Attack and Decay Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Leave us a Review

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: Bad Tattoo

  2: Corpse-Faced Motherfucker

  3: Officially Night

  4: No Blood

  5: Gothenburg

  6: The Burning Car

  7: Troll’s Shoe

  8: Union Jack Mini

  9: Boom

  10: Ufos and Dog Poo

  11: Devilish Dickhead

  12: Enough Loot for all Concerned

  13: Secondhand-Butik

  14: Snow

  15: Juicer Heist

  16: Big Animal

  17: Lying to the Police Kiss

  18: Sriracha

  19: With an Umlaut

  20: Hell Breaks Loose

  21: Bensindunk

  22: Eagle

  23: The Shelf-Fitting Persuasion

  24: Circus

  25: Red Halo

  26: Taverna

  27: Comb-Over Bastard

  28: Eye of the Beast

  29: Enough not to be Inside

  30: The Rain Doesn’t Read

  31: Lonely Murder Farmhouse

  32: Answering Shade

  33: Farewell, Trollesko

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  THE VINYL DETECTIVE

  ATTACK AND DECAY

  Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

  Written in Dead Wax

  The Run-Out Groove

  Victory Disc

  Flip Back

  Low Action

  THE VINYL DETECTIVE

  ATTACK AND DECAY

  ANDREW CARTMEL

  TITAN BOOKS

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  The Vinyl Detective: Attack and Decay

  Print edition ISBN: 9781789098969

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781789098976

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First Titan edition: June 2022

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © Andrew Cartmel 2022. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  For Alasdair Shanks, aka the Dude.

  1: BAD TATTOO

  “Someone is watching our house.”

  Nevada had just been out to do the recycling—mostly wine bottles, it has to be said—and was now standing between the Quad speakers, pretty much in the sweet spot, in fact, in front of the sofa where I was sitting with our friend Jordon Tinkler and one of our indolent wastrel cats.

  “Is it that creepy corpse-faced motherfucker?” said Tinkler.

  “I imagine it must be,” said Nevada, “judging by the felicity of your description.”

  “Yeah, I noticed him, too.”

  “Well, thank you so much for alerting us.”

  “Oh, so now I’m supposed to be in charge of security around here?”

  I was about to disrupt this bickering with a pressing enquiry about what exactly a corpse-faced motherfucker might look like, when the doorbell rang. I went and let Agatha in.

  Our friend, Agatha DuBois-Kanes. Also known as Clean Head.

  She came into the sitting room and settled into an armchair. She had the look of a woman who would be entirely relaxed if she suddenly discovered that a sharp-clawed obligate carnivore was hiding under her chair and might begin attacking her toes at any moment.

  Which was just as well.

  Perhaps with that in mind, she stretched her long legs in front of her. Out of obligate carnivore reach.

  Tinkler couldn’t keep his eyes off those legs, and you could hardly blame him. They were clad in dove-grey leggings, as tight and shiny as though they’d been sprayed on.

  “Did you happen to notice someone watching the house?” I said.

  Agatha looked up at me, perhaps a little startled. “Someone is watching your place?”

  “A creepy-looking corpse-faced motherfucker,” said Tinkler. “Standing out there, staring creepily like this.” He made a blankly bug-eyed and fixedly gazing face which actually was fairly creepy.

  “He could have been creepily staring at any of the buildings along here,” I said. “Not necessarily our place.”

  Beside me on the sofa, Turk—short for Turquoise—stirred. She was lying on her side with her back luxuriantly arched and her paws stretched out to rest companionably against my leg, as though arrested in the spring and stride of the hunt. Now, perhaps in response to the tension in my voice, she allowed her sharp little claws to emerge briefly, pressing emphatically into me, maybe in readiness for that hunt.

  Or perhaps just to remind me who was boss.

  “No,” said Tinkler. “Definitely your charming domicile that he’s focused on. With obsessive interest, some might say.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t notice anyone out there,” said Agatha.

  “You would have noticed this motherfucker,” said Tinkler. “He’s creepy and corpse-faced.”

  “Well, shouldn’t we do something about him?” said Agatha. “If he is out there?”

  To my surprise, Nevada shook her head. “No. He’ll probably just go away.”

  “He’ll probably just go away,” I said.

  Nevada had wandered over to the table where she was taking a cork out of a wine bottle. “And if he doesn’t, there’s nothing coming through that door that I can’t handle.”

  “So much potential there for innuendo,” said Tinkler. “Where to start?”

  Just then, under Nevada’s ministrations, the cork came out of the bottle with a ripely plosive pop that made me jump.

  “Well, I want to get a look at this guy,” I said, repressing the wave of anger that came from being startled. I was definitely on edge. The notion of a malevolent cadaverous onlooker tends to do that to me. “And maybe take a photo of him.” Experience had taught me to err on the side of caution in these matters.

  Nevada looked at me with approval and smiled. “That’s a good idea.”

  At that moment the doorbell rang and our third dinner guest arrived. A new friend of ours called Saxon Ghost. Of course, he hadn’t been born with a name like that. He’d created it himself in tribute to two great record producers who had been his heroes, back when he’d been an aspiring record producer himself. Unfortunately, he’d fucked it up—he’d got one of the names wrong—but, like a bad tattoo, he owned it.

  Saxon Ghost was in many ways the opposite of Agatha—he was white, male, short, stout—but they shared one attribute. His scalp was as closely shaved as hers. Maybe he’d sha
ved it especially for us this evening.

  Maybe she had, too.

  As with Tinkler, Saxon Ghost had brought some records with him in a smart canvas shoulder bag the colour of damp sand, with dark tan leather trim, purpose-built for carrying LPs. A possession which I immediately coveted. As, apparently, did Tinkler.

  “Is that your Original Peter?” he said, referring to the luggage brand. “Or are you just pleased to see us?”

  Saxon gave this more of an indulgent chuckle than it merited. “Yeah, this model is called the Utrecht Record Hunter, I think.”

  Tinkler already had his phone out, looking it up. “Apparently its capacious gusset allows it to take more in than you can usually expect to fit.” He was in full innuendo mode, grinning at Agatha.

  “I’m not even listening,” she said.

  “It’s lovely,” said Nevada, who always had an eye for a stylish accessory. She glanced at me. “I think I know what I’m getting someone for his birthday.”

  “Costs over two hundred quid,” said Tinkler. “Sorry to be pouring cold water, but I thought you ought to know.”

  Nevada was indeed a little taken aback. “Well, maybe if some funds flood in…”

  Funds in our household came from Nevada’s sales of vintage fashion items—i.e. second-hand clothes—and my sales of rare vinyl. Flooding in was not what they were currently doing.

  “I might be able to help you with that,” said Saxon Ghost.

  “In that case, allow me to pour you a very generous glass of a very good wine,” said Nevada.

  Saxon chuckled and, while Nevada poured the wine in the kitchen, he opened his record bag. The Utrecht Record Hunter had apparently not been exploited to its full capacious extent—he took out a modest handful of albums.

  As with the LPs Tinkler had brought, these were all Decca pressings.

  Unlike Tinkler, however, Saxon’s selection consisted of Stravinsky with a bit of Rimsky-Korsakov thrown in for variety.

  Saxon Ghost didn’t look like a man who listened to a lot of classical music. Indeed, his background was in producing punk rock. But nowadays he was a devotee of French and Russian symphonists of the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth century.

  Whereas Tinkler had brought over a trio of albums by some sixties beat combo called the Rolling Stones.

  The thing about Decca was that they had pretty much invented high-fidelity sound recording, at least on this side of the Atlantic, and had routinely created audiophile landmarks of the classical repertoire. It just so happened that the Stones had also been recording for this same label at the height of their powers.

  What’s more, there were a handful of British jazz masterpieces, like Tubby Hayes’s early LPs, which had been recorded by Decca on their Tempo subsidiary in the 1950s and 1960s.

  Indeed, I had a couple of these lined up for us to listen to later. First, though, we were playing the Stones’ Their Satanic Majesties Request. Nevada looked at the lenticular cover. “I gave you a copy of this,” she said. “I brought one back for you from America.”

  “That’s right,” said Tinkler. “Variant US copy. Thank you very much. This, however, is the British original.” He held up the record. It was one of the rare examples of a Decca stereo pressing with a green label. Tinkler put it on the Garrard.

  It sounded so good I almost forgot to worry about the guy watching the house.

  Sometimes record companies compressed pop songs so they would sound better on cheap radios, but when Decca made these albums they were basically turning out Rolls-Royces. They didn’t know how to do anything else.

  Tinkler was busy showing Agatha the inner sleeve. The original inner sleeve, of course. “See the ‘red smoke’ design? A deliberate riposte to the red ‘Fool’ inner sleeve of Sergeant Pepper. That’s a Beatles album.”

  “Of course it’s a Beatles album,” said Agatha. “I’m not a fool.”

  “I am, though, ma’am. Your humble fool. At your service.”

  “Now,” said Nevada, leaning over and refilling Saxon Ghost’s glass, “I believe you said something about money, money, money.”

  “Right.” Saxon nodded and set his wine aside. Time for business. “Okay, so how much do you know about black metal or death metal?”

  “I know enough not to listen to it,” I said.

  “Tut-tut,” said Tinkler censoriously. “Very narrow-minded. And surely those are two quite different subgenres?”

  “I’m just not as much of a headbanger as you,” I said.

  “Or, to put it differently, you’re less of a headbanger than me.”

  Before I could ask Tinkler in what way he imagined this was putting it differently, the doorbell rang, announcing the arrival of our fourth and final guest that evening. Sydney Reasoner was a tall young woman who was employed as a camera operator. We had first met her on Halig Island when she was working for Stinky Stanmer, but we didn’t hold that against her.

  She was currently dating Saxon Ghost despite, to paraphrase Tinkler, being twice his height and half his age. After the flurry of greetings and much pouring of drinks, Saxon said, “Where were we?”

  “We got as far as you asking us about death metal,” I said.

  He nodded. “That’s right. I know this guy who runs a small but very lucrative record label.” I could see Nevada start to glow at the word lucrative. “Specialises in hard rock music of the Nordic variety. His name is Owen Winter. Except Owen and Winter are both spelled with a ‘Y’. Owyn Wynter.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We’re friends with Erik Make Loud. We understand the principle of stupid rock music names.”

  “Of course you do. I was forgetting.”

  “And you think Mr Wynter might have a job for me.”

  “I do. That I do, mate. And it could involve an all-expenses-paid trip to Sweden.”

  “A trip to Sweden,” said Nevada.

  “I’ll come along too,” said Agatha, instantly. “It’s about time for a road trip. What does the Tingler think?”

  “My god,” said Tinkler. “The Tingler is tingling. In fact, that sound you hear is me coming… Can I amend that to arriving? Arriving at the airport with you guys. All of us together. Going to Sweden together. Arriving there at the airport to join you. Road trip!”

  “Road trip,” concurred Agatha.

  “Can I high-five you?” said Tinkler.

  “No.”

  Saxon Ghost leaned forward. His small blue eyes were suddenly solemn. “There’s one thing I want you to know,” he said. He sounded very serious.

  “Okay.”

  “Some of these death metal people were truly into some weird shit. They called them church burners.”

  “Is that because they…”

  “Supposedly. Anyway, some of them were—and for all I know still are—genuinely dangerous.” He looked at us. “You guys are my friends…”

  “You’re our friend, too,” said Nevada warmly. And it wasn’t just the wine talking.

  “So, I don’t want to send you into peril.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Nevada.

  Beside her, Agatha nodded seriously in firm agreement. “We can handle ourselves.”

  “Can I watch it while you handle yourselves?” said Tinkler, adding thoughtfully, “I think I’ve settled on that line of innuendo.”

  “All right,” said Saxon Ghost. “Just be careful, okay?” He glanced at his phone. “I’ve sent you Owyn’s number and you can take it from there. Like I said, he’s not short of a few bob. So don’t undercharge him.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Nevada. “We won’t.”

  Even though we hadn’t even taken the job yet, Saxon’s warning had unsettled me.

  So, after supper I insisted that Nevada and I go out and look for the corpse-faced watcher.

  There was no one there.

  2: CORPSE-FACED MOTHERFUCKER

  A few nights later I was returning from Putney where I’d spent several fruitful hours scouring the charity shops.

  Norm
ally this was an activity Nevada and I would have undertaken together, but Agatha was taking some time off work and she and Nevada had gone out for a girls’ day—just the two of them. Their plan was to eat lunch at a pub in Richmond, their visit topped and tailed by a finely calibrated pillage of the local charity shops in pursuit of high fashion at low, low prices.

  Not to be outdone, Tinkler had also decided to take a day off work—this never required much inciting—and invited me for a boys’ day out, commencing with lunch at his place on Putney Hill, followed by a thorough perusal of every crate of vinyl in every charity shop in the vicinity.

  Lunch at Tinkler’s had consisted mostly, but to my surprise not entirely, of high-end takeaway delivered to his door. The surprising bit was that he had decided to try to do some cooking himself. In fact, he attempted to replicate one of my recipes—the parsnips with olive oil, maple syrup and herb glaze.

  Tinkler volunteering to do anything resembling work in the kitchen would normally have set alarm bells ringing. But it seemed his obsession with Agatha, and with getting laid in general, had entered a new phase: he’d decided that the solution to all his problems was cooking for girls.

  “Not just cooking for them, you understand. But cooking tasty, appealing, hip and appealingly hip cuisine. Think of it as the culinary equivalent of the rabat solo on Yusef Lateef’s Eastern Sounds. Oh, and easy. Whatever recipes you give me must be easy. Above all else, on god’s mercy, easy.”

  So I had started him off with the parsnips, which really was a very easy recipe. Gleaned off the back of a bag of those noble root vegetables, purchased at a local supermarket, if memory serves.

  Tinkler hadn’t had any maple syrup on hand, so he’d substituted honey. But despite this he actually managed to bake the parsnips to the correct golden brown, admittedly with my frequently solicited help and supervision, and the honey had provided a fine substitute. The parsnips had proved to be a pleasant addition to the lunch. Indeed, one of the highlights.

  After eating the food and drinking the bottle of wine Nevada had thoughtfully provided for us—“It’s that Viognier-Chardonnay blend, not a world beater, but fresh and tasty and you’ll be eating spicy food anyway, right? It’s always spicy food at the Tingler’s”—we hit the charity shops.