Dead Beat (6 page)

It was a burglar who got me into Thai boxing three years ago. Dennis O’Brien is what I like to think of as an honest villain. Although he feeds and clothes his wife and kids with the proceeds of other people’s hard work, he’s got his own rigid moral code that he adheres to more firmly than most of the supposedly honest citizens I know. Dennis would never rob an old lady, never use shooters, and he only steals from people he thinks can afford to be robbed. He never indulges in mindless vandalism, and always tries to leave houses as tidy as possible. He’d never grass a mate, and the one thing he hates more than anything else is a bent copper. After all, if you can’t trust the police, who can you trust?

I’d been having a drink with Dennis one evening, asking his advice about an office I needed to have a quiet little look round. In return, I was answering his questions about how I work. He’d been outraged when I’d revealed I had no self-defense skills.

“You want your head mending,” he exploded. “There’s a lot of very naughty people out there. They’re not all like me, you know. Plenty of villains don’t think twice about hitting a woman.”

I’d laughed and said, “Dennis, I deal in white-collar crime. The

He’d interrupted, saying, “Bollocks, Kate. Never mind work, living where you live, you need martial arts. I wouldn’t bring the milk off the doorstep in your street without a black belt. Tell you what, you meet me tomorrow night and I’ll have you sorted in no time.”

“Sorted” meant taking me to the club where his own teenage daughter was junior Thai boxing champion. I’d had a good look around, decided that the showers and the changing rooms were places where I’d be prepared to take my clothes off, and signed up there and then. I’ve never regretted it. It keeps me fit and gives me confidence when I’m up against the wall. And time has shown that just because a man has a fifty grand salary and a company Scorpio it doesn’t mean he won’t resort to violence when he’s cornered. As long as the British government never takes us down the criminally insane road of the USA, where every two-bit mugger totes a gun, I guess it’s all I’ll need to keep me alive.

Tonight, I’d got what I came for. As I showered afterwards, my whole body felt loose and relaxed. I knew I could go home and listen sympathetically to Richard without biting his head off. And I knew that in the morning I’d be raring to go on the trail of Billy Smart and Moira Pollock.

I got home just after nine with a carrier bag bursting with goodies from the Leen Hong in Chinatown. I let myself into Richard’s house via the conservatory and found him sprawled on the sofa watching
A Fish Called Wanda
for what must have been the sixth time, a tall glass of Southern Comfort and soda beside him on the floor. Judging by the ashtray, he’d smoked a joint in tribute to each time he’d seen the movie. On the other hand, maybe he just hadn’t emptied it for a week.

“Hi, Brannigan,” he greeted me without moving. “Is the world still out there?”

“The important bits of it are in here,” I reported, waving the bag in the air. “Fancy some salt and pepper ribs?”

That got a reaction. It’s depressing to think that a Chinese takeaway provokes more excitement in my lover than my arrival. Richard jumped off the sofa and hugged me. “What a woman,” he exclaimed. “You really know what to give a man when he’s down.”

He let me go and seized the bag from my hand. I went to his kitchen for some plates, but as soon as I looked in and saw the mound of dirty dishes in the sink, I gave up the idea. How Richard can live like this is beyond me, but I’ve learned the hard way that his priorities are different from mine. A dishwasher is never going to win a contest with an Armani suit. And I refuse to fall into the trap of washing his dishes for him. So I simply took a couple of pairs of chopsticks from a drawer, picked up the kitchen roll and headed back for the living room before Richard polished off all the food. I know from bitter experience just how fast he can go through Chinese food when the dope-induced raging munchies get him in their grip.

I was pissed off that I couldn’t tell him about my assignment from Jett, because I really needed to pick his brains. However, Richard was still smarting from his humiliation the previous evening, and it didn’t take much prompting from me to put some more flesh on the bare bones of my information. The only hard part was getting him off the subject of Neil Webster.

“I just don’t understand it,” he kept saying. “Neil Webster, for God’s sake. Nobody, I mean nobody, in the business has got a good word for the guy. He’s ripped off more people than I’ve had hot spring rolls. He got fired from the
Daily Clarion
for fiddling expenses, you know. And when you think that every journalist in the history of newspapers has fiddled their expenses, you begin to realize just what a dickhead the guy must be.

“He’s been in more barroom brawls than anybody else I know. And he treats people like shit. Rumor was, his first wife had a lot more black eyes than hot dinners from him. After he got the bullet from the
Clarion
, he set up as a freelance agency in Liverpool. He was bonking this really nice woman who worked for the local paper there. He persuaded her to bankroll him in his new venture. He even promised to marry her. On the day of the wedding, he left her standing like a pillock at the register office. That’s when he took off to Spain. After he’d gone, she discovered he’d left her with a fivegrand phone bill, not to mention a load of other debts. Then her boss found out she’d been putting him down in the credits book for payments for jobs he hadn’t actually done, so she got the boot.

“Maybe Kevin’s got something on Neil, something to keep him in line with,” I suggested.

“Dunno,” Richard mumbled through his Chinese. He swallowed. “I guess it was just that Jett wasn’t bothered enough about who did it to hold out for me.”

“Perhaps Kevin wants to make sure it’s a whitewash job,” I tried.

Richard snorted with laughter. “You mean he thinks he can keep Neil on a leash? He thinks he can tell Neil exactly what to do and Neil will do it? Shit, he’s in for a rude awakening. Neil will feather his own nest, regardless of Kevin laying down the law.”

“Yes, but at the end of the day, Neil’s not a rock journalist. You know exactly what stones to turn over, where to start looking if you wanted to dish some dirt, to get behind the headlines to the real story. But Neil doesn’t even know where to start, so to some extent, he’s going to have to go with whatever Kevin feeds him. And they’ve got him right where they want him, you know. According to Jett, Neil’s got an office and everything right there at Colcutt. He’s actually living there while he does the book.”

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Richard pounced. “Looking after number one. And he’s the only one who will come out of this on the up, I’d put money on it. Kevin might think he can control Neil more than he could me, but I’d give you odds that Neil will end up biting the hand that feeds him, just you wait and see.”

“Sounds like a bad deal for Jett.”

“Wouldn’t be the first time Kevin’s done that. And it won’t be the last.”

That sounded fascinating. And it was a good way to get off Neil and on to the other members of Jett’s entourage. “How do you mean?” I asked sweetly, helping myself to more vermicelli before it all disappeared into the human dustbin.

“Always seems to me that Jett has to work a lot harder than other people at his level in the business. I’d love to pin Kevin down as to why that is.”

“Maybe he just likes it,” I suggested.

Richard shook his head. “Not the amount of stuff he does,” he

I put some of the lyrics down to sour grapes, but I filed the general melody away for future reference. As Richard tore into the spicy pork, I tried another strategy. “Couldn’t you go ahead anyway and write the unauthorized biography, warts and all?” I asked. “You must know a lot about the things that Jett wouldn’t necessarily want to make public. Like the split with … Moira, wasn’t it?”

“Sure, I could spill any amount of beans,” Richard agreed. “But I don’t know if I want to do that. I mean, Jett’s a mate.”

“He’s got a funny way of showing it,” I mumbled through a mouthful of beef koon po.

“It would be the last exclusive I got from him.”

“There are plenty more people in the rock business who trust you,” I replied.

“But an awful lot of them wouldn’t be happy about talking to me if I’d dropped Jett in it,” Richard reasoned.

“Surely they’d understand why you’d done it?” We were going down a side alley that wasn’t taking me any further, but I couldn’t help myself. Offering support to Richard was a lot more important to me than helping Jett.

Richard shrugged. “I don’t know. But anyway, there wouldn’t be enough of a market for two books. Jett’s not quite in the international megastar league.”

I got up and helped myself to a bottle of Perrier from the executive drinks fridge Richard keeps in the living room. It had

Wonders will never cease. Richard stopped eating. “You know, Brannigan, you just might have something there … If I flogged it on the quiet, they could put a staff reporter’s byline on it and that would protect my other contacts.”

That was enough to open the floodgates. I knew that when he was sober in the cold light of morning, Richard would have changed his mind about plastering Jett across the front pages of the gutter press. But by the time we made our amorous way to bed a couple of hours later, as far as Jett and his entourage were concerned, I had picked Richard’s brains as clean as he’d picked the salt and pepper ribs.

   The following morning, the sun was shining and I was full enough of the joys of spring to cycle into work. I was in the office even before Shelley, keying in all the information Richard had unwittingly given me the night before. I couldn’t imagine how it could be relevant, but I’d rather have it neatly stored in my database just in case. It’s a hell of a lot more reliable than my memory, especially when you consider how many brain cells shuffle off this mortal coil with every vodka and grapefruit juice. God help me if my computer ever gets the taste for Stolichnaya.

A few minutes after nine, Shelley put a call through to me. It was my friendly neighborhood copper. Derek’s a career constable. He doesn’t like the hassle that his seniors have to live with, so he tries to keep his head down whenever promotion is suggested. He does, however, like the vice squad. It makes him feel virtuous and he likes the perks. I’ve yet to meet a thirsty vice cop.

“Hi, Kate,” Derek greeted me cheerfully. “I popped round to the house, but I couldn’t get a reply, so I thought I’d try a long shot and call you at the office.”

“Very funny,” I replied. “Sorry I missed you, but some of us have to work long hours keeping the streets safe.”

He chuckled. “With your respect for the police, Kate, you really should have stuck to being a lawyer. Any road, I’ve got what you wanted. Your young lady does indeed have a record. First was five years ago. Soliciting. Fifty pound fine. There are three others for soliciting, ending up with two years’ probation just over a year ago. There’s also Class A possession charge. A small amount of heroin, personal use. She got a three hundred pound fine for that, but the

I scribbled frantically to keep up with his sad recital of what had become of the talented writer of Jett’s best lyrics. “What address have you got?”

“I’ve got as many addresses as there are offenses. All in the Chapeltown area of Leeds.”

Just what I needed. I didn’t know Leeds well, but I knew enough to know that this was bedsitterland. The kind of area where junkies and prostitutes rub shoulders with the chronically poor and students who try to convince themselves there’s something glamorous about such Bohemian surroundings. It isn’t an easy belief to sustain, especially after the murderous depredations of the Yorkshire Ripper ten years ago. I copied down the three latest addresses as Derek read them out at dictation speed. I had no real hopes of them but at least I now knew that when Moira had fled from Jett she’d headed over the Pennines. It was a start.

I thanked Derek and promised to drop his money in that evening. It looked like I was going to have to go over to Leeds, which meant I wouldn’t be looking after the Smart brothers for another day. That didn’t worry me as much as it perhaps should have, because they’d followed an identical pattern on the two previous Thursdays. The days I still needed to keep watch were Mondays and Tuesdays, when they did most of their irregular deliveries. I knew if Bill was worried about their surveillance he could bring in one of the freelances that we occasionally use for routine jobs when we’re overstretched. The extra cash we were making on Jett would more than cover the outlay.

Before I left, I gave Josh a quick call to see if his computer searches had come up with anything. Like Derek, all he had for me was bad news. When she left Jett, Moira had had a five-star credit rating. Within two years of her departure, she’d run up a string of bad debts that made me wince. She owed everybody—credit cards, store accounts, hire purchase, two major bank loans. There were several County Court judgements against her, and a handful more still pending. The court hadn’t been able to find her to serve the papers. That really filled me with confidence. But it also

I left the office by half past nine and cycled home, where I changed into a pair of jogging pants that were past their best and a green Simply Red road crew sweatshirt, one of the few donations from Richard that hadn’t been dispatched straight back next door. If I was going down those mean streets, then I wanted to make damn sure I looked a bit mean myself. I pulled on a pair of hi-top Reeboks and a padded leather jacket that was a bit scuffed round the edges. I picked up the last bottle of mineral water from the fridge and threw a packet of fresh pasta with yesterday’s sell-by date into the bin. I made a mental note to hit the supermarket on my way home.

I didn’t want to risk getting snarled up in the crosstown traffic, so I took the longer but faster motorway route out to the western edge of the C-shaped almost-orbital motorway and picked up the M62 to cross the bleak moors. Within the hour, I was driving out of Leeds city center north into Chapeltown, singing along with Pat Benatar’s
Best Shots
to lift my spirits.