Written in Dead Wax (31 page)

I ignored this. “Who bought it?” I said. “Who bought the record?”

“Was it that woman?” said Kempton, looking at Gilbert. “The one I saw coming down the stairs?”

Gilbert nodded. “She’s the only customer we’ve had today.”

I said, “What did she look like? Was she blonde?”

“No, she had red hair,” said Kempton. “I passed her on the stairs.”

“Definitely not blonde?”

“No. Red hair. Long red hair.”

“It was a wig,” said Gilbert suddenly. We both looked at him.

“What?”

His face took on a stubborn set. “A good one, but definitely a wig.”

“I defer to your greater knowledge of women’s hairpieces,” said Kempton, rather bitchily, I thought. Then he said to me, “Listen, we’ll make it twenty per cent. Twenty-five per cent…”

* * *

I met Ree at the Bull’s Head at noon. We’d agreed to rendezvous there before going on to Jimmy Genower’s. I hadn’t been able to reach her on the phone that morning and I was dreading giving her the news about the record at Styli having disappeared. I hadn’t wanted to leave a message. That seemed cowardly. So I told her in person.

She took it philosophically, shrugging. “Just a piece of bad luck.”

“Luck had nothing to do with it. I suspect it was the Aryan Twins. Heinz and Heidi. Or in this case just Heidi.”

She said, “Who are they?”

“Matching blonde his and hers hitmen… hit persons? Hit people?”

“Blonde?”

“Except now she’s wearing a red wig.”

“And you say they’re hitmen.”

“Men and women.”

“Have they actually killed anyone?”

“I am very inclined to believe so. And made a damned good try on other occasions.”

Ree took this in with no apparent reaction. Maybe she didn’t believe me.

“I think this may be my fault,” I said.

“What is?”

“Them getting to the record before us.”

“Why do you say that?”

“They were hired by somebody to try and stop me getting hold of
Easy Come, Easy Go
. The pre-emptive buy was the Aryan Twins’ trademark trick. Getting in just before me and snatching up the merchandise.”

“But you
did
get hold of
Easy Come, Easy Go
. So why are they still trying to stop you?”

This was a good question. Was it possible that they hadn’t seen the press coverage announcing my find? Or perhaps, rather more likely, they hadn’t believed it? My speculations were interrupted at that moment because Ree looked at her watch and said, “We’d better get moving. Even someone like Jimmy should be awake by now.”

Jimmy Genower’s house was in Elms Avenue, just the other side of the traffic roundabout. Like much of Barnes, it was an odd mix, with council tenants in social housing jostling beside very wealthy homeowners. Here you could find a millionaire stockbroker ensconced next door to a colourful local who was indulging his god-given right to leave a motorcycle half dismantled in the front garden.

Which is exactly what Jimmy seemed to be doing.

“Nice place,” said Ree ironically. “Very trailer park.” We walked across the oil-stained gravel, dodging motorcycle parts, towards his front door. I got there ahead of her and knocked, good and hard, with the black iron lion’s head knocker. I had decided I was going to take charge of this encounter, and make damned sure that Jimmy Fucking Genower didn’t manage to charge Ree the ludicrous sum quoted for his second-hand record.

I’d be amazed if it was even the right album.

Ree stood beside me on the front step. There was no sound from within the house. The entire street was quiet. I thought about knocking again—then I noticed the garden gate. It was just over to our left. “Maybe he’s in the back garden,” I said.

The garden gate opened with a screech and we walked into the narrow shadowed walkway between the two houses, Ree just behind me. She was following me so closely that she walked right into me when I stopped suddenly.

Jimmy Genower was there all right, sitting in the back garden in an old black and white striped deckchair. There was a can of beer between his feet and he was looking at us.

Or at least, he would have been, if he had been able to see anything with his eyes.

I hustled Ree back through the gate. “What is it?” she said. “What’s the matter?”

My stomach felt cold and bruised. “He’s dead,” I said.

“What?”

“He’s sitting there in a chair, dead.”

“Are you sure?”

I nodded. I was never more sure of anything.

“Let me go have a look,” she said.

“No, we’ve got to get out of here.”

“Why?”

“Not least because the people who did it might still be around.” I was trying as hard as I could to think straight. “Give me your lighter, please.”

“The people who did it?”

“Your lighter, please.”

She reached into her pocket, dug around for a minute, then handed it to me. She was looking at me strangely. I was figuring out how to work the lighter.

“You press the thing on the—”

“I’ve got it.” I went back to the garden gate and ignited the lighter, playing the blue flame over the metal handle where I’d touched it. Then I went to the front door of the house and repeated the procedure on the lion’s head knocker.

She was looking at me. “DNA?” she said.

“Yes.” I finished and gave her back the lighter.

“Seriously?”

I led her back to the street and looked both ways. The street was still empty. Ree was reluctant to go but I took her by the arm and walked her away from the house. We marched briskly down Elms Avenue, just a couple out for a bracing stroll on a winter day. When we reached the main road I began to breathe again. We turned right, towards my house.

“I should have taken a look at him,” said Ree suddenly.

“We want to get the hell out of here,” I said.

She began to slow her pace. “Maybe he wasn’t dead.”

“He was dead.”

But she had stopped, so I had to stop too.

We were standing outside the little local supermarket with the occasional shoppers hustling past us and snow starting to come down from a clear sky. Ree was getting a stubborn look on her face and I realised with a sinking feeling that I might be in for a battle here I couldn’t win. “Maybe he’s just sick,” she said. “He might be in bad shape and need our help.” I took a deep breath before I replied, and just then we heard the sirens.

They were coming from the direction of the river. Approaching from Hammersmith. They came around the bend in the road by the Bull’s Head, shot across the mini roundabout and turned right into Elms Avenue. There was an ambulance and two police cars. A group of children ran past us and followed them.

I looked at Ree. We followed the kids. By the time we turned left into Elms Avenue there were a dozen neighbours and passers-by stopping to take a look, in addition to the kids. A big enough crowd for us to get lost in. We stood there and watched as the police and medics got out of their vehicles and hurried towards Jimmy Genower’s house. Ree looked at me.

“Okay,” she said. “There’s nothing we can do. Let’s get out of here.”

The snow began falling heavily as we walked back past Barnes Pond, white flakes disappearing into the cold black water. She looked at me. “They got here fast. The cops.”

“Yeah,” I said. “Almost like someone wanted us to get caught there with him.”

I phoned Tinkler as we walked home and he was waiting for us when we reached my estate. “What’s the matter?” he said as he fell in step beside us. Ree and I looked at each other. “Well?” said Tinkler.

I cleared my throat. “You remember that bloke we met the other night at the Bull’s Head?”

“What bloke? Oh the moronic prick of a bass player with his fucking silly stories? The arrogant, brainless, boorish tattooed wonder?” Something in our faces must have cued him, because he went quiet.

“He’s had an accident,” I said.

Tinkler peered at us. “Just before he could sell you the record?”

“That’s right.”

“Christ.”

We walked the rest of the way in silence.

The sun was low in the winter sky and threw the angular shadow of the crane across us as we entered the square and crossed it, heading towards my house. The crane was recently arrived, a hefty red and white piece of equipment on the back of a truck with the name
REDGEAR CRANE HIRE
on it. It was parked in the alley leading off the square where it was being used in the dismantling of the boiler.

We paused for a moment to look at the work in progress. The boiler room was in a sunken area, a basin adjacent to our square, about twenty feet below us where there had once been a car park. We couldn’t get too close to the edge because the first thing the contractors had removed was, of course, the handrail which had previously served as a safety barrier.

The boiler had been dismantled and was lying around in the form of giant steel components severed from the whole. I remembered how I used to think of that vast boiler as a sleeping dragon.

The dragon’s bones
, I thought.

The cats heard us coming and streaked through the door as we opened it, back from their adventures in the snow. I took off my shoes, hung up my coat, and excused myself, going into the bathroom where I vomited violently and noisily. I was thinking of Jimmy Genower’s dead eyes. I flushed the toilet, brushed my teeth and came out to find Ree and Tinkler looking at me with concern.

I avoided their gaze and went into the kitchen to feed the cats. I poured out some biscuits into their bowls, only for these to be ignored after a quick tentative sniff, as was the custom of late. “They’ve lost their appetite,” I said to Tinkler, who had wandered in to join me.

“What?” The concept of not having an appetite was utterly alien to Tinkler.

“They just don’t seem to be eating,” I said.

“They must be eating something.”

“Not nearly enough. In the winter they need a lot of calories.”

“They’re not the only ones,” said Tinkler, opening the fridge and peering into it. “Have you got any grapes?”

Before I could reply, the doorbell rang and I went to answer it. Standing there was Tanya, my postwoman. She looked agitated. “You won’t believe this,” she said. “But I’ve just been robbed.”

“Christ,” I said.

“Shit,” said Ree, peering over my shoulder. “What happened?”

“I was just doing my walk, just headed for your place in fact, and I’d taken out the post ready and this bloke came running past.”

“Big?” I said. “Athletic build?”

She gave me an odd look. “Yes. At first I thought he was just a jogger. I had my headphones on so I didn’t really notice him. But then he ran right past me and snatched something from me. Right out of my hand, he did. Cheeky bugger.” She was obviously angry, and a little shook up.

“What did he get?”

“What?”

“You said he stole something. What was it?”

“A calendar, I think.”

“A calendar?”

“Yes. It was addressed to one of those ladies who lives next door to you. Why would anyone want to steal a calendar?”

I said, “Did you see what colour his hair was? The runner?”

“No. He was wearing a woolly hat.”

At that stage I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had been wearing a long flowing auburn wig. Tanya was looking a bit pale now, with the aftershock of the encounter. “Are you all right?” I said.

“I’m fine.”

“Do you want a coffee?” I said. “A cup of tea?”

“No, I’m fine.” She gave me a crooked smile. “For a moment I thought it was one of your LPs, but thank god, I reckon it was just a calendar. Probably had meerkats on it.” She handed me my post and left. I closed the door and looked at Ree.

“You know, it does look like an LP,” she said. “A calendar.” She shook her head. “Is there an LP coming to you in the mail?”

“Not yet,” I said. “And I think we’re going to have a little change of plan about that.” I hurried to my laptop and sent an email to Alan at Jazz House, asking him not to ship the record of HL-003, the Richie Kamuca, just yet, but to hold it for us. I then asked him if he would do me a favour and outlined what I wanted. Then I settled back on the sofa. Through the window I could see Ree in the back garden, having a cigarette. It was dark now and the streetlights had come on. I watched the smoke from her cigarette glow strangely in their yellowish sodium light.

And I sat thinking.

Tinkler wandered in from the kitchen and said, “About those grapes?”

“Bottom shelf at the back,” I said.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He gave me a sceptical look and went back into the kitchen. I returned to my thoughts. Ree came back inside with a gust of cold air, closing the door behind her and taking off her shoes. Tinkler came back in munching away at a bowl of grapes.

I said, “Does anybody need to use the bathroom?” They both gave me a strange look, but shook their heads in unison as though operated by the same puppeteer.

“Okay.” I took out my phone and holding it carefully in full view, went into the bathroom with it. I set the phone on a shelf beside the window and came out again, closing the door behind me. I came back into the sitting room where Tinkler and Ree were waiting. The looks they’d given me before were nothing compared to the strangeness of the ones they gave me now.

“What was that about?” said Tinkler.

“Let me explain.”

“Okay. Would you? It would be nice.”

I took a deep breath. “These fuckers are always one step ahead of us,” I said.

“This would be the Aryan fuckers,” said Ree.

“Correct.”

“And I want it to stop. I want to be one step ahead of them for a change.”

“Okay,” said Tinkler.

“Good,” said Ree. “But how do we achieve that?”

I sat down. “Well, to start with, we figure out how they’ve managed to
be
one step ahead of us.”

“You left your phone in the bathroom,” said Ree.

“You think it’s bugged,” said Tinkler.

I nodded. “I’m sure someone is picking up my calls. But for all we know…”

“They might also be able to listen in,” said Ree, “even when the phone is off.”