Kill For Love (26 page)

“You called your last album
The Sandman
.”

“I did.”

“Can you tell me why?”

He shook his head. “No. I
cannot.” Then, forestalling any further questions, he began to play the record.

“Mr Sandman, bring me a dream, make him the cutest that I’ve ever seen…”
sang an all -girl a-cappella Fifties American group.

It sounded to Kate like the kind
of pop song a child might like to sing along to; but to Gadden it was more than
a song as he began weeping openly, tears running into his stubble, his head
bowed forward into his hands, his fingers clutching into his long hair.

He was falling apart mentally,
retiring just in time.

It took some moments after the
record had ended before he was able to regain his composure. When he spoke his
voice was cracked and gasping. “Well, there you are, Kate you’ve seen something
no-one else has ever seen. Jesse Gadden crying.”

“What about a final record?”

He shook his head. “It might be
breaking the rules a bit, but, if it’s all right with you, the last song will
be one of my own. You’ll hear it pretty soon at the concert.”

“And its significance in your
life?”

“You’ll see.” He looked at his
watch again. “Now, I think it might be time to get ready. They’ll be coming for
me soon.”

She put up a hand. “One last
question. Why did you want to be interviewed?”

He shrugged. “Ah, well, you know
us Catholics, always wanting to make a good act of contrition to purify the
soul before going out and having a hell of night.” He stood up. “Come with me,
Kate. And keep your camera running. Film everything. Come and see how they turn
little Jesse Gadden Monaghan into a superstar. You’ll be amazed. I always am.
You never know, if you get this right, you might even win one of those
fly-on-wall, cinéma
vérité
prizes you TV people like so much.”

And, after waiting as she
unclipped her camera, he led her from the room.

                                               
Chapter
Forty Six

They were waiting for him at the
top of the stairs, the make-up artists and the dressers along with Kerinova and
assorted, radiant young helpers. Kate followed as the retinue entered a
dressing room suite, where, slipping away his clothes, they ushered him into a
shower; after which came the hair washing and the shaving. Finally a masseur
loosened his muscles, as, under a small towel, he lay naked and silent on a
bunk, his body thinner than she remembered, his smooth, hairless skin paler.
Around him flunkies picked up what he dropped. Kerinova leant against the
dressing room wall and watched.

Kate filmed everything.

At last, pulling on a gown, he climbed
into a chair and examined his face in a large mirror. The chief make-up artist,
a thin, androgynous girl, pursed her lips and waited. Eventually he smiled, as
though in inner conversation with his reflection, then nodded, and the girl
went to work. It was already after eight o’clock. Less than two hours to the
concert.

Panning around, Kate's camera now
took in the stacked bundles of unopened messages from well-wishers, the gardens
of flowers still wrapped in cellophane and already dying because no-one had
thought to put them in water, and the young coterie of silent Glee Club
favourites whose names she'd never caught, but who were watching, envying,
every movement of the make-up girl’s hands.

 
It took a little time, but eventually the
miracles were worked, the abundant Jesse Gadden hair dried and the make-up
applied, and once again he was beautiful. All that remained was for him to
dress. Usually he wore black for concerts, but for tonight's appearance he'd
selected cream silk trousers and a plain, cream, smock shirt. Three identical
costumes hung from a rail. On being offered one he frowned as he found a fault
in the stitching of the lining, dropped it on to the floor, and chose another.
Then very carefully he stepped into his stage suit, his eyes never leaving the
mirror.

By nine o’clock the preparations
were complete. Jesse Gadden was ready for his farewell appearance.

A light November rain was falling
as four stretched limousines threaded swiftly through the streets of Chelsea past flurries of
waving fans, their faces glowing in the flames from candles they held. Gadden
and Kerinova sat together in the back seat of the second car and Kate alone in
a middle row.
T
here was little
light, but Gadden insisted she filmed him as they drove. "Then there’ll be
a real video diary of the evening, Kate. Something to look at in years to come."

At Notting Hill Gate the car
stopped at a red light and Kerinova took a hand off the beaded, silver bag she
was carrying to block the public's view. For a second Kate caught Gadden
looking at the Estonian, and noticed a glow of excitement deepen the woman’s
pallid cheeks as she became aware of his gaze.

As the car moved on towards North
Kensington, Stefano, who was driving, pointed into the sky where an orange
airship floated, its inflated sides decorated by a giant picture of Gadden,
looking down upon London with its message:
“Tonight
at 10 p.m. Jesse Gadden In Concert at www.jessegadden.com”.

The street was congested outside
the old Pavilion Picture Palace,
with crowds of fans, television news crews and sightseers corralled behind
police barriers, and satellite and outside broadcast vans lining the pavement.
As the car came to a halt, Gadden quickly opened the door and made his way
alone past a battery of cameras, before, on the steps of the cinema, he turned
back to look at the fans. A barrage of flashes peppered him. Then, with a wave,
he turned and went inside. The entourage followed.

"Come along, Kate, I
wouldn't want you to miss the show," he chided as, reaching the cinema
lobby she began filming the herd of ticket holders who were waiting there,
staring at him in devotional wonder, not yet allowed to take their seats.

 
"Why am I filming this, when there are so
many proper cameramen here?" she asked as the party moved past security
men and down a side aisle of the small art deco cinema.

Gadden smiled. "I told you.
I like you. I like you a lot. Make sure you find a place on stage where you can
see me, and I can see you.”

She was still puzzled.

They’d reached the stage and now
moved immediately into the wings. Without looking, Gadden put a hand out.
"Give me a line."

The order must have been anticipated,
because immediately one of the retinue moved forward with a silver framed hand
mirror bearing a white line of cocaine. Gadden had told Kate he didn’t do drugs
anymore.

He smiled as he noticed her
camera watching: "So, I lied,” he grinned into the lens. “This is a
special occasion.” Then turning to Kerinova, he asked: "Are you all
right?"

“I’m all right,” came her reply.

Soon everything was ready. The
three or four hundred specially selected fans and Glee Club staff began
expectantly making their way to their seats, and a squadron of TV camera men
and women were at their posts.

Hidden from everyone, Gadden had moved
behind the small stage and joined his four backing musicians.

"If you stay here, you'll be
fine," a voice whispered to Kate, indicating that she stand at the side of
a camera crane in the wings. It was Peter, the helpful young technician with
the straggly hair she’d met at the recording studio.

“Thank you,” she murmured, and,
as he hurried away, she looked at her watch and then her phone. If Chris Zeff
had been able to help he would have at least texted her by now.

One by one the stage musicians,
as anonymous as ever, began to take their positions in the semi-darkness on
stage. Alongside them Gadden's guitars were lined up like weapons in an
armoury.

Turning to the audience now, Kate
filmed Kerinova, cradling her bag, and dropping into a reserved seat in the
front row of the audience. A smiling face further back was a surprise. It was
Elizabeth McDonagh. The police hadn’t found her. With transmission imminent, a
Scottish floor manager was reminding that mobile phones must be turned off.
Kate ignored the order.

The house lights were dimmed.
Darkness.

Then it was time. Ten o’clock. On
the monitors around the cinema the screens went black. Then the titles
appeared:

In Concert

Jesse Gadden

And with the name the sound of an
extended guitar chord echoed, a beckoning call, a Jesse Gadden trademark.
Slowly a spotlight came up, and, from out of the blackness, he emerged, his
eyes gazing deep into the camera, like a newcomer peering out on to the world.
He waited. Then, as his hand came down on the twelve strings of his guitar, he
lifted his head and began to sing.

Kate watched. More than ever she
wanted to hate what he did, for his voice to be thin and tuneless and his
performance to be melodramatic and absurd, the vain, bogus posturing of a
madman. Perhaps it was. Perhaps he was all those things. But, she knew, it
didn't matter,

because, at that moment, he was a shaman summoning the world
to listen.

And still there was no word from
Chris Zeff.

Chapter
Forty Seven

He'd never looked so bewitching.
Scarcely moving, he stood centre stage, the young man and his guitar, his eyes
beseeching, his voice both pleading and commanding.

 
She could see what he was doing. He was
performing for fifty million audiences of one, singing for that emotionally
fragile person sitting alone in a room staring at a computer screen. Would Fraser
and Robin Broomfield and the others at WSN who’d been so sceptical be watching
now, praying that she’d got it wrong?

She’s spent weeks studying the
songs, but, though she now knew them well, she listened harder than ever as the
lyrics unfolded. At ten fifteen there was one from
Crusader of Sadness
, and at ten thirty five it was time for a
selection from
Chance Meadows Morn
. A
couple of times Gadden glanced towards her, but what the looks signified she
had no way of telling. Was he just making sure that she was there, filming
everything as he’d demanded? Could he even see her? Not properly, she was sure.
The spotlight was only on him. Not once did he speak to his audience.

Behind her a young technical
assistant wearing headphones was sitting with a laptop on her knee, monitoring
the show, the stage-side link with the outside broadcast van through which the
show was being streamed to the internet.

And now on either side of her,
Kate noticed that Stefano and Kish
were standing guard over her. She hadn’t noticed them take their places.

Please God, make me wrong, she
prayed, when, just before the end of the eleventh song and through the scream
of a guitar, a convulsion of applause erupted for no reason that she could see,
and she wondered desperately if there’d been a message she hadn’t
understood.
 
Was it already too late?

At the front of the audience her
camera picked out, in light reflected from the stage, Petra Kerinova staring in
ghostly attention at Gadden. Kevin O’Brien had said there seemed to be a vacuum
in this woman’s personality where her sense of self should have been. Perhaps
that was the way it always was with chief disciples; they smothered their own
personalities so that they might more fully worship the one to whom they were
devoted. Further back Liz McDonagh was smiling and smiling.

Another song came and went and
the technical assistant glanced at her stopwatch and made a note to herself. How
strange, Kate found herself thinking, the girl was present at the concert, and
just a few feet from Gadden, but her memory of the occasion would be only what
she saw on her laptop. Perhaps it made sense: so much of life was now
experienced through the prism of a screen.

Time was fleeing by with Gadden
seeming to be singing almost to himself, so remote in mind did he appear. But
as eleven thirty passed, and the songs became louder and in a higher key, she
could sense the tension rising.

“
Knights of the Night,”
was next and she remembered how he'd played
it for her when she'd been summoned to the recording studio. For a second she
pictured herself as she'd been then, secretly thrilled to be there, trying to
convince herself she didn't find him attractive. She winced at the notion.

"Knights of the night looking for the light..."
Now the orchestra
backing tracks recorded that night came into play and the electric guitar of an
unseen, anonymous musician at the back of the stage sobbed.
"Knights of the night, looking for the
light..."
Over and over the chorus went, and again and again the applause
exploded. Kate kept her camera on Gadden.

At last as the song died and the
ovations faded, the singer held up a hand. An obedient stillness fell. In the
front row Kerinova now had a bouquet of white roses in her arms.

Unblinking, Gadden looked into a
TV camera. “As you know,” he began, “this is my last ever concert…”

Inevitable pleas filled the
little cinema. He ignored them.

“…so I just want to say thank you
to every one of you for your love and support these past few years. And to tell
you that I love you all. This has been the very, very best night of my life.”

And without waiting for the
response he turned to the musicians and nodded them in.

“If it’s all right with you, the last song will be one of my own,”
he’d told Kate of his final
Desert Island
Discs
selection.

And now he began to sing again as
a bass trembled behind him:
"Life is
just a start, a getting ready, Stumbling down the path, the way unsteady,”
he
half whispered.

Kate closed her eyes. He was
singing
A Sunny Day In Eden,
the song
Beverly had
puzzled over.

“And its significance in your life?”
Kate had asked him of his last
choice.

“You’ll see,”
he’d teased.

Did she? Did she see it now?
 

“How do you hold back time, how do you hang on to today?”
he was
murmuring.
“By putting it in a bottle?
No, sorry, Jim, I don’t think that’s the way…”

He was toying with his followers,
but, yes, she did see it now. She understood what Donna Hallsden had heard. It
wasn’t just the song. It was the way he sang it, the aural magic.

“It’s been a perfect day in Eden,
but the serpent’s coming soon, to steal your youth and rip out your truth, and
prick your pretty balloon…”
Howls of electric guitars broke into the
lyrics.

 
Now she knew: this was where the message would
come.

“Deep-freeze the diem, if you really do love, And extreme sweet unction
tonight. And don’t let the serpent suck innocence dry, with age and betrayal
and spite…”
With beads of sweat, or were they tears, running down his face,
Gadden was addressing the microphone.
"So
live for love..."
he sang,
and,
putting out his hands like a preacher at a revivalist meeting, invited his
audience to sing with him.
“Come on, now,
live for love.”

“Live for love,”
they chorused back.

“And love for love.”

“Love for love,”
they echoed.

“And
g
ive for love...That's
right, give for love..."

“Give for love.”

From behind her, Kate was aware
of a sharp cry. It came from the girl who was watching the concert online. On
her feet now, she was speaking urgently into a microphone hanging around her
neck, her voice drowned by Gadden and the audience.

"And die for love...Yes, die for love...”
he sang.
 

This was a new ending. He’d gone
further than ever before.

She had to stop him. She tried to
push a way past the camera crane to get to him, but Stefano and Kish immediately moved in
front of her, their bulk blocking her path.

“Die for love,”
parroted the Glee Club and fans.

"Live for love, love for love and die for love, do you hear me
now, live for love, love for love and die for love ..."
 
Gadden urged. The earlier lyrics had been a
matter of interpretation for the brightest; but with the additional lines the
message was aimed at everyone.

Kate was fighting; Stefano, the
muscle hard minder, wrestling her back. Kish
holding her.

 
“Die for love, kill for love,
kill the one you love for love…”
came next.

 
Fans were standing, arms
thrusting outwards towards him repeating:
“Die
for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…”

"That’s right, die for love, kill for love,
kill the one you love for love.”
 
It had turned into a mantra.

In the wings, Kate struggled to
free her arms, her feet kicking.

 
Below the stage Kerinova was now out of her
seat, carrying her bouquet, her silver bag over her arm, running laughing up
the steps towards Gadden.

“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love...Die for
love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love,”
chanted the devotees.

In that second Kate broke free.
Smashing her camera into the side of Stefano’s head, her teeth sinking into Kish’s wrist, she stumbled
across cables on to the stage.

Too late. As he audience chanted
Kerinova’s bag was open, a gun in her hand: then in Gadden’s.

“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…”
singer and audience sang together.

Then suddenly Gadden was aware of
the advancing Kate. Turning to her he raised the gun, and pointed it directly
at her.

“Die for love, kill for love, kill the one you love for love…”

She stopped. She was no more than
four feet away.

Then Jesse Gadden smiled at her,
a winning, dazzling, victorious smile, and put the gun to the side of his head.

Blood exploded across the stage.

It was too quick and too sudden
for most of the audience. Some were still chanting among the screams of others
as Kerinova calmly bent over the singer’s body, picked up the gun, put the
blood coated muzzle into her mouth and pulled the trigger.