Kevin looked furious as he stomped into his office. 'What the hell is going on here?' he started. 'What is this? Why's everybody playing cops and robbers in my office?'
T was just leaving,' I said haughtily, skirting the pair of them. 'I'll catch up with you another time, Kevin,' I threw over my shoulder as I pulled the door shut firmly behind me. Time to do some work on my timetables.
24
I found Jett in his private sitting room, on the opposite side of the house to Kevin's suite. I walked in through the open door, then paused till he noticed me. He was sitting on a tall stool by the window, picking out fragments of old melodies on a twelve string Yamaha. After a few minutes, he turned his head towards me and nodded. He reached the end of a phrase of 'Crying In The Sun', one of their collaborations from the second album, then stood up abruptly. 'Kate,' he said softly. It was impossible to see the expression on his face, silhouetted against the light as he was. I sat down on a chaise longue and said, 'How're you doing?' Jett carefully leaned the guitar against the wall then folded himself into the lotus position on the floor a few feet away from me. 'It's the hardest thing I've ever known,' he replied, his voice curiously lacking in its usual resonance. 'It's like losing half of myself. The better half. I've tried everything I know – meditation, self-hypnosis, booze. Even sex. But nothing makes it go away. I keep getting flashbacks of her lying there like that.'
I didn't have anything useful to say. Bereavement isn't something I've had a lot to do with. We sat in silence for a few moments, then Jett said, 'Do you know who killed her yet?'
I shook my head. 'I'm afraid not. I've asked a lot of questions, but I'm not a whole lot further forward. Anyone could have done it, and nearly everyone seems to have some kind of motive. But I've got a few interesting leads that I need to follow up. Then I might have a clearer idea.'
'You've got to find who did it, Kate. There's a really bad atmosphere round here. Everybody suspects everybody else. They night not admit it, but they do. It's poisoning everything.'
'I know. I'm doing my best, Jett. It would help if I could ask you a few questions.' I was treading gently. I didn't know how close to the edge he was and I didn't want to be the one to push him over. Besides, he was the client, therefore not up for any kind of badgering.
He sighed, and forced out a half smile that looked grotesque on his haggard features. 'I laid you on, so I guess I have to pay the price. Look, I have to go see Moira's mother. Why don't you drive me into town and we can talk on the way.'
'How will you get home?' I asked. Trust me to find the completely irrelevant question.
He shrugged. 'Gloria'll come and pick me up. Or Tamar. It's not a problem.'
I followed him out the door and down the stairs. On the front steps, he paused and said, 'You can ask me anything you want, you know. Don't worry about sparing my feelings.'
'Thanks.' I unlocked the car and kept an anxious eye on him as he squeezed into the passenger seat. The briefest of smiles flickered on his face as he strapped himself in.
'I've got too used to flash motors,' he remarked.
I revved the engine and headed off down the long drive. The tyres hissed on the wet road, the wipers struggled to keep the screen clear. 'Weather looks like I feel,' Jett said. 'OK, Kate, what d'you want to know?'
'Can you run through your own movements from about eight? I particularly want to know where and when you saw anyone else.'
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Jett massage the back of his neck with one hand, then rotate his head a few times. 'Tamar came back from one of her shopping sprees, and said she'd cook us some dinner.'
'Was that usual?' I butted in.
He shrugged. 'We don't stick to formal routines round meals here. Everybody kind of fends for themselves, except for Sunday. Gloria always cooks a proper Sunday dinner and we all get together then. But Tamar often cooks for the two of us. Moira did dinner a few times the first couple of weeks she was here, but once we'd really got stuck into the work, she didn't bother.'
'Right. So what did you do then?' I opened the window and pressed the gate release button. A flurry of rain stung my face before the electric window could wind up again.
Ignoring the invasion of the weather, Jett said, 'Moira and I went down to the studio to see Micky about a couple of tracks we weren't happy with. He wanted to do some fancy stuff with drum machines and stuff, but we weren't thrilled with the idea. So we discussed it, and then I went up to have dinner with Tamar.'
'Did you and Moira come back upstairs together.'
Jett thought for a moment. 'No,' he eventually said. 'She was still there when I left, but she was upstairs a few minutes later, because I saw her going towards the front door as I came through from the kitchen. I thought she was going off to meet Maggie.'
'So you knew Maggie was staying in the village?' I asked, with a vague gesture in the general direction of the pub.
'Sure I knew,' he replied in surprise. 'Moira didn't broadcast it, but she had to tell me. I'd have been worried, you see, if I'd been looking for her and I hadn't been able to find her. I told her to bring Maggie up to the house to stay, but she wasn't having any of that. Said she didn't see why Maggie should have to put up with the shit she was getting from all sides.'
'OK, so after Moira left, what then?'
'We ate our steaks, and watched
'What exactly is the score between you and Tamar?' I prompted.
'That's a question I don't have the answer to. I'm fond of her, but sometimes she drives me crazy. She's so materialistic, so empty compared to Moira. I keep thinking I'll end it, then we go to bed together one last time and I remember all the good times and I can't let go. Maybe if Moira and me had been able to get it together in bed again, I'd have been able to free myself.'
You mean Tamar's a great lay, and you won't say goodbye till something better comes along, I thought cynically. 'I see,' was all I said. 'So where did you go after you left Tamar's room?'
'I went back to my room and had a shower. Then I went down to the rehearsal room. That must have been some time between half-eleven and midnight. Moira and I had planned to do a couple of hours' work on a couple of new songs, but we weren't meeting till half-past one.'
I said nothing for a moment, concentrating on the road junction ahead. The traffic comes down that main A56 like it was a German autobahn and speed limits hadn't been invented. I spotted a gap in the cars and went for it. Thank God for the Nova's acceleration. It took Jett by surprise, I noticed. He was thrust back into his tight-fitting sports seat with a look of serious discomfort on his face.
'Isn't that a bit late to start work?' I asked.
Jett relaxed as my speed levelled out and the G-forces disappeared. His smile this time seemed genuine, though I couldn't see into his eyes. I adjusted the rear-view mirror slightly so I could see his face. 'We always did our best work in the early hours,' he told me. 'Sometimes we'd still be tossing lyrics and tunes around at dawn. In the early days, we used to drive off to a greasy spoon around five in the morning and have bacon butties and tea 'to celebrate our new songs.'
'So why did you go off to the rehearsal room so much earlier than you'd arranged?'
'I'd had a tune going round my head for a couple of hours, and I wanted to fiddle around with it a bit before Moira arrived. So I'd have something new to show to her, I guess. I tinkered with it for a while, then I decided to fix myself a sandwich, so I went off to the kitchen. That must have been just before one, because the news came on the radio while I was eating.' His speech had become noticeably more jerky as he got closer to the discovery of the body, his shoulders tense and hunched.
I slowed for the roundabout but still managed to hit the motorway slip road at fifty-five. This time, Jett made it
