by Paul Charles
KENNEDY AND Irvine drove straight to Park Village West and parked the unmarked police car outside Judy Dillon’s house. Kennedy was sure he noticed a flick of the curtains.
‘Let’s just sit here awhile,’ he said to Irvine. They were the first words they’d spoken since they’d left Kentish Town. After a few minutes and several more flicks of the curtains, Kennedy said, ‘Let’s go for a wee spin, James.’
‘Okay, where to?’ asked Irvine bemusedly, turning the key in the ignition.
‘I fancy a bookshop, myself. Let’s try the Regent’s Bookshop.’
‘Okay, whatever you say,’ Irvine replied, starting off on the short but complicated drive to Parkway. It took eight minutes.
‘Good day,’ Kennedy said to Peter, the ever-helpful and friendly store owner, as he walked into the shop.
‘Hello,’ Peter said, breaking off momentarily from his ceaseless conversation with the previous owner of the bookshop, his father. Today’s conversation seemed to be concerned with the ever-growing number of people who go into bookshops but who never seem to purchase any books. As far as Kennedy could gather, they’d compiled a list over many years that included: people who look up at ceiling as they walk into the shop; old ladies in black suits; people with backpacks and rucksacks; people with Filofaxes; people with banknotes in their hands (a cunning breed this) and people who walk in saying, ‘What a really nice store you have here’.
‘Just a quick question,’ Kennedy said, providing a much-needed diversion to their conversation. ‘Do you offer a photocopy service?’
‘Yes we do and we could tell you a thing or two about the people who come in here to get photocopies.’
‘Would you remember a young lady coming in here, it would have been some time on Monday morning, and photocopying a notebook?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. A lady of generous proportions, as I remember,’ Peter answered diplomatically.
‘Did she photocopy part of the book or all of the book?’ Kennedy asked.
‘I’d say, all of the book, judging by the time she spent at the copier,’ Peter replied.
‘Great, that’s all I need for now. See you later.’
‘Okay, see you,’ Peter replied. He turned and said to his father, at a level he knew Kennedy would hear, ‘I think we can add “detectives on investigations” to our list of people who never buy books.’
*
Five minutes later, Irvine pulled up outside Dillon’s flat in Park Village West for the second time in twenty minutes. It was eighteen minutes to four, enough time to ask a few questions before Dillon’s four o’clock call to ann rea was due. Kennedy was interested to see how the nanny would react as the deadline loomed. For the second time the curtains twitched nervously, as though there was an actress hiding behind them who suffered from first-night nerves.
‘Okay,’ Kennedy began, as he unclipped his seat belt and opened the car door. Rain had started to fall; a gentle but dampening mizzle. ‘Let’s put her out of her misery.’
No sooner had Kennedy’s index finger connected with the doorbell than the door sprang open. The fingers of his left hand twitched by his side as the lady in black greeted them from inside.
‘Oh, what a surprise,’ Judy Dillon said.
Not a great opening line, Kennedy thought. Perhaps just a little too over-rehearsed.
‘We’d like to ask you a few more questions,’ Irvine said.
‘Oh, come in,’ Judy began. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Ah, no thanks,’ Kennedy replied, perhaps a little too quickly.
Judy responded the way a dentist’s patients have a habit of doing when the dentist drops a hint that they aren’t going to be long in the chair. Obviously, Kennedy thought, from the nanny’s perspective refusing tea implies that the interview’s going to be short and painless. The simple truth was that the refusal was based purely on the fact that the nanny made a vile cup of tea.
‘Esther Bluewood,’ began Irvine, as they all sat down. Once again Judy chose a seat Kennedy felt was barely able to take the strain. ‘Would you know if she’d been involved with anyone?’
‘What? You mean apart from Paul Yeats?’ Judy asked, fidgeting in her seat.
‘Wasn’t it all over between her and Paul Yeats?’ Irvine suggested.
‘It’s not over until the chickens are hatched,’ Judy announced. ‘Or at least that was the case as far as Yeats was concerned.’
‘Yeah. I meant, did she have any other relationships?’ Irvine said.
Judy leaned in towards them to the point where the chair was fighting the laws of gravity.
‘Well, now that you come to mention it, she had me do quite a bit of babysitting over the last six months or so,’ the nanny offered, a few decibels above a whisper.
‘So, you think she might have been seeing someone?’ Irvine asked. He was speaking, Kennedy was observing. They looked more like an odd couple than two policemen, with Irvine in his country tweeds and brogues, and Kennedy in a dark blue two-piece suit, crisp white shirt, green tie, black highly-polished shoes and Crombie coat. Neither were smokers and so didn’t have anything obvious to do with their hands during conversations – though Irvine was more demonstrative with his gestures.
‘Well, if she’d been going out with a girlfriend I’d have known about it, wouldn’t I? She’d have come round the flat, for instance.’
‘Perhaps.’ Irvine said. ‘Was there anything more definite than that, you know, to make you think she was seeing a man?’
‘Well,’ Judy began, leaning back in her chair again. She clasped her hands together around her knee, using them as a form of crane to raise her legs off the ground, all the time leaning back further in the frail basketwork chair. Kennedy was convinced it was either going to tilt over or collapse into tinder wood as she fell into a heap on the floor. ‘I think…the thing I was thinking was, and it’s not an original thought, I know, I don’t know which book it comes from, but she didn’t really seem to be missing her man – Yeats, that is. You know, for sure she was sad that the children had lost their father, but she wasn’t missing out…if you know what I mean.’
‘Okay,’ Irvine said, continuing in the driving seat, ‘do you think there is a chance that Paul Yeats knew that Esther was having an affair?’
‘I didn’t say she was definitely having an affair!’ Judy barked.
‘Sorry, of course you didn’t. Let me rephrase it. Do you think there is a chance that Paul Yeats suspected that Esther was having an affair?’
‘No.’
‘Why do you say that so positively?’
‘Simple. He’d didn’t care a fig about anyone other than himself, so he wouldn’t have been tuned into what was going on in her life or what kind of vibes she was giving off.’
‘Did the kids ever say anything to you about there being another man around?’ Kennedy said, breaking his silence.
‘Oh, what do children know? They live in a fantasy world all the time anyway.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that. I would have thought Holmer was old enough, not old enough to understand, but old enough to know something was amiss,’ Kennedy continued.
‘It’s not something I ever discussed with them,’ Judy replied, shutting down the subject.
‘Tell me,’ Kennedy continued, searching for the right question, one that would bear fruit, ‘who were Esther’s friends?’
‘Friends. That’s interesting. It’s like…I think she didn’t really have any real friends. She used to tell me that she felt she was like a black and white character in a colour movie. She seemed to find it hard to make a connection beyond the initial words. I mean I could dig that. It’s hard for people who think a lot to go into a pub with their mates and talk about weather or the price of fish. I’m a bit like that myself, no time for small chat. Never been able to do it. I know it’s terribly anti-social but I much prefer to come back here and read my books and maybe have a glass of wine or two.’ Judy looked l
ongingly at Irvine as she said this.
‘So, Esther wasn’t really a pub kind of person?’ Irvine asking implying directly that of course she wasn’t.
‘I mean, you can’t possibly write an album as beautiful or as confessional as Axis and then go out and discuss how many goals Beckham should have scored on Saturday,’ Judy said.
Kennedy felt that she was shifting the emphasis from herself back to Bluewood for Irvine’s benefit.
‘So, she’d no friends?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Well, no buddy-buddy friends I’m sure. But she liked Hugh Watson; she got on well with him. She liked that journalist, the one with no capitals in her name…ahm…’
‘ann rea?’ Irvine offered helpfully.
‘Yes, she seemed to come round to Fitzroy Road regularly. Esther seemed to like her and was always happy to have her come round. Let’s see who else? That’s sad, you know, no one else springs to mind. Of course, there was Jill and Jim Beck but apart from that she pretty much lived her life for her children and her songs.’
Kennedy didn’t bat an eyelid at the mention of ann rea, and he was impressed that Irvine didn’t steal a glance to see if he was batting an eyelid.
‘Did you ever work for her at the weekend?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Rarely,’ Judy started. ‘I like to have some space to myself. It’s important, enables me to do my job better. I think so, anyway. But occasionally I would break my rule and help her out if she was doing something or needed someone and no one else was around.’
‘Were there other people who’d babysit for her?’ Irvine asked.
‘I think she was just comfortable leaving them with me and Jill and Jim. Even Yeats wasn’t high on the babysitter list. She kept saying that Paul got distracted too easily and she was scared of something happening to the kids. Paul wasn’t really a kiddie kind of person, all the coochie-coochie-coo embarrassed him.’
‘So what did you do with your Sundays?’
Judy swung around in her chair. Kennedy prepared himself to catch her. She swung her arm around in an arc. ‘These. I get lost in my books.’
‘Don’t you ever go out?’ Irvine asked. The DS hadn’t meant it to be a put down, but Kennedy felt it sounded like that.
‘I sometimes meet friends, yes,’ Judy said, very defensively.
‘A certain group, or just various people?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Pardon?’ Judy said.
‘I mean, do you hang out with a regular group of people or are there other friends you see from time to time?’ Kennedy said, stepping up the pace of questioning now.
‘What does that matter? I can’t see the point? You’re not suggesting I’m part of a gang or something are you?’ Judy said, obviously on her guard.
‘No, it’s just that Josef Jones…you do know Josef don’t you?’ Kennedy said, interrupting his own question.
‘Yes, I know Josef.’
‘Well, it’s just that Josef said that there were a group of you, and you all were fans of Esther’s and—’
‘Excuse me,’ Judy replied, interrupting Kennedy, ‘I worked with Miss Bluewood. I admired her work, immensely in fact. But I was not a fan the way that group of Jones’ were fans, swapping and all that. I loved her music and her work, that was enough for me.’
Kennedy immediately thought of the journals.
‘No, I don’t think Josef was implying anything,’ he began. ‘He was just suggesting that some of you, who shared a common bond in a love for Miss Bluewood’s music, occasionally met up.’
‘Well, I did see some of them from time to time. But most of them are anoraks, they tend to upset artists in their search for the rare and the unique. They’ll literally go through rubbish bins looking for stuff – ugh! Gross!’
‘I’m intrigued about all this, you know. How did Esther meet up with these people? At her concerts, at TV stations?’
‘Esther hadn’t done a live concert for about three years, since Jens was born, in fact,’ Judy started.
‘You’re kidding,’ Irvine said. ‘I thought it was impossible to be in the pop business and not appear on TV and on the concert stage.’
‘She hated it. Made her feel physically sick. And then she decided if it was making her feel so bad, why do it? She told me she couldn’t work out why someone, anyone, would ruin their lives just to sell a million records. She sold a million records of Axis and the high she felt from selling a million didn’t balance out how bad she felt doing the never-ending stream of concerts and TV shows, so she just stopped doing them. All her records sold comparatively well. Enough that the record company wanted her to continue to make records, which was all she wanted. So long as she had a genuine outlet for her work, she was happy.’
‘So, why did she have such fanatical fans?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Because the more of a recluse someone it, the more a certain group of people will chase them. That’s not everyone, mind you. Some of the fans receive enough from her music and we’re prepared to leave her alone, others wanted more.’
‘So how did she promote her work?’ Irvine said.
‘She’d do an exclusive with Radio Two for one of their specials and she’d talk to one person from the press she liked, and that was it. The record company took a few ads and the word of mouth spread,’ Judy said. She seemed happier with the conversation now that it had moved on to this topic.
‘So would you call Josef Jones an “anorak”?’ Kennedy asked.
‘Well, he looked better than most of them, but that voice. Goodness, it sends a shiver up my spine. I mean, I’m not slagging him off or anything like that, and he certainly followed and supported Esther, but you got the impression that his support had little or nothing to do with her music, more to do with her celebrity. Do you know what I mean?’
‘Mmmm,’ Kennedy said with a certain degree of uncertainty in his voice. ‘These anoraks, as you call them, they usually hang around dressing room and stage doors and places to see their idols?’
‘Yes…?’ Judy said.
‘So, where would they hang around to see Esther?’
‘Well, sometimes they’d stop by Fitzroy Road, but mostly they gathered in The Lansdowne, out of the way,’ Judy replied.
‘Did Josef ever hang around Esther’s house, hoping to see her?’ Kennedy asked.
‘I mean, from time to time you’d see all of them, not just Josef. There were about nine in the crew. Do you think one of them had something to do with this? I saw her, you know. I found her. I’ll never forget that scene for the rest of my life, her lying there dead. The oven was open. I just thought she’d committed suicide but you’re still busy asking questions. Do you think it was one of her fanatical fans? Was she not gassed?’
‘Oh, we’re still checking that entire situation out. Still carrying out our investigation,’ Kennedy said, looking at his watch.
‘What time is it, please?’ Judy asked.
Kennedy, as ninety-five per cent of the population would, looked at his watch again, even though he’d checked the time a matter of a second earlier.
‘Three fifty-six,’ he replied.
Judy began to twitch ever so slightly.
Kennedy pretended to be intent only on his ongoing investigation, and continued with his questioning, ‘So, where do you go from here? What do you do for a living now your job’s gone?’
‘Oh, I’ll continue to be a nanny, no doubt.’
‘Is there much work going for a nanny is this area?’ Irvine asked innocently.
‘Oh, there’s always work for a good nanny,’ Judy began, as she tilted her head to a forty-degree angle, so that she could read Kennedy’s watch.
‘How would you go about getting a job?’ Kennedy enquired, prolonging the agony.
‘Oh, there are agencies that secure that kind of work. Which reminds me, I’ve got a call to make, you know, chasing up work—’
‘Sorry, you’ll have to forgive us,’ Kennedy said, all of a sudden the voice of concern. ‘James, please loan Miss Dillon
your mobile so that she can make the call.’
‘No, no, it’s okay,’ Judy protested. ‘There’s a communal coin box out in the hall. I can do it when you’ve gone.’
‘Oh, we’ve a few more questions to ask you yet,’ Kennedy began, starting to feel bad for pretending so with the nanny. If only she wouldn’t lie like this. ‘But we don’t want to spoil your chances of a job. Why don’t you make your call and we’ll talk here amongst ourselves until you’re done.’
‘No, I prefer to wait until you’re gone, to be honest. What time is it, please?’ Judy asked, just about managing to keep her cool.
‘It’s now one minute to four,’ Kennedy replied.
‘Ah,’ Judy replied, now literally and physically twitching in her seat. ‘Actually, I do have an important call I have to make at four o’clock. It’s rather private, though. I wondered, could I possibly go outside?’ Judy was now beside herself.
‘Certainly, shall I dial the number for you?’ Kennedy asked innocently.
‘Sorry?’ Judy asked, every ounce (and there were plenty of them) of her being confabulated.
‘No, sorry, I just thought it would be quicker for you if I dialled the number.’ Kennedy, every ounce, and there were but a few to spare, the straight man.
‘Pardon?’ Judy said, getting more rattled by the millisecond.
‘ann rea’s number. Should I dial ann rea at Camden New Journal’s number for you? Just to save you a bit of time so that you can see if she’s been able to get your money.’
‘What!’ Judy was now totally distraught. ‘What’s going on here?’
‘Listen, Judy, we know you visited Regent’s Bookshop and photocopied Esther’s journal on your way home on Monday morning. We know you’ve been trying to get fifty thousand pounds from Camden New Journal for it. So why don’t you save us all a lot of time and hand it over and then we can keep the fuss to a minimum?’
‘But…’
Kennedy simply stared at the nanny, as if to say, please, we both know what’s going on here.
Although she said nothing, Judy Dillon seemed to agree this to be the case, and she started to panic.
