The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 3
Albert returned to the kitchen, and harassing his new chef.
The Australian girl behind the bar was also new, which explained why soon after we arrived she checked her watch and went to the radio at the back of the bar and switched it on. An annoying and all-too-familiar piece of theme music started up, followed by an unctuous announcer’s voice declaring, “And now for Stinky’s Stellar Stars.”
Nevada winced. “Stellar stars,” she said. “Jesus Christ.”
“The series in which Stinky Stanmer profiles the music stars of past, present and future,” continued the announcer smoothly. Or with what passed for smoothness in the realm of Stanmer.
Tinkler was looking at me as though he expected me to explode. I didn’t feel like exploding. I just felt weary. But I got to my feet and started for the bar.
Before I could get there, Albert came hurrying out of the back of the pub. “Janine,” he said.
“Yes?” said the Australian barmaid.
“Could you turn the radio off, please?”
“But we always play the Stinky Stanmer show,” said Janine. Her willingness to argue with him suggested that Albert had once again fallen into the trap of sleeping with the help. Or maybe it was just because she was Australian.
“This week, a half-forgotten legend of the British music scene…” continued the announcer.
“We don’t play the radio,” said Albert, “when he is in here.” He nodded at me. “Not the Stinky Stanmer show, anyway.”
“Why not?” said the barmaid pugnaciously. I decided it was both because she was Australian and she was sleeping with him.
He gestured vaguely towards me. “We have an agreement.”
“What kind of agreement? Why?”
During this Socratic dialogue, the radio kept right on playing. And now the oleaginous tones of the announcer had yielded to something even more awful. “Good evening, space cadets,” chirped Stinky. Even though he was safely many miles away and only a digital transmission, it was horribly as if he were in the room with us.
Albert gave me a helpless glance and then turned back to Janine, who was standing, slim suntanned arms determinedly folded, right in front of the radio. Nobody was getting past her. Evidently a Stanmer fan.
But I had once helped Albert out of a rather tricky situation, and in return he had promised a moratorium on playing the radio whenever I was in his establishment. With special reference to Stinky Stanmer.
Albert moved closer to Janine and lowered his voice. I was nonetheless able to make out the words. “At university together… based his whole career on imitating him… Stinky is rich and famous… always steals his ideas… gets more rich and more famous… while he hasn’t got a pot to piss in.” An anxious glance in my direction to make sure I couldn’t hear any of this. But I could. All of it, quite clearly.
I think Albert’s hearing had been damaged by years of standing behind the bar with his head beside the radio.
Stinky was still running through his repertoire of wooden catchphrases and stilted patter. The Australian girl’s face was darkly angry in a way that suggested trouble for Albert later, and possibly also sooner. But he leaned past her and switched off the radio. As he did so, Stinky was saying:
“The great lost British folk band—”
The radio went off and there was suddenly silence in the pub. I was on my way back towards the table where Tinkler and Nevada were sitting when suddenly I spun around on my heel and went back to the bar, my heart thumping.
“Could you turn it on again, please?”
Janine looked at me truculently. Albert with astonishment. “Turn what back on?”
“The radio. Please.”
Janine turned to look at Albert. “You said…”
“Please,” I said.
I guess the note of urgency in my voice cut through all the usual crap, because Albert turned the radio back on. Stinky was saying, “A legendary British folk group—some would say folk-rock group—Black Dog was basically a volatile mixture of wild talents who were always on the verge of flying apart, like a detonating hand grenade. It was only thanks to the genius of their manager that they stayed together as long as they did. And once they lost him, that was the end of them.”
I remembered, with glum vividness, a hooded figure scrambling into a muddy Land Rover.
“Their last album, Wisht, was released in two different versions. The first one is the rare one. It was recalled to the factory and destroyed because of a contractual dispute within the group. The band’s co-leader and accordion player, Max Shearwater, wasn’t happy with the record, and legally he had control. So all the LPs were destroyed, and so were the master tapes. A few copies survived, but just a few. That would make them hard enough to find…”
I remembered the same figure crouching over the record racks, virtually at our elbow, while I’d talked to Nevada.
“But what complicates the picture even more,” continued Stinky, “is the second release of the album. When the unhappy Max Shearwater left, the other members of the band went back into the studio and re-recorded the album. They released it again.”
Now I knew why he’d looked so familiar.
“With exactly the same songs, the same cover art. Which makes it difficult to tell from the rare and valuable original issue. The two versions are almost identical. But there are some subtle differences. You can tell them apart by the covers. The first version has a flip back…”
“Okay, you can turn it off now,” I said.
Once again, there must have been something in my voice, because Janine turned it off without an argument. Albert took one look at me, then fled back into the kitchen. I returned to our table. I looked at Nevada and Tinkler. I wondered if my face was as pale as theirs.
Probably.
“That evil fucking little shit,” said Nevada.
“How did he know…?” said Tinkler.
“The fucking fucker eavesdropped on us.”
Tinkler shook his head. He looked like he’d been hit with a baseball bat. “Now he’s told everyone.”
“At least it wasn’t a TV show,” I said. “Only radio.”
“He doesn’t have a single original idea in his head, does he?” said Nevada.
“He’s told everyone about the flip back version,” said Tinkler. I thought he was going to cry. I knew how he felt. “If there are any copies out there, prices will go through the roof.”
“There are copies out there,” I said. “I know there are.” I could feel it, but I didn’t add that, because I’m supposed to be the rational one.
“Maybe,” said Tinkler. “Maybe. But now we won’t be able to get one for love or money.”
Our drinks came and we proceeded to all get drunk.
Once again Stinky had fucked things up for us.
Little did I realise, this was going to be the least of our problems.
3. THE HOUSE WITH THE MOAT
Nevada was curled up in one of our armchairs, reading a Patricia Highsmith novel—in French, of course. She looked up at me with those disquieting blue eyes and said, “Honestly, what’s wrong with you?”
I was sitting on the sofa, hunched over the laptop. I sighed. She could read me as easily as that book. I said, “I wasn’t aware I was radiating disquiet.”
“Stroppiness,” she corrected me.
“Or that.”
“It’s perfectly obvious, from the way you’re ignoring poor Turk.”
It was true. Our cat Turk—short for Turquoise—was standing on the coffee table, peering over the computer screen at me. I hadn’t even noticed that she was there.
As soon as I looked at her, she extended her paw.
“Sorry, Turk,” I said. I knuckle-bumped her, which is what she had been waiting for. She then subsided contentedly into a sprawled heap on the coffee table and resumed licking herself shamelessly. I looked at Nevada.
“I’m preoccupied,” I said.
“I know. I noticed.” She put a bookmark into her Patricia Highsmith and came over and sat beside me on the sofa. “I like a man who takes his work seriously.” She kissed me. “But you shouldn’t let it gnaw at you.”
“I can’t help it. When I started this project, a first pressing of Wisht by Black Dog—a presumptive first pressing, that is—”
“I love the use of the word ‘presumptive’.”
“Because in theory the original version has been completely suppressed—”
“In theory.”
I sighed. “You see, when we started looking for that record, copies were cheap. And any one of those copies might have turned out to be a true original.” Despite the theoretical complete suppression, several hundred of the originals had escaped into the wild.
So to speak.
“Because most people didn’t know about the flip back, right?” said Nevada. “I still want to call it a flap back, you know. I think that would be a much better name. Anyway, most people didn’t know about it.”
“That’s right,” I said. “Unless you really knew what you were looking for, a rare original could easily be mistaken for one of the common ones.”
“And pass unnoticed, by whatever fool was selling it.”
“Yes,” I said.
“And we, by which I mean you, but actually of course I mean both of us, and the cats, would have scooped it up.”
“Yes.”
“For a bargain sum. And then we could have sold it to Tinkler at a hugely inflated price.”
“The friends-and-family hugely inflated price,” I said.
“And everyone would have been happy. In Tinkler’s case, ‘happy’ meaning miserably and hopelessly pursing a sexual lost cause.”
“Yes,” I said. It was a pretty fair summary.
“But then Stinky went on the radio.”
“Yes. And he got everybody stirred up. By everybody, I mean his small audience of listeners.”
Nevada shook her head. “In fact, almost a million—I checked. Unimaginable, I know, but that must also include all the radios that are on all over the country playing in the background, unheard, while people are doing better things.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Anyway, now suddenly everyone is interested in the original version of Wisht and on the lookout for it.”
“So prices are soaring.”
“Yes. Copies are selling for about ten times what they cost just a week ago.” I’d just been on Discogs and I was still trying to get my blood pressure back down.
Nevada winced. “Ouch.”
“And Stinky has also got everybody confused about what the hell a flip back version is.”
“In other words,” said Nevada, “people don’t know if they’ve got an original copy or not. Everybody is mixed up now.”
“Everybody was mixed up before,” I said. “But back then it was to our advantage. It gave us the chance of finding a rare version of Wisht being sold as a common one.”
“And getting a bargain,” said Nevada avidly. She really liked the idea of a bargain. So did I, for that matter.
I shrugged. We could forget about that now. “Unfortunately, now it’s all flipped around with even the cheap version being mistakenly priced into the stratosphere.”
“All thanks to flipping Stinky,” said Nevada. I thought she was being a model of restraint.
I said, “I’ve begun to resign myself to the fact that we’re never going to find this record.”
“I understand your despair, but it’s still no justification for ignoring Turk.”
“True.” The cat watched us from the coffee table with her strange, pale eyes. She looked from one of us to the other. She might have been aware that we were talking about her and closely following our conversation. Or she might equally have been thinking about that satisfying crunching sound a mouse skull makes when you sink your teeth in.
“What I’m really dreading is telling Tinkler.”
“Tell him what? That you’re going to quit? You’re not going to quit, are you?”
I shrugged. “It isn’t fair to go on charging him expenses if we’re never going to find the bloody record for him.” I looked at the computer. “Anyway, he knows something’s up. He’s been trying to reach me all evening.” I indicated an annoying little flashing icon on the corner of the screen. “No point postponing it. I’ll tell him now.”
“But he’s paid us until the end of the month.”
“We’ll give him his money back.”
“The hell we will. We’ll think of something. You’ll think of something.” Nevada put her arm around me. “You’ll find it.”
“I have a feeling I’m being wheedled.”
“I am a world-class wheedler.”
I clicked the icon and Tinkler’s petulant, chubby face appeared on the screen. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to—”
Suddenly the image froze and the sound went dead. This wasn’t unusual. For some reason, we’d been having trouble with the broadband lately. Digital technology at its finest.
The frozen image of Tinkler’s face had caught him looming at the camera in a grotesque mid-expression. “My god, he looks ugly,” said Nevada. “And that livid illumination doesn’t help. He seems to be in a shoestring production of Dante’s Inferno.”
“He’s using his lava lamp,” I said. “And no doubt destroying his brain by smoking pot.”
The image suddenly unfroze and Tinkler leered at us. “I heard all that,” he said. “But I’ll give you hell later. Why haven’t you been answering? I’ve been trying to reach you all evening. Where have you been?”
“Avoiding you,” I said.
“Avoiding you and brooding,” added Nevada. “You should see him brood. He’s even been ignoring the cats.”
“My god,” said Tinkler. He tut-tutted while his stoned brain tried to remember the reason for his call.
While he was doing that, I got on with business. “Tinkler, look, I don’t think we’re going to be able to find this record of yours.”
“Because of fucking Stinky and his fucking shenanigans.”
“Yes.”
“Well fuck fucking Stinky and fuck his fucking shenanigans,” said Tinkler. “I have a great idea. That’s what I wanted tell you. I’ve thought of something.”
* * *
What he had thought of was Erik Make Loud, the rock guitarist and now Tinkler’s bosom buddy.
It still seemed odd to think of him as that. Erik (formerly Eric) had enjoyed semi-legendary status in the 1960s as a member of the psychedelic band Valerian. He was the only famous person Tinkler knew—unless you wanted to count Stinky, and nobody wanted to do that. Anyway, Erik was quite an anomaly in Tinkler’s life.
But the two seemed to have become genuinely friendly. Of course, they had cannabis in common.
And, to be fair, a genuine love of music.
I arrived at Erik Make Loud’s house by the river in Barnes promptly at eleven o’clock on a bright winter’s morning. I was alone on the pavement. I’d got here before Tinkler.
Or to put it differently, Tinkler was late.
Late for our carefully arranged and painstakingly negotiated meeting.
When you have three or more parties involved in agreeing a common time for anything, it becomes almost impossible. And when one of the parties is convinced he is a rock god, as was Erik, that impossibility is greatly magnified. So it wasn’t as if Tinkler was unaware of the exact day and time we’d agreed. It had, god knows, taken us long enough to negotiate it. I sighed, breathing in an exasperated lungful of cold London air. Then I tried phoning Tinkler. No answer.
I waited outside Erik’s large white house in the freezing morning as long as I could, pacing up and down the footpath by the river. My temper wasn’t improved by the fact that one of Erik’s near neighbours was having extensive renovations—basically their whole house was being gutted—and the noise of hammers, drills and indeed hammer drills was so loud that I felt my hearing was imperilled. So finally I decided I’d had enough. It was time to go in on my own.
There was an intercom on the locked iron gate outside Erik’s. I pushed the button and in response there came an immediate buzz and the lock clicked open. The gate creaked complainingly as I pushed it inwards and stepped through onto the short section of iron footbridge that led to the front door.
Erik called this his drawbridge, although it didn’t draw. I suppose the name made some kind of sense, because it ran above what he called the moat. This was a kind of deep rectangular trench in the concrete around the house. Big enough to stroll about in, it surrounded the house at basement level.
This basement contained Erik’s guitar room. His pride and joy. Indeed, Erik had the moat built in event of flooding, because he thought it would protect his guitars. It had been pointed out to him that, to do any good in terms of sparing his house from the attentions of an angry River Thames, the moat would need to be about ten thousand times its current size.
Tinkler had told me his only response to this was to say that, in event of any such watery catastrophe, Bong Cha had firm orders to carry all the guitars upstairs to the attic.
When asked why he hadn’t built the guitar room upstairs in the attic in the first place, Erik’s only response had been angry laughter. He might well laugh. His basement was the most vulnerable place he could have chosen for his precious collection. Apparently he only realised this after he’d already installed the elaborate setup down there—the guitar room had everything including controlled humidity—and by then of course it was too late.
Because Erik’s pride was at stake.
So, rather than admit he was wrong, rather than move the guitars to the top of the house, he’d had the ‘moat’ dug.
As I crossed the footbridge my footsteps echoed in the concrete canyon of this folly. Ahead of me, the front door suddenly sprang open. Surprisingly, standing there peering out was none other than Erik Make Loud himself. His middle-aged female housekeeper Bong Cha, Korean by way of Birmingham, was nowhere in evidence. This was odd. Bong Cha usually looked after the tedious details of ordinary life for Erik. Like opening doors.
