The Vinyl Detective - Attack and Decay E-Book

Andrew Cartmel

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Krimi
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 534

Beschreibung

The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of death metal in his sixth adventure. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.It starts with a perfectly normal evening in, except for the corpse-faced gentleman dressed all in black, with a crow on his shoulder, staring into the house, of course. And the visit from Owyn Wynter, head of Whyte Ravyn Records, who needs the Detective's unique skills.So begins an all-expenses-paid trip to Trollesko, Sweden for the Detective, Nevada, Tinkler and Agatha to track down a copy of the debut album from demonic metal legends, Storm Dream Troopers. Condemned by the church and banned on release, Attack and Decay is a legendary record.But their trip to the homelands of Nordic noir is quickly thrust into a world of intrigue as the Detective closes in on the deal, the band unexpectedly converge on the peaceful town, And worse, their trip somehow coincides with a visit from Stinky Stanmer… Soon the bodies start piling up, and the Vinyl Detective is the only one who can solve the case.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

Title Page

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Copyright

Dedication

  1: Bad Tattoo

  2: Corpse-Faced Motherfucker

  3: Officially Night

  4: No Blood

  5: Gothenburg

  6: The Burning Car

  7: Troll’s Shoe

  8: Union Jack Mini

  9: Boom

10: Ufos and Dog Poo

11: Devilish Dickhead

12: Enough Loot for all Concerned

13: Secondhand-Butik

14: Snow

15: Juicer Heist

16: Big Animal

17: Lying to the Police Kiss

18: Sriracha

19: With an Umlaut

20: Hell Breaks Loose

21: Bensindunk

22: Eagle

23: The Shelf-Fitting Persuasion

24: Circus

25: Red Halo

26: Taverna

27: Comb-Over Bastard

28: Eye of the Beast

29: Enough not to be Inside

30: The Rain Doesn’t Read

31: Lonely Murder Farmhouse

32: Answering Shade

33: Farewell, Trollesko

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE VINYL DETECTIVE

ATTACK AND DECAY

Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

Written in Dead Wax

The Run-Out Groove

Victory Disc

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THE VINYL DETECTIVE

ATTACK AND DECAY

ANDREW CARTMEL

TITANBOOKS

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The Vinyl Detective: Attack and Decay

Print edition ISBN: 9781789098969

E-book edition ISBN: 9781789098976

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

First Titan edition: June 2022

10 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 © Andrew Cartmel 2022. 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.

For Alasdair Shanks, aka the Dude.

1: BAD TATTOO

“Someone is watching our house.”

Nevada had just been out to do the recycling—mostly wine bottles, it has to be said—and was now standing between the Quad speakers, pretty much in the sweet spot, in fact, in front of the sofa where I was sitting with our friend Jordon Tinkler and one of our indolent wastrel cats.

“Is it that creepy corpse-faced motherfucker?” said Tinkler.

“I imagine it must be,” said Nevada, “judging by the felicity of your description.”

“Yeah, I noticed him, too.”

“Well, thank you so much for alerting us.”

“Oh, so now I’m supposed to be in charge of security around here?”

I was about to disrupt this bickering with a pressing enquiry about what exactly a corpse-faced motherfucker might look like, when the doorbell rang. I went and let Agatha in.

Our friend, Agatha DuBois-Kanes. Also known as Clean Head.

She came into the sitting room and settled into an armchair. She had the look of a woman who would be entirely relaxed if she suddenly discovered that a sharp-clawed obligate carnivore was hiding under her chair and might begin attacking her toes at any moment.

Which was just as well.

Perhaps with that in mind, she stretched her long legs in front of her. Out of obligate carnivore reach.

Tinkler couldn’t keep his eyes off those legs, and you could hardly blame him. They were clad in dove-grey leggings, as tight and shiny as though they’d been sprayed on.

“Did you happen to notice someone watching the house?” I said.

Agatha looked up at me, perhaps a little startled. “Someone is watching your place?”

“A creepy-looking corpse-faced motherfucker,” said Tinkler. “Standing out there, staring creepily like this.” He made a blankly bug-eyed and fixedly gazing face which actually was fairly creepy.

“He could have been creepily staring at any of the buildings along here,” I said. “Not necessarily our place.”

Beside me on the sofa, Turk—short for Turquoise—stirred. She was lying on her side with her back luxuriantly arched and her paws stretched out to rest companionably against my leg, as though arrested in the spring and stride of the hunt. Now, perhaps in response to the tension in my voice, she allowed her sharp little claws to emerge briefly, pressing emphatically into me, maybe in readiness for that hunt.

Or perhaps just to remind me who was boss.

“No,” said Tinkler. “Definitely your charming domicile that he’s focused on. With obsessive interest, some might say.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t notice anyone out there,” said Agatha.

“You would have noticed this motherfucker,” said Tinkler. “He’s creepy and corpse-faced.”

“Well, shouldn’t we do something about him?” said Agatha. “If he is out there?”

To my surprise, Nevada shook her head. “No. He’ll probably just go away.”

“He’ll probably just go away,” I said.

Nevada had wandered over to the table where she was taking a cork out of a wine bottle. “And if he doesn’t, there’s nothing coming through that door that I can’t handle.”

“So much potential there for innuendo,” said Tinkler. “Where to start?”

Just then, under Nevada’s ministrations, the cork came out of the bottle with a ripely plosive pop that made me jump.

“Well, I want to get a look at this guy,” I said, repressing the wave of anger that came from being startled. I was definitely on edge. The notion of a malevolent cadaverous onlooker tends to do that to me. “And maybe take a photo of him.” Experience had taught me to err on the side of caution in these matters.

Nevada looked at me with approval and smiled. “That’s a good idea.”

At that moment the doorbell rang and our third dinner guest arrived. A new friend of ours called Saxon Ghost. Of course, he hadn’t been born with a name like that. He’d created it himself in tribute to two great record producers who had been his heroes, back when he’d been an aspiring record producer himself. Unfortunately, he’d fucked it up—he’d got one of the names wrong—but, like a bad tattoo, he owned it.

Saxon Ghost was in many ways the opposite of Agatha—he was white, male, short, stout—but they shared one attribute. His scalp was as closely shaved as hers. Maybe he’d shaved it especially for us this evening.

Maybe she had, too.

As with Tinkler, Saxon Ghost had brought some records with him in a smart canvas shoulder bag the colour of damp sand, with dark tan leather trim, purpose-built for carrying LPs. A possession which I immediately coveted. As, apparently, did Tinkler.

“Is that your Original Peter?” he said, referring to the luggage brand. “Or are you just pleased to see us?”

Saxon gave this more of an indulgent chuckle than it merited. “Yeah, this model is called the Utrecht Record Hunter, I think.”

Tinkler already had his phone out, looking it up. “Apparently its capacious gusset allows it to take more in than you can usually expect to fit.” He was in full innuendo mode, grinning at Agatha.

“I’m not even listening,” she said.

“It’s lovely,” said Nevada, who always had an eye for a stylish accessory. She glanced at me. “I think I know what I’m getting someone for his birthday.”

“Costs over two hundred quid,” said Tinkler. “Sorry to be pouring cold water, but I thought you ought to know.”

Nevada was indeed a little taken aback. “Well, maybe if some funds flood in…”

Funds in our household came from Nevada’s sales of vintage fashion items—i.e. second-hand clothes—and my sales of rare vinyl. Flooding in was not what they were currently doing.

“I might be able to help you with that,” said Saxon Ghost.

“In that case, allow me to pour you a very generous glass of a very good wine,” said Nevada.

Saxon chuckled and, while Nevada poured the wine in the kitchen, he opened his record bag. The Utrecht Record Hunter had apparently not been exploited to its full capacious extent—he took out a modest handful of albums.

As with the LPs Tinkler had brought, these were all Decca pressings.

Unlike Tinkler, however, Saxon’s selection consisted of Stravinsky with a bit of Rimsky-Korsakov thrown in for variety.

Saxon Ghost didn’t look like a man who listened to a lot of classical music. Indeed, his background was in producing punk rock. But nowadays he was a devotee of French and Russian symphonists of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

Whereas Tinkler had brought over a trio of albums by some sixties beat combo called the Rolling Stones.

The thing about Decca was that they had pretty much invented high-fidelity sound recording, at least on this side of the Atlantic, and had routinely created audiophile landmarks of the classical repertoire. It just so happened that the Stones had also been recording for this same label at the height of their powers.

What’s more, there were a handful of British jazz masterpieces, like Tubby Hayes’s early LPs, which had been recorded by Decca on their Tempo subsidiary in the 1950s and 1960s.

Indeed, I had a couple of these lined up for us to listen to later. First, though, we were playing the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request. Nevada looked at the lenticular cover. “I gave you a copy of this,” she said. “I brought one back for you from America.”

“That’s right,” said Tinkler. “Variant US copy. Thank you very much. This, however, is the British original.” He held up the record. It was one of the rare examples of a Decca stereo pressing with a green label. Tinkler put it on the Garrard.

It sounded so good I almost forgot to worry about the guy watching the house.

Sometimes record companies compressed pop songs so they would sound better on cheap radios, but when Decca made these albums they were basically turning out Rolls-Royces. They didn’t know how to do anything else.

Tinkler was busy showing Agatha the inner sleeve. The original inner sleeve, of course. “See the ‘red smoke’ design? A deliberate riposte to the red ‘Fool’ inner sleeve of Sergeant Pepper. That’s a Beatles album.”

“Of course it’s a Beatles album,” said Agatha. “I’m not a fool.”

“I am, though, ma’am. Your humble fool. At your service.”

“Now,” said Nevada, leaning over and refilling Saxon Ghost’s glass, “I believe you said something about money, money, money.”

“Right.” Saxon nodded and set his wine aside. Time for business. “Okay, so how much do you know about black metal or death metal?”

“I know enough not to listen to it,” I said.

“Tut-tut,” said Tinkler censoriously. “Very narrow-minded. And surely those are two quite different subgenres?”

“I’m just not as much of a headbanger as you,” I said.

“Or, to put it differently, you’re less of a headbanger than me.”

Before I could ask Tinkler in what way he imagined this was putting it differently, the doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of our fourth and final guest that evening. Sydney Reasoner was a tall young woman who was employed as a camera operator. We had first met her on Halig Island when she was working for Stinky Stanmer, but we didn’t hold that against her.

She was currently dating Saxon Ghost despite, to paraphrase Tinkler, being twice his height and half his age. After the flurry of greetings and much pouring of drinks, Saxon said, “Where were we?”

“We got as far as you asking us about death metal,” I said.

He nodded. “That’s right. I know this guy who runs a small but very lucrative record label.” I could see Nevada start to glow at the word lucrative. “Specialises in hard rock music of the Nordic variety. His name is Owen Winter. Except Owen and Winter are both spelled with a ‘Y’. Owyn Wynter.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “We’re friends with Erik Make Loud. We understand the principle of stupid rock music names.”

“Of course you do. I was forgetting.”

“And you think Mr Wynter might have a job for me.”

“I do. That I do, mate. And it could involve an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden.”

“A trip to Sweden,” said Nevada.

“I’ll come along too,” said Agatha, instantly. “It’s about time for a road trip. What does the Tingler think?”

“My god,” said Tinkler. “The Tingler is tingling. In fact, that sound you hear is me coming… Can I amend that to arriving? Arriving at the airport with you guys. All of us together. Going to Sweden together. Arriving there at the airport to join you. Road trip!”

“Road trip,” concurred Agatha.

“Can I high-five you?” said Tinkler.

“No.”

Saxon Ghost leaned forward. His small blue eyes were suddenly solemn. “There’s one thing I want you to know,” he said. He sounded very serious.

“Okay.”

“Some of these death metal people were truly into some weird shit. They called them church burners.”

“Is that because they…”

“Supposedly. Anyway, some of them were—and for all I know still are—genuinely dangerous.” He looked at us. “You guys are my friends…”

“You’re our friend, too,” said Nevada warmly. And it wasn’t just the wine talking.

“So, I don’t want to send you into peril.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nevada.

Beside her, Agatha nodded seriously in firm agreement. “We can handle ourselves.”

“Can I watch it while you handle yourselves?” said Tinkler, adding thoughtfully, “I think I’ve settled on that line of innuendo.”

“All right,” said Saxon Ghost. “Just be careful, okay?” He glanced at his phone. “I’ve sent you Owyn’s number and you can take it from there. Like I said, he’s not short of a few bob. So don’t undercharge him.”

“Don’t worry,” said Nevada. “We won’t.”

Even though we hadn’t even taken the job yet, Saxon’s warning had unsettled me.

So, after supper I insisted that Nevada and I go out and look for the corpse-faced watcher.

There was no one there.

2: CORPSE-FACED MOTHERFUCKER

A few nights later I was returning from Putney where I’d spent several fruitful hours scouring the charity shops.

Normally this was an activity Nevada and I would have undertaken together, but Agatha was taking some time off work and she and Nevada had gone out for a girls’ day—just the two of them. Their plan was to eat lunch at a pub in Richmond, their visit topped and tailed by a finely calibrated pillage of the local charity shops in pursuit of high fashion at low, low prices.

Not to be outdone, Tinkler had also decided to take a day off work—this never required much inciting—and invited me for a boys’ day out, commencing with lunch at his place on Putney Hill, followed by a thorough perusal of every crate of vinyl in every charity shop in the vicinity.

Lunch at Tinkler’s had consisted mostly, but to my surprise not entirely, of high-end takeaway delivered to his door. The surprising bit was that he had decided to try to do some cooking himself. In fact, he attempted to replicate one of my recipes—the parsnips with olive oil, maple syrup and herb glaze.

Tinkler volunteering to do anything resembling work in the kitchen would normally have set alarm bells ringing. But it seemed his obsession with Agatha, and with getting laid in general, had entered a new phase: he’d decided that the solution to all his problems was cooking for girls.

“Not just cooking for them, you understand. But cooking tasty, appealing, hip and appealingly hip cuisine. Think of it as the culinary equivalent of the rabat solo on Yusef Lateef’s Eastern Sounds. Oh, and easy. Whatever recipes you give me must be easy. Above all else, on god’s mercy, easy.”

So I had started him off with the parsnips, which really was a very easy recipe. Gleaned off the back of a bag of those noble root vegetables, purchased at a local supermarket, if memory serves.

Tinkler hadn’t had any maple syrup on hand, so he’d substituted honey. But despite this he actually managed to bake the parsnips to the correct golden brown, admittedly with my frequently solicited help and supervision, and the honey had provided a fine substitute. The parsnips had proved to be a pleasant addition to the lunch. Indeed, one of the highlights.

After eating the food and drinking the bottle of wine Nevada had thoughtfully provided for us—“It’s that Viognier-Chardonnay blend, not a world beater, but fresh and tasty and you’ll be eating spicy food anyway, right? It’s always spicy food at the Tingler’s”—we hit the charity shops.

My best find of the afternoon proved to be a bunch of Joni Mitchell albums, Japanese pressings, from the period when that certified genius had been working with some of the finest jazz musicians on the West Coast. They were in immaculate shape and I had no doubt that I could find a buyer for them at a healthy mark-up: the sort of mark-up that Nevada would approve of.

“You aren’t tempted to keep them for yourself?” said Tinkler. “The vinyl is high purity and the pressings themselves…”

“Got to love that precision manufacturing.”

“Right.”

“But how can it ever be as faithful to the original sound as an original pressing?” I held up the Joni Mitchell albums. They made an agreeably weighty stack. “In this case, probably originating at some record plant in Santa Monica.”

Tinkler chuckled. “I was the one who told you that. I was the first one to promulgate the thesis of the original pressing.”

“You may well be telling the truth, my friend,” I said. “Don’t let it become a habit.”

“No chance of that.”

We shook hands and went our separate ways off into this late grey afternoon on Putney Hill. I caught the bus back home. Our estate is also on a hill, and there are a number of routes back there from a variety of bus stops. I tend to choose the one that takes me home through maximum greenery, including a patch of what you might almost call urban woodland.

This is where I found myself with the sun starting to set and the smoky grey afternoon transforming under the rich coppery light of evening. There was a strange quality to this copper glow spreading all around me—it added to an odd sense of stillness, as though the weather was about to change.

And, weirdly for this time of day, I found I was quite alone. I couldn’t see another human being.

I did, however, see a cat. Turk came sneaking out of the foliage and began to accompany me on the walk home. Well, accompany is an exaggeration. She would dart ahead of me, wait for me to catch up, then dart ahead again.

And then she disappeared completely.

So I found myself walking alone once more—indeed, now even more emphatically alone, having been abandoned by my trusty cat.

I had left the patch of woodland behind and was now moving through our estate. A remote section that Nevada liked to describe as: “A location from A Clockwork Orange now covered with moss.” Or, for purposes of brevity, “moss-covered Clockwork Orange”.

It was a kind of modernist courtyard with a large oak tree at the centre. The sun was setting. In that last smouldering late light, the oak towered over the square. An inky shadow detached itself from the upper branches and flapped down towards me, swooping low over the strange statues.

A crow.

It landed in a thick, shiny green hedge just ahead of me and turned its head to observe me. Its eyes were quite unusual. But what really set this crow apart was its beak.

Through an accident, whether genetic or physical, the two halves of the beak met and overlapped. They made me think of the blades on an open pair of scissors.

I looked on the crow with a surge of sympathy. It must be hard getting on in life with a beak like that. The crow looked back at me calmly, seemingly aware of my sympathy but indifferent to it. Then he rose up, a shadow come to life, and flapped vigorously away.

I turned to watch this strange and somehow noble creature fly off, to lose its tiny blackness in the vast blackness of the night sky.

That was when I saw him.

He was dark as the crow, dressed all in black. His face was dead white but with bold black patches around his eyes, suggestive of the hollow sockets of a corpse. The alternative comparison, with a panda, did not occur at the time; even if it had, I doubt that it would have proved helpful or amusing.

I wasn’t in any mood to be amused. Frankly, I was a little alarmed.

And that alarm was in no way diminished by the top hat.

Although it was tempered by an annoyed reflection that my beloved and my best friend had both neglected to warn me about that little detail. You’d think they could have at least mentioned the hat.

It was a black silk top hat, worn slightly askew, like a precarious stove pipe that might spew smoke at any moment.

We were staring at each other, myself and this apparition. It was a taut and progressively tightening moment. We stared at each other for what seemed like a long time.

In fact, time seemed to be slowing down. My heartbeat was thunderous in my ears, but steady and measured. The corpse-faced clown in the top hat stared at me and stared at me and didn’t move. The moment stretched on and on, to the point that it began to seem quite possible, indeed quite likely, that it would never actually end.

Then a deeply affronted animal cry resounded off the mossy stone walls.

It was the unique sound of Turk voicing her displeasure.

I turned towards her cry, but she was nowhere to be seen. I looked back at the—

But he was gone.

Perhaps not unexpectedly, I very much kept my eyes open and maintained a vigilant watch on the remainder of my journey home. But I didn’t see him again.

Turk, however, rejoined me a split second before I opened the garden gate. She waited while I held it open for her—despite the fact that, when she chose to, she could and did slither under it with ease—and then she ran inside. As soon as the door was securely locked behind us, I phoned Nevada. “I saw the corpse-faced motherfucker,” I said.

“When? Just now?”

“Yes. You should have warned me about the top hat.”

“What? He was wearing a top hat?”

“And you didn’t say anything about a crow…”

“A crow? What crow? You mean a bird?”

“Yes.”

“Are you feeling all right, dear?”

“No, actually. You know what, I don’t feel that great.” The room swum gently around me. “I think Tinkler has drugged me.”

“The bastard. Again.”

“I think so. Let me call you back later.”

“Okay. I am coming home. Right home, right away.” “Okay.” I hung up and dialled Tinkler’s number. To his credit, he answered without delay and didn’t dissemble. “It’s a really mellow hit, isn’t it?”

“Tinkler, that honey you used on the parsnips…”

“I was wondering when you’d notice!”

“It was the jar that Nevada’s mother gave you.”

“Well, not the exact jar. As you might imagine, I’ve gone through quite a number of jars since then.”

“But it’s the Hashish Honey.”

“You do understand that hashish is a misnomer, inserted for meretricious reasons of alluring alliteration? It’s actually cannabis honey. But what’s in a name. Isn’t it a zany high?”

“You should have warned me.”

“I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t realise. I just used that honey for the recipe, not realising it was the doped honey. But I guess I should have surmised as much, given that it’s the only kind of honey I ever have in my kitchen. Really mellow high, isn’t it?”

“Not when you run into the corpse-faced—”

“Good old Corpse Face. Hang on, just a minute, I’m getting a text from Nevada. What is this? Something about a top hat? You’re kidding! He was sporting a top hat this time?”

“I’ll talk to you later, Tinkler.”

“Later.”

Even as I hung up, a key turned in the front door and Nevada stepped inside. “I’ve done a sweep of the estate,” she said. “There’s no sign of Corpse Face.”

“Well, good,” I said. Nevada was taking off her coat.

“Are you still high?” she said.

“Oh, yeah.”

She took off her shoes and then continued taking off her clothes. “Would you like to come along to the bedroom?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, I would.”

3: OFFICIALLY NIGHT

Tinkler was over at our place for supper a few nights later when we saw our corpse-faced friend again.

His presence—Corpse Face’s—was announced by Turk crashing through the cat flap, closely followed by our other cat Fanny, both fleeing into the safety of the house, clearly spooked by something. Nevada glanced out the kitchen window and then came through to the sitting room, abundant thunder brewing in those big blue eyes.

“I am a tolerant woman.”

“Yes, you are, you certainly are,” said Tinkler hastily.

“I am willing to put up with a certain amount of creepy corpse-faced motherfuckery.”

“Of course you are. Very commendable. We’re all tolerant people. We encourage tolerance. We frown on intolerance.”

“But when they start scaring our cats, that’s where I draw the line.” Nevada looked at me. “Do you want to help me nail this bastard?”

“Of course,” I said.

Nevada went into our bedroom and came back with an elegant green rucksack slung over her shoulder.

“What’s that?” said Tinkler.

“My go-bag,” said Nevada.

“And what, pray tell, constitutes a go-bag?”

“Well, in this case it’s a highly fashionable Made Galli rucksack in forest green. I’ve also got the black one, but oddly enough the green is better for remaining unseen in low light conditions.”

“Keep those fashion nuggets coming,” said Tinkler. “I take it dinner won’t be happening any time soon.”

“I think it’s chiefly because the bronze fittings are less reflective than the copper ones.”

“So far, so snoozeworthy.”

“Is this snoozeworthy?” Nevada unzipped the bag and drew out a Taser.

“I’m disappointed it isn’t pink like your last one,” said Tinkler. “Shocking pink. Get it? Shocking.”

“We bought it for the same knockdown price as the shocking pink one,” said Nevada, who liked her bargains. She turned to me, holding up the Taser. “So, are we going to nail this bastard? This cat-scaring bastard!”

“We are,” I said.

“Can I stay here in safety and hide?” said Tinkler.

“Hard to imagine you doing anything else, old buddy.”

“Well, hide and also listen to your admittedly fairly good hi-fi,” said Tinkler to me. “I could entertain your cats, too.”

“Okay,” I said. “But don’t touch supper. Those baked mushrooms will keep just fine for hours.”

“Hours,” said Tinkler with sudden concern. “Are you likely to be gone for hours?”

“No, all I’m saying is that the mushrooms will keep just fine. They will only need a little warming up when we get back from—”

“Seeking to perpetrate an act of vigilante violence on a corpse-faced interloper.”

“We are not perpetrating anything,” said Nevada, tucking the Taser back into her natty green rucksack and zipping it shut. “This is just for eventualities.”

“Eventualities, I see. Is it all right if I at least eat some bread while you’re gone?”

“Just don’t eat the whole loaf. Don’t spoil your appetite.”

“Have vigilante fun.”

*   *   *

“He was standing over here,” said Nevada, “when he scared our cats.” She pointed left, and we went out of our front gate and turned that way. We went past Ginnie and Sue’s house, past the dense patch of vegetation on the corner where Fanny liked to lurk and periodically spring out at us, past the ramp down to the lower level of the estate where the central boiler room had once existed, and out into the street that looped around between our estate and the walled perimeter of the Abbey.

“You said you saw him hanging around moss-covered Clockwork Orange?”

“Yes,” I said. And that was in the opposite direction to the way we were heading now.

Then we saw him. “There he is,” whispered Nevada, gripping my arm.

And, as if he’d heard her whisper, Corpse Face turned to look at us.

I was glad to see that he was still wearing his top hat, to confirm that I hadn’t imagined it.

But he’d added a dapper black ribbon to the hat, a long silk ribbon that trailed down at the back. When he turned to the light, I saw that the ribbon also served to fasten a flower to the hat. Some kind of all-black flower, that is. It looked like a rose.

A black rose. But of course.

Since his clothing was also all black and clung close to his body, it was difficult to make out any detail. Perhaps a close-fitting business suit…?

Corpse-faced motherfucker in a business suit?

Well, why not?

He turned away from us in a prompt but calm and orderly fashion, and strode off down the street, across the pavement and up a walkway into the estate.

We hurried after him.

As we followed him into the enclosed walkway, we couldn’t see him, but we could hear the echo of his boots. He was wearing pointy-toed black boots with high Cuban heels. Of course he was.

And he was making pretty good time in them.

We pursued him, his heels tapping, down a white stone staircase with a blue steel handrail which led out into an open area, where it converged with a retrofitted wheelchair ramp that curved down from the right.

To our left was another enclosed walkway, this one made of chocolate-brown brick set in concrete. It was into this that Corpse Face was walking briskly, but still quite calmly. Certainly with no sense of panic.

We followed him through the walkway, closing in on him inexorably.

His boot heels echoed clearly all around us, the sound staying briskly ahead of us, as steady and as stable as a metronome.

At the far end of the walkway was daylight—well, evening light—and we saw Corpse Face impose his dark silhouette on this fading glow as he reached the end and turned left.

We turned left a second later, following him.

We found ourselves in a part of the estate I couldn’t recall venturing into before, a sort of rectangular canyon of brown brick. It was abruptly cooler in this artificial canyon—chilly, in fact—and I found myself suddenly shivering.

On three sides of us were dwellings with cheery lights coming on in their kitchens as families began to serve dinner. The lights swelled out into generously sized gardens in front of these flats.

I call them flats, but they were more like compact town houses, with another level on top of them. Like at my place, the ones on the ground level all had big front gardens, in which a commendable amount of greenery thrived, giving this concrete canyon something of the feel of a natural, wild place rather than somewhere boringly tamed and urban.

But I would have appreciated the boringly tamed and urban just now.

Because when we emerged from the enclosed walkway, close on the heels—the Cuban heels—of Corpse Face, he was abruptly nowhere to be seen.

He was, however, still to be heard.

Specifically the sharp clip of his boot heels, marching away from us at the same efficient, measured pace. Ghostly footsteps marched past a wall of cypress trees on our left. Light spilled out of the kitchen windows, turning the trees into lime-green beacons in the dim evening light.

We heard his boots walking past the pale green trees.

But we couldn’t see him.

I looked at Nevada. “Can you see him?”

“No. But I can hear him. Can you hear him too?”

“Yes, he’s walking along there.”

“Past those cedars…?”

“Yes.”

Nevada and I looked at each other. The footsteps continued, drawing away from us, maintaining their brisk, forthright pace.

But we couldn’t see him.

I told myself there had to be a rational explanation, but nonetheless I felt a cold thrill go through me.

The disembodied footsteps stopped. They had reached the end of the row of cedars and now there was silence. Several moments passed.

And then Corpse Face appeared.

Standing at the end of the row of trees. He waved to us, grinning.

I felt as if the ground had suddenly dropped out from under me. “How the hell did he do that?” I said. He had vanished and then reappeared again, as if rendered temporarily invisible.

Corpse Face lifted his top hat and tipped it at us in salute. Revealed by the removal of the hat, his hair was long and—wait for it—dead black.

“I don’t know,” said Nevada. “But he’s not getting away with scaring our cats.”

We moved forwards, towards him.

Instantly, he was gone again.

There was a pause. And then his footsteps resumed, the emphatic tapping of those boot heels moving along now in a new direction, some distance ahead of us, but equally invisible.

We could hear him clearly moving past another row of gardens. We could see those gardens, but we couldn’t see him. Then the footsteps changed direction. Now they were to our right but coming towards us, getting louder, echoing clearly in this concrete canyon as they inexorably approached.

Nevada and I were looking at each other. It was the eeriest of sensations. We could hear the motherfucker, but we couldn’t see him.

Then, suddenly, we could see him.

He was moving up the curving white concrete of the wheelchair ramp. His already impressive pace seemed to be, if anything, increasing. Before he disappeared entirely, we set off after him.

The curvature of the ramp was such that we didn’t glimpse him again until he was emerging from it, back up onto street level.

And then we saw the direction he was heading.

Beside me, I heard Nevada suck in her breath. We had both come to the realisation at the same time. “He’s doubling back,” said Nevada.

“He’s heading for our house,” I said.

*   *   *

The streetlights came on around us as we broke into a run. It was suddenly, officially night.

To our right was the dark bulk of the Abbey with its comfortingly high wall shielding it. To our left, concealed by its own modest wall, was our back garden.

And, as we drew nearer, we could hear someone moving around inside.

We ran to the gate and flung it open.

Tinkler was there, eating, with his feet propped up on one of our all-weather outdoor tables. He was seated on the all-weather garden sofa and making use of another one of the outdoor tables to fully enjoy a plate of food, a glass of wine, a spliff and his tablet with the vivid hues of what might well have been some shameless pornography flashing on it, shining brightly in the twilight garden.

He also had both our cats at his feet.

Tinkler looked up in surprise as we came in through the gate, frozen in the act of lifting a sandwich to his mouth. It was a very characteristic act.

The cats yawned. Or rather Fanny yawned and Turk couldn’t be bothered. Our arrival held no surprises for them. With their keen feline hearing they had both, unlike the startled Tinkler, heard us coming from a long way off.

Nevada and I came into the garden. I was still straining to listen for the distinctive rapping of those Cuban heels, but all around us was silence.

“I hope you don’t mind,” said Tinkler. “I’m eating the supper you prepared in the much easier sandwich format.”

“Tinkler. The baked mushrooms…”

“I had to eat them. You’ve been gone for hours.”

“We’ve been gone for less than seven minutes.”

“Really? It felt like forever. What happened with Corpse Face?”

“He… slipped away from us.”

Somewhere out in the night, a fox yelped.

“Get your feet off that table, Tinkler,” snarled Nevada. It has to be said, my darling was a trifle on edge.

“Well, excuse me,” said Tinkler, nevertheless removing his feet from the garden furniture with commendable alacrity.

“It’s not a fucking footstool.”

“All right, all right. So touchy…”

Nevada retrieved control of herself. “I don’t mean to be uncivil, Tinkler.”

“Of course not.”

“It’s just that this corpse-faced motherfucker is leading us a merry dance.”

“Doesn’t sound so merry.”

“It isn’t,” I said. “Not least because he has given us the strong impression that he can disappear.”

“Disappear? As in…”

“Become invisible.”

“Well, that’s not good.”

*   *   *

We left Tinkler and our cats as we’d found them, closed the garden gate behind us, and circled around to the other side of our house. I knew that we wouldn’t find Corpse Face there. He would have pulled another one of his patented disappearing acts.

But I was wrong.

Lo and behold, there he was.

Standing politely enough outside our front gate, though also peering with apparently unabashed voyeurism through the various shrubs Nevada had planted in a vain attempt to screen our house, directly into our kitchen window.

The kitchen had the look of an abandoned stage set. The big oval glass casserole dish that had contained the baked mushrooms was on display on top of the stove, with most of its contents pillaged and gone. Stuffed into Tinkler’s face. Normally this would have occasioned some knee-jerk outrage at his greed, selfishness and general poor behaviour. At the moment, we had other things on our mind.

Corpse Face turned to look at us as though we’d been expected and, what’s more, we were irritatingly late.

Then he turned and strode away.

It was not at all like he was fleeing from us. It was like he was a fitness instructor—admittedly a weird-looking fitness instructor entirely dressed in black—and we were incompetent stragglers in his class—admittedly a small and angry class—who needed to pull ourselves together and catch up. And he was certainly not going to slow down for us.

Instead, he moved at an athletic and progressively increasing clip, loping off across the estate, moving at a speed that in other circumstances and from another individual might have been impressive, even admirable.

From Corpse Face, it was just plain annoying.

It rapidly became clear that he was heading towards the place where I’d first seen him—and seen his herald, the crow with the twisted beak.

We pursued Corpse Face’s swift-moving thin black figure, descended a staircase to a lower level and suddenly there we were, in moss-covered Clockwork Orange. The oak tree loomed over us as we descended the stairs, cutting off the luminous underbelly of the clouds in turn reflecting the lights of the city sprawled around us.

As with the concrete canyon where we’d earlier pursued Corpse Face, there were generously sized gardens on three sides of us. But there the resemblance ended. Instead of lemon-scented cypress trees, glowing like elegant beacons in the darkness, the disembodied tapping of Corpse Face’s Cuban heels now advanced briskly among heaps of rubbish, discarded furniture, unrecycled recycling and a mouldering mattress with the words Nothing Really Mattress spray-painted on it in large red letters.

Also, dormant and defunct barbecues, ditto bicycles, and many an abandoned, unloved and rain-sodden toy.

Nevada and I looked at each other. Even my beloved’s resolve seemed to weaken a little at this point. Here we go again, we both thought.

The footsteps of our nemesis continued, not fleeing, but making firm, invisible and uncompromising progress past the gardens full of garbage.

We listened to the distinctive ringing of those boot heels connecting with the concrete: assertive, ineluctable, invisible.

Then, suddenly, there was another invisible sound…

A door opening. Right beside us. We turned and looked at the nearest flat: indeed, the one right beside us. Unhappily, its door wasn’t open. It was very firmly closed. And the dark windows suggested an empty property.

But we had heard what we had heard. Nevada and I looked at each other. Then, from the phantom open door beside us, we heard the voices of two young women, invisible but apparently standing right next to us, and the following deathless exchange ensued:

“She’s not really a blonde, you know. I mean, the actual actress who plays her. She is actually a brunette.”

“I know, I’ve seen her.”

“It’s a bit of a shock to discover that the Mother of Dragons isn’t a natural blonde.”

“I know, but I’d still give her one.”

Nevada and I looked at each other again.

Then we looked up.

Above us, on top of the row of ground floor flats, was a row of upstairs flats with a walkway in front of them. And on that walkway, immediately above us, were two young women, one of them unlocking a bicycle and the other looking on, arms folded, as they discussed the shagability of Daenerys Targaryen.

Beyond them, at the far end of the walkway, we could see good ol’ Corpse Face.

He was now above the position where his footsteps had ceased, at the end of the row of gardens. He’d stopped and currently had his foot up on the low concrete wall of the walkway, revealing a shocking red sock.

He had unzipped his boots and removed them.

Now he lowered his red-socked foot and scooted off, disappearing soundlessly into the stairwell of the walkway. A moment later, after a now familiar pause which was no doubt necessitated by putting his boots back on and zipping them back up, he appeared and waved to us. Then he disappeared back into the stairwell.

Now we knew what was going on, we went up the stairs at our end and pursued him. Much good it did us. When he realised that we were on to him, he actually did flee. And he ran like an Olympic sprinter.

I have no idea how he could run in boots with heels like that, but he did.

We followed him down the stairs, past the oak tree, out of the square, down past the row of garages. There we watched him run like hell, his shadow stretching then reversing as he ran past the floodlights of the playing field. He was drawing inexorably away from us.

By the time we reached Beverley Brook, he was gone.

*   *   *

“So that’s how he kept disappearing,” said Tinkler.

“Yes.”

“He was running around on the upstairs walkways?”

“Yes.”

Tinkler chortled.

“Why are you amused?” said Nevada.

Tinkler was doing his idiot yokel face. “He was using one of those new-fangled staircase things. It enabled him to go upwards. You ain’t seen nothing like it. They only have them in the big cities, amongst them urban elites.”

I could see Nevada in danger of getting seriously angry. But Tinkler was on a roll and he just kept going.

“There’s people in the air above us! We don’t get that where we come from…” He paused and thankfully dropped the yokel schtick. “But we do get that where we come from.” He wagged an accusing finger at us. “Or rather where you come from. You’ve got one of those walkways right above this place. You live under one.”

“It’s a matter of sound perception,” I said.

Tinkler wiped the obnoxious glee off his face. He might even have been genuinely interested now.

“Sound perception? How so?”

“Well, as you have noticed, this place does have a walkway above it, but it faces out into open space.”

“So, nothing to reflect the sound.” For a buffoon, he was often surprisingly quick-witted.

“Right,” I said. “So when people are moving along on the upstairs walkway here you hardly hear them.”

Nevada was nodding now, her anger faded, caught up in the problem as we discussed how both the concrete canyon and moss-covered Clockwork Orange were effectively courtyards. “In contrast to us here, they’re almost completely surrounded with stone walls, and as a consequence there’s this acoustic trick.”

“Curse those acoustic tricks. You mean the acoustic reflectivity of the built environment in those places conspired to create an auditory illusion?”

“Yes.”

“And Corpse Face exploited it.”

“Judging by the fact that he took his noisy footwear off when he crept up the stairs, he knew exactly what he was doing.”

“You know what that means?” said Tinkler.

“That he’s a very annoying corpse-faced motherfucker,” said Nevada.

Tinkler shook his head. “This guy knows about acoustics.”

4: NO BLOOD

“Saxon Ghost is very emphatic that you are the man for this job and, having done some research on you, I dare say I agree with him.” Owyn Wynter smiled and nodded, affably enough, at me and then Nevada. And then his gaze returned, a trifle nervously, to his hand.

Which Fanny was holding between her paws.

Owyn Wynter seemed like a nice guy, so much so that one was almost tempted to forgive him for the spelling of his name.

There was more to forgive, however. His record company was called White Raven Records.

“Except it’s spelled Whyte Ravyn Records,” I’d told Nevada. “With a ‘y’ in White and a ‘y’ in Raven.”

“Of course it is.”

“But that, at least, is for a fairly good reason.”

“Can there be such a thing?”

The fairly good reason, as Owyn Wynter himself explained to us in some detail, was that, after they came up with the name, they found out there already was a White Raven Records—conventional spelling—in Poland.

Owyn had come over to our house for dinner on a warm and windy Thursday evening. I had diced shallots and garlic, steamed three kinds of beans—petit-pois, broad beans and fine beans, all sweet and green—then gently cooked them all in olive oil, with added lemon juice, lemon zest and fresh dill. For her part, Nevada had agonised over whether to serve up our best Rhône red, or our second best, and ended up popping the corks on both.

She was a little nervous because she’d built up this meeting in her expectations and now it suddenly was upon us. While we’d issued the invitation soon after Saxon had given us Owyn’s number, it had taken a little while for our diaries to synchronise. Or at least, for Owyn Wynter’s busy diary to synchronise with our somewhat less busy one.

“Whyte Ravyn Records,” he’d said almost as soon as he was through the door, insisting on giving us both a business card. I suppose it was less rude than playing favourites and only giving a card to one of us. “We used to call it Right Raving Records. Because we used to party so hard.” He announced this with the smoothness of a much-repeated anecdote, and Nevada laughed dutifully.

It was hard to imagine Owyn Wynter ever partying hard. It was much easier to imagine him taking care to remain hydrated on his mountain bike during a bracing ride to the gym. He had short blond hair, an affable, open face and he was athletic in a casual, laidback way. As I say, he seemed like a nice guy. Even the cats took a shine to him.

At least, Fanny did. She’d permitted our visitor to stroke her and enjoyed the attention considerably; so much so that, when he tried to withdraw his hand, she did what Nevada calls “her little trick”.

Owyn Wynter looked at us. He was definitely getting a little nervous now. “How long does she usually…”

“Oh, not long. She generally lets go after a couple of minutes.”

“A couple of minutes, I see.”

“The important thing,” said Nevada, “is not to suddenly pull your hand away, because then things could get messy.”

“Messy, I see.”

“I mean, right now she has her claws sunk into your hand, but they are so fantastically sharp, and sunk in with such precision and surgical skill, they won’t leave a trace.”

“Won’t leave a trace. I see,” said Owyn Wynter. “Surgical skill.” He didn’t sound entirely convinced.

“There won’t even be any blood,” said Nevada.

“No blood.”

“She’s normally very good. She’d never hurt anyone. She doesn’t even hurt mice when she brings them in. It’s just that, if you’re stroking her and you stop stroking her before she feels she’s had her full complement of stroking…”

“She grabs your hand and sinks her claws in and holds it there,” said Owyn Wynter, in an admirably clear and brief summary.

“Yes.”

Suddenly tiring of her game, Fanny released her grip and let the poor human being go free. The poor human being stared at his hand. “My god. You were right. She didn’t leave a trace.”

“You see?” said Nevada, with something very like pride in her voice.

“You can just see the faintest mark where her claws went in.”

“That will fade quickly.”

“And it hardly hurts at all,” said Owyn Wynter gamely, squeezing his hand briefly but comfortingly under his armpit. “Now where was I?”

“You were being poured a glass of very nice wine.” Nevada filled his glass. She was outwardly relaxed, but I knew her well enough to sense her enormous relief that the wayward behaviour of a nefarious family pet hadn’t deep-sixed our chance of a major payday.

She even gave Fanny a quick caress, running her hand along the supple length of her tail.

“You were just saying he’s the right man for the job.” Nevada looked at me. It was a look that combined affection and warmth with an unspoken but nonetheless firmly worded request for me not to fuck up what was, despite the excellent food and wine and light-hearted instance of guest-mutilation inflicted by our beloved cat, basically a job interview.

“That’s right.” Owyn Wynter nodded decisively. “I don’t know how much Saxon told you about me…”

He did mention that we shouldn’t undercharge you, both Nevada and I were thinking, but instead I said, “Not much, apart from saying you ran a record label.”

“I do. We predominantly use streaming, of course. But we also manufacture in physical formats. The sale of these is a comparatively small part of our turnover, although vinyl is a growth area.” He looked at me. “In fact, in future, as we continue to expand, I foresee a possible role for you. In supervising the quality control of our vinyl releases. We need someone who understands vinyl and its challenges, and who has good ears.”

Nevada’s own ears pricked up at this—the prospect of a potentially long-term, potentially lucrative gig. She looked at me. I tried to look back at her with the expression of a man who hadn’t already decided that no gig could be sufficiently lucrative to tempt him to listen to Owyn Wynter’s kind of music on a long-term basis.

“Anyway, the record label is valuable not just in itself but crucially because it gives us a relationship with the artists. The groups. We get to know them, and they come to trust us. They hire us to arrange their gigs and tours, including some very substantial concerts at big venues.”

“That must be so exciting,” said Nevada in her best hostess, keep-the-conversation-rolling mode.

“It is. But we’re not here to talk about that.” He fixed me with his clear-eyed gaze. “Do you know what demonic metal is?”

I said, “I assume it’s heavy metal with a lot of pretentious references to demons. Plus gothic typography, of course.”

He laughed. “It’s exactly that. Have you ever heard of the Storm Dream Troopers?”

“Sorry, no.”

“For short, just called the Troopers. They were arguably the greatest demonic metal band. Two blokes, two birds.” For a moment I thought he meant literally birds—and an angular scissor-beaked crow flapped through my memories on its wide black wings. But then I realised that when he said birds he meant women. “They were going out. And then they got married. Two couples. They looked great visually. One blond couple, one dark. Like a sort of death metal Abba.”

Perhaps to my discredit, this did indeed help me to visualise what the Storm Dream Troopers might look like. It was not a great look.

“Anyway, these guys were Sweden’s most extreme demonic metal band. And their album, Attack and Decay, is exceptionally rare because it was banned by the Church.”

“Can they do that in Sweden?”

“Not really. Probably not anywhere, probably not even in Russia. But what they can do, the good people of the Church, is buy up every copy and destroy it. Which is pretty much what they did.”

“And you want me to find you a copy,” I said.

Owyn Wynter shook his head. “No, I’ve already found a copy.”

Nevada and I looked at each other.

“Well, that makes a refreshing change,” she said.

“In fact, I have found a copy of the even more rare audiophile 180-gram version. I mean, this is seriously rare. A member of the band was having supper with me the other night. Patrik Nordenfalk.” He said this as if he was dropping an important name. “We had dinner together and he told me even he doesn’t have a copy.”

“But you do,” said Nevada succinctly.

“Yes,” said Owyn Wynter. He had a happy glow in his eye which, I have to admit, as a fellow fanatic, I could all too easily recognise.

“But if you’ve already got a copy…” I said.

“Well, I haven’t actually got it,” he conceded a trifle ruefully. “I have secured a copy for purchase but I have yet to physically acquire it. Which is where you come in.”

“You want us to collect the record for you?” I said.

“And effect payment?” said Nevada. “Make sure it’s secure?” Clearly, my honeypie’s mind, with its keen aptitude for mayhem, was racing ahead: already weighing up scenarios and potential opportunities for profit.

“All that, yes, please, thank you,” said Owyn Wynter. He looked me in the eye. The record-collecting fanatic’s gleam had gone and now he was all business. “But most of all, I want you to listen to the record and make sure it’s the real thing.”

I sighed inwardly because I knew Nevada was not going to be tickled at me looking a gift horse in the mouth, but somebody had to ask the obvious question.

“Why don’t you go and pick it up yourself?” I hadn’t underestimated my beloved’s reaction. Her blue eyes flashed hot with disbelief at this faux pas.

Owyn was unfazed. “Too busy at work. I simply don’t have the time. And someone needs to listen to it, listen to it properly, check it out.”

Given that this really wasn’t my kind of music, I had very few qualms about persisting with another obvious question. “Surely you need to check it out yourself?” Those hot blue eyes had switched to giving me a My office, now look. But I persisted. “Wouldn’t that be better?”

“Frankly, no,” said Owyn Wynter. He turned to Nevada. Her reaction to my obfuscation apparently hadn’t gone unnoticed. “I trust his ears better than I trust my own.” He said this simply and almost humbly.

“Well, so you should,” said Nevada, suddenly both gratified and mollified. She looked at me. I was instantly out of the doghouse, which was a relief because I’m fundamentally a cat person.

“He has very good ears,” she said. “He has the best ears.”

Owyn Wynter seemed gratifyingly disinclined to contradict her. Instead, he nodded and said, “The thing is, Magnus, the guy who is selling this record, says it’s in perfect condition. And he’s charging me a considerable premium for the privilege of acquiring it in such superb shape. So that’s one of the things I want you to do over there—”

“Over there?” said Nevada quickly.

“Over in Sweden.”

“Sweden?” said Nevada happily. No doubt the words foreign jaunt and all expenses paid were dancing in her lively mind.

“Sweden, yes.”

“Excellent,” said Nevada. “Just checking. When Saxon outlined this caper to us, he did say it might involve a subsidised excursion to beautiful, beautiful Sweden.”

“Saxon is absolutely right. I want you go over there, on a subsidised excursion, listen to this record on my behalf and determine if it is indeed the real thing, and indeed in perfect condition, before I pay this Magnus fellow what many might deem a considerable fortune for it.”

“Darling,” said Nevada, turning to me. “Isn’t that lovely? We really are going to get paid to go to Sweden.”

“Beautiful, beautiful Sweden.”

“Yes. Just so you can listen to a record.”

“It is demonic metal,” I said. “Don’t forget that. We’ll be earning every penny.”

Owyn chuckled. “Yes, don’t forget that. And in case you’re wondering, Magnus has very firmly said that he won’t ship it over, for us to listen to here,” he nodded at my beloved record player which currently had an equally beloved cat asleep in front of it, comfortably sprawled between the Quads. Fanny had apparently exhausted herself savaging our guest’s hand earlier. “So you have to go over there.”

“So we have to go to Sweden,” said Nevada. “That is such a shame.”

We all laughed, but there was something nagging, small but ceaseless, at the back of my mind. “I kind of hate to bring this up, but Saxon said this job might be dangerous.”

“No, darling,” chuckled Nevada, taking my hand. “At most he implied that it might be dangerous.”

Owyn Wynter shrugged. “I don’t know why he said that.”

“Implied that,” corrected Nevada.

“Some of these bands are quite eccentric, admittedly…”

“You said this record had been suppressed by the Church.”

“Well, they bought up every copy they could find. And presumably destroyed them all, which is one reason it is so sought after.”

“And why did they do that?” I said. “Suppress it?”

“Oh, some nonsense about demonic influences corrupting young people. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds like a great record.”

“No, it is, seriously it is,” said Owyn. A happy little note came into his voice when he discussed this venerated piece of vinyl. “It’s a very early and very pure example of demonic metal. A great, great classic record. But I still don’t see why Saxon would think that you guys just going over there and evaluating and picking up a copy for me should represent any kind of danger to you.”

“Well, I guess we were all a little on edge,” I said, my mind going back to that evening when Saxon Ghost had come over to dinner, and indeed to a couple of subsequent occasions.

“Why?” said Owyn Wynter. “Was there a reason for you to be on edge? Good name for a band, by the way. On Edge. I wonder if anyone has used it?”

As he considered the possibility of looking this up on his phone, then dismissed it out of fear of being rude, Nevada and I looked at each other. And then, between the two of us, we proceeded to give Owyn a detailed description of the corpse-faced motherfucker and an account of his peregrinations.

Owyn listened patiently and with considerable attention.

Then, when we’d concluded, he immediately said, “Oh, that’s Jaunty.”

“Jaunty?”

“And he was in full makeup, was he?”

“You know this guy?”

Owyn Wynter nodded. “Why yes. He works for me.”

“So this corpse-faced creepy motherfucker who has been hanging around our house is working for you?” said Nevada.

“And his name is Jaunty?” I said.

“It’s short for Jonathan. He’s my accountant.”

“Your accountant.”

“Well, financial comptroller, actually. He is a big fan of the music, hence his appearance. And, you see, he knows about this transaction I’m planning, the purchase of this copy of Attack and Decay. And since I’m both paying for the record and paying you for your services—” he looked at me and Nevada, “—through the company, Jaunty has to sign off on any significant capital expenditure. So, he was just doing what he regarded as his due diligence.”