Blood Never Dies (22 page)

‘One of the support crew for a pop band. The Asset Strippers.’

‘That’s correct. He was one of the gofers. The friend who looked him up was one of the sound technicians – chap called James Harnett. He could hear music inside, playing quite loudly. He rang the bell, banged on the door, tried the phone, all to no avail. So he rang Guthrie’s sister, who lived in Barnsbury. She said she hadn’t heard from him, and once Harnett had convinced her he was worried, she came round with the key. She was only five minutes away. She let them in, and found Guthrie in his bedroom. The bedside lamp was on, and he was lying naked on top of the bedclothes. There was a mirror and glass tube on the bedside table, and traces of white powder round his nostrils.’

‘So who called you in?’

‘Harnett did. Apparently the sister wanted to call a doctor, but Guthrie was dead and cold, and Harnett was worried he would get into trouble for having been the one to find him. So he insisted on calling the police. But there was never any reason to suspect him. There were no marks on the body, no sign of any break-in or struggle. And the post-mortem established that death was due to an overdose of cocaine, causing electrical malfunction of the heart and syncope.’ He looked at Slider to see if he understood the medical terms.

Slider nodded. ‘So what were your particular concerns?’ he asked. ‘I can see there was something about it that bothered you.’

Care put down his cup and drummed his fingers a moment on the desk, as though considering whether to entrust Slider with the valuable contents of his mind.

‘You’re right,’ he said at last. ‘There were a couple of things. The lethal dose of cocaine was less than a gram, but it was pure. You understand what that means?’

Slider nodded again. Before it was sold to users, pure cocaine was cut with other materials – corn starch, vitamin c powder, icing sugar, even talcum powder. Cocaine seized on the street was typically little more than 20% pure – sometimes as low as 15%. Even at that strength, too much of it could disrupt the heart’s action; so suddenly to ingest pure cocaine would be very dangerous.

‘The traces of cocaine on the mirror and in the tube were also pure. But we found a large quantity of other cocaine in the flat – a whole kilogram bag and several wraps – all of which was already cut down to around eighteen per cent. There was no other pure on the premises.’

‘So Guthrie was a dealer?’

‘We weren’t able to establish that, but he wouldn’t have had such a large quantity in his possession for his own use. He must have been providing it at least for friends and acquaintances.’

‘Did you find any money?’

‘No, and there was no indication of any great wealth. It was a fairly tatty flat. He had an expensive television and sound system, but no large sums in the bank.’

‘Any indication where he might have got the stuff from?’

‘If we knew that, we’d have pursued it,’ Care said. ‘If he was a dealer, he wasn’t one of the organizers, but he must have been fairly high up the food chain. But we had nothing to go on. And he was dead. We passed what we had over to the drugs squad and left it at that. It’s their baby now.’

There was always so much to do, Slider thought, and this was a self-cauterised canker. No point in flogging a dead duck, as Mr Porson might say. He didn’t know that he wouldn’t have done the same. And you had to be careful about treading on the toes of special squads. They tended to know people . . .

‘What else worried you?’ he asked. Care looked enquiring. ‘You said there were a couple of things.’

‘Oh.’ He frowned. ‘Well, it probably isn’t significant. But the post-mortem showed that the testes were empty. Which suggested he had ejaculated very shortly before death.’

Slider’s scalp prickled. ‘So you think there might have been someone else there?’

‘Even if there was,’ he said defensively, ‘it doesn’t follow they had anything to do with it. He could just have easily have taken the pure after they’d left. Something he’d got for himself only, as a treat – that sort of idea. Or the person might have witnessed the death and made themselves scarce out of panic.’

‘When did the death take place?’

‘Some time during the previous evening or night. He was accounted for at a recording session, with a meeting afterwards, until ten o’clock. After that, he went off, and no one seems to have seen him or spoken to him again. No one that
we
know about, anyway.’

Slider suspected Care and his team hadn’t tried very hard, but that wasn’t a thought he could possibly voice.

‘Do you think I might possibly have the name and address of Guthrie’s sister?’ he asked with the maximum injection of politeness.

Guthrie’s sister, Joyce Finnucane, lived in a council flat in the Barnsbury district of Islington, but Slider caught up with her at a primary school just up the road, where she was working as a dinner lady. He found her in a wonderland of stainless steel, multiple burners, steam cabinets, gay nylon overalls and deep fat fryers, part of the dedicated team crafting that days’ culinary highlight, cottage pie and chips. He almost felt guilty about taking her away from so much delight, but she followed him willingly into a yard full of dustbins behind the kitchen where she lit a cigarette with the desperate urgency of a smoker just getting off a long-haul flight.

She was in her thirties, pale and rather pudgy, but with a hard mouth and eyes and a voice you could scour pans with. She had the look of someone who ‘knew her rights’ and would take offence with almost professional promptness at anything she thought infringed them.

‘What you dragging all that up again for?’ she demanded. ‘He’s dead. Can’t you lot leave him in peace?’

‘I’m sorry, I wouldn’t bother you if it wasn’t really important. Do you know who Jesse’s friends were?’

‘Didn’t have any,’ she said, on an exhalation. Slider managed not to flinch as it hit him full in the face. ‘He was always a loner, even from a kid. Left home as soon as he could and never went back. You wouldn’t think he lived just round the corner, number of times I see him of a year. Always remembered the kids’ birthdays, I’ll give him that – I got two. Bought ’em both bikes for Christmas. And he was talking about an Xbox next time. But sending a present’s not the same as being around for ’em. And they love their Uncle Jesse, my two – worship him. But he’s always too busy. I could count on the fingers o’ one hand the times he’s took ’em to a football match or the park or whatever.’

‘But you had the key to his flat?’

‘Yeah, he give me that, case of emergencies.’

‘Did you go there often?’

‘Never. When I see him, it was out. Pub, usually, or a restaurant. He’d get us tickets to his shows, sometimes. Tell you the truth, him and my Dean – my husband – didn’t see eye to eye. So it didn’t make for happy families, you know?’

‘Why didn’t Dean like him?’

She shrugged, dragging on the fag with a power that could have sucked the ink out of a biro. ‘Dean thought he was a bit slick, too full of himself. Reckoned Jess thought he was better than us.’

‘And did he?’

‘Jess? Nah. He was just a loner, like I said. Never had time for no one. But he was still my brother, all right? He loved me and I loved him, and that’s it and all about it.’

Slider could imagine the rows on the subject between husband and wife.

‘Did he have a girl friend?’

‘Nah. Never had time for that sort of thing.’

‘Boyfriend, then?’

‘Piss off! He wasn’t one o’ them. Nothing wrong with my Jesse. He had women when he wanted – just didn’t want a relationship with it.’

‘So he never talked about any particular woman? Never brought one with him when you met?’

‘Married to his job,’ she answered elliptically. ‘That’s all he ever cared about – his bloody job, running back and forth for them bloody Asset Strippers. It wasn’t just a day job, you know. He had to hang around them all the time, not just at work but when they went out and everything, case one of ’em wanted her fag lit or her arse scratched. Couldn’t do nothing for themselves. I said to him, you’re just a skivvy, that’s all. But he loved it. Sucker.’

Slider had come to the conclusion that Jessie Guthrie had not allowed his sister inside his life much. But there was one more question to ask, and he put it bluntly, to see what her reaction would be. ‘Did you know he was dealing drugs?’

‘Piss off!’ she said scornfully and at once, but her eyes gave her away, the alarm followed by the steely caution. ‘He never done nothing like that.’

‘It’s all right,’ Slider said soothingly, ‘I’m not trying to get you into trouble. It won’t come back on you if you tell me the truth, I promise. We know he was dealing. We found the stuff in his flat.’

‘Planted it, more like,’ she said, but it was a routine objection. Behind the automatic hostility she was worried.

‘Did he ever mention anything about where he got the stuff? Mention any names or places? Anything at all that you can remember. It’s very important,’ he added beguilingly.

She remained unbeguiled. ‘He never,’ she said emphatically, ‘dealt no drugs.’ She threw down the fag end and ground it out with a vehemence that suggested it should be Slider’s head down there. ‘I gotter go.’

‘What did he do before he started working for the Asset Strippers?’ Slider asked, a last bid to catch her attention. ‘Did he have a trade, or training in anything?’

She paused, considering why he was asking. But she said, ‘Yeah, he went to stage school.’ Her sisterly feelings had overcome her reluctance to cooperate. She spoke with pride. ‘He wanted to be a dancer. Not bally, I don’t mean – in shows and that. He was good, an’ all. He got parts. He did
Starlight Express
in Glasgow and
Guys and Dolls
in Bournemouth, and then he was in
Les Miserables
for two years.’ She pronounced it the English way. ‘He was brilliant. It was a bloody rotten shame he give it all up for that stupid job. He was nothing but a skivvy to that lot, but he could have been up on the stage himself. I told him he’d regret it. And now look where it’s got him.’ Tears jumped into her eyes, surprising her as much as Slider. She dashed them away impatiently, wiped her nose with the back of her hand, tugged her nylon hat down more tightly, and said, ‘Now if you’ve
quite
finished.’

‘Thank you for your help,’ Slider said.

‘Been a pleasure talking to you, I
don’t
think,’ she said, and stalked away, honour satisfied.

What a crushing retort, Slider thought humbly, and took his leave. Trying to fit these pieces together in his mind was like doing a jigsaw puzzle from the back, with the picture face-down. Things were obviously connected, but you couldn’t see what they meant.

But ‘hear a new word, and you’ll hear it again within the day’, as his mother used to say. Corley had left the Hot Box saying he was going to be a dancer. Guthrie had been a dancer who had left to become a gofer. What the heck was that all about?

‘W
ell, Corley never trained as a dancer,’ Atherton said, finishing his prawn and avocado sandwich in Slider’s room, ‘though he was an actor, in Footlights. I suppose he might have done some dancing, but as far as we know not professionally. And why on earth would he say that to Villiers, when he didn’t need to say anything? He could have just said he’d got a better job and left it at that.’

‘It is a bit odd,’ Slider said, throwing the wrapper from his cheese ’n’ pickle into the bin and wiping his hands on his handkerchief.

‘More fishy than a sushi restaurant. Unless Connolly’s right and he was laying a trail of breadcrumbs. But what was he up to?’

‘The similarities between Guthrie’s death and Corley’s are suggestive,’ Slider said. ‘In both cases they were found alone and it was meant not to look like murder – Corley’s suicide and Guthrie’s accidental overdose. Both had their clothes off and in Guthrie’s case sex had certainly been had, while in Corley’s we know someone else was there. Given there was no struggle, it looks as though a tryst of some sort was involved.’

‘Right, the killer—’

‘If there was a killer.’

‘Let’s cast caution to the winds for a minute and assume it was murder – the killer sets up some kind of romantic encounter, does away with the victim when they’re in a vulnerable condition, and has it away on their toes, in Corley’s case with just about everything, including the remains of his fifteen thousand pounds, and in Guthrie’s—’

‘Possibly with his secret store of cash,’ Slider concluded, ‘given that if he was a dealer and it wasn’t in his bank account, it must have been somewhere.’

They looked at each other in silence. ‘So what does it all mean?’ Atherton asked at last.

‘Badgered if I know,’ Slider admitted. ‘I’m beginning to think maybe Mr Porson was right, and he—’

One of the uniforms, Willans, appeared in his open doorway, tentatively tapping on the architrave in apology. ‘Sorry, sir – got some bad news.’

‘Is there another sort?’ Slider sighed.

‘D’Arblay’s called in – he was the one went round to Tommy Flynn’s house to bring him in. Apparently, he’d dead. Flynn, sir. And it’s not an accident.’

Despite the address of Palliser Road being West Kensington, it was in fact still in the borough of Hammersmith, which was a great relief all round, especially as the Kensington lot were known to be very fussy about rival Vogons on their ground. By the time Slider and Atherton got there, two more uniforms had taken up position, one on the door and one on the gate, keeping the interested neighbours back, while D’Arblay was at the top of the stairs guarding the door to the flat, and little Jilly Lawrence, one of the female PCs, had corralled Mrs Panda from downstairs, who was hysterical and enjoying it.

‘A neighbour’s taken her two kids,’ she whispered to Slider. ‘I don’t think she knows anything but she’s the sort to make trouble.’

‘Hang in there,’ Slider said. ‘I’ll come and speak to her in a minute, but I want to take a quick look upstairs first.’

On the upper landing, handsome, blue-eyed D’Arblay was looking a little pale, but resolute. From inside the flat the music was playing, loudly but not at offensive level, unless you were trying to get to sleep.