Peter Rabbit had a rather painful-looking dart stuck into his left eye.
I heard Miss Honeyland coming back and returned to my chair. She came into the room with an envelope and two cardboard containers of coffee with the name of a famous Soho delicatessen on them. “I almost forgot,” she said. “I’d asked Albert to go out and get these earlier. I understand you’re quite a coffee drinker. I hope it isn’t too cold.” She handed me one of the coffees and the envelope. I put the reassuringly weighty envelope of cash in my pocket, resisting the urge to tear it open there and then. Instead I took the lid off the coffee and had a sniff. It smelled good. I took a sip.
“Is it stone cold?” said Miss Honeyland. She was standing in front of me, watching me eagerly.
“No, it’s fine.” It was. She remained standing in front of me, watching expectantly. I began to wonder if I was supposed to say or do something. I began to feel a little uneasy. There was, after all, a long history in Soho of people being expected to do all kinds of extraordinary things after being handed some money.
Finally she said, “Do you notice anything?”
I desperately hoped I wasn’t supposed to say how youthful she looked with her new hairstyle or anything like that. Then I got it.
“No cane,” I said.
She nodded approvingly. “It’s my second day off it. I’m virtually back to normal.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Have to be careful on the stairs, though, of course.”
“And no bicycling.”
“No, ha ha. Not just yet.” She pulled out one of the chairs from under the table and sat down again, this time by the window. As we sipped our coffee she resumed gazing out and downwards into the mews below, with the same proprietary look as before. I assumed she was looking at the Mercedes, but when I said my goodbyes and stood up to go I saw that the Mercedes was being washed by Albert the chauffeur, who was stripped to the waist. As he sponged the vehicle, water gleamed on his rippling torso and chest. His powerful arms bulged as he swabbed energetically.
Nevada would have enjoyed the spectacle. And Clean Head would have appreciated both the car and the figure washing it.
Finally Miss Honeyland managed to tear herself away from the sight long enough to see me to the door of the flat, which led out to a very narrow echoing stairway and down to the mews itself. I walked out past the garage, avoiding the sudsy water on the cobblestones and nodding to Albert. I glanced up and saw his employer’s pale face in the window. I waved but she didn’t see me.
When we’d described Miss Honeyland to Tinkler, he had immediately remarked, “The old bat has a young chauffeur? She’s probably shagging him.” This was typical Tinkler. He hadn’t even met them. If we’d described the woman turning up at our door with a Labrador retriever at her heels he wouldn’t have been above positing an improper relationship between the woman and the dog.
I’d dismissed his comments.
But now something about her expression, and the deliberately exhibitionist nature of Albert’s display, made me wonder if maybe old Tinkler was right after all. The whole car-washing performance seemed designed for someone’s benefit. The car hadn’t even seemed dirty.
Of course, I could have got completely the wrong end of the stick. We were, after all, in the middle of Soho, where the muscular young men were primarily interested in other muscular young men. Perhaps the chauffeur drove on the other side of the road, so to speak. And his employer’s gaze signified nothing more than abstract admiration.
On the other hand, two people could live quite cosily in that flat above the garage.
As I walked through the short dark tunnel that led from the mews to the street I took the envelope out of my pocket and tore it open. Five hundred pounds in fresh new twenty-pound notes. Walking-around money indeed. Nevada would be pleased.
I noticed a man standing just outside the mews, waiting on the pavement. He was a skinny guy with a scraggly beard, in a green waxed-cotton jacket. He looked more like a yokel out for a day of poaching rather than someone trawling the sinful delights of the metropolis. Then I saw the camera around his neck and thought, tourist. He was staring quite intently towards the mews. But as I glanced at him he turned away, rather furtively, I thought. As I walked off, I glanced back over my shoulder at him. He was taking something out of his jacket. It glinted in his hand. A pair of spectacles. He shook them open and put them on.
I tucked the money deep into my pocket and walked away.
* * *
“You always get paranoid about someone following us, anyway,” said Nevada. “So I reasoned that it would be better if we travelled in a taxi, because not only does it give us more control of the situation, the whole travelling situation—”
“Except when we’re in heavy traffic,” I said, peering out the taxi window at an apparently endless queue of stationary vehicles extending in both directions. I had suggested that we might have been better off making this journey by train to Waterloo. And I still thought the taxi wasn’t a great idea.
“Except when we’re in heavy traffic, granted. And also, this is the crucial thing, with Clean Head on the watch for us we’re more likely to know if anyone is following us.”
“True,” I said. This was a good point. If someone was on our tail—and despite Nevada calling it paranoia, it had happened in the past—it would be better for us to know about it. And perhaps to draw them out.
“Which gives us the initiative, and puts us in control,” said Nevada, completing my own thought. “Plus,” she said, glancing at Clean Head in the compartment in front of us. Her bald head gleamed, a sculptural entity in its own right. You could see from the set of her neck that she was concentrating on the traffic flow in a reassuringly expert way. “And almost as importantly,” continued Nevada, “we get to give a paying job to an old friend.”
“Also true.” We lurched forward, moving at last. I stared out the window behind me. I hadn’t been paranoid before, but I was now. Were we being followed? We were just passing the London Eye, and every motor vehicle in London seemed to be here. I said, “We can get out anywhere around here. Can she hear us? Clean Head, have you got your sound system on at the moment?”
“I can hear you loud and clear, back there being a cheapskate.”
“I know,” said Nevada. “And it’s not even his money.”
* * *
Clean Head dropped us off outside Waterloo Station and we crossed the road among a throng of pedestrians. All of them, like us, were apparently heading for the South Bank Centre by the river. This was where the Royal Festival Hall was located, and it was where Danny Overland was rehearsing today. I had phoned the RFH and managed to get a number for Overland’s management, where I’d spoken to a public relations person and arranged today’s ‘interview’. I hadn’t corrected anyone’s assumption that I was some kind of music journalist.
“Did you have to invoke the dreaded name of Stinky?” said Nevada. Stinky Stanmer was an old acquaintance of mine who’d climbed the slippery media pole with amazing alacrity and now had his own radio program. Sometimes even the television wasn’t safe from his presence. In the past we’d used his name as an entrée to people in the music business we wanted to talk to, people I couldn’t get at otherwise.
I shook my head. “It didn’t prove necessary. They seemed quite eager to set up a meeting.” We walked up the stairs, past the enormous bust of Nelson Mandela, and out along the windswept concrete of the Embankment. There was a cool breeze, but the sun was shining, glittering with blinding brightness on the Thames among the white riverboats.
At the coffee shop in the Royal Festival Hall we met Overland’s PR, a pretty, suntanned Australian girl called Jenny. Overland was supposed to be there too, but all that remained of him was an empty coffee mug. “He’s gone out for a smoke,” she said, pointing back through the glass doors towards the Embankment. “He said you could find him and have a chat out there.”
As we went back out the sliding door
s she called, “Good luck.” A remark that only later, in retrospect, took on significance.
We found Danny Overland standing by the river, smoking. He was a bald, wiry old man with a dark suntan and a deeply lined simian face. He was wearing flared jeans, which were either cutting edge or extremely dated, and a white shirt open at the throat, revealing grey curls of chest hair. Around his neck he wore a string with a white plastic clip on it that looked like it was designed to be attached to some kind of saxophone.
He didn’t seem bothered by the cool river breeze despite only wearing the thin shirt. We were in jackets and scarves.
I said, “Mr Overland?”
He grimaced and nodded.
“If you don’t mind, we wanted to ask you a few questions about Colonel Honeyland.”
He took the cigarette out of his mouth. Smoke bled between his lips and was carried away on the wind.
“That fucking bastard,” he said.
* * *
And our interview went downhill from there. Any notions of recording it and thereby gaining the delighted approbation of our client began to spiral down the drain.
I had assumed that the mention of Colonel Honeyland’s name would be met with the same kind of glowing nostalgic approval that had greeted it at our previous interviews. Instead, it rapidly became clear that Overland had no time for the late children’s author and air hero. No time at all.
“That son of a bitch,” he said truculently. “Talentless dumb tosser.” His Australian accent wasn’t especially marked.
“So you don’t rate him as a musician?” I said. Overland turned his face away from me disgustedly and stared at the river. “How about as a pilot?” He shot me a fierce look. I had his attention, anyway. I seemed to have touched a sore spot.
“As a pilot?” He shrugged. “The only thing he was worse at than flying a plane was leading a band.” He turned away again, offering us his profile as he smoked his cigarette. I looked at Nevada. She shrugged helplessly. I decided to change tack.
“What about the Glenn Miller band?” I said.
He kept watching the river. “What about them?”
“I understand they were enormously popular here during the war.”
He looked at me again. “The war?” he said. “What do you know about the war?”
“Nothing,” I said, sensing an opportunity. “We were hoping you could tell us about it.”
“‘Nothing’ is right,” said Overland with satisfaction. He looked at Nevada. “There was this girl who interviewed me in Melbourne for one of the papers. Did a very nice piece too. Lots of references to my experiences in World War One. World War Fucking One.” He shook his head disgustedly.
“I do realise that’s the wrong war,” said Nevada. But he wasn’t even listening.
“I like going to the pictures,” he said, apparently apropos of nothing. “And whenever there’s a film with a score by Johnny Williams I make a particular point of going along.” I couldn’t quite follow this sudden shift of logic and I wondered if it was a senior moment. But the steely contempt in his voice signalled a sharpness of focus that suggested otherwise. “And as a result of this,” said Overland, “I’ve seen some of the damnedest movies. One of my favourites was one of those Indiana Jones pictures. It was the one where Indy runs into Hitler and a bunch of his brown-shirted goons.”
“Was that the Last Crusade?” said Nevada, still trying gamely. But he ignored her again.
“And when he sees them, Indy says, ‘Nazis—I hate those guys.’ Do you know why he says that?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “He says it so that people like you, children like you, kiddies who have never heard of Hitler or the Nazis or World War Two, will know what to think.” He flicked his cigarette butt away on the wind. “I suppose someone has to tell you what to think.”
“Look,” I said, “why don’t you tell us—”
“What do you know about strategic bombing?” he said. Another sudden shift of logic. I realised that, far from being a sign of vagueness on his part, these abrupt segues were actually deliberately calculated to keep us off balance and on the defensive. Like a prize-fighter crowding you to the ropes.
Certainly he seemed as combative as a boxer. “Come on,” he said. “The strategic bombing campaign by the RAF in the Second World War.” He looked at us, his dark eyes glittering. “What can you tell me about it?”
“Not a great deal,” said Nevada brightly. “However—”
We never got to hear what brilliant idea Nevada was about to offer because he shook his head and said, with some measure of finality and disgust, “You just don’t know the score.” He turned away and looked at the river again. Gulls were wheeling and crying in the air above the bright water. “Send me someone who knows the score. I’ll talk to them.”
I said, “There isn’t anyone else. Just us.”
He looked at me. “Then come back when you can demonstrate you know your arse from your elbow.” He took out a packet of cigarettes and a lighter. “If you ever achieve that.” He lit a new cigarette and puffed on it. This, at least, seemed to make him happy. Then he turned back to his river view. “Because, until then, you’re wasting your time. And, more importantly, you’re wasting mine.”
* * *
The following evening we got a phone call from Tinkler, who wanted us to come out and play. I told him that was impossible.
“Why not? I mean, why? Why impossible?”
I sighed and looked at the huge stack of library books in front of me. “Because I’ve got just about every book about World War Two that’s available through the Wandsworth Public Library system. And I have to read, or at least look through, all of them.”
“Why in god’s name would you want to do that?”
“Because I’ve had enough of wading my way through the swamp of rumour, opinion, speculation, and occasional nugget of fact on the Internet.”
I explained about our encounter with Danny Overland, the bastard, and his ultimatum. “If we want to talk to him, apparently we have to be able to prove that we know about the war and what he, and presumably other people like him, went through during it.”
“Instead of doing all that reading, wouldn’t it be easier just to go and talk to someone who is an expert in the field?”
I said, “Unfortunately, I don’t know anyone like that.”
“But I do,” said Tinkler.
10. SATAN’S LADDER
We had first met Erik Make Loud—née Eric McCloud—when we’d been researching the legendary British 1960s rock chick Valerian. He had played in her band—indeed, it had been Valerian who’d given him his name. But while Nevada and I had remained on strictly business terms with Eric—sorry, Erik—my old mate Tinkler had somehow managed to strike up an implausibly close friendship with the erstwhile rock god and lead guitarist.
So it was Tinkler who made the arrangements and accompanied us on our visit to Erik’s house beside the river in Barnes. It was a modernist white residence with an odd little moat around it, set deep in concrete. Erik feared that the Thames might break its banks and wash his guitar collection away. But if the mighty river did flood, I had my doubts about how much good one little moat would do.
Erik himself opened the door. In fact, threw it open enthusiastically and grinned at Tinkler as though he were the prodigal returned. “Jordon, my old mucker. Come in, come in.” He slapped Tinkler on the back and led him inside, waving for us to follow. “Brought your friends, eh?”
“Yes, sorry about that. They’re very annoying, too. We’ll try and get rid of them as quickly as possible.”
Erik laughed and pounded Tinkler on the back some more. “Good old Jordon. He was just joking. Jordon the joker. You’re very welcome, all of you.” After we came in, he stared at the open door in puzzlement for a moment, and then went and closed it himself, with the manner of a man unaccustomed to doing such things. “Very welcome,” he repeated. Tanned and long-haired, he was looking fit and trim in an ornate Cuban shirt made of
very fine cloth, and exquisitely faded jeans with strategic tears at the knees. He was barefoot, which made sense given the pleasant warmth of the heated tile floors.
“I got you that Faces LP you were looking for,” said Tinkler. “With the original textured cover.”
“Nice one,” said Erik. He seemed genuinely delighted and gave Tinkler an energetic high-five. The sound of slapping hands echoed in the hallway.
“Yeah, nice one,” burbled Tinkler, inordinately pleased with himself.
“Good to see you, mate.”
“Good to see you, mate.”
They hugged.
“It’s a bromance,” said Nevada in a voice that only I could hear. I put my mouth to her ear and said, “Just as long as they don’t start talking about football.”
Erik and Tinkler broke their manly clinch. “Where’s Bong Cha?” said Tinkler.
“Setting up the audio-visual room.”
“Nice one.”
Bong Cha, whose name irresistibly suggested teenagers in their bedrooms furtively smoking controlled substances in bubble pipes, was in fact a rather strait-laced middle-aged woman who worked as Erik’s housekeeper and live-in cook. Despite her dwelling full-time under the same roof as the priapic guitar hero, even Tinkler had been unable to impute a carnal dimension to their relationship.
Her name actually signified something like ‘venerated daughter’. She was from South Korea by way of Birmingham.
She was waiting for us upstairs in the ‘audio-visual room’. I hadn’t been in this part of the house before, and I was impressed at how large it was. Our kitty cats could have spent days exploring the place. The audio-visual room was a rectangular space facing south—away from the river, and presumably towards a dense cluster of housing. A wide window that spanned the room would have given us a view of this, but it had been screened off by a highly effective blackout blind. The sunlight outside was just a remote subdued glow on its heavy cream fabric. Just below the blind was a long black sofa with a low table in front of it, and reclining armchairs on either side of it made of chrome and bright red suede. On the wall opposite was the biggest, flattest flat-screen television I’d seen in my life. There were no controls of any kind in evidence on it.
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