‘Probably not.’ Kelly paused again, as if he’d been about to say something. Clarke felt cogs shifting in her head.
‘Steele wanted us to meet, didn’t he? He put the idea in your head — said I’d be prime candidate if you needed someone inside the investigation?’
‘What if he did?’
‘It means he’s coming for me,’ Clarke stated, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘And thanks to you, he’s in with a shout.’
Thursday
42
‘This is beginning to look a lot like harassment,’ Kelvin Brodie said as he sat down with his client in the interview room. Sutherland and Clarke sat opposite, Clarke fiddling with the recording equipment. She reckoned her presence in the room was a message from the DCI to the rest of the team. Kelly had been as good as his word, according to Sutherland.
‘So you believe me?’ she had demanded to know, but all she’d got in return was a thin smile, no way of really reading it.
Jackie Ness looked pale and drawn, eyes bloodshot. His solicitor meantime wore an even more expensive-looking suit than previously and had a nervous energy about him, a parasite successfully locked on to its host. Ness had become big news, lifting Brodie’s profile. The eventual outcome probably didn’t matter — no such thing as bad publicity, as they said.
Not that the media interest seemed to be having that effect on Ness.
All four identified themselves for the record, and Clarke nodded to her boss that the gear was behaving itself. She then passed a set of photographs across the table. They’d been shot on her phone from the DVD and printed on to A4 paper. A bit grainier than she’d like, but fit for purpose.
‘Do you recognise these, Mr Ness?’
It took a moment for the producer to rouse himself. ‘They’re handcuffs,’ he eventually said.
‘As used in your film Cops v Demons. I watched a copy last night.’
‘If you say so.’
‘The sound recordist on that film was Colin Speke, yes?’
‘If you say so,’ Ness repeated.
‘Well, it’s his name on the closing credits. You asked Mr Speke if he knew anyone who could lend you handcuffs for a couple of scenes. He fetched some from Rogues nightclub, courtesy of Ralph Hanratty. You weren’t happy with them, though — does that ring any bells?’
‘Maybe.’
‘But these handcuffs...’ Clarke gestured towards the photos, which the solicitor was busying himself studying. ‘These look like the real deal; very similar — maybe even identical — to the ones found attached to Stuart Bloom’s ankles.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘So what we’re wondering is, what happened to them after you’d finished the shoot?’
Ness gave her the bleary look of someone who’d spent a night in a cell and not managed home since. ‘Know how many plates I have to spin to get a film in the can? How am I supposed to remember a detail like that?’
‘Even if it was to lead us to whoever killed Mr Bloom?’
‘I’d help you if I could.’ The producer shrugged. His shoulders were slouched, but Clarke wasn’t completely convinced. She had to keep remembering that this was a man who’d spent his life around actors.
‘Who sourced them then? You’d been asking around the crew and actors; someone must have come up with the goods?’
‘Joe Madden maybe? No, not Joe...’ He arched his neck, staring towards the ceiling for inspiration. ‘You’re right about Colin — he brought along these flimsy bloody things, looked like they should have had pink fur wrapped around them. Sex shop crap...’
‘Take your time,’ Clarke said, as Kelvin Brodie checked his watch.
‘I think we can take it that my client doesn’t remember. Shall we move on?’
‘Well then, there’s the little matter of the break-in.’ Clarke’s eyes drilled into Ness’s.
‘Break-in where?’ Brodie asked.
‘At Adrian Brand’s private office. Just a couple of nights before Stuart Bloom vanished.’
Sutherland had removed a typed sheet from a manila folder, studying it as though to refresh his memory without bothering to show it to either Brodie or his client.
‘You had asked Morris Gerald Cafferty for help in finding a safe-breaker,’ Clarke told Ness. ‘I’m curious: was it your idea or Bloom’s? Opening the safe, I mean? I don’t suppose it matters. What’s pertinent is that you put a man called Larry Huston in touch with Bloom, and the pair of them broke in and emptied the safe.’
‘That’s an extraordinary claim to make, DI Clarke.’ Brodie was holding his hand out, but Sutherland wasn’t about to relinquish the report. ‘I’d be grateful to see your evidence.’
‘We have a full statement from Mr Huston.’
‘And a list of the items taken? Did this Huston fellow actually meet with my client, or only with Bloom? Is he perhaps a fantasist persuaded by you to concoct this frankly far-fetched tale?’
‘He’s a credible witness, Mr Brodie.’
Brodie turned towards Jackie Ness.
‘Never happened,’ Ness responded.
Clarke made show of raising an eyebrow. ‘Cafferty says it did. Larry Huston says it did.’
‘I’ve never heard of anyone called Huston and I only ever met Cafferty a couple of times, and only then because Billy Locke had got him to invest in one of my films.’
‘Zombies v Bravehearts?’
‘Yes.’
‘He even watched you filming some of it in Poretoun Woods.’
‘Did he?’
‘He says he did.’
Ness offered another shrug. ‘Know how many hangers-on there are on a film set? Everybody from the executive producer’s nephew to some extra’s boyfriend or girlfriend.’ A light seemed to switch on behind his eyes. ‘That’s where the cuffs came from! I remember now. One of the extras had a mate who always seemed to be kicking around the place. Everybody liked him because he...’ He broke off, eyes on his lawyer, then leaned in and whispered something.
‘Unwise to hold anything back that could be germane to this inquiry,’ Clarke said in warning. Brodie mulled over what his client had just told him, then nodded. Ness turned his attention back to Clarke.
‘He always had a bit of powder on him — powder and pills. I never touch the stuff, and I don’t condone its use.’
Clarke thought back to her conversation with Hanratty, and the glittering onscreen eyes of Stuart Bloom and Derek Shankley. ‘We already know there were drugs on set, Mr Ness. You’re saying this individual was a dealer?’
‘I never saw money change hands.’
‘Presumably he wasn’t giving them away for free, though?’
Sutherland cleared his throat. ‘Do you happen to remember his name, Mr Ness?’
Ness puffed out his cheeks and expelled air noisily.
‘Maybe you kept a list of everyone who visited the set?’
‘I’m not Paramount Pictures. Security consisted of a question or two to anyone hanging around I didn’t recognise.’
‘But this man attended regularly, and you knew he was distributing drugs.’ Clarke leaned forward a little. ‘I find it hard to believe his name has slipped your memory. Did he ever play a role in one of your productions?’
‘Might’ve been an extra, I suppose. I’ve an idea his mate was one of the zombies on Bravehearts, so he might’ve been too.’
‘And his mate was...?’
Another shrug. ‘One of the locals.’
‘Maybe a name for him, then?’
A slow shake of the head. ‘I really am trying to help you here.’
‘Did you ask him where he found the handcuffs?’
‘I think I was just delighted they had a bit of heft to them. Sounded right, too — Colin said as much when we did this shot.’ He tapped a finger against one of the photos, showing the cuffs around the actor’s wrists.