by Paul Charles
KP cleared his throat and continued, “And Sean invited me to manage the band again. I told him I was flattered but I just wasn’t up to it, I preferred being his mate. I suggested that they hire someone else to be the manager, but I said I’d help out with TV and touring on a freelance basis. It’s changed a lot since my time; tour managers used to do all the work. Now they do none – they hire a team of assistants to do their job for them. Wilko rejoined. We were building up to an important tour next year and someone goes and tops him. That’s a heavy vibe, man, isn’t it?’
A few minutes later, he bid the detective farewell with his traditional, ‘God bless you, man.’
CHAPTER NINE
DS Irvine and PC Allaway found Circles’ management, Nick Edwards and Associates, situated in a refurbished warehouse overlooking Camden Lock and, remarkably, just in front of Dingwalls Dancehall. Nick Edwards, Irvine noticed wryly, had no associates. The surprising thing about Edwards’ top-floor suite of offices was that although the walls were adorned with posters, press cuttings, photographs and album artwork, mentioning several varied artists, there was not one mention of Circles.
A plump, smiling fellow-Scot called Jill greeted them and took a shine to Irvine’s accent. Although the feeling was not reciprocated, Irvine was as charming as ever, exchanging pleasantries for several minutes until the great associateless man deemed it appropriate to see them.
‘Come on in, won’t you?’ Edwards began, his Brum accent making a mockery of his attempt to smile. For one who had just lost a major client, Edwards was working under the “Business as Usual” banner when DS Irvine and PC Allaway came calling. He wore a telephone headset, earphones and microphone, leaving his hands free to compulsively tidy his already tidy desk.
‘It’s a shame all this. Wilko was a wonderful warm human and will be sorely missed by all his colleagues, family and friends. He, along with Sean of course, leaves behind a lasting legacy, a body of work as strong as any other seventies group,’ the manager began.
‘I couldn’t help but notice that Circles are conspicuous by their absence from your walls,’ Irvine offered in reply.
‘Well, of course you have to realise that we specialise in a much younger, more cutting-edge type of band…’
‘But you are the management for Circles?’ Irvine asked.
‘Were.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Were. We were their management company. They don’t exist any more, you see.’
‘But surely with all the albums, the lasting legacy as you say, there’s a lot of work to be done – particularly now?’ Irvine puzzled, thinking of artists’ careers that had snowballed after death.
‘Not exactly. We were retained to do a job by Mr Green and his solicitor, Mr Leslie Russell, on the future career of Circles. As of last night they have no future. I am not involved in any of their earlier product.’
‘Oh, I see,’ Irvine sympathised. For the first time since he’d arrived he felt sorry for the man. People rarely felt sorry for the manger, Irvine imagined. ‘So you’re not involved in any of their records?’
‘No, they’d just started up again and, well, Sean didn’t like to rush things. He wanted to get a set of material that matched up, in his eyes, to the earlier hits. It’s all extremely difficult you know. They say you have a lifetime to write your first album, but after that, well…in the early days you write songs because you have to get them out of your system, as it were. Then you have a few hits, a couple of million-selling albums and the perspective changes, doesn’t it? This time you sit down to write hits. And, officers, I’m here to tell you that people don’t write hits. They write songs and some of those songs are, hopefully and magically, hits.’ Irvine noticed Edwards was tidying his desk for the third time. Pencils were moved and then carefully replaced by the side of his notepad, as he droned on.
‘Sean was having problems. He had already done it once. He’d proven to himself, and his peers, that he had the talent to write and record successfully. He wasn’t going to do anything new, was he? He was just going to repeat himself. He wasn’t hungry, financially or artistically. Maybe he still wanted to prove that he could do it in America, I don’t know. At any rate, he set a goal for himself. Twenty new songs. And he’d just about completed them. We were looking around for a deal. The next stage would have been to record the album and then take to the road, around the time of the album release next year.’
‘Was a deal imminent?’ Allaway asked.
‘Well it wasn’t easy, I can tell you. Sean controls the entire back catalogue, including the greatest hits, and that still has life in it. If I’d been able to offer one of the majors the back catalogue as part of the deal, they would have jumped at it. We could have named our price, literally. But no, Mr Green was adamant. Only future work, no back catalogue. So at this point there were no takers amongst the major record companies. The smaller ones couldn’t afford us. A few people were sniffing around – the heads of Sony/Germany flew in to see last night’s show and have a chat…’
‘Were you at the show last night?’ Irvine asked, just a fraction ahead of Allaway.
‘Actually, no. Not during the actual performance. I’ve seen the set several times, you understand, and I was working here until quite late. It had been my intention to go across to Dingwalls at the end of the evening to meet up with the record executives and introduce them to Sean and Wilko. But I found that by the time I got there the boys in blue… I found several police officers blocking my entrance, claiming that they couldn’t let me in. I advised them that I represented the band and demanded to be let in. I was still refused admission so I came away and tracked down Mr Green on his mobile. He advised me about all that had happened.’
‘How well did you know the deceased?’ Irvine asked.
‘Well, personally, not very well,’ Edwards continued in his Midland’s drawl. ‘I was taken on to look after the business-side of things. Of course I knew him. But I’d never go out drinking with him or anything like that. Most of my Circles dealings were either with Mr Green or with Leslie Russell.’
‘Did he have any enemies?’ Allaway enquired.
‘I wouldn’t have a clue, to be perfectly honest,’ the manager replied. ‘I didn’t really know a lot about him, save that he liked to drink, that he’d been out of the band for a time and that he came from Scotland.’
Allaway returned to an earlier point, ‘You said earlier that some of the major record companies would have jumped at signing the group if the back catalogue had been part of the deal?’
‘Yes.’
‘Exactly how much would they have offered?’
‘Well, it’s confidential information.’
‘Yes, and this is a murder investigation,’ Irvine prompted.
‘I suppose it’s a matter of record, and you could have received the same information from the major record company involved. Circles could have received one point two million pounds for the back catalogue, with a further half a million pounds for the new album and, of course, recording costs up to three hundred thousand pounds.’
It was funny, thought Irvine, how Edwards could make such a fabulous offer sound mundane. Funnier still that the manager failed to mention exactly what his share would have been. Irvine looked around the less than ideal suite of offices. He really did feel sorry for the man who had just lost his meal ticket.
‘Was there anyone with you in the offices last night, sir, while Circles were performing across the road?’
‘Actually no. I was here by myself all the time. Jill, the girl you met on the way in, went home at seven.’
CHAPTER TEN
David Cooper answered the door in his relaxed, casual, flopping about the house, mode. Flip-flop shoes, loose green slacks, a loose-fitting Spanish-style shirt, with several of the top decorative buttons opened to reveal a V-neck vest. He answered the door with an authoritative rasp.
‘Come in. Come on in.’
As he led WPC Anne Coles and PC Lundy through
his house, it was easy to tell that David Cooper was a dedicated guitarist. If he had lived in America he would have had a guitar-shaped swimming pool. He occupied a converted warehouse space around the corner, literally, from KP in Chalk Farm and close to the Roundhouse. His large living space was set up with a display of about twelve guitars. The rarest, he boasted, was a Gibson Country Gentleman currently worth about £2,000.
He had been playing an acoustic guitar when the police came calling. When he led them through to his living room he returned it to its place, on a guitar stand, where it stood proudly on parade with the remainder of the highly-strung soldiers.
Lundy considered himself a bit of a guitarist and immediately went into raptures over the Country Gentleman. WPC Coles considered herself a bit of a detective though and so she started the questions.
‘How long had you known Wilko?’
‘A good few years, I can tell you.’ The guitarist leaned back into the fullness of his sofa. ‘I’ve spent all night trying to come to terms with it, you know? We are on this earth for but a short time and we have to enjoy each other’s company while we’re here. We have to make the best of it. There’s no time for all this squabbling and fighting and if we think we’re going to get a chance to make amends in the next life, then we should think on, for no such life exists. Wilko was, like the rest of us, human. Yes he had his faults…he had his—’
‘And what would his faults have been, sir?’ Coles interrupted, polite as, and as cold as, snow.
‘Oh,’ Cooper started to reply, shocked to have been cut off mid-flow. So shocked he didn’t consider before he spoke. ‘Well, he drank too much, he did too many drugs, he slept around, he cared not enough for his fellow men, he didn’t fully appreciate exactly how generous Sean was to him. But you know, on the positive side he absolutely drank up his life by the gallon. It’s just that he was positively speeding out of control and he must have known that his brakes would let him down at some point.’
‘Tell me about the sleeping around?’ Coles enquired, sweetly this time.
Cooper laughed. ‘You’re a lot like the media, you know. Here I am willing to tell you about the man’s spiritual side, help you see what plane he was on, but all you want is the sex and scandal.’
‘Well, sir,’ Lundy began, ‘we’re sure he wasn’t murdered for floating around spiritual planes but he may have been murdered for floating amongst the sheets.’
‘Yes, possibly, but I doubt it. Don’t you see it was all for show. He was showing the rest of us that he was still a lad, could still be out there pulling with the best of them. Believe me, it was positively all for show. No, I don’t think you’ll find any jealous husbands or boyfriends waiting in the wings.’
‘How did he and Sean Green get on?’ Coles asked, shifting restlessly in her armchair.
‘Well, they’d been together a long time, been through the wars together, so they gave each other a lot of space.’
‘What, you mean they fought a lot?’ Lundy asked.
‘In the early days they did have a habit of getting up each other’s noses. But now they were like an old married couple. They accepted that they were going to be together forever. They didn’t exactly forgive each other their faults, they just made sure they weren’t around each other much. In a way it was like a marriage of convenience.’
‘Did they really need each other?’
‘Good question, constable. I suppose they needed each other in different ways. Wilko needed the money. He wasn’t going to get another solo record deal. He wasn’t going to get a job with another group, he didn’t have what it took to put his own band together and he couldn’t go out there and work in the real world, in civvy street. He was too young to die and too old to change. Well, until last night I suppose that could have been our Wilko. And Sean. Well, yes, I suppose in a different way he needed Wilko. He is very wealthy but, in a way, he was also trapped in the same snare as Wilko. He’d had the record sales, he’d heard the applause of the crowds and he still craved it, still needed it. In a way it was very undignified, Circles playing at bleedin’ Dingwalls Dancehall last night. Did you know we used to be able to sell out Wembley? We once did three nights there, thirty thousand tickets. Last night we played to five or six hundred people. Hardly a fitting end to a great band.’
‘If you were so against it why did you do it?’ Coles asked politely.
‘It’s my gig, man,’ Cooper replied. ‘I am, or was, the guitarist with Circles. All those guitar intros you hear on the records, all those solos? That’s me, every single time. No session guitarists for Circles. Even the Beatles got Eric Clapton to play on “While my Guitar Gently Weeps”. But no, not us. And Sean didn’t compose what I play. Oh no, I made all that up myself. All boasting aside, one DJ went as far as saying on air that my “Plaintive guitar intro, solo and outro are what made ‘Together Again’ the classic it’s become”. That’s right. That’s the song that put us back on the map. And what do I get? What I’ve always got, a session fee. A session fee. Mind you, I can’t complain too much, can I? Sean has looked after us all, particularly me, because I’ve been there the longest, along with Wilko. There’s always a bonus cheque at Christmas, a bonus at the end of each tour and when the greatest hits package came out he did me right proud I can tell you. So I’m not going to complain too much, am I?’
‘What can you tell us about some of the people in the camp?’ Coles asked, fishing for general information at this point. The interview seemed to be reaching a natural but premature conclusion and she didn’t feel that she had amassed enough information.
‘Who for instance?’
‘Nick Edwards, say?’
‘Waste of space. He sees Circles as his meal ticket.’
‘Kevin Paul?’ Coles hoped if she threw the names at the guitarist quickly enough he might let something slip.
‘KP,’ Cooper smiled, ‘all round good egg, good geezer. Worth his weight in gold. Good planner, good thinker. If he’d stayed with the band the whole way through we’d be as big as Elton, or Rod or the Stones. I believe that, sincerely. He cares about people, looks after us well.’
‘Simon Rutland?’
‘Newest member, only plays bass ‘cause he can’t hack it as a guitarist, but he desperately wants to be in a band. He’ll soon get over that, if he didn’t last night. Many are called, but few are chosen.’
‘Mark Giles?’
‘Great musician and he’s mastered all this computer shit. Very quiet, keeps to himself. Very much in love with his girlfriend and doesn’t really have time for anything outside of her and his music. He doesn’t really like the road. Ideally he’d love to be doing music in his home for adverts, the TV and movies. Soundtracks, that’s where he’ll end up, I bet you.’
‘Dan Hudson, the roadie?’
‘Don’t really know him. Not great at his job, but he looks cool and that’s what he was hired for.’
‘Mick Litchfield, the other roadie?’
‘The only roadie. A genius, especially for me. He loves guitars and what he doesn’t know about them is not worth knowing. He’s a lovely guy.’
‘James MacDonald?’ The WPC was checking her notes.
‘Could well do with going to work for a real publishing company for a few years to learn what real old-fashioned publishers are meant to do. They’re not meant to be bankers.’
Coles had only one other name. ‘Leslie Russell?’
‘I don’t really have much to do with him, but he’s a lovely fellow. A bit of the old school, true British, sort of chap. Sean swears by him, depends on him a lot. I suppose the three of them, Sean, KP and Leslie run the band.’
‘Wilko wasn’t part of the decision-making team?’ Lundy enquired.
‘Oh, no. Not at all. Since he came back he was more like the rest of us, like a hired musician. Perhaps he wanted it that way. Perhaps he wanted a guaranteed wage without the worry about where the next cheque was coming from.’
‘Will you continue as a group now, do you
think?’
‘I don’t know, I doubt it. We’ll see what Sean says, but I doubt it.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The rain over Camden Town had stopped falling by the time Kennedy returned to North Bridge House. He was early for his rendezvous with WPC Anne Coles but he wanted to stop off on the way to Sean Green’s house. He had Flynn radio the WPC, who was returning from her interview with Circles guitarist, David Cooper, to pick Kennedy up at the bridge by Camden Lock at 2:50 p.m.
This would give him about half an hour to spend at Dingwalls Dancehall.
On reaching Dingwalls front entrance, he found WPC West and PC Gaul on duty. The forensic team had concluded their work and when Kennedy entered the club it was empty and dark. Kennedy marvelled at the thousands of pounds’ worth of Circles’ equipment, still set up on the stage. The venue appeared to slope down towards the stage, probably so that those seated and drinking by the long bar could see the stage over the heads of those on the dance floor. The overall look of the place was of an American-style bar room. It smelled of stale beer, strong but not altogether unpleasant. Kennedy walked around the perimeter of the venue from side stage to side stage, not really knowing what he was looking for. Something.
Who would be directly affected by the murder of Wilko Robertson? His wife Susan, obviously. Leslie Russell had already taken the trouble to advise and console her. He’d told Kennedy that she had appeared to take it well and had phoned her sister to come and comfort her. Kennedy would visit her tomorrow he decided, leaving a little time to deal with it.
Wilko and Susan Robertson had no children and both Wilko’s parents were several years dead. Susan had a brother who was fifty-five years old and still living in Paisley. Other than her sister, that was it for immediately family. Sean Green would be affected by the death, of course, as would the rest of the members of the Circles. The road crew, Edwards the manager, KP, MacDonald the publisher, the record company and Leslie Russell.