The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 30
Max was sitting at a desk behind a computer. It was cold in the room, the consequence of some aggressive air conditioning, and he had a blanket with a Native American pattern on it draped over him. He was looking at a Mac with two huge screens, the kind used for video or audio editing. He turned and gazed at me blankly for a moment, as if trying to place me, then comprehension dawned. I wondered if this was a florid affectation, or if he had indeed been so deeply engaged in his work that he’d forgotten I was around.
“I’ve got it,” I said, holding up the record.
“Great. Bring it over here. Let’s have a look.”
I walked over to the desk, and came around beside where he was. As I did so, I could suddenly see what was on the wall behind the desk. Hanging there, the way someone else might have a Route 66 road sign or an old enamelled metal plaque advertising Coca-Cola, there was a very familiar sign.
It was the one with a warning about tidal times. The one without any bullet holes in it. The one with the wrong times. The one that had almost got us killed.
I looked at Max Shearwater. He was smiling at me, a quiet little smile. I realised I’d been supposed to notice the sign on the wall.
That was why he’d told me to come into his office.
He shrugged off the blanket that had been concealing his hands. Those hands were wearing purple latex gloves and were holding what at first looked like a stubby length of thin piping.
But, in fact, it was a sawn-off shotgun.
Max pointed the shotgun at me with one hand and pressed a key on his computer with the other. “All done now, dear,” he said.
“We’re ready in here, darling,” said Ottoline’s voice from the computer.
Max took the record from me and set it down on his desk. It seemed amazingly irrelevant all of a sudden. Then he walked me down the corridor at gunpoint to the living room.
There was something odd about the room; something had changed about it. Then I saw what it was. On the white rear wall, with the fireplace in the middle, all the paintings on one side had been removed. To the left of the fireplace the wall was still covered with them. But to the right, it was just blank white wall. And the furniture that had been here—some armchairs and a Navajo rug—had been removed, too. The floor was bare.
Nevada and Tinkler were standing on the bare patch of floor, their backs to the bare wall. On a chair some distance from them, Ottoline was sitting pointing a gun at them. It was a sawn-off shotgun, just like Max’s. His and hers weaponry.
“I suppose you’re wondering why we’ve asked you here,” said Max, and both he and Ottoline laughed. He gestured with his shotgun, indicating that I should go over and join Nevada and Tinkler. I did so, and the three of us stood there as if posing for a photo, perhaps in a police line-up.
“You really have no one to blame but yourselves,” he said. He pulled up a chair and sat down beside Ottoline. Behind them was a table with one of her sculptures on it—a bust of a misshapen head. It seemed to form a grotesque family trio with the two Shearwaters on either side of it.
“If only you hadn’t gone to Erik Make Loud’s that day,” said Max. “You never would have been mixed up in any of this. And poor Stanley wouldn’t have got so confused and bungled everything.”
I had to think for a moment who poor Stanley was. Stanley Strangford, the would-be assassin with the red and green ski masks.
“He just wasn’t prepared to have so many people to kill,” said Max.
“You knew what he was going to do?” said Nevada. Her voice was carefully toneless but underneath it I sensed a growing rage. She didn’t like people pointing guns at us.
Ottoline must have detected it too, because she said, “Just so you understand the situation fully. These are shotguns, which have been rendered highly illegal by having their barrels cut down. What that means is, if they’re fired, the pellets disperse over a very wide area. That is why we have moved the furniture away from that whole section of the room. Because that whole section of the room is what you might think of as the blast area. Anything in the vicinity will be utterly shredded if we fire these weapons. So if you try anything, say for example trying to take these guns away from us, you will all be killed instantly. Sorry, darling, what were you saying?”
This last was directed at Max, who looked at us and said, in a tone of mild annoyance, “I didn’t just know what Stanley was going to do, I got him to do it. I went to quite a lot of trouble preparing him for that particular task, and it was all wasted.”
“You groomed him,” I said.
Max chuckled. “That’s right! I groomed him online. In the modern fashion—and they say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Ottoline chuckled at this. “But, essentially,” he said, “I used the same techniques as I did with Berit.”
Berit Barsness. The Loopy Groupie. “You got her to kill Norrie, your manager?” I said.
“Yes, I did. Although in her case the campaign was a little more elaborate. The dog howling outside her window, and so on.” He gave a nostalgic sigh. “I had a lot of fun putting those tapes together.”
“Why all the killing, Max?” said Nevada.
Max shrugged. “Why do you think? Money, I’m afraid.”
“The money you were supposed to have burned.”
“Of course. What else?”
“What really happened to it, Max?”
“Well, it was all very unfortunate. You see, just at that time my family had run into financial difficulties. So I needed a big cash injection. So I decided the chaps in the band should all chip in and help me out.” He smiled at us. “After all, none of them would have had their careers if not for me. I was the leader of the band. I was the brains of the outfit. If you looked at it coolly and objectively, they owed me the money. But of course I wasn’t crazy enough to think they’d see it that way. So if they were going to make a contribution, they’d have to do so without knowing it. That’s why I came up with the wheeze to burn a million dollars. Note dollars not pounds. Initially I thought I’d be able to pull the old switcheroo when we did the currency exchange. Swapping real pounds sterling for fake or counterfeit dollars. But I soon realised that would never pass muster. For the stunt to work at all we would have to invite the press to witness it, and they’d be bound to want to examine the money before it went in the fire. So I came up with another way of pulling off the trick.”
“How?” I said.
“Ottoline was already doing her sculptures by then, and she helped me. We built a heatproof ceramic chamber and put it in the middle of the fire pit. It had some metal components, to allow us to seal it when it was full, but it was chiefly ceramic. It had real flames all around it, but the chamber itself was completely secure. The money would go in there when I was apparently tossing it into the flames and instead of it burning up it was perfectly safe. I was standing directly over the chamber, the only angle from which you could see it. From every other angle all you could see was the flames. Of course I had to burn a bit of the real stuff, to make sure some genuine half-destroyed banknotes were carried away on the wind to create the illusion. After the bonfire, we just left our stash there. For weeks, because we didn’t want anybody to see us digging around in the ashes. But eventually we went back, Ottoline and I, and we uncovered our lovely ceramic chamber with all the money inside, safe and sound. We took the loot and I removed the chamber itself, of course.”
“And threw it in the ocean?” I said.
“God no.” Max sounded genuinely shocked. “How could we do that to a beautiful mechanism that had functioned so loyally? We incorporated it into one of the sculptures outside. Anyway, all the evidence was gone. But when I learned you were coming to the island I suddenly felt insecure. And it’s not like me to feel insecure. I suddenly wondered if there might be something I’d missed. Something you might find in the fire pit, even after all these years.”
“So you got Jimmy Lynch to campaign to have it filled with cement,” said Nevada.
“Yes, I could always twist Jimmy around my little finger. By the time I was finished with him, he was convinced it was his own idea. The only thing I had to do was pay for it. Or rather, pass him the money under the table so he could pay for it. Very tight is old Jimmy. Poor old Jimmy.”
“You killed Jimmy’s wife, didn’t you?” I said.
“Ah, now,” said Max. He seemed very eager to talk, which was good. Because the longer he talked the more chance we had of finding a way out of this. “That was sort of a combination of long-term project and spur-of-the-moment inspiration.”
“The long-term project being to get rid of everyone else in the band,” said Nevada.
“Well, I suppose you could put it like that,” said Max. “Our manager Norrie came very close to working out what we did with the money, so he had to go. Then, for years and years, everything was fine. But then we got careless. One night we were reminiscing about the money and the fire, Ottoline and I, and Maxine overheard us. So then she knew. Of course she never told anyone, but…”
“It’s such a burden on the poor thing,” said Ottoline.
“Exactly,” said Max. “One day she might inadvertently let something slip. And in this age of social media, the cat will truly be out of the bag. So we decided to take preemptive action.”
“And kill the rest of the band,” said Nevada.
Max shrugged. “We’re the only ones with a child. So when the others die, their claims on the money will die with them. It’s like a long-term art project I’ve been working at, on and off, for years. When Stanley Strangford was ready, I unleashed him on Tom at Erik Make Loud’s house. That didn’t work out, no matter. There’d be other opportunities. Meanwhile, my project with Pete had come to fruition.”
“That was very satisfactory,” said Ottoline.
“Very satisfactory,” said Max.
“And then the other night,” said Ottoline, “I’m in the Alexander von Humboldt with Maxine and Jimmy starts shouting about wanting to murder his wife. In front of witnesses.”
Max and Ottoline glanced at each other and began to giggle helplessly. But they both returned their gaze to us, and the guns didn’t waver.
“So I texted Max,” said Ottoline. “And told him what happened.”
I said, “Did your daughter know what you were doing?”
That stopped the giggling. Max and Ottoline now wore identical scandalised expressions. “Of course not,” said Max.
“She knows about the money, but not about anything else,” said Ottoline.
“Anyway,” said Max, “as soon as I got Ottoline’s text I began thinking at a million miles per second. I prepared a little special something, and then I literally ran down the hill. I got to Jimmy and Valentyna’s house in about two minutes flat, and I went straight in through the front door without knocking. And the first thing I saw was that coat stand with all the scarves on it. My eye just went straight to it. I think my mind must have already been working out the possibilities all the time I was on my way there, ever since the text, and on some level I had already decided that a scarf was the way to go.”
“Of course,” said Ottoline. “Subconscious deliberation. It’s the most powerful part of the creative process.”
Max nodded. “So I grabbed a scarf off the rack without even pausing and I called out for Valentyna, I gave a merry little yell, and she replied from the kitchen. And I scooted along to her. She was surprised, but not all that surprised, to see me. She was accustomed to me dropping round, and it certainly wasn’t out of character for me to come through the front door without knocking.” He chuckled heartily. “It was almost as if my past behaviour had been a preparation for that day, that moment.”
“The subconscious again,” said Ottoline, nodding vigorously.
“So I trotted into the kitchen, looking all cheerful, and Valentyna smiled when she saw me. She was sitting there at the kitchen table with her sleeves rolled up and a big bowl in front of her, shelling peas. My good mood was infectious. She even smiled when she saw me holding Jimmy’s scarf. And she laughed—she actually laughed—when I threw it around her neck. Giggled, actually. Girlish giggle. But then she saw I was wearing gloves.” Max looked at the purple latex gloves on his hands. “Just like these ones. And in that second, in that instant, something changed in her eyes. I suppose maybe she saw something in my eyes. Because she began to resist. To fight back. But it was too late, of course. I already had the scarf around her throat and I started to pull it good and tight. She wasted a lot of time trying to get it off her and I just kept tugging it tighter and tighter and I dragged her off her chair and down onto the floor and then I really began to tighten it. She was struggling like hell, but I had her and I wasn’t going to let her go.”
“Did you have an erection?” said Ottoline, apparently in a spirit of detached inquiry.
“A huge one,” said Max Shearwater.
“You old lecher,” said Ottoline, and they both laughed. At that moment I felt a terrible sense of sadness and loss. Not for Valentyna specifically, although she was part of it, but for everyone and everything. It was as though the bottom had dropped out of the world.
I had met some very bad people and had known them to do very bad things. But there was something about these two that just seemed to call everything into question. The fact that they could exist, and behave the way they did, seemed to devalue the very quality of the world.
I couldn’t stand to look at them anymore, so I turned my head away, and stared towards the window.
It was the window on my right, the garden window.
Clean Head was standing outside.
28. GARDEROBE
Clean Head stood there among the statues in the garden, just on the other side of the window.
Our eyes met. She gave me a tense nod. She understood what was happening and she was on the case. A hot surge of relief broke in my chest.
Nevada was unaware of what I’d seen, but I felt Tinkler stir at my side. Suddenly there was something very different about him. Maybe it was his breathing. He must have spotted Clean Head, too.
Then, horribly, Ottoline must have also sensed something, because she began to turn towards the window.
And the instant she started to do so, Tinkler let out an anguished cry and fell to his knees. All eyes in the room turned towards him. Mine too, though an instant later than the others, because first I took in the sight of Clean Head running from the window and disappearing around the corner.
Only then did I turn to Tinkler.
He was grovelling on the floor. “Please,” he begged. “Please just let us go. Don’t tell us any more. We won’t tell anyone what you’ve said. Just let us go.”
It was, I have to admit, a great performance. In particular I admired his voice, which was little more than a rusty croak. And he had completely covered Clean Head’s escape. Quick thinking, Tinkler.
“Now, you know we can’t do that,” said Max Shearwater, shaking his head in a gesture of reprimand, as if to a naughty child. “We can’t let you go. But what we most certainly can do is make the process much less unpleasant for you.”
“What process is that?” said Nevada.
“You know what process,” said Max patiently.
“Killing us, you mean,” said Nevada coldly. “And how the fuck do you propose to make that ‘less unpleasant’?”
“We have a supply of very pure heroin, and we shall administer a small injection to each of you.”
“Starting with the girl, I think,” said Ottoline. “She strikes me as the troublemaker in the bunch.”
That will never happen, I thought. I’ll never let that happen. They’ll have to kill me first. I will go for them and they’ll have to shoot me with the…
Then I realised the true nature of their threat about the shotgun. If any of us tried anything, the blast would kill all three of us.
“Good idea,” said Max. “We can start with her.” Then he looked at me, and it was horribly as if he’d read my mind. Or maybe he’d just read the expression on my face. “But we know you love her,” he said.
The words were unimaginably unpleasant. It was true, but hearing this man say it was like having worms crawl around inside my head, exploring every contour of my skull. My most private places.
“We know how much it will hurt for you to see her go,” he said gently. “So we’ll make sure we do you next. There won’t be any delay. You won’t have time to suffer.”
“Do both of them at the same time,” said Ottoline.
Max’s face lit up. “That’s a wondrous idea,” he said. “Utterly brilliant, my darling.”
“Do them simultaneously. Then neither of them has to go through watching the other die first.”
Nevada and I looked at each other. Looking into her eyes was like looking into a furnace, with the rage and hatred for these people burning in them.
“Utterly inspired, my love. And we shall record it. On video.”
“Of course we shall.” They too were gazing into each other’s eyes. I looked at Nevada. We were both thinking the same thing. Should we jump them now? Then we both looked at the shotguns and knew there was no chance.
Max saw us looking at the guns, and perhaps again he followed our chain of thought. “That would be a horrible way to go,” he said. “It would be quick I suppose, but it would also be unimaginably agonising. Why would you do that when you could go out the other way? A simple, painless injection. I don’t know if you’ve ever taken heroin, but if not, you’re in for a treat.”
His voice took on a crooning, wheedling quality. “It will be the most luxuriant physical pleasure you will ever have experienced. You will literally dissolve, evaporating blissfully into the universe. What a way to go!” He whistled and laughed. “I almost wish I was joining you,” he said, and then he laughed some more and Ottoline joined in. Their heads were close together, happy conspirators, and the sculpted head on the table behind them seemed to be leaning forward and listening, perhaps even nodding with approval.
