Val McDermid - Dead Beat

'Can we talk, Kate?' he said as soon as I opened the door.

'I was actually having an evening off, Kevin. Can't it wait till tomorrow?'

'We've got some things to clear up that won't wait.'

'We do? You'd better come in then,” I said grudgingly, leading the way back through to the living room. I gestured to one of the sofas, and he perched on the edge.

I sat down opposite him, deliberately not offering him a drink. I wanted to keep him edgy. 'What did you want to talk to me about?' I inquired.

'You're setting me up,' he said abruptly, lacing his fingers together tightly. 'I didn't kill Moira, and you're trying to make it look like I did.'

'I am? What makes you say that?' I asked coolly.

He cleared his throat and swallowed hard. 'I overheard your conversation with Jett last night. I picked up the extension because I was waiting for a call.'

'On Jett's private line? You'll have to try harder than that, Kevin.'

He sighed. 'All right, all right. I picked it up because I was nosey, OK? That suit you better?'

'Much better. I prefer it when people tell me the truth. You overheard our conversation. So?'

Kevin unlocked his fingers and massaged the back of his neck with one hand. 'I'll come clean. I admit I've been doing one or two side deals that might not be strictly kosher.'

'You mean you've been ripping Jett off with fake merchandise. Let's stick to plain English, Kevin.'

He flinched. 'OK, but that doesn't mean I killed Moira. I don't even think she knew anything about it.'

'She didn't tell you she'd seen you and Fat Freddy together?' I was intrigued by the line he was taking. I had to admit what he was saying wasn't impossible. After all, at the time of Moira's death, Maggie still hadn't found out exactly what line of work Fat Freddy was currently in. For all Moira knew, it could have been nothing to do with Jett.

'No, she didn't. And if she'd known about it, do you really think she'd have kept her mouth shut? She was quick enough to badmouth me to Jett and to anyone else who'd listen about her bloody royalties money. She couldn't have resisted telling him anything she found to blacken my name with,” Kevin protested.

The psychology sounded credible, I had to admit. But my belief in his guilt didn't just depend on one thing. I was torn between letting him stew till the following evening, and fronting him up with what I suspected, to see if I could nail him once and for all. Arrogance won, for a change. 'You must have wanted rid pretty badly,' I observed.

Kevin gave me an admiring smile, all expensive dentistry and insincerity. 'Nice try, Kate. I'll admit that if she'd said she was leaving, I'd have carried her bags to the station. But murder? That's not my style.'

'You had plenty of motive, though.'

'Me?' Kevin threw his arms out in a gesture of supplication. 'Kate, if I bumped off every musician who made my life difficult, I'd have been in Strangeways a long time ago.'

'I hear Moira thought that's where you should be.'

Kevin's eyelids fluttered as his body tensed. 'Look, you keep making these innuendos, but I'd suggest you don't repeat them outside these four walls.'

'I'm talking about money, Kevin. Not just the business with Fat Freddy, or Moira's back royalties. She was convinced you were doing some fancy footwork with Jett's cash. Otherwise, why would he be on the constant treadmill of tours and albums? Most people of his stature who've been in the game as long as he has take it a lot easier than him. A few big stadium dates, an album every eighteen months or so. But according to Moira, Jett had to keep working to keep paying the bills. So where was all the money?' I pinned him with a hard stare, and I was gratified to see his hands grip his knees tightly.

'Look, I told you. If she'd had any proof of anything like that, do you think I'd still be around?' he exploded. 'She was full of shit! She loved to stir it. I told her a dozen times, her cash was all accounted for. It was tied up in a high interest investment account that I have to give three months' notice of withdrawal on. Out of that, tiny, insignificant fact, she built a whole edifice of poisonous rumour. That shows you the kind of woman she was.'

'Frankly, I'm amazed. I'd have expected you all to fall on her neck weeping tears of joy and gratitude, given the way Jett's career's been going of late,' I retaliated.

Kevin's head seemed to shrink into his shoulders, like a tortoise in retreat. 'Listen, Kate, I said when you started looking for Moira that we were looking at trouble. She was always a manipulative bitch. She loved playing us all off against each other, always had. OK, Jett's been going through a difficult patch in creative terms, but he would have come good again, with or without Moira. He just got this crazy obsession that he needed her. So we all got lumbered with her. She was only through the door five minutes when she had us all at each other's throats. I've told you already. We're not killers. We're putting an album together, that's the number one priority. No one would jeopardise that by making us the focus of all these shitty stories in the press,' he added.

'I thought Neil was controlling the press for you.'

Kevin snorted. 'Might as well try to knit a bed jacket out of a mountain stream as try to control those toe-rags. Neil's done his best, but he's got an uphill struggle on his hands. God knows where they've got some of this stuff from. I mean, one of them's even got some tale about Moira and Tamar being at each other's throats. I've a good mind to sue, except that it would only cause more bad publicity.'

'You'd have a job suing.' I couldn't resist it.

'What d'you mean?' he asked indignantly.

'I don't think you'd have any grounds,' I said sweetly. 'But let's leave that aside for a minute,' I continued. 'Cast your mind back to the evening of Moira's death.'

He butted in eagerly. 'I suppose you want to know what I was doing when Moira bought it?'

I nodded. He nodded. We were like a pair of toy dogs on a car's parcel shelf. 'No problem,' he said. 'I'd been over to Liverpool for a business meeting and I got back around nine. I stuck my head round the TV room door and said hi to Jett and Tamar. Then I nipped up to my office to make a few phone calls. Around ten, I went downstairs and made myself a steak sandwich, then I popped down to the studio for a word with Micky. That must have been getting on for eleven. He was up to his eyes in it, so I left him to it and went back up to the TV room. Gloria was watching Dead Babies on The Late Show, and I sat in for a while. I went back down to the studio about quarter to twelve, and listened to a couple of tracks with Micky, then I hit the sack. Next thing I knew, all hell was breaking loose.'

It was just detailed enough to be credible, if a bit glib. 'You don't have any problem with your memory, do you? Not like Micky?'

'I might be pathetic in your eyes, but I'm not a bloody killer,' he flared up.

This wasn't working out at all as I'd imagined. In my scenario, he was going to probe to find out what I knew then mount a murderous attack when he discovered I had him. Right now, he didn't look as if he could crush a daddy-long-legs.

I took a long swig of my drink and settled back to deliver the clincher. 'Can you explain something to me, Kevin? If you didn't kill Moira, how is it that you knew exactly how she'd been murdered before the police told everyone?'

He looked completely nonplussed. Gotcha, I thought. Prematurely, as it turned out. 'I don't know what you mean,' he said with an air of bewilderment. 'I knew the same time as everyone else. When the police interviewed me.'

I shook my head. 'Not what I've been told. According to my witness, you knew how Moira had died by the time the police released you from the blue drawing room, a couple of hours after the murder.'