‘He said it was because he couldn’t act.’
‘But he could! He was brilliant. Paul thought he was a real find until he started asking questions about the company.’
‘Do you think Barrow found out who he was?’
‘No,’ Delamitri said judiciously. ‘I don’t think it was that. He’d have been angrier if he had. He just sacked Ben and forgot about him. But there’s something going on. I don’t know what, and I don’t want to know, but that company isn’t all legit. It’s not what it seems.’
This was getting Slider nowhere. Maybe there was something shady below the surface of Ransom House – shadier than porn films, anyway – but on the other hand it might simply be Delamitri paranoia.
‘If you’re worried about the firm, why do you stay?’ he asked.
‘I like the job and the pay’s good. And Paul – he’s a scary bastard, but he leaves me alone artistically. I can pretty well do what I like on the floor. I just run through the basic idea with him and he says go ahead. And with the editing, he usually agrees with my ideas. It’s not always like that, believe you me – producers are bastards. That’s why directors have to be so pushy and arrogant, to keep their end up against the producers. I am going to leave eventually, when the time’s right. I want to get into mainstream movies. But it’s not easy, and I’m not going to leave until I’ve got something lined up to go to.’ He looked suddenly alarmed. ‘You won’t let on you’ve seen me? You won’t tell them what I’ve said?’
‘No, of course not,’ Slider said. ‘I won’t give you away. But why did you risk it, if you’re worried about losing your job?’
‘For Ben,’ he said simply. ‘If someone’s killed Ben Jackson, I want them caught and punished. He was my hero. He was a genius.’
‘Who said anyone killed him?’ Slider said.
‘He didn’t commit suicide. You don’t fool me. Someone wanted him out of the way.’ He looked suddenly bleak. ‘If it was Paul, or any of his bosses, getting sacked will be the least of my worries.’
‘I told you, I won’t give you away.’
He nodded, fixing Slider with a dark, urgent gaze. ‘Look into Ransom House. There’s something fishy going on, I swear it. Look into Paul Barrow and Ransom House.’
‘This gets nuttier by the minute,’ said Atherton. ‘Robin Williams stroke Mike Horden who is really B.J. Corley is actually Ben Jackson the pop singer?’
‘You’ve heard of him?’
‘No, you just told me that’s who he was. And Delamitri thinks he was an investigative journalist?’
‘Well, a journalist, anyway. And that part’s true. I rang Musical World, and they said he used to work for them, but he handed in his notice at the end of April. They were very upset, begged him to stay, and he said he might do freelance work for them at some time in the future, but they haven’t heard from him since. Oh, and his middle name is Jackson.’
‘End of April,’ Atherton said. ‘When all this began. Tattoos, Conningham Road, Ransom House. But if he resigned, it couldn’t be that he needed money.’
‘Unless he needed a lot.’
‘You’re thinking he was being blackmailed?’
‘No, blackmailers don’t kill their victims. Just a general need for more money than he could get as a journalist.’
‘But then he could have kept his job and done night work.’ He shrugged the problem away. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘Go and see the sister. Have you found anything interesting yet?’
‘No, but there’s a stack of stuff to work through. At least we now know what all this sound equipment was for. Oh, I had a look in his mail box.’
‘And?’
‘Nada. Some junk mail, couple of bills. People don’t write to each other any more now there’s email. But it struck me there’s not very much of it, even the junk mail, for three months, which suggests he’s been coming back and picking it up.’
‘You’ll have to check his email, then.’
‘Yes. But with everything else it’s going to take a while.’
‘Well, keep at it,’ Slider said, and rang off.
The Haven was a large, plain-faced mid-Victorian house, very square and set squarely in the middle of extensive grounds on the outskirts of Watford. Expanses of lush green, waving trees, the liquid sound of wood pigeons – all very soothing to the urban soul. The entrance was flanked with impressive gateposts topped with stone balls, and the long drive led to a gravel turning area in front of what looked a rather grave edifice, symmetrical and proper. The beauty, however, was only skin deep. Slider stepped through the portico and massive front door into a bathos of modern ‘luxury’ – acres of over-bright marble, fake columns, gilding, massive mirrors, chandeliers, black glass surfaces, trapped-looking single orchids in heavy angular glass vases. It was a Middle Eastern dictator’s wet dream – Gadaffi’s private bathroom. An expense of money in a waste of shame.
Behind the huge obsidian desk a very thin, glamorous young woman with a severe suit and an even more severe hair cut – she reminded him of Frasier’s Lilith – was looking at him with enquiry but little sympathy. Her enamelled face was not set up for expression, but she was managing to convey that he was not their type, in his worn suit and comfortable shoes. If you have to ask how much, you can’t afford it.
She looked even more sceptical when he asked to see Jennifer Shepstone, almost shuddered with distaste when Slider showed his brief, but consented to ‘ring through’, never taking her eyes from him as she did it, in case he did something to befoul the place.
Jennifer Shepstone’s room, when he was finally conducted to it, was another tragedy. What had once been a handsome morning-room had been stripped back and brutalized, the mouldings and fireplace removed, the walls painted in a matt darkish grey, the floor covered in grey woodstrip, the furniture minimalist and uncomfortable-looking, metal pipe legs, grey fabric, matt black wood, and the sort of ‘futuristic’ shapes that brought to mind the design revolution of the 1950s. From Gadaffi’s bathroom to a Soviet bureaucrat’s ante-room.
Mrs Shepstone, however, seemed quite normal – a handsome woman in a beige summer suit, a little alert and wary about Slider’s presence, but not frigidly hostile. Slider could see the resemblance to Ben Corley: they really were surprisingly alike, an illusion aided by her height and the firm symmetry of her perfectly made-up face. There had been nothing effeminate about Ben Corley’s appearance, but extreme beauty could give that impression of being asexual. Her hair was lightly curly, and black, as his had been in the portrait in the vestibule; her eyes bright blue. It was an attractive combination.
‘What can I do for you, Inspector Slider?’ she asked.
‘Mrs Shepstone, you have a brother whose name is B.J. Corley? Ben Corley?’
‘Yes.’ Her impassive gaze sharpened. Was that simple apprehension at the sudden presence of a police officer in your life, or was there a sensitive spot to be touched?
He braced himself for the bit they all hated. ‘Then I’m very sorry to say I have some bad news for you. I’m afraid your brother has been found dead.’
There was the usual shock, pain and denial to be got through. The denial was particularly hard to break down in this case, because there was the problem of the false name and address to get past. She tried to insist for a while that Robin Williams was someone else, the tenant of the flat who just happened to look like her brother. When he told her they had taken a fingerprint from the hairbrush in his bedroom and checked it against that of deceased, she tried to hope that two people could have the same fingerprints. He was reluctant to show her the mugshot of the corpse, but was obliged in the end to do so, and she was convinced at last, and the sorrow and distress arrived like great black birds fluttering down to perch on her.
But she was too strong a woman to give way to it. Her hands clamped themselves together and her jaw was rigid with the effort, but she was in control, and she asked, ‘You’d better tell me everything. I shall have to tell my pa
rents, and they will ask questions. You say he was found dead? How?’
‘It looked like suicide.’ He told her how the body had been found. ‘He had also taken some kind of narcotic. It wouldn’t have been a painful death,’ he added.
‘And this was on Sunday night?’
It seemed like a criticism. ‘We had the greatest difficulty in identifying him, because there was nothing in the flat to tell us his name, and, as I said, he had given a false name to the landlord.’
‘He went away,’ she said absently. ‘He wouldn’t do it at home and upset everyone. He’d know Mummy and Daddy would never be able to forget if he did. They’d never be able to live there again. Did he leave a note?’
‘None was found,’ Slider said. He would have to tell her it was not suicide, but for the moment he was interested in her reaction. ‘Forgive me – you’re not surprised at the idea of him killing himself?’
‘I am surprised,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect it. Of course he was upset when Annie died, and he seemed a bit strange for a while. But I thought he’d get over it. I never for a moment thought he was so upset he would . . .’ She stared, thinking. ‘I suppose he was always one for self-dramatisation. Perhaps underneath he felt things more intensely than we gave him credit for.’ She took a moment to control her mouth again. ‘He left without saying goodbye to me. That’s very hard.’
He ought to tell her now. But there was another question. ‘Who’s Annie?’
She looked thoughtful. ‘It’s complicated. I’d better tell you the whole story.’
‘If you would. From the beginning.’
‘How far back do you want me to go?’
‘As far back as you like. I always find the more I know, the better I can understand.’
The Corley children had always been close. Though both their parents had been to public schools, they valued their happy family life and did not want to send their children away, so they had not been separated as they might otherwise have expected to be.
‘When we were little we lived in a big house in Sussex, but when Mummy’s aunt died she left her the flat in Kensington, so they decided we’d all move to London. It suited Daddy to be nearer his office, and it meant Ben and I could go to day schools.’
Jennifer had gone to Godolphin and Latymer, and Ben had gone to Sussex House and then Westminster.
‘They’re strong on music and art at Sussex House, and Ben was very musical. Mummy thought at one time he might be a concert pianist, and he had the ability, but not the application. Music is hard work. He wouldn’t practice enough. He was always more interested in having fun. No ambition. Unlike both our parents, who are quite simply driven. But Ben says you only have one life, so what’s the point of wasting it doing things you don’t enjoy. I’m afraid he often got bored. Everything came too easily to him. He was so brilliant, he could grasp new things in an instant, but as soon as he’d mastered them, he got bored with them and moved on.’
She made the criticism ruefully, but with affection. Slider noticed the softening of her eyes and mouth when talking about her younger brother: there had been great love there, though she evidently felt he had squandered his birthright.
His brilliance had got him to Cambridge, where he read history. ‘Because of Mummy, I think – she’s Christine Buller-Jackson, the historian.’
She sounded proud of that. Slider said, ‘Yes, I saw the books in the hall.’
‘I was forgetting you’d been to the flat,’ she said, with what was almost a hostile glance – she didn’t like their private space being invaded. But she went on, ‘Ben was always her pet. Grandpa’s too – he was named for him. Benedict Jackson Corley.’
At Cambridge Ben had got in with the artistic crowd and, always eager for anything that was not like work, he joined the Footlights. ‘He was quite a star among them, partly because he was so good looking; but he was a natural actor.’ She smiled at some memory. ‘He was always acting parts when we were children. He’d put on funny voices or a different walk and suddenly he’d be the pirate or the Roman centurion. You never knew who you’d be with next. Excess of imagination, I suppose. He had so much of everything inside him it just spilled out. I’m not like that. I’m a striver. I could only get on through sheer hard work.’
Slider got the picture – the golden boy, good at everything, flamboyant and attention-grabbing; the quiet sister who shared the parents’ values but somehow never got the praise. She might resent the situation, but not the beguiling brother.
With his musical background he was also in with the musical crowd, and after a couple of false starts he formed the band called Breaking Wave. They were popular among the students, and did various gigs on an amateur basis, but in a crowded field they didn’t stand out. But after graduation – ‘He never got better than a third in any part of the tripos, because he wouldn’t work, which is so typical of him!’ – his parents offered him a gap year, and instead of travelling, which is want they expected and wanted, he used it to work on his band.
He found a new bass guitarist-songwriter, and they collaborated on writing their own material, changing their style to something more funky. For a couple of years he did odd jobs – waiting, bar work – to earn money while the band did the club circuit (‘Paying your dues, it was called’) and sent demos to record companies. Their distinctive style took time to find its niche, and it wasn’t until 2004 they had a demo accepted, and Not Even You got into the charts at number forty-nine.
‘He used the name Ben Jackson,’ Jennifer Shepstone said, ‘because Mummy and Daddy didn’t quite approve of the band as a way of life, and would have been upset if “Benedict Corley” had become famous as a pop star.’
She told Slider the same story he had had from Delamitri, about Ben’s change to video directing. ‘He’d succeeded as a pop singer, so he had to do something else,’ she said. ‘I was pleased if anything – it seemed a better outlet for his talents. And he was very good at it. Some of his videos became very famous. He did A Million Boys for Asset Strippers and Here Goes Nothing for Okay Gurlz – he won awards for both of those.’
Slider smiled. ‘I don’t know much about pop music. My daughter likes Girls Aloud and The Saturdays.
‘I didn’t know anything until Ben got into that scene. Now I know more than I want to,’ she said with a downturned mouth. ‘I was glad he was successful, of course, but I couldn’t like what he was doing. I was glad when he got bored again and changed to music journalism. I thought his videos were hateful – very clever, I could see that, but all that sexual miming and the suppressed violence was – well, it’s just trash, isn’t it? Pernicious trash. When he could have been a concert pianist. But you can’t live other people’s lives for them.’
‘No,’ said Slider.
‘All I wanted was for him to be successful. And I’ve no regrets for myself. I’ve done well out of my chosen profession, though my parents rather pooh-poohed it, as if I’d said I wanted to be a hairdresser. But there’s a lot to learn in the beauty industry before you can get to where I have. Chemistry, biology, a certain amount of anatomy and medicine, dietetics, nutrition, all sorts of physical therapies. I started with a small high-street salon, opened the first women-only spa in central London, and now with Hugh’s backing – my husband – I have all this.’ She waved a hand round the grim grey bus shelter décor, which was probably the apogee of fashion, for all Slider knew. ‘Not bad for a mere girl,’ she concluded.
‘You think your parents favoured Ben because he was a boy?’ Slider put in, really just to keep her talking.
But it threw a switch and she stopped with a blank, arrested look in her eyes. ‘He’s dead. Talking like this, I’d forgotten why you’re here. How could I?’
‘It happens all the time,’ Slider said soothingly.
‘I can’t believe it. And how will I ever tell Mummy and Daddy?’
The time was fast approaching when he would have to tell her it wasn’t suicide, but before that there was the topic she had
n’t reached yet. ‘You were going to tell me about Annie,’ Slider said.
NINE
Pop Tart
‘I hated Ben’s time in the pop world,’ said Jennifer Shepstone. An assistant had brought in coffee, and she sipped slowly as she talked, holding the cup in two hands for comfort like someone drinking hot chocolate after a cold winter walk. ‘It wasn’t so bad at the beginning, when the band was doing the circuit and not very well known. He was having fun, and it all seemed very innocent. They would drink a lot of beer after the shows, and I suspect they sometimes smoked a joint. Well,’ she added reluctantly, ‘I know they did, because Ben told me. He insisted it wasn’t harmful, no different from Daddy’s after-dinner brandy. But at least he had the sense to keep it from Mummy and Daddy, because they would have had a fit if they knew.
‘But once the band became successful it didn’t stop there. It wasn’t just beer it was vodka, lots of it, and it wasn’t just pot –’ she used the old-fashioned word without embarrassment – ‘it was cocaine, and sometimes ecstasy as well. At first he was self-conscious about it – it was almost like a little boy showing off. But once he got into the video side, and he was mixing with the big name bands, it was just part of the scene. Everyone was doing it, and he didn’t see anything wrong with it. That was what worried me most – that it would escalate, because he wasn’t thinking about it any more. I was terrified he’d get on to something even worse.’
She poured more coffee, her hand shaking just a little, and offered him another cup.
‘No thanks,’ he said. ‘It’s excellent, but one cup’s enough for me.’ Each man to the drug of his choice. ‘So, did he? Get on to something worse?’
Blood Never Dies Page 13