Death Of A Diva

by Derek Farrell

  Her eyes raked me once again. “What’s that, then?”

  “Lyra pictures, CDs, stuff like that,” I lied.

  “So where is it, then?” This Rumpole in a tight t-shirt demanded, her lips pursing, as her crossed-arms flexed and the bosom shot alarmingly higher.

  “I didn’t bring any.” Well, at least I’d said something truthful. “Wanted to, um, talk to him first.”

  “Well ‘e ain’t in,” she responded, turning as if to re-enter her house.

  “This doesn’t feel right,” I muttered and, squatting down, pushed open the letter box again and called his name.

  “’Ere,” Janet Wood protested, “You can’t go making a racket like that. This is a good street. Quiet. What’s your game?”

  “Something’s not right here,” I answered. “I’m worried that something might have happened to Leon.”

  And that was the second truthful thing I’d said in a while: to begin with I’d been annoyed that Leon had done a bunk but the more I thought about it the less likely it seemed. The drama surrounding Lyra was here, in London. Why would he decamp to the West Country unless he was afraid of something? But then, why would he leave the radio on?

  I wanted into the house. If Leon wasn’t there, I might find something that would indicate where he’d gone. If he was there, I needed to know. I was just trying to decide whether to call the ASBO twins (who’d received one of their Anti-Social Behaviour Orders not because of their incredible skill with a lock pick, but because of their inability to refrain from exercising said skill) when Janet appeared on my side of the fence.

  “Shift over,” she said, “and don’t try any funny stuff.” I stood and moved to one side as she stepped forward and, digging into the pockets of her sweatpants, extracted a keyring that must have contained fifty keys. “Neighbourhood Watch,” she explained as she began to go slowly through them looking for the relevant key. “Got a spare for nearly everyone on the street. Ah, here we are!”

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  We found him just inside the living room.

  I didn’t know how long Leon had been dead, but he was not a pretty sight, what with the effect caused by the pair of what looked like American tan tights tied tightly around his neck.

  On seeing the body still wearing that ratty dressing gown and with a bug-eyed look that seemed like a fifty-fifty mix of surprise and accusation, Janet let out a shriek, tilted rather alarmingly forward, caught herself against the door frame and swallowed another scream.

  “Bloody ‘ell,” she whispered, her eyes never leaving his bloated and discoloured face. “Did ‘e do ‘imself in?”

  “Not unless he worked out how to tie knots behind his head,” I answered. “D’you wanna call 999, or should I?”

  “I’ll do it,” she straightened up, “Neighbourhood Watch, innit,” and pottered into the hallway.

  “Don’t use his phone,” I called. “Fingerprints.”

  “I’ll nip next door,” she called, recoiling from the telephone she’d been about to use as though it were a viper. “Back in a minute.”

  And she was gone, leaving me with the midday news coming at me from the background. Some politician was denying he’d done anything wrong, the national statistics for something had gone up (I couldn’t tell whether this was a good or bad thing but sensed it was the latter) and in Newcastle someone had been arrested whilst trying to do something horrible in the Metro Centre.

  And in front of me, Leon lay strangled.

  I looked around the room. The same overstuffed place I’d seen last time; the piles of videos by the TV; the huge ugly shelving unit filled with books, magazines, CDs and vinyl referencing a woman now as dead as the man on the floor.

  The same framed photos were laid out: Lyra in full LWT glamour with a full-on eighties hairdo. Lyra being presented with various awards. A large one featuring Lyra and Leon, which flattered neither of them.

  I frowned at the display. There was one missing. I could see that the pictures had been pushed together, but where Leon had – as with all obsessives – taken pains to ensure that his portrait and landscape pictures formed a harmonious collective, someone had shuffled this set so that they no longer felt curated.

  Outside, the fog shifted and the change in light made something at my foot sparkle. I looked down at the sad sight beside me, trying to avoid actually looking into Leon’s face.

  There it was again: a shimmer, like a distant star winking across the galaxy. I squatted and squinted at the source of the sparkle. And, licking a finger, reached out to pick up, from amongst half a dozen of its dead brothers, a sequin.

  It was just a sequin. It wouldn’t stand up in court, but I knew I’d seen it before. Attached to a dress that had shimmered at me on another murder scene not too long ago.

  And then I don’t know what happened to me: something overtook me, as they say and I found myself walking down the hall, pulling a hanky from my pocket, lifting the very telephone I’d told Janet not to touch and hitting the redial button.

  I listened as the phone on the other end rang.

  Rang.

  Rang.

  And rang again.

  Finally, it was picked up and a voice answered.

  “Hello?” It said. “Hello? Who is this?”

  Then, receiving no answer, the person on the other end of the line disconnected, leaving me wondering why the last person Leon Baker had called had been Jenny Foster.

  Chapter Fifty

  It was obvious, really, that when a corpse linked to the Lyra Day case turned up, Reid would arrive; and that he’d also have Nick in tow.

  “Well, well, well,” Fisher crooned on arriving at the scene, his raincoat billowing around him and only the fact that he was clutching a Ginster’s pasty reducing the Darth Vader impression, “fancy meeting you here, Danny. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were deliberately going round bumping off anyone who could finger you for the Lyra thing. ‘cept I suspect you don’t mind gettin’ fingered.”

  “Sir,” Nick was squatting down beside the corpse.

  Reid sighed, shoved the remains of the pastry into his gaping maw and looked down at Nick. “What?” he demanded, spraying a light dusting of crumbs.

  Nick held up his finger. At the tip, something sparkled. “Sequins.”

  Reid clamped his jaw shut, swallowed the pie, inhaled deeply through his nose and raised an eyebrow. “Sequins?”

  “Sequins,” I said and made eye contact with Nick, who blushed so deeply red that I almost forgot my anger. Almost.

  Reid turned his head silently from Nick to me and back to the face of the late Leon Baker. “Fisher, take a look around: the fucking place is a Palace of Marabou and glitter. It’s what his sort love.”

  “But there’s none here, sir,” Nick said, pulling a tiny plastic baggie from his pocket, into which he placed the twinkling evidence.

  Reid looked around the room. “So? He probably danced around the room in her fucking frocks. I don’t know.”

  “Lyra was a size 6 at her largest,” Nick replied immediately. “I doubt this one was ever less than a 16.”

  Reid looked, once again, at me. Then back at Nick. Then a nasty little smirk crossed his lips. “So, Danny, what’s occurring here?”

  For a moment, I thought he was referring to me and Nick, then I realised he meant the death scene.

  “I know this looks bad.”

  “Bad? You’ve been present at three murder scenes in the past few days, mate. In each case I – and, I suspect, my friends at the Crown Prosecution Service – could make a very good case for you having had a real motive for committing said murders.” He flipped a glance at Nick “Put the fucking sparkly away, Fisher,” and turned his angry little eyes back to me.

  “You know, I started off thinking that you were in some nasty little Falzone business. But you know what? I don’t think even Chopper would be so stupid as to think he could send the same killer to three offings and not draw attention. So, like I said Danny:
what’s occurring here?”

  I considered pulling the whole I say nothing till my brief arrives act, but then remembered I had nothing to hide and actually a few things to say.

  “Have you met Miss Wood?” I enquired politely. “You know: the next door neighbour. The one who was with me when we discovered the body. You haven’t? Well, don’t you think you should talk to her before you roll in here throwing accusations around?”

  Reid opened his mouth, his face turning a frightening shade of puce. Then he closed it and the smugness settled back in. “Wouldn’t be the first time someone offed a vic, then set up the discovery to fake an alibi.”

  “Christ,” I sighed, my exasperation overtaking my fear at what was becoming a rather usual predicament, “am I in CSI: Stupidity? Does he get many convictions?” This last addressed to Nick. “Talk to her, Reid; I’m going nowhere. Then have a look around the place – get all your chorus line of coppers to take it apart. After that, come and tell me what my motive was. And also, tell me why you can’t find a single frock in this Palace of Marabou and glitter that matches the sequins beside the body.”

  Reid opened his mouth again and whistled slowly. “You got some balls, boy. Fisher: keep an eye on him,” and he left the room, his billowing black mac leaving, in his wake, an aroma of BO and onion.

  Nick beamed at me. “Jesus! Nobody’s ever stood up to him like that before.”

  “Can it, mate,” I snapped. “Every time I need you, you do the whole conflicted little copper act. I think you want me, then I think all you want is to use me to get at Chopper, then we’re back to wanting me, only you won’t look at me when your mates are around. I’ve had enough!”

  I sagged: I really had had enough. I felt like I had nothing left in the tank.

  “I didn’t do this,” I gestured at the corpse.

  “I know,” Nick said, stepping over the body, “and I’m sorry. You’re right: I started off thinking I could be some sort of Donnie Darko. Stupid.”

  “First,” I said, “I think you mean Donnie Brasco. Donnie Darko was the one with the giant rabbit. Donnie Brasco was the one where Johnny Depp went undercover.”

  “Wait: wasn’t the giant rabbit Harvey?”

  I ignored him. “Second: I think I know who did it.”

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Robert arrived at the Marq before nine am the next morning.

  His car pulled up outside the pub, the engine was turned off and he sat, in silent contemplation, in the car for another thirteen minutes before stepping out of the vehicle, walking up to the front door of the pub and knocking.

  I knew all of this because I was watching him from the window of the room where Lyra had been killed.

  Ali – who’d been prepped in advance – admitted him and led him through the bar into the private quarters and up the stairs to where I was waiting.

  “Danny,” he strode forward, clasping my hands between his in the style so beloved of dodgy politicians everywhere. “I came as soon as I got your call. Thank you so much for seeing me. I know you must still be furious with me but...” he frowned looking around him. “Is this – is this where it happened?”

  “Where Lyra was killed? Yes, Robert, it is. This is where my life – which I had thought couldn’t get much shittier after you broke my heart – got worse.” I held my hand up to stop his protestations. “Don’t bother, Robert; you broke my heart. It’s true. But you know what? I think it was a blessing in disguise.”

  “Danny,” he let go of my hands, his own coming up open and held out to me, “I can’t tell you how sorry–”

  “Sorry you did it? Or sorry I caught you.”

  “Sorry I hurt you. All those years and I was so completely ignorant. I thought I knew you, thought it wouldn’t really matter, thought you’d be OK with it. If I could undo one single thing in my life.”

  Just the one? I wanted to say. Was it really just the one? But I’d already decided that this was not going to be the point where I let Robert see me cry. This meeting was business.

  “But you can’t,” I said. “Anyways, I suspect – sooner or later – Andy will make you as unhappy as you made me.”

  Robert frowned. “I don’t think there’s any call…”

  I pointed at my bruises. “Every time you’ve turned up here recently, I’ve been getting anonymous calls. Silent. Not particularly threatening. I had no idea what they meant, or who was making them. Then you arrange a little dinner-a-deux, ‘a chance to discuss something important’, I think you said, and the lovely Andy has a bunch of his mates beat the living shit out of me to deliver ‘a message from a mate’.”

  “It couldn’t have been Andy,” Robert’s face was horror-stricken.

  “He stayed at the end of the alleyway where I couldn’t see him; but the light caught his hair a few times – a blond halo.”

  “Lots of people are blond. You’re mistaken. It was this bloody gangster.”

  “They threw a chamois over my head to start with. It was smelly and damp and leathery. A window cleaner’s chamois, Robert. I can’t blame him. He nabs you even though you’re already with me; the guy must live in terror that you’ll get tired of him and move on. And for you now to be hanging around me… I take it you haven’t told him why you’re hanging around me, so his imagination must have filled in the blanks and assumed you and I were getting too friendly again.”

  I took a deep breath. Get this thing done and you never have to see either of them ever again.

  “What are you going to do?” He asked. “About this?”

  “That depends. Do you love him, Robert?”

  He nodded. “Andy and I... we want to be married.”

  I was sure at that point: I’d been doubting if my hypothesis around who killed Lyra could possibly be true, but the rage that swept through me was all the proof I needed. I shook my head in silent wonder.

  “And does he know about these plans?”

  Robert looked sheepish. “Jesus, Robert! Tell him! If he knows, he’ll be less paranoid and I might not have to look over my shoulder every time I go to put the bins out.”

  “I want to make everything right,” he whined. “Between us. Financially.”

  I snorted. “I don’t want a penny from you.”

  “No,” he reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a piece of thick creamy paper, unfolding it as he continued. “I didn’t think you would.”

  “I gave you seven years.”

  “Six and a half.”

  “Seven, Robert. Seven years of playing housewife while you marched relentlessly up the ladder. I took a bloody drugs rap for you!”

  “And for that,” he said, “I will be eternally grateful.”

  “Don’t do that Robert: don’t talk to me like I’m one of the fucking typists at work. I spent seven years telling every one of my friends – every one of my colleagues – that you ‘weren’t the sociable kind’ when really you just couldn’t bring yourself to mix with the sort of people I actually liked. Meanwhile, I spent seven years going to dinner parties and corporate dos and smiling politely at fuckwits who were either visibly uncomfortable in my presence, or secretly trying to get rid of their wives early on the off chance I’d accompany them to a Premier Fucking Inn.”

  “Once,” he said, “that happened once.”

  “That I told you about; I stopped telling you after that. You know why?”

  “Look – I don’t really think we need to open this can of worms.”

  “I’ll tell you why, since you obviously don’t remember: because your response when I told you that one of the senior partners had just propositioned me was to say ‘I hope you were nice when you rebuffed him. He’s doing my review next week.’”

  “I was joking!”

  “Were you?” I sighed. “Whatever; it doesn’t matter. Thing is, even though I don’t want a penny from you, I could take a hell of a lot. I’ve been looking into it, you see and – well, you’re a lawyer, you probably already know this – but, since we liv
ed together, dearest, well, technically I’d be entitled to community property.”

  “But you don’t want any money,” he started again, unfolding the letter in his hand and producing a pen – the Mont Blanc that I’d saved two months’ salary to buy him, “so I need you to sign this. If you mean that.”

  He trailed off as I took the document from him, without looking at it and tossed it on to the dressing table behind me.

  “Mind you,” I carried on, “apart from the financial aspect, I could cause you a great deal of professional discomfort, couldn’t I? I daresay there are some solicitors who might actually enjoy causing you massive embarrassment by repeating the full story behind our break-up in open court? Or who might get a great deal of mileage out of the suggestion that the purchaser of all that grade A coke was not little old me on my mailroom salary.”

  “That suggestion would never be admissible.”

  “What about the suggestion that your psychotic loon of a boyfriend tried to have me killed because he thought that – rather than trying to ingratiate yourself so you could screw me out of the few quid I was legally entitled to – you were screwing me for mutual pleasure? Would that be admissible?”

  “Danny,” the hands were back up now, but in a pleading pose, “there’s a figure on that letter; a settlement. It’s a fair figure. It’ll save all the pain and suffering of a legal wrangle. Trust me – I’m a lawyer...”

  “Do you remember,” I asked him, “what you said to me the first time we made love?”

  That stopped him in his tracks.

  “Yes, Robert, I know I’m highly unfashionable to refer to it like that. Shagged, I should probably say, or fucked about. But I was in love. I did love you. And I think you loved me too. We were snuggled together afterwards and I was already dreaming – and at the same time telling myself I was stupid to dream it – of spending the rest of my life with you; of you looking after me and of me helping you to become a bit less starched, and you said ‘I’ll always be here for you, Danny. No matter what happens. If you need me, call me, no matter where you are. I’ll be there. On that you can depend. Don’t ever worry.’”