Murder Most Fab

This
book is dedicated to the memory of

Russell
Churney, 1964-2007

The
only known heterosexual in the

World
of showbusiness

In
secret we met:

In
silence I grieve

That
thy heart could forget,

Thy
spirit deceive.

If
I should meet thee

After
long years,

How
should I greet thee?

With
silence and tears.

‘When
We Two Parted’ — Lord Byron

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

With special thanks to Kirsty
Fowkes, my editor, who encouraged and restrained me with great skill and
diplomacy.

Thanks also to Andrew Goodfellow
at Ebury for giving me the chance to write my first novel, Ian Mackley for
telling me to get on with it, David McGillivray and Brenda Clary for helping me
select poems, Frankie Clary for the Spanish translations, and Valerie for kind
looks late at night.

Dear Timothy,

I am sorry about this book, in so far as it implicates you. My story
is so interwoven with my love for you that it is impossible to separate the
two.

It is time for me to explain my life, to demystify my feelings for
you and spell out exactly how fame and murder took over what might otherwise
have been a harmless, insignificant existence.

Guilt grows like a tumour inside me. The idea of telling my true
story, thus squeezing the spot, expelling the poison and cleansing my soul, is
not only a solution but a compulsion
—
writing
down the truth in all its grisly detail will be chemotherapy for my moral
anguish.

You know the real me, the me that existed beneath the famous
television persona, Mr Friday Night. Fame is such a strange thing, Timothy. It
transforms you and everyone who knows you. Only you, my beloved, remembered the
innocent boy from Kent whose heart you stole and broke and mended
—
and broke again. Even while I was the darling of the tabloids,
the king of television, doyen of the party scene, I was just Johnny to you
…
But even you didn’t know the full story.

If we were being picky we might describe me as a serial killer. But
I don’t think of myself like that. There was no bloodlust to quench, no
orgasmic satisfaction in dispatching any of my unfortunate victims. I was
forced into a situation by circumstances beyond my control, obliged to make a
choice between my survival and other people’s deaths. It sounds trite to say
‘one thing led to another’ but it’s true. I wasn’t acting under any
uncontrollable urge. Please don’t think of me as a psychopath, sociopath or
schizophrenic. None of those is applicable. I’m a normal, balanced,
contributing member of society. And I love you. It couldn’t be worse, really,
could it?

As for the rest of my dreary life, I’m done for. But, strangely, I
don’t mind. I’m a different man now, after everything that’s happened. I had it
all, lost it all, and now I’m surprised to find that I don’t want it back. Been
there, done that, got the bloodstained T-shirt. My juices don’t flow at the
thought of publicity like they used to. The thrill of being in the papers has
long since been replaced with dread, but the final feeding frenzy of tabloid
adjectives and lurid headlines has been a fine exit. And if one is, however
unwillingly, to enter that arena, it’s best to be cast in the role of bad boy.
The language of journalists flourishes much more imaginatively when they take
the moral high ground.

I’m sorry. I love you. I hope you understand and that you forgive
me,

JD x

I was no ordinary
prostitute, I liked to think. I was high class. I had a number of tricks up my
sleeve, as it were, to ensure my client’s satisfaction. I was twenty-two and my
enormous, proud and ever-ready member had the ability to throb and twitch on
command, and — most exciting of all — could ejaculate by the beakerful at a
moment’s notice and not before. If required to play the passive role, my
sphincter could squeeze and tug, vibrate and undulate in a frankly unnatural manner.
I was more of a circus turn than a common trick. I claimed I could peel a satsuma
with my arse, but that wasn’t strictly true — although I did once crack a
Cadbury’s Creme Egg.

Believe
it or not, back then in the early nineties, I was a straight-looking
boy-next-door type who specialized in rough sex and humiliation. The image was
part dominant master and part horny straight boy, up for it when paid, yet —
wouldn’t you know? —bad and dirty with it.

Although
I was British, my grandmothers had clearly had exotic tastes: people speculated
that I’d had one Indian grandfather and one, maybe, Hawaiian. While Grandmother
Rita assured me that Grandfather Norman was good, solid British stock through
and through, she had to admit that there was no knowing what might have come
through on the other side. I was dark-haired and olive-skinned with inscrutable
Buddha-like brown eyes. You couldn’t tell what I was thinking when I kissed
your forehead any more than when I tightened my hands round your throat.

I am a
modest five feet nine inches, smooth and naturally toned from my youthful
participation in athletics. My aura, I’m told, is the same dark green as an
empty Louis Coudenne claret bottle held up to the sunlight: menacing and
mesmerizing all at once.

My
working name at that time was simply JD (Johnny Debonair being my real name)
but I also answered to ‘sir’.

JD
—floating your boat, whatever the weather!
read my
business card, and it was true. If being verbally or physically abused was your
desire, I could deliver. I could transport. I could bring joy. As my ad at the
back of
Gay Times
stated (beneath a torso shot with a digitally blurred
face): ‘Totally active type. Versatile if need be. Horse hung.’

I
wasn’t boasting. The look of gratitude on my punters’ faces said it all — they
were misty-eyed as they said goodbye. It wasn’t love, of course, but I knew I
could induce infatuation in a single visit. I was the font of happiness.
Besides offering them my magnificent body, with its awe-inspiring genitals, I
could give them emotional satisfaction too. I told them that I hoped to see
them again. I did extended eye-contact and dealt with the financial
transactions quickly and dismissively, never counting or questioning. I
remembered their quirks and preferences, knew how and when to trigger their
orgasm(s) and held them tight in my arms afterwards, evaporating their
loneliness for a few blissful moments. I was worth it.

I was
also discreet, punctual, clean and enthusiastic. I did what it said on the
packet.

In
retrospect, my path to the unusual career choice of high-class hooker seems
straightforward, but I had no idea I was heading in that direction even as I
took each step along the road. Generally speaking, enrolling at the Lewisham
School of Musical Theatre isn’t always a sure-fire fast-track entry to a life
of vice. It might not be as prestigious as some drama schools but it has still
launched one or two limp little careers of vague interest, if only to those
closely related to the people concerned. Nevertheless, that was where it began
for me.

I
hadn’t craved a life in musical theatre but I applied for a place because my
grandmother had decided it was the best possible career for someone like me. I
was an extrovert youth, with a mother who wore gypsy skirts, so it was agreed I
would be a natural. As I wasn’t sure one way or the other, I went along with
it. Apart from anything else, I had to think of something to do with myself and
most other possibilities seemed too much like hard work. There was no way I was
going to spend my life in an office, if I could help it; singing and dancing
for a living were better than that.