Babazouk Blues Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Peter Morfoot and available from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  46

  47

  48

  49

  50

  51

  52

  53

  54

  55

  56

  57

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  FATAL MUSIC

  Also by Peter Morfoot and available from Titan Books

  Impure Blood

  Box of Bones (April 2018)

  PETER

  MORFOOT

  A CAPTAIN DARAC MYSTERY

  FATAL MUSIC

  TITAN BOOKS

  Fatal Music

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783296668

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783296675

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

  First edition: April 2017

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2017 by Peter Morfoot. All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

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  For Liz

  1

  Jeanne Mesnel loved her hot tub. It was such a wondrous thing, it amused her to recall how sceptical she had been at first. Well, how could ‘those jaunty, jet-propelled bubbles’ soothe and invigorate? But when she tried it, Jeanne could no more have resisted the effect than a sugar cube resist hot coffee. The girl had been right about that.

  And relaxing in roiling heat brought other pleasures. She was beguiled by the way spindrifting steam transformed the look of things: blurring her bougainvillea into swathes of magenta silk; smudging the back wall of her villa into dabs of pink and blue. It was like sitting in the middle of an Impressionist sunset, especially on a cold day like today.

  Nothing was perfect, of course. The thing did take up most of the lower patio. But if its looking out of place offended visitors, well, screw them.

  She took another sip of champagne. Why not throw a hot-tub party? It could seat four comfortably. Six at a squeeze. She smiled. Wouldn’t Alain have loved this?

  Jeanne no longer enjoyed the robust health she had once taken for granted. At times, she could hardly get her breath; the increasing stiffness of her joints was a nuisance; and most irritating of all, her hearing was starting to fail. But it wasn’t all bad news. She had no liver spots, or that Roquefort-legged look she sometimes saw among her peers down on the beach. Hats off, anyway, to the varicose bathers of Beaulieu-sur-Mer. They were just as entitled to disport themselves in their dotage as they had been in their slinky youth.

  She pressed the play button on the tub’s built-in music console and closed her eyes. Swirling her legs in time with the languid beat of the music, it occurred to her that the only pity was that she hadn’t acquired the hot tub years before. She disowned the thought instantly. What should have happened was irrelevant.

  A voice called to her through the spindrift.

  ‘Come and join me,’ she called back. ‘And bring a glass.’

  2

  In summer, you could fry crêpes on the pavement outside the Blue Devil jazz club. A cold Thursday night in early January was a different story. Sucking resentfully on a Gauloise, Pascal the doorman was trying to stamp some heat into his feet when a strongly built man carrying a guitar case appeared on his blindside.

  ‘They always said smoking kills, Pas.’

  ‘They were right. I could freeze to death out here.’

  They exchanged kisses of greeting.

  ‘Much of a crowd in?’

  ‘How many in the band?’

  ‘Four, tonight.’

  ‘They’ve got you outnumbered, anyway.’

  Captain Paul Darac’s broad-boned face broke into a grin. ‘See you later.’

  Pascal pulled the lapels of his jacket together. ‘If I live that long.’

  Darac headed down the steps, gingerly flexing his left hand. The culprit wasn’t the cold; it was a brick wall. You weren’t supposed to punch them, apparently. The hand was healing well but fingers slowed by stiffness and swelling wasn’t what he needed tonight. Playing guitar in the Didier Musso Quintet was a challenge as it was.

  Framed posters lined the walls flanking the steps. But on the lintel over the scruffy, red-painted entrance doors themselves, there was just one. Darac was in the habit of reaching up and touching it as he passed underneath. Tonight, he felt the need to linger.

  The focal point of the poster was a photograph that captured the atmosphere of a live gig so completely, Darac could practically taste it. On the bandstand, the bass player: solemn, monumental, a solitary bead of sweat about to drop from his brow. Behind him, the drummer: an explosion of energy, sticks fanning blurred arcs around the kit. Facing the band, rows of spectators, nearly all of them smoking. And one woman in particular: strong, sloe-eyed, superb. And here was the master stroke: the photographer had captured the moment a plume of smoke from her nostrils dispersed as it met the onrush of air from the band’s front line. Later captioned Blown Away by the Brass Section, the photo had been taken at the Blue Devil in 1963 and had set the tone for the place ever since. A snapshot of a different world.

  Up top, Pascal gave a knowing smile. ‘We’re going to put a ledge under that poster,’ he called out. ‘Somewhere for the holy water.’

  ‘You’ve got to believe in something, Pas.’

  Darac’s gaze settled on the sloe-eyed woman. As a young guitarist, he would often picture her as he played. Over time, she had become something of an absent muse but he knew she would never fully leave him. Reaching up, he ran a tender finger over the poster and continued
into the lobby.

  A handwritten card reading BOX OFFICE sat on a folding table just inside the doors. On it, a stack of CDs entitled At The Blue Devil Again by the Didier Musso Quintet vied for prominence with a reel of tickets and a biscuit tin for the takings. The reel was plump; the takings thin. Behind the table, venerable club owner Eldridge Clay was doing his best to stay square on Pascal’s usual perch, a skinny drum stool. The impression that he was squatting in mid-air at odds with the gravity of his mien, Ridge looked up from the newspaper he was reading, slipped off his glasses and clasped Darac’s good hand.

  ‘So we made 2010. What’s this new decade going to bring, “Garfield”?’ The voice was deep; the accent six thousand kilometres from home. ‘More of this?’ Straightening the paper, Ridge put his glasses back on, their thin wire frames looking wrong on his large, statesmanlike head. ‘Listen: “It’s now two years almost to the day since the government saw fit to sanitise our cafés, bars, restaurants and clubs by imposing a ban on smoking. But in taking a scrubbing brush to the rich patina of French life – and especially to the musky underbelly of its demi-monde – politicians have done more than remove a layer of grime; they have removed a layer of our national identity. Our beloved Gauloises are now made exclusively in Spain. Other atrocities will follow. Indeed, I fear that soon, there will be little left in our country that is truly French.”’ Ridge fixed Darac with the kind of look judges favoured when passing sentence. ‘Well?‘

  ‘I’ve just been thinking about this sort of thing, myself.’

  ‘Back home we say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But if it is, I’m all for change. Look at my marriage. Or take you and Angeline. You wouldn’t wind the clock back, right?’

  Darac wouldn’t wind it back to the end part. It was six months since she had left him. At times, he felt her loss as acutely as pain from an amputated limb. ‘No.’

  ‘Exactly. I tell you, France is cleaner than Switzerland now.’

  ‘It’s wrong. Khara in the bar?’

  Ridge went back to his paper. ‘In the kitchen.’

  Darac found the club’s Senegalese waitress scattering a white powder cordon around the food preparation table.

  ‘How’s it going?’ he said, struck by the grace with which Khara performed even the most unglamorous tasks.

  ‘For me, fine. The rats? So-so.’

  ‘You should just let them eat Roger’s steak tartare.’

  ‘This is cheaper.’ She binned the canister and exchanged kisses with Darac. ‘Let’s look at your hand.’ She examined his red, swollen knuckles. ‘You have been using the lotion I gave you?’

  ‘Yes.’ He smiled, then winced slightly as he flexed his fingers. ‘See?’

  Khara narrowed her eyes, the look accentuating the diamond-cut angularity of her face. ‘Have you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Darac!’

  ‘But I’ve brought it with me.’

  ‘Then go apply it.’ She turned his shoulders in the direction of the open archway behind him. Darac had the build of a light-heavyweight boxer but under the pressure of Khara’s fine, tapering fingers, his torso swivelled as freely as a weathervane.

  ‘Do you push Roger around like this?’

  ‘Yes!’ boomed a voice from the cellar. ‘And I heard that about my steak tartare.’

  Darac shared a look with Khara and headed for the archway. A medley of sour smells assailed his nostrils as he climbed the stairs to the first floor: drains, damp plasterwork, and more subtly, an undernote of ink, a legacy of the club’s former existence as a printing works. It was all balm to Darac. After the blood, sweat and tears of the past few weeks, he needed the release the gig would provide. But one step at a time. He wasn’t certain he would make it through the opening number.

  The quintet’s pianist, Didier Musso, swept on to the landing above. His boyish quiff nodding on the off-beat, he began descending the steps two at a time. ‘Hey, Darac.’

  ‘If you’re checking out the audience, there isn’t one.’

  ‘It’ll pick up.’ They kissed in greeting. ‘How’s the hand?’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Excellent.’ Didier’s soft-featured face crumpled. ‘Is it my imagination or is the drain stink worse than ever?’

  ‘Careful, that’s a “valuable layer of the patina of French life” you’re talking about.’

  ‘What am I thinking?’ Didier continued on his way. ‘Marco’s sub is upstairs,’ he called over his shoulder. ‘Half man, half giant spider. Wearing an orange dashiki.’

  ‘If I’d known, I would’ve worn mine.’

  Darac was looking forward to meeting Marco’s latest protégé, one of hundreds of students the drummer had mentored through JAMCA, the region’s young musicians programme. This one, though, Marco said, was special. Swishing through the streamer curtains that served as a doorway into the shabby, sparsely furnished dressing room, Darac found the starlet occupying the lowest perch in the room: the driver’s seat from an old Citroën 2CV.

  ‘Hey. I’m Darac.’

  Beaming through beaded braids, the young man unfolded his impossibly long, stick-thin legs and stood. ‘Rama N’Pata.’ Skin dark as black bamboo and milk-white teeth combined to dazzling effect. They shook hands. ‘I’m in for Marco for the next few gigs.’

  The young man’s appearance was so joyously extreme, it made Darac smile. ‘Marco’s told us about your work with JAMCA, though he doesn’t call you Rama.’

  ‘I’m Stretch to him. Most of the kids in the band call me Beanpole or Bones.’ He grinned again. ‘And they are the polite ones.’

  ‘That’s why you’re so miserable.’ Darac put down his case. ‘This your first pro gig?’

  ‘I can’t believe it. Being paid to play? Wow!’

  ‘Yeah, you’ll be a millionaire after tonight.’

  Despite the depth of Rama’s voice, his laugh was a high-pitched tee-hee.

  ‘How come Marco’s never invited you to the club?’

  ‘I only moved here a couple of months ago. Still settling in.’

  ‘Ah.’ Darac reached into his jacket and fished out a handwritten note headed Set list, Jan 8. ‘So what’s after JAMCA? The Conservatoire?’ Darac’s voice dropped to a monotone as he deciphered his scrawl. ‘Quite a few of Marco’s kids have made it on to the jazz course over the years.’ He looked up. ‘Including Didier, but don’t be put off.’

  More tee-heeing. ‘No, we talked about it but I decided I needed to get a job. It’s cool.’

  ‘OK.’ Darac brandished the set list. ‘Pretty challenging. Got it down?’

  ‘Marco’s been over and over the charts with me.’

  The quintet’s bass player, Luc Gabron, emerged from the toilet with a fat spliff sticking out of his bearded face. ‘Just keep your eyes on Didier for the changes,’ he said, blowing smoke. ‘And on me for spiritual guidance. Hey, Darac.’

  A sign reading FIRE HAZARD – NO SMOKING was nailed to the wall over the sink. Darac gave it a meaningful glance.

  ‘Yes, alright.’ Luc took a deep toke. ‘But you know what today is? More or less. It’s the anniversary of the ban. Want a hit? For old times’ sake?’

  Darac flicked open the locks on his guitar case. ‘Pass.’

  Luc examined the guitarist’s knuckles. ‘Sure? For happy joints nothing beats a joint.’

  Darac opened a compartment in the case and took out a small bottle. ‘I’ve got this.’

  Luc peered at the label. ‘Witch… hazel. Witch – one of the better hazels. Still useless.’

  Drinking it all in, Rama was looking on like a star-struck fan.

  Luc turned to him. ‘How old are you, Stretch?’

  ‘Eighteen. Just.’

  ‘And are you as hot as Marco says?’

  The young man’s smile could have lit up a small town. ‘It’s down to him.’ He declined a hit. ‘From videos to Skype lessons and now in person, Marco’s taught me everything I know about playing drums.’

  ‘But
has he taught you everything he knows?’

  Luc bantered on with Rama as Darac released his guitar from its blue velvet cocoon and began his warm-up. Perversely for a player who loved to improvise, the routine never changed. Once in tune, he opened with a series of single note runs, followed that with a set pattern of chord changes, and then finished off with a chorus of ‘Limehouse Blues’ in the style of one of his heroes, Django Reinhardt.

  The warm-up didn’t go well. But Darac had touched the talisman poster for luck; he’d greeted Ridge and kissed Khara. What could go wrong?

  Didier Musso’s band was billed as a quintet however many players were on board at any particular time. But whether going out as a trio or a big band, one thing remained constant: Thursday was their night at the Blue Devil and had been for the past six years. With players signing up on a gig-by-gig basis, the quality of the performances inevitably varied. But on its best nights, the DMQ was as compelling as any jazz group in France.

  The audience had filled out considerably by the time the guys took the stand. Despite Darac’s injured hand, a debutant drummer, and nostalgia for the old smoke-filled club uppermost in everyone’s minds, the band hit its straps from the first downbeat, and continued hitting them. Running into the set break with the stampede in six-eight time that was Charlie Mingus’s ‘Better Git It In Your Soul’ proved a joyous experience; all the more joyous for the drive and snap of Rama N’Pata’s drumming. Marco hadn’t exaggerated. The kid was a phenomenon.

  A crate of their favourite Leffe Blonde beer was waiting for the band when they returned to the dressing room at the interval. Luc opened three bottles as Darac fished Khara’s lotion out of his case and went to the sink.

  From the unfavoured 2CV seat – genius or not, the youngster knew his place – Rama watched Darac massaging the fluid into his knuckles. ‘You haven’t got… what do they call it… tendonitis?’ He began rippling his sticks on the sides of his boot heels in a series of perfect double paradiddles. ‘Marco has had that.’

  ‘The hand? No, it just got in the way of something. But here’s a question for you, Stretch. Where were you living before?’

  ‘Nantes. Why?’

  ‘And are you here legally? In France, I mean.’