The Singer (52 page)

‘I put on a wig,’ she said, ‘strap myself into a corset and beat the living shit out of silly little men,’

That should have been enough to see me out of the door and out of that tower like a streak of greased weasel shit. But as the words left Donna’s mouth, I found myself with an enormous hardon. The next thing I knew, her hand was on top of it, and she was leaning over me saying,
‘Thing is, Eddie, I kind of miss having a normal fuck. Especially with a man what looks like Dave Vanian.’

And all those months of loneliness, all those nights of crying over Louise, all those stories of Vince and Sylvana and Steve and Donna and Helen and Allie, they all swirled round in my head like a rush of mad voodoo and all I wanted was her mouth over mine and my cock inside her and her
huge tits right in my face and her huge arse right on top of me, grinding me into her red leather sofa while the sun set in a blaze behind us, all of West London aflame, coming into the lava flow of that sky and her thighs.

And then I must have passed out because the next thing I knew the room was dark and I was lying on the sofa with my flies open and a horrible cold mess congealing on my belly.
Donna was sitting next to me, calmly smoking one of my cigarettes.

‘You all right now, love?’ she said as she saw me open my eyes. ‘The bathroom’s back through the hallway, on the left. I think you probably need to clean up a bit.’

My head was hammering like I’d downed a vat of beer, not just three, or was it four bottles? I tried to piece together what terrible spell she must have cast over
me for it to end up like this as I staggered to my feet and made tenuous steps towards her bathroom. All I could think was, thank God she didn’t turn the light on, as I really, really didn’t want to see what I had just done.

Her bathroom was as stark as the front room. Everything chrome, everything spotless. In her mirror, my face looked a hundred years old. I tried not to heave as I patted down
the mess on my shirt with some toilet paper, shoved everything back where it properly belonged. I splashed more cold water on my face, tried to bring myself back to my senses, knowing only now that the main thing was to get out of here.

Donna had put a low wattage lamp on when I finally picked my way back to the front room. It cast her in a better light than I had expected.

‘I’ve called you
a cab,’ she said kindly. ‘My usual firm, they won’t be long and they won’t charge you much either.’

I felt a wave of nausea as she said the word ‘charge’, but I fought it down, I really didn’t want to piss her off now. Though on the contrary, Donna was looking pretty pleased with herself.

‘I remembered what we were supposed to be talking about,’ she said, as I gingerly sat back down, noting
that my dicataphone was still where I had left it and my bag didn’t appear to have been disturbed.

‘Oh?’ I said, doing my best to smile.

‘You wanted to know about Vince, didn’t you?’ she said. ‘I was telling you how he wouldn’t let it finish with me, weren’t I?’

I just nodded. I had no idea now where she would go next.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘After he did his big disappearing act, he kept sending
me postcards. Just so as he could keep me under his thumb, just so I could never keep my head straight. First it was from Marseilles. Then it was Tangiers. Travelled around a bit, I can tell you, but he always wanted me to know how well he was doing for himself, how happy he was that I wasn’t with him.’

She was smiling a strange, glassy smile. I wondered if her medication was starting to wear
off, but perhaps she really was just grateful for a clumsy fuck with someone who reminded her of her youthful crush.

‘Seville was the next place,’ she went on. ‘He thought he had it good there for a while. But then it all went quiet for a few years so I thought he must have got nicked or something, ‘bout facking time an’ all. But that weren’t it. Nah. He found a better place. A place where no
one knew him from Adam; a place where he could run things without the law bothering him or nuffink. A place,’ she snapped her fingers and her bangles jangled at her wrist, ‘where they do all their living by night. Do you want to know where that place is, Eddie? All them people think he’s been dead all this time, but he ain’t. If only they knew.’

She gave a hollow laugh. I would have thought that
she was mad, that she had just been playing with me all afternoon and evening if it wasn’t for the fact that, thanks to Joe Pascal, I knew she wasn’t lying. Then she looked at me sadly. ‘He’s in Lisbon, Eddie. That’s what you wanted to know.’

The buzzer rang loudly, cutting through the sound of my jaw dropping.

‘And that’ll be your cab.’ She stood up. ‘You got all your stuff?’

‘Er, yes, yes,
thank you.’ I stuffed my tape recorder back into my bag, made a quick rummage through my pockets as she walked
ahead of me towards the front door. Everything was exactly where it should have been.

She picked up the intercom. ‘He’ll be down in a second,’ she said into it, then turned to me. ‘Where to?’ she asked.

‘Camden,’ I said, my mind reeling too much to even think to make up an alternative.

‘Camden,’ she told the cabbie, then replaced the receiver.

‘Well, I hope you got everything you came for.’ Donna opened the front door and stood aside to let me pass.

There wasn’t an answer to that, so I didn’t give one. Instead, I offered her my hand. ‘Thanks, Donna,’ I said as she took it.

‘Eddie,’ she said as I stepped into the hallway.

I looked back into her black Spanish eyes.

‘Safe
home,’ she said and closed the door.

I don’t remember the journey home, or stumbling into my bed. The next thing I knew was the phone was ringing, my head was splitting and the clock by my bed said the time was half-past ten. For a moment I couldn’t think where I was or what I was doing. But then, as the answerphone clicked on, I was given an all too clear reminder.

‘Eddie,’ came Ray’s voice.
‘I’m just checking to see if you’re all right. Blimey, mate, I don’t know what you did to please Donna, but she thinks you’re the best thing since sliced bread. I’ve just had her on the phone singing your praises. You’re lucky you’re not twenty years older, mate, or I’d be seriously worried about your chances. Anyway, give us a ring when you get the chance. Ta-ra.’

Donna. Jesus. I clasped my
hand to my aching head as it all flooded back to me. I fucked Donna.

I felt sordid and sick inside. How had she beguiled me that way? Had I wanted to get into this story so badly that I literally had to go where Vince had been? Had I been chasing the
Time Out
vamp
with the chopsticks in her hair or had her fried remains been trying to resurrect her own youth via some infernal sex magick when
we did what we did? Either way, it was an unholy communion.

And yet...I dimly realised from what Ray had just said that she hadn’t told him about it. And more than that.

She had told me where Vince was.

That thought propelled me out of bed. Yesterday’s clothes were all over the floor in a mess. I dumped them in the already overflowing laundry basket and made straight for the shower. Ten minutes
of alternate hot and cold blasts of that and I’d cleared my head and rid my body of any faint, lingering aromas of last night’s performance. Now wasn’t the time to dwell on that. Now was the time to work out how to tell Gavin I’d come about this information.

I thought, as I put the kettle on and poured Crunchy Nut cornflakes into a bowl, I’d have to be a bit careful about what I said to him.
I didn’t want him to know I’d seen Donna. Perhaps Monsieur Pascal could be of assistance.

I poured cold milk over the cereal, moved over to the Mac, powered it up and stood there in my dressing gown, rapidly filling my face and working out what to say. Pascal was old school. Blokes of his generation could generally be relied upon to be discreet.

As soon as I was up and online, I had it. I wrote:

Dear Joseph, I’ve had a bit of a tip-off about Vince Smith. Now, the person who told me did so in strict confidence and I’m not altogether sure if they’re not just a random nutter, but they seemed to know enough to convince me this is worth a try. For instance, they knew about Marseilles and Seville and confirmed he had been in Tangiers, as you suspected. Only could we please keep the information
between ourselves, and if anything comes of it, tell the others it came from one of your comrades? It’s just to protect my source, as all good journalists must.

I sent that little beauty off, wondering what else I could tell Gavin if Pascal didn’t have any snouts in Lisbon. In the meantime, I called Ray, assured him that everything had gone well and proceeded to laugh off the source of Donna’s
enthusiasm for my good self through gritted teeth. ‘She kept saying I looked like Dave Vanian,’ I told him.

‘That’ll be it!’ he said. ‘Course. I’m not too on the ball, am I? I hadn’t noticed it myself, but I suppose there is a bit of a resemblance. Well, enough for her fevered brain anyway. She always was obsessed with Vanian.’

‘Well, she was very complimentary about you,’ I told him, trying
to change the subject. ‘She said you were the best punk journalist of them all and I should be writing about you.’

‘Yeah, well,’ Ray brushed the compliment off. ‘We’ll see. She’s being nice for now, but we’d better hope she hasn’t developed too much of a crush on you,
Dave
…’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ It was just as well he couldn’t see me squirming in my chair.

By the time he’d rung off, Pascal was flashing
in my inbox:

Let me assure you any information you give me will be treated in the strictest confidence. I understand perfectly that you need to protect your source and compliment you on finding one so quickly. You must be quite a detective yourself!

Well I was beginning to think so. I replied:

Thanks Joseph I didn’t doubt your discretion. My source—

I liked that word, made me sound like a
professional, not someone who went round shagging mentally ill, middle-aged dominatrices

—said that they had heard from him recently and that he was living
in Lisbon. If you know of anyone there, maybe they could take a look around. I have no idea if he’s still using the Dawson alias, but from what I can gather he’s still involved in some kind of drugs thing.

Pascal thought he might have a friend
of a friend in Lisbon. By the time I had finished the morning’s correspondence with him, last night’s hangover had all but disappeared in the rush of anticipation. So what if I had done something slightly unsavoury to get the information I needed, I told myself. I’d still got it. And by Christ, if we found Vince, then this book would be heading for the top of the bestseller lists. They could
make a documentary out of it, or a film. Even, maybe, I’d win some prizes for it, like I’d dreamed way back in cold November on Gavin’s couch.

I supposed I could start work on Donna’s tapes, get it out of the way as fast as possible, keep moving on while I waited to see what Joseph could find. At least I knew I’d stopped recording well before all that stuff had happened that I didn’t want to
think about. And in the run up to that, it had been mostly gossip, if I remembered rightly. The things I had really needed to know I didn’t need a tape recorder for.

I rummaged around in my bag and found the dictaphone, and with it that
Camden New Journal
from the train back from Guildford. Hmmm, I thought, this could be interesting, I was more in the mood for that kind of shit now. Eddie Bracknell,
Ace Detective, in his secret hideout overlooking the Murder Capital of Britain. That would be a few moments distraction before I got down to Donna’s dirty laundry.

I got myself another coffee and a packet of digestives and sat down to read it. There had indeed been a hefty upswing in the murders around these parts, hardly surprising when you took a look outside at some of the citizens of the
parish. Some of the crimes were pretty gruesome. Bodies in carrier bags shoved into wheelie bins. Bodies in suitcases thrown into Regent’s Canal. A
lot of stabbings, gang warfare the police reckoned, to control the drugs racket, but some of them just stupid après-pub bust-ups or crack addict muggings gone wrong. Even a couple of drive-by shootings, proper South Central Los Angeles behaviour.

They’d written a list of everyone who’d been murdered between Camden, Chalk Farm and Kentish town in the past six months. My eyes trailed down the list. And my blood turned to ice.

January 12: A man’s body found under a bridge over the Canal between Oval Road and Regent’s Park. Slumped against the wall, he had been dead for at least twenty-four hours when a concerned passer-by realised he was
not simply sleeping or inebriated. The pathologist subsequently found heavy trauma to the back of the skull, made by a blow with a hammer or similar blunt instrument. An emaciated homeless itinerant and heavy drug user, the man was identified through his dental records as Robin Gordon Leith.

‘I took care of that thing for you,’ I heard Christophe say, loud as a bell in my head. Christophe, sitting
by the fire in the Lord Stanley, surrounded by smoke, looking supremely contented, like he’d just had himself a fine meal. Christophe of whom I’d heard so little from recently. Christophe who was so sure my problems with Leith were over.

Because he knew for sure. ‘He won’t be bothering you again, believe me.’

Eddie Bracknell, Ace Detective, shagger of middle-aged dominatrices and keeper of the
secrets of the dead, presides in his secret hideout in the Murder Capital of Britain, himself an accessory to murder.

May 1981

Steve sat backstage at the Lyceum Ballroom, staring through rather than looking at the copy of
Sounds
in his hands. That record that had nearly killed them to make, that Lynton had so cryptically titled ‘Butcher’s Brew’, was number 25 in the actual charts. Tonight’s gig had sold out within a day of the tickets going on sale. It seemed the Great British Public
had missed Blood Truth while they’d been away, couldn’t wait to have them back.