Dear Departed (18 page)

‘I’ve told you about that. It wasn’t mine.’

‘Yeah, but he’s put you right in it. You don’t wanna go down, just protectin’ him. Do yo’self a favour. You don’t owe him nuffin’. Give us a name, girlfrien’. No-one won’t know you said anyfing. ’At’s a promise.’

Jassy sighed, and said, ‘I know one of ’em’s Dave O’Brien.
I don’t know his address but his phone number’s around somewhere. Will that do?’

‘Yeah, that’s good, girl,’ Hart said. ‘You get that for us, an’ that’s a lot o’ Brownie points for you.’

Jassy got up and said, ‘If you find Darren, make sure he falls down a flight of stairs or something.’ She found the number on a pad by the telephone and handed it to Hart with an air of having finished all transactions.

But Slider said, ‘So when did you find out your sister was dead?’

She turned to him, wariness creeping into her expression and posture. ‘Eh?’

‘When you went to her house on Wednesday night and saw the policeman on duty, you didn’t know then she was dead?’

‘Well, of course I didn’t. I thought it was to do with the coke. That’s why I had the fight with Darren.’ She said it with the exaggerated exasperation of the age.

‘So when did you find out?’

Jassy sat down. ‘If you must know, my mum phoned me up about it last night. She saw it on the telly, on the news.’

‘Don’t you watch the news on television?’

‘No, why should I? It’s a load of rubbish. Capitalist indoctrination. All those TV companies are tools of the establishment.’

‘That’s a big TV set you’ve got,’ Hart remarked.

‘It’s Darren’s. He watches the sport on it.’ It was said with a roll of the eyes.

‘You don’t seem very sorry that she’s dead.’

Resentment flared. ‘Why should I be? She was only my half-sister. Anyway, she wouldn’t care if it was me. She always thought she was a cut above everyone else. Her mum is a stuck-up bitch. She called my mum all the names under the sun for stealing my dad from her, but she’d done just the same, so who was she to give herself airs? The first time I went to her house for tea when I was a kid, she went on and on about table manners and had I washed my hands and was I allowed to eat like that at home. I wasn’t good enough for her. I mean, I was just a little kid! You don’t take it out on a little kid like that, do you? And Chattie was just like her – thought she was oh-so-posh, looked down on me and my friends, all holier-than-thou every time I wanted to do a line of charlie or a couple of tabs
of E or whatever. The fuss she made when I smoked a bit of weed in her precious house! You’d have thought I’d been spraying anthrax around. I said to her, everybody does it, and she said, I don’t, and I said, well, that doesn’t surprise me because you’re just bloody perfect, everybody knows that. Her and her stupid little piddling business, and all that crap about doing it on her own and not taking anything from anybody! That was aimed at me, that charming little remark. All very well for someone who’s always had everything they wanted, all very fine and nice. She made me sick, she was so bloody pious, sitting in her ivory tower and telling me I had no right to draw social security, as if it was a crime. I said to her, I know my rights, and she made some smart-mouth remark about not knowing my duty. Duty! Yeah, duty to the forces of global capitalism, I said. Never mind the third-world poor, grind them in the dust, as long as you’ve got your share! She was such a hypocrite. I mean, she only had that house in the first place because our dad gave her the money for it. So much for not taking anything from anybody.’

‘Is your dad well off?’

She shrugged again. ‘All I know is, he’s never given me anything.’

‘Are he and your mum still together?’

‘You’ve got to be joking!’ she said, with a toss of her head. ‘He scarpered the moment I turned up. Cleared off and left Mum to it. I was just glad he’d done the same to Chattie and her snobby mum. Her and her stupid books! My mum got one out of the library once. She said it was rubbish.’

‘Sounds like you’ve really got some issues wiv your sister,’ Hart said sympathetically.

‘She always had everything,’ Jassy cried, with a fresh burst of self-pity. ‘She’s pretty, she’s brainy, and everybody always takes her side, because she sucks up to them. Everything she does turns out right, she always had tons of boyfriends, and now she’s got that house and she hangs around with celebs in that potty job of hers, and her life’s just bloody perfect! All I’ve got is this crummy place, and Darren. And now,’ she reached the peak and tumbled over, ‘Darren’s hit me and gone off and I don’t know where he is or when he’s coming back!’

She began to cry again, and Hart handed her another Kleenex and met Slider’s eye over her bent head. The resentment was fresh and hot and there was plenty of material here for motive. And the absent Darren, Hart’s look said as clearly as words, was more than a bit tasty.

Baroque Solid were not playing together on Friday evening. Marion and Trish had outside work, playing at Milton Keynes, and the others were about their normal social rounds – or normal-ish, considering the shock they had all sustained. Atherton eventually tracked Jasper Stalybrass down in a pub in Islington, which was filled with well-scrubbed, well-dressed young people spending large amounts of money on designer beers (the men), which they drank out of the bottle, and bizarre cocktails (the women)
that came laden with fruity bits and twisty glass straws. Stalybrass was tall and handsome and was evidently being the life and soul of the group of laughing people he was in company with. It was a delicate manoeuvre to cut him out from his adoring fans.

Atherton’s experience, backed up by what he had learned from Joanna and Sue, was that horn-players were often men with enormous charm and cold, cold hearts, so he started off with a mild prejudice against him, especially as he had found him telling jokes and laughing heartily. But once he had him alone in a quiet corner, he fell victim himself to the charm, especially as it was allied to a sharp mind, a straightforward delivery, and an obviously genuine shock and sadness about Chattie.

‘God, it’s hard to believe,’ he said. ‘I keep forgetting for a time, and then remembering all over again. It was a hell of a blow, I can tell you. I mean, everybody liked Chattie. Who in the world would want to kill her?’ He put his hand up to scratch his eyebrow in an almost boyish gesture of hiding his tears. He cleared his throat, and then said, ‘But I was forgetting –
it was this Park Killer, wasn’t it? So that means he picked her at random. God, what a terrible, awful chance. You never think it could happen to anyone you know, do you?’

‘I imagine the whole band is very upset,’ Atherton said neutrally.

‘Upset? That doesn’t come near it. We were back at the
studio today to do the final mix on our CD, but we all just sat around and talked about Chattie. We hadn’t got the heart to get on with it. Mike Ardeel – the studio boss? – he was really cut up. He said in the circumstances he’d give us another session and wouldn’t charge us for the wasted one, and usually he’s red hot on money – has to be, in a small operation – so that shows you. But really, none of us could think about doing it right then. It would have been too weird. The last time most of us saw her was in that studio on Monday. The girls were all in tears. I nearly was myself.’

‘You knew her quite well,’ Atherton said, as a statement rather than a question.

‘Yes,’ Stalybrass said. He eyed Atherton for an instant, as if working out how much he already knew, and then said, ‘Well, I suppose it doesn’t matter if it comes out now. She and I were very close. We’d been having a thing for about a year.’

‘You were lovers?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about it. We weren’t in love or planning to live together or anything like that. It was all very light-hearted. We liked each other very much but we were just good friends, with sex added, that was all. Chattie was a great girl – a real pal, if you know what I mean. One of those rare women who can meet men on their own terms and be proper friends without dragging in all that female baggage and emotional trappings. We met when we felt like it, made love when we felt like it, lived our own lives and had no obligations to each other beyond having a lot of fun.’

‘Was that the way she was in general?’

‘Well, I can’t speak for every corner of her life, but from what she said to me it was. She liked men and she enjoyed sex but I don’t think she’d ever felt seriously about anyone. She told me that she’d never been in love, and never expected to be. She said to me more than once, “There’s no room in my life for another man.”’

Atherton noted that, the same words she had used to Mrs Hammick. Another man? So who was the first? ‘Had she had a bad love affair and been hurt, or something?’

‘Not that I ever heard. She just liked to keep emotions at a distance,’ Stalybrass went on. ‘Well, it suited me, because I’ve
been through a bad divorce, and it suited her, and it was nobody’s business but ours, was it?’

‘So she may have been seeing other men as well as you?’

Atherton was amused to notice that he didn’t like that question. For all his vaunted independence, he didn’t want to think of Chattie in someone else’s bed. ‘She may have been,’ he said lightly. ‘I suppose I ought even to say that it was likely. She was very attractive and she liked men, so why wouldn’t she? But I would never have asked her, and if I had, she certainly wouldn’t have answered. She was quite a private person in many ways.’ He smiled faintly. ‘I’ve seen her and Marion having those girls’ heart-to-hearts they all go in for and, believe me, it was Marion doing the telling and Chattie doing the listening. She would never have given away
her
inmost secrets.’

Touché,
thought Atherton. So it was all round the band, then, that he had seen Marion two nights running? He had managed not to come face to face with Marion’s flatmates yet, by bedding her at his place and leaving her at her door afterwards, but evidently there were no secrets kept within the group. Or, perhaps, not within the female half of it.

Down to business. ‘Did you have a date with her on Tuesday night?’ he asked.

‘Yes. How did you know that?’

‘It was in her diary. “JS 8pm”. It seemed likely that JS was Jasper Stalybrass.’

‘JS could have been anyone, but in fact it was me. I’ve nothing to hide. We went to see the new Woody Allen film, and then we went back to my place, but she didn’t stay long. She said she had a lot to do the next day and wanted to get up early.’

‘Did she usually stay the night?’

‘More often than not, but not invariably. Sometimes we went back to her place instead, and then I generally stayed the night, unless I had something early the next day.’

‘Did she say what it was she had to do?’

‘No, we didn’t talk about business. But she did seem a bit preoccupied – not as forthcoming as usual.’

‘Was she worried about something?’

‘I wouldn’t say worried exactly. She just seemed to have her mind on other things. She was perfectly cheerful when she did
talk, and she laughed her head off at the film. No, not worried or unhappy, just busy, I think.’

‘Do you know what she had been doing earlier that day?’

‘No. She’d been working, I presume, but she didn’t say and I didn’t ask.’

‘It didn’t come up in the course of conversation?’

‘No, we mostly talked about the band and the CD and music in general. She never did speak much about her other clients, unless they were friends of ours. And even then – well, she was discreet, I suppose. Which was quite right.’

‘Of course,’ Atherton said. ‘It’s just that there was an entry in her diary for that day which we haven’t been able to work out. It said, “DC 10 TFQ”. Does that mean anything to you?’

He shook his head slowly. ‘No, I’m afraid not. I’ve no idea what that means.’

Atherton tried another angle. ‘You said about your relationship with her, “It doesn’t matter if it comes out now.” Were you keeping it a secret?’

‘It wasn’t really a relationship in the sense—’

‘Okay, take that as read, but was it a secret you were seeing each other?’

‘Yes, it was – but not for any sinister reason,’ Stalybrass said, and he gave a charming, confiding smile which Atherton tried to resist, but with difficulty. ‘You see, though Chattie never took any relationship seriously, it didn’t always follow from the other side, if you get what I mean. She’d been out a couple of time with Toby – Toby Harkness, our oboe-player – and he’d fallen desperately in love with her. He just couldn’t understand that she didn’t feel the same. Poor old Toby’s a bit intense, and he had a sheltered upbringing – in Bristol, to make it worse. To him, the fact that she’d been to bed with him meant she loved him and they were going to get married. Once she found he wasn’t singing from the same hymn sheet she tried to disengage from him but it was difficult. In the normal course of events she would just have refused to see him or talk to him any more. But, of course, with Tobe she couldn’t do that, because of everything she was doing for the band. She’d be seeing him in the course of things several times a week, so she had to try to let him down gently. And part of that was not letting on to anyone that she and I were seeing each other,
because it would just about have killed old Tobes, and if any of the others had known it would have got back to him. So I’d be grateful if you didn’t let on about this to anyone.’

Atherton promised nothing. ‘Did you know she saw Toby on Tuesday evening, before she met you?’

He raised an eyebrow, but didn’t look unduly concerned. ‘No, I didn’t. Where was that?’

‘In the pub at the end of her road.’

‘The Anchor? Oh, well, I expect he was just trying to get her to go back with him, and she was telling him kindly it was no go.’

‘So she was still sleeping with him?’ Atherton tried. He had to wonder whether Chattie had not been a manipulative little minx.

‘Oh, no, it had only been a couple of times, and it was all over as far as she was concerned. But I’m not altogether sure she was right about handling him with kid gloves,’ he added thoughtfully. ‘I mean, I know Toby’s an emotional sort, and all oboe players are a bit mad anyway, but he just wasn’t capable of believing there’d been nothing in it, and a short, sharp shock might have been better for him in the long run.’ His expression changed and he said bleakly, ‘Well, he’s had that now, hasn’t he? Couldn’t be any shorter or sharper. I suppose old Tobes will be able to go to his grave believing she loved him really. Oh, God, I just can’t believe – I mean, I was making love to her on Tuesday night and just a few hours later—’ He chewed his lip, staring away from Atherton while he tried to keep control.