‘Christ,’ he said, ‘what the fuck happened you?’
‘Finn Hamilton jumped off the PA.’
‘So I hear. Didn’t know he landed on you.’
‘Damn near did.’
I took a hit off the spliff he offered, ignoring the stale whiff of blood caking black under my nails. He nodded along while I filled him in, gloomy but unsurprised. He’d known Finn, had hosted his band once in The Cellars, the usual deal, the boys drinking free for as long as they played. Which didn’t exactly put a hole in Dutch’s pocket. Finn’s boys were a Rollerskate Skinny tribute band, or more accurately a tribute band playing the Horsedrawn Wishes album, a loose setup with his mate Paul on drums, a couple of the lads who jammed up in Dude McLynn’s on bass and rhythm, Johnny Burrows picking away, Finn taking the lead and vocals. That night they’d been bottled off after two songs, Dutch lobbing lemons from behind the bar. Spanners trapped in a spin-cycle, he reckoned, until I gave him the CD and he realised that was how they were supposed to sound, the Pistols trying on Beethoven’s Ninth. Dutch didn’t buy it. ‘So he’s put together this tribute band to play what you’re telling me is the greatest album of all time, except the real band went bust because they couldn’t play it live, couldn’t tour. Is that it?’
In a nutshell, pretty much.
That was Finn, though. Watching him up there that night on the non-existent stage, ducking bottles, putting all that effort into playing songs nobody knew or cared about, not giving a shit what the audience liked or thought it wanted — yeah, sure, he was a dilettante, self-indulgent. But you’d want to have a dead soul not to applaud the nobility of the gesture, the quixotic purity of it all.
And maybe that was the problem right there. That Finn had surrounded himself with people who’d encouraged his every extravagance, who’d clapped him up onto the stage knowing the whimsy could only end badly, or out onto those cliffs to watch him dive, cheering him all the way out onto that ledge nine storeys up.
‘And you’re feeling guilty enough to try,’ Dutch said when I told him Saoirse Hamilton wanted me to find Finn’s suicide note.
‘His sister says it’s traditional.’
‘Bullshit.’ He yawned and scratched at his skull stubble. ‘Say you were even psychic, you twigged to what he was planning. Okay, you could’ve stopped him. This one time.’
‘Once might have been enough.’
‘Don’t beat yourself up, Harry. There’s an epidemic out there, blokes jumping every day. And you know blokes, the first you’ll hear is the splat.’
‘They’re not fucking lemmings, Dutch. Every one of them has a good fucking reason to go.’
‘Reasons plural. It’s never just one thing.’
‘Sure, yeah. But I’d say if you went through every last one, money’d be an issue somewhere along the line. And whatever else Finn had going on, money wasn’t a problem.’
‘Harry,’ he said quietly, ‘the guy was a diagnosed schizo. I mean, that’s how you met him, right? All fucked up over his father, traumatised, he’s burning down everything that can’t run away.’
‘I told you that in confidence, Dutch.’
He looked pointedly over both shoulders. ‘Who else is here?’
‘Anyway, that was all a long time ago.’
‘So was the Big Bang, and we’re still dealing with that shit too. And the guy was smoking his head off, Harry. Not exactly what the doctor ordered, eh?’
‘You’re saying I enabled him.’
‘Fuck that. You didn’t sort him out, he’d have gone somewhere else.’
‘He didn’t, though, did he?’
‘Don’t do that, Harry. Seriously, can you hear yourself? You’re like a teenage girl.’ A mincing tone. ‘“Should I have known? Was I the reason he jumped?” You’ll be starting a fucking Facebook page for him next.’
‘Yeah, well, something sent him out that window.’
He exhaled a long draw and held out the spliff. ‘And you’re sure,’ he said, serious now, ‘it was something and not someone.’
‘I was the only one around.’
‘Far as you know. How long were you up there?’
‘In the studio? Twenty minutes. Maybe more.’
‘Plenty of time for Gillick, this Jimmy guy, to get around the back. Up the fire escape. Or anyone else, for that matter.’
‘Possible, yeah, except the cops didn’t find any sign of a struggle. Jimmy’s a big man but Finn’s tall, he wouldn’t have gone out that window easy. And anyway, why would Gillick want him gone? He’s the family solicitor, he’s horse-trading with Finn for the PA.’
‘Except you’re saying, the mother reckons that couldn’t happen.’
‘That’s what she told me.’
‘Maybe Gillick found a way around it.’
‘That’s what I said. But Gillick’s in tight there, covers all the legal shit for Hamilton Holdings. Always has. I doubt he’d blow a sweet deal like that for a one-off on the PA, a piece of shit no one wants.’
‘So maybe it’s someone else.’
‘Who? Finn’s a good guy, Dutch, he’s in the Champion every second week with some charity or other. Runs the artist’s co-op, Christ, he’s out on a limb for-’
‘Sure, yeah. But a good-looking guy like that, plenty of cash to flash, he liked to put it about …’
‘Not since Maria. Not that I heard, anyway.’
‘He’d hardly go broadcasting it on the radio, would he?’
‘No, but he was making plans, getting married. Moving to Cyprus.’
‘Sure,’ Dutch said, ‘one step ahead of the posse, some father waving a shotgun. I mean, this Cyprus move, it’s all a bit sudden, right?’
‘Last night was the first I heard of it, yeah. But who knows how long he was planning it? And anyway, it was nothing he actually said, but …’
‘What?’
‘He mentioned kids, Dutch. How Cyprus was this great place for raising a family.’ I shrugged. ‘I got the feeling, just the way he was saying it, that Maria is pregnant.’
He winced. ‘Fuck.’
‘Yeah.’
‘How is she?’
‘I don’t know. I went around there but she wasn’t home, and I couldn’t raise her on the phone.’
‘Does she even know?’
‘No idea.’
‘Christ.’
‘I should ring her again,’ I said, and suddenly the tiredness was an ache in my bones.
Dutch hauled himself out of the deckchair, laid a hand on my shoulder. ‘A few more hours won’t hurt. Get some sleep, get your head straight.’
‘Yeah, maybe.’
‘And Harry, this suicide note bit.’ He shook his head. ‘Don’t get sucked in. Family shit like that, you don’t want to get involved. The mother wants it found, let her find it herself.’
He left. I tumbled into the deckchair, had one last suck on the spliff and waited for what Mailer once called the biles and jamborees of the heart.
Nothing stirred.
Too soon, maybe. Still in shock. Too numb to feel and too exhausted to start building bridges between what had been and what would have to be. And maybe it was just that he wasn’t dead, not tonight. Not until I closed my eyes and rolled across the stones and woke up tomorrow with Finn sealed in yesterday’s tomb.
Just one more fucking thing, man …
Yeah, I could nearly hear him now, that hollow chuckle, how being dead was just one more fucking thing. It had been our mantra inside, our koan. No matter how bad it got, it was just one more fucking thing, no worse there is none …
The night I met Finn he was walked into the cell, eyes glazed, a screw to each arm. And yeah, he stank like the pit lane at Le Mans. He crawled onto the bottom bunk and lay on his back all night, hardly able to breathe, unblinking and endlessly fascinated with whatever it was he saw in the pattern of rusty springs and bare mattress above his head. Next morning I tried to rouse him and if he hadn’t been warm I’d have said he was dead. I left him to it. A good-looking guy with a shaggy mop of blonde hair and wide blue eyes. Bad enough, but he was limp and vacant, passive and beyond caring. A walking invitation to the kind of man who doesn’t need an invitation, prefers not to be invited.