Kill For Love (20 page)

“
Cult!”
Greg had used the word flippantly as the tabloid Press did
to describe almost any group of nonconformist people, and at the time she’d
mentally resisted it.

But now a question was begging to
be answered. At what point, if ever, could fan devotion turn into a cult?

Chapter
Thirty Five

October 29:

The white painted Victorian
building in Smithfield
lay at the end of an alley between the back of a Turkish restaurant and a
clothes warehouse. With her canvas bag over her shoulder, Kate addressed an
assortment of bells alongside a locked door, then pressed the one marked “Mount Venus”.
The door buzzed open immediately, and she made her way up three flights of
stairs and to the end of a corridor. A door swung open at her knock.

The girl was black with bright
red lips. Wearing white stockings, a white lace suspender belt and nothing else,
she was swinging gently back and forth in a white hammock. The man, white but
tanned chestnut and dressed in an ice-cream linen suit with neither shirt,
shoes nor socks, was watching her through a large gilt picture frame. The girl
bit into a ripe cherry, and then sucked the juice as it oozed on to her
fingers. Slipping off his jacket the man, now naked from the waist up, stepped
through the frame into the picture, and...

The image froze.

"I think that's about enough
of a tease, don't you?" Frank Teischer grinned all the way from his oval,
pink face to the back of his bald head, and swivelled his chair away from a
very large computer screen.

Kate smiled: "Well, it does
it for me.”

"Welcome to Mount Venus,
Kate! I thought you'd like to see how much more fun I'm having now than when I
was cutting news at WSN." And, with a nod to the screen, the film editor
closed the programme. "That was one of the
Awakening Virgins
you were looking at, by the way. Perhaps not
everyone’s idea of a sweet young virgin, but there we are, she’s the star of
our film. Not bad when a man's hobby becomes his job, eh!"
 

“Not bad at all, Frank. It’s good
to see you.” Kate had always liked Frank Teischer, and she couldn't help feeling
sorry for him. He was an old lech, and had been
 
pushed out of WSN for coming on to Hilly Weston, but he'd always been
jokey, never embarrassing, and he'd been a brilliant, supportive editor.

"Anyway,” he said, pulling
up a chair for her, “you say you’re looking for an editor to work on a little
bio-pic. Anyone interesting?”

She told him.

He looked neither shocked nor
disbelieving. A career cutting news footage had immured him to surprise. "So
I take it this stuff shows Jesse Gadden in a light less than favourable.”

"He might think so.”

“Splendid! Let’s see what you’ve
got.”

Opening her bag she passed him
the material she’d shot in Ireland
and America.
“If it’s okay with you I’ll have the ITN Archive material delivered here, too.”

“Fine, if you don't mind your
stuff nestling alongside the
Awakening
Virgins.
I know it isn't usual, but it's warm and secret and..."

For the first time in days, Kate
found herself laughing as he hammed up his reputation. "All right, all
right. Wide awake or fast asleep, virgins or otherwise will be fine with me.”
She took his hand. “Thanks, Frank. You’re a good friend.”

Teischer’s brave-face crumpled.
"Thank
you
, Kate, for giving me
some real work to do. It means a lot.”

Jeroboam
didn’t have a mobile, so she called his home number as she walked back to her
car. He was out, but his mother told her where to find him. On the late shift
at the hotel, he’d gone to a street market near to his home to do some shopping
for her.

She
saw him before he saw her, the lonely boy taking his mother’s task seriously,
paying for some plums at a fruit stall, feeling for the firmest before he took
them. He smiled, more confident than usual, when he spotted her approaching.
“You’ve had a haircut. It looks good.”

“Thank
you,” she said, although she wasn’t sure that it did.

“You
got my messages?” He was beaming.

“Yes.
But, Jeroboam, I need your help.”

“What?”

“It’s
about Jesse Gadden!”

 
His face fell.

 
“You told me he had scary eyes. What did you
mean exactly?"

Jeroboam
screwed up his face, and too late she realised he’d been expecting her to ask
him about his job.

“I
dunno,” he said, and turned away.

She
moved closer to him. “I’m sorry. We’ll talk about other things later. But this
is important. Why do you think his eyes are scary?”
 

He
shrugged unhappily. “He looks like he thinks things," he mumbled at last. "As
though he could do things…like…in the night..."

"What
kind of things?"

"Creepy
things." Then, facing her, he raised his voice. “Why d’you want to know
about him, anyway? Do you fancy him or something?"

Surprised
by his outburst, a woman passing by with two small children in a double buggy
carefully avoided going too close to him.

Kate
was shocked. He'd never spoken to her like that before.

The
boy’s bravura shattered as he saw her expression, and he walked hurriedly away
through the crowds.

She
followed.

Stopping
by a second hand clothes stall, he turned back to her. "I’m sorry, Kate.”

“That’s
all right.”

“It's
just that I don't like to think of you being with him, of him doing things to
you..."
 

She
understood. He was growing up. “Oh, Jeroboam…”

"Cold,"
he said suddenly, wanting to help now. "He makes me feel like I'm cold and
want to shiver. And I don't like to look in his face in case he looks at me.”

"You
mean, you feel as though he's watching you when he's on television?"

"Yes.
And now on the internet on the computer you bought me. Especially on the
internet. He's always there, watching me. And it's too cold."

She
looked at him. "Thanks, Jeroboam," she said softly. "That's terrific.
You know, I’m so pleased for you and your job, but…I’ve been having a difficult
time." She hesitated, as some shoppers pushed past. "And the answer
is, ‘No, I don't fancy him’. I was wrong about him. You were right not to like
him." And she found herself putting a hand on his sleeve.

Jeroboam
flushed, and glanced around to make sure no-one on the street had noticed.

“Look,
I have to go and see someone now. But I’m really glad you like being at the
hotel. I got your messages. We’ll get together and you can tell me about it
just as soon as I can sort a couple of things out. Promise.”

They
were waiting on her doorstep, Cotton, the younger of the two Kentish Town
detectives,
 
and a uniformed woman
colleague with a crooked smile.

 
She led them inside. "Would you like
something to drink?" she asked as they reached her sitting room.

The
officers shook their heads, the policewoman looking around at the paintings
Kate had bought off street artists in Africa and South
America.

Kate
waited. No one spoke. "Look, I'm not sure of the form here,” she said at
last, “but am I allowed to ask if you've interviewed anyone belonging to the
Jesse Gadden organisation?"

"We've
talked to a number of people as part of our enquiries into the death of Gregory
Passfield," Cotton came back.

"And...?"

"Investigations
are still proceeding."

"Right!”
That was that. “So, what can I do to help you?"

"You
can help us because we've had a complaint about you.”

“What?”
 

 
"...from lawyers acting for a lady called
Petra Kerinova. I understand you know her."

She
looked at them. "Go on."

"Actually
the lady contacted Chelsea CID, but in view of the circumstances there was a
bit of liaising and we thought it would be better if we had a word with you
ourselves."

She
could feel the ground tilting. "And the nature of the complaint?"

Cotton
produced a typed sheet, which he glanced at as he spoke. "Miss Kerinova's
lawyers say that Mr Jesse Gadden feels that you've become obsessed with him to
a degree unacceptable in a reporter or a normal fan, and that you've been
stalking him and pestering some of his old colleagues and acquaintances as well
as harassing and embarrassing him by playing loud music outside his house.”

 
“You’re serious?” she said.

“This
is the complaint we’ve had.”

Neat,
she thought. Her indignation was rasping but she needed time to think.

"We
understand you've been suspended from your job at WSN…” the policewoman said.

She
didn’t like the way that had been phrased. “Not exactly suspended. It was
agreed that it would be inappropriate for me to be seen on television…in view
of what happened to…”

 
The police woman nodded over-sympathetically.
"Look, we know you had a bad experience abroad. I saw it on the
television. And then the shock of...of finding your friend. I wasn’t on duty
that night, but I believe it was very upsetting. These things can often take a little
while to get over..."

Cotton
came in. "But you can't go around harassing people."

That
was enough. "I’m not harassing anybody. I might almost say the reverse is
true.”

“You
mean, Jesse Gadden is stalking you?” Cotton almost smirked.

“Jesus!
A young man bleeds to death in his bath and all you can do is lecture me on
some trivial trumped up pretext…”

"A
crime is a crime," Cotton came back dully. “We have to investigate all of
them.” The preferential treatment she'd initially been given by the police had
run out. She was now an emotional nuisance of a woman with an almost shaved
head and an unhealthy obsession with a rock star.

When
they'd gone she made herself the drink they hadn't wanted and watched the early
evening WSN news. It was a thin news day and they were running stories about
the Yanomami's battles against the gold miners in the Amazon and human rights in
Burma.
In other circumstances she might have been reporting on one of them.

It
had never occurred to her before what a privilege it was to be listened to. As
a reporter, with access to the world's television screens, she'd taken it for
granted that millions of people would accept whatever she told them. Now she
couldn't even get a couple of cops to give her a fair hearing.

Something
Cotton had said jumped to the forefront of her mind. Kerinova had accused her
of “pestering old colleagues and acquaintances”, he’d said. The only colleague
of Gadden’s she’d talked to had been Kevin O’Brien in Maine. How had Kerinova known about that?

Had O’Brien told them?

Unlikely. Only one other person
knew that they’d met.

“Kate, this is a friend of mine…Julie,”
O’Brien had said as he’d
introduced his young… very young…girl friend with the yellow Toyota.

Kate hesitated. Was she now
seeing malevolence where none existed? Crazy people like her did that: they
imagined things. Or…?

Finding the number O’Brien had
given her she picked up the phone.

Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong
were on O’Brien’s voicemail in Shakeston,
Maine.
“Gone fishing, there’s a sign upon my door, Gone fishing, I ain’t
working any more…”
they sang,
followed
by an invitation to leave a message.

Gone fishing? O’Brien liked
fishing.

She left a message asking him to
call her and put down the phone.

Chapter
Thirty Six

October 30:

There was only one piece of mail
for her the following morning. It was a postcard showing the glossy, wet green
of Connemara. She turned it over. The
handwriting was round and neat.

“Dear Miss Merrimac

I don't know if it's important, but just before her death Frances
told us she wanted to give up teaching and be admitted to an enclosed order. Perhaps
we should have told you that.

I hope you didn't think we were uncaring of others when you came to see
us, but it’s been very hard. We'll remember you in our prayers.

Yours sincerely

Nancy
Cleary”

Kate reread the postcard. She
didn't know whether it was significant either.
 

It was Saturday. While the kettle
boiled she opened her laptop and looked at the BBC News online. A down-the-page
report was saying that only Jesse Gadden’s staff and maybe a hundred heads of
fan club would be admitted to the farewell concert which would be streamed from
the little Pavilion Picture Palace
in North Kensington. It was, in Gadden’s words
going to be “a family affair”.

She was considering this when her
mobile rang. It was Phil Bailey in Galway.
"I’ve got a couple of things for you, Kate…”

“Yes?”

 
“Michael Lynch turned up last night. It seems
Seb Browne paid him too well. He's been on a bender ever since.”

"Did he have any more on
what happened the night Sister Grace died?"

"Nothing. He was at a boys’
boxing match and never saw Jesse Monaghan again. Seb got everything he had.”

She was disappointed. “Anything
else?”

 
"Well, yes, actually….” There was a lilt
of pride in the reporter’s voice. “It's Theresa Monaghan. Gadden’s mother. I've
traced her for you.”

She reached for a pen.

“Her documents, anyway...case
history, that sort of stuff. They were with the social welfare people down in
Kerry. They'd put all the old files in the cellar of some disused council
offices.”

"And they let you see
them?" She was surprised.

"I told them I was from the
pest control department, that the place was full of rats. They left me to
it." He hesitated. "Kate, I think it's better if I scan and email you
everything I have. Your man had a terrible start in life."

Ten minutes later she sat
transfixed in her study as the attachment on Theresa Monaghan opened. Bailey
had been right about Gadden's start in life. But there was something else.

Logging on to Google she typed “
Reich’s Syndrome”
into the search
engine.

The old glitter ball spun
uncertainly on its flex sending floaters of light across the walls and floors
of the church hall. Standing by the door, Kate was watching a wet, Saturday afternoon's
entertainment in Ealing.
"I know a
dark, secluded place,
A place where
no one knows your face.
A glass of
wine, a soft embrace..."

At a piano an elderly woman with
a lilac rinse was playing and singing a selection of show tunes, while on the
floor couples of old ladies, joints out of kilter, feet mostly out of time,
tangoed back the years. In their chairs elderly men chuckled.

"It's called Hernando's Hideaway! Ole!"
Around the room
thin old lips parroted the chorus.

It had taken only a few hours to trace
Mary Murray, former nursing auxiliary from County Kerry.
Phil Bailey's email had supplied the name, adding that she'd retired and gone
to live in England
in the late-Eighties to be near her sister. Immediately Kate had begun working
the connections: a last known home, churches, Catholic social clubs, Irish
clubs, doing the chores like the cub reporter she'd never been. By three
o’clock she'd had a current address. On days like this the internet was
brilliant.

"Can you phone again next
week?" the manager of the Sunnyside Retirement Home had said when she'd
called. "We're having a tea dance today and we rely on Mary for the
music."

"No, I can't," Kate had
replied. A fifty pound facilities fee had opened the door.

"This is the lady from the
television we told you about, Mary," a punky young carer with a gold ring
clipped through her right nostril said, as she delivered Kate, together with a
slice of angel cake and a cup of tea, to the pianist. "She wants to talk
to you about when you were a nurse in Ireland."

The old lady smiled up from the
piano. "Won't that be nice! Me on the TV. Lucky I've got my make up on
today. How can I help you, dear?"

Kate was already clipping the
camera into the tripod. Peering into the viewfinder, she focused and pressed to
record. "I wanted to talk to you about something that happened in County Kerry
in l979, Mary," she said. "Does the name Theresa Monaghan mean
anything to you?"

"Nineteen seventy nine. Well
now, that's going back a bit. Theresa Monaghan, you say. Did I work with her?
There was a Monaghan family in Tralee. They
had girls..." She looked vague.

Kate waited. They'd said on the
phone that Mary's memory was patchy. "No. This Theresa Monaghan lived alone
in a caravan. A neighbour was worried. You got a call..."

She saw instantly that the old
lady had remembered. The crepe of her skin creased, and she quickly put down
the angel cake. "Oh, that poor child..."

"You remember her?"

"I remember him. I'll never
forget him. My God, you've never seen anything like it. It's a miracle he
survived."

Kate held her gaze. The
investigation by the Kerry social services department had been couched in
careful, professional language. Mary Murray's scribbled nurse's report was what
had shocked Phil Bailey. "You were the person to find them, weren't
you?" she said.

"That's right. And when I
got there, I couldn't get in. I could see in the window, though, through a gap
in what passed for the curtains. The little fellow was there, peering up at me
like a frightened little animal. Those eyes. Staring. He'd been locked in with
her for days.

"I couldn't see her, but,
even though the doors and windows were locked, there was a smell. I knew that
smell. I got on my bicycle and cycled like a madwoman to a place where I knew
there was a telephone to call the police.

"They were arriving as I got
back. I went in with them when they broke the door down. The boy was trying to
protect her, not making a sound, kicking and struggling. He'd only be four or five,
but it took three of us to hold him and get him off her and out of there. He
was caked in filth and covered in lice."

"And the mother?"

The old lady shook her head.
"The poor soul had been dead for days. The child mustn't have understood,
because he'd been sleeping with her. You could see the indentation where his
little body had tried to cuddle up to her. He'd been trying to feed her, too,
to push biscuits into her dead mouth, though he must have been starving to
death himself because there wasn't another morsel of food in the entire
place."

"What kind of programme did
you say this was for?" The young carer, who'd been listening with increasing
apprehension, interrupted.

Kate ignored her. She was
thinking of a little boy cuddling up alongside a dead mother, and a night in Cornwall with Jesse Gadden
and the ghosts of Owoso.

Mary hadn't finished her story.
"It was a terrible sight. I think he must have passed his time by putting
on the records. There was a pile of them there by the bed. Afterwards people
said they'd heard the music as they'd passed by and assumed the mother had been
playing them herself."

"Do you know what illness
the mother died of?" Kate asked. She knew how she'd died, but she wanted
to hear Mary say it on film.

“I’ll never forget it. Reich’s
Disease. Huntington's Chorea. I looked it up when they told me. Her mother had
gone mad and died the same way, but it was kept quiet. This poor woman had had to
suffer alone. She was a traveller, but she'd lost touch with whatever family
she might once have had, what with the drink and the illness. Not even the useless
man who got her pregnant, whoever he was, was there to help her."

Kate kept her voice steady.
"And the little boy? What happened to him?"

"Oh, the nuns took him, I
expect. I never heard him utter a sound. I can still see the way he looked at
us when they put his mother's body into the ambulance to take her away. Those
eyes...as big and black as old saucepans. It was frightening."

"You wouldn't know who that
little boy, Jesse Monaghan, turned out to be, would you, Mary?" Kate said,
deciding not to correct the nurse’s memory of Gadden with dark eyes.
 

Half a dozen other old people had
now gathered around to listen, and Mary began to play to her audience.
"Well, I've certainly never heard of anyone called Jesse Monaghan doing anything
special, I don't think. Should I have done?"

Kate shook her head. "It
doesn't matter."

Tea-time was already nearly over.
The carer was looking at her watch, unsure of whether she should have stopped
the interview earlier. "Mary, it's nearly time. We're waiting." She
turned to Kate. "Have you finished?"

Kate switched off the camera.
"Yes. That's fine. Thank you very much, Mary."

Mary Murray smiled. "Thank
you, dear. It's been very nice meeting you. Come and see us again some time?
Bring your boy friend next time and have a dance. He'd love it." And she
turned back to the piano.

Around the room ham sandwiches
were being quickly swallowed as Kate put her camera away. The carer watched her
suspiciously. Then a sequence of piano chords summoned everyone's attention. "And
now, ladies and gentlemen," Mary was saying, "will you all please
take your partners for the
Tea For Two
Cha Cha
. One and two and three and four..." And pumping the keys she
began to play.

Kate crept from the room.

The phone began ringing as she was
hanging up her coat and car keys. It was her sister-in-law Helen asking her
over for a family supper, and wondering, very delicately, how she was.

Kate told her she was fine,
though she knew her mother would have put out a quite different story. She also
lied and said she’d arranged to go to dinner with a colleague.

She could tell from Helen’s voice
that she wasn’t believed. “Ah, that’s such a shame because Catherine…well, all
of us…we were hoping to see you. We don’t see enough of you, Kate, and we’ve been
worried…”

“Ah, sorry. Ask me another time.
Please.”

“Yes. I’ll call again.”

The conversation had just about
reached that moment for polite ringing off when a thought struck her. “Helen,
you wouldn’t be able to put me in touch with one of your psychologist
colleagues who are doing research on music and schizophrenia, would you? You
mentioned them at that family Sunday lunch we had. I need someone who knows a
lot about music...and maybe a little bit about hypnosis, too, for a programme
I’m working on.”

“Music and
hypnosis
! That might be a tall order. I’ll ask around and get
back.”

“Thank you. And don’t forget. Ask
me over again some time.”

“The child is father of the man,”
she mused sitting at her desk watching her Mary Cleary interview on her
computer. But, true though that might be, it didn’t help. Nothing she’d
discovered was enough. There had to be a link to Seb and Beverly, a connection
to Greg, possibly even one to Donna Hallsden. But, if there was, she hadn’t
found it.