by Mat Osman
“Miss Kimi, we watched the show online. Triumphant.”
He was helping her out of her coat and she reached out to read the badge on his chest. The voice box clicked into life. “I climbed the Eiger in three hours. Ask me how?”
They had the look of a couple enjoying a private joke. “How, Kaspar? How did you climb the Eiger in three hours?”
He sighed. “I had my puffa jacket pumped full of helium. The walk was so gentle that I barely left tracks in the snow.”
Kimi applauded quietly. “Bravo. Kaspar, this is Brandon, an old friend of mine.”
He reached out a hand. “Hello Brandon, welcome to At The Sign Of The Magpie.”
If, for my many and varied sins, I were to be reincarnated as an estate agent, this is how I’d describe the suite of rooms in which Kimi had ensconced herself. A period front door with a “speakeasy-style” viewing hatch gives way onto a hallway that you could play a decent game of tennis in, lined with Japanese makura-e prints. This leads to a living room with the dimensions and general ambiance of a ballroom. Its generous proportions hold a devastatingly tasteful range of furniture: the chairs are Eames and Chippendale, the couch is Beaux Arts, even the side tables are sourced from a Loire Valley chateau. The kitchen boasts a Meneghini Arredamenti refrigerator that could hold a whole cow, a climate-controlled wine room/humidor and a coffee machine that uses up more chrome than a 1950s sedan. (Note, nothing as vulgar as a hob or an oven — this is not a room for cooking.) Next door is the chapel, 1,500 square-feet of reclaimed Portland stone with a wrought-iron mezzanine gallery that originally graced the Bedlam hospital, just a couple of miles from this site. The staircase leads to the bedroom, which doubles as a gallery for some of east London’s best new artists and has a dual aspect balcony out onto the Shoreditch streets.
I guessed the whole thing had been created by knocking through disparate buildings that, between them, bore signs of this area’s many guises. You could see traces of Hugenot weaving rooms, Jewish tailors, Bengali fabrics and YBA-style shock art. It was a great place for a party. Musical instruments for the show-offs, a kitchen full of booze, and lots of alcoves for the addicts, both chemical and sexual. If I hadn’t had work to do I could have done myself some serious damage in there.
A party, like any other power relationship, is a lattice of interweaving forces; you just have to ride them. I didn’t sit by Kimi on the couch (too needy) but I didn’t head for the groups out in the bedrooms either. Instead I worked an elliptical orbit, wedging myself into arguments with at least three groups of people, more to keep my hand in than anything serious, and I let my circles and Kimi’s overlap. It was like those games of simultaneous chess that Adam used to do at exhibitions: walking from board to board, on tiptoe sometimes to see his opponents’ pieces, almost vibrating with focus. I was convincing a slow-witted bassist that the Pistols were simply the Stones with all traces of black removed — “Their Satanic Majesties” for the Apartheid set, innit — while telling some vegan ding-dong that owning a pedigree dog was worse than eating meat — Himmler bred dachshunds, that should tell you everything — while floating a theory that every generation gets the drug it deserves. All this while cocking an ear to Kimi’s gang and their discussion about whether some fashion designer’s suicide bid had been serious or not.
At one point I went to have a line and sat in a bedroom whose fur throws and tented ceiling made it look like Ghenghis Khan’s harem. As I pondered the right way to approach Kimi the bed started whispering. Ssssilver sssssurfers on sssilver sssurfboards. A girl poked her head out, looked fretfully around the room, her neck a periscope, and then hid back away. I got out my notebook and sat on the edge of the bed. The covers were pulled up over her head but I could see a few strands of sodden hair and hear serpentine whispering. Ssssons of sssilence sssing sssongs of sssadness. A hand pounced from under the covers and unerringly encircled my wrist. Ssssshew-stone shows you, sssshow-stone shews you. I left her to whatever trip she was on.
As the night spiralled inwards the herd thinned. The twenty or so we’d been at first waxed and waned. Guitarists invoked early morning flights and got Kaspar to order cabs to Manor House and Hounslow and other such monstrosities. There were walk-on parts for stragglers, hangers-on’s hangers-on, friends of friends, enemies of enemies, but by 4.30am it was just me and Kimi and the seemingly indestructible Kaspar. We huddled closer to the little alcove around the log fire. The pool of light it threw felt like a whole universe: a bubble of life and laughter in the deep space of cold, unfriendly London. We took it in turns to put on records, each one feeling like the best thing ever made, at least for the moment. I played Scott Walker and Laura Nyro, Kimi the Knife and ESG. She was casting some website on a laptop and texting as she listened. It was a no-frills chatroom with cam windows open. I kept sneaking glances at her in the screen-light. She looked remarkably fresh-faced; whatever industrial petrocarbons her team had used on her hairdo were holding solid and her makeup gave her a healthy glow. It was fucking infuriating.
“Look, read, watch.” She ran her finger under a line of text. I needed my glasses.
“What site is this?”
She made a face. “Narconauts. Shit name, interesting site. It’s all these amateur chemists synthesising their legal highs at home. This is where they come to try them out.”
“In public?” In a couple of the windows similarly screen-lit faces worked their way wordlessly through some Olympic-level gurning.
“Yeah, to share the knowledge.” I followed a couple of faces on the screen. Glasses, T-shirts and low-level facial hair were the fashion choices du jour. I watched the centre one for a while, a plump white guy in a T-shirt that read HIGH ON LIFE… (AND DRUGS). He was playing air drums to something we couldn’t hear.
“What’s fatty’s story?”
Kimi expanded his screen. “Dwight, from Melbourne. He’s on a mix of 5Me-O, which is a synthetic DMT I think, and some cannabis oil.”
“Can we talk to him?”
She checked his info box. “Says so. Hey Dwight? DWIGHT?” He nodded but didn’t stop drumming. Kimi leaned closer to the mic. “You good, man? Having fun there?”
“Sure, sure.” His voice was bitty through the speakers. “Coming in waves about six, seven minutes apart. Temporal slips, some strobing, a tiny bit of paranoia.” He shrugged it off and executed a long snare roll on the desktop. “Fun trip.”
I turned away from the screen to speak quietly. “Do they ever OD?”
She made a side-to-side gesture with her hand. “Not too often. They follow guidelines. It’s all tapered microdosing, recovery periods, basal temperature monitoring, y’know.”
That figured. “There’s a lot more health and safety involved in getting wrecked nowadays. I guess that’s why the site is so empty then.”
She gave me a blank look.
“Oh please, why d’you think people go to air shows?”
We settled into a companionable silence. She’d put on the second side of Hounds of Love and it was washing my emotions back and forth. “So Kim, I want to talk to you about something.”
The Sphinx would have found her expression inscrutable.
“I’m going to make a record.”
She gave me a smile that was 85% pitying, 15% scornful. “Of course you are. What else can you do?”
I nodded. “I know. But I need some help.”
She reversed the percentages of that smile. “Of course, that’s the other thing you do.”
“Not with the music or anything. That’s all up here.” I tapped my head. “But with the publicity.”
She started to roll a joint and looked at me from under the crest of hair. “That’s a shame Bran. Because gear, studio time, that kind of stuff I can get you for free. It’s a buyer’s market out there. But publicity, that costs. And, not to put too fine a point on it, the kind of publicity a forty-year-old musical also-ran who didn’t get too much attention back when he was pretty and on-trend, the kind of push that would
need, I’m not sure you could afford.” She licked the edge of the Rizla. “Even if I wanted to help. Which I really, really don’t.” She fixed a look on me. “Talent’s not enough. Everyone needs a story nowadays Bran. And yours is the oldest, dullest story of them all. No offence.”
I don’t think anyone has ever said “no offence” to me without it meaning the exact opposite. A twist of fury rose up and I tamped it down. Let her have her head.
“I know that. You think I spent the last twenty years not watching which way the wind was blowing? But what if I have a story?”
Her face was blank. “I’d love to hear it. I’m a six-foot-tall, sexually ambiguous singing bass player with a robotic voicebox and I still can’t get playlisted. What in God’s name have you got?”
How did she make the synthesised words shimmer with scorn? I lined up shot glasses and poured a row of grappas.
“OK,” I said, “How ‘bout this.”
I downed a shot. “So, a washed-up, over-the-hill musical… what did you call me back then?”
“Also-ran.” Her smile was the warmest it had been all evening.
“OK. So a washed-up, over-the-hill musical also-ran called Brandon Kussgarten is murdered, gunned down actually, in an east London street, one of the very streets where Jack the Ripper’s victims were found. The whole thing is captured on grainy CCTV: Brandon in his suit, the killers in their costumes. Great visuals. Very Michael Haneke.”
I fingered the lapel of my Tom Ford herring-bone and took another shot.
“The police find a white-label album on his body. It’s a copy of his just-completed, not-yet-released final record.”
The room was stuffy and for the first time I noticed fingers of dawn creeping around the blinds. I was parched and I felt the warning signs of a stammer coming on.
“The police appeal to fans, to musicologists. They think there might be clues to his killing hidden in the lyrics and imagery, in the chord sequences even, but they can’t understand them.”
The joint sat unlit in her hand. Her expression was unreadable. “Deliberately?” she asked, “I mean the clues are purposely hidden on the record? Or is it unconscious?”
There, then, I knew I had her.
“The latter I think. If Brandon knows that he’s going to be killed then it takes on the air of a publicity stunt, and we don’t want that, do we?” Stressing the “we”. Reeling her in.
She twisted the end of the joint and shook it. “Yeah, that’d get some attention. It’d get some attention without my help though, surely?”
Of course I’d considered it. I’d prefer not to rely on anyone else to make this work, but I knew this century’s news cycle was unforgiving. If I were to be killed on the same day that Bowie died, or some terrorist atrocity were to take place (just my luck), then I’d need some earthly representative to nudge my story back on track.
“Possibly. Probably. It’s not really a risk I’d like to take. If it slipped through the cracks it would be… y’know?”
“A waste.” She lit the joint and passed it straight over. “So, what would Brandon want from me?”
What did I want? The unearned slice of her fame perhaps? The part of her success — a very large part — that came from nothing very musical at all, made up in equal parts curiosity, empathy and desire. Payback for a debt she didn’t think she owed.
“Not much. A statement, afterwards. Timed for impact. Sad loss, towering talent, almost unbearable sexual charisma, that kind of thing.”
Again her snort bypassed the voice box.
“Of course if you were to contribute to the record, that might be helpful.” Not unhelpful to her either. A quick search had shown that she’d sold out three O2s back in 2004. The gig I saw, a singleton, had been draped upstairs to mask empty seats.
“Vocals? Or bass?”
It was my turn to snort. “Vocals. Any fucker can play bass.”
I got up to change the record. The walk from the circle of light around the fire to the turntable felt like a journey from a Norse epic and I heard the far-off hooves of approaching comedown. It was time to shunt those thoughts into a holding pattern and get this done.
She gestured for the joint. “Where’s the money in all this? It’s not like a dead man can tour, and, unless you’ve missed it, that’s where the cash is nowadays.”
“We’re not in it for the money though, are we, you and I?”
She shrugged. “You might not be. Money’s the reason I’m making records and you’re not. You need money just so that you don’t need money.”
“Well it might get you a front cover or two. And there’s the publishing.”
“And it’s for real? Brandon’s not going to pop up and say, ‘Hey, that was just a postmodern joke but you should all buy my record anyway’?”
I let the run-out groove do its thing a couple of times before I shook my head. “No pain, no gain.” It was the first time I’d thought seriously about this idea, and what it meant. Each word hardened some thought I’d had into something you could hold. A plan. She examined me sadly and then put a finger to my lips.
“I don’t want to hear anything more about it tonight. But I promise I’ll think about it — the statement, the singing, everything.” She looked tired. She said something to herself quietly, like a reminder and I didn’t catch it.
“What was that?”
All the amusement was gone from her eyes. “I said that if you can’t shine then you might as well burn.”
Kaspar materialised from out of the gloom, I hadn’t heard the door. He whispered, “Your car is here Mr Kussgarten.”
I raised an eyebrow at Kimi. I hadn’t asked for a car.
She gave me a look that was almost tender and said, “You still don’t know when you’re not needed, do you Bran?”
Chapter Three
“Is he for real?”
After so long reading the text, coming back to Rae on the screen was like waking from a dream. The liner notes had caught me up in my brother’s logic again. There was something almost hypnotic about his rhythms. The words bore you along so gently that you hardly noticed that what he was saying was nonsense. Visible Wi-Fi networks. Having yourself gunned down to sell a record. It was insane, but it was consistently insane, and his confidence made even the unlikeliest ideas seem feasible. But one look at Rae crushed that idea. She pressed her hands against her temples as if she were holding herself together and her mouth had retreated into a thin line. For me Brandon had been practically a fictional character for the last twenty-five years. I knew him through hearsay and snippets of media. But this was her life: her partner, the father of her son, the body she woke up next to each day. I reminded myself that he’d only been away for a fortnight. And Robin. How could you explain something like this to him? A pulse of guilt swept over me. I’d enjoyed reading Brandon’s notes. I liked the feeling of Rae and I sharing something, and I’d read to the end like it was a novel.
I tried again. “He can’t be serious, surely? This is just a story.” How would it feel walking out of your front door knowing that you would never be coming back again? Waiting for the end: the slam of a car door, your name called across waste ground, masks, guns, your hands in the gravel.
Rae twisted a strand of hair over and over around her little finger until, even over the camera, I could see the tip swell and purple.
“Rae?”
Her lips moved soundlessly and then she looked at me for the first time. “I don’t know Adam, really I don’t.”
I couldn’t read her emotion. Anger? Fear? Resignation? I tried again.
“I mean what good is it? To him? Even if this were to come off, and the record were to be a hit, it would just kill him not to be around to see it.” Poor choice of words, I know.
Rae shook her head gently, her finger still entwined in her hair. When she started talking again her voice was low.
“Look, obviously Bran’s not a selfless person. If he were to somehow have a hit record and front covers
and people talking about him, which is all he’s ever wanted, then you’re right, it would just destroy him to miss it. You can’t rub other people’s noses in it if you’re dead. But…”
She tilted her head back and stared at the ceiling. I could see her neck muscles flutter.
“I think you’re underestimating quite how far he would go just to say ‘fuck you’.”
“To who?”
She spread her hands. “To everyone. To his contemporaries. You can’t imagine the depth of his hatred for those guys. While he was writing songs in our garage, or playing ‘Thug #5’ in some crime drama, they were busy selling out. They were doing corporate gigs and car commercials and reunion tours and dating models and generally living the life he thought he was due. He didn’t even exist in that world any more, and every year he moved further and further from it. And then this.”
She pulled her hair back into a ponytail, distorting her features. “It’s not just that his death would be a rebuke to those guys, proof that you could make it without selling out, though he’d love that. He’d have died for his art, Adam, imagine how shallow that would make the others look. But also it would transform the last twenty years of his life. He’d become a music enthusiast, and for him that was the worst insult possible. But if this record were to take off then all that would be transformed. He’d be reappraised. All those shitty years would be the raw material for his resurrection.”
There was a proper silence then. Rae was lost in some furious thought and I tried to pull her back.
“OK, but even if he did go through with it then something went very wrong. There was no music on the USB stick. There’s been nothing on the news. He wasn’t even found anywhere near the East End.”
Rae blinked as if she was waking up. I watched the tight curl of hair she’d been twirling unfurl.
“Where he died isn’t one of these Jack the Ripper places?”
“No, it’s miles away.”
