Kill Your Friends (33 page)

“What is it?” I say, but he turns away from me, finger in the
ear, still listening. This can’t be happening. We were outselling
the nearest record by…

He hangs up and turns to me, his moutkhanging open.

“Tony Parker-Hall’s committed suicide.”

The sensation of relief I experience is tidal, almost
orgasmic.

Finished. Game Over. See you later, Sooty.

“Thank fuck for that” almost comes out of my mouth but I manage
to say, “Oh my God,” because I suppose that’s the kind of thing
you’re meant to say.

♦

Bangkok Airport on New Year’s Eve.

Ross, Leamington and I are knocking back the local brew, which
is called—brilliantly—Chang. It’s barely lunchtime and already half
a dozen fat, brown empties are lined up on the Formica tabletop.
We’re Chang’d up to the max and waiting for Trellick, whose flight
out from Heathrow has been delayed. It’s a billion degrees outside
but we’ve managed to wedge ourselves right under the air
conditioner, so we’re laughing.

I feel great, tanned and fit. We’ve been here over a week,
taking it easy down at Koh Samet. Beer and beach. Books and
Discmans. Backgammon, torn yam gai and floating in the
body-temperature ocean. No ostros. No class As. No quadruple
Rockschools. This is, of course, all set to change with Trellick’s
arrival. Later today we fly down to Phuket for a fuck-off party;
tonight is when the real shit begins. It’s a boiler-fest down
there—clean-tasting Scandinavian backpackers a go go. We’re also
planning to pop into the human toilet of Pattaya and catch a few
shows: bare-knuckle midget boxing and teenage ostros firing
ping-pong balls, goldfish and frogs out of their cunts; pulling
razor blades, butcher knives, landmines and Christ knows what out
of their arses.

We’re larging it.

“Any more for any more?” Leamington asks. We both give him a
thumbs up and he pootles off towards the bar, weaving a little.

I’m leafing through a week-old copy of the
Guardian
. Tony
Blair is larging it too. He’s in the Seychelles, staying at some
massive fuck-off gaff where (apparently) they filmed the soft-porn
flick
Emmanuelle
. They reckon Tony will have spunked seven
and a half million quid on travel and entertainment in his first
year in power. Meanwhile, back home, he wants to slash benefits to
single mothers. Top lad, Blair.

There’s a little piece about the upcoming Brit Awards. I want to
be back in London for 12 January, for the nominations at the Cafe
de Paris, where Songbirds are going to be nominated for Best
Single. I gave an expansive interview to
Music Week
about
the girls just before I left London. I said, “I’ve dealt with a lot
of bands, but these girls are the best songwriters I’ve ever worked
with.” And I said, “They’re real music fans. Trust me. They can
give you the bar codes on their record collections.” Then, refuting
a slight accusation that they were just another manufactured pop
act, I said, “You wouldn’t believe the IQs of these girls. No one
tells them what to do.” Then, finally, I looked the journalist in
the eye and, with an absolutely straight face, I told him:
“Songbirds will be around for a long, long time.” Oh yes I did.

We’re putting the second single out end of February, album
beginning of March. There’s two more potential singles to come
after that. Bish, bash, bosh.

I’ve got another big album shaping up for next year too. You
won’t believe it, but the press have gone mental for the Rage story
we leaked out: the whole ‘a crippled man dislocated from his
environment communicating through electronica’ bullshit I drummed
up with the press office went down a storm. He’s being perceived as
some kind of drum’n’bass Stephen Hawking. Front covers with
NME,
Muzik
and
Mixmag
. They don’t know he finished the record
months before he got quadra-spazzed. And what does it matter that
the record’s an unlistenable pile of shite? He’s riding his steel
wheelchair across a massive wave of PC goodwill. Are you going to
be the journalist who sits down and tells this poor, drooling mess
that his record sucks? No one listens to this sort of album anyway,
do they? You buy them and stick them down on your Habitat coffee
table so that the cretins at your dinner party think you are on it.
I’m not even releasing a single. We’re spending fuck all on
marketing. It’s all being done via press and word of mouth. I
reckon we’ll just about ship gold, which is little short of a
miracle considering what we had to work with. Rage. The last turkey
in the fucking shop sprouts some wings.

Ross drains his beer. “Ahhh,” he yawns contentedly, “it’s a hard
knock life.” I light a duty-free Marlboro as Leamington reappears,
three fresh Changs tinkling together on a plastic tray.

“Hey, look at this,” he says, slapping down a copy of the
Sun
he’s found. It’s dated 28 December, three days ago.
Leamington flips as fast he can through the tired, soggy pages
until he comes to the half-page story. There’s a photograph of
Ellie Crush in a black dress and sunglasses. She’s a little out of
focus, it’s clearly been taken with a long lens. Above the
photograph, the headline: ‘ELLIE GRIEVES FOR SUSPECTED POP
PAEDO’.

We all hunker round and read the story. It’s the usual
guff—“
ace record industry talent spotter…Brit winner
Crush…police seized computer…sacked…six-figure
salary
…
charges later dropped…
”

Towards the end there’s a quote from Parker-Hall’s father, also
Anthony, a solicitor, 57, from Hampstead, north London: “
Anthony
was innocent and we know we will clear his name. Now we hope we can
be left alone to mourn our son
.” There’s no photo of him and I
wonder what Anthony Senior looks like.

“Shocker,” says Ross, setting his beer down, “absolute
shocker.”

We’re all quiet for a moment. “Do you think he was guilty?”
Leamington says. “I mean, topping your fucking self? If you were
innocent surely—”

“I can’t see it,” Ross says, “I mean, they dropped the charges,
didn’t they? Now, if it had been Derek…” He trails off, leaving us
to join the dots ourselves, to make our own solid connections
between irons and paedos and demi-paedos, (
Queer + cocaine ×
Internetaccess
…)

“What do you reckon?” Leamington asks, turning to me.

Gak, chang, nose-up, bag, beak, charlie, krell, powder,
chisel, bump, posh, bugle, sniff, skiwear
…

What do I reckon? I pour more Chang into my plastic cup and the
foam volcanoes up, lathering down the sides and running over the
Sun
, darkening the paper, bleeding into the blurry
photograph of sad-looking Ellie. He was buried at Kensal Rise
cemetery, at the corner of Harrow Road and Ladbroke Grove, near the
William the Fourth. Good chips in there. Nice Bloody Mary. Crush’s
face disappears beneath the expanding circle of golden bubbles. I
wonder if Parker-Hall ever fucked her? Surely to Christ he must
have? I wonder if he fucked Marcy from the Lazies? Because this is
something that’s definitely on my ‘to do’ list for next year. It’ll
be tough as she hates my fucking guts. But that may all change now,
given that I’m her boss. We’re meeting soon.

To discuss producers and recording budgets and the like. I’m
thinking Steve Albini.

Woodham called the office just once after that night, to see if
there had been any interest in his songs. I didn’t speak to him. Jo
gave me the message. I didn’t bother calling him back. I think
we’ve definitely reached an understanding there.

We stayed in Bangkok last night, at the Ramada. This morning I
got up bright and early and strolled to an Internet café near the
hotel. I tapped into Rebecca’s Hotmail account (her password,
obtained during a little good-natured pillow talk, is—fairly
unbelievably—“Steven”) and sent the following email:

From:

[email protected]

To:

stevens@******records.co.uk

Subject:

I’m sorry…

Steven—I’m so sorry, but I won’t be coming back to
work after the holidays. I think you’ll understand. What with Roger
and losing the baby and everything, I’m just really messed up right
now. I need to be on my own for a while. Sorry to leave you in the
lurch, especially when you’ve been so understanding this year.

Love R x

Back home, after the holidays, I’ll be forced to tell people
that Rebecca was pregnant with Waters’ child. She didn’t know what
to do, whether to have it or not. She confided in me. Then she had
a miscarriage. She was depressed…

Other than in these very practical terms I don’t think about
Rebecca much. And I’m definitely not planning on fucking Jo in a
hurry. I mean, there’s a level of fallout, of grief, you’ll take
from doing a secretary—the frosty silences, the substandard work,
her sporadic dashes to the bathroom with the red eyes and the
balled Kleenex—and a level of grief you won’t take. (Like, for
instance, a ketamine-addled copper dismembering a fucking corpse in
your en suite.)

“I don’t know,” I say finally, shaking my head, “you just don’t
know about people, do you? Anyway,” I yawn, turning the page, “fuck
him. One less guy we have to compete with.”

“Christ, Steven,” Leamington says, “you
are
hardcore.”

I
am
hardcore. I am the fucking King.

“OI! OI!” Ross shouts and I turn round.

About seventy yards away, I see Trellick appearing out of the
handful of International Arrivals. He comes towards us pushing a
trolley. He hasn’t seen us yet and he has that air about him that
people do when you see them before they see you; alert, scanning,
vulnerable, self-conscious.

“OI!
LOSER!
” I shout and a few Thai heads turn.

He sees us now and his face lights up reluctantly. He’s grinning
as he trundles towards us through all the people, using his elbows
to keep the trolley on line as he gives us a really stupid thumbs
up. People, mostly Thais in their shitty sub-Western
dress—tracksuit trousers and ‘The Pope Smokes Dope’ T–shirts, like
Scousers from 1988—get out of his way, darting and dodging around
his trolley, all smiling their heads off and it strikes me that the
airport is pretty busy considering it’s New Year’s Eve, but then I
remember that the holidays don’t mean much out here because they’re
all Buddhists. I mean, they don’t give a shit about anything, do
they?

EOF