Written in Dead Wax (6 page)

He looked at me glumly. “It’s Jerry.”

“What’s happened?”

Glenallen Brown, who also worked in the shop, came over and joined us. He was the opera specialist. He said, “I knew it would happen. He always went cruising for dangerous types.”

“What?” I said. I looked at them.

Kempton shook his head. “Why did they have to kill him?”

“Kill him?” I said.

Kempton kept shaking his head. Tears gleamed in his eyes. “They didn’t have to kill him.”

I turned to Glenallen. He nodded. “Battered him to death.”

“Oh Jesus,” I said. “Jerry?”

“Yes.”

“Who did it?”

“We don’t know. Some piece of rough trade. Kempton went over there first thing this morning with the van. He was supposed to pick up some records. We’d just bought a big collection. He found Jerry lying there and called the police. The whole place was a mess, apparently. A bombsite. And Jerry kept it so tidy. Kempton said the entire place was torn apart. There were records everywhere. All over the floor. You couldn’t move for them. They’d been pulled off the shelves and strewn everywhere.”

I said, “Almost as if someone was looking for something.”

We held an improvised wake for Jerry at the shop. There couldn’t be a funeral yet because the police hadn’t released his body, but we felt we had to do something, to mark the occasion, so to speak. Jerry had always made a point of drinking decent single malts and someone went out and bought a couple of pricey bottles of Islay in his memory.

It felt wrong to be drinking whisky at ten in the morning, but that wasn’t the only thing that felt wrong.

I got home to find Miss Warren—Nevada—waiting for me on my doorstep. She was fuming. “Where have you been?” she said. Then I brushed past her and she smelled the whisky. “Have you been drinking?”

“Shouldn’t you be waving a rolling pin?” I said. “And have curlers in your hair?” I took out my keys and tried to open the front door.

“You’re drunk,” she hissed.

“Nonsense.” I fumbled with the lock. Actually, I
was
feeling a little light-headed after the morning’s boozing.

Fanny and Turk sprang out of the dense plot of vegetation that occupied the centre of the square outside my bungalow. It was like a giant concrete planter raised to waist height and protected by a low fence of blue enamelled steel railings. The cats loved it because it was a miniature jungle and they could play hide and seek in it. They jumped up onto the fence and dashed to join us. They had heard me jingling the keys.

“Oh, look who’s here,” cried Nevada. The cats swirled around her ankles and she bent down to pat them as I struggled with the front door. “Who’s a darling?” she said. “Who’s a honey darling, who’s sweet? Yes, you are, and you are too. Yes, both of you, yes, yes, yes.” And then instantly and without transition she resumed her tirade against me. “It isn’t even lunchtime and you are supposed to be meeting me and spending the day working and instead you are late and you are deeply unprofessional and you are drunk.”

“I am not drunk.” I got the door open and the cats sped in, followed by Nevada. I was the last through, wrestling the keys out of the lock and clumsily closing the door behind me. “I had a few drinks. All right?”

“Why in god’s name were you having a few drinks at this time of the morning?”

“A friend died,” I said. “We held an impromptu wake.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right. I mean, you didn’t know him.” I took my coat off and wondered if I had the moral fibre to make us some real coffee. While I was making up my mind I poured out some biscuits for the cats. Turk crunched away at them enthusiastically and immediately. Fanny played hard to get for a while, wandering to her bowl, then wandering away again, but she finally deigned to start eating.

“Who was it?” said Nevada.

“Just a friend. A guy I knew. He worked in a record shop. Actually I mentioned him to you. He was the one who told me that the Stravinsky on Everest was bogus. Your little ruse.”

“It wasn’t a ruse,” she said. “It was your job qualification exam. How did he die?”

“He went cruising for a playmate and he took the wrong bloke home.”

“My god.”

“He got beaten to death.”

“My god.”

I belched whisky fumes. I decided I couldn’t face grinding the coffee beans. I was dreading the noise of the grinder as much as the cats. I could already feel the distant painful promise of my looming hangover, like a storm cloud approaching on a summer’s day. I got out the jar of instant and put the kettle on. “I didn’t even know he was gay,” I said. I spooned the freeze-dried granules into the mugs. “I suppose the fifteen thousand albums of show tunes he owned might have been a clue.”

“Fifteen thousand?”

“Something like that.”

“Good lord.”

“Maybe it was only five thousand.”

“Still, good lord.”

The kettle was just approaching the boil. I switched it off. “And that was just a small part of his collection.”

Nevada shrugged her coat off and sat down. “Any jazz?” she said. And I knew what she was getting at.

“If he’d had a copy of
Easy Come, Easy Go
, I think he would have told me.”

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. And if he’d owned an original he wouldn’t have had to run a record shop. He could have sold it and retired on the proceeds. However…”

She peered at me. “However what?”

I poured the hot water over the instant coffee. “Jerry had just recently bought a big collection of records. There was a lot of jazz in it, he said. He hadn’t finished sorting through it yet, so who knows what it might contain?”

“Well then, for god’s sake, let’s go and have a look at this collection.”

I sighed. “That’s not going to happen.”

“Why not?”

“Jerry was killed in his house. The records are in his house. It’s a crime scene. The police are crawling all over it and they won’t let anyone in for at least a week.”

She said, “Well, as soon as we can get in there, we must.”

“Yes,” I said, “that should definitely be my first order of business, now that my friend is dead. Rifling through his record collection.”

“Are you going to stir that?” she said.

“Oh, sorry.” I finished stirring the coffee and handed her a mug.

She blew on it and took a sip. “Still, it’s a pity. Not being able to check if the record is there.”

I shrugged. “Actually the real pity is not having access to Jerry’s reference books. He definitely had some information about the Hathor record label. He was going to go home and look it up for me.”

She set her coffee aside. “What did you say his name was again?”

“Jerry Muscutt.”

She nodded, as if it meant something to her.

* * *

In the back of the cab she sat as far away from me as possible. “You stink of whisky,” she said.

“You don’t have to come.”

“What do you mean?”

“I could look for the record on my own. I’m a big boy.”

“Oh no,” she said. “I couldn’t do that.”

“Why not?” I remembered what Tinkler had said. “Because you don’t trust me? Because you think I’ll find the record and keep it for myself?”

“No,” she said. She shot a nervous glance at our driver. She’d made good on her promise to hire the young woman with the shaved head. But the driver, sealed away on the other side of the glass, seemed appropriately oblivious to our conversation. “Of course not. Of course I don’t think that.”

But she didn’t convince either of us. I said, “Why don’t you just look for it yourself?”

“You’re not making any sense. Look, you’re just despondent about your friend, and that’s understandable. Plus it doesn’t help that you’ve had a skinful. But we have a job here and we have to do it.”

“We.” I sighed. I was coming down from the whisky and everything looked bleak. We were driving through Strawberry Hill, along the narrow curving Waldegrave Road. The entrance to St Mary’s University flashed by on our left. Our driver, whom I’d begun to think of as Clean Head, was making good time.

Nevada said, “Besides, without you, where would I start? I mean, I’d never think of going to exotic places like Surbiton to seek out fascinating institutions like this, what did you call it? This record fair.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I said.

* * *

The record fair was a monthly fixture, held at a church hall near the tall, elegant white art-deco railway station, which to my mind was the best thing about Surbiton. Well, that and the charity shops. The record fair was in a small building in the courtyard of an old redbrick church, situated opposite a pleasant little park.

I got the taxi driver to drop us on the far side of the park so we could stroll across it in a leisurely fashion and appreciate the greenery. However, I don’t think my power-walking companion even noticed it, as she strode implacably forward, focused intently on the grey rectangular building ahead. There was a poster on a sandwich board outside which said
RECORD FAIR, THIS WAY
!

“Why did you tell me not to get my hopes up?”

“It’s a record fair,” I said.

“And?”

“And everything that ends up here has already been picked over by dealers.” I held the swinging door for her and we entered. “It would be a miracle if we found something really special.” It was chilly in the hall despite a battered ancient chrome electric heater which was standing in the centre of the room with its power cord taped to the floor to prevent excited record lovers tripping over it as they rushed blindly to seek out treasures.

I noted with approval that the device, bars glowing a cheery orange, had been placed as far as humanly possible from any of the records. Vinyl and heat: not a good combination.

“Then why are we bothering at all?” said Nevada.

I looked around. It was a long narrow room with dusty wooden floors. There were folding tables set up along three of the walls, in a U-shape around the heater. The dealers, all men except for one formidable-looking middle-aged lady with a hooded orange sweatshirt and Brillo pad hair, were still setting up. On the tables were boxes and crates of records, some yet to be opened.

Despite myself, I felt the familiar pang of excitement. Who knew what I might find? I said, “Because not all of these guys are on the ball, because most of them aren’t jazz specialists, and because miracles happen.”

I started going through the crates and Nevada became bored almost immediately. It didn’t help that the heater was kicking in and the smell of large and largely unwashed men hauling in heavy crates of records to beat a deadline pervaded the place. “Listen,” she said, “why don’t I go out and get us some coffee? I suspect they have coffee in Surbiton.”

“That’s a good idea. And see if you can—”

“Yes, yes, I’ll search out some gourmet connoisseur blend of the kind that you won’t turn your nose up at.” She waved her hand, more in a gesture of dismissal than farewell, and headed for the door.

I didn’t blame her for fleeing a place that smelled at worst of sweaty trainspotter and at best of budget deodorant. Plus, to be honest, it was a relief not to have her constantly tapping her toe impatiently while I gave all of the boxes of records a thorough inspection, including the ones lurking under the tables. It was the usual overpriced junk with the occasional item apparently price-stickered by somebody on a grandiose and florid LSD trip. Ten pounds for a Culture Club album of no discernible scarcity, anyone? But there was also the occasional nice, or at least intriguing, record.

I found a Prince bootleg I’d been searching for for years. It was the one where he jammed with Miles Davis. Unfortunately it was in poor condition, crazily expensive and turned out to only feature Miles on a single track. Three strikes and you’re out. I put it back in the box, to my regret and obviously also that of the avaricious clown behind the table who had optimistically saddled it with its stratospheric price tag.

“Found something?” It was an all-too-familiar voice. I turned to see Stinky Stanmer standing there. I suppose it wasn’t so surprising. I had introduced him to this place, years ago. He bent down and checked the box I’d just been searching through. He found the Prince/Miles Davis record right away and glanced at me. “You aren’t buying this?”

“Too expensive.”

He chortled and took out his wallet. It was bulging with banknotes. He paid the dealer, who had perked up considerably. He put the record in a bag and Stinky tucked it under his arm.

“So,” he said, looking around. “Found anything else?” For a moment it was the good old sincere, ingratiating Stinky whom I remembered from university. “Found anything really choice?”

I shook my head. I said, “It’s hardly likely, is it?” I looked around at the dealers, their overwhelming shared attributes being obsession, a poor sense of personal hygiene, passion and greed. I said, “It would be like finding a virgin at a pimp convention.”

He gave a loud bark of laughter and people stared at us. I was appalled to notice that some of the dealers and customers had recognised him, and doubly appalled to realise that in their eyes my status had been elevated through being in his company.

It was at this moment that Nevada returned with two cardboard cups of coffee. She saw us and paused. There was a faint buzzing, like a wasp trapped in a jam jar, and Stinky started digging into his pockets, apparently in search of his phone. He took it out. “Probably my agent,” he said.

“Well, don’t let me keep you,” I said.

He scrutinised the screen. “No, it’s just this model I met. She keeps pestering me.” He shook his head and switched the phone off. I smiled at him. Knowing Stinky it was just as likely the call had been some spam from his phone provider. He said, “You haven’t been writing much on your blog lately.”

This was a surprising observation from someone who pretended not to read it. “No,” I said. “I’ve been doing other things.”

“Well, you have to keep the content refreshed, or you won’t get any hits.” He noticed Nevada, who was hanging back, politely waiting for him to finish talking to me. He turned to her and smiled. “Hi. Do you want my autograph?”