The Vinyl Detective--Flip Back, page 4
Erik’s abundant Viking beard flowed into the hirsute chest revealed by his loose green silk Hawaiian shirt. A number of gold and silver necklaces hung around his neck, with matching bracelets on his wrists. His long hair, profusely streaked with grey, was secured by a black scrunchie. His chest and shoulders were powerful but his legs looked absurdly long and skinny in tight black drainpipe jeans.
He was wearing a pair of rose-tinted granny glasses and was grinning broadly.
The grin faded as soon as he saw me, or rather as soon as he realised that I wasn’t Tinkler.
For a moment I thought he was going to shut the door again.
But instead he opened it just wide enough to allow me grudging entrance. Things would have been different if I’d been with Nevada. Erik closed the door behind us and we stood in the entrance hall, pale and clean in the calm winter daylight that came through the window.
There were big black and white tiles on the floor, brightly coloured vintage rock posters framed on the wall and a gleaming antique mahogany bookshelf full of titles about military history. It was a pleasant, warm, well-lighted space and I could have quite enjoyed the peaceful order of it if Erik Make Loud—born Eric McCloud—hadn’t been looming over me.
He removed his tinted glasses, perhaps so as to loom more effectively. He examined me with thorough and varied disapproval, and in so doing revealed his extravagantly dilated pupils. They were the big dark gaping bullet-hole eyes of someone who has smoked lots of weed. Suddenly I was aware of the sharp tang of cannabis, detectable despite the musky and no doubt expensive aftershave he was wearing.
Evidently, Erik had been smoking dope all morning. When Tinkler arrived, the two of them would probably smoke dope all afternoon. It began to look to me like a very long and very tedious day.
My only drug is coffee. And I probably wouldn’t even get a decent cup of that. Once again I wished Nevada was with me.
As if by some stoned telepathy, Erik said, “Where’s your girlfriend?”
“She can’t make it today.”
“Pity.”
It was, but Nevada had found a whole new string of charity shops just south of Wimbledon. The most recent hiccup in our economy had slain any number of struggling small businesses and, as these premises were abandoned, the charity shops moved in. “It’s an ill wind that blows no good,” Nevada had said. “Have I got that right?” I knew what she meant.
She meant that there were new opportunities for high fashion acquisitions at low, low prices. And she needed fresh stock.
Nevada had discovered charity shops through hanging out with me and she’d begun by snapping up bargains for her own wardrobe, and then had expanded to selling fashion items to others. Now, thanks to a combination of her own innate good taste and cut-throat business sense, she was in danger of becoming a thriving business.
And of course the Internet had helped.
There was a sound on the staircase and Erik and I looked up to see Bong Cha peering down at us. She was standing on the floor above and looking over the banister rail. Only a segment of her face was visible, but it was enough to show she was unhappy to see me.
If she’d been a cat she would have hissed.
She withdrew.
“Come on downstairs,” said Erik, raising his hand as though he was about to slap me on the shoulder, but thought better of it and ended up instead gesturing vaguely in midair. These gestures indicated a door in the wall, which might have led into a closet. I knew instead it led to the basement. And the guitar room.
We opened it and walked down a concrete stairwell. The walls here were smooth white plaster and there was a high oblong window with black iron bars set in the long wall above us, the outside wall of the house. It provided enough thin winter daylight for us to see by. At the bottom of the stairs another tall, barred window peered outwards. But here it was dimmer because the window faced out into the moat.
We turned to the left and down the corridor to the guitar room. It was a large room, which must have occupied fully half of the basement. Again, high barred windows provided as much daylight as the moat outside allowed. Enough illumination for Erik to save on his electricity bills. At least I assumed that was his reason for ignoring the light switch.
The guitars gleamed in the cold, pearly light of day. I didn’t know anything about guitars but I recognised some Fenders. They all looked like rare and valuable vintage instruments.
Erik gestured towards a long black leather sofa. “Have a seat. Don’t touch the guitars. Or the chord books. Or the sheet music. In fact, just don’t touch anything. To be on the safe side.”
I sat down on the sofa. He looked at me for a moment then went out. I expected him to return momentarily, but I gradually came to realise that I’d been parked in here.
I didn’t touch the guitars, chord books or sheet music.
I didn’t even look at them.
I just sat there being mindlessly bored. It was peaceful and quiet in this room but I was too much on edge to enjoy it. I didn’t feel comfortable here. Erik might come back at any minute. Or on the other hand he might have slipped out the back door and got a taxi into town.
But he wouldn’t do that to Tinkler, I told myself.
So I sat there listening to the subtle, distant whisper of sophisticated air conditioning. I wondered if the ideal humidity for guitars was the same as for human beings. I certainly didn’t feel that I was being best served by my environment. The air was dry and caused my throat to itch.
Erik strolled in again about a quarter of an hour after he had first withdrawn and briefly stared at me. He looked disappointed that I hadn’t undergone an interesting transformation during his absence.
I thought I heard a sigh as he withdrew again.
I leaned back on the sofa, trying to adopt a Zen-like acceptance of the wave of boredom that I expected to wash over me. I anticipated it being a long, long day.
I didn’t know that in less than an hour someone was going to try and kill me.
And not just me.
4. MONEY TO BURN
I settled in for the long haul on the sofa in the guitar room. In fact, I started wondering if I could put my legs up on one of the nice chocolate-coloured cushions—made of expensive, butter-soft leather—and maybe snatch a nap. I’d take my shoes off first, of course.
Almost at the same moment I conceived this scheme, and in what some soft-minded souls would take to be a verification of telepathy, Erik stepped through the door and gave me a suspicious look over his ridiculous pink glasses. His pupils were still dark, huge, stoned.
Perhaps he was trying to work out if I had stolen one or more of his guitars, having used some kind of miniaturising ray, and then concealed them in my pocket.
But in fairness to my host, he was also carrying a tray. He set it down on a table beside the sofa, and sat down in a chair nearby.
On the white tray were two black cups with gold rims set either side of a chunky black ceramic pot with a contorted spout. From the spout came a warm, perfumed fragrance.
Tea.
Didn’t he know I was a coffee drinker? Surely Bong Cha, whom I assumed was the only one who was capable of making a pot of tea in this household, would at least have remembered that? Was this intended as a deliberate insult?
I decided not to be paranoid, and politely accepted a cup of the insipid stuff. Maybe I was wrong about Erik not being able to make a pot of tea. He certainly succeeded in pouring out the two cups expertly, despite the fact that the spout on the pot was as convoluted as a model of the human digestive system.
Thankfully I was spared the necessity of pretending to drink the tea because, as soon as he’d finished filling the cups, Erik got up again and walked across the room. He looked at the guitars there. Some of these were standing upright on the floor on special mounts, while others hung on the wall. Some particularly notable specimens were in display cases. He selected one of the guitars from the wall, an acoustic model of beautiful polished wood, and brought it back with him.
He sat down in his chair with it cradled in his lap. Since he made no move to touch his cup of tea, I felt at liberty to also ignore mine. We sat there while Erik endlessly tuned the guitar and the tea gradually got cold. We didn’t speak until finally he said, “So, Tinkler wants to meet Tom.”
Tom was Thomas Pyewell, one of the members of Black Dog, co-leader of the band, in fact. And along with Max Shearwater was—I suppose—its other bona fide star. It turned out that Pyewell, sorry, Tom, and Erik were friends. So Erik was in a position to arrange an introduction. Anyway, that was Tinkler’s big plan.
I said, “Tinkler only wants to meet this guy because he thinks he might have a copy of that record, you know. The guy, I mean. Tom Pyewell. Tinkler thinks he might have a copy of Wisht.”
“Wisht?” said Erik, strumming slowly and softly on the guitar. “Great album. Fucking great album.”
“Tinkler wants the original version.”
“Even better.” Erik strummed away happily. “Even better.”
“The one with the flip back cover.”
“That’s right.” He nodded as he played softly, at the edge of hearing.
“He thinks your mate Tom has got a copy.”
“If anybody’s got a copy, Tom has.”
“You do realise that if he does have one, Tinkler will pester you until he gets his hands on it.”
Erik, head bent over his guitar, didn’t answer me directly. Instead, he said, “What do you know about Black Dog?”
I started to outline what I’d gleaned about the band, from books and magazines and of course the Internet, but he interrupted me almost immediately. “Do you know why they were called Black Dog?”
“No idea.”
The music he was playing became a little louder. It was now just audible, a slow, mournful folk air. “They named themselves after the barghest, a ghostly black dog in folk legends that is said to haunt wild places, prey on lonely travellers and foretell deaths.”
“Busy dog.”
He continued to strum the guitar. I was amazed at the way he just seemed to conjure music from the strings with the most trifling of movements. He didn’t appear to be doing anything, but he was doing everything. He played more loudly, and eerie chords filled the room. The sun went behind a cloud and the basement was suddenly flooded with darkness. “He was a busy dog,” said Erik. “Also known as a wisht hound.” He took off his glasses and looked at me bleakly. Somehow he managed to do this without interrupting his playing.
The folk strain he’d been strumming had transformed to a blues, haunting and mournful and repetitive. He said, “I thought I saw some weird shit when I was with Valerian. I mean, John Blacklock and all his Aleister Crowley crap and all that. Everybody was mucking about with the dark arts in those days. It was very much the done thing.”
The daylight seemed to have been completely extinguished, as though the apocalypse had silently arrived and was politely waiting to announce itself. I wondered why my host didn’t turn some lights on. Maybe it was Bong Cha’s job. “But Black Dog,” he said, “they really got into it. All kinds of really weird shit. There’s even a story they tried to manifest the devil.”
He seemed to expect a response from me. When none was forthcoming, he just kept playing his tremulous, eerie blues. “That’s right,” he said, as if agreeing with me, although I hadn’t said anything. “They tried to summon him up on stage one night while they were playing.”
“Why?”
“Why? To join them, I suppose. To join in.”
“To join in the concert?”
“Yes.”
I thought, Opening Act: Satan. I said, “Did he bring a pick-up band?”
“The old gentleman didn’t show. But at least they tried.” He played thoughtfully, the guitar giving voice to an endless cascade of chill, rolling chords. It was starting to get a bit repetitive. That’s the trouble with the blues, if you ask me. “A black dog is also called a wisht hound,” he said, for the second time. Then, perhaps sensing that I was losing interest in his performance, and his monologue, he added, “The Hound of the Baskervilles was one.”
“Only he wasn’t real, was he?” I said. “I mean, even in the story the evil dog wasn’t real. Sherlock Holmes unmasked him. One of the few occasions when anybody’s had the opportunity to unmask a dog.”
He shook his head. “Joke if you like, but some people take this sort of thing very seriously. Ever so seriously.”
I was saved from having to reply by the doorbell.
My host’s face lit up. “Tinkler!” He was overjoyed. I knew how he felt. Erik stared up at the ceiling. “Bong Cha will let him in.” Indeed, there came a rattle of impatient footsteps descending a staircase, then a pause, and then the sound of a door opening. Indistinct voices echoed, just about identifiable as Tinkler and the reluctant housekeeper. More descending footsteps, then the door of the guitar room opened and Tinkler came in, beaming.
Bong Cha glanced in over his shoulder, shooting a poisonous look at her employer. That seemed to be the sole purpose of her visit, to let him know she was pissed off, because when she finished glaring she withdrew again.
Tinkler shook hands with Erik, who had set his guitar aside and risen enthusiastically from his chair, and then shook hands with me. I should have known better, but I was glad to see old Tinkler. I even forgave him for being late. “I see you’ve brought the sunshine with you,” I said.
He glanced towards the window and the inky darkness beyond. “Yes, it’s black as night out there,” he said. “I even had the headlights on.”
“You drove?” I said. “You could have got here quicker if you’d walked.” He only lived in Putney.
“That’s London traffic for you,” said Tinkler. “I blame all those other drivers.”
Erik leaned over and slapped him on the shoulder. “Well, you’re here now, mate, and that’s what counts.”
“So, where is he?” said Tinkler, looking around the room. “Tom. Tom Pyewell. Mr Pyewell.” He grimaced anxiously. “Should I call him Mister?”
“Yes, that’s right, mate,” Erik twinkled. “Call him Mr Bastard. Mr Bastard Knob Head. That’s about right.” He chuckled and Tinkler chuckled too, but much more uncertainly. He glanced at me with his big, worried brown eyes.
I said, “I can’t believe you’re so nervous about meeting this guy, Tinkler.”
Erik swivelled a disapproving gaze my way. “Why shouldn’t he be nervous?”
“Yeah, why shouldn’t I be nervous?” said Tinkler.
“Tom Pyewell is a major figure in British music,” said Erik. “Him and old Max Shearwater were like our answer to Simon and Garfunkel.”
“Well, that’s sort of my point,” I said. “As half of a partnership, Pyewell was someone all right. But without Max Shearwater he hasn’t exactly had a glittering career.” I was being generous. Shearwater had been the presiding genius of Black Dog. After he decided to split with the band, it had been pretty much downhill to oblivion for all the others.
Erik pretended he hadn’t heard me. He turned to Tinkler. “Anyway, how you been keeping, mate?”
But Tinkler wouldn’t let it go. I’d got him worried. “No talk about creative decline when Mr Pyewell arrives, all right? No suggestion that he is any less of a rock god than he used to be.” He eyed me nervously.
“Folk god,” I said.
“Whatever. Folk-rock god.”
Erik deigned to join the conversation. “And whatever you do, don’t mention Max Shearwater when he gets here. He’ll go spare if you do.” I didn’t point out that he was the only one who’d brought up Shearwater’s name so far.
“Still bad blood between them?” said Tinkler.
“There always will be, mate. Always will be.”
“Because Max Shearwater broke up the band?” said Tinkler.
Erik shook his head. “Tom hated Shearwater’s guts long before that. Everyone in the band did. Come to think of it, people all over the world who didn’t even know him hated his guts.”
Tinkler nodded sagely. “Because of what he did with the money.”
“That’s right, mate. Because of what he did with the fucking money.” Erik suddenly took his phone out of his pocket and squinted at it. “Excuse me. Got to take this. It’s him.” He walked out of the room with the phone to his ear.
I turned to look at Tinkler. “It’s him,” he said excitedly. “Tom. Mr Pyewell. I think I’ll definitely go with Mister.”
“What was this about the money?” I said.
“What?”
“You said people hated Shearwater, ‘Because of what he did with the money.’ What did you mean?”
Tinkler stared at me. “You mean you’ve never heard about that?”
“I’m hoping to hear about it now,” I said.
“Well, you know how there were all kinds of ‘artistic differences’ in the band?” Tinkler made heavy quotation-mark gestures in the air. “Which is what ultimately led to them breaking up? Well, these differences were because Shearwater was totally avant-garde.” Nevada would have picked him up on his pronunciation. “In fact, that’s a polite name for what he was. But it wasn’t just a matter of Max making weird sound recordings. At the same time he abandoned conventional music he began a series of other goofy art projects and conceptual ‘happenings’, as they used to say in the 1960s. Each one stranger and more far out than the last.” I thought of the alleged attempt to raise the devil on stage, and wondered if this had been one of those. But I didn’t want to interrupt Tinkler. He looked at me. “These came to their—you’ll excuse the expression—climax when one day he announced he was going to burn a million dollars.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Burn?”
“Yes, burn, baby, burn. Make a big pile of banknotes and just set fire to them. Whoosh.”
“You mean in a kind of anarchistic gesture?”
“In an artistic gesture,” Tinkler corrected me.
“In other words, basically just for the hell of it.”
