by Paul Charles
‘Okay, dudes how can I be of service?’ Coming from a cool Texan, this would have been perfectly natural. From an Islington wimp it was pitiful, as was his, ‘You know, man, time is money, and all that jazz.’
‘We would like to ask you some questions about Mr Peter O’Browne,’ said Anne Coles briskly.
‘That shit. What an uncool cat. Hey man, don’t expect me to lift a finger to help him.’
‘I’m afraid it’s a bit late for you to help him, sir.’ The DS interrupted refusing to allow Jason Carter-Houston to make a complete prat of himself. ‘He was murdered yesterday evening.’
‘Dead? Murdered? Man, that’s heavy. Mind you, it was only a matter of…’ Carter-Houston seemed to think better of whatever it was he’d intended to say and left the sentence unfinished.
To WPC Anne Coles this whole aspect of police procedure was more than slightly suspect – telling someone, suspect or not, about a murder and then standing back and trying to gauge something from their every move and utterance. She was not even sure how effective it was. There was so much scope for bluffs and double bluffs.
For instance, the case in point. Was Carter-Houston behaving with bravado because he had figured a murderer would not be expected to react like this? Or was this merely the way that what passed for his brain dictated he behave? If he was innocent, he knew it, and perhaps feared no consequence from what he did or didn’t say.
‘Yeah, man. Look, I mean, what can I do to help?’ Carter-Houston said, appearing to pull himself together.
‘Well, as I said, we’d like to ask you a few questions about Mr O’Browne,’ WPC Coles began and DS Irvine continued, so that you couldn’t notice the join. ‘We believe you worked with him quite closely early on in both your careers? A group called Radio Stars?’
‘No. I mean, yes. I did work with him, but, the group were called Radio Cars, not Radio Stars. Yeah man it was a long time ago. My first management gig, man, and he fucked them up. Major bad vibes, man. Total fuck-up.
‘Yes, a long time ago, man. I remember in those days I thought it would be frightfully exciting to manage one of those pop groups.’ Carter-Houston effected a plum in the mouth accent. ‘I soon lost the accent and the greenness.’
‘Did you get the group a recording contract with Peter O’Browne?’ WPC Coles quizzed.
‘Recording contract? Now there is a joke, man.’ Jason afforded himself a little titter. ‘Actually they had already made their first record direct with Peter. They were taking off, doing well. Shifting units, as we say in the biz. The leader of the group, Johnny Heart, brought me in to look after things. It was all happening so quickly they needed someone to take charge,’ Jason answered proudly.
‘How did you meet?’ asked WPC Coles.
‘Who, Peter?’
‘No, Radio Cars.’
‘Oh, Johnny Heart’s lawyer worked with my dad, and my dad had asked him to look out for something for me to do. I dropped out at this point, man. My old man, a real suit-man, I think he thought I was on the path of ruin and destruction. I know the kids today have their E and all that shit, man, but I can tell you, we were pretty wild in the seventies.’
Wild maybe; pretty, never. Not to mention fucking blind if you think someone as stunning as Anne Coles is the ‘man’ you keep addressing her as, thought DS Irvine.
‘Anyway, Johnny Heart had made it known that he’d like a manager, and we met, and got on great in those days. Well Mr Heart was easy to get on great with. He was a bit of…well, he liked to smoke a lot of grass, and he liked to have fun.’
‘Where was Johnny Heart from?’
‘A man without a soul doesn’t come from anywhere, man,’ came the reply, leading DS Irvine to believe that Mr Heart had been kind enough to share his cannabis with Mr Carter-Houston.
‘I hope I’m not out of order here but why…’ DS Irvine realised, once he had started his question, that it was going to be difficult to complete without appearing to insult Carter-Houston. ‘Why would an up and coming pop group pick, an um, inexperienced manager?’
‘Oh that, man…’ it seemed Carter-Houston didn’t discriminate. ‘He was a novice as well. He was selling records, or his group Radio Cars were, but he hadn’t a clue why, and if I’m honest, man, I’d say I had the right accent and the right vibe and…’ Carter-Houston smiled a smile that distorted his face the way a clay beauty-mask cracks when its owner grows restless and grins. ‘He thought I was really cool ‘cause I took him to all those posh parties.’
‘Oh,’ was all Irvine could say in acknowledgement.
‘So how did you get on with Peter O’Browne back then?’ WPC Coles inquired as Irvine recovered.
‘Well, fine, really. Oh, he was suspicious of me. Up to the point I came along he had direct dealing with the group, man. He was a sharp cat, man – he ruled the roost. He’d say jump and four heads would hit his ceiling in unisonic reply. But the main problem was that they, Camden Town Records, were just starting out and they were cutting their teeth with Radio Cars.’
‘Just like yourself?’ Irvine suggested not maliciously, merely establishing the facts.
‘Sure, cool man. Yea that’s hip, I know where you’re coming from, but that was different in a way. I was coming from a different angle, man, and I wasn’t getting in the group’s way. He was, man. Grab the moment, that’s what it’s all about, and he was doing it, man. They were selling records so it was time to move on, man, to grab another moment. We had to move to a major label. I – the group, needed to become players. We were ready to move up a step or two.
‘Come on, it was a joke, man. Camden Town Records was forever running out of stock or the stock would be fine but there would be no sleeves. They were always behind the demand.’
‘So what happened?’ WPC Anne Coles pressed. This was all very interesting, but DI Kennedy was going to be looking for facts. He loved facts; he loved compiling all the information and spreading it all over his noticeboard and then wandering around his room staring at it until something hit him.
‘Well, it’s simple man. When Peter found out that we were looking – well, actually that I was talking to a major – he blew a gasket. Very, very uncool.’
Irvine did a Nigel Mansell, allowing his bushy dark eyebrows to exclaim, ‘I don’t blame him!’
‘I pointed out – much to my later cost – that the group didn’t have a written deal with Camden Town Records. Noting had been signed, they had merely discussed some kind of arrangement. I also pointed out that the band were free to do as they wished and that they wished, under my guidance, to sign to Butterfly Records. Butterfly Records had offered a great deal, man, a fucking real cool deal which secured Johnny Heart’s and Radio Cars’ future.
‘Well, Mr Peter bloody O’Browne effed and blinded at me. He told me I’d never work again. He’d make sure everything I did would fail. I thought it was idiotic, ludicrous. Here I was sitting on a great deal with a band riding high in the charts. So I told him he was Mickey Mouse and to grow up.
‘There was no reasoning with him. I think I might have called Camden Town Records another amateur paddy outfit. He and one of his henchmen threw me out of the building. Man, it was so uncool, so embarrassing, the manager of a hip chart act being treated that way. I couldn’t believe it.’ Talking about it was obviously getting him worked up all over again, nearly twenty years later. He took a yellow pen from the cup on his desk and doodled on his scribble pad.
‘Was that the end of your dealings with Peter O’Browne?’ WPC Coles asked. Apples for the teacher, facts for Kennedy.
‘Nah, man, that was just the start. They owed the band about thirty grand in royalties and when we asked for the bread they wrote to us saying that if there was no written agreement between Radio Cars and Camden Town Records, then equally there was no arrangement under which Camden Town Records could owe Radio Cars money.’
We threatened to take them to court but our lawyer advised us not to. He figured that if we managed to win our case; there
would be a very good chance Peter in turn could successfully take action against us to prevent us leaving Camden Town Records.’
‘So you and the band were never paid a penny for that first album?’ DS Irvine inquired, convincing in his new role as the doubting Thomas.
‘Correct! Fucking correct man! Can you believe it?’ Jason shouted, beseeching both officers in turn. ‘And you know what was the saddest thing of all?’ He appeared to want one of them to reply, but when neither did he answered his own question: ‘It was their biggest disc. Oh yeah, man, Johnny Heart made a few bob, as in a lot of bob, on the publishing.
‘Hate to say it, but his songs became boring too. Butterfly Records dropped them after the first record,’ DS Irvine noticed that the royal ‘we’ of the group in their successful days had now become ‘them’.
‘I got them a deal with PCA Records. But to be honest, man, I have to admit they would sign anybody. The group made two albums with PCA and, man, in this biz it’s like, when you’re hot you’re hot, and when you’re not, you have to climb into a fridge just to warm up.
‘So PCA dropped the band – which is probably the biggest insult you could have – and then the band fired me. Man, such ungrateful mothers some of these musos are.’ Carter-Houston threatened to brush his fingers through his blue-black hair and would have done so were he not frightened the majority of it would have come out in his hand. ‘Look, with ninety-five acts out of a hundred, they have a big album and after that it’s downhill. Few consistently top the charts. It’s such a hard thing to do. Really it’s just getting the big album and then dealing with the aftermath. Anyway, Radio Cars made one final album, a live one, and that was it,’ Jason Carter-Houston concluded glumly, evidently thoroughly disgruntled that he’d been made to relive such a disastrous period of his life.
‘And now?’ posed the fact-finder.
‘And now, well man, it’s cool. A bit of wheeling and dealing, a bit of ducking and diving. I’ve got this band – cool band, man – they’re called, Two Humps and a Tail, and their thing, man, is doing all of Camel’s material live. Yeah man, a Camel tribute band. They are going to be bigger than The Bootleg Beatles.’ Jason was pitching to the wrong people. When he saw that maybe Coles and Irvine were not going to rush out to the next Two Humps and a Tail gig he added, ‘No, really, man it’s cool. You know Camel were really very, very big in Austria and Finland and so I’ll get lots of work for them over there, I just need to get them an agent.
‘The secret of success in this biz is just to stick with something, and eventually it will become big, and hip. You know, like someday your ship will come in, man, it’s cool.’
‘When was the last time you saw Peter O’Browne?’ Some questions just had to be asked and WPC Anne Coles asked that one.
‘Well, man, actually, I was in his building – let me see.’ Jason Carter-Houston flipped through the pages of his desk diary. ‘Yes, three weeks ago I was in talking to his A&R man. That’s a talent scout: all record companies have them. They’re easy to spot: they all have tea towels where their ears should be,’ Jason laughed, but this well-worn joke missed the two members of Camden CID by about a million miles.
‘I’ve got this other act, called Brian. Don’t you think that’s brilliant, man? A one-word name just like Dylan. Brian. He’s great, a prophet for the E generation. And “Also”, a new Britpop band from Oldham. Not quite Manchester, I know, but then Richmond, the home of the Stones, wasn’t quite London, either.
‘So I was in the building playing some tapes and I saw Peter as I was leaving. I don’t think he saw me though and if he did he might not have recognised me. I’ve changed quite a lot since the early days.’
‘You mean after all that had gone on, you were still prepared to work with his company again?’ WPC Coles asked in disbelief.
‘Look, man,’ Jason looked around his office, ‘you take what you can get for your artists. And I was right; Ted liked the cassette.
‘So did you get a contract for Brian or for Also?’ DS Irvine felt impelled to ask.
‘Nah, man. They wouldn’t even make an offer in the end. But Ted told me he liked the tape and that if it were up to him he’d sign both my acts. He felt both were on the cutting edge of music, maybe just too ahead of their time for Camden Town Records. These guys, they never use the word No. They don’t know how. That way they can never be wrong. “Yeah,” they’ll all say, “I was really into so-and-so but I couldn’t do a deal because…” And then they’ll list one of their hundred standard reasons. That way when the groups become successful with someone else, they can always say, “Yeah, I was into that one. I saw that one. I tried to do a deal.” It’s like the thing about success being a bastard and failure an orphan. You know.’
‘I think you mean, success had many fathers, failure is an orphan,’ the WPC corrected.
‘Yeah, man. That’s it. That’s a cool one, isn’t it?’
‘And finally,’ DS Irvine began, rising from his chair a split second before the WPC did the same. ‘What were you doing last night between six o’clock and midnight?’
Jason Carter-Houston just sat there staring at them. He looked at each of them in turn slowly, as though he hadn’t understood the question. It was asked again, this time by WPC Coles.
‘Well,’ he said eventually. ‘I was here till about seven, then I walked over to Union Chapel to see Penguin Café Orchestra. Afterwards we, my partner and I, we went to dinner. I think we got home about twenty-to-one. They’re a cool group, Penguin Café Orchestra. Have you ever seen them? Don’t think they’ve got any singles though.’
By now, Jason, having failed to decide which one of them to address, was looking directly at a space midway between them.
A few minutes later WPC Coles and DS Irvine were in the car weaving their way through the busy afternoon traffic. The DS was the first to speak and then as much to himself as to WPC Coles: ‘I wonder who his partner is? When people these days describe their mate as a partner it usually means that they are a member of the same sex.’
‘Oh, man! Surely not always. It’s cool,’ she joked, adding, ‘I would say partner is also used, and perhaps more often by either partner in a heterosexual relationship, to show the equality of both.’
‘So he’s either gay or politically correct?’ Irvine suggested bluntly. To him a wife was a wife, and a girlfriend was a girlfriend. ‘We’ll find out when we check his alibi.’
‘I was wondering more about the name of his partner,’ WPC Coles conjectured without taking her eyes from the road.
‘Oh yeah?’ Irvine replied, backsliding into his strong Scottish brogue.
‘Well, I was thinking – assuming of course we are talking female – were his partner to be called Miss Thatcher-Devon and they married, does that mean they would be called Mr and Mrs Carter-Houston-Thatcher-Devon?’
‘No,’ came the dry reply. ‘Just Mr and Mrs Richard Head for short!’
WPC Coles stopped their laughter with, ‘He’s a bit of a John Major, though, isn’t he?’
‘What? He hasn’t got grey hair?’
‘No,’ Anne Coles agreed. ‘But I bet he tucks his shirts into his underpants though.’
‘Aye,’ said Irvine. ‘When the shirt reaches that far, that is.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Then sends out for the doctor who pulls down the shade
- Bob Dylan
‘So what can you tell me, good doctor?’ Kennedy smiled as he poured tea into two large, white bone china cups.
‘Well, old chap, quite a bit and devilishly interesting – or, at least, I think it is,’ began Dr Leonard Taylor. He was dressed in the way you expect an old-fashioned English country doctor to dress. Tweed suit, green checked waistcoat, green dicky-bow and a huge smile which made it all work.
‘Good. I could do with a bit of good news on this one.’ Yet Kennedy felt that his current dark mood probably had more to do with the storm clouds gathering around ann rea’s shoulders, than the murder case. He
had left her feeling…well, feeling like maybe he shouldn’t have left her. They could have comforted each other if they had hung on together for just another five minutes in her car. But ann rea had to return to the Camden New Journal for an appointment and Kennedy had promised to make Dr Taylor one of his special cups of tea in return for an ‘in person’ review of the autopsy report.
Of course life is full of compromises, but Kennedy didn’t feel that he should be making them at that (or indeed any) point in his relationship with ann rea.
‘Peter O’Browne was strangled.’
‘Yes,’ came Kennedy’s impatient reply, which did not hide the fact that Dr Taylor’s opening comment was about as big a surprise as traffic jams on the M25.
‘Let me qualify that. All the rope marks, and in particular the inverted V on the side of his neck, indicate that the deceased was hanged. But he didn’t have a broken neck, which would lead me to believe that he didn’t receive any sort of sudden jolt, as would be usual with hanging. For instance, in the days when people were executed by hanging, with the trapdoor and all that, it was the weight of the body, the sudden fall, that snapped and broke the neck. One can only deduce that Peter O’Browne was hoisted up from the floor; or something similar.’
‘Hmmm.’ Kennedy thought for a few seconds. ‘Would this mean that two or more people were involved in the murder? It would take a considerable amount of strength to lift up a dead weight with a rope.’
‘It would be hard work, yes, but I dare say one man could do it.’
‘But not a woman?’
‘Oh,’ the doctor chuckled as he took another sip of tea. ‘I wouldn’t have thought so. It would be much too heavy, unless of course we’re talking about one of those Russian javelin throwers.’ Both Kennedy and the doctor laughed. Then Leonard Taylor opened his hands away from his body. ‘Of course I am talking about a normal circumstance. But there is a possibility that a woman trying to kill someone could find hidden superhuman strength. All that increased activity in the adrenal glands.’
