Amphetamines and Pearls (7 page)

I asked for Mr Gordon-Brown and gave my name. She gave it back into a little speaker at the edge of her desk and pointed to the door opposite. I smiled a thank you and she smiled all right back but she wasn't as appealing as her colleague downstairs. It was when I was opening the door that I realised why: she hadn't giggled.

Your friendly neighbourhood recording manager didn't look as though he was going to giggle either. Thickly striped shirt open at the collar, black, tight trousers, tinted glasses without rims. He held out a well-manicured hand.

‘It's lovely to meet you, Mr Mitchell. Janie said you wanted to talk to me about dear Candi, God rest her soul.' He offered me a seat, a cigarette and a drink in swift succession. ‘You're a reporter, are you?'

I told him that I wasn't. A photograph of Candi looked at me from behind his desk; the same pose as in the one which had been in her flat. At the bottom corner she had signed it ‘To Patrick, With All My Love'.

‘Oh, I see, I understood from Janie in Reception that you were—a reporter, I mean.' He showed several expensively-filled teeth.

I told him I was just a friend. Had been a friend.

‘I see. A terrible thing, naturally; terrible. To happen at such a time in her career makes it a true tragedy.'

‘Why now in particular?'

‘She had never really broken big on the American market. All over Europe and Scandinavia she was a big name—Australia, too. But in the States, nothing. Just a big zero. Till the last month or two, that is. One of her singles went to number two in the Billboard and Cashbox charts and the album rose to the mid-twenties. Oh, yes, she was about to take off there all right. We had a whole tour lined up: supper clubs, a few places like the Troubador for the hipper audience, television. And now … nothing.'

‘Just money for her memories.'

He looked puzzled, slightly annoyed. ‘I'm afraid I don't quite follow.'

‘I heard it on the radio this morning. Her new record. Wouldn't you say that was cashing in?'

Now he did look hurt. What right had I to make remarks' about his integrity?

‘That single would have been issued regardless, Mr Mitchell. As would the album it was pulled from. And we're putting that back till next month so that we can redesign the cover.'

‘So you can put on a picture of her coffin,' I suggested. ‘Just to pull in the necrophiliac end of the market.'

He stood up. ‘So that we can call it a memorial album and use a simple picture of her with a black line round it, if you must know. It will all be very tasteful, I can assure you of that.' He felt that his dignity and that of his company was restored and he sat down again.

He even apologised: I had never realised what nice young men worked in the record business.

‘Excuse me. I worked with Candi for a number of years and we were very close
…'

I interrupted him and pointed at the inscription on the photograph behind his desk: Yes. I can see that.'

He turned and half-smiled: ‘Oh that, that is merely show-business talk, Mr Mitchell. Our relationship was merely a working one, I assure you. A very close one, but a working one only.'

I tried to work out whether he was happy or sad about that fact but I couldn't.

I switched tack.

Did you look after all of Candi's affairs, or just the recording side of things?'

‘Oh, no.' He took a long cigarette from the box on the desk, offered one to me and when I shook my head replaced the box on the desk. He lit the cigarette with a table lighter in the shape of a dragon: they weren't about to let anyone forget who was paying the bills. If anyone stepped out of line maybe they just burnt them up: instead of a retirement clock, a full-scale funeral pyre.

He inhaled deeply and let the smoke float out from slightly parted lips. ‘Oh, no, that wasn't my job at all. In many ways I wish it had been. I might have made a better job of things for her.'

‘I thought you said her career was largely successful?'

‘So it was, but something funny was going on with the money side if you ask me.'

I leaned forward without trying to look too interested.

‘And did she?'

‘Ask me? No. But I loaned her money from time to time. Quite large sums, too. Not that I begrudge that, of course. Nor did I ask her what she wanted it for.'

‘Why couldn't she ask her personal manager for money? Presumably she'd earned it?'

He blew a smoke ring thoughtfully towards the ceiling.

‘I really haven't the slightest idea. I don't even know what sort of arrangement they had. She wouldn't discuss it with me: not that I tried very hard. She had the same manager as when she started working solo, as far as I know. Some chappie in the provinces somewhere. Had to do almost all the business by telephone, or letter. Inconvenient at times.'

Something was becoming clearer. ‘Nottingham?' I asked.

‘Yes, that's right. Do you know him then?'

Try it, Mitchell. Play your hunch. ‘Howard, you mean?'

‘Yes, that's the name.'

I sat back in my chair. ‘No. No, I don't know him.'

Patrick Gordon-Brown looked bemused. I stood up and held out my hand. He shook it automatically.

‘Thank you, you've been very helpful. I may drop in on you again some time. Perhaps we could have lunch.'

I left his office and was half-way through the outer door when he called after me.

‘I say! Look! I don't really know what it was that you wanted.'

Nor did I when I arrived, but I thought that maybe I did now. I thought of winking at the secretary but decided against it: I would save it for Jane on the way out. You do it too often and it makes you blind: or so my old granny used to say.

8

The motorway was crammed full with lorries and idiots who thought they were driving in the Grand Prix but who would never have got round the first hairpin. Show them a length of straight road and they'll race along it, no matter what. I stopped at the service station for a cup of coffee that tasted as plastic as the cup in which it was served. I left the doughnuts on the counter, begging for a home like fat boys in an orphanage.

On the last stage of the journey it began to snow. That was almost all I needed. I huddled down into the expensive-feeling seat, plugged John Stewart into the eight-track and got on with the driving. The only trouble with motorways was that you never got slim girls with suitcases and names like July standing by the side of the road hitching lifts. Hell, where did I think I was going anyway? Seattle?

In real terms it wasn't long before I hit the Nottingham turn-off, but it seemed like a snowy eternity. Now I knew why I didn't run a car of my own: I just hated driving. Even one like this.

I parked the Saab in the multi-storey and crossed the road into the Victoria Centre. Howard was in the phone book, with about twenty-five variations of initial. I cross-checked in the yellow pages and found one under ‘Clubs and Entertainment'. There were two numbers: one for the 250 Club and one which I thought might be a home number. I dialled the latter and there was no reply. I tried the 250 without much hope of success. While it was ringing I wondered whether the number was to do with the location or was the price of fresh air: whatever, no one at the other end of the phone was about to tell me.

I walked out of the centre and went into a little Turkish restaurant beside the car park. They gave me a fine helping of lunchtime's moussaka and a local paper to read with my tiny cup of sweet coffee and pieces of turkish delight. I ate the delight, left the coffee and used the wooden stick to pick the remnants of minced lamb from between my teeth.

The murder was still front page news and there was a picture of the man in charge of the case, a Superintendent Leake. He was standing next to the inspector who had questioned me and taken my statement. Neither of them looked particularly happy, though Leake seemed to have more about him. From the picture he was about fifty and surprisingly short. I wondered how he had got into the police in the first place. I figured if he could make superintendent with his height then he could solve murders. I thought I would go and pay him a visit.

On the way to the station I called Tom Gilmour. He was in and he was up to his mothering arse in paperwork. His words, not mine. He told me he had found out who the corpse on my stairs belonged to and I tried hard to sound interested. He didn't say anything more, so maybe the money I had given to Mrs Cook had bought her silence. For a while, anyway. Or perhaps she had been in no fit state to tell them anything very much.

He asked me where I was and I said that I was in Nottingham and that I was about to go to talk to the officer in charge of the case. He said something not clearly audible at the other end of the phone. I thought about asking him to repeat it, but decided against it. Instead I told him about my morning visit from the hood with the gun. He told me to watch my mothering arse and I told him to look after his own—all that paperwork must be bad for it.

Superintendent Leake didn't look as if he used such coarse expressions. He was indeed a smaller man than you might expect in the tallest force in the country, but I guessed he must have compensatory factors. Like, maybe he had a brain that worked. After talking to him for a quarter of an hour I knew that he had and that it worked well. I always knew there must be civilised and intelligent cops somewhere and here was one.

I showed him my card and licence and he didn't look at me as though I was a traitor or a fool. He asked me what I knew and I said that it was precious little. I told him about the pressure to keep my nose out and about my conversation with Candi's recording manager. I said I was going to call on Howard and he raised an eyebrow. He had spoken to him yesterday and got nothing: no facts, no suggestions, not even an impression as to the man's feelings.

I asked if anything was known about him. He had no form, but the police had watched his club from time to time. Mainly because they suspected dope was being passed there. So far, though, they had come up with nothing. I promised that if I found out anything useful I would let him know.

Leake gave me what information he had in return: either he had unearthed very little or he wasn't being as straight as he appeared. The only prints in the flat had been mine. There were none of Candi's either, which suggested that whoever had been there before me had wiped the place clean. It also made things look better for me. The bullet was a .32: a small calibre and an unusual one for a professional to use. He asked me if I carried a gun and I looked shocked and said I didn't but that if I did it certainly wouldn't be a .32.

They had got some incomplete prints from the hallway and the stairs, but so far they hadn't been able to match them with anything. They were now in London at C11 being checked through the system.

There was nothing more. The interview was over. I thanked him for his time and for being so open.

‘There is just one thing which bothers me, Mr Mitchell,' he said as I stood up.

I looked at him enquiringly.

‘If a man beat you up on the stairs outside the building which housed Miss Carter's flat and if we presume not too long a gap between that happening and yourself coming round, why did no one see him? My men in the car were outside the flat nearby for a while before they saw you coming out. They say that they saw no one. Certainly, after the murder was discovered by us there were policemen all over the building.' He took a lengthy pause. ‘It certainly makes you think, Mr Mitchell, doesn't it?'

I was out in the street again with nothing much to do. I tried both of Howard's numbers without any more luck. So I did what I usually do when I have time to kill. I went to see a movie. It was a re-run of Hawks's ‘Rio Bravo' and by the time it was over and I had managed to get past admiring Angie Dickenson's legs, I had picked up a lot of respect for old John Wayne. No matter what difficulties they threw at him he didn't back down. Of course, he did have a few people helping him. They might only have been a drunk, a cripple and a singing cowboy who looked as though he was only just weaned, but they were there. All I had was a scarred stripper with red hair, a worn out hunch that probably wouldn't lead me anywhere at all and a thirst. But like I said before, this isn't a movie.

It was time to try out the thirst and the hunch on the 250 Club. Like a lot of similar places it was over the top of a large tailor's. There were posters on the stairs and at the landing a mean-looking brunette took a couple of pounds off me with the expertise of Arnold Bennett skimming the skin from a rice pudding. If you see what I mean.

A red velvet curtain pushed aside into a small room with a bar at one side. Behind this room was another, about the same size and with a small bandstand at the far end. There were one or two fellers at the bar, chatting to the usual brass barmaid. They must all come from the same mould straight to places like this. A small guy in a dark suit was taking drums from their leather cases and setting them up on the stand. Nobody took much notice of me. I bought a pint of bitter for my thirst and a scotch for myself and went and sat in the inner room and watched the drummer putting his kit together. From a speaker over the door came the music of someone who might almost have been Charlie Parker but wasn't. Just like I might have been John Wayne! I called it as Sonny Stitt left it at that.

It was quite a bit later that the man I guessed to be Howard came in. There were more paying customers by now, including one or two part-time prostitutes and someone I figured to be a plain-clothes man Leake had sent down to see how I got along. The only thing was, I couldn't be sure if he was there to watch me or Howard. Both, I supposed.

Howard was a big man, a fat man. He had his arm round the shoulders of a thin guy carrying a saxophone case and was laughing from underneath dark glasses. It was a sound I didn't like: slightly unearthly, unnatural. He clapped the sax player on the back a few times, went round behind the bar, goosed the barmaid—or so I assumed from her practised reaction and the customers' snorts of delight—and poured out a couple of liberal scotches. Then he and Mr Sax disappeared into a room beside the bar which could have been the gents but which was probably the band room.

I looked round. The drummer had finished setting up and was sitting on his stool reading the
Melody Maker.
A double bass had been laid on its side in front of the upright piano. Most of the people round the bar seemed involved in a fairly noisy conversation. The guy I figured for a cop was sitting on the edge of the group drinking beer and doing a good job of listening. Above the increased sound the tape had changed to Monk playing Ellington. I waited until he had played the riff at the opening of ‘Sophisticated Lady' that takes him into the melody, then I got up and headed for the door beside the bar. I hoped that if I moved not too fast and not too slow no one would notice: except for the copper, in case I needed him.

I mean, any stranger could mistake it for the gents.

Not once you got inside you couldn't.

It was a small room, no bigger than a large cupboard. A naked light bulb hung dimly from the ceiling. The sax man was sitting on a wooden chair, slumped down and with his jacket on the floor by his feet. His left shirt sleeve was rolled up and in his right hand he was holding a plastic syringe. The needle had pierced the vein just below the centre of his arm.

He had his eyes shut tight and was biting deep into his lower lip. He didn't open his eyes when I came into the room and shut the door quickly behind me. There was a key on the inside and I turned it damned fast. I had the key in my pocket and my gun nestling in my hand before fat-boy knew what had hit him. I tell you, there are times when I'm good and when I'm good you had better watch out!

Howard didn't speak but the front of his gut began to tremble slightly, like a gigantic jelly. Maybe it didn't like the fact that a Smith and Wesson .38 was pointing straight at it from a distance of less than two feet.

I looked for the expression behind his glasses but could see nothing there. There was no sound for several minutes except for an intake of breath from the guy who was shooting up. I saw his finger ease on the end of the syringe and his head lowered; his eyes blinked, then opened. And he found himself looking at me standing there with a gun. Strange trip.

He looked as though he was going to speak; at least his mouth opened and closed a few times. In case he was I told him to shut up. It was Howard I wanted to talk to.

‘Okay, we've only a little time before someone comes and knocks on this door and wants to know why you're taking so long getting fixed. So listen hard and answer fast if I ask you a question. Got it?'

He nodded and looked across at the junkie in the chair. I eased his face round gently with the barrel of my .38.

I was beginning to enjoy this more and more.

‘I'm the guy who found Candi's body. That wasn't all that I found. I also found a few things in a shoe-box that whoever had cleared out had carelessly left behind: and they sure weren't shoes. As I was leaving someone slugged me and took the things back. Maybe you know what was in that box. Maybe it even found its way back to you. Am I getting warm?'

Whether I was or not, Howard certainly was. The sweat quietly ran down his forehead and behind his glasses; it ran down his sideboards into his neck; it sprang out in the palms of his podgy hands.

‘Now all that means Candi was hooked. Whether she was mainlining or not I don't know because I didn't have the sense to look for the marks at the time. But a quick check with the path. lab report will turn that up. But perhaps she was still taking orally, I don't know. It doesn't matter.'

I paused for breath and pushed his stomach with the end of the gun. The vein to the right of his forehead leapt out into sharp relief. The sweat flowed more freely. He was surely as scared as all hell and it wasn't for no reason.

‘Okay. I'll tell you my version of the story. You were Candi's manager. She trusted you and you got her hooked on dope. Then you sold it to her. The deeper she got hooked the more you sold. You were taking a percentage off her earnings for managing her and then another percentage after that for feeding her habit. She was getting so little herself she borrowed money from her recording manager and from Christ knows who else besides.'

I grinned at him and waved the gun in his face.

‘How does that grab you so far? Shall I go on? 'Cause now we come to the part where it becomes a little less clear and this is where I want your help. Several things could have happened at this point; things that could have caused someone to get so annoyed with Candi they wanted to put her out of the way. She might have been into someone for a lot of money and not look as though she was going to pay it back. She might have tried to turn her back on the whole thing—the singing, the dope, everything. She might have been trying to get back at you in some way; maybe even blackmail.

‘Now, which of those ideas do you like?'

I fanned him with my gun again but it didn't seem to cool him down. The sax player was still sitting on his chair, as though he didn't believe it was all happening. I let the barrel come to rest alongside the fat man's temple.

‘There isn't much time but don't think you can stall me for long. Which of my little ideas do you like best? Tell!' The gun was making a dent in the skin and I knew that he was going to call my bluff. Despite all that shaking blubber and all that sweat, he knew that I wasn't going to use a .38 in there with a crowd of people outside and no other way out.

But I had hit more home chords than were comfortable and he knew it. I was thinking what the hell to do next when there was a bang on the door from the outside. A voice shouting above the music and the chatter to find out if Howard was all right.