Death Of A Diva (21 page)

              “Well we can clearly see that, Barry,” Caz crooned. “You’d never touch a hair on her head.”

              “Except for that time you tried to strangle her,” I added.

              Haynes opened and closed his mouth, like a fish gasping for air and his face changed from silver to the flat purple of a good steak. Finally, in his rage, he remembered the contraption that could give sound to his fury and lifted it to his throat.

              “Bollocks,” it spat. “What cunt told you that?”

              “Dear me,” it was my turn to behave like a disappointed nanny, “such language. Do you get angry often, Barry? ‘Cos that’s a temper and a half you have there...”

              He snatched the mask violently and pressed it, with trembling hand, to his face, gasping from it, before flinging it to one side and glowering at me. “Once,” he said. “One fucking time. And she was asking for it.”

              “Asking?” Caz raised an eyebrow at that one and put her mug down on the carpet.

              “She was asking for it the day someone offed her in my bar,” I murmured, “but you’d know nothing about that...”

              “Listen,” he gulped hungrily from the mug, leaned forward in the chair and jabbed a finger at me, “we were good. She was going to be a star. I was going to marry her. Then, out of nowhere, she starts picking fights, finding faults. Nothing I did –
nothing
– was good enough.”

“First, I thought she was on the rag. Then I figured she was shagging someone else and looking for an out. But she wasn’t. I had her followed. She went to the doctor. I asked what was up and she turns on me: starts throwing half the fucking flat at me, bawling me out. Said I wasn’t good enough for her: she was gonna be a
star
and I was holding her back. Then she starts throwing punches. Nearly broke my fucking jaw.”

              “So you throttled her?”

              He rolled his eyes. “I laid hands on her – I’m not proud of that, boy. I pushed her away; she came back at me and the next thing I know I have my hands around her throat.”

              He sipped his scotch and when his voice came again, it had, behind the electronic drone, a melancholic tone. “She packed that night and left.”

              “And you never heard from her again?” Caz offered.

              “Course I did,” he snorted and the sound, caught by the apparatus, came out as a
nnnng
sound. “Told you: I
adored
her; and Ellie – Lyra, I mean – for all her faults, was fond of me. I never knew where she went – probably back to that pig of a mother of hers. But, after a year or so, she gets in touch. She calls and tells me she’s sorry that it ended the way it did and now she wants to make it up to me.”

              “So how’d she make it up to you?” Caz asked.

              “And what was she making up to you for?” I wondered aloud.

              “I never pushed on my contract; could have. She was still signed to me, but I figured if she wanted out, then fuck it... She sent me a cheque,” he answered Caz. “Every now and again, by post. Different amounts, depending on how she was doing.”

              “Wait: twenty years ago she walks out on a contract that probably wouldn’t have been worth much and she’s been paying you ever since then?”

              “I kept my eyes and ears open for Lyra; always did. Used to call her if I heard of anyone trying to stitch her up. Press were always sniffing around here trying to get the dirt on the early years, so if I got wind that someone was asking embarrassing questions – you know, about the family background, that sort of thing – I’d tip her the wink.”

              Something – some tiny silver bell in the dim past – began to jingle. “When was the last time you spoke to her?”

              He frowned. “Last year. Tried to call her a few months ago.”

              “Why?”

“Well I heard about this bloke digging up stuff.”

“What did this bloke want?”

“I dunno. Scandal, probably. There was always some bugger trying to dig up dirt.”

“What did he look like,” I asked.

“Never met him, but I figured Lyra might want to know and, if he was going anywhere she didn’t want, she could get the lawyers on to it.”

“And she might slip you a few quid for the heads-up.”

He shrugged. “Was a waste of time, anyway; she was in one of her strops. Wouldn’t take my calls.”

“So you never told her?”

“Nah. And now, I never will. Still,” he shrugged, draining the mug of whiskey, “I don’t suppose it mattered.”

But it did. I didn’t know why, but I knew it had mattered.

Chapter Forty-Eight

              I was confused: Leon Baker had told me the story of Haynes’ attack on Lyra and now I was wondering where he’d heard the story from. I was also still haunted by Doris’ last word. What did ‘munchkin’ mean? If there was anyone who’d know, it would be the self-professed keeper of Lyra’s story.

              I needed answers, so next morning, whilst Ali and the ASBO twins bottled up, I slipped out of the pub and took the bus round to Leon’s.

              The rain of the past few days had gone and instead we now had a piercing cold and a fog which gave the streets an almost Victorian gloom.

              I pressed the doorbell and waited. A minute passed. I pressed again, keeping my finger on the buzzer this time.

              Nothing – apart from the fact that my feet went numb as the damp cold fog seeped through my trainers – happened.

              I grabbed the door knocker and pounded out a
rat-tat-tat
on the door.

              Again, nothing.

              Squatting down, I peered through the letter box. From somewhere in the house I could hear music. Lots of people leave a radio on when they leave the house. Especially if they have pets who they don’t want to leave alone.

              Leon – so far as I’d seen – didn’t have a pet. There was precious little room in his life for anything more than Lyra Day.

              “Leon!” I called through the slot. “Leon, it’s Danny. I know you’re in there. Come on Leon! Open up!”

              I peered, once again through the letter box. Was that a shadow I’d just seen move?

              “You gonna make that row all morning?” came a voice to my right.

              I looked up. Leaning over the dividing fence was a woman roughly the size of a wardrobe. The t-shirt she wore had the words ‘National Scaffolding’ stretched across it and I wondered whether this was an endorsement for the firm which had constructed the bra which was valiantly attempting to contain the most enormous frontage I had ever seen.

              Her face, when I finally focussed on it, bore a startling similarity to the jowly visage of Henry Kissinger, if Kissinger had spent a lifetime plucking his eyebrows so thoroughly that all that remained were two light pink ridges and a couple of pencil lines three inches above them.

              “Only,” she carried on, crossing her arms under her bosoms, which of course hoiked them further north so that from my vantage point all I could see were two eyes, a surprised-looking forehead and the most voluminous knockers on the planet, “I’m tryin’ to watch the telly. And you bangin’ an’ shoutin’ is doin’ my ‘ead in.”

              I straightened up. “Sorry, Mrs...?” I said, sticking out my hand.

              “
Miss
,” she pursed her lips and ran an appraising eye over me, “Wood. Janet to my friends.”

              Janet Wood had a face that looked like it had been hacked out of a thousand-year-old redwood, which made her age difficult to guess at. She fluttered her lashes at me.

              “...Janet.” I smiled and attempted to withdraw my hand. She held it a little longer, then, with a moue of disappointment, gave it up. “I was looking for Leon. Mr Baker. Do you know if he’s in?”

              “Ooh. Haven’t seen him since yesterday, love. I think ‘e was goin’ away.”

              “Away?”

              “In a right state, ‘e was. I’d just come out to sign for something from Amazon, an’ ‘e was just leavin’. ‘Mornin’ Leon,’ I says, and ‘e almost din’t even see me. Hyper ’e was. I says ‘
Ooh, you looks like the cat what got the cream
,’ an’ ‘e goes ‘Better than the cream, Janet.
Vindication
,’ ‘e says.”

“’Bit cryptic,’ I says, an ‘e goes on about ‘ow ‘e was goin’ to the West Country, to make sure.”

“The West Country?”

“I know: tha’s what I thought? This time of year, there’s nothin’ down them parts but stones an’ cows. I don’t ‘old wiv the country. Full of cow shit, it is. And like my ol’ mum used to say: ‘Janet,’ she used to say, ‘Never trust nothing that can eat an’ shit at the same time.’”

              “Any idea where in the West Country he was going?”

              She paused, frowned, “Cornwall, I think. Or was it Somerset? No, it was Devon. Or was it Cornwall? No: Somerset.” She shrugged. “Somewhere where the cider comes from.”

              So that was it: Leon had done a runner. To somewhere beyond Bath. I turned back, stupidly, to the door, wondering what my next step would be. Janet Wood was already shuffling back into her house.

“D’you want me to give ‘im a message, when ‘e gets back?” She asked.

“Why’s he left his radio on?” I asked, absentmindedly.

“That’s a funny message,” she frowned.

“No.” I tilted my head at the door. “Listen.”

She leant her incredible bulk over the fence, which groaned a little in protest and did as I’d instructed. From behind the door came the unmistakable sound of a commercial radio station – something cheesy and shiny.

She straightened up and her flirtatious manner became, at once, a little more careful. “What you gettin’ at?” She demanded.

“Well, if he was going away, why would he leave a radio on?”

“Lots o’ people leave ‘em on,” she answered, looking me up and down. “Stops it feelin’ so lonely when they get in of an evenin’. If they live alone.”

“Does Leon?” I asked. “I mean: you live next door. Does he usually leave the radio on; even when he’s going away with no return date arranged?”

She scoffed. “’E’s left ‘is radio on. I tole you ‘e was in a right state that day; prob’ly just forgot to switch it off.”

“Did he have any luggage when he went away?”

She frowned. “Now you come to mention it: no. I thought that was a bit odd at the time. I mean, ‘e might ‘ave been intendin’ to get there an’ back in a day.”

“And this was yesterday morning,” I prompted.

“So ‘e’d be back by now.” She finished for me. “’Oo’d you say you was again?”

“I’m a friend of Leon’s,” I lied. “Met through the Lyra Day fan site he runs. I was round here last week and I’d said I’d lend him some of my memorabilia.”

Her eyes raked me once again. “What’s that, then?”

“Lyra pictures, CDs, stuff like that,” I lied.

“So where is it, then?” This Rumpole in a tight t-shirt demanded, her lips pursing, as her crossed-arms flexed and the bosom shot alarmingly higher.

“I didn’t bring any.” Well, at least I’d said something truthful. “Wanted to, um, talk to him first.”

“Well ‘e ain’t in,” she responded, turning as if to re-enter her house.

“This doesn’t feel right,” I muttered and, squatting down, pushed open the letter box again and called his name.

“’Ere,” Janet Wood protested, “You can’t go making a racket like that. This is a good street. Quiet. What’s your game?”

“Something’s not right here,” I answered. “I’m worried that something might have happened to Leon.”

And that was the second truthful thing I’d said in a while: to begin with I’d been annoyed that Leon had done a bunk but the more I thought about it the less likely it seemed. The drama surrounding Lyra was here, in London. Why would he decamp to the West Country unless he was afraid of something? But then, why would he leave the radio on?

I wanted into the house. If Leon wasn’t there, I might find something that would indicate where he’d gone. If he was there, I needed to know. I was just trying to decide whether to call the ASBO twins (who’d received one of their Anti-Social Behaviour Orders not because of their incredible skill with a lock pick, but because of their inability to refrain from exercising said skill) when Janet appeared on my side of the fence.

“Shift over,” she said, “and don’t try any funny stuff.” I stood and moved to one side as she stepped forward and, digging into the pockets of her sweatpants, extracted a keyring that must have contained fifty keys. “Neighbourhood Watch,” she explained as she began to go slowly through them looking for the relevant key. “Got a spare for nearly everyone on the street. Ah, here we are!”

Chapter Forty-Nine

              We found him just inside the living room.

              I didn’t know how long Leon had been dead, but he was not a pretty sight, what with the effect caused by the pair of what looked like American tan tights tied tightly around his neck.

On seeing the body still wearing that ratty dressing gown and with a bug-eyed look that seemed like a fifty-fifty mix of surprise and accusation, Janet let out a shriek, tilted rather alarmingly forward, caught herself against the door frame and swallowed another scream.

              “Bloody ‘ell,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his bloated and discoloured face. “Did ‘e do ‘imself in?”

              “Not unless he worked out how to tie knots behind his head,” I answered. “D’you wanna call 999, or should I?”

              “I’ll do it,” she straightened up, “Neighbourhood Watch, innit,” and pottered into the hallway.

              “Don’t use his phone,” I called. “Fingerprints.”

              “I’ll nip next door,” she called, recoiling from the telephone she’d been about to use as though it were a viper. “Back in a minute.”

              And she was gone, leaving me with the midday news coming at me from the background. Some politician was denying he’d done anything wrong, the national statistics for something had gone up (I couldn’t tell whether this was a good or bad thing but sensed it was the latter) and in Newcastle someone had been arrested whilst trying to do something horrible in the Metro Centre.

              And in front of me, Leon lay strangled.

              I looked around the room. The same overstuffed place I’d seen last time; the piles of videos by the TV; the huge ugly shelving unit filled with books, magazines, CDs and vinyl referencing a woman now as dead as the man on the floor.

              The same framed photos were laid out: Lyra in full LWT glamour with a full-on eighties hairdo. Lyra being presented with various awards. A large one featuring Lyra and Leon, which flattered neither of them.

              I frowned at the display. There was one missing. I could see that the pictures had been pushed together, but where Leon had – as with all obsessives – taken pains to ensure that his portrait and landscape pictures formed a harmonious collective, someone had shuffled this set so that they no longer felt curated.

              Outside, the fog shifted and the change in light made something at my foot sparkle. I looked down at the sad sight beside me, trying to avoid actually looking into Leon’s face.

              There it was again: a shimmer, like a distant star winking across the galaxy. I squatted and squinted at the source of the sparkle. And, licking a finger, reached out to pick up, from amongst half a dozen of its dead brothers, a sequin.

              It was just a sequin. It wouldn’t stand up in court, but I knew I’d seen it before. Attached to a dress that had shimmered at me on another murder scene not too long ago.

              And then I don’t know what happened to me: something overtook me, as they say and I found myself walking down the hall, pulling a hanky from my pocket, lifting the very telephone I’d told Janet not to touch and hitting the redial button.

              I listened as the phone on the other end rang.

              Rang.

              Rang.

              And rang again.

              Finally, it was picked up and a voice answered.

              “Hello?” It said. “Hello? Who is this?”

              Then, receiving no answer, the person on the other end of the line disconnected, leaving me wondering why the last person Leon Baker had called had been Jenny Foster.