BK – True. And that was it. All over. I never saw her again.
The myth of me vanished. Whatever she was imagining, she realised I wasn’t it.
GJ – She could’ve been a real nut.
BK – She probably went back to baking cookies, appreciated normality again. I tell you, that was a liberating moment. Never thought I’d be so happy to disappoint. That was where the Moscow stunt came from.
GJ – The Red Square Rocks double? I knew that wasn’t you … I know that ass a mile away.
BK – Ouch! You were the only one.
GJ – He did look like you … but …
BK – The moves were wooden.
GJ – You need a clone, trained to jive from birth.
BK – Wise hired him when the public lost the plot. Mathew. Mathew Quail. Some kid who dropped out of university to be Billy 2. What a fucking job. They were tipping the fucking tour bus on the way out of stadiums. Teenage girls crushed against the barriers. I felt like a TV evangelist, fans fainting as I reached out and touched them. Bellboys and chambermaids selling bogus room numbers for fistfuls of cash. Mathew would wave from dressing- room windows while Ronnie or Tommy screeched us out a side street in a hire car. I’d peek out from under the blanket and see fans shinning up drainpipes and rushing the security.
GJ – Sounds like fun.
BK – It was a getaway. We were shit scared. We were swerving between gangs of kids wearing T-shirts with our faces printed on them. This was an escape from fame, but not Billy K. Good friends or not, the guys in the car knew. To them Billy K was hiding on the back seat. Barry was nowhere. I needed the full out-of-Billy experience. Mathew already knew the songs, I just had to fine-tune some of his microphone waltzing and who’d know we’d switched? Not the fucking band, Ronnie caning his kit and Tommy and Dave too frit of fucking up … So I slip offstage mid-song, everyone thinking the usual theatrics, except Billy 2. He’s all ready to come bouncing on, same outfit, shirt undone four buttons, doused in water to imitate the sweat and effort of keeping a quarter million Muscovites from freezing over.
GJ – And no one guessed …
BK – Not for two songs. I grab a coat and hat, hurdle the barrier and suddenly I’m in the thick of the crowd, watching myself sing and dance. I was squashed, crushed, spat on and offered swigs of vodka from plastic bottles. The Kremlin floated in the haze like some alien cathedral. It was a fucking wild crowd. Two women had a fistfight. A bottle came boomeranging past my ear and shattered on the back of a hatless head. The man brushed off the glass and punched his fist into the sky. Crowd surfers climbed over us, crawling towards the stage. All this hysteria, all for Billy K. Not Barry Fulton, not me.
GJ – He forgot the words.
BK – Everyone forgets the words. He missed a whole verse. Tommy thinks I’m drunk or stoned, dances his way across the stage and actually manages to look up from the strings …
GJ – Then what?
BK – He freaks out. That’s it. The song sounds like something dropped down the stairs. The crowd boo and cheer simultaneously. King of the fucking castle Wise strides onstage. He susses the double and hauls him off by the collar. Bearing in mind the crowd believe this to be me, Billy K, garrotted into the wings by a man in an Armani suit. And this in a country with a history of vanishings. Family and friends disappearing into thin air, snatched from their beds in the dead of night. The plastic cups and bottles turned to cobblestones. Ronnie knows the siege routine and digs in behind his drums. I was nearly over the barrier when a petrol bomb exploded in the rigging. Fuck it, I thought. Fuck all this. What am I wrestling half of Red Square to get back for? Barricaded into dressing rooms, hiding under room service trolleys, fans kicking in doors and sidestepping bellboys. No. Fuck that. I turned from the music and ran. I ran with the pack, invigorated, between riot police and cans of tear gas. It was exhilarating. Terrifying. The singular, swaying mass, minutes before united by the beat of a drum and electric guitar, now dispersed by mounted police swishing batons with the flourish of Alexander the Great stampeding a burning city. People fell. The athletic hurdled the fallen. I watched a man shrug his coat to the floor and sprint on, faster than the runners swaddled from the cold, faster than a man tripping, rising to his knees before a rider leaned from his saddle and whacked the air from his lungs. And the horses. What a sound, the clattering hooves on frozen stone. I ran faster, helpless against a gallop, almost patient for the crack of polished wood across my skull. But then came the lunatic fringe. A bare-chested rebel cut through the crowd and stuck a broken bottle in the flank of a horse. Men and boys, scarves tied around their noses and mouths, eyes streaming, back-pedalled and taunted the police with open hands, proving they had nothing to lose. We stood our ground, and then charged. I picked up a baton and hurled it against a line of retreating shields. This was every high from every concert. The police regrouped, reorganised, shapes practised by centurions two thousand years ago. Missiles rained. We danced in the street. Tear gas swirled like dry ice. This kid, no more than ten or eleven, skipped about blasting an aerosol horn. It was a party, a celebration of chaos. Another petrol bomb, fumes of melting plastic mixed with tear gas. My throat burned. I felt something wet on my cheek, my blood, my glorious red blood …
For a few minutes we were fucking invincible.
GJ – Fuck, what a rush!
BK – But then came the tanks, rumbling from a side street. Even the police gave them a wide berth. The crowd hushed, a few thrown stones bounced off the armour. Maybe the machine gun was only fired into the air, but the effect was panic and party over, our silly dreams broken by the reality of bullets pinging off buildings. People ran in a crouch, hands over their heads. I recognised the man five steps in front, the big man who’d shed his coat for speed, shirtsleeves rolled up, panting, hunched over by the crack of gunfire, like a fucking bear let loose on the streets. Staggering through a heap of shovelled snow then slipping, his feet higher than his head, slamming the flagstones and hurting …
GJ – Ouch. Poor guy.
BK – A terrible thing to see that, a fat man betrayed by gravity.
GJ – Fucking crazy. Kind of wish I was there … Did you stop and help?
BK – Of course I stopped.
GJ – But the police didn’t know who you were. You were just another rioter to be whipped by one of those batons … or worse.
BK – I stopped because I owed this man. He’d come to hear me sing and play and lost his coat. He was about to hear the beat of the Moscow police drummed across his back. I grabbed his arm. When he stood I thought he was swearing at me, but he was laughing, a hearty boom separate to the danger of the moment, the closing squads of uniformed thugs. He pulled me down a side street where old ladies stood aghast with bags of shopping. The more sprightly officers had broken unit and chased down stragglers with neck-high tackles. I heard shouting behind me, orders to halt. My coatless friend spun on his heels. He extended his arm into the visor of our pursuer. The plastic shattered against his knuckles. One of Moscow’s finest melted on to the road. More police rushed the street. A water cannon washed an old lady and her shopping on to the pavement. Police rampaged down the avenue. Vegetables rolled from her split bag, mashed under jackboots. I was done for, Billy K or Barry Fulton, the truncheon wouldn’t know. Then a lady called out from an open door to one of the mansions. A wide-hipped woman with an apron and headscarf, the cleaner. My friend dragged me up the steps and into the house where he kissed her on both cheeks. I did the same, grappled to her bleach-smelling bosom before she shooed us along the hallway to the back entrance. We shot down an alleyway on to a busy street. Now, I’m not sure if my friend hailed or hijacked the taxi, but suddenly we’re beyond the avenues, skidding through narrow lanes, the coatless man twisting around to speak to me in Russian. I guess he told the story of the KO’ed policeman as he punched his open palm and bellowed another laugh. He turned to me and slapped his chest. ‘Viktor,’ he proclaimed. ‘Barry,’ I said. He studied me more closely
and asked, ‘Billy?’ I said, ‘Barry’ again. He repeated my name, the one I was born with, smiled and shook my hand. We drove past warehouses, between smoking chimneystacks. The taxi driver waved away the money Viktor offered and dropped us at the rear of a factory. I was cold now, the heat of running evaporated. Viktor still had his sleeves rolled up. I didn’t care where we were going as long as it was inside. I needed a drink. I could taste tear gas in the back of my throat. Viktor hammered on a windowless door that was opened, and I’m not bullshitting, by a man with a black patch over his left eye. Viktor said, ‘Barry’ and the patch said, ‘Barry’ and we all descended the crooked staircase into a raucous drinking den where men sat around packing crates and downed glasses of vodka that made them spit and growl after each swallow.
GJ – Where were you?
BK – No idea. All I knew was that I was alive. Somebody. Barry. They called me Barry. Viktor navigated us between groups of men to the bar, ducking under exposed pipes, a ragged flag of the hammer and sickle. I say bar, but it was a high wall with shelves and shelves of the same bottles of vodka. Nothing else but a few dusty cans of tonic water. The barman slid Viktor a bottle and two stout glasses. We walked through the drinkers. Viktor clutched men by the shoulders and spun them around. They shook my hand and said, ‘Barry, Velcome Barry.’ The first glass thrust into my hand was brimming with vodka. I downed it in one. The scorch of tear gas erased from my throat. I was melting from the inside out. I heard music, an accordion pumping up the room, and Viktor the bear, backslapping his buddies and laughing, his atomic bellow. Glasses were filled, held, and tipped. I reached into the pockets of the coat and fished out the snakeskin wallet of Ricky Wise. I set free the roubles, dollars and pounds, showering bills on to the bar like confetti. The barman held up the empty wallet and stood on a stool to announce the generosity of my manager. Roars rattled the shelves of glasses and bottles. Viktor danced, gravity his friend again, a twinkle-toed big man light on his feet. He swept his hand across the seated men, ordered a dance floor and the clearing of furniture. Packing crates and chairs flew into the fireplace, the roof beams shook with stomping feet of men dancing, singing and drinking. Time didn’t exist here. No clocks on the wall. No sun, moon or stars. I looked at the long bar and thought of a submarine stranded on the bottom of the ocean, these abandoned men the doomed crew, making merry before the last of the air.
GJ – How the hell did they find you? None of this ever made the press, did it?
BK – Wise. He was scared of what would happen if the police got hold of me first. Two were killed in the riot. Maybe I was to blame?
GJ – For singing?
BK – Singing? Not singing? Before the goons hired by Wise tracked me down, I danced and sung in the bar, standing on tables beating two chair legs together to keep time to jaunty folk songs. I drank, slept, and woke. Always the packed bar, the fated men knocking back firewater. I dreamed of a cosmonaut floating in the corner of the room. We spoke to each other. I understood his language of isolation, the stellar dialect. We shared a dislocation from the planet, a lonely orbit followed by billions … And then I woke and realised it wasn’t a dream. He was in the room after all, hovering by the lights in his orange space suit. He was live on the evening news. He flickered across the screen of a broken TV mounted on the wall, assembling and reassembling in the grainy waves of static … same way my body came and went in that subterranean bar.
GJ – Fuck … That’s something … Fucking out there.
BK – Best of all was leaving the place freezing, knowing the fur coat of Ricky Wise fitted Viktor like a glove.
GJ – Story makes me crave vodka … you got any? Pass me the whiskey. Fuck, Barry. I want a little hit, sure you can’t join me?
BK – No, no … not yet, anyway. I feel like me, Barry.
GJ – Come on … no fun by myself. Don’t desert me now. Now you’re spent.
BK – Never … I … fought the angels from the sky … Nothing they could do, stole their wings so I could fly … Forgot … the weight of walking on the world … Now I’m … a wanted man in powder clouds…
GJ – Woooo … we all wanna fuck you, rock star.
BK – You’re all messed up.
GJ – Don’t fucking judge me … I’m the cosmonaut now … Speak to me …
BK – What about?
GJ – Love … That word is for ever … never die. Say it and fucking mean it … I dare you.
BK – Forget it.
GJ – Amore, Liebe … Fuck it … Burn it up, Billy, the view is beautiful from here.
BK – Take it easy.
GJ – Fuck! Ouch!
BK – Fuck. All right?
GJ – The fucking ground, hard ground … I want a beach, soft white sand … Take me out somewhere … Fuck me in the surf.
BK – You want a beach?
GJ – Waves … Turquoise.
BK – You want to heap your clothes on the sand and wade out into the sea, naked, swim into another life?
GJ – Just a hotel would be fine. Why so much effort to escape when we have drugs? The getaway car, always waiting with the engine running.
BK – That drops you back at the scene of the crime … Fucking magic.
GJ – Fuck you, Billy … You’re fucking with my high.
BK – High? A high should be simply being alive … I just want to play my guitar and sing a few songs. Swing on a hammock plucking bum notes. Have a self composed by me, not the press, not the record execs or fucked-up fans.
GJ – A beach …
BK – What?
GJ – Fuck me on the beach, Barry K.
BK – Barry fucking K? You’re way gone.
GJ – Come … come here.
BK – And vanish with you?
GJ – Come to the poppy seed … the slopes of the Himalaya.
BK – Good stuff?
GJ – Fucking good stuff.
BK – Pass it here.
GJ – Love the sky, Billy.
BK – Fuck.
GJ – Hold my hand … Now you got your wings.
PART THREE
Charles Nash lands at Nairobi Aiport. Charles Nash walks coolly past the customs officers, bored and listless, swatting flies, sweating beneath the cranking fans. Charles Nash has entered Kenya, a travelling salesman in Africa, flying in for a high-powered business meeting, or perhaps a conference.
When Anna mailed back and told me a Peter Cornell appeared on both lists, renting a 4WD on the 20th, and then flying from Sydney to Nairobi on the 28th with a ticket bought in Australia on the 24th, all I had to do was sit and lie low until my new passport arrived.
I admit I had moments of wondering who the hell I was chasing. But this was something. Particularly since Peter Cornell didn’t appear on any databases in the UK – no National Insurance number, driving licence, or previous convictions – despite travelling on a British passport.
Australian customs had looked me up and down twice, then let me pass. Kenyan officials barely glanced at the passport. The moment I stepped from the air-conditioned foyer I was hit by the heat. Like an oven door left open. Past the airport security I’m swamped by taxi drivers and street kids, limbless men with paper cups, the hungry rush of people starting the day without a penny to their name.
And it breaks my heart to see children the same age as Gemma begging barefoot, rifling the bins like stray dogs. I make another promise to be a better man, a better father, once this chase is over.
But there’s money here too, in the armoured limousines and mirrored office blocks, the international banks protected by guards with machine guns. And this isn’t a country I can track a man by his electronic footprint. Needs good old-fashioned detective work here, favours and kickbacks. Threats. Maybe that’s why I buy a panama hat from a market stall. I feel like a character who has wandered from the pages of a Raymond Chandler novel.
I arrange for a car to drive me to Mombasa in an hour, then ask around the taxi stand if a Peter Cornell had booked a ride
south. Futile. I’ll need more than luck to catch a man with a week’s head start.
Show Me The Sky Page 13