The Blissfully Dead

by Louise Voss

  He slid an embossed card across to Patrick who stood up, ignoring the card and turning away from the PR man. He had finally encountered someone he liked even less than Winkler.

  Patrick and Carmella left the room, both glad to escape the curt silence. Hattie was typing furiously at a desk on the other side of the room, looking up at her screen and pausing, as if something there had grabbed her attention. Her fingers fluttered over the keyboard.

  Patrick wandered over to her desk. ‘Where can we find Graham Burns?’

  Hattie jumped like Patrick had sneaked up behind her and popped a balloon in her ear.

  ‘Shit. Sorry . . . Graham? Oh, he’s right behind you.’

  Patrick turned to see the social media manager coming towards him across the lobby.

  ‘Any joy?’ Patrick asked. ‘Did Rose Sharp and Jessica McMasters ever message each other?’

  ‘Yes.’ Graham had that excited air people get when they think they are helping the police solve a tricky puzzle. ‘They exchanged several messages last year.’

  ‘But you really can’t access those messages? That’s incredibly frustrating, Mr Burns.’

  Graham looked over his shoulder and said quietly, ‘Well, it’s possible that, if I dig deep, I could find something . . . It goes against policy, but . . .’

  ‘That would be extremely helpful.’

  ‘No problem, Detective.’

  Yep, he really was an arse-kisser, Patrick thought.

  Patrick handed him a business card. ‘Here’s my number. If I’m not around, you can talk to any member of my team. I’ll need your contact details too.’

  Graham delved in the back pocket of his cords and pulled out an antique engraved cardholder that looked as if it was made of ivory. He flipped it open and gave Patrick a card from it. ‘Certainly,’ he said. ‘Anything I can do to help.’

  As they left the building Patrick heard footsteps tapping hurriedly up behind them. It was Hattie Parsons, the PA, her beads bouncing against her flat chest as she broke into a run to catch them up. She was looking behind her as though she was being chased by a pack of wolves.

  ‘I can’t let Kerry see me talk to you.’

  Patrick and Carmella exchanged glances. ‘Kerry? Mervyn Hammond’s security guy?’

  Hattie nodded and Carmella smiled reassuringly at her. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that. He’s far too engrossed in Candy Crush. What is it?’

  Hattie actually wrung her hands together. ‘I shouldn’t tell you. It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Patrick.

  ‘I could lose my job . . .’

  ‘You won’t,’ said Carmella soothingly. ‘Not if you’re just helping us with our investigation. That would be unfair dismissal.’

  Tears sprang into the woman’s eyes. ‘Mervyn would definitely have me fired. So would Reggie. If the press got hold of it . . .’

  They waited expectantly. Eventually Hattie leaned forwards and spoke so quietly that they had to strain to hear her over the noise of the Knightsbridge traffic.

  ‘It’s Shawn Barrett. Nobody knows outside of Gideon, but . . .’

  She hesitated again.

  ‘Please tell us, Miss Parsons.’

  The words came out in a panicked blurt. ‘There are things about Shawn that nobody knows. Put it this way: if I had a teenage daughter, I wouldn’t let her within a million miles of him.’

  ‘And why’s that?’

  She looked over her shoulder, then handed him a business card. ‘Call me later,’ she said, and turned and ran back to the office.

  Chapter 18

  Day 5 – Kai

  Kai looked up from his position on the carpet where he was lying on his front, surrounded by used make-up wipes, empty Pringles tubes, dirty knickers, screwed-up bits of A4 paper from uncompleted school assignments and Haribo packets. The same litter had lain in the same place on the carpet ever since he’d first got it on with Jade, almost six months ago now.

  He unscrewed the little pot of nail polish and began painstakingly sweeping brushfuls of silver glittery varnish onto Jade’s toenails, having already squeezed her toes into the pink foam toe separators.

  Jade scowled down at him over the top of her laptop. ‘You didn’t shake it! All the sparkles will be at the bottom if you don’t shake it!’

  Kai obediently shook the bottle – but he’d forgotten to put the brush back in it first, which prompted more howls of outrage from his girlfriend.

  ‘Oi, you NOB!’ she shouted.

  ‘It’s OK, bae, look, it ain’t spilled anywhere,’ he placated her.

  ‘It had better not. It’ll ruin me carpet if it gets on it and me mum’ll kill me!’

  Kai thought it best not to point out that he couldn’t even see the carpet, under all the trash, that Jade’s mum – who looked like she might one day need to be winched out of this house – had given up long ago. He decided it would be safer to change the subject on to something happier. ‘What date’s the OnT book signing, babe?’

  ‘The thirteenth. The day before Valentine’s Day.’ She paused. ‘Lol! Friday thirteenth! Can’t wait to go to that posh restaurant you booked us.’

  Kai looked up again, worried. ‘I didn’t book no posh restaurant, bae, was I meant to?’

  Jade slapped the side of his head, a little harder than necessary. ‘Duh! I was joking! You’d better get me a lush pressie, though. So, right, we’ll get a night bus over there, yeah? If we get there for 3 a.m. I reckon we got a good chance of being first in line. Or should we make it earlier, like the night before?’

  Kai didn’t answer, as he was concentrating too hard on the toenails. He suspected, correctly, that Jade wasn’t interested in his opinion anyway and that she was just thinking out loud.

  ‘I wonder when the others’ll get there. We gotta make sure we get in that queue before them chavs like Chloe and ShawnsCupcake.’

  ‘ShawnsCupcake? Who’s she?’

  ‘I dunno, she’s a noob. Tell you what, though, she’s a right know-all and I bet she’s a right little chav. She just comments on everything I post, like, straight away, chatting shit ’n’ shit. It’s not respectful to us lot who’ve been on the forums for, like, ever. You can’t just barge in and take over. I bet you she’ll try to jump the queue at the signing, well, that ain’t happening, no way!’

  ‘No way,’ echoed Kai from her feet.

  ‘She’s acting like she’s Shawn’s biggest fan when everyone knows that I am. She’s been commenting on StoryPad too – she, like, had the nerve to say that Shawn and Blake wouldn’t go that way round, that Blake would be on top? I mean, I wrote the fucking thing! How dare she? If I see her, I’m gonna have a word or two!’

  ‘How dare she? Blake would never be on top!’ Kai protested, although he hadn’t read Jade’s latest shipping story or any of her stories for that matter. He found it a struggle to read anything longer than a tweet. Hashtag Boring, he thought, but would never admit it. Actions speak better than words, was his motto. Besides, he really didn’t want to read about two blokes getting it on. But writing her stories kept Jade off his back for hours at a time, plus it made her horny as hell, and so was an activity to be encouraged.

  ‘More than a word or two, I reckon,’ he said, running a thumbnail around a smudge on Jade’s toe. ‘If she’s that much out of line, we need to let her know she can’t go around acting like that. I’ll sort her for you.’

  ‘Gettin’ good at that now, ain’t ya, bae?’ Jade smiled at him and their eyes met in a moment of sly complicity before hers flicked back down to her feet. ‘Don’t forget to do another coat. And shake it first this time!’

  Chapter 19

  Day 6 – Patrick

  Patrick fondly remembered the days when pubs were filled with the aroma of cigarette smoke, the blue-tinged cloud that hung over the tables, just as he recalled with a pang o
f nostalgia a time when he was young and foolish enough to puff his way through a pack of Marlboro Lights every day. Now, there were a couple of blokes sucking on e-cigarettes and the first smell he noticed when he entered the pub was the sickly sweet odour of the toilets.

  He ordered a lime and soda and looked around for Hattie Parsons. The Prince Regent in Kentish Town was almost empty at this time of day. It seemed the kind of place that would always be empty and the barman wore the thousand-yard stare of a man who has seen terrible things. But Hattie insisted they meet here as it was a long way from her office and her colleagues would rather have their eardrums ripped out than visit a place like this. Patrick smiled. He’d rather have his eardrums ripped out than listen to the new OnTarget album again. Carmella had forced him to play it in the car yesterday, after picking a copy up from the record company office. It was so anodyne that the moment it ended he’d forgotten every note – though later, to his intense disgust, he’d found himself humming OnTarget’s latest hit, ‘Lonely Girl’ (‘You are a lonely girl/But you are the only girl/For meeeeee’), in the shower.

  Hattie was in the corner, wearing dark glasses, which she raised when she spotted him, which made him laugh.

  ‘It is I, Leclerc,’ he said as he sat down.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Never mind. You obviously don’t share my love of corny sitcoms. Lovely place.’

  She leaned across the table. She had a glass of wine in front of her, lipstick smudges on the edge. ‘Ghastly, isn’t it? And the wine . . .’ She pulled a face. ‘Wise to choose a gin and lime.’

  ‘It’s lime and soda. I’m on duty.’

  ‘Oh. Shame. Never as much fun, drinking alone. Sure you can’t have just one?’

  He noticed her eyes flicking up and down his torso, sizing him up and apparently liking what she saw. Carmella was right – he must be giving off some kind of heavy pheromone at the moment – which was ironic, given the situation at home. If he was free and single . . . Hattie was a few years older than him but still a very attractive woman, with appealing laughter lines that showed she wasn’t always as wound-up as she was right now.

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to talk to me,’ he said, ignoring her question.

  She had taken the sunglasses off now and glanced left and right. Her eyes were slightly glazed and Patrick thought that, despite her complaint about the wine, she had downed at least a couple of glasses while waiting for him. That was fine. In fact, he had been deliberately ten minutes late, thinking this might encourage her to have a drink, which would help relax her and loosen her tongue.

  ‘You know, if I’m caught talking to you, it will be the end of my career. Not just at GSM but the whole music business. And although I’m just a PA, and could probably be a PA anywhere, I like working there, you know? It’s a hell of a lot more glamorous than being a PA in a bank.’ She sipped her wine and winced. ‘You look like you’re into music. Let me guess . . .’

  He was keen to move on to the point, so curtailed her guessing game. ‘I’m a big Cure fan.’

  ‘The Cure! I love them. They were my favourite band when I was younger. Saw them at this fantastic outdoor gig at Crystal Palace in, ooh, 1990? Actually, this is a big secret, but OnT are planning to record a cover of “Boys Don’t Cry” for their next album.’

  Patrick spat his lime and soda across the table.

  ‘Or possibly “Love Cats” . . .’

  Attempting to recover from this awful news – for Patrick, it was akin to being told his mother had started a new career as a stripper – he said, ‘I have to warn you, Hattie, that if what you tell us leads to a prosecution, you might be required to testify in court.’

  She blanched. ‘Oh God. Really? Can’t you blame an anonymous source?’

  ‘I’m not a journalist.’

  Another big gulp of wine. ‘Maybe I should have gone to the press instead. Then you would have found out that way.’

  ‘Found out what? Listen, Hattie, I will respect your need for privacy as far as I can, but if you know anything, you have to tell us.’

  Hattie shuddered, but then said, ‘OK, OK. I understand. Oh God . . . I’ve got teenage nieces, and when I imagine them . . .’ She trailed off.

  ‘Do you want another drink?’

  ‘I shouldn’t. Oh, yes please. White wine.’

  He returned from the bar and she immediately raised the glass and swallowed half its contents. Then he waited.

  ‘OK, so, the thing is . . .’ Her voice dropped so he had to lean forwards. ‘There have been rumours about Shawn Barrett for a long time. Since the band went on their first world tour.’ She paused. ‘Actually, that was only two years ago, but it feels like a lifetime, like they’ve been around forever. OnTarget are so huge. You know, without the cash they’ve generated over the last couple of years, GSM would be in deep shit. The company will do anything to protect them. There was an exposé last year when Blake and Zubin were caught smoking a joint on the tour bus, but no-one really cares about that sort of stuff anymore, do they?’

  ‘Well, it is illegal.’

  ‘Yes, but the media can barely be bothered to act outraged by a bit of ganja these days. It’s hardly in Ian Watkins territory, is it?’

  Ian Watkins had been the singer with the rock band Lostprophets, who had been convicted of sexually assaulting a one-year-old baby, a case that had made Patrick wish, in his most furious moments, that he could spend an hour alone in a cell with Watkins.

  ‘And you’re saying that the rumours about Shawn are in Watkins territory?’

  ‘Well, not that bad. But . . . OK, you know pop bands get a lot of groupies, obviously. With rock bands – grown-up bands – it’s quite straightforward. Women throw themselves at them and, in most cases, the bands act like Augustus Gloop let loose in Willy Wonka’s factory. I’m sure there’s a lot of weird, blurred-lines stuff that goes on, but on the whole it’s consenting adults. With a boy band like OnTarget, though, where most of the fans are very young, underage, we have to build a protective wall around them.’

  ‘When you say “we”, you mean the record company?’

  ‘Yes. The record company and their management. It would be an absolute disaster – some fourteen-year-old girl, who probably looks seventeen, going to the press revealing she had sex with one of OnTarget. Nightmare. We basically have to ensure that any girl who goes near the band is ID’d and isn’t a nutter. Anyway, it’s not such a big issue now as most of the band have girlfriends and are good boys. Carl is engaged to Alexa Woolf from The Shenanigans, and Blake is going out with wotsername from the Harry Potter films. Zubin is in between girlfriends. Shawn, though, has never had one, which has led to loads of rumours that he’s gay, especially as he’s the best-looking and most popular member, the one that everyone assumes will eventually go solo.’

  ‘But he’s not gay?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Her voice dropped another notch. ‘He’s definitely not gay. What I’ve heard is that he likes young girls. Fourteen, fifteen. I mean, he’s only twenty himself, but that five-, six-year gap is massive. And that’s not the worst of it.’

  Patrick looked up from his notebook, where he’d been scribbling notes. ‘What is the worst of it, Hattie?’

  A man walked past the table and Hattie jumped, but it was just a guy on his way to the Gents.

  ‘The rumour is that he . . . hurt a girl while they were on tour in Ireland.’

  ‘What do you mean, hurt?’

  Her voice was so quiet now that he had to lean right across the table, and she did the same. To observers, they must have looked like a couple having an affair, whispering secrets and plans. ‘The rumour is that he’s into bondage and . . . role-play. He likes to tie girls up and whack them with a riding crop.’

  ‘Hm. Influenced by Fifty Shades of Grey?’

  ‘Probably. Listen, this came from a guy who was looking after Shawn on tour. S
hawn would ask him to take him to local sex shops where he would buy handcuffs and rope and, you know, kinky underwear. The guy thought it was a bit weird, but this is the music industry – everyone sees extreme behaviour all the time. Anyway, apparently, they were at the hotel in Dublin after a gig there and it was mayhem, as it always is – the place surrounded by fans and press – and the guy who was looking after Shawn let this girl go up to Shawn’s room. Two hours later she’s in the hotel corridor, sobbing, and Shawn’s minder manages to get her into an empty room where she tells him that Shawn tied her to the bed and then he laid into her with a crop. He gagged her so she couldn’t scream . . . She was in a dreadful state, apparently, and then she drops the bombshell – she’s only fourteen.’

  ‘I thought they were meant to ID all the girls?’

  ‘Yes. They are, but this guy fucked up. The girl had fake ID, he said she looked about nineteen, was determined to get into a room with her idol.’ She shook her head sadly. ‘Anyway, the minder called GSM and they managed to persuade her not to tell anyone. They paid her off. That’s how I know about it – I saw my boss’s emails.’

  Patrick stared at her. ‘So he committed at the very least statutory rape . . .’

  ‘Hang on, no. He didn’t have sex with her. This girl apparently said afterwards that although Shawn was excited through the whole thing, he didn’t actually, you know . . .’

  ‘Penetrate her?’

  She nodded, a hint of pink blossoming on her cheeks.

  ‘How can you be sure this girl in Ireland won’t talk?’ Patrick asked.

  ‘She was paid extremely well and . . . Mervyn Hammond got involved. I believe he made certain threats, explained to her, in a very nice way, of course, how the media works, how her life would be over if this ever came out. And I think he made promises too, that he would help her if she ever got into one of the talent industries. Do some positive PR for her. Vile man.’

  From what he’d seen of Hammond, Patrick had to agree with her assessment.