My bungalow is, in theory, a three-bedroom house. Nevada and I have our king-sized bed in one of those rooms, while the other two are supposedly guest rooms. Both are equipped with sofa beds. But both are also currently used for other purposes and packed with other things. Nevada uses one to store all her clothes—her own stuff as well as the items she buys and sells. Her ‘stock’, as she’s taken to calling it. The third room is used for general storage. In other words, all the junk we don’t have any other place to put. It may not be surprising to learn that this includes several large boxes of records.
I shoved one of these boxes aside with a scraping sound of complaint—from the box, not me—and lay down on the floor so I could get an arm under the battered blue sofa. Fanny came in to see what was going on and lay down beside me as I scrabbled under the sofa, retreating cautiously when I began dragging out a dusty canvas bag. As it emerged from the shadowy space, Fanny came back and pounced on it, jumping on top of it as I hauled it out, giving it a thorough, savage going-over with her needle-sharp little claws.
Once she was sure the bag was good and dead, she hopped off and strode proudly away. Another job well done. I hefted the bag and carried it into the living room and set it down on the table with a heavy metallic clunk.
When Nevada and I had first met we’d collaborated on a project that had looked like it would involve breaking into a house in Richmond. In the event, it turned out we didn’t need to do any such thing, but by that time Nevada had already made preparations in her usual methodical way. And since we had been bankrolled by a man of enormous financial resources and remarkably few scruples, this had involved assembling a state-of-the-art housebreaking kit.
Now I unzipped the bag, which had lain dormant in the spare room for years, and went through it. Just as I remembered, it contained everything needed to gain entry to a locked, well-protected property. Including the instruction manuals.
As I leafed through one of these, Nevada came and looked over my shoulder.
“You see?” she said. “Never throw anything away. You never know when it might come in handy.”
* * *
Trident Studios was the name of a legendary music recording venue that had once existed in Soho. Great British rock and R&B acts had laid down tracks there, including the Beatles. If Tinkler had access to a time machine, this would be one of the first places he’d visit.
Trident Studios was also the name of Derek Robert’s business in Camberwell. It had been an act of hubris for him to have borrowed it. And a particularly bitter irony because ‘Trident’ was also the code name of the Metropolitan Police campaign to stamp out gun crime in the capital.
Behind the Trident Studios in Camberwell ran a thin, winding maze of an alleyway that squeezed between two rows of business premises. The alley existed where there were gaps between the walled backyards of the various businesses. In some cases the yards shared a common wall, and at these points the alley reached a dead end.
Luckily it extended far enough to give us access to the rear entrance of the studio. Construction work was taking place around the mouth of the alley, with new brickwork rising in ragged and apparently random stacks. The entrance to the alley had been half-heartedly sealed off with a tall rectangle of weather-beaten brown fibreboard. It had been jammed tightly into the opening, causing a tall vertical crease in the damp board, but I was able to ease it aside, creating an opening big enough for us to squeeze through.
Nevada was standing behind me. She was carrying selected items from the canvas bag in a small rucksack. The instruction manuals we had left at home. The rucksack was black, as were the clothes we were wearing. We also had what Gerry had referred to as the traditional black ski masks, although as yet we hadn’t put these on.
Nevada was speaking into the phone. “Yes, we’re about to start now.” Back down the street, Clean Head, who was sitting in a car keeping watch for us, said something in reply that I didn’t catch. I grunted as I shoved the board aside.
Nevada switched her phone to silent and we went down the alley.
We eased along the dank, narrow passage. The only light came from behind us, in the street we’d left behind. The alley smelled sharply of urine. Empty beer cans crunched under our feet. I could see virtually nothing, and although we had torches, neither of us felt like turning them on yet. So I ran my hand along the wall to our left. I felt distinctly when it changed, the size and texture of the bricks altering perceptibly. This indicated that we’d passed one of the buildings and moved on to the next. Keeping count in this way, I was able to determine when we’d come to the fourth one. Trident Studios.
The biggest problem with the lock on the gate was getting Nevada to hold the torch beam steady enough to see what I was doing. Nevertheless, we were inside within five minutes. The gate gave access to a tiny courtyard with a green recycling bin beside a steel reinforced back door that looked considerably more formidable than the gate we’d just come through.
There was also the blunt metal box of a burglar alarm on the wall above and to the left of the door.
The heaviest item in the rucksack we’d brought was a drill, which would enable us to pierce the outer shell of the alarm housing and insert what the manual called the ‘electronic countermeasures cluster’. This would be a ticklish business, not least because of the unavoidable noise of the drill.
So it was an enormous relief when I stood on the recycling bin and held a digital voltage detector beside the alarm housing which told me the alarm system was switched off. Derek Roberts must have done so after entering his studios for the final time, and the police had obviously not switched it back on—which, come to think of it, made total sense, since they wouldn’t know the entry code and a constantly ringing alarm would just annoy the hell out of everyone.
I climbed back down from the bin and we went to work on the back door. This time Nevada wanted to try dealing with the lock. The subtext of this was that I should hold the torch and see how easy it was.
The answer being, not easy at all.
I had to hover behind her, moving when she moved, trying to keep the lock in the beam of light while preventing her body blocking it and also shielding it as much as possible from anyone who might be watching.
It took twenty minutes for her to open the lock, and I doubt that I could have improved on her time. We were both damp with sweat and shaking with relief when the door finally swung open to reveal a dark, quiet space that smelled of synthetic pine air freshener.
We didn’t switch on any of the lights in the studio. As far as I could tell the windows were all shuttered and sealed, but we weren’t taking any chances. We used our torches, probing the shadows and getting our bearings. We had moved through a storage area into the control room, which consisted of a long console covered with mixing controls and computer screens. There was a window above it that overlooked the recording studio proper—a small carpeted chamber with sound-absorbing panels on the walls and three microphone stands looking tall and forlorn and abandoned in the middle of the space. Inside the control room there was a secondary bank of equipment on the right and two doors to the left. We opened these.
One led into the studio, the other to a small kitchen area combined with an office and lounge and, beyond that, the front door of the building. Just on the other side of that was where the actual crime scene began, and where Derek Roberts had died on his front steps. We closed the inner doors and went to work.
We found the records almost immediately. Miss Honeyland had given me a list, but I didn’t need it because every item was seared into my brain. I went through them quickly as Nevada held the torch.
Everything was there.
We had a bag thickly lined with bubble wrap ready to cushion the 78s. It would have been a terrible shame to go to all this trouble—and burglary—and then get home with a sack full of rattling shellac fragments.
As I packed the records carefully into the bag I noticed the bookshelf on the wall in front of me. Predictably eno
ugh, it held a number of volumes about electronics and sound recording. But most of the books were about statistics. I wondered if Derek had had any idea of what the odds had been of him catching a stray bullet in this neighbourhood.
One hundred per cent, as it turned out.
I was just packing the last 78 into the bag—‘Catfish’ backed with ‘Whitebait’—when Nevada suddenly snatched her phone out of her pocket. It vibrated in her hand as she stared at it. “It’s Clean Head,” she said. “Someone’s coming—”
At that moment we heard, from the other end of the building, the sound of the front door opening. We looked at each other for an instant and then I stuffed the last record into the bag and closed it. There was the sound of the front door shutting. Nevada and I quickly crossed the control room, the omnipresent carpet thankfully muffling our footsteps. Voices came from the other side of the door, in the office area.
Male voices, low, two of them by the sound of it.
Nevada went out of the back door of the control room and I followed her. She was already halfway across the store room and heading for the rear of the building as I came through. I turned to close the door behind me.
As I did so, the torch in my hand swung its beam across the control room and lit up something on the short section of the control console to the left.
I froze.
I couldn’t believe what I was looking at.
On the other side of the door, the voices had come to a halt, somewhere around the office area, and were holding a low discussion. I stared at the thin beam of my torch, streaming back into the control room. Behind me Nevada had the back door of the building open. I felt a thin, cold stream of air flow over me from it.
I stepped back—into the control room.
Behind me I could hear Nevada hiss in astonishment.
I moved across the control room, following the beam of my torch.
There in front of me, built into the short section of the console between a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a rack full of headphones, was a turntable. It was a vintage EMT 930st studio deck. There was a thin patina of dust on the silver metal plinth of the turntable, which was set flush with the blonde wood of the console. I reached down and ran my finger through the dust on the plinth, and across the console. It left a long pale streak.
Then I switched the turntable on.
Through the door I could still hear the voices in low conversation. Were they getting nearer?
The platter on the deck started to spin, smoothly and silently.
The selector lever on the left allowed it to run at 33 1/3, 45 or 78rpm. I turned it all the way to the left, to 78. Then I switched on the small neon strobe lamp. Outside the door the voices murmured. It was hard to tell, but I thought they were indeed getting closer. Which wasn’t at all surprising.
Behind me I heard a tiny sound and turned to see that Nevada had come back into the room.
She was staring at me in utter terror.
I looked back at the turntable. In the eerie glow of the strobe lamp I could see the small black stroboscopic markings spinning on the outside edge of the turntable. There were three sets of these, one for each speed setting. Two of them were an indistinct blur as the turntable spun, but the third, which corresponded to 78rpm, appeared to be standing perfectly still.
Which meant it was running at exactly 78 revolutions per minute.
Outside the door, the voices were definitely getting closer.
I felt Nevada grab my arm and try to physically drag me away from the turntable. I pulled free and bent over it again. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her hesitate for an instant, then go back out the door.
The voices were very near now.
I took one last look at the turntable then switched it off, first the motor then the neon lamp. The strobe light went out. I heard the voices outside the door. I turned to go. I was almost out of the room when I realised that the turntable was still spinning. Although I had switched it off, momentum meant the platter was still rotating. I heard someone rattling the door of the control room.
I stepped back inside and went to the turntable. I reached towards the platter and put a finger on it to gently retard its progress without damaging the drive belt—the habit of a lifetime—then realised what I was doing and just grabbed it and brought it to an abrupt halt.
They were coming into the room as I left, silently closing the door behind me. Nevada was waiting for me in the outside doorway at the back of the building, her posture a pictogram of tension. She wouldn’t look at me as we hurried out.
We locked the outer door silently behind us, went across the yard, through the gate, closed that and hurried down the alley.
I stuffed the tall damp panel of fibreboard back into the opening and we stepped into the street. “Wait a minute,” said Nevada.
She reached into the rucksack and pulled out a checked jacket for me, and an elegant, geometrically figured sweater for herself. We hastily pulled these on, and suddenly instead of being two suspicious-looking figures all in black, we were a fashionably attired young couple strolling back from a night on the town.
Nevada still wouldn’t look at me.
We got back to Clean Head’s vehicle. She had left her taxi at home and had borrowed a silver Audi. She had a theory that silver cars were so all-pervasive as to be virtually invisible.
She was staring at us as we got in. “What happened?” she said. “Why did you take so long? I was shitting myself. Didn’t you get my warning?” She looked over her shoulder at us as we settled in the back seat. “I told you they were going into the studio. Did you see them? Did they see you?”
“Just drive,” said Nevada.
We pulled away, Clean Head smoothly slipping through the gears. Nevada looked behind us until we’d turned the corner, then she looked at me.
She hit me. On the shoulder. As hard as she could.
It was cramped in the car and she didn’t have much room to manoeuvre, so it wasn’t much of a blow, but nevertheless I grabbed her arm before she could hit me again and held it tight.
“What the hell is going on?” said Clean Head from the front of the car.
“He stopped to admire a fucking turntable,” said Nevada. Her voice shook. Anger was turning to tears.
“What?”
“I didn’t stop to admire it,” I said. “I stopped to check it.”
There must have been something in my voice, because Nevada calmed down immediately, wiping her face. “Check it for what?”
“It had a 78rpm setting. Our murder victim owned a working 78 deck.”
“So what?” said Nevada. “We know he’d got hold of one. He told Miss Honeyland. That was the hold-up. He didn’t have one, but just recently he managed to get hold of one.”
“Not just recently,” I said. “That turntable was integrated. It was built into the console.” I looked at her. “It was installed the day they built the studio.”
Nevada shook her head, putting it together. “So he didn’t have to get hold of one… He already had one.” She peered at me. “And it was definitely in working order?”
I remembered the ghostly glow of the strobe lamp, and the precise dance of the markings. “Definitely,” I said.
“Couldn’t it have been recently repaired, the turntable? I mean, perhaps it was out of action and recently fixed. Or replaced? Or renovated?”
I said, “If it was, somebody managed to do it without disturbing the dust that had settled on it for years.”
There was silence in the car. Clean Head was listening, too.
Finally Nevada said, “So that’s what you had to check.”
And Clean Head said, “And that’s why you didn’t come out when I warned you.”
“Yes.”
“Even though I gave you plenty of warning.”
“Yes, you did. Thank you.”
“They almost got you, you know.”
“What did they look like?” I said.
She considered. “Two white
blokes. Big.”
“Police?”
“No.”
“Hefty lads?” I said.
“Hefty? Yes. Did they see you?”
“No, but they were coming into the room while I was still there.”
“That was a bit careless of you,” said Clean Head.
“I was making sure the turntable had stopped completely after I’d switched it off. I had to. Otherwise they would have come in and seen it was still spinning.”
“And they would have known someone had just been in there.”
“Correct.”
“Was it scary?”
“It was touch and go. But I had to do it.”
Nevada took my hand. “That was very brave of you.”
I said, “I noticed that you didn’t take off, either.”
“What do you mean?”
I looked at her. “You could have made good your escape as soon as things got dicey. But you didn’t. You waited for me. You didn’t bail.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” said Nevada. “I have far too much invested in you. I’ve only recently got you to abandon your last bad habit. If something happened to you I’d have to start again with someone else. Imagine the effort.”
“How romantic,” said Clean Head from the front seat.
“Actually, it is,” I said. I leaned close to Nevada and kissed her. I could smell her perfume and the tang of sweat. It was a lengthy kiss.
“Save it until you get home, you two,” said Clean Head.
We moved apart. I looked at Nevada. Amber streetlights flared at regular intervals in tiny replica in her wide dark eyes. She said, “So the upshot of all this is that the sound engineer was a duplicitous individual.”
“He was certainly a liar.”
“And if he was given to lying, it was presumably for a reason. Which suggests he was up to something. Perhaps he was some kind of scam artist.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It kind of makes you wonder why he was killed, doesn’t it?”
19. VIEW FROM THE BRIDGE
Having borrowed the necessary equipment from Tinkler—a Meridian AD converter and some cables—it took me less than two hours to make digital copies of all the records. This was grimly gratifying, but whenever I found myself reflecting with vindictive satisfaction on how favourably I compared to the spectacular incompetence of our chump of a sound engineer, I had to remind myself that this poor chump was dead.
Victory Disc Page 18
