It didn’t matter how much they went on about the DIY spirit of punk and how anyone could take part, Donna could never commit herself to doing anything unless she knew she could do it a hundred times better than anyone else. Being laughed at was her worst nightmare. And much as she’d tried, much as she’d spent night after night praying for a miracle, she’d never been blessed with the gift of a golden voice. Or any sort of voice, for that matter. The music teacher at school had said she was tone deaf. She’d always suspected that was why she got straight into punk when all of her classmates were still down at the disco. She didn’t like music that sounded nice. She liked music that felt like she did inside – icy, angry, full of the desire to intimidate and control.
She was almost wincing when she took the tape out of its box, with its little card inlay carefully fashioned by Sylvana, who despite all her training in fashion clearly still didn’t have the first idea about what constituted good design. For a start it was in purple. With silver writing. For Christ’s sake, didn’t she realise those were hippy colours?
Mood Violet it read. Thorn Necklace. Tracks: While You Were/Heavenly Shades/Thorn Necklace/Crimson Contact: Sylvana on 01 942 3669
Dear God. It sounded worse than her brother’s prog-rock collection. All it needed now were some Arthur Rackham flower fairies to seal its fate. Donna scrunched her eyes shut as she pressed play.
Found them opening spontaneously a couple of seconds later.
It was a whole lot better than she had dared expect. In fact, she realised, as track followed track and took her nowhere she’d ever expected, it was everything she needed.
Ray came back alone that night, as she knew he would if he thought she was ill. Before he did, she disposed of Sylvana’s original inlay card, fashioning one herself from the heaps of music papers, fanzines and flyers that Ray hoarded, typing out the tracks again on his own typewriter. Then, satisfied that this one would embarrass no one, she went to work on herself. Shortly before eleven o’clock, she had arranged herself prettily under the bedcovers in a silky black nightie, a surprisingly risqué number she’d actually had out of British Home Stores on one of the rare occasions she’d been shopping with her mother in the past three years. She shut her eyes, tuning into the footfalls on the street outside, waiting to hear his key in the lock.
‘How are you feeling, love?’ Ray came through the door and straight over to her, kneeling down by the bed with an expression of genuine concern. He had such a sweet face. Despite his albino porcupine hair and the row of sleepers that went all the way up his left earlobe, he still could have passed for a twelve-year-old.
Donna pretended to blink awake, touching her forehead delicately as she did so.
‘Hmmmm, a bit better, thank you,’ she sat up, allowing Ray the full benefit of BHS’ daringly cut bodice. ‘I’m sorry I fell asleep, I wanted to stay up for you.’
She glanced at the clock. He hadn’t even waited for last orders.
‘Don’t worry,’ Ray had a laugh in his voice that was very endearing. It didn’t seem possible that he could get angry about anything. ‘I brought some chips up, if you fancy?’
He rustled the blue-and-white striped carrier bag he had put down by the bed and Donna’s heart skipped a beat. Even if she had been legitimately off-colour, the smell of fried food would have brought her round.
They lay there companionably for a while, eating the chips out of yesterday’s paper, hot and salty and drenched in vinegar, washed down with a can of Tizer. Tonight’s gig hadn’t been very inspiring, apparently, so she let him talk that out of his system before he got up to put the chip wrapper and the crumpled can in the bin. Nicely house-trained he was too.
Ray came back over and flopped down on the bed next to her. He gently traced the outline of her face with an index finger.
‘You’re gorgeous, Donna, what did I do without you?’ He almost sounded in pain as he whispered it.
‘I don’t know,’ Donna raised one eyebrow. ‘I supposed you just had to make do with dirty old punk rockers.’
He leaned forward to kiss her and Donna tried, she really tried to kiss him back with the same amount of enthusiasm. He was so delicate with her, it was easier to fight the wave of revulsion she usually felt at being touched, easier to nail back the memories of other, harder, more forceful fingers probing into her young flesh, the taste of vinegar on his lips so different from the stale smell of whisky and ashtrays that always brought back her worst nightmares. She could control the urge to slap him off her and beat him a thousand shades of purple, to see him lying naked on the floor, defenceless against her stiletto heels and her fists full of rings.
Ray wasn’t like the other hormonal oafs she’d made short shrift of in her time.
Better than that, he wasn’t her dad.
All the same, she didn’t want to get him too carried away just yet. She pulled away from his embrace smiling, put her finger on the end of his nose. ‘I’ve got something special for you,’ she said.
Ray looked slightly dazed.
‘You are special, Donna—’ he began.
‘I’m gonna prove how special, though,’ Donna slid off the side of the bed. She reached for the cassette that she’d left beside his tape recorder. ‘And how clever I am.’
She flipped up the plastic lid, fitted her future dream between the spindles and clicked the machine shut.
‘Listen to this, Ray. I bet you’ve never heard anything quite like it before.’
Ray, who had been hoping that Donna was about to show him something else entirely, lay back on the tousled bed, confused. She enjoyed watching that expression change, as the first notes filled the room with eerie wonder; that strange, scratchy guitar, those undulating keyboard swooshes, and then the unbelievable sounds that had come out of Sylvana’s throat.
Another thing that was perfect about Ray. He could always be distracted from matters carnal by his truest love – music. She let him drink it in, stealing back across the room to lie beside him, soft and compliant in his arms. Ray looked like he was receiving a Holy Sacrament. Finally, when the four tracks had played themselves out and the tape recorder abruptly snapped off, he sat up and said: ‘Where on earth did you get that?’
‘They’re just some friends of mine,’ Donna replied, smiling up at him. ‘Pretty good, hey?’ she echoed Sylvana’s words.
‘Pretty amazing,’ Ray scratched his head. ‘You’re right, I’ve never heard anything quite like that before. Do you know what she’s singing about?’
Donna shook her head. ‘No, I can’t understand a single word she says. Except that it’s enough to turn a man’s knees to jelly.’
She prodded him there and he laughed.
‘Shall I run it by my editor?’ he said. ‘I’m sure he’d be really interested.’
‘You could do,’ Donna toyed with the end of a strand of her hair. ‘But I think I have a better idea.’
‘What?’ Ray frowned. ‘You’re not gonna give it to the NME? You couldn’t…’ His face started to colour in a way she’d never seen before.
‘Shhh, shhh,’ she shook her head. ‘Course I’m not gonna give it to those wankers. I’ve just had a better idea than just writing about them. Why don’t we put the record out as well?’
‘You what?’
‘It would be easy, Ray, you know it would. Who was that bloke you had over here the other night? Tony, was his name? He set up a label with a hundred quid loan from his old man, he earned it all back on his first release and still had enough over for the second. It looks pretty easy to me. I know we ain’t got a hundred knicker, but you know plenty of people who’d give you that kind of backing, Ray. ’Cos they know they’d make it back like that,’ she snapped her fingers.
‘Everyone would buy a record you championed. Everyone knows you. And it wouldn’t just be this band, there’d be loads of others would follow. Don’t see why you should be making money for some magazine that you could be making for yourself.’
Ray winced at this.
‘It ain’t about the money, though, is it, love?’
Shit, thought Donna, those fucking punk principles. How tiresome.
‘Course it ain’t.’ She shook her head furiously. ‘That weren’t what I meant, Ray, it just came out wrong. What I meant was, instead of just writing about them, you could actually help them get their records out. That Tony said it was the biggest rush he’d ever got in his life. Said it was dead easy, everyone’s willing to help. And I know helping people is what you love doing most.’
She rolled him her most pleading eyes. Ray chewed his lip. He still didn’t look happy.
‘I’ve never thought about anything like this before,’ he finally admitted. ‘I thought I was lucky enough just doing what I do.’
‘You are,’ she agreed. ‘Sorry, Ray. Maybe you weren’t the right person to talk to about this. Maybe I should ask that Tony. He might be able to help me.’
‘Maybe you should,’ said Ray, but he didn’t sound sarcastic, more like wounded and lost. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Donna, I feel a bit out of my depth here. It’s just that I love what I do. I’ve never thought about doing anything else but writing. All that stuff about business and other people’s money scares me. I met Malcolm McLaren and I can honestly tell you, love, he scared the shit out of me. He was an evil man. He didn’t want to help no one except himself. But I know you’re right, Tony Stevens ain’t like that, and there are plenty more like him.’
He sighed and hugged her closer. ‘Is that what you want, then, a record label?’
Donna nodded. ‘I’d be good at it, Ray, I know I would.’
‘Course you would, and I will help you with it. I just don’t want to be part of running it, that’s all.’
‘Fair enough,’ Donna shrugged. As Ray continued to offer up suggestions of who he could get to help her and how he would do his bit in the paper, her head started to swim with the enormous possibility of it all. This was a better idea than she had ever anticipated. Instead of entering a partnership that could grow tiring, she could end up with her own business. She would become a famous entrepreneur – the first woman of punk. She could use that dumb rich Yank Sylvana to elevate herself into the penthouse league. Say bye bye to the Tower of Terror for ever. The very thought of it almost gave her hysterics.
To make matters even better, Ray seemed to think he was letting her down by not coming in with her, just dishing out all his hard-won contacts on a plate instead. After he’d apologised for the seventh time, she decided it was time the poor boy finally got his just rewards.
‘Ray,’ she said sweetly. ‘There’s something else I want to show you…’
15
Giving Ground
February 2002
There were no more mad phone calls and, despite my paranoia, I never did look out of my window to find Robin Leith staring back up at me with bloodshot, accusatory eyes. Nor did I get an icy tap on the shoulder as I walked down a dark Camden alley at night. After two weeks had turned into three, I started to relax. I hadn’t told Gavin anything and I was relieved about that; I could have made a right arse of myself there for no reason. Christophe continued to reassure me of the wisdom of this course of action every time I saw him, and Louise asked no more questions about it.
But Kevin Holme never did call me back, and that still rankled, still caused a couple of nights of fretful churning under tangled, sweaty sheets. Come the grey light of morning, my fears would evaporate again and I gradually pushed the Leith incident to the back of my mind. Now that Gavin was back, it was all stations go again anyway.
I don’t know whether Gavin had nudged him for me, but soon after, Tony Stevens sent me a photocopy of his private detective’s report into Vince’s disappearance, along with a copy of his own file of all Blood Truth’s Exile press cuttings.
At first, I had been really excited to receive the report, a thirty-page densely worded document, on what would have been the standard manual typewriter of the time. I thought I would be able to find something encoded there that Dan had missed or overlooked. It started off promisingly enough.
It gave Vincent’s address as apt 16, 112 Sacré Coeur, Paris Arrondissment 18 – the top flat in a nineteenth-century residential building in a quiet neighbourhood street underneath Vince’s beloved cathedral. A bit of digging around on the net and I began to realise how appropriate this part of the French capital was for a man like Vince – the streets of the 18th district, combining Montmatre, Pigalle and la Chapelle, had long been home to anarchists and artists and the centre of the sex and drugs industry. Emile Zola wrote about its ‘foul environments,’ Toulouse Lautrec immortalised its Chat Noir cabaret in oils and Picasso was put on police file on suspicion of being a robber when he lived there. Vince’s historical neighbours would also have included Degas, André Breton and Max Jacob – Impressionists, Dadaists and Cubists all carved out their own niche on the hill, under the neon underskirts of the Moulin Rogue and the pure white domes of the Sacré Coeur.
Sanctity and Sin, one just above the other. The psychogeography was perfect and I was itching to book my place on the Eurostar right there and then, so I could go and wander those historic streets myself, drink in the atmosphere along with some bitter black espresso and Gitanes. The only thing that stopped me was the thought that Louise would probably want to come too, and then we would have to spend all our time looking at modern art rather than examining the underside of the red-light district. I would have to work this one out as a magazine trip, I reckoned, and not tell her I was going with Gavin.
Another lie, but still.
The detective signed himself M. J. Pascal and in the note Dan sent with the package he explained the guy had been recommended by a friend who’d also once been in need of a French connection – Joseph Pascal was from Paris but had lived and worked in London for years. He had his snouts on both sides of the Channel and had quickly ascertained that the French cops hadn’t bothered too much with the disappearance of someone they considered little more than a criminal. Especially when it seemed there wasn’t very much of a mystery to solve.
There was a thread of a story running through his report, but as hard as Pascal chased it, he couldn’t find any reliable witnesses to back up any of it. Plenty of locals had heard rumours about ‘les Anglais’ and some of them were pretty lurid too – one witness statement from a prostitute, referred to only as ‘Petite M’, said that Vince’s nickname was ‘The Vampire’ and that the local working girls were afraid of him. But Pascal dismissed this tale as the fevered ranting of an addict who had only given her statement to make some money.
However, it was common knowledge that Vince had managed to get himself barred from a couple of the local pubs and nightclubs by causing disturbances with his fists. Pascal had spoken to a couple of aggrieved Montmartre landlords who had told him that Vince had been keeping company with a local lowlife known as Marco, who was rumoured to run hashish up from Marseilles with the help of Algerian gangsters. Needless to say, Pascal couldn’t find hide nor hair of Marco. His contact with the local cops told him they didn’t figure him for a major player, just a boastful small-time crook who they’d picked up a few times for pimping, not drugs. People told stories about him, they said, because he looked like an Arab.
Vince had also been seen with a blonde woman on a few of his wild nights out, but she wasn’t local and no one could tell Pascal who she could have been.
Pascal theorised that Vince could have got himself in even more girl trouble, that the blonde could have been one of Marco’s whores and they could have had a falling out over her. But of course, as Marco was long gone by the time Pascal reached Montmartre, he had no way of following this line.
With Vince being a junkie, there was also every possibility he could have finished his days OD-ed in some rat-infested flophouse and been an unidentified John Doe frozen in a local morgue. Pascal duly checked out this possibility, visiting everywhere there was to visit in Paris and the surrounding area, but no stiffs had ever come in that could poss
ibly have been a physical match for Vince.
Maybe he could have just insulted the wrong person one night and been what Pascal tactfully referred to as ‘disappeared’ – in which case, no one would ever find him again.
But the strongest evidence tended to offer another alternative. Vince had paid his landlord in advance for the final three months of his tenancy in October. He had planned to leave when he did. However degenerate his final months in Paris may have been, his flat was left spotless, everything in order, no signs of a man interrupted. He didn’t leave a single thing behind.
Pascal ended his report by suggesting that, in his opinion, Vince had deliberately ‘disappeared’ himself, had spent three months carefully arranging it and had taken care that no one would be able to follow him.
Stevens had obviously gone along with this summation, even if it had sorely disappointed him. His note said that he had paid Pascal for his services and forgotten about looking for Vince.
Pascal’s number had turned into a mini-cab firm. Now the detective’s trail was long cold. But Stevens had finished by saying that he would chase up the friend of a friend who had recommended him in the first place to see if he could find out if the PI was still around. Although if he was, he reminded me, he would be in his seventies by now.
I phoned Stevens to thank him and he was very genial, although he hadn’t tracked down the friend of a friend yet, let alone a number. Somehow I didn’t expect that he would. Knowing my luck, if Pascal was still alive, he’d be dribbling away in an old folks home by now. So I turned my attention to the press file.
Just about every piece of press Blood Truth had accrued in their two years with Exile was positive, the only voice of dissent being a Melody Maker live review that finished with the words: ‘Take this disgusting racket and shove it’, something that Vince and Steve happily told their next interviewer they were going to use on the top of all their press releases from then on. Mick Greer, was of course the NME’s biggest fan and had written the major feature for every release from Down in the World in March 1979 to Butcher’s Brew in May 1981.
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