by Val McDermid
The phone went dead, before I even had the chance to tell her about Fat Freddy. I decided I’d try her again in the evening, once she’d had a bit of time to get used to being home alone again. I used the rest of the morning to type up a report for Bill and our clients about the morning’s events. It was a sorry ending to a successful investigation.
I was putting a new pack of microcassettes in my handbag when I caught sight of the detailed info Josh had faxed me about Moira’s financial problems. In the recent chaos, I’d completely forgotten to look at it. I smoothed it out and started to read.
The very first debt, for £175, caught my eye immediately. The County Court judgement on it dated from a few months after she’d left Jett. The creditors were an outfit called Cullen Holdings in Bradford. The name rang a vague bell. I went through to Shelley’s office for the Bradford phone directory and looked it up. There was no listing for Cullen Holdings, but there was a listing for The Cullen Clinic. That was what had rung the bell. Before I’d joined Bill full-time, I’d done a company search on The Cullen Clinic for a client in the same line of business who was looking for traces of financial shenanigans. Or any other kind of dirt.
Shelley found the relevant records disc and I loaded it into my computer. The Cullen Clinic was owned by Dr Theodore Donn. In spite of the title, he was no medical man. His degree was a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Strathclyde University. He’d set up The Cullen Clinic for one reason only. To make money out of abortion. He’d been running the clinic at a substantial profit for nearly ten years. He’d even survived a Department of Health inquiry into the connection between his business and a pregnancy advisory service owned by his sister, which referred their unhappily pregnant clients to The Cullen Clinic for terminations. Very cosy. And they’d sued Moira Pollock for the non-payment of a bill incurred just a week after she’d left Jett.
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I couldn’t believe that Jett had known about that when he hired me to find her. If he’d found out after she’d come back, it gave him one hell of a motive. I knew his rigidly hostile views on abortion. I’d seen how mercurial he could be. I’d seen his rages. And above all, this crime was spontaneous, panicky and angry.
I changed discs, just to confirm what Josh’s printout had told me, and called up Moira’s medical records from the Seagull Project. Halfway down the page, there it was. VAT. Voluntary Assisted Termination. She must have been going through hell. Hooked on smack, pregnant, alone. It was a miracle she’d survived as well as she had. And all the more of a crime that someone had killed her when she’d finally got her life back together.
I leaned back in my chair and thought. If I’d been able to find out about Moira’s abortion, the chances were that Neil could have too. Good journalists use exactly the same kinds of sources that investigators do. The only question for me was if Neil’s sources in the financial sector were as efficient as mine. And if he’d told Jett about his discovery. That could be just the kind of scandal he’d been looking for to sell his book. Whether he’d still be getting any cooperation from Kevin and Jett if he’d told them he planned to use material like that was another matter entirely. It was time to ask Neil Webster a few more questions.
It was lunchtime for the world, breakfast time at the manor when I arrived. The atmosphere in the kitchen was less than welcoming. Jett looked up from the toast he was buttering to say hello, but no one else paid me a blind bit of notice. Kevin and Micky were sitting opposite Jett, both leaning forward earnestly over their cups of coffee. Tamar was shovelling down Weetabix, spluttering between mouthfuls that Jett ought to listen to Kevin and Micky, that they were right.
‘Right about what?’ Jett was paying me to poke my nose in, after all.
Micky’s brow corrugated in a simian frown. Kevin delivered one of his ingratiating smiles and said, ‘We’ve just been telling Jett, the best thing for him is to get back to making music. Take his mind off things, let him work through his grief.’
‘How near is the album to completion?’ I asked.
‘It’ll never be finished now,’ Jett replied morosely. ‘How can I even think about it?’
A look of irritation was chased off Kevin’s features by a spuriously sympathetic expression. ‘Hey, I know you feel like that now, but you should think of this as a tribute to Moira. A way of making her spirit live on.’ I had to hand it to Kevin. He was shrewd when it came to manipulating Jett.
Jett looked doubtful. ‘I dunno, seems like bad taste, and her not even in her grave yet.’
‘That’s just her body, Jett, you know that. Her spirit’s free now. No fear, no hate, no pain, nothing to worry about. She came back because she wanted you to make music together. You owe it to her to finish that work.’ I cast my eyes heavenwards at Kevin’s words. God, I’d be glad when this job was over.
Gloria swept into the room and headed straight for the kettle. ‘The police have released the rehearsal room,’ she announced. ‘We can use it whenever we want.’
Jett shuddered. ‘No way. Kevin, I want my instruments moved out of there and up to my sitting room.’
‘But what about the piano? And the synths?’
‘Them too. If I’m going to work, I can’t do it in that room, with all the negative energies from her death.’
Kevin nodded in resignation. ‘There’s a couple of road crew live locally. I’ll get them over to sort it out.’ He got to his feet and left, followed at a trot by Micky. Gloria finished making her herbal tea and turned to glare at Tamar, who was helping herself to a slice of Jett’s toast. If I had my breakfast in an atmosphere like that, I’d be sucking Rennies for the rest of the day.
‘While you’re all here, can I ask when it was that you knew how Moira had been killed?’ Time to get to work.
Gloria looked uncertainly at Jett. Tamar covered her toast with strawberry jam and said, ‘The first I knew was after I got up that morning. Jett was the only one who knew, and he wasn’t in the mood for talking. Besides, PC Plod was standing over us in the drawing room till well after four o’clock. It really wasn’t the atmosphere for cosy chats about murder methods.’
‘Gloria?’ I asked.
‘I knew before I went to bed,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I went to my office after they told us we could go to bed, and I overheard one of the policemen saying he’d never seen anyone battered to death with a saxophone before.’
I couldn’t disprove it, and she couldn’t prove it. ‘Did you discuss it with anyone else?’
‘Of course not,’ she retorted, back on her dignity.
‘And was there anyone else in your office with you?’
‘No. I just wanted to make sure everything was locked up securely before I went to bed.’
‘Jett, did you discuss the method of Moira’s death with anyone at all apart from me?’
He shook his head. ‘Kate, I was too fucked up for conversation. No way did I want to talk about it. Also, you told me to keep my mouth shut, so I knew there had to be a good reason for it.’
I thanked them all, and went off in search of Neil. He was in his office, battering the keyboard of his computer as if it were an old manual typewriter. I winced as I perched on the edge of his desk. ‘I can see you’re not exactly familiar with the leading edge of modern technology,’ I said sarcastically.
He paused and grinned. ‘I know exactly as much as I need to do the job,’ he said.
‘And if all else fails, read the manual?’
‘You got it in one,’ he replied, still smiling.
‘It’s a shame,’ I said. ‘I always feel sorry for people who don’t use their machines to their full potential.’
‘How do you mean?’ he asked, finally intrigued enough to give me his full attention.
‘Well, for example, you must have a comms setup here to send your copy, am I right?’
‘You mean the modem and the Hermes Link?’ he asked.
That answered one question. Now I knew which electronic mail service he was hooked
into. ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘But have you ever used bulletin boards and public domain software?’
He looked at me as if I had lapsed into Mandarin. ‘Sorry, Kate, I haven’t a clue what you’re on about.’
I explained at mind-numbing length about communicating with other users through bulletin boards, about capturing free software programs over the phone lines, and about game-playing via modems. He looked just as dazed and confused as I’d intended. ‘I bet you don’t even do the things that make it easy on yourself, like date-stamping your files.’
That earned me a blank look. ‘Pardon?’
‘You date-stamp your files, that way you can check when they were sent and what mailbox they were sent to. A great come-back when people haven’t paid you and claim they never had the copy.’
‘Oh, right,’ he said blankly.
‘You want me to show you?’ I asked, sidling over beside him. ‘Just connect yourself to Hermes and I’ll show you how.’
Right according to plan, he connected his computer to the telephone system. He had an autologon program, which only revealed his mailbox number, not his ID and passwords. But that was probably enough for what I had in mind. I memorized the eight digit number, ran a routine quickly by him, then exited from the link. ‘If you’re interested, I’ll come over one afternoon after all this is finished and show you how to do it for yourself,’ I offered.
He gave me a sly grin. ‘Be my guest. Maybe I can do you a trade. I’m sure there’s one or two things I could teach you.’
How to slide under a stone without disturbing it, perhaps, I thought. Time for a bit of hardball, I decided. ‘Neil? How did you hear about the way Moira was killed?’
He shifted in his seat. ‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked.
‘I’m just checking with everyone. Routine. I’m not very accustomed to investigating murder, and there were one or two things I forgot to ask last time around.’
‘Obviously, I was dying to find out exactly what had happened, but the cops told us not to talk about it while they had us cooped up in that bloody blue drawing room. Besides, the only person who seemed to know what was going on was Jett. Anyway, after the police told us we could go to bed, I collared Kevin. I told him the best way to control any bad publicity was for me to handle all the stories. I know, I know, it’s earned me a few bob, but why not? Anyway, I asked him for the details, and he told me she’d been battered to death in the rehearsal room with a tenor sax.’ He smiled disarmingly. I wondered if he knew he’d just given me the last brick in my case.
28
Cracking a case is a unique feeling, a mixture of relief, self-congratulation and a curious sense of deflation. I felt all that and more at Neil’s words, and I struggled not to show him any of it. Until the net was ready to close round Kevin, I didn’t want anyone to know how much I had on him. I searched my mind for another question to ask Neil, so his last reply wouldn’t stick in his mind as the thing that had sent me haring off. ‘Have you told Jett about the abortion yet?’ I hazarded.
He froze, and a mottled flush spread up from his neck. ‘A-abortion,’ he stuttered.
I’d got him. Time for the major league bluff. ‘I know all about it, Neil. And I know you know. I just wondered if you’d told Jett yet.’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about, Kate, I swear.’
‘You can’t bullshit me, Neil. Either you co-operate with me, or I go straight to Jett and tell him you’re planning to drop that little bombshell in the public domain just to make yourself a shilling.’
‘You’re a hard-faced bitch,’ he complained, his face the picture of petulance.
‘Yeah, but I’m good at it. Now talk. When did you find out about the abortion?’
‘A few days before Moira died,’ he admitted sulkily.
‘Just as a matter of interest, how did you find out?’
‘I ran a financial check on her, then I rang the clinic pretending to be Moira’s accountant, saying she was now in a position to settle the outstanding amount, and could they send the account to me. I confirmed it was for a termination, and gave them a fake address to send it on to.’ He couldn’t help himself. He looked smug as a Cheshire Conservative.
‘So how did you plan to use the information?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘I thought about telling Jett, but it didn’t seem like a good idea when he and Moira were working so closely together. He’s not exactly what you’d call a New Man when it comes to abortion and working wives, is he? It would have caused an almighty row, and God knows what would have happened. I decided to hang on and see what happened after the album was finished.’
‘You mean you were going to wait till the book came out, then sell it separately, and to hell with the damage it caused?’
His angry look told me I’d hit the nail right on the head. But he wasn’t going to admit it. ‘Of course not,’ he said hotly. ‘What do you take me for?’
If I were American, I’d have pleaded the fifth. As it was, I just gave him my most contemptuous look and walked out.
Two doors down the hall from Neil’s office, I found the dining room. It looked as if it got about as much use as Richard’s vacuum cleaner. I sat down on an antique balloon-backed chair and inserted a fresh tape in my recorder. I dictated a report of the case to date, explaining the reasons for my conclusion that Kevin was the killer. The problem was that I still lacked any substantial proof. I had no doubt that would be easy enough for the police to find once he was arrested. A serious probe into his finances would be one place to start. But I had to produce enough evidence to convince the police to take that first step.
It seemed to me there were two ways to approach it. One was to ‘persuade’ Fat Freddy to co-operate. The other was to try to flush Kevin out into the open. That was risky, but the results would be much more damning than anything a Bradford villain might have to say.
I found Jett in his sitting room, talking music with Kevin and Micky, who both looked less than thrilled to see me again. ‘Sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got something important to say,’ I announced.
Jett jumped to his feet and crossed the room in a rush. He gripped my upper arms so tightly I knew I’d have to forget sleeveless dresses for a few days. ‘You know who killed Moira? I sense it, Kate. You know!’ he said intensely.
‘I’ve got a pretty good idea,’ I said.
‘Tell me,’ he shouted, shaking me.
I tried to wriggle out of his grasp, but he held on. ‘Jett, you’re hurting! Let me go!’ I demanded.
His hands fell to his sides and he slumped into the nearest chair, drained. ‘I’m sorry, Kate. I didn’t mean to hurt you. You gotta tell me, though.’
Micky lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. ‘He’s right. If you know, he’s got a right to be told.’
‘I haven’t got enough proof to start throwing accusations around yet,’ I said. ‘But I know where to go to find it. By this time tomorrow, I should know for sure. When I do, Jett, you’ll know. What I want you to do is to get everyone together tomorrow at five. The blue drawing room’s as good a place as any. I’ll tell you everything I’ve learned then.’
‘For God’s sake,’ Kevin exploded. ‘This is ridiculous. I never heard of anything so bloody silly. What do you think this is? Some crappy detective novel? Showdown in the drawing room? Why the hell can’t you just tell Jett like you’re paid to do?’
‘Shut up, Kevin,’ Jett said forcefully. ‘I gave Kate a free hand. She’ll handle it. She knows what she’s doing.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘The reason I want you all together is that I have things to say that affect each and every one of you. And there are people who know more than they’ve told, for whatever reason. Once they know they’re no longer suspects, they’ll be more willing to give me the full picture.’
‘Can’t you give us some idea now? I don’t fancy spending another night under the same roof as a killer,’ Kevin protested.
I had to hand it to
him. He had bottle. Either that or the arrogance of the criminal who thinks he’s cleverer than the investigators. ‘No. All I will say is that Moira was killed because she knew too much. Someone in this house got greedy. They were trying to make a fast buck. And purely by chance, Moira found out. And once I’ve made a little trip across the Pennines tomorrow to talk to a certain businessman, I’ll know everything Moira knew. And more. Now, if you’ll excuse me, gentlemen, I’ve got work to do.’
I didn’t hang around waiting for a response. Within five minutes, I was heading back to town. I’d done my best to flush Kevin out. Now I was going to have to cover my back.
I double-tracked the busy line between Essen and Utrecht and monitored the effect on my station boxes. Railroad Tycoon, the ultimate computer strategy program, was doing the trick of taking my mind off the waiting game. It’s not just little boys who like playing trains.
I’d been building my trans-European railroad for about an hour when the doorbell rang. I froze the game and went through to the hall. The security lights blazed down on a uncomfortable-looking Kevin. Surprise, surprise. I was a little taken aback by the full frontal approach, but if he’d been planning to take me by surprise, he would have been foiled by the lights as soon as he got within twenty yards of any of the windows. I must remember to tell clients that they’re a great deterrent against potential murderers.
‘Can we talk, Kate?’ he said as soon as I opened the door.
‘I was actually having an evening off, Kevin. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?’
‘We’ve got some things to clear up that won’t wait.’
‘We do? You’d better come in then,’ I said grudgingly, leading the way back through to the living room. I gestured to one of the sofas, and he perched on the edge.
I sat down opposite him, deliberately not offering him a drink. I wanted to keep him edgy. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’ I inquired.
‘You’re setting me up,’ he said abruptly, lacing his fingers together tightly. ‘I didn’t kill Moira, and you’re trying to make it look like I did.’
