Kill For Love (15 page)

Chapter
Twenty Five

October 20:

It was like driving a car, she
liked to think, sitting at the desk with the robot camera facing her, steering
through the traffic of news and weather, City and foreign stories, fashion,
studio interviews and filmed packages. She actually preferred being alone to
sharing the job with Robin Broomfield. It was easier to concentrate this way
and she didn't have to go through the tedious girlie smiles routine with her
partner.

She wasn't really alone, of
course. Behind her orderly, friendly facade, the editorial and production teams
were there, too, feeding stories into her computer screen and messages into her
ear-piece, altering the running order, warning her of hazards approaching,
glitches to avoid and how to pronounce difficult foreign words.

The morning passed quickly as
with news headlines every twenty minutes, the stories were read and re-read,
expanding in length when they became more interesting, contracting as their
news value diminished. Once an hour the WSN financial correspondent joined her
with the latest currency and share price news, and a regular thirty minutes
later, toothy track-suited Sally Bracken, permanently tanned and personal
trainer toned, enthused through the sports headlines.

She called Greg after the show
wanting to know how the meeting with Overmars had gone, but reaching only his
answering machine, left a message for him to call her back. For lunch she had a
sandwich at her desk, gossiping with Ned about the potential candidates for WSN-TV's
new Washington
correspondent; before Owoso she might have considered applying for the post herself.
Then in the afternoon she went home and took an hour's sleep. The early morning
had taken its toll.

Jeroboam woke her just before
four, ringing the bell insistently. Opening the door sleepily she led him into
the kitchen.

"So…?” she asked as she put
the kettle on.

"I got the job, Kate,"
he whispered, his squashed features creased in delight.

"Well…of course you
did," she said, pretending she wasn't in the least surprised.

He giggled. "They said
they'd give me a try. I start on Saturday.”

"I'm so pleased,
Jeroboam."

"You helped. It was your
reference that made all the difference."

"No. You made the difference
yourself. You got the job because you're a very nice young man who'll be good
for them. They're lucky to get you. Your mother must be thrilled."

"Yes. I won't let her down
any more." He looked embarrassed. "I won't let you down either."

She ruffled his hair fondly.
"You could never let me down."

The kettle had boiled. They had a
cup of tea together, and she found some crumpets which weren't too stale.
Jeroboam covered them in butter and jam. He left shortly after five, jogging
away down the street, the happiest boy in London.

Kate felt good, too. After
watching him leave she closed the front door and made her way outside to water
her plants. It was mild and her neighbours had their windows open. From the
Motts’ house she could hear the Beach Boys singing
God Only Knows
. She hummed along.

By now, though, she was puzzled that
Greg hadn't returned her call to report on his meeting with Hans Overmars. She
needed to know.

Switching off the tap, she went
back into the house. As always the television was on. She skipped through the
channels. The BBC national news was just being replaced by the local London stories. These
didn't interest her. Flicking off the sound, she picked up her phone and
dialled Greg's number again.

She'd just got through when a
photograph of a good looking, fair haired young man, smiling winsomely into the
camera, appeared on the screen.

On the telephone Greg's recorded
voice was asking callers to leave a message.

But Kate wasn't listening. She
was turning up the sound of the TV.

"...found today on a mudbank in the Thames in East London has been
identified as that of part-time disc jockey, Hans Overmars. Mr Overmars, who
was Dutch, is believed to have been well known on the London club circuit. Police are asking anyone
who has seen him in the last few days to get in touch..."

She didn't know why she was going
there. If Greg had been at home he would have answered the phone. But she didn't
know what else she could do. She knew where he lived; she'd been invited to a
party there shortly after he'd moved in with Harry. The two shared a flat on
the first floor of an end of terrace house in Kentish Town.

Theirs was a street of mixed
incomes and nationalities, and, parking in a side road, she walked towards the
house. Traces of different cooking smells and styles in music met her from the
various homes. An overflow pipe which stuck out of a side wall of the house was
dripping on to the pavement. Avoiding it, she rounded the corner, entered the
tiny garden and approached the front door. There was a set of bells with three
names taped alongside them. She pressed for
Gregory
Passfield
.
 

Now that she was here, she remembered
that Harry had been coming home from Stockholm
today. Greg had probably gone to the airport to greet him. She should have
thought of that earlier. But a man he'd been meeting was dead.

There was no answer to her
ringing. After leaving a discreet five minutes in case Harry was already back,
she tried again. Nothing. Retreating a few paces back down the garden path, she
looked up at the first floor window. The curtains were drawn and she looked at
the other windows in the house, wondering if any of the other residents were at
home. There was no sign of anyone, but she rang the other two doorbells, just
in case. There was no response.

Disappointed, she made her way
out into the street, around the corner and back along the pavement. It was a
warmer evening than she'd realised, and, reaching the Citroën, she took off her
cream linen jacket. She was about to throw it on to the back seat of the car
when she noticed a small round stain on the shoulder. It looked like a red
bullet hole.

Puzzled, she lifted the jacket up
for closer examination, tentatively putting a finger to the stain. It was wet.

For a moment she wondered if
she'd accidentally cut her hand and not noticed. She examined herself. She
hadn't. Turning, she looked back down the pavement. The overflow pipe she'd
noticed earlier was still dripping. Locking the car again, she retraced her
steps.

There was a wet pool on the pavement under the pipe. She put
her hand out. A fat, red globule dropped into her palm.

She was still staring at it when,
with the rattle of a diesel engine, a taxi drew up. The rear door opened.

"Hello! This is a nice
surprise. Don't tell me he's laid on a surprise party! If he has, I'm not
coming." Harry, Greg's boy friend, was pulling his suitcase from inside
the cab. He was a merry, plump, young man, whose dyed yellow, receding hair had
been shaved very short. Laughing, he put a hand out to her. "Good to see
you again."

Kate couldn't offer her hand. She
stared at the stain; it lay like a stigmata.

"Are you all right?"

Another drop fell from the
overflow pipe and catching the cuff of her shirt spread outwards.

Harry's puzzled smile faded as he
followed Kate's eyes up to the overflow. "Kate! What's going on? Where's
Greg? He said he'd meet me at the airport.”

She was hesitating to answer, when
Harry dropped his bags and ran off around the corner, pulling out his keys as
he went.

"Wait here! Please!"
she called to the cab driver.

Harry had already opened the
front door of the house and was pushing up the stairs by the time she caught up
with him. On the first floor landing a door leading into the flat had to be
negotiated. The Yale lock was at eye level. As Harry turned the key she dropped
under his outstretched arm and slipped in ahead of him.

"Greg! Greg!" Harry was
calling. She could hear the fear in his voice as he entered the bedroom.

She turned towards the bathroom.
The door was closed. She hesitated, opened it and stepped inside.

The shock was so great an
involuntary suction of air into her lungs made her gasp noisily and step back. The
bath was filled with red water. Lying in it, his long thighs pointing upwards,
his face an inch or so beneath the surface, was the naked body of Greg.

"Greg!" Harry was
trying to push past her. "Greg!"

"Stay out!" she shouted,
trying to block his way. But she couldn't hold him.

Harry screamed.

She was gasping for breath,
clinging to the wash basin. Harry had thrown himself at the bath and was trying
to pull the body out of the water, shouting hysterically. Thick, red liquid was
splashing over both of them, spilling on to the tiled walls and floor.
 

She looked up. The mirror behind
the wash basin stretched to the ceiling. Through it she could see the
reflection of the bathroom. It looked like an abattoir. She forced herself to
look into the bath: to look at Greg. Between his thighs, bobbing about in the
deep, red soup as Harry struggled with his corpse, was what looked like a small
piece of semi-attached gristle and skin.

Only then did she realise where
the blood had come from. Greg's penis and testicles had been almost cut off.

They served her strong tea, two
young policewomen, their faces glowing, one pink, one brown, against white
shirts. Harry, they’d told her, had had to be sedated and taken to hospital. He
was suffering from shock. She wondered why they should think she wasn’t.

They didn’t say much, but simply
observed her with a strange yet polite curiosity. Finally she realised what it
was. They were thrilled to be in the presence of a television presenter.

“A gay killing?” Kate repeated
the words. “That’s what you think?”

The elder of the two detectives,
a paunchy fortyish man in an olive polo shirt, looked embarrassed. His name was
Bull and he’d let the words slip while commenting to his partner, in a world
weary aside, about the ways people chose to kill each other. She hadn’t been
meant to hear. “Well, it certainly wasn’t an accident,” he said bluntly.

His companion looked at Kate.

Her hands were trembling, and she
slipped them under her thighs so that they wouldn’t notice. She was now wearing
a borrowed, police track suit two sizes too big for her. Her own clothes had
been taken away for forensic examination. She knew why. Greg’s blood had become
encrusted in the fibres. “I don’t believe it was a gay thing,” she said.

Bull dipped his head to one side
in a gesture of indifference. “Well, it won’t be for us to decide, but that’s
what it looks like. A kitchen knife was in the bath with the body.”

She shook her head.

“The blood will be analysed for HIV
infection,” Cotton said, as though this might explain something. He was blond,
and, wearing a leather jacket, he looked like an undercover cop from a TV crime
series, and therefore slightly absurd. Kate wished she was talking to the uniformed
police. These guys were all attitude.

She needed time to think. Harry
had gone into hysterics in the bathroom and it had taken both her and the taxi
driver, alerted by the screaming, to drag him away from Greg’s body. In the
struggle he’d pulled out the bath plug. Most of Greg’s blood had drained away
with the water. By the time the police had arrived the upper part of the body
had been drying, the colour of old porcelain.

They were sitting in a small,
primrose painted interview room in Kentish
Town police station. Easy
chairs and a rubber plant failed to suggest an atmosphere of informality. “Was
there any particular reason why you wanted to see Mr…Mr Passfield tonight?”
Cotton asked, checking Greg’s name in his notes.

She closed her eyes, but Greg’s
smiling face as she’d seen him in Covent Garden
found a way through. “He was working with me,” she said. “We were doing an
investigation into some people for a TV programme.”

“What kind of people?” Bull
asked.

“People who work for… “

“Yes?”

“Jesse Gadden.”

“You’re talking about
the
Jesse Gadden? The rock star?” Bull’s
florid face was an eruption of surprise.

“Yes.”

“I think we’d better record this,”
he said.

There was a delay as the recorder
was readied and the interview identified. Then, at their suggestion, she began
again. She told them in the briefest detail about her discussions with Greg,
and how he’d arranged to meet Overmars at Danton’s the previous night.

“Whose body, as you know, was
found in the Thames this afternoon,” Bull
interrupted.

“Yes.”

Only when they asked exactly why
she and Greg were investigating the Glee Club did she stall.

“Jesse Gadden seems to be
surrounded by a very…secretive organisation,” she said at last. “I wanted to
know how it worked…that it might make a programme. Greg was a rock music
reporter. He was told about Hans Overmars, who’d worked for Gadden, and thought
he might be able to give us a few pointers.”

“And this Overmars...he was gay,
too, wasn’t he,” Bull said.

She nodded. “I believe so.” It
was the route everyone would take. Gays, late night assignations with strangers
in gay bars, followed by one violent death and one mysterious drowning, it was
a well worn path. “But I don’t think the gay thing has anything to do with it. I
think you ought to interview Jesse Gadden.”

The two detectives gave her a
long look, but didn’t answer.

At length they thanked her for
her help, told her that they’d need to talk to her again, and offered to drive
her home.

She accepted a lift back to her
car, and then drove herself.

Chapter
Twenty Six

October 21:

She spent the morning in bed
watching, though scarcely aware of, WSN-TV. Hilly Weston had taken her place as
presenter: she’d been angling for an opportunity as anchor for months.

She hadn’t slept, the smell of
Greg’s body and blood being a constant companion through the night.
“You killed him, Kate:”
the voice in
her ear had been persistent. It was her own. At five o’clock she’d called in
sick. She couldn’t read the news today, she’d said, giving no reason.
 

The morning had brought floods in
Portugal, another jihadist
suicide bombing in Pakistan,
a fresh U.N. initiative on land mines, and Natalie Streub, now back in Russia, on the new St Petersburg flood barrier. There was a lot
for Hilly to get through.

Then, shortly after ten-thirty,
the news Kate had been anticipating arrived.
“Police in London have confirmed reports
that the sexually mutilated body of a man was found in a flat in the Kentish Town area of the capital last night,”
Hilly
Weston intoned
. “The man, said by police
to be a freelance radio journalist who specialised in rock music, has been
named as Greg Passfield. The discovery was made by a friend of Passfield,
believed to be a well known television reporter.”

Kate turned off the TV and went
to get dressed.

 
"I'm sorry, Kate, but this puts WSN in a
difficult position.” Neil Fraser was staring into the sheen on the top of his
desk.

It was what she’d expected. On
her way into his office, as Chloe had put a comforting arm around her, she’d
noticed a copy of the
London
Evening Standard
. Her photograph was
across three columns of the front page under the main headline
“TV STAR FINDS MUTILATED BODY OF GAY
FRIEND”.
Greg’s picture was smaller and further down the page: even in his
death she’d outshone him.

At first Fraser had ushered her
into his office and poured sympathy, as lawyer Larry Abramsky had listened
understandingly at his side. “How terrible for you! What an awful shock. I’m so
sorry.” But quickly he’d moved on. “With your name being so publicly linked
with this…this incident, a sensational story which is likely to be of public
interest and rumour for the foreseeable future, I think it will be better for
everyone if you aren’t seen on screen for…well, until it’s all been resolved.”

She could understand that. She’d
become the story. If anyone else had found Greg’s body his death would have merited
no more than a small item on an inside page of the newspaper. People were
murdered all the time. It was her association that made it particularly
newsworthy. Some policeman in Kentish
Town had made himself a
nice little bonus by giving out her name to the Press. “Are you saying I’m
being suspended?” she asked.

“I think a holiday until all this
blows over might be a better description, don’t you,” Fraser soothed.

“Actually, no.”

Fraser was surprised. He glanced
sharply at Abramsky. “But you must see …”

She was already shaking her head
emphatically. “I see why I shouldn’t be reading the news. Obviously. But Greg
was murdered because I asked him to meet someone. He was working for
me…investigating the organisation around Jesse Gadden.”

There was a long silence in the
room.

“Why, Kate?” Fraser asked at
last, his tone completely flat.

“‘Why?’”

“What were you investigating?”

“There’s something…I don’t know,
something…sinister going on there.” She turned to Abramsky. “And I don't think
Seb Browne and Beverly had an accident in Ireland, by the way.”

The lawyer looked at Fraser. “The
police are convinced. Beverly
probably took her eye off the road. It was tragic, but…”

“Have you got any evidence for
what you seem to be suggesting?” Fraser asked.

“No. But what happened to
Greg…it’s all part of it, I’m certain.” She was aware that her voice was now
higher and louder. She hated herself for it. She knew what the impression must
be.

“You’re linking the two?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

“In what way?”

She couldn’t answer. “I don’t
know. That’s what we should be investigating.”

“We?”

“WSN. It’s our story.”

Quietly Fraser turned to the
lawyer. “Larry, I wonder if you could give Kate and me a few minutes.”

“Of course.” Abramsky left the
room.

Fraser got up and stared out of
the window.

She tried again. “I’m not
imagining things, Neil. Something’s wrong…”

“I don’t doubt you believe that,
Kate. And I don’t doubt that Gadden runs an unconventional organisation. But…”
he stopped. “You spent a weekend with Gadden, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but…”

“And it went…badly?”

She didn’t answer.

“You know, don’t you, it’s
possible that we sometimes get too close to our sources.”

“Neil!
For Christ’s sake!” She could feel the heat of indignation.
“There’s something bad happening!”

Fraser managed, just about, to
hide a slight sigh. “It’s my fault, Kate. I’m sorry. You had a terrible
experience. After Owoso…you probably came back to work too soon.”

He hadn’t
actually said it. He was far too silky for that. But his message had been
clear. She’d become irrational about Jesse Gadden, so obsessive that she was
seeing him, or what she saw as his malign influence, everywhere. In other
words, she was hysterical, imagining things, on the brink of madness.

“He
thinks I’m having another breakdown,”
she told herself.
“Am I?”

She was sitting in her car in the WSN car park,
her forehead resting on the steering wheel.

“No.
I’m, not.”

 
After the
meeting she’d hurried from Fraser’s office and through the newsroom without
stopping or speaking. Colleagues would be talking about her, she knew.

But suddenly she felt distant from everyone. What
to do, she wondered. She wasn’t wanted here at WSN.

Starting the car, she drove up the ramp to the
street. She'd noticed a couple of days earlier that there was a Hollywood
musical season at the National Film Theatre, so, for no reason that she could
understand, she went there, leaving the car on a parking meter. Today’s movie
was
Calamity Jane
with Doris Day. She remembered her father singing
Deadwood
Stage
when she was a little girl.
“Whip
crack away, whip crack away, whip crack awaaay…”
he’d gone in the mornings
as he’d driven her down Haverstock Hill to school.

She didn't stay long. Abruptly boring of the
dead-eyed-dick shooting, she got up, and, walking out of the cinema, took a stroll
along the South Bank past the big wheel of the London Eye, watching the
seagulls and river taxis, buskers and tourists as she went. It was a pleasant
afternoon.

How strange, she thought, to be mooching about on
a work day with no work to do. It was a Wednesday, too, a “wasted, working
Wednesday”, in Jesse Gadden-speak. She was fully aware that she was behaving
strangely. People did that, she told herself, when they were in shock…or had
gone mad.

Yes, she could admit that to herself. She was in
shock. But she wasn’t mad or having another breakdown.

By mid-afternoon she was still walking, going
nowhere in particular. She’d turned off her mobile but there were bound to be
worried messages on her voicemail by now.
 
Passing a newspaper vendor she saw again her
photograph on the front page of the
Evening
Standard
, and she put a hand to cover her face.

On a whim she decided to drive up to Kentish Town. She needed to see Harry. She owed
him at least some kind of explanation.

Harry wasn't at home. Of course, he wasn’t. Heavy
duty blue and white sticking tape and a warning on the door said the flat had
been sealed by order of the Metropolitan Police. It was a crime scene. Two
police vans were parked outside.

A teenage girl neighbour was loitering in the
street, watching. She had, she said, seen a middle-aged man and woman she’d
guessed were Harry's parents arrive in a police car and go in and out of the
house that morning. She spoke loudly, having to raise her voice above the music
in the earphones she was wearing.

 
Returning
to her car Kate drove back to central London.
She had the feeling that there was something she ought to be doing, if she
could only discover what it was.

Parking in the multi-storey behind the Dominion
Theatre she wandered down

But why? What was it for?
 
Greg would have known.

A large black and white photograph, a massive
blow up of a face framed by a television screen, hung over the Jesse Gadden
collection. She gazed at it. The cheeks and jaw were unshaven, the hair gelled,
then ruffled, and the lips slightly parted as though the star had been just
about to say something when the picture had been taken. But as always it was
the eyes that arrested. They were shameless.

His London
house was in a backwater, a quiet old

She knew she was being watched. That was why she
was there. She'd parked her car opposite the gates, and, leaning on the open
car door, she gazed up at the windows and the cameras and waited. From the car’s
stereo the peel of
Crusader of Sadness
cut through the stillness of the
evening. Before that she'd played
Jesse Gadden Live in Chicago
, and
before that
Chance Meadows Morn
, all turned as loud as her system would
go.

She wanted them to hear her, she wanted
him
to see her, for the CCTV cameras to record her. Then Jesse Gadden would have
another Kate Merrimac tape for his collection.

"Crusader of sadness, I hear you sigh,
Of the madness of the moonlight…”
he sang.

The police arrived at just before eight in the
shape of a stout and rosy policewoman asking her politely to turn the music
down and move on. There'd been complaints from residents further down the
street, the officer said, puzzled and embarrassed to find that it was Kate
Merrimac who was making the disturbance. People with recognised faces weren't
expected to cause incidents outside the homes of rock stars.

Kate didn't give in easily and was still arguing,
when, without warning, the gates of the house opened and the black Mercedes
drove out. Gadden and Kerinova in the back.

It only took a moment. As the Mercedes stopped
when a second police car pulled down the narrow street,
she slipped
away from the policewoman and advanced quickly on it.
For a second as Gadden spotted her, he seemed to smile a welcome, as though he
was pleased to see her.

She grabbed at the car door.

"Oh no, you don’t," a voice bit into
her ear, and she was pulled sharply back. The policewoman was stronger than she
looked.

From inside the Mercedes, Gadden now watched the
short struggle, like a puzzled spectator at a sport. Then the Mercedes drove
swiftly away.

"What the hell did you think you were
doing?" The officer was flushed with exertion.

"There was something I had to say to him."

"You want my advice? Write him a fan letter
like all the others then," came the reply. "And shut that bloody
music off!"

In the end she did. The police followed her as
she drove home.

Her house seemed foreign as she entered it. One
by one she checked every room. And then she checked some again. She was in the
kitchen making cocoa when the telephone rang. She let it ring, and then
listened
to the message. It was Chloe, checking to see that she was all
right, asking her to call back. She didn't. She left the message to lie with
all the others.

“Am I
all right?”
she wondered aloud
as she drank her cocoa.
“Not really.”

It was almost six in the morning when it came to
her. She’d slept fitfully with the bedside light on all night, and, awake
again, had been waiting for the inevitable images of Owoso to arrive. Then, through
her exhaustion, everything became clear. Reaching across to her bedside table
she picked up the pen and pad which were always there. Carefully she wrote the
name
JESSE GADDEN
at the top of the page and drew a box around it. Then,
very neatly, she began to make a list of single words, positioned at regular
intervals down the page.
“WHAT? WHO?
WHERE? WHEN?
WHY?”