Dead Beat

5

I opened the door and walked in to hear a man shouting, 'How many times do I have to tell you? You just don't need anyone else to…'

At the sound of the door, he whirled round and fell silent. There were two other men in the room. Neil Webster was sitting in a canvas director's chair with an air of fascinated satisfaction. Jett was leaning against a white grand piano with a sulky expression on his face. The third man, the shouter, I recognised at once. I'd seen him talking to Jett at the dinner where we'd met. Richard had told me he was Kevin Kleinman, Jett's manager.

Before any of us could say anything, Gloria erupted into the room and shoved past me. I couldn't believe the transformation in her. She'd altered from the dragon at the gates to a sweet little kitten. 'I'm so sorry, Jett,' she purred. 'But this woman just forced her way in. I tried to stop her, but she just pushed past me.'

Jett shrugged away from the piano with an exasperated sigh. 'Gloria, I told you I was expecting Kate. Christ, how could you have forgotten?'

The effect of Jett's words on Gloria was out of all proportion to their sting. She blushed scarlet and almost seemed to cringe out of the room, muttering apologies. To Jett, not to me. Her exit did nothing to diminish the air of awkwardness in the room. With an almost palpable effort, Jett turned the full force of his charm on me and smiled. 'Kate,' he said. 'I'm really glad you could make it.'

My reply was drowned by Neil, who called across, 'You're really going to be doing all of us a big favour, Kate. I can't tell you how pleased I am for Jett that you're going to sort this business out.'

I caught Kevin's scowl at Neil before he too turned to me and gave a forced smile. 'Kate hasn't made any decision yet, if I understand it correctly,' he said. 'Maybe we should wait and see what she decides before we start dishing out the congratulations.'

I hadn't been too impressed by Kevin when I'd first seen him, and the second meeting wasn't improving my opinion. His average height and build were diminished by his lousy posture and rounded shoulders, and when he walked his feet seemed to slide over the floor. His thin brown hair was receding fast, emphasising the sharpness of his features. Richard had told me he'd had a nose job, but looking at the finished product I found that hard to believe. Judging by his outfit – a soft brown leather blouson over a toffee-coloured cashmere crew neck and a pair of Levi 501s, he was doing his damnedest to ignore the fast approaching fortieth birthday. Aware of my scrutiny, he moved over to me and extended his hand. 'You must be the lovely Kate. I've heard so much about you from Richard. I'm Kevin, I take care of business for Jett.'

'Pleased to meet you,' I lied.

'I want to make it perfectly clear that whether or not you take on this job for Jett, it's vital that you do not mention outside this room what we discuss today. In the wrong hands, that information could do Jett a great deal of damage,' Kevin smarmed, holding on to my hand for fractionally too long. I had to fight the impulse to wipe it on my trouser leg.

'I've already told Jett that our confidentiality is guaranteed. We wouldn't have so many corporate clients if we had loose mouths.' My reply came out sharper than I intended and I noticed Neil smiling wryly.

'Fine, fine, I just wanted to be sure we understood each other,' Kevin oozed.

I deliberately walked away from him and crossed the room to Jett. 'Do you want to tell me why you've asked me here?'

He nodded and, taking my arm, he steered me across the room to a group of chairs round a low table. I took the chance to look around the large room. It was the size of a tennis court and was obviously a recent addition to the beautiful eighteenth-century mansion Jett had bought five years before. In one corner was a built-in bar, the only thing in the place that looked tacky. The long windows that looked out over the house's adjoining parkland had heavy shutters that could be drawn across to improve the room's acoustics. As well as the piano, there were banks of synthesizers, a few guitars, both acoustic and electric, a drum kit and an array of other percussion instruments. It was an impressive sight and I said so.

Jett smiled. 'It's not bad, is it? I've turned part of the cellars into a recording studio. I mean, for a man who can't tell Chateau Margaux from Country Manor, it was a hell of a lot of wasted space.'

Kevin walked across to join us. Jett ignored him and leaned on the bar, staring intently into my eyes. 'I want you to find someone for me. I knew as soon as we met that I could trust you, Kate. I had the feeling that we'd met before. In a previous life.'

My heart sank. I really wasn't in the mood for some rehashed New Age philosophy. The last thing I needed right now was a loop for a client.

'It's the flux. When I really needed someone to do this job for me, our paths crossed. I realise this isn't the kind of thing you usually take on, but you have to do this one.' Jett patted my hand.

'So tell me about it,' I stalled, sipping my drink.

'When I started out, I had a partner. I suppose you know about that, huh? Moira was my soul mate, the one person I was meant to be with. We wrote all the songs on the first two albums together, we were magic. But we blew it. I didn't look after her needs, and she couldn't take the pressures without my support. So she went. I was too full of my success to realise what a fool I was to let her go. And she left enough of her energy with me for me to keep going a long time without noticing how much I'd needed her.' His eyes were shining with tears, but Jett showed no embarrassment at baring his soul in front of so motley a crew.

'I don't need to tell you that I've run out of that energy. My last two albums have been shit.' He looked up defiantly at Kevin, who shrugged. 'You know it's true. I just can't cut it any more. It's not just my music. It's my whole life. That's why I need you to find Moira for me.'

I congratulated myself silently on having guessed correctly. 'I don't know, Jett,' I hedged. 'Missing persons takes a lot of time. And if Moira doesn't want to be found, no amount of work will bring her back to you.'

Kevin, who had been bursting to interrupt, could contain himself no longer. 'That's exactly what I said, Jett,' he said triumphantly. 'I told you it would be nothing but grief. You don't know that she'd want to see you. You sure as hell don't know if she can still write lyrics the way she used to. Kate's right. It's a waste of time.'

'Don't tell me that shit,' Jett roared. I nearly fell off my stool with the shock of the sound wave. 'You're all the goddamn same,' he carried on shouting. 'You're all shit-scared of what will happen if she comes back. Neil's the only one of you who agrees with me. But just for once, Kevin, I'm going to have what I want. And Kate's going to get it for me.'

The silence after his outburst was more deafening than the noise.

I shook my head to clear it. I had to admit that Kevin's opposition had aroused the contrary side of me. I almost wanted to take it on just to spite him. I took a deep breath and said, 'I'd need a lot more information before I could decide if this is a case we can take on.'

'You got it,' Jett said.

'Just a minute,' Kevin said. 'Before we get into this, we should know what we're getting into. What's it going to cost?'

I named a price that was double our normal daily rate. If we were going to get embroiled in the search for Moira, they were going to have to pay for the privilege. Jett didn't bat an eyelid, but Kevin drew his breath in sharply. 'That's a bit heavy,' he complained.

'You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,' I replied.

'Getting Moira back would be cheap if it cost me everything I own,' Jett said softly. Kevin looked as if he was going to have a stroke.

Neil's smile had grown even broader during the last exchange. The prospect of me finding a major primary source for his book was obviously one that cheered him up. He got to his feet, slightly unsteady, and raised the glass of whisky he'd been nursing. 'I'd like to propose a toast,' he said. 'To Kate's success.'

I don't know if my smile looked as sick as Kevin's, but I hope I'm a better actress than that. I tucked my hand under Jett's elbow and steered him away from the others. 'Is there somewhere we can sit down quietly and you can fill me in on the details I'll need about Moira?' I asked softly.

He turned to face me and patted my shoulder paternally. 'OK, guys,' he said. 'Me and Kate have got some business to do. Neil, I'll catch up with you later, OK? You too, Kevin.'

'But Jett,' Kevin protested. 'I should be here if it's business.'

Jett was surprisingly adamant. Clearly, he had the boundaries between business and personal clearly defined in his own mind. In business matters, like who was going to ghost Jett's autobiography, Kevin's word was obviously law. But when it came to his own business, Jett could stand up for himself. It was an interesting split that I filed away for future reference.

Neil headed for the door, turning back on the threshold to wave his glass cheerily at us. 'Good hunting!' he called as he left.

Grumbling under his breath, Kevin picked up a filofax and a mobile phone from the bar and stomped down the room without a farewell. As I watched his departing back, fury written large across his slouched shoulders, I remarked, 'I'm surprised you chose a woman for a job like this, Jett. I thought you were a great believer in a woman's place being in the home.'

He looked a little suspiciously at me, as if he wasn't certain whether or not I was at the wind-up. 'I don't believe in working wives and mothers, if that's what you're getting at. But single women like you – well, you got to make a living, haven't you? And it's not like I'm asking you to do anything dangerous like catch a criminal, now, is it? And you women, you like talking, gossiping, swapping stories. If anyone can track down my Moira, it's another woman.'

'You want her back so you can work with her or so you can marry her?' I asked, out of genuine curiosity.

He shrugged. 'I always wanted to marry her. It was her didn't want to. My mother brought me up strict, to respect women. She taught me the way the Bible teaches. Now, I've studied a lot of different philosophies and ideas since then, but I have never come across anything that makes sense to me like the idea of a family where the woman loves and nurtures her children and her husband. So, yes, I wanted Moira to be the mother of my children, wanted that more than anything. I don't know if that feeling's still there, so I can't answer you.'

I nearly got up and walked out right then. But I don't think it would have changed anything if I had. Certainly not Jett's neolithic view of women. I couldn't understand how a man of some intelligence and sensitivity, judging by his music, could still hold views like that in the last decade of the twentieth century. I swallowed the nasty taste in my mouth and got down to business. About Moira,' I began.

Two hours later, I was back in my own office. I'd just spent quarter of an hour persuading Bill that we should take on the case. I was far from convinced that we could get a result, but I thought the chances were better than evens. It would earn us a tasty fee, and if I did pull it off word would get around. Record companies have a lot of money to throw around, and they're notoriously litigious. Going to law and winning requires solid evidence, and private investigators are very good at amassing that evidence.

Now I'd pitched Bill into accepting the case, I had some work to do. Once I'd prised Jett away from Kevin and Neil I'd managed to get a substantial amount of background on Moira. The difficulty had been getting him to shut up. Now I needed to arrange my thoughts, so I booted up my database and started filling in all I knew about Moira.

Moira Xaviera Pollock was thirty-two years old, a Pisces with Cancer rising and a Sagittarius moon, according to Jett. I felt sure that piece of knowledge would help enormously in my task. They had been kids together in Moss Side, Manchester's black ghetto, where growing up without a drug habit or a criminal record is an achievement in itself. Moira's mother had three children by different fathers, none of them in wedlock. Moira was the youngest, and her father had been a Spanish Catholic called Xavier Perez, hence the unusual middle name that was such a godsend to an investigator. In the photographs Jett had given me, she looked both beautiful and vulnerable. Her skin was the colour of vanilla fudge and her huge brown eyes made her look like a nervous bambi peeping out from a halo of frizzy brown curls.

Jett and Moira had started dating in their early teens and they'd soon discovered that they both enjoyed writing songs. Moira wrote the poignant and enigmatic lyrics, Jett put them to music. She had never wanted to perform, seeing no need to compete with Jett's unique voice, but she'd done her best to organise gigs for him. He'd played a couple of local clubs, then she'd managed to get him a regular weekly spot in a new city centre wine bar. That had been the break they needed. Kevin, who'd bought the wine bar as a diversion from the family wholesale fashion business, immediately saw Jett's potential and informed the pair that he was going to manage them and to hell with the rag trade.

Seeing Jett now, it was hard to imagine what an enormous change it must have been for the two of them. Suddenly they were being wined and dined by Kevin Kleinman, a man who had a suit for every day of the week and then some left over.

Height, five foot, four inches, I typed in. She'd had a good figure too. The snapshots taken before Jett hit the top of the charts looked positively voluptuous. But later, she'd lost weight and her clothes had hung unbecomingly on her. Cutting through Jett's self-reproach, it seemed that Moira had felt increasingly insignificant as Jett became the idol of millions.

So she had fallen for the scourge of the music industry. I could see how it had happened. Drugs are everywhere in rock, from the fans at the concerts to the recording studios. With Moira, it had all started when Kevin was piling on the pressure for more songs for the third album. She'd started taking speed to stay awake, working through the night with Jett on new songs. Soon she'd moved on to the more intense but shorter high of coke. Then she'd started freebasing coke and before too long she'd been chasing the dragon. Jett hadn't had a clue how to cope, so he'd just ignored it and tried to lose himself in his music.

Then one night, he'd come home and she hadn't been there. She'd just packed her bags and gone. He'd looked for her in a halfhearted way, asking around her family and friends, but I suspected that deep down he'd felt a kind of relief at not having to deal with her mood swings and erratic behaviour any longer. Now, his fear of falling into musical oblivion had spurred him into taking action. I could see why his entourage were nervous. The Return of the Junkie was not a feature eagerly awaited at Colcutt Manor.

I finished inputting all my notes, and checked my watch. Half-past six. If I was lucky, I might just be able to short circuit some of the tedium of tracing Moira. Her unusual middle name made the search through any computerised records a lot easier. I picked up the phone and rang Josh, a friend of mine who's a financial broker. In exchange for a slap-up meal every few months, he obligingly does credit checks on individuals for Mortensen and Brannigan.

His job gives him access to computerised credit records for almost everyone in the British Isles. These records tell him what credit cards they hold, whether they have ever defaulted on a loan, and whether there have ever been County Court judgements against them for debt. Also, if you supply him with a person's full name and date of birth, he can usually come up with an address. Very handy. We could probably hack in to the system and do it ourselves, but we do like to keep things semi-legal when we can. Besides, I like having dinner with Josh.

The next call I made was to ask for something strictly illegal. One of my neighbours on the estate is a detective constable with the vice squad. He's always happy to earn the twenty-five pounds I slip him for checking people out on the police national computer. If Moira had any kind of criminal record, I'd know by morning.

There was nothing more I could do that night to trace Moira Pollock. It had been a hell of a day. All I wanted was to go out and kick the shit out of someone. So I decided to do just that.