The Pleasure Quartet (11 page)

‘Fingal’s Cave’ was about to play again for the fifth or sixth time and Noah switched the system off with his remote as he leaned back in the black leather chair and swivelled round to face the desk again. He picked up the CD box and pulled out the liner notes. They were succinct. Just credits.

He had to look twice to learn the name of the violin player.

A woman.

Summer Zahova.

The name rang a faint bell, but he had never followed the classical scene closely.

Someone who’d had her hour of fame some years back, he thought.

He delved into the old files, buried somewhere in his computer’s memory, those concerning this set of recordings. Damn, she wasn’t signed to the label! Had been a free agent at the time, allowed by her own record label, an essentially classical outfit owned by a rival corporation, to play with Viggo and the guys as a one-off against a minor participation in any of the recording’s profits. Which, of course, had not been forthcoming.

Was she still signed with them, he wondered?

He returned home to his Maida Vale flat. Called for a takeaway sashimi. The music he had been listening to still reverberated inside his head, in turn full of languor or aggressive and savage. Mad thoughts ran in conflicting streams through his mind. Reissue the album with some serious money behind it? Contact the artist and lure her to his label, work with her on something new and equally powerful?

He pulled out his laptop. Searched for her. Found hundreds of hits. Rather than open up random links, which mostly appeared to be reviews of concerts, Noah called up images. Expecting a staid-looking matron in evening dress, he felt his throat tighten when a page full of photographs of Summer Zahova materialised. Each image featured a striking splash of red. The Medusa-like curls of her long hair always the centre of gravity, often matching the russet colour of the violins she was holding or playing.

She was no middle-aged typical classical artist. She was young and marketable. Undoubtedly. In most of the images of Summer playing on stage, she was wearing short black dresses, barely reaching her knees. Long legs tense, body captured in trance, her gaze distant as she played. Even when she was wearing demure evening gowns, her provocative playing stance was unmistakably sexual.

Noah felt his throat go dry.

That flaming hair.

Those eyes, so full of craving and, he also felt, unnameable sadness.

The way that, in every picture, she stood taut, unsmiling, remote, every invisible nerve in her system on alert, in quiet provocation, her body lacking in self-consciousness, screaming out its availability, a willing captive of the music she was playing.

Just as he had felt listening to her on the CD earlier.

A further search established that she had issued a handful of albums, all purely classical. It had been some years since the last, though. Why?

He quickly proceeded to download them all.

Noah managed to make contact with Summer’s label and discovered she was, as he hoped, no longer under contract to them. She had, it appeared, not been willing to renew beyond the initial number of albums she had committed to.

‘Any particular reason?’

‘Wanted a break from recording. A difficult young woman, she was.’

‘I can’t find any trace of any public concert appearances since, either,’ Noah continued. ‘Just retired?’

‘I think she got involved in some experimental theatre, a play that enjoyed a short run. But it was all a bit hush-hush,’ his interlocutor added. ‘Nothing was recorded, to the best of my knowledge. I heard there was something a bit off about the whole thing, though. She was part of the play as well as its musical director. There was a whiff of scandal in the papers, some reviewers thought it sordid. Tell you what, we were a bit relieved that she went her own way. Always felt there was something of an unexploded bomb about the girl. Like that collaboration with Viggo Franck she was so adamant about. Rock and classical just don’t mix well, do they?’

‘Did she have representation?’ Noah had no wish to argue with the other executive and his conservative attitude.

‘Let me look it up. I wasn’t directly involved with her . . .’ A moment passed. ‘Ah, here we go: her agent is Susan Gabaldon. A good woman.’

Noah arranged a meeting with Susan.

‘She just disappeared. Haven’t heard from her in ages. Had a private gig with some organisation I’d never come across before, but who made an offer she couldn’t refuse, Summer told me. But when that engagement came to an end, she said she needed time off, turned down all further touring offers and just buzzed off somewhere without a word of warning. Sad,’ the business-suited woman who had once managed Summer Zahova’s musical activities informed Noah.

‘So you have no idea how to contact her?’

‘No. Not even had a postcard, let alone a courtesy phone call to say how she is getting on, wherever she might be. Could be she returned to New Zealand. It’s where she came from. And in the meantime, what’s left of her career is going downhill fast. People forget so quickly, you know.’

‘Sometimes, there’s a mystique in being invisible,’ Noah mused. ‘Could be a deliberate move. Absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that . . .’

‘Not with Summer,’ Susan said. ‘She was never a planner. Her emotions ruled her. A somewhat tempestuous private life, if I might be indiscreet.’

‘Tell me more,’ Noah said.

‘I’d rather not, but I’m sure you’ll come across many rumours. I wouldn’t even disbelieve all of them,’ the agent remarked with a wry, resigned smile.

‘Artists live in their own world, different standards. In the rock ’n’ roll world a touch of madness has always proven productive, I’ve found.’

‘Depends what your standards are. Anyway, your label has never been into the classical business, Noah, so why the sudden interest?’

‘Just curious. Had a listen to the album she recorded with Viggo Franck and his band. Found it unexpectedly moving . . .’

‘Maybe you should be in touch with him. He might have heard from Summer?’

‘You’re right. Although maybe a bit awkward as he’s also taking a break from music. Could there be a connection?’

That night, Noah kept perusing the images of Summer he had found on the internet.

She captivated him. There was no denying the fact.

The way her face now fitted the sounds of her music.

And the fire splash of her hair.

All of a sudden, he recalled again with terrible sharpness those crude photographs of the gangbang in the sauna he had stumbled across on his screen that night in New York.

The same unforgettable shade of hair.

The same pale skin.

The similarity in the shape of the woman’s chin, from the little he could now remember of it.

Noah shivered.

‘Why all the curiosity over our red-haired friend, Noah?’ Viggo’s live-in partner asked.

Viggo had been happy enough to discuss his musical dealings and friendship with Summer Zahova, but Lauralynn, who was stomping towards Noah to refill his cup from the filter jug she held in one hand, was obviously suspicious. ‘Is there something that you haven’t told us?’

Her fingernails were filed long and sharp, and painted a glossy blue-black. Noah found himself practically cowering back in the profusely cushioned bucket seat that he was ensconced in as she gazed at him, her Amazonian form cased in a pair of high-cut, wet-look leggings with a long, industrial-style exposed zip that ran provocatively from the top of her waistband down to the base of her crotch and a plain white, cropped T-shirt that exposed an inch of her flat torso and was tight enough to indicate that she was not wearing a bra. She was pure rock chick; he’d seen the style often enough on young groupies at concerts, or new front-of-band singers, usually still struggling to define their branding through their wardrobes and evince a suitable degree of sex appeal and fuck-you attitude in a Debbie Harry way that few managed to pull off.

Lauralynn was undeniably both sexy and sexual, and her sharp, calculating stare made Noah feel as though he’d gone back in time fifteen years or so and was being interrogated for teenage misdemeanours by his erstwhile headmistress, a domineering woman named Ms Abbott, whose no-nonsense attitude was made all the more terrifying by the nipped-in pencil dresses that she wore, which made no secret of her long, shapely legs and ample cleavage and gave every boy in the school a hard-on when she called him into her office to be simultaneously aroused and berated.

Noah squirmed in his chair, hoping that Viggo would return quickly from the errand that Lauralynn had sent him on, to search for any further demo tapes that might never have been passed along to his management and were likely to be tucked away in his studio from the occasions on which he and Summer had jammed together.

The lanky rock star had meekly acquiesced to Lauralynn’s suggestion without so much as a sigh of irritation, even though he had already mentioned that all of his files had been put away into storage since he had decided to take a break from recording, while he worked on getting his mojo back and figured out what direction to move in next. Making Noah wonder what exactly was the status of Lauralynn and Viggo’s relationship. Viggo wasn’t what he knew some would crudely term ‘pussy whipped’, and neither did his blonde girlfriend have that tired and resigned attitude about her that he recognised in women who proclaimed to be exhausted from browbeating their other halves. They were playful with each other and seemed to revel in their respective roles.

Noah had been engaged in conversation with the two of them at the gated mansion they shared in Belsize Park for the past hour, sipping coffee and snacking on a plate of peanut brittle that Viggo had prepared, after proudly informing him that baking patisserie had become a new hobby over the past few months during his sabbatical away from music. The fact didn’t show on either of their figures. Viggo was as thin as a rake, and Lauralynn certainly voluptuous in shape but not even close to Rubenesque. Over-indulging on the bowl full of sweet confection had caused Noah to feel faintly sick. He had still not managed to glean any particularly useful information from either of them about Summer, since Lauralynn kept cutting Viggo off short before he had a chance to reveal any interesting nuggets of gossip, leading Noah to suspect that the whole trip to meet them would prove to be a waste of time. Then Lauralynn ordered Viggo out of the room, an orchestrated move to speak with Noah alone, he was certain.

‘I assure you,’ Noah repeated, ‘it’s just about the music.’

Lauralynn paused. Assessed him with that shrewd stare of hers, as if she was absorbing every inch of him and then formulating a judgement on his character.

‘Well,’ she said at last, filling his mug to the top and stepping away, ‘I don’t believe you in the slightest, frankly, but that aside, you seem like a decent enough person.’

Noah was unsure whether or not she meant him to be flattered. He wished that she would sit down.

‘You’ll forgive my reticence,’ she continued, ‘to provide you with much in the way of details. Summer is my friend. One of my closest friends.’ A wave of sadness swept over her features.

‘Of course,’ he agreed. ‘I fully understand. And you must know, my position being entirely mercantile, that I have absolutely no interest in harming her reputation in any way, or god forbid, actually harming her. I run a record label, and just investigating left-of-field possibilities.’

Lauralynn nodded. An affirmation of some modicum of trust in him, at last.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘the damage to her reputation was done long ago, but I’m sure you know that already. You cannot have come this far in researching Summer Zahova without stumbling across some of the rumours. Mind you, any publicity is good publicity, as they say. I’m not sure that any of the stories circulating ever did her career any harm. Probably quite the opposite. Perhaps even part of her appeal.’

Noah remained impassive, politely waiting for her to continue.

‘I really don’t know where she is,’ Lauralynn explained. ‘And if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. Summer has had a hard time over the past few years, she lost someone close to her . . .’

‘Oh. I’m sorry to hear that.’ He waited for her to elaborate on the circumstances, but she didn’t.

‘She’s always had a tendency to be self-destructive, passionate. You must have seen it before, working in the industry.’

Noah nodded. ‘Stereotypes about creative sorts and musicians abound,’ he agreed, ‘but there’s some truth to them.’

‘Well, Summer’s wild side always led her to seek out men. She found some solace in sex in the way that others drink or take drugs. Not an addict as such. At least, I don’t think so, but she always had very specific cravings in that regard that some would consider unsavoury.’

Lauralynn’s features had now taken on a definite leer. She almost winked at him.

‘Go on,’ he encouraged.

‘She attracts others to her who seek out the same extremes, albeit on the opposite end of the spectrum. Always has done. Now, there’s no shame in any of that; I’m partial myself to the sort of activities that would make some people faint in shock, probably, but the problem with Summer was that she never had the sense to exercise her demons in the confines of a healthy, mutually enjoyable kinky relationship. Or a one-nighter, whatever. There’s plenty of clubs around, groups, where people indulge, you know.’

Noah was aware of such places, of course, but had never considered attending one or entertained any thought about the goings on there in a serious kind of way.

‘No, Summer liked to take things one step further. To play with risk more than she ought to. Especially when she was feeling down. I had hoped she’d grow out of this kind of behaviour, but I suspect she hasn’t and maybe she never will. We all have shadows,’ Lauralynn explained, ‘some of them are more powerful than others, I guess.’

Again, that calculating stare, as if she could see right through him, read his thoughts, knew exactly the kind of things he fantasised about. Understood his desire and his shame.

‘And you think she’s on some kind of . . . sex binge?’ he asked. ‘Now? That’s what has led her to disappear?’