The Run-Out Groove Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Daily Chronicle

  1. The Discovery

  2. Dinner Party

  3. The Client

  4. Valerian’s Brother

  5. Mercy Killing

  6. Last Resort

  7. Dockland Ducks

  8. The Singles Barn

  9. Butterfly Dreams

  10. Strawberry Hat Weather

  11. Lunch

  12. Cushion

  13. Flood Plain

  14. Rock Pub

  15. Canterbury

  16. Baby Grand

  17. Bric-Ā-Brac

  18. Lamb

  19. Iced Bottle

  20. Mission: Morocco

  21. Cinephile

  22. Blacklock

  23. Black Eye

  24. The Paths of Glory

  25. White Mice

  26. Card Table

  27. Weeding

  28. The Side Entrance

  29. Red Butterfly

  30. Postmarked Canterbury

  31. Soap Bubbles

  32. Drinks

  Epilogue

  Vinyl Detective Series

  Victory Disc

  1. Hidden Treasure

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  THE VINYL DETECTIVE

  THE RUN-OUT GROOVE

  Also by Andrew Cartmel and available from Titan Books

  Written in Dead Wax

  Victory Disc (May 2018)

  THE VINYL DETECTIVE

  THE RUN-OUT GROOVE

  ANDREW CARTMEL

  TITAN BOOKS

  The Vinyl Detective: The Run-Out Groove

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783297696

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783297702

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: May 2017

  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 © 2017 by Andrew Cartmel. 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.

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  For Ben Aaronovitch, comrade in arms.

  Daily Chronicle

  Saturday 21 January 1967

  Singer Dead—Child Missing

  NOTHING COULD BETTER illustrate the depravity of the current so-called ‘psychedelic music scene’ in Britain than the gruesome recent demise of the pop singer Valerie Drummond, alias ‘Valerian’. Much has been written about this horrid occurrence (see lead story, pages 1–3) but not enough has been said about the fate of her infant son. True, he was an illegitimate child but that was not the little boy’s fault. He was let down by those around him, a clique of selfish, hedonistic thrill-seekers for whom reality is not enough. Not for them the honest glow of daylight. They need the disturbing glare of so-called ‘mind expanding’ drugs. These drugs are actually mind destroying. They are the same mind destroying drugs that have already claimed the lives of other pop stars, such as Brian Jones of the notorious ‘rock’ group, the Rolling Stones, and many of Drummond’s own intimate circle. When one contemplates the fate of that poor little boy, one can only shudder…

  1. THE DISCOVERY

  My friend Tinkler is about my age, considerably more plump, and has a face that suggests he is a member of some disreputable rank of the cherubim.

  Today was his birthday.

  “I beg your pardon?” he said, staring at both of us, hand theatrically on his chest. “A present, you say? For me? You mean you knew it was my special day?”

  “You only mentioned it about fifty times. Anyway, Nevada found a record for you in a charity shop.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know. She hasn’t let me see it.”

  “A rare record,” said Nevada. “A very rare record.”

  “Well, give it to me, then,” said Tinkler.

  She trotted into the bedroom to get the record—thoughtfully wrapped in elegant black and gold paper—and came back and handed it to me. “You can give it to him,” she said. “I found it and I’m responsible for the wonderful discovery and I did all the hard work and paid for it and wrapped it and everything, but you can give it to him.”

  As I took the package, through the gift wrap, I caught a whiff of something penetrating but faint—spicy and musty.

  I sniffed it.

  It was the aroma of an old record. In fact, it was what a cardboard LP cover smells like after about fifty years.

  I felt my stomach go hollow. “My god,” I said. “I think it really might be something rare.”

  Nevada was staring at me. “You can tell by smelling it?”

  Tinkler saw the expression on my face and immediately took the record from me. He began to unwrap it. Actually, “unwrap” is a considerable understatement. He ripped into it like the degenerate lord of the manor tearing at the bodice of the innocent chambermaid in a cheap romance novel. Bits of paper were flying everywhere.

  Nevada watched, eyes gleaming. “I knew you wanted it, Tinkler, because you have a picture of it hanging on the wall. A framed picture of the cover, hanging on your living-room wall. That’s how much you want this record.”

  Tinkler was now standing there, holding the LP.

  It was hard to say who was more surprised, him or me.

  It was All the Cats Love Valerian, the final album by the great British 1960s rock band whom those cats were said to love. It featured a cover photograph of the eponymous singer. Valerian was a wild child and prototypical hippie chick, completely nude and sprawled on an old Persian rug in a room full of antique furniture with cats climbing all over everything. It was a great photo and indeed the album had been banned at the time because of this image of Valerian’s provocative nudity—although some strategically placed antiques and the odd cat spared her modesty.

  It was an incredibly rare item.

  “Holy fuckaroo,” murmured Tinkler.

  “The Bard could not have put it better himself,” Nevada said. Then, looking at me, “You didn’t think it was the real McCoy, did you?”

  This was true. “Well…”

  “Never doubt me,” she said complacently, picking up the cover and studying it. “Did the cats really love Valerian? She must have really loved them if she actually owned all this lot. I mean if they were her cats.”

  I went over to her. “No, it’s just a photo shoot. It was a play on words.”

  “What was?”

  “The title.”

  “How so?”

  “Because all the cats do love valerian. It’s the name of a kind of herb, and apparently cats just love it. They go wild for it. Rolling in it. Sniffing it. Eating it.”


  “Like catnip?” said Nevada.

  “Exactly like catnip. Nip and valerian are the two drugs of choice for cats.”

  “Speaking of drugs,” said Tinkler, “have you seen this?” He delved into his pocket and took out a scrap of newspaper. It was the front page of a tabloid with the headline STINKY STANMER COCAINE BUST across the top.

  “My god,” said Nevada.

  “He’s your neighbour, you know,” said Tinkler.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s in the Abbey.” He nodded towards the window, and the garden beyond. Just over our back wall were the elegant white battlements of London’s leading celebrity detox and rehab centre.

  Nevada lowered the newspaper, which she’d studied carefully. “What? Why isn’t he behind bars? I mean behind proper bars.”

  Tinkler shook his head. “I suppose no one was in a hurry to have a whimpering celebrity cluttering up the prison system.”

  I said, “I can understand that.”

  “What a shame,” said Nevada. “I’d have thought they would have slammed him in the… slammer.” She started striding back and forth. She seemed to be taking this personally. “Christ. He’s going to be right next door? We’ll never get rid of him.” She glanced at me. “He’ll be around here incessantly trying to chat me up and steal your ideas and generally making himself obnoxious.”

  Tinkler grinned. “Newsflash. If he so much as sets one toe outside the grounds of the Abbey they’re going to rescind the deal and put him into a real, high-security prison complete with abundant scary cell mates and ample rape in the showers.”

  This put a different complexion on things. Nevada stopped striding and smiled a big smile.

  “I just love the word ‘rescind’,” she said.

  * * *

  I duly wrote a post about the epochal discovery of All the Cats Love Valerian the next day, giving Nevada full credit for the discovery. When I finished, I pushed the button and the blog went live. In the kitchen I heard Nevada grunting with approval as she read it on her iPhone. Then she put on her jacket in the hallway and peered around the door at me.

  “Who don’t you doubt?”

  “You.”

  “That’s right.” She blew me a kiss and headed out, going shopping. Charity shopping.

  In a way, this was my fault.

  I had introduced Nevada to the world of charity shops in the first place. I routinely trawled every one of these in southwest London in search of rare records, which was my business. In the course of accompanying me on a portion of this perpetual quest, she had come to discover that the shops weren’t the malodorous quivering dens of parasitic insect life she had first supposed and, much more to the point, could be the source of some spectacular high-fashion but low-price acquisitions.

  Now that we were living together she had taken to scouring them on a regular basis, and was always coming home with a bargain pair of Louboutin sneakers or a phenomenally inexpensive Dolce & Gabbana breechclout or something.

  I returned to my blog and added a bit more detail. I gave some background about the band and Valerian herself, but I didn’t mention her unpleasant fate or what had happened to her little boy.

  More than enough had been written on these subjects already.

  The phone rang. It was Nevada. “It’s autumn,” she said.

  “Yes. I’d noticed.”

  “It’s just perfect.”

  “What’s perfect?”

  “I’ve got an idea. For Tinkler’s birthday party.”

  “Well?” I said. “Spill the beans.”

  “It’ll be a surprise. For you as well as him. And Clean Head. For everyone.”

  I said, “I don’t think Tinkler can take any more surprises.”

  * * *

  I woke up in the middle of the night, instantly aware that something was wrong. Fanny moaned in complaint as I shifted under the covers. The little opportunist was huddled up to me, for my body heat. Which was odd, because she’d been favouring Nevada of late. I rolled over in bed and reached out for Nevada.

  She was gone.

  I fumbled for the alarm clock and held it close enough to my face to read. It was three in the morning. The godforsaken hour when hope fails, the frail and elderly die, and—apparently—your girlfriend goes missing.

  I called her name and checked the bathroom and kitchen, but I already sensed that the house was empty. I pulled on some clothes as I searched the other rooms, increasingly anxious.

  Then, suddenly, I knew where she’d be. I went into the kitchen again and opened the curtains, peering out. There she was. I put on my shoes and a scarf—it was a cold night—and went out to join her.

  My little house is in a small square of similar buildings on the raised concrete platform of a large housing estate, the kind London’s councils built before they knew better. It’s been much improved over the years, and what is now a large sunken basin adjacent to our houses, full of low buildings, fir trees and winding footpaths, was once an underground car park and the estate’s giant boiler room. You can look down into this basin over some railings at the edge of our square.

  That was where Nevada was standing now.

  I went and joined her. She glanced at me, then took my hand and resumed staring downwards. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. Her hand was cold.

  “Bad dreams?”

  “Bad memories.”

  The basin below was lit by high streetlamps. Their amber glow gave it a slightly eerie cast. It was the kind of light that would have made a puddle of blood look utterly black.

  There was no blood down there now, of course. It had been washed away long ago—in an uncharacteristic burst of efficiency by the local authorities.

  I looked at Nevada’s face and realised, with astonishment, that she was scared. This was doubly strange because she hadn’t been scared at the time. Indeed, she had saved both our lives.

  Later, looking back at this moment, I couldn’t help wondering if perhaps it wasn’t the past that frightened her. Not what had happened but in some inexplicable way, what was yet to come…

  I felt her shiver and I wrapped my arms around her.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, holding her tight. “It’s all over now.”

  I didn’t know it was just beginning.

  2. DINNER PARTY

  While I did all our day-to-day cooking, Nevada liked to prepare the occasional elaborate dessert for a special occasion, and it turned out this was the birthday boy’s surprise.

  “I’m going to do a tart. A tart for Tinkler,” she announced one morning. Shortly thereafter she started purchasing and assembling ingredients, which for some reason was a protracted and clandestine business. Finally she was ready to start cooking.

  The tart, prepared under conditions of strictest secrecy, was smelling good by the time our guests showed up on the night of Tinkler’s party. First to appear was an elegant apparition in a white trench coat with a bottle of wine under one arm and a long thin cardboard tube under the other.

  This was Agatha DuBois-Kanes, better known by her now firmly affixed nickname of Clean Head. We had met her, a beautiful mixed-race woman with a shaven head, in her capacity as a taxi driver, piloting one of London’s fleet of storied black cabs. But on this occasion she had got one of her colleagues to chauffeur her to our place. No driving for her tonight.

  “I fully intend to get blotto,” she said, handing me the bottle of wine as she kissed me. She smelled good. I was about to ask her about the cardboard tube when the doorbell rang again. It was the birthday boy himself, resplendent in a Hugo Boss jacket, Paul Smith sweater and Woodhouse trousers, all of which Nevada had found for him at various times in her charity shop excursions. I wasn’t surprised to see him dressed to the nines. Tinkler had a doomed passion for Clean Head.

  Supper went well and, as usual, I began to relax as soon as people had hungrily cleaned their plates and asked for second helpings. “What is this cheese?” said Tinkler. “I think I’ve c
onceived an unnatural infatuation for it. Can a man love a cheese? Would we be happy together?”

  As the evening progressed I provided the music, selecting the records. These were mostly jazz and Brazilian—sometimes Brazilian jazz—and Nevada made sure the wine glasses stayed full. We took a little break between the main course and dessert, allowing Clean Head to give Tinkler his birthday present, which of course is what the cardboard tube turned out to be.

  It contained a poster of the Rolling Stones. A moody black and white shot of them in their surly heyday, circa 1968—Beggars Banquet era—by the great rock photographer David Wedgbury. It was a perfect gift for Tinkler, and so thoughtfully chosen that I began to wonder if his passion was entirely doomed after all.

  Then, with much ceremony, Nevada carried in the tart.

  It was a beautiful confection of almond pastry, with a glazed surface of sliced apricots. It was also oddly thick. “This is a very special tart,” she said coyly, setting it on the table.

  “You’re a very special tart,” said Tinkler. For which he got kicked under the table.

  “It is special,” persisted Nevada, taking out a pie cutter, “because it has an utterly unique ingredient.” She drew a careful line across the glazed fruit with the cutter, dividing the tart neatly in half. Then another line the other way, forming a perfect cross.

  The tart was now divided into quarters. She set about subdividing each of these. When she was finished, it was divided into sixteenths.

  She carefully insinuated the point of the pie server under one of these tiny wedges and began to prise it out. “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said. Nevada smiled triumphantly as she lifted out the first miniature serving of tart. “Tinkler isn’t going to settle for a portion that small,” I said.

  She handed the plate to Tinkler. “It’s a very special dessert.”

  “So you keep saying.” I was looking at the slice. I could see the inside of the tart now, and there was a curious brown layer under the yellowish apricot slices. “Those aren’t berries.”

  “Who said anything about berries?” Nevada was smiling at me.