Attack and Decay, page 23
Useful for visuals, as props when you’re being filmed, I thought. And probably for later resale, once the notoriety of the record increased and the market value skyrocketed. But none of that was any of my concern. I would just look for the records. “So, we’d like to hire you,” said Oskar.
“Sure,” I said.
“And I understand you are already in possession of one copy.”
No prizes for guessing who’d told him that. Patrik had barely been able to let go of it. “That’s true.”
Oskar shrugged. “Okay. Fine. I want to hire you to find more copies for us. As many as you can. We’ll pay top market value for them…”
Nevada almost broke into a happy little dance.
“I’ll have to talk to Magnus,” I said.
“Why?” said Oskar.
“Why?” said Nevada, little happy dance now a forgotten thing of the distant past.
“I’m operating on his home turf,” I said. “It would be a professional courtesy.”
“Well, I’ll leave that up to you.” said Oskar. “But frankly, my understanding is that Magnus is something of a pain in the ass and that he has had the monopoly on selling copies of our record for far too long.”
I couldn’t fault any of this assessment.
However, I said, “I may not be able to find any copies of your record.”
“Oh, come on, if this Magnus person has managed to obtain more than one copy…”
“Quite a lot more than one,” I said.
“Well, there you go,” said Oskar. “If he has managed to find copies then surely the Vinyl Detective will be able to find some?” I could see Nevada happily buying into this pep talk.
Actually, I was fairly confident that I could locate some copies locally and I had a pretty good idea where to look. But, among other things, this involved calibrating such small matters of etiquette as how long you should give someone to mourn the death of a close friend before approaching them to ask if they had any records to sell.
“In any case, you have one,” said Oskar. “You have one already.”
“That I have,” I said.
“And I assume you don’t need to talk to Magnus before you sell that one to me?”
“You would be assuming right,” I said. “But unfortunately, that particular copy is spoken for.” By Owyn Wynter.
“Well, let’s assume you find another one. How much would you want for it?”
I set about haggling with Oskar, purely theoretically, over the next copy of Attack and Decay I found. Nevada stood nearby, listening happily. She enjoyed it when I haggled, in much the same way the cats enjoyed it when I prepared food. There was the same happy, respectful observation of me as I pursued a matter of some obvious importance.
Nevada was an excellent haggler in her own field —the second-hand clothing hustle. But she deferred to me entirely in matters related to record pricing.
Oskar and I settled on a fair price—fair, but nevertheless one that could make our visit very profitable indeed. Nevada was back in happy dance mode.
She took my arm and we headed quickly for the door. Agatha broke off her conversation with the Gylling sisters to come over to us. “We’re going back to our room,” said Nevada.
Agatha’s eyes widened with concern. “Is something wrong?”
“On the contrary. Team Vinyl Detective has just scored big and we are going to reward ourselves with a little private celebration.”
Agatha winked at us. “You kids have fun.”
But before we made it through the door, Rut blocked our way. She was apparently more steady on her feet now, although somehow even drunker than before. “We must all be on our guard,” she said. On the other side of the room, Gun saw us and started to our rescue.
“Okay,” said Nevada.
Rut peered at us with deeply inebriated owlish seriousness. You could smell the champagne coming out of her pores like an expensive yeasty eau de cologne. “The trolls might not be happy about any unauthorised killings in their town.”
“Right. The trolls. Unauthorised.”
Gun arrived and led her sister away and Nevada and I went back to our room. It has to be said that there was something rather comforting about Rut having reverted to type, even if that type was raving lunatic.
* * *
The next morning, we made the unfortunate error of going to the breakfast room while Stinky was still nourishing himself there. Jocasta shot us an apologetic glance. She and Stinky were the only people present, although a member of the hotel staff may well have been hiding in the back room. Stinky was holding forth at volume.
The volume went up a notch when he saw us. “There’s been another killing,” he said. “This time it’s really got weird. The victim’s face had been sort of deformed to make it look like a bird’s face. Like a giant bird’s face. And, for the bird’s beak, the killer has split the guy’s face open and inserted scissors…”
“Fucking button it, Stinky,” I said.
“Okay, dude.” Stinky recoiled as if I’d actually moved to hit him instead of merely doting on the notion. “Chill.”
21: BENSINDUNK
“Creepy crow song,” said Tinkler when we told him about it. “Check.”
He and Ida had met us outside the Notre Coeur, where we’d decided to relocate for breakfast after being propelled away from the hotel by our close encounter with Stinky.
Kisses were exchanged—did Nevada and Agatha seem marginally less silently malevolent towards Ida?—and we were just about to go into the café when a car pulled up beside us.
A Union Jack Mini. Emma scrambled out quickly and hurried happily towards us for more hugging and kissing, this time accompanied by cries of “Nice one!” and “Oh, my days!” Meanwhile Magnus climbed out of the Mini slowly and did not hurry happily towards us. Instead, he stopped some distance off and summoned me towards him with a curt gesture.
When I responded to this with spontaneous good-natured laughter, he angrily strode up to me and said, “We have to talk.”
“Agreed,” I said.
“Apparently you think you are going to start dealing vinyl in my town?”
“Magnus, I’m going to be gone from your town in a few days…”
“But not before you see how much damage you can do?”
“No,” I said. “It’s not like that.”
“No? And yet it seems you are now suddenly officially in charge of finding copies of Attack and Decay for the Storm Dream Troopers. Officially in charge of finding records for the band. Well, good luck.” This last was uttered with very little sincerity.
“I was going to talk to you about this, Magnus,” I said.
“Oskar Hafström has already talked to me about it. How did you insinuate yourself with these people? What did you say about me behind my back?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“What makes you think you’ll find anything for them?”
“Maybe I won’t,” I said. “But I’ll take a shot.”
Magnus had been avoiding eye contact but now he looked right at me, a gaze of roiling rage. “Okay, if it’s war you want,” said Magnus, “it’s war you’ve got.”
“Great way to put a positive spin on things.”
“Be as sarcastic as you like, and as smug as you like. You will regret the day you crossed swords with Magnus Fernholm. Come along, Emma.” He took Emma by the arm.
She shook herself free. “Laters,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘laters’?”
“Right now I am having brekkie with me mates.”
Magnus sighed a sigh of exhaustion and disgust. “You stupid girl,” he said. He gave me one last hate-filled look, then got into the Union Jack Mini and drove off.
“Passive aggression gone pyroclastic,” said Agatha, who had caught the look.
“Hell has no fury like a vengeful nerd,” said Tinkler. “That may not be the exact quote from Shakespeare, but you get the picture.”
We were all sitting down at our regular table when I got a text from Kriminalinspektör Eva Lizell. “She wants to meet me,” I told Nevada.
“When and where?” said Nevada
“Now,” I said… I was reading another text from Eva Lizell which simply said, Look up.
I looked up.
She was standing on the other side of the window.
“And here,” I said.
* * *
I joined her in the tiny courtyard placed, like a jewel in a brooch, at the heart of the café. She was dressed in jeans and a pale blue leather jacket, standing by the little love seat. I had a funny feeling the Kriminalinspektör had not chosen this location because she was planning on making a romantic declaration to me.
This was swiftly confirmed as she lifted a crafty cigarette to her lips. A roll-up, by the look and smell of it. She blew pale blue smoke up into the chill winter air, setting it spooling towards the snow-clad lamppost above us. This was why we were meeting outdoors.
“You wanted to talk to me?” she said.
“You might already know this,” I said, “but the remaining members of the band are now here in town.”
Her brown eyes became still and thoughtful. “I did not know that.”
“Yup. Full line-up of the Troopers. Currently residing in our hotel.”
“Oskar Hafström and Gun Gylling are the newcomers.” Eva Lizell was now looking at her phone, held in the same hand as her cigarette.
“Yes.”
“Well, thank you for letting me know. Did they happen to say why they have come here?”
“To do damage limitation on the negative publicity that is about to erupt.”
“Yes. I imagine a considerable amount of such publicity is indeed about to erupt. Have you heard of the latest incident? Of course you have. It seems to also match a song.”
Scissor beak crow.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m not clear if Oskar and Gun knew about that one or if they were already on their way here when it happened.”
“On their way here to do damage limitation,” said Eva Lizell.
“So they say.”
“It sounds like you think they’re here to do something else.”
“Yes,” I said. “To cash in. Big time. On the principle that there’s no such thing as bad publicity.”
“And also presumably on the principle that the suspect pool is never large enough.” Eva Lizell sighed. “Have you learned anything else that might be relevant?”
“No,” I said.
“You are sure?”
“Well…” I said.
“Well, what?”
“Unless you want to consider that the trolls might not be happy about any unauthorised killing in their town.”
There was a pause while Eva Lizell stared up into the winter sky, watching the slow ascent of her cigarette smoke as it curled, dispersed and ultimately vanished into the high emptiness of the world. “The trolls?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
Now the Kriminalinspektör’s eyes met mine. “Well, you know what? That actually is quite an interesting theory.”
“Is it?” I said.
“No.” Eva Lizell spoke with meticulous patience. “It is shit. And you know it is shit.”
She smiled and put out her cigarette by pinching it between thumb and forefinger and then slipped the dead stub into the pocket of her jacket. I hoped she hadn’t burned the lining. It was a very nice jacket. And rather familiar.
* * *
Nevada grinned at me. “I was wondering if you’d notice.”
I was back inside sitting with our friends at the table, and the Kriminalinspektör had returned to her investigation, now with the benefit of nicotine in her system.
“She got in touch via the website.” This was Nevada’s vintage clothes website. “Obviously she’d been profiling me…”
“Checking you out,” said Agatha.
“Stalking you,” said Tinkler.
“…and she stumbled on my website and saw that jacket I found at the secondhand-butik and she liked it and bought it.”
“A woman who knows what she wants,” said Agatha. “Speaking of which, do you think it was a stratagem to meet with you?”
“I think it was a stratagem to get a really great jacket at a terrific price,” said Nevada. “But in all modesty, I think meeting with me was a bit of a bonus.”
“Did she go in for a kiss?” said Tinkler.
“No,” said Nevada. “But it was odd. When she was standing near me, I could actually feel the heat coming off her, as if it was directed at me, seeking me out—her body heat. I could actually feel it.”
“So the lesbian cop really is hot,” said Agatha.
“Was it pleasant?” said Tinkler. “Her body heat seeking you out?”
“It certainly wasn’t unpleasant,” said Nevada.
“Not exactly a ringing endorsement,” said Tinkler. “‘It certainly wasn’t unpleasant.’ On the basis of such a TripAdvisor review, I don’t predict any muff diving for the good inspector in this vicinity any time soon.”
When Tinkler had finished with this line of discourse, I filled the others in on my own meeting with the good inspector. “She didn’t much like the troll theory,” I said.
“Rut will be disappointed,” said Nevada.
Ida was looking raptly at her phone. She suddenly put it away and whispered something in Tinkler’s ear. Tinkler in turn said something in a low voice to Agatha, then he and Ida got up from the table and slipped past her.
I was taking all this in only peripherally while I discussed with Nevada what I assumed would be the ramifications of our recent chat with Magnus, our pyroclastic nerd. “I don’t think we can count on completing our purchase for Owyn Wynter,” I said. “Magnus sounds like he’s washed his hands of me.”
“More fool he,” said Nevada.
“But it does mean we lose our commission on the sale.” Not to mention having to pay back large swathes of expenses, I reflected, rather glumly.
“On the other hand,” said Nevada, intent on cheering me out of any glumness, “Oskar has guaranteed to buy every copy of the record you can find.”
“Do you think you can find any?” said Agatha.
“Well,” I said, “over the last few years Magnus, in association with Christer, has picked the carcass fairly clean. But even if there’s only a few copies left, that will be a major payday for us. And I have a pretty good idea of where we might find some.”
“Where?” said Agatha.
Before I could reply, Emma said, “Oh my god.” She was looking at her phone—clad in a Union Jack case, of course—with her eyes wide. “Tinkler and Ida…”
“What about them?” said Nevada.
“I thought they had gone to look at the cakes,” said Agatha.
“That’s what they wanted you to think,” said Emma, staring at her phone. “That’s what Tinkler says. He apologises for misleading you.”
“He apologises for misleading us?”
“Yes. He has just messaged me. With a message for you.”
“Why didn’t he just message us directly?” said Nevada
“Because he says he is afraid that you will be angry with him.”
“Shit,” said Nevada. “What has he done now?”
“He says he and Ida have gone to rescue the juicer.”
“Not the fucking juicer again.”
“I guess he was right that it was going to make you angry.”
“Where is the juicer?” I said.
“They think either at Bo Lugn’s office or his country estate.”
“There’s a killer on the loose,” said Agatha, “and Tinkler’s going on a quest with his stripper to rescue a juicer? From Creepy Elvis’s country estate?”
“Or his office. They said they were going to the office first.”
“In the middle of a killing spree?” said Nevada. “With a criminal investigation in full swing?”
“He’s cunt-struck,” said Emma simply.
We all paused to briefly consider the justice of this observation and then Nevada said, “Once again we’re moved to commend your command of colloquial English, Emma.”
“Cheers.”
“Because that’s exactly what he is,” said Agatha.
“Cheers, me dears.”
“But it doesn’t change anything,” said Nevada. “We still have to go to the poor fool’s rescue.”
* * *
Going to the poor fool’s rescue was expedited by the fact that Agatha had already been scoping out the car hire situation in Trollesko. “After a few days anywhere, I start to get itchy feet,” she said.
“Itchy to start driving again?” said Nevada.
“Yes.”
“So, it would be the foot that goes down on the accelerator that gets itchy.”
“Mostly that one, yes.”
Agatha drove us—myself and Nevada; Emma wisely elected not to get involved—out of town at a high but legal speed in a Volkswagen Tiguan. “I’ve never driven one,” said Agatha. “And I wanted to compare it to the Toyota RAV4.”
“You don’t have to justify your addiction to us.”
We reached the Red Iron Inn in record time. In fact, the car that was leaving the parking lot as we pulled in—we were the only two vehicles in a wasteland of tarmac—was the one that had just dropped off Tinkler and Ida. They looked at us like they’d been expecting us, although perhaps not so soon.
“Look, darling,” said Tinkler. “My annoying friends.”
“Mine too now, I hope,” said Ida.
“How come you guys only just got here?” said Nevada. “You texted us ages ago.”
“That’s all my fault, I’m afraid,” said Ida. “I had to change into my burglary garb.”
“Burglary garb?” said Nevada.
“I think that’s the word for costume or clothing, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“It’s all Jordon’s fault, actually,” said Ida.
“How is it Jordon’s fault?”
“Well, he told me how you always dress up specially for a break-in.” Ida smiled at us. The smile was mostly directed at Nevada but didn’t make any inroads with her.
“I do normally,” said Nevada. “I didn’t have a chance to today.”
“Well, I did,” said Ida happily. She was wearing a black raincoat that would have done credit to a woman in a graveyard with a gun. Now she opened it for me, displaying black Converse high tops, skin-tight black jeggings and a black roll neck sweater that clung to her closely enough to reveal that she wasn’t wearing a bra. The sweater looked very soft and expensive and the idle thought that it was cashmere triggered in me a startlingly powerful desire to reach out and touch it, an endeavour that could only end badly.
