01.Dead Beat

by Val McDermid

  ‘I am? What makes you say that?’ I asked coolly.

  He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. ‘I overheard your conversation with Jett last night. I picked up the extension because I was waiting for a call.’

  ‘On Jett’s private line? You’ll have to try harder than that, Kevin.’

  He sighed. ‘All right, all right. I picked it up because I was nosy, OK? That suit you better?’

  ‘Much better. I prefer it when people tell me the truth. You overheard our conversation. So?’

  Kevin unlocked his fingers and massaged the back of his neck with one hand. ‘I’ll come clean. I admit I’ve been doing one or two side deals that might not be strictly kosher.’

  ‘You mean you’ve been ripping Jett off with fake merchandise. Let’s stick to plain English, Kevin.’

  He flinched. ‘OK, but that doesn’t mean I killed Moira. I don’t even think she knew anything about it.’

  ‘She didn’t tell you she’d seen you and Fat Freddy together?’ I was intrigued by the line he was taking. I had to admit what he was saying wasn’t impossible. After all, at the time of Moira’s death, Maggie still hadn’t found out exactly what line of work Fat Freddy was currently in. For all Moira knew, it could have been nothing to do with Jett.

  ‘No, she didn’t. And if she’d known about it, do you really think she’d have kept her mouth shut? She was quick enough to badmouth me to Jett and to anyone else who’d listen about her bloody royalties money. She couldn’t have resisted telling him anything she found to blacken my name with,’ Kevin protested.

  The psychology sounded credible, I had to admit. But my belief in his guilt didn’t just depend on one thing. I was torn between letting him stew till the following evening, and fronting him up with what I suspected, to see if I could nail him once and for all. Arrogance won, for a change. ‘You must have wanted rid pretty badly,’ I observed.

  Kevin gave me an admiring smile, all expensive dentistry and insincerity. ‘Nice try, Kate. I’ll admit that if she’d said she was leaving, I’d have carried her bags to the station. But murder? That’s not my style.’

  ‘You had plenty of motive, though.’

  ‘Me?’ Kevin threw his arms out in a gesture of supplication. ‘Kate, if I bumped off every musician who made my life difficult, I’d have been in Strangeways a long time ago.’

  ‘I hear Moira thought that’s where you should be.’

  Kevin’s eyelids fluttered as his body tensed. ‘Look, you keep making these innuendos, but I’d suggest you don’t repeat them outside these four walls.’

  ‘I’m talking about money, Kevin. Not just the business with Fat Freddy, or Moira’s back royalties. She was convinced you were doing some fancy footwork with Jett’s cash. Otherwise, why would he be on the constant treadmill of tours and albums? Most people of his stature who’ve been in the game as long as he has take it a lot easier than him. A few big stadium dates, an album every eighteen months or so. But according to Moira, Jett had to keep working to keep paying the bills. So where was all the money?’ I pinned him with a hard stare, and I was gratified to see his hands grip his knees tightly.

  ‘Look, I told you. If she’d had any proof of anything like that, do you think I’d still be around?’ he exploded. ‘She was full of shit! She loved to stir it. I told her a dozen times, her cash was all accounted for. It was tied up in a high interest investment account that I have to give three months’ notice of withdrawal on. Out of that tiny, insignificant fact, she built a whole edifice of poisonous rumour. That shows you the kind of woman she was.’

  ‘Frankly, I’m amazed. I’d have expected you all to fall on her neck weeping tears of joy and gratitude, given the way Jett’s career’s been going of late,’ I retaliated.

  Kevin’s head seemed to shrink into his shoulders, like a tortoise in retreat. ‘Listen, Kate, I said when you started looking for Moira that we were looking at trouble. She was always a manipulative bitch. She loved playing us all off against each other, always had. OK, Jett’s been going through a difficult patch in creative terms, but he would have come good again, with or without Moira. He just got this crazy obsession that he needed her. So we all got lumbered with her. She was only through the door five minutes when she had us all at each other’s throats. I’ve told you already. We’re not killers. We’re putting an album together, that’s the number one priority. No one would jeopardize that by making us the focus of all these shitty stories in the press,’ he added.

  ‘I thought Neil was controlling the press for you.’

  Kevin snorted. ‘Might as well try to knit a bed jacket out of a mountain stream as try to control those toe-rags. Neil’s done his best, but he’s got an uphill struggle on his hands. God knows where they’ve got some of this stuff from. I mean, one of them’s even got some tale about Moira and Tamar being at each other’s throats. I’ve a good mind to sue, except that it would only cause more bad publicity.’

  ‘You’d have a job suing.’ I couldn’t resist it.

  ‘What d’you mean?’ he asked indignantly.

  ‘I don’t think you’d have any grounds,’ I said sweetly. ‘But let’s leave that aside for a minute,’ I continued. ‘Cast your mind back to the evening of Moira’s death.’

  He butted in eagerly. ‘I suppose you want to know what I was doing when Moira bought it?’

  I nodded. He nodded. We were like a pair of toy dogs on a car’s parcel shelf. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’d been over to Liverpool for a business meeting and I got back around nine. I stuck my head round the TV room door and said hi to Jett and Tamar. Then I nipped up to my office to make a few phone calls. Around ten, I went downstairs and made myself a steak sandwich, then I popped down to the studio for a word with Micky. That must have been getting on for eleven. He was up to his eyes in it, so I left him to it and went back up to the TV room. Gloria was watching Dead Babies on The Late Show, and I sat in for a while. I went back down to the studio about quarter to twelve, and listened to a couple of tracks with Micky, then I hit the sack. Next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose.’

  It was just detailed enough to be credible, if a bit glib. ‘You don’t have any problem with your memory, do you? Not like Micky?’

  Kevin pulled a face. ‘Nose like mine, Kate, you don’t mess about with it, if you catch my drift. Anything other than music goes out of Micky’s head like water down a drain. Besides, I’ve already been through it once for the boys in blue. I was there twice, and he can’t deny it.’

  ‘Did you see anyone near the rehearsal room?’ I asked.

  ‘Afraid not. The whole thing’s a mystery to me. I can’t accept it was one of us, you know. It must have been someone on the outside,’ Kevin told me confidently.

  I ignored the pathetic attempt at a red herring. ‘You say you went up to bed after you’d spoken to Micky?’

  ‘That’s right. You saw me come downstairs yourself,’ he pointed out, his tone grievance incarnate.

  ‘Precisely. And do you normally go to bed in a suit and tie?’

  His eyes widened, and the fingers of one hand started to beat a nervous tattoo on his knee. ‘Just because I hadn’t actually gone to bed yet doesn’t mean a thing.’

  ‘You’d been upstairs nearly two hours. And you hadn’t even loosened your tie, Kevin. That’s not normal behaviour. And in a murder investigation, anything that’s not normal behaviour is automatically suspicious. So what was going on?’

  Kevin took a deep breath, leaned his elbows on his knees and rubbed his face. ‘If you must know,’ he said, his words curiously muffled, ‘I was going out. I haven’t always shacked up in a grace and favour corner of Jett’s house, you know. I’ve got a home of my own, Kate, a beautiful place down the road in Prestbury. Queen Anne style house, five bedrooms, gym, jacuzzi, swimming pool, the works. The wife lives there. When we split up, I moved in at Colcutt temporarily while I sorted things out. Only, my wife, she’s screwing me for every penny she can get her hands on. And she’s fucked o
ff on a skiing holiday with her new boyfriend. I was going round to burgle the house.’ He raised his head and stared defiantly at me.

  ‘In a suit and tie?’ I blurted out incredulously.

  ‘I thought it would be the least suspicious thing to be wearing if anyone saw me or if I got stopped by the police,’ he said lamely. ‘I know it sounds stupid, but she’d got me so wound up, I just wanted to get back at her.’

  ‘And make a few bob at the same time? That’s some excuse, Kevin. God, you’re pathetic’

  ‘I might be pathetic in your eyes, but I’m not a bloody killer,’ he flared up.

  This wasn’t working out at all as I’d imagined. In my scenario, he was going to probe to find out what I knew then mount a murderous attack when he discovered I had him. Right now, he didn’t look as if he could crush a daddy-long-legs.

  I took a long swig of my drink and settled back to deliver the clincher. ‘Can you explain something to me, Kevin? If you didn’t kill Moira, how is it that you knew exactly how she’d been murdered before the police told everyone?’

  He looked completely nonplussed. Gotcha, I thought. Prematurely, as it turned out. ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ he said with an air of bewilderment. ‘I knew the same time as everyone else. When the police interviewed me.’

  I shook my head. ‘Not what I’ve been told. According to my witness, you knew how Moira had died by the time the police released you from the blue drawing room, a couple of hours after the murder.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ he cried, desperation in his voice. His eyes flicked from side to side, as if checking the escape routes. ‘Who told you that? They’re lying! They’re all lying. They’re trying to discredit me.’ For the first time, his smartalec composure had cracked wide open. He clearly hadn’t been expecting this at all.

  ‘You’re the one who’s lying, Kevin. You had means, motive and opportunity. You killed Moira, didn’t you?’

  ‘No,’ he shouted, jumping to his feet. ‘I didn’t. You bitch, you’re trying to set me up! Somebody’s trying to push me out. First Moira, now someone else. Tell me who told you those lies!’

  He lunged at me. I pushed myself sideways on the sofa. He crashed into the arm of the sofa, letting out an ‘oogh’ of pain. But he kept coming at me, yelling, ‘Tell me, tell me.’

  I couldn’t find enough space to use any of my boxing moves on him. He threw himself on me, gripping me by the throat. His paranoia seemed to lend him extra strength. I’d miscalculated. This was something I couldn’t handle myself. Red spots danced in front of my eyes, and I could feel myself retching and fainting.

  29

  I opened my eyes to a huge, out-of-focus face inches from my own, like a sinister Hallowe’en mask. I blinked and shook my head, and realized it was Richard, his face a mixture of fear and concern. ‘You all right, Brannigan?’ he demanded.

  ‘Mmm,’ I groaned, carefully probing my tender, bruised neck. Richard sat down heavily beside me and hugged me. Looking over his shoulder, I could see Kevin’s legs. The rest of him was hidden under Bill’s bulk. My boss was sitting astride Kevin, looking triumphant.

  ‘Would someone pass me the phone?’ he said calmly. ‘I need to call the garbage disposal people.’ A muffled grunt escaped from the body under him. He obligingly shifted his position slightly.

  ‘On the table, Richard,’ I told him, and he went to fetch it. Bill punched in a number and asked for Cliff Jackson.

  ‘Inspector? This is Bill Mortensen of Mortensen and Brannigan. I’d like to report an attempted murder,’ he began when he was finally connected. ‘Yes, that’s right, an attempted murder. Kevin Kleinman has just tried to strangle my partner, Miss Brannigan.’

  I wished I could have been a fly on the wall in Jackson’s office. The news that someone had actually done what he’d been longing to do since the beginning of the case must have provoked a serious conflict of interest. ‘Well, of course it’s connected,’ I heard Bill protest. ‘They were discussing the murder at the time of the attack…How do I know? Because I was listening at the door, man! Look, why don’t you just get over here and we can sort it all out then?’

  Richard, ignoring Bill’s conversation, was fussing over me. ‘Thank God we were there,’ he kept repeating.

  Losing patience, I said, ‘It had nothing to do with God and everything to do with the fact that I told you to be there.’ They had been my insurance policy; Richard crouching in the conservatory, Bill lurking in the hall. Arrogant I may be, stupid I’m not.

  Richard grinned. ‘I thought that came to the same thing? You and God?’

  ‘They’re on their way,’ Bill interrupted, saving me the bother of having to think up a witty reply. ‘Inspector Jackson doesn’t sound like a happy man.’ A muffled shout from under him indicated that Jackson wasn’t the only one.

  It took a couple of hours to sort everything out. They’d made Bill stop sitting on Kevin, and he’d immediately burst into a loud tirade of complaint. Jackson had shut him up briskly and removed him in a police car to Bootle Street nick. By the time he’d taken statements from all three of us, he grudgingly admitted that the assault on me gave him enough to hold Kevin while he made further inquiries into his financial background. I could see the whole episode hadn’t improved his attitude to the private sector.

  After he left, Richard found a couple of carefully hoarded bottles of Rolling Rock, his all-time favourite American beer. He and Bill toasted each other, boasting cheerfully about their rescue as small boys the world over will do. I poured myself a stiff vodka and said sweetly, ‘Don’t you think we should save the celebrations for when we’ve nailed the murderer?’

  They stopped in mid-swig and stared blankly at me. ‘I thought that was what we’d just done?’ Richard said. ‘You said Kevin had done it.’

  ‘That’s what I said. But now I’m not so sure.’

  Richard gave one of those sighs that seem to come from his socks. ‘I don’t get it,’ he complained. ‘Two hours ago, you were accusing the guy of murder. Now you’re not so sure?’

  Bill shook his head, a wry smile lurking in his beard. ‘OK, Kate, let’s have it.’

  I explained my theory, and he got to his feet, muttering about no rest for the wicked. ‘Let’s go, then, Kate,’ he said resignedly. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘Can I come too?’ Richard asked plaintively.

  ‘You’ll be bored out of your tree,’ Bill told him. ‘But you’re welcome to come along if you want.’

  ‘You can always make the coffee,’ I added wickedly. I knew how to turn him off. And much as I love Richard, I didn’t want him kicking his heels in boredom while we worked. I mean, would you take a four-year-old to the office with you?

  My strategy worked. Richard shrugged and said, ‘I think I’ll just stay home. I suppose I could earn myself a few bob putting out the story of Kevin’s arrest. I mean, even if you think he didn’t do it, he’s still down the nick, isn’t he?’

  ‘Good thinking. Why should Neil Webster be the only one making a shilling out of Moira’s murder?’ I teased.

  He poked his tongue out at me and gave me a farewell hug before he disappeared into the gloom of the conservatory.

  ‘You think you can do it?’ I asked Bill.

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know till I try, do I? It won’t be easy, but it shouldn’t be impossible.’

  ‘Well, what are we hanging round here for?’

  Bill’s attempts at hacking still hadn’t borne fruit by midnight, when the phone rang. From force of habit, I picked it up. ‘Mortensen and Brannigan,’ I announced automatically.

  ‘Is that Kate Brannigan?’ an unfamiliar voice asked.

  ‘That’s right. And you are?’

  ‘My name is David Berman. I’m Kevin Kleinman’s solicitor. I’m sorry to disturb you so late in the day, but my client was most insistent that I speak with you. Would it be possible for me to come round to your office? I’m only a couple of minutes away.’ His voice was soft and persuasive.


  ‘Can you hold a second?’ I asked him. I pressed the mute button and said, ‘Kevin’s solicitor wants to come round. I don’t think he’s just after a decent cup of coffee.’

  Bill’s eyebrows rose like a pair of blond caterpillars. ‘Let’s see what the man has to say,’ he said. Sometimes I think I’d kill to be that laid back.

  I reopened the channels of communication and said, ‘That would be fine, Mr Berman, I’ll meet you downstairs in five minutes.’ I hung up and said, ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’

  ‘The time has come, the walrus said,’ Bill muttered in cryptic response as he tried out another password. I left him to it and put on a fresh pot of coffee before I went downstairs to meet David Berman.

  When I got downstairs, a prosperous-looking yuppie was waiting on our doorstep. Dark grey self-stripe suit, pale-blue shirt and a subdued paisley pattern silk tie. Not a crease anywhere, except in his trousers, and that could have sliced salami. His dark hair was fashionably slicked back and a pair of horn-rimmed glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He smiled confidently at me as I struggled with the four locks on the plate glass doors.

  As soon as I opened them, his hand was thrust towards me. The handshake was cool, with the carefully measured amount of pressure that gives the message, ‘I could crush your hand if I wanted to, but who needs to be macho among friends?’

  ‘Miss Brannigan? Pleased to meet you. David Berman,’ he said cheerfully. ‘I really appreciate you making time for me at this hour of the night.’

  He followed me up the stairs, avoiding small talk in a way that I found slightly unsettling. I suspected it was deliberate. I showed him into the main office, and offered him coffee. Bill didn’t even look up from his screen, though I caught Berman peering nosily through the door of his office.

  I sat down at Shelley’s desk and said, ‘What makes you think we can help, Mr Berman?’

  ‘It’s a little difficult,’ he admitted. ‘I am well aware of the alleged attack earlier this evening, and I can appreciate that you might not be inclined to listen to what I have to propose.’