December (69 page)

      
'OK, Weasel, why don't you go and sit in it and someone will
be along to take you to Tom. He'll go with you, OK?'
      
'Spot on. Fanks a lot.'

      
Weasel buys a few items at the bar, comes out to the van
grinning like a frog, glad he didn't ring Shelley again earlier. Next time
he'll have something to say worth hearing.

'Spot of afternoon tea.'

      
Back in the van. Weasel, all smiles, produced a bag of goodies
- tuna sandwiches, crisps, Coke - he'd bought in the pub. Bit of a sweetener.

      
'Do's a favour, Princess. Hop in the back again, would you?
Just for fifteen, twenty minutes, yeah?'

      
Be warm enough in the back now all the produce was unloaded
and the cooler turned off. What he wasn't going to have was the kid involved in
any aggro which might result when they turned up at the Abbey or wherever they
was headed.
      
'Not long now. Next face you see
when those back doors opens'll be your dad's. Promise.'

      
Vanessa went along with it. Weasel closed the doors on the kid
with a cheery thumbs-up sign and went back to the cab to wait, munching an
apple, thinking how he was going to handle this.

      
How to tell the big guy he'd been scammed, set up, lured into
the studio on false pretences. Maybe save that for later. The fact that Weasel
was not sure what the false pretences had actually been - or why - would kind
of take the meat out of the sandwich.

      
Maybe he should just get Tom on his own, whizz him round the
back of the van, tell him, I brung somefing for you, special delivery. And let
the Princess do the rest.

      
In other words, play it by ear.

      
Presently, a farmer-looking geezer in a long coat, flat cap,
appeared across the road. Walked over, tapped on the passenger door and Weasel
let him in.

      
'Mr Weasel?'

      
'S'me. Where we going?'

      
'The Abbey, of course. Where did you think?' Bit of a Welsh
accent.

      
'Oh, right.' Quite eager to see the place at last.
      
Weasel motored down this lane, narrow
and getting narrower, trees meeting overhead, branches scratching the paintwork.
Who in their right minds would live in the country?
      
'Right, now, what I want you to do,
Mr Weasel ... slow down … past the next telegraph pole you'll see a little track.
Now. By here. This is it.'
      
'Shit, I can't get down there.'
      
'You'll be fine. Gets wider after a
bit.'
      
'Bloody rough. Ain't got four-wheel
drive, you know.'
      
Bet the poor kid's getting shaken
up something rotten back there.

      
'This it, guv'nor? Don't look like no Abbey to me.'
      
'This is the Grange. The old Abbey
farm.'
      
'Right.'

      
'Go round the back, you'll see a barn, double doors open.
Drive in.'

      
'I ain't stopping long, mate. Can't I leave it outside?'
      
'As you please.'

      
Weasel pulled up outside this old, grey house, major
dilapidation, few slates missing from the roof. Typical rundown Welsh farm,
outbuildings collapsing all around. He wasn't going to drive into no barn where
the roof might come down around him.

      
The geezer had the door open, and as soon as Weasel applied the
handbrake he was hopping down and there was another guy sliding into the passenger
seat. A guy with close shaven hair and a tight beard like iron filings.

      
'Ferret. How are you, lad?'

      
'Jeez.'

      
It was only sodding Sile Copesake, godfather of the bleeding blues.

      
'Sile,' he said.

      
'So what's this all about, Ferret?'
      
'Weasel,' Weasel mumbled.

      
'Summat on your mind, Ferret? Everywhere I go, people keep
telling me they've been getting calls from a little bastard in Gloucestershire
running up his boss's phone bill.'

      
Shit. People couldn't keep nothing under their hats more.

      
'You should've come directly to me, Ferret. I'd've cleared the
whole thing up for you. As it is ...'

      
'Look, Sile,' Weasel said. 'This is nuffink personal. I work
for the Storeys, they been good to me. I don't wanna see 'em damaged, yeah? Tom's
my gaffer. Always has been, always will be.'

      
'How touching,' said Sile. 'Tell me. Ferret ...'
      
'It's Weasel!'

      
'All nasty little scurrying creatures are much the same to me,'
said Sile. He tutted.
 
'Forgotten what I
was going to say now; you always have this effect on people?'

      
'Situation is,' Weasel said, sticking to his story without
much hope. 'I got a whole pile of Tom's gear in the van. His favourite Telecaster.
He can't work wivout his 'Caster, can he?'

      
Sile smiled. 'Where'd you get that idea?'

      
'Stands to reason, dunnit?'

      
'Does it?'

      
'Lemme speak to him.' This was not going at all how he'd
planned. Something distinctly iffy about this whole set-up. Crummy farmhouse,
middle of nowhere. Time for straight talk.

      
'Just get Tom out, willyer, I ain't got all night,'

      
Sile smiled. 'That's exactly what you have got, Weasel, and a very
long night it's going to be.'

      
'You freatening me?' Weasel felt his fists bunching. He might
be little but he'd always been able to handle himself. Never took no shit in stir.

      
'Threatening?' Sile looked amazed. 'Why should I have to threaten
you?'

      
You know summink?
Weasel thought but didn't say.
I never
liked you much.

      
He glared resentfully into Copesake's eyes, which were dry and
dead, like cinders.

      
Never rated you neither.
You was strictly mediocre as a guitarist, as a singer. Like, derivative. You
only got there on the backs of all the real talent you got in your bands. You
was a fixer, a wheeler-dealer. Too smart to have the blues. And you always
worked with young guys. Young guys you could push around.

      
'Balls.' Sile grinned suddenly and his eyes lit up in the
darkness of the cab, like somebody'd put bellows behind the cinders, and he
pushed Weasel very hard in the chest and Weasel fell back against the driver's
door.
      
'Never pushed anyone in my life,'
Sile said.
      
Weasel gasped. Bastard had knocked
all the breath out of him. Had he said all that out loud? Nah. Not a bleeding
word.
      
'Never pushed nobody, eh?' he found
himself gasping. 'What about...'bout Carlos Ferrers?'

      
'Yeah, OK,' Sile said, leaning back against the window dead
relaxed, like he'd never moved. Must be bloody fit, say that much, for a geezer
wouldn't see sixty again. 'I'll give you that one, Ferret.'

      
'What ... what you was always good at, Sile. Persuading people
to split wiv their mates, sign up wiv you. Get 'em while they're weak, doing
dope. Dope you bunged 'em, yeah? Prob'ly that's what got you up the ladder in ...
TMM. Yeah? And ...'

      
It occurred to Weasel then that Sile hadn't contradicted him
when he'd accused him of pushing old slave-driving Carlos down the stairs at the
Croydon Lido or wherever it was. He'd said,
I'll
give you that one.

      
Cocky bastard. 'I tell you, one day, Copesake ...' Weasel so
mad his mouth was full of spit or bile or some shit '… you're gonna land
yourself ...'

      
'What are you going on about, lad?'

      
Weasel sat up. It seemed darker in the cab, except for where
Sile was. There was like a hazy, whitish glow around Sile. It certainly wasn't
from his smile, not with the state of Sile's teeth.
      
You'd think he'd have had them
capped, all the bread he was raking in.

      
Weasel's lips felt wet.

      
'I said, yeah,' Sile said. 'Yeah to everything. Except the bit
about having no talent. I resent that. I resent that very much. That's the
reason you're dying, Ferret.'

      
Weasel smelled a rich, rusty smell. It brought a memory he
couldn't place. He sat upright with difficulty, wiped some spit off his chin.
Bloody thick spit.

      
'Carlos tripped,' Sile said. 'Good as tripped, any road.
Carlos drank too much tequila. Tom was in a shocking state that night, figuring
he'd not only predicted it, he'd made it happen. Tom was crying on old Sile's
shoulder. Pitiful. Like you, Ferret.'

      
Weasel held up his hands. Blood dripped from his fingers. He
touched his lips; it was thick all over his mouth, like curry sauce.

      
'What you done? What you done to me, Copesake?'

      
'Just a bit of a push,' Sile said. 'Like this.'

      
Sile jerked forward, sending Weasel rocking back against the
door again, and this time Weasel couldn't get himself up. He coughed, and a
massive red gob splatted all over the dash.

      
'No wonder they wear leather aprons in abattoirs,' Sile said,
looking bored now, leaning back as far as he could go, folding up his knife.

      
He shook his head sadly. 'Nobody's gonna think twice about it,
when they find you in the van on some scrappy bit of derelict land in
Wolverhampton or somewhere. You've got too much form, Ferret. Ex-con, dubious
associates.'

      
Weasel, heaving feebly, saw that Sile was wearing thin leather
gloves.

      
'Well, I must be off. Wish I could stay with you until you died,
Ferret, lad, but I could do with a piss.'

      
Sound of the door handle, and then all that remained of Sile
was a dent in the passenger seat. Weasel couldn't move. He tried to breathe and
his mouth, his throat, his lungs were all flooded and all he could do was make
stupid slurping sounds.

      
Lying back, he could see through the windscreen, hills and
trees and some action in the sky, a last squeeze of sunlight, seeping through
the mist like orange juice.
      
Weasel made a noise like

      
urrrrr

      
And a whole tomato hit the screen, bright red, red as the
Gretsch Chet Atkins Tom's old feller'd brought back from the boozer all those
years ago.

      
All those years. Weasel's eyes filling up.
      
Blown it good this time. Too clever
for your own good. Sod-all use to Tom and Shelley and . ..
      
Princess!

      
Rage and agony exploded in Weasel's head and his whole body
shuddered as he clutched in desperation at the steering wheel -
Princess, Princess! No! Please!
- tried
hopelessly to haul himself up, no breath in his lungs, only holes and blood
drowning him inside and out, big helpings of blood everywhere, over the seats,
the dash, the vinyl roof.
 
Lifeblood dripping
down the dirty little square of glass through which solemn eyes peered, big
eyes behind spectacles thick as bottle-bottoms.

VII

Gin Trap

Seeing the drummer in the
studio smoking a joint - that was quite a shock.
      
Not the joint, the drummer. As
Moira had never thought for one minute that any of them were here for the music,
the need for a drummer had never occurred to her.

      
The appearance of this particular guy showed how heavily TMM
must be committed to this crazy project. And that was worrying.

      
'Oh, wow,' the drummer said. 'If it ain't the exquisite but
criminally underrated Ms Cairns.'

      
'Oh shit,' Moira said under her breath, pausing in the doorway
to take this in. 'Lee Gibson.'

      
The band had never had a full-time percussionist on the simple
basis that Max Goff hadn't been able to find one with reputed psychic
abilities. Drummers weren't like that.