by Jo Bannister
‘So what did happen? Was it just a stupid accident? Maybe she got angry when you couldn’t agree terms, went to storm out and tripped on the stairs. She banged her head, didn’t she? That’s all the pathologist could find. But by the time you realised she wasn’t getting up and went to see why, she was dead.’
He watched Fry’s face for confirmation. However she died, if he killed her that was the best gloss he could hope to put on it – he should have jumped at it. But he said nothing.
A little doubt beginning to nag inside him, Deacon pressed on. ‘And because of who you are you thought you wouldn’t be believed. You panicked and dumped the body, hoping like hell there was nothing to connect her to you. Perhaps she’d already told you that coming to see you was a spur-of-the-moment decision and she hadn’t told anyone what she was doing. She didn’t want people to be disappointed if she never even got to see you.
‘Is that what happened, Mr Fry? If it is – if it was anything like that – you should tell me. That isn’t murder. We can go a long way towards sorting it out.’
Finally Fry looked up at him. For a moment Deacon thought he was going to grasp the lifeline. He’d made it as tempting as he could. There would be time enough, once Fry had confessed to being there when Sasha Wade died, to map the extent of his culpability.
But what Fry said was, ‘Do you know when she died? I mean, can you pin it down precisely?’
Deacon nodded. ‘Pretty much. Mid June 1997. She went missing on the 14th and we think she was buried on the night of the 16th. Why, have you got an alibi?’ He smiled.
By now Fry’s breathing was growing ragged. ‘I’ve no idea where I was then – hell, I’ve no idea where I was last week – but it’ll be a matter of record. Ask Eric. If we were on tour you’re going to find it hard to make a case against me.’
Deacon resented his manner, but actually it was a good point. Fry didn’t work in the local carpet factory. If hundreds of people had seen him strutting his stuff at the Fortwilliam Empire the night Eddie Rollins was late home from stock-taking, someone else buried the girl.
‘All right,’ he said after a moment. ‘Let’s find out.’
Chapter Twenty
He was in Ireland.
Chandos didn’t have the books with him: he phoned The Diligence and his PA brought them down. Voss took him into the other interview room – keeping him away from both Fry and Deacon – and went through them with him.
The records were clear enough: entries in a ledger written in the same hand, though with different pens, to those before and after. There were no signs of alteration. Fry, the band and the crew were in Ireland for seven days before Eddie Rollins’s stock-taking and four days after it. They played four nights in Dublin, two in Cork, one in Limerick, one in Londonderry and two in Belfast. The night the black van was seen at The Diligence, Souls For Satan were rattling the back teeth of several thousand fans in Limerick.
Anticipating the next question Chandos opened a file of press cuttings. The Irish Times was typically restrained but The Irish Press had a comprehensive review of the gig including an interview with the lead singer.
Chandos looked up with his handsome, confident smile. If he’d done it next door Deacon would have decked him. ‘I could probably track down video if you still have doubts.’
‘I don’t think that’ll be necessary.’ Voss managed a wry smile of his own. ‘It’s a pretty good alibi as it stands.’
Chandos shrugged. ‘We were lucky. It happened to be a time when I could prove where he was, what he was doing. There are plenty of weeks where the only people to have seen him will be me and other members of his staff.’ He looked Voss full in the eye. ‘So, sergeant, can I take it Jared Fry is no longer a suspect? Can I tell the press that?’
Voss was surprised. ‘I didn’t know the press thought he ever was.’
‘I’m not sure they do,’ said Chandos calmly. ‘But they’re never far away. As soon as the body turned up there’d be whole teams of them doing what you’ve been doing – trying to make a connection between Jared and the dead girl. Some of them may think that Jared helping with your inquiries is all the proof they need. Before they print that I’d like to put them right.’
‘I’d have thought being a murder suspect was money in the bank to a demon rocker.’
Chandos grinned. ‘It’s certainly less damaging than to a lay preacher. I don’t mind the publicity, I just want to manage it. After all, that’s my job.’
Voss nodded. ‘I’ll need to speak to Superintendent Deacon but it’s going to be difficult to show Mr Fry could have buried her.’ Which wasn’t quite the same as saying he couldn’t have killed her, and it occurred to Voss that if he had it might have been smart to make himself visible in another country while a friend disposed of the body. ‘Were you in Limerick too?’
‘Earlier. By the time the band reached Limerick I was probably in Belfast, making sure things would be ready when they arrived.’
‘Can you prove that, sir?’
Chandos shook his head. ‘I doubt it. We keep receipts for six years, for tax purposes – the invoices from that tour are long gone. I don’t even remember where I stayed. Somewhere near the venue, I expect, but I can’t bring it to mind.’
‘It would be helpful if you could,’ said Voss.
Chandos nailed him with a glance. ‘Why, am I a suspect now? Sergeant Voss, I’m trying to help. I’m sorry I can’t tell you where I stayed one night eight years ago, but I do know it was a long way from Dimmock.’ He thought. ‘Besides, how would it help? You don’t really think Jared killed this girl before he left for Ireland and left her lying around for eight days till I got the chance to bury her?’
Voss changed the subject rather than answering. ‘Why did you move to this area? Where were you living before?’
‘In London. It was very central, very handy, just a bit too accessible. The south coast is nearly as convenient and a little more private. And also …’ He stopped.
‘Sir?’
Chandos sighed. ‘I’m not going to surprise you, am I, by saying Jared uses heroin. I thought it would be easier to control his habit if we lived out in the sticks than if he was never more than a taxi-ride from the dealers.’
‘You’re trying to get him off drugs?’
‘Good grief, no. After this long? I doubt he could function at all. No, Jared’s never going to come clean. He likes it too much. All I try to do is keep him off the downward spiral: taking more and more as his system responds less and less. I doubt if I can save Jared Fry’s body any more than I can save his soul, sergeant. I’m just trying to keep him going as long as I can.’
Voss thought it was time to use the powder he’d been saving. ‘Mr Chandos, have you any idea how the same song could appear both in Sasha Wade’s notebook that she last wrote in eight years ago and on Jared Fry’s albums as having been written by him in 1999?’
He’d thought it was unanswerable; that, if it didn’t prove Fry murdered Sasha, at least it proved he knew her. But Chandos’s expression wasn’t worried enough. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. Crucifiction. The same song, except for a handful of words.’
‘Jared wrote that song. I remember him writing it.’
‘So how did it get in Sasha Wade’s notebook?’
Chandos considered. ‘There’s one way I can think of. You have to understand, writing a song isn’t like making a chair – you have a log and a lathe after breakfast and something to eat your dinner off that night. A song can be a long time growing. Jared was working on Crucifiction for a couple of years before he recorded it. He came to me with different drafts half a dozen times. He even sang a few of them – for friends, at private parties – to see how they went down. If this girl was at one of those parties, or knew someone who was, she could have heard a version of the song. She may not have intended plagiarism – she just liked it, wrote it down and played with it in a notebook she never expected anyone else to read.’
Voss had to concede it
was a plausible explanation. It could have happened that way. The mere possibility undermined the notebook as evidence linking Sasha and Fry. Disappointed, he moved on to his last question. ‘How do you move the band around on tours?’
‘We have a big transporter thing, custom-built on a bus chassis. Think Air Force One on wheels. And a truck for the equipment.’
‘That wouldn’t come cheap.’
‘It didn’t.’ Chandos frowned. ‘You want to see the receipts?’
Voss shook his head. ‘I’m wondering what you used before the band hit the big-time.’
Chandos understood. ‘Say, eight years ago? Vans. The first ones were small and old, and they got bigger and younger as Souls got better known and made better money. Eight years ago? Transits, I think. Two of them.’
Voss would check with the Department of Motor Vehicle Licensing but only because being thorough was a habit. ‘What colour?’
‘Black.’ He shrugged. ‘For demon rockers? What else?’
‘With the band’s name on them?’
‘No. You’d get mobbed every time you stopped at traffic lights.’
‘Did you take them both to Ireland?’
‘Yes. It took both to carry the band and their equipment.’
Voss reflected, but there weren’t any questions he hadn’t asked and there weren’t any Chandos had seemed reluctant to answer. ‘OK. I’ll have a word with Mr Deacon but I think that’s probably it for now.’ He left the room still unsure whether these people were involved in the death of the girl in their garden but with no clear idea how to nail them if they were.
When his sergeant asked to see him in the corridor, Deacon was almost glad of the interruption. His interview with Fry was going nowhere. He’d have liked to think it was because Fry had secrets to guard, but actually he believed the demon rocker didn’t remember where he was eight years ago.
It made the interview a frustrating and increasingly pointless exercise. Fry wasn’t suddenly going to remember anything helpful or let out something damaging, which meant that sooner or later Deacon would have to send him home. It was no pleasure watching Fry come apart in front of him, but it went against the habit of a lifetime to cut a suspect loose in exchange for nothing at all. He went outside hoping Voss could give him either grounds to charge Fry or a reason to let him go.
‘If Rollins has the date right, Fry couldn’t have killed Sasha Wade. She was safe at home when he left for Ireland, had probably been underground for four days when he got back,’ said Voss. ‘Even if it isn’t Sasha, he’d have had to kill her before June 9th and leave her for someone else to bury a week later.’
‘Chandos?’ asked Deacon.
‘He says he was in Belfast on the 16th. And that the two vans used by the band – which were in fact black – were both with Fry.’
‘Can he prove that?’
‘No, but we probably can. I’ll check with the ferry company.’
Deacon was disappointed. ‘I’m going to have to let them go, aren’t I? Well, I’d have had to do something about Fry soon anyway – another half hour and we’d have to mop him up and send him home in a bucket.’ He stood a moment longer, craggy features twisted in thought. ‘What do you reckon, Charlie Voss? Are they involved or not? Am I trying too hard to believe that they are?’
Voss didn’t know. He had less reason than Deacon to hate Chandos but no more reason to trust him. Yet he hadn’t caught the man out in so much as an evasion; which seemed to make a nonsense of Daniel’s theory.
Or did it? Wasn’t that the point – that he, not Deacon, had conducted the interview? Because of what had gone before Chandos had been questioned not by a detective superintendent at the peak of his investigative powers but by his sergeant. ‘I don’t know, sir. I can’t say I’ve much confidence in what they’re saying, but I can’t fault it either.’
‘What did he say about the song?’
Voss repeated Chandos’s explanation. ‘It sounded feasible. How about Fry?’
‘I thought he was going to cry when I suggested he might not have written it. He said it was the best song he ever wrote.’
‘Chandos said he was working on it for a couple of years.’
Deacon shrugged. ‘Fry didn’t tell me that. But then, I doubt if he can remember back that far. I think you’re right, Charlie. I don’t know if they did it, but I don’t think we can prove they did it. We need to catch them out in a lie. Get them to contradict one another. It shouldn’t be that difficult – there may be worse co-conspirators than a heroin addict but off-hand I can’t think of any. Fry can’t remember what actually happened, let alone what he’s been told to say happened.’
‘You want to keep them talking?’
Deacon shook his head. ‘Not today. If I don’t turn Fry loose now I’ll have to get him looked at, and that’ll tie my hands. No, send them home. Thank them for their co-operation and send them home.’
‘Chandos wants to tell the press we’re not treating Fry as a murder suspect.’
For a moment Deacon’s eye kindled. ‘Does he indeed? Well, he can tell the press anything he likes. If they ask me I’ll tell them we have certain lines of inquiry but we aren’t currently treating anyone as a murder suspect.’
Voss nodded and turned away.
With his hand on his own door Deacon hesitated. ‘Charlie?’
‘Sir?’
‘About earlier. I was ready to shout at someone. You got in the way.’
It was the nearest thing to an apology Voss was going to get. ‘OK.’
‘OK.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Daniel thought they should leave. He assumed the police investigation had reached a point where whatever he or Brodie thought, whatever suspicions they held, would be irrelevant. If charges were imminent, the last thing Jack Deacon needed in the middle of cautioning the demon rocker was to hear Brodie’s voice raised in querulous enquiry at the front desk.
Brodie thought she’d been left out of the loop. That she’d arrived too late to help settle the case and so missed her opportunity to make amends. It wasn’t much to set against her stupidity but she’d thought it was better than nothing. Now it seemed events had overtaken her. If Deacon was formally interviewing Fry he was probably past needing the benefit of her insights into Eric Chandos’s behaviour.
On the other hand, she thought, brightening, that needn’t prevent her from giving Deacon moral support. Or to phrase it slightly differently, from swanning past Sergeant McKinney on the desk, using her most dazzling smile as a swipe-card, and planting herself in the main corridor of the police station from where she could follow developments. ‘Come on,’ she said, hooking a finger in Daniel’s cuff, ‘let’s be in at the death.’
‘No!’ he exclaimed, horrified. ‘It’s none of our business, Brodie. Jack doesn’t need us there and he doesn’t want us there. For heaven’s sake, come away.’
Which is how, five minutes later, Chandos and Fry heading down the police station steps met Brodie and Daniel heading up them.
She was surprised. She hadn’t thought either of them would be leaving any time soon. She’d thought Fry wouldn’t be leaving at all. She opened her mouth to ask Chandos what had happened. Then she saw Fry’s face, and his sweat-dark shirt, and knew this was neither the time nor the place for conversation. ‘We’ll talk later.’ Chandos registered her presence just enough to nod.
Daniel was looking at Fry and a rage was building within him. He knew Deacon too well to think, as a passer-by might have thought, that helping with police inquiries had meant having the crap kicked out of him in a sound-proof room, but that was how he looked. Only force of habit was keeping Fry on his feet and he seemed scarcely aware of his surroundings. Daniel stared into his white face and found no recognition there. The man was a husk, withered by pain, verging on mental and physical collapse.
The sensible thing would have been to keep quiet and keep moving. Not every tragedy can be averted. Sometimes good men have no choice but to do not
hing. Daniel had tried to save Jared Fry – from his history, his manager and himself – and failed: there was no reason to suppose another attempt would succeed. More than that, he recognised that further intervention would only make things worse. Still he couldn’t bring himself to take the extra couple of steps that would mean turning his back on the ruined man.
He said quietly, ‘If you killed that girl, Jared, tell Superintendent Deacon now. Nothing the law can do to you will compare with what you’re doing to yourself.’
Fry’s deadfall eyes came round to him slowly, his jangled brain struggling to make sense of the words. Finally he realised that the face before him, etched as it was with sombre concern, was familiar. ‘Daniel …’
For Chandos it was the last straw. There was a split second, and Brodie saw it pulse through his expression like a trace on a seismograph, in which he might equally have let fly with his tongue or his fists. She thought her own presence was the only restraining factor.
‘Jesus!’ he swore, ‘here we go again with the Sister of Mercy routine. What is it with you, Hood, that you can’t see someone having a bad day without wanting to extend your hand and poke them in the eye?’
Daniel didn’t even smile. ‘A bad day? That’s what you call it? He’s dying on his feet, Chandos. Look at him. He made you a wealthy man, and all you care now is that he’s good for one more gig, one more album. You could save his life. You could get him into a clinic and make him stay there till he was well. No one in the world has that kind of power over him, except you.
‘But that’s not what you want, is it? The only thing that’s worth more to you than Jared Fry’s next album is Jared Fry’s last album.’
Chandos flushed darkly. But he’d demolished tougher opponents than a sometime maths teacher with a tendency to panic attacks. And he knew Daniel’s weakness, and wasn’t above exploiting it even with her standing beside them.
‘We both know what this is about, Hood, and it isn’t Jared. Last time you rattled my cage I said something I shouldn’t have, but that didn’t make it any less true. You resent me because you envy me. Dress it up any way you like, but the reason you’re interested in men’s souls is that you have no luck with women’s bodies. Here.’ He dug in his pocket, threw down a crumple of notes. ‘Buy yourself a short-sighted hooker and all this wanting to make the world a better place will stop.’
