A Last Act of Charity (Killing Sisters Book 1) (5 page)

It also pays well. Sometimes very well indeed. I have no need for money, not really, not any more, but the more you get then the more you want. No smutty comments please. They can hurt. Hurt you, that is.

The dirty blonde always pays her rent. She is unusual in that she always pays it well in advance. This is particularly unusual given her profession, her calling, as many in similar paths of employ are less than entirely reliable. The dirty blonde boasts several professional friends whom no one could describe as being reliable in any sense. So . . . she pays her way. Got that? Good.

I detest what she does. Think about this, if you can so do without sniggering. Think about meeting the most amazing woman in the world. Think more. Think really hard. Good. You meet this astonishing woman and she’s standing there all neat, clean and friendly asking about an apartment you have for rent.

Which apartment, you wonder? You have a couple, also a house or two. Show me, she says. So you do.

You show her around the apartment her friend, my tenant, has told her about. She is interested. It is a nice apartment. Pleasant. Roomy. Airy. She asks you about the rent, the deal, the contract, grown-up important stuff like that. What you want to say is something like it’s yours for free if you want it and my sweet lord but you are amazing and what on earth can I say which you’ll find interesting and things like that. But you don’t say any of that. Instead you name a price and she asks whether it includes local taxes and you agree that it does but really you don’t care about anything to do with rental properties. You want to ask her every question anyone ever asked anyone else and then several more.

Then you wonder whether she wouldn’t perhaps prefer something a little more striking? Something which she might find
more amusing? More involving for someone who is plainly more creative than Leonardo, more beautiful and more deadly than Lucretia and more interesting than the most interesting thing ever invented. She smiles. Your heart pounds. She agrees that something a little unusual would be good. You smile back, in a casual and calm kind of way and remark that one of your properties has a turret.

The upshot of all this merriment and delight is that she rents the half-house which you had lined up for yourself and for a rental rate which is only just enough for her to avoid feeling either subsidised or patronised. You could of course get a lot more money for it, had you wanted to rent it, which you didn’t, but you do not meet ladies like this one more than once a lifetime. Meeting this lady was a unique experience in my life, and my life, as you will have understood by now, has been both long and intense, interesting and varied. Fulfilling too at times, less so at others. I hope that yours has been the same.

You subtly suggest nailing the deal over dinner. She agrees.

The evening is as astounding as you could have hoped for. You get on impossibly well. Soulmates drawn together through the wilds of the world and destined to be together inseparably for evermore. At the coffee point, she apologises to you and begs your indulgence while she picks up her cell phone, which has been buzzing in her pocket from time to time unanswered. It might, she says, be unavoidable work.

And so it proves. Work. Unavoidable. She texts ferociously and with impressive dexterity and then looks up ruefully and announces that her departure will be imminent, unavoidable and unwelcome but unavoidable. You try so hard to look unsurprised, staying cool, and enquire with only slight bemusement what can be so crucial as it is not exactly early in the evening? In fact, it is approaching ten o’clock, and . . .

She needs to meet a client, she announces, and she needs to
dress and prepare for it, and she needs to do that now because she needs to meet her client at his hotel and she needs to escort him to a club, where they will spend the rest of the night doing whatever it is paying clients and their escorts do in all-night and very expensive clubs. The sort of clubs where the pearls really should be genuine, my dear. You try your very best to appear unastonished. You offer to pay and you offer to drive her home, wherever home is, prior to her moving into your wonderful half-house with a turret.

She points with her smile towards the door of the restaurant. At the large, well-built and neatly suited chap who is just entering. You hate him at once of course. She laughs, gently and quietly and deeply, staring at your eyes, eyes which may just display a little more emotion and wonder than you would like them to. She laughs, as I said, and tells you that, no, silly, that’s not the client, that’s her midnight wheels. So that’s all right then.

And then she is gone and you are sitting wondering who you can kill. Who you can pick a fight with and beat senseless. Who owes you money because now would be a grand time to go kick the debt out of them, maybe breaking a few inessential bones and generally relieving those innermost tensions which can be so damaging and destructive if left bottled up. Or whether you should instead visit a welcoming and familiar friend and fuck the night into light, and then you immediately wonder why suddenly and unexpectedly that option – always such a sublime way of easing tension in the past – is so abruptly unappealing.

You collect your thoughts, gather your wits, call for the bill, discover that she has paid it on her way out and wonder what on God’s fuzzy green planet is happening to you.

Right now, here in what we pretend is real-time, the dirty blonde apologises, no, laughs at the moment, and checks her cell phone. Sighs, rolls her eyes and says; ‘Difficult, this. Got to go, got to go and party. Don’t want to, JJ, but need to. I had no idea
you would have a fresh corpse available for the evening’s entertainment. Can you put off taking a scan at it until tomorrow? Thought not.’

She is too familiar with my attempts at nonchalance whenever she needs to interrupt our shared time with work. Her work.

My cell calls. Buzzes in a fussy irritated manner in my shirt pocket. I ignore it. The dirty blonde glares a little. She rarely answers her own cell but thinks that I am being rude and awkward when I decline to answer mine.

‘It’s that twat, isn’t it? Go on; answer the thing. Tell him that you’re on your way.’

She manages to make it sound as though it’s my fault that she has a need to go to work, to accompany some rich sack to some rich sacks’ club where she will no doubt party the night away and pick up a handsome shilling at the end of it. Whatever ‘it’ is. A question I most carefully never ask. Usually never ask.

I pull out the phone. Flip it open. It is the Hard Man indeed. Who else? I share the intelligence. She beams again, unpredictably.

‘Give him one for me!’

Then she’s up, on her toes and gone. Just like that. I get the bill. We take it in turns . . .

5

LIE IN THE DARK

The stars themselves spat at Stoner. On good nights, they sparkled and they smiled. On sad nights, they gently wept and hid themselves away in silent safety behind the hazy gauze of heaven. But not tonight. Tonight, the stars spat at Stoner.

At least, that’s how it felt. Darkness should always be an old friend, to lover, loser and the taker of life. The skies provide mood music for all. How that music is understood, how it is heard, how it is interpreted . . . that’s where the mood can deepen with the darkness, lighten with the light. Or none of those things. Because the darkness is deepest when in shadow, and the darkest, deepest shadow comes hand-in-hand with the brightest light.

Stoner felt that he was safe from sudden unwelcome lightness at the Blue Cube. When times are tough and the darkness is falling, the only answer is to make deep, dark music.

Actually, that is arrant nonsense, he decided, but it would have to do, because he was entirely out of uplifting philosophical japes. He wanted a little escape from his understanding of the most probable current whereabouts, most probable current activities, of the dirty blonde. Enough dwelling upon an unacceptable reality, then; time for something absorbing. The Blue Cube.

The quiet door. The familiar muffled rumble. The sense of home for a man with no home. And my, aren’t we feeling sorry for ourselves? Stoner keyed himself into the back door, entered by the fire door, a life-saving exit in reverse. Life is like that. The man Stretch was active on the ivories, but apart from the general clubsound background, that was it for the evening in a musical sense. Late evening; night yet to come. Plenty of empty tables, plenty of dark corners, although more of those corners were occupied than he’d expected.

Stretch and the piano played together over at stage right, so Stoner chose a table facing them. Dropped the weighty coat, gazed across the small stage, poured the first of a few from the new bottle and raised the glass to the player. An eyebrow in acknowledgement. No need for more. The first glass is just the first glass; no mystery, no pretence that it will be the only glass or the best glass. The first note is just the first note; no pretence that it will be the only note. Unless a chap is a more adventurous player than any before him. The one-note solo? Stoner almost smiled. Only sax players could do that. And he couldn’t work the saxophone; neither point nor need, as so many can already boast this fine skill. Maybe the world awaits the one-note solo? Is this why the triangle is a rarely-heard instrument in the world of club jazz?

The Chimp, occasional and always competent barkeep, eased into the next seat, carefully leaving open Stoner’s view of the entrance. Habit. No one talked too much about the ways Stoner might or might not make a living, but over time it had become clear that he always liked to keep an eye on the doorway. Many things are best left unsaid; this is one of them.

Stoner leaned over, looking into his companion’s eyes while pouring two more glasses. A neat trick, and scary for an unfamiliar, but easy for any chess player or careful observer.

‘It’s time.’

The Chimp looked back, leaned back, said nothing. He was entirely familiar with Stoner’s self-indulgent word games. And there was always a time to talk back.

‘Time, my simian friend, for the triangle. It can’t make a comeback, because it’s never been away nor indeed come into its time in the first place, but it is time for a new prominence. Mark my words. The future of music is the triangle, an instrument of unplumbed excellence.

‘Imagine it. Purity. The single note. Timing, pitch and perfect placement replacing all that hysterical jangling.’

Stoner was warming to his thoughts. Across the stage from them, Stretch ran a neat chromatic scale into an otherwise unremarkable – if entirely competent – rendition of something familiar but too easily forgotten. The small audience looked up, nodded knowingly, stored applause for the end, for no reason any musician could appreciate. A scale, after all, is simply that; a scale. There are lots of scales. School kids learn scales.

‘Do you enjoy it when pals talk through your best efforts?’

Chimp spoke softly, no facial posturing to distract the amused pianist.

Stoner smiled at Stretch, replied to Chimp; ‘You’ve not heard my best efforts, and neither have I. And if this is the best Stretch can manage, then maybe he should consider a switch to the triangle.’

Both men relaxed. The piano played on, as pianos do. The bottle drained away, as bottles do. The evening promised to distract, as evenings always should.

Stoner glanced through his glass. Glanced around the club. Bili was there, sitting like a silent stack of golden curls in her favoured corner by the stairway. In front of her, facing her from her table’s top, stood her trademark two-litre bottle of gassy water. When life was without sparkle, she would say, from the depth of melancholy known only to bassists and public executioners, then it is
a soul’s duty to replenish, to revive, to add a little fizz. Her bottle may have been half full; it was hard to tell.

Bili sat alone, which suggested that she was yet to perform. By the time she had left the stage, by the time she had once again beaten black and blue music from her bright red bass, she would sit surrounded by the inevitable acolytes. They would slip secret shillings to the bar to learn of her favourite drink, and send bottles of slosh most expensive to her table. They would line up, the bottles, phalanxes of attention-seeking trophy drinks, and at the evening’s end they would return undrunk to their station behind and above the bar. Bili was of the firm opinion that she had owned some of those bottles more than just a few times. It was certainly possible. The bottle which the Chimp at the bar would reluctantly reveal to be her top tipple? Whichever he considered to be the most lonesome. If the bar was down to its last bottle of Stolichnaya, then Bili drank nothing else. If there had been a mysterious run on Cockburns Special Reserve, then her life was incomplete without a bottle by her side. Prices rise with rarity. It is a law of nature. Profit is the name of the only game that matters.

Bili would claim that she rarely drank. That is a demonstrable untruth. Her music was intoxicant enough, she would claim. And that was certainly true, but despite her denials, the brilliance of her playing could not suppress her appetite for alcohol’s clouding confusions. She was an almost unique mistress of her instrument, the only sadness being that her chosen vice was the bass guitar, and although studiedly poor six-string guitarists could always stand up and volunteer to crucify another singer’s song for the edification of the punting masses, it was rarely considered appropriate for an impromptu half-hour burst of jazz extemporisation on a four-string theme. If a bluesman’s lot is to cheer the dank lives of others by sharing their own pain with strangers, the lot of the bassist is to forever stand in the background
or to sit at a table awaiting the call to perform. But it bothered her not at all.

Stretch ended his solo set to much applause and with a fine bow. Left the stage by stepping straight over the edge and dropping the full four feet without breaking stride, and stood before Stoner, lips smiling, eyes guarded. ‘You’re looking bad, my man? Care to share?’

Stoner pushed the bottle slowly, slowly over to Stretch. Who rose to his full, impressive, height, grinned a wild wide grin, raised the bottle to his ear, clanked it against the hugely heavy ring of gold hanging there, swung bottle to mouth and drank it down. All of it. Every drop. A neat trick. Applause from the floor was as loud for that as for his keyboard set. Maybe louder. Stretch turned to the room, and performed a strange mix of bow and pirouette, holding the quite suddenly empty vessel upside down and wondering whether anyone would care to replace it? Inevitably . . . they would.

The house band, a trio, sometimes a quartet of well hidden potential, stood to their instruments and attempted a selection of occasionally familiar jazz instrumentals, mingling their own interpretations of popular tunes in an apparently random way. As is so often the case, interpretation of inspired original tunes was restricted more by the players’ ability than by their imagination. Imagination is always a strong suit of house bands. It needs to be. They need, for example, to imagine their own musical excellence, and they need to buttress that with the belief that the audience is their own audience and that it is packed into the club’s uncomfortable seats to listen to
them
perform. It cannot be easy to maintain this belief, and this was the subject of the Chimp’s favourite regular monologue. It was a familiar theme, and as ever the shock of the familiar raised Stoner’s spirits. As was also traditional, Stretch remarked in a less than subtle, quiet tone that less folk were listening to Chimp, who had an audience of . . .
well . . . himself, so would he please give it a rest and give the three-piece a chance.

Polite applause welcomed the house set’s conclusion. And in the traditional ironic manner, their pianist reminded the audience that there were other players present; maybe they could be persuaded to play?

And indeed they could. They almost always could.

The evening progressed, as the best evenings do, with gentle instrumentals from inconsistent combinations of players. Always a piano, sometimes a sax, sometimes a guitar, sometimes a fiddle; once there was a flute. No one understood exactly why someone who could perform with a degree of excellence with a saxophone would feel the need to experiment with the flute. Maybe a clarinet, which – all agreed – boasted a decent level of soul, but a flute? Whatever, the audience loved it. maybe they believed they were hearing something seriously original . . . and maybe they were.

As the bar clock slipped past midnight, Bili sat herself down alongside Stoner. Swung her cascade of curls away from her eyes and smiled, cautiously. Caution is a kindness when dealing with a friend, particularly an unpredictable friend. A friend who was these days but not always and maybe not for ever a friend only in the club context. A musical friend. She smiled. Stoner smiled back.

‘Flying tonight, old man?’ As ever, the traditional gentle joke raised the traditional part-smile.

‘Not sure. You, young girl?’

Bili shook more curls. They may have been natural; how do you tell?

‘I do have my four strings if you have your six.’

They centred the stage. The audience, a packed crowd by now, shouted approval for what they hoped would follow. It was what they were there for.

She sang too. Deeply in G.

‘One summer’s day, he went away . . .’ the first vocal burst of the evening. Songs can be rare events in jazz clubs. The audience went silent, leaned forward, elbows on tables, glasses lowered, conversation stilled. Bili sang as she played; beautifully and with the desperate wide smile the lyric demanded. A sad song of lost love and longing, superficially at least. Stoner stroked the strings of his Stratocaster, Stretch chorded sevenths in time with Bili’s wandering bass as she strolled towards the chorus.

‘He’s gone, but I don’t worry. I’m just sitting on top of the world.’

Stoner switched from bass to middle pick-up, pulled the volume control around two points and built a slow, pensive verse around the bass and piano duo, then shook his head to Bili, who sang seamlessly into the next verse.

Stoner’s personal internal blues lasted three numbers. Just three. And then, as is sometimes the way, he stood up from his high stool, shuffled his shoulders and glanced at Bili, who flicked a smile to Stretch, who kicked the piano’s loud pedal and shifted from minor to major for one single bar as Stoner flicked the pick-up selector away from him, all the way to full treble, reeled the volume control until his little finger could twist the pot no further, pulled his hand back till pick hit string right by the bridge and cranked everything he had into a complex part-chording, moving into ever-louder, sustained single notes. Guitar sang like a sax as he worked his rage, his frustration and his blues away. Feedback and talent battled for control of the instrument in a conflicted riot of exuberance for several verses more than any album producer would permit. Such is one delight of live music.

Dream over, game played, he made eye contact with Bili and Stretch and the latter hammered the keys so that they rattled against the harsh staccato of the brittle Stratocaster, while Bili
fretted her bass high on the board, fingers picking the heavy strings and dropping them back against the fretboard to provide a percussive beat to anchor the song. Piano took over from guitar, Stoner sat down mid-verse, switched back to the bass pick-up, halved the volume, killed the conflicts, the audience drew breath and applauded while Stretch on the piano pulled the whole train into the station of silence and the power trio took their bow.

‘Share a glass, Bili?’

The unlucky house band returned to the stage, clapping their hands over their heads and nodding with fake respect.

They sat at a table for two, as far into the shade as they could. Stretch sat in with the house band, providing encouragement and occasional ironic accuracy.

‘Should we be talking guitars for a while?’ She looked for a drink. Music is always a safe playground for musicians, even if they play for rivalry as much as for mutual respect. ‘Rumour told me that you were considering maybe, almost, contemplating, perhaps wondering, whether you might replace that old Strat?’

Stoner’s elderly Fender was nothing less than notorious for its capricious moods. Ninety-nine plays out of a hundred it would function as Leo Fender had intended, and would sound rather better than a guitar of its age should, due to a little extra in the switching department, but on its off day it could be a bad boy indeed. A bad buzzy boy. Ancient wiring was the problem; the breakdown of the earthing the cause of the buzz. And the ancient nineteen-sixties soldering could possibly be the cause of the occasional inappropriate silence. Buzzing silence. Stoner had been known to threaten it with conversion into firewood. Or worse; conversion into an unplayed ornament, hanging on some collector’s trophy wall.