The Music of the Spheres

by Allister Thompson

  “And what about Her Ladyship here!” Mallorn exclaimed, shaking water out of his hair. “Like the Goddess of War, striding into battle to aid the puny male in his hopeless hour, knocking her enemies about like nine-pins—”

  “That’s enough, please. If you’ve never seen a woman taking care of business, you clearly don’t get out much.” If there were any stirring speeches to be made, Teresa preferred to be the one making them.

  “Moorhen here was taking notes through the whole thing, the cold fish! Coming soon to a bookstall near you, The Battle for Ladbroke Grove!”

  Moorhen smiled slightly and didn’t seem embarrassed at all at this mention of his nonparticipation.

  Mallorn’s face had reddened a little. “I was there with you in spirit, my dear. You know I’m a pacifist, and besides, you chaps seemed to have the situation well in hand.”

  “I’m supposed to be a pacifist too,” Hastings mumbled. He could not understand why he should feel so guilty about protecting the place he loved deeply from despicable invaders bent on destruction, but he did.

  “What was that, Simie?” Teresa took his arm.

  “I said don’t start bickering. And stop calling me Simie.”

  *

  It was early in the evening. A few telephone calls and visits to those lacking telephones had led to an impromptu conference in Daevid Mallorn’s one-bedroom flat. Teresa and Steve Brock had taken turns making the calls while Mallorn had brought Hastings to his “doctor,” which might not have been the best idea. Mallorn’s doctor had never taken classes at any kind of medical school and practiced “holistic” medicine without a license. She prescribed herbs, which she also sold in her shop, for almost any malady a patient could arrive with. Mallorn said that he and “everyone in the know” swore by her services, even when they resulted in a case of the runs.

  The doctor, a corpulent figure with a mass of tangled gray hair who had smoked a large, ornate hookah throughout the examination, concluded that not only was he suffering from a concussion, but the water element had also become unbalanced with the fire element in his cortex, a condition that could lead to serious spiritual duress if left unchecked. For this she had prescribed a herbal supplement to be taken orally. She claimed it was grown in a secret valley in the Hindu Kush and would restore the sacred balance; she also provided a very pungent herbal poultice to be held to his head for two hours. She refused payment.

  Hastings now sat dazedly in a corner of Mallorn’s crowded flat, holding the poultice to the bump on his head with one hand and his nose with the other. The oral concoction had numbed every part of his body but his head, which still hurt quite badly. And he was pretty sure he could feel the runs starting already. He was puffing on a large joint to try to kill the throbbing and the smell.

  A pall of smoke hung at the ceiling, produced by the marijuana, hashish, cigarettes, and cheroots of the assembled company. Mort Moorhen was there, scribbling furiously in a notebook, along with Maurice Wyatt, Bill Filmour, and Roger Lakehead of The Peuce Frank, and Brock and his bandmate from The Sonic Assassins, Stick Turner. Teresa, Mallorn, and his “partner in auras” (girlfriend) Shakti Yoni, rounded out the group. The whereabouts of Rick Farren and Ed Barrett were the only item on the agenda.

  Barrett, well known as a genius but something of a loose cannon, had never been quite the same since leaving The Peuce Frank the year before. He had started buying a new, dangerous substance called “crack” off the streets, which had driven him completely mad for a short time, and though his friends had managed to wean him off the stuff, he had never been coherent enough since then to resume working. After a brief attempt at a solo career, he had abandoned a half-finished album and disappeared into the deep underground network of basement flophouses, where people stoned out of their minds on homemade mixtures lived out the remnants of their miserable lives. Even the most rabid aesthete like Guy had (generally) known better than to fall prey to the endless quest for new, unlicensed sensations and forsake mainstream pharma for the dangerous products of the cellars of the city. If Guy had lived, there would have been a good chance that, should his music career ever have stumbled, he would have ended up in a chemical den somewhere, dreaming away his last years. Barrett had already made that choice.

  “Well, obviously in the case of Ed, we have no bloody idea where he is, but we do know the sort of place we’re likely to find him,” Mo Wyatt said. “We’ll just have to search. I wonder why whoever’s doing these killings considers poor Ed important enough to bump off. I mean, he’ll die soon enough on his own.”

  “True,” Bill Filmour said. “But it’s possible they still consider him important as a symbol. He’s still remembered by our fans.”

  “Or maybe they haven’t followed the scene in a while,” bearded Stick Turner pointed out dryly, absently playing with his saxophone reed, which he had brought in hopes that the meeting might turn into a jam session.

  “Regardless,” Teresa put in impatiently, “his name was on the list that Simon saw. We have a responsibility to find him. He can at least still be saved from himself.”

  “Fine. Some of us will be charged with searching for Ed.” Mallorn had taken on the responsibility of chairperson, a right he felt should be his since they had convened in his flat, interrupting his and Shakti’s evening ablutions and the ritualistic drinking of their jasmine tea. “We’ll try every rubbishy hole we know of tonight, tomorrow, and every day thereafter until we track him down. Obviously the Frank boys should be involved in all this, since he’s their mate. I’ll come along. Maybe if we find him we can get him to Ms. Moonstone for a good cleaning out, eh Simon?”

  Hastings had discarded the smelly poultice Ms. Moonstone had given him and was quietly sipping an ale, a much more pleasant anesthetic. “I’ll come too. I rescued Guy from flophouses a couple more times than I care to remember.”

  Wyatt smiled. “I remember those days. All right, what about Rick Farren? Where the hell’s he?”

  Steve Brock piped up, coughing out a cloud as he did so. Teresa made a face and went to stand by the window. “Rick’s still in hiding from the fuzz; they want him for blowing up that statue of the queen and her doggies a couple of months ago, remember?”

  Mallorn frowned. “Yes, we’ve had a few disagreements over his methods. But he’s still a friend. Well, those of who aren’t involved in looking for Ed will have to try to track down Rick. Hopefully this mysterious Latin assassin won’t have a better idea of these chaps’ whereabouts than we do.”

  “All right, so me, Stick, Mo, and presumably old Moorhen here, if it’s up to it, will search for Farren. Mort?”

  Moorhen started, dropping his notebook. “Yes, absolutely. Whatever it takes.”

  They decided that Farren would likely have taken refuge amongst his fellow anarchists. Sometimes he hid out in a dried-out sewer pipe under a road in Wandsworth (where he swore he’d once seen an alligator or some kind of small dinosaur). He discovered the pipe when on the lam from the police for blowing up an (empty) bank. He could have got life on one of the Hulks on the Thames for that.

  (These details, by the way, are being divulged in this narrative only because I have chosen a pseudonym to mask the identity of this intrepid urban guerrilla and his band; he is a long-time acquaintance of mine but has wisely chosen discontinue these activities. The authorities won’t get a word out of this scribe!)

  “Someone call Rod Blair,” Hastings suggested. “He’s good pals with Farren, isn’t he?”

  “Good idea,” said Steve with a nod.

  This is where your narrator must again place himself briefly into this story. I was indeed contacted shortly after the incident described here, by Stick Turner. I am still offended to this day by the fact that he did not tell me the reason why he was seeking Rick Farren or invite me to this council. As it happened, I had no idea where he was, not having seen him in months myself. Apparently, it was decided that they could not risk my journalistic zeal overcoming my tact, and that if I were to leak t
hese events in the press, it would warn the assassin of pursuit, thereby forcing his hand and making the investigators responsible for a death. Imagine! That point is, I must admit, somewhat lost on me. I am a great believer in the power of the public to do good if properly aroused and feel, moreover, that more trust should have been put in my discretion; but I digress.

  “Okay, guys, that’s it.” Teresa strode commandingly into the center of the room, surveying the assembly with a look of disgust, like a general inspecting a badly turned out regiment. “Butt out your cancer sticks, and let’s get going. And don’t spend any time sampling the delights of these flophouses yourselves, or I’ll personally kick your asses. This is serious.”

  After a few minutes of mild protests and milling about, three groups split apart, one to try the old Seaman’s Rest in the Docklands, where several local anarchists were known to tipple and hold forth on their theories over important pints of Raspberry Wheat ale from Upper Canada, the other groups to start touring dens in the Central and East London areas, not exactly a savory task.

  Hastings had decided that his group had best start their investigation at one particularly notorious house of ill repute in Fulham, an illegal basement drug den known to its customers as Benny’s. It had enjoyed a relatively illustrious history for an establishment of its kind. The cellar of the house had been an infamous opium den in the eighteenth century, featured in the social novels of Sir Walter McPhee and immortalized by Boswell in his history of the city. Not much had changed since. It was one of the places where Hastings had searched for Guy when he disappeared for two weeks after a badly received gig. The proprietor, Benny, a shaven-headed, one-eyed Cockney who apparently didn’t indulge in the products himself, cooked up most of the chemicals consumed there in a private room and never divulged his recipes to anyone.

  His wife, a buxom, raven-haired Irishwoman, served as the devil’s waitress, walking around to the filthy cots and doling out the “medicines,” as they called them. Their prices were considered quite reasonable. When one of the “patients” died, they were removed by night by members of the Brennan Boys crime family, and whence the corpses were taken, no one knew. The existence of the place was well known to the police, who, it was rumored, were well paid by the Brennans to stay clear.

  Mallorn wrinkled his nose as he, Hastings, and Teresa entered the slimy, dark alleyway (“Old Mainline Lane,” the graffiti called it) customers had to pass through to gain entrance to the basement. The evening air was noticeably chillier; it was a colder than normal fall for the south of England. Hastings shivered in his thick denim jacket.

  “I deeply regret having to come to such a place. It reeks of sin,” Mallorn said.

  Hastings laughed hollowly. “Sin? I never thought you were so old-fashioned, Daeve. One man’s sin is another man’s paradise, I’ve heard.” He descended the two stairs to the chipped green door, almost slipping on the well-worn surfaces, and delivered three quiet knocks and one loud one on a heavy brass knocker shaped like a boar’s head.

  “Where’d you learn that?” Teresa said suspiciously.

  Hastings rolled his eyes. “I told you, I had to come here to save Guy’s life. It was Marty, by the way, who taught me the knock. I’d be surprised if they haven’t changed it by now.”

  The door squealed open a couple of inches, and a fat, frowning face with an eye-patch peered out. “Wod’ya want?”

  “Hello, Mr. … Benny,” Hastings said politely. “You may remember me, Simon Hastings. A friend of Marty Sharpe’s. He used to come here sometimes.”

  “Wrong knock. Knock’s changed. Go away.” The door started to close.

  “Listen, Benny, stop.” The door stayed open an inch. “I’ve got an important message for a friend, a customer of yours. It’s a life-and-death situation. Is there an Ed Barrett here?”

  “No Barrett. No Sharpe. Fuck off.” The door started to close again.

  “How much?” Teresa’s brazen Virginian voice boomed out behind Hastings, making him jump.

  “Eh?” The voice behind the door sounded muffled but intrigued.

  “How much do you want for us to come in?”

  There was silence for a few seconds as Benny considered his price. “Fifty quid.”

  Teresa reached into her pocket, pulled out a large roll of bills, and stripped three off. Mallorn’s left eyebrow shot up. “For emergencies,” she said with a cheeky grin. Hastings didn’t know whether to be admiring or appalled. She squeezed the banknotes through the crack.

  There was a crackle, then the door opened wide, revealing Benny in all his corpulent glory. He wore a stained white undershirt, which was too short. His hairy, rotund belly fell out over his beltline. He scratched the stubble on his head and regarded them with beady eyes, blinking in the permanent half-light of the alley. “In,” he growled.

  They heard the door slam behind them, and they were enveloped in the rank odors of sweat, urine, feces, and burning chemicals.

  Mallorn’s face creased in disgust. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Hastings nodded, lit up a smoke to try to kill the smells, and began to inspect the denizens of the cots. There were about fifteen wooden cots, with thin, dingy, stained mattresses on them, but no pillows or blankets. The room was lit by two naked bulbs dangling from the low ceiling. The floor was bare flagstones, on which the odd well-fed rat could be seen scurrying about its business. There was water leaking out of a large pipe on one wall, forming a filthy pool where two rats were happily bathing like a couple at the seaside. A horrible odor wafted from the door to a lavatory that had likely not been cleaned in months, even years. Roughly half of the cots were filled with huddled forms, all motionless. All appeared to be male. The atmosphere of despair was almost palpable, clinging like an aura to these lost souls who had chosen a slow, sordid suicide over a quick and clean one.

  Benny had disappeared back into a private office, but the proprietress came puffing up to them. She was as large as her husband, with long, greasy hair, wearing a blouse unbuttoned to reveal cleavage that resembled a shady Alpine valley nestled between two massive, rounded peaks. The effect was, however, completely unerotic. She grinned at them, incongruous in her occupation and location, showing two rows of broken or missing teeth.

  “Well then, me dearies, what can we do for you? Three beds and three spoonfuls of Benny’s best?” She brandished three needles in one hand. At least those were new and still in their packaging. Her warm voice sounded like that of the proverbial Irish country milkmaid and contrasted sharply with her sordid surroundings. Hastings found himself wondering about her history, how she fell in with Benny and came to run one of London’s filthiest drug houses.

  “No, thank you, madam.” Mallorn inclined a little in a small bow. Hastings and Teresa exchanged looks of amusement. “We’re here to find a friend; we deeply regret the imposition, but we would not be here if we could avoid it. We know how much emphasis you place on discretion. Do mind if we look around for a few minutes?”

  The Irishwoman beamed. “Oh, aren’t we a well-spoken little man, then?” She patted Mallorn’s cheek. He flinched slightly. “Of course you can, duckies. Just don’t disturb the customers. They’re likely to ‘freak out,’ as you young ’uns say, if you bother them too much.”

  They thanked her and began a circuit of the room. Hastings shuddered as he looked into each of the desolate faces they passed. Their eyes were glassy, staring at nothing. None of them appeared to see him, or if they did, they were indifferent. They were a mixture. Some were stereotypical hippie druggies, but there was one man with recently clipped, now messy hair, dressed in parts of a once-immaculate business suit. The suit was covered in dried vomit, and he was drooling. An open briefcase lay beside him, and torn papers were strewn all over the bed. Hastings turned quickly away, feeling his gorge rise.

  “Legalizing and regulating drugs was one of the few intelligent things this government’s ever done,” he remarked to Teresa. “Who knows how many people it’s saved fro
m places like this?”

  “I’m not sure,” she murmured. “They’re here because they still can’t get what they want from the legal products.”

  The next man, who had long, matted hair and a bushy beard and sported biker colors on his dirty leather, started, sat up, and stared with wide eyes at Hastings, mumbling something incoherent. As his whisper started to climb rapidly to a scream, Hastings was forced to beat another hasty retreat. Although he was disappointed at not finding Ed Barrett here, he approached the last cot with some relief. He did not, however, relish the prospect of spending the night in one nightmarish den after another, looking for a man no one had seen in weeks. Mallorn, who evidently had no stomach for the task at hand, had gone to stand by the door and was shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Teresa followed Hastings as he walked over to the cot, in a corner underneath the only window, which was so grimy that it let in almost no light. He leaned down then recoiled with such force that he fell back into Teresa and almost knocked her over.

  “What the hell, Simon?”

  “My god, Teresa, it’s Marty!”

  FourTeen

  It was indeed Martin Sharpe-Thornton lying almost dead to the world on the cot. He had certainly fallen into a sad state in a very short time. His clothes were soiled, and his long, curly hair, which no one had ever seen even slightly out place or unclean, was oily and tangled. A pile of used needles lay beside him. His mouth hung open, and a thread of spittle was dripping out.

  “Jesus!” Hastings exclaimed. He couldn’t believe it. Marty had not gone back to Coventry to stay with his mum. He had come directly to London and headed straight for the nearest flophouse. How could Marty, always in control, have broken into pieces so quickly? He looked at Teresa and Mallorn, who had cautiously wandered over when he had heard the commotion. “We’ve got to get him out of here.”