'In the UK, yes.'
Kiley glanced back across the street. 'How long's she at Ronnie's?'
'Two weeks.'
When Kiley had been a kid and little more, those early cappuccino days, a girl he'd been seeing had questioned the etiquette of eating the chocolate off the top with a spoon. He did it now, two spoonfuls before stirring in the rest, wondering, as he did so, where she might be now, if she still wore her hair in a ponytail, of the hazy green in her eyes.
'You could clear a couple of weeks, Jack, I imagine. Nights, of course, afternoons.' Costain smiled and showed some teeth, not his but sparkling just the same. 'You know the life.'
'Not really.'
'Didn't you have a pal? Played trumpet, I believe?'
'Saxophone.'
'Ah, yes.' As if they were interchangeable, a matter of fashion, an easy either-or.
Derek Becker had played Ronnie's once or twice, in his pomp, not headlining, but taking the support slot with his quartet, Derek on tenor and soprano, occasionally baritone, along with the usual piano, bass and drums. That was before the booze really hit him bad.
'Adams,' Costain said, 'it would just be a matter of baby sitting, making sure she gets to the club on time, the occasional interview. You know the drill.'
'Hardly seems necessary.'
'She's not been in London in a good while. She'll feel more comfortable with a hand to hold, a shoulder to lean on.' Costain smiled his professional smile. 'That's metaphorically, of course.'
They both knew he needed the money; there was little more, really, to discuss.
'She'll be staying at Le Meridien,' Costain said. 'On Piccadilly. From Friday. You can hook up with her there.'
The meeting was over, Costain was already glancing at his watch, checking for messages on his mobile phone.
'All those years in Europe,' Kiley said, getting to his feet, 'no special reason she's not been back till now?'
Costain shook his head. 'Representation, probably. Timings not quite right.' He flapped a hand vaguely at the air. 'Sometimes it's just the way these things are.'
'A little start-up fund would be good,' Kiley said.
Costain reached into his suit jacket for his wallet and slid out two hundred and fifty in freshly minted twenties and tens. 'Are you still seeing Kate these days?' he asked.
Kiley wasn't sure.
Kate Keenan was a freelance journalist with a free-ranging and often fierce column in the
Independent.
Kiley had met her by chance a little over a year ago and they'd been sparring with one another ever since. She'd been sparring with him. Sometimes, Kiley thought, she took him the way some women took paracetamol.
'Only I was thinking,' Costain said, 'she and Dianne ought to get together. Dianne's a survivor, after all. Beat cancer. Saw off a couple of abusive husbands. Brought up a kid alone. She'd be perfect for one of those pieces Kate does. Profiles. You know the kind of thing.'
'Ask her,' Kiley said.
'I've tried,' Costain said. 'She doesn't seem to be answering my calls.'
There had been an episode, Kiley knew, before he and Kate had met, when she had briefly fallen for Costain's slippery charm. It had been, as she liked to say, like slipping into cow shit on a rainy day.
'Is this part of what you're paying me for?' Kiley asked.
'Merely a favour,' Costain said, smiling. 'A small favour between friends.'
Kiley thought he wouldn't mind an excuse to call Kate himself. 'OK,' he said, 'I'll do what I can. But I've got a favour to ask you in return.'
The night before Dianne Adams opened in Frith Street, Costain organized a reception downstairs at the Pizza on the Park. Jazzers, journalists, publicists and hangers-on, musicians like Guy Barker and Courtney Pine, for fifteen minutes Nicole Farhi and David Hare. Canapés and champagne.
Derek Becker was there with a quartet, playing music for schmoozing. Only it was better than that.
Becker was a hard-faced romantic who loved the fifties recordings of Stan Getz, especially the live sessions from The Shrine with Bob Brookmeyer on valve trombone; he still sent cards, birthday, Christmas and Valentine, to the woman who'd had the good sense not to marry him some twenty years before. And he liked to drink.
A Bass man from way back, he could tolerate most beer, though he preferred it hand-pumped from the wood; in the right mood, he could appreciate a good wine; whisky, he preferred Islay single malts, Lagavulin, say, or Laphroaig. At a pinch, anything would do.
Kiley had come across him once, sprawled along a bench on the southbound platform of the Northern Line at Leicester Square. Vomit still drying on his shirt front, face bruised, a cut splintering the bridge of his nose. Kiley had pulled him straight and used a tissue to wipe what he could from round his mouth and eyes, pushed a tenner down into his top pocket and left him there to sleep it off. Thinking about it still gave him the occasional twinge of guilt.
That had been a good few years back, around the time Kiley had been forced to accept his brief foray into professional soccer was over: the writing on the wall, the stud marks on his shins; the ache in his muscles that never quite went away, one game to the next.
Becker was still playing jazz whenever he could, but instead of Ronnie's, nowadays it was more likely to be the King's Head in Bexley, the Coach and Horses at Isleworth, depping on second tenor at some big band nostalgia weekend at Pontins.
And tonight Becker was looking sharp, sharper than Kiley had seen him in years and sounding good. Adams clearly thought so. Calling for silence, she sang a couple of tunes with the band. 'Stormy Weather', of course, and an up-tempo 'Just One of Those Things'. Stepping aside to let Becker solo, she smiled at him broadly. Made a point of praising his playing. After that his eyes followed her everywhere she went.
'She's still got it, hasn't she?' Kate said, appearing at Kiley's shoulder.
Kiley nodded. Kate was wearing an oatmeal coloured suit that would have made most other people look like something out of storage. Her hair shone.
'You didn't mind me calling you?' Kiley said.
Kate shook her head. 'As long as it was only business.' Accidentally brushing his arm as she moved away.
Later that night – that morning – Kiley, having delivered Dianne Adams safely to her hotel, was sitting with Derek Becker in a club on the edge of Soho. Both men were drinking Scotch, Becker sipping his slowly, plenty of water in between.
Before the reception had wound down, Adams had spoken to Costain, Costain had spoken to the management at Ronnie's and Becker had been added to the trio Adams had brought over from Copenhagen to accompany her.
'I suppose,' Becker said, 'I've got you to thank for that.'
Kiley shook his head. 'Thank whoever straightened you out.'
Becker had another little taste of his Scotch. 'Let me tell you,' he said. 'A year ago, it was as bad as it gets. I was living in Walthamstow, a one-room flat. Hadn't worked in months. The last gig I'd had, a pub over in Chigwell, I hadn't even made the three steps up on to the stage. I was starting the day with a six-pack and by lunchtime it'd be cheap wine and ruby port. Except there wasn't any lunch. I hardly ate anything for weeks at a time and when I did I threw it back up. And I stank. People turned away from me on the street. My clothes stank and my skin stank. The only thing I had left, the only thing I hadn't sold or hocked was my horn and then I hocked that. Bought enough pills, a bottle of cheap Scotch and a packet of old-fashioned razor blades. Enough was more than enough.'
He looked at Kiley and sipped his drink.
'And then I found this.'
Snapping open his saxophone case, Becker flipped up the lid of the small compartment in which he kept his spare reeds. Lifting out something wrapped in dark velvet, he laid it in Kiley's hand.
'Open it.'
Inside the folds was a bracelet, solid gold or merely plated Kiley couldn't be certain, though from the weight of it he guessed the former. Charms swayed and jingled lightly as he raised it up. A pair of dice. A key. What looked to be – an imitation this, surely? – a Fabergé egg.
'I was shitting myself,' Becker said. 'Literally. Shit scared of what I was going to do.' He wiped his hand across his mouth before continuing. 'I'd gone down into the toilets at Waterloo station, locked myself in one of the stalls. I suppose I fell, passed out maybe. Next thing I know I'm on my hands and knees, face down in God knows what and there it was. Waiting for me to find it.'
An old Presley song played for a moment at the back of Kiley's head. 'Your good luck charm,' he said.
'If you like, yes. The first piece of luck I'd had in months, that's for sure. Years. I mean, I couldn't believe it. I just sat there, staring at it. I don't know, waiting for it to disappear, I suppose.'
'And when it didn't?'
Becker smiled. 'I tipped the pills into the toilet bowl, took a belt at the Scotch and then poured away the rest. The most I've had, that day to this, is a small glass of an evening, maybe two. I know you'll hear people say you can't kick it that way, all or nothing, has to be, but all I can say is it works for me.' He held out his hand, arm extended, no tremor, the fingers perfectly still. 'Well, you've heard me play.'
Kiley nodded. 'And this?' he said.
'The bracelet?'
'Yes.'
Forefinger and thumb, Becker took it from the palm of Kiley's hand.
'Used it to get my horn out of hock, buy a half decent suit of clothes. When I was sober enough, I started phoning round, chasing work. Bar mitzvahs, weddings, anything, I didn't care. When I had enough I went back and redeemed it.' He rewrapped the bracelet and stowed it carefully away. 'Been with me ever since.' He winked. 'Like you say, my good luck charm, eh?'
Kiley drained what little remained in his glass. 'Time I wasn't here.'
Standing, Becker shook his hand. 'I owe you one, Jack.'
'Just keep playing like tonight. OK?'
The first few days went down without noticing, the way good days sometimes do. Adams' first set, opening night, was maybe just a little shaky, but after that everything gelled. The reviews were good, better than good, and by mid-week word of mouth had kicked in and the place was packed. Becker, Kiley thought, was playing out his skull, seizing his chance with both hands. Adams worked up a routine with him on 'Ghost of a Chance', just the two of them, voice and horn, winding around each other tighter and tighter as the song progressed. And, when they were through, Becker gazed at Dianne Adams with a mixture of gratitude and barely disguised desire.
Costain didn't have to call in many favours to have Adams interviewed at length on
Woman's Hour
and more succinctly on
Front Row,
after less than three hours' sleep, she was smiling from behind her make-up on
GMTV;
Claire Martin pre-recorded a piece for her Friday jazz show and had Adams and Becker do their thing in the studio. Kate's profile in the
Indy
truthfully presented a woman with a genuine talent, a generous ego and a carapaced heart.
All of this Kiley watched from a close distance, grateful for Costain's money without ever being sure why the agent had thought him necessary. Then, just shy of noon on the Thursday morning, he knew.
Adams paged him and had him come up to her room.
Pacing the floor in a hotel robe,
sans
paint and powder, she looked all of her age and then some. The photographs were spread out across the unmade bed. Dianne Adams on stage at Ronnie Scott's, opening night; walking through a mostly deserted Soho after the show, Kiley at her side; Adams passing through the hotel lobby, walking along the corridor from the lift, unlocking the door to her room. And then several slightly blurred and taken, Kiley guessed, from across the street with a telephoto lens: Adams undressing; sitting on her bed in her underwear talking on the telephone; crossing from the shower, nude save a towel wrapped round her head.
'When did you get these?' Kiley asked.
'Sometime this morning. An hour ago, maybe. Less. Someone pushed them under the door.'
'No note? No message?'
Adams shook her head.
Kiley looked again at the pictures on the bed. 'This is not just an obsessive fan.'
Adams lit a cigarette and drew the smoke deep into her lungs. 'No.'
He looked at her then. 'You know who these are from.'
Adams sighed and for a moment closed her eyes. 'When I was last in London, eighty-nine, I had this . . . this thing.' She shrugged. 'You're on tour, some strange city. It happens.' From the already decimated mini-bar she took the last miniature of vodka and tipped it into a glass. 'Whatever helps you through the night.'
'He didn't see it that way.'
'He?'
'Whoever this was. The affair. The fling. It meant more to him.'
'To her.'
Kiley caught his breath. 'I see.'
Adams sat on the edge of the bed and lit a cigarette. 'Victoria Pride? I guess you know who she is?'
Kiley nodded. 'I didn't know she was gay.'
'She's not.' Tilting back her head, Adams blew smoke towards the ceiling. 'But then, neither am I. No more than most women, given the right situation.'
'And that's what this was?'
'So it seemed.'
Kiley's mind was working overtime. Victoria Pride had made her name starring in a television soap in the eighties, brittle and sexy and no better than she should be. After that she did a West End play, posed nearly nude for a national daily and had a few well-publicized skirmishes with the law, public order offences, nothing serious. Her wedding to Keith Payne made the front page of both
OK!
and
Hello!
and their subsequent history of breaking up to make up was choreographed lovingly by the tabloid press. If Kiley remembered correctly, Victoria was set to play Maggie in a provincial tour of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
But he didn't think Victoria was the problem.
'Payne knew about this?' Kiley said.
Adams released smoke towards the ceiling. 'Let's say he found out.'