he could see a few monoliths of gutted speakers and burned-out amplifiers shoved in with the pots and boxes. Nothing worth stealing. Nothing worth saving. Ghosts. Broken, dead ghosts. Like Nemo Skagg.
“I think I have a can of beans somewhere.” Nemo applied a candle to some greasy chips papers and scraps of wood. The yellow flame flared in the dark cave, its smoke carried outward past the lean-to. “That’s all right,” said Chase. “I really must be going.”
“Oi. We haven’t finished the bottle.” Nemo poured. “Drink up. Of course, I used to throw better parties than this for my fans.”
“Cheers,” said Chase, drinking. He knew he would be very ill tomorrow.
“So, Ryan,” said Nemo, stretching out on a legless and spring-stabbed comfy chair. “You find yourself wanting to ask where all the money went.”
“I believe you’ve already told me.”
“What I told you was what people want to hear, although it’s partly true. Quite amazing how much money you can stuff up your nose and shove up your arm, and how fast that draws that certain group of sharks who circle about you and take bites till there’s nothing left to feed on. But the simple and unsuspected truth of the matter is that I spent the last of my fortune on my fans.”
Chase was wondering whether he might have to crash here for the night if he didn’t move now. He finished Nemo’s sad story for him: “And then your fans all proved fickle.”
“No, mate. Not these fans. Just look at them.”
Nemo Skagg shuffled back into his cave, picked out a floral vase, brought it out into the light, cradling it lovingly in his hands for Chase to see. Chase saw that it was actually a funeral urn.
“This is Saliva Gash. She said she was eighteen when she hung out backstage. After she OD’d one night after a gig, her family in Pimlico wouldn’t own her. Not even her ashes. I paid for the cremation. I kept her remains. She was too dear a creature to be scattered.”
Ryan Chase was touched. He struggled for words to say, until Nemo reached back for another urn.
“And this one is Slice. I never knew his real name. He was always in the front row, screaming us on, until he sliced his wrists after one show. No one claimed the remains. I paid for it.
“And this one is Dave from Belfast. Pissed out of his skull, and he stuck his arm out to flag down a tube train. Jacket caught, and I doubt they picked up all of him to go into the oven. His urn feels light.”
“That’s all right,” said Chase, as Nemo offered him the urn to examine. “I’m no judge.”
“You ever notice how London is crammed with bloody cemeteries, but no one gets buried there unless they’ve snuffed it before the fucking Boer War? No room for any common souls in London. They burn the lot of us now, and then you get a fucking box of ashes to carry home. That’s if you got any grieving sod who cares a fuck to hold on to them past the first dustbin.”
Nemo dragged out one of the cardboard boxes. The rotted carton split open, disgorging a plastic bag of chalky ashes. The bag burst on the bricks, scattering ashes over Nemo’s shoes and trouser cuffs. “Shit. I can’t read this one. Can you?”
He handed the mildewed cardboard to Chase, then poured out more Bell’s. Chase dully accepted both. His brain hurt.
“Bought proper funeral urns for them all at first,” Nemo explained. “Then, as the money went, I had to economize. Still, I was loyal to my fans. I kept them with me after I lost the house. After I’d lost everything else.”
The fire licked at the moldy cardboard in Chase’s hand, cutting through his numbness. He dropped the box onto the fire. The fire flared. By its light Chase could make out hundreds of similar boxes and urns stacked high within the vault.
“It’s a whole generation no one wanted,” Nemo went on, drinking now straight from the bottle. “Only I spoke for them. I spoke to them. They wanted me. I wanted them. The fans today want to worship dead stars. Sod ’em all. I’m still alive, and I have my audience of dead fans to love me.”
Chase drank his whisky despite his earlier resolve. Nemo Skagg sat enthroned in squalor, surrounded by chalky ashes and the flickering light of a trash fire—a Wagnerian hero gone wrong.
“They came to London from all