Rock'n'Roll Suicide (Jack Lockwood Mystery Series Book 1)

by Geoffrey West

  He leaned forwards.

  “Not a word to anyone. Or I’ll come back and finish the job. I mean it. Not a fucking word. You won’t get lucky a second time.”

  A few minutes later, after more door openings and slammings, and engine revving, they were gone.

  I passed out and lay there for a long time. When I woke up there was a strong breeze, chilling the blood that had dried on my face, heightening the sour taste of bile in my mouth. Everything ached, but when I tried to flex my muscles, to my relief it seemed that everything worked as it was supposed to, no broken bones apparently, unless the sharp pain in my chest meant a cracked rib. Cutting the tape around my wrists had been the first, the hardest thing to do. It was a matter of balancing the knife on the ground at the right angle and offering the tape around my wrists against it and sawing.

  But as I was slicing through the last few strands I made a bad misjudgement. The blade skittered back along my wrist, slicing into the skin. I couldn’t see properly in the darkness but I could feel the wet splashing spread of pulsing blood. I quickly managed to cut the rest of the tape, then the band around my legs.

  The blood was welling up across my wrist, oozing everywhere, and I realised that I must have cut an artery.

  Shelly’s revenge.

  Tourniquet.

  I stripped off my shirt and tied it around my upper arm, stretching it as tight as I could. Then raised the injured arm up as high as possible, in the hope that gravity would reduce the blood flow enough to allow me to make it to hospital before I bled to death.

  Although the pain of my injuries made it hard to walk, I managed. Made it as far as the main road, recognising the way home. But there were no cars at that time of night. No houses nearby either. I pressed on, until eventually I could see the turn-off to my road in the distance.

  I was staggering by the time I made it through my front gate, the effort of keeping the arm raised long lost. My dangling hand was covered in fresh blood that had been dripping onto the road.

  The last thing I saw before I collapsed was a car in my front drive.

  Time must have passed but I had no knowledge of it. I thought I was dreaming or dead. A woman was beside me, kneeling there on the ground. Her face was familiar: the spectacles, the serious expression, the frown of concentration, a faint aroma of sweet perfume and freshly washed hair. It was the policewoman, Jane Redfern. But I couldn’t believe what was happening. What was she doing? My arm was resting on her knees and she was staring at my bloodied wrist, tiny deft fingers poised and active. There was a sharp pain as I felt something stabbing into my wrist. As I faded out of consciousness I wondered why she was torturing me.

  Next time I woke up there was light all around me. Bright colours. A paramedic’s high-viz jacket below an anxious face, his hands busy with something around my other wrist. I felt another hand touching my arm, a soft, gentle, small hand, the fingers probing gently.

  “You’re okay, you’ve lost a lot of blood but we’re on the way to hospital,” the voice said.

  I turned my head. It hadn’t been a dream. Jane, the DC who’d been questioning me yesterday, was sitting beside me.

  “Lots of people think you die quickly if you sever a wrist artery,” she reassured, holding on to my hand and giving a gentle squeeze. “It’s a fallacy. You’ll die, of course, but it takes quite a long while, and it’s best to cut much higher up along the forearm. The volar ulnar artery – the one you’ve severed – is covered by the volar carpal ligament, protected to some extent. It doesn’t have the blood-carrying capacity of something like the carotid artery in your neck or the jugular.”

  “This one saved your life, mate,” said the paramedic, nodding towards Jane. “Sewed up your wrist she did – you wouldn’t have had a hope otherwise, the rate the old claret must’ve been pumping out.”

  “I knew my four years training at medical school would be useful one day,” Jane explained. “When you fainted, I calculated how much blood you’d probably already lost and how long the ambulance was likely to take. No way can the artery ends be reconnected without microsurgery, but I reckoned that the vessel wasn’t likely to be completely severed, so keeping the edges of the skin together was the best way of pulling the yawning opening parts closer and slowing the blood flow. The needle and thread in my handbag did the job almost as well as proper sutures. We’ve radioed ahead for them to have a few pints ready for transfusion, thanks to the blood donor card we found in your wallet, telling us your blood group.”

  “You’re Jane, the DC who interviewed me earlier on?”

  “The one who gave you a hard time.”

  “Why did you come?” I managed to ask, feeling the onset of sleep again, presumably the effects of whatever drugs the paramedics had given me.

  “To tell you that the postmortem results show conclusively that Shelly was murdered, that she didn’t die as a result of self asphyxiation, as we thought might possibly have been the case – someone arranged things to look that way, but there’s a bruising pattern and damage to the neck consistent with manual strangulation. I wanted to set your mind at rest that she didn’t commit suicide because of the way you treated her.”

  * * * *

  It was Monday afternoon. After arriving at the Gare du Nord, Ken and I took the metro to Hôtel de Ville station. A couple of days’ rest had been enough to get over my brush with death, so that I’d been able to keep my promise to go to Paris with Ken to look into the circumstances surrounding the death of Lucinda Lee, the rock star singer whose death a couple of weeks previously had seemed to Ken worth investigating, since she’d been a client of LoneWolf, and was known to have been discontented with her management team, and anxious to leave them. My heart wasn’t really in the trip, I honestly didn’t think there was going to be much point.

  I’d been thinking a lot about Jane Redfern, realising that she’d undoubtedly saved my life. She’d visited me in hospital, but I’d been in such a weak state I felt I hadn’t been able to thank her properly. I’d phoned the station, trying to reach her, but she never seemed to be available, and the mobile number she’d given me in hospital had somehow got lost. I really wanted to see her again, but also felt slightly embarrassed about what she’d done for me. And I still remembered her disdainful expression when she’d questioned me about Shelly’s death. No, maybe things were better this way. I’d left messages at the station for her to return my calls, but she hadn’t replied. Best just to leave things alone, despite my fascination for her, and the memory of the kindness of her face, the feel of her hands on mine. While I found Jane incredibly attractive, she’d already saved my life, so what right did I have to inflict my problems on her? She’d come to see me the other night to give me the news that Shelly hadn’t killed herself to set my mind at rest because she was a kind person, not necessarily because she liked me, or wanted to be my friend.

  Ken’s gloom about his wife’s supposed affair had vanished halfway through the channel tunnel, as we sat together in the Eurostar train, drinking wine. Now, after exiting the Hôtel de Ville metro station we were walking up the Rue de Rivoli. We turned right at the Rue du Renard, continued up until it changed to the Rue Beaubourg, turned left at the top into Rue Rambuteau until the fantastic glass building that was the Pompidou Centre came into view.

  “Gotta meet you somewhere public, get me?” Eden Langford, Lucinda Lee’s boyfriend had said on the phone, after reluctantly agreeing to join us. His northern Irish accent was as crisp and cutting as a scythe hacking grass, and it was clear that he didn’t want to talk, but was prepared to meet Ken and me to chat informally about his girlfriend’s death. “But I have a problem,” he confessed. “I can’t stand confined spaces. Noo small bars, hootel rooms, no way could ah goo to plesses like that,” he’d warned. “Bad enough talking about what happened, sure it is. I gotta be somewhere where I’m free, you know? Somewhere I can hang loose, cut and run anytime I want to, do you get me? Lucy always helped journos, when she could.” he’d explained. “S
o I’ll talk to you because that’s what she’d have wanted, do you hear what I’m saying?”

  The ground floor of the Pompidou Centre reminded me of the main hangar at Stansted Airport, a vast inner courtyard area, with cinemas and the Bibliotèque Publique (collection of periodicals), and in the corner, stairs leading to a mezzanine floor. Then the escalators on the outside of the building took us up to the sixth floor, past the Musée National d’Art Moderne on the fourth and fifth floors. To my right through the glass wall was the exciting vista of the landmarks of Paris: Sacré Coeur apparent as a white domed building in the distance up on a hill, and Notre Dame cathedral beside the Seine, the whole panorama of the roofs and streets of Paris laid out before us.

  The restaurant George, on the sixth floor, had aluminium tables and chairs that looked as if they were balanced in mid air, the décor being so light and airy, every surrounding wall of glass, the sensational panoply of the view out over Paris. The day was bright and sunny, and in any other circumstances my spirits would have been high in this cheerful lively restaurant in the sky, whereas I was subdued, with a growing feeling that this whole trip was a hiding to nothing.

  Ken, however, was in good spirits. He looked younger somehow, free of the domestic chores that dominated his existence. In a smart light-grey suit and open-necked white shirt, his pale face seemed somehow less pasty than usual, the baldness less apparent.

  The man we assumed to be Eden Langford was already at a table at the far corner beside a window, looking like a smudge of darkness in the bright arena. I judged him to be in his mid twenties, extremely tall and thin, wearing a dark sweatshirt and jeans. His lugubrious face below the unkempt thatch of black hair had a harsh forest of stubble below baleful eyes that looked wary as we approached his table.

  “Are you the journos?” Eden Langford stood up as we approached, looking awkward and ill-at-ease. I’d told him we were from a little known music journal, who wanted to write a piece about Lucinda’s last days.

  “That’s right,” I said. “I’m Jack Lockwood, this is Ken Taylor.”

  “Hi Ken, Jack.” Eden had a firm handshake. “I reckon a bottle of wine’s what we need, yeah?”

  Eden was very good at talking. Nervous, almost shy at first, once we’d settled at his table he soon blossomed out, telling us all about how he’d first met Lucy after a gig she’d played in New York. The time that he’d been part of her band, a ‘bass player with attitude’ was how he’d described himself.

  “So,” Ken said. “I gather she was alone when she died. How did you hear about it?”

  “Oh Jeez it was terrible, so it was…” Eden put a hand over his eyes, pinched the bridge of his nose and sniffed back tears. “We’d been to a party the night before. Lucy, she really knew how to party, you get me? We’d scored some high grade powder, you know? Really great shit, she couldn’t get enough of it. The guy who brought it said it was called Atlantic Ice, that it was the latest gear, you know? But she stopped taking it around ten in the evening, she felt bad, she’d had enough. Lucy was like that, you know, the shit could take her into a real bad place, the worst kind of paranoia, kind of thing. Leastways that’s the way I saw it. She picked arguments. She once had a fight with another girl – tore great clumps of hair clean out of her head, you know?”

  I noticed Eden’s hands, drumming on the glass table top, fingers long and thin, the nails bitten back to the quick.

  “Had she taken Atlantic Ice before?” I asked.

  “Oh for sure she had. Lucy had taken every kind of shit there was going. I told the police all about the drugs, how much she’d had to drink, yeah? But Oh God, they never say to you, ‘Eden, look, it’s sorted, we know what happened’. Because they don’t. They’re just assuming it was an accidental overdose.”

  “How about the postmortem?” Ken asked.

  “Cause of death was supposed to be choking on her vomit, but they think she had some kind of seizure before that. They listed all the different drugs in her system. But no one of them, or the alcohol, was supposed to be enough to kill her. They told me all kinds of crap, like, ‘in her condition these things happen’, meaning her heart trouble, she was in a precarious state of health, anything could have tipped her over the edge, kind of thing. But they don’t have a clue really, they’re just guessing, so they are.”

  “What do you think?” I asked.

  “I think she pushed herself a wee bit too far just once too often. She got away with it in the past.”

  “But not this time?” Ken added.

  Eden shook his head, gulping as he swallowed the last of his wine, and poured out some more.

  “Look, this is going to sound strange, and we’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone,” I said. “But do you think anyone might have had a motive for killing her?”

  “Killing her? Jeez what is this man?” Eden glanced up, blinking at us in surprise. “You’re not the police are you?”

  “No. Look it’s a long story, and it sounds crazy. But the fact is, over the years there’ve been a number of artists managed by LoneWolf who’ve died in odd circumstances. Two in the last couple of years. Just like Lucy, at the time they died they were in dispute with LoneWolf.”

  “And you think?” Eden let the question hang.

  “We don’t think anything yet,” Ken assured him. “It’s just a possibility, that’s all. We just came here to look things over. We’re not expecting any answers.”

  “But you’re hoping, yeah?” Eden was stunned, staring vacantly at the table and shaking his head. “How the fuck could anyone ever prove a thing like that?”

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “More to the point, a company like LoneWolf wouldn’t hesitate to take legal action against anyone suggesting they were involved in a client’s death. That’s why we’re trusting you not to tell anyone what we’ve said.”

  “But if you’ve not told the police, and you have no evidence, strikes me that you’re just pissing in the wind.”

  “Precisely,” Ken agreed. “That’s why we want to make some discreet enquiries, in the hope that if there is any evidence we can find it, then start a proper enquiry.”

  “I’d help you if I could.” He downed the last of the wine and poured another glass. “Hey, wait a wee minute. Maybe I can. I’ve still got the keys to our flat. I moved out after it happened, the police were all over it, and after they took away all their stuff, I couldn’t face seeing the place, you know? Haven’t even got around to giving the landlord notice. I moved into a cheap hotel – just pop over and collect my clothes when I have to, and I guess I’ll go back home once I’ve sorted my head out. It’s practically empty of my stuff now. Why don’t you guys go and take a look?”

  * * * *

  It was just a short walk away in the central Marais district. Eden led us back along Rue Rambuteau in the direction of the Place des Vosges, then along a few side streets until we came to a three-storey building, constructed in the ubiquitous Haussmann style of the 1800s. He gave us the keys, arranging to meet us back at the Pompidou once we’d finished with them.

  Across the road, we went into the vestibule of the building he’d pointed out, one of a terrace with a wide entrance, and the number 59 above the doorway. One of the keys let us into the common area, where a smell of furniture polish dominated the marble-lined space. We took the hard echoing stairs to the first floor and stepped out into the corridor.

  I can’t be sure when I had the feeling, but I think that was the start of it.

  You know the feeling I mean? When you’ve started to do some task which you’re convinced is a good idea, and then, little by little, you realise you were wrong, and it’s time to face the fact that it was a really really bad idea, and it’s time to cut your losses. That’s how I felt as I registered the dull clatter of our footsteps on that grim empty stairway. It was bad: that awful sinking sensation that’s deep down in your consciousness that tells you you’ve made a monumental blunder. That sooner or later you’re going to have to
admit to yourself you’ve screwed up and have to try something else or give up altogether. I still hadn’t fully recovered from Adrian Hart’s beating, and a headache was stabbing hard above my eyes, reminding me of the stiffness of my leg muscles, the pain in my wrist and shoulder. Suddenly I felt very very tired, one of several delayed reactions I’d had in the last few hours.

  I didn’t know it at the time, but that was the tipping point, the beginning of the sequence of dreadful events that were about to come thick and fast and shake everything I’d believed in so far: things were about to happen that were going to change my world forever.

  So when I saw Ken’s happy face, I felt something like pity for him, mixed with irritation. He actually seemed to be enjoying himself, yet the instinctive feeling I’d had before we’d even set out for Paris, was growing more and more, and his light-hearted demeanour was getting on my nerves.

  I was in serious trouble and had no time to waste. So why was I here, chasing after shadows, when I should be at home, trying to get my life on track?

  The Maggi O’Kane massacre, sure, I had photos to prove there’d been a terrible miscarriage of justice. But how could that historic catastrophe have any possible bearing on other, more recent deaths? And if by some astonishing possibility LoneWolf had been systematically liquidating their clients over the years, surely something untoward would have come to light before now? We were chasing around Paris with no clear idea of what we were doing or even of why we were there. How Ken managed to remain so enthusiastic I just didn’t know. Yet he was no fool, so why was he so convinced that the Maggi O’Kane conspiracy to murder had anything to do with the present day? Nothing seemed to make sense.

  Inside what had been Lucy’s room things were a maelstrom of hopelessness and disorder. There was a fusty smell, combined with a more unpleasant biological stench that made me feel sick. The bed was unmade, sheets and duvet on the floor, covered with stains of I dreaded to think what. Some of the shelf and cabinet surfaces were wiped clean, others filled with bottles of perfume, make-up and girly knick-knacks. Clothes and papers and CDs were strewn on the floor. I longed to open a window, to dispel the fug, but knew I shouldn’t interfere. On some surfaces there were scatterings of what looked like fingerprint powder, and on the bedside cabinet there was a small, empty plastic bag with an official-looking label on it.