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

by Geoffrey West

  I took a deep breath. “Am I free to go?”

  He nodded. “But an officer will accompany you back to your home, and he’s been told to take your passport.”

  * * * *

  When I got home that evening, the last person I wanted to see was Eden Langford. But the tall Northern Irish boyfriend of Lucinda Lee, whom Ken and I had met in Paris, had called at my house, because he was in Canterbury promoting the play he was supposed to be directing at the Gulbenkian Theatre.

  He was a genuinely nice guy, no doubt about it, but with all my worries it was hard to respond to his breezy manner, and it had been good of him to make the effort to drop in and see me. He’d been there a while, had a couple of drinks, and looked at his watch and stood up from the sofa.

  “Life’s so unfair you know?” Eden began again, going on to reiterate how he met Lucy, her struggles with success, the time it took for her to find herself musically, how hard it had been to keep their relationship alive, with her busy touring and him largely based in the theatre capitals of the world. He was helping to flesh out the ‘story’ that Ken and I were supposed to be writing in our music magazine. As he talked I realised just how ridiculous Ken’s idea of examining recent pop stars’ deaths for inconsistencies was. I was tired and stressed and worried, and, charming as he was, I just longed for Eden to shut up and leave.

  “You find someone, you have all the ups and downs, things settle finally, and then, right out of the blue something like this happens, you know?” Eden shook his head.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “And how about you guys?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You and Ken. Going okay for you, is it?”

  “Going okay?”

  “Truth to tell, I got the wrong end of the stick at first.” He drank the remainder of his beer and wiped his mouth. “I just thought you were a couple of regular guys working together, you know? I mean to look at the two of you I’d never have guessed. Wasn’t until the evening, when I saw your mate at Café Cox that I realised.”

  “Café Cox?”

  “I guess you were in another part of the place. I just popped in quickly to see a client who goes there regularly to hang out, you know? Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw Ken there at the bar and I thought, oh I hadn’t realised. But there you go. The most unlikely people can surprise you.”

  “I’m sorry Eden,” I said, still mystified. “I’m not with you. The evening of the day we saw you I was at the hotel, resting after a recent injury that was playing up. Ken went out on his own – to a night club, he said.”

  “Quite a night club, too, so I’m told,” he laughed. “My mate goes to Le Carré as a rule. Do you know it?”

  “No.”

  “Oh God, I haven’t put my foot in it, have I? Ken went there on his own? I’m sorry, I really didn’t mean–”

  “Look, Eden, if he felt like going to a night club, what’s the big deal? What’s wrong with that?”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Why should I mind?”

  His phone rang and he answered it. Eden’s face registered pain, then he did a lot more looking at his watch as he chattered away. Within a minute he was gone in a swirl of apologies about cutting things short, muttering about missed messages and a plane at Manchester airport that he’d probably miss. When he’d gone, I looked up Café Cox and Le Carré on the internet. They were listed as amongst Paris’s most famous gay night spots, in the central Marais district, which apparently had its own ‘gay village’. I smiled to myself. Typical mistake-prone Ken: not knowing Paris nightlife, he’d obviously wandered into the first bar he’d come to, and selected a gay bar by mistake. I smiled, imagining Ken’s confusion and embarrassment at such a scene.

  Then I thought back to my predicament.

  Miranda had died shortly after she met me. Shelly had died after we’d been together and had almost made love. So, whether I liked it or not, I was connected with both those deaths.

  But how?

  On the other hand, Shelly Hart had talked to a number of people about the John Lennon assassination mystery. Strangling someone and making it look as if it was the work of a random killer or even suicide was the kind of thing that the secret services specialised in, especially if they could make it look as if I was her killer.

  The more likely culprit was Melanie Deeprose. She had almost succeeded in killing me, so why wouldn’t she kill my girlfriends too, as a way of torturing me? Now I thought of it, in Cornwall I distinctly remember seeing the spectre of Van Meer following me one day, and, having only just been released from St Michael’s, I’d thought it was just my overactive imagination, or the effects of the drugs that might still have been in my system. Melanie had probably been stalking me ever since then.

  So had Melanie followed Ken and me down to Cornwall and killed Miranda to torture me? Similarly with Shelly, had she done the same thing with my most recent girlfriend? In the cellar when Melanie had almost killed me, when I’d asked her if she’d killed Shelly, she’d smiled in that knowing way as she’d left me, virtually admitting it. There were facts that didn’t fit, sure, for instance would she have had the strength to shift the heavy hardcore to conceal Miranda’s body? But we all have secret reserves of energy we can call upon in times of emergency. And the note that Miranda left? Melanie might have overheard Ken and me discussing my potential new girlfriend, and the news her brother had given me – that she’d been having an affair with a married man. Ken and I had discussed the matter in the local pub, within earshot of plenty of other people. Alternatively, Melanie could have heard the village gossip some other way.

  After all, Melanie had told me she’d done everything she possibly could to destroy my life. Destroying those closest to me would make a lot of sense. But now she was dead, how could I possibly prove it?

  * * * *

  I’d got into the habit of ordering Making Sounds, a trade journal for the pop music industry. I wasn’t that interested in modern music, but it had been a way of keeping in touch with trends, a method of helping me get the background of the business whilst writing Crash and Burn. It arrived next morning, and as I was idly flicking through it an article caught my eye:

  Did the CIA kill John Lennon? was the title. It went on: A wild new conspiracy theory has surfaced concerning the death of John Lennon, that almost coincides with the twenty-eight-year anniversary of his death, on the 8 December 1980. An unnamed source claims that the lone assassin, Mark David Chapman DID NOT kill John Lennon, but it was the work of someone else. Who it is ‘the source’ does not say, but hints at the American security services. A spokesperson for the CIA has hit back, branding this crazy idea ‘complete and utter fabrication. Yet another wild conspiracy theory’. However, to substantiate this bizarre claim, it has been suggested that the 1970s pop star Maggi O’Kane and her group Border Crossing were executed during December 1980 because they were threatening to make public the details of Lennon’s murder. Maggi O’Kane was said to have murdered her band members, then committed suicide, something, which our source said ‘did not happen. They were all murdered by agents of the American intelligence services, because they had photographic evidence which had to be destroyed.’

  Farfetched, factual, of just another fairy tale? Take your pick. At first it struck us as just one more of the many John Lennon murder conspiracy theories that some people love so much, which hadn’t got a thread of evidence to back it up. However, the photographs here, supplied anonymously, do appear to at least back up the possible ‘assassination of Border Crossing’ assertion, if we can believe they’re genuine, and not someone’s sick idea of a bad joke.

  Underneath the article were the two photos of the massacre.

  Fury made the print swim before my eyes. I’d promised Robert that what he’d told me would remain confidential. He’d trusted me to keep it under wraps. And there was only one person I’d told about it.

  Chapter 15

  BETRAYAL

  Wimbledon v
illage was basking in the evening sun as I parked in Sunnyvale Rise, sat back and closed my eyes, wondering if I could bear to speak to Ken without beating him senseless.

  Holding the magazine under my arm, I pulled myself together, walked up the front path and rang on the bell.

  Ken answered the door, his round face breaking into a warm smile, as if nothing had happened. His smile froze when he saw my expression.

  “Jack, what is it?”

  “Don’t you know?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “Why did you do it?”

  I slapped the magazine into his hands, and he read the heading of the article. I followed him as he walked down the hall and into the living room, still reading. He almost tripped over a pile of books and sank into the sagging sofa, mouth open, reading silently.

  I looked around the room. Faded ancient wallpaper, scuffed grey carpet with a brown stain near the old tiled fireplace. Rusty old French windows with peeling paint looked out onto the back garden, the creamy grime on the glass softening the view of overgrown grass, a leafless apple tree and a broken swing. Books, newspapers and unwashed cups and saucers covered the pair of coffee tables and the part of the sofa Ken wasn’t sitting on. After a few moments, he put the magazine down and looked up at me. “Why did you do this, Jack?” he asked me. “For goodness sake! After all you said to me last week about promising Robert Malachi-Brown to keep it secret?”

  “Why did I do it? Of course it wasn’t me. It was you! You’re the only one I told! The only one who has the copy of the original negatives of those photos!”

  He shook his head. “You must have told someone else.”

  “No one. Ken, do you realise what you’ve done? Robert Malachi-Brown said that if any of this came out his life would be ruined!”

  I grabbed him by the collar and pulled him upright to face me. “So what have you got to say?”

  He pushed me away, shaking his head angrily, a flush spreading across his cheeks. “For God’s sake, shut up Jack and listen! Making Sounds came out this morning, yes? It’s a monthly magazine. Don’t you know anything about magazine deadlines? It’s not like a daily newspaper, the copy has to be at the printers at least three weeks before publication, usually press day is about four before. It takes that much time to set everything up, for the printers to get the pages printed and assembled.”

  I’d arrived wanting to kill Ken. But this revelation was something I hadn’t realised. “Surely, they can slip in extra pages after press day?”

  “If they could, what would be the point of having a press day? No. That’s the whole point. It’s do or die, absolutely cast in stone – in the old days there actually was a physical stone on which the print was laid out, the old style journalists had to send someone to proofread their copy ‘on the stone’, and any mistakes after that were left in. The press day can be closer to publication on some magazines than others, of course. But I can’t imagine it could be less than a week, or in fact a fortnight, for any monthly mag with colour pictures and advertisers, and that’s really pushing it. The designers have got to do the layout, slot in the advertisements, it’s all got to fit into the rearranged design plan, called a grid, which is a specific number of pages, each page mapped out, text cut or expanded by the copy editors so it fits the spaces around adverts and pictures. This is Tuesday, right? You told me all about Robert Malachi-Brown’s ideas last Saturday, didn’t you?”

  I could see the logic of what he was saying. I sat in the armchair facing him, having first removed a pile of ironed children’s clothing and put it on the floor.

  “Jack, think, you must have talked to someone over a fortnight ago about all this. Some treacherous bastard who’s stabbed us in the back for the sake of what this magazine has paid them, and I don’t imagine they’d have paid much for this unsubstantiated nonsense. There’s only the photographs that give it any credence, and they could have been forged.”

  “But it’s impossible. Even I only found out about the John Lennon revelation two days ago.”

  “If you read this you’ll see there’s none of the detail Robert gave you – just bare outlines that could have been gleaned from the diary alone.” Ken didn’t say anything, just narrowed his eyes in concentration. “And I never saw the diary, because you only got it back a few days ago. There has to be an explanation. There just has to be. Let’s go through what happened, ever since you found the old camera and the diary.”

  I shook my head, trying to think.

  “Okay, Jack. Think back. You first found the camera, at the Mansh. What did you do with it?”

  “I went into Bath. Found a camera shop.”

  “And?”

  “The guy took the film and sent me the pictures a few days later.”

  “Did he see the diary?”

  I closed my eyes to try and remember. Now I remembered the man in the camera shop. Geeky bloke, wild hair, mad on seventies music, keen on all the old bands and record memorabilia. Tony Woodley.

  “He took it into the back room for a minute. He was so interested in the old camera: asking all about where I’d found it, so I showed him the diary too – I remember he took it into the back of the shop for a while, I never knew why.”

  “Long enough to photocopy some of the pages?”

  “Certainly. So Tony Woodley obviously made copies of the pictures, and either copied pages of the diary and got them translated, or maybe he speaks German, and read enough to realise what it said about John Lennon’s killing. He had the pictures, and the gist of what was in the diary. And the bastard screwed us.”

  “That’s the only explanation,” Ken agreed.

  “But what about the CIA involvement?”

  “He invented that part and got lucky. He knew that Maggi was murdered because she suspected someone apart from Chapman was involved with Lennon’s murder. Who else was it likely to have been?”

  My mobile phone rang and I answered it. It turned out to be Nikki Prowse. Nikki was travelling, on business, and was asking if he could come up and see us. I told him I was in London, and he said that he was on the M4, heading in our direction, and asked if we could we meet up tonight. I agreed, and we fixed to meet at Clacketts Lane services on the M25. I told Ken, and he was keen to come with me to renew our acquaintance, provided we could wait until Natalie came home, because she had to stay in for the children.

  “As I told you, things are a bit fraught between us at the moment,” Ken said, sighing. “Everything seems to be going wrong.” He gestured around the room. “Natalie works all the hours. We can’t afford anyone to help anymore, apart from Gillian, the young girl next door who pops in for emergencies, when we both have to go out.”

  “You said you thought Natalie might be having an affair.”

  “Yes. And when you think about it, who could blame her? I can’t earn money, I’m no bloody use looking after the house. All in all I’m a failure.”

  “Course you’re not–”

  “Easy for you to say, Jack, because you’re different to me. You always were. You’ve lost your job, but you don’t wait for things to happen to you, you get up and make them happen. You’ve got ideas, you try and get things done. That’s just not me. When I was young it was all plain sailing. I did well at school, got a good degree at university, walked into a lovely cosy job. But when times got tough in the publishing world I just couldn’t hack it. I belonged to the days of long drunken lunch hours, everything running smoothly, the bestsellers tiding us over the bad times, and a never-ending supply of easy well-paid work, mostly chatting people up and schmoozing. Then it all changed, we had to achieve more in the time, get results. Other publishers started going under, so the pressure began. Natalie married me in the good times. She didn’t know I’m not a fighter, not a survivor. In a way I married her under false pretences…”

  There was a rattling and click as the front door opened and we heard footsteps.

  I got up when she came in, looking at the mousy, small, dark-haired woman I’d o
nly met a couple of times before. She studiously avoided looking at me.

  “Hello Nat, Jack’s popped in to see us.”

  “So I see.” She turned towards me and scowled, before looking back at Ken. “Kenneth, you said you’d tidy up in here! It’s like a bloody tip, it wouldn’t hurt you to pick up the hoover and put things away! Do I have to do everything?”

  “Sorry, I meant to, but I had to catch the shops before they close, and I was caught up with those emails–”

  “For heaven’s sake, Kenneth, what do you think it feels like to come home to this mess, when I’ve been at work all day?”

  “I’ll wait in the car,” I interrupted, stepping away. Ken nodded, and Natalie turned her back on me.

  I let myself out, to the sounds of Natalie’s voice rising higher and higher and getting louder and louder. I heard something like: So it’s okay for you to just swan off and leave me to do everything? And why the hell did you ask him here? You know that I...

  Twenty minutes later, Ken came out of the house, his face more flushed than ever, his eyes cast down in embarrassment. He came around to the passenger side and got in.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “Sure it’s all right?” I couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of my voice. “Has Mummy said you can come and play?”