Dead Room Farce (20 page)

‘Too true. Come on, Charles, I'm sure there must've been a few jobs in your past you wouldn't exactly boast about . . .'

‘In my case, that's rather an understatement, David.' Charles Paris tried to think which of the many had been absolutely the most embarrassing. Could it have been his performance as a burnt chip in an advertisement for cooking oil? Or his rendering of the role of a turd in an experimental work entitled
Sewer Fantasies
(‘An evening of which I would like to flush away all memories' –
Time Out)
. Charles wasn't even sure whether he'd boast about recording over a hundred thousand words and phrases for a Thesaurus on CD-ROM.

‘And with those tapes that Mark Lear produced,' David J. Girton went on, ‘there might be even more reason for the actors involved to keep quiet.'

‘Why? Just because they were porn?'

‘No, Charles, because they were gay porn.'

‘MAURICE, I've now got information that definitely ties Mark Lear in with the audio porn cassettes.'

‘Really?' Down the telephone his agent's voice sounded disgruntled. ‘I was getting close to a result on that myself.'

‘So if I can tie in the Ransome George strand, you know, prove that he got Mark Lear involved on the financial side . . .'

‘Yes, all right, Charles.
If
you can do that, so what? How's that going to help you?'

‘I'm not sure . . .'

He wasn't. All he knew was that Ransome George was now at the top of his list of suspects. Everything seemed to come back to Ransome George. First, there was his character, entirely amoral, out to get any money he could by any means.

Then there was the conversation Charles had overheard him having with Bernard Walton in Bath. Ran knew something that Bernard wanted him to keep quiet, and Ran, presumably because of some financial arrangement with the star, also wanted to keep it quiet. If the challenge Mark Lear had thrown down in the studio threatened that cosy little set-up, then Ran was quite capable of using any means to neutralise that threat.

What the secret was that Ransome George and Bernard Walton shared, Charles didn't know. Bernard certainly couldn't have had anything to do with the porn tapes, because Mark had specifically denied ever working with him. But the tapes were the link between Mark and Ran.

Charles was confident that it would soon all be clear to him. Though he hadn't got the fine detail of motivations worked out yet, he felt certain that Ransome George had murdered Mark Lear.

‘Maybe it'd make things easier,' he was aware of Maurice Skellern's voice going on, ‘if you told me why you were trying to get this information.'

‘Yes, yes, perhaps it . . . No, I'm sorry, Maurice. Have to keep quiet about it for the moment. I think I'd better talk to Ran.'

‘All right, but when you're with him, just make sure you don't open your wallet.' Maurice's laugh wheezed away at the hilarity of the idea.

‘Yes, yes, all right, very funny. Anything on the other names I mentioned?'

‘Nothing that ties them up with Mark Lear, no. David J. Girton may have been involved in some overnight expenses fiddles, but no worse than most BBC producers of the time got up to.'

‘What about Bernard Walton?'

‘Nobody's ever got anything on Bernard Walton – well, except for insincerity, egotism and being a workaholic. Anyway, all those just go with the territory of being a star. Otherwise, dear old Bernard remains Showbusiness's Mr Squeaky-Clean.'

‘Never anything dubious on his sex-life?'

‘Charles, the general view is that Bernard Walton doesn't have a sex-life, that he's so obsessive about his work Mrs Walton would get more action in a nunnery.'

‘But they've got three children, haven't they?'

‘Yes, and the consensus is that those three times were the only three times it's ever happened. I mean, I'm not one to spread gossip, but . . .'

Why is it that people say things like that, Charles wondered. Why do they say exactly the opposite of what they mean? Why do the shiftiest characters in the world always begin sentences with ‘Honestly . . .' and ‘Trust me . . .'?

But, as Maurice Skellern rambled on with more details about the supposed aridity of Bernard Walton's sex-life, Charles Paris was reminded of something else he had to check up on. He must find out precisely what place Pippa Trewin had in the star's life.

He finally located Ransome George in the pub near the stage door before the show that evening. He indicated Ran's gin and tonic glass. ‘Another one of those?'

‘If you're buying, Charles, I would be honoured.' He did it in his obsequious-funny voice. Had there been other people there to hear it, the line would have got its certain laugh.

They settled with their drinks. Instinctively, Charles had bought himself a large Bell's. It was only as he was carrying the glasses back to their table that he remembered his pledge to Lisa. Oh well, time enough. If he didn't drink on the Friday or Saturday, then when they met on the Sunday, he'd have survived nearly three days without booze.

Anyway, he was conducting an investigation. He had to relax the person he was pumping. If Ran noticed Charles wasn't on the Bell's, that might put him on his guard.

Even as he shaped these justifications, Charles Paris knew they were nothing more than the casuistry of the alcoholic. He raised his glass to Ran. ‘Cheers.'

‘Down the hatch.' Again, the timing and the voice were funny. It was difficult to consider someone who could be so consistently funny in connection with a murder enquiry. But then so impermeable was Ransome George's humorous defence that it was difficult at times to think of him as a human being, or to get near the real human being who must lurk somewhere in the middle of all the funny faces and funny voices.

‘Was talking to my agent about poor old Mark Lear . . .' Charles began.

‘Uh-uh.' Ran's reaction was entirely without attitude. He didn't sound anxious or guilty. He didn't sound anything. ‘Who is your agent?'

‘Maurice Skellern.'

Ransome George just giggled.

‘Maurice used to know Mark way back in the early 1970s,' Charles lied. ‘I gather you did some work for him back then . . .'

Ran didn't deny it. ‘Odd little bits here and there, yes.'

‘Agent mentioned something about some audio porn tapes . . .'

‘So?'

‘Do you remember making those?'

‘Vaguely. I've done all kinds of stuff over the years. Never been out of work for more than the odd month.'

‘Lucky you.'

‘Partly luck. Partly grafting away, following up leads, making the right friends, you know how it is.'

‘Oh yes. Were you actually involved in the production company that made the porn tapes?'

For the first time there was a wariness in Ransome George's eye. ‘May have been. Why you asking?'

‘To be quite honest, I think there was something funny about Mark Lear's death.'

‘Funny?'

‘Not to put too fine a point on it, I think someone may have helped him on his way.'

Ran nodded slowly, weighing the idea. ‘I suppose it's possible. What's this got to do with the porn tapes?'

‘Well, that afternoon Mark talked about writing a book, exposing things that went on in the BBC, or amongst people who had BBC connections . . . Do you remember?'

‘Uh-uh.'

‘And in retrospect I've come to the conclusion that what he was actually doing was issuing a threat. He was saying he would expose something he knew about someone.'

‘Who?'

‘That's what I don't know. Obviously someone who was in the studio that afternoon.'

‘Mm.' Ransome George caught his eye. ‘You're not looking at me, are you? I never worked for the BBC.'

‘Not on the staff, I know, but you did the odd radio as an actor.'

‘Very few. Pretty quickly realised my face was going to be my fortune and concentrated on the telly.'

Charles took another sip of his whisky. It did taste good. The idea that he could ever give the stuff up permanently seemed more remote than ever. ‘I've just a feeling, Ran, that what happened to Mark is somehow tied in with events at the BBC in the early 1970s.'

Ransome George shrugged, without much interest in the subject. ‘Maybe.'

‘So I want to find out all the detail I can, particularly about the time when Mark was involved in producing those porn cassettes.'

‘Well, good luck. I don't see that it has anything to do with me.'

‘You were involved in making those cassettes, so you could fill in a bit of the background.'

‘Yes, possibly I could. Doesn't mean I will, though, does it?'

‘Why not?'

Ran didn't answer that straight away. Instead, he asked, ‘What kind of stuff do you want to know?'

‘Anything. Everything. Names of the other actors involved, for a start.'

‘It'll cost you.'

‘What do you mean – it'll cost me?'

‘I'd have thought the words were clear. We live in a consumer society. Most things have a price. Information's certainly a marketable commodity. I've got information you want. So, to get it, you're going to have to pay me.'

‘How much?'

Ransome George stretched out a ruminative lower lip. ‘Say five hundred quid per actor's name.'

‘What? But I haven't got that kind of money.'

‘Didn't think you had. Means you haven't got that kind of information either, doesn't it?'

Charles was too dumbfounded by this reaction to press his point. Instead, he said, ‘Incidentally, Ran, talking of money . . . there's still the small matter of that twenty you borrowed from me on the last day of rehearsal in London.'

Ransome George looked up, his face full of shock and injured innocence. ‘Oh, now come on, Charles . . .'

‘What?'

‘I paid you back that money when we were in Bath. Don't you remember, just before the first night? You were hurrying to your dressing room and I thrust a twenty into your hands.'

‘I don't remember that.'

Ransome George hit his head with the heel of his palm in annoyance. ‘Oh no, you must've left the note in the pocket of your costume. I bet one of those little sluts in Wardrobe nicked it.'

The awful thing was that, for a moment, Charles actually believed it. He'd underestimated Ransome George as an actor.

‘So what was it like directing Bernard Walton in his first major role?'

There was something creepy and slightly unwholesome about Curt Greenfield. He was late thirties, a showbiz journalist who'd developed a lucrative second string as a paste-and-scissors ‘biographer to the stars'. An uneven beard straggled round his chin. His clothes were sweatshirt, denim jacket, jeans and incongruously new-looking cowboy boots.

Curt Greenfield had no social graces, made no attempt at small talk. He hadn't offered coffee or a drink when Charles appeared in the theatre bar for the interview officially sanctioned and arranged by Tony Delaunay. All Curt Greenfield wanted was quick, quotable answers to his questions. Answers that could be shoved straight into his book with the minimum of editing.

‘Well, he was quite inexperienced,' Charles replied, ‘but he had got something.'

‘Star quality?' asked Curt Greenfield, ever eager for the cliché.

‘I wouldn't say that. More a stage presence. Even back then, when he was on stage, the audience found it difficult to concentrate on anyone else.'

Charles saw the biographer write down ‘Star quality', then look up and ask, ‘Why in particular did you cast him? What was it about Bernard that so impressed you?'

‘Well, his stammer was certainly part of it.'

‘So you'd say Bernard Walton's speech impediment, something which to many people might appear as an obstacle, in his case proved the springboard to stardom?'

‘No, I'm not sure that I would say that,' said Charles, reluctant to have his views reduced to journalese.

Curt Greenfield ignored the objection. ‘And was the Cardiff production when you first met him? You didn't know him as a child? You didn't know any of the Miles family or –?'

‘I met him first at the London auditions for that production of
She Stoops to Conquer
.'

‘By which time he was already “Bernard Walton the actor”?'

‘I suppose you could say that. He hadn't got much experience at that stage, but he had been around a bit.'

‘Hmm . . .' Curt Greenfield didn't reckon any of that was worth writing down. His hopes for charming, winsome reminiscences of the star's boyhood were not to be realised. ‘Anything else?' he asked restlessly. ‘Any little anecdotes? Any stories that show what a popular member of the Cardiff company Bernard Walton was?'

‘No, I can't think of any of those.'

The biographer shrugged. ‘Oh well, if I put something like . . . “Bernard Walton's infectious high spirits made for a relaxed and convivial backstage atmosphere”, that should cover it.'

‘Not really. I think that'd give rather a misleading impression of –'

‘And he's been generous to you over the years, I gather?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Helping you out. Seeing you got the odd small part in shows he's been involved in. Not forgetting the lesser figures who helped him on the way up.'

‘No, I wouldn't put it like that. I'd say –'

But Charles knew his protests were in vain. Curt Greenfield had arrived with his interview virtually written. Nothing that was actually said was going to change it.

The biographer closed his notebook with an air of finality. ‘That's it. I'll see any quotes I use are attributed to you by name.'

‘But will the words be what I actually said?'

Curt Greenfield looked at Charles in total incomprehension. He didn't understand the question. Then he sat back, with a reptilian expression, and said, ‘By the way, you know what I'm writing about Bernard is, like, the official, authorised biography.”