The Run-Out Groove Read online

  “Is that significant?” said Nevada.

  “It means that whoever set us up didn’t know about Clean Head. Or didn’t know much about her.”

  “They do now,” said Nevada. “Unfortunately.” The cat flap rattled open and Turk came scurrying in and peered at us proudly. “Ah,” said Nevada. “I’ve been looking for you, young lady.” She made kissing noises and Turk came over and hopped up onto the sofa between us. Her fur was wet from the recent rain and, as I stroked her, it grew rapidly dry under my fingers. Nature’s finest weather proofing.

  While I was patting Turk, Nevada went to fetch a piece of paper. When she’d visited the Colonel she’d also dropped by Stinky Stanmer’s office in Soho. Part of our agreement with Stinky was that we’d pass the occasional ‘vital message’ back to him from his business people. Initially I’d been concerned that this would prove an endless and onerous task. But Nevada had put her foot down and we now had Stinky’s people quite well trained. They even provided the messages on small pieces of paper especially designed to fit neatly under Turk’s collar.

  As soon as she saw the piece of paper, Turk lifted her head so Nevada could get easy access to her collar. She was a clever cat and she knew this routine meant a luxury fish meal was waiting for her, just on the other side of the wall.

  The note was no sooner in place than Turk squirmed out of my grasp, hopped off the sofa, and rattled briskly out through the cat flap again. I went to the window and watched her move through the garden, hop onto the wall and disappear over it. “I’m going to time her,” I said.

  “And I’ll ring Clean Head. About Mission: Morocco.”

  I went out into the garden. The air was clean and cool after the rain. Soaked red and yellow leaves lay thick across the ground. I told myself that once the trees had finally finished shedding their autumn load I was going to make a concerted effort to rake up the leaves and generally tidy the place. I’m the first to admit that such tasks don’t come naturally to me. Give me a difficult-to-set-up cartridge any day. I’m more comfortable with a stylus protractor and alignment gauge than a rake and a black bin bag.

  I was still staring at the graceful white façade of the Abbey, and trying to work out whether the window I’d imagined was Stinky’s might actually be Stinky’s, when Turk came bounding back over the wall. The note was gone from under her collar. I checked the time. Just under three minutes. She was a fast eater. And Stinky must have had a fridge in his room stocked with seafood treats.

  We went back inside together, Turk waiting for me to open the door for her. Despite the presence of cat flaps in every available portal, the little fiends still liked to have doors opened for them. I guess it was a luxury.

  Nevada was grinning at me as I stepped inside. She held up the phone. “Well, I spoke to her and, not surprisingly, Clean Head is up for an all-expenses-paid weekend in Morocco. I also rang the Colonel and cleared it with him. So it’s full speed ahead! Clean Head asked if she could bring us back a present for sending a free holiday her way, and I said she’d bloody well better.” Nevada nodded with satisfaction. “So she will get us something nice in the way of wine. I’ve given her a list. She might be able to get Chateau Musar cheap over there. It’s that part of the world.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “And you’ll also be pleased to hear that Clean Head has made restitution.”

  “How so?”

  Nevada smiled. “She sent some money to that poor woman in Canterbury.”

  “The woman whose books she stole?”

  “Stole is such a harsh word.” Turk was writhing with pleasure as Nevada scratched her tummy. “She sent a generous cash settlement by courier, strictly anonymously.”

  “So there’s no chance of her actually returning the books?”

  “Are you kidding? She’s raving that she got all the Iris Murdochs she was looking for. The ones with the wild cover photos.”

  * * *

  I dug out the business card that Dr Osterloh had given to us when we had so memorably crossed paths in Canterbury. I saw on the back of it he had printed an ad for his book. At the bottom it said, First editions still available—but going fast.

  I tried to ring the number on the card but all I got was voicemail. I considered leaving a message but instead I thought I’d try again later. I wanted a chance to think, anyway, about what approach to use with the good doctor. I called again later that day. Still voicemail. I wanted to speak to him in person, if at all possible.

  I tried intermittently over the next few days, always getting voicemail.

  I decided if I did leave a message it would be to say that I wished to buy a signed hardcover of The Sovereignty of the Self. That ought to flush him out of the undergrowth.

  Clean Head came back from Morocco with a bottle—a magnum, actually—of Chateau Musar for us in an attractive wooden box. And the documents. She was looking chic in tight black leggings, pink Converse high tops and a leather jacket. When she unzipped the jacket it revealed a stylishly baggy white t-shirt with a legend in bold, black letters that read, I WENT TO CANTERBURY AND ALL I GOT WAS THIS LOUSY MURDER ATTEMPT.

  “It’s a present from Tinkler,” she said. “What do you think?”

  I was speechless.

  Nevada said, “It’s reminiscent of Katharine Hamnett.”

  “I understand your Iris Murdoch collection has improved recently,” I said.

  Clean Head smiled at me, eyes gleaming with enthusiasm. “Yes, I’ve now got all the ones with Harri Peccinotti covers. I’ve been looking for some of those for years.” Then she went next door with Nevada to talk about whatever it is women talk about when they slip away to strategise.

  I spent the afternoon going through the cache of documents about Valerian. I had imagined it would be handwritten papers such as letters and journals, and there were indeed a lot of those. But there were also newspaper clippings, tear-sheets from magazines, photographs and even drawings. Among the photographs was one of Monty Tegmark. He looked just like his daughter. They had identical pug noses set in matching potato faces. I didn’t even need to find the scan of the back of the photo and read the typed caption to identify him—although I did, and saw the photo was credited to one Nicholas Vardy.

  I showed it to Nevada. “Lucille takes after her father.”

  “Doesn’t she just? Poor thing.”

  In the evening Tinkler came over for supper and to assist. He’d brought his laptop to help try and organise the Valerian documents into some kind of a database. “This is where my spectrum disorder side comes in really handy,” he said, peering cheerfully into the computer screen. “Actually you’re really lucky.”

  “Why?”

  “Clean Head has done an amazing job.”

  Nevada looked in from the kitchen where she was theoretically doing the washing up but was actually playing with the cats. “As if you’d say anything else, love-struck boy.”

  “No, really,” said Tinkler, studying the screen. “She hasn’t just scanned the documents optically, she’s actually taken all the printed material—all the material that is in the form of printed text—”

  “Yes, yes, we get it.”

  “Well, she has scanned all that stuff in using OCR software.”

  “You’re sure it’s not OCD software?” said Nevada.

  “Optical character recognition,” said Tinkler. “And it’s a very sophisticated algorithm. It’s managed to make sense of the rather blurry type on the faded newspaper clippings, of which there are several hundred in the archive.”

  “So why does that help us?” said Nevada.

  “Because it’s searchable,” I said.

  * * *

  The next morning I got up early, fed the cats, put some music on—Lucy Ann Polk—and went to sit at the computer. I fired up the database Tinkler had prepared.

  I typed in the name ‘John Blacklock’.

  Sure enough, several documents were immediately selected. I clicked on them and started to read.

>   John Blacklock, real name Neville Stimping, was indeed Irish. He had been an orphan—parents unknown—and had been raised in a church orphanage: not a fate I would have wished on anyone in rural Ireland in the 1940s and 1950s. In the late 1950s he had run away, and eventually managed to stay away, from these institutions. He had then been at the centre of a bohemian set in Dublin. There had always been a mystical tendency in Irish literary circles and, at its extremes, this had led to people who should have known better dabbling in the ‘dark arts’. Like his illustrious predecessor Aleister Crowley, Blacklock had seen a marketing opportunity here and had proceeded to peddle his own particular brand of snake oil to the well heeled and gullible.

  The arrival of the swinging 1960s, with its soft-headed enthusiasm for drugs and the occult, had pretty much represented a gold rush for people such as Blacklock and he had wasted no time moving to London and taking advantage of folk like Valerian.

  There were photographs of him in the archive. He was clean-shaven, slightly soft-looking, all dressed in black with carefully coiffured black hair. In one shot he was holding a human skull, like some hack actor playing Hamlet. It was a head and shoulders shot of him, holding the skull against his chest. The jagged whiteness of the bone was strikingly in contrast to the soft, black garment he wore. His black eyes peered out intently. It was hard to deny him some charisma, at least in this arresting shot. I checked the photo credit, in small print at the bottom right edge of the picture.

  Photograph by Nic Vardy.

  Ah, Nic, I thought. You didn’t catch him just getting off the crapper here, did you? No attempt to minimise the subject’s magnetism in this case.

  At that moment the doorbell rang and one of the cats came hammering excitedly through the cat flap. They sometimes did this when people arrived, rushing past the visitor and disappearing inside. They’d almost given one postman a heart attack.

  It was Fanny. She came trotting into the room and started washing herself as Nevada answered the door. I heard voices. Lucy and the Colonel. Unusual to hear them together. And it didn’t even sound like they were fighting. At least not yet.

  The Colonel bustled in and immediately came and stared over my shoulder at the computer screen. “Very good,” he said. “Tinkler Dropboxed us a copy of the archive, all organised on his database. It’s useful, isn’t it?”

  “Very,” I said.

  Nevada came through and took the Colonel’s coat. “What, no lamb from Harrods?” she said, and he chuckled. Lucy came in and also looked over my shoulder.

  “That’s my father’s article,” she said proudly. I checked the by-line on it—which embarrassingly I hadn’t bothered to look at, despite carefully scrutinising the provenance of the accompanying photo. She was right. A special report by Monty Tegmark.

  It had been published in one of the Sunday tabloids, in the same year that Valerian had died.

  The Colonel was marching around the room, peering out the window, pretending that he wasn’t going to end up sitting beside the cat. “We’re going to Ireland,” he said. Ireland? I thought. Then, we? I wondered if there had been some sort of rapprochement between the two of them.

  “We’re getting separate flights,” said Lucy. “And staying in separate hotels. Apparently I’m going to foot my own bills, too.” This sounded a lot more like it.

  “I’m quite happy to pay for your hotel if you remain in London,” said the Colonel, sitting down beside Fanny. “But if you insist on coming with me to Dublin—”

  “I need to go,” said Lucy.

  “You are to have absolutely no involvement with any of my activities while I am over there.” The Colonel reached down and scratched Fanny behind the ear. She lifted her head to give him better access.

  “I don’t want any involvement in your activities. I just need to soak up the atmosphere. For the book.”

  “Dublin,” I said. “Have you been reading about Blacklock?”

  The Colonel nodded. “And Nevada told me about your suspicions concerning the possible paternity of Valerie’s son.”

  “We don’t know anything for certain,” I said, or started to say. He immediately waved his hands in the air in protest. Fanny yelped at the sudden cessation of the stroking and he immediately resumed it, properly rebuked.

  “I’m going to see what I can do to confirm or deny the rumour. I will be making use of local sources, researchers and investigators.”

  “He’s going to hire a private eye,” said Lucy contemptuously.

  “You don’t want me to look into it?” I felt both relieved and obscurely offended. The Colonel shook his head vigorously, as he continued to caress Fanny’s little head with both hands.

  “I want you to stay here and continue making progress,” he said.

  “We’re making progress?” I said, surprised and pleased.

  He gave me a sardonic look. “Number one, my sister who had been presumed dead for twenty years, turns out to be alive. Number two, she has been talking to you when we thought she wasn’t capable of speech. Number three, we might have found the identity of the father of Valerie Anne’s son.” He looked down, rubbing his hands on Fanny’s whiskers. “Yes, I would say you were making progress.”

  * * *

  The following day I rang Dr Osterloh’s number again and finally got an answer. It was his secretary, who told me he was at a conference in Zurich and wouldn’t be back until the end of the week. She promised she’d get him to ring me immediately on his return. She sounded very Scandinavian and very efficient. I didn’t even have to offer to buy his book.

  Despite her promises I hung up feeling thwarted. I would have to wait days before I could speak to Osterloh. It was all very frustrating. Surprisingly so. I felt anxious and tense. Then I realised why I was so eager to talk to him.

  It was so I could avoid thinking about the other possibility.

  But there was no dodging it now. I sat staring out the window, not registering the familiar view. I thought it over and decided I was right. We’d have to pursue it. Nevada came in and immediately realised something was wrong. Maybe I just looked miserable.

  “What is it?” she said. She sat down beside me, looking at me with concern. “What’s the matter?”

  “Do you remember what Cecilia said to us in Canterbury, just before we left?”

  “I’m hardly likely to forget it.”

  “But do you remember exactly what she said? ‘Do you want to know the truth about my sister? She took it to the grave with her. That’s where it is. All of it. That’s where it is now.’”

  Nevada looked at me.

  She said, “You don’t think…”

  21. CINEPHILE

  Valerian’s grave was in a little churchyard in Canterbury.

  “Back to bloody Canterbury,” said Nevada, as we sat on the train.

  “It was the family home,” I said. “This is where her father, the Colonel—the real Colonel—lived. So it makes sense that they brought her back here to bury her.”

  “Oh it makes sense, all right. But it’s still the same poxy place to have to visit again. I mean, if we were going buzzing around the UK enjoying its diverse cultural heritage, that’s one thing. But always going to sodding Canterbury, that’s quite another.”

  I said, “You’re just not wild about the place because we were almost lured to our doom in its sunny streets.”

  “True,” said Nevada. “I went to Canterbury and all I got was almost burned alive.” She looked at me. “Maybe I should print my own t-shirt.”

  “You have to have the word ‘lousy’ in there, or it doesn’t qualify.”

  She peered out the window at the speedily unfurling countryside, which was just then obscured by a passing train, thundering by in the opposite direction. We had caught the 11:22 from Victoria that morning. “That business about her father explains why Valerian is buried there, but it doesn’t explain why Cecilia is living there.”

  “Presumably when she went mad they slung her into the nearest loony b
in.”

  “Don’t think the insensitivity of your language has escaped notice.”

  “I’m laughing to keep from crying,” I said. “All right, let’s call it her nervous breakdown. That was the jargon at the time. And she had her first nervous breakdown just after she buried her sister.” I’d been reading about the incident in newspaper accounts in the archive. Very lurid newspaper accounts. I suppose it invited that. It was a huge, juicy story. Little boy disappears. Pop princess hangs self. Now sister goes insane. The cash registers just kept on ringing.

  “And so she spent all the intervening years at a psychiatric hospital in Canterbury?” said Nevada.

  “Various hospitals. In and around the city.” I shrugged. “This was as far as Cecilia got. It’s weird to think about. She was a schoolgirl in Canterbury, dreaming about the big wide world. And sure enough, off she went with her sister and the band and they did go everywhere, Australia, Japan, Brazil, Mexico, the States and Singapore, but she ends up back here in Canterbury. Back where she started, stuck here for all the remaining years. Just like it never happened. Just like she never went away.”

  “You know what,” said Nevada. She leaned over in the seat towards me, eyes bright. She was genuinely quite excited. “That would be a wonderful angle for the documentary.”

  “It would,” I said. “If we were actually making a documentary.”

  There was a pause while our train rattled past Rochester.

  “Good point,” she said, at last. “But I’m still the producer. You still have to fetch coffee for me.”

  “What else is new?”

  * * *

  We came into Canterbury East railway station and got a taxi the rest of the way. It took us past Boleyn Court, the wide green tree-lined grounds of St Augustine’s College and—I must admit I felt a little pang of apprehension as we passed it—HM Prison Canterbury.

  The taxi turned down a little lane beside the church. We paid off our driver and arranged for him to collect us at this spot in exactly an hour. The taxi pulled away and we turned to the church gate, an antique structure of dark, worn wood with a funny little triangular roof. As you stepped through there were wooden walls and small benches on either side of a flagstone path and a second gate inside. It was like a tiny little house, open at the front and back.