Blood Never Dies (18 page)

‘And did he?’

She frowned. ‘Well, now you mention it, he didn’t. But that wasn’t unusual. We were always very fond of each other, but we had our separate lives. It wouldn’t surprise me not to hear from him for a couple of months – and vice versa. We tended to catch up when the parents came home, but this year they haven’t been home since February – Daddy had work to do in Canada, so he said they’d holiday on the west coast of America this summer.’

‘So you last heard from him – when?’

‘It would be – about the beginning of April, I suppose. About six weeks after Annie died.’

‘And you’ve no idea what he might have been doing since then?’

‘Not the slightest.’ She looked haunted now. ‘I should have tried to find out, shouldn’t I? I shouldn’t have just left him to his own devices. But I thought he was all right. And you know how it is. The days go by so quickly when you’re busy and you don’t notice how long it’s been. I never really have time to stop and think – there’s always something coming up. When you run your own business, it’s twenty-four-seven and three-six-five. I didn’t know he was so unhappy he would do something like that.’

He had felt sympathy with her until she said ‘twenty-four-seven and three-six-five’. But he squashed his linguistic sensibilities and said, ‘You don’t need to feel guilty. Everybody’s busy these days. And in fact, although I said it looked like suicide, I don’t think he did kill himself.’

She stared. ‘What? What do you mean?’

‘It looks,’ he said carefully, ‘rather as though someone killed him and then staged it to look like suicide.’

She was almost speechless. ‘But you . . . Why did you say—?’ She reddened. ‘You let me think—’

‘I wanted to give you time to get over the first shock. Now I have to ask you if you can think of anyone who might have had reason to harm your brother.’

‘No,’ she said, sounding bewildered. ‘I told you, I don’t know what he’s been doing these past few months. Before that – well, I don’t know who he knew. I never mixed in that circle. What are you saying – someone
murdered
him?’

‘I’m afraid it looks that way. Your brother was left-handed, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, from babyhood. They say left-handedness often goes with artistic talent. Mummy’s left-handed too. Daddy and I are both right-handed.’

‘The fatal wound seems to have been administered by a right-handed person. And there are other factors I can’t go into that suggest it was murder.’

‘I can’t believe it,’ she said flatly, staring at him as if to force him to recant. ‘People don’t get murdered. Not ordinary people.’

‘I’m not sure everyone would think of your brother as being an ordinary person,’ Slider said. ‘And he doesn’t seem to have led a humdrum life.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Not humdrum. Not Ben.’ And then she made a strange sound and put her hands over her face.

There was a little knot of people around Atherton’s desk – Hollis, Swilley and Atherton himself – looking over the shoulder of someone clattering away at the keyboard. As Slider moved across the room he saw it was Emily. She was in a business suit, and there was a flight bag on the floor beside her, from which he deduced – being the ace detective he was – that she had just got back from Paris and had called in to see Atherton on the way home.

No one looked up at him, so he said, ‘I know all about Ben Jackson now.
And
, he had a relationship with Kara.’

Swilley answered at him. ‘We know. That’s what we’re looking at.’

‘Emily knew,’ Atherton said. ‘As soon as we said Ben Jackson, she was off and running.’

Emily peered apologetically round the screen. ‘I remembered the various fusses. Well, it’s my job to keep up with the news. She died of heart failure from excessive use of cocaine.’

‘I know,’ said Slider sturdily.

‘We’ve looked at one of her pop videos,’ Atherton said with a mild shudder. ‘It’s important to try to remember that Kara comes from the Greek, meaning sweet melody.’

‘She’s a sexy dancer, though,’ Hollis said.

‘Violent hip thrusts, suggestive of someone with their skirt caught in a lift door, is not sexy.’

Hollis ignored him. ‘Guv, is it possible there was someone connected with Kara who blamed Ben Jackson for her death?’

‘Why should they?’ Slider asked.

‘Well, because he got her started as a soloist. She were just a backing singer before.’

‘I’m sure everyone in the business comes into contact with drugs,’ Slider said. ‘She’d have been backstage with the stars and the roadies and the hangers on long before she and Jackson – Corley – whatever – were an item. We’ll have to decide what to call this man,’ he added peevishly, ‘before he drives us all nuts. I think we should go with Corley from now on.’

‘What did you find out from the sister?’ Atherton asked.

‘Nothing much. Except that he
was
left-handed. He apparently rang her in early April to say he was going to be busy, wouldn’t say busy doing what, and said he might be away from home quite a bit, and not to ring him. And that’s the last she heard.’

‘April,’ said Swilley. ‘Just about when all this starts. So he deliberately cut himself off, took the flat under a false name, got the job as a porn star – what the hell is it all about?’

‘Porn star?’ said Emily, startled.

‘She did say the parents, though rich, did not pony up at the slightest demand,’ Slider said. ‘Wanted both children to stand on their own two feet. He was allowed to live at the family flat but had to earn his own living.’

‘So maybe he did the porn thing just for the money after all,’ said Hollis.

‘What porn thing?’ Emily pleaded.

‘But then why would he take on the rented flat?’ Swilley said, while Atherton answered Emily’s question in a murmur.

‘And it was the beginning of May when he got the job at Ransom’s,’ Slider pointed out. ‘What was he doing for the month before?’

‘Research,’ Swilley suggested.

‘More’s the point, what’s he been doing since?’ Hollis added. ‘He was out o’ Ransom’s by the end o’ May.’

‘Well, we all identify the questions very readily,’ Slider said. ‘What I’d like is someone to find some answers. Where’s everyone else?’

‘McLaren, Connolly, and Fathom are at the flat. Gascoyne was still out hunting pizza last we heard, and Mackay will have gone off to the clubs by now,’ said Atherton.

‘All right, well you can finish up and get off. Nothing more to do here tonight.’

‘What’ll you do?’ Atherton asked. ‘Emily and I are going for something to eat.’ He saw Slider was not really listening, and added provocatively, ‘We’re going to try that new Jewish-Italian place, Kosher Nostra.’

‘Thanks,’ Slider said vaguely, ‘but I want to talk to Jackson’s agent.’

‘Corley’s agent, boss,’ Swilley corrected. ‘Though that sounds wrong given he was Jackson when he needed an agent.’

‘Oh, blast the man,’ Slider said. ‘Too many names spoil the broth.’

‘As Mr Porson would say,’ came a composite murmur from the troops.

He reached for his telephone but it rang before he could touch it.

‘Bill, my old fruit bat!’ someone bellowed in his ear.

Tufnell Arcenaux from the forensic lab usually referred to himself as the bodily fluids man, and given his huge appetites in all fields of human enjoyment it was an apt sobriquet. With the reorganization of the service he was also now in charge of toxicology, which was fortunate for Slider. Tox results had always taken weeks in the pre-Tufty days, but now Tufty put a rocket under anything that was wanted for his old chum Bill.

Tufty was a huge man – six foot five and muscled to match – and he had a huge voice, a sonic boom that could have unclogged drains from thirty feet away. Slider always had to hold the receiver some distance from his ear or risk having his fillings shaken loose.

‘Tufty,’ he said mildly. ‘Is that you, or has Krakatoa erupted again?’

‘Sorry!’ Tufty howled at a slightly decreased volume. ‘People tell me I tend to shout a bit. I’ll try and lower the jezebels. How are you, anyway, my old banana? Getting any?’

‘Getting so much I’m thinking of opening a branch,’ Slider said. ‘How about you?’

‘You know me, old horse. Life affirmation is my creed. How’s the lovely lady?’

‘A bit thoughtful at the moment. Wondering whether to go for a more stressful job or give up on ambition.’

‘Bugger the way it always comes down to that,’ Tufty roared sympathetically. ‘Shinning up the ziggurat’s all very well, but like the gorilla and the waistcoat, you have to have the stomach for it. Any idea which way she’ll jump?’

‘None. I wish I had, then I could say the right things.’

‘You could give her an honest opinion.’

‘Haven’t got one. I can see arguments on both sides.’

‘Ah, yes, the curse of Libra. Well, chum, to take part you have to send off the entry form. Who dares wins. You can’t be in two minds without having two faces. And it’s the rolling stone that escapes getting cemented into the foundations of a dinky bungalow on the Chelmsford Bypass.’

‘Thank you, Old Moore.’

Tufty’s voice became a sympathetic bellow. ‘Chin up, old bean. You know what I’d do if I were in your shoes?’

‘You’d limp. Your feet are twice the size of mine. Have you rung up for a reason, or just to swap aphorisms?’

‘A for isms and L for leather. And T for tox work rushed through the system.’

‘You’ve got a result for me already?’

‘Miracles we do while you wait. The impossible probably not until tomorrow. The drug your corpse ingested was an old-fashioned barbiturate. Not enough to kill, just enough to put him to sleep – in the human, not the veterinary sense.’

‘Barbiturate?’

‘Phenobarbital, if you want to be picky. In injectable form it’s used to control seizure. As a sleeping pill it’s pretty much been superseded, but some doctors still prescribe it for people who are intolerant of the benzodiazepines, or find they don’t work for them. Trouble with insomnia, it’s largely self-diagnosed. Someone says old Morpheus is on permanent secondment, you can’t prove otherwise. You have to take their word for it, or—’

‘Or not.’

‘Quite.’

‘So easy enough to get hold of?’

‘Easy and peasy. You get it from your own GP if you know the right words, and if not, you can get it on the Internet these days. And the beauty of barbiturate is it comes in a white powder which dissolves readily in alcohol without leaving a taste. So you can slip it in your sipper and Bob’s your uncle.’

‘I see. Well, thanks, Tufty. That’s cleared up one thing. There were no capsule cases in the stomach.’

‘So I understand. Phenobarbital goes well with suicide or murder, but white powder’s a pain to carry about in your pocket, so if you didn’t find the handy container—’

‘Which we didn’t – it’s another pennyweight on murder’s side.’

‘And how’s the case going?’ Tufty asked kindly.

‘As smoothly as a Jerusalem artichoke through a pasta press.’

‘That smoothly? Ah well, keep buggering on, old gumshoe. You’ll get there. Eventually.’

The name Danny Ballantine had led Slider to expect another skinny young Scot like Ewan Delamitri, an expectation stubbornly not dispelled by the voice over the phone, which was older, richer and more undeniably English than it had any right to be.

Ballantine had said he would wait on at his office in Archer Street to speak to Slider, though it was past home-time. The office was above a vegan restaurant called SeEds, the extraneous capital in the middle giving Slider something to wonder about as he climbed the stairs. The large outer office, supplied with plenty of hard chairs for the hopeful or desperate, was empty and dark, but the door to the warmly-lighted inner office was open, and as Slider arrived a figure appeared in the doorway with a decanter full of amber liquid hospitably in hand.

‘Drink?’ he said. ‘Sun’s over the yardarm.’

‘Thanks,’ said Slider.

The man before him was as little like
his
Danny Ballantine as it was possible to be. In fact, he was nothing like any Danny Slider could have imagined, though he could have been a Dan or a Daniel. He was tall, well over six foot, and massive, with the figure of an Edwardian clubman straining against the waistcoat of his expensive and beautiful three-piece suit – which was finished off with a spotted bow-tie and a watch-chain across the embonpoint. He had thick, kinky dark hair, ferociously slicked back and down. Enormous glasses rested on a small, sharp nose like a little hard triangle in the middle of his wide, fat face, and he had so many spare tyres round his neck he looked as though his chin was resting on a stack of crumpets. But he moved briskly on exquisitely-shod feet, and his pudgy hands knew their business, as they arranged two cut-glass tumblers, poured generously, and injected a short stream from the siphon into one.

‘Soda?’ he offered. ‘’Ice?’

‘Just as it comes, thanks,’ said Slider.

‘Ah, a purist, eh? Well done.’

Slider had followed him back into the inner office, which was just as it ought to be, dim, mellow, book-lined and panelled, so much mahogany you could have reverse-engineered a rainforest. There was a vast antique desk, leather chairs, comforting lighting, and even a leather globe of the world in a mahogany stand which opened up to reveal the drinks cabinet inside. It was a superb piece of theatre. Yet when Slider managed to get a proper look at his face – hard to do with the fat and the chins and the big spectacles and the whole distracting air of anachronism – he was not that old, probably not above forty-two or so.

‘Well,’ he said, easing himself into the chair behind the desk and waving Slider to another. ‘Ben Jackson, eh? Have that chair, it’s the most comfortable. Cigar? Mind if I do? I don’t smoke during office hours, but I do like one when the day’s toil is over. I find it relaxing. Not that it all ends with office hours in this business, as I expect you can imagine. So what’s happened to Ben?’

‘When did you last see or speak to him?’ Slider countered.

Ballantine was lighting his cigar, but the eyes watching Slider through the initial puffs were thoughtful. ‘Like that, is it?’ he said, when he removed it from his mouth. ‘What’s he done? No, I understand, you won’t tell me until I’ve told you. Well, I won’t disguise he was one of my favourite clients. So much talent it was hard to know where to start with him. I was devastated when he went into journalism – terrible waste. But I never thought it would be permanent. He’d do it for a few months and get bored and come back to me. That boy’s capacity for boredom is terrifying, you know. And then there was that Kara business – you know about that?’