Dead on Cue (30 page)

‘You underestimate my powers as an actor,' Coates told him. ‘The judge and jury are an audience like any other, and by the time the trial is over, I'll have them eating out of my hand.'

T
he first hint the pack of reporters had that something significant was about to happen was the black police car pulling up right in front of the studio's front door. The second, even clearer, came when the doors themselves burst open and half a dozen uniformed constables emerged in a tight phalanx – but not tight enough to hide the fact that in the middle of them was a man with a jacket completely covering his head.

The police urged the journalists to stay back, the hacks interpreted that as an invitation to surge forward. Flash bulbs were popping, questions were being hurled. The constable at the front of the phalanx opened the back door of the car, and two others guided the man with the jacket over his head towards the opening.

‘Duck down a bit lower, Mr Coates,' one of the constables said, louder than he'd probably intended.

‘What was that?' asked the journalist in the crush next to Elizabeth Driver.

‘I think he said, “Duck down a bit lower, Mr
Adams
,” Elizabeth Driver lied. ‘Isn't there somebody in the show called Adams?'

‘Don't think so,' the other journalist replied. ‘Anyway, you probably misheard. Could have been Allen or Atherton.'

The man with jacket over his head was now firmly ensconced on the back seat of the car, and the constable who he was handcuffed to slid in beside him. Another constable slammed the door closed, and the driver eased the vehicle slowly forward, trying his best to avoid staining any of his tyres with journalists' blood. Then the car was clear of the pack, and heading out away from the studio.

‘I'd think twice before I bandied names about,' the journalist next to Elizabeth Driver said. ‘Like I said, you could have misheard, and you'd look a complete bloody fool if you got it wrong.'

And having offered a seasoned reporter's advice to the young novice, he rushed off to file the exclusive story that George Adams had been arrested for the double murder.

Elizabeth Driver stayed where she was, considering her position. It was a pity she'd written such a critical article about Woodend just hours before he'd made the arrest, she thought. Perhaps now was the time to eat humble pie – to admit to the chief inspector that she'd been wrong, and promise to be a good little girl in the future.

But even as these considerations were running through her mind, a large headline was elbowing them out of the way. ‘THE DEVIL'S OWN LUCK?' she composed. ‘In what appears to be more by chance than ability, Chief Inspector Woodend of the Central Lancashire Police today arrested Laurence Coates for the double murder at NWTV's studios . . .' Yes, something along those lines would do very nicely indeed.

Ben Drabble and Paddy Colligan sat at their desks, scoring out large chunks of that evening's scripts with red pencils.

‘How much do you reckon we're going to have to rewrite?' Paddy asked.

‘My best guess is around seven minutes,' Drabble replied miserably.

Seven minutes! Paddy repeated to himself. Seven whole bloody minutes! And they didn't have long to do it, because the cast would need to learn their new lines – or at least have some idea of what they were – long before the seven-thirty broadcast. Nor did the crisis end there. By the time Monday's episode of
Maddox Row
went out, they would have to have come up with some reasonable explanation for the disappearance of Jack Taylor, the Laughing Postman. It was going to be a bugger of a job which would keep them working round the clock.

His mind turned to Diana Houseman. He wondered if he still loved her. Or if he ever really had? Because how could you love a woman you didn't understand at all? And how could he pretend that he
had
ever understood her, when even now he found it hard to believe that she would go to bed with another man in order to hide the fact that she was sleeping with him?

He would give her up, he decided. He would give her up – and he would give his job up. He would go back to Dublin, and the only words he wrote from now on would be ones that mattered – ones that had something significant to say about the human condition.

But in order to be truly creative, didn't a writer actually
need
the kind of creature comforts his current wages brought him?

And how would he
ever
be truly inspired again, when all the time he was squandering his emotional reserves on thoughts of Diana Houseman's warm body lying beside his?

He suddenly realised that he didn't mind the extra work the murders had brought – almost wished there was more of it – because as long as he was wrapped up in the fictional life of
Madro
, he could keep himself free of the twists and complications which made up his own
real
life.

Sitting next to him, his partner, Ben Drabble was doing some serious thinking, too. The publicity which had come from the second murder – the murder of a
producer
, like the one in his plot – would almost certainly guarantee success for his book. But he was starting to wonder whether a novel was the right way to go, or if he could squeeze more out of the idea by turning it into a screenplay. The project would be a new departure for him, and he was not quite sure he was up to the job – but perhaps, if he approached it in the right way – he could persuade Paddy to work on it with him.

Jeremy Wilcox sat at his desk, trying to convince himself that he was furious. After all, didn't he have a
right
to be in a rage? That bastard Charlie Woodend had bullied him into going through the charade with the special script Colligan had written, and, as a result, he had lost one of his principle actors just a few hours before they were due to go on air.

And yet there were compensations, if he really looked for them. Despite all that had happened, he would still produce a smooth, professional show by seven thirty, and the people who made all the decisions back in head office would realise how much they needed him. Then there was the warm glow he felt when he looked back on the script reading which had led to Larry Coates's arrest. Halfway through, Coates had realised what was happening, but he had gone on to read the rest of it. And why? Because his director had led him through it – cajoling and coaxing, yet being firm when necessary.

‘Nobody else could have directed that denouement quite like me,' Wilcox told himself self-satisfiedly. ‘Nobody!'

Acting Chief Constable Marlowe and DCS Ainsworth stood at the bar in the Glades Golf Club, glasses of the club's finest malt whisky in their hands.

‘It's a good result for us, sir, isn't it?' Ainsworth said.

‘A very good result,' Marlowe agreed. ‘Couldn't have been better, in fact. Not only do we have a murderer behind bars, but he turns out to be a nationally known actor. Think how much more publicity mileage we can milk out of that than if he'd been some obscure studio electrician assistant with a grudge.' He paused. ‘Of course, you do realise that while it will undoubtedly help both of us, it will also help Charlie Woodend. There's no way we can possibly prevent him from coming out of all this with at least some share of the credit.'

‘I'd already worked that out,' Ainsworth told him.

‘So it looks as if your prospects of getting rid of Cloggin'-it Charlie have been somewhat dimmed.'

‘It's only a temporary set-back,' Ainsworth said easily. ‘I know Woodend, and before the printer's ink's even dried on the story, he'll be putting his size nine foot into it somewhere else. And next time, I'll have the bastard.'

Woodend, Rutter and Paniatowski sat in the studio cafeteria, drinking lukewarm tea and thinking their own thoughts.

‘We'll give the reporters outside another half-hour to clear off, an' then we'll head for the nearest pub an' have the almighty piss-up you both so richly deserve,' Woodend said.

‘I'm not sure I've earned it this time,' Rutter said, perhaps a little despondently.

Woodend raised his eyebrows in mock amazement. ‘Don't start goin' all modest on me, lad,' he said. ‘I'm not sure I could cope with it.'

‘I really thought I'd contributed something to the investigation when I found that Valerie Farnsworth was a lesbian,' Rutter told him.

‘An' so you did.'

‘No, I didn't. All it did was shore up your erroneous suspicion that Bill Houseman was the murderer, a suspicion you'd probably soon have discarded if I hadn't—'

He stopped suddenly. He had been talking to Woodend just as he would have done at the end of a case in the old days, when he was Woodend's bagman and neither of them had even heard of Monika Paniatowski. Now he had remembered that Paniatowski was there, and was beginning to think that he'd spoken too freely.

A few seconds awkward silence followed, then Paniatowski said, ‘That's a bit of a simplistic view – if you don't mind me saying so, Inspector.'

‘And if I
do
mind you saying so?' Rutter replied.

‘Then I'll just have to make myself even more unpopular with you than I am already,' Paniatowski said calmly.

‘Tell us how he was bein' simplistic,' Woodend said quietly.

‘He was forgetting – just for the moment, I'm sure – that an investigation is the sum of its parts, and it needs all those parts for it to roll forward, even if a few of them are thrown out on the way.'

‘Go on, lass,' Woodend said.

‘The fact that Valerie Farnsworth was a lesbian is a case in point. If we hadn't known that when we first confronted Diana Houseman, we wouldn't have been able to unnerve her as much as we did. And if she hadn't been unnerved, she'd never have let slip the fact that she'd taken precautions to make sure her husband didn't find out about her secret lover.'

‘I think you may be right,' Rutter said, brightening considerably.

‘With respect, sir, I know I'm right,' Paniatowski replied.

Rutter glanced down at his watch, then stood up. ‘Before I go to the pub, I'd just better check that my lads are mopping up properly.'

My lads!
Woodend, thought, hiding a smile.

He waited until Rutter was well away from the table, then turned to Paniatowski. ‘That was nice thing you just said to Inspector Rutter,' he told her.

‘It was true,' Paniatowski replied defensively. ‘I wouldn't have said it if it wasn't.'

Woodend shook his head. ‘You two really should try to get on a bit better,' he said.

‘I know we should,' Paniatowski agreed, without holding out much hope that the age of miracles was in any danger of imminent arrival.

They sat in silence for a while, then Paniatowski said, ‘Do you know what my favourite part is in all those “B” picture detective stories?'

‘No. What is it?'

‘It's when the hapless assistant turns to his boss, and says, “There's just one thing I don't understand, Inspector.”'

Woodend grinned. ‘Is that right?'

‘Of course, it would never happen in real life.'

‘Of course not.'

‘There's one thing that's been puzzling me about the case,' Paniatowski said.

Woodend's grin broadened. ‘An' what's that?'

‘I can see how that newspaper article about Preston Vance's death would have led you to suspect that Larry Coates killed Bill Houseman, but what I
don't
see is how it could also have made you immediately drop your theory that Houseman had killed Valerie Farnsworth.'

‘I was assumin' that once Houseman had decided to kill one of the cast for the good of the show, he selected Val Farnsworth because she'd had an affair with his wife.'

‘Because he
thought
she'd had an affair with his wife,' Paniatowski corrected him.

‘Same difference,' Woodend said. ‘It's what he believed which was important.'

‘True.'

‘But when you read me that article, I realised that he believed that while his wife had had no more than a fling with Val, she was actually
in love with
Larry.'

‘How did you work that?' Paniatowski asked.

Woodend grinned again. ‘You tell me.'

Paniatowski frowned, then clicked her fingers. ‘He didn't fire Val, because that would have been bad for the other love of his life –
Maddox Row!
' she said. ‘But the same was true in the case of Larry Coates, yet he still gave him the boot.'

‘Because?'

‘Because it hurt him more – because he felt that what she'd had with Larry was much more than a fling.'

‘So if he'd been going to kill anybody, it would have been Larry, not Val.'

‘And once you realised that the brass candlestick had been made in deepest Romania by a left-handed man, it was obvious that the simple groom was not a groom at all, but the son of the ruined count who had come to take revenge on Lord Ponsonby for seducing his sister,' Paniatowski said.

‘Exactly,' Woodend agreed. ‘Now you're finally startin' to think like a real detective.'

T
he leaves of the horse chestnut trees were already edged with rust, and the conkers which they had borne had burst from their spiky green armour and now lay brown and unprotected on the fading grass. Bees buzzed busily from one wild Michaelmas daisy to another, and grey squirrels made brief and nervous forays along the ground before retreating once more to the safety of the trees.

Woodend studied the girl who was sitting on the bench at the top of Parliament Hill, looking down – without much apparent interest – at the bathing ponds below. It had only been a few days since he'd last seen her, but she seemed much smaller and much more vulnerable than he remembered. He stuck his hands deep into his pockets – as if he thought that would give him courage – and began to walk towards her.