Blood Never Dies

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  There were four bedrooms, plus one fitted out as a study. It had a desk with a computer on it, and shelving in the fireplace alcoves containing modern TV and sound equipment, and a huge collection of DVDs and CDs. On the other side of the room, along a modern built-in unit, was what even Slider could recognize as a home recording studio or audio workstation. Though he wouldn’t have known the names for all the bits of kit, they included some kind of multi-track recorder, what he thought was called a mixing board, a couple of decks, loudspeakers and microphones.

  He went back to the entrance hall. There was so much stuff in the flat it would take a lot of sifting through, and they would need to call in a larger team to do it. What he needed first was information about the next of kin and Corley’s recent movements. The porter seemed to have recovered from his momentary weakness and was on his feet again, but he was jingling his keys uneasily and his eyes kept shifting from Atherton’s face to the portrait on the wall, as if he really didn’t know what to believe.

  ‘So tell me,’ Slider said as chummily as he could manage, ‘when you last saw Ben Corley.’

  ‘Well – sir – I don’t see much of him at the best of times. Not of any of the tenants, really, unless they’ve got a complaint. Some of them are complaining all the time, but the others – well, weeks might go past without me happening to see ’em. So with Mr Corley . . .’ He shook his head. ‘I couldn’t rightly say. It’d be a good few weeks.’

  ‘So you wouldn’t know whether he’d been around more or less often?’

  ‘No, I can’t say as I would. He’s got his own keys. Doesn’t need me to let him in or out.’

  ‘Do you know what Mr Corley did for a living?’

  ‘I know he was something to do with the music business. I think he worked for a magazine or a recording company, something like that. Wasn’t a musician himself, though he played the piano. I heard him playing once when I was up here changing a washer on the kitchen tap – played beautiful, he did. Just like a concert hall. But he never did that for his living, far as I know.’

  ‘His parents, Mr and Mrs Corley—’

  ‘Sir Richard and Lady Corley,’ he corrected with a faint air of affront.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t know.’

  ‘Knighted by Mrs Thatcher for services to government. He’s a lawyer by profession, Sir Richard, but on the financial side. He’s a consultant with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank now. They live in Hong Kong, but they’ve been all over – China, Australia, Canada, California. Lady Corley sends me postcards,’ he said with a self-conscious smile. ‘It’s a little joke between us – always sends me a card when she goes anywhere new. But they come back from time to time, like I said, and they’ve always said they’d retire here. Still proper UK citizens. Lady Corley likes to use the British Museum for her research. She writes historical books. Not fiction,’ he added sternly, as if her probity had been impugned, ‘but the proper stuff. There’s some of her books in the bookcase there.’

  Slider looked. There was a row of pristine books, obviously a series, on Tudor monarchs. ‘These ones here?’ he asked. ‘Christine Buller-Jackson?’

  ‘That’s right. Her maiden name, that is,’ said the porter. ‘’Cause she was already writing before she married Sir Richard.’

  And Atherton said, ‘The Christine Buller-Jackson? She’s famous – you must have heard of her, guv.’

  ‘It does ring a slight bell,’ said Slider, who rarely had time to read for pleasure, and when he did would not choose non-fiction for relaxation purposes. ‘So Sir Richard and Lady Corley are in Hong Kong now?’

  ‘That’s right. They were back for a couple of weeks in Feb’ry, but they haven’t been back this summer like they usually do. I got a card from Lady Corley from Seattle, so I’m guessing they’re taking their summer holiday in America this year.’

  So they wouldn’t be any help in the case, Slider thought. But they’d have to be informed, as next of kin. Unless . . . ‘Was Ben married?’

  ‘No, sir, not as far as I know. I’m sure Lady Corley would have told me if there was anything of that coming up. It’d’ve been a big occasion, if their son and heir got married.’

  ‘Heir, you say? They’re a wealthy family, I imagine?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ the porter said proudly. ‘And a proper, old wealthy family, too. And just the two children to share it all when the time comes.’

  ‘You mentioned the sister – Jennifer, was it?’

  ‘That’s right. Lovely young lady. Married, now – she’s Mrs Shepstone. Don’t see much of her, except when Sir Richard and Lady Corley are home and she comes to visit, but she comes over now and then. Her husband’s in property and she’s got one of them spas, The Haven, it’s called, out Watford way. Lot of actresses and film stars go there. When I do see her, she likes to tell me what famous people have been in. “I had that Kate Winslet in the other day, Perkins,” she says to me. I loved her in that Titanic,’ he added in parenthesis. ‘Now she’s my idea of a proper film star, not like some of these scrawny wimmin that look like the chicken after Sunday lunch.’

  ‘Were they close, the brother and sister?’

  ‘Oh yes, very fond of each other, they are. Always have been. She’s that little bit older than him, so she always looked after him when they were kids. She used to take him down the museums, both of ’em in their little coats and woolly hats, and she’d say to him, “Now hold my hand when we cross the road,” and I’d hold the door open for ’em and she’d give me a lovely smile, and she’d say, “I’m looking after Ben because Mummy’s busy.” Like a little grown-up, she was.’

  A pager in his pocket began to buzz and he started back to the present. ‘That’s for me. I gotter go.’ He looked at them with the bewildered look of someone just waking up. ‘He’s not dead, Mr Corley? You made a mistake.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Slider said, gently.

  He shook his head. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘I don’t believe it. Even if it’s true he’s dead, he’d never commit suicide. That’d break his parents’ hearts, and he wouldn’t do that, not Ben. It’ll break their hearts anyway, him being dead – apple of their eye he was. But he wouldn’t kill himself.’

  He turned away, but turned back to say, ‘You’ll be wanting their address, to let them know? You’ll see to all that, I dare say. If you call in on me before you go I can give you the address in Hong Kong, though whether they’re there at the moment . . .’ He shook his head, slightly dazed by the turn of events. ‘I’ll leave the key with you, seeing you’re police,’ he said. ‘I s’pose I can trust you. Make sure you double-lock the door when you go, and bring the key back to me.’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to keep it for the time being,’ said Slider.

  He stared a moment longer, shook his head again, said, ‘As you please,’ and left.

  EIGHT

  Girls Allowed

  Atherton looked at Slider. ‘What have we here? Father a knight and a lawyer, obviously wealthy, mother a top historian, lives in this multimillion pound flat – I can’t believe he went into porn movies for the money.’

  ‘The flat’s his parents’, and by the look of it the contents are too. Doesn’t mean to say he had any money,’ Slider said. ‘Though I agree with your general premise. This doesn’t give the impression of a man short of a bob. Unless he’d got himself into some trouble he didn’t want to tell his parents about, and needed quick money to get out of it.’

  ‘I suppose that’s possible. Although why would he bother with a rental place when he could live here?’

  ‘Beats me,’ Slider said. ‘If it was me, you’d need implements to winkle me out.’

  ‘We’ll have to find his bank statements and so on. At least there seems to be plenty of stuff in this flat, not like Conningham Road. This was obviously his real home.’

  Yes,’ said Slider. ‘Too much stuff, really. It’s going to take some sorting through. I’ll get on to Hollis, have him send some reinforcements. There’s a bedroom set out as an
office back there – we may find a diary or something that will tell us what he’d been doing recently. And we’ll have to have a word with the sister.’

  ‘Presumably the parents are the next of kin,’ Atherton said.

  ‘But she’s a lot closer. I wonder what happened about his mail?’

  ‘I asked the porter about that while you were looking round. I noticed there was nothing behind the door when we came in. But he said he sorts it into locked boxes in the hall downstairs and they each collect their own. He’s going to open the box for us when we go down.’

  ‘All right. Oh, and let’s get a lift off something in his bedroom, just to be absolutely sure the corpse is Corley. This case is confusing enough as it is without any more doubt over identities.’

  Slider had just rung off from the conversation with Hollis when his phone rang again. It was the low rumble of Paxman, duty sergeant back at the station, that reached his ear.

  ‘I’ve got a call for you from a Ewan Delamitri, about your murder case. Asking for you personally – won’t talk to anyone else. Says it’s important. He sounds nervous as hell. D’you want me to put it through to you?’

  ‘I suppose I’d better speak to him,’ Slider said. In a moment Delamitri’s voice was in his ear. He did sound nervous – and furtive.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you,’ he said, with an air of cupping the phone close and glancing over his shoulder. ‘I can’t come in to the station – someone might see me. Can I meet you somewhere?’

  Slider sighed inwardly at the cloak-and-dagger stuff. ‘Is it really necessary?’

  ‘I’ve got some important information for you,’ Delamitri muttered. ‘Look, I can’t talk. Someone might come any minute. Do you know The Dove, by the river?’

  Probably it would turn out to be nothing, Slider reflected, but given that genius is the infinite capacity for taking pains . . . ‘Yes, I know it.’

  ‘That’ll be OK. No one I know’ll go in there.’

  ‘All right, I’ll meet you there. What time?’

  ‘I can be there in an hour.’

  ‘OK.’

  Slider rang off, and Atherton said, ‘What was all that about?’

  ‘Ewan Delamitri, from Ransom House, fancies he has something important to tell me. And that someone might want to stop him telling.’

  ‘Juicy,’ Atherton remarked. ‘D’you want me to come?’

  ‘No, I need you to stay here and wait for the troops, get the search properly organized. I’ll see you back at the factory later.’

  The Dove was an ancient pub on the river bank at Hammersmith, all beams and crooked ceilings. Charles II was supposed to have met one of his mistresses there, in the days when Hammersmith was a holiday spot a good distance from London, with the same slightly louche reputation as Brighton in the fifties. The Dove’s entrance was from a narrow stone-flagged alley, which was the only surviving remnant of the original riverside village, comprehensively demolished by the London County Council in the thirties in its pursuit of universal happiness. Ernest Hemingway and Graham Greene were said to have frequented the tiny hostelry, though possibly not at the same time.

  In the summer now it was usually crammed with tourists, and Slider thought it was a good bet that no one Ewan Delamitri knew would be there on an August lunchtime.

  In addition to its other many charms, The Dove was a Fullers pub, so Slider hastened to secure a pint of Pride before oozing carefully through the crowds to look for his date. He found him lurking in a corner just inside the busy door from the inside to the riverside terrace, popular on this hot summer day. The tide was out, and the exposed shores on either side of the river were colonized by rowdy gangs of black-headed gulls, looking sinister in their summer disguise, and busy lone pigeons, homely and nonchalant in the face of raucous screams and razor sharp bills. Faint airs were moving, bringing the flat smell of clean river mud into the hot, crowded room.

  Delamitri was clutching an untouched lager in one of those glasses shaped like a flower vase. There was sweat on his upper lip, but it was pretty stifling in there, which could account for it. There was no more room out on the terrace, and Slider thought Delamitri would feel more secure indoors anyway. Pressed together, and with the cheerful bedlam of conversation all around them, they would be as safe here, he reflected, as anywhere.

  ‘I’ve got to talk to you about Mike,’ Delamitri said, his eyes roving nervously for approaching assassins. ‘Mike Horden. You see, that’s not his real name.’

  ‘Yes, we guessed that.’

  Delamitri looked momentarily thrown, but rallied. ‘But you see, I know who he really is. Was,’ he corrected himself awkwardly. ‘When I first saw him, I thought there was something familiar about him, but it wasn’t until he started talking to me about film techniques, and he obviously knew what he was talking about, that it suddenly clicked. You see, he was really Ben Jackson.’ He looked at Slider for bouquets.

  ‘Ben Jackson? I’m afraid you’re not quite right. We’ve recently – just today, in fact – discovered that his name was B.J. Corley. His first name was Ben, but—’ He stopped. The mother’s name was Buller-Jackson. What did the ‘J’ stand for?

  Delamitri shook his head emphatically. ‘No, I’m telling you. He was Ben Jackson. I know he was. He’d disguised himself – dyed his hair, for one thing. It used to be dead black. And he’d cut it differently and he’d shaved off his beard. He used to have this plaited beard, like Johnny Depp in Pirates – you know?’ Slider nodded. ‘But I know I’m not mistaken.’

  ‘Did you say anything to him, about recognizing him?’

  ‘Well, no. I was going to, but it occurred to me that he’d gone to a lot of trouble to disguise himself, and changed his name, so I thought, he doesn’t want people to know who he is, so why should I give him away?’

  ‘But if you’d seen through his disguise, it couldn’t have been a very good one,’ Slider pointed out. ‘Did you know him very well?’

  Delamitri stared. ‘You don’t know who Ben Jackson is?’

  ‘I take it he’s someone famous?’ Slider hazarded.

  ‘Well,’ Delamitri said kindly, ‘I suppose you can’t know everything, and given you’re, like, not young . . . Ben Jackson, lead singer of Breaking Wave?’

  ‘I have heard of Breaking Wave,’ Slider said. No need to reveal how recent the knowledge was. So Corley had bought a copy of his own CD, had he? Perhaps he hadn’t liked the idea of it languishing like an unwanted puppy in the pound of the second-hand shop. He could understand that.

  Delamitri looked sceptical. ‘They weren’t very big. Only made a few records. Not Even You, their first single, never got higher than forty; their second, You’re Killing Me, went in at thirty-five and got up to eighteen. But I Didn’t Mean It climbed to number four when its video went viral on YouTube.’ He looked at Slider to see if he was following this.

  ‘I know what YouTube is,’ he reassured him.

  ‘It’d just been launched then, but Jackson was one of the first to see the potential. I Didn’t Mean It only succeeded because of the video. It became cult viewing overnight. It even won a Brit award and an MTV award – not the song, you understand, but the video. Well, he’d practically produced and directed the video himself, and I suppose he decided the rest of it was a mug’s game. He left the band and started making music videos for other artists. He was one of the great cult music video directors.’

  ‘So how did you know him?’ Slider asked.

  Delamitri stared. ‘I didn’t know him personally. But, see, I’m a bit of a music vid fanatic. I mean, it’s my passion, and I was just totally into Jackson’s work. I’ve watched MTV and YouTube for years, I follow the directors and swap clips with other fans. He’s been one of my heroes since the beginning. I’ve spent hours looking at him and listening to him on screen. Like, I’m a bit of an obsessive. That’s why I recognized him, even with the disguise. I don’t suppose anyone else would have spotted him. And even then, it was only when he started talking
about the techie stuff that I made the connection anyway.’

  ‘So, what was this famous music video director doing—?’ Slider began.

  ‘He wasn’t still directing,’ Delamitri interrupted earnestly. ‘He was brilliant at it, but I suppose after a few successes he got bored and wanted to do something else. About three years ago he gave it up – that was a tragedy! He went to work for Musical World – you know, the music magazine? – and as far as I know, he was still working there. I’ve read articles and stuff he’s done for them.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about him.’

  ‘None of that’s a secret,’ Delamitri said. ‘If that’s what you’re interested in, it’s all out there, on the Internet. And I told you, he was, like, a hero of mine.’

  ‘So what do you think he was doing at Ransom House?’ Slider reverted to his interrupted question. ‘Did he talk to you about it?’

  ‘No, he never said, and I didn’t like to ask him. Like I said, if he wanted to be in disguise, I wasn’t going to blow it for him. But it seems to me he couldn’t just have been doing it for the money. He must have been getting residuals from his CDs and videos. And I mean, with his skills and contacts he could have got any job he liked in the music business. In any case, as far as I knew he was still working for Musical World. So I reckoned he must be after something.’

  ‘Any idea what that might be?’

  Delamitri chewed his lip, frowning and still looking round nervously, and he lowered his voice even more so that Slider had to lean in to him to be able to hear. ‘I don’t know,’ he said – disappointingly – ‘but I wouldn’t be surprised if he wasn’t trying to find something out about Ransom House.’

  ‘And what is there to find out about Ransom House?’

  Now Delamitri was surprised. ‘I don’t know! I’m only saying maybe that’s what Ben Jackson was doing.’

  Slider remained patient. ‘But what makes you think there might be anything to find out?’

  He gave a curious little shudder. ‘There’s something about the boss – Paul Barrow . . . I don’t know what, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was up to something. He never lets anyone go in his office – it’s always locked, even if he’s just going to the bog. And he’s always having phone conversations no one’s allowed to hear. If you come up to him when he’s on the phone he goes mad and yells at you. And he can’t stand anyone asking questions. That’s why he chucked Mike – Ben out.’