The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 9
I picked up the phone and looked at it. Tinkler.
Under other circumstances I might have been exasperated or annoyed. But now as I answered I just hoped he was okay. Tinkler didn’t seem the type to suffer much from post-traumatic stress, but you never knew…
“Turn the TV on,” he said, with no greeting or preamble.
“What?”
“Turn it on. Quick. Now. BBC One.”
I hurried back into the bedroom, Nevada giving me a surprised look as I scooped up the remote and sat down on the edge of the bed as the TV screen came to life. I’d lost track of time but it was the London news.
Tom Pyewell was standing on the road near Erik’s house with the Thames framed picturesquely in the background. He was dressed the way I’d seen him a few hours ago, including the long black coat. Standing beside him was a big man, somewhat taller than Tom and considerably more bulky. He was expensively, meticulously and eccentrically dressed in black and white checked trousers and a black and gold brocade jacket with a floral pattern on it. He also wore tennis shoes and a yellow and black Rupert the Bear scarf. His long hair and long beard were a wild mess of grey, but both the quality of his clothes and the gleaming intelligence of his eyes cancelled any impression of a drunk, derelict or wild man. As did his voice.
The camera moved in close on him as he said, in mellow and educated tones, “I was in London this morning visiting the Church of St Sepulchre, a regular pilgrimage I make, standing in front of the John Ireland Memorial Window, and I was actually thinking about the band, thinking about Black Dog and Tom—” At this point the man glanced to his side and the camera bobbed back to take in Tom Pyewell standing beside him, just long enough for Pyewell to nod and open his mouth as if he was about to say something, but then the big man started speaking again and the camera closed in on him once more, excluding Pyewell.
And the man said, “So there I was, making a pilgrimage to a shrine—so to speak—of one of our musical heroes, and thinking about the good old days with the band and with Tom and at that very moment my phone starts blowing up, with messages about what had happened here.” At this point, some lettering and graphics belatedly appeared at the bottom of the screen identifying the speaker as Max Shearwater, Founder and Lead Singer of Black Dog. “So of course, I rushed straight over.” He turned to look at Pyewell and the camera drew back again to show both men. Shearwater’s voice grew husky. “And thank god, he was all right. It really makes you…”
“It really makes you think,” said Pyewell.
Shearwater nodded eagerly. “It makes you realise…”
“Realise that all of…”
“Our differences and petty arguments…”
“All of that just, ultimately, doesn’t matter,” said Pyewell. “What matters is…”
“That you’re alive,” said Shearwater.
“And you are too. And life is just too…”
“Precious.”
“Too short.”
“Too precious and too short.”
“Too short for any bad blood or differences,” said Shearwater.
“For any silly grudges or stupid feuds.”
“So we’re going to be getting back together,” said Shearwater.
“The band is going to get back together,” said Pyewell.
“That’s right,” said Shearwater.
“Black Dog is getting back together,” said Tom Pyewell decisively. A caption now appeared under his image. It said, Tom Piewell, Guitarist in Black Dog. I didn’t think Tom would appreciate either the misspelling of his name or his demotion in comparison to the stature of Max Shearwater, the putative ‘founder’ of the group. I wondered how long the band’s reunion would last after Tom got home and saw this on television. But then I was distracted by the sight of the two men embracing furiously, rocking together tearfully in each other’s arms, two burly older blokes standing beside the river. It was actually quite touching, and even the news anchor looked moved as we cut back to her saying it was time for the weather and goodnight.
I switched off the television and put the phone to my ear. “Did you see that?” I said.
“Of course I did,” said Tinkler. “I was the one who told you to watch. The band’s getting back together. And it’s all thanks to us.”
“What? We didn’t have anything to do with it.”
“Oh, come on,” said Tinkler. “Pyewell would never even have been there if we hadn’t been trying to swindle him out of his record.”
“I can’t even begin to follow your twisted logic,” I said.
“It’s all very simple and I’ll explain it to you in easy words of very few syllables. But not right now. Right now Maggie’s here and I better get back to her.” Maggie was Tinkler’s sister and I imagine he’d told her what had happened and she’d rushed over to be with him. “Goodnight,” he said.
“Goodnight, Tinkler.”
I switched off the phone and looked at Nevada, who was sitting up in bed with Fanny cradled in her arms, evidently having abandoned the quest for dried cat treats.
“The band is back together,” I said.
“So I understand. It’s an ill wind that blows no good.”
I said, “That’s what you said about the charity shops.”
“It applies here, too.”
I got back into bed. Nevada switched off the light and repositioned Fanny beside her. Then she rolled over and hugged me, and whispered softly in my ear:
“If anyone ever shoots at you again, and you’re running away, run in a zigzag pattern instead of straight. And try and make it an irregular pattern, so they can’t predict it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Pillow talk.
9. THE KILLER WITH TWO MASKS THING
In the days following the nightmare at Erik Make Loud’s house, details of our attacker began to emerge. His name was Stanley Strangford, from Southcote, Reading. And the now-dead Stanley was rapidly retrofitted into a number of handy media templates, most notably obsessive fan, embittered dropout (he’d abandoned a law degree at the University of Reading) and unhinged loner. Some of his neighbours—there were no signs of friends or family—appeared before cameras and obligingly said how shocked they were and, right on cue, reminisced about how quiet he’d been.
Nevada said, “Just for once I wish that people would say that one of these bastards held non-stop noisy parties.”
But I guess bastards who hold non-stop noisy parties have better things to do than end up in news segments. Anyway, add isolated loser to those templates.
Stanley Strangford had lived a rich and extensive existence online, however, with a massive presence among Black Dog fan sites and discussion groups. He was utterly fixated on the band, especially poor Tom Pyewell, and Stanley’s digital footprint was particularly heavy in the corners of cyberspace where Pyewell was vindictively criticised and blamed for the decline of Black Dog. Stanley had also drilled deep down into the band’s supposed occult connections—Black Dog’s drummer Pete Loretto featured heavily here—and perused these with an unhealthy appetite and enthusiasm, if his computer’s cache was anything to go by.
And then, in his final weeks, Stanley Strangford had spent virtually every waking hour—and there’d been a lot of them; he’d hardly slept—researching Tom’s life and routine and movements. So add Internet fanatic and psychotic stalker and then call it a day…
Having ascertained that Strangford had obtained his gun online—how else?—the police didn’t find anything more of interest on his computer, so they did indeed call it a day. And Stanley was forgotten with surprising swiftness. More than fifteen minutes of fame, maybe, but certainly less than fifteen days. Then he was as gone and forgotten as it’s possible to be, fading from every human synapse and computer buffer into an oblivion as complete as any being could aspire to.
I felt no regret about this on his behalf, as he disappeared into eternity.
After all, the fucker had tried to kill me.
Christmas came and went, then New Year. The memory of what had happened at Erik’s began to fade. I was absorbed back into the everyday business of trying to earn a living looking for records. I wasn’t having much luck but my beloved’s canny reselling of second-hand fashion items kept us in funds until late spring.
At which point we found ourselves seriously broke. Again.
All this time Tinkler’s desire for the flip back copy of Wisht had been very much on my mind. To me it was unfinished business. I hated to admit defeat, and I was convinced that I could find a copy, despite Stinky having fucked up our chances by telling the world and his wife how rare and desirable the record was.
I knew I could find it.
What I didn’t know was whether Tinkler still wanted to buy a copy, for a very large sum of money. And, more importantly, whether he’d front the funds to provide us with expenses—living and otherwise—while I searched for it again.
He’d gone silent about the subject of the record, and I couldn’t blame him for that, or for changing his mind about wanting it, if indeed that is what had happened. And, though we had the sort of friendship where we could talk about virtually anything, including the most sensitive subjects—indeed, try shutting Tinkler up about such things—this was a little bit different.
Neither of us particularly wanted to bring up what had happened to us, or almost happened to us, at Erik’s that day. And of course the record was all tied up with this. It was the reason we’d been there, and the reason we’d been in harm’s way.
So we avoided the subject.
But we didn’t avoid the subject of Black Dog. Or at least Tinkler didn’t. He never got tired of claiming that we were responsible for the band getting back together. And there was a modest, but steady and growing excitement about this reformation among fans old and new, fed by a steady string of announcements, rumours and speculations concerning new songs, new albums and a tour, first of the UK and then the world…
All of which came to a screeching halt in mid-May when the sudden death of Black Dog’s drummer Pete Loretto was announced. And it wasn’t just any old death, so to speak. His wife Sarita had killed him and then killed herself.
I felt a distinct cold chill when I heard this, and not just for any of the usual reasons. I went to Nevada to talk to her about it—she was sitting out in the garden with Fanny—only to find her on her way inside to talk to me about the same thing. She had the newsfeed about the incident on her phone. She held it up.
“Does this remind you of something?” she said.
“Yes,” I said, delighted that she was one step ahead. “What happened to Norrie, the manager of the band.”
Nevada frowned and shook her head. “No. What almost happened to you.”
* * *
Sarita Loretto had killed her husband and herself using a firearm. Now, in some parts of the world this wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. But in Britain gun crime was still a thankful rarity. Of course, inner-city gangs were known to shoot each other up, but the Lorettos had lived on the idyllic, rural Halig Island.
“Isn’t that where the band burned their money?” said Nevada.
I had told her about the million-dollar bonfire and it had made a very deep and vivid impression on her, as well it might. You’d have to sell a lot of second-hand clothes—not to mention records—to have that kind of money in your hands. And then to burn it…
“Yes,” I said. “That’s the place. Apparently all the band members have houses there. Or I suppose, had is now the correct tense with Pete Loretto dead.”
“Why would they have houses on the island where they burned the money?”
“Good question,” I said. “It’s supposed to be lovely there, though.”
“I would have thought they’d never want to see the place again. I’d never want to see the place again, if it was me. Lovely or not.”
The Lorettos had apparently been running a modest pig-breeding business as part of their idyllic, rural, etc. existence on Halig Island. And they’d obtained a handgun, highly illegally, to kill their pigs before butchering them. An odd choice, some might say.
“Poor pigs,” said Nevada. “I still want to know why they’re all living on the island where they burned a million bucks. The scene of the crime, so to speak.”
“I’ll ring Tinkler and ask him.” Which I proceeded to do. After exchanging comments about how shocking Loretto’s death was, I popped the question.
“Well, it’s a lovely island,” said Tinkler.
“That’s what I said, but I don’t think Nevada is satisfied with that as an answer.”
“Okay. I’ll do a bit of digging and find out more and brief you.”
“You’re being strangely cooperative, Tinkler,” I said, suspicion growing in me.
“If you’d let me finish my sentence, it wouldn’t seem so strange. I’ll brief you, providing you cook supper for me.”
“All right.” We were about due for a Tinkler visit, anyway.
“Now who’s being strangely cooperative? How about making the Ligurian pasta with the avocado pesto?”
“Okay.”
“See what I mean? Strangely cooperative.”
So I cooked the Ligurian dish—trofie pasta, gently steamed green beans and baby potatoes—and stirred in the pesto, made with a large clove of garlic, a little olive oil, a couple of tablespoons of ground almonds, a large bunch of basil leaves, the flesh of a large ripe avocado and a squeeze of lemon, all blended until smooth. The ground almonds were my own little wrinkle. I substituted them for pine kernels, which I hated because the only ones we could get tasted like cardboard. Rancid cardboard, at that.
“Not bad, not bad at all,” said Tinkler as we ate. “The green beans are perhaps a little overcooked…”
“Watch it, Tinkler,” said Nevada.
“Did I mention how splendid the wine is?” said Tinkler hastily. We were drinking red with the pasta, of course, a nice M. Chapoutier Côtes-du-Rhône Villages, which Nevada had chosen. Also of course.
“Don’t think I don’t know you’re just buttering me up,” said Nevada. “Would you like another glass?”
“Is the pope Catholic? That’s a yes, by the way.” Tinkler looked at me. “And the pesto is very nice. Hard to believe that I like something so much which is vegan. By the way, did you know that was why she killed him?”
“Who killed who?” said Nevada.
“Pete Loretto,” I said. “And his wife. Or rather, his wife and him.”
“She killed him because he was vegan?”
“Because she was vegan,” said Tinkler. “And he was insisting on raising these pigs and slaughtering them.”
“Poor pigs,” said Nevada again.
“And she apparently befriended them, the wife befriended the pigs, during the long process of raising them, you know, from cute little piglets…”
“Poor piglets.”
“And in the end she just couldn’t stand it. They were supposed to kill the pig and they had this gun ready to shoot it, but she shot him instead. Her husband. And then herself.”
“Doesn’t that remind you of anything?” I said.
Tinkler nodded as he rubbed the last of the pesto off his plate with a chunk of focaccia. “Yes. What happened to Norrie the manager with the Loopy Groupie.”
“No,” said Nevada. “What almost happened to both of you with the ski-mask lunatic.”
“Oh. Yeah. I guess. Is there any more of this pesto?”
When we were finished eating, and the cats had taken turns coming in and clamouring for attention—read biscuits—I said to Tinkler, “Okay, time to sing for your supper.”
“Sing for my… oh, I get it. But surely you realise people have to be made to sing first. Before their supper. Otherwise what leverage do you have? Plus, who can sing well on a full stomach?”
“Tinkler…”
“Okay, so Halig Island is basically a volcanic cone…”
“You can skip the geology.”
“It features a medieval monastery, which was always being raided by Vikings. Oh, those nasty Norsemen. So they built a castle to protect the monastery…”
“And the ancient history.”
“Oh, okay. Right, well. So Max Shearwater was the first to buy a place there. And then, not to be outdone, Tom Pyewell got a house on the island, too. And apparently he loved it. Loved the place. In fact, it was Pyewell who suggested they burn the money there.”
“He loved it so much that he suggested they burn their money there?” said Nevada.
“That’s right. He was the one who chose the spot. For the billion-dollar barbecue.”
“It was a million dollars, not a billion.”
“I know, but it doesn’t alliterate.”
“True. Also, it wasn’t a barbecue. It was a bonfire.”
“Still doesn’t alliterate,” said Tinkler. “And if you’re going to be pernickety pedants…”
“Well, that does alliterate,” said Nevada graciously. “So please do go on.”
“Thank you. I will. Where was I? Oh, yes, Tom Pyewell had found a dramatic beauty spot overlooking the ocean—I mean, the whole damned island overlooks the ocean, doesn’t it? But apparently this spot particularly. Anyway, Pyewell chose it and Shearwater enthusiastically agreed. Perfect venue for a spot of million-dollar burning. Looked great in the photos anyway. And, after they burned the money, both Jimmy Lynch, the fiddle player, and Pete Loretto, the drummer…”
“The late drummer,” I said.
“Ah yes, the late drummer. Poor chap. Never marry a vegan. That’s clearly the lesson here. Where was I? Oh, yes, Loretto and Lynch both bought houses there, after they burned the money.”
“Why would they do that?” said Nevada. “Why would they want to live there afterwards?”
“Well, it’s a beautiful place.”
* * *
After the death of Pete Loretto, Tinkler shut up about how we’d been responsible for the band getting back together, naturally enough. Because the band could never get back together now. They could have hired a new drummer, I suppose, but it wouldn’t have been the same. So all the energy went out of the project, again naturally enough.
