Read Online Written in Dead Wax by Andrew Cartmel - Free Book Online Page B

pretty good, and his own turntables had their admirers. He also made a state-of-the-art record-cleaning machine. But he didn’t sell quite enough of any of these to make a living, hence his sideline in “shipments” to people like Tinkler.
    Concealed behind his rambling, antiquated factory overlooking leafy Rock Park, Hughie had a yard where he’d erected a network of poly tunnels in which, screened by tomato plants, he grew an impressive cannabis crop. He shipped his wares to customers all over the mainland UK in boxes purporting to contain hi-fi equipment. I noticed that there was one of these on the floor now, labelled PRECISION AUDIO COMPONENT, HANDLE WITH CARE .
    Tinkler had handled it with anything but care when he’d opened it. It looked like a wolverine had torn the box apart. I guess he’d been impatient to get at the goodies inside. He showed me the dope. “Here, have a sniff of this.”
    He held open the glassine bag. The rich green foliage inside resembled tiny cabbages, perhaps miniaturised by the experimental ray of a mad scientist. You could see pale crystals of THC on the buds, like minuscule flakes of cake icing. He said, “It’s as if somebody gene spliced Bob Marley and Pepé Le Pew.” The smell was indeed raw, rank and complex. Intoxicating. I looked up at Tinkler. “Go on,” he said. “Try some.”
    “No thanks. At some point tonight I’m going to need to remember where my house is.”
    Tinkler shrugged and ignited the joint. “Your loss.”
    I said, “I found some more stuff from the Unknown Jazz Fan today.”
    Tinkler slowly breathed out smoke and examined it as it hung in the air. I was getting a buzz just from being in the same room with the stuff. Hughie evidently knew what he was doing when it came to more things than turntables. Tinkler stared at the far wall of the room, the wall that was almost solid LPs. “Do you know what I think?” he said. “I think that when a record collection reaches a certain complexity it becomes a kind of vortex of possibility, summoning new records in out of the void.”
    “You mean like a magnet?”
    “Yes, a magnet that attracts the records you’re looking for.”
    “Now,
that
is like something out of Borges,” I said.
    His eyes slowly focused on me again. “Did you say you’d found some more records from the Unknown Jazz Fan?”
    “Yes. Welcome back.”
    “Any British rock or R&B?”
    “Well, there was an original copy of John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers on Deram with the ‘Beano’ cover. It was in mint condition, but they wanted three quid for it, so I left it there.”
    “What? You did what? Are you out of your mind?” Tinkler’s eyes were agreeably a-bulge with outrage. Then he realised I’d got him.
    “You bastard,” he said.
    * * *
    I did manage to remember where my house was, but it was well after midnight by the time I got there. As soon as she heard my keys Fanny came out to meet me, emerging from the house through the cat flap, and Turk joined us, bounding in from the outer darkness of the estate and giving a little yelp of triumph as she surmounted the final fence.
    We went inside. I turned on the lights and saw the pile of mail, exactly where I’d left it during this afternoon’s drama with Stinky at knifepoint. One envelope jutted out from the pile. It was handwritten, the envelope addressed in a neat italic script, apparently written with a fountain pen. I opened it carefully. Inside were several folded handwritten pages.
    I started reading the letter. My stomach did a funny little flip.
    It was from Jerry.

5. JERRY’S LETTER
    It felt very strange to get a letter from a dead man.
    Underneath his address and the usual salutations it began:
    Forgive me for writing to you in this old-fashioned way, but I find that putting pen to paper helps me to organise my thoughts.
    When I got home tonight I realised that if I’m ever going to sort out this behemoth of a record collection that we so recklessly purchased, it’s