The Dwarves of Death

Intro

I find it hard to describe what happened.

It was late in the afternoon, on a far from typical London Saturday. Winter was mild that year, I remember, and although by 4.30 it was already good and dark, it wasn’t cold. Besides, Chester had the heater on. It was broken, and you either had it on full blast or not at all. The rush of hot air was making me sleepy. I don’t know if you know that feeling, when you’re in a car — and it doesn’t have to be a particularly comfortable car or anything — but you’re drowsy, and perhaps you’re not looking forward to the moment of arrival, and you feel oddly settled and happy. You feel as though you could sit there in that passenger seat for ever. It’s a form of living for the present, I suppose. I wasn’t very good at living for the present in those days: cars and trains were about the only places I could do it.

So I was sitting there, with my eyes half closed, listening to Chester crunching the gears and giving it too much throttle. I was pleased with myself that day, I must admit. I thought I’d made some good decisions. Small ones, like getting up early, having a bath, having a proper breakfast, getting the laundry done, and then getting up to Samson’s to hear their lunchtime pianist. And then the bigger ones, as I sat alone at a table, drinking orange juice and letting ‘Stella By Starlight’ wash over me. I decided not to phone Madeline after all, to let her contact me for once. I’d sent her the tape, and made my intentions pretty clear, so now it was up to her to make some sort of response. I’d got one unit left on my phonecard, and I could use it to phone Chester instead. That was the other thing: I’d decided to take him up on his offer. I didn’t owe the other members of the band anything. I needed a change of scene, a new environment. Musically, I mean. We’d grown stale and tired and it was time to get out. So I left just before the final number, round about three, and phoned Chester from a box on Cambridge Circus, and asked him what time he wanted me to come over.

‘Come now,’ he said. ‘Come to the flat and then I can give you a lift. They’re rehearsing at six so you can come and meet them all first. They all want to meet you.’

‘They’re rehearsing tonight? What — you want me to sit in?’

‘See how it goes. See how you feel.’

Before taking the tube up to Chester’s I stood at Cambridge Circus for a while and watched the people. I watched while the sky turned from blue to black and I don’t think I’ve ever felt so good about London, before or since. I felt I’d reached some kind of turning point. Everyone else was still rushing around, panic on their faces, and I’d managed to stop, somehow, to find some time to think and take a new direction. That’s how it felt, anyway, for about half an hour. I would never have believed that things were going to get even worse.

‘You’re not nervous about meeting these boys, are you?’ Chester asked me, as we drove on into ever darker side streets.

‘What are they like?’

He gave one of his short laughs, and said, in that funny, friendly North London drawl: ‘Like I said, they’re a bit weird.’

‘Who’s the one I saw that time?’

Chester gave me a sidelong glance, and I wondered whether I’d been tactless to mention it. But then he answered, readily enough: ‘That was Paisley. He sings, and writes the words. He’s good, too. You know, he’s got real presence. He looks really manic on stage, throwing himself about. I just wish I could keep him off the drugs. It’s the same with all of them. It’s costing me a fortune. Perhaps you’ll be a good influence on them. Someone sort of straight like you, you know — perhaps it’ll set them an example. Like, Paisley, he hasn’t written a song for two months. He’s been too stoned.’

The car lurched and made a sickening grinding noise as Chester negotiated the difficult business of arriving at a main road, stopping, starting and crossing it.

‘You ought to get this thing seen to,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve been meaning to. Like, when the money starts coming in, right, from this band and everything. I’m going to have it done up. Or maybe get a new one. I’m just a bit hard up right now.’

Chester drove a 1973 Marina, orange. The sidelights didn’t work and the heating was broken and there was something wrong with third gear, and yet somehow (like its owner) it inspired trust in spite of appearances. You knew that one day it was going to let you down, badly let you down, but perversely you continued to rely on it. It amazed me to think that the car was only a few years younger than Chester himself. He was only twenty-one; but for some reason I’ve always looked up to people younger than me.

‘Nearly there,’ he said.

We were driving down a handsome, sad sort of road, with high Georgian terraces on either side. It was that hour of the evening when the lights are on but the curtains are not yet drawn, and through the windows I could see families and couples, bathed in a golden glow, preparing their suppers, pouring their drinks. You could almost smell the basil and the bolognese sauce. We were in North Islington. I felt a sudden desire to be inside one of those houses, to be either cooking or being cooked for, and all at once I realized that I had not made a proper decision today at all. I began to wish that I had phoned Madeline, and I knew that I would, at the first opportunity. I ached for her after just one week’s absence. And that was the first sign that things weren’t quite as simple as I’d thought.

The next sign was when Chester parked the car, pointed up at a window, and said, ‘Good. They’re in.’

I looked up and saw, not a soft square of amber, framing a domestic scene, but a curious, distant, flickering beam of pure white. It was luminous but muted, eerie. I must have stared at it long enough for Chester to get out and open the door on my side.

‘I’m warning you, it’s a bit of a tip, this place,’ he said. ‘The landlord doesn’t care what they do to this house. He doesn’t give a toss.’ He found his keys and locked the door. ‘When I was looking for a house for them, I heard about this place through a friend. Well, perhaps friend isn’t the word. Through a business associate, if you like.’ He chuckled, for some reason. ‘Anyway, the deal was, he didn’t mind what kind of a mess they made of it, so long as he was able to use it himself now and again. Just sort of one evening a week. Well, I knew that was ideal for these boys, ’cause I knew, any place they moved into, they’d have it looking like a pigsty in no time. So, I mean, it sounded like a dodgy deal to me, but handy with it.’

‘What does he want to use it for himself?’

Chester shrugged. ‘Search me.’

‘Doesn’t anyone ever see him?’

‘Nope.’ He looked up at the window again. ‘Listen to that bloody racket. I don’t know how the neighbours put up with it.’

Incredibly loud music was issuing from behind the barely lit window. A wail and swirl of saxes and synths and this drum machine pounding out some robotic backbeat. The noise in the adjoining houses must have been unbearable.

Chester went up to the front door, which was falling off its hinges, and began pounding on it with both fists.

‘You have to do this,’ he said, ‘or they won’t hear you.’

While we were waiting for someone to answer, I mentioned a matter which had been worrying me.

‘Look, Chester, if I decide to join this band, then The Alaska Factory — you know, they’ll fold up. I won’t have time to play with them, too, and I don’t think they could carry on without me.’

‘Yes, I know. That’s all right.’

‘But we’re your only two acts. It’ll halve your income.’

‘I’ve got other money coming in. Besides, what am I making out of you at the moment? Two gigs a week, at ten per cent of fifty quid a time? I’ve told you before, there’s no money in live music, it’s all in the record deal and you boys are never going to get a record deal. Are you? I mean, when did you ever make a decent demo?’

I fingered the tape in my pocket — the one we had made only last week, the one we had made for Madeline. But all I said was: ‘So?’

‘Whereas this lot, you know, they’ve got potential. They’ve got image. They’re young.’ He went back down the steps into the street, and looked up at the window. ‘This is bloody ridiculous. Oy!’

Cupping his hands and shouting did no good either. Finally a handful of pebbles thrown hard at the window brought a puzzled pale face, with long red hair dangling over the sill. He smiled when he saw Chester.

‘Hi!’

‘Are you going to let us in, or aren’t you?’

‘I’m sorry, Chess. We can’t hear much, with the music.’

‘Well hurry up, will you? It’s freezing out here.’

In fact I think I was the colder of the two, in my thin old raincoat, whereas Chester, as usual, looked impeccable: fur-lined gloves, leather jacket, cloth cap, with those steely round eyes and stocky figure which seemed ready to take on anyone. He tutted to me and rubbed his hands together briskly. Then the door was yanked open, at last, by someone I recognized: it was Paisley — taller, more angular, more sallow even than I had remembered him.

‘Hi, Chess,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

‘About time too,’ said Chester, as we stepped inside. ‘Paisley, this is Bill.’

‘Hi.’ He shook my hand coldly.

‘We’ve already met,’ I said. Chester coughed, and Paisley looked puzzled, so I added: ‘Briefly, down at the Goat. Remember?’

‘No,’ said Paisley. ‘Sorry.’

We picked our way down a dark corridor, past a rusty bed frame standing against a wall, and several black bin liners from which rubbish was overflowing on to the floor.

‘Watch out for the holes,’ said Paisley, as he led us up the staircase. Two of the stairs were missing.

Chester turned to me and whispered: ‘Is it all right to introduce you as Bill?’

‘I prefer William,’ I said. ‘It’s… well, it’s not so short.’

‘OK.’

I paused at the first landing. A window pane had been smashed and broken glass was still scattered over the floorboards. Already the music from upstairs was getting oppressively loud and a curious filthy smell had begun to infect the air, so I put my head out of the empty window frame for a little while, looking at the tidy back gardens of the other houses. Chester went on ahead, while Paisley waited for me further up the stairs.

‘You coming up?’

On the second floor, the mystery of the luminous glow was solved. Paisley led me into a large room — two rooms knocked together, in fact, running the length of the house. There were no carpets, no curtains, no furniture at all except for a huge dining-table and six or seven wooden chairs. On the mantelpiece in the back half of the room was the only source of light: a long phosphorescent tube, obviously pinched from the strip lighting of some office or tube station or something. It gave off a ghostly sheen, scarcely touching the shadows in the corners of the room but throwing into unearthly relief the faces of the four people sitting around the table: three men and a woman. They were eating a massive takeaway meal: tin cartons, paper buckets and bits of old newspaper littered the table and the immediate floor area, which led me to believe that the meal was a compound of Chinese, Kentucky Fried and fish and chips. The air was thick with the smell of stale dope. There was an electric cooker in one corner; all four rings were on, which seemed to be a way of providing heat as well as making it easy to light up. My arrival had no impact. They went on drinking and smoking as if I wasn’t there.

In the front half of the room, nearest the street, was the stereo system. Not a domestic hi-fi, but a huge disco console with twin turntables, mixing desk and 200-watt speakers. The noise of that maniacal, volcanic music was deafening. I put my fingers to my ears and Chester, noticing this, tactfully turned it down a little before announcing to the room in general: ‘OK everyone, this is William. William’s going to be your new keyboard player, right. William — meet The Unfortunates.’

There was a muted grunt from one or two of the eaters. The woman looked my way. That was it.

‘Hi,’ I said nervously. ‘Nice place you’ve got here.’

This produced a short outburst of mirthless laughter.

‘Yeah, it’s got character, hasn’t it?’ somebody said.

‘Sometimes you can smell the character of this place half-way down the street.’

I decided to try another subject.

‘Is this one of your tapes?’ I asked.

‘What, this music? No. It’s too tuneful for us, this is. We used to sound like this, when we were trying to be commercial.’

Chester switched it off.

‘Here, I’ll put one of their tapes on,’ he said.

What I heard was disconcerting, but if you listened closely, there was a kind of sense behind it. The rhythm section was loud, fast and minimal, while the two guitarists — one using some sort of fuzz box, the other playing strange funk patterns high up the neck — seemed to be playing songs all of their own. Meanwhile, Paisley’s voice was jack-knifing all over the place, from the top to the bottom of the register:

Death is life

Death is life

And black is the colour of the human heart

Death is life

Death is life

You have to die before you can live

You have to kill before you can love

‘Nice lyrics,’ I said to Paisley, when it came to an end. ‘Did you write them?’

‘Yeah. You think so? I don’t like them. Too soppy.’

‘Yeah, you want to… darken them up a bit,’ said someone at the table. ‘We don’t want to start sounding too friendly.’

‘We don’t sound too friendly, do we?’ Paisley asked me.

‘It’s not your main problem.’

‘You think you could do something with that?’ Chester asked. ‘Put some keyboards in, I mean?’

‘Yes, sure.’

‘Something with a bit of bite, I mean. No strings or anything. We don’t want it to sound like Mantovani, you know what I mean?’

‘I think so. Listen, Chester — ’ I felt in my pocket, and my fingers closed on the tape. ‘I’ve brought something of my own along: that tape we made, last week? I know you haven’t heard it yet, but — well, I think it’s really good. Can I put it on? Give everyone an idea of the kind of thing I do.’

Chester shook his head.

‘Not now, eh? They might think you were being pushy. Maybe play it when we go down to the studio.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Which had better be now. All right, everybody! Clear that shit away and get the gear downstairs. We’re going to start on time for once.’

To my surprise, there was a slow but positive response. They got to their feet (leaving the remains of the meal as it was) and began putting on coats and picking up instrument cases. I’ve never been able to understand authority. Some people (like Chester) have it, and others (like me) don’t. It’s not even as if he was especially tall. As they got ready, he stood there counting heads and making a mental calculation.

‘Janice, are you coming with us tonight?’

‘I thought I would, yes.’

‘We’ll need two cars. Paisley, have you got yours outside?’

‘Mm-hm.’

‘Give William a lift, will you?’

‘Sure.’

Soon they were all heading downstairs, leaving just Paisley and me.

‘What are you waiting for?’ Chester asked him.

‘Finish my joint.’

‘For God’s sake, Paisley. It costs me five quid an hour, that place. Every time, we lose an hour for some reason or other. Usually to do with you.’ He turned to me. ‘Don’t let him be late, Bill. See you in a few minutes.’

His footsteps echoed down the staircase. From the street, there was the sound of car doors opening and closing. Then the car drove away.

Paisley got slowly to his feet, bent down to a wall socket and turned off the light. He turned all the rings on the cooker off, too, and then sat down.

‘What are you doing?’ I asked.

It was completely dark. All I could see was the yellow glint of his eyeballs, the shine of the grease on his jet-black hair, and the tip of his joint glowing as he inhaled.

‘Want some?’ he said, leaning forward.

I walked to the window.

‘You heard what Chester said. We’d better go. Are you safe to drive after taking that stuff?’

‘We’re not going yet. Got some business to do first.’

‘Business?’

‘C’ mere.’

I guessed that he was beckoning, so I went to the table and sat opposite him.

‘Chester tell you about our landlord?’

‘A bit.’

‘He’s a dealer. Uses this place to meet people. That’s why we rehearse on Saturdays, see — he wants us to be out of the house.’

‘And?’

‘There was a phone call for him this morning. First thing. Nobody else was up. Then I got this idea, see.’

Not wanting to know, I asked: ‘What idea?’

‘I pretended to be him, didn’t I? ’Cause they said, “Is that Mr Jones?” — I mean, a name like that, it’s a cover, isn’t it? No one’s really got a name like that — and I said, “Yes, speaking.” So they said, “Meet you at the house tonight, six-thirty,” and I said, “What for?”, and they said, “We got some stuff for you,” and I said, “What sort of stuff?”, and they said, “Good stuff,” and I said, “How much stuff?”, and they said, “Loads of stuff, mate, loads,” and I said, “All right, I’ll be here,” and they said, “Make sure none of them wankers is in,” and I said, “It’s all right, I’ll be here on my own,” and then they rang off.’

‘I don’t get it,’ I said.

‘Well, I’ve got this plan, see.’

Still not wanting to know, I said: ‘What plan?’

‘Well look. They’re going to turn up with all this stuff, right, and they’re going to want some money for it. The thing is, I’m going to take the stuff, not give them any money, and then scarper.’ There was a pause. ‘What do you think?’

‘That’s your plan?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Look, Paisley, how many of those things have you had today?’

We waited in silence for several minutes. Every time a car approached my heart began to beat frantically. It was an absurd situation. Why could my life never be simple? All I had wanted to do was audition with a new band. Why should it have to involve something like this?

‘Paisley, this is a stupid idea,’ I said at last. ‘Let’s go and join the others. I mean, if you really think these guys are going to come in here and calmly hand over — look, how old are you?’

‘Eighteen.’

‘Jesus, you’re only eighteen, you don’t want to be mixed up in all this. You don’t want to be into drugs and crime at your age. You want to be a singer, for God’s sake. You’ve got a terrific voice, you’ve got a manager who’s devoted to you — ’

‘You think I’ve got a good voice?’

‘Of course you have. Look, you don’t need me to tell you that.’

He frowned. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes it doesn’t sound so good.’

‘Listen, we’ve got a singer in our band, right? To him, you’re like — Sinatra. You’re like Nat King Cole. Marvin Gaye. Robert Wyatt.’

‘You mean that?’

‘We’ve just made this new tape. Here, have a listen to this.’ I took the cassette out of my pocket and handed it to him in the dark. ‘Listen to what he sounds like. I mean, he’s OK, it’s not embarrassing or anything. But just think what you could do with a song like that.’

‘What — is this something you wrote yourself?’

‘Yes. It’s… well, it’s a very personal song, actually. I’d like you to hear it and… maybe hear you sing it some time.’

Just then, a car stopped outside the house. Two doors slammed.

‘Here they are.’

He slipped the cassette into his jacket pocket, stood up and went to the window overlooking the street. Quietly, I joined him, and saw the car parked outside, with its sidelights still on.

‘Can you see them?’

I thought I saw figures moving in the shadows by the front door; but couldn’t be certain. The next thing we knew, there were footsteps in the corridor.

‘Two people,’ I said.

Now that I could see his face, Paisley looked scared; more scared even than I felt.

‘Have you any idea what you’re going to do?’

‘Ssh.’

From downstairs, a voice called: ‘Hello!’

Paisley went to the door and, doing his best to disguise his voice, shouted, ‘Up here!’

The footsteps ascended the stairs, slowly. We heard a thud and a cry of ‘Shit!’ where the missing boards must have been. Paisley withdrew to the centre of the room, where the wall had been knocked out. I stayed right where I was, beside the window.

The footsteps stopped on the first landing, and we heard one voice say, ‘It’s a bit bloody dark in here, isn’t it?’

‘Shut up,’ said the other.

‘We’re upstairs!’ Paisley called. His voice was shaking now.

The footsteps approached, getting slower and slower. Outside our room, they stopped.

‘In here,’ said Paisley.

∗

I find it hard to describe what happened. There was a long silence, a very long silence, and then some more footsteps. Suddenly, two figures were framed in the doorway. They stood apart, threatening and wordless, their little bodies visible only in silhouette. They were wearing hoods and carrying heavy wooden clubs, and they could only have been about three feet tall, both of them. I don’t know how long they must have stood there. Paisley just stared at them, frozen with shock and terror, until they stepped forward and began to scream, together. This awful, icy, high-pitched scream. All at once they were running towards him, and then one of them jumped on to the table. The other one was swinging his club around and starting to hit Paisley about the legs with it. Paisley turned, and from somewhere or other he produced a knife and started slashing madly in the air. He was shouting something, too. I don’t know what. Then he must have managed to knife the little man in the hand because he dropped his club and started screaming and shouting ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ and he grabbed the bottom of Paisley’s jacket and tried to pull him down. But by now the other one, the one on the table, was standing right over Paisley, and before I could warn him or anything, he’d crunched him over the head, and there was this sound like an egg-shell cracking when you’re making an omelette. And then Paisley was on the floor, and for the next minute or so they were both at it, beating the life out of him till there was nothing left of his head at all and they were both too tired to do any more.

They still hadn’t noticed that I was there. I was stooped beneath the window sill — not a very good idea, when you think about it, because it put me at eye-level with them — but it must have been too dark for them to make me out. I just crouched there and looked at these two little figures standing over Paisley’s body. One of them had his wounded hand clasped between his knees: he must have been in agony.

‘Come on now,’ the other one said. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

This produced no response other than an indistinct mutter, followed by a moan.

‘Come on, for Christ’s sake. Let’s get you down to the car.’

‘The jacket.’

‘What?’

‘We’ll have to take his jacket. It’s got my blood on it, and my prints.’

‘Jesus Christ.’

He dropped his club, rolled Paisley’s body over and got the jacket off as best he could.

‘And his trousers. It’s all over his trousers, look.’

So they took off his trousers, too, and wrapped them around the still-bleeding hand.

‘Come on, let’s get shot of this place. Let’s go.’

Just as they were leaving, the injured one paused, reflectively. He shook his head and said: ‘I didn’t enjoy that much.’

‘Me neither.’

And then they clattered off down the stairs, these two little men, leaving me to shake and shiver beneath the window, alone with Paisley’s corpse. I heard their two car doors opening, and heard the car drive off even before the doors had had time to close.

I stayed there for a while, God knows how long. I didn’t go anywhere near the body, though. I didn’t even step over it — I skirted right round it, giving it as wide a berth as the room would allow. Then I too climbed down the stairs; slowly, one at a time, clutching at the banister. When I got to the front door I stood in the doorway, drinking in the fresh air. I don’t think, at that point, that my mind had taken in what I’d just seen.

I guessed, afterwards, that the police must have had their eye on that house for quite some time. Perhaps they’d even been tapping the phone or something. The first thing I saw when I stepped outside, anyway, was a police car tearing down the street in my direction. Before I knew what was happening it had pulled up at the front door; so the two of them must have got a good look at my face as I stood there wondering what the hell I was supposed to do next. Then, after a few fatal moments of indecision, my brain stuttered into action again. In the time it took them to get out of the car, I realized that no explanation I could give for my presence would stop them from suspecting me of being involved in the crime; perhaps of having committed it myself.

So I turned and ran back up the stairs. I could hear them coming after me. When I reached the first landing I remembered the broken window, clambered through it and crouched, ready to jump. I’m sure they would have got me, sure they would have caught up with me, if it hadn’t been for those missing stairs. There was the sound of wood giving way and a cry of pain and I knew that one of them had fallen through.

‘Are you all right?’ his mate was calling. ‘Are you all right?’

This was my chance. I jumped and landed in the middle of all this long wet soft grass. The whole garden was like a jungle. I ran right to the bottom, scrambling and tripping over brambles, branches, old broken milk bottles — all sorts of junk — and then at the end I climbed over the wall and found myself in a quiet, unlit alleyway.

I was more terrified than I had ever been in my life. Much more. So although I was tired, it wasn’t difficult to carry on running. While I was running, you see, I couldn’t stop to think.

∗

I wanted to get the difficult part out of the way — to describe what happened, that evening in Islington. The temptation now, of course, is to go straight on and tell you how it all ended, but there are a few things I have to explain first. I have to explain about Madeline, and Karla, and London, and why I wanted to join Paisley’s band in the first place. It’s hard to know where to start — hard to know if there was a specific point where things started to go downhill. But I think there was. It can be traced back to a particular evening, and to a particular culprit. Yes, I know where to point the finger of accusation.

Because it all started, as far as I’m concerned, with Andrew Lloyd Webber.