The Sound of Broken Glass (3 page)

George raised a full pint and gave him a mock salute. “To our guitar hero.”

“You bastards,” Andy said again. He was shaking, and wondered fleetingly if he was ill. “You deliberately—”

A hand tugged at his sleeve. “Hey, mate.” The voice was slightly slurred.

Turning, Andy found himself facing a bloke about his own age in a scruffy hoodie. When Andy frowned at him, the bloke pushed his hood back, revealing short brown hair that still managed to look unkempt. Light caught the wisp of a soul patch under a lower lip that was just a bit too full.

“Look,” said Andy, “I'm in the middle of—”

“Always knew you'd be good. Nice guitar.” The guy reached towards the Strat.

“Don't touch my guitar.” Andy's response was automatic. Memory was tugging at him again, and he felt queasy. “You—” He shook his head and peered again at the bloke's face, wishing he'd worn his glasses. “Do I know you?”

“Ha bloody ha. Always the joker, our Andy.”

What the hell was this bloke on about? Andy stepped back. “Look, just bugger off. And don't call me—”

“You really don't remember me?” Soul-patch sounded petulant now, and something in the tone blasted Andy's vague perception of familiarity into full-blown recognition.

“Joe?”

“I knew it was you when I saw the poster for the band. I knew you'd come back someday.” Soul-patch smiled, showing white, even teeth that seemed at odds with his overall air of neglect. “I thought we could have a pint, maybe. Old times, yeah? Or are you too good for us now? Andy the rock star.”

Soul-patch. Joe. Bloody Joe, grown up to be even more pathetic than he had been as a kid. The anger boiled up in Andy, so fierce it almost doubled him over. “Old times? You little shit.” He knew he must be shouting, but he didn't care. “You—Why would you think I ever wanted to see your stupid face again?” Andy saw the crowd around them as a blur through a red, beating haze.

“Hey, man, it's been years.” Joe was wheedling now. “Water under the bridge. Can't we just for—”

“Forget? Don't you even think it,” Andy spat at him, his hands balling into fists without his volition. Nick stepped up behind him, murmuring something, but Andy shoved him back with his shoulder.

“I just wanted to be friends, that's all—”

“Friends? Friends? You should have thought about that then, shouldn't you?” Andy went cold, the room fading until there was only a hum in his ears. He wanted nothing but to blot that face from his vision. “Just. Fuck. Off.” His right fist slammed into Joe's face.

Then Nick was wrapping his arms around him, dragging him backwards through the jumble of cables, pushing him down onto his amp.

A new face loomed over him, a silver-haired man, booming at him in authoritarian tones. “. . .  can't have that in a public place . . .  management should call the police . . .  assaulting customers, you little hooligan.”

“Hooligan?” Andy managed a strangled laugh. “You've no idea. Who the hell are you?” He struggled to get up, to tell this wanker what he thought of him, but Nick still had him firmly by the shoulders.

“Leave the laddie be.” It was Tam's voice. “And take care with the wee guitar,” Tam added, his strained face swimming into Andy's vision as he pulled the Strat over Andy's head and set it in its stand. “You, laddie, outside,” he ordered, yanking Andy to his feet, and the crowd parted as Tam marched him through. There was no sign of Joe or the silver-haired man.

Tam pushed him out the side door that faced on Church Road and Andy gasped at the sudden enveloping chill. The drizzle had turned to fog, dense as cotton wool.

Spinning Andy round to face him, Tam gave him a shake. “What the hell were you thinking in there? First you let those idiots sabotage the gig and then you start a bloody barroom brawl?” The fog muted his voice, but Andy had never seen Tam so angry.

“I—”

“Tell me you havenae broken your bloody hand,” Tam went on, gentler now, but the Glasgow accent was still in full force. “Let me see it.”

Andy held his right hand up, wondering that he hadn't felt the pain.

“Can ye move your fingers?”

Andy gave them an experimental wiggle and nodded, then cradled his hand to his chest. It stung like bloody hell now.

“Ice. You'd best get ice on it.” Tam's voice went steely again. “But first you're going to tell me what happened in there. And you'd better be bloody glad that Caleb Hart left before you pulled your little stunt.”

“They were pissed off, Nick and George,” Andy said, hoping to deflect Tam from what had happened after. “I suppose they had a right—”

“They have a right to play in their fricking locals on Saturday nights if they get their jollies from it. They're amateurs. But you—” Tam stabbed a finger at Andy's chest, narrowly missing his injured hand. “You just barely pulled that one out of the barrel. Caleb still wants you to play with the lassie tomorrow, and you bloody well better be able to use those fingers on the guitar.”

“But I don't—”

“I don't want tae hear it.” Tam stepped back, his eyes narrowed, his voice gone quiet, and that was worse than the temper. “If you screw this up, lad, you don't have the brains God gave a sheep, and your talent isn't worth your fricking piece-of-crap guitar case.” He drew a breath, then said even more softly, “If you walk away from this, I'm finished with you. You hear me, laddie? Ten years I've given you, for a break like this, and you're just too bloody scared to take it.”

Tam should have looked ridiculous, his stubby hands clenched at his sides, his lips pinched into a bloodless line, but he didn't.

Andy shivered. He felt a swirl of violence in the chill air, a pulse of emotion that made the hair rise on the back of his neck.

But it hadn't come from Tam—Tam's anger was palpable, direct. This was something else, some indefinable malice that moved in the fog, and Andy was, suddenly, frightened.

And he also knew that Tam was right.

The exact boundary for the Crystal Palace area isn't precise, because it takes the name from Crystal Palace Park. There is also a Crystal Palace Railway Station and a Crystal Palace Ward in the London Borough of Bromley.

—www.crystalpalace.co.uk

The persistent sound tugged Gemma from the depths of sleep.

She rolled over and groaned, pulling the pillow over her head to shut out the irritating tune. Duncan patted her shoulder and mumbled something.

“Phone,” he said more distinctly. “It's yours.” It was, she realized—the annoying stock ring tone that everyone in the family griped at her to change. Emerging from under the pillow, she realized that pale gray daylight had infiltrated the room, and when she squinted at the clock it read 8:05.

“Oh, God,” she said, her heart thumping into overdrive as she came thoroughly awake. How had they slept so late? Why weren't the children up? Kit could manage to sleep in on weekends, but Charlotte and Toby were usually bouncing on the bed by seven.

Then she remembered. Last night had been Duncan's newly instituted family pizza-and-game night. Pizza, homemade. Game, Scrabble. Nothing electronic allowed, and no takeaway. Kit had complained mightily when his phone and his iPod were both banned, but in the end even he had seemed to enjoy the evening. The little ones had stayed up late, and once they were tucked in and Kit was in his room, she and Duncan had polished off a very nice bottle of Bordeaux in front of the fire, planning how they'd spend the weekend. Today was for shopping and lunch with the kids; then on Sunday she'd promised to take the children to Leyton to visit her parents.

Her phone fell silent, but before she could breathe a sigh of relief, it started ringing again. Not a good sign. Sitting up, she yanked the duvet up to her shoulders, then fumbled the mobile from the charger. She glanced at the caller ID before clicking on.

“Melody,” she said on a yawn.

“Sorry, boss.” Melody sounded wide awake. “Saturday's canceled, I'm afraid. We've got a call-out.”

“Domestic?” asked Gemma, still holding on to a smidgen of hope for her weekend. Friday nights were notorious for domestic disputes escalating into alcohol-fueled violence, but the cases were usually fairly straightforward.

“No. Something much more interesting,” Melody said cheerfully. “A man found in a hotel room. Naked, bound, and strangled. I can pick you up in”—as she paused, Gemma knew they were making the same calculations, how long for a barely wet shower, clothes, a minimum of makeup—“twenty minutes,” Melody said. “Twenty-five, max.”

With an apologetic shrug aimed at Duncan, Gemma slipped out of bed and headed for the bathroom. “Where are we going?” she asked Melody.

“Crystal Palace.”

By midday that August, you could fry an egg on the tarmac of Crystal Palace Parade, and the air in the town center reeked of bus exhaust mixed with just a hint of candy floss.

In the mornings, Andy had his cornflakes in the kitchen, then read or watched telly—quietly, so as not to wake his mum. When she got up, he made her breakfast, then walked her to the pub. He had a rotating list of excuses for doing so, and never said that it was because he wanted to make sure she actually got there. She'd grumble as they climbed up Woodland Road to Westow Hill, frown at him as they rounded the corner into Church Road. Then, as they reached the pub and she tied on her barmaid's pinny, her face would soften for an instant and she'd tell him to stay out of trouble.

When he'd seen her safely inside, he'd wander down the Parade and into the park with his guitar.

He liked Crystal Palace Park, summer or winter, but in this long stretch of fine weather, it had taken on a carnival atmosphere. Two of the old Crystal Palace sphinxes flanked either side of a flight of steps, marooned between one empty terrace and another. Here he liked to sit, in the shade of one of the great stone beasts, watching the holidaymakers as he picked at the guitar.

His mum hated the old standard Höfner, hated him playing it even more. His dad had left it behind when he abandoned them, and the sight of it could still make his mum livid when she was having a particularly bad day.

Andy barely remembered his dad, who had moved out when he was four. He held a fuzzy image in his mind of his dad sitting on the front steps of the house in Woodland Road, playing the guitar while the smoke curled up from the cigarette he held between his lips, but he wasn't sure if it was an actual memory or something he'd conjured up from wishful thinking.

He did remember his mum telling him that his dad had “gone to greener pastures.” He'd thought that meant his dad had died and gone to heaven, but when he'd said it at school, one of the nuns had taken him aside and explained that his dad was alive and well and working on a gas rig off Canvey Island. The memory still made him cringe with embarrassment, and he wasn't sure now if he'd felt any relief at knowing his dad wasn't dead.

The details fell into place gradually, as he got older and learned to decipher his mum's muttered comments. “Greener pastures” meant another woman, a girlfriend. As far as Andy knew, his parents had never got a divorce. He thought his dad had sent money for a while, but it had long since stopped.

At first, his mum had had a job as a cashier at the supermarket, but after a couple of years, one day she'd just stopped going to work. He never knew what had happened. For a time they seemed to live on bread and Marmite, and then his mum had got the job at the pub, and for a while after that things had been better.

Sometimes there were “uncles,” but they never seemed to stay for long, and Andy was always glad to see the back of them.

From his seat on the park steps, he watched other families, his curiosity tinged with envy. Mothers handing round ice creams, fathers playing football with sons. He couldn't imagine what that would be like. His mum had never come to the park with him, although he had another vague memory of his dad bringing him to see the dinosaurs once.

There were other boys, too, in the long August afternoons, about his age and on their own like him—sunburned savages who roamed the park in baggy shorts and expensive trainers with blinding-white laces. There were two, in particular, who came almost every day on bikes that he knew cost more than his mum made in a month. They raced and wheeled, then stood astride their bikes, watching him from the corners of their eyes. He couldn't tell if their gazes held interest or menace, but on this day, he hugged the guitar a little closer and glanced at his watch.

He had a schedule to keep now. The park, then an hour or two in the library, then home to get his own tea. Then, as the sun sank behind the houses on the west side of Woodland Road and the air began to cool, he'd sit on the steps with the guitar on his knees and wait.

He knew to the minute when he'd hear the little Volkswagen chugging up the hill.

“A hotel, you said?” asked Gemma when she was buckled into the passenger seat of Melody's bright blue Renault Clio. Having thrown on trousers and boots and her cream-colored wool coat over a sweater, Gemma had pulled the tumble of her hair into a short haphazard plait. She saw that her partner, however, wore a dark trouser suit set off by a turquoise blouse, and had not a hair out of place in her dark, lustrous bob. Melody Talbot was the only woman Gemma knew who could wear a suit without looking dowdy, and on this miserable morning she found it a trifle annoying.

Melody downshifted through the light at Holland Park Avenue. “Some place called the Belvedere.”

The streets were glistening from the fine drizzle, and Gemma was glad, at least, that they wouldn't be working outside. “Has the super been notified?” she asked. Their team's detective chief superintendent, Diane Krueger, would coordinate the investigation from South London headquarters.