by Paul Charles
‘Oh I’m sure it won’t take that long,’ Kennedy replied as he unbuttoned his coat.
‘And I do have several American calls I need to make before I can go,’ Best said politely as he closed the door behind the detective inspector.
Kennedy paused in the hallway, allowing Best to lead him up the stairs above the record shop into the office. It appeared that all of Best’s staff had followed the old Ready Steady Go motto, ‘The weekend starts here,’ and had left Tom Best as the lone remaining soul of the fast dying week.
‘I spoke to two of your colleagues yesterday, Detective Inspector,’ Best began as he offered Kennedy a seat, a comfortable armchair to the left of his desk. Kennedy felt more like a guest on the ‘Letterman’ show than someone about to conduct an interview in a murder inquiry.
WPC Anne Coles had picked up a bad vibe from Tom Best and had said as much to Kennedy. Her DI, however, did not feel any such vibe. Perhaps it was just because it was the end of a long week, or perhaps it was Kennedy’s rank, but to Kennedy, Tom Best was quite a pleasant and courteous fellow.
‘Have there been any further developments since?’ he asked, playing with six silver balls suspended on a frame on his desk.
‘Several, in fact,’ Kennedy assured him. ‘I’m not at all certain how they will eventually fit into the overall picture. That takes time.’
Kennedy’s aches were now exacerbated by tiredness. He tried to settle into a comfortable spot and remain there. Any new position brought new pain. God only knew how he was going to get up from the armchair. He thought that if Tom Best didn’t very shortly offer him a cup of tea he might be forced to remove the ‘good fellow’ badge he had mentally pinned on the man’s Ry Cooders sweatshirt.
As if reading his mind, Best said, ‘Fancy a cup of coffee?’
‘Ah,’ Kennedy answered, looking around the office in search of some Tetley Tea Folk, ‘I wouldn’t say no to a cup of tea.’
‘Sure, of course,’ Best replied as he jumped up and skied on his stockinged feet across the stripped and varnished pine floor to the back of his inner office.
‘Milk and sugar?’ he hollered from somewhere outside.
‘Yes and two please,’ Kennedy called.
‘I wanted to ask you some more questions about your relationship with Peter O’Browne.’ Kennedy paused to blow across the rim of his teacup. He took a sip of tea and, finding it still too hot for pleasant consumption, he continued. ‘I know WPC Coles and DS Irvine have already asked you some questions. I just need to see if there is anything they might have missed, or, equally, that you might remember a second time around.’
Best lit a cigarette. If Anne Coles had been present she’d have been amazed he’d lasted this long without one. ‘We were mates. Well, I suppose we were never really mates. I think Peter considered it pretty much a boss/employee relationship.’
‘And you?’ Kennedy prodded.
‘I think that if it had been spelt out differently, I would have dealt with things differently. There were just the two of us, doing everything, and I do mean everything, ourselves. And we’d work every day, including Sunday, till ten o’clock. If someone had told me then that at some time down the line a major record company would pay six mil’ for the wee company we had started, then…’ Best nodded his head and formed the letter Y with his lips before saying ‘…yes, I would have sat down with him, forced him to do a deal with me and write it down on paper.
‘But I didn’t, and I suppose I should have, and therefore I’m as much to blame as he was. But I really thought we were mates, in it together and the love of the music and the artists we were working with would see us through. Wrong!’
‘Why do you think it was that he didn’t give you half, or even a quarter?’
‘Hell, ten per cent would have been more realistic than a hundred G! Even bleeding agents get ten per cent.’
‘So, why? Why do you think he didn’t give you the six hundred thousand pounds?’
‘As I say, I think the bottom line was that he saw our relationship differently from how I saw it. And you know the thing I really couldn’t understand was that it didn’t really make any difference to O’Browne.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well look at it. If you’re doing okay in your life financially and then someone comes along and drops six mil’ in your lap, surely you don’t mean to tell me that five point four mil’ won’t create the same effect? But maybe it was just damage control. Maybe he was thinking, what’s the least I’m going to have to pay to make this problem go away?
‘Perhaps that was my problem. Maybe I just rolled over too easy. If I had pushed, maybe he would have paid me six hundred Gs. Hell, at a stretch I might even have got him up to the magic million. He was a great negotiator, we all knew that. Maybe he felt he had to negotiate to keep his hand in. Or maybe the big bread just made him greedy.
‘I felt that the big pay day had come as a result of our joint efforts and that we all, including the artists who helped us get up there, deserved a bit of a “lucky penny”.’
‘Like Martyn Farrelly?’ Kennedy suggested.
‘Yeah, exactly. Like Marty Farrelly.’
‘Did you know that Martyn lent Peter five hundred pounds to start the label off in the first place?’ Kennedy asked, happy that his tea was now cool enough to drink.
‘Yeah. Yeah I did. You see there it is again. Don’t you think that should have been remembered when the big fucking kite flew in through O’Browne’s window? Come on, wouldn’t you have given Marty Farrelly some money, like even a cheque for fifty G. Is O’Browne going to miss fifty lousy G out of six mil’? And Marty certainly would have found a use for it.’
‘But Martyn Farrelly did refuse Peter’s offer to return the original five hundred, didn’t he?’
Of course he did, come on. He had been insulted. You don’t give him back his original money. It wasn’t a loan, it was a gift. The right thing was not to return the gift but to give him a bigger gift by way of thanks, even a piece, doesn’t matter how small, of the company.
‘That would have made Marty feel good. It was the right thing to do. Hell, it might even have made O’Browne feel good. He’d been around the Irish ballrooms – with Marty, in fact – enough to know you always give back a lucky penny. Didn’t matter how big the showband was, or how many thousand dancers were crammed into the ballroom, the showband manager always had a sweet handshake for the ballroom manager at the end of the night.’ Tom Best sighed and rolled himself a cigarette.
‘Do you think Farrelly was still annoyed at Peter O’Browne?’ Kennedy shook his head to refuse the offer of a DIY cigarette.
‘What? Do you mean do I think that Marty was pissed off enough at O’Browne to top him?’
Kennedy nodded again this time affirmatively.
‘I don’t know. I don’t really know him that well, and who knows what we all think in the privacy of our own minds?’
‘What about girlfriends?’
‘What about them? We can’t live with them and we can’t live without them,’ Best smiled knowingly.
Kennedy couldn’t agree with that premise but did not contradict him. ‘I meant what about Peter and his girlfriends?’
‘Oh, I see. He wasn’t really a ladies’ man, he wasn’t totally comfortable around them. He wasn’t gay or anything like that, but you know I think that deep down every Irishman has a fear of women, sexually speaking. Oh, I know, a few beers, or a bottle of wine and they, we, can all do the biz and get by. But O’Browne never really seemed comfortable on the pull or chatting them up. He seemed much more comfortable talking to and dealing with other people’s girlfriends or wives where there was never a need for him to have to chat them up. So he was more relaxed and natural and so got on a treat.’
‘Was there ever anyone serious?’
‘You know the funny thing is, there wasn’t. There was usually a current girlfriend, but you were never surprised when you heard that she’d joined the ever-growing l
ist of exes.’
‘The people you dealt with in the early days. Do you think there was anyone who would have wanted to see him dead?’
‘Ah, now, that’s a leading question if ever I heard one,’ Tom Best replied rolling up a third cigarette.
Kennedy smiled and tried unsuccessfully to banish the thought of how Tom’s lungs would probably bear a striking resemblance to the packed ashtray on the desk.
‘Let me see…’ Tom Best continued expansively taking a large drag on the soon-to-be not-so-new cigarette. ‘We had our trouble with Jason Carter-Houston, the manager of Radio Cars, and we had trouble with Radio Cars’ lead singer, Johnny Heart. That was extremely unpleasant at the time and they bombed shortly after they left us, so I imagine there could be a major gripe there. But who knows if it would be enough to kill somebody.
‘I mean, that’s a real heavy thing to do, isn’t it? Well of course it is. That was a stupid thing to say. Okay, at some point in our lives we all say, “Oh, I could kill them for what they did or didn’t do,” but how many of us could actually sit down in the cold light of day and plan to end someone’s life, and then actually carry out the execution?
‘Crimes of passion are a different thing really, aren’t they? Where some poor unfortunate is so possessed by love or lust, and on being rejected lashes out to protect their emotions and claims a life. But the other – to execute someone. I mean, you’ve obviously met some of these people. What are they really like, are they any different to you or I, Detective Inspector?’
‘Now there is a leading question.’ Kennedy moved in his chair to ease a growing ache. ‘I don’t think that there is a single kind of person capable of committing murder. I think that for part of the time, these people lead normal, ordinary lives. That is if you believe there is such a thing as normal, ordinary life. Maybe they are just like you or me. Then something happens which makes them feel aggrieved, vengeful, spiteful or angry towards someone and they are, well, they are bad. It’s the simplest word I can use to describe them. They are bad, or they allow the bad which is in us all to take over. They are bad enough to calmly plan a killing. Because they are prepared to act without conscience they are very dangerous. Is there anyone else you and Peter crossed swords with?’ he persisted.
‘The only other person from the early days was Paddy George, O’Browne’s original partner in the shop. But he’s a great man in a world of few great men, and I believe they were mates up until Peter was killed.
‘I think his solicitor, Leslie Russell, would probably be more of help in this area than I could ever be. As you know, I’ve been out of O’Browne’s circle for some years now, and I wouldn’t have a clue who he’d had a run-in with recently. But I’m sure you’ve chatted with Leslie. He knows where all the skeletons are buried. And,’ Tom Best smirked, ‘being a solicitor, I’m sure he even helped to bury some of them.’
‘Are we talking in general here, Mr Best, or specifically?’
‘Oh, in general, of course,’ Best replied, glancing at the Mickey Mouse watch on his arm.
‘Well, that will do for now. I’ll leave you to an enjoyable evening.’ Kennedy winced as he rose painfully from the (too) easy-chair. ‘We’ll chat again next week.’
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
It was one of those occasions
Where believe you me
I would rather have been held ransom at the point of a gun
- Gilbert O’Sullivan
Kennedy woke up on Saturday morning unable to move. Well, he could move, but the slightest attempt to do so resulted in the most excruciating pain in his chest.
When he asked ann rea if she thought it could be his heart, she replied, smiling and unsympathetic, ‘Oh, come on, Kennedy, wise-up. You were in the wars yesterday. It’s probably only a cracked rib.’
ann rea rolled astride and gently prodded his chest. Usually such an action would have had a predictable effect on Kennedy, but on that particular Saturday sex was as far from his mind as was children’s welfare from Attila the Hun’s.
About four inches up from his navel and three inches to the left, ann rea located the hub of the pain in the middle of the yellow and purple bruises.
‘Weird place for a heart Kennedy, but I’ve always wondered about the location of yours.’
Kennedy yelped as she continued prodding.
‘You know, there is not a lot to you. You’re all skin and bones. You need fattening up a bit.’
Food, any food, was something else that was far from his mind at that moment. He’d like to have mobilised his body. He had a lot planned for that Saturday. He was glad he was off-duty. Kennedy would have hated to have had to call in sick. He was jealous of his one hundred per cent record. He didn’t know why such a record was important to him, it just was.
Kennedy had planned to drop into the office at some point during the morning. He wanted to review the case in the cold light of day. (Actually, it felt as if it was going to be mild on that day but, in the mild light of day doesn’t quite have the same ring somehow.)
ann rea hopped out of bed and walked across the polished wooden floor. A sight, not for sore eyes, the t-shirt she wore to bed was just about decent.
‘Back in a sec.’
Kennedy lay there feeling sorry for himself. There he was with a beautiful semi-nude woman in his bedroom, and what was more, she had just spent seven and a half hours in bed with him and he hadn’t engaged in any horizontal dancing. If you had told Kennedy this when he met ann rea for the first time, he would have arrested you for being a stranger to the truth.
ann rea returned to the bedroom with a bandage. ‘Okay Kennedy. Who’s going to tie who up?’
He managed a chuckle, nothing more.
She feigned dejection. ‘In that case I’m going to have to do the tying. Sit up, then!’
Kennedy tried but the pain prevented him from rising but a fraction of an inch from the bed. ann rea gently rolled him to the side, amid a torrent of groans. When he was balanced right on the edge of the bed she moved his legs over and, using them as a lever, supported and lifted his upper torso into a sitting position.
The manoeuvre had been so painful that Kennedy broke out in a sweat.
‘Make an aeroplane!’ ann rea ordered.
‘What on earth are you on about? I admire your sense of the surreal but I suggest you stop smoking crack.’
‘Make an aeroplane,’ she repeated through her laughter, lifting her arms to demonstrate. He feebly followed her example, allowing her to bind him tightly with the bandage. She wound it around his lower chest several times, kissing him gently on the neck, cheek, head and shoulders each time she circled, and fixed it tight with a safety pin. Then she moved behind Kennedy and started to massage his shoulders. He was as tight as a drum. ann rea made him drop his head as she worked her fingers, first gently, then firmly, deep into his neck, shoulders and upper back.
Kennedy was surprised how much relief from the pain the tightly bound bandage brought. As ann rea moved closely about him, he started to become intoxicated with her fresh sensual natural scent and gradually he began to think that maybe, you know, Attila the Hun was quite fond of his direct family.
Twelve minutes and forty-three seconds later, ann rea was the first to break their post-passion calm. ‘God, the lengths you’ll go to, to attract a bit of attention,’ she whispered, delicately stroking his cheek. ‘You didn’t need to go and get yourself beaten up just to…’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’
‘Oh, it speaks as well.’
Kennedy was sweating once more, but it was no longer the cold sweat of pain. He was lying on his back with one arm around ann rea’s neck, his hand caressing her hair, and the other protecting his side as she lay snugly against him. He thought, not for the first time, how absurd bodies would look if you froze them in their lying positions and stood them upright. No doubt Damien Hirst would get around to such an exhibit at some point.
‘Tom Best reckons that…’
‘Oh
we are feeling better then. Our mind is back on the case, I see,’ ann rea laughed into his shoulder. She was happy to lie with Kennedy in a mild daze, but such tranquillity had passed. ‘Reckons what?’
‘He reckons that Peter O’Browne never really had a serious girlfriend, just an ever growing list of future exes.’
‘Some people are like that, Kennedy. The even sadder thing is that some of them marry their future ex-wives.’
Kennedy decided not to stir up ann rea’s inherent fears about marrying badly. He let his mind drift through the characters in Peter O’Browne’s life and death.
It was ann rea who broke the silence. ‘Are things starting to fall into place yet?’
‘That’s the strange thing. Not at all. Yes, we’re gathering lots of evidence, but we have yet to find some cement to tie it all together. So, all the parts are floating around and I keep trying to imagine different ways the pieces will fit together.
‘But I’m always left with one spare piece, and the entire puzzle crumbles around me. I’ve often thought that solving a case is a bit like going to a mystery car journey. You have to be prepared to take a few wrong turns, but remember where you have been and what you have seen so that you can successfully retrace your steps and try another road.’
‘So, what are your problems?’
‘Well, the main one, I suppose, is that I haven’t worked out how Peter O’Browne was murdered.’
‘I thought that was obvious.’
‘Yes, but how was he hanged? How was the body manoeuvred into position? Peter O’Browne was ten stone thirteen. That is a considerable weight for one person to move around.’
‘Perhaps there were two of them,’ ann rea offered as she followed the wall-to-ceiling border around the cream-painted bedroom.
‘Perhaps, but personally, I doubt it. With two people there is more chance of being found out, and I think this was all too carefully planned to risk betrayal by an accomplice.’
‘Okay, okay. How about – if – okay, how about if the accomplice has also been murdered?’ ann rea suggested, concentrating now not on the ceiling line, but on the hairs on Kennedy’s chest, pulling at them gently.
