The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 26
“How long has she been sitting there?” said Nevada.
“Ever since Stinky made landfall on the island. She’s apparently keeping an eye on us.”
We went and sat back down at the table. I felt distinctly uneasy now that I knew we were being watched. It was all I could do not to spring back up and go to the window and make sure that the camera person was still sitting in the same place. And hadn’t, for example, crossed the road while putting on a ski mask and taking out a gun.
I told myself not to be ridiculous. Stinky and his entourage were annoying, but not dangerous. Still, it took a pronounced effort to remain in my chair.
“So Alicia was really a honey trap for Tinkler?” said Nevada.
“So it seems,” said Clean Head.
“Did he actually get any honey?”
“This is Tinkler we’re talking about here. Of course not. Oh, shit, here he is now.” Clean Head was staring towards the window where the top of Tinkler’s head was visible as he came in through the gate. A moment later the front door opened and closed, there were footsteps in the hall and Tinkler came into the breakfast room.
We all must have been staring at him, because he said, “Come on, it’s not as bad as all that.”
“Tinkler, I am so sorry,” said Nevada.
“Me too,” said Clean Head.
“Me too,” I said.
Tinkler sagged into a chair at the table with us and sighed. “I’ve been out there… trying to avoid Stinky. And trying to talk to Alicia.” I winced at the thought of this. “Avoiding Stinky was the easy part,” he said. “He’s engulfed in people, would you believe it? Standing there on the seafront, holding court. Adoring fans all around him. Adoring. The limited gene pool of these island types is really beginning to show itself.”
“Did you talk to Alicia?” said Nevada gently.
“Oh, yes. Oh, yeah.” Tinkler fell silent, frowning, his eyes cast down. Finally he looked up at us. “She was just pumping me for information, all that time, you know. And the rest of you. She wanted to know what we were up to. That’s what it was all about.”
“She’s a vile little hag,” said Nevada succinctly.
Tinkler shook his head sadly. “No. No, she’s not. She was just doing her job.”
“For Stinky Stanmer!”
A ghost of a smile appeared on Tinkler’s face. “But while she was getting information out of me, she didn’t realise I was also getting information out of her.” He leaned close to me and lowered his voice, conspiratorially. “It turns out that Stinky isn’t just here to make a documentary. He’s also looking for a copy of Wisht. The flip back version, of course. He wants to buy it and add it to his collection. You know, like a trophy.”
“Hmm,” said Nevada. “I wonder where he got the notion that he might find a copy here?”
Tinkler waved his hands in the air in a helpless gesture. “It was me, of course. With my big mouth. I told Alicia all about it.”
“Don’t worry, Tinkler,” I said. “Once we came here it was inevitable Stinky would follow. He obviously scents a documentary on the subject of Black Dog, and he won a BAFTA by following us once before.” That had been his programme about Valerian, which was entirely based on our research and our ideas. Needless to say, we’d received no credit. “But since then it’s been all downhill for him…”
“Because the little shit has never had an original notion,” said Nevada.
“So here he is,” I said. “Shadowing us again, hoping to get lucky. And once he arrived on the island it was only a matter of time before he found out that we were looking for the record. Assuming he didn’t know already. So don’t blame yourself.”
Tinkler gave me a grateful look. “But you know what we have to do now?” he said.
“Of course,” I said. “We have to beat Stinky to the punch.”
* * *
An hour later I made a pot of coffee and we sat in the breakfast room sipping it, holding a council of war. I said, “We came here to look for Wisht because there were four band members who had record collections where we might find it.”
“Four?” said Clean Head.
“Including the dead one,” said Nevada.
“Pete Loretto,” said Tinkler. “The drummer. Why is it that the drummer is the least surprising one to end up dead?”
“So far,” I said, “we’ve managed to look through just one of these record collections—Jimmy Lynch’s.” As terrible as it sounds, one of the many emotions I felt on learning that Valentyna was dead was a guilty sense of relief that I’d already checked Jimmy’s LPs. Because I wouldn’t be able to get to them now, since the house was a crime scene.
This in turn had got me thinking.
“Obviously,” I said, “what we need to do is look through the other record collections as soon as possible.”
“Before the other members of the band get killed?” said Clean Head.
That led to a protracted silence.
“Actually,” I said, “that hadn’t occurred to me.” What had occurred to me was that the other crime scene, at the Lorettos’ house, must have ceased to be a police priority, or the focus of any activity… I didn’t mention this yet, though.
“So we need to get in touch with Max Shearwater and Tom Pyewell as quickly as possible,” said Tinkler, looking at me. “Or is that what you’ve been doing?”
“That is exactly what I’ve been doing,” I said. Remarkably, I actually had working phone numbers for both of them and I’d called them up before this little meeting. To my amazement, in each case I’d managed to reach them on my first attempt.
Initially, though, they’d both reacted with identical wariness, for identical reasons. They’d thought that I was calling to discuss Jimmy Lynch’s arrest, and his wife’s murder. When they learned I had something else entirely in mind, they’d both relaxed.
I’d played it somewhat differently with each of them.
I told Tom Pyewell that we wanted to take up his kind offer of coming to stay at his house. His response had been enthusiastic. “I’ve split up with Lakshmi,” he confided. I didn’t tell him I already knew this, thanks to the efficacy of the island grapevine. “So there’s plenty of room at the house. Even more than there was before. You guys can use the swimming pool. And Nevada can explore the wine cellar. I had stuff put down there years ago, and I’ve forgotten what I’ve got.”
I told him that sounded fantastic, which it did. But we wanted to pay him a preliminary visit today and look for the record. Business before pleasure, so to speak. This seemed to make sense to him, and he’d agreed, saying we could turn up at any time.
With Max Shearwater I’d begun by praising the CD he’d made for me. In this I was simply telling him the truth, so it was easy. And I obviously sounded convincing because Max had been delighted. If he’d been a cat, he would have purred.
Then I asked him if we could drop by at his house and have a look for Wisht. I was hoping that we might be able to do this today, after visiting Tom Pyewell, but Max had said today was impossible. So we agreed to do it tomorrow.
I didn’t like waiting. There was so much that could go wrong now that Stinky was in the equation. So, since truth had worked so well with him earlier, I decided to come clean.
I sipped my coffee and looked at the serious faces of my friends around the table. “I explained to Max that Stinky Stanmer was on the island, and I said that he might make an approach to try and buy the record before we did.”
“What did he say to that?” asked Nevada.
“He said he’d tell Stinky to take a running jump.”
“A man after my own heart,” said Clean Head.
“So he’s not a big Stanmer fan?” said Nevada.
I shook my head. “Particularly since it seems that his daughter Maxine is dating Stinky.”
“You’re kidding,” said Nevada in chorus with Clean Head.
“Dating may be overstating it. But they’ve hooked up a few times, and Maxine’s mum and dad aren’t too delighted about it.”
“Smart people,” said Nevada.
“And Tom Pyewell?” said Tinkler, rather admirably keeping his eye on the ball for once.
“He’s expecting us any time.”
Clean Head half rose from her chair. “Let’s go, then.”
“Not me,” I said.
Clean Head and Tinkler looked at me. “What do you mean?”
“The rest of you go, but I’m not coming with you.”
“What the hell—” said Tinkler.
“Why not?” said Clean Head.
I nodded towards the window. “I take it we’re still under observation?”
Nevada went over and looked out and nodded. “Yes, the giantess is still on stakeout,” she said.
I leaned forward, looking across the table at the others. “If I go with you, Stinky will hear about it. And I don’t trust him not to turn up at Tom Pyewell’s and make an attempt to buy the record himself. And I don’t trust Tom Pyewell not to sell it to him.”
“So what are we going to do?” said Tinkler.
“You guys go up there without me. Nevada will go through Tom’s record collection. With your help, of course, Tinkler. If the LP is there, you’ll find it.”
Nevada came back and sat beside me, nodding. “Both because he’s a sexist moron and incapable of lateral thinking, it will never occur to Stinky that we’re going to look for the record without him.” She kissed me on the cheek.
“Okay,” said Tinkler, looking at me doubtfully. “So, you’re just going to stay here?”
“Not exactly,” I said.
24. PORKY AND PERKY
After the others set off for Tom Pyewell’s house, I went into the kitchen and joined Miss Bebbington.
She smiled at me and said, “How’s the stomach?”
Just to cement the story that I wasn’t going anywhere, we’d got Tinkler to text Alicia saying that I’d been laid low with food poisoning and was spending the day in bed. The pretext for contacting her—the text pretext—was that Tinkler was concerned about Alicia, because she’d also ordered the salmon at the Alexander von Humboldt last night.
I felt a bit bad lying about the pub’s food—which had been excellent. But not as bad as I would have felt pretending that one of Miss Bebbington’s meals had given me food poisoning. Come to think of it, I doubt we would have dared to say that; we would have had to come up with a different story.
Anyway, Alicia now believed I was out of action and no doubt Stinky would immediately be operating on exactly the same information.
I’d decided to come clean and explain all this to Miss Bebbington. Letting her in on our plan proved to be a smart move, because it turned out that she loved a good conspiracy. And she didn’t love Stinky Stanmer. “Sometimes his programme comes on when I’m listening to the radio while I’m cooking and I have to turn it off right away, even though my fingers are covered with flour or something. He’s just so obnoxious and smarmy.”
I allowed that these were two very good adjectives for Stinky.
I also needed Miss Bebbington’s help in showing me how to get to the house where Pete and Sarita Loretto had lived. Farmhouse, as it turned out. It would be about half an hour’s walk from the B&B. Maybe forty minutes because a lot of it was uphill. The best part was that I could begin my journey by climbing over the back wall of Miss Bebbington’s garden.
This meant that Stinky’s camera person, whom Nevada had rather cruelly called the ‘giantess’, and who was still stubbornly staked out outside the B&B, wouldn’t be aware of my departure.
“You won’t have any trouble climbing the wall,” said Miss Bebbington. “I do it all the time, to get to my vegetable patch. I just use the stepladder. She nodded towards the window that overlooked the garden at the rear of the house. “I’ve got it out of the shed and set it up for you.”
Sure enough, standing against the back wall was a sturdy-looking aluminium stepladder, glinting rather invitingly in the afternoon sunlight.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to have a little snooze if there’s nothing else I can do to help? I’ve finished drawing the map and I’ve put it with the key. And I’ve left the computer on. Switch off the monitor when you’re finished.”
I said I would, and that I had everything I needed, and wished her a pleasant nap.
“Remember to stay hydrated and stick to bland fare like rice and bananas,” she said, and went out chuckling wickedly. She just loved the food-poisoning cover story, not least because it reflected badly on the Alexander von Humboldt’s cuisine.
I picked up the map, folded it, and put it in my pocket along with the key. Then I made myself a coffee and went and sat down at the computer, which had a surprisingly large LED monitor since Miss Bebbington liked to have a number of different recipes open on it at once. It was officially the kitchen computer, or KITCHEN KOMPUTER, as a hand-lettered sign on the top of the screen declared.
I forgave Miss Bebbington for that.
There were no recipes open on the big screen at the moment. Instead there was a browser page displaying the blog that had belonged to the late Pete and Sarita Loretto. I had originally wanted to look at this just because it was plentifully illustrated with photos of their house and the area around it. But I soon discovered that it actually made for riveting reading.
The Lorettos had started blogging in earnest when they decided, as part of their rural self-sufficiency, to go in for pig rearing. This had begun as a cheerful adventure for them and Sarita had documented it in a series of engagingly written posts especially devoted to the saga, starting with the day they had bought two little chaps.
The young pigs had been virtually treated as domestic pets. An enclosure with a trough had been built for them in the Lorettos’ extensive garden, but they wandered freely and at will, and often spent time in the house. One pig was considerably larger and they’d called him Porky. The smaller, more energetic one was dubbed Perky. But then as they grew, they sort of reversed. Perky had swiftly caught up with his friend and had become rather porky. Meanwhile, Porky had grown steadily more active and become rather perky.
The adventures and misadventures of this duo were recorded by Sarita in lively detail and with considerable affection and abundant photographs. The pigs were intelligent and friendly creatures. Surprisingly intelligent. And also surprisingly friendly, given the ultimate nature of their relationship with the Lorettos.
But they couldn’t be expected to have any inkling of that, or of their eventual fate. And Sarita did her best to put it from her own mind as she lovingly chronicled life with two pigs.
However, that eventual fate loomed ever closer, with Porky scheduled as the first to go. And the inevitable day came when Pete Loretto and his wife had to take him to the pig killer on the mainland.
Here the blog took a distinctly dark turn, giving a graphic account of the nightmare journey across the causeway as they left the island, with Porky increasingly distraught in the back of their car.
At least, I thought, they didn’t end up underwater.
But things didn’t improve much when they got to the pig killer, who was a sort of environmentally conscious, back-to-the-land hippy type who operated a small independent abattoir. Unfortunately, it turned out that what he couldn’t operate was the grossly misnamed ‘humane killer’. This was a bolt gun that was supposed to be held to poor Porky’s head to usher him out of this world instantly and painlessly.
It did anything but. Repeated attempts to apply it led to blood, screams and intense suffering. And not just on the part of the pitiable pig. The account of how they finally killed Porky, using knives and blunt instruments, was unbearable. At least, I couldn’t bear it, and I skipped whole chunks of the text, content just to absorb the general thrust of what happened.
Sarita Loretto, however, recorded every detail unsparingly, including the hideous dismemberment of Porky when he was finally, thankfully dead. And turned into meat.
Not surprisingly, she was utterly traumatised by the whole incident, and she stopped writing the blog for a while. It was left to her husband to do a ‘guest post’ about the first meal when Porky’s remains were served up. Pete Loretto wrote rhapsodic descriptions of the mouth-watering smell of the roast in the oven, the moist golden pork that emerged, the perfection of the crackling, etc.
There were photos of the meal—which, it has to be said, looked pretty good—and of the people who had attended. The Lorettos had invited a bunch of friends around to join them. The smiling faces around the table included Jimmy Lynch and Valentyna, and Tom Pyewell and—I was surprised to see—Lakshmi. I was even more surprised to see Gareth the garage mechanic there.
But the most striking person in the photograph was Sarita Loretto. In contrast to the happy grins of the others, she looked pale, drawn, positively stricken. A spectre at the feast.
Troubled and disgusted, she refused to take even a mouthful of the meat, as she explained the following day, when she began to post sentimental reminiscences about the late Porky. The website briefly began to look like a condolence book for someone who had died. But it quickly segued into radical vegetarian and then radical vegan pronouncements.
These were very different in tone from her earlier jolly writings. But if they were a bit doctrinaire and humourless, I couldn’t really blame her. And she argued the case for veganism with passion and clarity.
Her husband continued to offer the occasional guest post and for a while their two blogs ran in parallel, although there was really no contest between the two. Pete posted only very sporadically, and the content of their posts was separated by more than ideology. Pete’s writing was stilted and seldom more than a string of banal clichés.
Things really began to get tense when Sarita started writing about the surviving pig, Perky.
Perky was heartbroken at the sudden and inexplicable loss of his lifelong friend. Sarita wrote about this in a way that broke the reader’s heart, too. But at least Perky earned a temporary reprieve, as both the Lorettos had Porky’s last hours hellishly fresh in their memories, and had agreed that they never wanted to go through that particular nightmare again.
