Dead Beat (16 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said, knowing how hollow it would sound, but feeling the need nevertheless. “I hardly knew her, but I liked what I did know.”

Maggie walked over to the window and stared out at the silent rain falling on the gray roofs. “Let’s get one thing straight, Kate,” she observed. “I am not going to discuss my feelings with you. I have friends for that. I’ll tell you anything I can about what happened after she left with you that night, but our feelings for each other and the way I feel right now is nothing to do with you.”

“That’s fine by me,” I said, feeling like I’d been reprieved. After Jett’s histrionics, I didn’t know how much more I could take.

She turned back into the room and sat on the other sofa, as far from me as it was possible to be. “I suppose Jett’s hired you to discover I did it?” she challenged.

“I’m working for Jett, but he hasn’t pointed the finger at anyone. I think he’s still too upset to have given it much thought. It was him who found the body, you know.”

“I didn’t know,” she sighed. “You should never have tried to find her. If Jett had let the past rest in peace, she’d still be here now.”

I couldn’t deny it. And I saw no point in trying to justify my own part in the process. “Suppose we go back to the beginning and work forward?” I asked. “What happened after I took her over to see Jett?”

Maggie sighed again. She pulled a small tin out of her pocket and with trembling fingers rolled a cigarette. “She rang the morning after. She said that she and Jett had had a long talk.” A

“It doesn’t sound unreasonable to me. I’d guess that Jett could afford it,” I agreed.

“Jett was over the moon, according to Moira. He said she’d have to work out the money details with Kevin, but it was fine by him. She was laughing, you know? She said he’d got into all this New Age stuff, and kept telling her they were soul mates and must be together. She’d told him that only extended to work and he could forget sex. Then he went all huffy and started on about spiritual love. She was very funny about it all.” Memories overwhelmed Maggie suddenly and she looked away.

Awkwardly, I said, “I liked her sense of humor, too. Maggie, did she say anything about the reactions of the others at the manor to her arrival?”

Maggie relit her cigarette and took a deep drag. “Not then. But she had plenty to say later. Only Neil seemed really pleased that she was there. He seemed to think she’d be able to fill in any gaps from the early days. I know he talked to her about what it was like before Jett hit the big time. She said Gloria was always trying to bust up their conversations. She wanted to come across as the only significant person in Jett’s life. Pathetic, really.

“Tamar hated her on sight, of course. Her and Jett have been having this on-off relationship for a few months now, and I guess she saw Moira as a threat. Moira couldn’t stand her, thought she was just a stupid bimbo, and she told me she used to wind her up by flirting with Jett when Tamar was around. But there was nothing in it. She told me that, and I believe her. I trust …” she gulped. “I trusted her.”

“What about Kevin? How did he take it?” I probed.

“She said he wasn’t thrilled, but that she wasn’t surprised because the idea of parting with any money, even if it’s not his own, gives him a physical pain. She said if he gave you his shit for fertilizer he’d want the roses. And there was a lot of money coming to her. All those years of royalties from the first three albums.”

“Did she get the money?” I suspected I knew the answer before I asked the question.

“Not yet. Kevin said it was tied up in some account where he had to wait three months before he could get access to it.”

I’d been right. Moira had died before she’d cost anyone a penny. I wondered if anyone would ever be able to untangle things now she was dead. “Do you happen to know if she left a will?” I asked.

Maggie’s mouth twisted into an ironic smile. “Jett tell you to ask that? Yes, she left a will. We both made wills in favor of each other about two months ago.”

“Do you mind if I ask you why?”

“Because a friend of mine was killed in a car crash and she hadn’t left a will. The house was in her name, and her family kicked her lover out on the street the day before the funeral. Gay couples don’t have any rights. We have to make our own. That’s why we made the wills. At that point, Moira didn’t even think she had anything to leave,” Maggie said bitterly.

But when she’d died, it had been a different picture. I knew I’d want to come back to this, but I needed to hear more from other people before I’d have any useful leverage. So I changed the subject. “Surely Micky was pleased? He must have been happy that they were all working together again, just like the good old days?”

“You’d have thought so, wouldn’t you? But not according to Moira. She said he was always nit-picking. She thought he wanted to take all the credit for Jett’s great comeback album—they hadn’t worked together for the last four, you see.”

“I’m beginning to wonder why she stuck it,” I remarked.

“I wondered myself. But she really enjoyed the work she was doing with Jett. She loved the writing. And she was even doing some of the backing vocals. She kept telling me that when the

“Had you seen her much in the last few weeks?” I asked.

“Not really. She hasn’t been home at all. We had a couple of weekends in a hotel in Manchester. Jett had gone to Paris with Tamar, and he’d given her some money and told her to show me a good time.” Her eyes lit up, then the light died. “We had a good time, too,” she said softly.

“Why did you go to Colcutt this week?” I asked.

She looked at me in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I saw you. I was driving the car that nearly ran you over in the early hours of the morning. The landlady at the Colcutt Arms told me you’d been staying there. I just wondered, you know? With you two not having seen very much of each other lately.” I let my words hang in the air. Maggie was no fool. She must have realized it would only be a matter of time before the police would be at her door.

“Now I see why you wanted to talk to me,” she accused. “You really are trying to pin it on me.”

I shook my head. “Maggie, I’m not trying to pin it on anybody. I’m trying to find Moira’s killer.”

“If that’s true, you’d be better off back in Colcutt,” she said angrily. “Someone there had it in for her. That’s why I went over to see her, to try to persuade her to come home with me.”

“What do you mean?” I asked. My antennae were quivering. I had the feeling we were really getting somewhere at last.

“Someone there wanted her dead. They’d already tried once.”

   I took a deep breath and said very slowly, “What do you mean, they’d already tried?”

“I don’t know how much you know about heroin addiction,” Maggie replied.

“Lay person’s knowledge only. Assume I’m ignorant.”

“OK. Coming off is hell. But once an addict is off, they often get a strange kind of confidence that one little hit wouldn’t do any harm. Like the smoker who’s been stopped for three years and fancies a fag at a party. Only with heroin addicts, that can be fatal a lot faster than with smokers. Anyway, someone at Colcutt Manor kept leaving a set of works in Moira’s room. Every couple of days, she’d come upstairs to find a nice little hit sitting there waiting for her.” Maggie stopped dead, her anger making her voice a growl.

“That is evil,” I breathed.

“So now you see why I wanted her to leave. So far, she’d just flushed the smack down the loo and shoved the syringes in the bin. But sooner or later there was going to come a time when she’d be low, when she couldn’t ring me up for reassurance, when she was going to go for it. I couldn’t stand the thought of it.”

I swallowed hard. Now for the nasty question. “So why did you leave when you did? In the middle of the night like that?”

Maggie rolled another cigarette while she pondered my question. I couldn’t help feeling she was using me as the rehearsal for the harder interrogation she knew was on the horizon. “We’d had a drink together that evening in the pub. Moira promised me that her work would be over in another two weeks and then we’d go on holiday together. She said she could hold out, and begged me not to make her choose. I gave in, God help me.

“Afterwards, we went up to my room and made love. She left about eleven, saying she was going back to work with Jett. I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t. I know it sounds pathetic, but I had a dreadful feeling in the pit of my stomach that something terrible was going to happen. Eventually, I got up and went for a walk. Then I saw all those police cars up at the manor and I panicked. Whatever was going on, I knew I would only be in Moira’s way if I turned up on the doorstep, so I went back to the pub. That’s when you nearly ran me over.” Maggie lit her cigarette and ran a hand through her graying curls.

“I tried to ring from the phone in the pub, but it was constantly engaged. I didn’t know what else to do, so I set off for home. Moira knew I was coming home today, and I knew she’d call me as soon as she could. The first I knew she was dead was when I heard the news on Radio One at half past nine.” She couldn’t hold the tears back any longer, and they streamed down her face. Her shoulders shook.

I got up and tentatively put a hand on her arm, but she shook me off and huddled into a ball. Feeling helpless, I retreated to the sofa. While I waited for her to compose herself, I thought about what I’d heard. It sounded incredibly thin to me. I couldn’t imagine any circumstances in which I’d behave as Maggie had done unless I was running from something. But equally, I couldn’t see why she’d have killed Moira if she was telling the truth about their relationship.

After a few minutes, Maggie managed to find the strength from somewhere to dry her tears, clear her throat and look me in the eye. “I didn’t kill her. I’d have cheerfully killed the bastard who was trying to destroy her with the smack, but not Moira. Never Moira.”

Her denial was vehement. But I’ve heard good performances before. I didn’t have enough information to try to get beyond that right now, but if I uncovered it, I’d be back. This was one case where I couldn’t let sentiment get in the way. “I believe you,” I said, almost convinced. “Is there anything else, however trivial, that Moira said that might shed some light on what happened?”

Maggie got up and poured herself another mug of tea. She leaned against the table, eyebrows twisted in concentration. “There was one thing,” she said uncertainly.

“Yes?” I asked expectantly.

“It’s probably nothing, but last night in the pub, she asked me about one of the guys she used to know in Bradford. A bloke called Fat Freddy. She wanted me to ask around and see what he was into just now that might be connected to Jett in some way,” Maggie said hesitantly.

“Did she say why?”

Maggie shrugged. “To be honest, I wasn’t paying a lot of attention. She said something like, she’d seen him talking to someone from the manor who shouldn’t be mixing with small-time villains like Fat Freddy.”

The whiff of red herring was getting pretty strong. If I’d been trying to divert suspicion away from myself, that was exactly the kind of unprovable line I’d come up with.

“Did she say who it was she’d seen with this Fat Freddy?” I asked cautiously.

Maggie shook her head. “I’m sorry, she didn’t. She said she wanted to find out what the connection was before she said anything more.”

I felt frustrated. Why couldn’t Maggie have shown a bit more interest in something other than her own relationship with Moira? Had she no natural curiosity? If I’d dropped something like that on Richard, he’d have been on it like a rat up a drain, demanding chapter and verse on everything I’d seen and heard. “What do you know about Fat Freddy?” I asked without much hope.

“He’s a bit of a wide-boy. Moira knew him from when she was working in Bradford. She told me he was into buying and selling—whatever came along. I met him once. Moira bought a couple of jogging suits from him.”

“Would you know where to find him?”

Maggie pulled a face. “Not really. Why? Do you think it might be important?”

“Yes, I do. I don’t know how yet, but it could be.”

“OK. I’ll see if I can find out what he’s up to and get in touch with you. It’s what Moira asked me to do.”

I tried not to show my surprise at her co-operation, and fished a card out of my wallet. I wrote my home number on the back. “If

“Believe me, the worst is yet to come. And I’m not talking about the police.” Maggie’s face had frozen into a cold mask. “There’s no framework for grief when you’re gay.”

“I’m sorry,” I said inadequately.

“Spare me the bleeding-heart liberal shit,” Maggie flashed back, suddenly angry. “Just leave me alone.”

It wasn’t hard to do exactly as she asked.

   I spent what was left of the afternoon back at the office. I’d recorded my notes on tape on the way back from Leeds, so I didn’t even have that to keep me occupied. I hate those spells in an investigation where everything is stalled. I didn’t want to go back to the manor for another confrontation with Jackson. I’d rather wait till tomorrow, when the police presence would have eased off, and the initial shock would have worn off for the inhabitants.

So I did the paperwork on the Smart brothers that had been hanging over me for the last couple of weeks since our clients had passed our dossier on to the police. I was providing them with more details on my surveillance, so they’d be fully prepared for the raid they were planning for some unspecified date in the future when they got their act together. I plowed through my diary for the relevant weeks, and there, in the middle of it all, I found the notes of my search for Moira. I couldn’t help agreeing with Maggie that it was a pity I’d ever found her. Bill had been right. Missing persons’ jobs produce more trouble than they’re worth.

Before I left the office, I helped myself to a couple of Raymond Chandlers and a Dashiell Hammett from Bill’s bookcase. I was going to need all the help I could get, and somehow I had the feeling that wandering down to Waterstone’s for a book on how to solve a murder wasn’t going to be a lot of use.