Dan drove slowly into the centre of Exeter, negotiating the Monday morning shoppers and avoiding speeding where he knew cameras lurked. He left his beloved Audi in the multi-storey car park behind the John Lewis store, and walked round onto Sidwell Street. He checked out his reflection in the glass as he walked, sucked in his stomach and pushed his shoulders back. He spent so much time over a computer these days he was developing a hunchback.
The open doors of the store were tempting. A nice display of squashy sofas distracted him. He’d got virtually no furniture in his flat yet. Four weeks in and he’d been working practically every day. How could he entertain friends, even just have someone round for a drink, when he only had one chair? He just needed a couple of days browsing and he reckoned he could do all the furnishing in one go.
Sidwell Street had once been the centre of Exeter’s shopping district, but it was fast deteriorating into the cheap end of town. He scanned the peeling shop signs, looking for the recording studio as he walked. He wondered if, now he was a DI, he could delegate furniture purchase to a member of the team. Someone with good taste. He thought about his colleagues. Unlikely. Or, he could do what his mum had suggested; find a room display in John Lewis that he liked and buy the whole thing. He could do it for the bedroom and kitchen, too. Great idea, mum. Just might be lacking the thousands needed to pay for it, until the settlement on his flat in London came through, of course. That would cover everything, wouldn’t it? He hoped.
Dan hadn’t exactly been in the mood for entertaining since he’d returned from London, tail between his legs, grateful that he got a transfer rather than a demotion straight down the ranks. He’d been so stupid to let himself get caught out like that. It wouldn’t happen again.
Things had started to go wrong with Sarah when he talked about getting married and having kids, about settling down and moving out of London. Sarah had stared at him like he was a stranger. She moved out two weeks later, after some horrible late-night discussions that always ended in tears, most of them his.
That part he got. She really didn’t want kids, and it was a deal-breaker. Fair enough. He just couldn’t believe that she would choose that ugly loser over him, and only wait a couple of weeks before falling into his open arms. The familiar flush began in his chest, bloomed over his throat and into his face. That ugly, rich, loser smirking and raising his glass to him in the pub with his arm around Sarah, like he owned her. Tosser deserved it. Every punch and kick. He unclenched his fists and realised he’d stopped walking and was looking at his reflection in a shop window. Looking but not seeing.
Dan shook his head and crossed the road. Sarah wouldn’t even talk to him now, so no point in going over it again and again. He just felt like a massive hole had been cut into the place where all his security had been. The tosser had decided not to press charges, which had made Dan even angrier, although he knew that was irrational. He walked further towards the old Odeon, checking side streets and wondering if he’d missed it altogether.
He’d been shocked to see how few possessions he had to show for the five years they had spent together. It had only taken one trip in a Transit van for him and his dad to wipe out the previous ten years of his life in London. Or at least that’s what it felt like. In reality he hadn’t stopped missing Sarah and worrying about his decision to take the transfer back to Devon for a single minute. Had he just been a stubborn fool, hankering after an impossible life? He knew the answer. In those middle-of-the-night honesty sessions where he lay awake on one side of a bed too big, he admitted to himself that he did want a life like he had imagined, with marriage and kids and a dog. That was who he was. So Sarah of the long legs and clever brain was not the girl for him, and he had to get over it. He scrubbed his hands through dark hair and walked more briskly.
He still couldn’t understand how they could have been so far apart when he’d thought they were so happy together. But that was the way it was. His mum had said the usual clichés about ‘better to find out now than later’, ‘going through a divorce was worse’, etc. Dan didn’t know about that. He couldn’t see that a marriage certificate added more weight to the feeling of loss he experienced pretty much all the time.
Two weeks back with his parents in the Exeter suburbs, however, had been enough to convince him to take his small flat on the quayside, and he was growing to love living near the water.
He trotted past more shop fronts, noticing the gradual decline from glass and steel to badly painted wood and hand-painted signs. Students occupied much of this part of town; there were bars, cheap takeaways, laundrettes and open-late mini-supermarkets.
The Illusion Recording Studio was located in the basement of a spacious, two-storey music shop. Dan approached via a small alleyway, where a Mini in Racing Green and a rusty white Transit van were squashed nose to tail. He squeezed past the van. Did Carly Braithwaite actually get here on Sunday and did she leave again?
Pulling open the external steel security door, Dan found himself in a small lobby facing a locked glass door. He looked into the security camera and pressed the buzzer. After a brief conversation with a Welsh accent, he was buzzed through.
Illusion Studios was far more impressive than the dingy entrance had led him to expect. Once through the glass door, Dan followed a carpeted stairway to the basement. The walls held well-lit pictures of semi-famous bands and singers who had recorded at Illusion as well as pictures of the owner, Jed Abrams, at parties with celebrities. They appeared to have been taken over a period of at least twenty years. Dan smirked at the ponytail. Abrams really didn’t carry it off as well as Bono had, and hadn’t had the sense to chop it off when he hit forty, either.
He entered through the lower door, experiencing a small thrill in the pit of his stomach. As a teenager he too had harboured dreams of being in a band and becoming famous. He and a group of lads from school had played in a band for a while, called rather embarrassingly, ‘Kids eat Free’, but they had split up when university beckoned and their parents made them choose a more reliable method of earning a living. But Dan still played guitar and would have loved to have the opportunity to record in a proper studio with the lads. Who knew where they might have ended up?
He looked around. The place was large with a roomy reception area furnished with two enormous in-trend, battered leather sofas and a slate coffee table holding music magazines.
‘Can I help you?’
The Welsh accent belonged to a tiny woman with short, black, spiky hair and dramatic eyeliner. She seemed to be wearing several tee shirts of various colours and sleeve lengths, stripy leggings and Doc Marten boots. Fashion student earning a bit of extra cash, Dan guessed.
‘Only you’ve taken five minutes to get down the stairs. Don’t think anyone has actually looked at those photos for years. Is it someone in a photo you’re looking for?’
‘No,’ said Dan, showing his warrant card. ‘I need to speak to Jed Abrams. It’s urgent.’
The girl took a step forward to read the card. She only came up to the middle of his chest.
‘He’s recording at the moment. I’m due to take them in a cuppa, though, so I can interrupt them then. What’s it about?’ she asked, heading for the compact kitchen behind her desk.
Dan hesitated. He wanted Abrams to hear the news first. He needed to judge Abram’s reactions before he had a chance to work out a cover story, if he needed one. On the other hand, he had a few minutes now to gather some useful information. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked, following her into the kitchen.
‘Chas Lloyd’, she replied, ‘short for Chastity. Laugh and I’ll never speak to you again. I’m the product of Welsh Presbyterian lay preachers.’ She lifted one corner of her mouth up into half a smile, ‘but my brother is called Ezekiel, so I guess I was lucky. Tea or coffee?’
Dan remembered he’d eaten nothing since the night before, and his stomach, betraying him utterly, rumbled loudly enough for Chas to hear it and smile.
‘Biscuit?’
He smiled too, ice broken. ‘I’ll have coffee with milk, please. Ms Lloyd, did you know about the recording session won by Carly Braithwaite?’
‘The schoolgirl? Yeah, course. Call me Chas, by the way, everyone does. Jed’s been going on about this girl for ages, said she has a good voice and he’s hoping to manage her once she leaves school.' She made air quotes as she spoke. 'He’s always looking for the next big thing.’ Turning, she measured coffee into four mugs and emptied half a packet of plain chocolate digestives onto a plate. ‘He’s just got one guy in there this afternoon,’ she explained. ‘Does most of his band work later in the day.’
‘Did Mr Abrams say anything about the session with Carly on Sunday evening?’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, he was furious, said she didn’t turn up and he was hanging around for an hour waiting for her.’
‘Were you here then?’
Chas shook her head. ‘No, I’m usually off on a Sunday unless we’ve got a really busy day. He doesn’t exactly like paying me overtime, so if he’s just got one punter in, he manages by himself. Suits me. Pile of talentless losers, most of them. I’m only here to earn a bit of cash so I can go to design school next year.’
‘Fashion?’
She laughed and looked down at her stripy leggings. ‘Is it that obvious?’
‘How do you get on with Mr Abrams? Is he a good boss to work for?’ Dan saw a wariness enter her eyes, as if she’d suddenly remembered that he was a police officer.
‘He’s OK.’ She turned away, filled the mugs with hot water, gave each one a vigorous stir, and re-arranged the biscuits on the plate. Classic displacement activity. He didn’t push. He could speak to her again later.
Dan took his coffee and two biscuits and stood outside the long window, which looked into the studio control room. Inside, he could see the back of Jed Abrams’ head and smiled at the hopeless ponytail. Abrams was twiddling knobs on a vast console as a lone guitarist sang and played. The player wasn’t bad at all.
Chas opened the control room door, waited until the young singer finished his song and took in the coffee.
Dan watched Abrams turn around and stare as Chas gave him the message that a police officer was here to speak to him. He pressed his warrant card against the glass and smiled. He couldn’t work out whether Abrams’ expression was hostile or fearful. From the front his hair was scraped straight back into the ponytail, and was an unlikely shade of dark brown. Some help from the dye bottle there, I reckon, thought Dan. Here is a man fighting the inevitable onset of middle-age, and making it worse.
When Abrams stood and came towards the door, his belly stretched the waistband of his jeans around the tight ball of his stomach. Fighting but losing that battle too, thought Dan. There was something pathetic about a middle-aged man wearing a ponytail and skinny jeans to disguise a lifetime of no exercise and a rubbish diet. Abrams was pasty from working underground all the time and had the clammy handshake and puffy eyes of the habitual drinker.
Abrams withdrew his hand from Dan’s and indicating one of the leather sofas in the reception area, said, ‘Shall we go over here? Chas will replay the song for the punter, which should give us a few minutes uninterrupted. Can I ask what this is about?’
Dan decided on the direct approach, ‘Mr Abrams, I’m investigating the unexplained death, in fact the murder of a young girl called Carly Braithwaite. Did you see her on Sunday?’ He scrutinised the music producer’s face carefully. He'd missed all his ex-girlfriend’s non-verbal clues and look where that had got him.
Abrams’ eyes widened and he swallowed noisily. ‘Murder? Carly? I don’t understand.’ He took another long drink of coffee and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘What’s this got to do with me?’ he asked, a Bristolian burr betraying his origins.
Not much of a show of spontaneous feeling for a fellow human being, thought Dan. He could really have done with Sally Ellis here to build the guy’s trust and get him to spill all.
‘Carly was supposed to come here on Sunday for a recording session, wasn’t she? Did she arrive?’
Abrams stared at the table. ‘Err, no, she didn’t come. I was sat around like an idiot until eight-ish and then I left and went for a drink. I was well mad, I can tell you, wasting my time like that. I could have had a paying customer in for that slot.’
Hellier felt himself take offence at the man’s tone. ‘A young girl is dead, Mr Abrams. I’m not really interested in what you could have had.’
Abrams looked down at the table again. A finger crept to his mouth and he chewed on a hangnail, but he asked no questions about the death of the girl at all. Dan couldn’t work out why the guy made him feel so uneasy, apart from his lack of reaction to the news that the girl he should have been recording was dead. He pushed on.
‘Did anyone see you leave at eight o’clock?’
Abrams’ eyes slid sideways to where Chas was chatting to the guitar player.
‘No point looking at Ms Lloyd for an alibi, she’s already told me she had yesterday off. What pub did you go to?’
It was the word alibi that seemed to galvanise him. He sat upright. ‘Look, am I a suspect in this murder, or what? I’ve told you what I know. Why should I have to have an alibi? I’m not being accused of this, mate, whatever you think.’ He stood and put his hands in his pockets. ‘Excuse me. I have to get back to work now. See yourself out.’
‘Just one more question, sir,’ said Dan. ‘I just need to know where you went for a drink last night and then I’ll leave you alone. I appreciate your co-operation and I’m sure you want to help our enquiry into this dreadful crime.’
Dan relaxed back into the sofa and dunked a biscuit into his coffee, throwing the soggy mass into his mouth before it fell. Abrams sank back down onto the sofa. Dan watched emotions flicker across Abrams’ face as he tried to decide what to say.
‘I didn’t say I went to a pub, I went home and had a drink there,’ Abrams offered.
Dan nodded. ‘Right, I see. Anyone see you coming home? Talk to anyone on the way? Anyone at home I could check with?’ Dan waited, but got the same nail-chewing lack of response.
‘Are you sure you wouldn’t rather just tell me where you were?’ He could see the muscles twitch in Abrams’ face as his brain churned, trawling for a suitable answer. Dan felt a small lurch in his stomach that this might be the murderer sitting right in front of him.
‘Don’t worry sir,’ he said finally, fed up of waiting for Abrams to spit out an alibi, ‘we all forget things in the heat of the moment. Just jot down your contact details on my pad for me and I’ll be on my way. Here’s my card so you can ring me if you remember anything useful.’
Abrams took the pen and wrote down the details. His hand shook, but Dan couldn’t work out if that was because he had something to hide or because he needed a drink.
Abrams avoided shaking Dan’s hand and scuttled back into the studio.
Chas Lloyd came out. She raised an eyebrow at Dan. ‘Do you want to tell me what that was all about?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t seen him looking that worried since his ex-wife’s lawyer came round.’
Dan took a few moments to explain about the girl’s death and where she had been found. Chas was both shocked and sympathetic and wanted to talk more, but Dan needed to get her back to talking about her boss. There had been something there when she said he was ‘OK’ to work for.
‘Would you say that Mr Abrams was capable of hurting a young girl, Chas?’
‘What? And killing her and dumping her body?’ She laughed a quick, chopped off snort. ‘I don’t think so, Inspector. Don’t get me wrong, he’s not above trying to get his end away with any female who enters his pathetic little world, but you can sort him out with a sharp tongue and swift left hook. All these ex-rock stars are the same, huge egos. Hit 'em where it hurts, criticise 'em, they crumple. To be honest, though, I don’t really know. How can you be sure of what anyone would do if the circumstances were right?’ She shook her head. ‘I just don’t think Jed’s capable of actually killing someone. He’s a bit of a plonker, really.’ She peered up at him and twinkled a smile.
Dan smiled back. ‘Thanks, Chas, you’ve been really helpful.’ He pulled a card from his wallet and gave it to her. ‘Call me if you think of anything else that may be relevant.’
‘I will. Bye, then. Oh…’
Dan turned back.
‘Are your eyes grey or purple?’ she grinned at him.
Dan gave her a level look and headed for the stairs.
‘Just asking,’ she called after him.