Music of the Night, page 20
I wondered if he’d say any fool knew that. I wondered if, like a lot of people, he’d add that ‘Stolen’ was a bit too macabre, a bit too personal for his taste. But he did neither. What actually happened was that he burst into song. “She was by the bright waters,” he crooned softly. “In the arms of her killer. She was sleeping so gently. In the arms of her killer.”
As ever, I was left feeling that the line ‘in the arms of her killer’ was slightly awkward, a bit too contrived. The harsh words jarred with the gentle melody. You felt that there were better lyrics in there somewhere that Tony had failed to locate. But it was well sung by the man I had still failed to recognise. Whoever he was, I had to give him credit for that.
“Wow!” I said. “You’re good. That might have been Tony himself singing. You should have taken it up.”
“I did,” he said.
“Hang on,” I said. “I know who you are. You’re Zak…”
“Frimley,” he said. “Zak Frimley.”
“Of course,” I said. “I remember you from…”
“The nineties,” he said. “I had three hits back in the nineties. Not as big as ‘Stolen’. Not remotely as big. But I did OK. For three years I did OK.”
“Was it that long ago?”
“Trust me. You don’t forget the brief moment the spotlight shines on you.”
To be honest, as I think I said before, it was difficult imagining him under a spotlight at all. He was quite short and plump. The collar of his white shirt was very worn. The cuffs of his clerical-grey suit were slightly shiny, where they had clearly rubbed against the surface of a desk. He had the face of an irritable ageing cherub. Until he announced his name, I had him down as a teacher at a rural prep school.
“Why did you give it up?” I asked.
He paused for a long time. “I’d said all I had to say. I knew I’d never write another song as good as the last one I’d written. So, I stopped.”
“What do you do now?”
“I teach music in a prep school in Kent. It’s what every rock star dreams of doing.”
“Ah,” I said.
There was another long pause, then I said: “I know the stretch of river where Silvia drowned, of course. I know it well. It’s just up the valley from here. She and Tony were walking together – by the bright water, as the song goes – and she somehow slipped and fell. She couldn’t swim and was swept away by the current… and then over the waterfall. Horrible, really. Nightmarish. Doesn’t bear thinking about. That’s why there’s that bit about the brutal rocks. How did it go?”
“Brutish,” said Zak, somewhat testily I thought. “The brutish rock. People always get that wrong.”
“OK,” I said, cautiously. It was clearly something he felt more strongly about than I did. “Anyway, he found her in the pool at the bottom of the fall. She’d apparently hit her head on a… rock. A brutish one, if you say so. He had to wade in up to his waist to get her. He tried to resuscitate her but it was much too late.”
“I know,” said Zak. “I was there.”
“You actually saw her swept over? That must have been awful for you.”
“No, not that. I mean I was staying with Tony and Silvia at the time. There was a whole party of us. Me. Tony and Silvia. Silvia’s sister and the sister’s husband. And Vanessa.”
“Vanessa? Tony’s second wife?”
“She was his PR in those days. She’d come up from London with something he needed to work on. I don’t know what it was that couldn’t wait a day or two. Still, it was nice that she was on the spot. To console him when Silvia died. Very convenient.”
“So, Vanessa and Tony…”
He looked at me as if I were an idiot. “They married a year or so after Silvia’s death. It’s probably safe to assume they were an item long before that. But I can tell you Tony and Silvia were already pretty much finished by then. They’d have split up sooner or later, with or without Vanessa. Silvia became a beautiful memory only when Tony saw how profitable that would be. The perfect wife that had been snatched away. Stolen by the river.”
I felt disloyal before I even asked my next question, but I couldn’t stop myself. “The rumour at the time was that she hadn’t fallen,” I said. “Some people thought that he pushed her in. When Tony wrote ‘in the arms of your killer’ he didn’t mean the river as some fanciful personification of a murderer – he meant himself, pulling Silvia out of the water at the bottom of the fall.”
Zak’s reply confirmed how tasteless my question was. “We all heard the rumours, but Tony was a good friend. So, I’ve always chosen not to speculate. OK?”
“No. Of course,” I said, also a friend, though evidently a less good one than Zak.
“The police questioned us all,” he continued. “As you would imagine. And they concluded that only Tony and Silvia had been there when she fell in. But there were no charges. No question of charges. It was an accident. End of.”
“I didn’t mean that’s what I thought myself,” I said.
“Whatever,” he said.
“Sorry – it’s simply that, as a crime writer, I guess my mind works that way…”
“I’m sure it does. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I just need to go and talk to somebody,” he said.
“Of course,” I said.
Chorus
I’ve noticed it before. After a funeral, there’s a sense of relief. People say things they wouldn’t say otherwise. Sometimes things that were better not said.
First bridge
“Well,” said Elsie, glancing briefly down into the grave. “Not exactly a rock-and-roll interment, is it?”
“No,” I said.
“Scarcely worth the effort of dressing up for it.”
My agent was attired in a manner suitable for a rockabilly funeral circa 1955. The shiny black skirt was well supported with petticoats. The bodice was as tight as could be managed until her current diet had started to kick in and deliver results. The sunglasses were perched on top of her head. The lipstick was scarlet.
“I said it would be a small affair but you were very welcome to come with me,” I said. “I definitely didn’t promise you the great and the good of the rock world. Tony had been out of all that for a while. He’d lost touch with the sort of people you were hoping to get a selfie with.”
“I came here entirely to support you, Ethelred. In your very understandable grief. You know that.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“Is that Mick Jagger over there?” said Elsie, searching her handbag for her phone.
“No, just a fan who happens to live nearby and found out from somewhere that the funeral was today. A couple of them seem to have cottoned on. I saw them surreptitiously taking pictures of each other. But they will sadly realise their error when they post on Twitter.”
“You’re sure he’s not Mick? There aren’t many people that wrinkled.”
“I’ve spoken to him. He’s a plumber from Windermere. But that was Zak Frimley that I was talking to a moment ago.”
“Really? The Zak Frimley? In that Oxfam suit? God, he’s aged. I didn’t recognise him at all. He was pretty hot in the late nineties. Then we had the Millennium and it was all about Eminem for some reason.”
“Zak now teaches at a prep school in Kent.”
“Why not carry on performing?”
“He told me he’d nothing new to say.”
“You don’t have anything new to say, Ethelred, but you carry on writing crime novels. I mean, it’s fine. Your readers don’t like new stuff. It frightens the shit out of them. But you have to admit that your last four or five books haven’t exactly broken new ground.”
“Do you think I should?”
“Hell, no. Not at your age.”
“Thank you,” I said.
“My pleasure,” she said. “You know they reckon your mate Tony bumped his first wife off, by the way?”
She showed no sign of worrying whether this remark was insensitive. She obviously reckoned my grief was up to it.
“If so, he made a decent profit out of murder,” I said.
“Which is more than you do,” said Elsie. “Have you got the car keys? There’s a bar of chocolate in the glove compartment that needs my attention.”
Second verse
I wasn’t sorry to be left in contemplation of a perfect Lake District spring afternoon. The blossom was just making its appearance on the trees in the churchyard. Primroses grew in profusion around their roots. But I was not to remain alone for long.
“Well, that’s done, Ethelred. It could have gone worse, eh?” Marion drew on her cigarette and exhaled a stream of grey smoke. I had met Tony’s sister-in-law – Silvia’s sister – when Elsie and I arrived at the church an hour or so before. In the absence of any closer family, Marion had taken charge of proceedings, vetted and tracked down possible attenders of the funeral, made a firm and binding decision not to invite Vanessa or to inform the press of anything. She was dressed simply but expensively in a well-tailored black dress and a large black hat. Her hair was midway between blonde and grey. It suited her.
“Yes,” I said. “It’s all been very well organised. It was good of you to do it.”
“Good of me because Tony bumped off my sister?” she asked. She flicked some ash carefully into the grave.
“Yes… I mean, no… do you really think he did?”
She laughed. “It was a very odd weekend, that one. Relations between Tony and Silvia were at rock bottom. She was carrying on with anyone and everyone – Tony must have told you that. My brother-in-law, for a rock star, was sweetly but unnaturally monogamous. He wanted somebody who would unquestioningly return his love and devotion. He should have bought himself a Labrador but he inadvisably married my sister instead. Marry in haste, and so on. Most of the time he just about kept the lid on it all. Then, out of the blue, Zak showed up. That was one thing too many.”
“Zak Frimley?” I said, a bit unnecessarily.
“Zak may be a portly music teacher now, but he was a rising star then. Awarded Best Newcomer at one or other of the big awards ceremonies and with a couple of mega-hits under his belt.”
“He said three big hits.”
“Well, two big hits and a little one to follow them. But he was very excited about his next project. He saw Tony as a bit of a mentor. He wanted to talk things through with him – run some thrilling new idea past him. But Silvia had different plans for little Zak. And Zak took a much more heavy-metal approach to infidelity. He was well up for it.”
“And Tony caught them together? Is that what you mean?”
“I’ve no idea. Anyway, Zak was only a snack – a naughty nibble on the side. In those days, Silvia had my husband down as the main course. You’ve met him, so it will be as inexplicable to you as it was to me, but there it is.”
I tried to remember his name. As Marion had said, we’d been introduced. “Robert?” I said.
“I usually call him ‘Rock’,” she said.
“Rock as in…?”
“The brutish Rock in the song? The one that did for Silvia? Yes, I’ve wondered about that too. Odd wording. If it was aimed at my unintelligent husband, then Tony undoubtedly knew for certain what I merely suspected. Silvia told him everything, of course. She was always happiest when being cruel to be kind.”
“So, if jealousy was the motive for murder, then it may have been your husband that excited it?”
“My husband and excitement rarely occur in the same sentence, Ethelred. But I think that he in some way played a part. Or Zak the snack. One or the other. Or both. It was supposed to be a nice relaxing country house weekend, but the atmosphere was pretty tense all round, I can tell you. As the very last straw, that bitch Vanessa showed up on her motorbike – all shiny leather, sweat, Chanel Number Five and bright red lips. Tony suggested we all went for a walk, to clear our heads. We started as a fairly coherent party, but we took our respective grievances with us into the fells, and one by one people peeled off and went their own way or turned back towards home. Tony and Silvia were still together, chatting amiably, by the time they reached the river above the falls. Or that was what the police concluded. I missed the action myself.”
“So you didn’t see Silvia fall? You don’t know that he killed her?”
“Look, Ethelred: my sister had found herself a good man and then decided to cheat on him on an industrial scale. All I know is that, if I’d been Tony and I’d been sure nobody was watching, I’d have pushed her in. Maybe I’d have given her a good whack with a brutish rock first, just to make sure. They never could prove what she’d hit her head on or when.”
Marion flicked the cigarette butt onto the top of the coffin. It landed on the brass plate. You had to admire her aim. “You’ll come back to the house for a sherry or something? There’s beer and Cumberland sausage available too for all bona fide mourners.”
“Who could resist an offer like that?” I asked.
Chorus
I’ve noticed it before. After a funeral, there’s a sense of relief. People say things they wouldn’t say otherwise. Sometimes things that were better not said.
Third verse
“Is that a cigarette butt on the coffin?” asked Robert, looking down. “Some folk have no respect.”
He lit up his own cigarette anyway and drew deeply.
“Think of it as a libation,” I said. “Like the wine the Romans poured onto the ground.”
“Did they? Seems a waste.”
I wondered if this was professional concern. Tony had told me once that Robert worked in the drinks industry – he was the regional manager or deputy head of sales or something for a distiller. From Tony’s description, I’d always envisaged Robert in a tweed jacket, propping up the bar in some thatched pub. Now I’d actually met him, it still seemed likely his typical working day was exactly that. I couldn’t see that the nickname ‘Rock’ had been applied to him in anything other than a spirit of extreme irony.
“Sort of placating the spirit of the deceased, I suppose,” I said.
“It should have been a joint in that case,” said Robert. “Was that young Zak I saw you talking to earlier?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Surprised he made an appearance. I mean, he attended Silvia’s funeral, obviously. He was pretty cut up about it all. But I hadn’t expected to see him here. Laying a few ghosts to rest perhaps.”
“Zak and Silvia were close?”
“You might say that. She had a habit of picking up nice young men, toying with them for a bit and then dropping them. Sadly she died before she could dump him properly. So he continued to believe that it might have all worked out for them. He probably thought it was only a matter of days until they could both run off to some rural idyll, where he would gaze lovingly on her while she baked seeded batch loaves and stitched samplers.”
“Your wife said that Tony and Silvia were close to splitting up.”
He shook his head. “Marion and Silvia’s father manufactured petrochemicals, until he was bought out by some Americans, leaving the family with more money than it knew what to do with. When he died, it all went to the girls. But, knowing they might marry losers like me and Tony, their father ensured it was mainly held in trust. In the event of a divorce, the ex-husbands would get nothing. Shrewd old bird, Marion’s dad. Liked him a lot. Tony’s career was very much in the past at that stage. He needed every penny he could get from the trust. Of course, he didn’t know then what a success ‘Stolen’ was going to be. If he had, he might have been less keen to keep patching things up with Silvia. Not making a fuss about all the other men in her life.”
“But he knew what was going on?”
“She always told him. Honest as the day is long, that Silvia.”
“What happened if she died?”
“Oh, I know the answer to that. I’m on the same terms and conditions of service myself. If Silvia died before Tony, he’d receive an income from the trust for life.”
“And there were a lot of other men around her?”
“I’ll say.”
“Including you?”
“Ah, you had a longer conversation with my wife than I’d thought. Nothing in it, old boy. Silvia issued me with an invitation, if I can put it like that, but I never RSVP-ed. Too risky. Silvia would have told Tony, Tony would have told Marion and I’d have never seen another trust fund cheque for the rest of my days. I’ve never claimed to have been the brightest of my year at school, but I’ve always known which side my bread was buttered on. Didn’t stop me winding up young Zak, of course. I dropped a lot of hints there.” He smiled, as if at a distant memory of something rather good.
“So, it would have suited Tony if Silvia had died rather than divorced him?”
For a moment Robert looked thoughtful, then he smiled again and shook his head. “I suppose so, but I don’t think things were really that bad between them just before Silvia died – I mean that particular day. Tony was actually quite cheerful. I heard him singing before breakfast – it was that thing about the bright water and so on – the one that he ended up selling millions of.”
“But he wrote that after his wife’s death,” I said. “It came from the grief he felt.”
“So he always told people,” said Robert. “But you’re not under oath when selling rock music. Obviously, he didn’t grieve that much. Not in real life. And Vanessa was right there to help with the grieving process. More a PR thing really – Tony’s grief. Selling gin, selling music – it’s all a bit hit and miss what catches the public’s imagination and what flops. You need a unique selling point, and a dead wife was almost as good as it gets. But you’re right. He must have already more or less written that song before she died – words and music. Not that it makes much difference one way or the other. Not now.”
