Written in Dead Wax (23 page)

Hughie finished drenching the record and inspected the gleaming wet surface with satisfaction. “Now we let it soak for a moment.” He turned away and started rooting around in a cardboard box, eventually producing three pairs of heavy-duty ear defenders. These were like sets of headphones with large foam discs to enclose and cover the ears. He handed a pair to me and one to Nevada.

“Are these really necessary?” she said, inspecting them.

“Just you wait,” I said.

“Well, I hope they’ve been washed.” She slipped them on reluctantly.

Now that we were all safe, Hughie set the turntable in motion. The record began to spin. He set the cleaning head on the disc and turned on the vacuum cleaner. As I’d explained to Nevada, a normal domestic vacuum cleaner is insulated to reduce the amount of noise it kicks out. Hughie’s record cleaner, like most such machines, dispensed with these fripperies.

It emitted a bellow suggesting dinosaurs fighting in a primordial swamp. Big dinosaurs.

Nevada looked at me in amazement and fitted her headphones a little tighter. She was happy to be wearing them now, dirty or not. We watched the cleaning head travel across the record, slurping up the liquid from the vinyl. When it reached the run-out groove, Hughie guided it carefully back to its resting point and switched the turntable off.

He turned the record over and repeated the process on the other side.

When he was finished we removed our headphones and looked at each other. Hughie unscrewed the clamp from the label and took the record off the turntable. He handed it to me, grinning.

The vinyl was gleaming, a deep rich reflective black with rainbow highlights. The dense beautiful pattern of the microgrooves shimmered, precise and pristine. It looked brand new.

It was perfect.

“Normally I charge two quid for this service,” said Hughie.

“I think we can manage that,” said Nevada. She was jubilant. “We may even stretch to a bag of your no doubt overpriced cannabinoid greenery.”

“Yeah, you mentioned that,” said Hughie. “And you must take some tomatoes.” He was always eager to get rid of those tomatoes. He turned to me and pointed at the record. “Do you want to play it?”

Hughie’s listening room was next door to the office. It was a large, rectangular room with a turntable, amp and speakers located at one end and a sofa at the other. So that was where his sofa had gone. At home his lounge had nothing but armchairs in it. Now we knew why.

The speakers were set up against the far wall to fire down the long axis of the room towards us listeners at the other end. It was an ideal setup.

Hughie switched on his amps while I held the record, still faintly damp, carefully by its edges.

“That’s weird,” I said.

Nevada was instantly on the alert. “Is something wrong?”

“No, no, not at all.” I held the record up to the light. “It’s just something in the dead wax.”

She was watching me apprehensively. “But there’s no question that it’s the original?”

“On the contrary, everything about this authenticates it. It’s got the autographs by Geary and Rita Mae. It’s got the initials DDP, which is Danny DePriest, who engineered it. It’s got the right stamper and matrix numbers.” I moved closer to the light. “But there’s something else here too.”

She moved closer. “What?”

“Two more letters. A capital ‘B’ in a circle on side one, and a capital ‘Y’ in a circle on side two.”

“What do they mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“Ready here,” said Hughie impatiently. He reached for the record, then smiled indulgently when I insisted on putting it on the turntable and lowering the stylus myself. He winked at Nevada. “He doesn’t trust me.”

“Very wise,” said Nevada.

We went back down to the far end of the room and sat on the sofa as the music began to play. Hughie had aligned his speakers with considerable care and the imaging was excellent. Much more importantly, the record was in great shape. “Sounds good, doesn’t it?” said Hughie proudly.

I nodded. “Sounds like it’s never been played before.”

“Just as you predicted,” said Nevada. She moved closer to me on the sofa. She sounded proud as well.

The second side of the record sounded, if anything, even better. I waited with particular eagerness for the vocal track at the end. It was an old Red Jellaway composition, a spooky little number called ‘Running from a Spell’ and Rita Mae Pollini brought out all its eerie loveliness. But by now I was taking the sonic and musical qualities of the album for granted and I was specifically listening for the tiny flaw I’d noticed before.

The one Tinkler had diagnosed as the singer being too close to the mic.

This was the first time I’d heard a first-generation copy of the track, direct from the master tape. And there it was, the undeniable popping sound. Nevada looked at me. “Is that good old Rogue Plosive?” she said.

I nodded. “Yes. But I don’t think it’s anything to do with the singer or microphone anymore.”

“Yeah, weird isn’t it,” said Hughie. He was listening keenly. “It’s not dirt on the record.” He sounded a trifle defensive.

“No one’s suggesting that it is.”

“My cleaner would have removed all that.”

“Naturally.”

“And it doesn’t sound like a pressing flaw.” Hughie sounded thoughtful now that there was no question of him being at fault. “It’s probably a noise from the session.” When the track ended he went to the turntable and played it again. I didn’t interfere this time, although I had to repress the urge to do so. The song began again, and again we heard the sound. Hughie was listening with the keen attention of a hunting dog, his head to one side. I wondered where his dog had got to.

“It’s the sound of someone knocking over a music stand,” he said.

“Maybe.” I wasn’t convinced. The track ended, and with it the record. Hughie went to the turntable and lifted the arm and switched it off. I let him. I was, finally, beginning to realise what we had accomplished. A sleepy sense of triumph was stealing over me, lulling and relaxing me. I reminded myself that I would have to drive back. Nevada had hit the wine a little too hard at lunch.

Hughie came back to the sofa. Nevada was looking at me and smiling a lazy, contented smile. She squeezed my hand and leaned over to Hughie.

“Well, it looks like we owe you two quid,” she said.

“I take cash, credit cards or PayPal,” said Hughie.

Then the lights went out.

* * *

“Oh fuck,” said Hughie, sounding irritated but unsurprised. “It’s the fucking generator.”

“Hughie,” I said, trying not to let the tension show in my voice as we all sat there in the darkness, “does this happen often?”

“All the fucking time.” He got up from the sofa and starting blundering around. The only light in the room was the distant gentle orange glow of the valve amps, slowly fading now that their power had been cut. Nevada suddenly giggled.

“I’ve got to go to the loo,” she said.

“I’ll get some candles,” said Hughie. “So you can see your way.”

“It’s all right,” said Nevada. She’d taken out her phone and the spectral glow of the screen created a pool of pale blue light. She offered it to Hughie. “Here, you can borrow this.”

“It’s all right,” grunted Hughie, searching his pockets. “I’ve got one of my own. I just keep forgetting to use the damned thing.” He took out his phone and used it to guide him to the doorway. Nevada followed. She was gone for what seemed an awfully long time. When she returned she was preceded by the ghostly glow of her phone.

“Where’s Hughie?” I said.

“He went out to look at the generator, with much cursing.” She switched off the phone and we were in the darkness again. The sofa creaked as she sat down beside me. We groped blindly for each other and then held hands. “This is fun,” said Nevada. “A power cut in Wales. In the winter. You take me to all the best places.”

Before I could answer, the dog started barking. He was downstairs and evidently very excited about something. “Jesus,” I said. “What’s going on?” But I could hardly hear my own voice. The dog’s baleful cries were echoing stridently through the whole building. Nevada said something but I couldn’t hear what. We both stood up at the same time, as if synchronised. And at that exact moment the lights came back on.

We heard Hughie’s voice downstairs and the dog fell silent. We sat down again. A minute later Hughie was in the room, shaking his head. “Spencer’s going spare,” he said. “I had to give him some biscuits.”

“Look, Hughie,” I said, “if you don’t mind, we’d better be going.”

He looked crestfallen. I suppose he’d envisioned a convivial late session listening to music and smoking dope. “Do you have to?” he said.

I nodded. “Got a long drive back,” I said firmly.

“I suppose,” he sighed.

Nevada put a hand on my knee and stood up. She yawned and stretched. She hadn’t said anything but I knew she was as anxious to get going as I was. The power cut and the malignant cacophony of the dog had put both our nerves on edge. I got up and went to the turntable to get the record.

It was gone.

I turned and looked at Hughie and Nevada. “Hughie,” I said. Then I turned and looked at the wall behind the speakers. There was a door there I hadn’t noticed before. I opened it and stepped through. Nevada was calling something behind me but I didn’t hear what it was. The room I’d stepped into was dark. I fumbled for a light switch and found one. The room was another office, empty except for a desk and some old filing cabinets.

There were footprints on the floor, damp with melted snow.

I followed them out the door, into the hallway, down the stairs. Hughie and Nevada were coming after me now, moving fast and with a sense of urgency. They’d realised that the record was gone.

Spencer the dog was sitting waiting by the back door. He gave me an I-told-you-so look. I shoved the door open and stepped out into the cold night air. I heard the crunching of feet moving quickly on snow and then I saw the figure. Small and lean, moving fast. Wearing a dark ski suit that might have been black or navy blue.

I was sure it was a woman. And I was sure I knew which one.

As she ran, she was trying to slide the record back into its sleeve. She’d managed to steal both. “Wait!” I shouted, inanely, then I started after her. I turned my head as I ran, and saw Nevada and Hughie coming through the door behind me. Hughie raised his shotgun into the air and fired a blast into the night sky.

“Stop!” he yelled.

Instead the woman turned. She had the record in one hand. In the other was something I couldn’t make out. It sparkled brightly and then I heard a noise like twigs breaking and behind me a window shattered.

I realised I was being shot at. I stopped dead and the woman kept running. Nevada came up behind me, moving fast. “Get down,” she said, and shoved me down, hard, onto the snow. I saw she had her own gun in her hand, the one I had never asked her about.

She stopped and aimed it, using a professional two-handed grip, and fired.

The woman went down.

The record went flying out of her hand, through the air. The record and sleeve separated, the record flying like a discus. It landed on a sloping bank of snow. It made a perfect black circle against the whiteness. In a distant, detached corner of my consciousness I found myself thinking the record would be fine. A nice soft bed of snow was probably one of the best things in the world it could have landed on, provided it didn’t have a chance to turn to water.

I got up and started towards the record. Nevada looked back at me. “Stay there,” she shouted. “I’ll get it.” I did as she said.

Suddenly the woman lying on the ground got up again, apparently unharmed. Nevada had hit her for sure, so she must have been wearing some sort of vest. I pieced all this together and it made a kind of sense, but suddenly in my mind it made everything seem like a paintball game. None of it was serious, and no one was really going to get hurt.

So I got up and followed Nevada.

The woman was running away towards the darkness at the far end of the yard, the record abandoned. Nevada glanced back over her shoulder at me. “Stay back!” she shouted. Suddenly Hughie ran past both of us, reloading his shotgun as he went. Nevada cursed and set off after him.

Hughie emptied his shotgun towards the fleeing woman and the darkness at the far end of the yard.

Someone started shooting back.

Nevada was now running beside one of the greenhouse ditches and as the gun went off, she stumbled with the impact of a shot.

I could feel it. It was as though the bullet had hit my own body.

Nevada wasn’t wearing a vest.

She fell sideways into the ditch, disappearing from sight.

I ran towards her. There was the sound of Hughie’s shotgun again and then a savage burst of fire from what I now realised was an automatic weapon of some kind. Hughie came fleeing back from the shadows at the end of the yard.

Bullets whined overhead. I heard them hitting something metallic, above me and to the left, with a ringing, stitching sound. Hughie came running toward me. “Get back!” he shouted.

“Nevada!” I yelled.

“She’s dead. I saw her. No chance.”

There was more gunfire. I heard it rattling off metal, ricocheting wildly off something and then punching hard into something else.

Hughie and I were both crouching low, trying to stay under the whining slice of the bullets. Behind us I heard the dog barking frantically. Hughie was staring desperately into my face and I nodded and he ran back towards the factory.

I let him think I was with him, but I ran the other way, the way I’d been heading before.

Towards the ditch where Nevada lay.

But as I moved towards it, there was a fierce sizzling, popping above me and then a dangerous creaking sound. Suddenly the snow was a bright yellow, lit with a hot wavering light. I looked up and saw flames rising out of the fuel tank. It must have been hit by the bullets, and ignited.

As I watched, it began to come apart.

It collapsed, easing down on its four legs like a wounded giant falling to his knees. The tank burst open and decanted its blazing contents across the frozen ground.