Kill Your Friends (16 page)

“Right.” Cunt. Fucking fuck.

“Hey, Steve, I’ve really got to run too. We’re playing again
tonight at this thing, it’s a little way out of town…” he writes
the address down on a napkin.

“Yeah, great. How far along are you? You know, in terms of other
companies.”

“Well,” he says grinning, shaking his head, “I’ve got to tell
you, we’ve got a couple of really interesting offers on the table
already. I wouldn’t want you to get your hopes up.”

I laugh. “Another offer wouldn’t hurt though, would it?” I am
going to fire Darren. Why weren’t we on to this fucking band
earlier?

“Maybe not, maybe not. Thanks for lunch.”

We shake hands and I watch him fruit off through the restaurant,
stopping halfway to shake hands with some girl.

A waitress appears. She’s cute, huge rack.

“You’re finished?” she says.

No, I think. Not completely. Not yet.

♦

With the indie kids you have to remember this: they really think
that what they do matters in some way. They reckon that history
will care. (They don’t know that history will have other shit to be
getting on with.) The indie kids figure that they’re passing on the
torch or some fucking thing. That, just as they were influenced by
someone—the Velvet Underground, Jonathan Richman, the Stooges,
whoever—then, in the future, young bands will be influenced by
them. Maybe so. Maybe a few thousand malnourished cockless freaks
scattered around the globe will give a shit. So what? Real people
don’t care, do they? Real people put stone cladding and UPVC
double-glazing on their council houses, they buy four albums a year
and they want to be able to hear all the words. And there are
fucking
billions
of them.

That’s why I like it when you deal with a genuine pop act. It’s
so refreshing and honest. Some greasy demi-paedo of a manager flops
down in your office with three fit fifteen-year-old sluts on his
arm. Half a GCSE between them, they say, “We want to be famous and
make a lot of money.” You know what? No problem.
Let’s fucking
rock
. I might thereafter have to have the odd conversation
about, for instance, do we need to Photoshop someone’s jugs to make
them look bigger or firmer? What I
won’t
have to do is sit
in some toilet flat at three in the morning, listening to tuneless
B-sides and talking about, I don’t know, Tom Verlaine’s guitar
solos. Because, really, who gives a fucking shit?

Here—you want to say to these indie kids—have a
steak
.
Let’s go to Harvey Nicks and buy you some decent clothes.

Here’s three hundred quid—go and get a hot boiler to suck your
dick properly for the first time in your life.
Live a little,
son
.

∨
Kill Your Friends
∧

Talk of EMI⁄Seagram merger. Spice Girls do massive
Pepsi deal. Lots of interest in Ultrasound now. The Jamiroquai LP
goes triple platinum. Audioweb’s single ‘Faker’ charts at 70.
Reconstruction signs this girl singer called Sylvia Powell. The
label’s MD Keith Blackhurst says, “I’m sure her songs will make it
onto TV and radio and that the album will be huge.” Echo and the
Bunnymen look like making a comeback. Labour wins the
election
.

∨
Kill Your Friends
∧

“
The nature of show business means that people
within the business feel that if someone else fails, they move up a
notch
.”

Tom Arnold

A
few days after I
get back from Austin I go on a date. Yeah, I know.

The thing is, if you just fuck an awful lot of whores all the
time then you kind of need to go on a date now and again, if only
to prove to yourself that you can still do boilers without a
fistful of grubby fifty-pound notes changing hands. Also, sometimes
I’ll look at people who have girlfriends and I’ll think, “That
doesn’t look so crazy.” Who knows, maybe it’s worth a pop.

I’ve been listening to this girl (she’s literally called Sophie,
for fuck’s sake, a friend of a friend, works in international
at…Warners?) crapping on about something—an argument she had with
the singer from some band about, I don’t know, maybe the quality of
cheeseburgers at Oslo airport, or the purity of bottled water in
Auckland—for what feels like a decade. This is the thing. You’re
expected to make conversation, aren’t you? Beyond the level of
‘here’s your money, now suck this, you rancid fucking slut’.

“Hey,” she says, waving a hand across my vacant face as a
fawning spic plonks her dessert in front of her, “what are you
thinking about?”

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

This is the thing about girlfriends. They’ll say to you: “What
are you thinking?” I am always thinking about cash and fucking, but
you can’t really say this, can you?

But people do it, don’t they? You see it all the time. There
seem to be definite upsides, financially and health-wise at least.
I mean, you’re unlikely to come in from work of a Friday evening
and—during the course of a quiet weekend with your girlfriend—spend
nearly two grand on coke, crack, booze, Viagra and hookers. I don’t
imagine that’s how it goes, is it? Your girlfriend is unlikely to
suggest the kind of evening out that will terminate sometime the
following afternoon in an Albanian knocking shop in Brixton, up to
your nuts in an illegal immigrant. You don’t do that nasty stuff
with a girlfriend, do you? You…What do you do? You go to, I don’t
know, the cinema? Or maybe for a walk? Stuff like that?

But then I think about the downsides. The talking. They’re
really into the whole talking thing, girlfriends. Ross has a
girlfriend. He tells you about the things they do, the stuff they
say. They try and talk to you about complicated weekends away in
three months’ time over breakfast. About wallpaper colours. They
ask things like, “How was your day?” and “How did your meeting go?”
What do you care how the meeting went?
I
don’t fucking care
how the meeting went and I was there.

Why? Why would they ask these things? What can they possibly
have to gain from the answer? At least with hookers I find the
banter, the discussions, manageable:
bend over…put your leg
there…good…suck harder…faster…lick my balls…piss on me
.

I mean, I can just about manage that.

I tune back into the present, into the restaurant, the date.
She’s saying, “…and anyway, these days BA’s business class is
almost
as good as first.”

You’re wrong, I think. But I don’t correct her. I just listen,
wondering how much more of this I will have to sit through before
she will be drunk enough to let me fuck her. Tiredly I reach for
the Pinot Grigio and refill her glass.

“What are you thinking?” Well, I’m thinking about having some
big hit records and then upgrading your pockmarked arse for someone
younger and fitter. Now, what film did you want to go and see?
Shall we get a takeaway? Do you really want to go for a fucking
walk
, you horrible cow?

♦

I’m lying on the sofa in my office, half listening to demos,
mostly playing Fifa ‘97 on the PlayStation, when Rebecca,
ridiculously serious-faced, pops her head around the door.

“Steven?”

“Yeah?” Just the defender to beat, if I…

“There’s someone in reception who wants to see you.”

“Tell them to fuck off.” That’s it, scoot along the edge of the
box…

“Actually, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“Why not?” He shoots…

“It’s a policeman.”

…he hits the post.

The guy comes in. Plain clothes, a nasty-looking Next ⁄ Marks
and Sparks type suit on. He’s young, maybe just a couple of years
older than me. “Mr Stelfox?” he asks needlessly, extending his
hand. Rebecca hovers in the doorway.

“Steven,” I say.

“DC Woodham. Thanks for seeing me without an appointment. I
could come back another time if this is inconvenient?”

“No, no. It’s fine. Can we get you anything?”

“No, thank you.” Rebecca shuts the door and Woodham folds
himself awkwardly into the chair opposite me. He’s tall and gangly,
all limbs and angles in his nasty, ill-fitting suit. He’s
fair-haired, but it’s not the thick Aryan blond you see on someone
like Trellick. This is pauper’s hair—thin, pale and frayed into a
cheap, bad cut which (surely unusually for a copper) touches the
collar of his shirt here and there. His face is thin and pinched,
kind of sad-looking. But that’s fair enough. If I had to tool
around in a Next suit dealing with the world’s sewage for—what?
twenty grand a year?—I’d be looking fucking sad too.

“Wow,” he says, eyeing up the pile of gold and platinum discs
stacked beside my desk, “shouldn’t they be up on the wall?”

“Oh, I’ll get round to it,” I shrug bashfully. “I’m sorry, is
this about Roger? Because I already spoke to—”

“Yes, I know you’ve given a statement. I just had a couple of
questions about the—hey—” he breaks off, pointing to the pinboard
on the wall behind me—“is that…is that you and
Joe
Strummer?
”

I turn. He’s pointing to a photograph of me and Strummer—arms
around each other, both in wellies and macs covered in mud, both
out of our poor minds—standing behind the Pyramid Stage. I’d been
looking at signing him last year but the demos were a pile of shit.
But young bands often respond well to that photo. Good icebreaker.
“Yeah,” I say chuckling, “backstage at Glastonbury last year. We’d
had a few.”

“Wow. What’s he like?”

A washed-up cunt. “Joe? He’s a sweetheart. Are you a fan?”

“God, not half. I saw the Clash live when I was fifteen,” he
beams proudly.

“Really?” Jesus wept, what a waste of fucking semen this cunt
is. “Bit before my time I’m afraid.”

“Oh, best live band in the world, I reckon.”

“A few people say that. Sorry, Officer, I do have a meeting
starting shortly.”

“Of course. Sorry. What it is, I’m following up with a few
people and…I believe you told one of my colleagues that you,” he
consults a notebook he’s pulled out, “you were with Mr Waters on
the night of his death?”

“Yeah.”

“You’d been to…the Dublin Castle in Camden?”

“That’s right. Then we shared a cab and I dropped him off.”

“See anything good?”

“Anything good? Oh, the gig. Band called Rape Squadron I think.
They weren’t bad.”

“Bit of an old toilet the Dublin Castle, isn’t it?” he
grins.

“Oh, you know it?”

“Yeah. Well, I played there a few times. Back in the day, you
know.”

“Really? You were in a band?” Mother of fucking uncontrollable
God. “What did you play?”

“Guitar. And songwriting. We still play a bit as it happens, in
our spare time and that. We’ve all got jobs now. Wives and kids and
all that.”

Fuck me. “Yeah, it can be tough.”

“Tell me about it,” he says, shaking his head. “Anyway, I really
wanted to ask you about Mr Waters’ state of mind that night.”

“In what way?”

“Well, did he seem worried about anything? Did he have any
enemies that you know of? Debts? Money problems?”

I pretend to think for a moment. “No. Nothing like that. He’s
unlikely to have had any money problems.” The fat overpaid
spastic.

“Yeah, I didn’t think so. Expenses all the way in this racket,
isn’t it?” Woodham laughs.

I laugh too. “Yeah, we’ve been known to claim a few beers
back.”

“You’d been drinking?”

“Yeah, we’d had a few. He’d just been promoted. We were
celebrating.”

“Drugs?”

“No.”

“Really? The autopsy showed considerable levels of cocaine in Mr
Waters’ bloodstream.”

“It must have been after I left him. I don’t take cocaine.”

“I thought all you guys…”

“Oh, that’s a myth. It’s not the eighties. You have to work too
hard these days.”

“But you knew he took drugs?”

“Well…”

He writes something down and goes on to ask me a few more
vaguely Waters-related questions before getting onto what he really
seems to want to talk about: what kind of bands were getting signed
these days? How many demos did we get a week? How many gigs did I
go to? Who have I worked with? What kind of music did I like? (The
Clash, Bob Dylan blah blah blah…) Finally I email Rebecca telling
her to come and get me for a non-existent meeting.

She pops her head around the door. “Sorry to interrupt,” she
says, leaning in, giving Woodham full cleavage, “but you’ve got
that meeting starting now, Steven.”

“Thanks, Rebecca.” She ducks back out.

“Well, thank you, Mr Stelfox,” Woodham says, getting up.

“Steven’s fine. Sorry I couldn’t be more helpful,” I say walking
him to the door.

“No, you’ve been very helpful. Just one last thing. This is a
bit awkward.” He reaches into his jacket.

Fuck. Here it comes, the fucking Columbo bit. He’s almost out
the bastard door when he turns round and produces the, smoking gun.
“Could you tell me what you think of this?” he says, holding
something towards me.

Oh God. I look down.

It’s a CD. “It’s just some rough mixes we did at my mate’s home
studio, but I’d really like, you know, a professional opinion about
the songs. If you could spare ten minutes to have a listen
sometime…”

I look at him for a moment.

“Sure,” I say, taking the CD. “Is your number on here?”

Seconds after he leaves Rebecca comes in to find me standing up
at the window. “Is everything OK?” she says, sounding genuinely
anxious.

“It’s nothing. Just some questions about Roger.” She joins me at
the window and we watch Woodham walk to his car—a shitty Ford of
some description.

“Quite cute for a policeman,” she says.