A Pleasure to do Death With You

by Paul Charles

  As King drove up Worple Road in the direction of Raynes Park, drawing closer to Chloe Simmons’ building, Kennedy could feel himself sinking further and further into the passenger seat, remembering how embarrassed he felt about the DI Anne Coles incident the previous evening on these very same streets.

  Chloe Simmons seemed genuinely happy to see him, a fact DC Dot King was very quick to pick up on.

  With pleasantries over, Simmons and King refreshed with coffee and Kennedy with tea (which Chloe insisted he make himself.) Kennedy jumped right in at the deep end.

  “I’ve a rather delicate question to ask you, I’m afraid,” Kennedy started.

  “Oh, should I get the wine out again?” Chloe said, a frown crossing her youthful face. Her freshly washed hair was fuzzier than it had been the previous evening.

  “No, it’ll be fine. I just wanted to ask you about an item of Mr Mylan’s clothing.”

  “Okay.”

  Kennedy, as much for King’s benefit as his own, stopped circling, “Were you ever aware of Mr Mylan wearing garters?”

  “What?” she exclaimed. “Are you kidding? Has someone been telling you Patrick was a cross dresser?”

  “No, no, I don’t mean a ladies’ suspender belt.”

  “A man’s? Are you kidding around with me? There’s no such thing as a man’s suspender belt, is there?” Chloe directed her final question to King.

  “Well, when I was growing up, the older men used to wear a belt around here,” Kennedy said, showing her his calf, “and then to each belt they’d attach their socks to keep them up.”

  “Then someone obviously invented elastic,” King suggested.

  “They’re not something I’ve been aware of since I was a kid,” Kennedy admitted.

  “But Patrick was wearing them when he died, wasn’t he?” Chloe said, as the penny dropped loudly and her full soft lips involuntarily formed a large “O.”

  Neither Kennedy nor King said anything.

  “Never, never,” Chloe said very firmly. “Patrick might have been vain, and maybe his hair implants were not the best, quite possibly he fell asleep too quickly after sex, and he might have had to work harder than he wanted to keep his waistline in check, but let me assure you, he wasn’t into any of that kinky stuff with me. He never even suggested that I dress up for him in something risqué. What could he possibly be doing with male suspender belts? How would that get him off?”

  “We don’t know, is the honest answer, Chloe,” Kennedy admitted.

  “But I can’t even see what would be the point of that, even if someone else put them on him.” She shuddered at the thought of it. “What would they be trying to do?”

  “Humiliate him?” Kennedy said, feeling it was worth risking honesty.

  “Ah for heavens sake, poor Patrick,” she said. “What could he possibly have done to someone for them to want to treat him this way. Does this mean you know who did it?”

  “No, we’re still working on that.” Kennedy hesitated, as he was about to head off into uncharted waters again. “You know, when you visited Mr Mylan…”

  “Yeah?” Chloe replied nervously, obviously picking up on Kennedy’s demeanour.

  “Could you tell us about it, you know the details?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You know, like ehm, when you’d go to see him. Would you have coffee, tea, spend an afternoon, an evening, go for a swim, talk, watch the television, go for a walk in Regent’s Park…things like that?”

  “Thank goodness for that. For one horrible second there, I thought you wanted to ask me details about our physical relationship.”

  Kennedy held the silence for one beat extra.

  “And if you were, it’s not going to happen this side of a half a bottle of Sancerre,” she added, challenging Kennedy with her eye. “Okay, here’s how it worked. We’d chat on the phone at least twice a week.”

  This took Kennedy aback, noticeably so because she continued, “Christy, our relationship wasn’t, how should I put this? Let’s say it wasn’t clinical. We were friends. We talked. We cared about each other. We didn’t always meet up just to relieve his physical frustration. However, there is no denying that was part of the service. So I’d see him …”

  “How often?” King asked.

  “We didn’t just meet on the first Friday of every month for a quick one. I could see him maybe as much as three times a week, and then I wouldn’t see him at all for a month.”

  “But when you didn’t see him for a month, you’d still talk on the phone?” King asked again.

  “Yes, you’re getting it,” Chloe said, smiling warmly at King. “We’d chat about our lives, about movies, about books, about television, about how his tennis was doing, about how my studies were going.”

  “What are you studying?” Kennedy asked.

  “Interior design,” Chloe said, her eyes proudly scanning around her apartment.

  “Part-time or full time?”

  “I’m on an eleven-week part-time course at Merton College’s adult education programme. I’ve got Patrick to thank for that. When he first found this place for me - my sister lives in Kingston and I didn’t want to be a million miles from her - I’d a nightmare with builders and decorators. So he said, ‘Just do it yourself. You know what you want; don’t waste any more time.’ I’d hundreds of pages I’d been tearing out of magazines for years, and I kinda knew what I wanted to do. All I really needed was a bit of confidence, and Patrick gave it to me.

  “Where were we? Oh yes, so we’d talk on the phone. He’d invite me around when he wanted to see me. His rules were simple. He didn’t want me turning up in slacks and an anorak with my hair stuffed up in a hat, just because we both knew I’d be taking my clothes off. He liked me to… what’s the best way to put this… well, he’d say when we were seeing each other, he wanted me to look like the beautiful woman I was. He liked me to be classy, sensual, beautiful, but never, ever tarty.”

  Chloe Simmons blushed deeply at this point.

  “Did he buy the flat for you?” Kennedy asked because she hadn’t been clear on that point.

  “Yes he did, but I wasn’t to get the lease until the end of our relationship,” Chloe admitted.

  “Do you know if this point was covered in his will?”

  “He didn’t have a will.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, we talked about it a few times. He said he’d nobody he wanted to protect and he wouldn’t make a will until as such a time as he had.”

  As Kennedy considered this she continued, “He told me that the lease to this flat was already made out in my name.”

  “Last night,” Kennedy started hesitantly, “we talked a little bit about the time you met Nealey Dean up at Mr Mylan’s house.”

  “Yes?”

  “And you said you talked a little with her and afterwards… Well, Mr Mylan was different that night was how you actually put it.”

  “I remember, Christy. You’re not asking for me to spell it out for you in detail, are you?”

  “Of course not, but do you think Mr Mylan wished that something would happen between him and Miss Dean?”

  “I’d have to say yes. That would be a very definite yes.”

  “Did Mr Mylan ever confess to you that he was interested in Miss Dean in that way?”

  “No, he didn’t. It was just my intuition.”

  “So what did youse talk about?” Kennedy asked, drawing out the Ulster “youse.”

  “Oh really, Christy, nothing that would be of interest to you or your investigation. It’s like probably ninety-five per cent of all our daily conversations ­-a total waste of time.”

  “So he’d never discuss any of his worries with you or anything like that?” Kennedy pressed.

  “I’d surely remember that. Patrick was a great man for keeping himself to himself. I think he probably revealed a different part of himself to all of his friends. To get an accurate picture of Patrick, you’d need to chat to all of his friends,
weed out the dross and the gossip, and the rest might add up to a reasonably accurate picture of the man.”

  “Was he a patient man?” Kennedy asked.

  “Well, he was never short-tempered, but…”

  “But what?” Kennedy prompted.

  “Well, he was a nice, easygoing man; he was gentle, he was well mannered, and he was polite. Maybe that was the person he wanted to be, the person he wanted to come across as.”

  “Interesting,” Kennedy said, very impressed by her observation. “What makes you say that?”

  “It’s like, he made his money, he was aware of his success, but it wasn’t always who he’d been. The person he was, or the person I knew, might have been stepping into the shoes of the earlier man. I saw a man on one of those reality TV shows once, and he was certainly less subtle than Patrick, but he was trying really hard to come across as this cool, relaxed, intelligent type, but he wasn’t quite pulling it off. He always looked like he was pretending, acting even. I don’t mean to be negative about Patrick. It’s just a feeling I had a few times, particularly after I watched that TV show. Maybe Patrick was a better pretender than the man on the TV show.”

  “Yes, I think I know what you mean,” Kennedy said. “Well, we’ll be out of your hair. Oh yes, do you remember what you were doing last Saturday between four o’clock in the afternoon and eight o’clock in the evening?”

  “Oh that’s easy. I was babysitting my two nieces for my sister. She was taking a bit of a break from the kids and having a day indulging herself. I got around there at just before noon and got back here just after midnight. I was totally wiped out and slept well into Sunday.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  It took DS Allaway quite some time and some complicated negotiations to set up the meeting for an interview with Tim Dickens and Alice Robbins. In fact, as Allaway mentioned to Irvine on the way to Leinster Mews, he’d had to threaten Miss Robbins with door-stepping them if she couldn’t “find them a window.” Then there was a bit of a confrontation at Dickens’ mews when Irvine insisted he and Allaway interview Dickens and Robbins separately.

  When all of this was going on, Dickens remained aloof, happy to let his PA do what PA’s do: protect her boss. Dickens only felt a need to step in when Robbins threatened to suspend the interview until Mr Dickens’ lawyer could be present, “Most probably sometime early next week.”

  “No problem,” Irvine conceded. “We’ll take you and Mr Dickens in to North Bridge House, and we’ll happily detain you there until your lawyer is free.”

  Alice Robbins looked as if she were about to blow a gasket when Dickens said, “That won’t be necessary. Alice, you’ve work you can be doing here, and I’ll take the detectives through to the studio.”

  Irvine was surprised by how modest the studio was. Tim Dickens clocked this immediately.

  “All studios aren’t like Abbey Road, you know. In fact, very few are these days,” Dickens started. “I really cringe when I remember the amount of money I used to spend in the studios in the early days. You know, it was the norm for my drummer, engineer, and producer to get into the studio a week ahead of the rest of us, just to get the drum sound. And then I was still always disappointed with the end product, by how small they sounded.”

  He crossed the studio floor to a small drum cum percussion set-up and took the drum stool. He played a few fills.

  “Do you hear how big that sounds? With all our time in the studio and all our experts, I could never get the drums to sound exactly like you’ve just heard them. They’d record them and put them through limiters and compressors and what have you, and all that cack was doing was making the sound smaller, tinnier, and shittier. We’d record the vocals out in the bathroom, because supposedly that was what the Beatles did. Can you imagine? We were spending, literally, thousands of pounds a day to hire these high-tech studios, and then we were recording the vocals in the khazi.”

  Dickens ran over to where he had his control desk and consoles. He hoaked around for a few minutes before finding a CD, which he put in the player. Pretty soon the speakers in the room were fired up with the magnificent sound of the blues.

  “Muddy Waters,” Dickens shouted at the top of his voice, obviously very excited. “‘Baby Please Don’t Go.’ Just listen to the sound of that, man.”

  Dickens picked up a guitar and strummed along to the hypnotic track.

  “You see, what I came to realise was, all the old blues records sounded the best. That was the sound we were all after. It was the pure reproduction of what they were playing. The secret was to learn the song in advance and then play it live in a room where the sound of the room and the sound of the instruments were what you got to hear. I eventually worked out - a million or so pounds of studio bills later - that we were all losing the sound of the room for the sound of the studio. But don’t you see that the sound of the room is really perfect; it already has all the natural acoustics. There is little or no need for mixing. You just do it all in your set-up, your rehearsals of the song. You walk away from the mic, and your sounds get quieter; and you go closer to the mic, and it gets louder. The drums are the loudest, so you have them furthest away from the mic. You use the depth, distance, and natural echo of the real room to get the drama and fun into your music.”

  The singer took off the Muddy Waters CD and immediately replaced it with another CD.

  A few seconds later another sound filled the same speakers with a more modern sound. Irvine recognised the catchy introduction to “No More Sad Lonely City Streets,” but before he could say so, Dickens said, “Now listen to this. You can hear where the sound very nearly strangles the song. I mean, the sound is so puny; I’m still baffled how this was ever a hit. However, this is the version I rerecorded last year. Now listen to this version,” Dickens ordered as he changed the CD in his machine for another. “Man, just listen to the sound of that!”

  Again Dickens started to strum along with the track and picked out a line or two to sing.

  Irvine thought, but didn’t admit, that he much preferred the “hit” version.

  Dickens must have noted Irvine’s lack of enthusiasm, because he faded the track out.

  Irvine felt a little guilty. After all, here he was, in a position several hundreds, if not thousands, of Tim Dickens’ fans would have given their eye teeth to have been in, and all he could do was wonder how many other artists were dissatisfied with the quality of their hits. He’d recently hear that Sir George Martin, producer of the Beatles, had reported that towards the end of the Beatles’ recording career, John Lennon had told Martin he would love to be able to rerecord all of the Beatles’ songs.

  “What, even ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’?” Martin asked, mentioning what he considered to be one of the Beatles’ undisputed masterpieces.

  “Particularly ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’!” Lennon had retorted in his strongest, driest scouse.

  Dickens led them through from the control room to the studio room itself and sat down at the piano stool.

  Irvine studied Tim Dickens. He didn’t look quite as healthy today as he had at their last meeting. His hair was slightly dishevelled, only slightly, and he didn’t quite need a shave, but soon would. He was still dressed in classy, dark, lose-fitting, expensive-looking clothes, and he hooked his knee in both hands and swung around to face Irvine, as he had at their last meeting.

  “Have you made any progress on the case?”

  “Well, we’re still gathering information,” Irvine admitted.

  “But you’ve still no clues?”

  “We have lots of clues,” Irvine claimed. “It’s just that we don’t know as yet what they are clues to.”

  Irvine laughed at the end of his line. Tim Dickens did not.

  “Nealey says you and DI Kennedy are very good.”

  Did that mean he’d been boasting to Nealey? It would be fine for him to have boasted on behalf of Kennedy, because Irvine sincerely believed that, as a detective, Kennedy was one of the most gifted h
e’d ever met. But for him to be boasting on his own behalf, well, that just wasn’t cricket, was it?

  “Inspector Kennedy is very, very good.” Irvine ring-fenced the subject. “I wanted to talk to you some more about your deal with Patrick Mylan.”

  “Yes?”

  “You admitted you weren’t happy with it,” Irvine said, dropping an un-wormed hook into unknown waters.

  “Look, this is all very difficult. I know, I mean I really do know, that if I’m not careful, this is going to come out, making me appear to be a greedy bastard to the man on the street. You know: ‘He’s already made his fortune; what does he need any more for?’ And there is logic to that sentiment. When I started off first, all I was interested in was acquiring a car, a telly, and a house. That’s all I wanted. No, really,” the singer protested when he saw the look of disbelief on Irvine’s face. “Well, maybe a girl or two thrown in as well.” Dickens paused to laugh. “But you get your telly and then your car and finally you are in a position to buy your first house. But the money continues to come in, and you find that you’ve enough for another car and a second telly and maybe even a few more houses. And the money still keeps coming, and you realise that when you were poor and wishing for money, you felt that it would solve all of your problems. Everything would be fine if you’d just enough money to … you know… fill in whatever it is you dream for…”

  “But this is different,” said Allaway, attempting to cut the songwriter short.

  “You start to realise,” Dickens continued, ignoring him, “that money doesn’t solve all of your problems. Oh, I’m not going to be a hypocrite and claim that money doesn’t cushion your life, and I do mean with very deep, feathery cushions. But people start to deal with you differently. They say people change when they become successful. I’m not so sure I agree with that. I would say it’s the people around famous people who change. The people you grew up with, went to school with, they think this man who’s now in the charts, playing sell-out concerts, making millions - they think this man must have changed. So they behave weird around you. I’m talking about weird as in out of their own character. They can’t believe that the man who can go on stage to play to thousands is still the same nerd with the same bad habits from the early days. You know, from before the success came knocking.