Dead Beat

by Val McDermid

  He shrugged. 'Please yourself. But I want you to handle it.'

  'We'll talk about it in a minute.' I stood up. There was a phone in the room, but I wanted some privacy to gather my thoughts so I headed for Gloria's office down the hall. Neil was coming down the stairs as I reached the door. He looked as surprised to see me as I was to see him. 'Kate!' he exclaimed. “I didn't know you were here.'

  'Jett needed a meeting,' I offered lamely, not feeling up to breaking the news.

  'Maybe see you later,' he said, sketching a wave as he walked down the corridor into the far wing. Clearly he saw nothing odd about business meetings in the small hours.

  I closed Gloria's door behind me, picked up the phone and dialled 999. I was quickly connected to the police emergency line. 'I'm calling to report a murder,' I said. To my amazement, I could feel a giggle welling up inside me. I must have been more shocked than I'd realised.

  The copper on the other end of the phone wasn't amused. 'Is this some kind of hoax?' he demanded.

  I pulled myself together and said, 'I'm sorry. Unfortunately not. A woman has been killed at Colcutt Manor, just outside Colcutt village.'

  'When did this happen, madam?' His voice was hard and cool.

  'We're not sure. The body's only just been discovered.' I gave him the details. It seemed to take forever. When I returned, Jett was sitting exactly as I'd left him, hugging himself and rocking gently to and fro. What he needed was a cup of strong, sweet tea, but I didn't rate my chances of finding my way to the kitchen and back again without a ball of string or a map. Instead, I sat down and put an arm round him. 'Jett,' I said softly. 'We're going to have to get our story straight or the cops are going to get very heavy with you. Listen. I was passing on my way home from a job and I dropped in for a drink. We were talking for the best part of an hour, then you went down to the rehearsal room to get Moira to join us, and that's when you found the body. I was already here. Understand?' I could only pray that the pathologist wouldn't come up with a time of death that made a nonsense of the alibi I was handing him.

  'I got nothing to say to the cops,' he informed me.

  'Jett, unless you want to spend tonight in a cell, you're going to have to stick to our story. In their eyes, you're the number one suspect, especially if we tell them the truth. Promise me you'll keep to my version.' I repeated the tale to him and made him recite it back to me.

  We were interrupted by the distant sound of the gate intercom. Jett showed no signs of moving, so I headed back towards the hall. Gloria had beaten me to it. She was wearing a heavy red silk kimono with, appropriately enough, black and gold dragons embroidered all over it. Either she had ears like a bat or she'd been on her way downstairs anyway when the intercom sounded. She was carrying out her usual friendly interrogation over the entry-phone when I butted in and said curtly, 'Let them in. Jett knows all about it.'

  She pressed the gate release button then turned furiously towards me. 'I don't know what you think you're playing at, police in the middle of the night. I suppose Moira's doing drugs or something. I wish he'd never hired you in the first place. Then we would all have been happy.'

  I already felt put upon, which is the only excuse I can offer for snapping back at her, 'Moira won't be doing drugs or anything else ever again. Somebody made very sure of that tonight. Moira's dead.'

  Before I could properly judge her reaction, there was a tattoo of knocks on the front door. I pushed past Gloria and opened the door. Two uniformed officers stood on the doorstep, the flashing blue light on top of their car washing them in an eerie glow. 'Miss Brannigan, is it?' the older of the two asked politely.

  'That's me. You'd better come in. Are the CID on their way?'

  'That's right, miss,' he said as they walked into the hall, looking around them curiously. They'd drink out on this for months, murder in the rock star's den. 'Can you show me where the uhh . . .'

  'You'd better wait here, Gloria,' I said loftily. 'Someone will have to let the other officers in.'

  As I turned away to lead them to the rehearsal room, a man's voice echoed down the stairwell. 'What the fuck is going down?' I glanced up to see Kevin leaning over the gilt banister, looking as

  Dead Beat • 93

  spruce as if he was heading for a meeting with his bank manager. Didn't anybody ever sleep in this house?

  'You'd better get yourself down here,' I called back.

  'What the hell are you doing here, Brannigan?' he ranted as he turned the corner of the stairs. Then he saw the cops and stopped dead. 'Oh shit, what are they doing here? What's going on?'

  'Moira's been killed,' I blurted out before anyone else could speak.

  Kevin missed a step and almost tumbled to the foot of the stairs, just catching himself in time on the banister. 'You what?' he gasped. 'There's got to be some mistake. Gloria, what's she playing at?'

  'I don't know, Kevin. I just came downstairs and found her here.'

  'No mistake, I'm afraid,' I interrupted. 'I've seen the body. You'd better go and sit with Jett. He's in the drawing room.'

  Kevin shook his head like a man who thinks he's trapped in a bad dream and moved across the hall towards the door. Gloria took a couple of steps after him, then hesitated. The policemen conferred almost inaudibly, then the younger one stepped back towards the front door. 'I'll have to ask you not to leave the building, sir,' he said to Kevin.

  'Listen, sonny, I'm not going anywhere. I've got an artiste to look after,' he said self-importantly. 'I've got a right to be here. Why don't you ask her what the hell she's doing on the premises? She's the outsider here,' he complained sharply, pointing to me.

  The older policeman looked exasperated. All he wanted to do was get to the murder scene before the CID arrived and started treating him like a turnip. At this rate, he'd end up looking like a complete wally who hadn't even managed to keep tabs on the occupants of the house. Ignoring Kevin's histrionic gesture, he said, 'Miss, if you could just show me the way?'

  I led him to the door. Wild horses wouldn't have dragged me across the threshold again. I handed him the key and nodded at the door. 'In there. I checked for a pulse, but there wasn't one.'

  'Touch anything else, miss?' he asked as he unlocked the door.

  'No.' I leaned against the wall as he let himself in. All I wanted was to climb back into bed and pull the duvet over my head. It didn't seem to be an available option. Wearily, I pushed myself back into action. Apart from the young constable, whose radio was crackling like an egg in a hot frying pan, the front hall was empty.

  I didn't feel up to Kevin and Gloria, so I sat on the bottom step of the stairs and wondered gloomily why I'd already stuck my neck out to protect Jett. He wasn't a friend, simply a client who'd paid his bill promptly. I know that's rarer than a socialist at a Labour Party meeting, but it still wasn't reason enough for my quixotic behaviour.

  The sound of the intercom brought Gloria scuttling back from the drawing room. This time, the door opened to reveal two plain clothes officers, a uniformed sergeant and an inspector. They hadn't wasted any time. They had a brief conference with the officer on the door, and the CID disappeared in the direction of the rehearsal room. The inspector went off to the drawing room. The sergeant turned to Gloria and me, pulled out his notebook and asked, 'Who else is in the house?'

  I shrugged and Gloria pursed her mouth in a self-satisfied smirk. She didn't care if it took murder to keep me in my place. Then she rattled off efficiently, 'Jett is in the drawing room with his manager, Mr Kleinman. Mr Webster, Jett's official biographer, will either be in his office or in bed. Miss Spenser, Jett's companion, is in her room upstairs.'

  'Thank you,' the officer interjected, desperately trying to keep up with her flow. He scribbled on for a moment then said, 'And you ladies are . . .?'

  'I'm Gloria Seward, Jett's personal assistant and private secretary. And this is Kate Brannigan,' she added, her tone spelling out that I was an insignificant menial, there to make up the numbers. I held my tongu
e. The time to reveal my profession would come soon enough. Once they knew I was a private eye, it would be straight into quarantine for me, and I wasn't ready for that yet.

  The sergeant, a hard-eyed man in his late thirties, finished writing and said, 'So that's everyone, is it?'

  Gloria ran through her mental checklist, then her hand flew to her mouth. I really didn't think anyone did that any more. 'I forgot Micky,' she wailed. 'I'm sorry. Micky Hampton is Jett's record producer. He'll probably be in the studio - that's in the cellar.'

  'Don't worry, it's hard to remember everything at a time like this. You've obviously had a bit of a shock. I'm sorry to ask this, but we're going to have to interview everyone as soon as possible. I'd appreciate it if one of you ladies could get everyone together,' he said.

  'I'll go,' I piped up. 'I think Gloria should be with Jett right now.'

  The look she shot at me was pure poison, but there was really nothing she could do about it. After all, she was the one who'd set herself up as Jett's little helper. The policeman nodded and I swiftly got directions from Gloria. Jett clearly wasn't going to let me walk away from this murder. And if I was going to have to investigate these choice specimens, I at least wanted to see how they reacted to the news.

  14

  Tamar was my first target. For obvious reasons, her reaction to Moira's death was the one that interested me most. I didn't know what had been happening at Colcutt Manor in the six weeks since I'd dutifully delivered Moira, but the corpse downstairs told me plenty. Not everyone had been as thrilled by her return as Jett. At least one person had taken extreme measures to try to return things to the status quo ante. (I love legalese. Sometimes it sums things up so beautifully.) And even if Jett and Moira had no longer been an item, it can't have been Easy Street for Tamar having Jett's alleged soul mate under the same roof.

  I knocked sharply on the panelled door Gloria had directed me to and didn't wait for a reply. Crossing the threshold gave me the answer to one question at least. Jett and Tamar might be lovers, but he was clearly a man who liked his own sleeping space. This room was Tamar's, no question.

  It looked like a guest room where someone was camping out. The only light came from a flickering TV screen, but it was enough to show me the room was decorated in white and gold, with some very nasty still-life oils on the walls. Lots of dead pheasants and fruit. It was furnished in Louis Quinze style. The only straight edges were on the television, which was even housed in a hideous gilt cabinet. If someone had put me up there, I think I would have preferred to sleep in the bath.

  Tamar was lying on one of the twin beds wearing a pair of silk lounging pyjamas. She hadn't noticed my entrance because she was glued to the television, watching a video of 9Vi Weeks. A pair of headphones were clamped to her head as she studied Kim Basinger and Mickey Rourke indulging in the ultimate nice work if you can get it. I walked across her line of vision and she sat bolt upright in annoyance.

  She pulled the headphones off and snapped the bedside lamp on. More gilt horror.

  'What the hell do you think you're doing, walking into my bedroom?' she snapped.

  'Sorry to butt in on you,' I apologised insincerely.

  'So you bloody should be. What are you doing here, anyway?'

  I was beginning to get the message. Maybe I should change my deodorant. 'I'm afraid I've got bad news for you,' I said.

  She scowled and pushed her tangled blonde hair back from her face. 'OK,' she sighed, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and standing up. 'Message received and understood. He means it this time.' She walked across the room and dramatically pulled open a wardrobe door. 'I was getting pissed off with having to be a little goody two shoes anyway. I'm too old to be sneaking off to the loo every time I want a joint.' She rattled the hangers noisily.

  Then she turned back to me and shouted, 'So what are you hanging around for? Enjoying the cabaret, are you? My God, he didn't have to send you to do his dirty work.'

  Crossed wires are, in my experience, the kind that provide most illumination. Unfortunately, it looked like this set had finally short-circuited. 'I think we're at cross purposes, Tamar. It's not Jett who asked me to come and get you. It's the police.'

  'The police?' The puzzlement on her face looked genuine. 'What d'you mean?'

  'Like I said, I've got some bad news. Moira's dead,' I said.

  It was as if I'd pressed the freeze-frame button. Tamar stopped dead, her face immobile. At first, she said nothing. Then a slow smile curled her lips. 'Well, what a shame,' she said sarcastically. 'I suppose she just couldn't stay away from the stuff.'

  Tamar might have been a blonde, but I was far from convinced that she was dumb. And if she was guilty, she was choosing a very clever way of hiding it.

  'You're right off track,' I commented. 'Moira's been murdered. In the rehearsal room.'

  That got a reaction. Tamar flushed scarlet. 'I ... I don't understand,' she whispered.

  'I don't know any more than that myself,' I said. 'I called in to see Jett, and he went to fetch Moira. He discovered the body, and we called the police. They're waiting downstairs. You'd better get down there now. Everyone's in the blue drawing room.' I know I'm not going to win any points from bereavement counsellors for my attitude, but as far as I was concerned, Tamar lost all rights to my sympathy with that smile.

  I moved towards the door. 'Wait,' she called. I turned back. 'Do you know who did it?' she asked.

  I shook my head. 'Not up to me, Tamar. It's the police who work that sort of thing out. And they want to see you now,' I added, twisting the knife as I closed the door behind me.

  I didn't hang around to see if she was following me. I tripped back down the curving stairs, half-expecting a Busby Berkeley chorus to break into song. But all I could hear was the police radio chatter. As I reached the hall, the intercom sounded again. This time, the constable on the door dealt with it so I made my way to the cellar door at the end of a short side-passage. I opened the door which led to a tiny vestibule with a flight of steps. I descended and found myself facing a heavy steel door. Above it was a red light. I know what happens in computer games if you ignore warnings like that, but I thought the chances of being zapped by an android were pretty remote, so I opened the door. Just shows how wrong you can be.

  I was in a large recording studio, walls and ceiling covered in acoustic tiling. Keyboards, drum machines and mikes filled most of the available space. At the far end of the room there was a wall of glass. Behind it, a man sat hunched over a series of control consoles, a cigarette hanging out of one corner of his mouth. I could actually feel in my chest and stomach the throbbing bass line that emerged from tall speakers. I walked down the studio and waved to catch his attention. Abruptly the music stopped and a deafening voice yelled over the intercom, 'Get the fuck out of here! You blind, or what?'

  I didn't know if he could hear me, but I spoke anyway. 'I'm sorry to interrupt, but you have to come upstairs.' I was beginning to wish I'd left this to Gloria.

  'Look, sweetheart, it might have escaped your obviously limited intelligence, but I'm working. I don't stop on the say-so of anybody's bimbo, so just fuck off and find someone else to bug,' he snarled back at me, stubbing out his cigarette and immediately lighting another.

  'Please yourself,' I said angrily. 'The next interruption you'll get will be the cops. They don't like being pissed about by little boys with expensive toys when they're investigating a murder.' I turned on my heel and marched off towards the door, feeling strangely satisfied with my childish response. Two steps later, I regretted it. I'd thrown away the chance of watching his reaction to my news. I turned back quickly and saw he'd stood up.

  The resemblance to a chimp was overwhelming. The long arms, the jutting jaw, the flat nose all gave Micky Hampton a startlingly simian appearance. His blond-streaked hair had been carefully cut, but it couldn't altogether hide the Prince Charles ears. He'd have made a wonderful extra for Planet of the Apes. At least the make-up department wouldn
't have had much work to do.

  As I watched, he disappeared from my sight then emerged from a small door at the back of the studio. 'Wait a minute,' he said. 'You'd better explain yourself. For a kick-off, who the hell are you?'

  'I'm Kate Brannigan.'

  Understanding flooded his face. His soft brown eyes were unexpectedly intelligent. 'You're the one who dug Moira up,' he acknowledged. 'What did you mean about a murder?'

  'Moira's been killed. I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but the police want to see everyone who was in the house tonight,' I parroted.

  Micky's eyebrows shot up. 'They're wasting their time with me. A bomb could drop up there and I wouldn't know. I've worked in top-class studios the world over and I've never found one that was better soundproofed than this.'