by Paul Charles
WPC Coles and DS Irvine took this as a signal to get going and so they completed their cups of tea (Irvine in one gulp and Coles in three sips) and departed Kennedy’s office just as the phone rang.
‘Ah Kennedy, it’s yourself,’ ann rea laughed in her execrable Irish-going-on-Scottish accent.
‘I’m glad you rang. Listen, we’ve just received the fire report.’ Kennedy told her about the findings.
‘It gets more and more suspicious by the minute. Mary Jones has just called and told me that she has just noticed that a few things are missing from Peter’s office.’
‘Did she say what?’
‘No, she wouldn’t. She wants me to go over there to see her. Do you want to meet me there?’
‘Fine. I was going to question her again anyway. We’re going over with the troops to see if we can learn anything else from the staff. But do me a favour: don’t mention the incendiary device. We’ll want to keep that quiet for a while.’
‘Okay. I’ll see you there in four or five minutes. Oh and by the way, I’ve got something for you,’ ann rea replied.
‘Promises!’
‘See you one-track.’ The line went dead.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I just don’t know where to begin
- Elvis Costello
The first thing that crossed Kennedy’s mind as he walked into Peter O’Browne’s office and saw the hundreds of music cassettes, was the incendiary device.
Without alerting anyone, he asked ann rea and Mary Jones to accompany him back to Mary’s office, locking Peter’s office door as they went. He then rang North Bridge House and put in a request for Bomb Squad officers to be sent for immediately.
Three hours later, after their search had turned up nothing more suspicious than an old Brendan Croker demonstration tape, Kennedy returned once more to the tranquillity of O’Browne’s office. He was surprised that the workplace of such a leading light of the music industry should be so sober and tasteful. He had not really been sure what to expect, but whatever he had been expecting, this was definitely not it.
What the inspector found was an office not unlike his own; comfortable to be in and probably even more comfortable to work in. The desk was American arts and crafts and owed a lot to the more functional elements than to any particularly aesthetic aspect. Three drawers to the direct right and left of the knee space. On the opposite side, away from the knee space, were three well-packed book shelves. The books were all about music, most of them reference books.
The ten editions of the Guinness Book of British Hit Singles by Gambo and Double Rice, and the six editions of the Guinness Book of British Hit Albums by the same authors, had pride of place on the top shelf. Other volumes included several leather-bound song catalogues, The Guinness Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, volumes one to four, edited by Colin Larkin, and George Martin’s wonderful book, The Summer of Love, about the making of the classic Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album. Kennedy knew it was wonderful because ann rea bought it for him as a present and he had found each and every one of the 168 pages to be an absolute joy.
A few more tomes on the Beatles included two exquisitely leather-bound editions by George Harrison, I, Me, Mine, and Songs by George Harrison. Kennedy was tempted to remove them from the shelf and have a browse, but he managed to resist the temptation, feeling it may not be appropriate.
Lost in his exploration of the book shelves, his concentration was abruptly broken by Mary Jones, who, by this time, had grown impatient to impart her news. ‘Look,’ she began, turning her head so quickly from ann rea to Kennedy that her hair spun out like a Flamenco dancer’s skirts. ‘I think you both should know this. I’ve only just found out.
‘I was going through Peter’s things and his desk, like, trying to find some hint, some clue to his whereabouts…’ Both ann rea and Kennedy noticed that tears were building up in her eyes and beginning to roll down her snow-white skin.
Ann rea went over, put her arm up round Mary’s shoulders and led her to Peter’s wooden (with leather inlay) swivel American arts and crafts chair. ‘Whatever is it, Mary? You have to tell us. The sooner, the better.’
‘Well, I think, I think. You see, I was going through his desk, wondering why he might…’ Mary babbled on in her infuriating way of starting the sentence several different ways before she could finish it.
‘Yes? And?’ ann rea prompted.
‘Well I found this, you see. Well, like, I thought. Well, I think Peter was being blackmailed!’
Mary stood up and took two sheets of white paper out of the left-hand pocket of her baggy blue skirt. She handed them to ann rea, who removed her arm from Mary’s back. Mary comforted herself, wrapping her own arms around her sides and rocking back and forth.
ann rea gazed at the papers for a few seconds before passing them unopened and unread to Kennedy.
‘Ah, at last!’ Kennedy said in his mind’s silent voice as he carefully unfolded them twice to reveal two full sheets of foolscap. Both pages had word processor style type in the centre of the page.
Kennedy read the first one aloud:
On 16/10 NW14
38 2 43
on 23/10 NW14
43 2 29
????????
I KNOW!’
None the wiser, he turned his attention to the second sheet of paper:
‘SO DO U!
NO ONE ELSE WILL
IF YOU DO AS I SAY’
ann rea leaned over for a better look. She was so close to Kennedy she could smell his honest non-perfumed smell, the smell which reminded her of their shared moments.
Four eyebrows in Peter O’Browne’s office arched a question mark; the remaining two drew an almost straight line, beneath which teardrops fell.
Kennedy read the two notes again. He surmised that the contents were not exactly a code, but were probably some sort of shorthand which would hide their meaning from strange eyes.
‘Do you know what any of this means?’ he asked Mary in a business-like manner which begged her to stop crying. Sometimes the official approach was not as encouraging to tears as a more personal tone.
‘I think so,’ Mary said, beginning to pull herself together. She reached behind Peter’s desk and what had appeared to be a wall sprung out at the touch of her finger to reveal a large cup and saucer; some headache pills; a bottle of what seemed to be more headache pills; a first aid kit; three fresh, neatly-folded blue shirts; half a dozen white shirts (apparently brand new and still in their boxes) and a box of Kleenex. Mary helped herself to a tissue or three and then closed the door.
The lines of the door were carefully camouflaged into the lines of the wooden panelling which completely covered the wall behind the desk. Kennedy wondered if there were any more hidden compartments in the wall, or anywhere else in the office for that matter.
‘Okay.’ Mary wiped her eyes and blew her nose. ‘NW14 is the number, the serial number of our fourteenth single, and I think, though I have to check, that on the sixteenth of October it dropped from number thirty-eight in the charts to forty-three and then the following week it rose again to twenty-nine.’
Kennedy reread the first page and declared, ‘Yes, that makes sense. That makes perfect sense to me. The question marks obviously mean, “How did this happen?” and the author, in the last line, claims he knows. Simple, I suppose when you know what you are looking for.
‘What, tell me, is so mysterious about a single going up and down the charts? I thought that’s what happened all the time,’ Kennedy inquired with his voice, eyes and hands.
ann rea had the impression from Mary’s eyes that the Welsh girl was deciding how much she should tell Kennedy and, more importantly, how much she shouldn’t.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Let X = X. You know it could be you
- Laurie Anderson
Kennedy came away from Camden Town Records with three things that afternoon:
1) Information about the life, near death and resurrect
ion of NW14.
2) A cassette.
3) An envelope containing fifteen typed pages entitled, Peter O’Browne – A Profile.
ann rea’s cassette would prove to be valuable to Kennedy because it contained an interview she had conducted with Peter O’Browne about eight months previously for the Camden New Journal. Peter had obviously been in a talkative mood and ann rea had just let the tape keep rolling.
North Bridge House was packed to overflowing. Mary Jones had sent some of the Camden Town Records staff over to the station for their interviews, claiming it was the only way to get them off the telephones long enough to hold a conversation. Kennedy tried unsuccessfully three times to listen to the tape. He had decided to play it before reading the profile. He wanted to hear Peter O’Browne’s voice to see if he could piece together anything about his character. But on each occasion he was interrupted. Once by ann rea ringing to ask him if he’d listened to the tape, once by DS Irvine checking whether any new info had surfaced on Peter O’Browne and, finally, by the Super wanting to know why there were so many people with serious haircut problems wandering around the station.
Kennedy was well aware that there were enough real cases to command his time, with real victims and real perpetrators, unlike the intangible scenario surrounding Peter O’Browne. But his curiosity had been awoken and his detective’s nose sensed the unmistakable whiff of something decidedly off, even if he could not quite identify what it was.
In the end he decided to nip home and listen to the tape in peace. Normally he would walk the short distance to Rothwell Street but, well aware of the pressure of time, he hailed a cab on the corner of Prince Albert Road.
Kennedy leaned into the cab and gave his address through the half wound-down window. Thousands of disgruntled passengers (what the cabbies call ‘fares’) would be familiar with the balding driver’s reply: ‘Nah, mate, sorry. I’m going the opposite way.’
Kennedy, unlike those thousands of disgruntled fares, replied: ‘I don’t think so.’
Keeping one hand inside the window he reached inside his jacket, extracted, and flashed, the warrant card. ‘I believe you’re going my way, “mate”.’
Getting a London black cab to take you where you want to go is about as easy as getting into a Marks and Sparks triangular sandwich packet. Kennedy hated using his police ID for such a privilege; if you could call insisting that someone does their job a privilege. He consoled himself with the thought that he was striking out for all the fares left stranded by the kerbside.
His house was quiet, as silent as a Canadian art movie; lots of static noise but nothing of substance. He felt like a trespasser, if not on the property itself then definitely on the time that had surely been marked down somewhere as house silent time.
The little room under the stairs which he used as his study/office/storeroom/den housed a midi music system which he fired up immediately, inserting the cassette ann rea had marked, P O’Browne Oct 10th, ’94.
ann rea’s voice comfortable and casual said, ‘I’d like to keep one running, it saves me making notes, and it saves me making mistakes.’
‘Yeah, sure, fine. No problem,’ what was obviously Peter O’Browne’s voice replied with a gentle Irish accent. ‘Um, Mary assured me this was not going to be a critical piece, or a bitter, spiteful attack like the ones the music press love to do.’
‘Oh no,’ ann rea assured him. ‘I like to make all the words I write sweet; just in case I have to eat them some time!’
Kennedy’s speakers crackled with laughter. ‘Fine, good one,’ said Peter. ‘Look, ann, I wouldn’t mind a glass of wine. It’s been a long day, a bit of a drag. Would you care for one?’ Kennedy felt slightly uncomfortable. He couldn’t tell if his discomfort was caused by eavesdropping on someone else’s conversation or by the fear he was going to hear something he really didn’t want to hear. Perhaps it was slightly spooky because he was hearing Peter’s voice for the first time and even though Kennedy had been unaware of his existence before the fire, his name had been around a lot in the following forty-eight hours.
Kennedy was going to look a right fool if Peter O’Browne showed up. How would he explain away all the wasted people-power to the Super? As the Sony electronic speakers under Kennedy’s stairs faithfully reproduced the sound of footsteps walking across a room, he came up with a bright idea. If Peter O’Browne did reappear then he would get ann rea to persuade Mary Jones to persuade Peter O’Browne to donate another of his many gold discs to Castle’s wife’s charity.
Kennedy heard a cork popping and footsteps coming back across the room to their original position. Was this O’Browne’s office, or were they in his house? Just how well did ann rea know him, anyway? It must be the office, Kennedy decided, because the footsteps had moved from a wooden floor to a carpet, which muffled the sound. There had been a more informal area to one side of Peter’s office, where he had a large wooden coffee table surrounded by two large comfy (dark blue) sofas on the long side and two easy-chairs (dark green) at the short ends, all standing on an island made by a vivid multi-coloured Native American carpet.
‘So this is for a feature about Camden Town Records?’ O’Browne continued, his voice betraying a slight hint of suspicion, as he poured two glasses of wine.
‘Yes. And I’d love to know about you and how you stared it all.’ ann rea had discovered that there were two main things the majority of the people in the music biz loved. It wasn’t doing drugs and having sex; it was making money and giving interviews.
‘Well,’ began Peter before taking a large gulp of the wine and exhaling a loud, ‘ah, now, let me see.’
Thirty-five minutes later, Kennedy nipped into the kitchen, made a cup of tea and returned to the study to read ann rea’s profile of Peter O’Browne.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Every generation throws a hero up the pop charts
- Paul Simon
From a combination of ann rea’s cassette and article, Kennedy discovered that in 1965, Peter O’Browne had dropped out of Trinity College, Dublin, where he had been studying English and American Literature. His plan had been to become a teacher for fourteen or fifteen years and then try to become a writer, but he got himself bitten by the sixties music bug. Bands like The Spencer Davis Group, The Animals, Kinks, Stones and a group from the wee ‘North’ (of Ireland) called Them turned his life upside down. The highlight of his week was listening to the Top Twenty every Sunday night on Radio Luxembourg.
The charts fascinated him and he became a lifelong scholar: cutting them out of New Musical Express each week and gluing them into scrapbooks. He still had all the originals and continued to collect the charts weekly, more recently from Music Week and leather-bound journals had replaced the scrapbooks.
A friend and fellow Trinity College dropout, Martyn Farrelly formed an Irish R&B group called Blues by Five. Peter started to secure them some gigs (bookings) in clubs supporting the likes of The People, Granny’s Intentions, Taste, The Interns and The Gentry (the last two from the North). In order to finance the club appearances they would act as ‘relief group’ to showbands in ballrooms.
Martyn Farrelly was a talented musician and began doing his own arrangements of Dylan songs. The audience reaction to these arrangements was sufficient to give Martyn the confidence to write a couple of his own songs. He left the R&B roots behind seeking a more ‘poppy’ soul sound.
Eventually Peter and Martyn decided (in 1967, when they were both aged nineteen) that if Blues by Five were to have a future, and it certainly looked as if they were, such a future would be rosier in London, the home of all the major record companies.
Due to the fabulous success of The Beatles, The Kinks and The Rolling Stones, Pye, EMI, Polydor, Decca and RCA was signing up everyone and anyone who looked scruffy, sounded fab and appeared to be ‘with it’. They hadn’t a clue about the music, having only recently grown accustomed to the ‘Bachelor Boy’ sound of Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and Adam Faith.
Peter O
’Browne had thoroughly enjoyed reminiscing with ann rea and had gone to great trouble to explain that he thought that the teenagers of the sixties, the first teen generation to have some kind of financial independence, were, as with all new fads then and since, consuming everything thrown at them. So the record company ‘suits’, eager to nurture this demand, were churning out soon to be forgotten acts like The Bow Street Runners, Honeybus, Hedgehoppers Anonymous and Dowlands.
Much to the annoyance of their parents and Dublin girlfriends, Peter and Martyn packed their bags and headed off to London to seek their fame and fortune. They stayed with Peter’s uncle in Camden Mews and while Martyn spent his days banging away on his electric guitar (unplugged), Peter would visit as many pubs and clubs as he could in and around London. The idea was to secure as many gigs as possible and bring over the remainder of Blues by Five.
It is worth remembering that this was before the general availability of cassette recorders made recording a demonstration tape (‘demo’) simple, and so Peter was unable to play the club owners the rave reviews and write-ups from Irish music papers such as New Spotlight.
Luckily for Peter, Martyn, Blues by Five and trusted roadie, Touche, there was a strong Irish contingent living in Hammersmith, Kilburn and Camden. So the pubs and clubs in these areas were more than happy to stage ‘the darlings of Dublin.’ Up to that point, Them were the only Irish band working in England and they were certainly too big to play there.
Within a couple of weeks, Peter had set up a month’s worth of work. To fund the trip Peter had persuaded Gentleman Jim Aiken to promote a farewell concert for the Blues by Five in The National Stadium, Dublin. Jim Aiken, a Northern Irishman, promoted all the English groups on their visits to Ireland and had in fact used the Blues by Five several times to support some of the English names. The National Stadium, a dingy run-down boxing hall on the South Circular Road had never before been used to stage a headline show by an Irish group: this in itself became a contributing factor to heavy ticket sales.
