On The Beat

(Short humorous story when a cop meets his favourite rock star)

"Claudia Raine?"

"You got me."

"I’m…"

"Call me Claudie. Come in," she said casually and walked away from the door.

The most immediately noticeable feature of the room – apart from the complete and utter mess, piles of clothing draped over half-hidden furniture, every surface covered with empty beer bottles, dirty glasses, crushed cans, overflowing ash trays, unidentifiable bric-a-brac and general rubbish – was a speaker cabinet with four – four! – huge drivers, standing on cheap set of open and overflowing drawers. That and the guitars. The guitars were all hanging neatly as if to attention along the wall from the kind of fixtures gardeners use for spades and the like in tool sheds. There was an Ovation Classic, two Fenders, both a Telecaster and a Stratocaster, a Gretsch Tennessean, a Yamaha 12-string and some others.

"You from Mojo?"

He stepped cautiously into the room. "No, I’m from…" but at that moment he stumbled over some cabling snaking across the floor. For a moment, he thought he was going to have to choose between falling on to a small television on the floor, or an expensive-looking record deck complete with vinyl LP perched precariously on a chair. He grabbed a littered table, causing a plant pot to fall off the back.

"Never mind," Claudie said. "I got a loose schedule today. You can interview me anyway. Wanna beer?"

"No… Thank you." Before he could say more she had gone into an adjoining room that looked like a kitchen except for the fact that a bomb seemed to have gone off in it. There was a crash, a tearing noise, and the sound of a bottle being popped with an opener.

He took in the rest of the room. Over to his right was an ugly set of Ikea CD racks, packed to the top. At least all the CDs were put away. Looking closer, he saw the CDs were stacked in alphabetical order. Under what might have been a bed were piles of sheet music, some in folders, stapled or paper-clipped together. On the nightstand, an ash-tray was grimly trying to contain a mountain of roll-up stubs, next to a Walkman with tiny earphones.

"What magazine are you with, then?" She was stood in the doorway with a bottle of Stella in her hand.

"I’m not with a magazine, Ms Raine."

"Oh?"

"I’m Detective Constable Burton, Greater Manchester CID."

"Wow," she said, not seeming overly impressed. How do I know you’re a po-lice man? Where’s your uniform?"

"I’m in plain clothes."

She took in jeans and jacket at a glance. "You’re telling me, honey. You’re a walking style famine. Don’t they teach you how to dress? To blend in?"

"What’s wrong with my clothes?"

"Let’s just say you’d look better in your uniform. I could have tried your helmet on."

Burton turned away and, stepping carefully to avoid standing on anything, pulled a pair of headphones from where they were hanging from a drawer.

"You got a warrant to search these premises?"

"I’m not here to conduct a search," he said, stiffly.

"Betcha glad about that," she said with a grin, and punched his shoulder with her bottle hand. "So what can I do for you, Detective Constable Burton? You come to stitch me up?" She laughed at her own joke. "Burton – stitch-up. Geddit?" She propped the beer bottle against a cushion on the sofa and began rolling a cigarette.

"I’m here about an alleged incident at the Band On The Wall pub last night."

"You call that an incident? That was an event."

Burton had interviewed lots of people, over the years of his career, about alleged incidents. Usually, there weren’t too happy to be speaking to him. They had a tendency to latch on to word alleged, because that could mean that the incident hadn’t actually happened. He liked people to think they were in trouble because it tended to make them more co-operative, as they gave their version of the facts. He especially wanted Claudia Raine to take the situation more seriously. After all, he had an objective to achieve in being here. He studied a poster Blu-tacked to the wall. On it was the word Apocalypse.

"Have you been with Apocalypse long?"

She was licking the edge of her Rizla and paused a moment before answering. "A while," she said, and started hunting for a lighter.

"Before that you were with The Gin Crew, weren’t you?"

She looked mildly impressed. "Hey, that’s right." She held up her tobacco pouch. "D’you want one."

"No, thank you."

"I split from them months ago," she said tossing the pouch and the lighter on to the table. "Personal differences."

He bent down and retrieved the plant he’d knocked over and put it on the table, noting its familiar-shaped leaves, and looked at her, impassively.

"Got that from an admirer," she said. "Guess he couldn’t afford flowers. Such a little plant, too. Under eight inches tall."

"Quite," he said, and began to pick up other items from the top of the drawers. There was a small, round-topped box about the size of a packet of cigarettes, with the word Farter printed on it, and a can of Right Guard.

"I thought you said you didn’t have a search warrant," she said.

"I’m not searching. Just looking. Men’s deodorant?"

"It gets hot on stage. Girlie stuff can’t hack it." She still sounded relaxed, conversational. "What was this alleged incident?"

"It is alleged that you assaulted a member of the public during your act."

"I did?" She looked genuinely puzzled.

"You hit him with the neck of your guitar."

"It was a headless bass," she corrected him.

"You nearly turned him into a headless fan," he said, with an edge to his voice.

"The twat jumped up on stage. I was just fending him off."

"You fended him right off the edge of the stage into the audience. He needed stitches afterwards."

"He stumbled. It’s a long way down. Needed stitches, did he?"

"So did the member of the audience he landed on."

"Haven’t you heard? It’s lonely at the top. Or it’s supposed to be. If I hadn’t done it, security would have. And they wouldn’t have been so polite about it."

Burton could see he still wasn’t getting her rattled. He continued to inspect objects on the drawers, picking up the round-topped box. "What is this, exactly?"

"The Farter? It’s an effects pedal. Like a fuzz box. For lead guitar."

"Oh." He nudged a crushed beer can off the drawers and spotted a lump of something dark and crumbly wrapped in Cling-film. "And this?"

It was the first time she had looked uncomfortable. "If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. And I’d have to kill you."

"Looks like a full ounce. Claudia Raine, I am arresting you on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance. You do not have to say anything, but you may harm you defence if you fail to mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say…"

"It’s Oxo."

"What!?"

"It’s Oxo. I carry it around with me at gigs. You get dehydrated and lose a lot of salt with sweating. I like to have a drink made of that when I come off stage."

"What’s wrong with keeping it in the foil wrapping?"

"The foil tears. You see, I wear leather pants and they’re very tight. It’s safer wrapped up like that. See how crushed it is. Plus I don’t want to be known as some freak who carries Oxo around in her pocket."

"You must think I’m daft!"

"You arrest me for possession of a stock cube and everybody’ll think you’re daft."

"And what about the assault?"

"Get real. The twat fell off the stage. Five hundred people saw him. It’s not as if I swung my guitar like an axe and brained him. You’d never get that to stick. And you know it."

Burton sniffed the Cling-film-wrapped package. There was an unmistakable savoury aroma. He was wrong-footed. He played his last card. "Who’s to say I might find something else in my pocket on the way to the station?"

"My lawyers. Klein, Mullin and Mansfield. You’ve heard of them, no doubt."

He put the little package back down on the table. They seemed to be at an impasse.

"There might be a way out of all this," he said.

"I thought there might be." From her tone, Burton finally realised that Claudia Raine had been around a little and was way ahead of him from the moment she opened the door. She knew people every bit as well as he did. Everybody wanted something.

"I thought it a shame," he said, somewhat at a tangent to their foregoing conversation, "when The Gin Crew split up."

"Why was that?" She was prepared to be patient.

"I… I used to enjoy your gigs."

"Why, thank you kindly, sir."

"I went to a lot of your gigs."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"Someone who dresses the way you do?" she snorted, and stubbed out her cigarette.

"Have you any idea how boring it can get being in the Police?"

"Well, it got to Sting in the end. Someone should write a song about it."

Burton coughed and studied his shoes. " I have written a song."

"Oh, God. I was scared you might have."

"Would you like to hear it."

"Arrest me now. I’ll even plead guilty."

"I was hoping I might be able to get it to you when you were in The Gin Crew. But they split up. Then I caught your act last night. And that idiot tried to get at you on stage and… well, that was the end of him. But it gave me an idea."

"To commit police harassment?" She swigged her beer.

"Something like that." He looked longingly at the beer. His throat was very dry. "I could make a real nuisance of myself. If I wanted."

"I wouldn’t argue with that."

"My colleagues and I could always make a visit to you backstage. What would you say the odds were against us finding something.

Claudia tapped the rim of the beer bottle against her lips. She seemed to decide. "What’s this song, then?"

"You really want to hear it?"

"Oh my," she said, with mock melodrama, "do I really have a choice?"

He shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. Something fell off the drawers behind him and knocked over a double angle spot lamp.

"That’s criminal damage," she said.

"It’s arranged for piano," he said, pulling a sheaf of paper from his jacket pocket. "Do you play piano?"

She shoved a heap of clothing off what Burton had presumed to be a desk, and revealed a Roland keyboard. "A little. I’ve got Grade Eight. What’s it called?"

"Love Patrol."

"Oh, Jesus," she sighed, and took the papers from him. She studied them for a moment, then pulled up a practice amplifier as a piano stool. "Perhaps we could do it in an ironic post-modern sense. Go and put the kettle on."

Burton navigated his way to the kitchen. As he got to the door, she threw the Cling-film package to him. "Make us both a cup."

He was gone a few minutes, time spent partly hunting for two mugs, and washing them. She played snatches of the chords he had written, and la-la-ed fragments of melody. He came back in and sat beside her, handing her a mug.

"Well," she said, taking a long swig from her mug, "the lyrics are crap but no-one ever hears them. And we’ve got to change the title. But it’s got a good hook." She took another drink. "A very good hook. I just might be able to do something with it."

He took a long drink from his mug and pulled a face. "This," he said, "is the strangest Oxo I’ve ever tasted."

"I didn’t say it was pure Oxo. Great, isn’t it?"

The End