Written in Dead Wax (24 page)

A tongue of flame poured into the ditch where Nevada had fallen.

The mass of burning fuel gushed after it. The ditch filled with a hot, bright, crackling flood.

The ditch where Nevada had fallen.

My mind couldn’t absorb what was happening. I could feel the heat on my face, like sunburn. My lungs were full of the stink of burning petrol. Shadows twisted on the ground. Black smoke began to pour into the sky, hiding the flames.

I heard a noise and I turned and saw Hughie was standing behind me, the dog at his side. It had gone deathly quiet except for the simmering of the flames. Tiny delicate snowflakes began sifting down from the sky.

The silence and the calm seemed insane, but it only lasted a few seconds. And then the sirens started in the distance.

“Get out of here,” said Hughie. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“Nevada…”

He shook his head. Tears were streaming down his face. He gestured towards the ditch, now brimming with burning fuel, a mass of smoke and flame. There was no hope.

He grabbed me by the arm and began to push me back, away from the fire, towards my car.

As we went I noticed the record lying on the snow-covered ground where it had fallen.

Splashes of burning fuel had reached it. The cover was a scorched fragment, the record a shapeless melted puddle of black vinyl.

The elegant Hathor label was still recognisable in the centre of the distorted black mess.

I left it there.

As I drove away from the factory I looked back in the mirror. The distant glow of the flames cast festive lights into the sky. I realised from this distance it looked like some kind of Christmas display. I left the country roads behind and joined the motorway.

Driving back to England.

Driving home.

Fat white flakes began falling into the beams of the headlights.

Snowfall.

Nevada
.

The roads were clear and, by the time I got home, it was still only late evening, but already pitch black with winter darkness. I was on automatic pilot, my mind meticulously and efficiently planning and preparing.

I drove around to my house first, because I had to drop off the bicycles next door, and only then returned the car to the rental place.

I couldn’t do it any other way because there were no longer enough people to ride both bikes.

So I dropped off the car and caught a bus home from Putney and unlocked my front door and stepped inside and felt my world fall apart. The cats, who had come running to meet me, stopped and stared as I doubled over with a cry of anguish and gradually went down onto the floor as though forced down by a giant hand. They watched me cautiously as I slowly got back on my feet, weeping. Fanny circled me uncertainly and Turk gave a funny little cry, which seemed to echo my own.

I didn’t sleep all night. Every time I tried to close my eyes, all I could see was her body, huddled in the ditch, and then cremated by a flood of fire.

Lying there all alone.

As soon as the sun was up in the sky, I rang Hughie. He answered instantly. “I’m coming back,” I said.

“No. Stay away. Please.”

“I have to see her. I have to take care of her.”

“It’s all taken care of. She’s gone. It’s done.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s buried. It’s all taken care of.” He hung up.

I went to the hospital to see Tinkler as soon as visiting hours began. I had nowhere else to go. As soon as he saw my face he knew something was terribly wrong. When I told him what had happened, he went white. I broke down completely so that towards the end of my account I was almost incoherent, leaning forward, sobbing. His plump hand crawled across the bed sheet and took mine and squeezed it, clumsily and powerfully.

As soon as I returned home I phoned Hughie again. I’d realised I had to go to the place. Wherever she was buried. I had to put some flowers there. I couldn’t rest until I’d done that. Suddenly I understood every sad roadside shrine of every accident victim I’d ever seen. “I’ve got to come down, Hughie,” I said.

“Stay where you are. I’m coming to London tomorrow.”

“I need to know—”

“I’ll tell you all about it when I see you tomorrow. I’ll tell you everything.”

“What do you mean, tell me about it?” But he was gone. Five minutes later I got a text from Hughie, giving me a time and place to meet.

* * *

I was there waiting for him the next day, at the coffee shop in the Curzon Soho. He came through the door carrying two large shopping bags. He saw me and waved and gave a big false smile and came over and sat down. It was a strange situation. Neither of us ever wanted to see the other again, and yet I had to see him. And he seemed to be under a similar compulsion. Before I could say a word, he started in.

“What a relief. Those sirens you heard. They weren’t the cops. Just the fire service. And I have friends in the fire service. They sprayed foam on the petrol and put it out. There wasn’t any damage to the greenhouses.” He shot me a fast, worried look, as if he realised how uninterested I was in his crops escaping unscathed. “No one had heard any shooting. They just gave me hell about the storage tank. Said they’d known it was unsafe and how I should be prosecuted and so on, but they were just putting the fear of god into me. I gave them some early Christmas presents and everyone went home happy.” He tried a smile, then gave up on it.

“When are you going back?” I said.

“Tonight.”

“I’ll come with you.”

He gave me an appalled look. “What for?”

“I have to see the place.”

“What place?”

“Where she’s buried. I want to put some flowers there.”

He was staring at me as though I was insane. Perhaps I was. “What are you talking about?”

“You said you buried her.”

“No I didn’t. I didn’t do that. I wouldn’t do that.”

“You said it had all been taken care of. That she was buried.”

“No I didn’t,” said Hughie. He had, but what was the point of arguing? Now he leaned across the table towards me and lowered his voice to a hiss. “I said it had been taken care of and her body was gone. When I came back the next morning, just after daylight, it was gone. I think they came back and took it.”

“Who?”

“Them. The bastards. The ones who shot her.”

“Why do you think it was them?”

“Because they also took that record of yours. What was left of it.”

“That melted lump of vinyl?” I said.

“And the cover.”

“Why would they do that?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. Then, “She was something, your lady. The way she went after those bastards.” He stood up and gripped me manfully on the shoulder for a moment. “Tough it out,” he said. Now that he was leaving he seemed to feel he could afford to be genuinely fond of me. He turned for the door. He’d left his bags on the chair.

“Hughie,” I said. “Your bags.”

“Those are for you.” He pushed through the glass door of the café and disappeared into the crowds on Shaftesbury Avenue. I looked in the bags. They were full of tomatoes.

* * *

Seeing Hughie had released something in me. Exhaustion spread through my veins like a drug and I realised I would be able to sleep at last. Since the incident I’d been lying in bed in a state of crystalline anguish, every sense sharp and alert. All that was gone now. As I walked through the door I started pulling my clothes off and threw them aside. It reminded me of the times with her, when we’d hurried to the bed together, undressing as we went, and my cheeks were slick with tears as I put my face to the pillow. In the darkness I heard the rattle of small feet on the floor and the cats surged in to join me.

As I fell asleep, at last, I realised why they might have wanted to retrieve the destroyed record.

To prove it no longer existed.

The next morning I woke up with a new determination. I had to tell someone what had happened to her. She had family somewhere and they needed to know. I had no idea how to contact them, but I knew someone who might. I started looking for her business card. The one she had given me on that first day. I searched everywhere, but I couldn’t find it. I started throwing things around. The cats watched me, baffled at my bad temper and the fact that they hadn’t been given their breakfast.

I forced myself to stop and take a deep breath. I fed the cats. Then I went on the Internet. I don’t know why I’d been so obsessed with finding the card. I remembered what was on it, anyway. Just her name and the company name. International Industries GmbH. Any large business was bound to have an Internet presence.

But not this one. The words International Industries GmbH typed into a search engine threw up plenty of results, all right. But they were all companies in which those words were prefaced by some kind of other name.

“Like Krautrock International Industries, GmbH,” said Tinkler when I told him about it.

“Exactly.”

He wrinkled his brow. “You know, I think you might have given me her business card.”

“Don’t worry about it,” I said.

“And I might have used it as a roach. I’m really sorry.”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’m sure that’s all it said on it.”

He nodded eagerly. “Her name and Industrial Industries GmbH.”

“International Industries.”

“That’s what I meant.” He looked at me. “So do you think that means it doesn’t really exist? Because you can’t find any trace of it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

But it turns out it definitely did have some kind of existence, because when I got home there was an envelope waiting for me. It was addressed to me and had a logo in the corner that read
i i GmbH
with the I’s in fashionable lower case. I tore it open with shaking hands. Inside was just a cheque. Made out to me. For one thousand pounds.

On the cheque was the name “International Industries”, but there was no address or other information of any kind.

I stared at it, the implications slowly seeping in. This meant that they must know what had happened to Nevada. How could they? But there didn’t seem to be any other explanation.

I looked at the cheque. Why a thousand pounds? Obviously it was a round number, but beyond that it seemed a strangely familiar sum. Then I remembered. It was what they were going to pay me if I’d found the classical record for them. The bogus Stravinsky on Everest.

This is what I was getting paid, for having failed to get them the record they really wanted. The same as if I’d found them one that didn’t exist.

I guessed it was what they call a kill fee.

* * *

The winter was suddenly deep and fierce and bitter. Much colder. Or maybe it just felt that way because Nevada was gone. The cats crossed the freezing floor with trepidation, scurrying as fast as they could, or jumping from one handy piece of furniture to another to avoid putting their little paws on the icy surface.

So I knew what I had to do with the money.

I bought an underfloor heating system and installed it. It was a simple carbon film technology with flat copper heating elements in sheets of plastic. I just took up the laminate flooring and laid the heaters down on the concrete. I unrolled the big sheets of film across the floor, fastening them onto a layer of insulation, spreading a membrane across the top to prevent damp, then putting the laminate flooring down again on top of everything. The cats watched in fascination as I ganged the wires from the heating units and attached them to a thermostat on the wall. Then I switched it on.
Voila
. Warm floors.

The cats looked at me like I was a god.

The work had done me good. I hadn’t needed to think about anything while I was concentrating on it. Now that it was over, I had to find something else to throw myself into. Another project.

There was enough money left over to buy some lumber to serve as shelves. Now I could address a job I had been ducking for at least ten years. Because it was ten years ago that a clergyman I had come to think of as the Digital Divine, who lived nearby in Barnes, had decided to get rid of his enormous, and wonderful, collection of rare jazz records.

He had taped them all onto DAT and consequently decided, insanely, to get rid of the vinyl. Perhaps god had told him to do it. Although personally I suspected it was more likely the devil.

Anyway, I’d got wind of his decision and I was the first one to approach him about buying his collection. He was agreeable, and he was willing to meet me on price, on one condition.

That I took everything.

Including all the crap and dross, along with the treasures. He just wanted to get rid of it all in one fell swoop. So I’d ended up taxiing everything home and living among the boxes for weeks. I’d managed to get rid of the worst of the junk—to charity shops, where else? And I’d sifted out all the real gems, and there were some astounding finds. Original Tempos featuring Dizzy Reece and Tubby Hayes, and some Shake Keane and Joe Harriott on Lansdowne.

Plus a strong run of California small label releases, including some Marty Paich and Lucy Ann Polk on Mode. The finest records in my library had come from this collection—the cast-offs of the Digital Divine.

But there also remained a stubborn residue of second-rate stuff. Records that weren’t bad enough to get rid of at the charity shops, yet not good enough to sell for a profit.

Some of it was worth listening to. None of it was very exciting. But all of it was in a state of chaos. About half the records were on shelves in the cupboard that had once housed my hot water tank. The rest were in crates on the floor of that cupboard.

There were a lot of records. Tinkler had seen them once and whistled and said, “From the crates they came and to the crates they shall return.” It was a depressing thought, and one day I’d promised myself I’d sort them out. I just needed to put in some new shelves.

That day had finally come. The demanding, mindless work was my salvation. Buying the timber, measuring and cutting and installing it. And once the shelves were made, the work didn’t stop there. I had to get the records out of the crates and onto the new shelves.