Val Mcdermid - Blue Genes

The trio moved across the room at a measured pace and I had the chance to take a proper look at Peter Lovell. He had a narrow head with the regular features of a fifties matinée idol, an image nurtured by a head of thick brown hair swept straight back like Peter Firth’s. It was an impression that crumbled at closer range, when skin wrecked by teenage acne became impossible to disguise or to deflect attention from. He stopped a few feet away from me, his minders closing ranks behind him. His eyes were like two granite pebbles, cold and grey as the North Sea in January. ‘Segue,’ he said contemptuously, his voice like hard soles on gravel. ‘What kind of a name is that?’

‘It’s Italian,’ I said. ‘It means “it follows”. Which means my band is the next big thing, yeah?’

‘That depends. And you’re Cory?’

‘That’s right. Tony says you’re the business when it comes to getting a band on the map.’

Lovell slipped into the seat opposite me. ‘A brandy, Tony,’ he said. ‘Best you’ve got, there’s a good lad.’

‘A large Hennessy over here, girl,’ Tony shouted. ‘What’s keeping you?’

I didn’t even glance at Della. ‘So what can you do for us, Mr…?’

‘My company’s called Big Promo. You can call me Mr Big or Mr Promo, depending how friendly you want to be,’ he said without a hint of irony.

I acted like I was deeply unimpressed. ‘The question stands,’ I said. ‘We’re really cooking in Europe, but this is where the serious deals get made. We want to be noticed, and we don’t want to hang around. We don’t want to be pissed about by somebody who doesn’t really know what they’re doing, who isn’t up to playing with the big boys.’

Something approaching a smile cracked his face. ‘Attitude, eh? Well, Cory, attitude is no bad thing in its place.’ Then he leaned forward and the smile died faster than a fly hitting a windscreen at ninety. ‘This is not the place. I’m not in the habit of dealing directly with people. It wastes time I could be using to make money. So the least, the very least, I demand from you is respect.’

‘Fine by me,’ I said. ‘So can we stop wasting your time? What can you do for us that makes you the one we should do business with?’

‘Why don’t you have a manager?’ he demanded.

‘We never found anybody we trusted enough. Believe it or not, I’m a qualified accountant. I can tell a good deal from a bad one.’

‘Then we’re not going to have any problems. I’m offering the only good deal in town. This is my city. In exchange for forty per cent of your earnings, including any record deals you sign, I can place you in the key venues. I can make sure your tickets get sold, I can get you media coverage and I can paper the whole city with your tits.’ Lovell leaned back as Della approached with our drinks on a tray. Sensibly, she served Lovell first, then me, then Tony. As she walked away, Lovell said, ‘Since when did you start employing pensioners?’

‘All she does is sort the glasses and stock the bar. She’s out of here before the punters start coming in. The girlfriend’s auntie,’ Tony said dismissively.

‘I hear on the grapevine that there’s been a bit of bother lately. Posters getting covered up, bands having their gigs wrecked, that kind of shit. What’s to stop that happening to us?’ I asked.

Lovell drummed his fingers on his brandy bowl. ‘Signing with us, that’s what. You stupid cow, who do you think has been handing out the aggravation? I told you, this is my city. Anybody who thinks different has to take what’s coming to them. You stick with me and nothing bad will happen to you. Ask Tony. He pays his taxes like a good ’un. You never have any bother, do you, Tone?’

‘No,’ Tony said tonelessly, reaching for his cigarettes and lighting up. ‘No bother.’

‘Let me get this straight, then. You’re saying if we pay you forty per cent of everything we make, you’ll sort it for us. But if we choose somebody whose prices are more in line with the rest of the planet, we’ll live to regret it? Is that what you’re saying?’

Lovell picked up his glass and wasted the brandy in one swallow. ‘Sixty per cent of something’s a lot better than a hundred per cent of fuck all. There’s a lot of things can go wrong for a band trying to make a break in this town. Posters that never make it onto walls. Tickets that mysteriously don’t sell. Riots at the few crappy gigs they manage to pick up. Vans full of gear burning up for no obvious reason.’

‘You saying that could happen to us if we don’t sign up with you?’

He replaced the glass on the table with infinite care. ‘Not could. Will. It was you asked for this meeting,’ he reminded me, stabbing his finger towards the centre of my chest. ‘You need what I can do for you. Otherwise you might as well fuck off back to Germany.’

I jerked back from his finger. I could relax now. Lovell had just nailed himself to the wall. ‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘No reason why we can’t do business. I was just checking.’

Lovell got to his feet. ‘Well, you’ve done your checking and now you know what the score is. You don’t ever get smart with me, bitch, you hear? I tell your poxy band where they play and when; you do no deals without consulting me first.’ He put a hand in his pocket and tossed a small mobile phone on the table. ‘Keep it on you. My number’s programmed in at number one. That’s the only number you call, you hear? I get any bills that say otherwise and you pay a service charge I guarantee you won’t like. You can buy a charger unit anywhere that sells phones. I’ll let you know when your first gig is.’

Whatever he was going to say next was lost. The door to the club crashed open again and two men piled in, shouting, ‘Police. Don’t move.’ The door to the ladies’ toilet opened and the other two rushed into the room, heading for the minders. A fifth cop jumped over the DJ’s turntables as Della ran out from behind the bar towards Lovell. Everybody was screaming, ‘Police. Don’t move.’ The acoustics of the club had a strange effect on their voices, almost swallowing them in the vastness of the space.

Lovell’s face went deep red from the neck up, like a glass filling with coloured liquid. ‘Fucking bitch,’ he yelled. ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’

But before he could go anywhere Della’s sergeant, a rugby prop forward from Yorkshire, misjudged his run from the DJ’s platform and cannoned into him. Seeing their boss floored and themselves outnumbered, the muscle decided that the game that had been keeping them in made-to-measure suits was over. Lovell was dead in the water. But that didn’t mean Tweedledum and Tweedledee had to sink with him. In perfect sync, two right hands disappeared inside their jackets and emerged holding a matching pair of semiautomatic pistols.

Suddenly, everything went quiet.

It’s not just the immediate prospect of being hanged that concentrates the mind wonderfully. Staring down the barrel of a gun does the trick just as well. For a long minute, nobody moved or said a word. Then Tweedledum gestured with his pistol towards Della. ‘You, bitch. Over here.’

At first she didn’t move. I knew what she was thinking. The more spread out we were, the harder it would be to keep us all covered. ‘I said, over here,’ the gunman screamed, dropping the nose of his pistol and firing. A chunk of wood from the dance floor leapt into the air inches from Della’s feet and frisbeed away across the room. ‘Fucking do it,’ he shrieked. I’ve never understood why it is that the guys with the guns always sound more scared than those of us without them.

Slowly, cautiously, Della moved towards him. As soon as she came within reach, he pulled her to him by the hair, back against his chest, gun muzzle jammed into her neck. I knew then that these guys were the real thing. The neck is the professional’s option. Much more sensible than holding it to the temple. The muzzle buries itself in the flesh of the neck rather than sliding on bone covered by sweating skin. Guns to temples are amateur city, a mark of someone who’s watched more movies than they’ve committed crimes.