Cuttin' Heads E-Book

Dave Watson

• Herausgeber: Next Chapter
• Kategorie: Abenteuer, Thriller, Horror
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Is it really better to burn out than to fade away?

Aldo Evans is a desperate man. Fired from his job and deeply in debt, he struggles to balance a broken family life with his passion for music.

Luce Figura is a troubled woman. A rhythmic perfectionist, she is haunted by childhood trauma and scorned by her religiously devout mother.

Ross McArthur is a wise ass. Orphaned as an infant, his interests include game shows, home-grown weed, occasional violence and the bass guitar.

They are Public Alibi. A rock n’ roll band going nowhere fast.

But when the sharp-suited, smooth talking producer Gappa Bale offers them a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make their dreams come true, they are caught up in a maelstrom of fame, obsession, music and murder.

This book contains graphic sex and violence, and is not suitable for readers under the age of 18.

Leseprobe

Cuttin' Heads

D.A. Watson

Copyright (C) 2018 D.A. Watson

Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter

Published 2019 by Next Chapter

Cover art by CoverMint

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Nietzsche

Intro

Little Walter, Jimmy Rogers, and myself, we would go around looking for bands that were playing. We called ourselves the Headhunters, cause we'd go into clubs and if we got the chance, we were gonna burn em.

Muddy Waters

1

“You know what you are, Aldo? You're a fuckin loose cannon.”

Sitting in the cramped HR office - which isn't much bigger than his own cubicle - Aldo Evans grins as he imagines himself as a maverick law enforcer raising hell on the streets of Glasgow, leaving a trail of mayhem in his wake as he tracks down bad guys with much high-speed car chasing and helicopter skid-riding while wearing a devil-may-care smile.

“Is the commissioner on yer arse, Deso?” he asks Desmond Graham, his HR manager. “The mayor giving you heat?” He can't help but smile, even though he's pretty sure he's about to be fired.

“Aye, he bloody well is,” Des says, clearly not seeing the funny side in all this. “The boss has had enough. Your stats are good, Aldo. Really good in fact, but you cannae just make up the rules as you go along. You've got to follow the script, mate.”

“Dude, we're doing market research cold calls. It's not Hamlet.”

“Disane matter. You've got to read all the questions on the survey. That's the job. I know it's a shite job, but it's a canter, and that's the deal.”

Deso was a good guy. Loved his Johnny Cash, and Aldo often went for a pint with him after work and they'd shoot the shit about music. Deso had spent a while in a blues band playing keys, but chucked it when he got married. And he understood fine well what the job in Data Location was and wasn't.

“Deso, the old boy on the phone was ninety-four years old,” Aldo says reasonably. “What's the point in asking if he wants a credit card? I can get more surveys done if I don't ask questions that clearly don't need to be asked.”

“Disnae matter,” Deso says again. “When you just skip questions, that's data fraud.”

Aldo gasps in exaggerated horror. “Well shit in ma hat! Not data fraud? Sweet Jesus, what've I done?”

“Aldo, I'm sorry, but that's it, mate.” Deso looks genuinely upset. “You were warned.”

It's getting harder for Aldo to continue seeing the funny side as the reality of the situation starts to dawn on him. Sure, it was ridiculous, hilariously so, but to a point. As stupid as the whole episode was, the consequences start to announce themselves in his head like a grim shopping list of things he suddenly can't afford. Rent. Food. The wee man's child support. The grand's worth of store debt he'd just racked up less than an hour ago while on his lunch break, treating himself to a new guitar – a Gibson Les Paul Studio Pro in glorious cherry sunburst - all the while thinking how great it was to finally have a proper full time permanent job that enabled him to get store credit. The last call centre job had been a week to week contract, and for three years he'd lived poorer than a particularly impoverished church mouse, only just making rent and doing his best to keep his temperamental Epiphone six string in tune. That guitar would detune if you looked at it the wrong way.

“C'mon, Deso,” he says. “You've got to be kidding. I'm fired? For this?”

Deso just shrugs. “Sorry, mate. Not my call. Listen, meet me in the pub when I'm finished. I know a couple of guys in other call centres…”

“You know what? Don't bother yourself,” Aldo snaps, getting up and heading for the HR office door, a slow panic swelling in his guts like a black balloon.

He knows it's not Deso's fault. He knew fine well that he could get bagged for skipping survey questions, no matter how ridiculous they were, and like the standard recorded message said, all calls were recorded for training and quality purposes. Such had been his downfall. As Deso had said, he'd been pulled up for it before, and he'd been warned it was a sackable offence. Aldo figures that despite the inevitable upshot, he actually wanted to be fired, and who could blame him, really? Spending nine hours a day making market research cold calls for minimum wage had to be about a step above being an equine fluffer in a horse porn movie in terms of job satisfaction. Still though, as bad as the job with Data Location was, it was money in the bank at the end of the month. A laughable amount, a pittance in all honestly, but still enough to survive on.

He walks over to his tiny work cubicle, takes his ID badge from around his neck and places it on the desk next to the keyboard. He briefly considers leaving a parting message as a flashing screen saver. Something like Fuck you and this brain numbing soul destroying low paying dignity stripping excuse for a job! Or maybe he could drop his breeks and take a big steaming shite on the desk.

Instead, he shrugs into his battered leather jacket, picks up the padded gig bag containing his expensive and unpaid for new guitar, and heads for the door. The Les Paul Studio Pro features a weight relief chambered mahogany body, and only weighs around six pounds in total, but at that moment, it's the monetary measure of pounds Aldo feels on his shoulder; the thousand pounds he owes for the instrument, and now has no way of paying.

As he makes his way across the call centre floor toward the exit, he's aware of several of his now ex-colleagues watching him leave with mixed expressions of curiosity, sympathy and bovine disinterest. He rolls his eyes and tips a little blasé salute to no one in particular, forcing a bemused smile onto his lips, trying to be all cool and dignified.

I don't need this. I'm better than this. This is great. No more itchy, uncomfortable headset. No more stupid survey lists. No more getting called all sorts by the poor bastards on the other end of the phone for interrupting their dinner with my questions about their favoured brand of washing up liquid.

But all the while that black panic balloon is squeezing the air from his lungs. Familiar feelings of shame, embarrassment and failure boil and bubble in his guts.

You've fucked up, ya dick. Again. What you gonnae do now, eh? No job. No money. No qualifications except three Highers and an HND in Music, which is worth the grand total of hee-haw in terms of employability. What's that make it now? Fired or quit from your last three call centre jobs? Bravo, son. Bra-fuckin-vo. You da man. You're on fire. When you going to grow the fuck up?

Aldo literally doesn't know whether to laugh or cry. Crying seems more likely.

Now, on the street outside the glass-walled offices of Data Location, Aldo stands in a daze, trying to order his thoughts and come to terms with his new state of unemployment. He turns his head left and right, looking up and down a rainy Sauchiehall Street as if expecting someone to come running up, lucrative contract of employment in hand, offering him a new job right off the bat.

That doesn't happen of course, and he can only stand there in the drizzle of Glasgow city centre, a wet, jobless chump, while a bustling river of umbrella wielding humanity flows around him, heedless of his distress, going about their own business, living their own lives. He wants to grab hold of random strangers and yell at them, Don't you know what's just happened? I'm fucked! Fucked I tells ya!

He feels an unreasonable surge of anger and jealousy toward the uncaring passers-by, most of whom seem to be carrying plastic bags emblazoned with high-street logos. Everywhere he looks, people are sporting carrier bags from HMV, Schuh, New Look, M&S. It's like they're mocking him.

Take a swatch at all this snazzy expensive gear I just bought, ya penniless fanny! It's great being able to purchase Dr Dre Beats headphones with my wages, it really is. Looks like it's Tesco Value beans on Tesco Value toast for dinner for you, though, Aldo, and oh yeah, you can forget about taking Dylan to that Frozen stage show when you see him at the weekend, like you promised him you would.

Guilt like something rotten sticking in his throat, Aldo breathes deeply, closing his eyes, trying to slow and silence the hard knocking of his heart in his chest, which sounds all too much like an implacable debt collector resolutely pounding on his front door. A debt collector with his ex-girlfriend's face.

Right, keep the heid. Break it down into manageable chunks. Adapt and overcome. Get somewhere quiet and work it out.

He opens his eyes and sees Squinty Ginty's, the pub across the street. It's just gone two pm, and the bar should be relatively quiet now the lunchtime crowds have gone back to work. A quick check of the change in his pocket confirms he has just enough for a pint. Probably not the wisest expense given the circumstances, but fuck it. Fuck it directly in the nose. A quick swally is just the ticket to get his thoughts in order while he plans his next move.

Aldo Evans squares his shoulders and makes his way across the busy pedestrian precinct, gamely resisting the urge to flying kick one slow moving old lady blethering into an iPhone as she makes her way up the crowded street.

2

“I tell you what, son, escaping from Stalag was easier than getting out of this place. Food was better as well.”

“I don't doubt it, Duncy,” Ross McArthur says to the old man in the wheelchair he's pushing. “There's a few nurses in here I imagine would've been right at home on Hitler's staff.”

“Aye, yer no kiddin there,” Duncy Brown agrees. “Coupe of wee crackers as well though, eh? If I was a few years younger I'd be rattling them left right and centre.” He lets out a lascivious Sid James-esque cackle, thumping the padded armrest of the wheelchair a couple of times with his large bony fist for emphasis. “Young lad like you must do alright in that department, working here, eh?” He cranes his head round and looks over his shoulder at Ross, waggling his busy white eyebrows suggestively, a knowing grin on his deeply wrinkled face.

Ross laughs. “Ach, mon now, Duncy. A gentleman never tells. Though I've heard the big redhead nurse in your ward's mad for it, and has a thing for older guys. Can get a hold of a couple of Viagra for you if you fancy your chances?”

Duncy cackles again “Cheeky wee bugger!” he crows, throwing a playful but hard elbow backward into Ross's midriff. “I'll fuckin Viagra ye! The amount of bullets I've taken in ma time, son, there's enough lead in ma pencil to stock a Staedtler factory.”

A young dark haired nurse passing them in the corridor bursts out laughing.

“Aye, you know it, sweetheart,” Duncy says, tipping her a saucy wink as she goes by. Ross rolls his eyes apologetically at the nurse. She favours him with a pretty smile in response. Claire, he thinks her name is. One of the student nurses down from Strathclyde Uni.

“Christ sake, Duncy,” he says as they roll on down the corridor toward the X-Ray department. “Leave some for the rest of us, eh?”

Ross had got to know and like Sergeant Duncan Brown immensely in the two weeks he'd been in the Inverclyde Royal recovering from his knee surgery. The old boy, who'd spent much of his life as an active member of the 51st Highland Division, 1st Battalion of the Black Watch, had an endless store of anecdotes and war stories. Some that made you laugh, others that made you want to weep. Eighty-three years old, but lacking none of his mental faculties, and still possessed of a thousand yard stare that could wither an oak tree. The medals he'd shown Ross, the bullet wound scars that pocked his wiry body in alarming numbers, they were evidence of the depths of the old soldier's life. The faded military emblem tattooed on his right forearm, its blurred, barely legible Latin scrollwork reading the motto of the Black Watch. Nemo me impune lacessit.

They're passing by the A&E department when Ross hears the raised voice from the waiting room.

“How much longer is this gonnae take? Ah've got shit tae dae!”

He pauses for a moment, looking through the doorway into the waiting area. Pretty busy for a Tuesday afternoon. There are six people in there, spaced out among the cheap chairs, most of which are badly worn and leaking padding from tears in the seats like yellow foam hernias. At the reception window is a big guy who looks like he's stepped out of the Neds R Us summer catalogue, resplendent in sovereign rings, a hand drawn neck tattoo, and wearing an expensive tracksuit, though he doesn't look like any sort of athlete. He's glaring through the glass at Linda, the wee receptionist on the other side. She's calmly telling him it shouldn't be too much longer, but they're busier than normal today.

“Fuck sake, ah've been here for a fuckin hour awready. Ma wean needs seen tae.”

Ross sees the wean. A pale, scrawny limbed specimen in dirty tracksuit bottoms and a Power Rangers t-shirt. Dark, close cropped hair and bags under his eyes. Maybe eight or nine years old, sitting by himself. His bare right foot's propped up on the low coffee table strewn with torn dog-eared copies of Heat and Now from three years ago. His ankle's badly swollen. The kid looks scared, watching on as Neck Tat loudly expounds on the failings of the NHS with much finger pointing and colourful turns of phrase.

“Hold on a second, Duncy,” Ross says to his patient.

“Aye, no bother, son,” Duncy replies, watching the unfolding scene closely.

Ross walks unnoticed past Neck Tat, who's still ranting at poor Linda behind the reception window, and squats down next to the skinny kid, who regards him warily.

“Alright, wee man,” Ross says with a smile. “What you done to yourself here, then?” He nods at the kid's bruised, grapefruit sized ankle. The boy drops his eyes and murmurs something barely audible. “Sorry, pal? Say again?”

“Playin fitba,” the kid squeaks, only slightly louder, still avoiding Ross's eyes. His small hands twitch and fidget nervously in his lap.

“Fitba, eh? Dangerous game. Looks a sore one,” Ross says, now seeing the other bruises, four small, roundish marks on the left side of the kid's neck, just above the frayed collar of his t-shirt. He rises from his crouch and sits down in the empty chair on the kid's right. As he suspected, there's another single bruise on that side of his neck. Ross feels his jaw tighten. “You get injured a lot?”

The little kid glances up at Ross quickly, then goes back to studying his hands, still twisting in his lap. He doesn't answer, but the haunted look Ross sees in the brief second their eyes meet tells its own story. It's a look he's well acquainted with, one that a lot of the kids at Eastburn had. A look he'd seen in the mirror.

Ross goes to lay a hand on the wean's shoulder, but he cringes away as if expecting a fist. “It's okay, buddy,” Ross says quietly, withdrawing his hand. He nods toward the tracksuited marvel still berating Linda. “That your dad?” he asks the boy. Again, the wee man looks away, then nods.

“Okay,” Ross says. “I'm gonnae go and talk to him, then we'll get you sorted out, aye? Keep the chin up, wee man.”

The wee man's dad still hasn't noticed Ross, involved as he now is in making his point about the waiting time by kicking the wall beneath the reception desk window. He only becomes aware of his presence when Ross steps up beside him and says, “You need to keep your voice down, pal.”

He turns and glares down at Ross. He's a big bastard. About thirty. Broad across the shoulders and big in the belly, with a boxer's face and at least three inches in height on Ross.

“Or fuckin' whit?” Sheer contempt ripping right out him. There's a familiar angry deadness in the man's eyes. Another look a lot of the kids, and a few of the teachers and orderlies in Eastburn had. The hard ones. The nutters. Flat, sharkish eyes.

Ross smiles pleasantly, then turns to the receptionist behind the partition. “Linda, could you tell me this guy's name, please?”

“I certainly can, Ross. This is Mr Neil Edward Donaldson,” Linda informs him.

“Excellent. His son's name?”

“Jamie Liam Donaldson.”

“And their address?”

“Flat G, twenty-four Bank Street in Greenock.”

“Splendid. Thanks very much, Linda.” Ross turns back to the ASBO poster boy. “Now, Mr Donaldson. We'll be with you as soon as we can. As you can see, we're a bit busy for a Tuesday afternoon. So just chill out, sit down and we'll get wee Jamie sorted soon as poss, alright?”

“Listen, mate,” Mr Neil Donaldson says loudly. “I don't gie a fuck how busy it is for a fuckin Tuesday. Ah cannae be sittin aboot here aw day.”

“Mr Donaldson. Sit down and shut up, or I'll have to ask you to leave.” That gets his attention.

“Aye? You gonnae fuckin' make me?”

“If needs be,” Ross says.

He knows the punch is coming. He'd known it the second he looked into the guy's eyes, and sure enough, Donaldson's face twists, he leans back slightly and raises his fist.

The punch never comes though. As soon as the prick's arm's up, Ross's left hand clamps into the exposed armpit, his thumb planted firmly into the brachial plexus nerve. In an instant, the expression on Donaldson's face changes. He makes a strange wheezing noise and immediately collapses to his knees. Crouching and keeping his thumb pressed into the man's oxter, Ross leans in close. “This is what you call a pressure point, fannybaws,” he says affably. “Now, we're walking.”

Quickly stepping behind him, Ross sets his left hand with a fistful of Adidas polyester and his right on the back of the father's neck, his talented fingers deftly finding the sensitive little hollow just behind and beneath the man's right ear. He thinks of the bruises on wee Jamie's neck and presses a little harder, making Donaldson cry out in agony.

“There we go,” Ross says, “Uppsy daisy.” Despite the man's size, Ross coaxes him to his feet with a slight twist of the fingers working his greater auricular nerve. Donaldson emits a strangled yelping sound and stands up in a hurry. Unceremoniously frogmarching the big ned towards the waiting room exit, Ross glances back over his shoulder at Duncy Brown. The old veteran is smiling broadly and softly applauding.

“I'll just be a minute, Duncy,” he says.

“Take yer time, son,” Duncy replies. “I'll look after the wee yin.” He gets up from the wheelchair, spry as a man a quarter his age, and goes to sit beside the scrawny kid, Jamie, who's now wearing a priceless look of awe on his face as he watches his arsehole of a father dragged about like an empty binbag.

Outside, Ross propels the other man round the corner to the rear loading area of the hospital. He looks left and right, checking there's no one around, making sure he's out of sight of the CCTV, then pushes the larger man against the wall. Donaldson starts to slide down the brick surface. Ross again takes hold of him, keeping him on his feet, this time with his right hand clamped around the man's windpipe. Donaldson's eyes widen in alarm as his air's suddenly cut off. His hands claw ineffectually at Ross's fingers.

“Now you listen to me, ya fuckin prick,” Ross says. “You're gonnae to go back in there, apologise to Linda in reception, then you're gonnae sit on yer arse and shut the fuck up. Agreed? Nod if you agree.”

The man nods, his face now turning a definite shade of purple. Spit hangs from his lips as he gasps and croaks for air. Ross takes just a little pressure off. Just enough so the cunt can squeeze a breath in, then brings his face closer, so close their noses are almost touching.

“And if I ever see that wean in here again with bruises in any place they shouldn't be, I swear to Christ I'll find you and I'll break your legs. I know your name. I know where you live. We clear? Nod if we're clear.”

They're clear.

When they return to the casualty admission room a few minutes later, Ross finds Duncy Brown sitting next to young Jamie, who's looking up at the old soldier, enrapt as Duncy entertains him with the story of how during the 1943 invasion of Sicily, armed with only a half empty pistol, a dagger and a few well-aimed rocks, he single-handedly took out a nazi machine gun nest in the foothills of the volcano Mount Etna while there was an eruption going on. Ross had heard the story. Was a belter.

Ross stands close behind the now contrite father as he mumbles an apology to Linda before sitting down. Quietly. It might be Ross's imagination, but the kid's demeanour isn't quite so whipped anymore as his father slumps down into the plastic seat beside him, a sullen look on his face as he by turns rubs at his armpit, neck and throat.

“Right, big man,” Duncy says to Jamie. “I best get on. Don't let the bastards grind you down. What's our motto?”

The boy smiles, then says shyly, “Nemo… me… im… impune… lacessit.”

“Excellent pronunciation,” Duncy says. “And what does it mean?”

“No one attacks me with impunity,” Jamie says. And Ross definitely reckons there's a bit less fear about him now. Then again, talking to Duncy Brown could make you feel like that. Duncy's also looking at Donaldson, that thousand yard stare of his in full effect.

Ross can't help but smile a little as he brings Duncy's wheelchair over and the old boy groans dramatically as he shuffles into it and gets himself seated.

“Take care, buddy,” Ross says to the kid, “and just holler if you need anything, okay?” He makes a point of flicking his eyes in the father's direction on that last point. Jamie Donaldson smiles and nods, and Ross tips him a wink before turning away and wheeling Duncy out of the waiting room.

“Nicely done there, son,” Duncy compliments him as they continue to roll on down the corridor to X-Ray. “You know your stuff.”

“Just hope the wee man's alright. You see the marks on his neck?”

“Aye. Cruel big cunt. Well, whatever you said to him outside, looks like you've put the fear of God into him.”

“Hope so.”

His blood's cooled, the anger's passed, and now Ross McArthur just feels depressed. He knows putting the frighteners on the father was no guarantee of Jamie Donaldson's long term safety or happiness. At most, he'd probably given the wee guy a reprieve, and maybe, hopefully, a little heart. Likely, though, his dad would chill for a few weeks, maybe as long as a month or even a year, then continue smacking his son about, right up until the day Jamie was big enough to fight back. Ross had once shared a room with a boy who'd been very much like Jamie, and on the day he was big enough to fight back, he'd stabbed his father to death.

“So what you up to tonight, then?” Duncy asks. “Playing with your band?”

“Aye,” Ross says. “Lookin forward to it.”

And he was. Fuck aye he was. The porter gig at the hospital was alright, and paid well enough, but it could be a bastard sometimes. Getting little glimpses into the stories of those who came and went through the hospital doors, all their little every day cruelties and tragedies. It could bring a man down, and get him het up. The band cheered him up. Made him forget the anger. As satisfying as it sometimes was to temporarily cripple an oxygen thief with just the precise application of his fingers, Ross McArthur enjoyed the feel of his hands on the frets of his Fender Jazz bass infinitely more.

3

“Woah, woah, woah, hold up there!” Luce Figura shouts, grimacing as if tasting something foul on her tongue and holding a clenched fist in the air.

The band stops playing, their painful attempt at an AC/DC cover coming to a clumsy, faltering halt with a discordant whine of off-key feedback and an uneven drum roll. The three music students turn to their ensemble lecturer, frowning and plainly mystified as to why she would stop them in mid flow.

“What's the problem?” Gordy, the singer and guitarist asks, turning from the microphone and letting go of the Strat copy strung around his neck.

“For a start,” Luce says, “you're way out of tune. Did you get the intonation on that plank fixed like I told you to?”

Gordy shrugs and runs his hands through his greasy shoulder-length hair, a picture of teenage nonchalance. “The tuning's not that bad. Sounds okay to me.”

Luce grits her teeth. “Not that bad? How long have you been playing guitar?”

“Almost a year.” Gordy smirks as if this automatically confirms him as a master of the instrument.

“Then you should've learned on the first day that there's no such thing as 'not that bad' about tuning. You're either in tune, or you're not. If you're not, you sound awful.”

Gordy shrugs again, as if such trivial musical concepts as being in tune were of little importance. Luce resists the urge to throttle the spotty nineteen-year-old.

She turns to Heather, the bass player. The lanky girl with the bleached blonde dreadlocks and dressed head to toe in strategically ripped black clothing, is tapping away at her smartphone, her bass propped precariously by its neck against the amplifier behind her, a loud fart away from toppling over. Luce forces herself to count to five before speaking. “Heather?”

The girl doesn't respond, but snorts laughter at something on her phone, seemingly unaware that her lecturer's talking to her. Luce steps past Gordy to the microphone, takes a deep breath and tries again to get the girl's attention, this time aided by two hundred watts of amplification.

“HEATHER!”

The girl squeals at the deafening blast from the PA speakers, jumping a near foot straight into the air and dropping her mobile, much to Luce's gratification. The sound wave also causes her delicately balanced bass to go over, hitting the floor with a loud low-frequency clang, and Luce's depressed to see the girl ignore her fallen instrument, scrambling instead for her mobile which she picks up and checks carefully for damage as if the device was a newborn baby. Heather shoots Luce a murderous look, her pale, powdered face and heavily kohl darkened eyes making her look like an angry raccoon.

“Oh, I'm sorry, Heather,” Luce says. “Didn't mean to startle you there. I was just going to ask why you were playing sixteenth notes in a waltz time over the top of a straight four-four back beat.”

Heather looks at her as if he's speaking in tongues.

“Remember what we talked about? About the bass locking in with the drummer?”

Nope. Nothing.

Luce sighs. “The bass and the drums need to play as one,” she tells Heather. Again. “The rhythm section's the backbone of the band. If you're doing one thing and the drummer's doing another, it…”

Heather's phone interrupts her with a jaunty whistle, and she goes to check it.

“Heather, I swear to Hendrix,” Luce says evenly, “if you don't put that phone away right now, you're off the course. I'm not even close to kidding.”

Heather scowls and reluctantly puts the mobile in her pocket. “Sorry,” she mumbles, sounding anything but.

“As I was saying,” Luce continues with saintly levels of patience, “if the bass and drums are doing two different things, it sounds woeful. There's no groove. No feel. Right?”

Heather nods, not looking at her. Luce reckons that's about as good a response as she can hope for. She then turns to Lyle, the bespectacled, whippet-thin kid in the Slipknot t-shirt sat behind the drum kit, engrossed at that moment in rooting in his nose with his pinky.

“Pick us a winner there, Lyle,” Luce says.

“Eh?” Lyle responds, wiping a large bogey on his jeans.

“Nevermind. You need to tighten it up and keep it simple. This is AC/DC we're playing here, not Rush.”

“Who?”

Never hit a student, never hit a student…

Luce opens her mouth to explain who Rush are, but finds that words simply fail her. At twenty-seven, she's only eight years older than the three harmonically challenged youths, but at that moment, she feels ancient.

“It doesn't matter,” she says, shaking her head. “Just keep it simple, steady and tight. Hats, kick, snare, cymbal. Don't worry about throwing in four bar tom fills and triplets. You don't need them here.”

“But they sound awesome!” Lyle protests, grinning broadly and waving his drumsticks in the air. “Bubbada bubbada bubbada! Yaaas!”

“Yes, yes they do sound awesome,” Lucy agrees, “but you have to play them at the right time, in the right song, and more importantly, know how to play them.”

Lyle looks at her like Luce's just spat on him. Clearly no one's critiqued his rhythmic ability so plainly before. Luce wonders what exactly Chris Turner - the department's other drum tutor who was Lyle's one-on-one instructor - has been doing in his lessons. “Here, let me show you,” she says.

Lyle trudges out from behind the Pearl four piece and grudgingly hands his sticks to Luce, who takes his seat. “If you're going to play a triplet fill,” she says, “and again, there's no triplet fills in this song, but if you're going to try, take it slow and easy to start with. Kick, right hand on the floor tom, left hand on the snare.” She demonstrates the three stroke fill.

Thud-boom-crack.

Then again, slightly faster.

Thudboomcrack.

“Got it? Kick, left, right. Kick, left, right. Once you've got it steady, gradually build up the speed. Like this…” She repeats the triplet fill, again and again, slowly increasing the tempo, faster and faster, until she settles into a perfectly metronomic galloping rhythm.

Thudboomcrackthudboomcrackthudboomcrackthudboomcrack.

As she locks in, Luce closes her eyes, and the world goes away. The students. The sour smell of teenage BO in the cramped rehearsal room. The ripped sound insulation padding on the walls. The battered amplifiers. Even Heather's knocked over bass and Gordy's out of tune guitar. It all fades. There's only her and the beat.

She gradually slows it down, the thundering trip hammer roll once more becoming three separate and distinctive strokes, and then she stops. The world comes back into focus.

Luce looks up and sees Lyle, Heather and Gordy looking at her very differently now. They're actually smiling, that light in their eyes. That spark. Luce feels her frustration lift, and remembers why she got into the job in the first place. For that spark.

“Woah,” Heather says, shaking her head. “That was… woah.”

“Now let's try it again from the top,” Luce says, stepping out from behind the kit and handing the sticks back to Lyle. “And this time, can we try to not sound like a one man band falling down the stairs? That'd be nice.”

4

“We all good?” Aldo asks into the mic, glancing at Ross and Luce in turn. Tuned up, levels set, they nod back.

“Alrighty. Mend the Black. When you're ready, Luce.”

Behind the kit, Luce counts them in on the hihats, setting the rhythm and tempo, one-two-three, one-two-three, then drops into the slow waltzing beat of the intro, accompanied by Ross dropping in with his grumbling fuzzed-out bassline. Aldo hangs back for a few bars while his rhythm section lays down the groove, smiling to himself, rocking back and forth slightly on his heels with his eyes closed. Almost unconsciously, the fingers of his left hand find the frets and strings of his new guitar, falling snugly into position on the neck as Luce goes into a rolling drum fill signalling the end of the intro bars.

One-two-three, one-and-a…

Aldo joins in, strumming out digital chorus washed chords. The new guitar sounds as good as it looks. Etheral and shimmering, hitting all the sweet frequencies. Singing.

Though he's been stressing about it all day, the large chunk of new debt the Les Paul represents doesn't even enter his mind right now. Neither does paying the rent, or even Dylan's child support money, because what's all that compared to this? The notes, chords, riffs, fills, solos and middle eighths? Soon lost in the song, Aldo's problems about money and debt and responsibilities are illusions. Glammers. Real truth, he knows, real grace, is found in moments like these. In verse and chorus.

They play, and the music feels like it washes Aldo clean. The day's worries and shame slide off him like a layer of greasy tattered skin. He doesn't care about being fired earlier. He doesn't care that he's flat broke, living in a cold, mouldy bedsit which he now can't even afford. None of it matters. It all goes away as the moody arrangement of Mend the Black - one of the first songs he'd ever written - flows around and through him, filling him up.

They play, and for the first time that day, for the first time since their last jam three days ago, Aldo is at peace.

An hour and five songs later, they down tools for a smoke break.

Leaving the stuffy college practice room, still redolent with the youthful BO of the day's students, they make their way through the empty corridors of the music wing toward the exit.

Outside, Ross sparks up a joint, fogging the evening air with an aromatically illicit cloud of home grown White Widow. He and Aldo had ordered the seeds from some Amsterdam based website months ago, wrecked one night in Aldo's bedsit and well into a two litre box of cheap white wine and a couple of lines of chico, courtesy of a guy in Ross's work. Until the seeds came through Ross's letterbox one day weeks later, they'd completely forgotten all about their lofty cocaine fuelled plans to get a high quality, Heisenberg from Breaking Bad level grow operation on the go.

Sober, they hadn't expected it to work, but with a bit of Googling and creative jury rigging of lamps, mirrors, tin foil, fans, and the commandeering of the outlet pipe from the back of an old tumble dryer, Ross had somehow constructed a half arsed, but functional enough grow space in his hallway cupboard, where there now lived a respectably bushy wee cannabis plant Ross had named Earnest, who kept him and Aldo in free weed.

Aldo's leaned back against the roughcast wall of the building, watching the cars go past on the main road, his ears ringing pleasantly, hands and fingers still buzzing with the feel of the Les Paul.

“Soundin no bad, eh?” Ross says, passing the reefer.

Aldo takes a drag, enjoying the flavour and blowing an appreciative smoke ring. “Not too shabby,” he replies. And it's not too shabby at all. They're sounding good. They're tight, and the songs are there. Over the past year they've started getting some decent gigs. The Garage and King Tuts in Glasgow. Fat Sam's in Dundee, and the Wickerman festival last year. That was some weekend, Aldo remembers with a smile. The three of them wandering about in a field in Dundrennan, full of acid, music everywhere, watching the fire jugglers as the sun went down. Amazing. They'd shared the bill with Stiff Little Fingers. Not on the same stage of course. Public Alibi played in a small tent off to the side, the one for unsigned bands, but still. They were on the same poster, and that was pretty fuckin cool. There'd been a good crowd packed into that tent watching them, and they'd been getting into it, even forming a modest mosh pit of five or six guys good naturedly knocking the shite out each other.

“The gig at the 13th Note's up on the Facebook page, by the way,” Luce says.

“Cool, cool,” Ross says, nodding. “Should be a good one. Friday night. Ladies night.” He waggles his eyebrows and does a little hip swaying dance move. “Oh yeah.”

“I've said to the students in my class if they don't come to the gig, they're not passing the course,” Luce adds. Aldo guesses she's joking, but with Luce, you're never quite sure, and he's known her for nearly twenty years. She took her music seriously, that was for damn sure.

“Get em telt, Luce,” Ross says, still gyrating his hips, now playing a little air-bass. “Any foxy wee student rock chicks in your class coming?”

“Away you go, ya sleazy bastard. You're nearly thirty.”

“Few years off that yet,” Ross objects. “A couple of boys from work are coming up to the gig as well. I told them it's two for one on voddies.”

“Is it?” Aldo asks.

“No idea.”

“So what you going to do for work, Al?” Luce asks. He'd told them about how his day had gone when they were setting up. He thought Loose Cannon was a decent song title.

“Fuck knows,” Aldo says, passing her the joint. “I seriously can't face another call centre.”

“I'll see if there's any jobs going in here.”

“Nice one.”

“I'll have a wee ask about in the hospital as well, dude,” Ross chips in.

“Cheers,” Aldo says. “This shit needs sorted. I need funds, pronto.” Earlier, in Squinty Ginty's, he'd sat down with his pint, a notepad and pen, and wrote down all his income and expenses. It made grim reading.

The banking app on his phone informed him that he had precisely forty-eight pounds and twelve pence available, which was all that was left of the three grand overdraft currently owed on the account. He'd already had a letter from the bank the week before, giving him notice that they would in fact be reducing his overdraft limit to a hundred pounds in four weeks' time. At the time, he'd called the bank and let them know everything was cool, he'd been in a new job for a few weeks and would start depositing his wages into the account within the month. The Indian lassie on the other end of the phone, who had the unlikely name of Morag, had agreed to Aldo paying off the overdraft by a hundred pounds a month. No worries, he told her. He could afford that. After all, he was a responsible adult with a full time, permanent job.

Then he got fired a week later for not asking an octogenarian if he wanted a credit card.

So, sitting in that dim lit pub, sipping sparingly at a pint he couldn't afford, the income column of Aldo's scribbled balance sheet had read forty-eight pounds and twelve pence (which was really the bank's forty-eight pounds and twelve pence) and the sad little collection of change in his pocket. Without any real hope, he'd opened the iTunes app on his phone and checked the band's account. The seven song EP they'd recorded in a cheap studio and put online a year ago had sold zero copies in the past three months, and less than a hundred since its release. No unexpected windfall from royalties, not that he'd really expected any.

Then he looked at the list of expenses in the other column of his accounting sheet, and knew he had a serious problem.

He already knew he had a lot more outgoing than incoming funds, but seeing those outgoings written down in hard black ink was a kick in the stones. The numbers, bound in inarguable mathematical laws, sneered at him from the page. Rent, food, council tax, child support, internet connection, gas and electric, mobile, payments on the eight hundred pound bank loan he'd taken out last year, the three grand overdraft, and the grand now owed at Coasters Music for his new Les Paul.

He tried to wrestle with the expenses, beat them down into smaller, more manageable digits, seeing what could be cut.

Tesco Value everything when food shopping. Lots of pasta. Other food in tins. In bulk if possible. See about getting a card meter in for the gas and leccy. Find a cheaper tariff for the mobile, or maybe even do without?

He'd have to call the bank, and then the benefits office. He'd been on the dole before, but never quite in such dire circumstances.

Dylan's child support. Christ. He still didn't even want to imagine that conversation with Ashley, but knew he'd have to do it eventually. As it was, he only got Dylan every other weekend.

Aye, and what did you do? Got fired from a job a retarded badger could've got a promotion in. Good luck seeing more of your son now, ya fuckin clown.

Sitting in the bar, his ill-afforded pint soured with guilt in his mouth and a bad case of debt dread crawling on the skin of his forearms, Aldo had decided to take the Les Paul back to the shop. It represented a thousand pounds on the expenses column. Ninety-five quid a month in payments. A debt he could really do without, and which was, after all, a luxury. Not necessary for survival. He'd only had it a couple of hours. Hadn't even taken it out the case. Surely the shop would take it back.

By the time he finished his pint, he'd talked himself into bringing it to jam, just to see what it sounded like. Just to have a shot. Just to say he'd had a Les Paul for a little while. It was the guitar he'd always wanted, ever since the day he'd seen the video for Guns n' Roses' Garden of Eden on MTV, sitting on the floor in the living room in the house he grew up in. He'd only been five or so at the time, but can still remember it clearly. How he'd been awestruck by the sight of the band in that wall-eyed video, all flying long hair, cigarettes, sunglasses and leather. The song. Fast and dangerous, like a machine that could mangle you if you got too close. And Slash, crazy afro flying and shredding the shit out of that bad ass riff on his black Les Paul…

That had been it for Aldo Evans. From that moment, he'd never wanted to be anything else other than a rock star, and by the end of the first hour of jam tonight, he'd known he was keeping the guitar. At least until the debt collectors came and took it.

Fuck you, expenses column.

“Who we playing with again on Friday, Al?” Ross asks him now.

“Shattered Twilight. Kinda gothy, heavy Cure type thing going on?”

“Oh fuck. Them? We played with them last year, mind? They're pish.”

“Aye. Strawberry fields. Were you no winching the facepaint off their bass player that night, Luce?” Aldo asks.

“Ya durty mare,” Ross says, nudging Luce with his elbow.

Luce blushes and punches him in the arm.

5

“Can I have a P please, Bob?”

“You should've went during the break, ya daftie,” Ross tells the contestant on the TV screen, adding an obligatory ba-boom-tish drum fill in the air for comedic punctuation. The old ones were the best.

“What P,” Bob Holness asks, “is a region of wilderness in South America, shared by Chile and Argentina?”

“That'd be Patagonia, Bob” Ross informs the immaculately groomed host.

The contestant - a bespectacled student in a horrendous yellow and purple knitted sweater – is completely baffled by the question. “Erm… Peru?” he ventures. Ross rolls his eyes.

“No, I'm afraid that's incorrect,” Bob tells the geographically challenged buffoon. “I'll have to pass it over.” He repeats the question to the opposing two-man blue team; a rather homely girl sporting a remarkable backcombed mountain of frizzy blonde hair and huge red hoop earrings, and a skinny guy with a day-glo pink tank top and a leonine mullet. Born in '89, Ross is always grateful he missed the questionable, often plain inexplicable fashion sense of the mid-eighties. The two-man team confer briefly, before Mullet Man confidently provides Bob with the correct answer, winning his team the princely sum of a fiver before selecting the next hexagonal segment of the game board. “I'll have a J please, Bob.”

“Good call, Billy Ray,” Ross says, sitting forward on his couch, hands going to his rolling board on the coffee table. Aldo and Luce are picking him up in about twenty minutes for the gig at the 13th Note. Time enough for a sneaky pre-show doob, which he rolls and enjoys as the vintage re-run of Blockbusters on the Challenge channel continues. After a shaky start, the hideously jumpered solo contestant in the white team manages to pull it back and makes it onto the Gold Run. Standing alone on the Hot Spot though, the pressure gets to him and he folds at the decisive moment like soggy cardboard, running out of time with only two correct answers. Crestfallen, he leaves the show with a grand total of eighty-five quid, an Oxford dictionary and Blockbusters branded cardigan and filofax.

Pleasantly stoned, Ross flicks over to Channel Four, and enjoys the seductively intellectual charms of Rachel Riley and Susie Dent on Countdown while he waits for Aldo and Luce to arrive.

His mobile rings, and Ross sees on the display it's Aldo. Crossing his small living room and looking out the window, he sees Luce's silver Nissan Micra idling at the pavement, seven floors below. The Tardis, they call her motor affectionately, on account of the number of times they'd managed to squeeze themselves, their instruments and a full backline of amps and drum kit into the small vehicle, seemingly in defiance of the laws of physics. Happily, there's no need for such logistical trickery tonight. The 13th Note has its own backline, including an old but serviceable Line 6 bass combo which he's used in other gigs.

Ross picks up his mobile and answers the call. “Alright, man,” he greets Aldo. “Be down in two secs.” He reaches for the TV remote. Countdown is just about finished, Nick Hewer about to reveal today's crucial conundrum. The famous thirty second jingle starts up as the letters appear.

E A R F U S I O N.

“Nefarious,” Ross says out loud, and like a boxer landing a knockout punch and strutting back to his corner before his opponent has even faceplanted into the canvas, he raises a fist in triumph and switches off the TV while the two contestants are still frowning at the jumbled up letters. He grabs his gig bag from the hall and leaves the flat, cheerily whistling the Countdown theme as he descends the graffiti adorned, hint-of-pish smelling communal stairway.

“Evening all,” he says as he climbs into the back seat of The Tardis. “How we all doing?”

“Not too shabby, dude,” Aldo says from the front passenger seat, looking over his shoulder. “Good day off?”

“Aye, sweet, man. Slept in till eleven, couple hours practice, spot of lunch, few reefers and a bit of telly. Did you know Harry Houdini's real name was Erich Weiss?”

“I did not.”

“You do now. How's tricks, Luce? Manage to press gang your students into coming along tonight?”

“Aye, should be a few turning up,” Luce says as she fiddles with the car stereo. A moment later, The Tardis fills with the frenetic drums and low-frequency guitar fuzz of Kyuss, pressurising the small car's interior with vintage stoner rock.

“Good call,” Ross says, smiling and bobbing his head in appreciation as the car pulls away from the pavement.

He loves this part, the commute to the show, almost as much as he loves playing the gig itself. The free and easy banter with Aldo and Luce, the car throbbing with music and the lengthy, often animated discussions of said music's pros and cons. He loves watching the world go by outside, the pre-show excitement buzzing in his bones. That feeling of doing what you're happiest doing. The thing you're built for. Ross was well into his teens before he found any sense of belonging or purpose in his life, and a big part of the discovery had been in picking up a dusty old bass guitar.

It didn't even matter if the gig turned out to be near empty, as was often the case. Just last month they'd driven for over three hours to a gig up in Aberdeen and played a set in front of a heaving crowd of ten, consisting of the two barstaff, the sound guy, the other band on the bill, an old man passed out blitzed in the corner, and the scabby looking mongrel at his feet, who'd watched their set with disinterest between prolonged sessions of enthusiastic ball-licking. As disheartening as it could be, for Ross McArthur even things like that weren't enough to take away the joy of playing the gig and the road trip to get there.

He's looking out the car window, the streets and schemes of Inverclyde passing by a visual mismatch to the sounds of Kyuss on the stereo, music that makes Ross think of wide open places, burning sunshine and tumbleweed, and late night generator powered parties in the Californian desert. He can almost smell the weed, sweat, beer and woodsmoke.

Inverclyde has its share of beer and weed, and weather permitting, manages the occasional bonfire, but there, any similarity to the Californian desert rock scene ends. Passing outside the car window is a tired urban landscape of industrial estates, office developments and residential streets, many of them in advanced stages of decay, with most of the windows in the tenement blocks securely glazed with steel plates. It's an area in decline, with a dwindling population. The shipbuilding disappeared from the Clyde decades ago, with only one or two yards left along the riverbanks once world renowned for maritime quality. More recently, the computer industry that had replaced the shipyards and had kept the area afloat ever since the seventies had all but vanished, too. The big IBM plant they drove past outside of town was empty now. The mile-long strand of factories and offices nestled in the hills now just a big ugly scar in the greenbelt, wide empty patches of overgrown scrub and half collapsed industrial ruins, as if the demolition teams couldn't even be arsed with it, and had just left it to nature to finish what they'd started.

Heading for the M8 which will lead them to Glasgow, the Tardis skirts the Oak Tree Mall in the town centre. Ever since what experts liked to call the 'financial downturn' of recent years, businesses that had been established in Inverclyde for decades had closed down one after the other. Their spaces in the mall now filled with cheap emporiums, card shops and pawnbrokers, many of which would themselves be closed before the next tax year. Gone were local institutions like Rhythmic, the wee record shop where Ross had bought his first Black Sabbath vinyl and the ticket to his first concert (Dropkick Murphys at the Barras, St Patrick's Day, 2006. Carnage.) and Mungin's Tailors, where Gregor, Ross's foster father, had seen him kitted out with a suit for his first job interview after leaving school. The suit had seemed to do the trick, and he'd got the gig, had done his time on the headset circuit doing customer service in one of the offices at the now defunct IBM plant. He'd worked in the same team as Aldo, who was bagged a few weeks later after phoning in 'sick' for the eighth time in three months.

“How's the job hunt going, Al?” he asks now. It's been three days since he got bagged from the market research place. It was always going to happen. Aldo just wasn't the type to last in that type of job. Couldn't keep his brain turned off long enough. Repetitive call centre work could be serious brain damage, especially for a guy like Aldo, who was smart enough, but a creative to the core. Problem was, with no useful qualifications to speak of, and no employable skills outside of music, it was one of the few types of work Aldo could hope to get.

“Shite,” Aldo says. “Been checking S1, Indeed, the Jobcentre, all the usual sites, all the usual pish. Even the customer service ads are only after Finnish and Norwegian speakers. I've sent applications out for a few bar and outbound sales jobs. Registered with the agencies. Not heard anything back yet. Anything going at your places?”

“Sorry, mate,” Ross says. “Checked the vacancy board in the hospital, but bugger all.”

“Nothing at the college either,” Luce says. “Unless you're an HR administrator with two years' experience and a degree, or a time served electrical engineer?”

“Mmmm… nope.”

“Ach, chin up,” Ross goes, giving him a slap on the shoulder. “You never know, mate. This could be the gig the A&R guy from Sony shows up waving blank cheques around. Did you know Rod Stewart was discovered when a record company guy heard him singing to himself on a train station platform?”

“I did not.”

“You do now.”

6

“We're Shattered Twilight, and we're here to rule the world!” shouts the leather-clad, facepainted ghoul on the stage.

“Aye, good luck with that, Morticia,” Ross says, chuckling and taking a swallow of his pint.

The first band of the night start their opener; a de-tuned dirge of a tune, all darkly ponderous guitar lines, slow and awkward tempo, the vocal melody a plaintive half whisper. The bass player, whose name Luce can't quite recall – Gaz? Garbo? - has been giving her the eye and a series of sleazy wee knowing grins since they'd arrived. Even now, on the stage - which isn't really a stage at all, just a slightly raised platform at the far end of the room - he's slowly gyrating his hips as he plays, staring straight at her in a manner she supposes he thinks is darkly seductive, but which is actually skin-crawlingly creepy. She shudders a little inside, cringing at the hazy memory of their brief liaison last year. She'd been really drunk.

Shattered Twilight have brought a pretty decent gaggle of Goths with them, and the area in front of the stage is crowded with about twenty slowly moshing, shoe-gazing figures, uniformly dressed in black. As promised, quite a few of Luce's students have turned up as well, and the cramped candlelit basement of the 13th Note is respectably crowded. It's a good turnout. They might even make a little cash from the gig, for a change.

They're sitting round a shoogly-legged table against the wall halfway down the room. Across from her, Aldo's surveying the crowd, nervously drumming his fingers on the tabletop. Like a lot of frontmen and women she's played with, he always gets a bit twitchy before a gig, but he seems more wound up than usual tonight. When they were putting the setlist together earlier, he was very deliberate about what songs should go where in their half hour slot, and during soundcheck he was pickier than usual about the levels, stopping their run-through several times to get the guy at the mixing desk to bring the guitar up, get more low end on the vocals, a bit less on the monitors. It's good to see him so motivated. Aldo can be hit and miss sometimes in his on-stage delivery, especially if there isn't much in the way of an audience. It seems like his new circumstances are the source of his focus tonight, and while she feels for her frontman, it can only be a good thing for the band. She hasn't seen Aldo look this hungry since they started out.

Placing her rubber drum pad on the table in front of her and getting her sticks out, Luce runs through her warm up exercises, going through her rudiments. She finishes her pre-show ritual by bending and flexing the muscles and tendons in her hands, wrists and ankles. She does this before every gig and every rehearsal, religiously so, and with far more devotion then she'd ever felt as a child during the complex rituals of Mass.

A daughter of devout Catholics – devout Italian Catholics no less – Luce'd never really caught the Jesus bug as a kid. All the elaborate bowing and kneeling and guilt and endless Latin recitals. It wasn't that she didn't believed in God at that age. In her simple, child-like way, she did, and she certainly liked the pretty dress she'd been given for her First Communion when she was seven. She just didn't think that God would be all that fussed about all the incense and hymns and sacraments and catechisms. Why would God or Jesus or the Holy Ghost care if you ate fish on a Friday or not? And it didn't seem fair that Brian McGill, the wee boy next door that she played with sometimes, would burn in hell for all eternity just because he was a Protestant. Surely God had other things to worry about with a whole universe to look after? Karen, Luce's best friend, had never shared any of her doubts. Karen never missed Mass in her life. She actually enjoyed going to chapel. Kind-hearted and achingly pretty, without a malicious bone in her body, Karen never went in or out of her front door without a wee splash of holy water and a heartfelt genuflection. Her unquestioning belief in the church and the Holy Trinity had been unshakeable.

“That dude at the bar,” Aldo says, interrupting Luce's memories. “I've seen him before.”