Dead Beat

15

When people find out what I do for a living, they always ask if it's dangerous. They usually seem disappointed when I confess that the hardest thing to deal with is lack of sleep. I get very ratty if I'm kept away from my bed. I'd been asleep for a mere four hours after my run-in with Jackson when the phone rang insistently.

I picked up the phone. 'Who is it?' I growled.

'Good morning to you, too,' Shelley replied. 'Bill wants to talk to you. Are you coming in or do you want to speak to him now?'

'Both,' I replied. Bill's no stickler for regular office hours, and he knows me well enough to know that if I'm not in the office at nine there's a good reason. So for him to get Shelley to roust me out of bed, it had to be important.

'Kate,” his voice boomed in my ear as Shelley connected us. 'What's this you've been up to now?'

'How did you get to hear about it?' I asked wearily, climbing out of bed and heading for the kitchen.

'The news about Moira was on the radio this morning, and I got into the office to find a string of increasingly hysterical messages from Jett and a demand for a meeting from a pompous asshole called Inspector Cliff Jackson. It didn't take a lot of working out,' he reported.

'What did Jett want?'

'You, basically. A lot of moaning about why did you run out on him when he needed you and instructions to get yourself back over there asap. I think you'd better come in and brief me on what's been going on before we decide whether we want to have any further involvement. OK?' It was the nearest Bill was ever going to get to a direct order.

Twenty minutes later, I was filling him in. When I got to the bit about the story I'd concocted for the police about the body's discovery, he shifted uneasily in his chair. 'I don't think that was one of your brightest moves, Kate,' he complained.

'I know. But anything else made Jett look like the killer.'

'And how do you know he wasn't?' Bill challenged me.

'I saw the state he was in. It wasn't the kind of reaction I'd expect from a man who had just killed his so-called soul mate. It was more like he couldn't believe it till someone else had confirmed it. Besides, if I'd told the truth, Jett wouldn't have been cluttering up our answering machine all night. He'd be down the nick in an interrogation room.' I knew it sounded weak even as I told it, but the strength of my own gut feeling about Jett's innocence didn't allow for compromise.

'I trust your instincts, Kate. But the cops sure as hell won't. We'll have to make damn sure they don't find out the truth. And I suppose that means you'll have to stay close to whatever's going on,' he added. He chewed his beard restlessly, a sure sign that he's worried.

'At least Jett seems to want that,' I tried. It wasn't much of a consolation, but it was the only one I could see right then.

'Jett might, but I don't,' Bill flashed back. 'We don't do murders, Kate. We do white-collar crime. We're not geared up to compete with the police on something like this. Besides, I'm not happy about putting you in the front line when there's someone out there killing people.'

'I can handle myself,” I replied huffily.

'I know you can. It's the other poor fuckers I'm worried about,” he said with a tired smile. 'Seriously, though. I really wish you hadn't got us involved. But now we are, you'd better brief me fully.'

I gave him a quick resume of events, leaving out only my glimpse of Maggie. I don't know why I held that back; maybe I was worried about her being the obvious scapegoat, even to a supposedly new man like Bill.

'Jackson wanted to know the nature of the job we did for Jett,' I finished up. 'I hid behind client confidentiality.'

'You did right. Leave Jackson to me. You'd better have a listen to Jett's messages then get yourself over to Colcutt.'

It was after eleven when I drew up outside the electronic gates. Half a dozen cars were parked along the verge, and I recognised a couple of national newspaper reporters. The news of Moira's death had broken too late for that morning's editions, but they were determined to make up for lost time. As I pulled up to speak to the police constable, who looked cold and miserable in the thin drizzle of rain, car doors suddenly opened and the pack descended. Luckily, Jett had had the sense to tell the police I should be admitted. He'd also remembered to leave me the security code for the gate in one of his messages. I was halfway through the gates before the first journalist reached me. I put my foot down and left him shaking off the spray from my tyres.

At the house, another freezing copper let me in. There was no one in sight, but the constable on duty at the door of the rehearsal room grudgingly told me that Jett was in the kitchen. I found him there alone, slumped at an old pine farmhouse table, a mug of tea sitting in front of him. He barely glanced at me when I crossed the room to the kettle. I put it on to boil and picked up his mug. Nothing like making yourself at home. His untouched tea was stone cold, so I made us both fresh.

'You shouldn't have gone,' he greeted me. 'I wanted you here.'

T didn't have any choice,' I explained patiently, like I would to Davy, Richard's five-year-old. 'The cops bounced me as soon as they found out who I was.'

Jett lifted his mug to his lips, but lowered it untasted. His skin had taken on a strange dullness, the colour of slate. His eyes were bloodshot, but not puffy with tears. 'You liked her, didn't you?' he asked.

'Moira? I hardly knew her, but yes, I liked what I saw of her. She had courage, and a sense of humour,' I replied.

He nodded, as if I'd confirmed something. 'That's why I want you to find out who killed her. Somebody in this house, somebody I trusted, took her life away. You're going to find out who.'

I felt like I'd stumbled on to the set of an episode of Murder, She Wrote. I took a deep breath and tried to bring the conversation down to earth. 'Don't you think you should leave this to the police? They've got the manpower and the facilities to investigate murder, Jett. I haven't.'

He warmed his hands on the mug. 'You don't understand, Kate. This isn't going to be solved by fingerprints and alibis. This is going to be solved by understanding people. The Old Bill, they didn't know Moira. And they sure as hell don't understand any of us. The people in this house, we don't talk the same language as these cops. Not even Mr Respectable Kevin. But you're different. You live with Richard, you know this life. You can speak to them, make them open up like they won't to the Old Bill.' It was a long speech for a man as close to the edge as Jett obviously was. He leaned back in his chair and squeezed his eyes shut.

'I don't know, Jett. I've never had to investigate a murder before.'

His eyes opened abruptly and he stared at me, brows drawn down in a scowl. 'Listen, Kate. To those cops, I'm just a piece of black shit. A rich piece, but still shit. Moira was just a junkie hooker to them. They'd love to pin this on me and walk away, because that would fit. I grew up in the Moss, I know how their minds work. I don't trust them and they sure as hell won't trust me. There's only you between me and the nick, Kate, and I need your help to stay out of it.' His bottom lip thrust out defiantly.

I pushed my mug away and reached out for his hand. 'OK, Jett. No promises, but I'll give it my best shot.'

He clasped my hand in both of his. There were tears shining in his eyes. 'That's good enough for me.' A single tear trickled down his cheek and he brushed it away as impatiently as if it were a troublesome fly.

'What happened after I left?' I asked.

'They kept us all shut up together till gone four o'clock. Didn't leave us alone for a minute, though. They had a kid copper keeping his ears open. That guy Jackson, he told me to say nothing about how I found her, or anything else. They all wanted to know, though,' he added bitterly.

'They'll be hoping they can trip up the killer,' I explained. 'You know, someone knowing more than they're supposed to.' Amazing that the police still rely on that after they spent three years barking up the wrong tree on the Yorkshire Ripper investigation because of a hoax tape that revealed details only the killer should supposedly have known.

'What time is it?' he asked incongruously.

I glanced at my watch. 'Five to twelve.'

Jett got to his feet and swallowed most of his tea in a oner. “I told them all to be in the blue room at twelve. I knew you'd be here. You have an intuitive spirit. I knew you'd know I needed you.'

I refrained from pointing out that it had more to do with the office answering machine than my psychic powers. 'I'm going to have to talk to you about the last six weeks, Jett,' I protested as he walked out of the room.

'You're going to have to talk to all of us about the last six weeks,' he said over his shoulder as I followed him. T just want them all to know they have to co-operate with you. They can be as bloody-minded as they like with the cops, but it's me that puts the bread in their mouths and they'll do what I tell them.'

It was strange to see how quickly his natural authority had returned to him. I couldn't believe it was my agreeing to work for him that had done the trick. If he was capable of such mercurial mood shifts, maybe my initial assessment of his innocence had been way off-beam.

Jett threw open the drawing room door just on the stroke of twelve. They were all there except Neil. None of them looked as if they'd had much sleep. Equally, none of them looked like they'd shed too many tears.

As I entered behind Jett, Kevin groaned. 'Oh God, Jett, I told you to leave her out of this. We don't need an extra nosy parker round here. The cops have already turned this place into a goldfish bowl.'

'He's right, Jett,' Gloria chipped in. 'You need to come to terms with your grief. Having her around the place isn't going to help.'

Jett threw himself into a spindly-legged chair. Miraculously, it withstood the impact. 'I can't be doing any grieving while I know Moira's killer is under my roof, eating my food and drinking my booze. Kate's here to find out which one of you is my enemy. Any of you that doesn't want to be part of my team, you can go now. But you want to stick around, then you co-operate with Kate one hundred per cent. She'll be reporting directly to me, and I don't want her interfered with. Is that clear?'

Kevin cast his eyes up to heaven and muttered, 'Give me strength!' I knew exactly how he felt. Melodrama was never my favourite art form. But it was Tamar who was right on the ball. She crossed the room and hugged him. 'Whatever you need is all right by me, Jett.' I tried not to vomit, but it was hard.

Before anyone else could chip in with their tuppence worth, Neil came in. 'Sorry I'm late, Jett,' he apologised. 'I've been issuing full press statements to all the nationals, and it took longer than I thought.'

'Enter stage left, the in-house vulture,' Micky sneered.

'Somebody's got to handle them,' Neil replied mildly. 'Better that it's someone who can string two sentences together.'

'Meaning what?' Micky demanded belligerently.

'My God, can't you two stop bickering for once? Have some respect for the dead,' Tamar shouted. Her shameless hypocrisy left me gasping, but no one else seemed to notice. Micky mumbled an apology and walked over to the window to watch the rain falling.

'You on the payroll, then?' Neil asked me sotto voce. I nodded. He smiled conspiratorially. 'Glad I'm not the only one making a shilling out of Moira's death.'

I'd only been there an hour and already I was heartily sick of the lot of them. Some jobs should come stamped with a government health warning. Something like: 'You lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.'

I decided it was time to start asking questions. But in the great tradition of the best-laid plans, I was thwarted by the arrival of Inspector Jackson and his merry men. Jackson marched in as if he'd taken a long lease on the place. He'd found time for a fresh suit and shirt, though the tie was the same. Maybe it held some Masonic significance I didn't recognise. Hot on his heels was an older man, who moved to Jackson's side and announced, 'Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I am Detective Superintendent Ron Arbuthnot and I will be in overall charge of this inquiry. I know some of you have given my officers initial statements, but we will be requiring you for further interviews in the course of the day. Please arrange to keep yourselves available.' The Royal Command having been delivered, Arbuthnot wheeled his tubby body round past Jackson and left us.

As soon as he'd gone, Jackson turned on me. 'Have you got some kind of death wish, Brannigan?' he hissed as he took me by the arm and led me to the door. 'I've already thrown you out of here once. Is business so bad you've got to come touting?'

'I was invited here,' I told him through clenched teeth. 'Get your hands off me. Now.'

He reluctantly let me go, then opened the door and tried to usher me through it. I stood my ground. Jett called, 'You OK, Kate? The lady's a friend, Inspector. I want her here.'

Jackson turned to Jett and flashed an insincere smile. 'I'm afraid that won't be possible, Mr Franklin. We have some questions for Miss Brannigan, and after that, we'll be needing to talk to you again. Perhaps it would be better if she came back tomorrow.'

Jett glared at Jackson. I wasn't sure if that was on my account or because Jackson had used his real name. Jett doesn't like to be reminded of its patriotic overtones. Let's face it, which of us outside the Tory Cabinet would like to be saddled with Winston Gladstone Franklin?

'It's OK, Jett,' I said reassuringly. 'I'll come back tomorrow morning, OK?' There were things I wanted to do, and none of this lot were going anywhere. They would keep. Maggie Rossiter might not be so keen to talk if I waited till she'd got her emotions under control.