Bottleneck by Ed James

his computer and logged onto the newspaper archives, focusing on the six months leading up to Strang's disappearance. There was the occasional feature about the band. As Johnson and Williamson said, they were getting some semblance of a profile.
    The biggest was a review of the last Invisibles gig in the Argus by someone called Sonny Bangs. Cullen had a vague recollection of the name Lester Bangs from his old man's punk obsession. He hadn't thought it was a real name.
    The review covered a whole page of the broadsheet, which Cullen thought was unusual for an unsigned band. He carefully read it, full of gushing praise, touting the band as the next big thing, 'sure to eclipse Expect Delays' . The picture alongside showed Strang in full-on Iggy Pop mode, cutting open his chest onstage with a broken beer bottle. It was so busy people were standing on tables to see the band.
    A second inset picture showed him smashing a guitar like the cover of The Clash's London Calling . Cullen frowned, recalling the expensive Fender Buxton had drooled over in Strang's bedroom. The guitar in the photo was red. He googled it and found a musicians' forum recommending switching to a cheap guitar for the last song as an economical way of looking like The Who in the sixties.
    The band played four songs in twelve minutes and Bangs cited the Jesus and Mary Chain, referencing a notorious series of short and angry gigs in London during the mid-eighties, at least one of which led to a riot. Cullen googled again and found he knew a couple of their songs from the film Lost in Translation .
    According to the review, the last song of the concert - the last song James Strang ever performed - was a wall of feedback. Strang was shouting 'they took all the money and all the fame', turning it into a mantra and inciting the crowd to sing along. He smashed the guitar halfway through and walked off through the crowd, blood dripping from his torso.
    According to the article, there was some trouble after the gig. Cullen took it to be more hyperbole. He checked through police reports of the night, finding a couple of arrests on the Cowgate as a result of crowd violence, unclear whether it was from the gig or the football.
    He dug into Lester Bangs - he was a punk rock journalist, helping fuel the American punk movement in the mid-seventies before covering the rise of the Sex Pistols, The Clash and countless others in the UK a few years later. Sonny Bangs was definitely a made-up name, someone trying to set themselves up as some sort of local punk rock figurehead. Maybe he was associated with the band.
    Cullen needed to speak to Sonny Bangs about James Strang.

CHAPTER 30

    Cullen parked his car on Holyrood Road and walked to the Argus 's offices, just across from The Scotsman and Dynamic Earth. It was round the corner from the municipal swimming pool that passed for the Scottish Parliament building.
    He shivered as he marched on down the road, the early evening wind cutting through him, the sun close to setting.
    He entered the concrete, chrome and glass construction. The building teemed with activity through the floor-to-ceiling windows, the Sunday edition just about ready for the press, last minute football stories no doubt throwing the sport section into disarray.
    Manning the reception desk was a young Asian man, wearing a sharp suit and a beard that would take a good twenty minutes of chiselling every morning.
    Cullen smiled as he produced his warrant card and introduced himself. "I'm looking for a Sonny Bangs. He works on your features desk."
    "One moment." He checked on his computer. "There's nobody of that name here."
    Cullen pulled out a print of the article. "This was written in August two thousand and eleven."
    "There's nobody on the system."
    "Can you try-"
    "We got a problem here?"
    A grey-haired man in his late forties was frowning at Cullen.
    "Sorry, who are you?" said Cullen.
    The man pulled an ID badge out of his pocket. "The name is Alexander Spence.