Kill Your Friends by John Niven Read Free Book Online Page A

dinner, to having a business meeting—is
fraught with the potential for real or imagined ‘disrespects’,
which must be immediately, viciously, avenged. How does he
do it? Then you remember his childhood: the foster-homes, the
beatings. His actual conception: a radioactive wad of angry
nigger-rapist semen getting pumped into some gibbering crack whore
to produce the ‘drum’n’bass superstar’ sitting opposite me.
    Hefe’s the thing. When Rage was a little boy his mother drove
them from London up to Manchester for the day. She pulled up in the
city centre and made him get out of the car. Then she drove back to
London. He never saw her again. He lived on the streets—crying and
begging—for a couple of days before the cops got hold of him. They
slung him in and out of a bunch of care homes for the next ten
years, where he was doubtless constantly beaten and fucked in the
ass. Let’s face it, that’d fuck you off, wouldn’t it? That’d about
do it for you with regard to the notion of unconditional love.
    But today, surprisingly, he decides to be benevolent. Graceful
even. “Whatever,” he says airily, somehow managing to wave an
ingot-heavy hand, “just bring me some fucking food. Yeah?”
    “Couldn’t we just hire the gear for the tour?” I say.
    Rage shakes his head, sucking air in through a mouthful of
chrome teeth. “Can’t work with no hired gear, man. No way.”
    “Look,” says Fisher, “do you guys believe in this fucking guy,”
he jerks a pudgy thumb at Rage, “long term?”
    “Yes,” we both lie.
    “Then this ain’t gonna be the only tour we ever do. It’s an investment .”
    “I just don’t think we can justify the additional expense,”
Schneider says, nervously. “The tour support’s high as it is.”
    “Right,” Fisher sighs as he lays down his last card, “we’ll have
to pull the tour.”
    We laugh. They don’t.
    “I ain’t fucking doing it,” says Rage. There’s a long
silence.
    “But,” Schneider says, realising they’re perfectly serious,
“we’ve already paid for advertising, we’ve—”
    “Not our problem,” says Fisher.
    Would they pull their own tour out of spite? Of course they
fucking would. When your own mother tells you to go and get fucked
at the age of seven, telling the rest of the world to go and get
Ricked on a daily basis holds no terrors. I wonder why they
bothered with lunch. Why didn’t they just walk into the boardroom
with stockings over their heads, wielding shotguns and demanding
sixty grand?
    Schneider pretends to think for a long time. There’s nothing to
think about.
    “Thirty grand,” he says, “recoupable.”
    “Fifty,” Fisher says.
    “Forty.”
    “Deal, man.”
    They shake hands. At some point we’ll see a Fantasy
Island budget from Fisher’s management company with a bunch of
fake receipts stapled to it for silly money they never spent on
gear they do not own. Essentially Schneider has just agreed to give
them forty grand, no strings attached. We might get it back if—and
it’s a continent-sized ‘if’—Rage’s album ever recoups all of its
costs.
    Neither Rage nor Fisher really had any formal schooling, but, in
their own ways, their backgrounds prepared them thoroughly for a
successful career in the music business. There was a visa problem
for a trip to the States last year and the legal department had to
sort it out. Trellick got to see the rap sheets.
    Yes, you guessed it. Back in the day Rage and Fisher were both
muggers.
    “So,” Schneider says pleasantly, “how’s the album coming?”
    “Mate,” Rage says sombrely, slowly removing his Oakley’s for the
first time and making eye contact with Schneider. His irises are so
brown as to effectively be black. A shark’s eyes. “It’s gonna blow
your fucking tits off.”
    “When can we hear it?”
    “Soon, mate. Soon.”
    The waiter glides into view. With a triumphant “ Voila! ”
he sets an enormous platter of fruits de mer in front of
Rage. Rage