Page 49 of Dead Fall

‘Yeah fine’ – shaking her head to dispel the melancholia. ‘So have you been getting a lot of this kind of shit since .?.?.?’

He pulled a rueful smile but dropped his gaze. ‘Yeah. And the band haven’t had any bookings for a bit. They’re playing with a stand-in guitarist this weekend. I can’t blame them – there’s too much heat around me. Nobody wants a bunch of paps turning up, annoying the punters.’

‘Do you miss it?’

‘Like you might miss breathing,’ he said with a sudden flare of passion.

His Bronte connection aside, Ethan’s band was just one of the dozens of indie rock bands scraping a living playing at pubs and Camden’s smaller venues. Still, a passion was a passion. She stood to retrieve a bottle of Polish vodka from the freezer compartment and poured a couple of shots.

‘Can I ask you something, about Bronte?’ she asked.

‘Sure.’ But she’d picked up the guarded look that had flickered across his face.

‘What was her relationship like with Melodik? Did she have any serious fallings-out with anyone specific there? Anyone who might have visited her at the flat?’

He took a swig of beer from the bottle, giving the question some thought. ‘Not as far as I know. She had a few screaming rows with her A&R man, Jesse Harbinger, about the new album’s direction but that was over the phone.’

‘Harbinger? As in—’

‘Harbinger of doom, right! That’s what she called him. But as far as I know, he never came to the flat. For big meetings with the suits she’d always go to Melodik. She reckoned they thought the fancy Soho offices, the boardroom lined with platinum discs, would faze her.’ He chuckled. ‘Which showed they really didn’t have a clue about her.’ He paused to think. ‘Funnily enough the person she really despised was another creative.’

‘Really? Why?’

‘You heard of SkAR?’ He spelled it out for her.

‘Is that a name?’

‘Yeah. He’s a club DJ who became a big deal producer. He produced that huge dance hit last summer, “Take Me Home”?’

She pulled an apologetic half-shrug, ‘I’m allergic to dance music.’

‘Anyway, Melodik were ecstatic they’d been able to hire him for her follow-up to “Clean Break”. She had to go to Berlin and record it in some studio where he insisted on working – and she hated flying. But she was excited cos his parents were from Cyprus too, and she thought he’d be an ally, you know, to give her sound a Greek vibe.’ He frowned, remembering. ‘But it didn’t work out like that.’

‘So what did she say about this SkAR character?’

‘Not much. Just that he started out all nicey-nicey but when she tried to discuss the sound he was giving the tracks he turned into a bully and a sexist twat. After she came back she told Melodik she would never work with him again, and that she was done being their rent-a-vocal artist. Which was the final nail in the coffin. After that they basically put the album on ice, and her contract meant she couldn’t even release anything on her own. She said she felt like a wild animal with its paw in a trap.’

Something occurred to Cassie. ‘You said she didn’t like flying. Did she ever go back to Cyprus?’

‘Never, as far as I know.’ Ethan started scrolling on his phone so Cassie stood to clear the plates. It struck her as odd that someone as into traditional Greek music as Bronte should have had shown no interest in exploring her roots.

‘Look at this,’ said Ethan.

Cassie turned from the sink to see Bronte’s face staring out at her from his phone screen.

‘Oh!’

The video showed her sat cross-legged on the sofa at home, in a T-shirt, make-up free, dark curls still wet from the shower, a guitar across her lap – looking young and vulnerable. After strumming an opening chord, she said, ‘It’s called “Skeleton”.’

Then Bronte broke into a half-spoken, half-sung refrain – that thrillingly deep voice of hers making the skin on Cassie’s neck prickle. The lyrics were cryptic, but there was a lot about secrets. ‘Nobody can know but everyone should know’ .?.?. and ‘there’s a skeleton knocking on the cupboard door’. The song ended chillingly, with the spoken line: ‘Your secrets be the death of me.’ Then Bronte struck a final chord before using the flat of her hand to quell the sustain and looked up at camera, her expression suddenly fragile. ‘Was that all right?’

‘You filmed this?’ Cassie asked Ethan. ‘It’s .?.?. powerful. Would you send it to me?’

‘Sure.’ He nodded. ‘It could have been a great track but by then Melodik had cut her dead.’

‘This business about secrets – any idea what she’s talking about?’

‘She wouldn’t tell me.’ He shook his head. ‘But just recently I did start wondering if that producer guy SkAR, did something to her when she was in Berlin?’

---