Dead Beat

Dead Beat introduces Kate Brannigan, a female private detective who does for Manchester what V.I. Warshawski has done for Chicago. As a favour, Kate agrees to track down a missing songwriter, Moira Pollock, a search that takes her into some of the seediest parts of Leeds and Bradford. But little does she realize that finding Moira is a prelude to murder…

DEAD BEAT

A Novel by

Val McDermid

The Kate Brannigan Series: Book 01

Copyright © 1992
by Val McDermid
eISBN: 978-1-612-94012-0

BLOODY BRITS PRESS
an imprint of Bywater Books

Dedication:

For Lisanne and Jane;

can we just tell them that,
then, darlings?

Acknowledgments

I picked a lot of people’s brains and stole a few jokes during the writing of this book. I’d like to thank Diana Cooper, Lee D’Courcy, Brother Brian, everyone at Gregory & Radice … Most of all, I owe an enormous debt to Linzi Day, who convinced me that I ought to believe in myself as much as she does.

1992
–

Part One

Chapter   1

I swear one day I’ll kill him. Kill who? The man next door, Richard Barclay, rock journalist and overgrown schoolboy, is who. I had stumbled wearily across the threshold of my bungalow, craving nothing more exotic than a few hours’ sleep, when I found Richard’s message. When I say found, I use the term loosely. I could hardly have missed it. He’d sellotaped it to the inside of my glass inner door so that it would be the first thing I saw when I entered the storm porch. It glared luridly at me, looking like a child’s note to Santa, written in sprawling capitals with magic marker on the back of a record company press release. “Don’t forget Jett’s gig and party afterwards tonight. Vital you’re there. See you at eight.” Vital was underlined three times, but it was that “Don’t forget” that made my hands twitch into a stranglehold.

Richard and I have been lovers for only nine months, but I’ve already learned to speak his language. I could write the Berlitz phrasebook. The official translation of “don’t forget” is, “I omitted to mention to you that I had committed us to going somewhere/doing something (that you will almost certainly hate the idea of) and if you don’t come it will cause me major social embarrassment.”

I pulled the note off the door, sighing deeply when I saw the sellotape marks on the glass. I’d weaned him off drawing pins, but unfortunately I hadn’t yet got him on to Blu-Tack. I walked up the narrow hall to the telephone table. The house diary where Richard and I are both supposed to record details of anything mutually relevant lay open. In today’s space, Richard had written, in black felt-tip pen, “Jett: Apollo then Holiday Inn.” Even though he’d used a different pen from his note, it didn’t fool the carefully cultivated