December (48 page)

      
'Why should I stay if you're not scared?'

      
Meryl stood up, arms by her side.
      
'Fuck you, lady.' Tom clutched at
one of her hands, his eyes wide open and glassy. 'Ain't you got no perception?
I'm scared clean out of my perishing mind.'

The Holy Mountain, the
Skirrid, was like a single wing. A cold sun made the serrated rims of ruptured
clouds shine like metal. It spread a fan of light-rays around the peak.

      
Divine light. The scene shimmered.

      
He lay inside the cleft of rock above Ystrad Ddu, an enormous
cradle fined with moss.

      
Above him, under the Skirrid, was a calm, still, bearded face.
A face be knew.

      
Simon whispered, 'Jesus?'

      
When the root of the rowan tree had snapped, the arm of Jesus
had reached out of the sky and grasped his wrist and held it firmly and pulled
him back until his boots had found footholds in the rockface.

      
Divine intervention.

      
Jesus laughed.

      
Jesus wore a short leather jacket and jeans and hiking boots.
Jesus had short grey hair starting high on his forehead above a deeply-lined
face.
      
And an earring.

      
Jesus said, 'Close thing, Simon. Nobody tell you you need
proper gear for rock-climbing? Ropes and spiky things to bang into crevices?
Risky sport, mate.'

      
His face was so familiar from somewhere. He had a wide,
friendly smile, although some of his teeth were chipped and discoloured. Jesus
wouldn't have teeth like that.

      
'I followed you up here. Figured it was time we talked.'
      
He put a hand to help Simon to his
feet.
      
'Sile Copesake,' he said. 'We
haven't met.'

VII

December:
Ain't It Always?

Motorway services. Dave felt
like he'd driven a thousand miles without a break. His legs not too bothered
about supporting him. Fuddled, he'd asked Prof on the way in here, 'Can we
talk
to Barney Gwilliam?' And Prof had
asked him if he'd got a serviceable spade.

      
Now Prof brought coffee and doughnuts to the window table where
Dave was sagging, 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'Sorry, sorry, sorry, OK?'

      
'Me too. I didn't know. Why'd he do it?'
      
''He didn't leave a note, David.
We're into speculation. Listen, what I meant, I'm sorry about my behaviour, the
things I said in the car. Angel of death. Sorry. Not funny.'
      
'Forget it.'

      
'Can't
forget
it.
That's the whole flaming problem. I heard the Black Album just the once, can't
forget it. It's lodged.' Prof tapped his head. 'Here. I'm stuck with it. Makes
new doorways into places you didn't know were there. I would really hate it to
be released.'

      
Prof started fiddling in the breast pocket of his jacket.
'Here, let's get this thing out in the open.'

      
A folded paper rumbled out. Prof trapped it with a hand,
smoothed it out, pushed it across to Dave. 'This was in the post for me this
morning.'

      
It was a photocopy of a single-column clipping from an unidentified,
undated newspaper.

STUDENT DOUBLE-DEATH PROBED

    
Detectives were last night investigating
the deaths of two Oxford students whose bodies were found in the flat they shared
in the city.

    
The students, both aged 20, were ...

      
Dave looked up at Prof. It meant nothing to him.

      
'Hang on,' Prof said, 'this is a better one.'

      
The second paper had two stories, expanding on the first, identifying
the students as Mark Collier and Declan Smallwood. The room was in a mess, and
it looked as if Smallwood had killed Collier by beating him over the head with
a blunt instrument and then taken an overdose. They were described as 'very
close friends'.

      
Prof said, 'Crime of passion was the implication. The papers
didn't dwell on it. Gay domestic murders, who cares? Especially seven years
ago. See this bit at the bottom ...'

...
shared an interest in music and had been working on an album of their songs.

      
'These boys,' Prof said, 'sound a bit like Simon and Garfunkel
in the sixties. Bedsit dreamers. Called themselves Soup Kitchen. Final cutting,
OK?'

Police
found a bloodstained electric guitar near a student's battered body in a room
lit by candles, an inquest was told today. Nearby lay the body of Mark
Collier's killer, with

      
'Blunt instrument was dead right. Seems Smallwood beat the
shit out of Collier with a secondhand Strat-copy and then topped himself. They reckoned
he was so cut-up about what he'd done he lit the candles as a kind of
ceremonial gesture before taking his pills. And the bottom line ...'

      
Prof jabbed a finger at the final paragraph.

The
students had returned to Oxford two days earlier after working on their music
at a studio in Gwent, South Wales. Recording verdicts of murder and suicide.
Coroner Paul Galloway said, 'There was an obsessional element in this
relationship that may never be fully understood.'

      
Dave's whole body was now feeling as subdued as his legs. 'Russell
was producing these kids? At the Abbey?'

      
'Guy I know sent me this stuff, music journalist. While I was
waiting for you this morning, I called him back. Seems Soup Kitchen had signed
to Epidemic, very hush hush at the time. The boys wanted somewhere atmospheric
to record. They suggested the Manor, which was local for them, but they were told
it was fully booked for months ahead. Then somebody says, Hey, what about the
Abbey?'

      
'But it was closed down by then.'

      
'So they used a mobile. Maybe it impressed Smallwood and
Collier that Epidemic were prepared to open up the Abbey just for them.'

      
Dave said, 'So this would be ... how long after the Philosopher's
Stone session?'

      
'Six, seven years. It didn't immediately close down because
Tom Storey had a bad accident there, why should it? So the boys are taken up to
the Abbey on two or three weekends, to get the feel of the place, get some
demos down. The idea being they could go back and lay down the whole album
during their Christmas holidays from the University.'

      
'Hang on ...' Dave fumbled his cup into its saucer, spilling
hot coffee over both hands. 'Strewth ... This was December?'

      
'Ain't it always?' said Prof.
      
'What date?'

      
'They died on ... the tenth. About then.'
      
'So they could've been in the
studio on the night of the eighth?'

      
Prof shrugged.

      
'What about Barney?' Dave was mopping at his wrists with a
napkin, trying to hold it steady.

      
'Barney died on the twenty-ninth, less than a week after
joining the BBC, Cardiff-based. Two days before New Year's Eve, he sat himself
in the studio, all alone, slashed his throat. And he'd been in that job less
than a week and doing well. Whatever it was made him do it, he brought it with
him.'

      
'Why the BBC? I mean, he was a top engineer. Be a major drop
in pay, that, wouldn't it?'

      
'But maybe,' Prof said, 'a raise in peace of mind.' He pushed
his coffee away. 'Or so he might have thought. I find this particularly
heartbreaking, David, because here was a boy who lived for his work. To this
guy, the studio - any studio - was home.'

      
'Let me get this right.' Dave sucked at his wrist where the
coffee had burned it. 'Barney engineered this Soup Kitchen session at the
Abbey.'

      
'I don't know that. I would've put it to Russell, but he didn't
hang around, did he?'

      
Dave said, 'Maybe it's better you didn't. Maybe it's better he
doesn't know we know about that. OK, let's assume he did engineer that session.
Where does that get us?'

      
'Gets us to the central question of why he packed it in and
took a lower-paid job at the Beeb. Like I said, this is a boy who lived for his
job. Juggling sounds, making music work. At the Beeb, half the time he'd be on
speech programmes, routine stuff. Why's a man like Barney want to do this, unless
...'

      
'Unless something happened to make him frightened of music.
Scared to put a pair of cans over his ears because of what he might hear, scared
to mess with a mixing deck because of the sounds his fingers might produce.
That's what you're getting at?'

      
Prof said, 'You asked me to re-mix the Black Album, I'd be
shit
scared. Scared of what it might
touch inside me. What it might bring out. It sticks like slime, some of that
music. I tell you, the worst thing ... I was never scared of death before.
Scared of dying, how it might happen, sprawled in the gutter stinking of meths,
whatever. But not death itself. Now …'

      
Dave shook his head. 'I really don't remember getting that far
I knew that was how it was going to end. I, me, Aelwyn, we were resigned to it,
but I ran out on him. And Moira. We backed off.'

      
Thinking, No,
I
backed off, ran out on them all, Moira, Tom, Simon, everybody. And it was a
long time before she came out of there.

      
'Ask her some time,' Prof said. 'Ask her about dying.'

      
Ice-crystals started to form around Dave's solar plexus. It
was the second time Prof had spoken like this about Moira. He couldn't deal
with it.

      
'So, OK,' Prof said, 'Barney quits. Maybe he's on the edge of
a breakdown, who can say? He
was
the
kind of guy who'd bottle things up. So he packs in, gets himself a nice, safe
job at the BBC. But it doesn't go away. I know that it doesn't go away. It sets
up home in dreams. What causes this? What did you let in? What did Soup Kitchen
let in?'

      
'Sometimes,' Dave said, from the heart, 'I think it'd be better
for everyone if I'd actually died that night.'

      
'Don't be a plonker.'

      
'No, think about it. Would Tom have gone rushing for the Land
Rover? Would Mark Chapman have pulled the trigger?'

      
'You've got a wheel loose, son. You're coming off the track.
Need to sort your head out. Anyway, like I said, I'd be shit scared. But I'd do
it.'

      
'What you on about?'

      
'Remix the album. You go back, give Steve what he wants, take
me with you as engineer.'
      
'You tired of life. Prof?'

      
'Yeah,' said Prof. 'I
am
tired of life. Tired of
this
life.
Tired of hearing about guys who didn't make it. Tired of drinking coffee in dumps
like this talking about poor sods with wonky auras. Tired of pretending not to
be a piss artist. Tired of looking at your miserable face.'

The bedroom window faced a
grassed-over courtyard. It had lace curtains and full-length drapes which Meryl
didn't bother to draw.

      
She got undressed without preamble, laying her sweater and her
trousers across a chair, unhooking her bra, tossing it on the chair too, but
keeping her panties on. Plain pink ones.

      
She had heavy brown breasts, which dipped and wobbled as she
got into bed. She hadn't even thought about the Lady Bluefoot for some hours.

      
'It's a waste of time,' Tom said gloomily, tossing his jeans out
of the side of the bed. 'I can't do nuffink lately.'

      
'You can hold me.' Meryl unclipped her dark hair. She was excited,
like the first time she went to the spiritualist church in Gloucester. I'm a
psychic groupie, she thought.
      
Tom said, 'This ain't charity, is
it?'