A Darker Shade of Blue (28 page)

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 lunch-time it'd be ruby port and cheap wine. 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. Okay?'

*

The first few days went down easily enough, the way good days sometimes do. Adam's first set, opening night, was maybe just a little shaky, but after that everything gelled. The reviews were good, better than good, and by midweek word of mouth had kicked in and the place was packed. Becker, Kiley thought, was playing out of 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 prerecorded 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 for 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, '89, I had this … this thing.' She shrugged. ‘You're on tour, some strange city. It happens.' From the already decimated minibar 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. ‘Virginia 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. Virginia 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-publicised 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, Virginia was set to play Maggie in a provincial tour of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

But he didn't think Virginia was the problem.

‘Payne knew about this?' Kiley said.

Adams released smoke towards the ceiling. ‘Let's say he found out.'

One image of Keith Payne stuck in Kiley's memory. A newspaper photograph. A tall man, six four or five, Payne was being escorted across the tarmac from a plane, handcuffed to one of the two police officers walking alongside. Tanned, hair cut short, he was wearing a dark polo shirt outside dark chinos, what was obviously a Rolex on his wrist. Relaxed, confident, a smile on his handsome face.

Kiley couldn't recall the exact details, save that Payne had been extradited from Portugal to face charges arising from a bullion robbery at Heathrow. The resulting court case had all but collapsed amidst crumbling evidence and accusations of police entrapment, and Payne had finally been sentenced to eight years for conspiracy to commit robbery. He would have been released, Kiley guessed, after serving no more than five. Whereas his former colleague, who had appeared as a witness for the prosecution and was handed down a lenient eighteen months, was the unfortunate victim of a hit-and-run incident less than two weeks after being released from prison. The vehicle was found abandoned half a mile away and the driver never traced.

Payne, Kiley guessed, didn't take kindly to being crossed.

‘When he found out,' Kiley said, ‘about you and Virginia, what did he do?'

‘Bought her flowers, a new dress, took her to the Caprice, knocked out two of her teeth. He came to the hotel where I was staying and trashed the room, smashed the mirror opposite the bed and held a piece of glass to my face. Told me that if he ever as much as saw me near Virginia again he'd carve me up.'

‘You believed him.'

‘I took the first flight out next morning.'

‘And you've not been back since.'

‘Till now.'

‘Costain knew this?'

‘I suppose.'

Yes, Kiley thought, I bet he did.

Adams drained her glass and swivelled towards the telephone. ‘I'm calling room service for a drink.'

‘Go ahead.'

‘You want anything?'

Kiley shook his head. ‘So have you seen her?' he asked when she was through.

‘No. But she sent me this.' The card had a black-and-white photograph, artfully posed, of lilies in a slim white vase; the message inside read ‘
Knock 'em dead
' and was signed ‘
Virginia
' with a large red kiss. ‘That and a bottle of champagne on opening night.'

‘And that's all?'

‘That's all.'

Kiley thought it might be enough.

Adams ran her fingers across the photographs beside her on the bed. ‘It's him, isn't it?'

‘I imagine so.'

‘Why? Why these?'

Some men, Kiley knew, got off on the idea of their wives or girlfriends having affairs with other women, positively encouraged it, but it didn't seem Payne was one of those.

‘He's letting you know he knows where you are, knows your every move. If you see Virginia, he'll know.'

Adams' eyes flicked towards the mirror on the hotel wall. ‘And if I do, he'll carry out his threat.'

‘He'll try.'

‘You could stop him.

Kiley wasn't sure. ‘Are you going to see her?' he asked.

Adams shook her head. ‘What if she tries to see me?'

Kiley smiled; close to a smile, at least. ‘We'll try and head her off at the pass.'

That night, after the show, she asked Becker back to her hotel for a drink and, as he sat with his single Scotch and water, invited him to share her bed.

‘She's using you,' Kiley said next morning, Becker bleary-eyed over his coffee in Old Compton Street.

Becker found the energy to wink. ‘And how,' he said.

Kiley told him about Payne and all Becker did was shrug.

‘He's dangerous, Derek.'

‘He's just a two-bit gangster, right?'

‘You mean like Coltrane was a two-bit sax player?'

‘Jack,' Becker said, grasping Kiley by the arm, ‘you worry too much, you know that?'

The following afternoon Adams and the band were rehearsing at Ronnie's, Dianne wanting to work up some new numbers for the weekend. Kiley thought it was unlikely Payne would show his hand in such a public place, but rang Costain and asked him to be around in case.

‘I thought that was what I was paying you for,' Costain said.

‘If he breaks your arm,' Kiley said, ‘take it out of my salary.'

Kiley had been checking out the
Stage. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was
already on the road, this week Leicester, next week Richmond. Close enough to make a trip into the centre of London for its star a distinct possibility. He sat in the Haymarket bar and waited for the matinee performance to finish. Thirty minutes after the curtain came down, Virginia Pride was sitting in her robe in her dressing room, most of the make-up removed from her face, a cigarette between her lips. Close up, she didn't look young any more, but she still looked good.

‘You're from the
Mail
' she said, crossing her legs.

Kiley leaned back against the door as it closed behind him. ‘I lied.'

She studied him then, taking him in. ‘Should I call the management? Have you thrown out?' Her voice was still smeared with the southern accent she'd used in the play.