by Greg Keen
He squinted at me. ‘Not after booze, are you?’
‘It’s nine o’clock.’
‘I know.’
That Nick fully expected me to knock back a large one for breakfast was irritating. ‘I haven’t had a drink for almost a week,’ I said.
‘Oh, yeah. That why you’re never in here, then?’
‘It’s one of the reasons.’
‘What are the others?’
‘I’ve been busy with work. Which is why I wanted to talk to you . . .’
‘It’ll have to wait until I’ve had a brew,’ he said. ‘Fancy one?’
‘A coffee would be great,’ I said. ‘Milk and two sugars.’
While Nick got busy in the small kitchen behind the bar, I took a seat next to the ancient fruit machine. I’d been frequenting the V for over forty years. Not much had changed for either of us. The club was still a dingy shebeen with nicotine-stained walls. I was still waiting for life to turn a corner. The only thing that was different since I’d last been in the V was that the framed poster of the 1982 Italian World Cup squad had been removed from the wall.
Nick returned with two steaming cups and laid them on the plastic gingham table cover. His voice box had been ruined when he was a kid. When the V is full, Nick uses a throat mic and speaker. As it was just the two of us, he remained unplugged.
‘What have you been busy with, then?’ was his first question.
‘I’m working on something connected to the Emporium club.’
‘To do with Cas Greaves?’
‘What makes you say that?’
Nick blew on the surface of his tea and took a tentative sip. ‘Because that’s all anyone ever thinks about when they think about the Emporium.’
‘It’s connected to Cas in a roundabout way,’ I admitted.
Nick chuckled. ‘Gonna track him down, are you, Kenny?’
I parried the chuckle with one of my own.
‘All I want to do is speak with someone who was around the night of Mean’s last gig. Doesn’t your uncle work at the Emporium?’
‘Uncle Kris is the premises manager.’
‘Was he there that night?’
‘That’s his claim to fame.’
‘Any chance you could give me his number?’
‘Sure,’ Nick said. ‘When d’you want a word?’
‘Today if possible.’
Nick went over to the pegs at the side of the bar and removed a phone from his jacket. I sparked up my first Marlboro of the day. As well as knocking the booze on the head, I’d also cut down on Madam Nicotine. And Nick wasn’t likely to invoke the smoking ban.
‘What’s happened to the footie poster?’ I asked. ‘You better not have chucked it out, Nick, or Jack’ll come back from the grave to haunt you.’
‘What you on about, Kenny?’ Nick said, holding his phone to his ear.
‘The Italian World Cup team, you’ve taken it . . .’
The poster was where it had always been. Dino Zoff, Franco Baresi, Bruno Conti and the rest of the team were staring down at me from the wall.
‘Taken it where?’ Nick asked.
‘Nothing, Nick, just that . . . Nothing.’
‘You sure you don’t want a drink?’ he asked.
‘Positive,’ I said.
I was halfway through my smoke, trying to understand how a poster could disappear and reappear in the space of thirty seconds. Nick was talking ten to the dozen in Greek. The street door opened and closed. Two sets of feet clattered down the stairs, and the real reason I hadn’t been in the Vesuvius lately walked into the club.
Two years after her husband died, Stephie Holtby turned up unannounced on my doorstep with a bottle of Stoli. After necking it, we went to bed and had the kind of uninhibited sex that people with half a bottle of vodka inside them generally do.
To assuage her guilt at betraying Don’s memory, Stephie pretended that nothing had happened. Attempts on my part to discuss the situation were met with stony silence. Three weeks later, she arrived with another bottle and we went again.
Stephie looked ten years younger than her age and had a body honed by exercise and a vegetarian diet. I lived off Pot Noodles and supermarket Scotch and had begun to accept that the only attraction my body held would be for medical science.
For this reason I carried on with the charade. At least, I did until Stephie invited me to move up north with her. We were set for a happy-ever-after ending until I bottled things at the last moment. Stephie was understandably pissed off and I’d assumed that would be the last I saw of her. And then she came back. With a boyfriend in tow.
I hadn’t met Jake Villiers, although I’d heard a fair bit about him. Sadly it all turned out to be true. He was fiftyish, with a lean physique, neatly cut dark hair and a jawline sharp enough to strike a match on. Had he been a character from the Eagle, Jake would have spent the morning test-piloting a prototype fighter plane before opening the batting for England with his best mate Dan Dare.
Worse than that, it seemed that everyone at the V thought that he and Stephie made the perfect couple. Worst of all, he was minted. Stephie had met Jake when she was working behind the bar of one of the thirty-three clubs, pubs and restaurants he owned around the country. She had moved back to London, as Jake lived in Richmond. They hadn’t moved in together but apparently it was only a matter of time.
Obviously, I was as delighted for them as everyone else.
‘Hi, Kenny,’ Stephie said. ‘How are you?’
‘Great,’ I said. I wondered if we were going to hug. We didn’t hug.
‘This is Jake,’ Stephie said.
‘Good to meet you, Ken,’ Jake said. He was wearing a grey cashmere jacket over a black polo-neck sweater along with a pair of jeans and Chelsea boots. There was a whiff of muscular cologne about his person. We shook hands.
‘Actually, it’s Kenny.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Kenny. People call me Kenny.’
‘Oh, right,’ Jake said.
‘Tell me Jake’s watch is still here, Nick,’ Stephie said. ‘I forgot to take it home.’
Nick removed a small brown packet from the till and handed it to Stephie.
‘It’s guaranteed for a year,’ she said, strapping something gold and slim to Jake’s wrist. ‘The guy said keep it away from water in future.’
‘Thanks, sweetheart. And thanks for looking after it, Nick.’
If Nick had been a dog, I swear to God he’d have wagged his tail.
‘Can we meet for lunch today, Jake?’ Stephie asked.
A cloud passed over her boyfriend’s face. ‘I’d love to, Steph, but I’ve got to meet the builders at the Dulwich site.’
‘Tonight?’
‘Out with the guys from PDT.’
‘Oh, yeah, I’d forgotten.’
‘Why don’t you and Kenny go to dinner?’
Stephie looked as though Jake had proposed a weekend crabbing in Great Yarmouth as a substitute for a fortnight’s skiing in Val d’Isère.
‘Kenny’s probably got something on,’ she said, almost hopefully.
‘Nope,’ I said. ‘I’m free.’
‘Good, that’s sorted, then.’ Jake consulted his recently repaired watch. ‘I’d better be going,’ he said, and cantered up the stairs like a man half my age.
‘Where d’you want to meet, Kenny?’ Stephie asked.
‘Pizza Express on Dean Street?’
‘Seven?’
I nodded.
‘Uncle Kristos said that he could show you round this morning at eleven,’ Nick said. ‘Just turn up at the stage door and say you’ve got an appointment.’
After leaving the Vesuvius, I took a short walk to Foyles in order to continue my research on Mean. According to Wikipedia, the main reference work was by one-time music journalist and hack-for-hire Saskia Reeves-Montgomery. Sure enough, there was a copy of Play Like You Mean It in the music section.
The first shot in the photo section showed the teenaged Mean
Red Spiders. Lead singer Castor Greaves was slim, spotty and had a mullet hairdo. JJ Freeman was darker and chunkier. Despite his best efforts, Peter Owens looked as though he ought to be working in a bank, which is what he would jump ship to do four years later.
The pin-up of the four was Dean Allison. The Spiders’ drummer was a couple of inches taller than his bandmates. He had the high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes of a professional model, and more of a pout on his lips than a snarl.
Successive photographs showed the Spiders rehearsing, onstage at various venues, and signing their first contract with Pergola Records. By this time, Gordon ‘Chop’ Montague had replaced Owens and the band had changed its name to Mean.
Even then Chop Montague’s hair was receding. Now he was as bald as a cue ball. But when you’re worth fifty million, who needs hair? After Castor went missing, Chop had carried on writing for himself and other artists, with huge success.
The final photograph I’d seen a thousand times. They were still selling T-shirts featuring it in Camden Market. Castor Greaves was staring directly into the camera; Emily Ridley had her head on his shoulder and was smiling dreamily.
Castor was a regular heroin user by then, but the photographer had caught him on a good day. Emily probably only had good days. Her blonde hair was cropped and she had the type of ethereal beauty that fashionistas trample over each other to get. Seventy-two hours later, she disappeared off the face of the earth.
All I had to do was find out why.
THREE
Archer Street is a two-hundred-yard stretch of road that joins Rupert Street to Great Windmill Street. Home to a couple of restaurants in which you or I would have to reserve a table in a previous life, it also boasts a design consultancy, a TV post-production company and, of course, the legendary Emporium club.
Hendrix played the Emporium, as did the Stones, the Clash and U2. It’s a scheduled stop for every walking tour of Soho, and a place of sacred pilgrimage for Mean fans. Scrawled on and around the main door are hearts pierced by arrows, song lyrics, fan names, and a skull with a cigarette clenched between its teeth.
The stage door is less graffiti-ridden. It had just gone eleven when I pressed the intercom and announced that I had an appointment with Kristos Barberis. The woman left me waiting thirty seconds before pressing the release button. I opened the door and jogged Jake Villiers-style up two flights of stone steps to reception.
On the walls hung autographed pictures of the club’s more famous acts. Notable by their absence were any of Mean. Behind a desk was a tall woman in her twenties who seemed concerned by the fact I was struggling to breathe.
‘Kristos is on his way,’ she said. ‘Can I get you a glass of water?’
I shook my hand to indicate that wouldn’t be necessary. Then I leant nonchalantly against one of the exposed brick walls and tried not to vomit.
Kris Barberis was a chubby man in his mid-sixties with a head of thick grey hair. Skinny brown jeans made his legs look like a pair of overstuffed sausages, and a denim shirt struggled to make it around his gut. The inverted silver cross hanging from the lobe of his left ear was about as trendy as a monocle.
‘Hey, Kenny, my friend,’ he said in a Greek inflection that forty years in the UK hadn’t entirely erased. ‘How you doing, mate?’
‘I’m good, Kris,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while.’
Kris grinned. ‘Last time I visit the Vesuvius I spend the next two days in bed.’ We shook hands. ‘Nick said you want to look around the place? Still in the private detective racket?’
‘Just about,’ I said. The girl behind the desk looked up from her phone.
‘Gonna find out what happened to Cas and Em?’ Kris asked.
I shrugged and smiled. It did the trick.
‘Well, you come to the right guy. You know I was here the night they disappeared?’ He tapped me lightly on the chest. ‘Just about the last person to see them both alive, mate.’
The receptionist’s attention was straight back on the phone. I suspected she had heard Kris’s claim to fame once or twice before.
‘So Nick told me,’ I said. ‘I’d love to hear about it.’
A sigh from the girl, the significance of which wasn’t lost on Kris.
‘Probably best I tell you in Cas’s dressing room,’ he said.
The second floor had been modified to create eight separate rooms leading off the main hallway. Kristos led me to the furthest, and pulled a large set of keys from his pocket. He inserted one into the lock of dressing room 7 and grinned.
‘Trust me, Kenny, everyone and his missus has had a go at working out how Cas and Em could have got out of here without being picked up on CCTV. No one’s cracked it and no one will.’
At the far end of a room the size of a suburban garage was a long table with a plate-glass mirror above it. Rows of bulbs provided the light for make-up to be applied. A microwave sat at one end of the table, a washbasin at the other. There was a steady drip coming from one of the taps.
The rug had seen better days and the walls were unadorned plasterboard. Placed against one of them was a tatty blue corduroy sofa that looked to be the same vintage as the rug. There were three metal chairs and an empty clothes rail.
No ghostly giggling.
‘So this is it,’ Kristos said. ‘Emily walks out of here at one a.m., and Castor about five minutes later. That’s the last time anyone sees ’em.’
‘Who was in the room?’ I asked.
Kristos leant against the table and rubbed his chin.
‘The band, plus me, Sweat Dog and Emily.’
‘Sweat Dog?’
‘Used to crew for Mean. Runs a tattoo joint in Muswell Hill now.’
I committed the name to memory. It wasn’t difficult.
‘Who was first to leave?’
‘Dean Allison,’ Kris said. ‘Twenty minutes later, Emily said she had a modelling job in the morning and needed to get a good night’s sleep.’
‘Did you let them out?’
‘Nah, the stage door was latched. You could open it from inside.’
‘But not the outside?’
Kris shook his head. ‘There were cameras above both exit doors and one on the stairs. You can see Dean leaving but there’s no sign of Emily at all.’
‘Could they have been faulty?’
‘Nope, they were both tested. She didn’t leave by the stage door or go into the auditorium. Neither did Castor. When he didn’t come back, Chop went looking for him in case he’d passed out. Then we all searched the building. No sign of him anywhere.’
‘Did you call the police?’
‘Course not. We all thought he’d had a slash and figured that he might as well go home. It was only when Castor and Em didn’t show up for a couple of days that anyone thought to check out the CCTV footage.’
‘What was JJ Freeman like that night?’
‘He and Cas were reminiscing about the old days while Chop was talking to anyone who’d listen about the next album. There was a real vibe in the room.’
‘And Emily Ridley?’
Kris leant over and attempted unsuccessfully to stop the basin tap from dripping. ‘Actually, she seemed a bit quiet,’ he said. ‘But that could have been because she was knackered. And obviously when you look back, you start imagining things.’
‘The police must have been all over this place.’
‘Not really. The guy in charge turned up with a couple of wooden-tops and had a nose round. That wasn’t until a few days later, though.’
‘DI Ronnie Mullen,’ I said, recalling the investigating officer’s name from my Wikipedia research. ‘What was he like?’
Kris forgot about the tap. ‘Didn’t seem that interested, to be honest. Ronnie was coming up for retirement. He thought the whole thing was a publicity stunt.’
‘And when it became clear it wasn’t?’
‘Not much happened. The whole Cas and Em thing has grown over the years. Back then the cops had better things to do than loo
k for missing rock stars.’
‘You must have had God-alone-knows how many investigators and journalists checking things out since, though.’
Kris shook his head. ‘Bloke who owns the Emporium doesn’t want cranks wandering round the place.’
‘What’s your theory about what happened?’
‘Wormhole.’
‘A what?’
‘Tear in the space-time continuum. If you’re unlucky enough to walk into one then it’s over and out. There’s loads of examples online, Kenny, but the government want to keep a lid on it in case of panic. I send you some links, if you like.’
‘Can’t wait, Kris. Any chance I could see the roof?’
‘The roof?’
‘Wasn’t there something about a helicopter hovering overhead?’
Kris rolled his eyes. ‘Trust me, there weren’t no helicopter. People just hear about stuff afterwards and think they remember it too. There’s a term for it . . .’
‘False memory syndrome?’
‘That’s it. Take it from me, mate. Cas and Em are in the fourth dimension.’
‘All the same, Kris, if I could take a look . . .’
My legs felt as though they were turning into plasticine, and the pain in my skull was pulsating. A gust of cold wind revived me to a degree, and I stepped out after Kris on to a tarmac roof covered in a layer of small stones. He closed the door behind us.
Several TV aerials had been tethered to a metal post that in turn had been lashed to a large chimney. There were five steel box-structures in a row. A tarpaulin had been wedged between a pair of boxes, one of which had been blackened by the elements.
I agreed with Kris that the helicopter theory was nonsense. The stories hadn’t emerged until a couple of years after Cas and Em’s disappearance. There had been a fire in Great Marlborough Street half a mile away that had been monitored by a helicopter. This was almost certainly the source of the ‘black chopper’ legend.
The building the Emporium abutted was a storey higher. You’d have to be an expert free climber or a straight-up magician to reach its rooftop without a ladder.
‘What if they made it up there?’ I asked Kris nevertheless. The wind snatched my words away. I repeated them with my mouth next to his left ear.
