“Why the hell not?”
“I don’t want them convicted.”
“I see.”
“Which is the same reason you were given this investigation, isn’t it? Keep an eye on Amanda. Wise move by your company. I worked with her before. She’s a smart girl. And a very good police officer.
She won’t make compromises.”
“And you will?”
“When it suits me. And this certainly does.”
“Crescent Insurance would be happy to consider an adequate remuneration for the time you’ve spent advising Oakham CID.”
“You should research more. I’m already rich.”
“What then?”
“Tell me what line of investigation Crescent wants avoiding, and I’ll see if we can help each other.”
Wilson took a slow sip, and eased back into his chair. “Okay. I’m actually on secondment to Crescent; my employer is Hothouse.”
“Byrne Tyler’s agency?”
“Yeah. Look, showbiz is not pretty, okay? We deal with images, illusions. That’s what we sell: characters larger than life. To the general public, Byrne is some hot young chunk of meat with a six-pack stomach and the devil’s smile. In the dramas all he’s got to do is show off that body in some tough action sequences and blow away bad guys with his big gun. In real life we portray him as an It Guy; he goes to all the best parties, he dates the most beautiful actresses and models, he’s friends with the older, real celebrities. That’s what we’re promoting here, the more he’s in the ’casts, the more ’castworthy he is.
Doesn’t matter if it’s private-life gossip, or reviews for his latest pile of interactive shit. We put him out there and shine a light on him for everyone to idolize and buy every tie-in funny-colored chocolate bar we can slam at them. We make money, and Byrne gets a bigger apartment and a better nose job.
Unfortunately, in reality, he’s some half-wit sink-estate boy from Walthamstow we uprooted and dropped in front of the cameras. That’s a shock to anyone’s system. Certainly for him it was. He couldn’t tell where the image stopped and life began. He’s got a syntho habit, a dream punch habit, a sweet amp;sour habit…he even uses crack, for Christ’s sake; he can barely remember his one-word catch-phrase, and his autograph isn’t in joined-up writing. What I’m saying is, he needs-needed-a lot of agency management and handling to cope with his new existence, right down to potty-training level.”
“You didn’t like him.”
“I’ve never met him. Like I said, this is showbusiness, with the emphasis on business. Byrne Tyler was an investment on Hothouse’s part. And it was starting to go ripe. A year ago he was living on credit, and his career was nose-diving. Well, even that’s okay. It’s not exactly the first time that’s happened to a celeb.
We know how to handle that. We got him partway through detox therapy, paired him up with the gorgeous Tamzin, and together they’re riding high. Bingo, we’re back on track, he’s being offered new interactives, she’s getting runway assignments for the bigger couture houses.”
“So you wrote a happy ending. So what’s the problem?”
“The problem is the middle of the story. When his cash was low and no studio would touch him, he earned his living the oldest way you can. All those trophy wives who’s husbands are so decrepit they can’t even take Laynon anymore. Single trust-fund babes, except at their age they aren’t babes any longer. Even supermodels who wanted a serious no-comebacks, no-involvement shagging one night.
Tyler serviced them all.”
“Let me guess. You pimped him.”
“Our investment was going negative. We pointed people in the right direction. Nobody got hurt. It paid off.”
“Except now he’s dead. And he recorded all those women on that big waterbed of his.”
“Stupid little prick.” Wilson nodded remorsefully. “Was it one of them, some husband or boyfriend who found out?”
“No. You’re in the clear.”
“Hardly. Amanda Patterson is going to start phoning around that goddamn list he left behind. Look, he beds twenty rich and famous girls, and he’s a superstud, a hero to the lads. Thirty and he’s unbelievable…how the hell did he manage that? Fifty of the richest women in Europe night after night, and damn right nobody’ll believe it can happen. There’s going to be rumors; the media will start scratching round. We won’t be able to keep a lid on it.”
“Perfect,” Greg said. “I can deliver someone who can take the rap for Tyler’s death. Amanda will stop phoning your list, and go after him instead. The Tyler case will be closed, and the women involved can quietly apply to the police for the recordings to be wiped under the privacy act.”
“Who is it?”
“A nasty little man called Richard Townsend.”
“Never heard of him.”
“No reason you should. But I’m going to need a motive to link him in with Tyler. What other failings did our late celebrity have?”
Gabriel Thompson was one of Greg’s oldest friends, from his army days. Morgan Walshaw he knew pretty well, handling security for the biggest company there was: Event Horizon. Trustworthy and competent at exactly the level Greg needed. It helped that the two of them had taken a shine to each other after meeting on one of Greg’s cases. They’d moved in together a few months later, living in a grand old terrace house in Stamford.
Greg phoned them as soon as he got back from his drink with Mike Wilson. They arrived together at the farmhouse as the sun was sinking behind Berry but spinney on the far shore. Gabriel helped with Christine’s bath time, while Greg and Morgan tackled the menu from the Chinese take-away in Mill Street.
They wound up sitting in the conservatory with the cartons from the take-away on the big cedar table.
Pink light drained away from the clouds bridging the horizon leaving a quiescent gloaming in its wake.
“I need a safeguard before I agree to this,” Morgan said after Greg had finished talking. “I appreciate there’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that Townsend had Noel Broady run down, but we don’t know for certain.”
“I’ll get myself in on the preliminary interview,” Greg said. “If I can see he’s guilty of paying someone to run Noel over, will that be enough for you?”
“Yes,” Morgan said. “I’ll accept your word.”
“If he’s not?” Gabriel asked archly.
“Then we collapse the deal. It’ll leave a nasty smell, but at least he walks away.”
“Okay,” she said. “So what’s the link between him and Tyler?”
“Hothouse set up a virtual company for Tyler to sell his action dramas and interactives. I think there’s even a best-of compilation fromMarina Days.”
“Compelling stuff,” Gabriel muttered.
“Yeah, anyway. This company is called Firedrake, and Mike Wilson has agreed to sell Hothouse’s half share. It’s only a pound New Sterling, so they don’t exactly lose out. All we have to do is convince Townsend to buy it, and back-date the agreement.”
“Why?” Morgan asked.
“Tyler wasn’t quite as stupid as you’d think. He was using the site to sell bootleg memox crystals of his own stuff. Any orders you place on the Firedrake site are supposed to go to the distribution company that’s contracted to deal with all Hothouse’s clients. Tyler, the clever little sod, rigged the site so that two thirds of the orders are redirected to a bootlegging operation that he’s got an arrangement with. That way, instead of getting his half- percent royalty payment from the cover price of the genuine crystal, he gets fifty percent of the price from the bootleg. Cash only, non-taxable. Hothouse found out about it a month ago, and confronted Tyler. He claimed he knew nothing, and that some hotrod had hacked into the site and loaded the diversion instructions. As his engagement to Tamzin was starting to produce results, Hothouse overlooked it, and sorted the site out.”
“So whoever his partner in Firedrake is, they’re being ripped off by Tyler,” Eleanor said. “Anyone examining the Firedrake site order log and comparing it to the legitimate distribution company’s orders will see the missing sixty percent straight away. The partner in Firedrake will have a justifiable grudge against Tyler.”
