Jenny glanced at me and left. He closed the gate behind her and then turned to look at me. Fanny left her post under the chair and wandered across the gravel towards us. From somewhere nearby came the sound of a car door slamming. Jenny returning to their vehicle, I presumed.
“Listen, mate,” said Overland. “When we met yesterday. There was something…” He paused and reached for his shirt pocket. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“I’d rather you didn’t.”
“Fair enough.” He dropped his hand to his side. His instant obedience surprised me. “Anyway, when I saw you yesterday there was something I wanted to tell you.”
I felt a faint flicker of excitement but I didn’t say anything.
“I wanted to tell you, but I bottled out.” He looked at me. “You see, there’s a record…”
There was a warmth rising in my stomach. “A record?” I said.
“Yeah, another one. By the Flare Path Orchestra. One you haven’t got. It’s a Victory disc. A V-Disc on twelve-inch vinyl. Probably the only one to survive the war.”
“And you know where it is?”
He nodded. “Yes. But that’s the thing. I know where it is, but I don’t have it myself. Someone else has it. It’s in the possession of these people. And they’re some very dangerous people.”
20. THE HOUSE IN ELTHAM
“Let me do the talking,” said Nevada.
“Why?”
“Because you’ve been getting very impatient with people lately—‘testy’ is the word, I think. Testy and grumpy. And we don’t want that. We don’t want to alienate anyone.” She pressed the doorbell. We were standing in a cramped alcove outside a big old house on a residential street in Eltham. There was a pair of grey plastic rubbish bins in the alcove with us, and a motorcycle shrouded in a blue plastic sheet that whipped and snapped. It was going to be a wild, windy night.
Nevada pushed the button again, and the bell echoed inside while grit circulated in the alcove at our feet, stirred by the breeze.
All I could see through the dusty slot of window in the door was a murky plane of shadows. Eventually, the shadows stirred and the door opened. A thin man with a bloodhound face and thinning brown hair peered out at us. He was wearing an expensively soft-looking grey sweater and baggy maroon trousers. Nevada smiled at him.
“Mr Pennycook?”
He nodded. “Yes?”
“Danny Overland arranged for us to—”
“Oh, yes, of course. Come in.” He smiled and stood back so we could enter. I was expecting some kind of entranceway, but we stepped straight into a room. A bedroom. In fact, a teenager’s bedroom—if the general level of untidiness and the numerous posters of heavy metal bands were anything to go by. I surveyed the posters. I didn’t recognise most of the bands, though Tinkler would have been pleased to see that Led Zeppelin was still prominent among them. No sign of Erik Make Loud, however. Perhaps the grip of his electric guitar on the youth of today was failing.
There was also a music system, which seemed to involve an iPod docking station and some serious transistor amplifiers that were driving a pair of big black speakers with an accompanying pair of even bigger, blacker subwoofers. I didn’t want to be around when anybody switched those suckers on. They would probably take the top of your head off in a lethal extravaganza of solid-state bass.
“My son’s room,” said Pennycook, who must have divined my thoughts. “Sorry about the mess. Bit of a shock to step straight into it when you come through the door from the outside world like that.”
“No, it’s fine.”
“This used to be the sitting room, you see. But then when Billy broke his leg he couldn’t get up and down the stairs very easily. So it seemed to make sense to relocate him down here. So we turned the sitting room into his bedroom. Would you like some tea?”
“Yes, please,” said Nevada. “Although I expect he would prefer some coffee.” She nodded at me as we walked through to the narrow galley kitchen that directly adjoined Billy-the-metal-freak’s bedroom. We were now in the back of the small house. There was a window over the sink looking out on a narrow concrete yard with a table made from an oil drum. A bedraggled yellow and white polka dot parasol spread over it, twisting and contorting in the increasingly lively breeze.
“Coffee, then?” said Mr Pennycook. He was opening a cupboard on the other side of the narrow room, looking at me with his bushy brown eyebrows angled in enquiry on his high smooth forehead.
“Yes, please,” I said. It couldn’t be any worse than tea. Pennycook carefully set out three mugs. Two blue and one pink. The pink one was presumably for the girl among us. Then he unscrewed a jar and began spooning instant coffee into them. Nevada gave me a look to make sure I didn’t kick up a fuss. Would I ever? Actually, it looked like decent instant—organic, fair trade and shade grown. It ticked all the boxes. Yet it would still remain something fashioned by an industrial process involving dry-cleaning fluid.
I said, “How did your son happen to break his leg?”
Pennycook was busy filling the kettle. “How did he…? Oh, on his motorcycle, of course. Or off it, actually. Yes, he came off his bike.”
I remembered the shrouded motorcycle in the alcove. It looked like no one had ridden it for a long time.
Pennycook switched the kettle on. “Who could have anticipated that?” he added bitterly.
“Is he all right now?” said Nevada. “I mean his leg.”
“Oh, yes, he’s fine.” The kettle began to hiss. “In fact, he’s going to university. Right here in London. I said I’d pay his student loan if he promised to stay off his motorcycle for the next three years while he’s studying.” The kettle began issuing steam into the tiny kitchen.
Nevada frowned. “But aren’t you afraid he will just hop straight back on his bike the minute he graduates?”
“The minute he hopefully graduates,” said Pennycook, peering into another cupboard. “I’m hoping, if he indeed does hop straight back on that bloody thing, at least his brain will have had a chance to mature a bit more.” He took out a pack of chocolate biscuits. “And he’ll be a bit more thoughtful and careful.” The boiling kettle switched itself off with a click. Nevada was watching me with amusement. She knew that I’d had to repress an urge to switch it off a moment earlier. Coffee is best made with water a shade short of boiling. But I wasn’t fanatical enough about the matter to start going around switching off strangers’ kettles.
Pennycook stirred the hot water into the crunchy brown granules, releasing a smell distinctly resembling coffee, and he placed the mugs on a tray with some plates and the pack of chocolate biscuits. He was pushing the boat out for us. Mr Darren Pennycook seemed a peaceful, affable sort. “This way,” he said. We followed him out into a cramped corridor that led to an awkwardly angled staircase. I realised that the house was actually half of a much larger building that had been chopped up decades ago. That explained a lot.
Pennycook started up the stairs and we followed him. “In a funny way, Billy is the reason you’re here.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
“Ah, come in. Since Billy moved all his stuff downstairs this has become our sitting room.” He ushered us into a small room. There was a sofa and armchairs, but mostly it was crowded with books and records. A serious-looking hi-fi system lurked on a shelf of its own. Pennycook scored a few points with me for that.
The few blank strips of wall in the room were covered with pictures related to his central obsession.
I wondered what had happened to Pennycook’s wife. Billy’s mother. The uncircumscribed pursuit of male enthusiasms by father and son suggested a house without women.
In a way, this was a tidier version of the room downstairs. The difference here was that the walls weren’t plastered with heavy metal posters. Instead there were framed publicity photos of our old friend Danny Overland. Nevada went over and peered at them avidly. I joined her. “He’s so young,” she said, gazing at a picture of Overland, gr
inning and looking dashing. He had gleaming, oiled hair, as they did in the age of Brylcreem, and he was wearing his air force uniform and holding a saxophone.
“Isn’t that a great picture?” said Pennycook, setting the tray down and bustling over to join us. He talked us through the various framed portraits in great detail, giving dates and locations. There were several of the great man in the Flare Path Orchestra, and one that also prominently featured Colonel ‘Lucky’ Lucian Honeyland. I made a mental note to see if we could get a copy of it for our client.
“What an amazing collection,” said Nevada, perhaps hoping to draw his peroration to a close.
“There are even several pictures which don’t show him holding a cigarette.” Pennycook bent over and made a chugging, wheezing sound. After a startled moment I realised he was laughing. “Yes, he does smoke rather too much, doesn’t he? I wish he wouldn’t. I know he’s already reached a massively ripe old age despite the cigarettes, but even if quitting now only bought him another year or two, that would be another year or two of the most marvellous music.”
Personally, I suspected the nicotine was probably the only thing holding the old bastard together. But I let Pennycook ramble on, remembering Nevada’s instructions not to be impatient. He resumed his inventory of the pictures on the wall, the most interesting of which showed Danny Overland with Frank Sinatra.
They were both holding cigarettes, of course.
“Australia in 1959,” he said.
“When Sinatra was touring with the Red Norvo Quintet,” I said. One of Old Blue Eyes’s few purely jazz excursions.
Pennycook gave me a quick look. “Yes,” he said. I had evidently scored some musical knowledge points myself. “They did an album together, Danny and Sinatra, very rare, only ever released on the Australian Calendar label. I have a copy here somewhere.” He peered at a shelf of records, looked for the album in question, evidently couldn’t find it, then in an apparent face-saving gesture, turned to the hi-fi system and began fussing with that.
It was a standard Linn-Naim setup, expensive and painstaking and considered by many to be the pinnacle of hi-fi. I wouldn’t have minded giving it a listen, but not now. I opened my mouth, getting ready to ask him a blunt question concerning our visit.
But Nevada read my intention and spoke quickly, “So what is it you do, exactly, Mr Pennycook? I mean in the way of work?”
He glanced at us. It was just small talk, but he didn’t seem to welcome the question. “Oh, I work in the local council planning office. All very dull really.” Then he brightened. “But I also run dope.”
Nevada and I looked at each other. “Oh, that’s nice,” she said. “Perhaps we can buy a quarter ounce from you later.”
Pennycook flushed scarlet. It was quite a sight. The tips of his large ears flared brightly as if glowing with heat. He shook his head mournfully. “Not ‘dope’,” he said. “D.O.A.P. The Danny Overland Appreciation Partnership.”
Nevada gave me a panicked, ‘get me out of this’ kind of look. I shrugged. I saw no way of backtracking. He didn’t look like he was going to call the drug cops, anyway. “D.O.A.P.,” he continued. “It’s sort of a fan club and I’m the chairman and general manager.”
“I’m so sorry,” said Nevada. “I just thought—”
“That’s perfectly all right.”
“I mean, I was just being polite. I wouldn’t really have used any. If you had any. If we’d bought any.”
“Yes, she would,” I said. “But I wouldn’t.”
Pennycook shuffled his feet and cleared his throat. “Well, anyway, you came here to ask me about something specific.” It seemed Nevada’s gaffe had had the happy side effect of getting him to cut the crap. “Danny Overland told you that I mentioned a certain record…”
“A Flare Path Orchestra recording,” I said. “On a V-Disc.”
He paused and stared at me. For a moment I had the odd but intense feeling that he was going to flatly deny it. But he said, “Yes. As I said before, my son Billy is the reason we know about this record. As you will have gathered from the trappings of his room downstairs, he is a big fan of the heavier variety of rock music.”
“Yes, actually we did gather that.”
“Well, this enthusiasm has led him to some odd places. Travelling around the country to listen to little-known bands in obscure clubs.” I thought of Lucky Honeyland, in another century, tooling around wartime Britain on his motorcycle, racing through the blackout in his quest for a quite different kind of music. “And it has also led him to some very odd people. He has quite an eccentric collection of friends.” He hesitated, and I wondered if we’d reached a sensitive subject. But he picked up a chocolate biscuit and crunched on it hungrily as he spoke.
“Last year he was in Gloucestershire to see one of these esoteric bands that he so admires. He just goes to gigs on his motorbike with no thought as to where he is going to stay afterwards. He’s driven by the sheer love of music. He doesn’t care where he ends up spending the night. He takes a sleeping bag and bedroll with him. Sometimes he sleeps in ditches, for all the world like a tramp. On other occasions he’s lucky enough to be taken in by somebody he met at a gig. As I say, he makes friends, and sometimes they invite him back home.”
He finished his biscuit and licked the crumbs off his fingers. “This particular time he’d been to see a band called Necker Cube. And he met a young bloke, about his age, in the audience and they hit it off. Shared enthusiasm and so on. After the gig the young bloke invited him back to his home. Or rather, the home of his older brother, which proved to be a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere.”
He went in search of another biscuit. As he was levering it out of the packet he recalled his duty as a host and offered the biscuits to us. We shook our heads. “It was a dump of a place, but big, the farmhouse, and Billy was given one of their many empty rooms to unroll his sleeping bag in and use for the night. He was duly grateful, and knackered, and when everyone else retired he went to sleep. Apparently a few hours later he woke up and needed to do a wee. He got lost and wandered through the house. It was very late and no one else was around. And he happened to open a door and find a room full of certain… unusual memorabilia. He went in for a closer look. And while he was looking he saw an old gramophone, and on it was a record.” He looked at us. His eyes had a kind of pleading intensity. “He knows about my passion for the work of Danny Overland, of course.”
“Of course.” I looked around the room at the dozens of pictures. How could anyone miss it?
“So when he saw that the record was one of Danny’s he took careful note of it. He knew I’d be interested, especially if it was one I didn’t have. Which indeed it turned out to be.”
I said, “And he’s sure it was a V-Disc?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re sure he’s reliable? I mean, it was late, the middle of the night. He was tired. You’re sure he definitely saw the record?”
Pennycook nodded. “He did more than just see it.” He reached into his pocket and took out a phone. “He photographed it. With his phone.” He showed me the image. It was a close-up of the record label and was admirably clear. Red, black and blue lettering on a white background.
It read:
Army—Navy—Marine Corps—Coast Guard
V-Disc
Produced by the Music Branch
Special Services Division
Army Air Force
OUTSIDE START 78RPM
This record is the property of the War Department of the United States and use for radio or commercial purposes is prohibited.
No. 719A
DEEP PENETRATION
D. Overland
The Flare Path Orchestra
BB 1821 Swing Band
“DD” RELEASE
I looked at him. He must have read the excitement in my eyes. “Amazing, isn’t it? What a discovery. And what an astounding coincidence. Or perhaps I should say, piece of synchronicity. I mean, my son was one of the very
few people who was in a position to recognise this record and realise its importance, and he happens to stumble on it in this godforsaken farmhouse, in the middle of the night.”
“What kind of memorabilia?” said Nevada.
His enthusiasm abated. “I beg your pardon?”
“You said your son was drawn into the room by the unusual memorabilia. What was it, exactly?”
He cleared his throat again and shuffled nervously. “What you must realise,” he said, “is that the sort of music he listens to, it is played by all sorts of people, all sorts of bands, and certain bands attract a certain type of listener.” He paused. “Including some people on the far right, politically speaking. In fact, rather to the right of the far right. Extremists. The lunatic fringe, not to put too fine a point on it.”
I said, “So what he found in the room was…”
“Nazi memorabilia. Swastika flags. Portraits of Hitler. That sort of thing, I’m afraid.” He said it as if it was somehow his fault. “I explained all this to Danny Overland when I told him about the discovery of the record. It made matters quite… complicated. Normally I would have simply approached the people, these people at the farmhouse who owned the record, with an offer to buy it.” He looked at me for moral support. “It’s an extremely valuable artefact.”
“Yes, it is,” I said.
“Priceless, in fact. But these people weren’t exactly approachable.”
“How do you know they’re not just some harmless nutcases?” said Nevada. “I mean, presumably Nazi memorabilia is sometimes collected by harmless nutcases. In fact, most of the time it is, I imagine.”
“Presumably most of the time it is,” said Pennycook. “But not in this case. When Billy got back in touch with this boy, the one he’d met at the gig, to say thank you for putting him up, he discovered he’d been savagely beaten up.”
“What?”
“Yes. By his own brother. For bringing a stranger to the farmhouse.”
“Wow,” said Nevada.
“They’re incredibly private people, not to say paranoid.”
I said, “Were they skinheads?”
Victory Disc Page 20
