by Jane Goodall
‘You were talking to him last night, weren’t you?’ said Sharon.
Logan ignored her. He brought out a scroll of yellow paper and spread it open on the table. ‘Interesting magazine, this. Yeller. Not a bad title.’ He turned some of the pages. ‘See here. Deff Row. Is this Flak’s idea? Do you know who these people are?’
‘No. And no,’ said Zig. ‘All sorts of people put stuff in Yeller. The pictures don’t have to be anybody in particular. It’s just the idea, that’s all.’
‘That right? You really don’t know who these people are?’
‘Why should we?’ said Sharon. ‘Who cares?’
‘Well, they might care — if they knew about it. And do you know who this is?’ He turned to the picture on the back cover. ‘No,’ retorted Zig, a bit too smartly. ‘Do you?’
Shaking his head and smiling, Logan pulled back from the table. ‘I can’t believe you two. How old are you — sixteen? Seventeen?’ He looked at Zig. ‘Eighteen, maybe? Having an interesting time, are you, in the big bad scene down there in the World’s End? You’ve no idea, have you?’
*
Zig divided the fanzines into two piles.
‘They’re worth money, these. We sell them for twenty pence a copy. Half that goes back to John who does the printing, so we get to keep ten. There’s a hundred copies here, so we stand to make five quid each. And you owe me two, remember.’
Sharon looked doubtfully at the stack of paper in front of her.
‘You reckon we can really sell all these, then?’
‘Easy. They’ll be gone in half an hour.’
‘You sure there’s nothing funny about this magazine?’
‘There’s everything funny about it, Sharon. That’s the point, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. But you know what I mean. That guy Logan was suggesting there’s something really fishy going on with it. And what did he mean by “snuff gigs”? What is a snuff gig anyway? Is it where people take that powder you put up your nose — cocaine? What’s so funny?’
‘You are. A snuff gig is where they snuff someone out. They kill someone.’
‘You’re kidding. They don’t really do that.’
‘In Logan’s imagination they do.’ Zig started transferring one pile of fanzines into a string bag. ‘Don’t worry. It’s just Kaiser stirring things up. He likes to make out he’s into extermination and assassination and all that Nazi stuff. It was him who thought up the name for the band, but he’s pissed off because he’s not the star any more. He’s lost control. Flak’s taken over the Suddens and he’s doing something totally different with the act. But don’t expect that tonight. They can’t use fire up at the Triangle because of the licence. Flak’s got other stunts he does for the indoor concerts.’ Zig handed Sharon a canvas bag. ‘This should hold your lot. I’ll see ya later. I’m going over there early — in case Sol turns up.’
Sharon jumped to her feet. ‘I’ll come with you.’
Zig was already heading for the door. ‘No you won’t.’
‘There’s something you’re not letting on about, isn’t there?’ Sharon called after her. But she got no reply.
Left to herself, Sharon wandered round taking a closer look at the premises. It wasn’t a very cheerful experience. Empty, the place just seemed an awful dump and she found herself suddenly longing for her bedroom at home, with Debbie’s daft little face looming up at her in the morning light.
Then she heard footsteps downstairs and was relieved not to be alone after all.
‘Annie?’ she called out. There was no answer. Sharon went very quiet. She heard her own breathing, but there were no more footsteps. Then it occurred to her that maybe Sol had come back and gone into his studio. She struggled out of her boots and sneaked down to the basement, but it was completely dark down there and she could feel that the padlock was still in place. All she could hear through the door was the distant noise of machinery.
12
The Triangle was on a corner a couple of blocks further down the King’s Road from SEX. By the looks it must have been a pub at one time, but the windows were boarded up and the boards were covered in graffiti. Live without dead time. Anarchy. Destroy. A time to hate. Destination chaos. Swastika Circus. Stick it up. Ya just don’t get It.
Sharon thought maybe she was starting to get it. What had she been doing for the last few years but living with dead time? As people began to gather around the doorway and she became part of the crowd, she felt like somebody, somebody who was going somewhere other than through the mill. Destination chaos.
A bill posted near the door listed the acts for tonight’s concert. Sudden Deff was at the top and the supporting act was the Crunch. Zig went straight in, but Sharon decided to stay outside the door for a while, because it seemed like a good spot for selling the fanzines. It was. She sold the lot in less than half an hour because people were coming through all the time and they hadn’t spent their drink money yet.
Inside the building, she saw that half the magazines had been dropped on the floor already. It occurred to her that she could pick some of them up and sell them all over again, but she was getting bored with being a hawker and besides, there was a sort of a buzz in there as if everyone was expecting things to start happening. The place was still filling up, with kids pushing through the doors in groups of three, four, five at a time. And even to Sharon they really did look like kids, a lot of them — scrawny with sharp little faces. One of the blokes came up to her and thrust a clutch of small plastic bags in front of her face. They had white powdery stuff in them.
‘What’s that?’ she asked, realising too late that it was a question she’d have done better not to ask. He looked at her as if she was stupid.
‘Sulphate,’ he said. ‘And it’s goin fast. You want some or not?’
But he’d already moved on before she’d opened her mouth to answer. He was right about the stuff going fast — he seemed to have attracted three customers at once. Sharon decided that what she did need was a drink, so she joined the crush at the bar and came away with a bottle in her hand as the first band made their entrance.
The noise started up so loud it hurt her ears, and the first song was finished before she knew what hit her. There was some clapping to mark the end but the second number started over the top of it. Everyone was pressing in now towards the stage, jerking around like puppets to the driving rhythm. Sharon was doing the same, drawing on the beer bottle every so often as if it was a life support system. By the time the set finished, she could feel the sweat pouring over her scalp. A girl wearing a rubber t-shirt had collapsed at the front, and they had to make way for her as she was dragged out through the crowd.
Sharon battled her way towards the bar again, noticing that everyone else was buying two or three bottles at a time and emptying the little packets of sulphate into them. She saw a tall bloke in a loose white shirt pour beer over his head, then shake like a dog, so splashes flew all around him. She laughed. Everyone’s batteries were charged up, including her own, and when the Crunch came on the whole place seemed to be electrified. Annie appeared next to her, mouthing the lyrics as the pace of the second set revved up. People in front of them started jumping up and down, flinging themselves into the air so they twisted this way and that on the bounce. Sharon gave it a try herself, and found she could get as high as anyone. It was mad. She’d never felt so much as if she belonged — everyone else here was a cast-off, just the same as her.
After the band left, the mood was still escalating. Bottles started flying across the room and one of them hit Annie on the shoulder. She squawked loudly and went charging off to attack the man who threw it, but she picked the wrong one and was now perched on his back, pummelling the top of his head.
Sharon pushed her way through to the door. It was a lot cooler outside and the sky had gone a deep glowing purple. There were two men standing against the wall of the building who didn’t really look as if they belonged with the rest of the crowd. They were too old, for a start.
One of them must have been thirty at least, and he was wearing jeans that showed bulges around his middle. The other was a bit more stylish — a black guy in white jeans and a fitted shirt — but it wasn’t the sort of style she’d seen anywhere inside. The older one turned towards her.
‘Nice night for it,’ he said. ‘Come to see Sudden Deff, have you?’
‘Partly.’ Sharon wasn’t too keen on getting into a chat.
He held up a copy of Yeller. ‘Interesting magazine.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Who puts it together, do you know?’
She shook her head. ‘Don’t know anything about it. I just sell it. Anyway, I got to go back now. They’ll be starting up again in there.’
She got the feeling they were following her as she made her way into the audience again, but she couldn’t actually see them. She heard someone behind her say, ‘Cops.’ He didn’t even say it particularly loudly but plenty of people must have heard it, because there was a hail of bottles in that direction and a gap opened in the crowd. She saw a glimpse of the white jeans, and a lot of pushing and shoving that turned into a fight around the doorway, but it was nothing to what started happening on stage. There was a noise through one of the mikes that was completely unlike any of the sounds the Crunch made.
Someone was standing up there at the microphone with a black leather mask over his head. He held a loud hailer up to his mouth and she could see his chest swelling as he breathed into it. That was all he was doing, but it produced a rhythmic heaving noise that filled the place and drowned out everything else. Then a deafening clang triggered a jolt through the crowd as another masked figure jumped on the stage. He leapt behind the drums and set up a battering so fast and loud no-one even tried to move to it, while a third member of the band produced weird screaming chords from his guitar.
When the number finished, there was total silence. The singer was prowling backwards and forwards across the stage with his mouth gaping open, staring at them through the holes in the leather. Suddenly the guitar started up again. The vocals didn’t come in for a couple of minutes and when they did, Sharon couldn’t make out any of the words except the chorus,
Ah ya don’t get nothing cos there’s nothing left
But we know what yer asking for
Sudden deff
The singer went on spitting the last two words out till it sounded like his voice was cutting his throat to pieces.
Sudden Deff Sudden Deff Sudden Deff Sudden Deff
After the third or fourth reprise, most of the audience were joining in, with the singer continuing at the same rasping, unvarying pitch. A new performer was on stage now, prancing about behind the singer, sometimes mimicking his gestures, sometimes just going into a crazy fling. He was wearing a dog collar with some chains attached but apart from that he didn’t look like the others. This guy had floppy hair and was wearing flared jeans and a Ban the Bomb t-shirt. He too had a mask on, a fancy horror show type thing with big blubbery lips and flaring nostrils. Everyone in the audience was shouting now, but the chorus had boiled down to two words.
Sudden Def — Sudden Deff — Sudden Deff
The dancer’s movements got crazier and crazier, with the chains flying out around him, and the noise through the speakers getting louder until it drowned out the shouting from the floor. Sharon’s ears were hurting so she had to cover them with her hands. But what happened then knocked the breath out of her. The man in the hippy clothes had got one of his chains caught on something and suddenly he was swung up, high over the heads of the band, jolting in violent spasms.
The after-image of the squirming body stayed before her eyes for a second as the lights blacked out and the sound suddenly died. There were a few calls of ‘Shit!’ — then silence. Sharon stood there in the hot darkness, wondering if she was going to lose her balance. She could feel the sweat on her face, and the pumping of her heart, and the warm breath flowing through her nostrils.
Then people started stumbling around. There were sounds of glass crunching, more swearing, a few yells. Someone bumped into her and she nearly did lose her balance, but there were other people standing so close she didn’t have room to fall over. She turned in what she thought was the direction of the door, sliding her feet forward so as to avoid stepping on the broken glass.
13
‘What do you mean you didn’t see anything?’ Briony had cornered Denis in the main CID office, where she found him at his desk leaning over some papers with his head propped on his hand. ‘They had to call the fire brigade. How could you possibly not have seen anything? Were you there, or weren’t you?’
Denis made a token gesture of sitting straight as she arrived, but remained with his eyes down, fiddling with a pencil. ‘Well, yes and no, ma’am.’ He drew a long breath. ‘We went down there about a quarter past eight, and we did a bit of looking around, mainly outside the building to see the comings and goings. Then we went inside, but somebody called out ‘Cops!’ and it was mayhem. We called for backup but it was ten minutes before they came. And when they did there was only one car. Supposed to be another one on the way, but it never arrived. So we had a discussion about what we’d best do and we decided we should get clear of the place.’
‘Who decided? You mean you decided. You were the senior officer in that situation, weren’t you, Denis?’
‘Well, as a matter of fact yes. I suppose you could say I decided. But it was more or less a case of no alternatives. The patrol sergeant said they’d keep a watch on the place and make sure there was plenty of cars around for when the concert finished. So me and Aidan went home.’
Briony knew that anyone else in her position would be blowing a gasket. They’d be expected to do that, as a demonstration of their authority, and on her last career advice session with the DCS, she’d been told that demonstrating her authority was one of her weak areas in the job. But she could see Denis felt bad enough right now. Making him feel any worse would be like bullying, especially with a half a dozen other people in the room, who were all ears.
‘Where’s Aidan?’ she asked.
‘Not due in till the afternoon shift. I said I’d work today so I can get next Sunday off.’ Denis met her eye with a cheery smile, as if he knew he was off the hook. ‘Birthday party, ma’am. I got to keep a half a dozen four-year-olds in order. Not to mention the two-year-old and five-year-old trying to get in on it, and the seven-year-old acting like a sergeant-major. There’s too many birthdays, that’s the trouble. You’re no sooner over one of them than the next one’s coming round the corner. I’ve told the wife, we got to ration them. They can have a birthday every other year.’
What would it be like to do a job like this with four small children to go home to at the end of the day — or night? It didn’t bear thinking about. Briony managed a smile.
‘All right, Denis. I don’t know what you’re messing about with there, but we got urgent things to attend to. There was a blackout last night at the Triangle. Ten past nine, according to the Electricity Board. Somewhere near four hundred kids packed into the place in total darkness, with broken glass and beer and god knows what else all over the floor. It took nearly an hour to evacuate them.’
Denis huffed and twisted awkwardly in his seat. ‘Oh. That’s a bit of a what you might call a situation, isn’t it? Obviously, if I’d have known, I’d have — ’
‘Never mind. Anyway, you’d better gear up now. Come on. We’re going out to make some enquiries.’
He stood up. ‘Oh, just a minute.’ He sat down again, leant sideways from his chair and fossicked in his case. ‘We got these.’ Briony took the wad of pages he handed to her. Yeller.
‘We bought two copies, just in case,’ he said. ‘Cost us forty pence.’
On a first impression, the contents of the magazine were pretty much the same as what she’d already seen — photos with slogans, the occasional cartoon, some passages of writing about groups, concerts, records. No repeat of the Deff Row series, but Maxwell Tremlay’s face
was again on the back page. The photos were so badly reproduced and the people so heavily made up that it would be hard to identify anyone from them. And apart from the ones called John — which seemed to be every other person — the names were mainly nicknames: Sol, Dooley, Fillet, Kaiser. Were there really people going around signing their names ‘Fillet’? She steeled herself and turned back to the image of Tremlay. Well, evidently they only had one picture, which was mildly reassuring. But who was behind it?
‘I assume you got the description of the person selling these things,’ she said.
‘Oh yes, for what it’s worth. Scottish kilt that looked like it’d been chopped up with a knife and fork, black and white makeup, spiky hair. Boots. Safety pin for an earring. All the usual regalia. Apart from that, five foot two and female.’
‘Did you talk to her?’
‘We sort of tried to, but she made herself scarce. Then we followed her inside and immediately ran into a bit of biffo. Crazy atmosphere in there. Crazy. All I can say is I hope this punk nonsense is over and done with by the time my eldest gets into her teens. Can you imagine it? I mean, all she’s interested in now is Barbie dolls. But you never know what’s coming next, do you, with little kids?’
‘I’m not an expert on that subject, Denis. But if you notice Barbie lying around with a safety pin through her ear, I reckon you’ve got problems. Come on, let’s be getting on the road.’
*
Denis adjusted the driving mirror and started the engine. ‘Where to then?’
‘I’m afraid,’ she said, ‘we have to call on Vince.’
‘Oh no.’ Denis let out a prolonged groan.
Vince Telford was the manager of the Triangle and a major operator in the clubs business. He was also a seasoned manipulator of the police, with a line in long-winded storytelling, combined with a physical presentation that got him known among the CID as the gold plated greaser. The income from a couple of dozen seedy venues in the West End kept him in the kind of style that included a Cadillac Eldorado and a penthouse in Belgravia, where his doorbell was attached to a closed circuit camera so he knew in advance exactly who was calling on him.