December

by Phil Rickman

  Weasel smelled a rich, rusty smell. It brought a memory he couldn't place. He sat upright with difficulty, wiped some spit off his chin. Bloody thick spit.

  'Carlos tripped,' Sile said. 'Good as tripped, any road. Carlos drank too much tequila. Tom was in a shocking state that night, figuring he'd not only predicted it, he'd made it happen. Tom was crying on old Sile's shoulder. Pitiful. Like you, Ferret.'

  Weasel held up his hands. Blood dripped from his fingers. He touched his lips; it was thick all over his mouth, like curry sauce.

  'What you done? What you done to me, Copesake?'

  'Just a bit of a push,' Sile said. 'Like this.'

  Sile jerked forward, sending Weasel rocking back against the door again, and this time Weasel couldn't get himself up. He coughed, and a massive red gob splatted all over the dash.

  'No wonder they wear leather aprons in abattoirs,' Sile said, looking bored now, leaning back as far as he could go, folding up his knife.

  He shook his head sadly. 'Nobody's gonna think twice about it, when they find you in the van on some scrappy bit of derelict land in Wolverhampton or somewhere. You've got too much form, Ferret. Ex-con, dubious associates.'

  Weasel, heaving feebly, saw that Sile was wearing thin leather gloves.

  'Well, I must be off. Wish I could stay with you until you died, Ferret, lad, but I could do with a piss.'

  Sound of the door handle, and then all that remained of Sile was a dent in the passenger seat. Weasel couldn't move. He tried to breathe and his mouth, his throat, his lungs were all flooded and all he could do was make stupid slurping sounds.

  Lying back, he could see through the windscreen, hills and trees and some action in the sky, a last squeeze of sunlight, seeping through the mist like orange juice.

  Weasel made a noise like

  urrrrr

  And a whole tomato hit the screen, bright red, red as the Gretsch Chet Atkins Tom's old feller'd brought back from the boozer all those years ago.

  All those years. Weasel's eyes filling up.

  Blown it good this time. Too clever for your own good. Sod-all use to Tom and Shelley and . ..

  Princess!

  Rage and agony exploded in Weasel's head and his whole body shuddered as he clutched in desperation at the steering wheel - Princess, Princess! No! Please! - tried hopelessly to haul himself up, no breath in his lungs, only holes and blood drowning him inside and out, big helpings of blood everywhere, over the seats, the dash, the vinyl roof. Lifeblood dripping down the dirty little square of glass through which solemn eyes peered, big eyes behind spectacles thick as bottle-bottoms.

  VII

  Gin Trap

  Seeing the drummer in the studio smoking a joint - that was quite a shock.

  Not the joint, the drummer. As Moira had never thought for one minute that any of them were here for the music, the need for a drummer had never occurred to her.

  The appearance of this particular guy showed how heavily TMM must be committed to this crazy project. And that was worrying.

  'Oh, wow,' the drummer said. 'If it ain't the exquisite but criminally underrated Ms Cairns.'

  'Oh shit,' Moira said under her breath, pausing in the doorway to take this in. 'Lee Gibson.'

  The band had never had a full-time percussionist on the simple basis that Max Goff hadn't been able to find one with reputed psychic abilities. Drummers weren't like that.

  Lee Gibson certainly hadn't been. What Moira most remembered about Lee were sneers and resentment. Resentment when it became clear that he was never going to be a full member of the band, for reasons he couldn't, at first, get his head around.

  Sneers when he did get his head around them.

  Seeing him here, Tuesday morning, just before nine-thirty, setting up his kit like in the old days, this was downright bizarre.

  Especially when you considered who Lee was nowadays.

  'You're looking like you just saw a ghost.' Lee flicked at a cymbal. 'Not that that would faze you too much, as I recall.'

  Looking down the studio from the mixing desk, you'd think the drummer was the most important guy here. He was the only one didn't have a booth; the drums were out there on the studio floor, at the farthest end, near the rear door. In this studio, they seemed to take up nearly a quarter of the floor space.

  'You do still see ghosts, I take it,' Lee said.

  For a millionaire superstar, he didn't look that much different. Back in 'eighty, when most guys were having regular haircuts, Lee Gibson, ten years too young to have been one, was looking like a hippie. He'd always suited long hair, anyway, with that hook nosed pirate's face. Now there was designer stubble; Lee's face had grown into that.

  'You're looking good, though,' Lee said, like this was a major surprise, like he'd expected she'd be some kind of wizened crone by now.

  Moira came in and shut the door. This early, she thought she'd have had the place to herself. Last night the whole band and Prof had gone out to the paddock behind the Abbey where TMM had set up a couple of Portakabins and a caravan, with two cooks and two technical guys working shifts. When the studio had been launched fifteen years ago, all this was inside the building, extending into the outhouses and barns. But those buildings were in a pretty bad state now. Case said, and needed major refurbishment.

  The band had stayed in the Portakabin-canteen for several hours until close to midnight, putting off a return to the Abbey.

  In the end it was OK, not a bad night, if a wee bit cold in the third-floor tower room. She'd awoken a couple of times, sensing waves of need from Dave in the room below and choosing to ignore them.

  No complications at this stage, OK.

  The return of Lee Gibson, now the Lee Gibson. What kind of complication was this?

  'How'd you get here, Lee?'

  'By limo, I suppose. Didn't really notice. Spent the night in the village inn. Amazingly primitive. Rocks in the bed, appalling food. First place I stayed in three years where nobody recognised me.'

  'Hell, Lee, nobody recognised you?' Moira whispered. 'What kind of morons are these people? Or maybe you just forgot to hang your gold discs over the bed again.'

  'You're just a goddamn jealous bitch, Cairns,' said Lee. 'No, I won't be going back there tonight. I'm in a mobile home. Down by the river, in the trees. Quite comfy. Little office in there too, and a PA. Called ... er ... Michelle. Works nights.'

  'All mod cons, then,' Moira said dryly.

  'Yeah. All mod cons.'

  Lee grinned. He'd be in his early thirties now. Over in the States, where he was pretty enormous, few people would even remember him as a drummer. Lee had switched pretty quickly to guitar: thrash metal and then grunge, strategic career move.

  No. Him being here made no sense; it was unreal.

  'OK.' Moira walked purposefully across the studio and sat on the edge of an amplifier. 'I'll admit it. I don't understand why you're doing this.'

  'Cause I'm sentimental, babe,' Lee said. 'I have attachments to my roots.'

  'Which is why you've cultivated that truly awful Californian accent, huh?' .

  Lee scowled. He could only take so much of this. It was more like the old Lee. Or actually, the extremely young Lee; he couldn't have been more than nineteen when he'd done that session. So could he just have come back on a whim, to relish the irony, the reversal of fortunes?

  That didn't make enough sense, either.

  'You figuring to put a couple of your own songs in this time?' Moira said casually.

  'Shit, no.' Lee offered her a hit from his joint; she shook her head. 'I'm just the session drummer.'

  He wore white jeans and a black shirt open to a hairy chest and a half-moon medallion. He was loving this.

  'How's Tom?' he asked.

  'As a guitarist or as a human being?'

  'As a neurotic bastard,' said Lee. 'Shit, that cat was really unstable. What happened, to his wife, all that - you didn't have to be frigging psychic to see that coming a mile off. Still... I understand all t
hat stuff better these days.'

  'What stuff?'

  'This psychic shit. Some gigs, you really feel you're wielding like cosmic power. Jim Morrison said that. Used to see himself as a shaman. That's a guy who connects with the spirit world.'

  'Yeah I know what a shaman is. The rock audience is like a tribe and the musician's the medicine man.'

  'Heavy shit,' Lee said. 'Up there on stage at a big gig or festival I can feel where Morrison was corning from.'

  'Except you were closer to being a real shaman in the old days,' Moira said. 'Tribal shamans used to bang drums to summon and dismiss the spirits, not stand there just growling out pretentious crap.'

  'Yeah?'

  'Yeah. Like this.' Moira stamped suddenly on the bass-drum pedal.

  Bam!

  'Leave those drums alone,' Lee snapped, not joking.

  'Aw, come on, Lee, spill it.' Moira stepped away, lifting her hands. 'What the hell are you really doing here?'

  'Well, it's not a frigging holiday.' Lee sat down on his stool, threw a pair of drumsticks in the air, watched them drop to the newly laid grey carpet, didn't pick them up. 'Pound of flesh situation, if you must know.'

  'I'm sorry, I'm very ignorant, but are you with TMM or what?'

  Lee stared at her, clearly amazed that somebody purporting to be a musician didn't know which record company he was signed to.

  'You remember when I first went out to the States. I was the drummer with Captain Blood, right?'

  'Sure,' Moira said. Captain Blood. That was the second-division British blues band which acquired American personnel and came to sound even less like the original than Fleetwood Mac. Until, pretty soon, there was nothing left of it that was British except the name. And Lee Gibson, presumably.

  'See, it was Sile Copesake let me go. Fixed it for me actually. After Frankie Lomax OD'd.'

  'You were in Sile's band?'

  'Who wasn't? The guy was good to me, what can I say? Got me the Blood job. Backed me on the solo career when Blood split. Rest is history.'

  'You mean Sile's calling in the favour,' Moira said.

  'That's about it,' Lee was sounding suddenly English again. Maybe L.A.-speak was hard to sustain in Britain in December. It made business sense. An album with Tom Storey on it, plus Lee Gibson, would be guaranteed to recoup expenses. But what if it was lousy? People who hadn't played together for getting on for fifteen years - about four generations in rock music - thrown into a studio, no rehearsals? Was this not a major gamble during a recession?

  Maybe. Maybe not. What it certainly was, Moira realised, was a well-calculated replay of December 1980. The studio layout was exactly the same; even the same amps, you'd swear: two Voxes, a Fender Twin and a McCarthy Dual. And on the stand in the booth nearest the mixing desk was an orange coloured basic Fender Telecaster, the only guitar Tom Storey ever used in the studio.

  How did they know which was Tom's old booth? How did they know about the original amps? How did they know - peering into the second booth - that Dave liked to perch on packing-case type McCarthy amp, even playing acoustic?

  Russell? Had Russell told them all this? Before he ...

  She said to Lee, 'Hey, d'you hear about Russell Hornby?'

  'Yeah.' Lee finished off his joint, holding it between clawed thumb and index finger in the time-honoured, waste-not-want not fashion. Stylishly blew out some fragrant smoke. 'Aaaaah, Russell, yeah. Stupid bastard. Why'd he do a thing like that?'

  Moira shook her head. She might as well have asked him if he knew Russell had got married again or bought himself an English setter. 'What's it like outside?'

  'Filthy,' Lee said. 'Anyway, I don't get this whole business either. You were having a bad time before, you couldn't get out fast enough, you destroyed the frigging tapes. So what the hell are you doing back here? You all suddenly desperate for cash? That's the case, I'll give you some to get us all the hell out of this museum.'

  It was a simple enough question. Why were they here?

  And yet this was the one big question which, whenever the four of them were together, nobody seemed to ask.

  'Straightforward enough, I suppose,' Moira said. 'We came here to make an album and we never finished it. It's taken us fourteen years to realise that this is one of those albums that's just got to be finished.'

  'Or else?'

  'Yeah,' Moira said.

  Vanessa rubbed at the glass panel and peered through into the cab.

  She just didn't know what was wrong with Weasel.

  His eyes were still open, so he couldn't be asleep. He couldn't be dead either. Dead people's eyes were always closed; she'd seen a dead person once, Granny Love, Shelley's mummy.

  She looked like a doll, but Shelley had said she was very peaceful.

  Weasel wasn't peaceful. For ages and ages. Weasel had been looking very angry through the dried soup.

  Vanessa knew he wasn't angry at her. Weasel was never angry at her. He called her Princess, like Princess Diana, who used to live near their house but didn't any more.

  She supposed she must have fallen asleep in the back of the van. Again! She'd fallen asleep the first time, after eating up all the food and then she'd woken up very cold and felt a bit sick and wanted to go to the toilet.

  It had been dark by then. Vanessa had climbed out of the back door of the van and gone round to the front and pulled open the door to ask Weasel where the toilet was. But Weasel felt funny and wet and didn't smell very nice.

  The van was in a big long shed with straw all over the place. There were cracks of light where the doors were. The doors had only been pulled to, and she opened them easily and it was very dark outside, but she was never frightened of the dark, not like Daddy.

  It was a sort of farm, like Rudkins's farm up the lane, only the Rudkins had chickens and horses and dogs everywhere and there were no animals here at all. Round the back of the house, Vanessa found a little shed with a creaky door and a string to put the light on, which was just a horrible bulb with dead flies all over it. There was a very dirty lavatory that she refused to touch with her bottom but had to use anyway because she just couldn't wait. It was a nuisance.

  There'd been a light on in the house but Vanessa didn't like to knock because the Bad Man who'd had a fight with Weasel was probably inside and he might want to fight her.

  So Vanessa had gone back to the van and didn't know what to do, so she prayed to her Guardian Angel, using the prayer she'd been taught at the convent.

  O most faithful companion appointed by God to be my guide and protector and forever at my side... What thanks can I offer you for your faithfulness and love? You watch over me in sleep. You console me when I'm sad. You lift me up when I fall...

  She didn't say it very loud, and then she lay down with her schoolbag as a pillow and her blazer and some dirty old sacks over her. The smell had reminded her of Weasel and she'd sat up again and put her hands together.

  And please watch over Weasel, too, and make him better.

  As she lay down again, she felt a bit worried about this, perhaps her Guardian Angel wasn't allowed to watch over Weasel as well. Perhaps she ought to pray to Weasel's Guardian angel. But was she allowed to do that?

  She must have fallen asleep thinking about this, perhaps for hours and hours. Now she was awake again and she was hungry and thirsty.

  She knocked on the glass. 'Weasel!'

  There were holes in the barn roof and light coming down grey and misty. She could see Weasel quite clearly. He hadn't moved. He didn't look too angry any more. Just sad.

  If anybody should be angry, it should be her.

  Weasel had said he was going to find Daddy.

  What he'd said was, the next time those doors open, Daddy'll be there.

  But the doors had never opened except when she'd opened them herself.

  It was no way to treat a Princess.

  She pushed the van doors open and scrambled down and peeped between the big barn doors to make sure the Bad Man wasn't there.<
br />
  Outside it was very foggy and very cold. Colder than the back of the van. Vanessa couldn't even see the house. She felt very miserable. The ground was all muddy and dirty and full of puddles with coloured circles in them, which was oil. She hated going to the dirty old lavatory again. When she pulled the chain it made a horrible noise, like the noises Weasel had made when the Bad Man had gone and there was vegetable soup all over windscreen.

  Crouching over the dirty lavatory, desperate not to touch it because of the germs, Vanessa started to say another prayer to her Guardian Angel and then felt ashamed. He wouldn't want to talk to her in here!

  Vanessa began to cry.

  She didn't want to go back to the van. She didn't want to see poor Weasel again. She wanted to go home. She was very cold.

  Outside the lavatory, it was so foggy and grey and her glasses were so misted up with tears that Vanessa almost bumped into the man.

  Although not really. The man came out of the mist. You couldn't bump into him. He was one of those men.

  'Grandad,' Vanessa said, relieved.

  'I don't know, Eddie,' the museum curator said, 'you were bad enough when you were at work, all your awkward questions, but since you retired you've been a complete pain. How can I explain it? The massacre was 1175, no argument.'

  'I don't need for you to explain it! All I want is for you to confirm it, see!'

  Eddie realised he was yelling down the phone and lowered his voice. 'I just don't want any mistakes, see, Elwyn.' He consulted his notes. 'Can we go over it one more time?'

  'Five minutes,' the museum curator said, 'then I've got a pensioners' club from Hirwaun to show around.'

  'OK.' Eddie spelled it out, tracing his notes with his finger.

  De Braose massacre of Seisyll's people ... 1175.

  Foundation work begins on Abaty Ystrad Ddu ... 1177.

  'But that doesn't mean there was nothing there at all, Eddie.'

  'No, all it means is there was no massive great stone edifice, which means the Abbey was probably a bunch of huts. Or even bloody tents. See, these little anomalies have been at the back of my mind for years, without me realising the significance.'