Dead Beat

23

Tamar swept off to make herself fit for company after that final pleasantry, leaving me rejoicing at the prospect of another friendly little chat with Gloria. Luckily, I didn't have to scour the shopping centres of the north west for her. She was in her office, beating up her word processor as if the keyboard had my face on it.

'Sorry to interrupt,' I said. 'I just wondered where I might find Kevin.'

'He's got a suite in the west wing,' she said pompously, not even breaking her rhythm. 'Bedroom, bathroom, lounge and office. Turn left at the top of the stairs, then left again. The office is the double doors on the right. But you probably won't find him there at this time of day. He's more likely to be out and about.'

'Thanks. Oh, one other thing. When I asked you about your movements, you didn't mention that you'd gone downstairs again after you went up to bed.'

That brought her frenzied typing to a halt. 'I never did,' Gloria denied vehemently, her chin thrust out like a defiant child. 'Anyone who says I did is a liar.' She'd gone that ugly puce again.

'Are you sure?' I asked mildly.

Her lips seemed to tighten and shrink. 'Are you accusing me of lying?' she challenged.

'No. I simply wondered if it might have slipped your mind.'

'It couldn't have slipped my mind if I'd never done it, could it?'

I shrugged and said, 'See you around, Gloria.' I walked slowly up the stairs, pondering on her reaction. If I were Neil, I'd be laying odds of 2-1 that she'd been lying. Which meant one of two things. Either she was the killer, or she thought she was protecting the killer. And the only person I could imagine Gloria protecting was Jett.

I followed Gloria's instructions to the letter, but there was no reply when I knocked on the double doors. I tried each handle in turn. They moved, but both doors were locked. On the off chance that someone had been careless, I tried the pair of them together. The doors swung apart, the small gilt bolt in one grazing the pile of the carpet. Oh dear, someone hadn't fastened it properly. I remedied the oversight, carefully sliding the bolt into place as I shut the doors behind me. The lock clicked sharply into place. The Ramblers' Association would have been proud of me.

The contents of Kevin's office were a set of cliches that sat in that beautifully proportioned room like a Big Mac on Sevres china. The walls were mushroom – sorry, taupe! – decorated with framed gold discs and photographs of Kevin with everyone from Mick Jagger to Margaret Thatcher. There was a Georgian repro stereo cabinet, and lots of those tricksy little repro low-level cupboards and sets of drawers. His desk was roughly the size of a championship snooker table. On top of it, two telephones rlanked a Nintendo console. Naff toys for mindless boys. I laid a small bet with myself that he couldn't get beyond level two of Super Mario Brothers. Behind the desk was an executive swivel chair upholstered in glossy chestnut leather, and against the walls there were a couple of those deep sofas that leave your feet waving in the air like a toddler.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, but that's never stopped me before. I started with the desk itself. It held few surprises. Top drawer, pens and executive gadgets, right down to the aerobasic calculator. (I only knew what it was because they sell them in the Science Museum's mail order goodie book, and I'm a catalogaholic.) Second drawer, scratch pads and packs of adhesive memos with album and record company logos on them. Also, black leather desk diary and telephone book. Bottom drawer, current issues of the music press, and men's mags from the navel-gazing Esquire to the nipple-gazing Penthouse.

I turned my attention to the nasty furniture. The unit immediately behind the desk looked like it had two drawers. But when I pulled it open, I realised they were fakes, disguising a file drawer. I quickly flipped through it, but as far as I could tell, it was a file of routine correspondence with record companies, promoters and tour venues. There was nothing at all relating to merchandising. The second looked more promising, if only because it was locked. I was assessing my chances of getting into it undetected when my worst nightmares came true. I heard voices outside the door.

It's amazing how quickly your mouth can get really dry. I straightened up as the key fumbled noisily into the lock. There weren't too many options. Under the desk was a sure way to be discovered inside thirty seconds. No room behind the sofas. That only left the door on the far wall. It could lead to a cupboard or a bedroom. As I shot across the room, grateful for the ostentation that had required ankle-risking deep-pile carpet, I prayed it wasn't locked. I yanked the door open and hit the threshold running. I hauled the door shut behind me, in time to see the office door opening.

Gloria's voice reached me across the office and through the door. 'If you'd just like to take a seat, Inspector, Mr Kleinman will be back in about ten minutes. If you see that Miss Brannigan, would you tell her that? She was looking for him a few minutes ago, but she's obviously found something more interesting to do than wait. Can I get you some tea?'

'No thanks, Miss. The constable and me are awash with tea. We'll keep an eye out for Miss Brannigan, though.' There was no mistaking that voice. It grated like an emery board on my nails. Cliff Jackson was sitting on the other side of the door, in the room I'd illegally entered not quarter of an hour before.

I looked around the room I'd registered subconsciously was a bathroom. That old villain Lord Elgin would have had it away on his toes with the whole room. Walls, floor and even the ceiling were marble. Not that cold, white marble with the grey veins. This was soft, pinky, with dark red veins running through it like a drinker's nose. The bath looked as if it had been hollowed out of a single lump of the stuff, with monstrous gold dolphins for taps. You could never be sure you'd got it really clean, that was for sure.

Luckily for me, there was another door on the far side. I slipped off my heels and tiptoed across the room. That was where my luck ran out. The door wouldn't budge. I crouched down, applying my eye to the crack. Situation hopeless. It was bolted on the far side. That left me two alternatives. Either I could sit it out and hope that no one would be caught short. Or I could brazen it out. If I was going to do that, better sooner rather than later. It would be a lot easier to talk my way out of it before Kevin arrived and started asking awkward questions about what I was doing in his office.

I tiptoed back to the loo and put my shoes back on. Then, very noisily, I stood up, flushed the loo and clattered loudly over to the sink, where I committed an arrestable offence with the dolphin till I got a loud gush of water out of it. Then I made great play of fiddling with the door lock before I emerged.

I managed to stop short in the doorway with every appearance of surprise. 'Inspector Jackson!' I exclaimed as his head swivelled round to face me. Those tinted glasses of his were really sinister when the light was behind him.

'And what exactly are you doing here, Miss Brannigan?' he demanded, a note of weary irritation in his voice.

'Pretty much the same as you, by the looks of it. Waiting for Kevin. I heard he'd be back soon.' Well, it was true, sort of.

'And how, exactly, did you get through a locked door?' His voice was oilier than I'd have imagined possible. It's the voice they use, cops, when they think they've got you bang to rights. Doesn't matter if it's speeding or murder. I think they learn it in training.

'Locked? You must be mistaken, Inspector. I just turned the handle and walked through. After all, if I'd effected an illegal entry, I'd hardly be powdering my nose and touching up my mascara, now would I?'

Me and my big mouth. Jackson's hands moved up to the knot of his immaculate paisley tie and tightened the precise knot a fraction. I had the irresistible feeling he wanted to tighten his hands round my neck. 'And is Mr Kleinman expecting you?' he said through stiff lips.

'Only in the most general way. He knows I'll be wanting to talk to him sometime. Nothing urgent. I'll pop back another time, when I'm not in your way.' I headed for the door, doing the confident routine.

'While you're here, let's you and me have a little chat while we're waiting,' he commanded.

'Fine by me,' I said. 'It'll save me having to get up early tomorrow for our little chat.' I can't help myself, I swear. Every time I run up against a copper who thinks he's in the last days of his apprenticeship to God, I get one on me. I walked over to the desk and leaned against it. Jackson squirmed forward on the sofa to try and get in a commanding position. I could have told him it was a waste of effort. 'Ask away, Inspector,' I invited him.

'In your statement, you said you'd been here, quote, about an hour, unquote, before you and Mr Franklin went in search of Miss Pollock.'

'That's right,' I confirmed.

'You can't be more precise than that? I'm sorry, but I find that very hard to believe, Miss Brannigan. I thought you private eyes prided yourselves on being accurate.' Had to get his little dig in, didn't he?

I shrugged. 'Don't you find that's so often the way it is, Inspector? People's memories are incredibly inconvenient. I'm constantly surprised when I'm interviewing people by the things they manage to be vague about.'

'Perhaps we can be more precise if we work backwards. Where did you come from? And what time did you leave there?'

'I had been working near Warrington. I finished there about half an hour after midnight, and decided that since I was only ten minutes or so away from Colcutt, I'd pop in for a nightcap.' Time to go on the offensive, I decided. I really couldn't afford to get into a detailed analysis of time and place. 'What's the big deal, anyway, Inspector? Still trying to get Jett in the frame? I'd have thought there wasn't a lot of point in that now you've got someone in custody.'

He pushed his glasses up and rubbed the bridge of his nose in an exasperated gesture. 'Why don't you just leave us to do the job we're paid to do, Miss Brannigan?'

'Are you denying you've arrested Maggie Rossiter?'

'If you're so keen to find out what we're up to, you should send that boyfriend of yours along to our press conferences,' he said sarcastically. Pity the police aren't as good at catching villains as they are at gossiping. 'At least that way you'd get hold of the right end of the stick. You still haven't answered me. What time was it when you got here?'

'I told you, I can't be sure. We chatted for about an hour, I'd guess, then Jett went to fetch Moira.'

'Why did he wait that long? Why didn't he go and get her before then?'

I took a deep breath. 'He went to get her then because they'd arranged to meet for a working session in the rehearsal room and he didn't want her hanging around waiting for him. I guess he didn't go and get her before because he didn't know where she was.'

'How long was he away?'

'A couple of minutes. Not long enough to kill her, if that's what you're trying to get at. Besides, I felt her skin temperature when I tried for a pulse. She was a lot cooler than she could have got in three or four minutes.'

'Don't tell me,' Jackson said sarcastically. 'Let me guess. And she wasn't as cold as she would have been if she'd been dead an hour, am I right?'

'That would be my judgement, yes,' I replied.

'I'm sure our pathologist will be fascinated by your expert opinion,' Jackson sighed. 'When you saw the girlfriend – was she going towards the house or away from it?'

'I can't be certain, but I think she was heading back towards the village.'

Jackson nodded. 'And she looked what? Startled? Afraid? Upset?'

'She looked pretty startled. But who wouldn't, nearly being run over in the small hours?'

'And when you went rushing off to interview her, did she happen to mention how Moira Pollock met her end?'

'No.' That I was sure about.

'And did you?' He was probing more firmly now. I began to wonder why he wasn't back at the station giving Maggie the third degree.

'No. You told me not to, remember?'

'And you always do what you're told? Spare me, Miss Brannigan.'

I pushed myself away from the desk. 'I don't know where this is getting us, Inspector, but I've got more important things to do with my time than sit here being insulted. If you've got some genuine questions to put to me, fine, we'll talk. But if you're just going over old ground, and trying to get me to change my testimony to incriminate my client, then you're wasting your time as well as mine.' I was halfway to the door as I finished. But Jackson was faster than me.

He blocked the doors, standing with his back to them. 'Not so fast,' he began. Then he stumbled forward, nearly cannoning into me as someone pushed the door behind him.

Kevin looked furious as he stomped into his office. 'What the hell is going on here?' he started. 'What is this? Why's everybody playing cops and robbers in my office?'

T was just leaving,' I said haughtily, skirting the pair of them. 'I'll catch up with you another time, Kevin,' I threw over my shoulder as I pulled the door shut firmly behind me. Time to do some work on my timetables.