Dead Beat (5 page)

My reply was drowned by Neil, who called across, “You’re really going to be doing all of us a big favor, 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

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, emphasizing 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-colored 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

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 Château 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 realize 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 realize 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

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

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 prized 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

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 organize 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 center 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 selfreproach, 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

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 computerized 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 computerized 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 into 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 neighbors 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.

   I shook my head to clear the sunburst of stars that filled my vision, trying to dodge the next blow. The woman who was bearing down on me was a good three inches taller and twenty pounds heavier than me and there was a mean look in her eyes. I tried to match her glare and circled her warily. She feinted a punch at me, but that opened up her defenses and I swung my leg up and round in a short, fast arc. It caught her in the ribs. Even through her body protector, it winded her. She crashed at my feet, and I felt the last of the day’s tensions flow out of me.