Page 60 of Dead Fall

‘Why would he even speak to me?’ she asked, playing for time.

‘He has a rep for liking pretty girls,’ said Ethan, having the grace to sound embarrassed.

Yecch.

But if the cops were homing in on Ethan then somebody had to check out this SkAR guy.

And so that evening she’d dug out her black spider’s web tights, plus a short leather skirt she hadn’t worn in an age and put on some make-up that wouldn’t scare the normals. She had agonised over shoes – not possessing anything remotely girlie – and in the end had gone for her cherry-red patent leather Doc Martens. Now, catching sight of her red lips and bat-winged eyes reflected in a massive mirror in the club entrance, she pulled her skirt down, suddenly self-conscious: was she too old to pull it off?

Inside, a pumping dance track was playing but the stage was empty, just two guys setting up the decks. Skirting the edge of the gyrating crowd, she reached the front and caught the eye of one of them, a muscular guy in his forties wearing a T-shirt with ‘CREW’ on the front, obviously one of SkAR’s roadies. He came to the front of the stage and dropped to a crouch. She pressed a little card with a note on it in his hand and after checking it out he just nodded.

Then she took up position to the side where she had a good view of the stage. But by the time SkAR appeared, suddenly spotlit at his decks, a dance track pumping, she had to peer past the forest of arms holding uplifted phones to get a look at him. Dressed in black, and older-looking than she’d expected – in his late thirties, maybe more. Not that she could see much of his face: beneath a beanie he wore wrap-around shades and a dark beard shaped into a goatee.

Had the roadie given SkAR her card? On it she’d asked for a brief interview for her TikTok channel, borrowing the identity of someone called @beatzbabe who covered dance music and had a sizeable but not ridiculous following. It had taken a while to find someone who never actually appeared on her reels and whose profile image was a dark-haired pierced avatar vaguely resembling Cassie.

During the first track, she stood still so that she’d be noticeable amid all the frenetic movement and after a moment he looked over to check her out. She felt a jolt of anxiety: Would she pass? What if he’d met this TikTok person? After a few more tracks – all sounding generically similar to her ears – she felt a tap on her upper arm. It was the roadie from earlier. Unsmiling, he handed her a black plastic card printed with the words ‘VIP’ and ‘Backstage’ before disappearing. When she looked up at SkAR, he tipped his head as if to say, You’re welcome.

Twat. He must have a prearranged signal with his roadies. But she just smiled and gave him a little wave.

Twenty minutes later, he’d finished his set and announced the next act would be coming on after a short break. She left a decent interval so as not to seem overkeen before heading backstage. At the door, another unsmiling flunky nodded her through and pointed out SkAR’s dressing room. The door was ajar.

‘Virtus Omnia Vincit,’ she murmured, before pushing it open. Courage conquers all.

‘Hey there, hot stuff,’ he said, spinning his chair round and splaying his legs. Stripped of the on-stage light show he looked .?.?. ordinary, a slightly overweight sweaty guy you wouldn’t look at twice in the street. The air was thick with some sickly cologne that he’d slapped on in a (failed) attempt to cover the smell of his sweat.

After closing the door behind her, he handed her a shot glass already filled with some clear liquid. She felt her heart start to thump, before picturing Bronte wearing a scornful look. Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not allergic to anything.

‘Cool set,’ she said, sipping the tequila – a drink she loathed. ‘I’m going to post about it.’

‘Oh yeah? You got a big following?’ His eyes moving from her legs to her breasts.

‘Eighty thousand,’ she said modestly, hoping she’d remembered right. Still, she hoped he wouldn’t go online to check: it would be just her luck if @beatzbabe was right now posting live from some club in Ibiza.

‘You know, I usually go for black girls’ – he put his head on one side, assessing her – ‘but I like an edgy chick too.’

Lucky me.

‘Thanks!’ Time to change the subject. ‘It’s so great you’ve got a new residency here and I was thinking maybe we could do a little interview?’

Lust wrestled with narcissism on his face, and he shrugged. ‘Why not?’

‘I interviewed Bronte you know, just before you two worked together.’ She crossed one leg over the other, a move he followed with dog-like attention. ‘What was she like?’

Still looking at her legs, he said, ‘She was high maintenance.’ He gave ‘high’ two syllables, standard in urban street-speak but fake-sounding in a guy his age. Cassie remembered her grandmother’s reaction the time she’d come home from school talking like that: We might be poor, but we can still speak the Queen’s English.

‘Really? High maintenance?’ she asked, mirroring the long ‘i’ sound. ‘I thought it would be amazing to work with someone that talented.’

‘You’re not recording this, right?’ he said, frowning.

‘What, no!’ she lied, making a show of pocketing her phone. ‘We’ll do the interview in a minute. Go on, tell me about her, I was a bit of a fan-girl.’ Putting her head on one side and playing with her hair like she’d seen silly women doing. ‘She was soo beautiful.’

He leaned over and put his hand on her thigh, saying, ‘She wasn’t as pretty as you.’

Panic flared in Cassie’s chest. She wasn’t in any danger, was she? Nah. With a packed dance floor just metres away she only had to scream her lungs out for someone to hear.

So she just smiled and said, ‘She must’ve been totally thrilled for the chance to cut a track with you.’

‘You’d think, right?! But we didn’t really see eye to eye.’ The feel of his clammy palm through the spider’s web tights was making her want to puke.

---