The End of the Roadie (A Mystery for D.I Costello) by Elizabeth Flynn Page A

hired in. Sorting out what’s what is down to me.”
    “You said you thought Brendan had gone back to his dressing room?”
    Jack flicked a quick glance up at Angela from under his eyebrows. “I did. I was wrong, obviously. He must have gone outside with Olly for one of their little talks.”
    “‘Little talks’? What were those all about?”
    Jack shrugged. “Search me. I don’t know what their relationship was, but every now and again some sort of hush-hush conversation went on between them. If we saw the two of them with their heads together we generally steered clear of the area. And sometimes they’d phone each other, too. No – hang on – I think it was usually Olly phoning Bren.”
    “Do you think,” said Angela carefully, “Oliver could have been supplying Brendan with drugs of some sort?”
    Jack lifted his shoulders and let them fall again. “I wondered about that at first, but I don’t think the idea’s a goer. Brendan did a bit of pot here and there in his younger days, but drugs aren’t really his thing – unlike certain members of his band.”
    Angela resisted the lure. She thought back over her interview with Brendan and his explanation of the conversation in the alley; manning-up, taking responsibility. I knew you were spinning me a yarn , she thought. I shall be visiting you again, Mr Phelan.
    “Tell us about Oliver Joplin,” said Angela.
    A shadow crossed Jack’s features and he looked at her with a mirthless smile. “What is there to say? You get all sorts in a crew.”
    This non-answer intrigued Angela. “What was he like?” she persisted.
    Jack grimaced as he thought. “All right, I suppose. Not the best techie I’ve ever had. He was usually a bit late when there was any lifting and carrying to be done. In the concerts he worked the lighting console and was there when he needed to be, so I can’t complain.”
    Yet I think you’d like to , thought Angela. “How did he get on with the other crew members?”
    Another grimace. “I’m not sure that he did, really. I thinkhe thought himself a cut above the others, being a bit closer to Brendan, so he kept a bit apart.”
    Angela nodded, thinking of Doug Travers’s perception of the dead man as being “on the edge”.
    “I believe he’d been with you for a long time, but if he wasn’t the best techie you’d ever employed, why –?”
    “– did I keep him on? Good question. I wouldn’t mind knowing the answer to that myself.” Angela’s eyebrows went up into her forehead. “See, it’s like this,” continued Jack. “Crew members, they’re not on a retainer, so at the end of a tour they get laid off, right?”
    “Yes, I get it.”
    “Well, they can’t hang around waiting for the next tour. They need to live. So when we’re getting another tour together, we cast about for a crew. The ones we like working with, we call them up, see if they’re available. A lot of them will have got other jobs by then.”
    “Yes?”
    “By the same token, if there’s one we don’t particularly want on the road with us again, it’s the easiest thing in the world to not call him.”
    “And?” Angela sensed there was more to come.
    “Every bloomin’ tour we’ve done for the past nine years, he’s been there. I haven’t put his name down. I haven’t called him. But I hand a list over to Doug and when I get it back, whose name has been added every time?”
    “Oliver Joplin.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Why do you suppose that is?”
    Jack shrugged. “Beats me,” he said. “But at the end of the day, our little outfit is not different from any multinational corporation.”
    “Meaning?”
    “You know where the decisions come from?”
    “From the top?” ventured Angela.
    “Exactly,” said the production manager.

Chapter Nine
    “That was useful, wasn’t it?” opined Angela, as they headed towards home a short while later.
    “I’ll say,” agreed Gary. “There’s definitely something in the relationship between