Eighty Days Red (7 page)

was a little gloomy without an audience in it, and the space on the inside was smaller than I remembered. Hard to believe that four thousand people would be crammed in here in a few hours. The sloping floor was covered in stains and smelled like beer, but despite that the building had a grand feeling to it, a sense of history.

Out front, punters who had been lining up for hours were chatting good-naturedly, drinking cans of beer and smoking cigarettes. A fair few of them, I was gratified to hear, had come to see Groucho Nights. Chris had accumulated quite a following. They stared at Fran and me curiously as we flashed our passes at the burly, uniformed bouncers who were guarding the front doors and we were waved straight through. I’d gone fairly nondescript, in a denim miniskirt and my old cherryred Dr Martens, but Fran drew a lot of attention, determined as she was to prove that she wouldn’t be defeated by the British weather, and despite the cold, she was wearing the shortest pair of high-waisted denim shorts I’d ever seen her in. Her skin had turned almost blue in the chill.

‘Hey,’ she said, ‘I’ll be thirty soon and I hear it’s all downhill from there. May as well get my legs out while I still can.’
I’d brought my violin with me at Viggo’s request. He hadn’t specified why, but I guessed that he wanted me to play for him at his party, after the show. I felt a little strange about the idea. Dominik had been the only person who I had performed for in that way, but for the sake of the band, if nothing else, I agreed. At least it would keep me in practice, seeing as I didn’t have any gigs lined up. I left the Bailly in the Green Room, which was heavily guarded, but empty for now as The Holy Criminals were in their dressing rooms and Chris, Ella and Ted were busy soundchecking. We idled the time away in the top bar, before taking our places at the front centre of the stage as the first half of the show was about to begin.
Chris was like another person the minute he stepped out in front of the crowd. Day to day he had a shy, boyish air about him, but in front of a microphone he wore a second skin, the perfect image and demeanour of a rock star.
The group burst straight into one of my favourite tracks, ‘Roadhouse Blues’, all rolling riffs with a blues melody and Chris and Ted’s husky vocals riding the sound like molasses rolling slowly down a whisky barrel. Ted pulled out his double bass for the second tune, ‘Fire Woman’, a song about hot love with more of a swing feel. It was a piece that always made the women in the audience go crazy, and tonight was no exception. Chris held the mic in one hand as if he was slow-dancing with a lover, his mouth open wide to catch the high notes.
‘Hello, London,’ he shouted out to the crowd, ‘how are we tonight?’
They leaped and cheered in response.
‘Would you like to meet our special guest?’ He stared down at me in the front row. More cheering. Maybe Viggo had agreed to make an early friendly appearance. ‘What are you doing?’ I shouted back, but my voice was lost in the screaming.
‘My girl is here, over from New York,’ Chris shouted. ‘Give her some encouragement, people, get her up on stage.’
One of the roadies raced out hurriedly from behind the curtain with an electric violin, and plugged it in with a burst of feedback. I was relieved it wasn’t my Bailly, as the sound would have been lost, even with the mic, but I hadn’t played an electric for nearly three years.
I crouched under the rope that cut the mosh pit off from the stage. The two bouncers hoisted me up and Chris grabbed my hand and pulled me alongside him. I turned to face the crowd. The energy onstage was much wilder than I was used to compared with my demure classical gigs. The room felt hot and alive, tingling with noise and electricity.
‘Just go with it,’ Chris said, as he broke into one of the songs that we used to play together, ‘Sugarcane’, a folk rhythm with a short violin solo and double-string licks punctuating the vocals, a fat, dirty sound that I hadn’t played since I first left London.
I stayed for the band’s next song, enjoying the ebb and flow of the music rushing through me like a current, forcing myself to leave them onstage alone for their finale, a heavier rock number which reached a thundering crescendo on the drums.
Fran was waiting for me in the wings minutes after I made my exit, having pushed through the crowd and flashed her backstage pass and a smile at security so that she could congratulate me. She stared at Chris as the crowd went wild, and the lights swept over the band one last time as they left the stage, fingers of green and red light gleaming against the hard wooden floors.
‘He’s pretty good,’ Fran said.
‘Chris? Yeah, I know. He’s like a different person when he plays.’
‘So are you.’
‘Really?’
‘Just more confident, I guess. And I can see you all getting into the music, like you’re high or something …’
‘We’re not. Always been very boring like that. Chris is massively anti-drugs, says he doesn’t want to upset his creative flow by fucking up his brain cells.’
‘Fair enough …’
I left her looking after our jackets in the wings, and headed off to hunt down a couple of drinks, taking advantage of the short break between acts. We didn’t get that many big acts in New Zealand, and even then they always went to the major centres: Auckland or Wellington, sometimes Christchurch. Neither of us had seen that many gigs at home. Fran seemed content drinking it all in, and staring up at the Academy’s starry ceiling which even after several visits to the venue still made me feel as though I was watching a show outdoors.
I returned just in time to see the stage lights dropped into blackness, save for a single red spot that lit up the centre of the stage. A trapdoor had opened and a cage was slowly rising out of it, with Viggo Franck inside, crouched over with his hands wrapped around the bars in a gesture of defiance. He raised his head and grinned as the cage reached level with the floor, and I was almost deafened by the high-pitched screaming of the women in attendance. Fake smoke bubbled across the stage and when it dissipated, the cage had disappeared and he was standing with his legs apart wearing virtually the same outfit I’d seen him in the other day. Low-slung black jeans, leather boots, a ripped T-shirt. If it wasn’t for the fame, and that Casanova aura that hung around him, he could have been any guy in a pub in London, though definitely not the sort that you would introduce to your mother.
He was on stage for about an hour and a half with his band, building to a final crescendo with a track from his first album,
Underground
, a song with a screeching guitar solo in the middle which he played on his knees, leaning over backwards so that his head rested on his ankles. He reportedly practised hot yoga in a special sauna room in his mansion and my mind immediately wandered when he demonstrated his flexibility.
Fran elbowed me in the ribs after the show, as we headed off to find Chris and the others.
‘You know you’re going to be one of dozens, don’t you?’
‘You’re presuming I’m going to sleep with him.’
‘Well, obviously. Just so long as you know you’re not the only one. Probably not even the only one today.’
‘You think I should avoid him?’
‘God no!’ she said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘How many chances does a girl get to fuck a rock star? Go for it. Just make sure he covers his loving, won’t you.’
‘I’m not an idiot …’ I replied, remembering that the first time I’d slept with Dominik we hadn’t used a condom. A stupid mistake that I hadn’t repeated since. With anyone.
‘No helmet, no ride,’ Fran added, giggling as one of the stagehands hovering by the dressing rooms glanced at her and lifted an eyebrow quizzically.
The scene in Viggo’s dressing room was quieter than I expected. He was sitting on a stool drinking a bottle of beer and Chris and Ted were relaxing on a black vinyl couch pushed against one of the walls. The rest of Viggo’s band had gone out to track down some more drinks. The room itself was fairly stark. Walls painted white with A4 printed signs warning occupants not to smoke belied the ashtrays that rested on the dressing table. Ella was leaning close to the mirror, wiping off her make-up with baby wipes.
They applauded when we walked in. Viggo’s gaze lingered on Fran’s short shorts. ‘Hey, our little star!’ Chris said. ‘They loved you.’
‘They loved you guys, more like. Listen to it out there.’
A bunch of fans, most of them women, had gathered around outside and were shouting ‘Viggo, Viggo’, and occasionally ‘Chris!’
‘Chris isn’t a very sexy name,’ I said to him, cheekily. ‘You should change it.’
‘So everyone keeps trying to convince me,’ he said, ‘but it’s too late now. I’d feel like a fool.’
Viggo put his beer down, grabbed my hand and pulled me towards him, so I was standing between his open legs. I was wearing a short skirt with tights, and could feel the scratch of his denim brushing against my legs. His touch hit me in a rush, like a glass of champagne going straight to my head, and I had to force myself not to fall straight into his arms.
‘So, darling,’ he drawled, ‘did you bring your violin? Will you play some more for us later?’ He rolled the word ‘later’ as though he was referring to something much more X-rated.
‘I would love to,’ I replied breezily, resisting the urge to press my body against his. It was one thing to hook up with an obvious womaniser in private, but quite another to do it publicly. I didn’t want to be the butt of Chris and Fran’s jokes for the next decade.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘we should go.’
The crew had loaded everything into a couple of vans out the back, and arranged to take Chris and his band’s stuff back to the studio where they’d pick it up next week, leaving us free to travel in Viggo’s cars, a couple of fairly nondescript black sedans with tinted windows. He apparently drove a black 1987 Buick most of the time, but preferred to keep his anonymity after shows.
The cars pulled up to a gated complex in Belsize Park. It was about 2 a.m. by the time we got there, and the neighbourhood was deathly quiet.
‘Loads of celebrities live on this street,’ Chris whispered to me. ‘And their unsexy names didn’t do them any harm.’
‘I see your point, but I’m sure plenty of people would disagree.’
‘There’s no pleasing some people,’ he replied, rolling his eyes at me.
The interior of Viggo’s mansion was nothing like I expected. No snakes in tanks, or aquariums full of nude women swimming as had been rumoured. The place was barer than bare, almost spartan, but for a few art pieces positioned to catch the light. A sculpture of a bird with its wings outstretched was suspended from the ceiling. A spiral staircase in pale timber and metal snaked up the centre of the room.
‘Is that a Hirst?’ Fran asked, staring at a long oblong painting, a white background covered with perfectly round coloured dots.
‘God no,’ Viggo said, standing a touch closer to her than I was comfortable with. ‘What kind of person do you take me for?’
I stared at the painting more closely, noticing tiny m’s painted in the centre of the coloured dots like sweets.
‘Clever,’ I said.
‘Exactly,’ Viggo replied. He was running his hand lightly up my skirt, brushing his fingers against my stockinged thighs. I shivered in response. ‘I don’t like things that aren’t clever. Now, come upstairs with me, the show hasn’t finished yet.’
The second floor was much more like I had imagined. The place looked like a harem, furnished entirely in deep-red and purple with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, plush, goldcoloured carpet and an array of black leather couches in unusual shapes that I suspected were designed for activities that might be pictured in the Kama Sutra. In the centre of the room was a fountain, and in the middle of the fountain, a lifelike statue of a woman.
At least, I thought it was a statue, until she gracefully unfurled a hand and pulled a pin out of her long, blond hair which tumbled around her shoulders. She turned slowly to face us, revealing small bare breasts and totally smooth genitalia.
Her movements were subtle and beautifully executed, as far away from the stereotypical stripper as you could imagine. She had positioned herself in such a way that the water bursting from the fountain appeared to flow up her legs, stopping just as it reached the barrier created by her flesh. Next to her pussy was a tattoo of a tiny gun.
A dim memory began to echo in the recesses of my mind. The world was full of dancing girls, but I’d only seen one who moved like this, with an identical weapon marked into her skin.
It was the Russian dancer who had performed at the place, a private club in New Orleans that Dominik had taken me to. I recalled with a flush of humility and arousal how, after we had watched her impossibly erotic dancing, Dominik had instructed me to dance for him on the stage. I had done so, nude but for ruby-red nipple rings and a butt plug.
Luba.
She met my eyes and smiled.

4
The Angelique

The small shop in Burlington Arcade where he had bought Summer’s violin was shuttered, although it was already mid-afternoon. Dominik peered through the glass door and noticed piles of mail gathering dust on the floor on the other side of the narrow letter box. A notice on the door redirected enquiries to a telephone number which he noted down.

He rang it later.
There was no answer.
He tried again at hourly intervals.
Around ten in the evening he was just about to hang up on his final attempt for the day, after

letting the phone ring for several minutes, when someone finally picked up.
The man sounded elderly and spoke in hushed tones.
‘It’s about the store in Burlington Arcade,’ Dominik explained.
‘You should get in touch with the letting agents,’ the man answered.
‘That’s not why I was calling,’ Dominik said. ‘I was once a customer. Bought a violin there.

I just had some questions I wanted to ask …’

‘We went out of business. I decided to retire. Just not worth the bother any longer,’ the man said. ‘I don’t think I can help you.’
‘Were you the owner?’ Dominik asked.
The man’s voice didn’t sound at all like the assistant who had sold him the Bailly. ‘I was.’
‘I don’t think we met. Your colleague sold me a beautiful instrument, but I’m now keen to

find out more about its history, the previous owners …’
‘Weren’t you supplied with a certificate of provenance? He should have provided one.’ ‘I was. But the information proved quite sparse.’
‘You can’t expect me to remember chapter and verse on every instrument that went through