by Paul Charles
The Ballad Of Sean And Wilko
First published by The DoNotPress 2000
This edition first published 2017 by Fahrenheit Press
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
www.Fahrenheit-Press.com
Copyright © Paul Charles 2016
The right of Paul Charles to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without permission in writing from the publisher.
F 4 E
The Ballad Of Sean And Wilko
By
Paul Charles
An Inspector Christy Kennedy Mystery
Fahrenheit Press
To Catherine for proving that dreams really come true.
CHAPTER ONE
‘Listen to that racket, would you?’ Detective Sergeant James Irvine complained to his boss, Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy.
‘Well,’ Kennedy replied, surveying the several hundred bobbing heads which filled Dingwalls Dancehall, Camden Lock, ‘if you can’t beat them…’
Irvine looked at his DI in disbelief. He couldn’t believe that Kennedy was going to join the thronging masses on the floor for a bop, particularly at a time like this. Kennedy winked and finished his sentence:
‘…get the DJ to turn the music off and ensure no one, but no one, leaves the club.’
Dingwalls Dancehall was by now overrun with members of the Camden Town CID. The owner, a Miss Violette Rodgers, didn’t know whether she was more nervous now or when the dead body had been discovered in the basement dressing room twenty minutes earlier.
Not that it was actually Miss Rodgers who discovered the body. She had been in the box office, rubbing her hands gleefully over the happy punters who gladly paid over their £12.50 to enter her establishment on a wet Thursday night, mid-November, to bop continuously to the sounds of Circles, a blast from the past, followed by a hip DJ.
There were 553 people paying £12.50 each; that’s £7,037.50 gross door take. After expenses and the band’s fee of £1,500, she would still be left with a clear profit of £3,772. Her other costs (venue upkeep, staff wages etc) would be more than covered out of her profits from 553 thirsty people crowding the venue’s long bar. It was proving to be a bit of a gold mine for Violette, this current seventies revival rage.
As the remainder of the Camden Town CID team secured the venue, Irvine led Kennedy into a small room in the basement; the one furthest from the stairwell. The wood of the doorpost around the lock was severely broken and splintered, and the body was lying sprawled out on a cold concrete floor.
The room and the corpse were brightly-lit by three large wall lamps. As well as a dressing area, it seemed to be a storage room for soft drinks with lots of cases of Lucozade, 7 Up, and Coca-Cola stacked up against the far wall. To the right of this, cylinders were scattered around the floor haphazardly with transparent plastic tubes attached to the pressurised containers and making their way up through the roof of the basement and into the bar overhead. Kennedy assumed that the dumb waiter in the corner was the lazy man’s route to the bar for the soft drinks.
In the opposite corner, the dressing room area was a pine table with a free-standing mirror on top. Forming a semi-circle around the table were eight mismatched chairs that all looked as though they might have been purchased at an odds and sods stall in the nearby Camden Market. All eight chairs had various pieces of clothes hung about them like one might expect in a football team’s changing room when the team were out at play. Except in this instance one lifeless player had remained behind, sprawled on the floor close to the soft drinks corner.
‘Do we know who he is? Who found him?’ Kennedy enquired, unconsciously buttoning up his Crombie. He was convinced that any room of death was at least ten degrees colder than any other part of a building.
‘Aye,’ Irvine began, shielded from the cold by his effective tweeds, ‘he’s called Wilko Robertson. His group was called Circles. They were playing here tonight.’
‘Circles?’
‘Aye.’
‘Hang on, I remember them. Didn’t they have a couple of hits during the seventies?’ The DI hoped one of the titles would come to him. ann rea was great at that, she could remember everybody’s hits.
‘Aye,’ Irvine replied unhelpful.
‘Yes, I remember.’ Kennedy searched for the melody, knowing that if he caught the melody the title would follow. He also knew the more he concentrated on song titles the longer he would delay the matter of dealing with a dead body. ‘Yes, I’ve got it, “She Loves Rain”. And then there was a big one. The big summer hit of, it would have been seventy-four or seventy-five, a girl’s name. Kathleen, Catherine. Col… Yes that’s it. Colette, “Colette Calls”. Yes, that was it.’
‘He was found by his roadie, a Mr Kevin Paul, known to all as KP,’ Irvine added as Kennedy answered his own question.
‘Roadie?’
‘Sorry, sir, road manager. I think he’s more of a tour manager, actually. Circles is a seventies group. I believe groups nowadays call their roadies “equipment technicians”. The chaps who look after the instruments and such,’ Irvine explained.
‘Right, right,’ Kennedy cut him off. He was nervous around corpses, and Irvine was sympathetic when he and Kennedy were close to a corpse and, consequently, at the beginning of another case.
By this point, WPC Anne Coles had arrived and was in the process of showing the portly pathologist, Dr Leonard Taylor, to the crime scene. Dr Taylor had been more closely involved in Kennedy’s last case than he ever intended to be and he was happy, relatively speaking, not to recognise the corpse. Not from the rear, at any rate.
Kennedy had recently found himself stealing glances at WPC Coles. Her long bottle-blonde hair was clasped up in some elaborate style which was designed more to fit in her pillbox hat than to turn heads. She had very pale skin; so pale in fact it allowed her full lips and trim dark eyebrows to be the defining features of her angular face. He wondered was his new-found attraction to her based on the recent difficulties he and ann rea were experiencing or was she simply blossoming into a beautiful woman right before his very eyes?
‘Goodness,’ Taylor announced theatrically, ‘this body is not yet cold.’
He was kneeling – his girth had long since prevented him the luxury of hunkering – over the body. He felt the victim’s throat in search of a pulse.
‘Dead, certainly,’ Taylor announced. ‘But not long since. I’d say he’s been dead less than an hour.’
‘Try less than forty minutes, doctor,’ Irvine said. ‘He was on stage forty minutes ago.’
‘Goodness,’ Taylor said again.
Kennedy couldn’t find much goodness around this room. The police photographer had shot the body from as many angles as possible and Irvine and Taylor were both convinced there was nothing to be gained from further examination. They turned the body over on its back.
At least the eyes were closed, Kennedy thought. The detective inspector was always disturbed somewhat when the corpse’s eyes were still open. It was as though they were trying to communicate something from the other side.
Wilko Robertson was dressed and groomed as though the eighties and nineties had never happened. He wore royal-blue flared trousers, a green shirt and a butterfly collar and a Ferrari-red V-neck tank top with a large “WR” embroidered into the front in white
. Kennedy pegged Robertson as unhealthy and continuously fighting his weight. He was around five foot nine, almost six foot if you included the red platform shoes. He had long ginger hair, parted in the middle, that, with his ginger face-stubble, gave him the look of a fiery highland warrior. But the real shock was that, to the naked eye, there was not a mark on the body. No blows, no blood, nothing.
Taylor had sealed both of Wilko Robertson’s hands in a plastic bag.
‘That’s all I can do here, chaps and chapesses,’ he said. ‘When you finish your examination, I’ll remove the body to St Pancras All Saints’ Hospital and carry out the autopsy. I’m afraid it’ll have to wait until tomorrow morning, however. I couldn’t possibly complete it tonight.’
‘That’ll be fine, doctor. We’ve a lot of people upstairs and we need to take their details. They’ll all be getting agitated so we’d better deal with them as soon as possible. Any sign of a cup of tea?’ Kennedy asked no one in particular. PC Allaway took the hint and went off in search of the DI’s favourite liquid refreshment.
Following the departure of Dr Taylor and the late Wilko Robertson, Kennedy instructed his team to take the names and addresses of everyone upstairs. He further instructed them to, ‘Take a Polaroid of everyone to dissuade any fibbing. And I’d like to see the road manager chap…ah…’
‘Kevin Paul,’ Irvine offered helpfully.
‘Yes. KP. That’s my man. Show him down here please,’ Kennedy announced, more relaxed now that the corpse had been removed. The sole memory of Wilko Robertson, the gravelly-voiced singer of seventies sensation Circles, was his chalk outline on the cold concrete floor.
CHAPTER TWO
‘A bit of a murder-mystery vibe, man, isn’t it?’ was Kevin Paul’s opening remark.
Hardly the way to speak about your former employer, Kennedy thought. At the same time he found himself warming to this softly-spoken Irishman and his tight smile.
‘You don’t mind if I prepare a roll-up, man, do you? Bit of a pressure vibe, you know what I mean?’
Kennedy nodded, assuming Kevin meant nothing stronger than tobacco.
‘Ah, Kevin…’
‘Oh, call me KP, man. Everybody does, man,’ the tour manager offered with a strained smile.
He was dressed from head to toe in black and of a style more nineties than his employer. Black Doc Marten boots, well-fitted black slacks, black Armani copy shirt, black linen waistcoat and black three-quarter-length leather jacket. He was dangerously thin, Kennedy thought. His black wiry hair was mostly hidden under a black skullcap, a kind of baseball cap with the peak removed.
Kennedy offered the road manager a tea.
‘Nah man, caffeine’s bad for you, man. I’ve had my quota for the day. I’ll have a mineral water though, no ice, if one is going,’ and he stared at Allaway so directly that the constable found himself doing as KP had directed.
‘You found the body?’ Kennedy began.
‘Yes, man.’
‘Can you elaborate?’
‘Well, about three quarters of the way through the set, our principals, Sean and Wilko, take a break and let the band go around the houses a few times.’
‘Why?’ Kennedy asked.
‘You know, a bit of an ego vibe, man. Sean and Wilko write and sing all the songs and consequently they get all the glory and the royalties. So the musicians, as well as getting their five hundred quid a week, once a night they get to show off their chops, sorry man, musicianship, on a ten-minute improvisation jam, man. It’s based on the B-side of a Circles hit single. The B-side is called “Gollyworbetson” and the A-side was called “Colette—”’
‘“Calls”’ Kennedy interrupted.
‘Cool, cool man,’ KP smiled a genuine smile and Kennedy felt he would have liked to have added, “cool-fuzz vibe, man”.
Kevin Paul had such a small face and such large black eyebrows that all his facial expressions were exaggerated. He had no other facial hair and although he looked like he may have been in his early forties, his boyish features appeared never to have been skimmed by a razor.
‘Anyway, as well as giving the chaps their ego spot, it also allows the principals a bit of a breather. Wilko always goes down to the dressing room to change, a bit of an over-sweating vibe, man, and Sean usually finds a quiet spot to watch the band. He generally hooks up with me to enquire if I’ve picked up the fee. If we’re on a percentage deal our income is based on the number of paying Billy Bunters, punters, you know. Tonight we were on a straight fee, fifteen hundred quid. I saw him when he came off, told him, “it’s a bank vibe, man” – you know, the money is as good as in the bank, I’ve picked it up. And he went off somewhere.’ KP stopped as Allaway handed him a bottle of water. ‘God bless you, man.’
He looked at Kennedy as though he was getting a bit exhausted by having to explain all his isms. Kennedy worried that he was making him feel like a bit of a foreigner and if an Irishman can’t feel at home in Camden Town where can he feel at home?
‘Sean and Wilko usually regroup at the side of the stage about ten minutes into the song and join the band, and the audience, in the final sing-a-long chorus. I’m there with Sean but there’s no sign of Wilko and it’s getting closer and closer to his on-stage time. He just doesn’t show. Sean gives me one of his, “where the feck is he” looks, as he goes back on stage, tambourine in hand, to lead the audience in the singing. So off I go looking for Wilko.’ KP paused as he lit up the ciggy he’d been elaborately rolling for the previous few minutes.
‘So I come down here and the door is locked. That’s not unusual. He always locks it when he’s changing. I knock on it a few times. He doesn’t answer. I imagine he’s having a problem hearing me because of the racket upstairs. The audience is so loud, man. It’s the sing-a-long vibe, man, and it always raises a lump in my throat. I love to hear an audience sing, it’s a truly wonderful feeling. I hammer on the door. Still no response, and I’m getting desperate. Wilko sings lead on the first song after the sing-a-long, which I can hear coming to an end upstairs. I’m getting frustrated. So I kick the door in. It’s like action-movie vibe, man, but nowhere near as glamorous. I feck up my arm and shoulder something rotten but I get the door open and Wilko’s on the floor over there.’ KP nodded in the direction of the chalk marks.
‘You didn’t move anything, did you?’
‘Hey, man, I watch Inspector Morse. I know the script vibe, man. Never touch anything at the scene of a crime.’
‘Why did you think it was the scene of a crime, KP?’
‘Lack of breathing vibe, man!’
CHAPTER THREE
Meanwhile, Irvine had organised Camden Town CID’s small but efficient team upstairs. With the help of several Polaroid cameras they took the names, addresses and likeness of everyone on the premises. The DS also kept the deceased’s band mates on the premises until his DI chose to either chat to them or let them go.
The musicians and crew gathered together in Miss Violette Rodgers’ office. Whatever money and space had been saved on the basement excuse for dressing rooms had obviously been lavished on the owner’s space. It was situated to the front of the venue, just above the box office, and had a spy window, which afforded a view of the audience and stage below.
Violette Rodgers was just this side of pretty without a trace of make-up. She was dressed in a dark blue suit, with waisted jacket and knee-length skirt. Her outfit was completed by a plain white male shirt. She anxiously hovered around the office, attempting to keep the musicians and police from uncovering its secrets; secrets like the four monitor screens Irvine had noticed her turning off just as he entered her office several minutes ago. She had concealed them behind closed cupboard doors but not before Irvine had noted the cameras were catching scenes inside the box office, outside the front door, along the main bar and then finally on the stage to catch the band in action.
WPC Coles, who accompanied Irvine, enquired hopefully about obtaining the video tapes from these monitors, which could make
all their work that much easier. Sadly her hopes were shot down in flames. The equipment was merely for monitoring purposes, so the owner could, literally, keep an eye on everything. Miss Rodgers apologetically informed Coles that when the equipment was being installed she had opted for the cheaper, non-recording, version.
Fair enough, Irvine thought, it’s her money.
Circles were not really sure what to do with themselves, trying to strike up some kind of conversation with each other. Anything was preferable to being alone with one’s own thoughts of career security now that one of the main members of the group was dead. They huddled around the owner’s desk, quietly consoling themselves with a nine-year-old malt that was kindly volunteered by Miss Rodgers from her bottom drawer.
The band had been formed in 1969 when two people moved from their native lands in search of fame and fortune. Sean Green – real name Sean Pratley – had left his parents’ plush home in Dun Laoghaire just outside Dublin. He’d been playing guitar (self-taught) since he was eleven years old and had been in various beat groups since he was fourteen. Sean was soon to cross paths with another similarly-motivated soul; one Wilko Robertson from Paisley. Whereas Sean had the musicianship and an ability to write songs, Wilko had the voice. A voice to die for. It wasn’t that Sean had a weak voice, he could hit all the notes and hold a tune but it was average, soulless and forgettable, very forgettable. A good voice for the high harmonies but a terrible voice to sell you the sentiment of a lyric.
Wilko, on the other hand, had an amazing soul voice in the tradition of Rod Stewart, Bonnie Tyler and Frankie Miller. He had a voice which made you believe the lyric, a voice which sold you the secret of the song each and every time he performed it. It was a voice tuned and tainted by whiskey, an abusive father, a poor childhood – having to bring up his two younger sisters and (older) brother when his mother died, the loss of his childhood sweetheart in the mass exodus to Australia and some more whiskey.
