I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass (The Christy Kennedy Mysteries Book 2)

by Paul Charles

  And there’s no tellin’ who

  That it’s namin’

  - Bob Dylan

  Twenty minutes later, Detective Inspector Christy Kennedy was back in North Bridge House in the briefing room, hushing his team again.

  ‘As far as Dr Taylor can tell us, Mr Peter O’Browne was murdered, probably by hanging, at approximately nine thirty, yesterday evening.

  ‘So, what we have so far is this: On the evening of Friday the third of October at around eight twenty in the evening, Peter O’Browne and his assistant, Miss Mary Jones, were leaving the offices of Camden Town Records when Peter stopped to take a telephone call. That was the last time he was seen alive. He failed to keep an appointment with Mary later that evening at the Forum in Kentish Town.

  ‘The next day someone, probably not Peter, used his Access card to purchase a rail ticket from Waterloo to Wareham. The card was used again to pay for lunch at Corfe Castle, Dorset the same day, and – so our handwriting expert tells us – it was the same person. Although the signature is similar to Peter O’Browne’s they feel it is a forgery, a good forgery, but a forgery, nonetheless.

  ‘Early yesterday morning at approximately eight forty-five, someone claiming to be Peter O’Browne rang Camden Town Records and asked to speak to Mary Jones. On being told that she had not yet arrived, he asked the receptionist to tell Mary he’d called. Mary maintained that this couldn’t have been Peter, as he would know that she was never in the office before nine o'clock.

  ‘Now, we have to assume that the phone call which interrupted his departure from the office last Friday had something to do with his disappearance. As I’m sure you will agree, Gaul!’

  Kennedy had noticed that PC Gaul was not only not paying attention but was also competing with him for the attention of WPC Anne Coles. After a pause, Kennedy said conversationally, ‘Tell you what, Gaul, do something useful for a change, will you? Go and fetch half a dozen teas and half a dozen coffees.’ PC Gaul was obliged to acquiesce to the humiliating order and left the room rather sheepishly.

  ‘Now,’ Kennedy continued, assured of everyone’s undivided attention, ‘someone must have seen Mr O’Browne between Friday and yesterday evening.’

  ‘Perhaps the call was from someone asking Peter O’Browne to meet them at Mayfair Mews Studio, sir?’ offered Anne Coles, happy to be rid of the pest, Gaul. ‘And whoever it was kept him there by force until they murdered him last night.’

  ‘Why not murder him right away, then?’ countered DS James Irvine. ‘Why all this fuss over the telephone calls and the trip to Dorset?’

  ‘Why, indeed?’ said Kennedy. ‘Let’s make some kind of start on this, anyway. Allaway, West, Franklin and our good friend Gaul, when he returns from tea duty, you all start with door-to-door from here up to and including Mayfair Mews on Regent’s Park Road. Take copies of the photograph with you and see what you can dig up.’

  Kennedy then nodded in the direction of his detective sergeant. ‘DS Irvine, get on to the media: Evening Standard, Camden New Journal, GLR, local TV news, radio. Send them the photo.’

  ‘You’ll have trouble getting a response on GLR, sir,’ Irvine smiled. From him, in his soft Scottish accent, the reply had sounded funny rather than smart-ass.

  Kennedy smiled and continued, ‘Yes, well, let’s get the story out as soon as poss. And appeal for any information. Someone must have seen Mr. Peter O’Browne during his missing five days.’

  The tea and coffee arrived at that point in the capable hands of PC Gaul, short-haired and red-faced. Each officer in turn took his or her tea or coffee and added, as personal taste dictated, milk and sugar. A packet of McVitie’s Hobnobs appeared from somewhere and some severe dunking took place.

  ‘Now we have to address the issues we were investigating, but which didn’t seem to be getting us anywhere, when Mr O’Browne was merely a missing person, namely, chart hyping, and possible blackmailing over the hyping.

  ‘Apparently our friends over at the Fraud Squad have investigated chart hyping a couple of times, so let’s contact them, WPC Coles, and see if they can give us any leads worth following.

  ‘DS Irvine, you and WPC Coles go and visit Tom Best, he was involved with O’Browne at the record shop and in the record company until he sold a share to Grabaphone; and Paddy George, his partner in the record store Camden Records. I’ll speak to Martyn Farrelly, the first artist he ever signed. Let’s talk to all of them as soon as possible; I want to hear what they say unprepared. There’s going to be an almighty splash in the papers when we go with this. I can see the headline now: Camden Pop Mogul Murdered!’

  ‘Forensic are currently working on the Mayfair Mews studio. Dr Taylor has promised us the results of the autopsy late this afternoon. So let’s see how much info we can pick up before we all meet back here for an update.’

  Just as they were all about to leave, Kennedy added, ‘And don’t forget…’ everybody expected the classic Hill St Blues opener, “Let’s be careful out there,” instead Kennedy counselled, ‘let’s be sure to thank PC Gaul for the tea.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  It’s only knock and know all

  - Peter Gabriel

  Although WPC Anne Coles and DS James Irvine had known each other and worked together for quite some time, they had never been officially partnered before. ‘You can be Watson and I’ll be Holmes,’ laughed Irvine, filling the deafening silence caused by the absence of a radio-cassette player in the police car.

  ‘No, I think not,’ retorted Anne. ‘You should be Lewis.’ She pulled in on the left of Kentish Town Road, just up from Camden Town Tube Station. As she neutralised the gears and pulled on the handbrake she added, ‘We could have walked, you know. Particularly with the traffic like this. It will take us a lot longer to get back.’

  ‘Aye, you’re right. I didn’t realise it was this end of Kentish Town Road. Ah well, now we’re here we might as well get on and see what this Tom Best has to say for himself.’

  Tom Best ran his business above a record shop, as he and O’Browne had done in the early days of Camden Town Records. The shop, crowded with people and cramped with records was unusual for the nineties in that it was what it claimed to be: a record shop, with not a CD or cassette in sight.

  The posters cramming every square inch of the wall clearly indicated that the shop’s clientele preferred the music of Elvis Costello, The Clash, The Stranglers, The Sex Pistols, The Beatles, The Stones and The Kinks to the likes of nineties Bratpop. All racked releases, however, seemed to be on sale at prices way in excess of the original list price. The only time Take That would be mentioned in this store was when a happy customer used the words, ‘I’ll take that,’ to secure a mint copy of Elvis Costello’s My Aim is True. Such a purchase could set you back fifty pounds.

  Neither Coles nor Irvine were into records, as in the vinyl variety, although both could boast of owning a few CDs. WPC Coles was happy to leave behind the musty smell of the shop as they made their way up the staircase they’d been directed to by the shop assistant who, by the look of him, was a train-spotter who still lived with his mum in Clapham Junction.

  The posters continued up the stairwell, at the head of which they found Tom Best waiting for them. He greeted them (not warmly) and directed them through to his office which effectively occupied the entire first floor. All internal walls had been knocked through to create an open plan L-shaped room, complete with wooden beams (fake wooden façade with steel RSJ-hidden centre) marking the lines along the ceiling, where a wall had once been.

  The floors and window frames were exposed pine and well-worn rather than shined. The walls had been exposed back to the original red brick, helping to create an overall olde worlde American feel. DS Irvine was entirely happy with this atmosphere, but WPC Coles couldn’t help thinking that the room would benefit from a coat of white paint and a few carpets – red or blue, perhaps – to warm it up a bit.

  DS Irvine noted that, apart from three gold discs, the walls here w
ere not crowded. Careful examination revealed that the discs were Presented to Tom Best from Camden Town Records for sales (UK) in excess of 100,000 units. The artists achieving these sales were Wire Crates, Radio Cars and Half Moon Bay Express. Scattered around other spaces were various gravity games like the five silver balls suspended in a silver frame, and the blue water creating waves in a Perspex container balancing precariously on a wooden fulcrum.

  Tom Best sat down on a sofa used to give business meetings an informal tone, and invited the WPC and DS to join him in a couple of facing easy-chairs. There was no offer of refreshments.

  ‘So, what can I do for you?’ their host began. Anne Coles noticed that he formed the first word of his sentence with his lips a split second before his mouth produced the sound. Best had a wiry frame, the ‘before’ body in the Charles Atlas adverts. He wore a starched white shirt and a thin black leather tie, knotted slightly lopsided. He had black linen Japanese slip-ons, white socks and black jeans.

  ‘Well,’ WPC Coles began, since the DS was clearly waiting for her to speak, ‘I’m afraid that a former colleague of yours was murdered last night.’

  Both Coles and Irvine noticed that beneath the thick red hair spilling over Best’s forehead, there was a slight widening of the eyelids behind the Lennon-style granny glasses. Apart from that little flicker there was no other acknowledgement of her news.

  ‘Peter O’Browne, with whom we believe you worked for several years, was killed last evening at about nine thirty,’ the WPC continued, taking a notebook from her top pocket, ‘and we have a few questions we’d like to ask you.’

  Tom Best was coming to the end of a hand-rolled cigarette. He performed the pot smoker’s ritual of sticking three skins (Rizla papers) together (two long sides together and placing the third long side along the two short ends of the first two). However, now that he was in the presence of the constabulary, he left out the most important ingredient and settled for just tobacco. He lit the new ciggy with the old one, which he then stubbed in an ashtray as packed as the Rolling Stones gigs at Brixton Academy in ’95. The ashtray stood on a fifteen-inch cube box (stripped wood containing magazines and records) which also served as a small coffee table.

  Best mouthed the word, ‘Well,’ before speaking. ‘Well, well,’ he smiled. ‘So some bastard had the guts to pay him back.’

  Holmes and Lewis were both shocked at the reply but only DS Irvine showed it.

  ‘Look,’ again a delay while he first formed the word. ‘You’re going to find all this out anyway, so you’d better hear it from me.’ Best paused as he used the thumb and third finger, of his ciggy hand to remove a piece of tobacco from between his teeth.

  ‘I was with him in the very beginning when his so-called record company was a complete and horrible mess. He brought me in – we’d been mates at Trinity College Dublin – to organise his company.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong. Peter O’Browne had his qualities. He was great at spotting artists, he was great at planning campaigns, he was great at schmoozing the artists and their managers, but he was crap, absolute crap, when it came to the follow-through; all the organisation, all the meat and potato stuff. Quite frankly it bored him. Bored him to the degree where he’d ignore it completely.’ His Northern Ireland accent was kind of slow, something like Alex Higgins on Valium. Every sentence sounded either like a question or an apology.

  ‘So, to cut a very, very long story short, I covered all of those areas for him and I’ll admit he did pay me very well for it in the early days. But he’d always avoid my requests for a formal partnership. He’d just wedge me up a bit more. I wanted, and felt entitled to, a piece of the company but he always put me off with, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you”. He never did. We just worked harder and harder.

  ‘I mean don’t get me wrong, there was fun in the middle of all the hard work, a lot of fun, and we were going to change the music business. We were going to be the first record company to look after our artists.’

  ‘What do you mean, “look after your artists?” Isn’t that what record companies generally do?’ interrupted DS Irvine trying unsuccessfully to find a comfortable position in the inappropriately-named easy-chair.

  Best’s delicate face smiled an oh-you-think-so? kind of smile. His mouth formed an A and he continued, ‘Ah, you think so?

  ‘Not so! Look, go to an artist, any artist, and I guarantee you that ninety-nine out of a hundred will have a gripe with their record company.’

  ‘You mean like George Michael?’ asked WPC Coles.

  ‘Well, that’s just a well-publicised fall-out. But that could be just greed. I mean, you have him and Prince going on about being slaves. That’s a laugh. Both of them make more money in a second than any genuine slave would make in a lifetime.

  ‘But down the scale from that, artists feel that their record companies make too much money and don’t promote them properly. The artists hate their artwork, hate the final sound of their CDs compared to the sound they spent hundreds of thousands of pounds of their own money creating in the studio. The artists hate interference from the knowledge-less record company executives, hate the fact that the record companies waste millions of pounds – usually millions of pounds the artists made for the record company in the first place – on talentless new artists.

  ‘These new artists in turn hate the fact that the record companies spend millions of pounds promoting the old over-the-hill farts at their expense. Together the old and the new artists hate the fact that they spend their own money recording and then the record companies deduct packaging costs, tour support, video costs, and so on and so on and so on, from the artist’s share.

  ‘At the end of it all, who will own the masters of these works? Yes you’ve got it: the record companies. That’s immoral.’

  ‘But surely the record companies have to make some money too?’ DS Irvine offered, not really sure why he was defending them.

  ‘Oh they do. Believe me, they do.

  ‘What we were trying to do at Camden Town Records was to change all that, in our own small way. Try to make it more of a partnership thing between the artist and the record company.’ Tom Best paused in order to commence the cigarette rolling-up performance once again.

  ‘How were you planning to do this?’ WPC Anne Coles inquired. She couldn’t see for the life of her what all this might have to do with the death of Peter O’Browne but the more they found out, the greater was the chance of a motive rearing its ugly head above the water.

  ‘Well, we wanted to dump packaging deductions, which we did. It’s really just another way for record companies to claw back money from the artist’s royalties. We worked out a system whereby if an artist was in credit at the end of their contract, then two years later we would give them back their masters.’

  ‘Why is it so important for the artists to own their masters?’ asked DS Irvine.

  ‘It’s their work, their birthright. Okay, at the early stage of a record company’s investment it is only fair that it should be allowed to seek a return on its investment. Although the artist’s money is used to record the album, it’s the record company who put the money up front.’

  Best lit ciggy number three with ciggy number two. ‘However, after that money has been repaid, and a bit more besides, the lion’s share should belong to the artist. And when artists move from record company to record company they should be allowed to move with their entire catalogue, so that they can use it as a negotiating plus at the shallow end of their careers.

  ‘The big record companies are fighting this, like they are trying to avoid the atomic inevitability of a third world war. But the reality is that the balance of power is not going to switch much. Because yes, the record company will lose his catalogue when Joe Bloggs leaves it but, equally it will gain the catalogue of Jane Bloggs when she joins it.’

  ‘Okay so what else were you going to do?’ pressed the WPC.

  ‘Oh,’ was a much easier word and took a lot less time for Best to fo
rm. ‘Oh, involve them a lot more in their careers, really, just try to do everything necessary to show them that the record company does not need to be the enemy, but should in fact be the partner.

  ‘We also agreed that we would never ever sign an artist in whom we, as a company, did not believe; no matter how strong we felt the commercial potential might be.’

  ‘All sounds great to me,’ smiled DS Irvine. ‘So what went wrong?’

  Best sighed, ‘All our principles seemed only to be our principles in theory. When we became successful Peter started playing by the rules of the big boys. We were in danger of becoming what we had supposedly hated, or at least what I had hated.

  ‘It transpired that Peter had other goals in mind. He wanted to become a major player. Bit by bit, he changed our deals to fit in with the big boys. All the time he had been planning to sell out.

  ‘I couldn’t believe it: all the people he was prepared to shaft just so that he could pocket six million quid. I just couldn’t believe it. He negotiated a salary of two hundred and fifty Gs for himself. He had just taken six million and he was worried about his salary. It must have been the status which appealed to him. You know, being the highest paid MD in London at the time.

  ‘He was pissed off that I wouldn’t go with him for ninety Gs a year. He wouldn’t even talk about it. I took him out to get him pissed, like in the old days, and to remind him about our dreams as an artist-friendly record company. But all he kept on saying was, “Things have changed Tom, things have changed”. Fucking sure things had changed.

  ‘I suppose it’s like Dylan said, “Money doesn’t talk, it swears”.’

  It seemed to WPC Coles that Tom Best mouthed the whole of his next sentence before he voiced it.

  ‘He’d become a fucking asshole,’ Best spat. He took a deep drag on his cigarette and squinted as the smoke passed his eyes.

  ‘So I figured, okay, that’s the way he wants to go, that’s his choice, but it’s not mine. So I told him I was going to leave and start up again and asked for my share of the buy-out. He hit the roof.’ Ciggy number three became four. ‘He went berserk. Said it was his company and he would do what he wanted with it. It had nothing whatsoever to do with me.