Last Train to Gloryhole (72 page)

As far as men were concerned, at that time it was a wonderfully talented busking musician called Dave Cronin who seemed to float Carla’s boat for her, she recalled. Though suffering dreadfully from a demeaning tic, which seemed to disfigure almost every conversation the young man had with members of the public, Carla considered the singer-guitarist both a hunk and a genius - that combination which women, especially her type of woman, often found irresistible.

The two years that followed, spent sharing Dave’s humble garden-flat in Chelsea with him, were, for the Celtic song-bird, a time of love as well as good fortune; after all, the pair seemed to complement each other in a whole host of ways, not least in their addictions. And so, whenever they chose to consider their prospects for the future, they unsurprisingly looked no further than to each other. And then one night Dave went out to get a fix, but failed to return home, and with the whereabouts of the amiable singer with Tourrettes being a complete mystery, and a body never being discovered, Carla’s ideal life was brought to a swift and abrupt end.

It was around this time that Abram Kronfield came to intervene in Carla’s life once more, and, within weeks, the singer’s magnetic pole became shifted around half a degree west, or, more accurately, to the handsome, sleek South African’s roof-top, riverside penthouse just a short distance from the south side of Hammersmith Bridge, and, unbeknown to Carla, within but a stone’s throw of the scene of Dave’s callous murder.

And so the autumn of 2006 proved to be a climacteric in Carla’s young life. Sharing a home once again, and, by definition, a double-bed, with a member of the opposing gender, at a time when her notoriety was soaring, and the public demands on her time and person had reached the sort of pinnacle that would send the average human into depression, proved more than even the feisty young singer from Wales could handle. Quite soon valium began to appear on her shopping-list almost as frequently as did face-wipes and marmalade. And then, suddenly finding herself pregnant for the first time in her life, it was hardly surprising that the poor girl ceased her recording and touring completely, and, pulling her phone from its socket, cracked up big time.

‘I’m not going to do it!’ shrieked Leone. ‘I’ve been a blonde ever since I was twelve. Why the bloody hell are you trying to make me dye my hair?’

‘But you won’t be dyeing it, sugar, just washing that blasted colour out,’ Volver told her. ‘Look - the roots are going already, can’t you see that? And didn’t you once tell me you were a natural brunette?’

‘At one time, baby, yeah. But I detest black and I always have. My entire bloody family are black. Even the tom-cat and my dad’s dying Labrador were black. Though he’s dead now.’

Volver gripped the girl’s arm, opened the kitchen-door, and silently led her over to the sink, where Steffan stood waiting, having already prepared the lotion. ‘Didn’t you say last night you loved me?’ the South African asked her.

‘And didn’t you say the same?’ she countered, smiling thinly, but trembling like a leaf.

‘But you see it’s something that I really want you to do for me, sugar’ he continued. ‘And you know - you already know - I’ll make it well worth your while.’

The girl stared into Volver’s eyes for a few moments then winced. ‘All right, then.’ Leone told him. ‘But if you find you don’t like it, babe, promise me you’ll let me dye it back, yeah?’

Projecting a taut smile, Volver nodded, then manoeuvred into position the squat, busty girl he still gripped onto, so that Steffan, resplendent now in a yellow, plastic apron and green marigolds, could force her head down into the basin which he had carefully prepared in the kitchen-sink, and, with his stubby, nail-bitten fingers and thumbs working furiously, attack with real venom the poor girl’s two-tone, wire-like, blond tresses.

‘If you’d - ouch! - if you’d only told me over the phone, babe, I’d have - I’d have got it done for you last week in
Gaston’s,
’ Leone stammered loudly, between head-wrenching jerks and repeated gasps of pain. She then let out a drum-bursting scream as Steffan suddenly turned on the cold tap, instead of the hot, in his understandable haste to finish up the despicable task.

‘What the hell was that?’ said Carla in her locked room on the floor above, where she was sitting, cross-legged, on the edge of the bed.

‘Sounded like a banshee,’ said Jake from his position by the window, from where he had long been staring out at the night-sky. ‘Or maybe the aliens out there have finally landed at last.’

Carla shook her head at his odd remark. ‘I understand the Americans are sending a robot to Mars soon,’ she told him. ‘And a few months ago they asked my people would I be interested in becoming the very first singer whose voice would get to be broadcast on another planet.’

‘Wow!’ ejaculated Jake, spinning round to face her. ‘What an honour that must have been.’

She smiled back at the boy, seeing how passionately he seemed to regard what was, for her, simply a boring topic. ‘But of course I said no,’ she told him.

‘You said no! But why would you do that?’ exclaimed Jake, his eyes wide and gleaming.

‘Well, for a start, I didn’t require the publicity that the stunt offered half as much as some others probably did,’ Carla told him.

‘Really?’ he asked, considering her comment. ‘O.K.’

‘But far more importantly, since everyone knows there’s nobody living on the surface of Mars to hear it,’ she went on, ‘then obviously no sound would actually occur, would it? You understand that, right? A friend of mine taught me that.’ Jake looked down, then nodded. ‘So, you see, to my mind, letting them do it seemed about as pointless as - oh, I don’t know -’

‘As recording your next single in the shower?’ asked Jake.

‘Well, yes, that’s a pretty good analogy,’ Carla told him, smiling. ‘Or maybe doing my one and only live gig this year on a wet Sunday night at
The Railway
pub in
Gloryhole
, a venue your average music critic would understandably be too terrified to even venture to, and where the only news-report covering it would most likely appear in the once-weekly
Merthyr Express
.’

‘That was a great idea of Volver’s, though, don’t you think?’ said Jake.

‘What was?’ asked Carla, glaring at him. ‘What was a great idea?’ She watched as Jake suddenly turned round and walked back over to the window, his head dipped this time, and not really looking out at all. ‘Are you saying - are you telling me that the charity gig for Amy was - was Volver’s idea, then? Oh my God! Oh my Great God! Yes, of course it was,’ she yelled. The singer suddenly covered her dark head with her hands. ‘And how stupid of me not to have seen that. Yes. It was by far the easiest way that he could have set me up for - for this. What a slimy bastard, eh? He took advantage of my kindness - god-dammit - knowing all the time how I knew and - and respected the singer so much, and knowing full well that I could never turn it down.’

Jake spun round and stared down at the woman, who was, by now, lying crumpled up on her side on the bed. ‘Please promise me you won’t tell him, though, Carla,’ he pleaded, slowly moving closer to the bed, then parking his bottom on the very edge of the mattress.

‘Tell him what?’ asked Carla, suddenly sitting up, a pillow grasped tightly in her hands. ‘That you just dropped this bombshell on me?’ She pondered this carefully for several seconds, then responded. ‘Listen - don’t worry yourself, Jake, I won’t.’ She moved her body round so that she could sit alongside him. ‘And what does it matter anyway that I know about it? Since there’s precious little I can do about it either way, wouldn’t you say? If the wicked devil means to kill me, then I guess he’s going to do it anyway.’

‘But he’s unlikely to do that,’ said Jake. ‘After all, to Volver this is just a money-making exercise. Nothing more, nothing less. Trust me.’

‘I would,’ she told him, ‘I would, Jake, except that - except that by now he probably realises that I know how it was him who murdered someone I knew less than a year ago. Someone very, very dear to me, as it goes. Yes, I’m absolutely certain the guy must realise that.’

‘Who
was
that?’ enquired Jake.

‘A girl, Jake. Not many years younger than me, if you want to know,’ she told him. ‘Yet another poor victim of Abram Kronfield’s intricate web of induced - no, enforced - narcotic addiction, and subsequent human helplessness, that at one time had included myself.’ She dragged her crumpled handkerchief across her weeping eyes, then continued. ‘But you know a very strange thing happened in here - in this very room - last night, Jake,’ she told him.

‘What was that?’ enquired Jake.

‘Well, I dreamed that the lovely young girl with the tight, black plaits walked right in here, bold as brass, in her red leather jacket and her Doctor Martins, and asked me where her lovely daughter was.’ Carla bit sharply into her top lip, then broke down sobbing. As she did so, the young man sitting alongside her, (who was fast beginning to seem to her like the only friend she had left in the whole world,) put his arm round her shoulder to comfort her, and began to rock her gently back and forth. Quite soon, however, Jake was forced to turn his head away from her for fear that Carla might see just how deeply her sad and heart-rending news had affected him.

Drew brought in the steaming teapot from the kitchen and placed it on the table beside the family’s Sunday tea-set. Then, through lack of seats rather than marital fidelity, he carefully parked his bottom down on the arm-rest of the easy-chair his wife Anne was occupying, her hands gripping tightly the paper-tissue she was using when the conversation regarding her deceased neighbour and his famous, but missing, daughter became too harrowing, or involved her having to recall to mind, and then to relate to everyone what she and I had gone through in the last twenty-four hours.

‘Wow! That’s some powerful brew you’ve made there, Sir,’ said P.C.Ben Thomas, sniffing the rising steam like a mountain hare. ‘I guess it’s one of those new-fangled fruit teas is it?’

Anne and Drew turned towards each other and exchanged quizzical glances that suggested they couldn’t understand what the young, bottle-blond officer was talking about. ‘

‘Yes, it’s bouquet is not unlike that of a certain plant we recently thought your boy might have been cultivating here,’ said Sergeant Foley, with a thin smile. ‘Right, Thomas? Look - I’ll just have a cup of milk myself, if it’s not too much trouble, Mrs. Cillick.’

Anne winced a little, but ceased pouring out tea for everyone, and poured the officer a cup of milk instead, and placed it on the table in front of him. ‘Here you go, Sergeant,’ she said, ‘though I can’t think what you find unusual about our
PG Tips
. You know, I imagine it’s possible you brought the queer smell you mentioned in with you. It happened once before, as I recall.’

Ignoring the woman’s implication, Sergeant Foley threw back his head and eagerly drank up all the milk in the cup, which he then placed back on its saucer, and, with his large, creased handkerchief, carefully wiped away the cream moustache that he knew he had to have deposited across his top lip.

‘Now that Mr. Davies’ body has been taken off to the morgue, Dyl,’ Sergeant Foley said, gazing in my direction, ‘and you and Mrs. Cillick here have been kind enough to describe for us in full the circumstances surrounding the old man’s death, perhaps you might like to show us the note that got pushed through their letter-box. You do have it with you, don’t you?’

‘Anne has it,’ I told him.

‘Yes, it’s upstairs,’ said Anne, rising. ‘I’ll just pop up to get it, shall I?’

I wasn’t sure why, but I stood up too, and walked over to the door as Anne went out into the hall and began climbing the staircase to retrieve it. The strange sound of scurrying bodies on the upper floor took me somewhat by surprise, and so I quickly followed her up to the landing, where we soon discovered her son Chris, accompanied by my red-faced daughter Rhiannon, sitting, huddled together on the carpeted step, holding hands, and plainly listening in to the conversation that had been going on for some time in the lounge below.

‘What on earth do you two think you’re doing?’ exclaimed Anne, shaking her head about.

‘Just listening,’ replied Chris. ‘I can do that, can’t I, Mam? I do live here, you know.’

‘Well why don’t the two of you come down and join us if you want?’ she asked. ‘You’ve got nothing to fear from the police have you?’ There was a pause during which the two youngsters gazed at each other. ‘Or have you?’ asked Anne. ‘Look - tell me Chris. What have you done?’

‘I’ve done nothing, if you want to know,’ he told her. ‘But - but there’s something in the corner of our lounge I suggest you move to another room when you go back down.’ At this Rhiannon smirked, and began giggling, and very soon Chris found that he couldn’t help but follow her lead.

‘Aisht now! Look I haven’t got time for all this silliness,’ Anne told him, as she disappeared into a bedroom to fetch the ransom-note from her bedside drawer.

‘What is it in your lounge that needs moving?’ I asked the boy quietly.

‘It’s the potted plant,’ replied Chris. ‘Mam thinks it’s from the rainforest.’

‘Well, it is in a way,’ said Rhiannon, grinning. ‘It’s certainly not native to Britain anyway.’

I shook my head at the pair of them, realising what sort of plant they must ne referring to, and why it was that the police-officers had stunned Anne by questioning her choice of scented tea.

‘It’s not in here!’ bellowed Anne, soon emerging onto the landing once again and staring at me in desperation. ‘Somebody must have moved it.’

‘Chris!’ I said, eye-balling the boy. ‘Would you happen to know anything about this?’

Rhiannon suddenly fetched the note from the pocket of her jacket and handed it to me. I smiled back my gratitude, and then opened it up to check that it was what we were after. Happily it was, and so I passed it over to Anne, who edged past the young couple and made her way downstairs again.

‘We happen to know who wrote it, Dad,’ said Rhiannon.

Plainly shocked, Chris turned and stared at her, then up at me. ‘But we’re not going to tell the police,’ he added, ‘because - well, well because.’