Authors: Phil Rickman
'Yeah, but it's hardly an incitement to murder. It's like
Charles Manson going on about having telepathic communication with the Beatles.
Claiming the Tate killings were inspired by McCartney's song "Helter
Skelter" then it turns out Manson didn't know what the hell the words
meant. That a helter-skelter was a kiddies' fairground ride in Britain - he
didn't
know that. It makes me angry, the
way so many of the worse things that happen are down to misinterpretation and
simple ignorance.'
She leaned back into the head-restraint, stretched her legs. 'But
Chapman killed him, Davey. Not you. Chapman took a
plane
over from Hawaii and bought himself a Saturday Night Special. You just
felt cross with the guy. And then you had a bad experience which somehow got
hooked up with his, and you hate yourself because you didn't follow through and
find out where they were, call up the studio where he was recording
and
say, "Could you please give Mr Lennon an urgent message, I think something
really terrible could be about to happen to him."'
Moira put a hand on his knee. 'Davey, you didn't
know
this was Lennon. You didn't even
know it was New York. And with the really malevolent vibes buzzing around the Abbey
on that occasion I'm pretty damn sure that if you'd rolled around on the grass
all night you'd never have got the insight you needed to alter history.'
Dave put his hand over her hand. 'That's not the worst of it.
The worst of it's that song. "On A Bad Day." You remember the
afternoon of the eighth?'
'Yeah, I ...'
Drove into Abergavenny to do a little shopping, then went
along to Tom's hotel to pick him up, have a chat with Debbie, Stayed an hour or
so, had afternoon tea with them in the restaurant. When we got back to the
Abbey ...
'... You were messing about in the studio with Simon and Lee Gibson
and Russell.'
'Yeh. We recorded a song. It wasn't
for the album, it was just a fun thing. Bit of a pastiche of "How Do You
Sleep", Russell had played a couple of tracks from
Double Fantasy
and I asked him to take it off, then I sat down and
started fooling about with a guitar and the song just came into me head. It was
just there.'
Dave began to sing, in Lennon's voice,
Don't know what you got
here
But it sure ain't a song
Sounds like Patience Strong
On a bad day.
If
you die tonight
Who has the last laugh?
If that's your epitaph
What can I say?
Am I ever gonna see you
again
I doubt it
Are we ever gonna hear you
again
I doubt it
I doubt it.
Oh God. Moira closed her eyes. 'You wrote that the verse afternoon
before ...?'
'And recorded it. In the Abbey.'
'Oh my,' Moira said hoarsely.
Dave took her hand from his knee. 'You don't want to touch me.'
'Don't be silly.'
'Mark Chapman's never been the quietest, most retiring of lifers,'
Dave said bitterly. 'He's always going on about how might
not
have shot Lennon. Earlier the same day he went along to the
Dakota and asked John for his autograph on a copy of
Double Fantasy
and then went away again and thought about
not killing him.'
'He's bonkers, Davey. He's a headcase.'
'Also, he kept on about hearing voices in his head. The Little
People he called them.'
'Davey, every fruitcake killer claims to hear voices. The Yorkshire
Ripper, all these psychos ...'
'And while he's thinking about it, agonising over whether to
go through with it, a song echoing all his Catcher in the Rye sentiments is
being laid down with a lot of malice
a forethought ...'
Davey, you can't
possibly
think ...'
'...at the
Abbey
.'
Moira sat up quickly and switched on the engine. 'That's it. I'm
no' gonny listen to any more of this nonsense.'
She jammed the BMW into gear, let out the clutch and swung
into the lane, which very soon began to narrow, tall trees meeting overhead. In
summer this would be a tunnel of green.
'Where are we going?'
'You know where we're going, Davey. We're gonna have a wee
stroll around the ruins and get our act together.'
'I can't,' Dave said. 'I just can't
do it.'
'Tomorrow you're gonna have to. OK ...
OK.'
She slowed down to a crawl and
began to look for a place to the car around.
Jesus,
she thought.
Last time we were here we were young and
innocent, most of us anyway. We had youth and energy and our patron was dear
old Max Goff, good vibes merchant and New Age entrepreneur.
This
time we've got a bunch of cynical bastards pulling the strings, a legacy of
death and disaster and we're all screwed up to hell.
She had a headache. On the way back to the Castle, she stopped
at a garage, bought a double-pack of Anadin and two hundred Silk Cut.
Whatever gets you through
the night...
V
Cortège
Weasel didn't remember a
time when he'd ever been so badly pissed off: upset, angry, worried, humiliated,
the lot, all at once.
Shelley had looked tired and glum
and Vanessa didn't hardly say a word to him when he took her to Stroud, as
usual on a Monday.
Vanessa's convent school was outside Stroud, and Weasel had to
go into town Monday mornings to pick up supplies from the main Love-Storey
distribution plant which was in this old mill-type building back of the shop.
Weasel in his brown overall with the Love-Storey logo and the
Princess in her brown convent blazer, jumper and skirt, they looked like a
team. Weasel liked that; him and the kid, they'd often joke about it on the
way.
No jokes today.
'You want me to take you up to the convent, or is Alexandra's
dad picking you up?'
Alexandra was this kid looked after Vanessa at school, her
special friend. Most Mondays, Weasel would just take Vanessa as far as the shop
and she'd go the final couple of miles with her mate, whose dad came through
the town.
'What's it gonna be then?'
Vanessa still didn't reply, just looked moodily out the
window, like she might spot Tom by the hedgerow thumbing a lift.
'You want me to take you all the way?'
Vanessa shook her head without looking
at him.
Jeez. Tom was gonna pay for this
and no mistake when Weasel got hold of the bleeder.
He parked the van up the side street by the shop and watched
the kid trot off with her school bag without waving or looking back.
What was pissing him off most was that whenever this bastard
place, the Abbey, come up on the horizon Weasel would be conveniently out of the
picture - the first time it was the hepatitis do - and, but for that, Debbie
would still be alive and he and Tom would have been on the road still, gigging.
On the minus side, there'd have been no Shelley, and Debbie -
God rest her wotsit - hadn't been exactly of the same calibre.
Debbie liked the high life and
foreign holidays; not the kind of woman to hold Tom together when he was into
one of his funny turns. Also, not the kind to devote the necessary attention to
a Down's kiddie. With Debbie, no doubt about it, Vanessa would
not be the smart madam she was, who could read books and went to a proper
school. Vanessa might even have wound up in a home.
So maybe ...
Anyway, not Weasel's job to question the situation, or to
philosophise.
Weasel's job was to find the big guy and Morticia before the
Bad Shadow merged with Tom's shadow.
He always saw it as a Bad Shadow, the thing following Tom. The
dirty rainbow, the visible sob. No question, Tom Storey had been born the wrong
side of the tracks - the black tracks most people couldn't see at all.
'What we got then?' Weasel said to Wendy in the old mill warehouse.
'Not a lot, Weasel. Usual for Circencester, trial batch of spinach
quiches and Cheze flans for Broadbanks in Chelt'nam and a special order for Safeway's
in Ross, directions on box. And that's it. Welcome to the Recession.'
'Brill,' said Weasel. 'I won't have
no job at all, it goes on like this. They'll be hiring a geezer wiv a moped.'
No, actually, this was not bad. It would leave him free to pursue
his inquiries. He was expecting a call from little Ginger Hodge at TMM this
afternoon.
Also ... Ross? Ross-on-Wye? Weasel hadn't done a delivery that
far west for quite some time. Ross was actually just over the Gloucestershire border,
in Herefordshire, right? So Abergavenny would be ... what, half an hour or so
from there?
And maybe three-quarters of an hour
from the Abbey.
Because, when you thought about it,
that was the direction it was all pointing. Shelley had said Case was after Tom
going back into the studio. Shelley was dead against it. But if Morticia was in
with Case and Morticia had gone off with Tom ...
Worth a butcher's.
A long time, anyway, since he done any sightseeing, places of
historic interest, all that shit.
Normally, Prof would have
been dashing into the dining-room waving his
Daily
Telegraph
. Look at
this, look at this!
But this week's motto was Don't Worry Tom. Also, by the looks
of things, Don't Worry Dave was about to come into vogue.
So Prof folded his
Telegraph
under his arm and endeavoured to look controlled and smiling as he sauntered in
for breakfast
- their second and final
breakfast at the Castle Inn.
Nervous as a kitten, Prof had been up at six, mooching round
the car park, up the lane, taking guarded glances at the Skirrid. This idea of
Simon's, having the Holy Mountain between them and the Abbey: could he credit
that?
There was more than a glistening of frost on the ground. Going
to be a cold one. Prof had been wearing a furry Russian hat, Christmas present
last year from his cousin's daughter in Warsaw, who was well into Western rock
and deeply impressed that Prof was at the centre of it, on joint-rolling terms
with Famous Names.
He'd stood on the edge of the beer garden, facing the Skirrid,
which was quite clear this morning despite a bit of mist. It wasn't really very
high, and if it had been a few miles further west you probably wouldn't have
noticed it at all.
Prof had had a quick look around to make sure nobody was
looking and then spread out his arms like some of the fey and mystical musicians,
back in the early seventies, used to do every morning, paying their respects to
the sun before venturing into the studio.
Prof
had closed his eyes and done it to the Skirrid.
Nothing happened.
'Daft sod,' he'd muttered, then gone back to the inn and
bought the Telegraph, a good, solid, no nonsense read. The Skirrid. Bollocks. Dave
might have thrown a wobbly that first night, been shell-shocked ever since, but
Prof hadn't felt a sodding thing coming off the Skirrid.
It was the
Daily
Telegraph
which had blown his mind. Bottom of page five. Two paragraphs.
The dining-room was empty, not even the little waitress
around. This being way out of season, nobody was staying here apart from the band,
and the Castle had adapted quickly to the little eccentricities of guests like
Tom Storey who breakfasted at twelve a.m.