‘A little start-up fund would be good,’ Kiley said.
Costain reached into his suit jacket for his wallet and slid out two hundred and fifty in freshly minted twenties and tens. ‘Are you still seeing Kate these days?’ he asked.
Kiley wasn’t sure.
Kate Keenan was a freelance journalist with a free-ranging and often fierce column in the Independent. Kiley had met her by chance a little over a year ago and they’d been sparring with one another ever since. She’d been sparring with him. Sometimes, Kiley thought, she took him the way some women took paracetamol.
‘Only I was thinking,’ Costain said, ‘she and Dianne ought to get together. Dianne’s a survivor, after all. Beat cancer. Saw off a couple of abusive husbands. Brought up a kid alone. She’d be perfect for one of those pieces Kate does. Profiles. You know the kind of thing.’
‘Ask her,’ Kiley said.
‘I’ve tried,’ Costain said. ‘She doesn’t seem to be answering my calls.’
There had been an episode, Kiley knew, before he and Kate had met, when she had briefly fallen for Costain’s slippery charm. It had been, as she liked to say, like slipping into cow shit on a rainy day.
‘Is this part of what you’re paying me for?’ Kiley asked.
‘Merely a favour,’ Costain said, smiling. ‘A small favour between friends.’
Kiley thought he wouldn’t mind an excuse to call Kate himself. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’ll do what I can. But I’ve got a favour to ask you in return.’
The night before Dianne Adams opened in Frith Street, Costain organised a reception downstairs at the Pizza on the Park. Jazzers, journalists, publicists and hangers-on, musicians like Guy Barker and Courtney Pine, for fifteen minutes Nicole Farhi and David Hare. Canapes and champagne.
Derek Becker was there with a quartet, playing music for schmoozing. Only it was better than that.
Becker was a hard-faced romantic who loved the fifties recordings of Stan Getz, especially the live sessions from the Shrine with Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone; he still sent cards, birthday, Christmas and Valentine, to the woman who’d had the good sense not to marry him some twenty years before. And he liked to drink.
A Bass man from way back, he could tolerate most beer, though he preferred it hand-pumped from the wood; in the right mood, he could appreciate a good wine; whisky, he preferred Islay single malts, Lagavulin, say, or Laphroaig. At a pinch, anything would do.
Kiley had come across him once, sprawled along a bench on the southbound platform of the Northern Line at Leicester Square. Vomit still drying on his shirt front, face bruised, a cut splintering the bridge of his nose. Kiley had pulled him straight and used a tissue to wipe what he could from round his mouth and eyes, pushed a tenner down into his top pocket and left him there to sleep it off. Thinking about it still gave him the occasional twinge of guilt.
That had been a good few years back, around the time Kiley had been forced to accept his brief foray into professional soccer was over: the writing on the wall, the stud marks on his shins; the ache in his muscles that never quite went away, one game to the next.
Becker was still playing jazz whenever he could, but instead of Ronnie’s, nowadays it was more likely to be the King’s Head in Bexley, the Coach and Horses at Isleworth, depping on second tenor at some big-band nostalgia weekend at Pontin’s.
And tonight Becker was looking sharp, sharper than Kiley had seen him in years and sounding good. Adams clearly thought so. Calling for silence, she sang a couple of tunes with the band. ‘Stormy Weather’, of course, and an up-tempo ‘Just One of Those Things’. Stepping aside to let Becker solo, she smiled at him broadly. Made a point of praising his playing. After that his eyes followed her everywhere she went.
‘She’s still got it, hasn’t she?’ Kate said, appearing at Kiley’s shoulder.
Kiley nodded. Kate was wearing an oatmeal-coloured suit that would have made most other people look like something out of storage. Her hair shone.
‘You didn’t mind me calling you?’ Kiley said.
Kate shook her head. ‘As long as it was only business.’ Accidentally brushing his arm as she moved away.
Later that night — that morning — Kiley, having delivered Dianne Adams safely to her hotel, was sitting with Derek Becker in a club on the edge of Soho. Both men were drinking Scotch, Becker sipping his slowly, plenty of water in between.
Before the reception had wound down, Adams had spoken to Costain, Costain had spoken to the management at Ronnie’s and Becker had been added to the trio Adams had brought over from Copenhagen to accompany her.
‘I suppose,’ Becker said, ‘I’ve got you to thank for that.’
Kiley shook his head. ‘Thank whoever straightened you out.’
Becker had another little taste of his Scotch. ‘Let me tell you,’ he said. ‘A year ago, it was as bad as it gets. I was living in Walthamstow, a one-room flat. Hadn’t worked in months. The last gig I’d had, a pub over in Chigwell, I hadn’t even made the three steps up on to the stage. I was starting the day with a six-pack and by lunch-time it’d be ruby port and cheap wine. Except there wasn’t any lunch. I hardly ate anything for weeks at a time and when I did I threw it back up. And I stank. People turned away from me on the street. My clothes stank and my skin stank. The only thing I had left, the only thing I hadn’t sold or hocked was my horn and then I hocked that. Bought enough pills, a bottle of cheap Scotch and a packet of old-fashioned razor blades. Enough was more than enough.’
He looked at Kiley and sipped his drink.
‘And then I found this.’
Snapping open his saxophone case, Becker flipped up the lid of the small compartment in which he kept his spare reeds. Lifting out something wrapped in dark velvet, he laid it in Kiley’s hand.
‘Open it.’
Inside the folds was a bracelet, solid gold or merely plated Kiley couldn’t be certain, though from the weight of it he guessed the former. Charms swayed and jingled lightly as he raised it up. A pair of dice. A key. What looked to be — an imitation this, surely? — a Faberge egg.
‘I was shitting myself,’ Becker said. ‘Literally. Shit scared of what I was going to do.’ He wiped his hand across his mouth before continuing. ‘I’d gone down into the toilets at Waterloo station, locked myself in one of the stalls. I suppose I fell, passed out maybe. Next thing I know I’m on my hands and knees, face down in God knows what and there it was. Waiting for me to find it.’
An old Presley song played for a moment at the back of Kiley’s head. ‘Your good-luck charm,’ he said.
‘If you like, yes. The first piece of luck I’d had in months, that’s for sure. Years. I mean, I couldn’t believe it. I just sat there, staring at it. I don’t know, waiting for it to disappear, I suppose.’
‘And when it didn’t?’
Becker smiled. ‘I tipped the pills into the toilet bowl, took a belt at the Scotch and then poured away the rest. The most I’ve had, that day to this, is a small glass of an evening, maybe two. I know you’ll hear people say you can’t kick it that way, all or nothing, has to be, but all I can say is it works for me.’ He held out his hand, arm extended, no tremor, the fingers perfectly still. ‘Well, you’ve heard me play.’
Kiley nodded. ‘And this?’ he said.
‘The bracelet?’
‘Yes.’
Forefinger and thumb, Becker took it from the palm of Kiley’s hand.
‘Used it to get my horn out of hock, buy a half-decent suit of clothes. When I was sober enough, I started phoning round, chasing work. Bar mitzvahs, weddings, anything, I didn’t care. When I had enough I went back and redeemed it.’ He rewrapped the bracelet and stowed it carefully away. ‘Been with me ever since.’ He winked. ‘Like you say, my good-luck charm, eh?’
Kiley drained what little remained in his glass. ‘Time I wasn’t here.’
Standing, Becker shook his hand. ‘I owe you one, Jack.’