Dead Beat (27 page)

“For God’s sake,” Kevin exploded. “This is ridiculous. I never heard of anything so bloody silly. What do you think this is? Some crappy detective novel? Showdown in the drawing room? Why the hell can’t you just tell Jett like you’re paid to do?”

“Shut up, Kevin,” Jett said forcefully. “I gave Kate a free hand. She’ll handle it. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “The reason I want you all together is that I have things to say that affect each and every one of you. And there are people who know more than they’ve told, for whatever reason. Once they know they’re no longer suspects, they’ll be more willing to give me the full picture.”

“Can’t you give us some idea now? I don’t fancy spending another night under the same roof as a killer,” Kevin protested.

I had to hand it to him. He had bottle. Either that or the arrogance of the criminal who thinks he’s cleverer than the investigators. “No. All I will say is that Moira was killed because she knew too much. Someone in this house got greedy. They were trying to make a fast buck. And purely by chance, Moira found out. And once I’ve made a little trip across the Pennines tomorrow to

I didn’t hang around waiting for a response. Within five minutes, I was heading back to town. I’d done my best to flush Kevin out. Now I was going to have to cover my back.

   I double-tracked the busy line between Essen and Utrecht and monitored the effect on my station boxes. Railroad Tycoon, the ultimate computer strategy program, was doing the trick of taking my mind off the waiting game. It’s not just little boys who like playing trains.

I’d been building my trans-European railroad for about an hour when the doorbell rang. I froze the game and went through to the hall. The security lights blazed down on a uncomfortable-looking Kevin. Surprise, surprise. I was a little taken aback by the full frontal approach, but if he’d been planning to take me by surprise, he would have been foiled by the lights as soon as he got within twenty yards of any of the windows. I must remember to tell clients that they’re a great deterrent against potential murderers.

“Can we talk, Kate?” he said as soon as I opened the door.

“I was actually having an evening off, Kevin. Can’t it wait till tomorrow?”

“We’ve got some things to clear up that won’t wait.”

“We do? You’d better come in then,” I said grudgingly, leading the way back through to the living room. I gestured to one of the sofas, and he perched on the edge.

I sat down opposite him, deliberately not offering him a drink. I wanted to keep him edgy. “What did you want to talk to me about?” I inquired.

“You’re setting me up,” he said abruptly, lacing his fingers together tightly. “I didn’t kill Moira, and you’re trying to make it look like I did.”

“I am? What makes you say that?” I asked coolly.

He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. “I overheard your conversation with Jett last night. I picked up the extension because I was waiting for a call.”

“On Jett’s private line? You’ll have to try harder than that, Kevin.”

He sighed. “All right, all right. I picked it up because I was nosy, OK? That suit you better?”

“Much better. I prefer it when people tell me the truth. You overheard our conversation. So?”

Kevin unlocked his fingers and massaged the back of his neck with one hand. “I’ll come clean. I admit I’ve been doing one or two side deals that might not be strictly kosher.”

“You mean you’ve been ripping Jett off with fake merchandise. Let’s stick to plain English, Kevin.”

He flinched. “OK, but that doesn’t mean I killed Moira. I don’t even think she knew anything about it.”

“She didn’t tell you she’d seen you and Fat Freddy together?” I was intrigued by the line he was taking. I had to admit what he was saying wasn’t impossible. After all, at the time of Moira’s death, Maggie still hadn’t found out exactly what line of work Fat Freddy was currently in. For all Moira knew, it could have been nothing to do with Jett.

“No, she didn’t. And if she’d known about it, do you really think she’d have kept her mouth shut? She was quick enough to badmouth me to Jett and to anyone else who’d listen about her bloody royalties money. She couldn’t have resisted telling him anything she found to blacken my name with,” Kevin protested.

The psychology sounded credible, I had to admit. But my belief in his guilt didn’t just depend on one thing. I was torn between letting him stew till the following evening, and fronting him up with what I suspected, to see if I could nail him once and for all. Arrogance won, for a change. “You must have wanted rid pretty badly,” I observed.

Kevin gave me an admiring smile, all expensive dentistry and insincerity. “Nice try, Kate. I’ll admit that if she’d said she was leaving, I’d have carried her bags to the station. But murder? That’s not my style.”

“You had plenty of motive, though.”

“Me?” Kevin threw his arms out in a gesture of supplication. “Kate, if I bumped off every musician who made my life difficult, I’d have been in Strangeways a long time ago.”

“I hear Moira thought that’s where you should be.”

Kevin’s eyelids fluttered as his body tensed. “Look, you keep making these innuendos, but I’d suggest you don’t repeat them outside these four walls.”

“I’m talking about money, Kevin. Not just the business with Fat Freddy, or Moira’s back royalties. She was convinced you were doing some fancy footwork with Jett’s cash. Otherwise, why would he be on the constant treadmill of tours and albums? Most people of his stature who’ve been in the game as long as he has take it a lot easier than him. A few big stadium dates, an album every eighteen months or so. But according to Moira, Jett had to keep working to keep paying the bills. So where was all the money?” I pinned him with a hard stare, and I was gratified to see his hands grip his knees tightly.

“Look, I told you. If she’d had any proof of anything like that, do you think I’d still be around?” he exploded. “She was full of shit! She loved to stir it. I told her a dozen times, her cash was all accounted for. It was tied up in a high interest investment account that I have to give three months’ notice of withdrawal on. Out of that tiny, insignificant fact, she built a whole edifice of poisonous rumor. That shows you the kind of woman she was.”

“Frankly, I’m amazed. I’d have expected you all to fall on her neck weeping tears of joy and gratitude, given the way Jett’s career’s been going of late,” I retaliated.

Kevin’s head seemed to shrink into his shoulders, like a tortoise in retreat. “Listen, Kate, I said when you started looking for Moira that we were looking at trouble. She was always a manipulative bitch. She loved playing us all off against each other, always had. OK, Jett’s been going through a difficult patch in creative terms, but he would have come good again, with or without Moira. He just got this crazy obsession that he needed her. So we all got lumbered with her. She was only through the door five minutes when she had us all at each other’s throats. I’ve told you already. We’re not killers. We’re putting an album together, that’s the number one priority. No one would jeopardize that by making us the focus of all these shitty stories in the press,” he added.

“I thought Neil was controlling the press for you.”

Kevin snorted. “Might as well try to knit a bed jacket out of a mountain stream as try to control those toe-rags. Neil’s done his best, but he’s got an uphill struggle on his hands. God knows where they’ve got some of this stuff from. I mean, one of them’s even got some tale about Moira and Tamar being at each other’s throats. I’ve a good mind to sue, except that it would only cause more bad publicity.”

“You’d have a job suing.” I couldn’t resist it.

“What d’you mean?” he asked indignantly.

“I don’t think you’d have any grounds,” I said sweetly. “But let’s leave that aside for a minute,” I continued. “Cast your mind back to the evening of Moira’s death.”

He butted in eagerly. “I suppose you want to know what I was doing when Moira bought it?”

I nodded. He nodded. We were like a pair of toy dogs on a car’s parcel shelf. “No problem,” he said. “I’d been over to Liverpool for a business meeting and I got back around nine. I stuck my head round the TV room door and said hi to Jett and Tamar. Then I nipped up to my office to make a few phone calls. Around ten, I went downstairs and made myself a steak sandwich, then I popped down to the studio for a word with Micky. That must have been getting on for eleven. He was up to his eyes in it, so I left him to it and went back up to the TV room. Gloria was watching Dead Babies on
The Late Show
, and I sat in for a while. I went back down to the studio about quarter to twelve, and listened to a couple of tracks with Micky, then I hit the sack. Next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose.”

It was just detailed enough to be credible, if a bit glib. “You don’t have any problem with your memory, do you? Not like Micky?”

Kevin pulled a face. “Nose like mine, Kate, you don’t mess about with it, if you catch my drift. Anything other than music goes out of Micky’s head like water down a drain. Besides, I’ve already been through it once for the boys in blue. I was there twice, and he can’t deny it.”

“Did you see anyone near the rehearsal room?” I asked.

“Afraid not. The whole thing’s a mystery to me. I can’t accept it

I ignored the pathetic attempt at a red herring. “You say you went up to bed after you’d spoken to Micky?”

“That’s right. You saw me come downstairs yourself,” he pointed out, his tone grievance incarnate.

“Precisely. And do you normally go to bed in a suit and tie?”

His eyes widened, and the fingers of one hand started to beat a nervous tattoo on his knee. “Just because I hadn’t actually gone to bed yet doesn’t mean a thing.”

“You’d been upstairs nearly two hours. And you hadn’t even loosened your tie, Kevin. That’s not normal behavior. And in a murder investigation, anything that’s not normal behavior is automatically suspicious. So what was going on?”

Kevin took a deep breath, leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face. “If you must know,” he said, his words curiously muffled, “I was going out. I haven’t always shacked up in a grace and favor corner of Jett’s house, you know. I’ve got a home of my own, Kate, a beautiful place down the road in Prestbury. Queen Anne style house, five bedrooms, gym, jacuzzi, swimming pool, the works. The wife lives there. When we split up, I moved in at Colcutt temporarily while I sorted things out. Only, my wife, she’s screwing me for every penny she can get her hands on. And she’s fucked off on a skiing holiday with her new boyfriend. I was going round to burgle the house.” He raised his head and stared defiantly at me.

“In a suit and tie?” I blurted out incredulously.

“I thought it would be the least suspicious thing to be wearing if anyone saw me or if I got stopped by the police,” he said lamely. “I know it sounds stupid, but she’d got me so wound up, I just wanted to get back at her.”

“And make a few bob at the same time? That’s some excuse, Kevin. God, you’re pathetic.”

“I might be pathetic in your eyes, but I’m not a bloody killer,” he flared up.

This wasn’t working out at all as I’d imagined. In my scenario, he was going to probe to find out what I knew then mount a

I took a long swig of my drink and settled back to deliver the clincher. “Can you explain something to me, Kevin? If you didn’t kill Moira, how is it that you knew exactly how she’d been murdered before the police told everyone?”

He looked completely nonplussed. Gotcha, I thought. Prematurely, as it turned out. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said with an air of bewilderment. “I knew the same time as everyone else. When the police interviewed me.”

I shook my head. “Not what I’ve been told. According to my witness, you knew how Moira had died by the time the police released you from the blue drawing room, a couple of hours after the murder.”

“That’s not true,” he cried, desperation in his voice. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if checking the escape routes. “Who told you that? They’re lying! They’re all lying. They’re trying to discredit me.” For the first time, his smart-alec composure had cracked wide open. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this at all.

“You’re the one who’s lying, Kevin. You had means, motive and opportunity. You killed Moira, didn’t you?”

“No,” he shouted, jumping to his feet. “I didn’t. You bitch, you’re trying to set me up! Somebody’s trying to push me out. First Moira, now someone else. Tell me who told you those lies!”

He lunged at me. I pushed myself sideways on the sofa. He crashed into the arm of the sofa, letting out an “oogh” of pain. But he kept coming at me, yelling, “Tell me, tell me.”

I couldn’t find enough space to use any of my boxing moves on him. He threw himself on me, gripping me by the throat. His paranoia seemed to lend him extra strength. I’d miscalculated. This was something I couldn’t handle myself. Red spots danced in front of my eyes, and I could feel myself retching and fainting.

   I opened my eyes to a huge, out-of-focus face inches from my own, like a sinister Halloween mask. I blinked and shook my head, and realized it was Richard, his face a mixture of fear and concern. “You all right, Brannigan?” he demanded.

“Mmm,” I groaned, carefully probing my tender, bruised neck. Richard sat down heavily beside me and hugged me. Looking over his shoulder, I could see Kevin’s legs. The rest of him was hidden under Bill’s bulk. My boss was sitting astride Kevin, looking triumphant.

“Would someone pass me the phone?” he said calmly. “I need to call the garbage disposal people.” A muffled grunt escaped from the body under him. He obligingly shifted his position slightly.

“On the table, Richard,” I told him, and he went to fetch it. Bill punched in a number and asked for Cliff Jackson.

“Inspector? This is Bill Mortensen of Mortensen and Brannigan. I’d like to report an attempted murder,” he began when he was finally connected. “Yes, that’s right, an attempted murder. Kevin Kleinman has just tried to strangle my partner, Miss Brannigan.”