The Run-Out Groove

by Andrew Cartmel

“I mentioned that you were from Stanmer Productions and he got very excited.” He smiled at Nevada. “Don’t worry about getting an interview. He’ll probably take your arm off in his eagerness. Ambrose would do anything for publicity.”

  I said, “If he’s so eager for publicity why isn’t he cashing in on her real name?” I nodded at the placard on the music stand.

  Erik nodded and leaned in closer to me. He smelled of expensive aftershave. He spoke in a low voice. “Me and the boys had a quiet word with him, when we found out he was involved with Cecilia. We’ve told him he can do that if he wants—tell everyone she’s alive. But if so, he has to be prepared for a lot of publicity. Including publicity about how he was her psychiatric nurse before he became her boyfriend and business manager. Which puts him on very dodgy ground both ethically and legally. When we put this to him he eagerly agreed that maybe certain sleeping dogs should be left well alone.”

  “So now they’re trying to make it under the name ‘The Spirit of the Jaguar’?” said Nevada.

  “Yeah.”

  “Is it South American music?”

  “No.”

  “So what’s the relevance?”

  “Relevance is the least of their fucking worries,” growled Erik.

  “But what about now?” I said.

  “What about now what, sport?”

  “What if we reveal who she is.” Nevada gave me a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look. “In this documentary we’re researching for Stinky,” I said. And Nevada got it. Our cover story required this question. “I mean we can hardly dodge around the issue if it’s a documentary about Valerian.”

  Erik Make Loud shrugged and sipped at his gin and tonic. “It has to come out some time. Just so long as it’s not exclusively for that little bastard Ambrose to cash in on. He’s cashed in enough as it is. Look at that.” He nodded at the guitar.

  “Very nice,” said Nevada.

  “Hand made,” said Erik, “by Brook in Devon. Beautiful guitar. Much too nice for that silly sod. He’s got ten thumbs. He should be playing a plastic banjo.”

  Nevada frowned as she adjusted her hair tie. Her black hair had grown long since I’d first met her, and it looked good. “And you’re suggesting that he fleeced poor Cecilia to pay for it?”

  “Oh yeah, she picks up all the bills, or at least her trust fund does.” He lifted his pint of Guinness again.

  “She has a trust fund?”

  Erik wiped the foam off his upper lip. “Yeah, after Valerian topped herself and Cecilia was committed and rendered, you know, unfit to look after her own affairs, her father was put in charge. He was the next of kin. And he made sure all of the money that came in, all Valerian’s royalties and all Cecilia’s royalties, went into a fund to look after her care. I think he realised he wasn’t much longer for this world himself.”

  “That was good of him,” said Nevada.

  Erik shrugged. “Not really.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The condition of the trust is that it only pays out a pittance. A bare living for Cecilia.” He grinned. “Just a bit of the interest generated by the capital. Barely enough to keep her in medication and Ambrose Smith in guitars and gold teeth. Meanwhile untold fucking wealth is piling up behind the scenes. And she never gets to get her hands on it.” He stared into the dark depths of his pint. “Like a teenager who never grows up.”

  “What happens if she gets better?” said Nevada.

  “She isn’t going to get better.”

  “What happens when she dies?” I said.

  “All the money goes to some military charity designated by the old man. Plastic poppies for plastic heroes, or something like that.” Erik shook his head ruefully. “You can imagine how pleased Ambrose Smith is about that. Oh look, here he is now.”

  A man was moving towards the corner of the pub reserved for music tonight. He was in his thirties or perhaps early forties. It was hard to tell. But, either way, decades too young to be with Cecilia. Classic gigolo stuff. He had an odd golden skin tone and I couldn’t identify his origins, which were obviously mixed race. He had an afro and freckles and was wearing a camouflage-pattern jumpsuit, the bagginess of which only emphasised the emaciated leanness of his frame, and highly polished oxblood Doc Marten boots. He picked up the guitar, sat on the stool and began to strum away.

  It became immediately evident that Erik hadn’t been exaggerating. Ambrose Smith couldn’t play the guitar, or at least not very well. His music was hesitant and stilted and his sense of time was way off. There were even some titters from the crowd, which he ignored or perhaps genuinely didn’t hear. He certainly seemed to be concentrating on his playing.

  Then the pub fell silent. Emerging from the women’s toilets came a strange figure. Pale-faced and lank-haired, she was of medium height but stupendously fat. Her dress, if you could call it that, was black and decorated with silver crescent moons. It had a cheap, shiny look and might have been made out of fabric intended for a children’s tablecloth. She had a preposterously large, red plastic flower clipped in her hair and was wearing splayed and battered red velvet slippers. She slopped across the pub to the corner where the freckled man sat playing, as if wading through a shallow swamp.

  He flashed her a smile as she joined him. Literally flashed. The man’s mouth was full of metal. I understood now what Erik meant about spending money on gold teeth. She stood beside him as he played, inert and massive. She made no move to do anything, and I began to wonder if indeed this was the act—that he thrashed ham-fistedly at the guitar while she towered in silence beside him. A thoroughly modern piece of performance art.

  But then she began to sing.

  At first it wasn’t clear whether she was making any noise at all, or if the noise was coming from her. The pale lips in her broad, pasty face were barely parted. But the sound kept getting louder, and sharper, until it was like something a cat might have made in a moment of torment, or ecstasy. Everyone in the pub was staring at her, even the bar staff, standing transfixed in mid-motion of pouring drinks.

  Suddenly the noise turned into song. Instead of inchoate sound, words were emerging. Soft and loud, harsh and gentle, a stream of words apparently unconnected, in such sharply varying pitch and intonation that it was like someone tuning a radio and spinning through stations, though without the intervening static.

  But all the time the voice was riding the tune that was coming from the guitar, and compensating for its deficiencies. It thickened the chords, tightened up the rhythm, made the effect more tuneful. Turning it into music. Thanks to the voice it was definitely music, real and urgent and unearthly.

  It wasn’t easy to listen to, though. It was as if something had been unleashed in the pub, and people couldn’t decide whether they were scared of it, or drawn to it. The vulnerability that shimmered in the voice, threatening to break through at any moment, gave tension to the stretched purity of every note. And her sense of time was extraordinary, the way she could draw out phrases was utterly unsettling, as though disdainfully showing that the idea of time itself was nonsense.

  She sounded strikingly like her sister, though more raw and damaged. The years had not been kind.

  When she finished there was stunned silence. Sometimes such a silence comes just before a tumult of applause. Not this time. There was some sparse clapping, including from our table, but for the most part just more silence, a grieved and injured stillness from listeners who seemed angry about what they’d been exposed to. And what it had made them feel.

  “They won’t be knocking the Arctic Monkeys off YouTube any time soon,” cackled Erik, shaking his head. But he was clapping.

  Ambrose came bustling over to our table, holding his guitar by the neck in one hand and Cecilia by the wrist with the other. She followed him neither willingly nor reluctantly, but like a mindless mass being moved by random forces. He sat down with us and she sat beside him. He grinned all around, showing us his gold teeth. There were a lot of them. She didn’t look at us,
but just gazed vacantly into the middle distance. There was a dismaying blankness to her face, as though a big hand had passed across it and wiped it clean of personality.

  “The flower looks really good in your hair, doll,” said Ambrose. He kissed her on the lips with a swift predatory motion. “Nice one.” He might as well have kissed a statue for all the response he got. What little signs of life she had shown while singing had submerged again, utterly and profoundly. Ambrose hitched around in his chair so he could direct his smile at Nevada and me. “So you’re with Stinky Stanmer, eh?”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you’d like to talk to us?”

  “Yes, about Valerian,” said Nevada. “We’re working on a programme about her.” She looked at Cecilia. “And her sister, of course.”

  “That’s great,” said Ambrose. “Isn’t that great, doll?” He kissed her again, on the cheek this time, and she swayed a little under the pressure of his lips but otherwise showed no reaction. “They want to talk about your sister.”

  “Uh, if that’s all right,” said Nevada, watching this freak show.

  “Yeah, yeah. You can come down to Canterbury, can you? To see us?”

  “No problem,” I said. We exchanged phone numbers and then Ambrose Smith left, guitar in one hand and singer in the other. A young couple were coming in through the pub door as they were going out and they recoiled physically from Cecilia. She gave no sign of even noticing this. The door swung shut and they were gone. We looked at each other.

  “Maybe it was just a bad night for her,” said Nevada.

  Erik laughed. “A bad night? This is as good as it fucking gets.”

  * * *

  “Erik Make Loud, you lying bastard.” We looked around to see Nic Vardy standing beside our table.

  “So you got here,” said Erik. He looked at us. “When I told you about Cecilia I had to tell old Nic, too.” Vardy pulled up a chair and sat down beside us, close to Nevada, I noticed.

  “The lying, lying bastard. All these years, letting me think she was gone.” But he didn’t seem terribly angry, and Erik just shrugged casually.

  “You know how it is, mate. Did you catch the show?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “What did you reckon?”

  “Oh, straight to the top of the charts. Definitely.”

  “You take any pictures?”

  Vardy shook his head. “The only one in here worth photographing is that girl behind the bar.” He looked at Nevada. “Present company excepted, of course.”

  “Yeah, she’s cute isn’t she?” leered Erik, his eyes on the barmaid. They then proceeded to discuss the woman’s merits. I glanced at Nevada, who rolled her eyes. I was impressed at the laddish persona Vardy had taken on in Erik’s presence. Maybe this was what you did if you were a good photographer. Imitate your subjects, so they relax in your company. But it was tedious to listen to, and I was just wondering if we could make our apologies and slip away when Vardy got to his feet again.

  “Well, I just dropped in for a quick visit,” he said. “Places to be.” He waved to us and left. Erik sighed.

  “I felt bad about keeping him in the dark. So once I told you two…”

  “We understand,” said Nevada.

  Erik drained the last of his Guinness. “I’d better be going myself.” He grinned. “Bong Cha will be worried if I’m late.”

  “We’ll see you off the premises,” said Nevada. We followed Erik and were almost at the door when a familiar voice called out.

  “Erik Make Loud! What an unexpected pleasure.”

  We turned to see Tinkler sitting on a bar stool, smiling like the Cheshire cat, with a whisky in front of him. He looked at Nevada and me. “Oh, and look! My old friends. What a surprise.”

  “You know this guy?” said Erik.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so,” said Nevada.

  “It’s a real privilege to meet you, Mr Make Loud.” Tinkler ostentatiously moved the empty stool beside him, indicating that it was available for occupancy. But Erik wouldn’t even look at him directly. I was beginning to realise that this was a rock star habit. If you weren’t interested in someone, just pretend that they don’t exist.

  “I’d better make a move,” he said, turning for the door. Tinkler didn’t seem troubled, or offended.

  “I recently acquired a copy of All the Cats Love Valerian,” he said, casually. “With the original blue label and the nude cover.”

  Erik paused in mid-stride and turned and looked at him. “Fucking hell, those are as rare as hen’s teeth.”

  “Indeed.”

  He drifted back towards Tinkler, who remained sitting nonchalantly on his stool. “I haven’t even got one myself,” said Erik. “The ex-fucking-wife got all my copies. Find it on eBay, did you?”

  Tinkler shook his head and smiled suavely. “No, in a charity shop, as it happens.”

  Erik settled down on the stool beside him and stared at Tinkler. “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “How much did you pay?”

  “Fifty pence,” said Tinkler. This was, indeed, what Nevada had paid for the LP in a charity shop in Hammersmith.

  “You’re kidding! You bastard.” Erik began to laugh helplessly.

  “Yes,” said Tinkler, “this is the kind of bargain you can find if you have time to scour the charity shops.” He looked at Nevada and me. “Unfortunately my friends here don’t have time for that kind of thing. Being high-flying media achievers.”

  “Fifty pence!” cackled Erik. “You want a drink, mate?”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” said Tinkler offhandedly. Erik slapped him on the back.

  “I suppose you want me to autograph it for you, the album?” he said.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t put you to that trouble,” said Tinkler. He took a piece of paper out of his pocket. “It would be quite sufficient if you were to sign this.” He handed the piece of paper, and a pen, to Erik Make Loud, who promptly signed his name.

  “Who should I make it out to, mate?”

  “Jordon Tinkler please. Jordon with an ‘o’.”

  “Like that bloke who played for Birmingham?” said Erik.

  “Exactly.”

  “What position did he play?”

  “Midfield.”

  “That’s right!”

  Nevada stared at me. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “They’re bonding over football.”

  But the conversation had already moved on. They were now discussing the cover photo of All the Cats Love Valerian and Tinkler was drawing relaxed reminiscences out of him in a way we had never achieved. “Never was there so much pussy on one album cover,” reflected Erik Make Loud philosophically.

  “That’s right,” said Tinkler happily. “Pussy!”

  Nevada and I edged up to the bar beside him. “How did you know we were here?” I whispered.

  “Clean Head told me.”

  I looked at Nevada. “Oops,” she said. “Loose lips sink ships.”

  “There is no escape from me,” said Tinkler. “And by the way, I’m coming with you.”

  “Coming with us when?”

  “When you go down to Canterbury to see Cecilia Drummond.”

  I said, “What makes you think—”

  “Oh come on,” said Tinkler, and sipped his whisky.

  15. CANTERBURY

  The Colonel looked like a man who’d seen a ghost. Which I suppose in a way he had.

  He set something down on the table in front of us. It was a sealed plastic bag of the kind you use to store food in the freezer. Inside it was a cotton swab. “DNA sample?” said Nevada. The Colonel nodded grimly. “You think it might not be her?” Before he could answer, the waitress came and took our order. Nevada and I each asked for another coffee. The Colonel ordered nothing.

  We were in a little café near Canterbury West station where the coffee was surprisingly good—particularly surprisingly since Ambrose Smith had recommended the place. We had come in on the train that morn
ing—despite his threats, Tinkler had stayed at home; it had been too early a start for him—and Nevada and I had waited tactfully here while the Colonel went for his reunion with his sister. Under the auspices of Ambrose of course.

  As soon as the waitress was gone, the Colonel said, “That bloated monstrosity? Are you surprised that I doubt it’s my sister? That distended bag of flesh?”

  “Ah, she is a big girl,” said Nevada diplomatically.

  “She’s revolting. How could someone let themselves get like that? I tried to count her chins but I couldn’t. I literally couldn’t, because they were wobbling too much. She wouldn’t look me in the eyes and I couldn’t stop staring at all those grotesque, disgusting chins.”

  Yes, that must have been a jolly family reunion, I thought.

  “That coffee smells good,” said the Colonel abruptly.

  “We’ll get you one,” said Nevada.

  “No, don’t bother.” But Nevada was already looking for the waitress. He turned away and sighed with exasperation.

  “You need something,” said Nevada. “You must, after seeing her for the first time in—how many years?”

  “Over forty,” said the Colonel. “Over forty years.”

  I said, “And for twenty of those years you must have thought she was dead.”

  Nevada winced at this bluntness but it didn’t seem to trouble the Colonel. He just shook his head pugnaciously, like a man coming to a conclusion, and said, “I’m still not convinced it’s her.”

  Nevada nodded at the plastic bag with the swab in it. “Well, you’ll soon have proof one way or another.”

  I said, “Do you have a sample of the real Cecilia’s DNA on file somewhere?”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  “So what will they do?” said Nevada. “What will they test it against?”

  “Him,” I said.

  The Colonel glared at me. I’d spoiled his explanation. “That’s right,” he said. “They test me and then they will be able to determine if this sample came from my sister.”

  “How did you get it?” I said. “Did you swab her mouth?”

  He held up the bag and looked at the little white swab with an expression of distaste. “No, her keeper did that for me. While I watched.”