Kill For Love (23 page)

Chapter
Forty One

November 2:

She woke with a shout. Someone
was trying to get into the room. "No!" she called, her arm going up
to protect herself.

"I'm sorry. Maid service.” A
Spanish voice answered as the hotel room door, hindered by its security chain,
closed again and the maid went about her rounds.

Kate gasped into her pillow, her
heart pummelling. Slowly she took in the room and her situation, before
reaching for the remote, and, switching on the television. On WSN Hilly Weston
was now sitting alongside Robin Broomfield. Robin would like that. Hilly was
very pretty.

Through floods in Bangladesh, a coach crash in Scotland, a minor political sex scandal at Westminster and unemployment in China she moved on through Sky News
and then the BBC. She was looking for the arrest of Liz McDonagh but there was
no mention of her. Getting out of bed, she checked with the news sites on her
laptop. There was nothing there either. She was puzzled. Were the West Midlands
Police keeping it quiet while they interviewed Gadden and his staff? Or had the
woman been spirited away from Haverhill
by the time they got there?

“What do you think?” Frank
Teischer asked as they paused for a break.

Kate, sitting on a high chair
behind him and staring at his editing screen, didn’t answer. It was
mid-afternoon and they were drinking some take-away coffee. They’d spent six
hours working on the material she’d either filmed herself or had sent over from
the ITN Archive, and she was worried. It wasn’t strong enough.

Like a trainee journalist she
went once again through the questions she’d set out to answer at the beginning
of her investigation.
  

 
“What was happening?”

“Suicide and murder,”
came her answer.
 

“Who was it happening to?”

“Obsessive fans.”

“Where was it happening?”

“Mainly by grooming through the
internet.”

“How was it happening?”

 
“By some kind of brainwashing
using music.”

“
When was it happening?”
She thought about the clusters of deaths, Beverly and Seb Browne,
Liz McDonagh’s family, and Greg Passfield and Overmars. Then there was Donna
Hallsden and her boy friend. Had there been others? Reason suggested there must
have been.
 

An ancillary question was now
posed?
“When will it happen again?”

And her answer: “If I’m right,
probably tomorrow night when Jesse Gadden’s farewell concert is streamed into
millions of computers.”

But could she prove it? That was
what Teischer had really been asking.

Climbing down from her chair she
went to the window and stared out at the street below. Teischer waited. Finally
she shook her head. “It’s all supposition, Frank. There are too few hard facts.
It doesn’t work yet.”

She could tell by Teischer’s tone
that he agreed with her. "What you have to remember, Kate, is that they
don’t all work out."

"You mean, you think I may
be wrong, that I’ve got him wrong…Jesse Gadden?”

"No. I mean we both know
it's a tricky one, and you can only do your best.”

She looked at him. "But if I
am right, and can’t convince anyone..? If they think I’ve become unbalanced and
no-one stops him, and tomorrow night…somewhere in the world… something terrible
happens…?”

Teischer didn’t answer. They
finished their coffees in ruminative silence, then went back to work. She'd let
all the interviews run, knowing that, intercut with the archive material, she'd
need only a minute on Donna Hallsden, more on Kevin O'Brien, and perhaps a
section on Mary Murray. Then there were moments from Haverhill, shots of Coneyburrow Point and
library material of Gadden on and off stage. All the time Teischer was making
suggestions, pursing his lips when he thought she was stretching a point, clicking
his fingers when he could see sections coming together. They'd done it many
times before after she’d returned from foreign assignments, but there’d been
more material to work with then.

At seven o’clock, eyes raw from
staring at the screen all day, they went out for something to eat at a cab
drivers' cafe on

After dinner they walked back down
the alley to the edit suite in silence. A motor cycle courier was riding away
from the building as they got there. As Teischer opened the door, he routinely
checked the post bin which hung behind the letter box.

"Well, now..." he said
pulling out a jiffy bag and withdrawing two CDs. “What have we here?”

They listened in silence.
Teischer’s friend in the sound lab at Pinewood had been busy. With most of the
background noises in Danton’s Bar filtered down to a hum, Overmars' voice was
now clearer, touched with excitement when, breaking off from his interview with
Greg, he’d answered his mobile phone.

"I'm sitting here with a friend…talking,"
he was saying,
before pausing to listen to the reply.
"Oh,
just someone who works in television. That's all right, isn't it?"

Kate felt tears in her eyes as
she pictured Greg listening, trying to work out who had been calling Overmars.

An embarrassed hesitation from
Overmars followed, before.
"Yes, I
think he might have mentioned her... Merrimac? Yes, that sounds like her."

She flinched at the sound of her
name. Teischer looked at her.

For a few moments the recording
ran on less distinctly, before a plaintive Overmars began protesting:
"Who's trying to hurt you? Why would
they want to do that? You know I'd never do anything to hurt you."

Just as quickly there was an
easing of tension, followed by:
"Yes,
I can hear it. I like that one, too."
He was listening to something
down the phone. It had to be music. He began talking again.
"No, I didn't know that...
Yes...yes...I understand..."

Again Overmars fell silent as he
listened, but now the sound of the bar, reduced though it was, drowned out his
replies.
Finally, quite clearly, he
said:
"I'll do anything you say. You
know that. Just tell me what you want me to do and I'll do it. Just say
it..."
 
before a sentence was
lost beneath someone shouting an order for a drink. Then:
“Yes, I understand. I understand. Yes, I…”
 
At that point the recorder had been switched
off.

Listening hard, Teischer replayed
the last moments.

 
"I'll
do anything you say… Just tell me what do you want me to do and I'll do it.
Just say it..."

It
had
to have been Gadden on the phone. "Music
,
" she said quietly. "He's
playing him music, I'm certain."

Teischer was screwing up his eyes
as he listened. "I can hear it."

“All the time, music and
suggestion." And she thought about the music in her Haverhill bedroom, and again during Gadden's
phone call to her when she got back, the soft voice and the gradually increasing
volume of the record. She'd slammed the phone down. It didn't work on everyone.

Teischer was already copying the
filtered version of the interview into his computer. "So, what do you say
we have another go at knocking this report into shape," he smiled. “Mind
you, it’s going to cost you. The sound lab won’t be cheap and this is turning
into a hell of a long shift.”

“Charge me anything you want.
Let’s just get it done.”

Re-energised they went back to
work, adding the new thread of material, muscling up the programme, putting
shots in and taking others out, Teischer as keen as she was.

They worked through the night and
into the morning, before, at shortly after eight, Teischer turned himself into
a cinematographer and set about filming the links, Kate speaking to camera
while standing in front of a computer image of Gadden. After that came her
narration that tied the whole programme together. She’d been writing it on and
off all night.

By noon they had their
documentary. It still had major weaknesses, they both knew that, but it was as
good as they were going to get it. And, with Gadden’s concert only hours away,
time was running out. Quickly Teischer ran off a master and a couple of copies
on DVD, sticking the name of the Mount Venus Cutting Room on them with the
title of the programme:
“Jesse Gadden:
The Truth”.

"I might as well let those
bastards at WSN know where they can still get a decent service," he
laughed as Kate put the discs into her bag. "You never know, they might
decide to use me again some time."

"I can't thank you enough,
Frank," she said as she prepared to leave.

"You don't have to. It's
been good working with you again. Just like old times." He then paused,
playfully. “Besides…”

“Yes?”

“The job had its perks, you
know.”

“It did?”

“Oh, yes. Those discs you stole
from Haverhill.
I took a look at some of the closed circuit stuff when you weren’t here. Didn’t
you realise there was a camera in your bathroom? You look very good in the
shower, Kate, you really do?”

Despite everything, she had to
smile.

Chapter
Forty Two

November 3:

Neil Fraser was taking an early
lunch in the WSN executive dining room when she called. He said all the right
things, and stressed how worried he’d been about her, but there was a guarded
quality about his tone when she requested an immediate meeting. “This afternoon
is difficult, Kate. Busy day today! What about tomorrow some time?”

"It
has
to be today. I need to show you something. It's urgent."

"What have you got,
Kate?"

She told him.

There was a long silence, but she
got her meeting.

He was waiting for her near the
lifts when she arrived at WSN at two o’clock. His eyes went uneasily to her
shorn head. "Kate, welcome back! You're looking... terrific! Come through!
Let's take a look at what you've got. We're all ready for you."

Aware of eyes on her as she
passed through the newsroom, she followed the editor-in-chief into his office.
Robin Broomfield winked a hello as he joined her, along with acting news editor,
David Harris, Hilly Weston on behalf of the entertainment department and senior
producer Sarah Shulman. Everyone was welcoming her back as though she was a
recovering invalid. But, then, that was probably how most of them saw her. The
last one into the office was lawyer Larry Abramsky.

Kate took the programme disc from
her bag. "I know you thought I might be having another breakdown a couple
of weeks ago,” she began, looking at Fraser.

“Well, no, that’s not……” Fraser
began uncomfortably, but she continued over him.

“And that I’d become obsessed
with Jesse Gadden. Well, in a way, I had. But for the right reasons. So I
decided to do my own investigation. I think if you look at this you might begin
to see him differently."

Politely no-one exchanged
glances, although she knew they wanted to.

With a clock countdown, the programme
began with library footage of Jesse Gadden in performance, his voice and
guitar, high and loud.

Resting against his desk, Fraser
shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He didn’t like any kind of rock
music.

A few seconds into the report the
music level dropped and the picture cut to reveal Kate standing in Frank
Teischer’s editing suite.
"Jesse Gadden..."
her narration began, her voice low key,
"is
at this moment one of the most loved men in the world...an eccentric rock star
and a generous philanthropist who gives away millions to good causes…to helping
the poor and the sick.”

The archive film now showed
Gadden first being mobbed and then signing a cheque in an African hospital
surrounded by smiling children and nurses. Then it cut back to Kate.

"But is he also something else? In the course of a special
investigation WSN has learned that there's another side to Jesse Gadden. Always
secretive, we have evidence to suggest that as well as being a great benefactor
he is also the focus of a sinister, cult-like organisation, and that his voice
and music, while loved around the world, are capable of manipulating adoring
fans through the internet triggering some into acts of suicide and
murder."

A draught of total disbelief cut
through the conference. Hilly Weston caught Robin Broomfield’s eye. Kate dug
her nails into her hands.

Donna Hallsden was now on the
screen, lying unconscious in her New
Hampshire hospital bed, the Jesse Gadden CDs at the
bedside.

"So, on the day his ‘goodbye’ concert is to be streamed online to
an estimated fifty million fans, we ask, what is the truth about Jesse Gadden?
Is he a very generous, enigmatic rock star, or is he a mentally unbalanced cult
leader who kills with his songs?"

Fifty minutes later there was
complete silence as the programme finished. Kate looked around the room.

Finally Neil Fraser cleared his
throat. "Jesus, Kate!”

"It's true." Kate could
hear a shake in her voice. Seeing the programme cold, alongside people who knew
little about Gadden, had unnerved her.

"It's
unbelievable!
" said Robin Broomfield.

Everywhere in the room there was
a clamour of confusion and disbelief.

"And the woman who killed
her children...?" Sarah Shulman interrupted. The interview with Elizabeth
McDonagh had caused the greatest impact. "Are you sure that's her?"

"Positive. I expect the
police have picked her up by now, but..."

"You're saying she got a
message to kill her husband and children from a song?" Fraser interrupted.

"
She’s
saying that. I think the girl in New Hampshire, Donna Hallsden, got the same
message, though not at the same time. There are probably other fans around the
world we don't know about yet who may also have got it.”

Broomfield shook his head disdainfully.
"I’m sorry, Kate, but…"

Fraser's foot was tapping
nervously. "Tell me again how you think this thing works… this
manipulation."

"It's something to do with
the power of the music, the repetitive riffs, the timbre of the voice and a
very charismatic performer. One or two other very big stars have it…”

"Other singers don't get
people to do anything apart from buy their records," Bloomfield interrupted.

Kate frowned. “I know it's a big
leap, Robin, but other big stars aren't psychopaths who also use hypnotic
tricks and the power of the internet to influence their fans. I don't suppose
Gadden realised what he could do when he started. Then he met Petra Kerinova
and added a little hypnosis to the magic.”

Broomfield was now wearing the incredulous
expression he used for interviewing evasive politicians. "
’Magic!’
This fellow has millions upon
millions of fans. Are you suggesting they're
all
brainwashed?"

"No, of course I’m not.” She
could feel herself over-responding to him as interviewees did when he started
to harry them. “To most fans he's a wonderful, good looking guy with a
sympathetic voice, who looks at them dreamily out of the screen. But to a few
others, a very few, people like poor Beverly Dennis, moments of life become a
semi-trance which is reinforced by every Jesse Gadden video they watch on the
internet and every Jesse Gadden record they listen to…”

“For God’s sake, Kate…”

She wouldn’t let him in. “And
these people watch and listen a lot, believe me. They want to get close to him
and become members of his entourage. And it's these people, like Beverly, who, given
the right trigger at the right moment, the right message, if you like, will do
whatever he tells them to do."

"But why," Harris, the
acting news editor, asked. “I mean, if that’s true, what’s in it for him?”

“You’d need a psychiatrist to
tell you that. But a crisis has happened in his life. He’s ill.”

 
“And insane?” said Harris.

“I believe so.”

Again the room was in silence.
Everyone was staring at her. She felt uncomfortable. She knew what they were
thinking: that it was she who was mad.

Fraser was making notes on a pad.
"This woman from Birmingham
who you believe to be Elizabeth McDonagh…she says she got a message?”

"Yes."

"What exactly did the
message say?"

Kate bit her lip nervously.
"She didn’t say.”

Fraser looked at her. "So we
don't know for sure that there was a message. Even if it
was
her, she may just have been saying that she got a message from
a song."

"It was her, Neil, and I
believe her."

"I'm sure you do,
Kate," Fraser said calmly. "But can we prove it? Can we prove that Beverly was responding to
him, or that the young man your friend met in the gay bar was given a message
on the phone by Gadden? Or even that the girl in America was triggered in some way
by a song? Can we prove anything at all?”

 
She felt shredded. She couldn’t answer. Even
the filtered recording from Danton’s Bar hadn’t been enough. They weren’t
convinced.

"This Reich’s Syndrome
thing," Broomfield
came in. "This illness. I've never heard of it."

"Because it’s very uncommon,
Robin. But Gadden's mother died of it, insane and helpless at the end. It's
inherited and progressive, like Huntington's Chorea. It marks people out from
childhood. They seem to lack something...kindness or human sympathy for anyone
else's predicament. They're completely self obsessed, often clever, frequently
criminal. Later on there are breakdowns, headaches. Dementia always occurs. If
he has it, Gadden knows what he's facing. There's no cure."

“
If
he has the disease! You’ve seen a doctor’s diagnosis?” Broomfield continued.

She didn’t bother to shake her
head.

Fraser was kinder. "You said
you think he’s suffering from a mental illness?”

"Yes. Mental illness is
common in cult leaders.”

"'Cult-leaders'!"
snorted Broomfield.
"He's a bloody rock star. Like Bono or Mick Jagger. That’s all.”

At this Hilly Weston had to
disguise a snigger.

Kate’s temper snapped. "No
it isn't all, Robin. The guy has a death obsession. I’ve experienced it. He
grooms suggestible fans to kill. He did it to Beverly because Seb was threatening to discover
too much about him and get in his way. The same with Greg. Beverly and Overmars
had already been programmed to do what he wanted. All it took was a couple of
phone calls with music playing in the background. There are veiled messages in
his songs when his concerts are streamed over the internet. And, if no-one does
anything, there might be another message tonight during his farewell concert,
which means there could be more deaths…” She looked around the room.

Faces were blank.

Her voice rose. “Why does nobody
believe me?”

“Because it’s all
“might”
and
“could”.
It’s preposterous!” Broomfield’s
bullying had now lowered into a murmur of derision as he turned away.

She heard him. “‘
Preposterous’?
That’s what you think?
And I suppose the mass suicide at Jonestown in Guyana in 1982 was preposterous,
too, when over nine hundred people drank cyanide because a charismatic, insane
leader told them to. Or what about Charles Manson who told his followers to go
out and kill and they did. Or the Heaven’s Gate cult in California who committed suicide because
they’d been told a UFO was hiding behind the Hale-Bopp comet and they wanted to
join it. You’re a newsman, Robin. You must remember that story? You probably
even read it on the damn news, for Christ’s sake! Thirty nine grown up people
killed themselves because some mad man told them to.” She was shouting.

Broomfield looked away. There was an
embarrassed, worried silence.

Finally Fraser looked towards Abramsky,
the lawyer. "What do you think, Larry?"

Abramsky, who hadn’t spoken since
he entered the room, delicately cleared a couple of spare hairs from his
forehead. "It seems to me that whether or not any of this is true, whether
or not this woman Elizabeth McDonagh is who Kate thinks she is, whether or not
we are convinced that it’s possible to manipulate people to suicide and murder
through music, and I’m sorry to say, Kate, I’m not, if we were to run any of it
now, Jesse Gadden, a massive benefactor whatever else he may be, could sue us
to the moon and back, and we wouldn't have a leg to stand on.”