The Singer (19 page)

So that
appeared to be that. Full of pepperoni and delicious wine, it should have been easy to drift off to sleep that night. But I couldn’t.

Instead I lay there, watching the arc of car headlights travel across the ceiling, listening to the usual midnight ravings echoing up from the street. Louise seemed happy enough with my explanation. But what was I going to tell Gavin?

Should I tell him anything?
It would be pretty embarrassing to admit the way things turned out and now that Christophe had got involved maybe it was better not to say anything at all. But then, how would I ever find out how Leith got our number? What if Louise brought it up and I hadn’t told him? How would he feel about that? And what if Christophe was wrong – the way Leith had acted in that pub, it didn’t seem like he was
going to give up easily. What had Christophe actually said to him that made him so sure?

The thoughts churned over in my mind like the red contents of my stomach. I don’t think I drifted off until right before Louise’s alarm announced that it was seven o’clock. Funnily enough though, once she had to get up and I didn’t, I slept through to midday like a baby.

It was another grim, grey day in
the hood when I finally got out of bed. I took a quick shower, wrapped myself up in my dressing gown and surveyed Camden Road from my window as I nibbled on my toast.

Across the road, a group of teenage boys were cycling down the pavement on bikes designed for their younger brothers, six abreast, pedalling as slowly as they possibly could without falling over. They all wore the same uniform –
sweatshirts with hoods pulled down low, baseball caps rammed down over the top so it was impossible to see their faces. Children brought up in front of the CCTV.

It was the middle of the day, but just like the dealers across the way on the High Street, they knew that no one was going to turn up to stop them. I watched as one of them idly flicked the strap of a handbag off a woman’s shoulder.
He wasn’t making much of an effort to nick it, this was more like a game of casual intimidation to amuse his mates.

Too scared to even look backwards, the woman grabbed it back tightly and increased her pace. Her tormentor kept dawdling behind, like an oversized, bandy-legged monkey teetering on top of his wheels, whooping and laughing at her discomfort. The woman ducked into the minimart, her
face tight and white. The gang continued on their way, cutting a casually menacing swathe through the pedestrians. Pushed a staggering old drunk out of their path and into a collection of bargain mops and buckets outside the pound shop. Gave each other high fives as the poor old bastard fell, his face a picture of utter bewilderment.

Still, at least there was no Robin Leith out there, staring
up at me from a doorway. I shivered.

I had to get out of this shithole.

Back to Kevin Holme.

I had gone through one tape, but another remained, and I slotted it into my dictaphone as the G3 powered up. Kevin had been pretty forthcoming in his own quiet way and the picture of
Vince that he’d painted so far was definitely the one that had been kept in the attic. I had to remind myself that maybe
I wouldn’t have got so far if Gavin, Vince’s pucker mucker, had been with me. So maybe it was for the best that I didn’t share all the details of the past few days with him.

‘The best year for me was that first year, when we were on the road,’ Kevin was saying as I pressed play. ‘1978. Don didn’t mess about. He got our singles out every couple of months and then we were off to promote them…’

‘Do you think Dawson took advantage of how young you were when he made that deal?’ I asked.

‘Not at all,’ Kevin almost sounded shocked by this suggestion. ‘You’ve got to look at it for the time that it was. The whole world was changing and Don had seen it before anyone else round our way. Not only that, but he was the biggest promoter in the North; he had all the contacts, all the clout. He paid
for our records and got us on tour with The Stranglers and The Damned, who were our heroes. Who else would have done that for a bunch of sixteen-year-old schoolboys? Who else could have done it? No one. No. Ethically unsound he may well have been, but Don was like our fairy godfather.’ Kevin chuckled softly at the thought. ‘Ooh heck, if he could hear me say that. He were a proper man’s man was
Don.’

So off the band went, round and round the north of England, Scotland and Wales. Getting their motorway miles in the back of a white Transit van driven by a couple of comedy Teds called Terry and Barry.

‘Course, things changed pretty quickly between the four of us. Stevie and Vince were off with the girls every night, but me and Lynton were still like the wallflowers at the school dance
in them days. Suited us, mind. We got the van to ourselves at night, which were a blessing, believe me. Worked out a lot of new songs that way…’

At this point Kevin wandered off into a musical odyssey while my mind started to stray. I glanced out of the window again, still
half expecting to see Leith glaring out of the doorway opposite. Started to wonder exactly what Christophe had said to him.

‘So did you and Lynton write most of the first album then?’ I heard myself say.

‘No, not really. We worked out a lot of the stuff and I think, because it did come from the rhythm section first, that made it different, gave us our edge. But Stevie could always come up with a good riff soon as he’d heard it. He were always playing his guitar in the van, you know what I mean? He didn’t really put
it down until after we’d played a gig. Then Vince would come up with the lyrics…’ Kevin paused. ‘Well eventually he would. ’Cos he couldn’t write them on his own.’

‘Did Stevie help him there?’ I prompted

But Kevin had gone quiet and I could recall his pained expression.

‘No. Look, probably no one else will tell you this, or maybe they’ll all tell you different, but it was actually a girl who
wrote half our lyrics. See, as well as all his groupies, Vince used to have a girlfriend, Rachel. He lived with her in Donny when they were at art college. I think she probably supported him there, because she came from a rich family.

‘Rachel was dead talented. See, that’s what you have to understand about Vince. He chose his company well. He were always surrounded by talented people, people
he could leech off…’ Kevin started to sound angry and reined himself in.

‘Any road, Rachel used to help us design our record sleeves and our T-shirts and that. And she used to write the lyrics with him. In bed, he used to say. He used to carry around a little notebook of hers and scribble things into it. Then she used to turn whatever it was he’d done into the words.’

Kevin’s voice sounded faint
on the tape. ‘She were the first person I saw Vince destroy, Rachel. It was horrible what he did to her. Worse than Lynton and all the drugs.’

‘What did he do?’ No one had told me any of this.

There was a pause. ‘If you don’t mind, I’d rather not go into that right now. Rachel’s still alive, you see, and I don’t want to say anything that would hurt her any more than she already has been. Ask
me something else and I’ll think on it.’

Kevin was much happier talking about music than people so I had to spend the rest of that side of the tape going over what studios they made records in and how great the people they toured with were. The kindness of Stranglers and other such bollocks – all good for background, I supposed, but not really what I wanted to know. Luckily, the conversation
turned dark again the moment Tony Stevens stepped into their dressing room.

‘That were when it all started going wrong, really,’ Kevin surmised.

‘Really?’ I said. ‘I thought those were the glory years, with Exile.’

Kevin chose his words carefully. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against Tony personally, he was very good to me, very good to all of us, in fact. But he treated Vince different
to the way Don did, different to everyone else. It was like he was in awe of him, like Vince were some kind of god or something. That’s what did it, really. Gave Vince
carte blanche
to do whatever he liked.

‘Tony moved us all up to London, which of course we were dead excited about at time. He put us all in this house, up the top end of Ladbroke Grove. It were a bit of a wasteland, that, at the
time. A lot of bands were squatting round there, so I don’t think he paid for it or owt, just knew the right people to break in and turn the water and gas back on.

‘We ended up living there nearly two year and in that time, this house became like Vince’s court. Like I said, he always had to have a circle of people around him, but this time it weren’t just talented people, it were the druggies
too. That were how it started to come in.’

‘But you made all your best records around this time…’ I began.

‘Yeah, and that were why. Getting away from the madness in that house made us right creative. Tony’s studios were a lot cleaner an’ all…’

Kevin was heading back to the music again. I tried to ask him about Lynton’s problems, which I knew had begun around that time, but he brushed me off,
saying that was for Lynton to answer. He didn’t have much to say about Sylvana either, except that she made Stevie really angry.

‘So was that when you had the big fight?’ I asked.

‘What do you mean?’ Kevin sounded puzzled.

I read him Mick Greer’s testimony on the making of
Butcher’s Brew: ‘Kevin Holme was hospitalised for injuries apparently caused by the rest of the band.’

‘Oh right, Mick
Greer said that, did he?’ He struggled to keep his voice steady. ‘Well, that’s typical of what it was like being surrounded by Vince’s mates. All putting the wagons in a circle around him, all the time. Yeah, all right, I did end up in hospital. But it was him who put me there, no one else.’

My own voice sounded faint now. ‘Why? Why did he do it?’

Kevin’s anger faded almost as soon as it had
flared.

‘Because he liked doing that kind of thing,’ he said sadly. ‘Look, Eddie, I think I might have gone far enough for one day. I did wonder what it would be like bringing up all this stuff again after so much time. To tell you the truth, I did think about not coming at all, but I’m glad that I did, you seem like a decent bloke. Why don’t you give me a couple of days to think on about the
rest of the stuff you’ve asked me? If you don’t mind giving me your phone number, I’ll definitely get back to you…’

I pressed the stop button with a jerk.

I’d given Kevin Holme my number. And after that, the phone calls from the nutter had begun. Was that a coincidence?

Listening back to the tape, it was obvious Kevin was still fucked up about a lot of stuff that had happened then. Had his
‘thinking on’ resulted in him deciding it would be better if
I stopped writing the book? And had he then decided to send Leith as his messenger?

I could feel my palms starting to sweat. I tried to reason myself out of this line of thinking. Kevin was the most mild-mannered bloke in the world. He’d even reproached himself on the tape when he started to sound angry. Why would he do a thing like
that? Why wouldn’t he just tell me himself? Come to think of it, why would he even mix with someone like Leith if he was trying to forget what had gone on in the past?

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was that pub I met him in – it was crawling with eighties casualties. Exactly the sort of place a loser like Robin Leith would hang out. The only place he was likely to get an audience. Maybe Kevin hadn’t
said anything. Maybe Leith had just picked it up from the rest of the Undead that I was doing a book and Kevin was doing an interview. Maybe he’d even been in the room that day…

The phone’s shrill ring cut through my paranoia like an electric shock. Oh shit, I thought. It’s going to be him.

For a moment, I sat there, transfixed, staring at the jangling piece of plastic as if it was a cobra coiled
up and ready to strike.

Two thoughts:

Robin Leith saying: ‘Storp glorifyin’ that bastid an’ let her rest in peace. Otherwise I won’t let you.’

Christophe’s soothing words: ‘That chancy bastard’s not coming anywhere near you. I promise you.’

Then, as if propelled by some unseen hand, I found myself walking across the room, lifting the receiver and saying in what I hoped was a steady voice:
‘Hello?’

‘G’day mate,’ Gavin’s voice buzzed brightly down the line. ‘What’s cookin’ in Camden?’

April 1978

‘You did what?’ Donna couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. She was possessed of the urge to smack that dozy smirk right off Sylvana’s face and watch those Bambi eyes fill up with tears. Instead, utilising all the self-control she could muster, she felt her own smile freeze on her face like a rictus grin as her brain slowly processed this wholly unwelcome
news.

That night at The Damned had not exactly turned out as she’d expected. Almost as soon as she’d got to the bar, she’d bumped into this bloke. Ray Spencer, his name was, she recognised his face from his byline in
Sounds
, where he was their top punk reporter, the very one, in fact, who’d announced the fact The Damned were going to split in the first place.

So she got talking to him and one
thing led to another, the way they do. It was too good an opportunity to pass up and she hadn’t thought the others would begrudge her that. Ray knew the band so well she’d got to watch them from the side of the stage, which was just as well, the riot that was going on in the auditorium. That
was really brilliant. She’d got backstage all right too, but that was where things had taken a turn.

The band weren’t putting it on, they were as angry as the audience. So there was no cosy chat and casual flirtation over a few beers to be had – instead the door to the dressing room was slammed in their faces as the noise of shouting and breaking glass intensified. One by one, each band member emerged to storm out into the night – Captain Sensible still without his clothes. Poor Dave had been so distracted,
he hadn’t even had the chance to look in her direction and Donna, standing powerless in the corridor with a
Sounds’
correspondent attached to her left hand, had had to quickly rethink her situation.