Kill For Love

by Ray Connolly

Bull dipped his head to one side in a gesture of indifference. “Well, it won’t be for us to decide, but that’s what it looks like. A kitchen knife was in the bath with the body.”

  She shook her head.

  “The blood will be analysed for HIV infection,” Cotton said, as though this might explain something. He was blond, and, wearing a leather jacket, he looked like an undercover cop from a TV crime series, and therefore slightly absurd. Kate wished she was talking to the uniformed police. These guys were all attitude.

  She needed time to think. Harry had gone into hysterics in the bathroom and it had taken both her and the taxi driver, alerted by the screaming, to drag him away from Greg’s body. In the struggle he’d pulled out the bath plug. Most of Greg’s blood had drained away with the water. By the time the police had arrived the upper part of the body had been drying, the colour of old porcelain.

  They were sitting in a small, primrose painted interview room in Kentish Town police station. Easy chairs and a rubber plant failed to suggest an atmosphere of informality. “Was there any particular reason why you wanted to see Mr…Mr Passfield tonight?” Cotton asked, checking Greg’s name in his notes.

  She closed her eyes, but Greg’s smiling face as she’d seen him in Covent Garden found a way through. “He was working with me,” she said. “We were doing an investigation into some people for a TV programme.”

  “What kind of people?” Bull asked.

  “People who work for… “

  “Yes?”

  “Jesse Gadden.”

  “You’re talking about the Jesse Gadden? The rock star?” Bull’s florid face was an eruption of surprise.

  “Yes.”

  “I think we’d better record this,” he said.

  There was a delay as the recorder was readied and the interview identified. Then, at their suggestion, she began again. She told them in the briefest detail about her discussions with Greg, and how he’d arranged to meet Overmars at Danton’s the previous night.

  “Whose body, as you know, was found in the Thames this afternoon,” Bull interrupted.

  “Yes.”

  Only when they asked exactly why she and Greg were investigating the Glee Club did she stall.

  “Jesse Gadden seems to be surrounded by a very…secretive organisation,” she said at last. “I wanted to know how it worked…that it might make a programme. Greg was a rock music reporter. He was told about Hans Overmars, who’d worked for Gadden, and thought he might be able to give us a few pointers.”

  “And this Overmars...he was gay, too, wasn’t he,” Bull said.

  She nodded. “I believe so.” It was the route everyone would take. Gays, late night assignations with strangers in gay bars, followed by one violent death and one mysterious drowning, it was a well worn path. “But I don’t think the gay thing has anything to do with it. I think you ought to interview Jesse Gadden.”

  The two detectives gave her a long look, but didn’t answer.

  At length they thanked her for her help, told her that they’d need to talk to her again, and offered to drive her home.

  She accepted a lift back to her car, and then drove herself.

  Chapter Twenty Six

  October 21:

  She spent the morning in bed watching, though scarcely aware of, WSN-TV. Hilly Weston had taken her place as presenter: she’d been angling for an opportunity as anchor for months.

  She hadn’t slept, the smell of Greg’s body and blood being a constant companion through the night. “You killed him, Kate:” the voice in her ear had been persistent. It was her own. At five o’clock she’d called in sick. She couldn’t read the news today, she’d said, giving no reason.

  The morning had brought floods in Portugal, another jihadist suicide bombing in Pakistan, a fresh U.N. initiative on land mines, and Natalie Streub, now back in Russia, on the new St Petersburg flood barrier. There was a lot for Hilly to get through.

  Then, shortly after ten-thirty, the news Kate had been anticipating arrived. “Police in London have confirmed reports that the sexually mutilated body of a man was found in a flat in the Kentish Town area of the capital last night,” Hilly Weston intoned. “The man, said by police to be a freelance radio journalist who specialised in rock music, has been named as Greg Passfield. The discovery was made by a friend of Passfield, believed to be a well known television reporter.”

  Kate turned off the TV and went to get dressed.

  "I'm sorry, Kate, but this puts WSN in a difficult position.” Neil Fraser was staring into the sheen on the top of his desk.

  It was what she’d expected. On her way into his office, as Chloe had put a comforting arm around her, she’d noticed a copy of the London Evening Standard. Her photograph was across three columns of the front page under the main headline “TV STAR FINDS MUTILATED BODY OF GAY FRIEND”. Greg’s picture was smaller and further down the page: even in his death she’d outshone him.

  At first Fraser had ushered her into his office and poured sympathy, as lawyer Larry Abramsky had listened understandingly at his side. “How terrible for you! What an awful shock. I’m so sorry.” But quickly he’d moved on. “With your name being so publicly linked with this…this incident, a sensational story which is likely to be of public interest and rumour for the foreseeable future, I think it will be better for everyone if you aren’t seen on screen for…well, until it’s all been resolved.”

  She could understand that. She’d become the story. If anyone else had found Greg’s body his death would have merited no more than a small item on an inside page of the newspaper. People were murdered all the time. It was her association that made it particularly newsworthy. Some policeman in Kentish Town had made himself a nice little bonus by giving out her name to the Press. “Are you saying I’m being suspended?” she asked.

  “I think a holiday until all this blows over might be a better description, don’t you,” Fraser soothed.

  “Actually, no.”

  Fraser was surprised. He glanced sharply at Abramsky. “But you must see …”

  She was already shaking her head emphatically. “I see why I shouldn’t be reading the news. Obviously. But Greg was murdered because I asked him to meet someone. He was working for me…investigating the organisation around Jesse Gadden.”

  There was a long silence in the room.

  “Why, Kate?” Fraser asked at last, his tone completely flat.

  “‘Why?’”

  “What were you investigating?”

  “There’s something…I don’t know, something…sinister going on there.” She turned to Abramsky. “And I don't think Seb Browne and Beverly had an accident in Ireland, by the way.”

  The lawyer looked at Fraser. “The police are convinced. Beverly probably took her eye off the road. It was tragic, but…”

  “Have you got any evidence for what you seem to be suggesting?” Fraser asked.

  “No. But what happened to Greg…it’s all part of it, I’m certain.” She was aware that her voice was now higher and louder. She hated herself for it. She knew what the impression must be.

  “You’re linking the two?”

  “Yes. Absolutely.”

  “In what way?”

  She couldn’t answer. “I don’t know. That’s what we should be investigating.”

  “We?”

  “WSN. It’s our story.”

  Quietly Fraser turned to the lawyer. “Larry, I wonder if you could give Kate and me a few minutes.”

  “Of course.” Abramsky left the room.

  Fraser got up and stared out of the window.

  She tried again. “I’m not imagining things, Neil. Something’s wrong…”

  “I don’t doubt you believe that, Kate. And I don’t doubt that Gadden runs an unconventional organisation. But…” he stopped. “You spent a weekend with Gadden, didn’t you?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “And it went…badly?”

  She didn’t answer.

  “You know, don’t you,
it’s possible that we sometimes get too close to our sources.”

  “Neil! For Christ’s sake!” She could feel the heat of indignation. “There’s something bad happening!”

  Fraser managed, just about, to hide a slight sigh. “It’s my fault, Kate. I’m sorry. You had a terrible experience. After Owoso…you probably came back to work too soon.”

  He hadn’t actually said it. He was far too silky for that. But his message had been clear. She’d become irrational about Jesse Gadden, so obsessive that she was seeing him, or what she saw as his malign influence, everywhere. In other words, she was hysterical, imagining things, on the brink of madness.

  “He thinks I’m having another breakdown,” she told herself. “Am I?”

  She was sitting in her car in the WSN car park, her forehead resting on the steering wheel.

  “No. I’m, not.”

  After the meeting she’d hurried from Fraser’s office and through the newsroom without stopping or speaking. Colleagues would be talking about her, she knew.

  But suddenly she felt distant from everyone. What to do, she wondered. She wasn’t wanted here at WSN.

  Starting the car, she drove up the ramp to the street. She'd noticed a couple of days earlier that there was a Hollywood musical season at the National Film Theatre, so, for no reason that she could understand, she went there, leaving the car on a parking meter. Today’s movie was Calamity Jane with Doris Day. She remembered her father singing Deadwood Stage when she was a little girl. “Whip crack away, whip crack away, whip crack awaaay…” he’d gone in the mornings as he’d driven her down Haverstock Hill to school.

  She didn't stay long. Abruptly boring of the dead-eyed-dick shooting, she got up, and, walking out of the cinema, took a stroll along the South Bank past the big wheel of the London Eye, watching the seagulls and river taxis, buskers and tourists as she went. It was a pleasant afternoon.

  How strange, she thought, to be mooching about on a work day with no work to do. It was a Wednesday, too, a “wasted, working Wednesday”, in Jesse Gadden-speak. She was fully aware that she was behaving strangely. People did that, she told herself, when they were in shock…or had gone mad.

  Yes, she could admit that to herself. She was in shock. But she wasn’t mad or having another breakdown.

  By mid-afternoon she was still walking, going nowhere in particular. She’d turned off her mobile but there were bound to be worried messages on her voicemail by now. Passing a newspaper vendor she saw again her photograph on the front page of the Evening Standard, and she put a hand to cover her face.

  On a whim she decided to drive up to Kentish Town. She needed to see Harry. She owed him at least some kind of explanation.

  Harry wasn't at home. Of course, he wasn’t. Heavy duty blue and white sticking tape and a warning on the door said the flat had been sealed by order of the Metropolitan Police. It was a crime scene. Two police vans were parked outside.

  A teenage girl neighbour was loitering in the street, watching. She had, she said, seen a middle-aged man and woman she’d guessed were Harry's parents arrive in a police car and go in and out of the house that morning. She spoke loudly, having to raise her voice above the music in the earphones she was wearing.

  Returning to her car Kate drove back to central London. She had the feeling that there was something she ought to be doing, if she could only discover what it was.

  Parking in the multi-storey behind the Dominion Theatre she wandered down

  Oxford Street

  to the Virgin Megastore, busy now, as young people shopped and browsed. Slowly she moved down the racks: from Mozart to Marley, Gilbert and Sullivan to jazz, Gregorian chants to ethnic. There was so much she hadn't heard: the whole world was awash with music. But why? What was it for? Greg would have known.

  A large black and white photograph, a massive blow up of a face framed by a television screen, hung over the Jesse Gadden collection. She gazed at it. The cheeks and jaw were unshaven, the hair gelled, then ruffled, and the lips slightly parted as though the star had been just about to say something when the picture had been taken. But as always it was the eyes that arrested. They were shameless.

  His London house was in a backwater, a quiet old

  Chelsea street

  overhung by the branches of an ancient oak tree, a hundred yards north of the river. One of the last remaining grand, detached Chelsea houses from the eighteenth century, it lay behind a high garden wall, its bricks mulled with age. Security cameras guarded from all angles. Lights shone from the upper windows. She knew she was being watched. That was why she was there. She'd parked her car opposite the gates, and, leaning on the open car door, she gazed up at the windows and the cameras and waited. From the car’s stereo the peel of Crusader of Sadness cut through the stillness of the evening. Before that she'd played Jesse Gadden Live in Chicago, and before that Chance Meadows Morn, all turned as loud as her system would go.

  She wanted them to hear her, she wanted him to see her, for the CCTV cameras to record her. Then Jesse Gadden would have another Kate Merrimac tape for his collection.

  "Crusader of sadness, I hear you sigh, Of the madness of the moonlight…” he sang.

  The police arrived at just before eight in the shape of a stout and rosy policewoman asking her politely to turn the music down and move on. There'd been complaints from residents further down the street, the officer said, puzzled and embarrassed to find that it was Kate Merrimac who was making the disturbance. People with recognised faces weren't expected to cause incidents outside the homes of rock stars.

  Kate didn't give in easily and was still arguing, when, without warning, the gates of the house opened and the black Mercedes drove out. Gadden and Kerinova in the back.

  It only took a moment. As the Mercedes stopped when a second police car pulled down the narrow street, she slipped away from the policewoman and advanced quickly on it. For a second as Gadden spotted her, he seemed to smile a welcome, as though he was pleased to see her.

  She grabbed at the car door.

  "Oh no, you don’t," a voice bit into her ear, and she was pulled sharply back. The policewoman was stronger than she looked.

  From inside the Mercedes, Gadden now watched the short struggle, like a puzzled spectator at a sport. Then the Mercedes drove swiftly away.

  "What the hell did you think you were doing?" The officer was flushed with exertion.

  "There was something I had to say to him."

  "You want my advice? Write him a fan letter like all the others then," came the reply. "And shut that bloody music off!"

  In the end she did. The police followed her as she drove home.

  Her house seemed foreign as she entered it. One by one she checked every room. And then she checked some again. She was in the kitchen making cocoa when the telephone rang. She let it ring, and then listened to the message. It was Chloe, checking to see that she was all right, asking her to call back. She didn't. She left the message to lie with all the others.

  “Am I all right?” she wondered aloud as she drank her cocoa. “Not really.”

  It was almost six in the morning when it came to her. She’d slept fitfully with the bedside light on all night, and, awake again, had been waiting for the inevitable images of Owoso to arrive. Then, through her exhaustion, everything became clear. Reaching across to her bedside table she picked up the pen and pad which were always there. Carefully she wrote the name JESSE GADDEN at the top of the page and drew a box around it. Then, very neatly, she began to make a list of single words, positioned at regular intervals down the page. “WHAT? WHO? WHERE? WHEN? WHY?”

  Greg would have recognised these words. He might even have smiled. They’d heard them together at the journalism course at which they’d met, when an old-time, Scottish sub-editor, sceptical of the academic qualifications of some of his class, had written them on a blackboard on their first day. “Never mind your fancy degrees, this is what reporting is all about,” he’d rasped as Greg had caught her
eye. “The five questions you have to know the answers to before you file your story. So make sure you do.”

  Finally she wrote one additional word: “HOW?”

  She knew what she had to do. It was the only thing she could do.

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  October 22:

  She was the first customer of the day, waiting at the door when Mr Badawi arrived with his two sons to open up. She'd been peering in the other camera and computer shop windows in Tottenham Court Road since eight thirty. A few years ago she would have had to find a professional stockist for the equipment she needed. Now anyone with a digital camera could make a TV programme.

  She ran though her requirements. A Sony Z1 camera, together with battery and spare and charger; a folding, lightweight tripod; and two Micron Explorer microphones together with a Sennheiser hand-held. Then there was a production bag for carrying the equipment, a set of headphones, a top light for the camera, and eighty 60 minute Panasonic DV tapes. Lastly, as an afterthought, she bought a new BlackBerry. She paid on her American Express card.

  She called in at an Economy Cutz hairdresser on the

  North End Road

  on her way home. She'd never been there before, and it was only a couple of days since she'd had her hair cut. "A number three," she shouted, above the banter of a radio disc jockey.

  The hairdresser, all of seventeen, looked uncertain. Women with educated accents and expensive clothes didn't go into Economy Cutz, and didn't ask to have their heads virtually shaved. "You mean with the clippers?" the girl checked cautiously.

  "Yes, very short all over. That's four centimetres. Right?"

  "Well, yes, but..." The hairdresser was about to protest further, but must have thought better of it. Fetching the electric clippers she obediently ran them around the nape of Kate's neck, up the sides and over the crown of her skull. In curls and whirls the admired expensive elfin cut dropped to the floor.