Chapter Twenty Three

“Are you sure you should be here? Shouldn’t you be getting some sleep or something?”

Jeff had his arm around Jake’s shoulders: it wasn’t particularly comfortable because Jake was about five inches taller than him, but he left it there for a bit. Jake seemed oddly calm, and Jeff was as much wanting reassurance as giving it.

“I’m an insomniac, remember.” Jake grinned; not full-voltage but it would do, “I’m kind of used to it, not sleeping. And I got back home by about four anyway. I did have some time lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, you know…”

Jake looked slightly sheepish: his sleep patterns fell firmly into the rather large category of things about him which Jeff didn’t quite get.

“Well, if you’re sure. Just don’t feel you have to do this.”

Jeff gestured vaguely at the studio, looking worried.

“I don’t actually do much anyway, do I? You’re all being great about it, and I really appreciate that, I do, but all I’ve done in the past week is drink tea and come up with a few crap lyrics. I can easily keep on doing that.”

Jeff looked at him, wishing he could unravel the thinking which would have gone into that statement. They all tended to think of Jake as the fragile one, and tiptoe round him in case he decided to pack it all in and bugger everything up, but there was something in him which came alive when the shit hit the fan. He had no idea whether his Dad was dead or alive, had been questioned by the police for more than half the night, but had still shown up in the studio to try to help write mindless happy pop songs, even though he knew he was crap at it. He even seemed reasonably cheerful, in a rather low-key sort of way. Jeff was saved by Duncan, who had been fiddling with coffee machine: it actually produced reasonably drinkable coffee, but it took quite a lot of fiddling around with weird little cartridge things to get there, so they had got into the habit of going to Starbucks instead. That morning they all knew that Starbucks was too public; too much of a risk.

“We’re all being shit at it, though, aren’t we?” He handed Jeff a passable cappuccino, in a recycled paper cup, before giving a second cup to Jake. “Bag’s been in about three and a half seconds.”

Jake smiled at him, before setting about trying to extract the teabag with two plastic stirrers. Duncan believed that tea should be the colour of rusty iron, and had tried on a couple of occasions during the tour to apply the same principle to Jake’s peppermint tea. Jake preferred it when it was barely more than scented hot water.

“It’s not been great, has it?” Jeff knew that ten days in the studio had produced next to nothing, and it wasn’t clear how that was going to change. At least, not for the better. He hesitated, wishing that one of the others had raised it instead, but he needed to carry on. “Do you think we should just call it a day? Just say that we can’t do it with all the stuff that’s going on at the moment and try again when we’ve had a bit of a break?”

Duncan looked concerned, but not surprised. “Studio’s booked though, isn’t it? And the record company are expecting at least a single before Christmas.”

“Studio’s booked and paid for until the end of next month, but that’s not a big deal.” Duncan looked as if he was about to protest, “I’ll pay for it Duncs if needs be, I don’t want to let stuff like that stop us doing the right thing. And I’m sure the suits will understand: they might even do better with a new album in a year or so when the fuss has died down.”

Just so long as we aren’t dead and buried by then: Jeff thought it but didn’t say it. Duncan was wondering whether he ought to get Mouse, who was out in the lobby trying to field a load of calls which had come in for Jake. It wasn’t just the silly band rules, which reminded him of cub scouts: it was Mouse’s life, just like it was his life. Jake, meanwhile, had squeezed the tea bag to within an inch of its life, so that it didn’t drip en route to the bin, and had walked back across the room to rejoin them.

“I know that I’m not much help at the writing and everything, but I don’t think we should stop yet. Not if it’s paid for and everything.” He looked slightly embarrassed, but carried on, “I mean, knowing that I’m meant to be here, with you lot, does kind of help, with all the rest of the stuff which is going on at the moment. At least carry on for another week or so and see where we are then, can’t we?”

“You really want to?” Jeff was surprised, “It isn’t much fun when it’s not really happening, though, is it?”

Jake was much more direct than Jeff expected him to be: he seemed to be tuned into Jeff’s sense of just how much was at stake.

“Yes, I really want to.” Having met Jeff’s gaze directly, he paused, unsure as to whether to carry on. “I was thinking, though, that what with everything else that’s going on, perhaps we shouldn’t be thinking that it needs to be happy, cheerful stuff. I mean, we are all kind of angry, and a bit scared, and a bit fearful of what’s going to happen, in a way. Perhaps we should just try writing about that.”

“Angry, miserable pop songs?”

Jeff smiled as he said it: it was a slightly twinkly smile which told Jake he was still on-side, and interested. Duncan, on the other hand, was getting a bit lost.

“Fuck that! We’ll end up sounding like Coldplay.”

“I’d be happy with that: I’m more worried we’d end up sounding like an angry, miserable version of us. That’d be fucking awful.”

What worried Jeff was what had always worried him, right from the beginning: that they would put out something half-baked and mostly forgettable, and which would have the vultures feeding on them. He’d been there before, while Jake had been busy wandering around Peru getting his aura aligned: it didn’t come as a huge surprise that Jake had more conviction.

“I’m not saying that we should be making miserable music, just that there’s stuff going on which we ought to be able to use. I mean, the stuff at the police station last night; I was thinking that there has to be something in that, somewhere, that we could do something with, as it were.” Duncan was screwing up his face, in a way which wasn’t intended to be encouraging, “I’m not sure what, mind. Might not be pop songs at all, I suppose. I was just thinking that happy isn’t working, so maybe we need to try something else.”

Jake was struggling in the face of Duncan’s gurning; and Jeff saw an opening in the conversation.

“Did the police tell you what they think happened?”

“Not really. They were asking me stuff about Marty, and about Dad, and then about Marty again; like they were trying to catch me out. It kind of seemed like they couldn’t figure it out, and they were taking it out on me because I’m kind of the reason they’re getting so much hassle about it.”

“Have you seen the papers?”

Jeff was watching him closely, but he didn’t flinch. That morning’s Sun had lead with a headline of “Beaten!” with a picture of Jake being lead to a marked police car the previous evening. At the time when they had gone to press, Jake was still being questioned. The Sun intimated that it expected him to be charged with kidnapping and conspiracy to murder, with a vague reference to “police sources”. The Mirror, which seemed to have totally lost track of the fact that as yet there was nothing at all to suggest anyone had died, had chosen “Murderer!” as its headline.

“Some of them. Wasn’t the best, was it?”

Jake was now watching Jeff as closely as he was being watched: Jeff wasn’t quite sure how to ask the question.

“But did the police say anything about either Marty or your Dad being dead?”

“A couple of times. I reckoned they mostly did it to try to rattle me, though. I know it’s a bit odd, and everything, but I just don’t think that they are; dead, I mean. I kind of feel as if I would know, if they were. I think that’s why Dad’s disappearing is sort of OK, now that I’ve got used to it: I kind of know he’ll come back. At least, I feel as if I know he will, even if I also know that I don’t know, if you see what I mean. I tried to explain that to them, but I don’t think that really helped much.”

Jeff, turned away slightly, swallowing a smile at the idea of the police trying to figure out what to make of Jake. Duncan was looking intently at the picture of Jake on the front of the copy of The Sun which Jeff had picked up on his way in.

“You look like one of them teenage hooligans who’s been knifing his mates in a shopping centre with your hood up like that.” He turned the picture slightly, squinting at it. “Did you have handcuffs on?”

“Course not. They didn’t actually arrest me, I agreed to go in for questioning.”

“Why’s your hands behind your back like that, then?”

Jake suddenly realised just how silly the answer to that question was going to sound, but there was no helping it.

“I didn’t want any of them to try to hold my hand. The police I mean: they seemed to be trying to get hold of me.”

Jeff and Duncan looked at one another, not sure how to react, before Duncan exhaled and slapped Jake heartily on the back.

“You fucking headcase! You don’t want anyone holding your hand, so now half the country now thinks you’re a fucking murderer!”

“Look, they let me go, didn’t they? They’ll have to publish that too, even if it doesn’t make the front pages. It’ll all sort itself out in the end, I know it will.”

Jake was trying not to plead; he didn’t know whether to be worried or relieved when Mouse came in with a long list of notes. He had been going through Jake’s texts and voicemails, trying to figure out which messages needed to be dealt with and which ones could be left to fester on the nutters’ heap.

“What’s up?”

“Think I’ve more or less got through them, but there were some seriously weird calls last night.”

Jake scrunched his face up, before remembering it wasn’t exactly Mouse’s fault.

“Is there anything I need to do?”, he asked.

“Not now, although there are heaps of people you need to get back to in a week or two once it’s all calmed down a bit. I made you a list.” He went to hand it to him, although Jake didn’t seem inclined to take it. “There was one that I couldn’t figure out, though. Called while I was out there. A girl called, well, more a woman I suppose. Said she was Sorcha Brompton, and asked me to let you know that she has got some of the papers you were looking for.”

Mouse had tried to roll the r in Sorcha, and hadn’t quite pulled it off. Duncan looked curious.

“Sorcha? Wasn’t that the lawyer at the hotel, with the knickers?”

Jake just about managed to look inscrutable, while wondering if it was a trick.

“Did she say anything else?”

“Not really. Apologised for calling at what she knew was a bad time, and asked me to take down her number. Said that you would know what she was talking about.” Mouse was wondering what he had missed, “You do know what she was talking about, don’t you?”