by Jo Bannister
‘That she was nineteen years old and looked less than that, and that she died in my bathroom after we had sex. That was the one I couldn’t get past. When the police came the press wouldn’t be far behind. They’d get hold of a picture of her looking like a child and they’d crucify me. Even if I could convince the police I was telling the truth, the tabloids wouldn’t care. I was a successful man in a glamorous industry, and there’s nothing the tabloids like better than feting you one week and stoning you the next.’
Somewhere in the telling he’d aged ten years. His skin was grey. His eyes were tired. His whole body had slumped now the secret he’d put everything into protecting was out.
‘Anyway, why should the police believe me? They’d look at her and look at me, and wonder if I’d raped her and hit her to stop her screaming. They’d find out I was supposed to be in Belfast, that there was no one else in the house because I’d said I’d be gone for days yet, but I’d come back early and had sex with a young girl who then died in my bathroom. I could be charged; conceivably I could be convicted. Even if I wasn’t the doubts would remain. People who’d begged to do business with me would stop returning my calls. Venues would be unavailable when I needed them, and as for supporting acts, forget it. Who wants to appear with a band managed by a paedophile? She wasn’t under-age. But I’d pay for it as if she was.
‘And it was too late to do anything for her. I asked myself if it was reasonable to have to pay with my career for her mistakes.’
And once the question was asked the answer was obvious. She was tiny: she fitted into a bin-liner. He brought his car to the back of the house.
Just in time he thought better of it. He meant to take her somewhere she would not be found; but if he was unlucky it made sense to ensure that no sign of her presence could be left in his car. He thought then of the old van. It was going to the dealer in the next few days, it could make one last run for him first.
But the sun was up and it was already too late to do anything more tonight. The long day passed minute by grudging minute. He was terrified that Miriam would return early, but his luck held and no one came to the house all day. He spent the morning agonising over where to take Sasha Wade, and in the afternoon he fetched the van and got together the tools he’d need. When darkness returned he carried the dead girl out to the vehicle, parked behind the house with the lights off, and left for Cheyne Warren. Passing through Horsham he dropped her clothes into a rubbish skip.
People with a body to dispose of always go somewhere they know, and nobody travels further than about a hundred miles. The Diligence Hotel suited Chandos on both counts. He hadn’t been with the band when they stayed there but he had seen it, in fact more recently than they. As late as February 1997, looking for somewhere to spend a night on one of his pre-tour trips, he’d seen the sign for Cheyne Warren and remembered booking rooms there the previous autumn. But he’d found The Diligence closed, derelict amid its overgrown grounds. He’d driven on and passed the night somewhere else. But five months later he returned to The Diligence expecting to find it still empty.
It was a shock to find the place a building site. His first appalled thought was that he’d have to keep driving, find somewhere else, the black plastic bundle behind him becoming more threatening with every mile. Then he wondered if there was in fact any need. The gate was open: builders’ carelessness, he assumed, not knowing one of the flats was already occupied. There was nothing to stop him driving through the yard and down the garden to where it stopped being overgrown and started being a wood. It was dark, no one would see him from the road. And if no one saw him no one would investigate what he was doing there.
It was a gamble. But so was turning round and starting to look, in an unfamiliar area in the middle of the night, for a safe place to dispose of a body. Every minute he was in this girl’s company she was a danger to him. A minor accident on these narrow unlit roads could result in policemen taking his name and looking in his van. Whether or not it was sensible, he couldn’t face prolonging this any further. He took a deep breath and drove through the courtyard and down to the wood.
In fact, no one disturbed him. Once he heard a car but supposed it was on the road. He paused, heart in his mouth, but the sound died and he thought it had passed. He kept digging.
It took longer than he’d expected. The sweat stung his eyes and bathed his body under his clothes but finally the job was done. It wasn’t a very perfect grave, he had to bend her to fit where the trench snaked among the tree-roots and she’d stiffened enough to make that difficult. Somehow he managed, and he spread the earth over her like a quilt and hoped she’d sleep forever.
Only when he was leaving, still without headlights, did he see a car parked beside The Diligence that had not been there when he arrived. His heart lurched into his throat and he didn’t know if he should stop or go on or leave the van and run. The last was the stupidest: the abandoned vehicle would be traced to him in hours. He decided to keep moving. If someone tried to stop him he’d know that he’d been observed.
But no lights sprang up, no voices rang out in challenge, and he reached the road daring to hope he was safe.
He drove by random ways for an hour, partly to break his trail, partly because he was still too shocked to plan. At first he told himself, If there are no roadblocks in the next five miles I’m in the clear; then, If there’s no hue-and-cry in the next half hour; then, If the police were out looking for me I’d have seen them by now. As the short night began to lift, with no sign of pursuit he turned for home.
Chandos looked at Brodie and smiled tiredly. ‘You’ll have figured out the rest. When the papers reported plans for more development here it was as if someone hit me with a sock full of wet sand. I knew what they’d find. I’d been careful, I didn’t think she could be traced to me, but I couldn’t be sure. I had to prevent that work starting. I convinced Jared we should move out of town, and I gave you a list of requirements you could hardly satisfy anywhere but here. As it happened you’d read about the plans too. If you hadn’t I’d have had to draw your attention to them. Discreetly.
‘Somehow it all worked. Like everything else I’d done, the hard bits came together and some crazy little detail scuppered me. Like God was teasing me. Even the girl, who climbed up to an open window with a guitar on her back then died slipping on a bar of soap. How can you not believe in God,’ he asked Daniel, ‘when somebody up there is so obviously playing silly buggers?’
‘How can you believe in God,’ responded Daniel, ‘and treat people like they’re of no consequence?’
‘I told you,’ said Chandos tersely, ‘it was too late to help her. She was already dead. She’d been dead for half an hour.’
‘It wasn’t Sasha I was thinking of.’
Chapter Twenty-Nine
All through the long telling Jared Fry had said nothing. Brodie looked at him now He was ashen and hollow-cheeked, and he’d sunk onto the lower steps of the staircase as if his knees would no longer support him. Now he looked up. ‘Finish it,’ he grated.
Chandos thought he had. ‘What do you mean?’
With a hand on the rail Fry jerked himself to his feet. His knuckles were clenched bloodless and his whole body shook. ‘I mean, the part where you turn me into a mouthpiece for someone else’s songs! The part where you decide I can’t write any more, I’ll never write anything worth listening to again, if you want to go on making money out of me you’ll have to find some other way. The part where you wait till I’m stoned then feed me the songs of a dead nineteen-year-old girl and let me think they’re mine.’
‘Ah,’ said Chandos. ‘That.’
‘Why do you think I’ve been shooting myself stupid for the last six years?’ Fry shouted in a fury of grief. ‘For fun? Because it made my life easier, or more rewarding? Because I liked waking up in my own vomit, and seeing from people’s faces that I owed them apologies for things I didn’t remember doing? Because it was fun knowing the band were carrying me, and all I brou
ght them now was my name and the few good songs it was made on?
‘Eric, the reason I take heroin in quantities that are not so much recreational as veterinary is that I thought that was how I wrote those songs! I thought that was how I got to where they were. I’ve thought that for six years, ever since the songs went where I couldn’ t follow. Now you’re telling me they weren’t even my songs. All the heroin did was knock me out long enough and bring me round stupid enough to believe that what I’d written down was my work. And it wasn’t. It was hers.’ He was almost crying.
‘Yes, it was,’ agreed Chandos. ‘But don’t kid yourself, that isn’t why you’re a junkie. I only started feeding you Sasha’s songs when you stopped producing your own. You know this business, you’ve been in it long enough. One way or another you stay on top of the game, because if you don’t there’s always someone younger and hotter waiting to take over. You were taking heroin by the time you were twenty. By the time you were twenty-two it was taking you – consuming you, feeding on your body, your energy, your talent.’
He saw how Fry devoured the little compliment, the raw hunger in his eyes. ‘Oh yes,’ he said softly, ‘you had talent. Those songs could have been yours: there was a time when you were that good. If you’d stayed clean; if you’d even stayed in control. That’s what I expected when I took you on. Even when you started doing drugs I thought it was something we could manage – either sort out or work round. I had no idea how comprehensively it would destroy you as an artist.’
‘You could have helped me – !’
‘I did help you,’ snapped Chandos. ‘A lot of people tried to help you. You didn’t want help. You were the great Jared Fry, the prince of demon rock, the poet of pain, and you liked it too much to want to change. Maybe I should have walked away at that point. You’d be dead by now if I had.
‘Instead I looked for a way to keep you working. To keep you in the band. The songs were the only reason Souls For Satan didn’t look for another front man, one they could count on. You’d used up everyone’s goodwill, Jared. At first people make allowances; then they make excuses; then they make other arrangements. You had no friends left, except me.’
He paused, as if expecting one of them to mock that. He seemed surprised when no one did, took a moment to pick up the narrative again.
‘And I had Sasha Wade’s songbook. I’d buried her, I’d dumped her clothes, I’d smashed her guitar and burned the pieces, but I couldn’t bring myself to burn her songs. I should have – they were the only link between her and me. But they’d mattered so much to her she’d died trying to get them heard, and it seemed callous. So I kept them.
‘That year was a turning-point in more ways than one. It was when you made the jump from cult hero to international rockstar. It was when your drug habit started getting the upper hand. And it was when every song you wrote went from being better than the one before to being a little bit worse. I didn’t even notice at first. But when I did and looked back, that was when it happened.’
Brodie risked a glance at Jared Fry. He looked frozen, his whole body locked with pain. He might have been stupid but he wasn’t a fool: he knew what Chandos was telling him was essentially the truth. If he had been betrayed it was because his own frailty had made lies both possible and necessary.
‘You went downhill from there,’ Chandos continued remorselessly. ‘Healthwise, as an artist, as a man. Six years ago I realised that the only way your career was going to survive – that you were going to survive – was if I gave you a talent transfusion. You’d passed out on the floor – and yes, you’d thrown up – and I looked at you and thought, Either I do this or I walk away now and read in tomorrow’s papers that he died of an overdose.
‘Well, I didn’t walk away. I got you pumped out, I got you cleaned up, and while you were sleeping it off I took out Sasha’s book. I picked a song and read the words to you, and whistled the tune. Over and over again, all the time you were coming round. When you opened your eyes I put a pen in your hand and your own book on your lap, and I read it again, word by word. And you wrote it down. An hour later you came lurching downstairs, babbling excitedly about how this great song had come to you while you were tripped out. And I had to pretend to be impressed.’
‘Crucifiction?’ whispered Fry.
‘Crucifiction,’ agreed Chandos. ‘Which was of course a mistake. I’d been so stunned by what followed that I’d forgotten what she told me – that she’d copied it from an older collection that she left at home. I only remembered after it was too late: the song was recorded and selling faster than they could distribute it. And I thought I was dead.
‘But nothing happened. No one came to accuse us of theft and murder. There was only adulation. From the fans, from the critics, from the industry. I wish I’d enjoyed it more. I was waiting for the second shoe to drop, but it never did. Finally I realised that the other book with the song in it must have been carefully packed up with all Sasha’s possessions in cardboard boxes in her parents’ loft, and even if they’d read it the chances of them listening to Jared Fry sing demon rock were vanishingly small. I’d got away with it. So a few months later I did it again.’
‘All those songs,’ moaned Fry. ‘None of them mine?’
‘None,’ said Chandos; so far as Brodie could tell there wasn’t an ounce of feeling in how he said it. ‘What you were writing by then wasn’t just crap, it was trite crap. This was the only way I could get a song worth recording out of you. I tried not to be greedy. We could keep going on a couple of hits and a few make-weights each year. Even so, eventually the well ran dry. By last year all Sasha’s songs had been used. All that was left was you. And I don’t have to ask, do I, how much useful work you’ve done this last year.’
He didn’t. Neither did Brodie. The answer was writ clear on Fry’s face. ‘You let me think I wrote her songs.’ It was more than grief in his voice, it was bereavement.
‘And now you know you didn’t,’ said Chandos coldly. ‘You’ve had six years of success that you didn’t earn. If you’re looking for an apology, Jared, I don’t think I owe you one. I didn’t ruin your career, I prolonged it way beyond the point where it would have imploded. You want to talk about debts, let’s talk about what you owe me. I didn’t kill that girl for you – I didn’t kill her at all – but I took risks for you that I didn’t need to. I kept you at the top when it would have been easier to let you fall. What you are today you owe to me.’
Scorn twisted his lip. ‘What you’ll be next month, of course, will be all your own doing. Anybody want to start a book on it? A gibbering wreck in the back ward of a psychiatric hospital? Another showbiz suicide? Or just a bore leaning on a club bar, bumming the price of a fix off people in return for telling them how he used to be Jared Fry?’
What escaped Fry then was something between a sob and a howl, a tortured sound racked from a tormented soul, and he turned and scrambled up the stairs. They could hear his steps stumbling upwards long after he was gone from sight.
‘You really are a shit, aren’t you?’ Brodie said quietly. She had her phone in her hand, her thumb on speed-dial. ‘If you want to run neither of us is going to waste much effort chasing you. But I imagine Jack will.’
Chandos eyed her loftily. ‘Why should I run? I want to sort this out. Maybe I’ll go to prison but it won’t be for long. It wasn’t murder, it wasn’t manslaughter, it wasn’t rape. I failed to report a death. I carried out an unauthorised interment. I breached the copyright on some songs. Like I say, it can be fixed. I can do a couple of years if I have to. Compared with keeping Jared on track it’ll be a holiday. And I’ll come back ready to do some real work for a real star.’
‘And Jared?’ asked Daniel, tight-lipped. ‘You’ve destroyed him – you do know that? He’ll never recover from this. He hasn’t the strength to do it alone and there’s no one to help him. His friends are gone, his career is gone, you’ve even managed to ruin his legacy. You brought him to this, and not for his benefit but for yours.
Now you’ve had everything he had to give, will you really let him rot?’
Because Daniel was shorter, Chandos could look down his nose at him without tilting his head back. He said simply, ‘Yes.’
Leaving The Diligence, Deacon had driven into Cheyne Warren and parked outside the grocer’s. The minutes passed and his phone remained silent. Half a dozen times he checked that he hadn’t inadvertently switched it off.
When Voss saw steam starting to come from his ears he went into the shop and came back with ice-creams. ‘She’ll call when there’s something to say.’
‘You reckon?’ Deacon took a fierce bite out of his flake. ‘Maybe she’s giving him a head-start.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
He considered for a moment. ‘Damned if I know what to believe, Charlie Voss. To be honest, I don’t know what she’s doing there at all.’
‘I do.’
Deacon sniffed glumly. ‘Me too. After everything he’s done to her, after everything she’s said, she couldn’t resist the opportunity to help him out one last time.’
Voss reflected for a moment. ‘Permission to speak freely, sir?’
Deacon peered at him. ‘Go on.’
‘Stop talking like a bloody fool. Sir. She isn’t there to help Eric Chandos. She’s there to help you.’
He thought about that. He still didn’t believe it. He didn’t dare believe it. And the phone still didn’t ring.
And then it did.
They went back into Chandos’s study. Brodie and Daniel waited in the hall. But they weren’t there long. Deacon didn’t need the full-and-frank version, just the bones of what had happened and to know Chandos was ready to make a statement. That would be done at Battle Alley, with all appropriate formalities. Deacon cautioned him and let him gather a few belongings, then they headed out to the cars.
Jared Fry met them in the courtyard. He’d composed himself a little since fleeing upstairs. Deacon guessed that if he looked he’d see a fresh needle-track under his sleeve. He said carefully, ‘As I understand it you had no part in the death or disposal of Sasha Wade. Unless new evidence emerges during interview I don’t expect to charge you. But I will need a statement, and you’ll need to contact your solicitor to deal with the civil complications.’
