The Run-Out Groove Read online

  “Oh yeah, right, anyway—hey that ties in with exactly what I was talking about. Blank Title, right. When we last got back together and recorded an album, when was it, last April? No, the April before that. It was at Olympic Studios in fact…” He seemed to have lost his thread again. He stared blankly into his glass.

  “Yes?” said Nevada helpfully.

  “You know, it really was weird,” said Erik. And I realised that he hadn’t lost his thread at all. He was overcome by memory. “You see, we were doing this song that we’d written. It was called ‘A Song for the Sister’. It was all about her. Cecilia. About the way we felt about her, and what had happened to her and everything. That poor kid got such a raw deal.”

  He shook his head and topped up his glass. “And we wrote this song about her, and we were recording it, and then we looked up and standing in the control booth there was this woman. Just standing there. And none of us recognised her. And we all thought, who the hell is that? She wasn’t there a minute ago. So we wrapped up the track and went in to see who it was. I was pissed off with Joey, the engineer, for letting a stranger into the session and I was going to give him a bollocking, but then he whispered to me.” He looked up at us, his eyes bright with the booze, but not just with that. “And he told me who she was.”

  “And who was she?” said Nevada.

  “Cecilia,” he said. “It was so weird. Here we were recording a song about her and she just turns up at that exact moment. Turns up out of nowhere. Apparently she’d hitchhiked up from Canterbury. She never did that. Never came to London. But for some reason she did this time, and walks into Olympic Studios at just the moment when we were recording that song, of all songs. None of us recognised her. She’d changed so much.” He shook his head. “She was such a mess. I can’t imagine anybody picking up a hitchhiker who looked like that. But she got here.”

  I was staring at him. A sudden chill had wormed its way up my spine. The world had ceased to make sense and I needed to put it back together again. Nevada was staring at me. “You say this was Cecilia Drummond?”

  “Yeah. Cecilia.”

  “Here in London. A year and a half ago?”

  “Around about then, I guess.”

  I said, “But she’s been dead for twenty years.”

  Erik stared at us for a long moment. Then he chuckled. “Oops,” he said. He looked at the glass in his hand as though someone had placed it there without his knowledge. “That’s right.”

  “What do you mean, ‘that’s right’?” I was eager for the world to make sense again.

  “I guess I let the cat out of the bag.” Erik chuckled. “Oh well, I suppose it had to come out sometime.”

  “You mean she’s not dead?” said Nevada.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, what the hell is going on?” I said.

  Erik sighed and poured the last of the vodka into his glass. “Like you said, it was about twenty years ago. Some tabloid newspaper ran a story about how Cecilia had died in a loony bin. It was a big deal, you know, a chance to dig up all the shit from the past and sell a few papers. All the other papers jumped on the bandwagon. The story was everywhere.” He chuckled again and grinned at us. He looked like a mischievous kid. “But it was wrong. The fuckers had got it wrong. You see, what happened was that some woman called Drummond with the same initial as Cecilia—C. Drummond—had died in a psychiatric hospital in Kent and some reporter had put two and two together and got twenty-two.” He shook his head fondly. “The dumb fucks.”

  “And no one discovered it was a mistake?”

  “Well, we did.” Erik smiled happily. “Me and the boys in the band. Of course we did. The only people who really cared about her.”

  Nevada shook her head. “But you never told anyone else?”

  “Well, at first we were going to.” Erik looked at us slyly. “Then we thought, why? It would just mean more hideous fucking publicity. And the way things were, Cecilia could actually be left in peace. When you think about it, it was a blessing in disguise. So we just let everyone go on thinking she was dead. And it worked.”

  We all looked at each other. “Holy shit,” said Nevada.

  “You didn’t tell Nic Vardy about her?” I said.

  “We especially didn’t tell Nic Vardy about her. He’s a photographer. What would he have done? Taken her picture. That’s the last thing any of us wanted, the state she’s in.”

  * * *

  The cold air sobered us up as we walked back through Barnes. Nevada huddled close to my side, sheltering from the wind. She said, “I had planned to scoot across the bridge to Hammersmith and do the charity shops. But after all those revelations…”

  “And all that vodka.”

  “And all that vodka, I don’t know if I’m up for the charity shops.” She took my arm and looked up at me. “Do you mind if we just go home? We can check on the little demons.”

  I shrugged. “Fine with me. I’ve got to get back anyway. The Colonel is due soon. He’s coming over to collect his single.”

  “And pay for it.”

  “He’s already paid. Freddie texted me to say thanks, the money had arrived.”

  “That was efficient,” said Nevada. “Yes, we’d better get back. The Colonel is likely to be on time.” Then she suddenly gripped my arm hard and stopped dead. “My god. We’re going to have to tell him about his sister.”

  “Absolutely not.”

  She stared at me. “But she’s alive. She’s his one surviving relative. He has to know.”

  “She was alive eighteen months ago when Erik Make Loud was cutting his album. Who knows what’s happened since then?”

  “What do you mean?”

  I said, “Erik told us he’s not in touch with her on any kind of a regular basis. For all we know she’s dropped dead of a heart attack or something in the meantime. Do you really want to take that chance? Tell the Colonel that his one surviving relative is still alive, and then discover she’s kicked the bucket?”

  “No, I suppose not. Not when you put it like that.” She looked at me. “But do you really think that’s likely to have happened? Her kicking the bucket?”

  “We’re not taking any chances,” I said. “We’re going to confirm Erik’s story, and see her in person, in the flesh. And when you and I have seen that she’s actually alive, then we’ll tell him.”

  * * *

  The Colonel certainly was on time, ringing the bell on the dot, standing outside our door looking pink and scrubbed in his full L.L.Bean winter regalia. The weather had really turned cold. I brought him in and Nevada made coffee—the second-best stuff—while I showed him the record and played it for him. I expected him to display some kind of a reaction to the eerie chant in the run-out groove—after all, this was his dead sister. But for all the expression I could discern on his face, he might as well have been listening to refrigerator noise. So I put the record back in its sleeve and we talked business until Nevada brought the coffee through.

  She sat with us at the table and Fanny came to join us, hopping into the one empty chair, which happened to be beside the Colonel. He reached down and patted her gently on the head as we talked. I told Nevada about the deal we’d struck. “I mentioned that a friend of ours is interested in acquiring the record when the Colonel—”

  “Mr Drummond,” said the Colonel, pausing sternly in his massage of our cat.

  “—When Mr Drummond is finished with it. And Mr Drummond has agreed to sell it to Tinkler for two hundred pounds.” This was a good deal for Tinkler, and for the Colonel for that matter, and I was proud of having struck it.

  “Providing your friend will sign an agreement giving me access to the record whenever I need it, to show to the media or whatever.” He gave Nevada a steely gaze. “I assume this friend is reliable?”

  “Oh, absolutely,” said Nevada.

  “Now,” I said, “I think you have something for us.”

  The Colonel frowned and looked up from stroking Fanny. “Something
for you?”

  “You said you’d bring over the documents. Lucy’s father’s material about Valerian. The photocopies she brought over from Morocco.”

  “Oh, that,” said Colonel, and resumed his attentions to the cat. “I’m afraid I can’t help you with that.”

  “Why not?”

  “It seems that Lucille,” he intoned the name with heavy sarcasm, “managed to screw things up.”

  “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “She took them into this printing place to get them scanned and there was some kind of mix-up. Before they could scan them they lost them. Apparently they were handed over to someone. A customer. The wrong customer. And they went off with them and now the printing place doesn’t know where they are and disavows any responsibility for losing them. This is just so typical of that woman.”

  He seemed almost happy in his bitterness. “So typical. She insisted on choosing this print shop to look after it, and they’ve gone and lost them. Just let someone walk in off the street and waltz away with them.”

  Nevada and I looked at each other.

  “Welcome back to Paranoia Heights,” she said softly. “We hope you enjoy your stay.”

  14. ROCK PUB

  “I think Tinkler suspects something,” said Nevada, over the noise of the traffic.

  “I’d be surprised if he didn’t,” I said. “You were carrying on like Mata Hari.”

  “Well, it’s just that I have no gift for intrigue.” I showed what I thought of this proposal with a snort. “All right,” she allowed. “Under normal circumstances I do have a certain gift for intrigue. When it’s called for. But not when it involves pulling the wool over poor Tinkler’s eyes. Isn’t that an odd expression? I’ll have to look up where it comes from. Wool over the eyes. I mean he is our friend and everything.”

  We waited for a gap in the steady stream of cars and then walked across Rocks Lane. It was a cold night with a high white moon. A full moon. Turk would be out hunting. I hoped she was okay.

  “‘And everything’ is right,” I said. “If Tinkler found out we were going to one of London’s legendary rock pubs, to see a pop goddess who has been presumed dead for two decades…” We paused and crossed Queen’s Ride. The traffic grew thinner as we moved away from the main road.

  “And what’s worse, it’s in Putney, this legendary rock pub. I mean it’s in Tinkler’s back yard. His stomping ground.”

  “He doesn’t have a stomping ground. He doesn’t stomp. In fact, he doesn’t get out much.” Tinkler’s idea of an adventurous evening was smoking dope and sitting in front of his hi-fi. It has to be said, it is a very good hi-fi.

  “Still, it does seem a bit of a betrayal,” said Nevada.

  “If he’d known we were going he would have insisted on coming along. And we don’t want to freak Cecilia out. With any additional attention, I mean.”

  Nevada shrugged. “It sounds like she’s fairly thoroughly freaked out already.” We turned off Queen’s Ride and went left, walking down Gipsy Lane.

  “Also he would have pestered Erik Make Loud for an autograph.”

  “That’s a point,” she said. “He would have wanted Erik to sign that copy of All the Cats Love Valerian. That rare prize which I found for him.”

  “Hell no,” I said. “Tinkler will want to keep the cover pristine.”

  “Oh.”

  “He would have wanted Erik to sign a piece of paper especially designed to slip inside the album without damaging it.”

  Nevada sighed. “Ah well, it’s all academic. Since we didn’t tell him where we’re going.” We slowed down now, both because the footpath narrowed here and because we were approaching the shrine that marked the spot where Marc Bolan had died in a car crash. It looked ghostly in the moonlight, a weather-beaten little affair. It obviously still received considerable attention. “His fans are just as dedicated as Valerian’s,” said Nevada, looking at it as we walked past. “Although he doesn’t have a giant oak tree devoted to him.”

  “A giant, spurious oak tree.”

  “Very spurious, yes.” Nevada turned and looked at me. Her face was pale in the moonlight, her dark eyes huge. “What was all that business about the Mars Bar? You know, the Evil Elf’s brother. What he told us.”

  “Gordon Treverton.”

  “Yes. What was he talking about?”

  “Well, I was going to get Tinkler to explain, but since we’re deliberately avoiding him…”

  “Only for this evening.”

  “To cut a long story short, the police made a drug bust, bursting in on Valerian when she was in bed with some guy. Her tour manager, I think. And it was said they found him in the act of eating a popular brand of chocolate bar, out of her… intimate apertures.”

  “Nicely put.”

  “But then after she died the whole story promptly migrated to Marianne Faithfull and Mick Jagger.” Which said something interesting about the nature of urban myths. “They were also caught, allegedly in flagrante, during a drug bust.”

  “I see. I think. How extraordinary.”

  “And now it’s your turn.”

  She looked at me, smiling. “Is it?”

  “To explain something to me.”

  “Oh.”

  “Who was Messalina?”

  “Oh, that. Have you never seen I, Claudius with Derek Jacobi? Well, you must. We’ll have to download it. Or I’ve got a copy of Graves’s book somewhere. No wait, damn it, I lent it to Clean Head. It was a Penguin edition. That’s why I haven’t got it back. You have to watch that girl. She’s very nice and all that but she will steal your Penguin paperbacks. She has a particular weakness for the Penguin Modern Classics series. It’s a character defect.”

  “And Messalina?” I said.

  Nevada took my hand in hers. The fabric of our gloves squeaked. “Well, she was a notorious trollop. She was Claudius’s wife and she was unfaithful on a sort of industrial scale. She is, I suppose, what in an earlier and more innocent age we would have called a nymphomaniac.”

  “You don’t hear that term much anymore,” I said.

  “Perhaps because it’s been assimilated into ordinary standards of behaviour. I’ve certainly done my part to contribute to that tendency.”

  “Haven’t we all?”

  “Anyway, Messalina. The story goes that she once challenged Rome’s leading prostitute…”

  “This is ancient Rome we’re talking about here.”

  “Yes. You have to picture them all wearing sandals and in Messalina’s case not much else. So she challenged ancient Rome’s leading professional prostitute to see who could, ahem, ‘service’ the most men in a single night. Messalina won by a country mile, so to speak. The prostitute fled with some harsh words about what an insatiable, depraved slut Messalina was.”

  I let the implications of this sink in. “So Colonel Drummond,” I said, “I mean the real Colonel—Valerian’s father—he had to read about that in the newspapers. How his daughter was British pop music’s answer to Messalina?”

  “Yes,” said Nevada. “He had to read it over his breakfast marmalade, as it were.” She looked up at me. “Nice, huh?”

  “Not very.”

  Nevada squeezed my hand tight. “We’re going to meet Cecilia Drummond.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What are we going to say?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We can ask her why her sister hanged herself.”

  “If she did hang herself,” I said.

  * * *

  As we walked through the door of the pub, into the welcome warmth and smell of beer, Nevada said, “Erik was very insistent we shouldn’t refer to him by name.”

  “I remember. You said.”

  “He doesn’t want to be mobbed by his fans. A natural anxiety, I’m sure.”

  We spotted him immediately, sitting at the bar. He was wearing a blue and white striped jacket and straw hat, for all the world as if he’d been hanging around since the boat race
last spring. He was even wearing sunglasses, despite it being an autumn night, and indoors. Apparently this was his idea of incognito.

  He was chatting up, or trying to chat up, the pretty girl serving him. She was smiling tolerantly as she waited for the foam to settle on his pint of Guinness. “And a gin and tonic, please, love,” he said as we joined him. “Might as well get them in before the show starts,” he commented, grinning at us. “So you made it, eh?”

  “Thank you for tipping us off about this,” I said. “It’s a perfect opportunity.” He didn’t seem to hear me. Maybe he was a man embarrassed by gratitude. Or made deaf by stadium rock.

  Nevada smiled at him as she unwound her scarf. “Can you believe I’ve never been here?” she said, pausing to unbutton her coat. “I mean, we live around the corner, right in the neighbourhood, and I’ve never been here.”

  “Spoiled a perfect record, eh?” said Erik. He peered around, perhaps trying to see through his sunglasses.

  Like the Bull’s Head in Barnes, and a million other music venues the world over, the Half Moon consisted of a large front room that was a saloon bar with doors at the back that led into a dedicated music area. But the music wasn’t in the back room tonight. Instead, one corner of the pub had been kept clear of customers—not a difficult challenge given the sparseness of the crowd—and featured an acoustic guitar poised upright on a stand, a stool, and a hand-lettered placard on a music stand that read ALL THE WAY FROM CANTERBURY… THE SPIRIT OF THE JAGUAR.

  “This is perfect,” said Erik. “You can meet Ambrose, her manager, and decide what you want to do about an interview.” He peered at us over his sunglasses. His eyes were surprisingly clear for a man who was drinking Guinness and gin. “You can go down and see them in Canterbury or whatever. I didn’t feel right just giving you Cecilia’s address. But you can meet here, on neutral ground, and take it from there.”

  “What did you tell her?” I said.

  “I didn’t tell her anything.” He sipped his drink. “I spoke to him. You have to speak to him. Ambrose. The amazing Ambrose Smith.”

  “What did you tell him?”