Remix (2010) (4 page)

Properly restored he’d be glorious.

Another bent nail pinged on top of the others in the box. Dog pottered in, followed by his owner holding a bag of Iams.

“Is it okay if I make myself some toast and use your laptop?”

“Yes. Go up. The door’s open.”

Ten minutes later I crept upstairs to check he hadn’t absconded over the side of the building with my valuables. I got so my head was high enough to peer into the flat. Ric was at the kitchen counter, hunched over the laptop, keys clacking furiously, playing a computer game, Dog curled at his feet. Harmless enough. I retreated.

James rang, as he said he would. He’s a man of his word. He asked tentative questions about ‘my visitor’ last night.

“Joe. I knew him at Central St Martin’s.” I felt bad, lying to James, but I had to tell him something. It was the first time ever that I’d not been truthful with him. He said nothing for five seconds, which is quite a long time.

“I thought I’d met all your college friends. You said his name was Ric.”

“It’s Joe Rick. We called him Rick. When we weren’t calling him Joe…” I’m a crap liar. “He needed somewhere to stay. He’s going tomorrow.”

“What does he do?”

“Paint. He’s on the dole.” This at any rate had the ring of truth. All the students I knew in the Fine Art Department either went into something else on leaving college, or were unemployed. I changed the subject. “How’s Posy?”

“Fine. She’s…fine.” He sounded abstracted. “Look, I’ve got to go, I’ll talk to you later.”

Ric was still at my laptop when I went upstairs to make myself a cup of coffee at eleven. Not playing a game; frowning over something he clicked off at my approach. He glanced up.

“I was thinking, maybe you could take me to Phil’s tomorrow.”

“Couldn’t you get the train?” I was miffed about his refusal to tell me anything. I felt he was taking advantage. And his breakfast things were still beside him on the counter. Huh. He might have put them in the dishwasher, instead of expecting me to tidy up after him. I spooned coffee into a mug. I didn’t ask if he wanted any.

“Okay. Can you lend me fifty quid?”

“It can’t be that much for a cheap day single. Under a tenner, I’d say.”

“I’d have to get taxis both ends. Easier to go door to door. And it would be nice to have your company, too.” He got up and took his plate and cup to the dishwasher, and stacked them neatly inside.

I gave him a suspicious look. He was being charming again.

“Does he know you’re coming?”

“No.”

“How do you know he’ll be there?”

“The housekeeper told me he’d be back tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you ring him?” A sleek new mobile lay beside the laptop.

“I haven’t got his number. He went ex-directory.”

This seemed distinctly odd to me. “But you’re quite sure he’ll have you to stay?”

“Fairly sure.” A shadow passed over Ric’s face. “He owes me. Go on, Caz, I’ll talk to you this time. I promise. Tell you the story of my life. From fame and fortune to the gutter.” He grinned at me. “I’ll let you be my sidekick.”

Like I said, I’m a fool. I agreed.

So, that Saturday morning my van crept and juddered along the Marylebone Road towards the Westway, the sun behind us. The van doesn’t like going slowly. Sometimes it gets overwrought and has to rest for a while. The traffic’s been terrible along there ever since the Con Charge came in, though I’d thought it would be okay at the weekend. That was a mistake. Every now and then, I noticed the occupants of neighbouring cars giving sidelong glances at Ric sitting beside me. He had the window down and his bare forearm resting along the edge, Dog on his lap.

“Maybe you should get in the back. Everyone’s looking at you.”

He got out a pair of dark glasses and put them on, as though that made him invisible. A powder-blue VW convertible drew level and its driver gazed at him. He looked away. I forbore to comment. The truck on my right hooted, and when I glanced up the man in the passenger seat said, “Heya!” and whooped. I scowled and put on my sunglasses.

Just too damn gorgeous, that was our trouble.

The traffic accelerated, and we turned towards the A4. Time for Ric to spill the beans to his new sidekick. I opened my mouth to say this, but he spoke first.

“Where did you get that horse, the big one with attitude? An Ayres, did you say it was?”

I told him it had been a very lucky find. The pensioner who owned it had been going to throw it out - he didn’t know what it was, and thought it beyond repair. He’d said I could have it for fifteen quid, but in the end we’d settled on PS375 as being a fairer price. Ric asked about the other horses, how I got started, where I’d been to college, about my teaching job and how I got my fabulous workshop. I told him about Mum dying, and how much I missed her; he said his parents were dead too, but he’d never been close to them. They’d sent him to boarding school when he was seven, and he spent the holidays with his grandmother. We were turning off the motorway when I realized I’d intended Ric to confess all, and we’d be at his agent’s house before he had time to do this.

I’d better get on with it. I said, “What’s Phil Sharott like?”

“He’s a lawyer. He was a trainee solicitor in Bristol when I was there. He’d done law at Bristol.”

“What did you study?”

“Pure maths.”

“Wow.” I was impressed. “You must be bright.”

He smiled wryly and shook his head. “I didn’t qualify. I went a bit wild the first year - the exams don’t count towards the degree, and you’re allowed to retake them. The second year, I left before the end to work full time with the band. I knew I hadn’t done enough to keep up. I jumped before I was pushed. D’you have exams at art college?”

“No.” I refused to be sidetracked. “Why would a lawyer manage a rock band?”

“Phil wanted to make some money while he was a trainee. He’s pretty good at it. Our first record deal was his doing.”

“What did he think of you faking your own death?”

“He organized it.”

I was taken aback. You’d think a lawyer would uphold the law, not break it.

“Why?”

“I didn’t want to go to prison.”

“But if you were innocent, surely you’d have got off? They’d have found the real murderer. They only stopped investigating because you were dead.”

“No, because they thought I did it. Haven’t you read it up?”

“It’s all circumstantial, isn’t it, the evidence? Just that you had a row with Bryan Orr—”

“Two rows. Not everything got in the papers.” He sighed. His voice was flat. “Okay, I’ll tell you how it started.
Bryan had a new girlfriend. Emma. Emma Redfern. She temped one week for Phil, that’s how they met. She wanted to make it as a singer herself, and I reckon that’s why she latched on to him. I didn’t like her much, but he was under her thumb, and she went everywhere with him, you could never talk to him on his own. She said he wasn’t getting a fair deal, he needed to stick up for himself - for instance, why was it always Kealey/Orr on the credits, why not Orr/Kealey on half of them? It had never been an issue. It got blown up out of all proportion, because of her. In the end me and Bryan were barely speaking, let alone writing songs together. A lot of it was my fault, back then I was out of my head half the time, and he
had
written a couple of songs on his own, it’s true, that were credited to us both. I was a mess, I didn’t turn up when I said I would, I’d got unreliable. I’d lost it.”

He was speaking more slowly now. “
On the day before he died, we were supposed to be doing a remix at Tiger Studios. I turned up two hours late. We got into an argument, then, I don’t know how it happened, me and Bryan were fighting on the floor. Jeff and Dave had to pull us apart. I stormed out, and Bryan followed and yelled at me on the main staircase. In front of a lot of people. He said,
if you come back I’ll fucking kill you
.”

Ric stopped talking. I pulled in to the side of the road and switched off the engine. I wanted to concentrate.

“Then what?”

“The next day I sobered up - as sober as I ever was in those days - and went round to see Bryan at his flat, to sort it out between us. He had a big place by Regent’s Park, in one of those wedding cake buildings. He was out, but his girlfriend was in. We shouted at each other…she slapped me, I grabbed her wrist…we ended up in bed. Bryan came back and found us.” Ric paused. “I’d never seen him so angry. Emma got scared and ran out. There were some commando daggers on the wall, Bryan collected them. He snatched one up and went for me. I thought he was going to kill me. He cut my arm, and it bled a lot. That stopped him. I took the knife away from him and chucked it across the room. He sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall, and started crying. I should have done something, I shouldn’t have left him like that, but I just walked out. I was seen leaving. In a state, blood on me.”

I waited. Ric was shaking. Eventually, he said, “Emma came back later and found him with the dagger stuck in him, dead. She told the police what had happened, and they arrested me. Phil came to see me. He said I’d get off lightly, it was self-defence. I told him I hadn’t killed Bryan. He was alive, unhurt, when I left. Phil said that would be difficult to prove. His advice was to plead self-defence, I’d be charged with manslaughter and be out in three or four years. But I didn’t kill Bryan.”

“D’you think his girlfriend did it? To save herself, maybe, if Bryan attacked her?”

“I don’t know.”

“Or Phil? Knowing he could shift the blame on to you?”

“Why would Phil want to kill Bryan? Bryan was a nice guy. My best friend. I don’t want to talk about this any more. Let’s get going.”

It crossed my mind, as I started the van, that Ric might have blanked out the memory of killing his friend, because he couldn’t bear it.

Chapter

6

*

I didn’t ask any more questions. We drove in silence, at the sedate pace the van favours, down twisting country roads, and those lovely lanes where the trees meet over your head and you’re in a green tunnel. This was prime English countryside, at the best time of year for it.

“It’s the next turning on the right,” said Ric. We were driving between a dry stone wall on our left, and a high mellow brick wall on the other side with trees visible over its top. “Those big gates.”

I turned in and stopped, facing them. Behind the engine noise it was quite quiet, just birdsong; something you notice if you live in London where it never is quiet. The blank shark’s eye of a CCTV camera watched us. Ric got out of the van. There was an entry phone, but he ignored it. He climbed up the edge of the gate with insolent ease, swung himself over the spikes at the top, and down the other side. He disappeared for a moment, and the gates started to swing open. When the gap was wide enough he slipped between them and rejoined me.

“I thought we’d surprise him,” he said. His face was grim. I realized the meeting we were on our way to might be a contentious one, and began to feel apprehensive.

We bowled down a long tree-lined private road winding between landscaped wooded areas and lawns. It was all very lush. Two bull mastiffs dashed towards us and ran alongside, barking in a way that suggested what they really wanted was the opportunity to take a chunk out of our legs, if we’d only stop and get out of our vehicle.

“They’re new,” Ric commented. “I wouldn’t talk to them, Dog, if I were you.”

We passed a big lake, and then we could see the house, a substantial Georgian pile, the drive curving round a circle of lawn to meet it. It looked like something out of the estate agent pages of Country Life. In front was a crimson Audi with its boot open, and a man loading a bag of golf clubs. He looked up at our approach and called the dogs over to him.

I parked to one side of the house. Its glossy white paint might have been finished the day before. The front door was a subtle English Heritage eau de nil, flanked by standard bay trees in antique lead planters; window boxes held miniature topiary, ivy and cyclamen. I could see gardens beyond the house, bright with flowers and the intermittent silver of a sprinkler. My van was lowering the tone. We got out, leaving Dog inside, and walked across the gravel.

“Ric?”

“Hi, Phil.”

Phil Sharott put down his clubs. He was tall, with a mild face and intelligent eyes glinting through stylish spectacles. He wore a blue polo shirt and cream chinos. I couldn’t visualize him sticking a dagger in anyone.

“You look…incredible. How did you get here? When you didn’t answer my letters I thought something had happened to you.” His eyes went to me.

Ric made the briefest of introductions. “Caz. Phil.”

Phil smiled and held out his hand. “Caz…?”

“Tallis.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” He closed the car boot. “You’d better come into the office.”

The bull mastiffs had wandered off once they realized we weren’t legitimate prey. We followed Phil through the front door, past neat lines of Wellington boots, Barbour coats and fishing tackle, into a spacious hall. It was as well-kept as the exterior. Twin staircases spiralled upwards on either side; a circular walnut table in the middle held a flower arrangement; the oil paintings on the walls were originals, and valuable.