Doctor Who_ Rags - Mick Lewis [8]
He frowned. It was the first time he’d ever seen a band rehearse on the bloody moor. Several other cons were staring at the distant spectacle as well, and raucous laughter arose as one of them cracked a joke about the scruffy roadies and the filth coating the cattle truck.
Grimes noticed Eddie Price staring intently at the truck. Eddie was a lifer without the slightest trace of a sense of humour, and as he was in charge of the wheelbarrow full of gardening implements Officer Evans nudged him to continue walking. Price didn’t respond.
‘Get your big hulk moving, Price,’ the prison officer barked, shoving him a little more firmly.
Price continued to stare at the distant truck, mesmerised. His lumpen features were quivering as if some great emotion were tearing through him. His eyes were stark. Grimes could see the lifer’s soul bare and wild in those eyes. A killer’s soul. He turned away, a cold pool collecting in the small of his back.
Across the moor, the roadies were almost ready.
Rod was waiting by the wall along with a crowd of curious onlookers; a mixture of locals and tourists, all gathering to watch the band.
Jimmy, Nick and Sin joined their friend as the band climbed from the back of the truck and strolled casually to pick up their instruments.
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‘Bloody hell,’ Jimmy said. Rod said nothing. His usually glazed eyes were curiously alert now, although with his scruffy beard, long unkempt hair and torn dinner jacket he looked as dilapidated as ever. Nick stood next to him, his attention fixed solely on the band.
He’d never seen anything like this.
Someone was joking. They had to be. The four musicians were a pick ‘n’ mix mess. A motley nightmare of clashing clothing and clashing periods. They were festooned with bright tatters like seventeenth-century mummers, and their hair was dyed and spiked with punk malevolence. The singer’s hair was grass-green, his trousers rags of paper stitched over hose. A torn leather jacket and wraparound shades completed the confused picture. The guitarist wore a top hat with its circular crown hanging down like a hinged lid - a cartoon tramp with minstrel trousers, leather waistcoat and spiked codpiece. The drummer was a skinhead adorned with coloured rags, tattoos and a bullet belt. The bass player was a skeletal ogre with a motley tunic, big boots and a Sid Vicious haircut.
‘What’s this, The Morris Pistols?’ Sin said in an attempt to lighten the inexplicable unease Nick was sure she must be feeling. He was sure because he was feeling it himself, and he didn’t quite know why. The sun was hot, and he was sweating inside his leather jacket. But he felt cold.
‘I know the roadies,’ Jimmy said as the three denim-and leather-clad men leant back against the truck to watch, their work over for now.
‘Sick bastards,’ Rod muttered. ‘From Tavistock.’ he added, as if there was a natural connection. ‘Seen ‘em in the Bull there. Tend to keep to themselves.’ Rod knew all the seedy haunts. He’d spent his adolescence discovering them and had realised, too late, that they had discovered him and made him their own. It was no longer any good trying to escape them now. Slow, creeping alcoholism had him in its horny grasp.
‘They’re sick all right,’ Jimmy agreed as the band tuned up, 24
shivers of electric sound skidding across the moors. ‘Been linked with most of the bad shit that goes on around here.Evil stuff, you 1, now?Devil worship, child murder. You name it, the Old Bill’s tried to pin it on ‘em.’
‘So where did these nutters come from?’ Sin wanted to know, nodding at the musicians. Nobody answered. Nobody knew. The crowd were muttering, the way crowds do. Local Princetonians, people from neighbouring villages, strangers. But as yet, not a sign of the village bobby.
Just then, the band began to play.
There’s a good pub in Princetown: the Doctor assured Jo as Bessie swept them along the moorland road. ‘They serve a wonderful breakfast as I remember.’
‘At two o’clock in the afternoon?’ Jo grinned at