Hunting for Crows (6 page)

DI Henderson walked out of the cinema at Brighton Marina deep in thought. It wasn’t because the film was so interesting and left him with a new way of looking at life, quite the opposite, in fact. He was racking his brains trying to think of something positive to say, as Rachel had been looking forward to seeing it for ages and would be annoyed if he dismissed it without justification.

‘Did you like it?’ he said, getting his question in before she could ask him. ‘Did it live up to your expectations?’

‘No, it didn’t. I found it overlong and I hated the way they switched the location of the story from London to L.A. as it is in the book. How about you?’

‘I haven’t read the book, as I told you before, but yes, it did go on a bit too long and I found my mind drifting at times.’ A lot of times, in fact.

She reached over and kissed him. ‘Sorry for dragging you there H, I’ll do better next time.’

‘No, you won’t. The next time it’ll be my choice.’

It was dark and the wind whipped across the wide open spaces in the centre of the Marina, swirling items of litter and bringing an instant chill to anyone not attired in warm clothing. Rather than drive back into Brighton and face the problem of finding a parking place, they walked up the stairs to The West Quay pub and entered.

Standing at the bar Henderson could see out to the army of masts and pontoons of the Marina, an impressive sight in the day but not much to see at night. It reminded him, if a reminder was required, that his boat was moored out there somewhere and he hadn’t been down to see it in a while.

It was close to the end of February and not a lot of sailing was being done by him or anyone else until the weather improved and the sea warmed, sometime in April or May. Until then, he was reassured to know it was securely tied and covered with tarpaulins to protect it from whatever Mother Nature could offer over the next few months.

The last time he’d taken
Mingary
out for a long sail was August when he took Rachel west along the South coast to Salcombe in Devon. They’d hit a purple patch of weather as it didn’t rain once and most of the evenings were warm, calm and balmy. The trip involved two firsts. It was the first time Rachel had spent more than one night on
Mingary.
In fact, she managed four nights aboard and felt disappointed when the voyage ended. It might have been something to do with her companion, but he was nothing if not modest.

The second ‘first’ was to have a first-class seat to view the Perseid meteor shower. He liked astronomy, ever since studying the rudiments of sailing as a teenager, as every sailor worth their salt needed to know how to navigate using the stars, just in case the electrics went haywire.

Perseid’s are loose rocks and other material from the tail of the comet Swift-Tuttle which the earth passes through once a year. When the rocks and dust enter the earth’s thick atmosphere, they burn creating a brief but bright streak of light across the sky, a modest fireworks display without all the crashing and banging. A boat on a calm night is the ideal place to watch something like this, almost impossible in Brighton with interfering light pollution from shops, street lights and houses.

He carried the drinks back to the table and sat down. Rachel, in common with many of the pub’s other customers, was looking at something on her mobile phone.

‘No phones at the table,’ he said, ‘remember.’

‘I didn’t know it included this table in this particular pub. Only joking, as I hate people looking at their phones when they should be talking to the person next to them. It’s just that I received a text from my mum.’

‘At ten-thirty at night? I thought they were early to-bed, early to-rise people.’

‘They are, but because Dad’s away in Japan at the moment she’s got no one to talk to.’

‘He’s always away. No wonder they pay him so much.’

She gave him a reproachful look before dropping the phone into her handbag with a practised air. ‘I suspect she’s lonely but I’ll give her a call tomorrow.’ She took a sip of wine. ‘So what did you get up to this week, H? I’ve hardly spoken to you as I’ve been so busy and you’re always in meetings.’

‘Did I tell you how I received this mark on my face?’

‘No, I was going to ask but I’m not sure I want to hear all the gory details. What was her name?’

‘Very funny, but the story’s not so gory.’ He outlined the Burgess Hill drug warehouse raid and told her about the amount of drugs seized. It had earned him a ten-second spot on
South Today
, the regional television news programme, his bashed face made more presentable for a television audience tucking into their lunch, with a dab of the presenter’s makeup. If this incident constituted the highlight of his week, he omitted to mention the meetings, the paperwork or the staff issues, as even he couldn’t make that lot sound interesting.

‘Did your fine newspaper make anything of the Barry Crow story?’ he asked.

‘Remind me. Who’s Barry Crow when he’s at home?’

‘The guy found drowned in the River Arun at Arundel trying to save his dog.’

‘Yeah, I remember the story. We first reported it as a regular news story, you know what I mean; a man drowns, body recovered, the police calling it a tragic loss of life, all that sort of thing. By the time the funeral took place, Becky had done a piece about a local hero who died trying to rescue his dog, with quotes from the RSPCA and other dog charities praising his actions. Why are you so interested? Was he on the police radar and doing something he shouldn’t?’

‘Nothing like that. He was the bass player in a band called the Crazy Crows.’

‘I remember reading the name somewhere. When were they around, as I’d never heard of them before?’

‘You’ve never heard of them because you were too busy listening to pop music when you were growing up and missed out on an essential element of your musical education. They were around in the mid-eighties, to the early-nineties.’

‘I take it when you say something like, ‘my musical education’, we must be talking about a rock band.’

‘Correct, but not any old rock band. One who looked destined for greater things but packed it all in before they got there.’

‘Interesting, as the Sunday papers are always full of gigs by bands from decades ago. According to you, they’re still playing the same clubs and halls they did in their twenties and most of them are now in their sixties. Why did this lot pack it in?’

‘Is this you feigning interest, the seasoned reporter thinking she might use it to fill a space in the newspaper sometime in the future?’

‘No, you cynic, I’m interested as it sounds like a good story.’

‘If you think you can add it to your ‘human interest’ collection of interviews and profiles, you’re a few years too late. It’s already been done.’

‘I guessed that. So come on tell me, what happened?’

Henderson had called his brother, Archie, last night and asked him what he remembered about the Crazy Crows. No longer in the Army, he was working now as an estate agent in Glasgow and, strange as it may seem for a guy who liked dressing in fatigues, carrying a gun and heading out on patrol, flogging flats and houses to people with harder accents than his seemed to suit him just fine.

Archie then trotted out a potted biography of each member of the Crows and his assessment of them as musicians. He knew a lot about the band’s leader, Derek Crow and admired him for his single-minded approach in the way he dealt with record companies and journalists, and how he marshalled the disparate factions of his band.

Henderson took a sip from his pint. ‘There’s not much to tell. As I was saying, the guy who died in Arundel used to be in the Crazy Crows, a band I liked in the eighties, still do. In fact, it was the first rock concert I took Archie to see.’

‘Do bands play places like Fort William?’

‘You are joking. Unless they play fiddles and acoustic guitars, they’ve got no chance. It was in Glasgow.’

‘How old were you then?’

‘About seventeen.’

‘So, Archie was what, thirteen? Surely you didn’t travel to Glasgow together?’

‘No, my dad took us down and while he visited his brother in hospital, we went to the concert.’

‘Were they good?’

‘They were brilliant. Now, continuing my story. Their first album wasn’t bad, a bit reminiscent of many other bands around at the time, but by the second, there were signs of a marked improvement and good things to come.’

‘Have you got them?’

‘What?’

‘The albums.’

He nodded. ‘Of course.’

‘I might give them a listen, if I can stand the racket.’

‘I’ll ignore that. By the third album they’d introduced a keyboard player, I forget his name, but he expanded the sound and improved the song writing and all the rest, and it was much better than the previous two. When they released the fourth album, they were flying. The music press were calling them the next best thing since Led Zeppelin.’

‘I take it that’s a good thing.’

‘Of course it is, Philistine.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘The keyboard player, Danny Winter, I remember his name now, was killed in an accident and afterwards the band just fell apart.’

‘Just like that?’

‘Yep, just like that. The main singer and songwriter in the band, Derek Crow–’

‘Not the guy who owns all those fuel tankers and who came to the country’s rescue in its hour of need?’

‘Him.’

‘He was in the papers only the other day, shaking hands with Rob McNaughton, our new Labour Prime Minister, for his role in averting a petrol shortage.’

‘Yes, the very man.’

‘Hasn’t he done well? I thought you said there wasn’t a story?’

‘I remember what happened now. Derek Crow was devastated by the accident and told the rest of the band he didn’t want to continue.’

‘That sounds like Derek Crow: this is what I’m doing and you lot can go and sling your hook if you don’t like it. What sort of accident killed the keyboard player? Did he take an overdose like all the rest or blow his liver on too much booze?’

‘No, but this is where the story takes on a little twist and is one of the reasons why it caught my eye in the first place. You see, the keyboard player drowned.’

Ludwigshafen, Germany - 1985

The gear from the last concert was safely stowed away, packed in vans that were now sitting immobile over in the car park. Derek and the rest of the boys were in the lounge of Friedrich Ebert Halle, drinking while waiting for the Guns of Detroit to finish their set. If it was up to Eric Hannah, he would piss-off right now, but Derek insisted they had to be nice to the folks they met on the way up, as they didn’t know when they might need their help in the future. Amen to all that.

It was brass monkeys outside as he was still wearing his stage clothes, thin cotton shirt and jeans. They felt damp and his body sweaty but it was more from the dope in his system than any form of exertion as he didn’t run around the stage much when performing.

Standing at the back of one of the vans was Fast Eddie, chief of the roadies. He was a slow-mover, but strong as an ox.

‘Hey Eddie,’ he said as he walked towards him.

‘Hey there, Eric.’

‘Is all the gear packed away?’

‘It’s all shipshape and ready to go back to good old Blighty.’

Eric leaned on the van beside the fat roadie, a man who liked curries and beer a couple of times a week.

‘I’m looking forward to going home,’ Eddie said.

‘Oh, yeah, what’s so special about it?’

‘I miss two things. A decent pint of ale and a bloody good fry-up. The fucking stuff they serve up for breakfast here, bits of meat and rolls you can’t get your teeth into, doesn’t hold a candle to a full English breakfast.’

‘You’ve got a point there, mate. How’s our little hideaway?’

‘All waiting to be filled.’ He nodded towards the open rear doors of the Transit. ‘Take a butcher’s.’

Eric pulled open the doors. The amps and guitars they had been playing at the concert about an hour ago were packed at the front with the big speaker cabinets standing behind. Three vans were being used for this tour, two full of gear and one for the band, but the difference here was the backs of a couple of speaker cabinets were off, exposing the rear of the speaker and electrical wiring.

‘When does your guy get here?’ Fast Eddie asked.

‘He’s late.’

He offered Eddie a cigarette and they both sparked up.

‘You played a blinding set tonight, Eric, you were on fire.’

‘I was, right enough. The tracks from the new album really suit a live venue, you know.’

‘The crowd could sense it. They came to see the Guns of Detroit, but I think they went away liking the Crazy Crows.’

‘If we could only bottle all the energy generated from a live performance and pour it into an album, we would sell shed-loads and get ourselves on the cover of
Rolling Stone
.’

‘I think you’re right.’

A silence descended between them, he thinking about the set tonight and if this, their second album, would be the making of the band. Eddie, on the other hand, was maybe trying to decide whether he should go back to his painting and decorating job after this tour or join another band’s road crew.

‘Is this him?’ Eddie said, nodding towards a Mercedes saloon driving fast around the car park, not easy as it was full of cars, vans and trucks as the Guns of Detroit were still on stage.

The car pulled up beside them. The rear door opened and a tall man approached them.

‘Eric,’ the man said grasping him in a bear hug. ‘It’s so good to meet you. Any friend of Heinrich is a friend of mine. Call me Max. Did the concert go well?’

‘It sure did. Your people seem to like us.’

‘This is good. Did you bring the money?’

Eric handed him an envelope and Max flicked through the pile of notes with a practised eye.

‘Good, good,’ he said. He walked to the rear of the car and opened the boot. Removing a holdall, he dropped it at Eric’s feet.

Eric bent down, unzipped the bag and rummaged through the merchandise. It was the largest consignment he had ever seen and indeed the largest he had ever bought, so he had to make sure he wasn’t being sold garden weeds and talcum powder. He pulled out a small knife, one used for trimming cables and splicing piles of coke, and pierced the bag.

Five minutes later the Mercedes screeched away, almost at the same time as fans were starting to stream out of the concert hall. Working fast, they transferred all the packages into the back of the speaker cabinets and using Eddie’s speedy battery-powered screwdriver, sealed them again.

He left Eddie to round up the rest of the road crew for the long drive back to the UK tonight, and headed back into the Friedich Ebert Halle and up the stairs to the artists’ lounge. The Guns of Detroit had finished their set after completing two encores, and there they stood, bathed in sweat and guzzling bottles of Becks Bier as if lives depended on it. There was a lot of mutual back-slapping, the Crows telling the Guns what a great band they were and the Guns doing the same to them.

It was the last date on the Crows’ mini-tour of Germany and for them it was back to the UK to start thinking about a third album, while the Guns were soldiering on through Europe bringing their own brand of blues-infused Southern rock to a new legion of fans.

For Eric, the tour was an enlightening experience, as he’d spent a lot of time talking to the Americans. They had been in the same place as the Crows were now, and within five years, they had conquered America and this month were doing the same all over Europe. Far from making him feel overawed or jealous, he desperately wanted to hear their stories and craved a piece of the action for himself.

He and the Guns’ guitarist, Henry White, spent many a happy hour trading licks and yakking about equipment and playing techniques. Looking back, it brought a smile to his face to think that even though White was a couple of years older than him and had worked as a professional musician since leaving school at sixteen, most of the tutoring came from him to the American.

He started talking to Emily Grant, the flirty, sexy wife of Peter Grant, the band’s drummer. So far, and despite his best overtures and chat-up lines, she’d still resisted all his attempts to get into her pants. To her credit, she was the only wife or girlfriend to make it out to Germany to watch them, moving her up a couple of notches in his estimation and making him want her all the more.

They left Ludwigshafen, a town near Stuttgart, around midnight, although none of them had much of a chance to see either place, and headed west. They drove in convoy, Fast Eddie driving the first van, Nathan Connelly driving the second, and Derek behind the wheel of the third. The third van was reserved for people but still it included some items of kit they couldn’t fit elsewhere, so they were fighting for space with coils of cables, effects pedals, and several unyielding guitar cases.

He was in the back with Peter, and at the front sat Barry, Derek and Peter’s wife, Emily, who was saving her train fare by hitching a ride home. It was a good job Barry was sitting there and not him, as the desire to slip a hand under her pretty, floral dress would be a temptation too far and most likely earn him a slap from Emily and a punch in the face from Pete.

It wasn’t so bad where they were, as they had a couple of mattresses to sleep on, but he hoped the gear was well tied-up, as he didn’t fancy being woken from a dreamless kip with a guitar or an amp bouncing off his head. He bedded down and in combination with the number of Becks he had consumed earlier plus a small toke from the new consignment, he fell asleep almost immediately.

He woke with a start, not because gravity had set loose a piece of kit, but on hearing a loud noise. He waited a second or two for his groggy head to clear before sitting up. The van was no longer in motion and yes, he could hear shouting outside, suggesting something was going on; he hadn’t imagined it.

‘What’s the beef out there, Pete?’

Peter Grant stretched. He didn’t seem to sleep much and even though he did the most physically demanding job in the band, he was still the fittest and healthiest of the bunch. Now, how did that work?

‘I dunno, some ruck about waiting too long or something.’

‘Where are we?’

‘In Dover, in a long bloody queue waiting to go through Customs.’

‘Christ, did I snooze through Germany and a Channel crossing? That has to be some kind of record.’

‘You did, and boy do you make some strange noises in your sleep.’

‘Yeah,’ he said as he got up, careful to avoid hitting his head on the low ceiling, and tensed tired muscles. ‘I must have been dreaming I was humping your wife.’

Pete flexed those big drummer arm muscles and a few other ones on his face.

‘Only in my sleep mind, nothing else.’

‘Better not be,’ he said through gritted teeth.

‘Bloody hell, when you put on a face like that, you could play a villain in one of the Bond movies instead of playing drums in a rock band. I’m going out to see what’s going on before you explode.’

He pushed open the doors. Before he could adjust, he was assailed by a combination of fresh sea air, the bright sunshine of a Dover morning and the rumble and grind of a traffic queue, making him flinch.

A long line of vehicles, including their three vans, were waiting to be cleared by Customs but at least they were near the front of the queue. The shouting he’d heard was an argument going on between a Customs officer and a lorry driver, the latter complaining about the time he’d spent waiting and the Customs guy giving him back as good as he got.

He wandered up the line to Fast Eddie’s van as the Customs guy seemed to lose the plot with the mouthy lorry driver and decided to give his load the complete tooth-comb treatment.

‘Christ, we’re gonna be here for ages,’ he said as he scrounged a light from Eddie.

‘That’s what you get for giving a bloody jobsworth too much lip. Be nice to the buggers is my approach.’

‘Yeah, you can be nice as ninepence because all our stuff is sprayed with Eddie’s custom-made pooch fooling perfume.’

‘Too true brother, it never fails.’

Eric yawned. He wasn’t a morning person, never had been. It was an old rock cliché to think all musicians slept during the day and worked at night, not getting to bed until regular folks were heading off to work. For him, there was nothing rock ‘n’ roll about it. He preferred working this way and often came up with his best guitar licks at three or four in the morning, stoned out of his skull and a long way from a warm bed.

He wandered back down the line of cars, buses and trucks to talk to Derek, who was stretched out in the passenger seat with a snoozing Emily beside him, her head on his shoulder, the jammy bastard. Barry sat behind the wheel and the taciturn bass player with the voracious sexual appetite acknowledged his pleasant salutation with a barely perceptible nod.

‘We sail through border controls in France and Belgium,’ Derek said by way of greeting, ‘and get stuck here. No bloody wonder Britain’s in such a mess. I’ve got a meeting with a promoter at one and don’t think I’m gonna make it.’

‘What’s that about?’ Eric asked, only mildly interested, as he would willingly play anywhere the band were doing a gig and didn’t care if it was called Aberdare, Aberdeen or Aachen.

‘He came to one of the gigs in Germany and wants to put a tour together with us headlining.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘No, straight-up.’

‘Fuck me, it’ll be brilliant. Hang on, we’re not heading back to the Bramley Scouts Hall or that dive of a pub we played in Brum when a drunken bastard came on stage and thumped me?’

‘Nah, don’t be daft. He says he’ll get us into decent-sized venues like The Dome in Brighton and Sheffield City Hall.’

‘Yeah, and there will be us strutting our stuff to big empty spaces.’

‘No chance. Watch out mate, we’re on the move.’

He stepped back to see the mouthy truck driver drive his big truck away, clearly not pleased with the treatment he’d received from the gentleman from HM Customs and Excise if a middle finger out of the window was anything to go by. The cars, vans, and trucks in the queue all edged forward and Fast Eddie was next.

Three of them were in on the deal: him, Fast Eddie and another roadie, Smelly Dave. He and Fast Eddie could represent England, an Olympic pair in the pill-popping and weed-smoking events, but Dave was too fond of buying the latest hi-fi gear and records, a way more expensive habit than dope, and as a result he was only interested in the money.

If Customs found the dope, they would claim it must have been there all this time as the cabinets didn’t belong to them, they were rented from a dodgy outfit in East London. At the very least, it would encourage the cops to raid their place which would serve the bastards right as they were always rude to him.

Eddie opened the van’s doors and the Customs guy looked in. ‘Fucking stinks in here,’ the jobsworth said. ‘What have you guys been doing?’

‘Had an oil leak,’ Eddie replied, his sad, hangdog face devoid of mirth. ‘I thought we’d fixed it but maybe it’s started up again.’

An oil leak? Where the hell did he get that little belter from? Their kit was either electric or acoustic and didn’t require more than a dab of WD40 now and again to loosen a hinge or free a stiff tuning peg. Nothing he could think of needed oil, except maybe Fast Eddie’s muscles and joints after sleeping outside in the van when he’d had a few too many.