The Run-Out Groove Read online

  Vardy shut the drawer again and checked the label. “No. Definitely in here.” He pulled open the drawer again. Still just the one photo. He looked up at us with a contrite little smile. “One of my interns must have moved them.”

  “Why would they have done that?” I tried to keep my tone casual, but paranoia had by now become an occupational hazard. Vardy shrugged.

  “Oh, they might be in the middle of scanning them. Like I told you.” He moved to shut the drawer again, but Nevada stopped him. “May I have a look?” she said. She indicated the one photo lying face-down in the drawer. He picked it up and handed it to her.

  It was black and white, a head and shoulders shot of a smiling woman with an elfin face, turning to look at the camera, caught in a moment of surprise.

  Her pale hair was streaming around her face and she looked young and beautiful.

  “She’s lovely, isn’t she?” said Nevada. He nodded and she handed the photo back to him. “And that’s the only photo of Valerian you have to hand?”

  “That isn’t Valerian,” said Vardy. “It’s her sister.”

  “Her sister?” Nevada looked at me.

  “Cecilia,” I said. “She used to play piano in the band and sing backing vocals.” I didn’t add that this was before her slide into mental illness. They’d been an ill-fated family.

  “They look a lot alike,” said Vardy, putting the photo back in the drawer and sliding it shut.

  * * *

  “Why didn’t you tell me Valerian had a sister?” said Nevada.

  “It didn’t come up.”

  “Surely we should be interviewing her?”

  “She died a few years ago.”

  “Even so, I should have known that she once existed. I was in grave danger of looking like a fool in there.” She glanced behind us at the marina and the street with Vardy’s house on the corner. We were taking a stroll back through Harbour Quay, heading for Canary Wharf, with the wind whipping cold off the water around us. I noticed that the moorhens had scarpered.

  “Don’t worry,” I said, “once he realised the depth of your loathing for Stinky you could do no wrong.”

  “Yes, he seemed like quite an agreeable chap once we established that common ground.” As reluctant as I was to agree with her after his initial rudeness, Vardy had indeed ended up being quite affable. He’d dug out some bread and cheese and even a bottle of what Nevada had identified quietly as a very good wine—already opened, I’d observed, and resealed with a vacuum stopper, but nonetheless a very good wine.

  And he had seen us off with a promise to find the photos or send us the digital scans. “Meanwhile I’ll dig out my contact sheets,” he’d said. “Those should jog my memory.” He’d even waved goodbye and hadn’t slammed the door behind us.

  “Not a complete shit, anyway,” I said.

  Nevada grinned. “You’re still angry at him, aren’t you?”

  “I’m slow to forgive.”

  “Still, an interesting bloke, you must admit.”

  “He’s very well preserved, for his age,” I allowed. “His hair and loathsome little goatee are still black.”

  Nevada snorted at my designation of his goatee. “He dyes it.”

  “Really?” I said. “You’re kidding.”

  “No. Not short of vanity, our Mr Vardy. So what now? Do we wait for him to dig out his photos and jog his memories? Or do we move to the next name on our list?”

  “Neither,” I said. “We go after the record. Valerian’s notorious lost single.”

  “The one you said you know where there’s a copy of it?” She paused. “Is that even a sentence? Not in English.”

  I nodded. “The guy who might have a copy is back from abroad. We’ll go and see him.”

  “Excellent. And this is the record with the satanic incantation recorded on it backwards?”

  “That’s the one.”

  Nevada took my arm and gathered herself more closely to me in the teeth of the chill wind. “So, do I need to bring my crucifix and holy water?”

  “It couldn’t do any harm.”

  8. THE SINGLES BARN

  “Here’s what I want for driving you,” said Tinkler.

  Nevada shook her head sadly. “I thought you were doing it out of the goodness of your heart.”

  I said, “I knew there had to be a condition.”

  “Just so we’re absolutely clear on this,” continued Tinkler, “I’m only doing you this enormous favour because I expect to be handsomely rewarded in return.”

  “Exactly what kind of reward do you expect, handsome?” Nevada was leaning forward from the back seat, towards where Tinkler and I sat in the front, so we could hear her over the roar of the engine and howling of the wind that battered the little car.

  “Well,” said Tinkler, “I was thinking along the lines of you asking Nic Vardy for an original print of his photo for the cover of All the Cats Love Valerian.”

  “Us asking?”

  “Yes. My god, I couldn’t ask him. I don’t know him.”

  “You want an original print?” I said.

  “I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall,” said Tinkler happily.

  I shook my head. “You don’t know what this Vardy character is like.”

  “He’s a brilliant photographer.”

  “He’s a right difficult bastard is what he is.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Nevada. “I’ll have him wrapped around my little finger in next to no time. Just you wait and see.”

  “Then you can ask him for me,” said Tinkler.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “You just expect Nic Vardy to give you one of his original photographic prints?”

  Tinkler frowned thoughtfully as he drove. “It’s hard to say exactly what constitutes ‘original’ in the context of a photographic print. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  “And you want this in return for driving us?”

  “That’s not all,” said Tinkler. “After you get the copy of ‘Butterfly Dreams’—”

  “Is that the name of the single?” said Nevada. “The title, I mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “‘Butterfly Dreams’. I like it.”

  “Millions of stoned hippies would no doubt have shared your opinion, if only they’d been given a chance to listen to it,” said Tinkler. “Anyway, when you get it from Freddie Forty-Five I would like it for myself. When you’re finished with it.”

  I said, “What do you mean, when we’re finished with it? We’re buying it for the Colonel.”

  “Yes, but he wants it—you all want it—so you can hear whatever secret sinister message is recorded on it, right?”

  “Right, okay, but—”

  “So when you’re finished listening to the message, let me have it and I can listen to the music. The music that comes before and after the sinister message. I mean the whole thing’s not a sinister message, is it?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  “So I might as well make use of the parts you’re not interested in.” Tinkler slowed for a red light. He was grinning placidly, evidently pleased with the elegant nature of his own logic.

  “You want to add it to your collection, I assume.”

  “Oh yes,” he said. “So, are we clear? When you’re finished with the record, give it to me.”

  “Give it to you?”

  “Well, the Colonel won’t need it anymore and he can resell it to me at a really knocked down rate. Or, preferably, as I suggest, give it to me gratis. In any case, I’ll be happy to take it off his hands. Your hands. Anybody’s hands.”

  Nevada sighed, “We’ll see what we can do, Tinkler.”

  * * *

  We drove out of London past the art deco elegance of the old Hoover Building and droned up the M11 towards Cambridge, turning off at Saffron Walden. Then we wound around the secondary roads, passing through smaller and smaller towns and then finally villages. We cruised past autumn fields and an old church, finally ending up on a winding rural lan
e.

  “We’re here,” I said.

  We drove in through a narrow wooden gateway between hedges with a sign on the side that said ST JUDE’S COTTAGE. As we crunched up the driveway we saw another sign that said THE SINGLES BARN.

  Then one that said TRESPASSERS WILL BE GOOSED.

  The gravel drive ran in a straight line from the gateway then opened up in a broad circle around a patch of unruly long grass with a pond in the centre of it, reflecting the milky afternoon sky. An elegant old Victorian park bench, painted green, looked out on the pond. We parked in a paved area on the left of the farmhouse. Over on the right, beyond some gardens, was the barn.

  I say ‘gardens’ plural because the place was a patchwork grid of them. It had once been farmland but now the fields around the dwellings had been subdivided into small units of hand-cultivated land. Some were planted with flowers and decorative shrubs, still showing a surprising amount of colour this late in the year. Others were devoted to fruit or vegetables. They were all irregular, interlocking shapes, like a jigsaw puzzle with its pieces set loosely together. Crazy curves of gravel paths led between them. The effect was less that of an ornamental garden than a very bohemian kibbutz.

  We got out and stretched our legs.

  “This is brilliant,” said Nevada, looking around. “I love this place. Can we explore?”

  “Actually,” I said—and just then her phone rang. She checked the number and showed me. Nic Vardy.

  “I’d better take this,” she said, moving away from the car. Of course… I remembered we’d given Vardy our numbers yesterday and asked him to get in touch when he’d succeeded in finding some of his photos of Valerian and/or managed to jog his memory of events of that last fateful weekend when Valerian had died and her little boy had vanished.

  I’d never actually expected to hear from him again, so this was a result. While Nevada was talking I went to the door of the farmhouse and knocked. Tinkler came and hovered at my shoulder. “Is no one in?” he said anxiously.

  “Give them a chance,” I said, and knocked again.

  “Aren’t they supposed to be in?”

  “Yes.” I knocked again. I was beginning to have a terrible sense of déjà vu.

  “I don’t think they’re in,” said Tinkler.

  “No.” We turned away from the front door and walked back onto the driveway. Nevada finished her call and looked at me. “That was old dye-job Vardy.”

  “So I gather.”

  “He’s managed to dig up a few pictures, just a few so far, but he’s sending them to us.”

  “That’s nice of him,” I said.

  “They’re not actually of Valerian.”

  “No, of course not.”

  “So, no nudes?” said Tinkler despondently.

  “No,” said Nevada. “And before you ask, no I didn’t have a chance to ask him about your print. The time didn’t seem right.”

  “Fair enough,” said Tinkler, stretching and yawning.

  “He told me they weren’t actually pictures of Valerian herself,” Nevada continued, “but they were all, as he put it, relevant. Ah, here are the images now.” She watched her phone for a moment, then showed it to us. The first picture was the one we had already seen of Cecilia, Valerian’s sister. The next one was of a very skinny and very hairy young man in a tie-dyed tank top intently playing an electric guitar. It was a moody black and white shot, full of energy.

  “That’s a classic.” Tinkler studied it happily.

  “Who is he?” asked Nevada.

  “Eric McCloud,” I said. “Lead guitarist in the band. Valerian nicknamed him Eric Make Loud and he adopted it. That’s what he’s called himself ever since.”

  “Except now he spells Erik with a ‘k’,” said Tinkler. “Because he thinks it makes him sound more like a Teutonic heavy metal guitar god.”

  “Is he a complete tosser?” said Nevada. “He sounds like a complete tosser.”

  Tinkler shook his head vigorously. “On the contrary. He is a guitar god. He played with Zappa.”

  “Oh well, if he played with Zappa,” said Nevada, scrolling through the photos on her screen. There were six more shots of Erik Make Loud in action, taken at various gigs. She moved through these quickly then stopped at the next image, which was of a gravestone in a rural churchyard. It was covered with bouquets of flowers, candles, photographs, scraps of writing, condolence cards, toys, dolls and teddy bears, wine and spirit bottles and sad little offerings of food.

  “This one is self-explanatory,” she said. “Her grave, yes? The poor thing. And they’ve turned it into a shrine, her fans.” She looked at me. “Where is this?”

  “Canterbury,” I said. “That’s where her family came from. The Drummonds.”

  “And it’s where the band came from,” said Tinkler. “They were part of the Canterbury scene.”

  “It’s so sad, isn’t it?” she said, peering at the picture.

  “We have a shrine like that near where we live,” I said. “In Gipsy Lane. For Marc Bolan.”

  “Except that’s to mark the spot where he actually died,” said Tinkler.

  “Or at least where his car crashed.”

  “All right, anyway, so that one’s self-explanatory.” Nevada flipped to the next photo. “But what is this?” She showed it to me. Another moody black and white composition, a study in contrasts. But this one was a landscape shot of a mammoth gnarled oak tree looming in shadow, as full of sinister character as anything ever drawn by Arthur Rackham. Nevada looked at me. “Why has he sent a picture of a tree?”

  A sound suddenly arose on the other side of the farmhouse, in the direction of the barn. It was a furious, diabolical honking, quite savage and almost machine-like in its intensity. For a moment none of us knew what the hell was happening and then, dashing along the winding path between two vegetable plots, came the rotund white shape of a goose, wings spread wide in a display of aggression. It ran off the path and onto the driveway and came straight at us, running with big flapping steps of its clumsy feet, neck extended and head held high.

  We began to back away as it came surging and flailing towards us. It honked again, a nerve-shredding shriek like a steam whistle on steroids. It sounded angry.

  “Holy shit,” said Nevada in alarm. We all turned and fled, taking shelter on the far side of Tinkler’s car.

  “They weren’t kidding about getting goosed,” said Tinkler.

  The goose came to a wary halt beside the car, peering around at us with its long neck extended. Its gaze looked strangely cross-eyed, which did nothing to diminish the alarming nature of its appearance. Or rather, her appearance.

  “Hello, Gwenevere,” I said, “don’t you remember me?” I took a tentative step out from the shelter of the car and moved towards her, hand extended. See? I come in peace.

  She surged forward, bristling with hostility, and I jerked back.

  “Evidently not,” murmured Nevada.

  We stayed put, the three of us huddled behind the minimal shelter of Tinkler’s car, and Gwenevere began to behave like she’d cornered us there. Which, thinking about it, I suppose she had. She strutted around, keeping an eye on us, never venturing far from the car and the spot where we cowered. After sizing us up from a variety of angles, that eager, watchful head extended on its long neck, she settled down into a rhythm of patrol. She was on guard, marching around us in an exaggerated military fashion for all the world like a Nazi stormtrooper; it made you realise how accurate the term ‘goose stepping’ was.

  “Can we get into the car?” suggested Nevada.

  “I think the moment we begin to move, she’s going to charge at us.”

  “This is just like that novel by Stephen King,” said Tinkler. “Except it’s a stupid goose instead of a huge rabid dog.”

  It’s interesting to speculate how long we would have stood there, three grown people, frozen, surrounded by a single goose. But then there was the rumbling of an engine, and a once bright yellow but now very grubby Vol
vo estate nosed through the gate and turned into the driveway. Freddie and Magda were grinning at us through the mud-spattered windscreen. I suspected that it was not the first time they’d come home to a scene such as this.

  They parked their car beside the pond and got out and wandered towards us in a leisurely fashion.

  “So she got you cornered, eh?” said Freddie. He was dressed in his usual corduroys—baggy maroon trousers and a mustard-coloured jacket. I couldn’t see if his shirt was corduroy, but if he’d managed to find one it would be. Corduroy socks and undergarments didn’t bear thinking about. He still had the silly Edwardian mutton chop sideburns he affected. I was amazed that Magda tolerated them.

  The goose backed away from us until she was standing between Freddie and Magda and then, never looking away from us, she began to make a low, conversational gabbling sound, as if she was reporting back to them about our conduct.

  “Is it safe to come out?” said Nevada.

  “Sure,” said Magda, “her bark is worse than her bite.”

  “Her honk is worse than her hit,” said Freddie.

  “Come and give me a hug,” said Magda. She was a plump, freckled woman who wore an assortment of hand-knitted jumpers, long Indian-looking skirts and woolly hats, often all at once. She came from Munich and after living in England for years her German accent was faint but still in evidence. I went and hugged her, breathing in the scent of apples. I wondered if it was shampoo or actual apples. She released me and looked at Nevada. “And this is your new lady friend?”

  “I keep him out of trouble,” said Nevada.

  “Come, you have a hug too. When Gwenevere sees us hugging she’ll know you’re friends and she’ll leave you alone.” Nevada seemed a little sceptical, but willing to try anything. She emerged gingerly from our hiding place behind the car and gave Magda a hug.

  “Do I get a hug, too?” said Tinkler.

  “Yes. Even you.”

  The ridiculous thing is, it seemed to work. As soon as Magda and I had broken our clinch the goose came over to me and leaned against my legs. She made a few gentle gargling sounds, craning her head to look at me as though to say, Sorry about that. No hard feelings.