Dead Girl Walking (10 page)

‘They’re not just promoting in Germany, then, I take it.’

‘Naw. Economies of scale and all that. Bands can tour all over Europe with Bad Candy running the whole thing. Record companies love it: keeps things simple, and instead of negotiating with fifty different wankers you’re only negotiating with one super-wanker.’

‘What do the bands think of it?’

Spammy shrugged.

‘Bands don’t give a fuck what company’s name is on the tickets as long as there’s a crowd to play to. Plus, instead of staying in dodgy B&Bs they’ll be in corporate chain hotels that Bad Candy have done a deal with. It’s not about the bands so much these days, though.’

‘Who is it about?’

‘Exhibitions and conferences. The German firm always had a finger in that, and now it’s the major part of their business.’

‘Makes sense. Presumably they’re often dealing with the same venues.’

‘Gotta be less bother as well. I’d imagine you cannae get many folk trying tae stage-dive at a catering-industry expo. But I’m guessing that seeing it’s you who’s asking, it’s not because you’re thinking of buying shares.’

‘Well, if I was, I’d be remiss not to look at the whole picture. Is there dirt?’

Spammy gave him an arch look, like Parlabane was at it.

‘It’s the music business, and they’re called Bad Candy, for fuck’s sake.’

‘I don’t like to judge. What have you heard?’

Spammy reached for the Tabasco again, further dousing what remained of his breakfast.

‘Bad Candy was started by Brian Crossan, who had been a roadie and a tour manager going back to the seventies. The rumour was – and by rumour I mean one of those cast-iron facts that folk are inexplicably coy about mentioning – that he was also a serious drug dealer. The word was that you could always get gear on a Bad Candy tour, but you could only get it through the road crews. Nobody else got to supply the bands and the after-parties. Strictly in-house.’

‘How does that work if a band has their own roadies?’

‘Another reason the record companies like them: Bad Candy supply their own personnel, which keeps down the payroll at the band’s end. Obviously, a band’s gaunny have a trusted guitar tech and a sound engineer, maybe a lighting guy, but the tour managers, the drivers and the basic box-humpers are all Bad Candy permanent staff.’

‘And that staff controls drug sales to the musicians on their tours?’

‘That’s how it was before the Germans came in and it all went corporate.’

‘So it’s cleaned up now?’

‘Are you daft? It’s bigger than ever, just the suits don’t know or don’t care. They’ve a squeaky-clean corporate image, but the guys in the shiny offices won’t have a clue what’s happening out on the road.’

‘Sounds like they’d have a ready-made distribution network: Europe-wide, several tours out at any given time, buses and trucks criss-crossing.’

‘Don’t forget there’s the exhibitions as well now,’ Spammy reminded him. ‘You know how many folk turn up to an expo in Frankfurt or Milan? I’m not even talking about punters, but exhibitors, tech staff, IT. That’s a lot of folk looking for a wee boost to keep them peppy, or a come-down after a hard day’s kiddin’ on they like people.’

‘Bad Candy right enough.’

‘I think they call it hiding in plain sight. Never used to think that would actually work as a strategy, but see since I got this haircut?’

I was having breakfast in the hotel with Heike and Angus, just enjoying the company at that time of the morning. I was an early riser and was used to eating on my own as the only other person ever up by then was Rory, who usually went out running.

I was grateful for the distraction of having someone else at the table, but worried they might read something into my expression and ask what was up. Before they arrived, I had just come off the phone to Keith, having caught him in the car on his way to work.

‘I looked into flights,’ I told him. ‘There’s one gets into Manchester about seven. We’re not on-stage until nine, so you’d be in plenty of time for the show. Then there’s one at ten-thirty the following morning, so you’d only need to take the one morning off.’

Before Newcastle, we had played two nights in Glasgow then one in Aberdeen. Keith didn’t come to any of them. We were used to not seeing each other for a couple of weeks at a time, but we were running out of chances before I went to Europe for the best part of a month.

He worked in the oil industry, based in Aberdeen, but his job regularly took him back to Shetland, which was mostly where we met up these days. Sometimes he would come down to Glasgow over a weekend, but he preferred it if I travelled up, because he didn’t have to share me with so many people, he said. What he meant was share me with people who weren’t his friends, as it wasn’t like he got me to himself when we went back to Shetland.

The day before we played Aberdeen, he called to say he had been sent to Sullom Voe and would be struggling to get back over to the mainland in time for the gig.

It couldn’t be helped, but he had already missed the Glasgow shows because he had work in Aberdeen the next morning. I was pretty sure that some of the people at the Barrowlands gigs had driven further than he’d have needed to, and would be driving back home afterwards. Maybe at the time he hadn’t thought it was important as he’d be coming to the Aberdeen show, but when he then got sent to Shetland I started to wonder how hard he had tried to get out of it.

‘I’m sorry, Mon. I just learned that we’ve got the Norwegians coming in at lunchtime that day.’

‘You’d still be back in time. The flight gets in at eleven forty-five, and then it’s only—’

‘I can’t risk a delay. Besides, I need to prep for the meeting.’

‘You could do that on the plane. Come on, this is the last chance for us to see each other before I’m away for weeks.’

‘And whose fault is that?’

‘It’s nobody’s
fault
,’ I replied, a bit rattled that he was making this about blame. ‘I don’t make the tour schedules.’

‘No, but it’s your choice to go off with that band for weeks at a time.’

With
that band. That was how he always put it.

‘This is my career, Keith.’

‘Yeah, and this is mine.’

There was a horrible silence after that, part mutual sulk and part stand-off to see who would concede some ground. I saw Heike and Angus come into the room.

‘Well, I guess I’ll call you,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ was the extent of his reply.

I put on a smile as the others sat down, hoping that any hint of tears would just look like me being bleary-eyed.

I hadn’t expected anybody to show until departure time because it had been a late one the night before. The Newcastle hotel had a few Savage Earth Heart fans on their staff, and they kept the bar open for what turned into an after-show party.

In Angus’s case, I guessed that he hadn’t been to bed and was probably buying a few extra hours with coke before napping on the coach. Heike was either unaware of this or choosing not to make an issue of it today. She seemed a little distracted over her coffee and pastries, her eyes looking over my shoulder all the time, like when you’re talking to someone and they’re permanently scoping for someone more interesting or important.

Suddenly she got up from the table and arrowed for the door, like a hawk that had just spotted its prey.

I glanced at Angus, who rolled his eyes: here we go again.

She was gone by the time I turned around, so I didn’t see what had attracted her attention, but I could hear her voice. Conscious of being in a hotel lobby, she wasn’t doling out the hairdryer treatment, so I couldn’t make out what she was saying. Her tone was controlled but definitely terse.

A few moments later I saw Rory make his way into the dining room, his cheeks flushed with a combination of embarrassment and anger. He had enjoyed a lucky escape yesterday, but not today. Heike raised the volume enough for me to make out her last words; in fact, I think she intended them for as wide an audience as possible.

‘You know, if you want even younger, there’s people Dean can put you in touch with once we get over to the Continent.’

She didn’t come back for the rest of her breakfast. Heike, I was coming to learn, believed strongly in the impact of a dramatic exit.

Rory made a direct line for the coffee machine and returned with what looked like a quadruple espresso in a teacup. He sat down with us, in the seat next to Heike’s, and began chewing glumly on a bread roll.

I desperately hoped Angus would ask what that was about, but didn’t feel it was my place to do so myself. Angus said nothing, though what was unsaid was pretty loud.

Eventually Rory decided we deserved an explanation; either that or he just wanted to unload.

‘Fucking ambushed on my way through the lobby,’ he muttered. ‘It’s not on. It’s none of her fucking business.’

He took a mouthful of coffee, while nobody asked
what
was none of her business. Again, nobody asked it pretty loud, and I thought, For Christ’s sake, Angus, aren’t you curious? Don’t you care?

‘She’s on my case about the girl I took to my room. Poor lassie was barely out the door when the H-bomb went off. I just hope she didn’t look back.’

I remembered Rory being with two young girls in the bar and vaguely recalled him snogging one around the time my eyes were closing.

‘The wee blonde one?’ Angus asked.

Hooray! A bloody question!

‘No, her pal. The blonde one went home about half-twelve.’

‘So why’s Heike kicking off?’

‘She’s ripping into me for the girl being too young. She was eighteen and we’re in Newcastle, for fuck’s sake. That’s the local equivalent of thirty-five.’

Angus managed a laugh, but Rory’s joke couldn’t disguise the annoyance he was feeling.

Rory took another sip of espresso.

‘All right, she might have been seventeen,’ he admitted, ‘I didn’t ask to see her ID, but neither did the bar staff. So what’s it to do with Heike?’

Angus looked pained.

‘This isn’t about you, though, is it?’ he said.

Rory sighed and shook his head.

‘No, I guess not.’

Who it
was
about no one said, but I could tell they weren’t only referring to Heike. There was a flavour of ‘not in front of the children’ about their reticence, like they were sparing rather than excluding me.

I’d had enough of it, though.

‘Sorry, for those of us who missed the first two seasons, can you bring me up to speed? Who are we talking about?’

Glances were exchanged, like they were wondering what to do. I don’t know if the problem was that I didn’t have clearance for this intelligence or just that a girl was messing with the man rules. But they understood that there was no way out.

‘Maxi,’ Angus said.

So that was it. The ghost at the feast: the person nobody ever talked about, especially around me. Maxi: Alistair Maxwell, Savage Earth Heart’s original fiddle player. I think I must have known this subconsciously, hence my remark about the first two seasons.

‘What about him?’

They shared another of those troubled male glances, though mostly it was Angus I could see, and he was the one truly on the spot, as he apparently knew a lot more about it.

‘He and Heike were an item, once upon a time. Way back. Before the band, even, but the fallout had a long half-life.’

A too-long pause to take this in and a look of confusion betrayed me.

‘What?’ Angus asked.

‘Nothing. I just—’

‘Thought she was gay?’

‘Well, I’m sure I read…’

‘What, you disappointed?’ Rory asked, a little too knowingly for my liking. ‘Don’t worry: you could still be in there.’

‘As far as I know, she is,’ Angus said. ‘But these things are never simple.’

‘Hell of a thing to have on your sexual CV,’ Rory added. ‘Turned Heike Gunn to the muff side. No wonder Maxi flings it about.’

‘Flings what about?’

‘His dick. Last tour, he was nailing anything that didn’t struggle, and I’m the one taking the grief for it.’

Angus nodded.

‘He was shagging like it was the Olympic trials,’ he confirmed. ‘Heike took it sore every time she saw him going off to his room with yet another young girl.’

‘Or girls.’

‘We weren’t in these nice big hotels then, either. Some of the places, you could hear everything. Maybe Heike thought he was waving it in her face or something, I don’t know. It was two or three years since they’d been together, but you know Heike: in her mind, everything’s about her.’

‘So she fired him for
that
?’

‘No,’ Angus answered. ‘She fired him because he was turning into a liability.’

‘I think “fucking nightmare” is the term you’re looking for,’ Rory added. ‘You’d never expect it would be the fiddle player who became a rock cliché, but that’s how it was.’

‘Safe to say Maxi became less interested in the music than in the lifestyle that went with it,’ Angus said, his understatedness lending it all the more weight given he was only awake right now thanks to the cocaine in his system.

‘Less interested?’ Rory went on. ‘That’s putting it mildly. Towards the end, the only occasion you could say he left it all out there on the stage was the time he puked on it. He was wrecked all the time, late for every rehearsal, too pissed to play half the gigs he did turn up to and pouring most of his energies into making sure he was sorted for gear and sorted for girls. I mean, I once drove down to fucking Nottingham on a Sunday for a show, knowing I’d be driving home again overnight and going straight to work as I’d school in the morning, and that cunt…’

He let it go there, shaking his head like he couldn’t believe he was still getting angry about it all this time later.

‘That’s why she was ripping into me and Scott yesterday,’ Angus explained. ‘She was chewing us out to make herself feel better about the fact that she never chewed Maxi out back then. She was too intimidated by him to do anything until it was too late.’

Rory finished his espresso, looking a little calmer by the time he’d swallowed it.

‘To be fair to Heike, I think she’s feeling a lot of pressure,’ I suggested. ‘She must be stressed out at the possibility of anything going wrong now, when there’s so much at stake.’