DEAD AIR (Henry & Sparrow Book 2)

by A D FOX

  ‘Sometimes a pattern... a frequency... comes through strongly. I just followed it and ended up at the Shrewton mast.’

  ‘I’ve never seen you do this thing,’ said Kapoor. ‘I hear tell that it’s a talent which probably saved DS Sparrow’s life, along with Melissa Hounsome’s. The trouble is, Lucas, a career in policing tends to turn you into a very sceptical being. Our world is all about evidence.’

  He let it hang there for a while and Lucas felt his jaw tightening. ‘I don’t do party pieces.’

  ‘Yes you do,’ said Kapoor. ‘When it’s important enough. Now... if I can have evidence of this ability of yours, for myself rather than reported by others, it will make it much easier for me to believe your sudden involvement in yet another murder case is purely down to your rather hapless talent.’

  Lucas took a gulp of coffee and sighed. ‘What have you hidden?’

  ‘I’d rather not say.’

  ‘Oh right - a blind test to find something, somewhere, for some reason.’

  ‘The reason is that I would like to understand,’ said Kapoor. ‘I find what I’ve heard very hard to believe. Convince me.’

  Lucas put down the mug and left the room, teeth gritted. Once again he was back to unearthing Sid from the balled up sock of oblivion. He felt angry but also a little wired, if he was honest with himself. He didn’t want to admit it, but life at the bungalow had been a bit dull of late. The muse hadn’t really arrived for his next art collection, despite Mariam’s encouragement. He had been feeling dispossessed and disconnected, thinking about Kate and the upcoming inquest too much.

  He returned to the kitchen, sat down opposite Kapoor, and suspended Sid between his interlocked fingers, in the triangle formed by his elbows on the table. He looked at Kapoor levelly for thirty seconds, during which the man looked back, his dark eyes giving nothing away.

  With a short, impatient exhalation, Lucas got up and walked to the front door, Sid spinning below his palm, sending up little buzzes and coughs of frequency that were beginning to take shape in Lucas’s mind map as he moved. He sensed Kapoor following and said: ‘Leave the door on the latch. We’re not going far.’

  Sid guided him along the lane, past Kapoor’s regulation BMW, with an assortment of the man’s complicated patterns reaching from it like sea anemones waving from a reef; these he disregarded. This wasn’t the time or place. He kept walking. There was a rise in the land, about two minutes along the lane, and an overgrown stile on his left, leading to a rambler’s access path on the edge of a neighbouring farmer’s land. Lucas mounted the stile, glancing back to see Kapoor close behind, his face unreadable.

  The man didn’t need a hand; Lucas could see he was mostly pretty fit. So he didn’t hold back for him but pushed on up the path. He found the first thing pushed deep into a network of roots at the base of an oak tree. A bracelet of yellow gold coin charms. He picked it up and had the satisfaction of watching an impressed smile spread across Kapoor’s face. ‘Your wife won’t be too impressed if she finds out what you did with this,’ said Lucas.

  Kapoor shrugged. ‘I guessed you would want something meaningful,’ he said. ‘I gave that to her on the eve of our wedding.’ He took the bracelet and tucked it into his tunic pocket.

  ‘Right, so… the next thing,’ said Lucas.

  ‘There’s a next thing?’ Kapoor raised his eyebrows in a show of surprise.

  Lucas shook his head and turned away to continue up the steep hillside. Another couple of minutes and he reached a pile of logs. He felt around inside the stack and withdrew a clear plastic bag containing what appeared to be a single leather sandal. He turned to look stonily at Kapoor, Sid chilling in his palm and his throat constricting.

  ‘This doesn’t look like your size,’ he said.

  ‘It isn’t,’ said Kapoor. ‘Don’t open the bag, please - it’s evidence.’

  ‘Pretty old evidence,’ said Lucas. He really didn’t want to rise to it.

  ‘About sixteen years old.’ Kapoor looked at him, waiting.

  Lucas felt a sudden rush of anger. He shook his head. ‘Cheap trick, don’t you think?’ he said. He handed it to Kapoor with some velocity and then headed back to the bungalow.

  They didn’t speak on the return journey but when they reached his car, Kapoor stopped beside it. ‘I’ll let you get on with your day,’ he said. No thank you. No suggestion that he was in any way impressed. No apology for showing Lucas the footwear of his murdered friend.

  Lucas very nearly kept on walking but something made him stop, take a deep breath, and turn back to the man. ‘When is your next medical due?’ he asked.

  Kapoor blinked. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Your police medical - when is the next one due?’ Lucas dug his hands deep into his jeans pockets, Sid still bunched up in his left fist.

  Kapoor shrugged. ‘Not for a few months. Why do you-?’

  ‘Don’t wait for that,’ said Lucas. ‘Go and see your doctor. Tell him to check your kidney function.’

  Kapoor looked deeply sceptical.

  ‘And… I think we’re done here,’ said Lucas, and left.

  14

  It had been one hell of a day. Malcolm Bright’s workload hadn’t been lightened by the station suddenly filling up with every staff member on the roster as they all crowded in to share their shock about Dave Perry and attend their interviews with the police.

  So many of them in one place meant every single terminal was switched on and being used, even if only for a spot of idle gaming or surfing while they talked in hushed and excited tones about what was going on. The LAN was under strain and he still needed to get down to the garage and do some vital maintenance on the old radio car. The mast motor switch was misbehaving, according to Gemma when she’d got back from that morning’s OB. He knew he should decommission that hulk of trouble for good, but it was still a useful back up and, he couldn’t deny it, he kind of loved the old beast.

  He wasn’t immune to the atmosphere, either. Other press had started to show up; the local ITV guys had parked a sat truck right out front. It made him feel childishly territorial, seeing the opposition’s vehicle right here on his BBC turf. The staff were in a state of confusion too. Some had been interviewed by other reporters on their way in to work. They didn’t know if they should talk - there had been no all-staff email directive against it. Malcolm had some sympathy for Rob Larkhill. There wasn’t really a chapter in the BBC handbook on what to say to rival media when the household name you worked with was murdered. The Journal had sent a reporter and a photographer who were busy getting a vox pop of grief from maybe twenty BBC Radio Wessex listeners who had gathered on the steps outside to express their sympathy. Flowers were arriving and so many calls were coming in to the phone-in line he’d needed to get them rerouted back to the main switchboard where an extra receptionist had been called in to help.

  By lunchtime a book of condolence - bought hurriedly at the local WHSmiths - had been opened, so the listeners could drop in and write their feelings down when they brought flowers. Malcolm found the whole thing bizarre. These people barely knew Dave Perry. If they had known him they probably wouldn’t be crying. The man was a five-star twat. Malc wasn’t happy he was dead; he didn’t think the guy deserved to be murdered. Strangled, apparently. Nobody seemed to know for sure. But he did think that of all the presenters to lose, Dave Perry, self-anointed Voice of Wessex, was one he’d probably miss the least.

  He’d spent most of the day keeping his head down and getting on with his duties - trying to avoid the gossip. Even he couldn’t miss the shock rumour that Gemma had been marched off to Salisbury nick, though. What the hell? That had to be nonsense. Although, he reflected, if he had to work with Dave Perry every morning, five days a week, maybe he might be pushed to murder the guy.

  And now there was another problem; with the output. It seemed something was interfering with the signal. Rowridge was running normally, as far as their guys were concerned, so it wasn’t the big transmitter ov
er on the Isle of Wight and he didn’t think the more local relay masts were the issue. It looked like something closer to home. Malcolm puffed out some air and shook his head. It was late afternoon and the light was fading fast. He was going to have to check the mast on the top of Salisbury Broadcasting House - and he was going to have to do it now.

  He pulled on his anorak; it was getting dark and raining lightly outside the small window of the IT & Engineering room. He walked past Rob’s office where the boss was now back behind his desk, the police having returned to base with Gemma. The guy looked knackered, which was no surprise.

  Malcolm cut through reception, squeezing past the damp tissue-wrangling queue for the book of condolence and grimacing sympathetically at the harried-looking receptionists pinned to the switchboard. He went on through to the other wing of the building where a locked door presented itself opposite the ladies’ toilets. Malcolm pulled out one of a dozen keys and let himself through to the narrow stairwell on the other side. The iron spiral staircase led up to the top of the building and beyond. Its landing was inside a small four-sided cupola, two metres across, with windows on three sides and a door out onto the roof. The access area for the mast was usually thick with pigeon shit, so he was glad of his stout work boots as well as the anorak as he stepped out into the cold drizzle.

  The base of the station transmitter was in a brick-built channel, hidden from view of traffic out front and the car park out back by the slant of two sections of grey-tiled roof. This was designed to give engineers a little shelter from the wind when they were required to attend to the mast for maintenance or repair. Of course, once you climbed up a little way, you got everything the weather could throw at you, but the mast was only five metres higher than the roof.

  He hoped the problem would be obvious; maybe a deceased pigeon clogging up a crucial working part.

  Malcolm stopped dead. Working parts of the mast were indeed somewhat clogged. But not with a pigeon. Something much larger was blocking its signal. Something with dyed blonde hair and a pink jacket. The chief engineer felt himself go hot and cold as he neared the shape; his mind wrestling with repulsion and recognition. The face, above the gaffer tape, was puffy and grey; eyes open and staring, hair uncharacteristically messed up. A toppled over BBC Radio Wessex mug lay just below the taped left hand, a dribble of hot chocolate pooling on the brick. Beside it lay a cake tin with its lid partly off. It looked as if a picnic had been going on up here.

  The fingers, bunched up inside the twists of tape, were tipped with glossy pink shellac nail polish. This was the convincer. Although Malc’s mind continued to flip around in horrified denial, there was no doubt that the body taped to the foot of the mast was none other than much loved former presenter of mid-morning Sheila Bartley.

  Just hours after she’d hosted the on-air memorial for her colleague, she had followed his example and got murdered herself.

  15

  Of course Gemma Henshall wasn’t their girl. Kate had known this just by talking to her back at the radio station. But there was no doubt that a text had been sent from her phone to Dave Perry’s, to suggest meeting for a drink. They had no choice but to take her back and get the interview taped.

  Gemma said she’d been at home with her parents in the window of time when Perry had been killed; they could verify this up to a point but it wasn’t the most reliable alibi. Parents were apt to lie for their offspring in a crisis.

  ‘Who had access to your phone last Friday afternoon?’ asked Kate, watching the girl’s pale face closely as she and Michaels sat opposite her in the interview room.

  ‘Nobody,’ said Gemma. ‘I mean… nobody that I knew of. I had my phone with me all the time.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’ asked Michaels. ‘In your bag? In your pocket? On your desk?’

  Gemma bit her lip, searching her memory. ‘Probably in my bag,’ she said. ‘But maybe on my desk for a while.’

  ‘Did you go to the toilet?’ asked Kate. ‘And leave it behind?’

  ‘I don’t know… maybe…’ Gemma looked around her helplessly. ‘I guess I must have because it wasn’t me who sent that text. I mean…’ She shuddered visibly. ‘Why would I ask Dave out for a drink? I didn’t even like him!’

  Kate saw something in her reaction and leaned in, resting her elbows on the smooth-topped grey table and speaking gently. ‘Gemma, was there a particular reason you didn’t like Dave Perry?’ She saw the girl flush.

  ‘I… he… he was just…’

  Kate saw Michaels open his mouth and glared him silent.

  ‘He kind of came on to me,’ mumbled Gemma. ‘He didn’t really want to take no for an answer.’

  ‘Are you saying he forced his attentions on you?’ asked Kate. It was a quaint figure of speech for an ugly situation, but she didn’t want to put words into the girl’s mouth.

  Gemma studied her hands, clasped tightly on the table top. ‘Kind of,’ she said. ‘I mean - not, like assault, as such. He was a bit grabby. He kind of took advantage, squeezing past me, that kind of thing. He put his fingers in my mouth once. He was giving chocolates out and he just…’ She shuddered again. ‘So… there was no way he was getting an invitation to drinks with me.’

  Kate nodded. ‘For the record, that is assault,’ she said. ‘Did you complain?’

  ‘I tried,’ said Gemma. ‘I set up a meeting with Rob Larkhill. I was just about to tell him about it when you arrived.’

  ‘Right,’ said Michaels. ‘So… we came along just at the wrong moment?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ said Gemma. ‘Can you, like, dust my phone for prints or something? See who else picked it up?’

  ‘That’s happening now,’ said Kate. ‘What do you think would have happened if you’d had a chance to talk to your boss about Dave Perry’s behaviour?’

  Gemma sighed. ‘Nothing, probably. I mean… Dave was The Voice of Wessex. Big doings. I guess I hoped Rob might just have a word with him… but even if he had I would probably have had to move onto another show. It would have been too awkward.’ She shook her head. ‘And breakfast is the best show to work on. It’s brilliant experience. I don’t want to go, I just…’ She paused, as if realising for the first time that the problem had solved itself.

  It had clearly been on DC Michaels’ mind too.

  ‘So it’s quite good for you, in a way,’ he said. ‘Dave Perry not ever coming back.’

  Gemma gaped at him, realisation dawning in her eyes that she had just revealed a whopping great murder motive. If she was Dave Perry’s killer, thought Kate, she was doing an Oscar-worthy act of dumb innocence. Which left the question… who had sent that text?

  The interview room door was rapped loudly and Sharon Mulligan put her head round it. ‘Um, have you got a moment?’ she said, glancing from Kate to Michaels. ‘Something’s come up.’

  It was fully dark by the time Kate got onto the roof of Salisbury Broadcasting House. SOC had already set up some arc lighting around the scene. Happily, at this height and contained by a pitched roof on either side, there was no need to shelter the body from public view.

  De'ath had got there ahead of her and was already finishing up his preliminary findings.

  ‘Is it the same as before?’ asked Kate, the wind whipping at her hair and prompting her to pull it back into a ponytail.

  ‘Yes and no,’ said De'ath. ‘Yes, she’s been gaffer-taped to a mast, I think we can all surmise that, and no, she wasn’t stabbed in the side. I can’t be sure until the post-mortem, of course, but I’m betting she was drugged. There’s no sign of struggle. The taping looks… neater, as if it was carried out in a more leisurely fashion.’

  ‘Any microphone sock in her airways?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘The same make it would appear.’

  ‘Jesus,’ said Michaels. ‘That’s the one who was on air first thing this morning, wasn’t it? Sheila Bartley. We interviewed her at lunchtime.’

  Kate found herself wondering who was going to get into the breakfast show seat t
he next morning - running an on air memorial for Sheila this time. If radio presenters were a superstitious type she could guess that the rush for the top job might have slowed a little this time around. Back at the landing of the narrow stairwell the station manager and the chief engineer were sitting on the top step in a state of shock. The engineer had discovered the body after investigating a problem with the signal from the mast.

  The last time Sheila had been seen appeared to have been mid-afternoon, in the newsroom. How she had ended up on the roof of the building was the key question. Staff didn’t normally go up there; not even for a crafty smoke. They went to the sin shelter down in the car park.

  Sheila wasn’t a small woman; it would have been very difficult to get her up there while drugged or dead, in a fireman’s lift. She would have had to walk up the steep steps herself. The mug and the tin of what turned out to be homemade rock buns were a clue. Perhaps someone had suggested a breather… a bit of perspective. A mug of cocoa and some cake up on the roof after a harrowing day. Who, though?

  ‘That tin,’ said Rob Larkhill, when Kate went to speak to him. ‘I… I think I know where it came from.’

  ‘You do?’ Kate raised an eyebrow.

  ‘We get things brought in all the time, for the presenters,’ said Larkhill. ‘Listeners get very attached. Sometimes they like to bake.’

  ‘They bake?’

  ‘Oh yes… and some are a little more persistent about it than others. Finley Warner - we spoke about him this morning - he drops stuff off maybe two or three times a week. Cakes, biscuits, knitwear…’

  ‘Knitwear?’ repeated Michaels.

  ‘Yes, some pretty awful jumpers come into SBH,’ said Larkhill with a sad wince.

  ‘Not always awful,’ interjected Malcolm Bright. ‘Some of them are good; we get some really nice listeners too, you know. Not all of them are bonkers. Some of them, you’d even take a chance and eat the cake. Like Eileen in Old Milton and Maria in East Gower - you get to know them quite well and they’re alright. They come along to the OBs and we chat.’