The Run-Out Groove E-Book

Andrew Cartmel

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

When a mint copy of the final album by "Valerian" - England's great lost rock band of the 1960s - surfaces in a charity shop, all hell breaks loose. Finding this record triggers a chain of events culminating in our hero learning the true fate of the singer Valerian, who died under equivocal circumstances just after - or was it just before? - the abduction of her two-year-old son.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Daily Chronicle

  1. The Discovery

  2. Dinner Party

  3. The Client

  4. Valerian’s Brother

  5. Mercy Killing

  6. Last Resort

  7. Dockland Ducks

  8. The Singles Barn

  9. Butterfly Dreams

10. Strawberry Hat Weather

11. Lunch

12. Cushion

13. Flood Plain

14. Rock Pub

15. Canterbury

16. Baby Grand

17. Bric-Ā-Brac

18. Lamb

19. Iced Bottle

20. Mission: Morocco

21. Cinephile

22. Blacklock

23. Black Eye

24. The Paths of Glory

25. White Mice

26. Card Table

27. Weeding

28. The Side Entrance

29. Red Butterfly

30. Postmarked Canterbury

31. Soap Bubbles

32. Drinks

Epilogue

Vinyl Detective Series

Victory Disc

1. Hidden Treasure

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE VINYL DETECTIVE

THE RUN-OUT GROOVE

Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

Written in Dead Wax

Victory Disc (May 2018)

THE VINYL DETECTIVE

THE RUN-OUT GROOVE

ANDREW CARTMEL

TITAN BOOKS

The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out GroovePrint edition ISBN: 9781783297696E-book edition ISBN: 9781783297702

Published by Titan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First edition: May 201710 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2017 by Andrew Cartmel. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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For Ben Aaronovitch, comrade in arms.

Daily Chronicle

Saturday 21 January 1967

Singer Dead—Child Missing

NOTHING COULD BETTER illustrate the depravity of the current so-called ‘psychedelic music scene’ in Britain than the gruesome recent demise of the pop singer Valerie Drummond, alias ‘Valerian’. Much has been written about this horrid occurrence (see lead story, pages 1–3) but not enough has been said about the fate of her infant son. True, he was an illegitimate child but that was not the little boy’s fault. He was let down by those around him, a clique of selfish, hedonistic thrill-seekers for whom reality is not enough. Not for them the honest glow of daylight. They need the disturbing glare of so-called ‘mind expanding’ drugs. These drugs are actually mind destroying. They are the same mind destroying drugs that have already claimed the lives of other pop stars, such as Brian Jones of the notorious ‘rock’ group, the Rolling Stones, and many of Drummond’s own intimate circle. When one contemplates the fate of that poor little boy, one can only shudder…

1. THE DISCOVERY

My friend Tinkler is about my age, considerably more plump, and has a face that suggests he is a member of some disreputable rank of the cherubim.

Today was his birthday.

“I beg your pardon?” he said, staring at both of us, hand theatrically on his chest. “A present, you say? For me? You mean you knew it was my special day?”

“You only mentioned it about fifty times. Anyway, Nevada found a record for you in a charity shop.”

“What is it?”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t let me see it.”

“A rare record,” said Nevada. “A very rare record.”

“Well, give it to me, then,” said Tinkler.

She trotted into the bedroom to get the record—thoughtfully wrapped in elegant black and gold paper—and came back and handed it to me. “You can give it to him,” she said. “I found it and I’m responsible for the wonderful discovery and I did all the hard work and paid for it and wrapped it and everything, but you can give it to him.”

As I took the package, through the gift wrap, I caught a whiff of something penetrating but faint—spicy and musty.

I sniffed it.

It was the aroma of an old record. In fact, it was what a cardboard LP cover smells like after about fifty years.

I felt my stomach go hollow. “My god,” I said. “I think it really might be something rare.”

Nevada was staring at me. “You can tell by smelling it?”

Tinkler saw the expression on my face and immediately took the record from me. He began to unwrap it. Actually, “unwrap” is a considerable understatement. He ripped into it like the degenerate lord of the manor tearing at the bodice of the innocent chambermaid in a cheap romance novel. Bits of paper were flying everywhere.

Nevada watched, eyes gleaming. “I knew you wanted it, Tinkler, because you have a picture of it hanging on the wall. A framed picture of the cover, hanging on your living-room wall. That’s how much you want this record.”

Tinkler was now standing there, holding the LP.

It was hard to say who was more surprised, him or me.

It was All the Cats Love Valerian, the final album by the great British 1960s rock band whom those cats were said to love. It featured a cover photograph of the eponymous singer. Valerian was a wild child and prototypical hippie chick, completely nude and sprawled on an old Persian rug in a room full of antique furniture with cats climbing all over everything. It was a great photo and indeed the album had been banned at the time because of this image of Valerian’s provocative nudity—although some strategically placed antiques and the odd cat spared her modesty.

It was an incredibly rare item.

“Holy fuckaroo,” murmured Tinkler.

“The Bard could not have put it better himself,” Nevada said. Then, looking at me, “You didn’t think it was the real McCoy, did you?”

This was true. “Well…”

“Never doubt me,” she said complacently, picking up the cover and studying it. “Did the cats really love Valerian? She must have really loved them if she actually owned all this lot. I mean if they were her cats.”

I went over to her. “No, it’s just a photo shoot. It was a play on words.”

“What was?”

“The title.”

“How so?”

“Because all the cats do love valerian. It’s the name of a kind of herb, and apparently cats just love it. They go wild for it. Rolling in it. Sniffing it. Eating it.”

“Like catnip?” said Nevada.

“Exactly like catnip. Nip and valerian are the two drugs of choice for cats.”

“Speaking of drugs,” said Tinkler, “have you seen this?” He delved into his pocket and took out a scrap of newspaper. It was the front page of a tabloid with the headline STINKY STANMER COCAINE BUST across the top.

“My god,” said Nevada.

“He’s your neighbour, you know,” said Tinkler.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s in the Abbey.” He nodded towards the window, and the garden beyond. Just over our back wall were the elegant white battlements of London’s leading celebrity detox and rehab centre.

Nevada lowered the newspaper, which she’d studied carefully. “What? Why isn’t he behind bars? I mean behind proper bars.”

Tinkler shook his head. “I suppose no one was in a hurry to have a whimpering celebrity cluttering up the prison system.”

I said, “I can understand that.”

“What a shame,” said Nevada. “I’d have thought they would have slammed him in the… slammer.” She started striding back and forth. She seemed to be taking this personally. “Christ. He’s going to be right next door? We’ll never get rid of him.” She glanced at me. “He’ll be around here incessantly trying to chat me up and steal your ideas and generally making himself obnoxious.”

Tinkler grinned. “Newsflash. If he so much as sets one toe outside the grounds of the Abbey they’re going to rescind the deal and put him into a real, high-security prison complete with abundant scary cell mates and ample rape in the showers.”

This put a different complexion on things. Nevada stopped striding and smiled a big smile.

“I just love the word ‘rescind’,” she said.

* * *

I duly wrote a post about the epochal discovery of All the Cats Love Valerian the next day, giving Nevada full credit for the discovery. When I finished, I pushed the button and the blog went live. In the kitchen I heard Nevada grunting with approval as she read it on her iPhone. Then she put on her jacket in the hallway and peered around the door at me.

“Who don’t you doubt?”

“You.”

“That’s right.” She blew me a kiss and headed out, going shopping. Charity shopping.

In a way, this was my fault.

I had introduced Nevada to the world of charity shops in the first place. I routinely trawled every one of these in southwest London in search of rare records, which was my business. In the course of accompanying me on a portion of this perpetual quest, she had come to discover that the shops weren’t the malodorous quivering dens of parasitic insect life she had first supposed and, much more to the point, could be the source of some spectacular high-fashion but low-price acquisitions.

Now that we were living together she had taken to scouring them on a regular basis, and was always coming home with a bargain pair of Louboutin sneakers or a phenomenally inexpensive Dolce & Gabbana breechclout or something.

I returned to my blog and added a bit more detail. I gave some background about the band and Valerian herself, but I didn’t mention her unpleasant fate or what had happened to her little boy.

More than enough had been written on these subjects already.

The phone rang. It was Nevada. “It’s autumn,” she said.

“Yes. I’d noticed.”

“It’s just perfect.”

“What’s perfect?”

“I’ve got an idea. For Tinkler’s birthday party.”

“Well?” I said. “Spill the beans.”

“It’ll be a surprise. For you as well as him. And Clean Head. For everyone.”

I said, “I don’t think Tinkler can take any more surprises.”

* * *

I woke up in the middle of the night, instantly aware that something was wrong. Fanny moaned in complaint as I shifted under the covers. The little opportunist was huddled up to me, for my body heat. Which was odd, because she’d been favouring Nevada of late. I rolled over in bed and reached out for Nevada.

She was gone.

I fumbled for the alarm clock and held it close enough to my face to read. It was three in the morning. The godforsaken hour when hope fails, the frail and elderly die, and—apparently—your girlfriend goes missing.

I called her name and checked the bathroom and kitchen, but I already sensed that the house was empty. I pulled on some clothes as I searched the other rooms, increasingly anxious.

Then, suddenly, I knew where she’d be. I went into the kitchen again and opened the curtains, peering out. There she was. I put on my shoes and a scarf—it was a cold night—and went out to join her.

My little house is in a small square of similar buildings on the raised concrete platform of a large housing estate, the kind London’s councils built before they knew better. It’s been much improved over the years, and what is now a large sunken basin adjacent to our houses, full of low buildings, fir trees and winding footpaths, was once an underground car park and the estate’s giant boiler room. You can look down into this basin over some railings at the edge of our square.

That was where Nevada was standing now.

I went and joined her. She glanced at me, then took my hand and resumed staring downwards. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. Her hand was cold.

“Bad dreams?”

“Bad memories.”

The basin below was lit by high streetlamps. Their amber glow gave it a slightly eerie cast. It was the kind of light that would have made a puddle of blood look utterly black.

There was no blood down there now, of course. It had been washed away long ago—in an uncharacteristic burst of efficiency by the local authorities.

I looked at Nevada’s face and realised, with astonishment, that she was scared. This was doubly strange because she hadn’t been scared at the time. Indeed, she had saved both our lives.

Later, looking back at this moment, I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps it wasn’t the past that frightened her. Not what had happened but in some inexplicable way, what was yet to come…

I felt her shiver and I wrapped my arms around her.

“Don’t worry,” I said, holding her tight. “It’s all over now.”

I didn’t know it was just beginning.

2. DINNER PARTY

While I did all our day-to-day cooking, Nevada liked to prepare the occasional elaborate dessert for a special occasion, and it turned out this was the birthday boy’s surprise.

“I’m going to do a tart. A tart for Tinkler,” she announced one morning. Shortly thereafter she started purchasing and assembling ingredients, which for some reason was a protracted and clandestine business. Finally she was ready to start cooking.

The tart, prepared under conditions of strictest secrecy, was smelling good by the time our guests showed up on the night of Tinkler’s party. First to appear was an elegant apparition in a white trench coat with a bottle of wine under one arm and a long thin cardboard tube under the other.

This was Agatha DuBois-Kanes, better known by her now firmly affixed nickname of Clean Head. We had met her, a beautiful mixed-race woman with a shaven head, in her capacity as a taxi driver, piloting one of London’s fleet of storied black cabs. But on this occasion she had got one of her colleagues to chauffeur her to our place. No driving for her tonight.

“I fully intend to get blotto,” she said, handing me the bottle of wine as she kissed me. She smelled good. I was about to ask her about the cardboard tube when the doorbell rang again. It was the birthday boy himself, resplendent in a Hugo Boss jacket, Paul Smith sweater and Woodhouse trousers, all of which Nevada had found for him at various times in her charity shop excursions. I wasn’t surprised to see him dressed to the nines. Tinkler had a doomed passion for Clean Head.

Supper went well and, as usual, I began to relax as soon as people had hungrily cleaned their plates and asked for second helpings. “What is this cheese?” said Tinkler. “I think I’ve conceived an unnatural infatuation for it. Can a man love a cheese? Would we be happy together?”

As the evening progressed I provided the music, selecting the records. These were mostly jazz and Brazilian—sometimes Brazilian jazz—and Nevada made sure the wine glasses stayed full. We took a little break between the main course and dessert, allowing Clean Head to give Tinkler his birthday present, which of course is what the cardboard tube turned out to be.

It contained a poster of the Rolling Stones. A moody black and white shot of them in their surly heyday, circa 1968—Beggars Banquet era—by the great rock photographer David Wedgbury. It was a perfect gift for Tinkler, and so thoughtfully chosen that I began to wonder if his passion was entirely doomed after all.

Then, with much ceremony, Nevada carried in the tart.

It was a beautiful confection of almond pastry, with a glazed surface of sliced apricots. It was also oddly thick. “This is a very special tart,” she said coyly, setting it on the table.

“You’re a very special tart,” said Tinkler. For which he got kicked under the table.

“It is special,” persisted Nevada, taking out a pie cutter, “because it has an utterly unique ingredient.” She drew a careful line across the glazed fruit with the cutter, dividing the tart neatly in half. Then another line the other way, forming a perfect cross.

The tart was now divided into quarters. She set about subdividing each of these. When she was finished, it was divided into sixteenths.

She carefully insinuated the point of the pie server under one of these tiny wedges and began to prise it out. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. Nevada smiled triumphantly as she lifted out the first miniature serving of tart. “Tinkler isn’t going to settle for a portion that small,” I said.

She handed the plate to Tinkler. “It’s a very special dessert.”

“So you keep saying.” I was looking at the slice. I could see the inside of the tart now, and there was a curious brown layer under the yellowish apricot slices. “Those aren’t berries.”

“Who said anything about berries?” Nevada was smiling at me.

“Or apples. You weren’t picking berries on the common. Or apples.” I stared at her. I finally got it. “You were picking mushrooms.”

Magic mushrooms.

“That’s right.” She extracted another slice of the tart and put it on a plate. “It’s exactly the right time of year. And the common was positively dotted with them.” She handed the plate to Clean Head, who accepted it eagerly.

“So it’s that kind of party,” she said, lifting her fork.

Tinkler was staring at the minuscule slice of hallucinogenic dessert on the plate in front of him. Saying nothing, which was odd.

“That’s why I can only serve you these little teeny slices,” said Nevada. “Because larger ones would cause your skull to go ka-boom.” She selected a third slice, put it on a plate and handed it to me.

I stared at it. The brown layer underneath the apricots was disconcerting. Not to say sinister. “It’s going to taste a bit weird, isn’t it?”

“Magic mushrooms taste like shit,” said Tinkler, with the manner of a man who knew.

“Don’t worry, boys,” said Nevada. “I soaked them overnight in sugar and Cointreau.” She served herself a slice. Clean Head had already started, spearing dainty chunks of tart and devouring them with evident relish.

“I’m sorry,” said Tinkler, lifting his fork glumly, “but I have a confession to make.”

“You’re not going to say you can’t eat it,” said Nevada.

“No, of course I’ll eat it. But it won’t have any effect on me.”

“Do you want a bigger piece?”

“No.” He shook his head gloomily. “It won’t do any good.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve taken mushrooms, I’ve taken ecstasy, I’ve taken acid—”

“Tinkler, you dark horse!”

“And I’m immune to hallucinogenic drugs.”

“I’m sure it will be completely different when you try some of Auntie Nevada’s hand-picked fungi.”

Tinkler shrugged. “I’m not so sure.” He picked up his fork and started eating. I looked at my own serving with hesitation.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to eat the dessert my own true love had prepared for me with her fair hands. It’s just that I don’t believe in tampering with my brain chemistry—numerous cups of high-end coffee aside.

I twirled my fork in my fingers, stalling for time.

The wedge of tart stared up at me, beginning to look very vivid against the bright red plate. It was like the emblem of some drug-crazed Mod. It looked positively lethal. I wondered if I could sneak it into the kitchen under some pretext and pitch it into the bin without anyone being the wiser. I glanced across the table at Nevada.

She knew me far too well for any such knavery.

Now she watched keenly as I pressed my fork into the tart and took the first mouthful. It was much better than I expected. In fact it was good. You could taste the mushrooms, just about, but they merely provided a kind of background meatiness to the flavour.

I found I was actually enjoying it and polished off the rest while Nevada watched with approval. I told myself that perhaps, like Tinkler, the mushrooms would have no effect on me.

* * *

I don’t know how long it took the drugs to come on, because the first thing that went was my sense of time. Indeed, my whole perception of time changed. Instead of a continuous flow, it began to arrive in discrete intervals. It was like the difference between a sine wave on a graph and a square wave. Separate moments arrived as individual snapshots.

I only realised just how far gone I was when I started talking to the cat.

Fanny had come in through the cat flap, evidently curious about what was going on with the grown-ups. She settled down on the floor and I went over and knelt beside her. My hand felt like it was sinking into her warm fur as I stroked her back. I could feel every individual hair, like a living filament with a delicate electrical charge.

She tilted her little head and stared up at me. Her eyes were enormous. I gazed into them and they were like the green and yellow landscape of an exotic planet. I could see details—oceans, mountains, plains.

And then she started talking to me.

Fanny spoke in a soft, attenuated, echoing voice. It was a pleasant enough voice, but strangely not in any way feminine. But then I realised, why should a female cat sound like a female human?

I hadn’t considered this before.

She didn’t move her lips when she spoke, of course. Cats don’t have lips like ours, anyway. The words just appeared over my head, somewhere above my pulsing brow centre.

She said, “You know when you’re having a bath and I come and scratch on the side because I want to have a drink from the taps?”

“Yes?”

“Well, sometimes you don’t hop out of the bath right away, and I can’t clamber in and get my drink.”

“It’s not so simple,” I said. “I mean, I get out as quick as I can, but I still have to pull the plug and the bath has to drain. You can’t just clamber in while there’s still bath water in there. You’d get your paws wet.”

“Well, it just isn’t good enough,” said Fanny.

“What about this,” I proposed. “While you’re waiting I could turn on the tap in the bathroom sink and lift you up to drink from it?”

There was a snort of suppressed laughter and I looked up to see Tinkler standing over me holding a long cardboard tube to his lips. It was the tube his Rolling Stones poster had come in and he was speaking into it. The tube gave his voice an eerie, echoing tone.

So Fanny hadn’t been talking to me after all.

It had been a cruel hoax.

“You drug-addled halfwit,” he said.

* * *

According to what I’d read, there should have been no hangover with magic mushrooms. But like so much prodrugs propaganda, I found this was wildly wide of the mark. Or at least, I was the exception to the rule.

The next day I felt like the inside of my skull had been sand-blasted. And the world seemed a strange place. Everything looked normal, but slightly off, as if overnight the size and shape of familiar objects had been subtly altered.

I managed to make my morning coffee, deploying the familiar but somehow unearthly implements. Nevada joined me, chopped up some raw Aberdeen Angus beef with the kitchen scissors and served it to the cats as their breakfast. She moved to the sink to wash the scissors and suddenly stopped and gave a little cry.

I went to join her. She was looking at the metal pie dish that, last night, had still contained three quarters of the magic mushroom tart.

It was now completely empty, except for a few crumbs.

Nevada spun around to stare at Turk and Fanny who were busy demolishing their breakfast. She said, “Do you think the cats could have eaten it?”

I went and looked. “Only if they used a fork and a plate and put them in the sink afterwards.” Nevada and I looked at each other.

“Tinkler,” we said, simultaneously.

Nevada picked up her phone and dialled his number. As soon as he answered she said, “Tinkler, how could you?” She put her hand over the phone and looked at me. “He said he was peckish.”

She resumed speaking into the phone. “Peckish or not, your fucking head will explode.” She checked her watch. “Will already have exploded. What? Christ.” She listened for a long time then hung up.

“It seems that when he got home, late last night, his boss was waiting for him on his doorstep. Apparently there was some kind of crisis at work. Some sort of super important database had failed or something and they needed Tinkler to go in and fix it. So he did.”

“He did? He fixed it? After eating all those magic mushrooms?”

“Yes. And apparently he did such a great job his boss is now buying him a champagne breakfast.”

“I guess he really is immune,” I said.

* * *

I took my coffee outside and sat in our back garden. I was sitting there when the doorbell rang.

I heard Nevada go and answer it. There was a man’s voice and a woman’s voice—not Nevada’s—and then Nevada’s voice again. Two people at the door. It could only be the Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other equally enthusiastic sect, proselytising on the doorstep. I sighed and rose from my chair. Underneath, where she had been sheltering in my shadow, Fanny gave a little squeak of alarm at being suddenly and cruelly exposed to the fearsome naked rays of the brutal British autumn sun.

I went in to help Nevada. It seemed unfair to let her deal with these callers on her own. And there was always the terrifying possibility she might invite them in for coffee or something.

As I stepped through the back door I heard a woman’s voice, soft and tentative, saying, “Is this the correct address for the Vinyl Detective?”

And a man’s voice; brusque, peremptory and brooking no opposition. “We want to hire him.”

3. THE CLIENT

Nevada had indeed invited our visitors in. She was standing with them in the sitting room in the uncertain configuration of strangers who have just met. The couple definitely didn’t look like any Jehovah’s Witnesses I’d ever seen.

The man had an abundant crop of grey hair so pale it was almost white, combed and styled with narcissistic care. His eyebrows were darker, thick charcoal hyphens above emphatic greyish blue eyes. He gave the impression of disciplined good health and carefully cultivated athleticism. He must have been at least in his sixties, but he seemed powerful, vigorous and forceful.

He was neatly turned out and was dressed, as Nevada would later remark, as if he had just looted a branch of L.L.Bean.

The woman was a quite different proposition. She was perhaps twenty years younger than him, but beefy and solid-looking. Despite being smaller she must have weighed considerably more. Her big amiable face was like a cylinder on which various features had been stuck—jutting ears, a snub nose. She was dressed in grey and pink tracksuit bottoms and a matching sweatshirt with a large slogan that read YOUR SUSHI’S GETTING COLD.