Zero history

Clammy, snuffling, nodded his consent.

›››

She hoped he really did have a virus. Otherwise, he was in the early onset of heroin withdrawal. But probably a cold, plus the very considerable stress inherent in working in the studio with Inchmale.

She’d gotten him to swallow five capsules of Cold-FX, taking three herself as a prophylactic measure. It usually didn’t seem to do anything, once symptoms were advanced, but the promise of it had gotten him around the corner and into the Starbucks on Golden Square, and she hoped he was prone to the placebo effect. She was herself, according to Inchmale, who was an adamant and outspoken Cold-FX denier. “You have to keep taking them,” she said to Clammy, placing the white plastic bottle beside his steaming paper cup of chamomile. “Ignore the instructions. Take three, three times a day.”

He shrugged. “Where’d you say you got the Hounds?”

“It belongs to someone I know.”

“Where’d they get it, then?”

“I don’t know. Someone told me it was a ‘secret brand.’ ”

“Not when you know,” he said. “Just very hard to find. Thin on the fucking ground, your Gabriel Hounds.”

“Is he starting to talk about rerecording the bed tracks?” She guessed that if she tried to change the subject, he might resist, and she could go along with that, not seem too interested.

Clammy shivered. Nodded.

“Has he talked about doing it in Tucson?”

Clammy frowned, forehead masked behind black cashmere. “Last night.” He peered out, through plate glass, at Golden Square, deserted in the rain.

“There’s a place there,” she said. “One of his secrets. Do it. If he wants to go back later for the overdubs, do it.”

“So why’s he breaking my balls now, remixing?”

“It’s his process,” she said.

Clammy rolled his eyes, to heaven or his black cap, then back to her. “You ask your friend where they got the Hounds?”

“Not yet,” she said.

He turned on his stool, swung his leg out from beneath the counter. “Hounds,” he said. The jeans he wore were black, very narrow. “Twenty-ounce,” he said. “Brutal heavy.”

“Slubby?”

“You blind?”

“Where did you find them?”

“Melbourne. Girl I met, knew where and when.”

“A store?”

“Never in shops,” he said. “Except secondhand, and that’s not likely.”

“I tried Google,” she said. “A Mary Stewart book, a band, CD by someone else…”

“Go further, on Google, and there’s eBay,” he said.

“Hounds on eBay?”

“All fake. Almost all. Chinese fakes.”

“The Chinese are faking it?”

“Chinese are faking everything,” Clammy said. “You get a real Hounds piece on eBay, someone makes an offer high enough to stop it. Never seen an auction for real Hounds run off.”

“It’s an Australian brand?”

He looked disgusted, which was how he’d looked in whatever few previous brief conversations they’d had. “Fuck no,” he said, “it’s Hounds.”

“Tell me about it, Clammy,” she said. “I need to know.”