The Sound of Broken Glass (6 page)

When they'd completed their arrangements, and Duncan had seen the boys off for the short walk down Lansdowne Road into Arundel Crescent, he found himself wondering what he and Charlotte would do with the rest of their day.

Kitchen and Pantry beckoned, but he told himself the café would be mad on a Saturday, jammed with tourists and marketgoers.

Then he realized he'd been given an opportunity to pay a much-needed and too-long-delayed visit. He dialed a number stored in his phone. “Louise, it's Duncan. Can Charlotte and I come to see you today? There are some things we need to discuss.”

By eleven o'clock, Andy was standing on the curb in front of his Hanway Place flat, his Strat in its case, watching for Tam's silver Mini Cooper.

He'd debated about the guitar. He had different guitars for different sounds, and when he knew what he'd be playing in a session, he chose the guitar accordingly. But today he had no idea, and the Fender Stratocaster was both his oldest electric and his favorite. And if he had to admit it, the Strat was his security blanket—the instrument that felt like an extension of himself.

His favorite amp, however, was still in the back of George's van. He'd meant to ask George if he could borrow the van this morning, but things had been so frosty between them after the gig last night that he'd accepted Tam's offer of a lift back to the flat, and then agreed to let Tam drive him to Crystal Palace today.

Tam had reassured him about the amp. “They'll have plenty of equipment in the studio, and you'll not want to be carrying your Marshall up those stairs. Trust me, laddie.”

And Andy had had no choice.

Peering down the narrow street, he transferred the guitar case to his left hand and flexed the fingers of his right. His knuckles were a bit bruised and swollen, but he'd followed Tam's advice, icing and elevating his hand as soon as he'd got back to the flat last night. He'd practiced a bit that morning, and although it hurt, his playing didn't seem to be impaired.

But he didn't want to think about the injury, especially not now, when he was feeling more nervous by the minute.

Why the hell had he agreed to this? Why had he pissed off his mates so badly that whatever happened today, the band was fated to split up? And why had he ever thought he could go back to Crystal Palace?

There was a swish of tires on the wet tarmac and Tam's Mini came round the tight corner from Hanway Street. When Tam came to a stop, Andy walked round the car, stowed the guitar in the backseat, and climbed into the front.

“All right, lad?” asked Tam, shooting him a concerned look as he put the car into gear.

“Yeah. Fine.” Andy didn't meet his eyes.

“Bloody traffic. Oxford Street on a Saturday. Can't think why you stay in this dump.” Tam was on vocal autopilot. He never failed to say that he didn't understand why Andy stayed in the flat, and Andy never failed to say that he couldn't afford to move anywhere better.

But Tam was right. He could find someplace in Hackney, like George, or Bethnal Green, like Tam and his partner Michael, or anywhere, for that matter, out of the dead center of London. The truth was that he loved being in the middle of the hustle and bustle. And he loved being able to walk to the guitar shops in Denmark Street, which had drawn him like magnets since he'd been old enough to take the bus into the city.

“I've got room for my guitars and my cat,” he said.

Tam grinned. “Barely room to swing the bloody cat. What you see in that beast, I don't know.”

“He's my mate, is Bert,” Andy said, relaxing into the familiar argument, as he knew Tam intended. Tam, who had German shepherd dogs, pretended to have no use for cats, but whenever he came round the flat Andy caught him giving the cat a surreptitious rub behind the ears.

Coming back late from a gig one night, Andy had found the tiny, shivering kitten in the middle of Oxford Street. There'd been no one else to help, and no other place to take him, so Andy had tucked the kitten inside his jacket and carried him back to the flat. That tiny bit of fluff had grown into an enormous tomcat the color of Dundee marmalade, and now Andy couldn't imagine life without him.

“You're sure that hand is okay, son?” Tam asked, when they'd crossed the river at Waterloo.

“It's fine, Tam, really.”

Tam let him be after that, and Andy was glad of the silence. He was tired, and after a bit he almost dozed in the warmth of the little car. When he opened his eyes and blinked, they were climbing Gipsy Hill.

He sat up, his nerves kicking in again as they reached Westow Hill and the triangle of streets that formed the crest of Crystal Palace. This studio was relatively new, and he didn't know it, although he remembered the steep little lane that dropped from Westow Street. He looked away as they circled past Church Road and the White Stag.

From Westow Street, Tam turned right. He bumped down a narrow way that was more of a passage than a lane, then turned left at the bottom, pulling into a small car park. To the west, the hill dropped away towards Streatham, a gray palette of rooftops seen through the delicate filigree of bare trees.

On the other side rose a higgledy-piggledy jumble of buildings, flanked by a wall with the most garish graffiti Andy had ever seen. No, not graffiti, he realized, but rather a mural with weird creatures depicted in bright, primary colors. It looked as if it had been painted by a giant alien child, and he smiled for the first time that day.

“There's a guitar shop,” he said, spying the sign tucked into the lower level of one of the brick-faced buildings.

Tam popped the door locks and climbed out of the car. “Best keep you out of there, then, hadn't we? It's there we're going.” He pointed towards a steep flight of open metal stairs beside the building, and Andy saw what he'd meant about the amp.

“Up there?”

“First level,” said Tam, consulting a note as Andy retrieved the Strat from the back of the Mini.

“Good God.” Andy stared. “How'd they get the equipment up there?”

“Stronger backs than yours or mine, I expect.” Tam winked at him and led the way.

Andy held the railing in one hand and the guitar in the other. When they reached the first landing and ducked into a dark doorway, Andy felt like he'd stepped into a hobbit hole.

Caleb Hart was waiting for them in a tiny, cluttered anteroom.

He shook Tam's hand, but not Andy's, which suited Andy well enough. He gave Hart credit for knowing that guitarists could be tetchy about having their hands touched.

“I've booked us three hours in studio one, but first an hour in rehearsal space, so you can get a feel for each other.” Hart glanced at his watch. “Poppy's running a bit late. Saturday trains.”

“From London?” asked Andy, frowning. He knew the train from Victoria like the back of his hand. It usually ran regularly and unimpeded on Saturdays.

“Twyford to Paddington.”

“Twyford? Why the hell is she coming from Twyford?” Andy felt Tam shift uncomfortably at his tone, but it was too late to call it back.

“Poppy lives outside Twyford,” said Hart. He glanced at Tam as if wondering whether there was some miscommunication. “Her dad's a vicar in a village near there.”

Andy just stared at him for a moment before he found his tongue. “She lives with her parents?” He turned to Tam. “She's a bloody schoolgirl
and
a vicar's daughter? What were you—”

“I was thinking that she's twenty years old and that she can sing,” Tam snapped. “Don't make a complete arse of yourself, laddie. What girl that age can afford to live on her own in London?”

“Are you talking about me?” came a voice from the doorway.

They all turned, and Andy saw a slight figure, backlit.

“Poppy. Good to see you,” said Hart with a smile.

“Bloody trains.” She stepped into the room, and Andy saw her clearly. She wore fur-lined boots, bright flower-patterned tights, and a tiny ruffled skirt beneath a puffy jacket. Her short hair, stuck up in unruly spikes, was the color of his cat's fur, and slung over her shoulder by a strap was what looked like a case for an electric bass. No one had told him she played an instrument.

“Hi, Caleb. Tam.” She nodded, then gave Andy an assessing stare. “You must be the hotshot guitarist. I'm Poppy.” She held out a hand encased in a purple fingerless glove, and he shook it awkwardly.

“I'm Andy, yeah. Andy Monahan. You're freezing,” he added as he felt the tips of her fingers.

“Nobody told me I'd have to climb Mount Everest. This is a cool place, though.”

It was a steep hike from Gipsy Hill Railway Station up to the Crystal Palace triangle, but Andy noticed that she didn't seem the least bit winded. And she'd come up the outside metal staircase as quietly as the cat she resembled.

Caleb Hart, however, went into solicitous mode. “Let's get you upstairs, and warm. I've already got the heaters going in the big rehearsal space.”

“I'm fine, Caleb,” she said with a shrug. “But I want to see it. We're going up?”

“Next level.”

Poppy led the way out, taking the stairs as if she had springs in the heels of her boots, her instrument case bouncing against her hip.

“You didn't tell me you'd met her,” Andy whispered to Tam as they brought up the rear.

“I went to hear her at the Troubadour. You didn't think I'd get you into something without being sure she was a goer? She's something special, I'm telling you. A bloomin' prodigy.”

That probably meant spoiled rotten, in Andy's experience. But she had balls for a vicar's daughter, he had to admit. At twenty, he'd been tough and independent in a street-smart way, but this girl had a poise and confidence he still hadn't managed to achieve.

Her speaking voice, however, while pleasant, was straight Home Counties middle class, and he hoped to God she didn't sing in that little-girl-breathy indie style that made him want to grind his teeth. Or even worse, some sort of faux working-class thing like Kate Nash. At least with that accent and her slight stature she was not likely to be another Adele clone.

They reached the next level and stepped into a space completely different from the cramped anteroom to the studios below.

“Very cool,” said Poppy, taking it in, and Andy had to agree.

The room was long and open, with light pouring in the large windows that overlooked the tree-clad hillside to the west. There were several guitar amps, a two-mic setup, small-scale recording equipment, and, by the windows, a baby grand piano that reflected the mottled gray sky in its black-lacquered top.

“Oh, lovely, Caleb. Thank you,” said Poppy, giving her manager a quick hug that was not the least bit coy. He might have been a favorite uncle.

She stripped off jacket and gloves, then bent to unlatch her guitar case. When she took out the instrument, Andy gave a low whistle in spite of himself. It was a Fender Pastorius bass, fretless—an instrument only for a very accomplished musician.

“Can you really play that thing?” he asked.

Poppy shot him a look from under brows that were a dark punctuation to her marmalade hair. “Wait and see, guitar boy.”

Stung, he shot back, “A nice prezzie from your daddy?”

She stood, slipping the bass strap over her head, and seemed to collect herself for a moment. Then she looked him directly in the eyes and said levelly, “I have two younger brothers and a younger sister. We manage, but my father is a Church of England vicar, and there is no way he could afford an instrument like this. I worked all the way through school giving music lessons to spotty, hormonal boys to buy this bass, and I bloody well deserve it. So just shut the fuck up, okay?”

She waited, and when he didn't reply, she nodded, as if something had been settled between them. Then she plugged the Fender into an amp and said, “Let's see what you got, guitar boy.”

The Palace was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, and after the Great Exhibition finished in October 1851 he had the idea of moving it to Penge Place Estate, Sydenham, as a “Winter Park and Garden under Glass” . . .  Penge Place, now called Crystal Palace Park, was owned by Paxton's friend and railway entrepreneur Leo Schuster.

—www.bbc.co.uk

Once the coroner's van arrived, Gemma left the crime scene techs to get on with things, and DC Shara MacNicols in charge of interviewing the hotel staff. Seeing Shara's mutinous expression, she'd said, “Unless you'd rather give the death notification? And, Shara, I think you'll do better with sympathy here. Whether or not the hotel was breaking any rules is not our main concern—at least not until we know how our Mr. Arnott came to be here,” she added, and got a grudging nod in return.

When Melody had double-checked the address she'd entered for Vincent Arnott, she looped round into Fox Hill and then up the steep incline of Belvedere Road, back towards the Crystal Palace triangle.

“He could certainly have walked to the hotel,” Melody said as she parked at the curb and pulled up the Clio's hand brake as an extra precaution.

Glancing at the vista spread below them as she got out of the car, Gemma wondered if, on a clear day, you could see all the way to the Channel. The view up the hill was pretty impressive, too. “He'd have been fit if he did that climb on a regular basis,” she said. “Never mind what else he got up to.”

She examined the house, half hidden behind a fortress of hedges. It was detached, a soft, brown brick with white trim on the windows and doors, and large upper and lower bay-fronted rooms on one side. Behind the shelter of the hedges, the lawn was immaculate, and the shrubs in the beds surrounding the house were trimmed to within an inch of their lives. A late-model silver BMW was parked in the curving drive.

“Eminently respectable,” mused Melody, nodding at the house. “In an eminently respectable street. Not a hair out of place.”