Attack and Decay, page 26
“Very sensible,” I said.
“Very,” said Nevada.
“Effectively what we are doing is filming ourselves talking without Stinky. Meanwhile Stinky quite separately films himself asking us questions related to the stuff we are talking about. And then we can cut it together later. This way we don’t have to interact much.”
“Again, very sensible,” I said.
“Of course, we’ll do a few shots of us together with Stinky, to tie things together, perhaps with him nodding seriously as we say something. He seems to be particularly fond of nodding seriously. Anyway, to help create the illusion it’s an actual interview, we’ll need to do a few shots together.”
“As few as possible,” suggested Nevada.
“So, Stinky is in there,” Oskar nodded at Patrik’s room, “filming some pickups, while Rut and Gun are in there,” he nodded at the lounge, “filming their bits. Or at least they will be when the director joins them.” He puffed out his chest and his viewfinder glinted. “By which I mean myself. Did you know that in addition to being a musician, which undeniably is my first love, I’m also a filmmaker? I know what you are going to say. You are going to say that for a man named Oskar, it was an inevitable calling. In any case, what I am saying is that I am currently being unfaithful to my musical muse by consorting with my filmmaking muse. So to speak. I got into filmmaking through still photography. Did you know that? I did the cover photography for Attack and Decay.”
“I did not know that,” I said. And I was intrigued. It was an excellent cover.
“The graveyard?” said Nevada. “And the boobs?”
Oskar laughed. “Yes, exactly.”
“Very striking photo,” I said. Quite sincerely.
“Very striking,” concurred Nevada. “Especially those boobs.”
Oskar laughed again. “Yes, well I am married to them, so I have had a lot of experience getting the best out of them.”
There seemed no answer to this. To fill the silence, Oskar went on. “I’m glad you like the photograph. We had a huge argument over whether the cover could be in black and white. The idiots at the record company wanted it to be in colour. I didn’t even want the title to be in colour. But the idiots got their way in that one instance.”
Oskar seemed to sense that he might be boring us with reminiscences, so he changed the subject. If continuing to talk about yourself, only in a different context, can be regarded as changing the subject. “Why don’t you come in and watch us at work?” He gestured towards the lounge where Rut and Gun could be seen through the glass door, sitting on the sofa, chatting companionably. “Myself directing the girls. You’ll enjoy that. Come and watch.”
Before we could reply to this kind offer, the door to Patrik’s room swung open and Agatha, of all people, peered out. When she saw us, her face lit up. “You’re just in time,” she said.
Nevada asked the obvious question. “For what?”
“To watch Stinky filming,” said Agatha.
Again, it was left to Nevada to do the honours. “You’ve got to be kidding,” she said. “Why would we want to watch Stinky do anything, let alone filming?”
“Because of who he is filming.”
“Who is he filming?
“Hiram.”
Nevada looked at me, eyes alight with mischief. “At last. My chance to meet the mystery crow.”
“I hope he doesn’t disappoint,” I said. Somehow, I didn’t think he would. Nevada followed Agatha back into the room. I was right at Nevada’s side but perhaps, if I’m to be honest, I was a little reluctant to get up close and personal with that spooky crow again.
However, I instantly stopped thinking spooky and started thinking smart when I beheld the spectacle.
There were three people in the room besides us: Stinky, Jocasta and Patrik. Jocasta was holding her iPhone and acting as camera person. Stinky was acting—and acting is the right word—as director. Meanwhile Patrik looked on as a kind of referee.
Stinky was saying, in the voice of a child well on his way to a tantrum, “We have to get this shot, Jocasta.”
“Well, if I could use a mirror…”
“A mirror?”
“For example…” her voice trembled. Jocasta was close to tears.
“We are not using a mirror,” said Stinky.
“I mean, to get a reflection…”
“I know what you mean, Jocasta,” said Stinky, now at his most nasty and sarcastic, and evidently quite prepared to push Jocasta the rest of the way to tears. “But we don’t need to get the shot by way of a fucking mirror. By means of a fucking reflection. We need to get it clean.”
The object of everyone’s attention was on one of the small bedside tables, which had been moved to the window, presumably to take advantage of the winter daylight.
On this table was the large transparent handbag we’d seen before. The one with a perch in it.
Only this time, perched on the perch was Hiram, who glanced at me as we entered the room. Stinky was bent down, leaning towards the crow on his perch, the vile Stanmer countenance veritably pressed to the transparent plastic like a child peering into a goldfish bowl. Hiram looked at him and then looked at me again. Was it fanciful to think that the crow was giving me an ironic look? Perhaps. But not as fanciful as it was to think this look conveyed the question, related unequivocally to Stinky, Who is this cunt?
Nevertheless, that is exactly what I thought. And all credit to Hiram for the perspicacity of his analysis.
“We need this shot,” said Stinky, “because we are going to go from a shot of the mutilated face of the murder victim—as gory a pic as they’ll let us use—to a matching shot of the crow. We may do it as a dissolve. I haven’t decided yet. But to do it at all, we have to get the fucking shot of the fucking crow.”
“I know,” said Jocasta tremulously. “I’m trying.”
“Well, try harder. No, in fact, I’ll try. Give it to me.” Stinky seized the phone from her. Jocasta clearly interpreted this as having now completely failed in her duty. She looked utterly bereft. Stinky leaned in towards Hiram again, taking aim with the iPhone, trying to record.
But as soon as Stinky pointed the phone at him, Hiram shuffled around on his perch so that his back was to the camera. Stinky moved, and Hiram also moved, perpetually keeping his back to the camera.
Agatha leaned over and whispered, “That’s exactly what he’s been doing whenever they try and film him.”
“Fucking crow,” hissed Stinky, giving up. He handed the iPhone back to Jocasta who apparently took this as a reprieve, smiling gratefully and blinking back tears. “Fucking stupid fucking crow,” said Stinky.
“Please,” said Patrik. “He can hear you. And he understands English at least as well as he understands Swedish.” In its own way, this was probably an irrefutable truth.
But Stinky ignored it and ignored him and instead directed all his attention, and his petulant rage, at Jocasta. “We need that shot, Jocasta. We need that crow to look into the camera.”
“If we could take him out of the bag and if someone could hold him…”
“No one is holding him, or handling him,” said Patrik with such equable firmness that my regard for him shot up. He wasn’t letting anyone mess with his crow. “If you can’t get your shot, then I’m afraid you can’t get your shot.”
“But he won’t cooperate,” said Stinky, pointing an accusing finger at Hiram but only after first waving his tensely clenched fist at the crow for some considerable time. Hiram watched all this with cool, alert interest.
“If he won’t cooperate, he won’t cooperate,” said Patrik.
“Can’t you do something?” said Stinky. I realised that he was probably as close to tears as Jocasta.
Patrik shrugged a debonair continental shrug. “What can I do? He is a free agent. If for whatever reason you have failed to elicit his creative cooperation then I’m afraid you’re not going to get the shot you want.”
“Fucking stupid crow,” said Stinky.
“I warned you that he can hear you. And he is not stupid. He is far from stupid. Corvids are extremely intelligent.”
“Evidently,” said Nevada. I could see that, on the basis of this brief acquaintance, Hiram had already become her favourite crow.
“We’ve got to get this shot,” said Stinky, edging a little closer towards tantrum.
Agatha and Nevada and I made our excuses and left, not least because when Stinky eventually blew he was bound to take it out on Jocasta, and we couldn’t stomach seeing that.
We went out into the hallway and closed the door of Patrik’s room behind us. If nothing else, the experience had left us with warm memories of Stinky Stanmer being driven to despair by a feisty corvid. Before I could remark along these lines, my phone rang. It was Owyn Wynter.
“There was one other thing I wanted to say to you,” he said. “It’s fairly important.”
“Okay,” I said.
“I understand that all the members of the Troopers have now converged on Trollesko.”
“Yes,” I said. “That’s right.”
“In fact, they’re staying in the same hotel as you.”
“That’s right.”
“Okay, so I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, because they are all nice people. Rut and Gun and Oskar and Patrik. All very nice, fine people. Individually. And in various combinations. However…”
“However?”
“When they are all together, all four of them together in the same place at the same time, be careful.”
“Be careful,” I said.
“Yes. Individually they are fine, they are nice people. But when they come together as a unit, they can be… dangerous. So, watch out. Just watch out. Look, I’ve got to go. Please don’t take anything I’ve said the wrong way.”
“The wrong way?” I said. But he was already gone. What the hell was the right way to take something like that? I told Nevada and Agatha what he’d said. To our surprise, this seemed to confirm something to Agatha. “I have this theory…” she said.
Just then the door of the lounge opened and Oskar stood there smiling blandly at us. “Are you coming in?” We looked at each other. There was nothing for it. Agatha and Nevada and I filed obediently into the lounge. Rut and Gun were sitting on the sofa, both dolled up and dressed immaculately within the terms of the band’s usual sensibility. Which embraced a lot of black and a lot of leather.
In front of them, on a tripod set squarely at the centre of a small red rug, a camera peered in their direction. On another tripod there was a microphone positioned to hang above the sisters’ heads, high enough to be out of shot.
Oskar smiled at us and then hurried to peer through the camera. “Okay, you bewitching temptress, whenever you are ready.” Gun nodded and assumed a serious expression that Stinky Stanmer would have been proud of and started talking, directly into the camera.
“Obviously these murders are a tragedy,” she said. “But many people will want more context on this tragedy. Indeed, need more context. To help them to understand. To grieve, to move on, but above all to understand.”
“Okay, pause there,” said Oskar, looking up from the camera. “This is where we will insert a graphic of Attack and Decay.” He grinned at me. “We’ll use a shot of the album cover. Of the record we will buy from you. Vinyl cred!” He turned back to Gun. “Now, you enchantress, whenever you are ready. Pick up from where you left off.”
Gun resumed talking. “To get a better understanding, you should definitely get a copy of the album that the killer seems—and I stress, nothing is for certain here, but it appears the killer might be somehow responding to at least some of the songs on our highly regarded album Attack and Decay. You should pick up a copy right now, available on vinyl in all good record stores and also in a limited edition digipack CD—which is also available free with every copy of the vinyl. Downloads are available as well, of course. Exclusively at the band’s home page. As I say, a highly regarded collection of songs that really will help you with valuable context for the thing that is going on here in Trollesko.” Gun paused here to look even more serious than before. “The terrible human tragedy that appears to be unfolding here.”
“Great,” said Oskar. “That is absolutely marvellous.” He turned to me. “We don’t actually have any LPs for sale, yet. Or indeed even CDs. But we’ve placed orders at the pressing plants.”
“The downloads are ready to go,” said Gun.
“Yes, and they are selling like hot cakes,” said Oskar cheerfully. “Now, Rut. It is your turn, my darling.” He adjusted the angle of the camera slightly and then waved his hand in a flamboyant starting signal.
Rut leaned forward and smiled. When she smiled she had a very pleasant face. She said, in the usual perfect English, “My name is Rut Gylling. I just wanted to add that my autobiography Rut Me is now available.” She held up a book.
On the cover, she was younger and wearing only what appeared to be a modest number of bondage accoutrements and an intriguing selection of tattoos. Gun leaned in so her head was beside Rut’s and she abandoned her serious face now to smile, too. A rather impish smile, or as impish as the cosmetic surgery still allowed.
She said, “If I wasn’t her sister and it wouldn’t be sort of weird, I would tell you that this book of hers is really hot.”
“And with every copy you get a free download of our new album,” said Rut.
Big smiles from both sisters. As Oskar stopped filming and declared himself more than satisfied, in the most florid terms, Agatha and Nevada and I made our excuses and got the hell out of the lounge.
To make sure we couldn’t be overheard, we then went into our room and finished our conversation with Agatha behind a closed door. “Tell us about your theory,” said Nevada.
“Well, when I heard Owyn Wynter had said that…”
“That the Troopers are dangerous when they’re together?”
“Yes,” said Agatha. She looked at me. “That is what he said, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said. “He told us to watch out.”
Agatha bit her lip. “Well, I have this theory about them. I’ve started checking and it looks as though none of them could be responsible for the murders…”
“Okay,” said Nevada.
“But when I say none of them, I mean no one of them could be responsible. If we look at any of the four and try and match them against the murder, inevitably each one is in the wrong place at the wrong time for one of them. But…”
“But?” I said.
“But the four of them working together, taking turns, could have done all the killings.”
25: RED HALO
I slept badly that night. Theoretically everything was going swimmingly for us. For all of us—Tinkler and his mad stripper romance included. The juicer had been retrieved, our deal had gone through, and we had been paid in full…
I should have been jubilant.
But all I felt was a growing sense of dread. Lying in a creepy old hotel in a country far from home, you might say this was to be expected. Mere insecurity and homesickness. Yet I felt entirely at home in the creepy old hotel, and very much welcome and at home in Sweden generally.
No, the seeds of dread were sprouting elsewhere. And, in my head at least, were spreading fast.
The next morning I resolved to talk to Nevada about this. We breakfasted late—in the breakfast room at the hotel, which was mercifully Stinky-free. There was also no sign of Jocasta. Perhaps they were both still in exhausted oblivious slumber after their harrowing ordeal trying to film Hiram.
Tinkler ambled in to join us. “There you are,” he said.
“There you are,” said Nevada. “We’ve lost track of when you’re at the hotel and when you’re staying inside Ida’s tower. So to speak.”
“Oh man,” said Tinkler, “being inside Ida’s tower is so nice.”
“We don’t want to hear about it.”
“It’s just a bit drafty. She likes to keep the doors open.”
“Oh, okay,” said Nevada. “Maybe we can hear about it.”
“You were interpreting her tower as a sort of sexual reference?” said Tinkler.
“I’m not entirely sure,” said Nevada. “I somewhat lost track. Stupid smutty innuendo really is more your line.”
“Damned right.”
“Anyway,” said Nevada. “It’s a pleasant surprise to see you, which isn’t something we can often say about you, Tinkler.”
“No, ma’am,” said Tinkler. He went up to the buffet table and rejoined us, heavily laden, and started shovelling down food.
“I thought you were replacing fat with muscle, Tinkler,” said Nevada.
“To achieve that one first needs fat,” said Tinkler. Polishing off his fried eggs, he wiped up the spilled yolk with a fragment of sweet pastry in true Tinkler fashion. It was a rather enticing pastry, I had to concede—soft, golden and topped with apricots, dusted sugar and crushed almonds. And now a fair quantity of egg yolk.
“I don’t think you’re in danger of running out,” said Nevada. “Of fat, I mean.”
“I got it.”
Agatha joined us even later than Tinkler, bringing her plate of food over to the table where we were now lingering over our coffee. Seeing Agatha’s selection of bounty caused Tinkler to go scurrying back for more for himself.
“So, are you going to tell us what your mysterious errand was?” said Nevada.
“Who said I was on a mysterious errand?” said Agatha, neatly slicing the top off a hardboiled egg. “Oh, all right. I was. I was eavesdropping. On Oskar and Patrik.”
“Eavesdropping?” said Nevada. “Do you realise how dangerous that can be?”
“It’s all right. If I sneak out of my room to a certain spot in the hallway, I can hear what someone is saying in the lounge and they can’t see me.”
“I repeat, dangerous. Your own theory is that these two guys are half of a…”
