Rotten in Denmark

by Jim Pollard

  ‘It seems they think that he must have taken at least some paracetamol himself because even if the speed itself was contaminated it would have been hard to ingest the amount he had.’ We all knew with what reluctance suicide verdicts were handed down, particularly in the face of prominent families with strong feelings. We all knew how Mr Carter’s were rarely otherwise.

  ‘Well that’s true. He was complaining of headaches, wasn’t he, Frank?’ said Wendy.

  I nodded. ‘I said all that in my statement.’

  ‘They thought you’d be there, Frank,’ said Jon, turning to me.

  ‘I wouldn’t let him,’ said Wendy.

  ‘They nearly adjourned it but Alex insisted. Did his magnate routine. He waved your statement and said: how much more do you want from him?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Wendy.

  I faced Jon. ‘The amount of time before he was discovered - that was a factor?’

  ‘No, Frank,’ snapped Wendy but Jon was already answering me. ‘Yes, if he’d been found sooner - well, insulin, stomach pump.’ He was mumbling. Wendy looked at me as like Jon I bowed my head.

  I lit another cigarette from the one I already had, buttoned up Jon’s coat and stepped out into the night. The gravel crackled, hurting my bare feet as I walked on it. The caravans had gone to bed for the night. As I walked past the only one that still had a light on behind its orange curtains I could hear whispers. They were in a language I didn’t understand but their gentle messages were universal.

  As I walked, I felt the texture change and soften beneath my feet. I tossed my dog-end out towards the sea and it died on the sand with a hiss. I began looking through Jonathan’s pockets for his cigarettes. In his inside pocket, close to his wallet, close to his heart, I felt a folded document printed on heavy vellum paper - the type where you can still feel the grain. Just the feel of it gave it away. I took it out. It was cream and folded in three. It was too dark to read easily but I knew what it was all right because I had one just the same. Its first line would say: I, Cal A Carter, a citizen of the UK, being of sound mind and disposing memory, do hereby make, publish and declare this instrument to be my last will and testament. I refolded and replaced it.

  I felt sick. When, a moment later, I found the cigarettes I contemplated burning the will but I didn’t. I sat on the beach smoking and watched the sun come up over the sea. From that day on, I didn’t write another note. I couldn’t. Every song on Stolen Moments and Phoenix was written before Cal died because when he died my creativity died too.

  I watched the sun rise, watched it slowly beguile the sea, taking it deeper and deeper - from the greys to the blues. I felt empty and purposeless until the moment when the ocean turned the same rich blue as it had been the previous day and it reminded me of Wendy. Then I tossed Jon’s heavy coat to the sand and plunged in.

  Here in my study I begin to make up the two parcels: the DAT tape which I will address to Tony and this manuscript and computer disc which I will address to my editor. Then I will walk round the house - the kids’ bedrooms, Wendy’s study, the kitchen in which we made love yesterday. I will probably wash my hands and then leave with two cases - my suitcase and my briefcase, the old one Cal gave me back in the days when I lived my life, briefly, in colour. At least the monotone black on white of this VDU will soon be behind me.

  I will walk down the hill to the station but I won’t catch a train - they don’t stop here outside the rush-hour now. At the old Victoria Regina postbox opposite the station entrance I’ll stop and post my letters. Perhaps I’ll look around - hear the fragments of old conversations, the ghostly bounce of tennis and footballs and the rustle of a sticky bag of bubblegum. I’ll notice the station window that has been boarded up for five years now but I won’t try to climb up and sit in it. Whatever it was I thought I was looking for when I used to sit up there I’ve finally got a chance to find. Then I’ll walk, a case in each hand, down to the mini-cab office. It’s not called Park Cabs anymore. I don’t think it’s called anything. It’s just a nameless, faceless shit-brown shopfront with a grille at the counter, a peeling lino floor and overflowing ashtrays.

  The controller now is still a woman but it’s not the fat controller. It’s not Janice. She retired to Guildford according to my mother. She informed my father of this with a note of glee. With a note of glee and, as it turned out, excellent timing because about two weeks later he pissed himself in the Horniman museum. Perhaps I’ll think of my father when I sit down to wait in the office. Perhaps I won’t. Perhaps I’ll think of Cal’s father and the stunting weight of success that he placed on his son’s shoulders and wonder what I am doing to my own children. Perhaps I’ll think of another person.

  When the driver drops me at Heathrow, I’ll tip him well - not extravagantly but substantially enough for him to mention it when he gets back to Beech Park or over a pint, perhaps in the The Roebuck, tonight. Maybe I’ll even tell him who I am so that he can boast about who he had in the back of his cab. I don’t know but I feel the need to make some small mark before I get on the plane.

  I insert a piece of card into the envelope with the manuscript and disc so as to protect them in the post. Then I seal it and write the address of the publishing house. Beneath that I write FAO: Wendy Carter.

  Before I leave I open the old briefcase. In it is every song that Cal ever wrote and the handful of teenage lyrics that were in truth my only contribution to the oeuvre of Dane/Carter. As well as The Go-Karts numbers, it includes all the songs that I have arranged, recorded and released under my own name over the past decade. Many may have credited Frankie Dane as the writer (if I’d honoured my pub promise to Cal they would have at least said Dane/Carter) and they may have been legally mine (he honoured his in his last will and testament) but, in fact, if accuracy matters, they were all written by Cal. The lot. Every one. I didn’t write ‘Rotten In Denmark’ in my bedroom in 1976. I couldn’t have - just look at the words. I didn’t write any of them. What I have done is to prove what Cal still doubted on the day he died. I have proved, with two of the best-selling pop albums of all time, the strength of the material.

  If Tony releases ‘Anything Evil’ that, at least, like this autobiography, and for the first time, will have been all my own work. I riffle through the loose pages as I have done a thousand times before - music manuscripts, tablature, lyric sheets, each of them on feint-lined paper torn from a Beech Park exercise book and loaded with fountain pen strokes in Cal’s rounded, open caress of a hand. I close the tired leather and fasten the buckle. I pat it like an old friend. The devil does have all the best tunes.

  The briefcase was in the kitchen where I’d left it, of course - as thick with his invention and creativity then as it is now. Sleep clogged my eyes and I had to rub them like a child. For a moment I thought it was just the creak of the bed springs but it wasn’t. With each stroke I could hear the waitress gently coming to the boil. I felt sore all over - my head, my neck, my legs, my prick. In the kitchen, I paused. The hammer, incredibly, was still on the table. The mistake of a mediocrity. I put it back in the larder where I knew it was kept. Then I opened Cal’s sports bag. Inside, as usual, was a thick sheaf of papers. I looked through it for anything new but there wasn’t much. America, this time, had not been inspirational for Cal. I transferred the pile of papers to my briefcase and walked out of the cottage.

  I checked the times of the tides by the peeling blue noticeboard on the promenade below which the lifebelts hang. It was going out. I walked down onto the beach circumnavigating the broken bottles, tar and turds. The seagull that was scratching around took off, soared up over the waves, swooped and effortlessly disappeared. From my pocket I took the duster in which that morning when I’d returned to the cottage alone, I had wrapped virtually the entire contents of the bottle of paracetamol before crushing it into a white powder that even an expert like Cal could not distinguish from speed. This time I wrapped it around a stone and hurled i
t out to sea where, for one blink of time, shorter than a heartbeat, it stood out against the cloud like a little yellow sun before plummeting into the rocking greyness.

  There. That’s the truth. I wish I could report that Cal’s drug-induced death had some glamour about it - heroin or cocaine - but it was just everyday paracetamol that I used to adulterate his stash of speed and he, with his drinking and his housewife’s headaches helped it along. It was all so ordinary. Like dying on the toilet. For me ordinariness comes as no surprise but for him perhaps this revelation is the unkindest cut of all. He would at least have enjoyed the irony.

  I read the news today…

  POLICE TAKE POSSESSION OF ROCK-STAR’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY

  (From the morning papers the day after Wendy Dane passed this manuscript to the police)

  The autobiography of musician Frankie Dane, who disappeared five days ago, has been handed over to the police. The manuscript is believed to shed new light on the death from a drug overdose in 1979 of Mr Dane’s songwriting partner Cal Carter.

  The manuscript was addressed to Mr Dane’s wife, publisher Wendy Carter, who is the sister of the late Mr Carter and daughter of the publishing magnate Alexander Carter, at her workplace. Mrs Carter is employed by publishers Big Blue where unofficial sources have suggested that the envelope was addressed by Mr Dane and bore a postmark from Beech Park, the area of south-east London where Mr Dane has lived since childhood.

  Mr Dane’s manager Jonathan Waters held a brief press conference yesterday morning at which he appealed for Mr Dane to contact him. He informed the media that Mrs Carter was unavailable for comment and that an injunction had already been taken out preventing the press from approaching the couple’s two children.

  Tony Beale, a representative of Mr Dane’s record company Phonodisc, was more relaxed. He said ‘This is just the sort of crazy thing Frank would do. He’s always felt guilty about Cal’s death but that’s not the same as being responsible is it?’ He added that the new Frankie Dane and the Denmarks single would be released on Monday.

  Rival record companies have dismissed the whole thing as a publicity stunt. A source close to one said ‘the only thing that’s been murdered here is the truth. Dane, Waters and Beale are all in this together. They’re probably having a big laugh about it right now.’

  MISSING MUSICIAN’S FINAL RELEASE BREAKS ALL RECORDS

  (from the same paper a few days later)

  The song ‘Anything Evil’ recorded by the missing rock star Frankie Dane is set to top the charts after selling more copies in its first week of release than any other single in the history of popular music on both sides of the Atlantic. If sales continue at the present rate it will be the quickest million selling record of all time. In the meantime the record’s creator Frankie Dane has not been seen for over a fortnight.

  Tony Beale of the successful record company Phonodisc told a packed press conference at the label’s West End offices, ‘Frankie has eclipsed Elvis, the Beatles, the Stones, Michael Jackson, Madonna, The Spice Girls and anyone else you care to name. He could be the biggest star ever now. If you’re listening Frank - it’s time to come home. We all miss you and we all need you.’ He declined to answer questions about whether Mr Dane had or would receive any royalties for the song.

  Mr Dane’s autobiography Rotten In Denmark due for publication next week is expected to break similar records in the world of publishing

  Earlier yesterday the metropolitan police issued a warrant for Mr Dane’s arrest.

  Leader comment, page 16

  Where might Dane have gone? - Ian Martyn Baker, page 18

  The serialisation of Rotten In Denmark begins in this newspaper on Saturday