain, an actor in a giant ladybird-shaped rubber suit, burst out laughing and walked off the set. He pulled one of his famous disappearing acts. The BBC made seven episodes without him and screened them in the autumn, but the show flopped. They tried to be inventive, rejigging the scripts to cover the loss of the star. In two shows Jason was in comatose in hospital, with a lookalike between the sheets; then, for the rest of the series, his mind was switched into another man's body, so Jason's role could be played by a different actor (John Castle).

It didn't work. Plug pulled. Show cancelled.

With these memories running through the projector of my mind's eye, I jogged up the stairs of Leicester Square tube station and headed out into the discordant Soho dusk. R. J. Black had agreed to meet me at his favorite watering hole, the French House on Dean Street, one of the Bohemian bars that resisted commercialization and remained a fond meeting spot for the West End's stage and TV luvvies. I pushed open the door, stepping into the misty, yeasty warmth, ignored by the clusters of eclectic-looking men and women ferociously busy in conversation.

I moved through the pub, and caught sight of a man about my age propping up the bar on his own, reading the Guardian. He was dressed in black from head to foot; leather jacket, turtleneck sweater, jeans, winkle-pickers, black trademark trilby hat jammed onto black shoulder-length hair.

He put the paper down as I stepped in front of him. "Oi, mate!" he yelled at me. "Did you just punch out Timothy Dalton?"

Private joke. Once I'd drunkenly bumped into some random bloke here in the French House whose face I half-recognized, thought was an old friend of mine, and insisted on buying a drink for him. It was only when I got back to my own table that I realized who the guy was because R. J. asked me in puzzled awe, "Did you just buy Timothy Dalton a drink?"

Ever since then it was our ritual greeting. "Did you just have tea with Timothy Dalton?" "Did you just grope Timothy Dalton?" – you get the picture.

"Are you still drinking real ale?" I asked in reply.

"Nothing but," he said proudly. "They've got Woodforde's Wherry as a guest beer this month. I'll have a half of that."

We eventually got served and propped our glasses on the wide windowsill near the side door. Somewhere, the PA was attempting to pipe John Coltrane into the pub's atmosphere, but the rising hubbub of drunken conversation made it totally pointless.

"I've been reading your articles," R. J. said. "They're pretty good. I was talking to Jake the other day and your name came up and we both said, yeah, they're the best pieces on retro culture we've seen in a long time."

Considering the reputation R. J. had for being grumpy and scathing in conversation, this was praise indeed. I couldn't help smiling. "So you know why I wanted to speak to you," I told him.

"Jason's punk days. Oh, yes indeedie." He sniffed, flicked the fringe out of his eyes, preoccupied with swishing the beer around in his glass.

"Personally, I think you should drop it," he said finally. He said it so quickly, in a low mumble, trying to avoid eye contact, that at first I couldn't believe what I'd heard. I asked him to repeat it.

"I think you ought to stop," he said, some of his famous belligerence rising to the surface. "You've written enough. Let the rest be a mystery, it's better off that way. People don't need to know the truth."

"But this is just starting to get interesting," I said. "Old footage of the TV show has turned up, archive recordings, bootlegs, people are talking about this kind of stuff again..."

"But it doesn't go anywhere," R. J. said, taking a deep swig of his ale. "Look at the facts. There was no death certificate ever issued but when the cops investigated, they found no birth certificate. No social security number. No permanent address. The guy didn't even seem to have any family. Jason Zodiac was the stage name of Jason Jones, but there's no official record of a 'Jason Jones' ever existing. If the cops couldn't find anything back in 1999, what makes you think you can now?"

I shifted uncomfortably. I didn't want R. J. to think...no, he wouldn't, would he? This was just a job.

Strictly professional.

"Well, the actors in the old show...Gerald Moore, Matt Mackenzie...they seem to know more than they're telling."

R. J. closed his eyes and pursed his lips. It was an old habit of his, or more like a facial tic, a grimace he made whenever he heard something he classed as bollocks.

"I've had anonymous tips," I pressed on. "Someone's got hold of my personal email address."

"Yeah, well, rock on with that." He knocked back the last of his ale and sniffed again, a deep snort like he was trying to clear a double decker bus out of his sinuses. "My round, ace reporter. Same again."

I took a few deep breaths, checked my cell phone and sent a text to Katy while R. J. was at the bar, scanned the crowd for any celebs in tonight. Nobody I knew. I tried to make sense of what R. J. had told me. He was notorious for being a contrary bugger, but even so...

"Listen," R. J. said when he got back, placing the beers on the windowsill. "Do you remember the Sex Pistols publicity stunt the night before the Jubilee?"

"The boat trip down the river Thames," I said straight away. "You and Tony Parsons covered it for the NME, and he article came out a few days ago before the Great Canine Protest of 1977. They were all on the boat; the Pistols, Malcolm McLaren, Vivienne Westwood...and Jason Zodiac."

"Let me tell you what really happened that night," he said, a grim note of confession in his voice.

"We all set off from Charing Cross Pier late in the afternoon, and we were feeling pissed off right from the start. This was meant to be a big two-fingers to the Crown, playing _God Save The Queen_ while floating next to the House of Commons, but the boat was full of wankers. Music biz journos and media toffs scoffing the champers and vol au vents from the hospitality table and having a good laugh at how jolly naughty it all was. Fuckers. Well anyway, the Pistols played a couple of numbers on a stage set up on the poop deck, and then they stopped to tune up their guitars. That's when we felt it. The boat was shaking, trembling, like...I don't know, like the engines were going out of control. People started to get worried and they asked the crew what was happening. Malcolm McLaren was at the other side of the stage, talking to the band, so I went around the back to see what Jason was doing." He stopped, swigged his beer, wiped the froth from his lips.

"Jason had rigged up another sound system behind the stage. You couldn't see it unless you walked behind the safety curtain and around the secondary cabin. He'd lashed together these machines – a keyboard, an old computer, two stacks of speakers, and he'd wired them to a big parabolic reflector dish. And he was pointing the dish at the Houses of Parliament."

I lowered my gaze to the beer glass, trying to picture the scene. "What was he doing?"

"That's what I asked him. 'Tell you later, R. J.', he said, 'I just need another minute.' But we didn't have another minute because the captain was turning the ship around. He must have thought the vibrations would damage the hull or something, and he decided to head back to Charing Cross Pier."

"I thought the captain turned back because a fight broke out between the Pistols fans and the photographers?"

"That's what we were _told_ to write. So all the toffs were on the poop deck wondering what the hell was going on, and Jason came back through the curtain and called me and Tony. We followed him around the back, then the Pistols followed us, and Jason said, 'You see this kit? We have to dump it in the river.' I was like, you what? – but Jason said, 'I'm not kidding. We can't let the cops get hold of this.' So that's what we did.

I stared at him. "You threw it in the river?"

"Malcolm was like, 'Hang on, you've got some valuable stuff here,' but Jason said, 'It all belongs to EMI Records,' and that made Johnny's eyes light up. So me, Tony, Malcolm, Johnny, Sid, Steve, Pete – we all unplugged a bit each and threw it over the side."

"Do you think it's still down there?"

"At the bottom of the Thames? Who knows? We still don't know what it was all for. The ship took us back to Charing Cross Pier and of course, there were loads of cops waiting. I was pushed around a bit but Malcolm, Johnny, Jason...they all got a beating. It wasn't pretty in those days."

R. J. adjusted his trilby, sniffed again, and looked disparagingly around the pub. "People think they know the story, but they know fuck all," he said mournfully, "and maybe it's better that way. Did you know the opening riff from _Pretty Vacant_ is the riff from the Abba song _Fernando_ , played backwards? Well it is. And you know what they say about music played backwards, don't you?"

"Let's not get into that," I said hastily. "Look, R. J., I know what you're getting at, but I really think what I'm doing is...well, Jason was special. He came from an age when music meant something. And...sorry mate, but I'm not going to let people forget it."

"I see." R. J. grimaced again, and drained his beer. "Well, in that case, if you want to know more of what really went on, you should look for the Zengineers."

Even though the pub was crowded and the conversations were deafening, the two of us seemed to have dropped into a little bubble of quiet.

"I've heard that name before recently," I said. "What does it mean? Who are they?"

"I don't know." R. J. lifted up his hat, pushed a hand through his thinning hair. "The only thing I could find out is there are nine Zengineers, and Jason was one of them. Whatever that means."

He shifted his gaze towards the door. "So good hunting."

We left the French House and crossed over into Wardour Street, with the blustery April air carrying its threat of rain into the Soho night around us. R. J. stopped and lifted his head up, questing like a hound on the hunt. "Do you hear that?"

"What?"

"Old things. Old things, being shaken out of the woodwork. You make a racket, like the Punk bands did and they're shaken loose,. And London is full of old things," he said, spitting out the words one by one. "Very. Old. Things."

I was just thinking of how to reply when two figures stepped from the turning into Old Compton Street and momentarily blocked our way. I stepped into the gutter to walk around them, R. J. went to the left, still ranting at full speed, and one of the figures turned with a drunken whoop and tried to lift the trilby off R. J.'s head.

Bad move. R. J. slapped the guy's hand away, turning and delivering a precision-strike curse, and then trying to walk on.

"Oi!" The figure grabbed R. J.'s sleeve, pulling him back. "Give us your hat, mate. Let us try it on, your boyfriend won't mind."

I stopped and looked at the guy speaking. Skinny jeans, trainers, navy blue Top Man hoody, in his thirties going prematurely bald, eyes dulled with too much beer and soccer and curries and reality TV. Come on, R. J., I thought, walk away, and we'll back at the tube station in five minutes. Just give the guy one of your witty, diplomatic lines and make him laugh.

"Nobody touches the fuckin' hat!" R. J. yelled, and punched the guy in the face.

It was a solid enough blow to make the guy reel back and bend over, his fingers touching the blood springing from his split lip. "Fuck," he said in a low, flat voice, before lifting his head up and staring murderously at R. J. "Come on, then! I'm handy, you c-"

Two more punches, nose and chin, and then R. J. lashed out with his boot and kicked him in the gut.

I've seen more than enough fights in my time. I've seen fights over in a few seconds, and fights that dragged on and on with the fighters rolling around on the floor, I've seen people viciously beaten. But I don't think I've seen anything like what happened that night.

The guy who'd looked and sounded threatening turned and ran away. Christ knows what happened to his friend. Not much of a friend if you ask me, disappearing when his mate was in trouble, but that's London folk for you. As for R. J., he didn't laugh or look angry or speak to me, he started walking after his attacker. Didn't even bother to run. Just walked, his hat back on his head and a scary blank look on his face. I followed R. J., calling his name, wondering what the hell had happened to our night out.

The 'handy' guy turned the corner and ran into Rupert Street, the gateway to the sleaziest part of Soho. A big telephone box stood on the corner, decorated to look like a Chinatown pagoda. People wandered past in twos or threes, too far away to really notice the little drama playing out at the top of the road. Did Mr. Handy turn and fight? Did he go into a shop or try to flag down a taxi? No. The nameless attacker, of all things, went inside the phone box and tried to hold the door shut.

Maybe he had the bright idea of calling the police? I guess I'll never know. R. J. reached the phone box and pulled the door open, unleashing a string of curses and a clumsy punch from the man inside. R. J. picked up the telephone receiver, smashed the guy over the head with it, wrapped the cord around the guy's neck and pulled it tight.

By this time I'd reached the phone box and I was standing at the door, pulling at R. J.'s arm, trying to get him off the guy who was now on his knees. I kept shouting R. J.'s name, my face right next to his, until he turned and glared at me through his glasses like he'd only now realized I was still here.

R. J. let go of the cord and stepped out of the phone box, the door swinging shut, the guy inside trying groggily to stand up. "What the fuck were you doing?" I said. "We'll get arrested. That guy, he could take you to court, you know. It doesn't matter..."

"They won't get me." R. J. turned, his face blank with suppressed rage, looking at me but seeing right through me. "I won't let them. Jamie, for fuck's sake, be careful. They'll come for you too."

Then he stalked off, turning into Peter Street without a goodbye or a backward glance. I stood there gaping like an idiot. What? I knew R. J. always had a paranoid thread running through his writings, but we'd just bumped into a couple of pissed-up casuals. They weren't exactly MI5 material.

Just when I was wondering how my drinking-with-a-buddy night had turned into a pile of shit, a godawful crash came from around the corner. A thunderclap of breaking glass, then a shocked silence, then the strident ringing of burglar alarms. Several of them.

I turned into Peter Street. The pavement stretching away from me was covered in what looked like pulverized glass. The passersby stood on the other side of the street, their voices mixing together in shock and apprehension, asking questions to each other that none could answer. The shop windows gaped open, empty of glass except for scattered shards and spikes clinging dangerously to the edges of the frames. The burglar alarms rang out in deafening cacophony.

I scanned the crowd, looking for R. J. No sign of him. He'd only been a few steps in front, but now, there was no sign. Disappeared. Melted away into the drunken Soho haze.

Ha, ha, ha. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

##

##  1979:

LONDON CALLING

The following is a fax sent anonymously to Fugue magazine on May 10th, and marked for the attention of Mr. Jamie Carter. It appears to be a photocopy of a letter considerably faded with age.

Ch Con Adam Roberts, QPM,

Sussex Police Headquarters

Church Lane, Lewes

East Sussex, BN7 2DZ

General Matthew Julian Dole, GCB, CBE, DSO.

5th Floor, Zone K

Main Building

Whitehall, London

SW1A 2HB

DATE: June 10th, 1979

SUBJECT: Clapham Wood Incident

DO NOT COPY

DO NOT REMOVE

DO NOT CROSS-REFERENCE IN ANY OTHER DOCUMENT

General Dole,

I am writing to you, at the request of your department, to give further details of the incident of June 4th of this year.

First, some information regarding Clapham Wood. It is a densely forested area on the South Downs in West Sussex, just off the A280, that has a particularly bad reputation among the local residents. It was the site of several rumors regarding 'cultists' of some kind conducting ceremonies among the trees at night, reported in 1967, 1968, and 1972. Several dogs have gone missing in broad daylight, sometimes when they were just yards away from their owners. The bodies have never been found.

In the early morning of June 4th, Findon police station received numerous calls reporting 'strange lights' seen in the skies over the woods near Clapham village. Car 23 was dispatched, and the two officers in the car were PC Craig Phillips and PC Ian Sandford.

The following is the transcript of the messages received from PC Sandford's radio, which began at one-thirty a.m.

CONTROL: Whisky November, please report location, over.

PC SANDFORD: Roger Control, we have arrived in Clapham Wood, we are on the path going through it about five hundred yards away from the main road. We can see some branches broken off the trees and lying on the ground a few yards away. It looks like someone's had a good swing on them, but...

PC PHILLIPS: Ian, did you see that?

(transmission break)

PC SANDFORD: Control, it looks like someone is walking through the woods and waving flashlights around. We see lights moving around the trees at ground level.

PC PHILLIPS: I think they're coming this way.

PC SANDFORD: Probably just kids having a laugh. We are leaving the car and going to investigate.

CONTROL: Proceed with caution, Whisky November.

(There followed a break in transmission for about five minutes. When PC Sandford next called in, his voice was heavily distorted and some parts of the message were indecipherable.)

PC SANDFORD: Control, we need help, I don't know where we are...we've been lost in this wood for hours, where's the backup? The lights are all around us, and the

sound...

(indecipherable static)

CONTROL: Whisky November, please give current location, over.

PC SANDFORD: Oh Christ, oh God, the sound, it's in my head, please do something! PC Phillips has collapsed, we need help...the sound! They say we are dead men, Control, they say we are –

(transmission ends)

Three units were dispatched to the area of Clapham Wood PC Sandford had specified. They found Car 23 with both front doors open, and nearby the broken branches mentioned in the call, but no sign of the two police officers or the 'people with flashlights' they had reported.

The units commenced a search of the wood that lasted until daybreak, when several British Army vehicles arrived and announced that Clapham Wood was off limits. My officers were met by Captain P----- who basically ordered them out of the area, and the troops started putting up roadblocks and setting up their mobile control centre.

At about ten o'clock that morning, the duty officer went to visit the families of the two missing officers, and found both houses empty. We subsequently received a telephone call from the same Captain P----- informing us that the families had been taken into 'protective custody'. The roadblocks around Clapham Wood were in place for five days.

The above transcript, sir, represents all that I personally know of this incident. I wish to make an official complaint and make clear the anger and frustration I feel regarding this entire situation. This is the United Kingdom, sir, people and their families cannot just 'disappear' without repercussions. I accept that nothing concerning this incident will be released to the press but I insist that a private enquiry be held to establish what happened. I await your reply.

Yours Sincerely,

Ch Con Adam Roberts, QPM,

Sussex Police.

Email received May 14th.

FROM: t-morgan@waitrose.co.uk

SUBJECT: FAO Mr. Jamie Carter – Appeal for Information (Zodiac)

DATE: ----/5/14

TO: info@fugue.com

Dear Mr. Carter,

First, let me say what a great job you're doing with the Jason Zodiac articles for Fugue. I have fond memories of both the Banana Sundial concerts and _The T-Service_ TV series, and I show copies of your magazine to all my friends.

You gave out an email address in the magazine and appealed for information regarding Jason Zodiac and his whereabouts. Well, here I am, because I have a story of the day I met not only Jason but also Joe Strummer of The Clash, and I think you might be interested.

My name is Terence Morgan and I'm over fifty years old now. You wrote in your article on the Sex Pistols that you would never forget the day you heard _God Save the Queen._ Well, I can tell you there's one day I will never forget– and that's the day Joe Strummer died.

I was in Naples at the time, of all places. My wife Julie and I had gone to Italy for our Christmas holiday with the kids, and we'd driven over from the Amalfi coast. In fact, we'd just got into the room, put down our suitcases, and sat down on the bed. We flicked on the TV and the BBC worldwide news, and there it was. Joe Stummer passed away at age fifty after a heart attack. My wife and I jumped to our feet and screamed _'What?'_ – we couldn't believe it. I still remember the shock of it all.

You see, I knew Joe Strummer. I met him on maybe four or five occasions, enough to be on first name terms. Let me explain.

I've been a record collector all my life. The first seven-inch single I bought was David Bowie's _Space Oddity_ , and the first album I bought was T. Rex's _Electric Warrior._ I started buying Punk singles in 1977; it took me a while to get into Punk, but when I did, I didn't mess about. The Clash, The Jam, The Stranglers, The Buzzcocks, The Undertones, The Rock Against Racism gigs; I saw them all at least three times each. I got to know Julie, my wife, through the records and the gigs. Our first date was a Clash gig at the ICA. Afterwards we went back to my student flat, I put _Working for the Clampdown_ on the turntable and she started singing along and imitating the way Mick Jones swung his guitar about on stage.

That's when I fell in love with her.

I studied economics at University College, London, and lived in a run-down student house in Hammersmith. In the summer of 1979 I had a part-time job in a corner shop in Pimlico. It was run by Mr. Gill, a huge Sikh with thick NHS glasses and mustache, turban, the full monty. He looked a bit scary and he was dead serious about money but as a boss, I've met people far worse.

Anyway, it turned out The Clash were working just down the road, in Wessex Studios. They were recording the _London Calling_ album. They used to play football in a little park across the square and call in the shop afterwards for beer and crisps and ham rolls. Brilliant, eh? My claim to fame. I've got all their autographs on shop receipts and flyers – Mick Jones, Paul Simonon, Topper Headon. And Joe. Poor, wonderful Joe.

Let me get to the point. On the last day of August that year I started work at five, as usual, looking forward to knocking off at ten, getting over to the Black Horse for a couple of pints and back to Colin's flat for a weekend spliff. About seven o'clock – Mr. Gill was in the back room stocktaking, and the radio was playing _I Don't Like Mondays_ by the Boomtown Rats – Joe Strummer walked in. This time he wasn't with the band – he was with Jason Zodiac. I was gobsmacked. I knew from reading the NME that they were mates, but even so, I never expected...

Joe came in wearing black drainpipe jeans, red brothel creepers, lemon yellow T-shirt and matching socks – and that famous jacket from the photo shoot, the one with PASSION IS A FASHION stenciled on it and a few razor blades and safety pins artfully placed around the lapels. Jason had never been into Punk gear, as you know. The Zodiac look was instantly recognizable, and kind of timeless – the denim cut-off with the Banana Sundial logo painted on the back, the long black hair, the tanned brown skin and shades perched on top of his long, Roman nose.

So anyway, I could tell they'd both been drinking. Joe saw me behind the till and came over. "Hi Terry, you all right?" He was great like that. Always remembered the names of his fans. We started chatting away about stuff but I noticed Jason wasn't buying anything. He seemed more interested in the door he'd just come through. He squatted down, muttering things like 'far out' and 'heavy', then got up and came over to the till.

"Mr. Zodiac," I said, trying to keep cool, "you don't know me, but..."

"No, I don't know you. What's your name?"

"Terry. Terry Morgan."

"Well listen Terry Morgan, can I ask you a question? How long has that graffiti been there?"

"What graffiti?"

He beckoned me out from behind the till and over to the shop's only door. I wasn't supposed to leave the till, and we had about five customers in the shop at the time, but...well, I went over to the door and we both knelt down and he pointed to what was bothering him.

It was a weird mess of circles and criss-crossing lines drawn in black marker pen. There were words as well, two lines of what looked like Arabic, which made me think of Mr. Gill – but he wouldn't graffiti his own door.

"How long has that been there?" Jason asked.

"I've no idea. Never seen it before."

"So it's recent?"

"Could be."

"In fact, do you think it was here before Joe and I came into our shop?"

I shrugged. I didn't know what to say, so he stood up, and so did I. "Try the door, Terry."

I did like he said, pushing the handle, expecting the little bell to ring as it opened into Pimlico High Street. It wouldn't budge. I kept pushing at it as hard as I could, then I checked the lock, and stood back, baffled.

"It's stuck," I said.

Jason turned his shades on me and grimaced, the smell of alcohol and patchouli wafting into my face. "Bit more than stuck, I'm afraid."

He walked back to the till. Both Joe and I were a bit befuddled by this time. I mean, you expect rock stars to act weird, but there's different kinds of weird, isn't there?

"Excuse me, ladies and gentlemen," Jason called, raising his voice and waving his arms. "Can I have your attention, please? Can you all come over to the till?"

There were six people in the shop: me, Joe, Jason, a middle-aged gypsy looking woman, a black woman a bit younger, and a hippy guy about my age. They all looked a bit miffed as they came over to the till with their shopping baskets. Then there were seven, because Mr. Gill came out of the back room where he'd been stocktaking. "What's all this bloody noise?" he yelled.

"Listen to me, everyone," Jason called. "The shop has been sealed off by the sigil of an Elder God. Anyone who's walked past the freezer and around the chocolate bar counter in the last few minutes has added to the power of the Sigil – a bit like spinning a prayer wheel, really. Anyone know what a prayer wheel is? Well...okay, forget that bit. But basically we've been taken out of normal time and space and pretty soon, the dimensions of this shop are going to warp and distort and...I'll try to get you out before the worst happens. Any questions?"

We all stared at him for a while until Mr. Gill said what we were all thinking. "Are you on drugs?"

Jason came out with more heavy magical stuff that went over my head. The black girl and the student went to the door, but of course it wouldn't open. Joe just laughed. Mr. Gill went behind the till saying he was going to call the police but the telephone wouldn't work. He just kept pressing the cradle down going "Hello? Hello?" until he gave up.

And then we all stopped talking, and stood there looking. Looking at what was happening at the back of the shop, and the door that Mr. Gill had come out of.

The corner shop wasn't the smallest general store I've ever seen. It had three aisles; looking in from the shop entrance, you've got the cooler with the cheese rolls and coronation chicken sarnies on the left and the freezer with the ice cream next to it, then an aisle of Curly Wurlys and Aztec bars and Milky Ways, then the Walkers and Golden Wonders crisps, then the Heinz baked beans and canned tuna, then the Branston pickle and Marmite, then the wall of newspapers and magazines and Happy Shopper toilet roll...you get the idea. Usually, you could see the whole of the shop when you're standing behind the till.

Not this time.

The fluorescent light in the freezer flickered and went out. The light bulbs in the ceiling dimmed, and the back of the shop filled up with shadows, obscuring the walls. And the shelves...

The shelves were twisting, warping out of shape. The SPECIAL OFFER signs and the cans of corned beef and the jars of marmalade and the packets of prawn cocktail crisps moved slowly and stealthily, as if small animals were prowling around behind them, shifting them out of line with rustling, scratching noises. The nicotine-stained walls undulated as I watched, swelling up and then falling back, like they were breathing.

We all moved closer to each other, a huddled, scared, little group.

"Now will you listen to me?" Jason said quietly.

It was then that the gypsy-looking woman came forward and said, "Hello, Jason. Long time no see."

Jason wasn't surprised – or if he was, he did a good job of not showing it. "Geraldine...I might have guessed. Is this anything to do with you?"

"We're in trouble, Jason. I've been tracking a lesser elemental across the West End. It went to ground here and I came in to exorcise it, but then you turned up and your aura seems to have...aggravated it."

Jason grinned. "Typical. It's always my fault."

"Well, if one of the Zengineers walks in, any elemental is going to freak out, don't you think?"

"Hang on a minute." Joe put up his big hands to appeal for sanity. "Jason, you're a mate, but I'd be happy if you could tell us what the fucking hell's going on here, pal. Mick's expecting me back in the studio coz we're half-way through _Guns of Brixton_."

Jason looked at Geraldine and she nodded.

"Geraldine here is one of the Whispering Sisters," he said. "They're a secret network of Wiccans who track down and exorcize ghosts, elementals and minor demons that have slipped off the leash and are hassling the good folk of Albion. Although the one Geraldine was tracking seems to have got a bit out of hand. Do you want to perform the ritual or shall I?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Geraldine said, a scary look in her eye.

I peeked over my shoulder at the back of the shop, and then wished I hadn't. Looking at the back wall was like looking down the wrong end of a telescope; the corners where the walls met the ceiling were stretched out into some spiraling nightmare vortex that made your eyes go funny. A black, sticky liquid was oozing over all the cartons of ice cream in what had once been the freezer.

Geraldine turned to the black woman and said, "Shopping basket."

"You what?"

"Give me your shopping basket!"

The woman looked like she was about to cry and gave her shopping basket to Geraldine, who tipped it up and dumped the contents onto the counter. Four tins of baked beans, Happy Shopper bread, a carton of milk, a bar of Cadbury's Fruit & Nut, and some other stuff I can't remember. Geraldine started waving her hands over the items, rolling her eyes back in her head and making funny noises.

"What's she doing?" Joe whispered.

"Well," Jason whispered back, "you know a long time ago, shamans used to cut open a sacrificial animal and read the guts to tell the future? The Whispering Sisters have kind of...updated the idea."

"Oh." Joe looked at me and if I hadn't been so scared, I would have laughed.

The student turned to me. "I only came in for a Kit Kat," he said in a stoned, whiny voice.

Geraldine gave a big sigh and relaxed. Jason raised his eyebrows and said "So?" and she said, "It's bad. It's really bad. We can't get back to London. It's out of the question – but if you work with me, Jason, we can expel this thing and escape to one of...the subtle realms."

"Hey!" Everyone started shouting at once, and Jason called for calm, and he started to take Geraldine off to one side for a private conversation, until Joe grabbed his arm. "Jason."

"Yeah?"

"She's lying."

They both stared at Joe and Geraldine spat out something in a foreign language, and Joe lifted his head and folded his arms. "Now look love, I might know fuck all about Elder Gods or Whispering Sisters or whatever, but I'll tell you something. I've been in the music business all my life, right, and I've worked with some right shits. I've had to put up with Bernie Rhodes for the last few years, for fuck's sake. And I know when someone's lying to me. Love, _you're lying to me right now_."

We all stood around in silence with the dark slithering around behind us. This weird kind of electricity was passing between Jason and Geraldine and then she said, "Oh, come on, who are you going to trust? Me or the singer of some sell-out Punk band?"

Whoa. That was it. Jason said, "Thanks, Joe. Okay. We're leaving."

"What?"

Jason started moving us all towards the door – in fact, he gave me such a push I nearly overbalanced. He's got pretty strong arms under that leather, I can tell you that. We all huddled by the door in a small group – even Mr. Gill had nothing to say for himself.

"Is that it?" yelled Geraldine. "You think you can leave?"

"I'm not going to be party to this," Jason said. "Whatever you summoned, you'll have to deal with it alone. You broke the rules, Geraldine."

"Well, why not?" Her face was suddenly a frightening thing to look at. The emotion made her eyes bulge, her throat tighten. "Why shouldn't I, if it got you away from that bitch Betty or Zena or whichever one you're sleeping with? You wouldn't notice me, would you? Oh no, you're too busy swanning around in front of the cameras!" She opened her handbag and groped inside it for something, her eyes on Jason. "Well, nobody will look at you when you're..."

She didn't say any more, because Joe picked up the big SPECIAL OFFER sign from the stack of tin cans by the door and hit her with it.

Now, that sign is pretty thin, and it's only plywood, but it can give you a nasty whack if an angry six-foot Punk hits you with it. Geraldine fell into the stack of baked bean cans and down they went, crashing and smashing and rolling all over the place, with her on top of them, the SPECIAL OFFER sign covering her face.

"And don't call me a sell-out!"

Jason took his sunglasses off and rubbed his eyes, put them back on and clapped his hands together. "Right! Like I said, we're getting out of here. Hold hands, everyone."

"Excuse me," I said, trying not to sound too much like a wimp. "She said we can't get out."

"Yes, we can."

"How?" screamed the black girl.

Jason shrugged. "Because Joe's wearing that jacket and he's fucking cool."

"Because I'm wearing this jacket and I'm fucking cool," Joe said. He looked really, really knackered. "I wish I knew what you were on about."

Jason reached out and gently unhooked something from the jacket's right lapel. He held it up, and it glittered in the overhead light, sparkling like it was polished silver.

Joe frowned at it. "The razor blade you gave me?"

"The razor blade. The present I gave you after the first Clash album came out."

He held it in front of his face, and the light gleamed off its edge so brightly, I had to squint to look at it. "This," Jason went on, "is the razor blade that Anton LaVey, High Priest of the Church of Satan, shaved his head with on Beltane 1966. This blade has been washed in the underground Zamzam river that flows to the lost world of Carcosa, and it can cut through any substance in this world, and quite a few in the next."

Holding the blade high, he turned and put his fist against the top middle of the doorframe. He slowly pulled his hand downward, and we all watched the razor move smoothly through the wood, and then the glass, leaving a thin black line with little wisps of smoke curling away from it. The shop was quiet except for the clicks and trilling from the gathering shadows, a soft moaning from Geraldine on the floor, and a faint hiss like a box cutter going through cardboard.

Jason bent down as he pulled the razor down to the welcome mat on the floor and then straightened up. "Right. All yours, Joe."

"My fucking pleasure."

Joe Strummer lifted his right leg up and lashed out with his boot. The door fell outward in two clean halves, out – out onto the pavement – and oh, thank God, it was the pavement of good old Pimlico High Street.

We stumbled outside, bumping into each other in the narrow doorframe. The black girl went first, then the student pushed his way through, then me, then Mr. Gill, then Joe and finally Jason. We stood on the pavement; it was still early evening, and there was nobody to see us fall out of the broken door gasping and laughing and cheering with relief, except some Indian lady in a sari on the other side of the road. We all burst into applause, and Jason and Joe looked really embarrassed.

Jason held out the sliver of blinding light in his hand. "Here's your razor back, Joe."

"Thanks, but you can keep it – I think you need it more than I do. What about Germaline or whatever her name is?"

Jason frowned. "You don't want to know," he said quietly. "Really, you don't."

Then he brightened up and clapped his hands for attention. "Okay everyone, danger's over. You can go home, relax, and, just one thing; I would appreciate it if you didn't tell anyone about this."

The student and the black woman didn't need to be told twice. They walked off, muttering to each other, and waved a quick goodbye.

"Hey, just hold your horses a minute," said Mr. Gill. "Where's my bloody shop?"

I was so glad to be out in the normal world I hadn't looked back at the shop entrance. I saw Mr. Gill, his hands on his hips, staring up at – nothing. A sheer unbroken expanse of red brick wall.

"Yes. Well. Um." Jason refused to look Mr. Gill in the face, and busied himself with brushing dust from his cut-off. "Reality has sealed the hole created by using the razor, a bit like new skin growing over a wound. The area of time and space infected by the Elder God has been removed from consensus reality. Your corner shop sort of never existed." He took a deep breath and looked away. "Sorry."

"Where's my bloody shop?" bellowed Mr. Gill.

"I think I'll be getting back to the studio," said Joe. He turned to me and winked. "Catch you later, Terry."

"I'll come with you some of the way, Joe," said Jason. "You all right for the Palladium on Saturday night?"

"Too right I am."

"Hey, wait! Wait! You bloody come back here!" yelled Mr. Gill at the two rock gods as they walked quickly down the street, then jogged, then sprinted around the corner out of sight.

And I was left with Mr. Gill, who had gone back to staring at the brick wall.

"I think I'll go," I said. "I've got to...er, go and see my Mum. I was supposed to call around tonight." Mr. Gill didn't say anything, just kept staring at the wall.

"We're having Spaghetti Hoops," I said.

And I ran off.

I bought the _London Calling_ album the day it came out. I saw Joe a few more times, from the audience when he was on stage, touring with The Clash. I never saw Jason Zodiac again. Or Mr. Gill, for that matter.

So there you are, Mr. Carter. The true story of how I met Joe Strummer and Jason Zodiac and lost my part-time job. After that day, I wondered about the Whispering Sisters and the invisible things that she said slither and crawl through London, and I wondered how much of that was true. But I didn't tell anybody. It was my secret. Until Fugue started publishing articles about the weird things that happened when Jason Zodiac was around, and then I thought, maybe now's the time.

But one thing I ask, Mr. Carter; don't be taken in by what _the other lot_ will say. You know who I mean – the ones who claim they're the _real_ fans of Jason Zodiac, and who say he's not a human being – he's a guardian angel or an avatar of a Hindu god or the last living disciple of Aleister Crowley or whatever. They're the ones who go around behaving like they've got some big secret and they're going to survive the coming Apocalypse because of the hidden messages in the Banana Sundial records. People will tell you a lot of stories, but most of them will turn out to be a right old pile of bullshit. Please be careful about what you believe.

Remember, Mr. Carter. London is drowning and these days, we all live by the river.

##

##  1980:

LOVE WILL TEAR US APART

"It may seem odd to say this, but to me, there was always something Lovecraftian about Ian Curtis's lyrics. They portrayed a vast, cold universe indifferent to and

beyond the comprehension of ordinary humans. Who exactly were the Lords mentioned in 'Day of the Lords'? Why was Curtis clearly terrified of them?"

From 'Down the Dark Streets: An Unauthorized History of Joy Division', by R. J. Black, p. 113, pub. Smith & Faulkner 2007.

Manchester.

I'd just turned onto the A537 heading for Macclesfield when the doubts began to take hold. It was four thirty in the afternoon, and there were only a few more miles before I met Simon, but I had this sudden, stabbing desire to turn the car around and give up. Go back to London. I shouldn't be here; I should be with my wife and kids.

The architecture didn't help. I'd left the fields and the bypasses and the pylons of the M6 behind and was driving past scores of high-rise apartment blocks and factories. The clouds had that peculiar luminosity that only an overcast August day in England could ever achieve. Up ahead, a group of road workers in luminous orange jackets stood in front of grotesque, hulking machines, gesticulating at a section of ripped up concrete embankment. The sight filled me with a profound sadness.

Or maybe it was the music. I was listening to a CD my son had burned for me; I'd told him I wanted to know about Dubstep, so Nick had given me this album by a guy cheerfully called 'Burial'. Sampled, distorted voices crackled over skeletal percussion and rumbling sub-bass tones, like a car radio tuned to the ghosts of long-forgotten radio stations. On the passenger seat, the newspaper headlines glared up at me: PM PROMISES MORE RIOT CONTROL MEASURES.

Anarchy in the UK? Or just 21st Century Britain?

My name is Jamie Carter and I write retro-culture features for Fugue magazine. This year, I've been working on the elusive counter-culture icon known as Jason Zodiac. I'd covered the Hippy connection, the Glam connection, and the Punk connection; now it was Manchester's turn.

Years before, the Northern city changed beyond recognition in a way that nobody expected and nobody really planned. When I was a college student at Sheffield in the late seventies, I spent a lot of weekends off my head in Manchester. In those days you were dwarfed by the decaying relics of the Industrial Revolution everywhere you went. Memories of neglect and despair behind crumbling brick, broken glass and barbed wire.

The streetlights along the cobbled streets seemed to make things darker rather than lighter; and the canals were places not meant for human beings, but homes for rats, drunks, and foul-smelling black seepages. During the day, Manchester's city centre heaved with people; but at night, the offices emptied, men and women hurried home like the aforementioned rats, and the place turned into a ghost town. A nameless, clinging depression; by the rivers, through the streets...on every corner.

And then – everything changed. On June 4th 1976, the Sex Pistols played Manchester's Lesser Free Trade Hall and as Bernard Sumner once said, 'it was like opening a door in a darkened room.' Only a few dozen people attended the gig, but over the years, thousands claimed to have been there to witness the birth of Northern punk. From this white-hot explosion came the Buzzcocks, Magazine, the ranting poet John Cooper Clarke, and Warsaw – the four young men Ian Curtis, Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook, and Stephen Morris – who soon changed their name to Joy Division.

This is the city where Tony Wilson's record label Factory set up home in first the Russell Club and then the infamous Hacienda (FAC51), where New Order and the Happy Mondays rediscovered dance, and where Acid House shagged Indie Rock and had scores of baggy, drug-addled love-children. The album cover for FAC 10, Joy Division's first album, depicted the radiation waves of a star collapsing in deep space. It was a good metaphor for the Eighties; ripples and echoes reaching out through time and space and picked up by an entire nation, a whole generation who lifted their heads in bewilderment and wondered where these unearthly signals were coming from.

Simon Briggs was there to cover all of it.

I got to know Simon when we were both working for Sounds, NME and The Face music magazines in the eighties. We spent many a time off our heads surrounded by the sharp yellow and black graphics of the Factory Dry Bar, or the Boardwalk, or the Legend Club, and once or twice the vast aircraft-hangar like ambience of the Hacienda itself. He was playing in an indie band himself, called Jake Marston and the Fresh Hearts, who got as far as meeting Tony Wilson but never following up on it.

Memories. Ghosts.

Simon had agreed to meet me not in Manchester, but in Macclesfield, in the foothills of the Pennines a few miles away – because the northern musical explosion owed so much to a young man who lived and died in this town. I was here because of something that happened in a small semi-detached house – 77 Burton Street – on 18th May 1980: the tragic death of Ian Curtis, the lead singer and lyricist of Joy Division.

I'd planned to meet Simon Briggs at the market square at six. After finally getting a place to park, I found him near one of the market stalls, jacket collar turned up against a slow drizzle of early evening August rain.

He was taller than I remembered. Unless he'd grown and I hadn't. But he still had the thick locks of brown hair, now swept back and receding slightly from his temples. He still had the tanned skin, sharp features and slight lisp that I remembered.

"I'm buying," I told him. "What'll it be? Fish and chips, like you used to have? Black pudding? Mushy peas?"

"I prefer Thai these days," he drawled. "Let's go to the Prestbury."

So we fussed with chopsticks over spicy tom kah kai, and savoured lemongrass and coconut milk-flavoured curry in the 18th century listed pub that Simon told me was his current love.

"Thanks for coming," he said.

I waved it away. "No, not at all. Thanks for taking the time to see me. How're things?"

He shrugged. "Oh well, getting by. Can't rest on my laurels, can I?"

"Didn't know you had any."

"And you, Jamie?"

"Not too bad. Except for the whole city of London falling apart thanks to those UKIP bastards, of course."

"The whole country's falling apart."

"The whole country's been falling apart for as long as I can remember."

"Remember the poll tax riots? Or the murder of PC Blakelock?"

"What about Toxteth?"

"What about St Pauls?"

We both laughed at the same time.

The waiter came with our food and we got to work on the stuff. Simon ate sparingly; it seemed like talking was more important. "I've been thinking a lot, after reading your articles. Thinking about the past. I'd be very interested to hear what R.J. has to say about all this."

"R.J. Black has disappeared," I told him. "Nobody's seen or heard from him for a few months."

He stiffened, and looked uncomfortable. "Yes...well, I wouldn't read too much into that. R.J. was always a moody bastard. Always going walkabout when he didn't feel like talking to anyone."

He reached down to his briefcase and pulled something out. A hardback diary, warped with age and wear and tear. "You're not going to believe this," he said, "but I'm quite obsessive."

"I can easily believe that."

"I don't think I told you I kept all my notebooks, ever since I started working as a journalist."

"All of them?" I started laughing, and then stopped. It might have looked like I was making fun of him, but in fact, I was deeply impressed. Someone who kept diaries from over thirty years ago?

"Well, there's a couple I've misplaced, but I've got them going back to the late seventies."

I stopped chewing and looked at him in admiration. "I wish I had," I said.

"That's why I called, I guess. Your articles made me go through the notebooks again and I noticed something I'd better tell you."

"About Jason?"

"Yes."

"And Joy Division?"

He looked up, pad thai noodles dangling from his chopsticks. "I've been connecting the dots, you might say."

"That's what intrigued me about your message, because as far as I know, Jason knew Tony Wilson..."

"...but he never met Ian Curtis, yeah. Jason's main link with Manchester was through Acid House in the late eighties. That's what I thought too. Then I rediscovered the notes I'd written just after Ian's obituary came out."

Briggs had put a bookmark in the 1980 diary, and he opened it at the entry he wanted, slipped on a pair of thin reading glasses, and peered at the wrinkled page. Then he laid it open on the table next to the vinegar bottle.

"Jamie, have you ever heard of a drug called Paramazepine?"

I shook my head.

"In the late seventies, drugs for treating epilepsy were pretty strong and had quite a few side-effects. Paramazepine was commercially available for a couple of years, and then taken off the market. And here's the peculiar thing; I can't find anything about it on the Internet. It was released by a German pharmaceutical company called Bartos Klein, and I can't find anything on them, either."

"Was Ian taking this for his epilepsy?"

"I don't think so – well, I can't find it mentioned anywhere. His wife Debbie never mentioned it in her biography of Ian, _Touching from a Distance_ , and I've never seen in any other source. But two days after Ian's funeral, my editor Andy Anderson in the Sounds London office got a telephone call from Jason Zodiac. He wanted to know if Ian had been taking Paramazepine."

I put down the chopsticks in the bowl smeared with the remains of the red curry and sat back.

"One week after Ian's death," Simon told me, "we had a visitor at our office. It was Jason himself. He said he'd come up to Manchester to see Tony and pay his respects to Ian's family."

"He'd never met Ian's family."

"He knew enough to realize that something extraordinary was happening."

That figured. The extraordinary was Jason's business.

Simon got up and went outside for a smoke, conforming to the smoking ban that had swept through all of England like a plague. While he was away I drained my lager and thought about Joy Division.

The first time I saw them on TV was on the Old Grey Whistle Test, towards the end of 1979, and it was something fascinating but deeply disturbing to watch. Ian's dark, existentialist lyrics, and his crazed dancing, hinted at emotions the human body and mind were not capable of expressing.

With hindsight, and having briefly met the other members of Joy Division after they became New Order, I understood the appalling drama taking place. Ian's spasmodic, frenzied dancing on stage was a parallel for the epileptic seizures he suffered in private. Like Voodoo priests who whirl and gyrate to the drums until they reach that ecstatic state where the Loa ride their bodies, Ian brought something back from those moments when the electrical storms swept through his brain, and put it into words and music for an unsuspecting public.

In the old days, we would have called him 'a man possessed'.

It couldn't last. The drugs that Ian took to control his epilepsy affected his personality. One moment he was laughing, then the next he was crying, then yelling at everyone to leave him alone. In May 1980 Joy Division were probably the most important band in the UK and about to embark on a US tour – but Ian's seizures were getting worse and more frequent, and he'd broken up with Debbie. He told the other members he wanted to quit the band, but they talked him out of it; they said he could take time off, sort out his life, after the tour.

He never got the chance. Before they went on tour Ian Curtis hung himself in his kitchen at home, in the early hours of May 18th.

When Simon came back, rain on his collar and Silk Cut on his breath, I had another question for him – something I couldn't believe, but couldn't keep to myself.

"Do you think Jason was asking questions because he suffered from the same thing Ian did?"

Simon nodded and grimaced. "That's what I've been wondering. Of course, there's nothing in the records to suggest Jason Zodiac was epileptic."

"There's not much in the records to suggest anything at all. Jason was like the Invisible Man. No national insurance number, no birth certificate...we're not even sure what his real name was. One door opens, another one shuts, and then they're all slammed in my face."

He looked away. "The thing is, when people say 'epilepsy', they don't really know what they're talking about. A seizure is an abnormal electrical message, sent out by a group of neurons in the brain. This discharge results in some kind of abnormal behaviour."

"You've been doing your research."

"Your fault, Jamie. And the other thing that got me thinking was something called a 'complex partial seizure'."

A burst of raucous laughter from the opposite corner made Simon wince. Then he continued.

"Complex partial seizures don't cause simple sensations but complicated ones, involving thinking, feeling, emotions, and sequential movements. Most seizures are short and last only seconds or minutes – but prolonged episodes can be the result of continuous seizure discharges, which induce compulsive, aimless wandering, accompanied by amnesia. The condition's called poriomania."

My eyes widened. "What are you saying?"

"There are plenty of cases of people who've been capable of performing quite complex tasks while suffering a seizure."

"Like what?"

"Like getting in their car and driving to the next city. When they come out of the seizure, they have no memory of how they got there. And there are extreme cases that haven't been classed as epilepsy because nobody can explain them yet. Stories of people walking out of their houses to buy a newspaper and disappearing – then turning up years later living and working in a different town, under a different name, with no memory of their previous identity. There's a case of a reporter from Tacoma going missing – and then turning up in Alaska, twelve years later, with a completely new identity." He sighed. "This kind of thing reminds me of _The Idiot_."

"Iggy Pop was epileptic as well?"

He blinked. "Not the Iggy Pop album, Jamie, the Dostoevsky novel."

I stared back at him. "This sounds too weird for me."

"Weird?" He sniggered. "Jamie, I'm talking about epilepsy with a guy from a lifestyle magazine called _Fugue._ How weird is that?"

I didn't know what to say. I just sat there for a while, staring at the table. I'd run all kinds of theories through my head to explain Jason's disappearance – but not this one.

"No," I said eventually. "It's too fantastic. Jason Zodiac had a seizure on New Year's Eve 1999, got in his car and just drove off? Now he's still working as a newsagent or a short order cook or a bartender somewhere, day in, day out, with no memory of who he used to be? I don't buy it."

Simon grinned like he was relishing all this. "I haven't finished yet. About a week after Jason's visit, I got a telephone call from a record collector called Martin Baxter. He asked if I wanted to buy some early bootleg recordings of Joy Division he'd come into possession of."

"Bloody vulture."

"Yeah, he was one of the new breed of aggressive record collectors, when all this celebrity cult thing was just starting. He knew that Jason had been in town, so he also asked me if I was interested in some Banana Sundial memorabilia."

"What did he have?"

Simon coughed. "An old scrapbook, a painting and a pair of green gloves."

"A pair of green gloves?"

"That's what he said, a pair of green gloves. So I told him to fuck off and thought I'd got rid of him."

Simon leaned across the table, lowering his voice. "The night after that, I was woken up by a telephone call at about two in the morning. It was Baxter. He was calling for help."

"What do you mean, help?"

"He said he'd arranged to meet someone to buy his stuff but he'd got lost in the woods. He sounded terrified – screaming and crying, so I could hardly make out what he was saying. It was something about being lost in the forest and he had no idea where he was. He shouted a lot of stuff that didn't make any sense, then we got cut off. That was the last I heard of Martin Baxter."

He sat back in his chair, and drained the last of his pint. "I'm sorry if you were hoping for something more," he said, "or hoping for something else."

But I could tell he looked relieved.

We caught an early evening train to Manchester and spent a couple of hours jogging memories by going around some of the old haunts. The Hacienda club was now a block of dull-looking apartment buildings, with the name HACIENDA in tasteful white lettering next to a CCTV camera. The clubs where the punk and indie bands were discovered? Mostly closed down and turned into theme pubs or sports clubs. It was all very depressing.

The things that we had learned were no longer enough.

I shook hands with Simon and told him I'd be in touch, then went back to Macclesfield and the hotel I'd booked into. After calling Katy and the kids, and lying on the hotel bed with a can of Heineken watching BBC 4, I suddenly realized there was a question I should have asked. Baxter had told Simon he was lost in the woods. But in 1980 nobody had cell phones and only the police had car phones.

How the hell could Baxter have called anyone from the middle of a forest?

I thought I'd get ready for bed, but started getting stomach cramps in the shower, and they got worse as I put on my pajamas. It might have been the beer...or maybe I wasn't used to Thai food these days...

Or maybe it was the depression that I'd felt ever since I'd got on to the M6 and headed north.

As I drifted off to sleep, the traffic droning away in the streets below, I was suddenly hit by a nasty, hypnagogic image that left me prickling with sweat.

The image of a red telephone box in the middle of a forest. The woods were in pitch darkness, except for the little box of light beneath the trees, divided into oblong slices of glass.

Zooming in, like a camera close-up: inside the box, behind the glass, a man's face. Screaming.

*

I sucked in breath and coughed as I came back to consciousness, my eyes open, my stomach a frozen lump, my back tense on the soft mattress. I was awake. In a Macclesfield hotel. I 'd woken from a vivid dream where I was chased through a forest by hooded, robed figures, some in black robes, some in white – and behind them, in the trees...

Things I could never describe.

I could smell green-apple air freshener and hear the sound of traffic outside...distant voices and the whirring of the elevator from inside the building...and a soft tap, tap, tap from inside the room.

With me.

My veins overflowed with ice. I lay rigid, arms and legs like iron rods, as my eyes grew accustomed to the dark. I calmed down slightly as I noticed that the bulky forms looming out of the grey-black emptiness were only desks, lamps, and telephone. I told myself that the faceless humanoid shape hovering above the floor was my coat, up on a hook.

Then I remembered I didn't have a coat.

But that shape had arms, and hands hanging limply at its sides. Short male hair above a white blob of face, slumped, looking downwards. Boots that dangled and bumped against the window as the body slowly turned. _Tap...tap...tap..._

I lay so rigid on the bed my back was arched, and a cold, slimy sweat oozed over my body and trickled into my armpits. I reached out a trembling hand, slowly, slowly, towards the lamp, willing myself to move quickly but afraid that I would draw the attention of – that _thing_ in the room.

I switched on the light.

Nothing. A desk, a lamp, a TV – no coat. No hanging figure. The walls were bare, the curtain was over the window, and the tapping sound had stopped.

I swung my legs over the side of the bed and sat up. I lifted up a trembling hand, brushed the hair out of my eyes, and it came away slick with sweat. It was cold in the hotel room, even though it was June.

I looked at my watch: a few minutes before five in the morning. There's no way I'm going back to sleep after that, I thought, I might as well call room service for an early breakfast. It might settle my stomach. I picked up the phone, about to dial reception –

\- and stopped, receiver to my ear, as I realized there were voices coming out of the telephone before I had pressed anything.

Two voices. A man and a woman. They were atonal and emotionless, somehow...inhuman.

"...and all its effects. All we have to work on is your experience and the journal's mathematical predictions."

"You'll have to assume that the information is reliable. If we accept that, there's no doubt; the Zengine has been activated."

"But the irregularities! These imbalances are widespread – they giveth, and they taketh away. If the Dakshina Marg is the cause, why isn't there a ripple effect emanating from whichever parallel they've got the damn thing located? Has there been anything in your dreams?"

"They're not dreams; they're visions I've had when I knew I was awake."

"Well that takes us back to the briefing. Several months ago, Head Office predicted that the Winter and Summer Solstices would be the times most suited to our assault. Any disturbance at those points would be echoed in hundreds of other parallels."

_"Just a moment."_ The man's voice was metallic, hollow, and the brief silence was like being inside a pipeline. Then he spoke again.

"I think there's someone else on the line. Listening to us."

My back and shoulders had locked up again. As softly as I could, I put down the receiver, although my hand was shaking so badly I almost dropped it.

I had to get out.

I couldn't stay in that room for one moment longer. I put my jacket over my pajamas and slipped on my shoes and opened the door. It didn't matter where I was going, and I didn't care about my suitcase. I slipped my wallet and phone into the jacket pockets. The only thing I cared about was light, warmth, seeing another human face, talking to another living person. Anyone who could tell me that I was still all right.

I didn't even care that I'd left the key card behind and locked myself out of the room.

The corridor shivered with yellow light, unnaturally silent even for this hour of the morning. Doors on either side receded into the shadowed square of the elevator lobby at the end. I felt hollow, as if the centre of my being had been stolen and replaced by a churning, coagulated slush. I had the sudden sickening thought that there were no rooms behind all these doors. The whole corridor was floating in space, and if there had been any windows, or if I could open a door, I would be faced with cold, empty starlight.

I had to get to the lobby. There would be someone there. Someone to talk to. Someone to help.

I reached the end of the corridor, two elevator doors flush with the wall, and I pressed the call button. No light showed, so I pressed again and again. Nothing seemed to happen, but I felt a vibration through the wall, like engines thrumming somewhere deep beneath me. I heard a soft whirring a moment later, but it wasn't in the shaft; it was something behind me. I turned, the panic returning in another, crashing wave.

The lights were going out.

The lamps at the opposite end of the corridor, near the room I'd run from, had blinked out of existence. As I watched, the two lamps next to them on either side switched themselves off. The dark moved up the corridor, slice by slice, flicker by flicker, until I was alone in the featureless black.

Alone with just my ragged breathing and the faint electrical hum from somewhere nearby.

I saw a pale circle emerge from the gloom at the other end of the corridor like a sea creature moving up from murky ocean deaths. The circle became the vague outline of a face, and beneath it the outlines of arms and legs, but twisted into grotesque angles as the figure came closer, down the corridor. The arms and legs didn't move as it glided along the floor. Just the buzzing noise, the soft electric hum.

I thought I was having a heart attack. My breath burned in my throat, pain swelled in my chest, and the contents of my ice-cold bowels threatened to void themselves into my pants. The thing in the wheelchair was getting closer, moving faster and faster, barreling straight towards me.

The figure returned my gaze with blank eyes in a smooth, smiling, plastic face. It was a shop window dummy, dressed in a man's suit, white shirt and black tie, hands held out in stiff, awkward angles, and it was sitting in an electric wheelchair. Aimed right at me.

I lost it. I turned round and hammered my fists on the elevator, shouting, screaming, weeping. I knew if the dummy touched me I would die. I knew with a terrifying, solid certainty that my heart would stop and the world would disappear into eternal blackness. I screamed for someone to open the doors, and from the corner of my eye I saw the wheelchair had caught up with me, I saw the grey plastic hands reach out –

My own screaming woke me up. I sat up in bed, shivering, sweat pouring down my face and chest, the sheets gripped between my hands. My stomach and bowels prickled with cold needles of pain.

It was seven-thirty in the morning.

I shaved and got dressed, forcing my arms and legs to do what they didn't want to do. I switched on the TV; familiar, depressing BBC News, to remind me of what year it was, what world I was in.

I arrived at the lobby, with my suitcase, feeling hollow and edgy from the nightmare. My gutsache hadn't improved during the night; perhaps the lack of sleep had made it worse – or perhaps the heaving in my guts had caused the nightmares.

"Breakfast is in the White Room, sir," the clerk said, but the thought of cooked food made me want to vomit.

I looked up.

The clerk frowned. "Mr. Carter, are you feeling all right? You look very pale."

But I was staring over his shoulder.

At my reflection in the window.

The glass of the windowpane showed someone standing behind me, dancing with wild abandon, waving his arms and shaking his head like he'd lost control of his body.

That was the last thing I saw. My legs gave way and the floor came up to hit me.

##

##  1988:

ENERGY FLASH

1: DRUG RAVE-UP IN HANGAR!

JASON ZODIAC AND THE T-SERVICE:

"THE CAMELOT RUN"

_by_ PETE KORNER

_and_ MICHAEL SHENLEY

_first broadcast –_ 13th March 1968.

_running time –_ 44 mins 53 secs.

**SCENE 7: Wintle Hall** INT – DAY.

A large group of well-dressed men and women are standing inside a huge drawing room, drinking champagne from fluted glasses, chatting and laughing with each other in very high spirits.

They are surrounded by a giant indoor racetrack. Plates are whizzing around the room on top of miniature racing cars running along a long plastic Scalextric track shaped like a Moebius loop. The plates are carrying buffet food such as vol-au-vents and tiny triangular sandwiches with the crusts cut off.

JASON, TANGERINE and SCREAMING LORD SMITH enter the room. JASON wears mirrored ray-ban shades, a purple crushed velvet frock coat with matching bellbottom trousers, a lemon frilled shirt from John Stephen, and high-heeled Chelsea boots from Mr. Freedom (Kensington Church Street).

TANGERINE wears a black and white Mary Quant mini-dress, knee-high side-zippered white vinyl boots from Countdown, a floppy hat and long false eyelashes,

SMITH wears a navy blue suit, pink shirt and paisley cravat, all designed by Pierre Cardin.

DR. CHESS (VOICE-OVER): Jason, can you hear me?

JASON _(discreetly touching the earpiece he is wearing behind his ear):_

Loud and clear, boss.

DR. CHESS: I'm initiating a scan for any known operatives of the Church With No Name that may be in this room. Stand by.

The three take champagne glasses from a waiter dressed as a Grand Prix mechanic and sip their drinks.

Close-up on a dark-skinned man standing alone, wearing sunglasses.

DR. CHESS: The man you are looking at is Astor Karvik. He's one of the Church's top assassins, and he uses the code name of 'Man-Snake'. The computer says his preferred weapon is darts of highly potent serpent venom.

SMITH: Sounds like he needs a good kick in the cobras.

Close-up on an attractive young lady, holding court with a group of male admirers. She wears a bright red dress that matches her lipstick, and smokes with a long cigarette holder.

DR. CHESS: That's Valerie Felgate, in charge of Church transportation and smuggling activities. Her code name is 'Fast Lady'.

JASON: Nice chassis.

TANGERINE: Down, tiger.

Close-up on a large man in glasses, wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches, and a bow tie. He is scoffing a plate of cheese and pickle sandwiches.

DR. CHESS: That's Dr. Terence Spooner, otherwise known as Anagram Sam. He's the Church cryptography expert. We suspect him of breaking several MI5 and MI6 codes and selling the secrets to certain hostile powers.

ANAGRAM SAM ( _to passing waiter):_ Cheaper gammon, my good man.

WAITER: Pardon, sir?

ANAGRAM SAM: I said, more champagne, my good man.

WAITER ( _handing him a glass_ ): Certainly, sir.

JASON: I'd love to know why The Minister thinks this treasure hunt needs the attention of the T-Service.

TANGERINE: I'd love to know what the treasure actually is.

SMITH: Just like a woman.

Sound of banging gong. A waiter takes the stage.

WAITER: Ladies and gentlemen, may I present...your host!

2: THOUSANDS IN ACID HOUSE DRUG PARTIES!

Mandy comes into my life in the summer of 1988 – yes, that's right, the so-called 'Second Summer of Love'.

She walks into the back room of the Camden Falcon, just after bunch of no-hopers The Bad Cats had finished. She's long-hipped and fluid in black top and jeans, green Celtic eyes, Asian cheekbones. We know each other vaguely because she's been going out with a mate of mine, John. Well, I say mate; nobody liked him. They just pretended to. Me, I'd been through a rough patch too. I'd split up with Jenny and was on the rebound. I'd landed my dream job at the New Musical Express but it felt like it was going nowhere. I spent my time in the subs room cutting, pasting and checking, writing the occasional article or review, and interviewing bands that nobody else wanted to (losers like The Poster Loonies, The Water Addicts, Gay Karl and other twats you've never heard of). For the summer I'd been doing Single of the Week, but even that had lost its charm. The initial thrill of seeing a desk piled high with mailers was replaced by the frustration of realizing it will take ages to listen to them all, and most of them will be shit.

The NME I'd worked on that week was a microcosm of 1988: stale and lifeless and ready for a shake-up. A cover feature on Morrissey and his new album, "Suedehead", and the death of the Smiths; interviews with The Fall, The Triffids and Billy Bragg. Amongst all the old stuff, and the full-page ads for golden turds such as Sting's new single "An Englishman in New York", was the only gleam of hope; Single of the Week – "Beat Dis" by Bomb the Bass. I didn't know it yet, but it's the shape of things to come.

I watch Mandy as she drinks her lager. I watch the swing of her long hair, the shade of fresh chestnut. The air is hot and smells overwhelmingly of beer and tension. Across the pub, at the entrance, the legend FOSTERS glows in excited red neon, the pub punter faces reflected in the huge mirror, the red grinning faces laughing and shouting so hard the chat merges into one long incomprehensible barrage of pub noise.

The bell rings for time. "What are you doing after this?" I ask her.

"Going to the Edge," she says.

"Is that some new club?"

"No, it's _the Edge_ , Jamie, Edge with a capital E," she says. "Just like Ecstasy."

3: I'M AN ACID HOUSE FREAK!

I opened my eyes and not only did I wonder where I was, I wondered where I'd been and how long I'd been there. I felt like I'd been a prisoner in some kind of feverish limbo and the dreams or nightmares or hallucinations or whatever wouldn't let me go. I remembered running. Running through the forest with something godawful behind me. Then I remembered puking, puking so hard my whole body hurt and crawling into a ball on someone's carpet and then sliding into a deep, black pit.

I blinked a few times but my vision was so blurred I couldn't make much sense of it. I was lying down – on a bed, I realized – and there was a man standing by the bed but my vision was so distorted he looked like a long streak of white and dark, white clothes and dark face. Then he came into focus. White jacket and handsome Indian face and he looked calm and dignified like one of those doctors on TV and then I realized that's what he was. A doctor.

I tried to speak but found I could only croak. "I'm so thirsty."

"You're dehydrated from all the vomiting and retching, Mr. Carter. We've put you on IV to rehydrate you."

My heart flipped over when I turned my head and saw the tuber sticking out of my arm and leading to a plastic bag hanging up by the bed. The shock and the fear mixed with the cold cramping sensation in my bowels.

I tried to lift my head off the pillow and immediately regretted it. "Is this London?"

"No, you're in Salford General Hospital. We thought it best not to move you."

My whole body hurt and shivered, and I had this burning sensation in my throat, no doubt from all the gastric juices that had passed it on the way out of my stomach. "What happened?" I croaked.

"To be honest, Mr. Carter, we're not sure if it's campylobacter or salmonella."

"Oh shit," I muttered through my aching throat, and realized how unfunny that word was. "I think I need the toilet again."

"We have a bedpan but it's possible to move the IV, if you want. You just take it with you. It's on wheels."

A male nurse helped me limp to the nearby toilet and as I shuffled along, the IV and bag rolling along with me, the cramps started again and sweat broke out all over my body and my hands were shaking and I had to bend over like an old man with arthritis. The nurse handed me in through the door and I slouched there, cold sweat dripping off the end of my nose, and I didn't know whether to sit on the bowl or kneel in front of it. My knees gave way and I sat down hard on the porcelain, and then I cried out as a stream of something vile jetted out of my arse.

When it seemed to be over, I pulled myself up and looked back into the bowl. It was bright red. Fresh, oxygenated blood was mixed in with the toxic sludge evacuated from my guts. Oh my God, I thought, I am going to die. I am really going to die.

The same nurse helped me back to the bed and I sank back into the cool sheets gratefully. Temporary respite, but it was respite nonetheless.

"Oh God," I continued, "This is so embarrassing."

"Not half as embarrassed as the hotel restaurant," said the doctor. "They'll probably get closed down."

"I didn't eat at the hotel. I had...oh Hell. The Thai food. The pub. Is Simon okay?"

"Who's Simon?"

"The guy I had dinner with."

"Nobody else has been rushed to hospital as far as I know, but we're checking on that."

"Thank you," I said, closing my eyes and hoping for oblivion. "Thank you."

4: FURY AS ACID PARTY LOUTS GO ON THE RAMPAGE!

I entered the world as James Thomas Carter at 1:55 pm on 25th January, at St. Mary's Hospital, born to William Ernest Carter and Mary Ann Carter (nee Bingham), weighing a respectable eight pounds. In my infancy, lying in my cot at home, I remember my parents' faces looming over the cot at home, and hanging above them, an endlessly fascinating mobile made of teddy bears. Home was 52 Nunswood Road, Glossop, Derbyshire. Three years on, welcome my sister to the family, Susan Victoria Carter. My father was a linotype operator at the Glossop Post and drove us around the hills and valleys at weekends in his Austin Rover. My mother had a part-time job in the canteen at the hospital where I'd been born, so there were countless jokes at home about the quality of hospital food as compared to Mum's cooking. Primary school started when I was five. My first friend, Andrew Smalls.

There was always music in the house from Mum playing Radio Two in the kitchen. Sometimes we'd put the black and white TV on in the afternoons when there was only the test card showing with background muzak version of old tunes like Cheek to Cheek and Under My Skin. At four o'clock the Granada TV fanfare would sound and the children's TV would start. Andy Pandy and The Flowerpot Men. Flob-a-lob-a-lob. Weeeed.

Summer trips to Grandpa and Nan's house in Scarborough. Getting a new friend, Pat Coleman, and through him discovering war comics and Airfix model plane kits. Spitfires and Stukas, war games in the adventure playground down the road. Banzai. Heil Hitler. Eat lead, Fritz.

Churchill's funeral in 1965.

My parents bought me a Danceteria portable record player for my eight birthday. No more Jim Reeves and Val Doonican in the living room. Instead, Rolling Stones and Martha and the Vandellas from my new gospel...Top of the Pops on Thursday nights.

My life was about to begin properly.

5: EVILS OF ECSTASY!

Turning off Oxford Street, Mandy tucks her hair into a wooly cap against the September chill, and I glance at her cheekbones reflected in the cracked windows of derelict shops. Earlier that year Nicky Holloway had opened Trip, a club night set in the Astoria on Tottenham Court Road. That's where she was going and she had some Es to flog. I've never had them before, because twenty-five quid for a pill seems ridiculous when you can get an ounce of hash for a fiver if you know who to talk to. But then, that's me, in my early thirties but already an old stoner.

Down an alleyway, we come up to some clubbing kid who's hopping from one foot to another behind a group of people laughing and milling about on the pavement. "Is this the end of the queue?" I ask him.

"Dunno where the queue ends, mate, I didn't bring me telescope," he says, and laughs.

I beckon Mandy forward, following the crowd, and when we get to the crash barriers and security I use my NME press card to blag our way in. That's what it's for, innit? We push our way upstairs, through knots of clubbers in smiley T-shirts, bandanas, ripped jeans, straw hats, Timberlands with laces undone. The auditorium is split on two levels, with a large stage dominating the open ground floor and a large balcony area upstairs comprised of tables, chairs and a bar running the length of the wall. The air is thick with the scents of sweat, roasting meat, hashish, stale beer, incense.

To me, nightclubs have always been tragic places where Casual Kev dances in his pastel knit sweater, white socks and loafers, looking for a Madge to pull or a poof to beat up. But I'd been hearing all year about this thing Acid, like the House music out of Chicago but different, like the Disco out of the European islands but different. The NME party line had been to treat it as an academic curiosity but the sheer balls of something calling itself 'acid' in these 'just say no' Eighties should have tipped me off long before.

The club walls and ceilings are covered with camouflage nets and parachute silk, billowing in the gusts from the smoke machine, and the DJ is a silhouette framed against a laser show and a screen showing fractals and clips from old freaky kid's shows like The Clangers and Magic Roundabout. I'm knocked out by the sheer strangeness of it (and also sneakily proud because I know what fractals are, I'd seen a BBC 2 programme on the Mandelbrot Set the month before).

"What's this track?" I yelled to Mandy.

" _Can You Feel It_ , by Mr. Fingers," she says without hesitation.

"Not bad!"

She shouts something like 'stop being a rock snob' and gives me a hug. During the hug she palms me a small white pill and I neck it, washing it down with the water we'd bought from the bar. It tastes really bitter and I can't help gurning for a few seconds. I'd wanted to buy a Carlsberg but she said you don't need it, that's the whole point.

We start dancing, and I gradually forget about my sense of London cool and exchange thumbs-ups and cheesy grins with the clubbers around us. Everyone's drinking water, not beer. I stare at a clubber with blond dreadlocks flailing around his head. He's so out of it, he's forgotten where he is and who he's with. Mandy tries to say something but the beat's so loud she's doing goldfish impressions, mouth opening and closing silently.

After about twenty minutes the fun starts. A tingling begins in my fingers and runs up my arms, filling me with a tense, really sexual energy. Beads of sweat break out on my hands and face, run down my chest. The buzz is new but it's also like an old friend, an electric hum up and down my spine. The relentless glare of lasers amid the smoke covers the dance floor in a pulsing nimbus of come-on colors. I barely feel my boots on the sticky, grungy floor.

Suddenly, all things are possible.

I don't know how, but the whole quality of the club – the light, the sound, the smells – everything has changed. Everything is sharper and brighter. I feel...woozy, yeah, woozy, it's a great word and it suits me right now. My jawbone starts to shake and a sudden cramp shoots down my stomach. I bend over, I can't help it.

"Have some water," says Mandy. Somehow I've lost my own so she hands over her own bottle – it's ten times better than beer – and then we start snogging.

Her lips, her skin, tastes and smells like the best thing ever. The entire upper balcony is shaking with the reverberations as clubbers chant _Aceeed, Aceed, Aceeed!_ I stop dancing for a moment, and just take in the energy, the novelty, the love – yes, love is the word for it. For the first time in ages, I've dropped my cynical facade and I feel something like love for my fellow human beings.

Some young bloke in a bandana and Batman T-shirt comes up to me and holds out an unwrapped packet of cigarettes. "'Scuse me, mate, can you help me open this packet of fags? I just can't get it together, mate, I'm off me nut. You can have a smoke out of it."

"Sure," I say, and proceed to rip off the plastic, with the random bloke, Mandy, and me all laughing hysterically.

6: 3,000 IN SEASIDE ACID RIOT!

Later that afternoon, they all turned up. They drove up from London – my wife Katy, son Nick, Liz and her boyfriend John. They brought the obligatory flowers and fruit and cards.

"How do you feel?" Katy said.

I shrugged and tried to give her a smile. "Still alive and grateful for it."

"Have you eaten anything at all?" Liz asked.

"I can't, that's why I'm on the IV. I can't even look at any food."

"So going for a kebab and a pint's out of the question?" John said with a laugh.

"Yeah, put the curry on hold as well. It feels a bit like having the flu," I told them," "but it's so much worse. High temperature, chills...and I don't know which end to put over the toilet first."

"It's one way to lose weight," said Liz.

"Yeah, the projectile vomiting diet," said Nick.

"It gets worse, I'm afraid. The diarrhea could last for up to two weeks and there's not much control over it."

"Which means you're on adult nappies?" Katy said with an impish grin.

"I'm not going to tell you in front of the kids! Anyway, I'll be on antibiotics for about a month. Meds for the muscle spasms and the diarrhea and lots of water and ginger ale."

"And soup."

"Yeah, lots of soup."

"Chicken soup."

"Good for the soul, apparently."

"Do you want us to put something on Facebook?" Katy asked.

"No, because if someone presses the like button it's as if they're liking the fact that he's sick," said Liz.

I coughed and tried to move my position, sitting up in bed with pillows behind me. "What do you want us to do with the Stevie Wonder tickets?" Katy asked.

Oh God. I'd promised to take everyone to the concert in Birmingham. "Well I might be out of hospital but I'll be in no shape to drive," I said. "You'd better give my ticket to someone else."

"Ashley said he's interested," put in Liz.

"Charming." I laughed, and that brought on a brief spate of coughing. "Would he jump in my grave as quick?"

7: COPS BATTLE WITH ACID PARTY YOBS!

SCENE 7 – CONTINUED.

THE HOST, SIR NORMAN TRASK APPEARS. HE IS A DIGNIFIED MIDDLE-AGED MAN, WEARING A THREE-PIECE SUIT, A RACING DRIVER'S HELMET AND GOGGLES, AND HAS A CHECKERED FLAG DRAPED AROUND HIS SHOULDERS.

TRASK: Ladies and gentlemen...welcome! Welcome, to the annual Trask Car Rally and Treasure Hunt! I promise that this year's treasure hunt will be the most exciting one ever! Exciting because...this year, the treasure itself is a mystery, and you will not know what it is, until you find it!

The room erupts in cheers.

TRASK: Why do we have the annual rally, my friends? Because the key image of the 20th Century is the human being driving an automobile. It sums up everything about this current era: speed, machinery, violence, desire, the shared experience of man and machine moving in harmony through a technological landscape. We spend a large part of our lives behind the wheel of a car; and everything you need in life can be found on the highway. The design of the automobile is one of unsurpassed beauty; this is the future, my friends, and it has fins on the side of it.

Polite applause. TRASK points to an upturned driver's helmet placed on a wooden stand in the centre of the room.

TRASK: Each one of you will be paired up, and given a new partner. Please come up to the table, one by one, and draw your partner's name out of the hat.

At the butler's gesture, a man with a champagne glass walks to the helmet and draws out a paper. He unfolds it and reads the name.

MAN: Ingrid Declair.

A young woman waves at him from across the room. Polite applause.

DR. CHESS: You're going to be split up. I don't like the look of this.

JASON: Why so nervous, Doc? Haven't you heard that swapping partners is the grooviest thing?

TANGERINE: You _would_ say that, Jason.

The butler points at Jason. He takes a paper out of the helmet.

JASON: Yvette Van Ost.

A gorgeous leggy female in feather boa waves at him from the side.

TANGERINE: Watch it darling, or I shall rename my voodoo doll 'Jason'.

TANGERINE walks up and selects a paper.

TANGERINE: Arthur Eden.

A young, handsome, distinguished man in a tuxedo waves at her.

TANGERINE: Now that's more like it. Touche, I think,

SMITH: My turn. _(Going to helmet)_ Jeremy Deacon.

A short, tubby man with glasses and buck teeth, wearing a stained anorak covered with car rally badges, waves at him

SMITH: _grinning with gritted teeth._ I shall kill you, Jason.

JASON: Luck of the drawer, Lord Smith.

TRASK: Let the treasure hunt begin!

Cheers and cries of 'Tally ho!' as everyone runs out of the room to their cars. Groovy Hammond organ music plays on the soundtrack.

8: EEE...ORVILLE'S MADE DRUG DISC!

The next day, David Olewaio turned up with flowers and cards, an envoy from my colleagues at Fugue magazine. A handsome Nigerian much younger than myself, he had a penchant for wearing thin cotton scarves in summer over his jacket and shirt, and sat next to my bed alternately grinning and furrowing his brow in sympathy.

"Can't be a barrel of fun shitting through the eye of a needle," he said brightly.

"That's why you're such a great journalist, David, you've got a wonderful way with words."

"Yes, I'm the master of the apposite epithet, wouldn't you say?"

"Fuck off."

"Charming. You're lucky I came to see you, instead of Mimi."

"Mimi wouldn't tear herself away from her Soho desk even if I was on my death-bed."

"Well then, you're lucky I came to see you instead of dickhead Peter."

"That's true." I lifted my head – wincing – and turned to look at him. "But that's not everything, is it? What's happening in the office?"

"Well." He was back to serious mode. "I don't want to bring you down while you're still recovering, but I thought I'd better tell you before you see Mimi. She's got a new commission for you. She wants you to do something on the Spice Girls. Something similar to what you've been doing with Jason."

"Oh David, you shouldn't make fun of a sick man."

"No, seriously, Nineties retro is the big thing now. It's demographics, Jamie! Most of our readers now were growing up in the nineties, which means they grew up with Cobain, Oasis, Blur and Spiceworld. We're doing a big end of year push on Britpop and Girl Power."

I closed my eyes and whispered, "Oh, give me strength."

"Anyway." The grin was back. "There is something else, something you might actually want to hear. You've had a couple of mysterious phone calls since you've been sick."

I looked at him sideways. "From whoever sent the emails? Our mysterious Deep Throat?"

David nodded. "Office gossip says it's the same person. It was a man's voice, and he said he'd call again when you were back at work. He calls himself King."

I almost laughed, but stopped myself. "He calls himself king? I wonder what Queen Elizabeth and MI5 would say about that. Did you give him my mobile number?"

"Of course not."

I sighed. "Oh well, it puts a little spice into life, doesn't it." Then I realized what I'd said.

David gave his characteristically rich laugh. "That's the spirit! Yes, a little spice in your life while you're doing your insightful Spice expose for Mimi. She'll be so happy. Sigmund Freud said at the end of his life that he still didn't know what a woman wants. Well, it turns out that what she really wants is a zig-a-zig, ah!"

NINE: ACID REVELERS RIOT THROUGH COUNTRYSIDE!

SCENE 14 EXT

Ariel shot of the rally cars racing along the cliffside roads of Padstow, south west Cornwall, with the sea raging beneath the steep drop to the rocks. Groovy trumpet and Hammond organ music plays on the soundtrack. MAN-SNAKE is in the lead, followed by TANGERINE and SMITH.

TANGERINE'S Car – Interior.

TANGERINE: The Padstow cliffs – our second test.

ARTHUR: Our third test will be that driver up ahead. I fully intend to win this treasure hunt, my dear, and it seems Mr. Korvik is the only driver faster than us.

SMITH'S car – interior. JEREMY has his head out of the side window and is squinting through his glasses.

JEREMY: Beautiful car...

SMITH: Which one?

JEREMY: Mr. Korvik's car, in the lead. 1963 XKE hard-top Jaguar convertible. Funny thing, though, the hood ornament is the wrong one. It's from a much newer model...a 1966 S Type Sedan, I think.

SMITH: I'm _so_ glad you told me that.

JEREMY: But why would he put the wrong ornament on his own Jaguar?

SMITH: When we catch up with him, you can ask him yourself.

TANGERINE'S CAR – INT.

TANGERINE: What are you doing?

ARTHUR: We'll cut the curve as close as we can.

TANGERINE: Do you think that's wise? We're going too fast! You'll have to slow down for the curve.

ARTHUR: What, and lose our chance of winning? Never! This is the kind of excitement that makes the boredom of being a multi-millionaire tolerable.

TANGERINE: (with heavy sarcasm) Oh, poor you.

They race around the curve safely with a spray of gravel and a screeching of brakes.

SMITH'S car – int.

JEREMY: Looks like your lady friend is round the bend.

SMITH: I keep telling her that.

TANGERINE'S car is pulling up closer to MAN-SNAKE, so he puts on a burst of speed as he approaches the curve.

SMITH'S car – INT.

JEREMY: Jumping jalopies! He has to slow down!

The Jaguar doesn't turn but crashes straight through the safety railings, and launches itself into the air. The camera follows its plunge down to the rocks below, where it explodes (STOCK FOOTAGE).

They all stop their cars, get out and run to the hole in the railing. They stand looking down at the smoking wreck at the bottom of the cliff.

ARTHUR: Oh, bad luck.

TANGERINE: Is that all you can say? A man's been killed! We'll have to call off the race.

SMITH: Somehow, I don't think that's in Trask's plan.

ARTHUR: Absolutely. We have a clear lead now – and I intend to keep it!

ARTHUR turns and strides back to his car. The other three whisper together in a huddled group.

SMITH: Jeremy, do you think it was brake failure?

JEREMY: No. All the cars were checked by experienced mechanics before the race. And anyway, I've never seen brakes fail as catastrophically as that.

SMITH: So it's sabotage...this race is getting serious. Someone is prepared to kill to get their hands on the treasure, and there's another player in this game besides us and the Church.

JEREMY: What Church?

SMITH: I'll explain later.

TANGERINE: But what _is_ the treasure? What's all this about?

SMITH: I think it's time we found out. Let's call Jason on the walkie-talkie and see where he's got to.

TANGERINE: With that dolly bird in his car, I dread to think.

They walk back to their cars. Music fades in.

TEN: RAVING MAD!

October 1988, and it's time for my first real rave, my first illegal warehouse party in the middle of nowhere. All in the cause of investigative journalism, you understand.

I pick Mandy up in my car and like she said, she's brought along a couple of mates, a girl called Julie who's like a blond version of Mandy and her boyfriend, a stoner called Pete. Pete gives me a sly grin as he gets in the car, and I wonder what Mandy told him about me. He's got a sharp face with thinning dark hair and designer stubble. His clothes are all in shades of grey and dark green, maybe expensive stuff, but none of your Casuals Man at C & A bullshit.

We drive around the North Circular and the M25, heading for somewhere south of the Leatherhead turn-off. We're looking for the designated meeting point printed on the party flyer – a strategic strong point when organizing raves. The only other things on the flyer are a psychedelic sunburst, a cell phone number and the name of the party – 'QUASAR'.

The meeting point turns out to be an Esso service station, and there must have been hundreds of cars and about two thousand clubbers who've already turned up, waiting to place the phone call to the number on the flyer at nine o'clock, dancing in the forecourt to the pirate stations on car radios and blasting out whistles and air horns. I recognize the track: Joey Beltram, _Energy Flash._ The bad news is that PC Plod has also arrived. Over the year the Old Bill's got more and more rave-savvy, but the cops are keeping a low profile at the moment, black Mariahs and jam sandwiches and lemon curd sandwiches back at the turn-off, keeping an watchful and disapproving eye on the ravers and muttering KKKKKHHH into the walkie-talkies every two minutes.

Off our heads in England's green, pleasant and highly policed land.

Mandy and Julie get out of the car and dance in miniskirts and fluffy bras, shouting out random song lyrics, throwing around Milky Ways that they've pilfered from somewhere.

"I can taste something," Mandy screams.

"Chocolate?" I call.

"No," she calls back. "I can taste the electricity."

Inside my car, Pete produces a bag of Es and we sort out payment. I roll up a spliff and after Pete's had a toke he says to me, "So...where do you think Acid House started, then?"

"Detroit, wasn't it? No, hang on...Ibiza. No, Manchester."

Pete shakes his head and gives me a knowing wink. "No, mate. It started a couple of years ago, in Northampton. It was an experiment. All Jason Zodiac's idea."

I laughed, blowing out a cloud of fragrant smoke. "Jason Zodiac? Jason's a recluse. He's in the John Lennon stage of his career, but with no sign of a _Double Fantasy_ on the horizon yet."

"Guess again. The New Acid Test, he calls it. The Eighties Acid Redemption. I seen it, man, I was standing on the Racecourse with a few mates when Jason did it. It's real. The door of the sun, man. Jason's gonna open the door of the sun."

I pull on the spliff and try to make sense of what he's telling me. "So why didn't NME hear about this?"

"Because _they_ don't want you to know about it, man."

I can't think of a reply to that.

"I'm writing an article, man. Gonna tell the whole story." He stares at me, eyes narrowed. "You reckon NME might be interested?"

I shrug. "I'll do what I can, mate. Put in a word for you."

He leans over and holds up a clenched fist and I sit there for a few seconds until I realize he expects me to touch fists with him. So I do.

A massive scream goes up from outside. "It's on!" yells Mandy. "Start the car!"

The convoy hits the country roads, with ravers standing up in their open-top cars shouting _Aceeeeeeeeed!_ and flashing blue lights somewhere behind us. I'm driving, following the BMWs in front, and Mandy's giving directions and Pete's stopped being mysterious and started snogging Julie.

About five miles from the Esso station, the convoy pulls off the main road and through an open pair of gates. I drive us through a labyrinth of dark hulks of buildings until we reach the loading bay, converted into the party's entrance. Five police vans turn up at the same time. We park where everyone else is parking, start walking, and then the security guys by the door yell at us to get inside the warehouse as quick as we can. We don't need to be told twice.

Light pours out of the windows, turning the warehouse into a fairy cathedral. Beats are pounding, making my sternum vibrate in sympathy.

Here be treasure. X marks the spot.

ELEVEN: THE ACID TEST!

I woke up.

I was in pitch darkness, but eventually I realized I was still in the hospital ward, lying between crisp, cool sheets. Vague shapes hunched around me in the gloom as my eyes became accustomed to the familiarity of where I had slept for the last two nights.

I whispered Mandy's name and tried to go back to sleep.

##

##  1988:

LAND OF CONFUSION

1: DAFT NEW TV BOSS TELLS KIDS: TRY OUT ACID!

The main _Fugue_ office was busy as ever, crowded with desks and shelves, partitions, bookcases, computers, plants, piles of paper, photocopiers, vinyl albums, CDs, DVDs, photographs and filing cabinets. I threaded my way through the maze, nodding and saying hello to my fellow hacks, who slapped me on the back and asked me how I was.

"Jamie," Mimi said, looking up from her terminal.

"Mimi," I said, sitting at my desk and squinting at the little yellow Post-Its decorating the side of the screen.

"They say our journalists are full of shit," Mimi said in her hazy voice. "You're the living proof, I suppose."

"Your motherly concern is duly noted," I said, logging onto the system.

"Your Deep Throat has been very busy, you know. He rang again this morning."

I looked at the most recent Post-It. It said 10:00. That was about five minutes away.

Mimi got up and walked around her desk to stand in front of mine, a pair of reading glasses in her hands. "What's all this about?"

"All what about?"

"These mysterious phone calls. I'm beginning to think you're being headhunted by the other celebrity rags."

I shrugged. "This contact seems to know where a lot of old Jason Zodiac material is. He may even know if Jason's still alive. But he's not giving it to me all at once, just in bits and pieces."

"Hence the paper chase." Mimi sniffed. "Did David tell you about the new commission?"

I sighed. "Yes, he did."

"Then don't waste too much time on this Jason mullarkey. It's old news, a mystery with no solution. The millenium's changed so fast that the Nineties are shrouded in mystery now. It's piss easy, Jamie! All you have to do is to write for the target demographic."

Peter looked up from his screen. "I've still got clothes from the Nineties."

"You've still got clothes from the Eighties," I shouted back at him, "especially your underwear."

Mimi was about to say something else when the phone at my desk rang. An outside line. I picked up the receiver. The line was terrible; full of crackling static.

"Mr. Carter?" It was a male voice, sounding very cultured and refined.

"Yes. Is that Mr. King?" I felt incredibly self-conscious saying that. I hoped he wasn't going to say _yes, and you are my knight_ or some such bollocks.

"Yes. Listen, Mr. Carter, I have something new for you. I cannot speak long; go to the following location."

"Go to...? Now, just a minute!"

"The A604. There is a telephone box just by the turn-off towards Clapham Wood. Be there at eight o'clock tonight. I shall call you."

"Mr. King, that's -"

"The A604. Telephone box. Clapham Wood," the voice repeated. "I have names for you."

The line went dead. I looked at the phone, and then over at Mimi's grinning face. "More running around?"

"Yes," I said grumpily, writing the information down on a memo and thrusting it into my shirt pocket.

Mimi winked. "Make sure you're close to a toilet."

2: COPS BACK OFF IN ACID HOUSE BATTLE!

Inside the warehouse, it's mayhem. There are giant snow nets, camouflage nets and parachutes pinned to the ceiling and around the walls, rippling with trippy visuals from projectors somewhere. The walls are covered in flourescent colored card and ultraviolet spray paint. The DJ's behind a semi-circle of car tyres to keep the stage and turntable from being jostled by the dancers. Around the walls at floor level are cages and behind the bars are inflatable animals illuminated by the black light lamps – gorillas, dragons , Mickey Mouse.

I attempt to shout my feelings of joy to Mandy but with her usual flair for madness, she jumps onto a nearby window ledge. She proceeds to dance along the wall jumping and swinging from window sill to another. I can't say it makes me feel very ecstatic, because my first rush has peaked and it's time for another E, but at least it's fascinating. A bouncer looms out of the smoke machine smog, but I shout at him "It's only Mandy", and he shrugs and lets her get on with it.

I'm throwing shapes in the air, no idea what I'm doing just knowing that it feels good, when a sampled vocodered voice rips through the warehouse, a voice modulated so low in the bass that it makes my whole body vibrate down to the bowels:

They say we are dead men...

They say we are dead men...

Then the beat cuts out all together and the computerized voice fills the air:

Everyone who has the mark shall live

Thousands of ravers put their hands in their air and this fucking mental howl from thousands of throats rocks the party.

Pete and Julie have disappeared into the crowd and for a while I dance by myself, feeling the beat surge through me and the sampled voices speak to me like messages from outer space, and I watch my hands make patterns in the smoke and the strobes and the laser light. My body feels so light, throwing my arms around, thinking of new and funky moves that the music gives to me.

The next time Mandy appears she runs up and snogs me and oh God she tastes like heaven, and she's wearing a pair of bunny ears and shaking a pair of maraccas that she's produced out of nowhere, dishing out her own musical insanity. Maraccas mixing in with Frankie Knuckles. A crowd gathers around us clapping and cheering. How sweet. She's a nutter, that Mandy. She's gorgeous.

I never realized life could be as good as _this._

3: DON'T COME TO THE PARTY, SAY POLICE!

(THE CAMELOT RUN – cont)

**SCENE 20** _Cornwall – ext._

JASON and YVETTE are in his Lotus Elan, driving down a sleepy country lane. They slow down and stop.

YVETTE: According to that puzzle you solved, this should be the way to Cadbury Castle.

JASON: I'm afraid it isn't.

YVETTE: I think we zigged when we should have zagged!

JASON: No, we're not lost. We've been detoured by the Church...they must have swopped the signposts around.

YVETTE: The Church? Those meanies you were talking about?

JASON: Yes. Look...those trees, the branches are waving around but there's no breeze.

YVETTE: That humming sound...it's like a bell, ringing deep underground. What... _(screams)_ Jason, the ground's moving! Is it an earthquake?

JASON: No, it's something much worse.

A voice echoes through the air, and they look around to see where it's coming from.

VOICE: By my troth, 'tis indeed Master Zodiac. The cunning man. The dark man from the dark house, and charming as ever.

JASON: The landscape is talking! Very interesting.

VOICE: Yes, I am the landscape, Master Zodiac, and you are but an ant crawling upon the dirt. Tarry, and I shall appear in a form more pleasing to you.

In front of the car, a mound of earth appears, like a mole burrow. A head breaks through and a face appears – a haughty, sharp, bearded male face. The body slides into view as if he is standing on an elevator rising up out of the earth. He is wearing an English Civil War Cavalier's military uniform; leather jerkin, short cape, sword at his side.

JASON: Yvette, let me introduce Lord Muck. He's a 17th century sorcerer who accidentally fused himself with the countryside when an Enochian magic ritual went wrong.

_(To Lord Muck)_ So you were expecting me.

LORD MUCK: I have formed an alliance with knaves of my own kidney. They said you would be upon this road. I understand that I am to provide a diversion, and to stop you approaching the treasure, whilst they are making sundry machinations of their own.

JASON: In other words, you're working for the Church With No Name. You do realize that whatever they promised, they'll betray you and try to eliminate you when you're no longer useful?

LORD MUCK (smiling): But there is more than one Church, Master Zodiac, and many doings are hidden from you. I did not confess who my ally was. But all things tend towards the same end, sir; the muck, the rot, the dung-heap – and there are few indeed who will care a nutshell for such trifles when they have gone. I cry you mercy! You are a smoky persecutor of nature, sir, and I shall see the worms feed upon your brains.

LORD MUCK raises his hands, and roots and long-buried bones erupt from the soil. The trees bend, branches reaching out towards JASON'S car.

YVETTE: Oh my God!

LORD MUCK: Do not speak of God, dear lady, for your abode shall evermore be Hell.

4: HELP US BEAT DRUG MENACE!

1966. England wins the Word Cup and I am faced with a life-threatening decision; am I a Mod or a Rocker? Dare I get my hair cut in a floppy bowl-cut with a square neck instead of round? Do I say to the barber that I want to look like the singer in The Small Faces?

Levi Strauss jeans and Clark's waterproof loafers. Forsaking Airfix model plane kits for 7" vinyl singles from Decca and Motown. Getting a massive crush on Miss Collins, the art teacher.

Susan and I both get guitars for our birthdays – me because I pestered Mum and Dad, and Susan because she didn't want to be left out. Camping trips on the Lake District, the west coast of Scotland, and a two week stay at Butlin's at Filey, North Yorkshire.

And the Heights of Abraham...

A network of caves and mining tunnels inside Masson Hill, overlooking the town of Matlock Bath. Cold, dark, narrow tunnels, full of moving shadows and echoing voices, lit by lamps at floor level turning faces into Halloween masks lit from beneath. The guide takes us into the Great Masson Cavern and turns off the lights. It's terrifying. Somehow the high-pitched voices of all the other kids asking questions makes it worse. I'm inside the earth, in the dark, with all the ancient rock ready to squeeze me in its fist.

The light comes on but the terror doesn't go away. I stare at green and white calcite crystals formed by unimaginable heat and pressure, their blackened tips poking out of the stone towards me.

_Down here,_ they whisper. _Down here. Join us. Hide with us. Join us beneath the earth, we've got secrets down here._

5: TEN REASONS TO SAY NO TO EVIL LSD!

SCENE 22 – CAVES (INT).

A giant cave network beneath Tintagel Castle, with stalactites and stalagmites and dripping water all around. The darkness is broken by car headlights from the right. ARTHUR EDEN's sports car enters the cave mouth, and stops. He gets out.

ARTHUR: Thank goodness I was able to get that Tangerine girl off my tail. Now the treasure is mine alone – just as it was meant to be.

He strides off into one of the tunnels. Behind him, the car boot swings up, revealing UNCLE JACK hiding inside.

JACK: Gor blimey! When they asked me to be a superhero I didn't know it'd include hiding in a car boot for two hours...ooooh! _(He levers himself out of the boot with his umbrella and stands on the cave floor)._ All this damp ain't going to do my lumbago any good. Still, I 'ave a go, don't I, missus? I 'ave a go!

Twirling his umbrella, he shuffles off into the cave tunnel, following Arthur.

SCENE 23: ANOTHER PART OF THE CAVES. INT.

A giant crystal dominates the cave, and a human form can be vaguely glimpsed encased within it, like a fly in amber. There is a large boulder in front of the crystal, with a sword embedded to the hilt. ARTHUR EDEN enters the cave.

ARTHUR: At last...

His form changes; flickering lights flow up and down his body and his racing cloths disappear, to be replaced by leather and metal armor.

ARTHUR: I've found you, Merlin.

VOICE _(off-screen):_ And I have found you, Arthur.

FAST LADY and ANAGRAM SAM rush into the cave.

ARTHUR: So! You were behind all this.

SAM: Anus twist! It wants us!

FAST LADY: It wasn't us, Arthur. We've all been used...by _him!_

She points behind her as TRASK enters the cave. He is still wearing his racing costume.

TRASK: Checkmate, my liege.

ARTHUR: The T-Service...

TRASK:...will do nothing. My booby-trapped hood ornaments took care of the other contenders, and Lord Muck has destroyed the magician. Your pawns are scattered across the board, my King. And now...

TRASK reaches down to the boulder. He grasps the hilt of the sword with both hands and with one mighty pull, draws it free of the stone.

TRASK:...The final move.

ARTHUR: That – that is impossible! That was not destined to happen!

TRASK: Destiny is just an idiot's excuse for not making enough effort.

TRASK points the sword at ARTHUR. A bolt of lightning flashes across the cave from the sword and strikes ARTHUR in the chest. he is hurled backwards across the cave with a cry of pain.

TRASK cries out, stumbles and nearly falls. He looks annoyed. He turns around and a green umbrella is sticking out of his back.

TRASK: Come out of the shadows, old man.

UNCLE JACK shuffles out into the main cavern.

JACK: Oh, lawks...

TRASK: Brave man. Brave, old, foolish man. I'll see that you have a funeral with full military honors...as befits a veteran.

VOICE ( _off-screen_ ): THERE'LL BE NO FUNERALS TODAY!

At the other end of the cavern, the headlights of half a dozen racing cars switch on and flood the cavern with bright light. The rest of the T-SERVICE stands silhouetted against the light. DOCTOR CHESS. SOMEDAY MAN. TANGERINE. JASON ZODIAC. SCREAMING LORD SMITH. CAMERA OBSCURA.

FAST LADY (TO SAM): I think it's time we cut our losses and left the race, darling.

SAM: Tuck fish! A wee Fuehrer, too!

SMITH takes the lead, walking across the cave floor, a halo of psychedelic patterns flickering around his body.

TRASK: What's this? An ordinary human has the power to warp reality?

SMITH: Your perceptions of it, murderer. I can shut your nervous system down and send you into a coma.

TRASK (gesturing): Not if I remove your immunity to your own powers.

SMITH: Gaaah...

His eyes roll up in his head, and he sinks to the floor.

SOMEDAY MAN runs across the cave floor, his size and mass growing as he moves until he is twice the height and musculature of a normal man.

SOMEDAY MAN: You need someone to cut you down to size, Trask.

TRASK copies the move, growing to a size and bulk even bigger than SOMEDAY MAN, his head brushing the cave roof.

TRASK: Big words from a lesser man.

With one punch, TRASK knocks SOMEDAY MAN across the cave into a mound of stalagmites and stalactites. Rocks and crystals rain down upon him as he lies dazed on the floor.

TRASK: Perhaps you would care to eat them.

The entire T-Service rush TRASK en masse, but he counters their attacks one by one, the power stolen from Merlin making him invulnerable to attack.

JASON picks himself up from the floor where he has fallen.

JASON: I think we might be out of our league. We're too late. VOICE ( _off-screen_ ): Not yet, magician. Not quite yet. You are still needed.

JASON: What? Who said that?

VOICE ( _off-screen_ ): I did. Inside the crystal.

JASON looks around him.

VOICE ( _off-screen_ ):: I can help. But I need you to aproach me.

Jason approaches the crystal, and places both hands on it.

JASON: Well, I'm not going to look a gift horse in the...

He vanishes, in a haze the same color as the crystal. He reappears in a surreal, pastoral landscape filmed through washed-out colour filters. He looks around him in bewilderment.

JASON: _Now_ where am I...?

VOICE: You are in the realm of Tir Na Nog.

Jason turns. A severe-looking bearded man, wearing medieval clothes, a cloak and carrying a staff, is standing nearby.

JASON: Merlin, I presume?

MERLIN: Correct. My spirit is in a state of transition. I am neither alive, nor dead, but in between...as all magical things aspire to be.

He approaches Jason and stands facing him.

MERLIN: Jason Zodiac, there is something I need you to do.

6: ACID PARTY ARMY OF BASEBALL BAT BRUTES!

I took the highway north, heading for Clapham Wood, inventing sarcastic puns about Nineties retro as I drove. It was early Tuesday evening and I got stuck in traffic. After a couple of dodgy overtakes which resulted in the other motorists beeping their horns and yelling through their side windows, I decided to slow down and enjoy the scenery. I had plenty of time before eight o'clock.

The trees and hills looked sharp and vivid in the slanting light, slopes and trunks coated yellow-orange or standing in their own shade. More of Nick's Dubstep was on the car CD player; some guy with the wonderful moniker of Vatican Shadow. The sky began to shift to deep violet and the headlights of incoming cars glowed in the dusk.

The turning onto Clapham Wood was on a quiet little byroad, and finding the right telephone box took only five minutes. I parked the car alongside.

I was feeling very apprehensive about this. I kept thinking about that weird hoax letter or whatever it was, faxed to the magazine a couple of months ago, about the two policemen who vanished in Clapham Wood. I was also thinking about Martin Baxter. What Simon told me about him had got mixed up in my brain with the memories of the food poisoning; remembering the burning throat and bowel cramps triggered off nightmarish images of lonely telephone boxes in the middle of nowhere, with people trapped inside, battering on the door and screaming through the glass.

I shivered and my bowels groaned in sympathy.

Luckily Mr. King was prompt. The phone rang at eight sharp, I left the car and ran into the phone box.

"Hello?" I said into the receiver.

"Who is that?" said the cultured voice.

I took a deep breath. "It's Jamie Carter, and you know full well it is."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Carter, I shall have to call you back later, but I have a name for you at the moment. Leonard McCabe."

"What!" I almost shouted with disappointment. Lenny McCabe, former lead guitarist with The Banana Sundial, and its only surviving member; also a recluse, currently living in San Francisco, with his agent refusing to return my calls.

"I have to go now but I shall call back in one hour with more information. This number, Mr. Carter. One hour."

"Mr. King, just -"

_Beeeeeeeeeeep._ Dead.

7: ROOF FALLS IN ON ACID HOUSE CRAZE!

SCENE TWENTY FIVE

TRASK and MERLIN face each other across the cave, their arms outstreched, a crackling net of magical energy between them.

TANGERINE moves over to where UNCLE JACK is stting on the cave floor.

TANGERINE: Jack, are you all right?

JACK: I think me broken arm is keeping me broken leg company. Where did the cavalry come from, then?

TANGERINE: Jason said that's Merlin. The _real_ Merlin.

TRASK: Is this the best you can do, sorcerer? You've been imprisoned for a millennium...a homeless spirit wandering the barren wastes of limbo, while I have spent my life gaining power, uncovering the secrets of the reptilian mages of ancient Agartha...I have been siphoning your power during our battle, getting stronger...strong enough to win!

There is a loud crash and a flash of light, and when it clears, MERLIN is lying on the floor. TRASK walks to him, crouches down and lifts the chain and crystal orb that hangs around Merlin's neck. He stands and places it over his own head.

TRASK: With all of Merlin's artifacts in my grasp...the treasure hunt has ended in my victory!

MERLIN: _(opening his eyes)_ You think you have won? You think Merlin is so easily beaten? Those artifacts are mine to control...mine _only._

Merlin stands, and energy crackles from his hands. TRASK howls as he disappears, and reappears inside the giant crystal at the side of the cave, imprisoned forever.

8: STARS TELL KIDS: DON'T USE THIS DEADLY DRUG!

It's bedlam. Happy crowds swing from rafters and hug in circles. Ravers roll around on the floor oblivious to the glue of garbage that sticks to their Chipie dungarees. And the music! Acid, acid, tweak tweak, squelch squelch.

Mental. Flob-a-lob-a-lob. Weeeeeeeeeed.

Time passes. How I love the music. I'm dancing. How I love Mandy for bringing me here. Yes, that's right, I said love. Mandy's dancing like a mad thing. Life is good. For the first time in ages, life is good.

I look at the cigarette in my hand. It burns like an Olympic torch for what feels like an age. I'm starting to rush again. I wave it in circles before my eyes. The amber glow impregnates my brain. I'm in an unknown heaven. Joy shakes me. The speakers plough the sound through me. I'm up big time.

Work it to the bone work it to the bone

There's nothing like a vist to the acid house to make you feel at home. Radiant girls come and kiss you, the boys come for a chat and a hug. It's like the veils of pretence and reservation and all that British bullshit have fallen and truth is allowed to dance naked. No place for wallflowers or observers or cynical rock journos. _My head is in a spin, my feet don't touch the ground._ Christ __ I love it. Thank you Mandy, I love you. I want to spend my whole life in the sweet haze of ecsasy. It's such a good crowd. Everyone's mental. Thud thud thud. Bang bang bang. I can feel it now. I never knew how good life could be. I remember thinking, thinking it in full 3D; _the eighties have been shit 'til now but this is fucking excellent._ The release is orgasmic. No, _better._

The lasers click back on and create a giant blue tunnel formed of light which I can feel as well as see and hear. The lasers and the smoke target me like God's finger, and I stare into it, forgetting to dance. It's a doorway. A doorway into another world. a great ambient wash of synth sweeps through the music, and the chanting stops, like everyone else is as spellbound as I am.

A figure appears in the tunnel. It's in silhouette, but even so, it doesn't look human. It's wearing rags, and carrying a stick, and the head – it must be wearing a mask. The head is a goat's head. The head is the skull of a goat. Fuck me, that'll freak people out.

The strobe kicks in and suddenly there's someone right in front of me, someone familiar. I think it's Pete. It's not him but it's someone familiar. This guy's voice is eerliy clear above the club beats and the chants of the ravers.

"Jamie, can you hear me? I'm operating a nueral net synch pulse, using the music as a carrier wave. You have the mark. You have the mark now and you must be ready to use it. Everyone who has the mark shall live."

He grabs my hand and squeezes it, then disappears between the flashes of strobe light. Wild.

This is all getting too much. I need to sit down, to chill out.

I head through a side door, the thrashing beats a constant companion, and I'm out in the dark steaming fresh air of the parking lot, and to my joy it's someone I know. There's Pete sharing a joint with some other ravers. I sit down and he offers me a toke and I gratefully accept.

"This is the dawn of a new era, man," Pete tells me. "We've got ravers, casuals, soccer hooligans, all hugging each other and loved up, man. This is a revolution against all that keep-your-legs-crossed middle-class crap, man, we'll be free to say what we want to say and love who we want to love."

As he says that, it hits me. It hits me with a massive downer. We're doomed. Our days are numbered.

All this, all of this magic will be stamped out. There is _no way_ they will allow us to feel as good as this. They will not rest until the last rave is stamped out.

I shiver, and stare into the darkness. There are flashing blue lights in between the great hulking shadows of the empty warehouses.

NINE: SHOOT THESE EVIL ACID BARONS!

SCENE TWENTY SEVEN

Cave, Int.

JASON: But I have so many questions...

MERLIN: Those questions shall be answered in time, as you continue to grow and evolve. All of you. I shall be there to guide you. I shall be watching you...

MERLIN walks to the centre of the cave, and raises his hand in a gesture of farewell.

MERLIN: I shall be watching you whatever you do, for this land belongs to me.

FADE OUT in a swirl of psychedelic colours. FADE IN as the T-Service find themselves standing in their headquarters, on the top floor of London's Post Office Tower. ROLAND, the butler, jumps in surprise and almost drops the teapot he's carrying.

ROLAND: Oh dear me...I should be getting used to this by now.

SMITH: We're back!

SOMEDAY MAN: I'm glad Merlin's on our side, that's all I can say.

TANGERINE: Well, not all of us are back...poor old Camera Obscura.

She beckons to the pile of mechanical parts that DR. CHESS is carrying in his lap, in his wheelchair.

DR. CHESS: Not to worry. After the last crisis we had, I made him self-reassembling.

He pushes the parts onto the floor and they start to move independently, connecting themselves to each other.

JASON _(to TANGERINE)_ : Fancy a mystical massage?

TANGERINE: Thanks Jason, but I think I'll let my muscles heal the old-fashioned way.

DR. CHESS taps his pen on the arm of his wheelchair, calling for attention.

DR: CHESS: I have a suggestion to make, bearing in mind what Merlin said to us.

They all turn to listen.

DR: CHESS: Until now we've been operating in secret, and acting on orders from our contact, The Minister. But if I can have your support...

Camera pulls back to frame the entire T-Service.

DR. CHESS: I think we should go public. Britain needs us – oh never mind that, the _world_ needs us – and I think the public have a right to know who we are. The world should know – The T-Service is here to protect it!

ALL: _Shouts of "Hear, hear!" "Right on!" "Gor blimey!" "Absolute dolly!" etc. etc._

FADE TO BLACK

FADE IN THEME MUSIC

ROLL CREDITS

10: IT'S GROOVY AND COOL – IT'S OUR ACID HOUSE T-SHIRT!

I turned over in bed, hearing the alarm, and I saw Katy's blond hair on the pillow next to mine. I knew it was time to get up but I couldn't move. My arms, legs and stomach had cramped up and I just couldn't move. I tried to ask Katy to switch off the alarm but my jaw didn't work and the best I could manage was a low moan. The pain in my limbs increased, my arms and legs started to shiver, shake uncontrollably, and I heard screaming mixed in with the alarm clock but it wasn't Katy it was Liz, my daughter who was suddenly four years old again and standing by our bedside screaming...

I woke up and it was dark and it wasn't the alarm clock, it was the phone in the phone box nearby ringing. It took me a second to realize I'd been asleep, and another second to remember where I was. I tumbled out of the car, bolted into the phone box and snatched up the receiver so clumsily I almost dropped it.

"Who is that?" asked the cultured voice.

"It's Jamie Carter, Mr. King, you know it's me."

"Listen very carefully, Mr Carter. There is someone you need to be looking for. His name is Harold Gilbert. Harold Michael Gilbert, known to his associates as Harry. He was well acquainted with Jason Zodiac in the late Sixties."

"But..."

"One more thing. Section K. They used the title of Section K."

"Who did?"

"You need to be looking for them. But be extremely cautious, Mr. Carter, because they might also be looking for you."

"Now just wait a -"

"Good luck, Mr. Carter. Watch your back."

The voice rang off.

I stumbled out of the phone box and sat in the car for a while, feeling half-awake, until Katy called on the iPhone.

"Jamie, where are you?" she asked, and she sounded very, very pissed off.

"You know where I am," I began pathetically, wondering what trouble I was in this time. "Out on a job."

"Why didn't you tell me we had people coming round tonight?"

"What?" I tried to shake the sleep out of my head. "Because...we don't have people coming round. What are you talking about?"

"There are two people sitting in our living room, waiting to speak to you."

"Who are they?"

"I think you'd better come home and see for yourself." She rang off.

I shook my head again, looked back at the phone box and cursed everything to do with it. Then I started the engine with unnecessary aggression.

The two visitors were sitting, one on the sofa and one in the armchair, mugs of tea in their hands. One man, one woman. They got to their feet when I walked into the living room. Kathy was standing by the door, her arms folded, her eyebrows raised in a silent question to me.

The man was roughly my age, and wore a grey tweed jacket, white shirt with no necktie. His long cheeks were tanned with years of wind and sunshine, his short bristly hair above his piercing blue eyes was flecked with white.

The woman was dressed more casually, but also professionally. A green sweater, jeans, a plump face made paler by the shock of red curly hair that spilled over her shoulders, green eyes wide with some kind of anticipation.

Kathy didn't need to say anything. After a few seconds of furious brain-work, I recognized them. The man was Philip Campbell, or Chief Inspector Campbell as I remembered him – the police officer who'd been in charge of the investigation into Jason Zodiac's disappearance. The woman was Melissa Garland – the last journalist to interview Jason before he vanished.

"Well, what can I do for you?" I said eventually.

Campbell shifted his weight, drew in breath like he was impatient, or nervous. "We've both had letters, Mr. Carter. Anonymous messages. " He took out an envelope from his jacket's inside pocket. Melissa watched him intently.

"Jason Zodiac," she said. "He's still alive. And he's coming back."

END OF PART ONE

THE JASON ZODIAC FILES

WILL RETURN

IN VOLUME TWO:

"DOWN AND OUT IN THE U.S.A."

##  PART TWO

##  The Banana Sundial Discography Part One:

Debut Album – "Angels and Interchange"

released May 15th 1967 (UK)

Side One

1. Name, Date and Place

2. The High Terrace

3. Angie, Angie

4. Banana Moon

5. The Blue Veil

Side Two

6. Girl in Pink Pyjamas

7. The Man Outside

8. A Fistful of Silence

9. Too Bad about Alice

10. The Cat with Six Lives

11. The Journey Ends Halfway

##

##  Lyrics to

"A FISTFUL OF SILENCE"

WORDS/MUSIC: ZODIAC/MCCABE/FEINSTEIN/WADLEIGH

(CHORUS)

I shout to the clouds overhead

Seven thunderclaps answer me

I reach out to grasp the light

But find only

A fistful of silence

The descent into the invisible abyss

Is steep

At the inner gate of the North

A moss-covered stone idol

Awakens from its sleep

I feel the earth beneath bare feet

Truth calls with seven voices

My eyes are sore from weeping

are aflame hurt burn as I weep

I pierce the wall of the temple

And take the book within

I shout to the clouds overhead

Seven thunderclaps answer me

I reach out to grasp the light

But find only

A fistful of silence

Way down into the abyss at last

Sum man, moon woman,

Both walking the dark left hand path

The wizard The voice Seven voices call for

another game

Of plants and metals, perfumes and planets

He knows They know I shall not remain the

same

I shout to the clouds overhead

Seven thunderclaps answer me

I reach out to grasp the light

But find only

A fistful of silence

From a bed of ebony and wine

A girl speaks of dandelion and dew

Scared of death, and trapped in time

All I am and have ever been

Is at the edge of death oblivion

nothingness

I plunge into the darkness of shadows

history or dreams

Screaming

Through the breaking clouds,

I reach out for the light

But I find grasp only the cold metal

Of the lantern

And a fistful of silence.

\- April, 1967.

##

##  from: The Confessions of a Psychedelic Saint by Pete Dervish

(Published 2012 Black Box Press)

1- THE DOOR OF THE SUN

It's rare knowledge I know...

...but Acid House didn't get its start in Manchester like most people think. Nor was it called Acid House to begin with. It had made its way to Manchester from Northampton via a gold metallic Maxwell tape in the left hand coat pocket of Jason Zodiac. The working title for the seminal album I'd helped him put together a month earlier was either going to be the acidic redemption or the acid test. Jason hadn't yet made his mind up about that but it didn't really matter what they were going to call it, he'd said. What mattered was that Jason was about to set the wheels in motion for a whole new generation of kids.

Kids with nowhere to go as the unemployment figures just sat there at around the 'official' six million mark, and everybody knew that the government always lied about its embarrassing little figures too, using multiple registers to pair the shame down, especially the Thatcher regime who had replaced gold watches and strike action with benefit sanctions. Unofficially, you could probably double that statistic and you'd still come out with spare change.

Kids...skinning up, dreaming and breathing in the atmospheres created by Brian Eno and Philip Glass, voting for Green Peace (Britain's then-nominated terrorist in residence), making the switch to vegetarianism, considering Buddhism as a possible alternative to Sunday morning sermons, anxious about whether or not they'd actually push that button, zoning out on bedroom walls decorated in Athena postcards, not yet having quite grasped that the defeat of the Miners Strike was about far more than just some stinking pits in the ground or that the world was going to turn out to be even more perplexing than they already understood it to be and last, but by no means least, wondering what had happened to the fucking age of Aquarius they'd promised us.

Kids...huddled in dilapidated digs, scared, angry and confused, with more questions than answers, subsisting on a meagre diet of welfare, the never-never and casual temp shit jobs if the contracts came in, fed on the nightly ganja trade of the rat runs and the imported fantasies of the new twilight zone. Waiting. Just waiting for something positive to kick off from out of all the dead light, broken noses and privatised theft of a Nation.

It was the perfect birthplace for Operation Acid.

There in the claustrophobic late Victorian tenements where blue bricks hard as nails lined the lower sides of the streets in dull-blistered streaks of flaking paint. An area that encompassed the back streets on either side of the Kettering Road situated around that corner of the old Racecourse on which the Pavilion stood. That was the main psychic heat spot of Acid House which radiated out as far as Phippsville and Abington Park at one end of its spectrum and the tip of Clare Street nearby the walk through car park at the back of the Race Horse pub, just a stone's throw away from Grey Friars Bus station up the mounts at the other end.

Of course, it didn't take long for the morphic field to expand further outward, quickly engulfing the rest of the town and then the whole country in the company of mad poets and repentant brewers. But that was where Acid House was really born, right smack bang in the epicentre of Jason's squat just off the arse end of Abington Avenue, beneath the eagle's eye and across the Kettering Road from the Pavilion with its homeless drunks, dog shit, grass verges and the old red telephone boxes that always stank of piss. Past the traffic lights and just up from the Christian Science Church with its little book display side window with pictures of devoted happy Christian families and into the middle of a leper colony where every street had its story to tell and every cobbled alley way more than one.

In those streets and back alleys you could find doorways that led to pungent herb gardens that weren't supposed to be there. On those walls still lingered the simmering evidence of former social revolts now decades suppressed and abandoned. The anarchy symbols and warloeg of the punks, a 'Crass' here, a gothic pentagram there, or older generations still, a psychedelic garage door, sometimes a frustrated pornography and sometimes the language of much darker things juxtaposed by charming Vaughn Bode rip offs, love hearts and their proclamations of forever...and here and there, a few of the newer Chaos symbols for which I'll admit I'm guilty of one or two.

Yeah...that was where it had all really began. And Jason was the eye of that shit storm. Redemption from Hell. The A test. Acid House. Call it what you will. The instinctive knee jerk reflex action of a disinherited generation scuppered by Aids and neoliberalism, lost and staggering blind folded in the sodium-stained mad house, still clutching the now fast fading one eyed teddy bear of 70's youth and running through the labyrinth of cracked pavements, road work scars and crumbling double yellows, past the dead shoe factories, fly tipped slums, stagnant launderettes and pawn shop litters with the Minotaur's breath prickling the hairs on the back of their necks, looking for the nearest exit into Summerland.

But back then that was a task as impossible as trying to find a rainbow in the night sky. Especially in this shit hole. That was until Jason; The Great Hey Presto himself, had said it was easy and then proceeded to demonstrate. The answer had been sitting on the tip of our tongues the whole time and Jason, having dosed us with the holy sacrament, then pointed to the sky, announcing the magic word...Lo!

And there it was.

That had done the trick...Jason had blown our minds and shinned us all. He'd been the one we were waiting for to light the blue touch paper and illuminate all our spines.

After that, we knew that nothing could ever be quite the same again and determined why the hell should it. We had had enough of this bullshit. It was us versus the worshippers of Mammon and the death suckers of Kali and we were going to stage a cultural revolution of our own.

We were going to open the door of the sun.

2- WALKING IN INFINITY

The OOBE had already begun, lifting us, as we hoofed it down Abington Avenue towards the park. Slowing cautiously as we passed the all night petrol garage half way down the stretch so as not to attract attention before accelerating again past the cobblers and on down towards the Methodist church on the corner of Park Avenue North before hitting the traffic lights that looked like spinning barbershop posts and 'peaking'; jetting across the road and into the freedom of the darkness of the park beyond...only the park was full of light.

But not earthly light. Preternatural light. I had already learnt from Jason that walking in Gaia was where the magic was at its strongest. Everything glowed from within and undulated gently with the rhythm of the sighing earth and butterflies with wings of coalescent light zipped quietly past my head. Stepping off the tarmac path to cut across the fields on down to the boat lake I noticed that the grass had been replaced by a beautiful emerald infinitude of something that looked like fractals or the designs of the Moors. But infinity was flat and you could walk across it!

And the affinity. An affinity for everything in this jewelled garden of Eden that seemed totally familiar in a way that the 2D cardboard cut out set of the houses and streets in the distance beyond did not. The energy was immense. I held my hand to my face and it burnt gently in the finely weaved design of racing, spiralling, snaking particles that had decided it should be there. Its design reminded me somehow of the beautiful complexities of illuminated Celtic manuscripts. And the sky was filled with heavenly fire. And Jason! I turned to look at Jason and he was dancing wildly, spinning endlessly in arcane arcs composed of multiple arms and legs that blended together in a gentle morphosis of gossamer wings and every step of the choreography, a visible dance sheet written in light for a Hindu god.

We made for the boat lake like glowing UFOs crashing through the dark of space and landed at the bottom on a bed of stars. The moon was full in the still waters and just sat there like the arrival of another planet while the running stream beyond spat quarks on fire and the trees of the spinney were dressed in the finest cathedral windows of Tir Na Nog, giant fruits sitting on the branches like over ripe phosphorescent grapes. Jason turned to look at me and something in that darkened gaze of awe frightened me so much that I couldn't look at him directly. It was like staring into the god filled eyes of a mad man...and it felt like he was measuring me somehow...like I was the balance of some larger equation. Then he turned back to the trees in the spinney, walked towards them shimmering in jewels like a Klimt painting only so much better and did something that scared me even more. He started to talk to them. Suddenly I felt far away from the brotherly camaderie we had felt timeless moments before and I couldn't understand a word he was saying. It was like gobbledygook but I knew it held meaning.

I looked up, escaping the discomfort of the moment. I had the sense that there was a hidden brotherhood of devotees in this place stretching back thousands of years in time to the earliest of Earth's cultures describing an infinitude of possibilities all discovered in this one same impossible hyperspace instant we now found ourselves standing in and 'Lo!' just couldn't do it any justice at all. I hadn't just dropped Acid. I had taken a magic potion and entered into the land of the lotus-eaters. It was true what they said. It was a religious experience...and here they all were, the psychedelic saints, chuckling at the cosmic joke of it all from up there in the glistening jewels that hung suspended in the hidden architecture like angels. And the joke was on me. It was the oldest magic trick in the book. Now you see it. Now you don't.

3- SYMPATHY

Jason tuned the guitar as I swiftly hit the tape deck. Next, I sat on the Mandelbrot and hit the packet of King-size I had obtained with some garbled difficulty of communication over the intercom at the garage together with some 'munchies' on the way back from the park, tearing off a portion of the cover and rolling it into a roach end for a mellowing joint to chill out with as Jason started to play. No conversation passed between us but we were both at ease with one another again. Besides, he was concentrating. I didn't want to put him off his focus and I didn't want to ask what he had done back there and I didn't have to either. I knew exactly what he was doing. He was trying to bring it back with us.

He started to play – and the sound! It was like he knew the exact sound that the souls of an entire generation were singing at precisely this moment in time and just how to pluck that collective cord. It was a river of harmonic light. It was the music of the spheres. It was more than just sounds to seek solace to or gimmicky industrial experiments or another political punk rant or another angst rap track or ambient relaxation or retro stuff or music to fuck to or any of the other numerous sounds you'd heard before. Every one of those tracks was a jewel singing in the night. It was the thing in itself. It was complete understanding.

I knew this was going to be big. That it was going to change things. But I was worried if the world would get it, because there was one major draw back. It wasn't supposed to be music that you listened to here. It was music for the other world and you had to listen to it there to properly hear it or else you never really would. But Jason had it all figured out from the start.

He knew exactly what to do about that.

TO BE CONTINUED IN

THE JASON ZODIAC FILES

VOLUME TWO

##

##  "The New Adventures of Jason Zodiac:

The Engulfed Cathedral"

\- first published in "God?" underground magazine, sometime in the early nineties. The strip is credited to Glen Ponder, which is most probably a false name.

** **

** **

** **

##

##  THE END OF VOLUME ONE

The T-Service (original line-up, before Someday Man joined: L-R – Jason Zodiac, Doctor Chess, Screaming Lord Smith, Tangerine, Uncle Jack, Camera Obscura. Source: BBC Radio Times, March, 1967.

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