by Jo Bannister
Wilmslow was working in his garden. Brodie could hear a strimmer in the background. ‘Hello? Yes?’
She told him what she wanted so matter-of-factly that he answered without wondering if she had any right to ask. ‘I told the police. I asked the big man and he said to go ahead.’
Brodie shook her head at Daniel. ‘He says you’re wrong.’
‘May I?’ He took the phone. ‘Mr Wilmslow – Daniel Hood. Do you mean the big man with the beard – Eric Chandos?’
‘What? No, the chap who’s paying the bill. The owner. The big man.’
Daniel wanted it in words of one syllable. ‘Who are you talking about? Who did you speak to about the test-pit?’
‘Fry,’ said Norman Wilmslow. ‘He was a bit dozy on it, but I couldn’t find Mr Chandos and it is Fry’s house. I thought, if he don’t mind a hole in his lawn why should anyone else?’
Daniel gave Brodie her phone back and for a moment they just looked at one another. Then Brodie nodded slowly. ‘When the digger hit pipes behind the stables Mr Wilmslow needed new instructions. Jared was there and Eric wasn’t. Wilmslow asked if he should sink a test-pit down the garden and Jared said yes. He didn’t know there was any reason not to.’
Criminal detection is an intellectual exercise right up to the point where you remember that someone got hurt. That moment arrived for Brodie just then. It wasn’t a puzzle: it concerned a girl’s death, and the fact that she was nineteen and never got to be twenty, and if they were right someone they knew was responsible for that. For killing her. For shovelling her out of sight under the leafy ground and letting her family mourn in ignorance for eight years.
And this – Brodie swallowed – was a man she knew. In the Biblical sense if not, it now appeared, any other way. Her skin had thrilled to the touch of hands which had killed. For a moment there was a real danger she would throw up.
Not Daniel, who was preoccupied with the songbook, but Fry saw the nausea swamp her face and reached out to steady her. ‘You OK?’
‘Yes,’ she answered quickly. Then, more honestly, ‘No, not really, but thanks for asking. It’s just, suddenly this is real. The skeleton in the garden was a real girl and we probably know her name and we probably know who killed her. All we don’t know is why.’
Wordlessly, Daniel pushed the tray to the end of the table and put the songbook down, open, the pages scrawled in thick black ink. Brodie could make out the title at the top and not much else.
‘See?’ said Fry, suppressing the satisfaction in his voice because it might seem crass in the circumstances. ‘I told you it was my song.’
But if what he’d seen had made Daniel revise his opinion he’d have said so. Brodie picked up the book.
It was heavier than she’d expected and three-quarters full. It was open about half way through. By knitting her brows and peering at the scrawl slightly sideways she was able to read what was written there – helped by the fact that the words were now quite familiar.
When she’d finished she looked at Daniel interrogatively. He looked away. Using her finger as a bookmark, she flicked back and forth through the pages. Then she saw what he had seen.
‘Jared,’ she asked carefully, ‘how long does it take you to write a song?’
He shrugged. ‘Depends.’
‘I’m sure it does. But in general, are we talking hours or months?’
‘A few hours for the first draft. I’ll rework it over the next few days, then come back to it several times before we record it. That might take a couple of months. It might take longer.’
‘And some come easier than others?’
He gave a mirthless grin. ‘It’s like giving birth. Sometimes it’s a yell, a rush of blood and there’s a baby in your arms, and sometimes it’s out with the forceps.’
Brodie leafed through the book again, noting the dates by each title. ‘You wrote more at the start of your career than you have recently.’
Fry was defensive. ‘There’s more to do now. We’re on tour a lot of the year.’
‘I’m sure,’ nodded Brodie. ‘And then – forgive me – by the time you wrote Crucifiction you were already on heroin?’
‘Way before that. So?’
She sighed. ‘Being stoned makes people feel creative but it’s an illusion. I bet it was getting harder to put together songs that still looked good in the cold light of day six or seven years ago.’
‘It was never easy,’ gritted Fry.
‘But the results used to be better,’ Daniel said gently. ‘You told me that.’
Jared Fry only bristled. ‘Crucifiction’s a damn good song. Ask anyone.’
‘Of course it is,’ agreed Brodie. ‘It’s a classic of the genre. It defines you as an artist. I’m not knocking the song, I’m trying to understand how it came to be written. And why this song, and a lot of the songs that came after it, were written in a different way to the ones that went before.’
He didn’t know what she meant. Frowning, he leaned over to look.
Brodie flicked the book back several pages. ‘I know nothing about songwriting, all right? But this is what I’d expect – a lot of writing down, scribbling out, writing over, writing in the margin, starting again. This song, from 1995, was worked and reworked until it satisfied you. To judge from the different pens, you had several sessions with it. And then you were happy that you’d got it right. Yes?’
Fry nodded and then shrugged. He still didn’t see what she was getting at, what she and Daniel had both seen.
‘So why is Crucifiction different? Did it really spring from your brain word-perfect? Did you really not want to change anything from when it came into your head?’
There wasn’t an alteration on the page. It seemed to have flowed from his brain, down his fingers and off the end of his pen in its finished state, exactly as he would sing it. Perfect.
Fry said off-handedly, ‘I must have worked it out in my head, only written it down when it was right.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Daniel. He indicated the bottom of the page where a spider appeared to have got drunk and fallen into an inkwell. ‘What’s this?’
‘That’s the music,’ said Fry through clenched teeth.
It wasn’t formal notation such as classical musicians would be familiar with. Perhaps it would have made sense to another rockstar, or perhaps these dashes and squiggles were a language unique to Jared Fry. What was clear was that he’d written the music exactly as he’d written the words: in one great out-pouring of creativity, without a note being subsequently changed.
Brodie was nodding slowly, but not because she was convinced. ‘Well, for whatever reason, you wrote Crucifiction in a different way to how you wrote all the earlier songs. But afterwards there are others written the same way. Not all of them. Half, maybe more, are scribbled and rubbed out and rewritten like the earlier ones. But among them are’ – she flicked through the pages, counting – ‘maybe twenty that look the way Crucifiction looks. As if you knew exactly what you wanted to say and how to say it before you ever opened this book.’
Daniel didn’t take the book back. He knew what was in it. ‘And after those twenty songs were written the muse departed. Everything you’ve produced since has been written the same way as your early songs: with a lot of effort, a lot of input, a lot of corrections and improvements. Just …’
He managed to stop the words but not the thought. ‘Just not the same results?’ said Fry bitterly. He didn’t need anyone to point out that his talent was gone.
‘I’m sorry,’ murmured Daniel. ‘I don’t mean to hurt you. I’m trying to get at the truth.’
‘Which is what? That I used to be a better songwriter than I am now? Hell, Daniel, I’d figured that out myself. What other revelations have you got lined up?’
Daniel’s eyes were full of regrets. He knew exactly what he was about to do: destroy another human being. ‘Jared, you didn’t write those twenty songs. Sasha Wade wrote them. You just copied them down when you were too doped-up to remembe
r.’
Chapter Twenty-Six
Deacon waited until Voss had returned from speaking to Brodie. ‘What did she want?’
Voss explained discreetly into his ear.
Deacon didn’t do discreet. ‘Speak up, Charlie Voss.’
Voss sighed. ‘She wanted to tell us that Daniel has worked out who killed Sasha Wade.’
‘Oh? Who?’
‘Jared Fry.’
That quiver like a small earthquake behind his craggy features was Deacon trying not to laugh. ‘What did you tell her?’
‘That Fry was several hundred miles and a body of water away, performing in front of several thousand people, when Sasha died.’
‘That’s our Daniel for you,’ Deacon remarked tolerantly to Eric Chandos. ‘Great thinker. Terrific thinker. You wouldn’t believe the times he’s been nearly right about things.’
‘Which makes two of you,’ smiled Chandos. It wasn’t just confidence: it was an arrogance that would have cut patterns on glass.
‘That’s about par for the course,’ nodded Deacon, refusing to rise. ‘You come up with a theory, it isn’t right; you try something else, that isn’t right either. But you’re getting closer all the time, and when you get it right you find the proof. Which is actually all that counts. Courts aren’t interested in what I think. They’re not even interested in what I know. They’re interested in what I can prove.’
‘And exactly what can you prove, Superintendent?’ Chandos’s bearded jaw jutted combatively.
So Deacon told him. ‘I can prove that you were in possession of a black van the night one was seen down the garden here, at about the time and place that girl was buried. I can prove that you cleaned it thoroughly before passing it on to a dealer for resale. I can prove a connection between Fry and Sasha Wade – either they wrote that song together or one copied it from the other. And that’s just now, Mr Chandos. Imagine what I’ll be able to prove when I’ve had more than an hour to absorb the fact that you murdered a nineteen-year-old girl.’
Chandos remained unshaken. ‘You can’t prove that. You don’t know that, and I doubt you even think it. You and I both know why we’re having this conversation, and it’s nothing to do with the girl in the garden.’
Deacon gave a shark’s-tooth grin. ‘You’re good, I’ll give you that. Most people in your position would be getting anxious around now. A bit breathless and dewy. And that includes the innocent ones. It takes nerve to just sit there saying, Prove it.’
‘That’s not what I said,’ said Chandos calmly.
‘Of course not,’ agreed Deacon. ‘Because that’s something else innocent people don’t do. They don’t ask me to prove their guilt, they try to prove their innocence. They get quite upset when they can’t.’
‘It takes a lot to upset me. More than an honest mistake that’s bound to get sorted at some point.’
‘Well, that’s a downright generous attitude,’ said Deacon appreciatively. ‘I’ve certainly made mistakes in my time, honest and otherwise. I’ve accused innocent men of crimes and let guilty men go free. The former is embarrassing, but only the latter costs me sleep. Because people who’ve killed once are always likely to do it again. Or something else vicious and damaging. Most people have basic inbuilt inhibitions to stop them really hurting someone, whatever the provocation. They recognise that even their worst enemy is another human being and you don’t end someone’s life just because you’re angry.
‘People who kill lack that mechanism. They don’t get angrier than other people, they just find it easier to ignore the warning lights. Everyone feels they’re more important than anyone else: those who kill really believe it. They put their own interests, desires, needs, whims even, ahead of other people’s basic rights. And not just once but again and again. Sometimes we get them not because they’ve killed again but because they’ve done something else no reasonable person would do.’
‘I understand what you’re saying,’ nodded Chandos, ‘but you’re wrong. I behaved badly towards Mrs Farrell – though of course it was she who behaved badly towards you – and for what it’s worth I regret that. Our … involvement … was one of those things that comes out of nowhere, that don’t even mean very much except for a few days when they mean everything.
‘But that sort of thing happens to everyone. Sometimes you’re the bandit, sometimes you’re the coach. You have to be philosophical about it. In particular, you don’t have to let it affect how you do your job. Accusing me of murder to pay back a personal grudge is unprofessional.’
Deacon’s eyes were wide with admiration. ‘Mr Chandos, it’s a real treat for me to be dealing with an educated man for once. Sometimes you’re the bandit and sometimes … I must remember that. Never got past O-levels myself so I wouldn’t have thought to put it that way. With me, everything’s black and white. Right or wrong.’ His voice hardened so fractionally Chandos might have imagined it. ‘True or false. No wonder Mrs Farrell was drawn to an erudite gentleman like yourself.
‘But you’re right, we should put that behind us. It has no bearing on what happened here eight years ago. The fact that I’ve seen you behaving like trash in recent days doesn’t prove that you behaved the same way towards Sasha Wade.’ Again the fractional change of tone, the distant rumble of shifting goalposts. ‘But it does suggest you might have done. It’s what I was saying about people who kill – they treat other people as if they have no value. As if using them is all right.’
Chandos kept a sofa in his office for the same reason Brodie had one in hers. His was bigger. Even so, Deacon just about filled it. He spread one broad hand on each arm.
‘I’ve thought and thought about it, Mr Chandos, and I can only come up with three explanations for your behaviour. The kindest is that you were skittled by Mrs Farrell and didn’t know what you were doing. Well, that I can understand. The second is that you knew what you were doing but you didn’t care. Didn’t care if you hurt her, certainly didn’t care what effect it might have on me because you’d no reason to court my goodwill.’
Deacon regarded Chandos speculatively. ‘And the third possibility is that you knew exactly what you were doing, and deliberately set out to anger me, and if it meant hurting Brodie, never mind. Which would make you one of those people we were talking about – the ones who ignore warning lights. I could believe that about you, Mr Chandos. I could believe you put so much more value on your own importance than anyone else’s that you’d have no qualms about going through someone to get what you want. In this case, me hating your guts. The question then is, why?’
Chandos’s gaze challenged him to find an answer. ‘It’d be a pretty silly thing to do if I’d carried out the murder you were investigating.’
‘That’s what I thought too,’ agreed Deacon. ‘At first. Then I wondered if it wouldn’t be a pretty smart thing to do.’
Eric Chandos leaned back in his expensive black leather chair, apparently seeking patience among the oak beams of the ceiling. ‘All right, superintendent,’ he said finally, ‘have it your way. However often I tell you you’re wrong, that I didn’t know this girl and I certainly didn’t kill her, I can’t make you believe me. I think you’re going to have to arrest me and charge me with something. Should I have my solicitor meet us at the police station?’
Nice normal people who don’t commit terrible crimes but occasionally wonder what it would be like to be accused of one think that beating the rap depends on giving the right answers. On having a watertight alibi, and a few corruptible friends to vouch for it.
Here’s a tip, only you didn’t hear it from me. No alibi is as difficult to break as no alibi at all. The suspect detectives dread above all others is the one who denies, and continues to deny, all knowledge of the crime without providing any supporting evidence that can be checked and found wanting. ‘I didn’t do it; I had a headache and went to bed early; I didn’t go out and no one saw me,’ is a story that will stand up to anything short of, and sometimes even including, eyewitness testimony
.
Of course, traces of the victim’s blood on your boots will always be a problem.
Chandos may have known this, or he may simply have run out of different ways of saying, ‘It wasn’t me.’ Either way, it was a good move. Charging someone starts a clock that runs as inexorably as anything in Poe. There’s time to iron out some of the wrinkles, there isn’t time to build a case. The material elements need to be in place first. Nine times out of ten, an officer given the choice Chandos was giving Deacon will show his suspect the door.
That isn’t, of course, the end of the matter. It may be a reflection of how close he is to tying up the loose ends, that the detective will opt to release his suspect – knowing he’ll be seeing more of him sooner rather than later – rather than risk compromising his case.
But the clock doesn’t start ticking while the parties are merely chatting in the suspect’s study, even after the tea and biscuits are gone and the questions have turned pointed. Deacon wasn’t ready either to move up a gear or to finish. He dealt with the ultimatum the way he dealt with so many, by ignoring it.
‘So it took Fry a couple of years to write that song of his? Seems a lot of effort for a page of scrawl. A few hundred words. Shakespeare wrote a couple of Henries, a Richard, that thing with the donkey and half a dozen sonnets in the same sort of time.’
‘Perhaps he wasn’t performing them as well,’ smiled Chandos.
‘Actually,’ said Deacon, meeting his gaze in a way that was the human equivalent of bighorn sheep clashing heads in the mountains, ‘I think he was.’
Chandos shrugged. ‘He must have been better at it, then.’
‘You can’t say that,’ said Jared Fry. Shock was a breathy pant in his voice. ‘It isn’t true.’
‘I’m not suggesting,’ said Daniel gently, ‘you knew that’s what you were doing. You use heroin because you think it takes you where the ideas are, and you come back with a new song in your head. But what if it’s only there because someone put it there?’