Authors: Derek Farrell
“She wised up and saw he was a loser?” Caz suggested.
“Not quite,” Leon smiled sadly at the TV screen where Lyra continued to perform. “Haynes tried to kill her.”
“
What
?”
“There’s a story that they argued one night after a concert and he tried to strangle her. She fought him off, but it wasn’t long after that that she got away from him.”
“Wait a minute: he tried to strangle her? Leon, she was strangled to death!”
“Not by Barry Haynes she wasn’t. He’s dead.”
Bugger
. “When did he die?”
“Well, he was last seen as a junkie on the streets of Camden. He lost everything. I tried tracking him down. That’s as far as the trail went.”
“But you haven’t actually seen a death certificate?”
“Trust me; he’s dead. And even if he wasn’t, why would he suddenly surface and murder Lyra? It makes no sense.”
“So why bring it up?” Caz asked testily.
Because he wanted us to know how much more than us he knows
, I thought. “Well where should we be looking?” I asked.
“You want to look at the leeches surrounding her. Her own family. That bastard husband and her bitchy stepdaughter. You saw them,” he answered, picking up the discarded housecoat and folding it into quarters. “This was hers,” he said absent-mindedly. “She wore it when she was in the hospital, after she got ill. I paid one of the orderlies. Cost me a grand, but worth every penny. It still smells of her.” He lifted the soiled gown and inhaled it.
I glanced at Caz, who rolled her eyes and mouthed the word
Cuckoo
.
“Bloodsuckers, every last one of them. You saw them that day; I’d watched them for years. They didn’t care about her. Not like I did. You want to know who killed Lyra, you start there. With the family.”
We left him, his eyes fixed firmly on the picture of a fourteen-year-old Lyra, a strange frown on his face.
Chapter Thirty
“I’m warning you,” I said, “if he gets grabby I’ll punch his lights out.”
“Oh sweetie,” Caz swept a pointed look up and down my personage, “how many years ago was this Christmas party?”
We’d just exited Farringdon station and were making our way through a series of empty and rain-swept streets to Aubrey St John’s flat.
“Here we are,” Caz announced, stopping in front of a red brick building. She pressed a bell and the lovechild of Bela Lugosi and Kenneth Williams answered.
“Who calls?” It asked, managing to make a two-word, one sentence sound completely sibilant.
“Lady Caroline Holloway and Mister Daniel Bird,” Caz announced in her purest RP.
A buzzer sounded and the door opened. We stepped into a halogen lit space and crossed to a waiting lift, which whooshed us upwards.
The doors opened directly into a giant loft space – all Eames chairs, glass walls and exposed brickwork. Standing before us was a tall, broad chested young man, tanned so deeply that he could – like a lizard – have blended in with the brickwork.
And it was an all over tan; I could tell this because, even in early December, with a constant slate grey rain falling beyond the tinted ceiling-to-floor windows, he was wearing – apart from a small tattoo on his left pectoral of a Chinese symbol that meant either bravery or spring roll – nothing more than a very small pair of white speedos.
I handed him the bottle of wine we’d brought as a peace offering to the motherfucker who’d fired me and started this whole mess, and he glanced at it, raised an eyebrow –
actually raised an eyebrow
– and said, in perfect Bella Williams tones, “Ah, Waitrose. Always a wonderful vintage,” before flouncing away stage right.
Leaving us facing the vastness of Aubrey St John’s pad.
“Oh for Christ’s sake,” a voice – clearly not talking to us – announced, “she might have been a spice girl, but nowadays the only thing going for her is the child. And, frankly, it’s a pig. Tell her: we Photoshop five pounds off the brat, or she loses the cover and it ends up in Cellulite Corner. Daaarling,”
Aubrey St John spotted Caroline, stood, announced “This conversation is over” to whichever unfortunate subordinate was on the other end and flipped shut the phone.
“Aubrey!” Caz stepped forward, arms open and allowed herself to be enfolded by the vile tub of lard.
After the air kiss fest had ended, she gestured towards me. “Daniel,” she announced.
“Ahh,” St John smiled, a transaction that made his whole face balloon to twice its already inflated size, “
the accused
.”
I mouthed some nothings and allowed myself to be ushered away from the desk and towards three hideously uncomfortable chairs arranged around a HD screen playing a DVD loop of a roaring log fire.
The mahogany manservant reappeared with a silver tray laden with drinks. These were placed on a small chest that might, just possibly, have served once as a coffin for a Moroccan child, and the servant withdrew.
St John watched every second of the jiggling retreat. “The lovely Stephen,” he sighed at last. “Isn’t he a gem? Have we met?” He fixed a beady on me and frowned, sipping his bowlful of red.
I lifted mine, sipped it, realised this was
definitely
not Chateau Waitrose and decided – for nothing, if not for the sake of the wine – to play coy. “Many years ago.”
That seemed to satiate him. “So,” he turned to Caz. “You wanted to know about Lyra?”
“Well,” Caz sipped the wine, paused and closed her eyes. “Margaux. Seventy-three?”
“Four,” he responded and I realised what the British public school was for.
“Yus,” Caz replied, placing the glass on the table. “Specifically: what’s her story? Who’d have it in for her?”
“The woman – and I say this as someone who has done
four
covers with Naomi – was a
beast
! And not,” he winked at me, “in a good way. I’d say anyone who ever came in contact with her would be a possible suspect.”
“But she was a bankrupt has-been,” Caz murmured, lifting the glass and sipping thoughtfully.
“Oh she was a has-been,
cara mia
, but hardly bankrupt. No; Ms Day’s glory might well be far behind her but, whilst it’s true that over the years she spent vast sums of cash on wigs, drugs and a wardrobe that, quite frankly, even Theda Barra would have considered a bit O.T.T., Lyra, when she died, was still a very rich nasty old bitch.”
“But I thought Lyra was skint,” I said.
St John gestured at a manila envelope on the table. “I’ve been doing some digging; spoke to some people in finance – amazing there are any people left in that industry, really. Anyway – and none of this is exhaustive – Ms Day had a rather attractive portfolio. Speaking of which…”
He trailed off as Stephen entered the room bearing a silver tray on which was a selection of antique china cups, each filled with various nibbles. His portfolio was fully displayed.
Aubrey snapped himself back to reality. “Try the olives; they’re from my own farm in Tuscany. Where were we? Ah, yes, Ms Day: government securities, property – and not just a couple of flats in Fulham. Last I heard, Songbird Investments – the company set up to handle the money – owned large chunks of Mayfair and Marylebone. Recession-proof. No, Lyra wasn’t short of a few bob.”
“But if she’s not skint,” I wondered, “why on earth was she performing...”
“At a shitty boozer in Southwark?”
“That’s not quite how I would have put it, but yes: why?”
“Because Mrs Foster didn’t exist offstage. It didn’t matter which husband she was with, there was only one Lyra and Lyra needed an audience.”
I didn’t like the way that Aubrey was making sense, but I had to agree that he had a point.
“Do you have any idea who might have wanted to kill her?”
He sipped his wine, his gaze fixed on the receding behind of the houseboy. “Magnificent,” he murmured, then snapped back to the present. “I’m sorry? What was that?”
“Murder,” Caz prompted. “Any ideas?”
“Oh, the husband, of course. If he didn’t do it, I’ll eat my hat.”
I suspected there was something else in the vicinity that he’d be much happier chowing down on but chose instead to challenge his assertion. “But surely, if Morgan had done it, he’d have been killing the golden egg.”
“Goose,” Aubrey responded and it was a moment before I realised it was a correction and not an instruction. “
Goose
that
laid
the golden egg. Of course, when the goose has a very public mental breakdown, in many businesses, they’d be sent straight to the foie gras factory. But, in showbiz, it just adds to the aura – of a tragic genius, whose artistic temperament was in conflict with the, shall we say,
stresses
of the modern world.” He frowned, peering at me. “Are you sure we haven’t met before?”
I was your mail boy for sixteen years, till you fired me to pay for the himbo’s tanning sessions
, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Instead, I asked another question: “But I still don’t get it; she’s had the nervous breakdown.”
Aubrey snorted. “
Breakdown
? Darling boy, she plucked herself like a fucking chicken. Live. On stage at the Albert Hall. She was batshit crazy. This made Britney’s breakdown look like a touch of the vapours. The woman went mental. Wonderfully, fabulously,
mental
. And if the story had ended there, it would have been Judy, Janis, Marilyn and all the other dead junkie divas rolled into one.
But she got better
. And worse...”
“She was willing to play any shitty old boozer going,” I finished, feeling a pit of dread opening up in my stomach.
“Exactly. Which would not have done a lot to burnish her reputation. Let’s face it: Who’d remember Marilyn if she’d ended up doing panto in Hull? But because Lyra died before the image – the reputation – could be made
too
prosaic, well, Morgan Foster is in possession of a back catalogue with an earning potential unsullied by his wife having played
The Dog & Duck
in Clapham. She died at a good time, too – disco’s coming back with a vengeance. Shame we can’t say the same about Lyra.”
Chapter Thirty-One
“Down there, just behind Big Ben,” Nick pointed at a dark cluster of buildings far below us.
“Ooh, I’m impressed,” I said, trying to make out just how big the family pile was. “A rich kid from Westminster.”
He laughed. “It’s a block of council flats. We moved to Acton when I was two.”
“But you were still born within the sound of Big Ben,” I answered, joining in his laughter, “Which makes you officially a Posho.”
“Isn’t that a Cockney?” he asked.
“No, I’m fairly sure being born within the sound of Big Ben doesn’t make you a Cockney.”
“You have a cute smile,” he said, immediately removing the grin from my mug. “And a great poker face”
“Well,” I said, “tonight, I have something to smile about. I mean, it’s not every day I get taken out for a picnic in a bubble floating over London.
Nick smiled, dipped into a bag at his side, produced two hot dogs and offered one to me. I accepted it with one hand and gestured around with the other. “I mean, when you said we’d eat somewhere after midnight on a Sunday night, I sort of thought some burger van somewhere and a ride home in your squad car. But this...”
Nick had arranged for a cousin of his to let us into a pod on the London eye, turn the wheel halfway round so we were suspended four hundred feet above the ground below, stop the wheel and turn out the lights.
Below us the frost-rimed city twinkled; the sparse traffic whooshing by on the embankment in silent blurs of light and suddenly I felt very serious.
“What do you want, Mr Detective Constable Nick Fisher?”
“To have dinner with you,” he answered.
“
That’s all
?” I couldn’t keep the incredulity out of my voice.
“That’ll do for now,” he answered, sitting next to me on the bench. “I don’t – despite what you may think – do this very often.”
“I never said you did,” I retorted; “it’s just, well...”
And before I knew what was happening, I’d told him about Robert. “So you see,” I finished, “I don’t, well, I don’t handle this sort of thing very well. With Robert the grand gestures were always because he wanted to do it anyway, or because he was guilty about something.”
“So anyone who does something nice, just
because,
has to have an ulterior motive?”
Moments passed, our breaths coming in tiny clouds that dissipated in the cold moonlight. At length, he spoke: “So how did it feel? Walking in on him like that?”
I was silent for a moment, staring into the distance, past the ghostly hulk of Battersea Power Station, on into the velvet dark night.
How did it feel?
“Up till then I thought that Robert loved me. Then, when I looked into his eyes, all I saw was impatience. I was getting in the way of him getting on with having a good time. And I knew. He never loved me like I loved him. So, that’s what it felt like: like the one thing I was most positive about in the whole world – the centre of my certainty – was gone. And if I was so totally wrong about that, well, what about the rest of the world? What else was I wrong about?”
“You bounced back,” he murmured.
“Resilient stock,” I smiled. “Mind you, I still harbour fantasies of setting fire to the house with the two of them in it.”
“Please don’t. I’d hate to have to arrest you.”
“Again.”
“You were never arrested. You were – helping us with our enquiries.”
“I don’t think I was much help.”
“Oh you helped
me
.”
“I didn’t help myself, though, did I? Half the world still thinks I’m a mad strangler, the Marq is turning into a stop on the ‘Murder sites of London’ pub crawl and I’m running out of chances.”
“You deserve better, you know, than all of this.”
I laughed mirthlessly. “Oh, mate, if we all got what we deserve, the world would be a very different place.” I sighed. “It’ll pass.”
It was now or never, I decided, so I asked: “Am I still in the frame for Lyra, or has Reid found some other mug to pin it on?”
Nick snorted, “Reid’s a throwback, but he’s really not a hundred per cent pig, you know; he’s a solid copper and he’ll get there in the end.”
“I may not have the time to spare.”
“There is one suspect he hasn’t looked at yet: Falzone.”
“What?” I frowned, puzzled.
“Well, you’re running the Marq, but we both know – regardless of whose name is over the door – who’s really running that place. If Chopper heard that Lyra was about to take a hike he might have decided to teach her a lesson.”
I stared over Nick’s shoulder at the illuminated face of Big Ben as one-thirty rang out. Underneath us, the embankment was empty, the river a vast dark expanse of nothing. “It doesn’t make sense,” I said. “Chopper doesn’t strike me as the sort to strangle a singer just cos she won’t perform.”
“You know him that well?”
“Not
that
well,” I said warily.
“But you’re running the pub for him.”
“We’ve never actually met.” I didn’t know why I was lying; only that the conversation had suddenly – almost imperceptibly – shifted into an area I wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
“Well, let’s hope you never do. A nasty piece of work, is Mr Falzone. Now, before it gets cold,” he stepped to the bag, withdrawing a tin foil box and carefully peeling back the lid, “home-made bread and butter pudding with real custard. And yours,” he presented a spoon to me, “is the honour of the first mouthful.”
We sat on the floor of the pod, the metropolis spread below our feet and I dug the spoon into the pudding.
It was heavenly and I made the requisite noises, before handing the spoon to Nick.
I stared out of the pod in the direction of the flats on the Old Kent Road where I’d been born and raised and, glancing back at the estate where Nick had been born, I marvelled at how close they were. If he’d stayed, we might have met before Robert, before Lyra and Chopper and before everything was poisoned with doubt and suspicion.
A moment passed and his finger bushed gently along my jaw bone. “Hey you,” he said, “penny for them?”
I sighed. “Ever wish you could wipe out everything and start again?”
“Isn’t that what you’ve just done?”
“And ended up with a whole new pile of shit.”
“It doesn’t have to be a pile of shit, Danny. You’ve got friends. You’ve got me.”
I looked at him, sitting on the floor, his fringe falling over one eye, the blue-green moonlight bathing his features, making his eyes seem even more catlike than ever.
And what good is that?
I wanted to ask him.
Everything I touch turns to waste, so what’s the point of having good things or good people in my life if all that’s going to happen is that I poison them
?
But I didn’t. Instead, I kissed him gently on the lips and turned so that my back was resting against his shoulder, my face turned away from him.
His voice came from the darkness, from what seemed like a million miles away. “I know you’re lying, Danny. I know you’re a lot closer to Falzone than you want to admit. But you know what? That’s OK; it doesn’t matter. You asked me what I want. Well, all I want is this:
to be your friend
. To be here for you, whatever happens.”
I shifted my gaze and everywhere it fell, the city – bathed in either a steel-blue moonlight or the yellow halo of artificial street lighting – seemed utterly uninhabited. For a moment I fantasised that, whilst we’d been having our dinner, some mysterious calamity had wiped out the population of London and with it all my troubles. Then, in the distance, I saw the tiny blue pinpricks of a cop car flicker on and, a second later, though it might have been my imagination, the siren sound drifted tinnily to bounce around inside the glass bubble.