Written in Dead Wax (11 page)

It wasn’t just the drugs. I wasn’t smoking and I could hear it.

I manoeuvred myself into the sweet spot, jostling her warm thigh against mine, pressing her gently back across the sofa towards Tinkler. “I’m being crushed,” he cried. “I’m being crushed against Nevada Warren! For god’s sake don’t stop.”

He and Nevada giggled. Long gurgling giggles. It sounded as if their intellects had already dropped by dozens of IQ points. But they kept smoking.

I leaned forward and listened. It was like I was in the room with the musicians.

“Why don’t you roll us another one of those,” said Nevada, at length.

“I’ve got the cigarette papers,” said Tinkler. “All I need is some roach fodder. A business card perhaps?” He looked at Nevada.

“You’re not using one of my business cards, sport,” she said.

“Oh well, then how about tearing the cover off one of these rare and expensive-looking records?”

I knew he was bluffing, but he still succeeded in putting a twinge of apprehension in me. My precious records. “The cardboard is too heavy for your purposes,” I said. I reached in my pocket and found the square of paper Kempton had given me at the funeral. “Use this instead.” As I handed it to him I happened to notice that there was writing on the back. It said:

As of midnight tonight the police will allow access to Jerry’s house. You can go there first thing tomorrow morning and look through that collection we’re selling. You can have first refusal on all the jazz.

Tinkler was flapping his big pale hand in the air, trying to get hold of the paper, which I had snatched back. I fended him off and passed it to Nevada. “Let me have it,” he said. “I need to complete assembly of this torpedo.”

“Quiet, Tinkler,” she said as she read the handwritten message. She lowered the paper and looked at me. “We have to go immediately. Tonight.”

I looked at her. “Tonight?”

“At midnight. As soon as the police are gone.”

* * *

It took three phone calls to track down Kempton, and the keys to Jerry’s house. Kempton lived in north London, about half an hour from Jerry’s. We arranged for Clean Head to drive us around to his place and collect the keys at half past eleven sharp. I apologised for the ungodly hour, repeated the story we’d cooked up—I was going on holiday, this was my only chance to look at the stuff—a lie that was beginning to take root in my mind as some ghostly semblance of the truth.

I told myself if we found the record, my first order of business would be to indeed go on holiday to celebrate and so it wasn’t really a lie at all.

Kempton handed the keys to me with some evident reluctance, despite our earlier conversations on the phone.

He said, “If you find anything you want, just leave it there with a note, all right? Don’t take any records away.”

“Of course not,” I said. Although if I did find
Easy Come, Easy Go
nothing on earth would stop me taking it immediately into safe keeping and removing it from the premises. But equally, if I did find the record, I had every intention of seeing that it was paid for in full. Or, rather, that Nevada paid for it in full. I took the keys, warm from the long time they’d spent clutched in Kempton’s reluctant hand, and headed for the taxi.

He watched me unhappily from his doorstep as I climbed on board and Clean Head started the engine.

Sitting beside me in the back, I could feel Nevada literally quivering with excitement. “Did you get the keys?” she said.

“Yes. Of course.”

“Tally ho!”

The taxi roared through the dark streets towards Primrose Hill. All the way Nevada drummed her fingers impatiently on the window, staring out. As if in a continuation of the day’s funeral theme she was dressed in a black roll-neck sweater, black ski pants and all-black Converse sneakers.

The drumming of fingertips was winding me up. “By the way,” I said, “what’s with the ninja assassin get-up?”

She stopped drumming and turned to look at me. “You said it was a dirty business grubbing through these records. I’ve dressed for dirty business.”

“You look like a cat burglar.” She turned away again, sulking. “A very high class cat burglar,” I added. This seemed to mollify her.

We were making good time, as per Clean Head’s usual driving, and only hit traffic once, on Belsize Road in St John’s Wood. I was worried about getting to Jerry’s before the police had a chance to clear out, but even though we were there at fifteen minutes to midnight, they were already evidently long gone. The only sign of them was a piece of blue and white police tape hanging limply from the doorframe.

“Maybe they knocked off early,” I said

“Not too early I hope,” said Nevada. “I’d hate to think anyone had a chance to ransack the place before we did.”

She paid and the taxi hummed off into the night, leaving us standing on the pavement. We looked at the house. It was a thin, handsome semi-detached Georgian. The front garden was covered with cracked concrete, a slender but flourishing plum tree rising triumphantly from a dark patch of earth in the middle. The wrought-iron front gate creaked as we opened it. Apart from the distant buzz of traffic, it was eerily silent. I paused as we stepped through the gateway. There was the sudden sound of footsteps.

I looked around, but it was just a his-and-hers pair of sports freaks out jogging.

Jogging in the middle of the night.

They ran along the pavement outside the gate, not even glancing our way, their panting breath just audible.

I watched them go as we walked up the narrow stone steps to a narrow green front door. On either side of it the police tape hung down. It looked like it had been cut through the middle. By the police themselves, I hoped. I sorted through the keys, jingling them on the ring, until I found the right one to open the door. It seemed strange not to have a rush of cats accompanying us as we entered.

It was dark and cool and damp inside. “I can’t see anything,” said Nevada.

I switched on the light, to reveal a scene of chaos. The small front entry hall, staircase leading up from it, and room to the right were all completely covered with LPs. Or at least they had been before the police had begun their crime scene investigation. A narrow pathway had been cleared through the hall, and up the stairs, with the records shoved to one side. I picked up one album. There was a size 12 boot print on it.

“Our British police,” I said. “Aren’t they wonderful?” In fairness, though, it was almost impossible to move in the place without stepping on a record. They were piled everywhere in toppled heaps like frozen waves. “It’s like sand dunes,” I said.

“Vinyl dunes,” said Nevada. We looked around at the apparently endless mess. It appeared an impossible task. “Well, let’s get cracking,” she said. Under her jauntiness I already sensed an edge of despair. She looked at me. “Where should we start?”

“Right here, I guess.” I crouched down and commenced looking through the records starting with those nearest the door and working my way in. “Luckily I remembered to wear my crate-diving shoes. I mean crate-digging. You’ve got me doing it now.”

“It’s more like diving,” said Nevada, “the way you launch yourself at them.”

She went off to explore the house and I set to work, pacing myself. Even with the right footwear, grovelling around on the floor like this for half the night would prove pretty taxing on the muscles in my legs and my lower back.

And half the night looked like an optimistic estimate.

I moved quickly through the records, checking the covers then stacking them in neat ranks against the wall, out of the way. A few had been badly mangled by people, presumably cops, treading on them. But most had escaped unscathed.

The records, at least those near the door, were all proving to be classical. Mostly on smaller European labels like Hungaroton and Supraphon. The light in the hallway wasn’t great, coming from one dim bulb in a floral glass bowl suspended from the ceiling, moths battering it as I worked. Nevada came back down from the upper levels of the house and perched on the steps, watching me. She was showing uncharacteristic levels of patience.

I reached the staircase and started working my way up them, step by step, going through the records and stacking them neatly. Nevada retreated to the landing above and sat there, watching me again, feet dangling, her shoulder bag squeezed between her legs. There was a fluorescent tube affixed above the stairs and the light was better here. I sorted through the records quickly and efficiently. She stayed put as I moved up towards her. By the time I was working beside her legs, my chin on a level with her knees, I had reached the last of the records on the stairs.

We looked at each other.

“Nothing?” she said.

“Not yet.”

She sighed. I said, “I’d better go back downstairs and work through the rest of the ground floor.”

“All right.” She remained sitting disconsolately at the top of the stairs, drumming her heels, as I went back down and started again. I finished checking the hallway, the whole place becoming gratifyingly more orderly and accessible as I stacked the records neatly, and I worked my way through the hallway into the front room.

This was a sitting room with an ornate fireplace, which had seen frequent use by Jerry if the set of fire tools, heaps of ash and large box of kindling were anything to go by.

I pulled the curtains closed and switched on a desk lamp that had been set up on the mantelpiece, to supplement the feeble light from the ceiling fixture. It was cold in the house, the heating not surprisingly having been switched off, but I was sweating from my exertions.

The records in here were, at least, getting more interesting. They were classical still, but some collectable labels—RCA and Mercury. I flicked through them more slowly. I found a copy of the Mercury Living Presence stereo pressing of Gunther Schuller’s
Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee
. It was in wonderful shape and I set it happily aside. If nothing else, the night’s mission had yielded this.

Nevada came running through, as though she had a sixth sense. “Have you found something?” she said excitedly.

“Yes. But not what we’re looking for.” I handed her the album.

She set her shoulder bag down and accepted the record, studying it unhappily. “I didn’t think you listened to classical music.” She handed it back to me.

“Occasionally they let me up to the big house,” I said. “Providing I remember to wipe my boots.”

“Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”

“How did you know I’d found something?”

“I heard you stop flipping.” That made sense. She looked around. “How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

It was a small room but the floor, a sofa and two armchairs were virtually covered with records. “Quite some time,” I said.

“I think I’ll continue snooping.”

“Good idea.” Her impatient presence in the room was already making the search more difficult. Also, she was standing in my light, and her dark angular shadow shrouded the pile of records I was inspecting. Nevada picked up her shoulder bag and went back out again. I resumed flipping through the records. I appeared to have exhausted the seam of classical and I was now finding vocalists and jazz. A distant beat of excitement started up inside me.

I found an excellent run of early Reprise Sinatra albums that would gladden the heart of some collector. I made a mental note to look out for anything with arrangements by Johnny Mandel or Robert Farnon. Then I was on to the jazz. It was all from roughly the right period and the excitement began to grow.

Suddenly Nevada was in the doorway again. “Look at this,” she said excitedly. She was holding a long, thin white cylinder with a smooth, curved head, clutching it in a two-handed grip like a lightsaber. It took me a moment to realise what it was. “Oh Jesus,” I said.

“
En garde
,” declared Nevada, holding the dildo like a duellist flourishing a rapier. She advanced on me and I took a step back. She cackled.

“Nevada,” I said, shading my eyes from the sight of the object. It appeared to be made of ivory and now that I had identified its function I realised it was enormous. “For Christ’s sake…”

“Look at the size of the thing,” she said, waving it around admiringly. “And it’s not at all flexible. Rigid is the word. I mean, can you imagine?”

“I’d rather not. Please…”

“What’s the matter?”

“Just put it back wherever you found it.”

She went over and set it down on its base on the mantelpiece beside the lamp. It sat there, stable and balanced, pointing up at the ceiling.
Maybe it’s purely decorative
, I thought forlornly.

Nevada stood admiring it. She said, “Isn’t it magnificent?”

“It’s loathsome.”

“Why?”

“It’s made of ivory. It’s from an endangered species.”

“Yes, because that’s what really bugs you about it.” She began to move it around on the mantelpiece. When she was satisfied with its position she began to move the lamp beside it. I saw what she was up to. At the new angle, with the lamp shining on it, it cast a monstrous diagonal shadow right across the room.

“I can’t work with that thing looming over me.”

She grinned at me. “Feel threatened? Inadequate?” But she laid it down on its side on the mantelpiece, with a resonant clunk, and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?”

“Further explorations beckon,” she said and scampered off again—this was more fun than a clothes rail full of second-hand Dolce and Gabbana. I resumed looking through the records. The room was becoming more orderly and inhabitable as I sorted them. I’d worked out where the piles of jazz were and I was going through those first.

I found half a dozen Woody Herman albums on CBS, from the period in the 1960s when Duško Gojković was playing trumpet with the band. They were in beautiful condition and I put them aside with the Gunther Schuller. My spirits were lifting both with the growing order of the room and with my discoveries. What had seemed a Herculean task was swiftly diminishing to human proportions and as I rescued the small neat house from the chaos that had come over it, I felt I was doing something for Jerry.