Lice looked at Dan, shaking his head pityingly. Dan looked at Richard, his eyebrows steepling in a demand for help. ‘Not as such,’ Richard explained. ‘When Lice talks about being wiped out, he means metaphorically.’
‘That’s right,’ Lice confirmed. ‘Poetic licence and that.’ My interest was dropping faster than a gun barrel faced with Clint Eastwood.
‘Somebody’s out to get us professionally is what we’re trying to say,’ Dan butted in. ‘We’re getting stuffed tighter than a red pudding.’
‘What’s a red pudding?’ Richard demanded. I was glad about that; we private eyes never like to display our ignorance.
‘For fuck’s sake,’ Lice groaned.
‘What do you expect from a country where the fish and chip shops only sell fish and chips?’ Dan said. ‘It’s like a sausage only it’s red and it’s got oatmeal in it and you deep-fry it, OK? In batter,’ he added for the benefit of us Sassenachs.
I wasn’t about to ask any more. I still hadn’t recovered from the shock of asking for a pizza in a Scottish chip shop. I’d watched in horrified amazement as the fryer expertly folded it in half and dumped it in the deep fat. No, I didn’t eat it. I fed it to the seagulls and watched them plummet into the waves afterwards, their ability to defeat gravity wiped out in one meal. ‘So this metaphorical, poetically licensed professional stitch-up consists of what, exactly?’
‘Essentially, the boys are being sabotaged,’ Richard said.
‘Every time we’re doing a gig around the town, some bastard covers all our posters up,’ Dan said. ‘Somebody’s been phoning the promoters and telling them not to sell any more tickets for our gigs because they’re already sold out. And then we get to a gig and there’s hardly any genuine fans there.’
‘But there’s always a busload of Nazis on super lager that tear the place to bits and close the gig down,’ Lice kicked in bitterly. ‘Now we’ve been barred from half the decent venues in the north and we’re getting tarred with the same brush as they fascist bastards that are wrecking our gigs. The punters are starting to mutter that if these guys follow us around from place to place, it must be because there’s something in our music that appeals to brainless racists.’
‘And actually, the boys’ lyrics are quite the opposite of that.’ Richard with the truly crucial information as usual. ‘Even the most PC of your friends would be hard pressed to take offence.’
‘The only PC friend I’ve got is the one next door with the Pentium processor,’ I snapped. To my surprise, Dan and Lice guffawed.
‘Nice one,’ Dan said. ‘Anyway, last night put the tin lid on it. We were doing this gig in Bedford, and while we were inside watching the usual wrecking crew smashing the place up, some total toerag torched our Transit.’
‘Have you talked to the police about this?’ I said. Silly me. The boys scowled and shook their heads. Richard cast his eyes heavenward and sighed deeply. I tried again. ‘This sounds like a campaign of systematic harassment to me. They’ve got the resources to pursue something like that properly. And they’re free,’ I added.
‘I thought you said she knew her arse from a hole in the ground?’ Lice demanded of Richard. ‘“Have you talked to the police about this,”’ he mimicked cruelly. The last time I felt that mimsy I was nine years old and forced to wear my cousin’s cast-off party frock in lemon nylon with blue roses, complete with crackling petticoat, to my best friend’s birthday party. ‘For fuck’s sake, look at us. If we walked into the local nick, they’d arrest us. If we told them we were being harassed, they’d piss themselves laughing. I don’t think that’s the answer, missus.’
Dan picked up the last salt and pepper rib and stood up. ‘Come on, Lice,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to embarrass the woman. Richard, I know you meant well, but hey, your missus obviously isnae up to it. You know what they’re like, women today. They cannae bring themselves to admit there are things that are way beyond them.’
That did it. Through clenched teeth, I said, ‘I am nobody’s missus and I am more than capable of sorting out any of the assorted scumbags that have doubtless got their own very good reasons for having it in for Dan Druff and the Scabby Heided Bairns. You want this sorting, I’ll sort it. No messing.’
When I saw the smile of complicity that flashed between Richard and Dan, I nearly decked the pair of them with the flying sweep kick I’d been perfecting down the Thai boxing gym. But there’s no point in petulance once you’ve been well and truly had over. ‘I think that little routine makes us quits,’ I told Richard. He grinned. ‘I’m going to need a lot more details.’
Dan sat down again. ‘It all started with the flyposting,’ he said, stretching his long legs out in front of him. I had the feeling it was going to be a long story.
It was just after midnight when Dan and Lice left Richard and me staring across the coffee table at each other. It had taken a while to get the whole story, what with Lice’s digressions into the relationship between rock music and politics, with particular reference to right-wing racists and the oppression of the Scots. The one clear thread in their story that seemed impossible to deny was that someone was definitely out to get them. Any single incident in the Scabby Heided Bairns’s catalogue of disaster could have been explained away, but not the accumulation of cockups that had characterized the last few weeks in the band’s career.
They’d moved down to Manchester, supposedly the alternative music capital of the UK, from their native Glasgow in a bid to climb on to the next rung of the ladder that would lead them to becoming the Bay City Rollers of the nineties. Now, the boys were days away from throwing in the towel and heading north again. Bewildered that they could have made so serious an enemy so quickly, they wanted me to find out who was behind the campaign. Then, I suspected, it would be a matter of summoning their friends and having the Tartan Army march on some poor unsuspecting Manchester villain. I wasn’t entirely sure whose side I was on here.
‘You are going to sort it out for them?’ Richard asked.
I shrugged. ‘If they’ve got the money, I’ve got the time.’
‘This isn’t just about money. You owe me, Brannigan, and these lads are kicking. They deserve a break.’
‘So give them a good write-up in all those magazines you contribute to,’ I told him.
‘They need more than that. They need word of mouth, a following. Without that, they’re not exactly an attractive proposition to a record company.’
‘It would take more fans than Elvis to make Dan Druff and his team attractive to me,’ I muttered. ‘And besides, I don’t owe you. It was you and your merry men who screwed up my job earlier tonight, if you remember.’
Richard looked astonished, his big tortoiseshell glasses slipping down his nose faster than Eddie the Eagle on a ski jump. ‘And what about this place?’ he wailed, waving his arm at the neat and tidy room.
‘Out of the goodness of my heart, I’m not going to demand the ten quid an hour that good industrial cleaners get,’ I said sweetly, getting up and tossing the empty tinfoil containers into plastic bags.
‘What about killing me off?’ he demanded, his voice rising like a Bee Gee. ‘How do you think I felt, coming home to find my partner sitting discussing my gravestone with a complete stranger? And while we’re on the subject, I hope you weren’t going to settle for some cheap crap,’ he added indignantly.
I finished what I was doing and moved across to the sofa. ‘Richard, behave,’ I said, slipping my legs over his, straddling him.
‘It’s not very nice, being dead,’ he muttered as my mouth descended on his.