PI Kate Brannigan Series Books 1-3: Dead Beat, Kick Back, Crack Down. Val McDermid

what we’re getting into. What’s it going to cost?’

      I named a price that was double our normal daily rate. If we were going to get embroiled in the search for Moira, they were going to have to pay for the privilege. Jett didn’t bat an eyelid, but Kevin drew his breath in sharply. ‘That’s a bit heavy,’ he complained.

      ‘You pay peanuts, you get monkeys,’ I replied.

      ‘Getting Moira back would be cheap if it cost me everything I own,’ Jett said softly. Kevin looked as if he was going to have a stroke.

      Neil’s smile had grown even broader during the last exchange. The prospect of me finding a major primary source for his book was obviously one that cheered him up. He got to his feet, slightly unsteady, and raised the glass of whisky he’d been nursing. ‘I’d like to propose a toast,’ he said. ‘To Kate’s success.’

      I don’t know if my smile looked as sick as Kevin’s, but I hope I’m a better actress than that. I tucked my hand under Jett’s elbow and steered him away from the others. ‘Is there somewhere we can sit down quietly and you can fill me in on the details I’ll need about Moira?’ I asked softly.

      He turned to face me and patted my shoulder paternally. ‘OK, guys,’ he said. ‘Me and Kate have got some business to do. Neil, I’ll catch up with you later, OK? You too, Kevin.’

      ‘But Jett,’ Kevin protested. ‘I should be here if it’s business.’

      Jett was surprisingly adamant. Clearly, he had the boundaries between business and personal clearly defined in his own mind. In business matters, like who was going to ghost Jett’s autobiography, Kevin’s word was obviously law. But when it came to his own business, Jett could stand up for himself. It was an interesting split that I filed away for future reference.

      Neil headed for the door, turning back on the threshold to wave his glass cheerily at us. ‘Good hunting!’ he called as he left.

      Grumbling under his breath, Kevin picked up a filofax and a mobile phone from the bar and stomped down the room without a farewell. As I watched his departing back, fury written large across his slouched shoulders, I remarked, ‘I’m surprised you chose a woman for a job like this, Jett. I thought you were a great believer in a woman’s place being in the home.’

      He looked a little suspiciously at me, as if he wasn’t certain whether or not I was at the wind-up. ‘I don’t believe in working wives and mothers, if that’s what you’re getting at. But single women like you – well, you got to make a living, haven’t you? And it’s not like I’m asking you to do anything dangerous like catch a criminal, now, is it? And you women, you like talking, gossiping, swapping stories. If anyone can track down my Moira, it’s another woman.’

      ‘You want her back so you can work with her or so you can marry her?’ I asked, out of genuine curiosity.

      He shrugged. ‘I always wanted to marry her. It was her didn’t want to. My mother brought me up strict, to respect women. She taught me the way the Bible teaches. Now, I’ve studied a lot of different philosophies and ideas since then, but I have never come across anything that makes sense to me like the idea of a family where the woman loves and nurtures her children and her husband. So, yes, I wanted Moira to be the mother of my children, wanted that more than anything. I don’t know if that feeling’s still there, so I can’t answer you.’

      I nearly got up and walked out right then. But I don’t think it would have changed anything if I had. Certainly not Jett’s neolithic view of women. I couldn’t understand how a man of some intelligence and sensitivity, judging by his music, could still hold views like that in the last decade of the twentieth century. I swallowed the nasty taste in my mouth and got down to business. ‘About Moira,’ I began.

      Two hours later, I was back in my own office. I’d just spent quarter of an hour persuading Bill that we should take on the case. I was far from convinced that we could get a result, but I thought the chances were better than evens. It would earn us a tasty fee, and if I did pull it off word would get around. Record companies have a lot of money to throw around, and they’re notoriously litigious. Going to law and winning requires solid evidence, and private investigators are very good at amassing that evidence.

      Now I’d pitched Bill into accepting the case, I had some work to do. Once I’d prised Jett away from Kevin and Neil I’d managed to get a substantial amount of background on Moira. The difficulty had been getting him to shut up. Now I needed to arrange my thoughts, so I booted up my database and started filling in all I knew about Moira.

      Moira Xaviera Pollock was thirty-two years old, a Pisces with Cancer rising and a Sagittarius moon, according to Jett. I felt sure that piece of knowledge would help enormously in my task. They had been kids together in Moss Side, Manchester’s black ghetto, where growing up without a drug habit or a criminal record is an achievement in itself. Moira’s mother had three children by different fathers, none of them in wedlock. Moira was the youngest, and her father had been a Spanish Catholic called Xavier Perez, hence the unusual middle name that was such a godsend to an investigator. In the photographs Jett had given me, she looked both beautiful and vulnerable. Her skin was the colour of vanilla fudge and her huge brown eyes made her look like a nervous bambi peeping out from a halo of frizzy brown curls.

      Jett and Moira had started dating in their early teens and they’d soon discovered that they both enjoyed writing songs. Moira wrote the poignant and enigmatic lyrics, Jett put them to music. She had never wanted to perform, seeing no need to compete with Jett’s unique voice, but she’d done her best to organize gigs for him. He’d played a couple of local clubs, then she’d managed to get him a regular weekly spot in a new city centre wine bar. That had been the break they needed. Kevin, who’d bought the wine bar as a diversion from the family wholesale fashion business, immediately saw Jett’s potential and informed the pair that he was going to manage them and to hell with the rag trade.

      Seeing Jett now, it was hard to imagine what an enormous change it must have been for the two of them. Suddenly they were being wined and dined by Kevin Kleinman, a man who had a suit for every day of the week and then some left over.

      Height, five foot, four inches, I typed in. She’d had a good figure too. The snapshots taken before Jett hit the top of the charts looked positively voluptuous. But later, she’d lost weight and her clothes had hung unbecomingly on her. Cutting through Jett’s self-reproach, it seemed that Moira had felt increasingly insignificant as Jett became the idol of millions.

      So she had fallen for the scourge of the music industry. I could see how it had happened. Drugs are everywhere in rock, from the fans at the concerts to the recording studios. With Moira, it had all started when Kevin was piling on the pressure for more songs for the third album. She’d started taking speed to stay awake, working through the night with Jett on new songs. Soon she’d moved on to the more intense but shorter high of coke. Then she’d started freebasing coke and before too long she’d been chasing the dragon. Jett hadn’t had a clue how to cope, so he’d just ignored it and tried to lose himself in his music.

      Then one night, he’d come home and she hadn’t been there. She’d just packed her bags and gone. He’d looked for her in a half-hearted way, asking around her family and friends, but I suspected that deep down he’d felt a kind of relief at not having to deal with her mood swings and erratic behaviour any longer. Now, his fear of falling into musical oblivion had spurred him into taking action. I could see why his entourage were nervous. The Return of the Junkie was not a feature eagerly awaited at Colcutt Manor.

      I finished inputting all my notes, and checked my watch. Half-past six. If I was lucky, I might just be able to short circuit some of the tedium of tracing Moira. Her unusual middle name made the search through any computerized records a lot easier. I picked up the phone and rang Josh, a friend of mine who’s a financial broker. In exchange for a slap-up meal every few months, he obligingly does credit checks on individuals for Mortensen and Brannigan.

      His job gives him access to computerized credit records for almost everyone in the British Isles. These records tell him what credit cards they hold, whether they have ever defaulted