December (13 page)

      
Now, when it came down to sounds, Tom was generosity itself,
recognizing that to a guy like Weasel, sounds was lifeblood, right? As a rule Tom
said; Yeah, sure, man, words to that effect.

      
But this day, on this question of
Electric Lady land,
Tom come over distinctly weird, gone all
confused, said nah, nah, he hadn't got that one no more, you take this one
instead, palming Weasel off with this crappy old Jefferson Airplane LP. But not
before Weasel had seen what'd happened to Tom's once-magnificent collection of
rock albums, stretching over three whole walls of the big guy's ballroom-size
den.

      
Had seen that there was not one single Hendrix disc on the shelves.

Along with other notable
absences.

      
A week later, just to test this theory of his, he'd presented
himself at the back door with a view to borrowing the Rolling Stones'
Beggar's Banquet
, and Tom had come over
all weird again and told him he'd lent it to someone and never had it back,
what a drag. And sent Weasel off instead with
Goat's Head Soup
, a particularly creepy-looking Stones album from
the seventies with references to the devil and stuff that Weasel figured Tom, considering
his past, would want nothing to do |with.

      
For some reason.
Goat's
Head Soup
was all right but
Beggar's
Banquet
was not.

      
Weasel had dithered around a bit to get another quick scan of the
rows of album spines on the shelves and, sure enough, he'd spotted a few more
significant gaps: the Doors, Joplin.

      
Which proved his theory, no question.

      
He dropped his fag on the grass, stamped on it. Too late now.
They didn't like - Tom didn't like - to be disturbed after dark. He'd give it
another day or two. Then he'd definitely go back, face up the big guy.

      
Making sure, however, before he said a word, that he was the one
closest to the door.

'
You were quite right,' Martin Broadbank said into the phone. It's
most
peculiar.'

      
'You seen him, then?'

      
'You're joking. Even his nearest neighbour hasn't seen him. He's
heard
him ... playing his
instrument.'

      
'More than I have, Martin. He won't even come to the bastard
phone.'

      
'What about the wife?' Broadbank asked.

      
'She quizzes you. If you're anything to do with the music business,
it's "I'm sorry, Tom isn't working at the moment." Naturally, I
didn't tell her what it was about, I want to spring it on him, I want to hear
his
reaction.'

      
Martin Broadbank sighed in mild annoyance. He didn't know why
he was getting involved in this, except perhaps out of boredom - you inherited
your father's business, expanded it during the acquisitive eighties into areas
the old man didn't even know existed; that didn't mean you had to find it
interesting or regard it, God forbid, as your life's work. Boredom: he was spending
an increasing amount of time fending it off.

      
'It's all pointless, though, isn't it, Steve, if the tapes
aren't worth it?'

      
'The tapes will be ...' Stephen Case sounded a little nervous '...
fine. That's my feeling.'

      
'God save us from feelings.' Martin Broadbank's own feelings
had told him to have nothing to do with it when his old university chum had
called a couple of nights ago to ask if he knew he was residing not ten miles
away from a living legend. But he'd been bored and slightly intrigued, and
remembered the environmental health officer telling him about Sir Wilfrid Tulley
getting ratty over some insane pop star at the bottom his garden.

      
'Anyway, it seems your friend Storey's taken to playing his
guitar, none too tunefully, in the early hours of the morning. His neighbour
wants it stopped.'

      
Stephen Case said urgently, 'How can I get to see him, Martin?'

      
'Buy yourself a powerful pair of binoculars is all I can
advise. Man's a total recluse, as you say.'

      
'No, come on - you could help me. You've got contacts.'

      
'Steve, you know how much I hate to say "What's in it for
me?", but ...'

      
'I was your best man!'

      
'Were you really? I must have forgotten that particular marriage.'

      
'
And
you're a TMM
shareholder. A substantial one '
      
'Lord, haven't I got rid of those
yet? Must be losing my financial acumen. Look, OK, you want to meet Storey …
give me a day or two.'

      
Why
was
he doing
this? Possibly for the same reason he'd got himself elected to the tedious
bloody council. Because he just had to be at the centre. Because he saw life -
and business - as a huge railway system. A matter of being at the right
terminus at the right time. Sometimes you could even switch the points, and
when two trains collided, capitalise on the salvage.

      
'I might have a chat with the wife,' he said. 'I tend to like
wives.'

      
'As long as they aren't yours,' said Stephen Case, 'presumably.'

      
Quite,' said Broadbank.

II

Baking

Unearthly in the dusk,
wreathed in white silk, the head glided silently past the vicarage window.
      
The vicar looked up from his desk,
disoriented.
      
His study was at the side of the
house facing the village, across the steep lane from the church under its
protective rock of ages.

      
The vicar, in jeans and sweater, moved to the window, leaving
open on his desk an ugly old book, a Victorian account, with engravings, of the
ecclesiastical buildings of Gwent.

      
Isabel Pugh was in one of those electric wheelchairs - quite
sophisticated, but not designed for Ystrad Ddu, struggling a little now, gliding
less evenly, as it moved up the hill. A couple of feet behind it walked Mrs May
Pugh, the vicar's part-time housekeeper, hands out ready to grab the chair if
it stalled and slipped back.

      
The vicar saw Isabel turn her head violently, tearing off the
silk scarf. Behind his double-glazing, he lip-read, 'For God's sake. Mother!'

      
Mrs Pugh's arms dropped to her sides and then folded
in
exasperation across her quilted chest as the wheelchair laboured away up
me hill in the failing light.

      
'What a bloody life,' the vicar mumbled, returning to his
desk. If she'd been a post-pubescent schoolgirl when she fell from the Abbey,
Isabel Pugh must be in her mid-thirties by now. How could she go on living
here, half a mile up the valley from where she'd spent a night of agony, lying
under rubble, next to the corpse of her young lover?

      
People were unbelievably stoical in Ystrad Ddu, it's foundations
perhaps, like the Abbey's, cemented in blood.

      
The vicar sat down and switched on his green-shaded desk lamp.
The battered book before him was opened to an engraving showing a bearded man
in a torn and ragged monk's habit, on his knees, hands together in prayer. On
the opposite page, the text read:

 
Richard
Walden, his back bent and twisted tender the burden of his sins, descended from
the Black Mountains by the old road and found himself in a most wondrous place,
a deep valley with a trickling stream and lush green hills all around, the air
of this paradise being as rich as the wine he had tended in the great cellars
at Hereford. All his senses swollen with joy, he fell upon his knees and drank
from the stream, and then, lifting his eyes humbly to Heaven, gave thanks. And it
was at just this moment that the light fell around him like golden rain and
Richard had his Holy Vision and the Revelation that this was the place where he
must spend the rest of his days in the service of the Lord and gather around
him those of a like disposition, repentant sinners in search of redemption.

    
And so Richard built for himself a rude
wooden hut by the stream and lived there, and from that day onwards, others
came to the place in search of sanctuary and the message was carried far and
wide. Indeed, such was the reputation of the community at Ystrad Ddu for piety
and humility that gifts were bestowed upon Richard Walden by lords and barons
anxious to atone for their own misdeeds, and he was soon able to fulfil what
had been foretold in the Revelation, the raising of a great Abbey to the glory
of the Lord, from whose towers could be glimpsed the Holy Mountain Ysgyryd
Fawr, the Skirrid ...

      
The vicar thought of poor Isabel Pugh, angrily urging her
electric wheelchair up the hill. How could Richard Walden's earthly paradise
have shrivelled into that grim, mean, stunted place which bestowed only misery
and death?

      
He looked out of the window, lights corning on in the cottages
which seemed to hang from the hillside.

      
No use putting it off, mate, the vicar told himself. This is
what the job's about. This is the sharp end.

      
I
can't.

      
Oh, yes, you bloody can.
Can't expect to be able to cast out other people's demons until you confront
your own.

Maurice, of Audico. said, 'OK,
we'll bake them for you. We'll bake them at fifty-five centigrade for three
days. No guarantees, of course; they may come out like crusty French bread, who
knows?'

      
'Don't worry about it,' Prof Levin said. 'I won't.'

      
Because he took things as they came these days, didn't he?
Stayed cool, avoided aggro, drank only coffee and Pepsi. Sure.

      
He lifted the wooden box on to Maurice's desk.

      
'My,' Maurice said. 'Some container.'

      
'Yeah.' He was glad to leave the box at the factory tonight.
Every time he looked at the thing, he found his body crying out for a proper
drink - this being his regular barometer these days, how badly any particular
situation made him long for a drink.

      
With this box, the barometer read: Stormy.
Stay in. Close windows, lock all doors.

      
Of course, he'd known all along there was a fair chance of
rescuing the tape, but with Steve Case it was always better t play your cards
close to your chest. And in this case he was rather hoping that in three days'
time Maurice would throw up his hands and say: Sorry, mate, it's just too far
gone.

      
This private enterprise bit: worrying. Prof was planning to
semi-retire in a couple of years, pick and choose his jobs. If he had a choice
of committing what was left of his future and his reputation to either Stephen
Case or the entire TMM organisation, well, not much of a contest, was it?

      
'Look,' Steve had said, the little vein under his nose twitching,
'do what you can. If it costs, it costs.'

      
Well, it wouldn't actually cost that much, considering. Not
when you had a mate in the recording-tape manufacturing industry and this mate
owed you a favour or two for recommending his product to people who mattered.
This was a business cemented by favours.

      
'So here's the situation,' Maurice said. 'The baking should
harden the binder, glue it all together again. But you know that without repeat
bakings it won't last? What I'm saying, you need dub off a copy, PDQ.'

      
'Yeah, yeah. Can you ring me the minute it's out of the oven?'
They actually had special ovens at Audico for this; a lot of duff tape was
produced in the seventies.

      
'You want me to have a listen afterwards, see how it's come
out, put you out of your misery?'

      
'Don't bother. I'll collect. PDQ.'

      
He knew there'd be no unauthorised copies run off, not with
Maurice handling this personally. He was simply covering himself. He didn't
know where this was going.

It was near closing time,
almost dark outside, no other customers in the store. An assistant was wiping the
counters with a damp cloth.

      
He took to the main cash register a bilious-looking item
clingfilmed into a foil pastry case.
      
What exactly is this?'