The End of the Roadie (A Mystery for D.I Costello) (12 page)

BOOK: The End of the Roadie (A Mystery for D.I Costello)
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Chapter Twelve

They approached London from the west, got off the main road and meandered through leafy suburbs to the house Carla shared with two other people. She opened the door to them, and Angela was struck afresh by her waiflike appearance. She was wearing short white socks, cut-off trousers and a baggy pink T-shirt. Her hair was tied in two bunches, one poking out from behind each ear. Only the finest suggestion of a skein of wrinkles beginning around her large dark eyes showed that Carla was a woman. Her tiny frame and the pathos of her gaze belonged to childhood. Evidently bewildered, she looked from one to the other.

“Good afternoon, Carla. Do you remember us?” began Gary.

Her brow cleared, she smiled and stepped aside for them to enter. “Oh, yes! You’re the police from the other night.” Her soft voice carried an ingénue quality, which matched her general appearance. Angela, puzzled, followed Gary into the house. Though she herself might wear crops and a T-shirt to relax at home, she formed the distinct impression that Carla wanted to present herself as a little girl. Since she was only twenty-two, she had hardly enough years behind her to worry about her age. It struck Angela as odd.

They all moved into the living room, a bright, cheery space containing a television, a sound system, a sofa and a couple of armchairs. The clutter of objects on the shelf above the empty fireplace represented the debris of an entirely feminine household; odds and ends of make-up, tissues, tweezers, a manicure set and several photographs – mostly of Carla and two other women
at a variety of social gatherings. On the chimney breast, a huge photograph of Brendan Phelan in concert dominated the room; a striking image, it showed Brendan highlighted by a spotlight, gazing down with intensity as he played his guitar. In the dimness behind him, Angela could make out Terry Dexter concentrating with similar focus on the keyboard he was playing, and remembered him saying that he could step in on the keyboard when required. A collage of images of Brendan hung in one of the alcoves to the side of the fireplace. Angela gazed at the photographs. She turned to Carla. “We’ve got a couple more questions for you. Do you have time to chat now?”

Carla curled herself onto one end of the sofa and drew her feet up under her. “Of course,” she said. “Sit down.” She sprang up again. “Oops! I should offer you something to drink, shouldn’t I?” Her smile was self-deprecating, that of a pupil who’s very nearly forgotten an important part of a lesson.

“We’re fine, thank you,” answered Angela on behalf of them both as they sat down. Carla curled herself up again and waited expectantly.

Angela looked once more at the pictures of Brendan. “I see you’re quite an admirer of Brendan Phelan.”

Carla raised her shoulders in a blasé manner. “Those belong to my housemates. They’re so jealous that I’m working with him. Mad keen, they are, go to every concert they can. You should hear them pumping me for information whenever I come back from work. ‘What was he wearing tonight? Did you speak to him? What did he say? Was
she
there?’” She gave a small laugh. “Gets on my nerves, it does.”

Her whole demeanour belied her words. Angela would have been willing to bet money that Carla loved every minute of the attention she generated, and the apparent power which her position as the crew’s runner gave her.

“She?” she asked.

“Yes, Tilly Townsend; Brendan’s girlfriend. They’ve been going out for nearly a year now; but she won’t last.” This statement was delivered with the nonchalance of one with inside information and, no doubt, when she said it to her housemates, they were wide-eyed, and pressed her for more details. Her interview with Tilly Townsend remained fresh in Angela’s mind and now triggered the memory of some details about Brendan’s love-life culled from the media. He’d squired a small procession of women through a considerable variety of headlines. The end of these relationships, as far as she could remember, all seemed to have been identical. “Holly/Scarlett/ whoever is a lovely lady. It’s not her fault – it’s me,” had been Brendan’s claim. “He’s got a problem with commitment” was the corresponding cry each time; statements skimming over the deeper truths of the matter.

“You think it’ll fizzle out?” she asked now, keeping a conversational tone in her voice.

“He needs someone who understands,” Carla asserted.

“Understands?” queried Angela.

“Yeah, you know, the pressure he’s under; being a big star and all that. All the girls want him but they’re, like, out there.” Carla stretched out her arm to its maximum length to illustrate her point. “On the other side of the footlights,” she continued. “Brendan, well, I work with him, so I know. He needs someone who… well, who’s on the inside… a professional colleague, you know?”

Angela and Gary nodded. Angela began to have an inkling as to where this conversation could go and she was sure Gary had picked up on it. She thought it time to get back on track. “We’re actually not here to talk about Brendan, as you can imagine,” she said.

For an instant Carla looked surprised. “No? Oh, of course,
I suppose not. You’re investigating Olly’s death, aren’t you?” She made it sound like a secondary issue. “You’re not –” she stopped.

“We’re not what?” asked Angela, always ready to be deflected in case the byway led to somewhere interesting.

“Well, you know…” A grimace appeared, belonging to the teenage persona Carla clearly clung to. “It’s just… as I said before. I was worried in case the real target was Brendan. That’s why I was so upset at the time. It still bothers me, to be honest.”

“We’ve got that possibility on our radar,” replied Angela, deciding that path was going nowhere and she’d better get back to the main drag. “When we spoke to you the other night, you said that Olly had something going on – though you didn’t say what, specifically. Is there any chance you can enlarge on this?”

Carla brought a hand up to her mouth and began chewing at a fingernail. Again Angela was struck by the studied youthfulness of the action. Almost as if to underline this Carla suddenly grinned and put her hand away from her mouth. “Oops, I keep forgetting I’ve got false nails on.” She giggled briefly. “I don’t think I can tell you much. He kept himself to himself. Like, he’d arrive just in time for the show so he wasn’t hanging around talking and joking with everyone else. Thought himself a cut above us all, if you ask me.”

Angela decided to go with the flow. “Why would that be, do you think?”

“Well he obviously had some sort of special ‘in’ with Brendan.”

Ah
, thought Angela, and was aware of Gary’s interest quickening as well. They had arrived where they wanted to be by a circuitous route. “We’ve heard about this from a couple of other quarters. What can you tell us?”

Carla took her time answering. She smoothed down one of her hair bunches, checked the state of the false fingernail and shifted a little in her seat.
OK, we get it
, thought Angela.
You think you know more than anybody else about this.
She was careful to keep her face expressionless as she waited for the young woman to speak.

“The thing is,” began Carla, “Brendan’s got his likes and dislikes, just as we all have.” She widened her large eyes, looking with meaning first at Angela then Gary. “He’s got needs, right? He’s a regular bloke.”

“Yes?” replied Gary, his tone inviting.

“Well, for those of us on the inside, those in the inner circle –”
Which I’m sure you’re not
, thought Angela, “– well, some of us know that his girlfriends might not be – er – enough for him, if you get what I mean.”

“I’m not sure that I do,” hazarded Angela. She didn’t want to break the flow, but given that Carla liked to dwell on all things “Brendan” suspected she could take a long time getting to the point.

Angela got the big wide eyes again. “Well, the girlfriends are all right. They look just right at first nights and parties, just the job, but Brendan needs a little something else to satisfy him.” Angela looked enquiringly at Carla. Carla smiled in an enigmatic fashion and ran her hands over her bunches again. “He likes something a bit more… fresh?” Her intonation rose into a question at the end, in the current popular manner.

Angela studied her for a moment. The penny dropped; Carla’s image, quasi-teenager, and young teen at that. Her heart sank. “Do you mean underage girls?” she said.

Carla looked horrified. “Oh no! Brendan wouldn’t do anything illegal! He wouldn’t! He just likes them
looking
young.” Her hand went unconsciously to her hair again and
both officers realized in an instant where her plans lay with the youthful manner and the gamine appearance.

A wave of pity for her rose up in Angela. “And what did Oliver have to do with this?” she asked.

Carla paused for an instant to give effect to her words. “Olly supplied him with the girls.”

A brief silence reigned in the room. Whatever Angela had been expecting, it wasn’t this. The information disturbed her in a way she couldn’t have explained.

“How do you know this?” she asked, expecting more “those-of-us-on-the-inside” behaviour, but she was surprised.

“It’s a big secret. I don’t think anybody else knows,” replied Carla. “I only found out by accident. I was in the pub before a show at the beginning of the tour and I saw Olly in there. He and a mate of his were sitting on bar stools and talking. I went over and stood beside him to say ‘hello’ – just to be, like, friendly – but he carried on talking with this bloke. So, after a minute or two I got bored. I mean, he hadn’t even realized I was there. So I made a point of going in front of him, and when he saw me he jumped and said, ‘How long have you been there?’ He was a bit sharp, to be honest. I thought,
Oh, thanks very much, this is what you get for being polite!
So anyway, I said I’d only just arrived and Olly said to his mate, ‘This is the new runner.’ His friend went all mysterious. He stared at me, then he nudged Olly and whispered, like it was a secret, and said, ‘Looks young; just right for Brendan’ and they both looked at each other and burst out laughing.”

“So his friend was in on the secret, was he?” asked Gary.

“Suppose so,” answered Carla. “I was a bit worried at that point because I didn’t want anyone to know that I’m a – that I live with a couple of fans. You have to keep a professional attitude when you’re working in show business.”

“Yes, I’m sure,” said Angela.

“But at the same time, if there was a chance of getting off with Brendan… well… I could hardly believe my luck. It’d be the thing I want most in all the world. I mean, who wouldn’t?”

Angela treated the question as a rhetorical one. “So how did you find out that Oliver supplied Brendan with suitable women?”

Carla couldn’t disguise a look of pride. “He let me into the secret. It was time to go back for the sound check then, so we walked back together and that’s when he told me.”

“So how did it work, this demand and supply situation?”

“Every now and again there’d be this little conversation; it didn’t take much, just a nod sometimes. But Olly always got the message and he’d deal with it. They had this arrangement, see? Olly was the only one he trusted, which makes sense; he’d been working for him longer than any of the other crew. He said every now and then, when Brendan had the urge on him, he gave the nod and Olly went and sorted something out. He explained that’s why I’d see them having a bit of a talk now and again.”

“And what about yourself, your own hopes?”

A strange mixture of pent-up excitement and anguish mingled on Carla’s face, with an undercurrent of anger she could not conceal.

“I tried to keep it casual. I asked where he got the girls from but he just tapped his nose with his finger and said that was his business. So then I said, ‘I’ve always been told I look young for my age’ and he stopped and looked at me, all over, like. Then he said, ‘You do, don’t you? And you’re quite small.’ He looked as though he was seriously considering me as a possibility and my stomach turned right over. I could have died from the excitement but I knew I had to play it cool, so I made out like I thought it’d be a laugh. I said, ‘I’d
be up for it if you’re stuck, the next time he asks.’ I made sure he couldn’t tell how keen I really was.”

Hmm, right
, thought Angela. She cast a brief glance across at Gary and guessed from his deadpan expression that he was concealing similar thoughts to her own. “What did he say to that?” she asked.

“He said he’d see what he could do the next time Brendan was
that way
, you know?” A tear rolled down her cheek. “But it never happened, and now the tour’s over and I don’t know when I’m going to get my chance.”

“Yes, I do see,” answered Angela.
More than you think
, she added to herself.

Carla looked at them as though considering her next move and decided to take them into her confidence. “It’s the only reason I kept in with him,” she admitted.

“Oh, really?” Angela was at her most inviting.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to miss my chance, did I? But lately Olly had started to say that if I was prepared to ‘oblige’ him, you know, he’d definitely put my name forward as soon as Brendan tipped him the wink again.”

“And have you done that?” asked Angela.

Carla, shrugging, studied her fingernails. “Well, yeah. I mean, for the sake of getting together with Brendan, why wouldn’t I? I didn’t like the idea of it, but I really fancy Brendan, so it’s, like, worth it to me. I mean, I know if I got the chance I could really make Brendan happy. I feel like I could be his soulmate, you know? His girlfriends aren’t doing much for him; they can’t give him what he really needs.”

I have serious doubts you could do any better, Carla
, thought Angela. “Can you remember when the meeting happened, with Oliver and the man in the pub?” she asked.

Carla screwed up her face and concentrated like a
schoolgirl, still playing the teenage ticket. “A few months ago,” she said eventually.

“Ah yes, you said, at the beginning of the tour.”
So
, thought Angela,
you’ve spent most of the past few months trying to get noticed by Brendan. And you’ve been so remarkably unsuccessful you were reduced to entering into some unsavoury liaison with Oliver Joplin on the dubious grounds that he might present you with a window of opportunity.
Angela had heard and seen some very unpleasant things in her career as a policewoman and had become acclimatized to much of it, but she was always struck afresh by genuine naivety. Carla felt herself truly in love with Brendan and the combination of working on his tour and the opportunity Oliver seemed to offer clouded her judgment, a situation destined to end in tears. She felt pity for the young woman but had to move the conversation on. “Can you describe this friend of Oliver’s, the man in the pub?”

BOOK: The End of the Roadie (A Mystery for D.I Costello)
8.19Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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