'So you knew Maggie was staying in the village?' I asked, with a vague gesture in the general direction of the pub.
'Sure I knew,' he replied in surprise. 'Moira didn't broadcast it, but she had to tell me. I'd have been worried, you see, if I'd been looking for her and I hadn't been able to find her. I told her to bring Maggie up to the house to stay, but she wasn't having any of that. Said she didn't see why Maggie should have to put up with the shit she was getting from all sides.'
'OK, so after Moira left, what then?'
'We ate our steaks, and watched Regarding Henry on the video. Tamar went off to have a bath just before ten, and I came up here to make a couple of phone calls. There were a couple of session musicians I wanted for next week, and I needed to check they were available. Usually, Micky does that, but he's got such strong ideas about this album that I didn't trust him not to come back to me pretending they couldn't make the sessions. After that, I went along to Tamar's room and we went to bed together.' His voice dropped and he came to a halt.
'What exactly is the score between you and Tamar?' I prompted.
'That's a question I don't have the answer to. I'm fond of her, but sometimes she drives me crazy. She's so materialistic, so empty compared to Moira. I keep thinking I'll end it, then we go to bed together one last time and I remember all the good times and I can't let go. Maybe if Moira and me had been able to get it together in bed again, I'd have been able to free myself.'
You mean Tamar's a great lay, and you won't say goodbye till something better comes along, I thought cynically. 'I see,' was all I said. 'So where did you go after you left Tamar's room?'
'I went back to my room and had a shower. Then I went down to the rehearsal room. That must have been some time between half-eleven and midnight. Moira and I had planned to do a couple of hours' work on a couple of new songs, but we weren't meeting till half-past one.'
I said nothing for a moment, concentrating on the road junction ahead. The traffic comes down that main A56 like it was a German autobahn and speed limits hadn't been invented. I spotted a gap in the cars and went for it. Thank God for the Nova's acceleration. It took Jett by surprise, I noticed. He was thrust back into his tight-fitting sports seat with a look of serious discomfort on his face.
'Isn't that a bit late to start work?' I asked.
Jett relaxed as my speed levelled out and the G-forces disappeared. His smile this time seemed genuine, though I couldn't see into his eyes. I adjusted the rear-view mirror slightly so I could see his face. 'We always did our best work in the early hours,' he told me. 'Sometimes we'd still be tossing lyrics and tunes around at dawn. In the early days, we used to drive off to a greasy spoon around five in the morning and have bacon butties and tea "to celebrate our new songs.'
'So why did you go off to the rehearsal room so much earlier than you'd arranged?'
'I'd had a tune going round my head for a couple of hours, and I wanted to fiddle around with it a bit before Moira arrived. So I'd have something new to show to her, I guess. I tinkered with it for a while, then I decided to fix myself a sandwich, so I went off to the kitchen. That must have been just before one, because the news came on the radio while I was eating.' His speech had become noticeably more jerky as he got closer to the discovery of the body, his shoulders tense and hunched.
I slowed for the roundabout but still managed to hit the motorway slip road at fifty-five. This time, Jett made it to the grab handle in plenty of time.
'Did you see anyone at all?'
'No. But then I probably wouldn't have noticed anyone unless they'd actually spoken to me. My head was full of music, I wasn't paying attention much to anything else. I don't know how to explain it to someone who's not a musician. I don't even remember what was on the radio. They could've announced World War Three and I wouldn't have taken it in.'
Which explained Gloria's behaviour. Great. I had a client in the right place at almost the right time. I had a witness who wasn't admitting it yet, but who could put him there. And it was my lies to the police which had given him his non-existent alibi. Never mind Inspector Jackson, Bill was going to love this.
'Did you go straight from the kitchen to the rehearsal room, then?'
Jett bowed his head in assent. 'That's when I found her. I was only a room away, and I didn't hear a damn thing.'
'Because the rehearsal room's so well soundproofed?'
'That's right. That's why the police had to believe you and me when we said we didn't hear a thing.'
There was no point in questioning him about what he'd seen in the room. I'd seen it too and it hadn't told me anything except that Moira was battered to death with a tenor sax. Besides, he seemed to be retreating inside himself, and I figured I'd have to move the conversation into different channels if I wasn't to lose him altogether. 'Who do you think it was, Jett?'
“I can't believe any of us did it,' he said in a tone that lacked conviction. 'Shit, we're always rowing in this business. Nobody ever got killed before.'
'She'd been arguing with Kevin, hadn't she? Do you know what that was all about?'
'She thought he was ripping her off over her royalties. But that was only a little bit of it. She made me stand up to him to get the deal she wanted – you know, a profit percentage on the album, an increased royalty rate, and now she was pushing for a production credit too. She kept telling me I wasn't getting my share either, that Kevin was taking too much of a rake-off. And she kept going on about how I was being ripped off on the merchandising. She said there were loads of illicit copies of the tour merchandise all over the place, and Kevin should be doing something to put a stop to it, and why wasn't he.'
My ears pricked up. Moira knew about the schneids? I was so busy with my own thoughts I almost missed Jett's next comment.
'She was even hinting we should get shot of Kevin and manage ourselves. She said it wouldn't take her long to get the job sussed, then we could ditch him. I didn't want to, but she made me promise that if she got evidence that he was ripping me off, I'd go along with her.'
I took a deep breath. Could anyone be as naive as Jett appeared to be? Here he was, handing me the strongest of motives on a plate, and he didn't even seem to notice.
'Did you know someone kept dropping heroin on Moira?' I asked. The motorway petered out into dual carriageway. I barely noticed, only my automatic-pilot reflexes making me slow to within ten miles an hour of the speed limit.
His face jerked up and his lips seemed to curl inwards in a snarl. 'What the hell do you mean?' he demanded.
'Someone had been leaving fixes and syringes in her room, according to Maggie. And Gloria said she'd noticed some of her disposable syringes had gone missing.'
'Jesus Christ!' he exploded. 'What kind of bastard would do that? Why the hell didn't Gloria tell me?'
'I suppose because she thought it was Moira who was stealing them, and it was her own business.'
'The stupid cow!' he howled, smashing his fist into the dashboard. 'It's her fault Moira's dead. The silly bitch!'
I took a deep breath, then said, 'I'm not convinced the two things are related. I've got an idea who was behind the heroin, and I don't think it was the murderer. It's a very different thing from being the passive supplier of the means of death and actually killing someone with your own hands.'
'So who was giving her heroin?'
“I don't have any proof yet. And I'm not making wild accusations without proof.'
'You got to tell me. I'm hiring you. You got to tell me, Kate.' There was a note of desperation in his voice. Too late I realised he was desperate for a scapegoat, desperate to wreak his personal vengeance on Moira's killer. I'd have to learn to tread a lot more carefully with Jett than I had so far.