by Val McDermid
Karen shook her head. ‘I’m fine.’ She took a seat, pleasantly surprised at how easy it had been to breach Jack Ash’s world. She’d expected more resistance, more sweet-talking or heavy leaning. But here she was, even if she didn’t quite know what she was doing.
She didn’t have long to wait. Less than ten minutes passed before the door burst open and a man she barely recognised from her online searches took a step across the threshold. His face was scarlet, his chest heaving. ‘What the fuck?’ Jack Ash shouted, his eyes bulging. ‘I’ve told you people already. I’ve got nothing to hide. I never touched any of those silly little teenage groupies. How many times? Just because I’m gay, it doesn’t mean I’m a fucking paedophile. Not every Radio One DJ was shagging their fans, you know.’
Karen jumped to her feet, hands up in a placatory gesture. ‘Whoa, wait a minute—’
‘Don’t fucking patronise me. I’m not a child.’ Ash took a step towards her, hands balling into fists. ‘You’re going to hear from my lawyer. You people. You destroy decent people’s reputations, you wreck people’s lives. This is fucking harassment.’
‘No, it’s not.’ Karen raised her voice now. Not shouting, but brooking no easy dismissal. ‘I’m not here to talk about sex crimes. I’m a cold case detective from Scotland. I’ve got nothing to do with historic child abuse investigations. Frankly, I don’t give a flying fuck who you sleep with.’ Taking the war to their territory on their terms was sometimes the only way to go.
For a moment, shock stopped him in his tracks. Then he took a step sideways, grabbing a chair and collapsing into it. ‘Really?’ His voice had subsided to a whisper.
‘Really,’ she said, matching his tone but not sitting down again. She held out her ID in his eyeline. ‘I’m Detective Chief Inspector Karen Pirie. I run the Historic Cases Unit in Scotland. Right now, I’m only interested in murder. And I’m only interested in you because I need to know about two of your friends who were murdered twenty-two years ago.’
26
Jack Ash sprawled in the leather armchair and sipped his glass of champagne. As soon as he’d realised bluster wasn’t going to get rid of her, he’d hustled them out of the building, away from prying ears and into the splendid hotel across the street from Broadcasting House. ‘That cunt Savile,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Everybody knew what he was like, the evil bastard. Girls, boys, he didn’t give a shit. They were just warm bodies to be fucked and fucked over. And now we’re all paying for it.’ He took a longer swallow and patted his stomach as a tiny burp escaped from his lips. ‘Now everybody looks at us askance. Every time I do an outside gig – a dinner, or spinning the discs at a wedding – I can see them giving me the evil eye, wondering whether I was at it too. They shepherd the kids away from me, just in case, you know?’ His mouth set in a bitter line.
Karen’s sympathy was tempered slightly by the fact that they were sitting in the marble-walled lounge of a five-star hotel where the fawning waiter clearly recognised Jack Ash as a regular. She reckoned the odd dirty look was a small price to pay for a lifestyle where a casual drink would set you back the cost of dinner for two at Pizza Express.
Now his rage had subsided, his resemblance to the publicity photos she’d seen online was much stronger. True, his jaw had lost the taut chiselled look he had in the eighties, and there were pouches under his eyes that marred his former high-cheekboned perfection, but Karen reckoned he’d worn pretty well. He still had a good head of hair and whoever dyed it for him did a good job of making it look natural. The only giveaway was the harsh colour of his sideburns, which she suspected he probably touched up himself every morning. He had retained the same trademark hairstyle – the casual jagged fringe that looked as if a small rodent had taken a series of bites out of it. His blue eyes still twinkled when he smiled, even though the wrinkles didn’t disappear with the smile itself these days. He’d put on a few pounds round his middle, his belly straining the buttons of his shirt. Time he dumped the fitted look for a more generous cut, Karen thought. Like she had room to talk, she reminded herself.
‘Aye,’ she said. ‘It’s good that the victims have finally been listened to, but a lot of innocent people have been caught in the backwash too.’ She wasn’t sure how much she believed that, but what mattered now was keeping him on side.
The waiter returned with a plate of tiny pastries and placed them delicately on the table between them. Ash attacked them immediately, popping them into his mouth in a greedy flow. ‘I get so hungry, doing the show. It’s all that adrenaline,’ he said between swallows.
‘It must take a lot of energy. I don’t know how you keep the chatter flowing when you’re on the air. I wouldn’t know what to say.’
He wrinkled his nose in a smile she reckoned must once have been cute. ‘You start out with a bit of raw talent and you hone it over the years.’ He emptied his glass and looked around for the waiter. ‘I don’t want to boast, but I’m one of the best. I’ve had a long successful career and I’m still at the top of my game. So, you want to talk about Caroline and Ellie?’ Without waiting for a response, he continued. ‘I thought that was dead and buried. It wasn’t even about them. The IRA or some other bunch of Fenian bastards out to get that champagne socialist Richard Spencer, that’s what everybody said at the time.’ He caught the waiter’s eye and signalled for another glass of champagne.
‘Have you heard about Gabriel Abbott?’ Time to stop pussyfooting around.
Ash frowned. ‘Gabriel? I haven’t heard from him in years. I stay in touch with Will. His brother, yeah?’ Karen nodded to show she knew who he was talking about. ‘Not close touch, you understand. Just Christmas cards. And sometimes we bump into each other around town. Parties, gigs, private views, that kind of crap. I have to show my face, make sure nobody forgets Jumpin’ Jack Ash is still out there, pumping and jumping.’
‘So, no contact with Gabriel?’
He shrugged, spreading his hands. A man with nothing to hide. Apparently. ‘Last time I saw him, I think, was one of Will’s birthday bashes. Must have been eight, nine years ago?’
‘So you didn’t see his name in the news this week?’
Ash frowned, irritation showing again. ‘What is this? Twenty questions? Look, I said. No contact with Gabriel for years.’
‘Right. Only, I thought you might have heard. Gabriel died last week.’
Surprise, curiosity, but nothing remotely like grief flashed across his face. ‘That’s young. What was it? Cancer? Not a heart attack, surely?’
Most people, in the thick of a conversation with a murder detective, would make a very different assumption, Karen thought. Unless you didn’t have enough room in your self-absorbed brain to bother joining up the dots when the picture wasn’t going to be you. ‘It wasn’t natural causes.’
That shocked him. His mouth fell open, giving her the unappealing vista of pastry remnants scattered across tongue and teeth. His head jerked forward like a bird about to peck at a rival. But he recovered himself quickly and brushed a stray crumb from his shirt front. ‘Killed himself, I suppose,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘Why do you say that?’
Ash pulled the sides of his mouth down in a rueful expression. ‘He had a shit time of it. He was packed off to boarding school at six and after Caro died, he was more or less dumped there. Will was too busy investing his inheritance in himself, exploiting his brilliant ideas, setting up his gaming empire, to be bothered much with his baby brother. The grandparents washed their hands of the boys. They weren’t about to give up their retirement villa on Corsica to raise the next generation. So poor old Gabe used to spend most of the holidays at school. He was more or less fostered by a succession of house masters and their wives. And then when he was let loose on his own at university, the wheels came off. And he never really got them back on again. He’s been in and out of mental institutions for years.’ He smiled weakly
and spread his hands wide. ‘Or so Will says. As I said, I’ve not seen much of him over the years.’ Then something clearly dawned on him. Karen couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen someone with such transparent emotional responses. It was like dealing with a small child who hadn’t yet mastered the art of keeping things to himself. ‘So why are you here, talking to me? There must be other people who knew a hell of a lot more about Gabriel’s state of mind.’
‘I never said it was suicide, Mr Ash.’
Now he reared back in his chair as if trying to escape from her. ‘What do you mean? Not suicide? Are you saying somebody killed Gabriel?’
‘We don’t know for sure. The circumstances are unclear.’
He reached for the fresh glass that had appeared as if by magic and gulped at it. ‘It must have been one of the other nutters,’ he said. ‘I mean, in and out of those places, Gabriel must have come across all sorts. They wouldn’t all have been gentle souls like him. He must have run into one of them, said the wrong thing and bang, there you go.’
‘Bang?’
He shrugged, his face twisted into an embarrassed wince. ‘A figure of speech, for God’s sake. The other guy, he’ll have lost control, gone off on one. What did you say had happened? How did he die?’
‘I didn’t say. But it was a gunshot to the head. Bang, as you say.’
Ash looked at her, incredulous. ‘Look, I just said “bang”, the way you do. Meaning, all of a sudden. You’re not suggesting I knew anything about this?’
Karen gave a small, reassuring chuckle. ‘Good heavens, Mr Ash. Of course not.’ But I wanted to see you squirm, you self-satisfied prick.
‘I’m sorry, I’m a bit confused. You said back at the studio that you were something to do with historic cases. And obviously, that means Caro and Ellie. But then you start on about Gabriel dying last week.’ He forced a laugh. ‘I know time goes faster as you get older. But even I don’t think last week was history.’
‘You’re quite right. I asked about Gabriel only because I thought, if you’d heard about it, you might have been thinking about your old friends.’
‘Well, obviously, if I’d heard about some nutter blowing Gabriel’s head off, that would have brought poor old Caro and Ellie to mind. But I didn’t hear about it, so no, I wasn’t expecting some detective to turn up out of the blue and go all round the houses about my poor dead friends.’ Peevish now, he turned his attention back to the pastries, prodding the few that remained as if that would somehow make them more attractive. Greed overcame taste and he grabbed one at random and stuffed it into his mouth whole.
‘I hoped you could tell me about Caro and Ellie,’ Karen said evenly. ‘It’s a truism of investigation that the best place to start is to understand the victims’ lives. So much time has passed now, it’s hard for me to get a handle on them. Their personalities, their relationships, their day-to-day life.’
He frowned. ‘But I don’t understand why. Their murder was solved when it happened. They were collateral damage in somebody else’s dirty fight. Why are you investigating it now?’
‘The case was never solved. Nobody was ever brought to trial or even arrested. We assumed at the time that the explosive device that destroyed the plane had been put in place by a Republican splinter group, but none of them ever claimed credit for it. Technically, it’s still an open case. And it’s my job to examine every possible angle. Now, I know it might sound daft to you, but one of the things I have to consider is whether Caro and Ellie – either or both of them – might have been the intended targets rather than collateral damage.’
There was a silence while her words sank in. Then Ash shook his head. ‘That’s mad. People like them don’t get blown up. Not deliberately, anyway.’
‘But I need to be able to rule that out. Tell me about them, Jack.’ Move into the more intimate form of address, make him feel loved. ‘How did you come to know them?’
‘I met Ellie first. She was the BA – broadcasting assistant – on my Radio One show for a while in the late seventies. We hit it off right away. She was a cut above most BAs. She figured out what we needed and sorted it out before I even asked her. She never made a fuss or moaned about having to go the extra mile, she just got on with things. We liked the same music, so I sometimes brought her along to gigs with me. Back then, people like me had to hide the truth about ourselves, and Ellie was the perfect beard.’
‘Did she know she was a beard? Or did she think there was more going on between you?’
Ash gave her a scathing look. ‘Of course she knew I wasn’t interested in her that way. But she liked being seen with me. It gave her kudos. People noticed her. She had all the benefits of being my girlfriend without actually having to do anything except have fun.’
‘And she didn’t want a proper boyfriend?’
He raised one eyebrow in a practised gesture. ‘The main thing Ellie wanted was to be a star. She always said her career came first. She didn’t want to waste her time on romance when she could be networking. She’d been working for my show for less than a year when she got her first TV job.’
‘That was on All Aboard!?’
He shook his head. ‘All Aboard! came later. She started out on TeaThyme. It was a cookery show for kids. Ellie wasn’t one of the main presenters, she was more of a kitchen porter. But she had on-screen charisma. The camera loved her. And she buttered up everybody whose path she ever crossed in kids’ TV, so when they were looking for someone to present All Aboard!, she was front and centre in everybody’s eyes.’
‘You must have been pleased for her.’
His smile was as false as any she’d ever seen. ‘It’s always lovely when your friends get what they want. Of course, the downside was that she didn’t have as much time to come out and play.’ He sighed. ‘And then she met Caro and she started playing happy families. The woman who had never shown any interest in kids suddenly started babysitting Will in the evenings when Caro was working instead of having fun.’
Karen’s antennae twitched. ‘What? She moved in with Caro and Will?’
Ash tittered. ‘Oh no, she didn’t move in. What happened was they bought a house together and split it into two flats. Caro and Will – and Tom when he was home – lived on the two lower floors and Ellie had the top floor and the attic. It suited everybody, apparently. Except Ellie’s friends. We saw much less of her after the move. Apart from Sundays, when Caro used to throw long lavish lunch parties for the theatre crowd. Actors, singers, scriptwriters. But it wasn’t the same. I missed that old intimacy with Ellie. For a long time I’d been able to count on her in a way I couldn’t any more.’
‘But you did get to know Caro too?’
‘Oh yes, I loved Caro. She was much more showbizzy than Ellie. And she was a fabulous hostess. Always wonderful food and endless drink and the most entertaining company. Those were wonderful Sundays. I met some lovely men . . . ’ His voice trailed off, the distant look of reminiscence in his gaze.
There was a key player missing in all of this. A key player who might have had a motive for removing Caroline Abbott from his world. ‘What did Tom Abbott make of it all?’ Karen asked.
That quick flick of the single eyebrow again. ‘Tom was hardly ever around. He was a marine engineer and he spent months on end at sea. When he was home, the parties stopped and nobody saw much of Caro.’ He smiled. ‘But at least I used to get Ellie back for a couple of weeks before Tom took off again. But latterly, he was hardly ever around. He can’t have seen Gabriel more than a couple of times before he died.’
‘He died?’ Karen wasn’t about to reveal that this wasn’t news to her. She wanted to draw from him whatever he knew that hadn’t been in the clippings.
‘Yes. It was out in Thailand, or the Philippines or somewhere like that. It must have been round about 1990.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘I think so. You c
an check easily enough – I remember Ellie phoning me to tell me, and I was watching Nelson Mandela being released from prison on TV at the time.’
Karen already knew he was right about the year but she feigned uncertainty. ‘I will check it out. What did he die of?’
‘Who knows? Caro said he’d contracted some sort of fever. I did wonder, though, whether she’d made it up to cover the fact that he’d left her.’
‘That seems a bit extreme. A marriage ending is nothing to be ashamed of.’
His expression was pained. ‘I know, what can I say? I feel a teeny bit ashamed of myself now.’
‘What about Caro and Ellie’s relationship? What can you tell me about that?’
The shutters came down. Apparently not everything was writ large across Ash’s face. He’d learned early on to guard the secret of his own sexuality. It seemed that singular discretion might stretch to others. ‘Are you suggesting they were a couple?’
‘I’m asking.’ Karen kept a level gaze on his narrowed eyes.
He sighed. ‘Just because I’m gay, I don’t assume the whole world is. It’s entirely possible for two people to have an intimate friendship without being lovers. After all, that’s how I would have characterised my relationship with Ellie. We confided in each other about many things, but not everything.’
‘I have one or two friends like that myself.’ It wasn’t quite a lie, Karen thought. ‘But you never asked? You were never told?’
‘I never asked,’ he said firmly. ‘We live in a very gossipy world, my dear. If you don’t know, you can’t betray.’
He had a point but she thought he was bullshitting. Whatever there was to know, he knew it. But he wasn’t going to give it up. He looked at his watch and seemed to gather himself together. He was going to make a break for it. ‘One thing before you go. Did Ellie or Caro have any enemies? Anybody who might have wished them ill?’
