Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (12 page)

“And now she’s dead.”

“Believe me,” said Sandy. “There’s more than one way to die.” She stared into the mirror for a moment. Then she put back her shoulders, and got to work. “Your cameraman, for example.”

“Miller?”

Sandy smoothed her eyebrows; bit colour into her lips. “Does he know his dream job is hanging by a thread? And
you
hold the scissors?”

“Look Sandy—”

“I’m upping the ante.” The face was back on; her straw-thin hair patted into shape. “I want your report to open on a
world exclusive
interview with Alan Pattison.”

“Fat Alan? You’re kidding. How the fuck—”

“You’ve won his trust, haven’t you?”

“But—”

“Use it.” Sandy nodded at the mirror, signing off on her restored image, and then turned, and leant past Tess for the door-lock. “Talk to Alan Pattison. Keep your mouth shut about me and Colin, and when all this has blown over – when Jeenie’s rotting in the ground, and Pattison is festering in jail – I might even bring you into the warm. As a studio producer.” She flicked the lock. “Let me down and it won’t just be your friend Miller facing a bleak future.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t forget and I don’t forgive. So brush your teeth, and watch your back – you’re Talent now.” Sandy pushed Tess back into the corridor of Soho House. “Welcome to the other side.”

• • •

With lead boots, Tess headed back down to Jeenie’s wake. She’d never seen Sandy Plimpton as a person before, just a mad-eyed media creature. That had been wrong, she now realized, and potentially foolish.
This
Sandy was a real human being, capable of profound passion. And passion, in Tess’ experience always got messy – ripped sheets, bruised coccyx… and murder?

Rounding the stairwell, her musings met Colin. Unintentionally, of course. Everything about the pillock was unintentional, Tess reflected, as she watched Colin usher his wife out of a room along the fourth floor corridor. “You were supposed to go home, Laura. What are you
doing
here?” he asked, obviously worried she’d heard him with Sandy.

“I was just looking for a book, dear,” she replied. “The bar downstairs was so hot and noisy, and people kept talking about this horrible man who’d been stalking Jeenie.”

Looking down from her position on the stairs, Tess could only see the top of Laura’s head, but her voice sounded querulous… and frightened. “What if he comes after
you
, Colin?”

“A hunk like me? He wouldn’t dare!” Her husband gave an over-hearty laugh, the kind that made Tess want to to punch him, but induced his wife to raise her face for a kiss. Tess caught a glimpse of her eyes. Bright green and sharp, they jarred with her voice. And didn’t seem to do wonders with Colin.

“Let’s get your coat, Laura, and pop you into a taxi home.” He extracted himself hastily. “I’m going to have to stay on for a while longer, I’m afraid. You know how it is with these celebrity parties – everyone wants Colin Pound to shake their hand, press the flesh.”

Grimacing at the thought of Colin pressing his wet flesh anywhere near
her
, Tess stayed back on the stairs, and waited for the couple to descend. “What were you doing up there, dear?” Laura asked, as Colin pushed her solicitously down the stairs. “There’s nothing but a Disabled toilet. I checked.”

“You did? Well don’t. I’ve told you before, Laura, you’ve got to stop checking on me. Or toilets. Not everyone can keep the facilities as clean as you do at home. Which is why it’s best you return there. Let’s get you in this cab.”

Despite – or perhaps
due to
the zeal with which her husband was hustling her out – Laura Pound shot a parting glance up the stairs. Whether fired by simple curiosity or genuine suspicion, the look she landed on Tess wasn’t pretty. Not a lot about her was, reflected Tess.

Mrs Pound was a big, nervy-looking woman. She appeared an uneasy combination of thickset and highly-strung. Her green eyes – her one beauty – looked strained, as if concerned her neck might any second snap under the weight of her large, Mount Rushmore head. Her broad shoulders were hunched, her hands as big as shovels – yet her clothes were those of a little girl. Laura wore a white shirt, navy kilt and tightly-buttoned, navy cardigan. Her feet were encased in flat shoes; her hair clamped into a velvet Alice band. She looked like an oversized, over-anxious schoolgirl, who’d just been promoted to the wrestling team.

Not
quite
ready to hit the mat herself, Tess tugged down her leather mini-skirt, and wished she didn’t always look such a guilty blonde.

“Are you
coming
Laura?!” As her husband’s voice rose up the stairs, Laura’s green eyes flashed like bits of broken bottle. Then she turned, and descended heavily after him.

Tess tried to give them a head-start. In the event, however, she overtook them on the first floor, as she picked up speed towards the exit. It was all too much: the gin, the heat, the sex, the loaded threats and false laughter. Tess hadn’t slept properly since the discovery of Jeenie’s body. Her stomach hadn’t stopped churning since Sandy tasked her with reporting on the woman’s death. For days, Tess had been propelled by nothing but her employer’s threats and her father’s scorn. Now a new force was taking over – the urge to flee. Time to escape another mess of her own making, thought Tess, pushing open the front door of the Soho Club. Sucking in the fresh air, she ducked away from the waiting press – thankfully distracted by the arrival of a small Russian oligarch and his 6ft bride – and headed down Frith Street to freedom.

She’d not got to the next corner before a strong arm went round her shoulders, dragging her off the street. “Oi!” she yelled, as she was pushed through the doorway of a dark, denuded cocktail bar. “What the fuck—”

“Keep your voice down, woman,” said her assailant. “I’m not planning on spectators.” He wasn’t going to get them here, she realized swiftly. Hauled into the neon-spliced gloom, Tess made out neither customers nor staff. Her assailant seemed to know his way however. He pulled her along behind him, kicking away bar-stools, and wrenching her arm, when she attempted to resist. Stumbling, swearing Tess tried not to panic. It was him, though, wasn’t it? The man in the baseball cap. Only it wasn’t a baseball cap, she saw now. A pristine white Nike Golf cap, it was pulled down tight over his head, hiding his hair, and showing only the back of his smooth, sun-tanned neck.

Assailants were going up in the world, she thought. They just weren’t getting any nicer. “Fuck,” she cried out. The bastard was tightening his grip on her arm, scraping her against table corners. He was leading her to a back room, she could tell, the kind where nice girls got garrotted, (and bad girls like her probably had to twerk a bit first).

Fear worked for Tess, however. It made her think. Recalling a self-defence class she’d taken at school, she dropped her weight. Knees buckling, she crashed sideways on to a chair.

To her horror, the man seated himself opposite. Whipping off his Nike Golf cap, he shook out a head of thick, blond hair. His cheeks were gaunt and his eyes haunted, but his smile was the stuff of two million housewives’ fantasy.

“Fuckinell,” said Tess. “You’re Mark Plimpton.”

I
t wasn’t just her assailant she identified. As her pulse rate slowed, Tess recognized the bar into which he’d dragged her. It was one of the anonymous, disco dens Soho is full of. Dingy places that stay empty until around midnight, when the better, bigger pubs and clubs around get rammed, and the doggedly drinking direct their (unsteady) steps to a bar where they know they’ll get served and may, if lucky, get snogged. The floor was sticky, the table was sticky – fair enough, it kept paying drunks glued into place – but the wall fittings were flash – all chrome and brushed velvet – and the neon sign above the bar was written in Times Roman calligraphy: Nero’s, aptly enough. Tess doubted the management were being funny though. There was
nothing
funny about this place. It was where dreams of a good time came to die.

Not that Mark Plimpton was giving up. Ten minutes after her grab off the street, Tess sensed her abduction was fast turning into a date. Having released her arm, the TV presenter had sat back in his chair, all charm. He’d apologized for his rough-handling of her, blaming the urgency of his situation—”I can’t afford to be seen talking to anyone – not like this, not today.” He’d even got them drinks. With the slick authority that comes with fame, wealth and a reasonable expectation of staff, Mark Plimpton swiftly summoned a waitress from the gloom behind the bar. Some fast pouring from Mark, and he and Tess were already halfway down a bottle of Sancerre. He was a smooth worker, she conceded, but then he’d had her at “Fancy a peanut?”

A couple of minutes before, while waiting for the wine to arrive, Mr Plimpton had pulled several bags of KP nuts from his coat pockets. “The only things keeping me alive this past week,” he explained, chucking a packet at her. “Nuts, booze…and Camembert.”

Tess could believe it. Mark had lost weight since his last, fraught appearance on
Live With.
Disconcertingly, it rather suited him.

Mark had always been the cosmetic half of the Plimpton package.
Live with Sandy and Mark
relied on Sandy carrying the show, Mark decorating it. And why not? He had an easy smile, a thick head of ash blond hair and expensively-capped teeth. His TV manner was relaxed and unapologetic. If you were a bloke, he squeezed your shoulder; if you were a woman, he squeezed your knees. After nearly a decade of hosting the UK’s top morning show, Mark had honed his flirty, ‘great-guy’ routine. While wife Sandy twitched and bulged, he’d just got tauter and more tanned. Now well into his forties, Mark still had the look of a shagged-slim tennis coach – tall, naff and horny. Just, it proved, Jeenie’s type.

Tess, however, was no Jeenie. And she’d never trusted dishy men. As a rule, they turned out to be dull in conversation and bad in bed. (Why bother to pleasure a lady, when she could just look at your gorgeous, climaxing face?) On top of this, a fair few could be prize shits.

But murderous shits? As Mark moved to refill her glass, Tess compared him with the last person sighted with the murdered presenter: chunky in a baseball cap. Obviously, Mark had the baseball cap, but that was a fairly standard badge of celebrity. Chunky? Weighted down with bags of KP maybe, but free of his nuts, he looked lean as a whippet. “You’re Tess Darling, aren’t you?” he smiled. “One hell of a debut you made on yesterday’s show, wasn’t it? I look forward to seeing more.”

Unsure how to respond to such lunatic flattery, Tess scowled and started sucking a lump of dry-roasted nut off her finger. As Mark Plimpton banged on about her ‘magnetic TV presence’ and ‘refreshing lack of poise’, she realised he was a) half-cut and b) unable to place her as the compost-lugging colleague he used to overtake on the Backchat fire stairs.

This didn’t surprise her. The gulf between on-screen Talent and their Production team could be huge, dependent on the character of the Talent in question. A decent, humble presenter cared about the hard-working team around them. The remaining 99% treated them as lesser mortals, who did curious things like ‘catch buses’ and pay income tax.

On his time on the show, Mark had ‘rested’ his charms off-camera, smiling only at the girl who was bringing his tea, and doing exciting things to a size 8 skirt. Those like Tess, who didn’t smile back, and was mostly bent over a mulch bag in jeans, he’d not registered. Tonight, however, was all change. When Mark’s flattery started to falter, she realized he was staring at her finger – or rather what was round it. “Your lips are incredible,” he said. “Seriously. You’ve got the most amazing mouth.”

She twisted it into grimace. “It’s not your night,” she said. Through a tiny window, set high in the wall behind Mark, she’d recognized a couple of reporters. They were now heading for the door of the bar. “The paparazzi are coming.”

“Shit,” said Mark. “We’ve got to get out of here.” Pushing back his chair, he felt among the wine glasses for his baseball cap. Pushing back
her
chair, Tess dropped under the table. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached up and pulled him down with her.

“Thanks,” he said, pushing his body up close to hers. A bit too close, she thought.

“Get off my boob,” she said. “Or I’ll—”

A rap on the table-top stopped her. Tess stuck her head out to see the barmaid. “I’ve got rid of the reporters,” said the barmaid. “They were only after a beer butseeing as there’s another thirty up the street, perhaps you’d be happier moving to our back room?”

Mark rose up with the nonchalance of a man who’d just been looking for his dropped Amex. This he now passed to the barmaid: He’d take a second bottle of Sancerre, and perhaps some olives?

Extending a hand to Tess, Mark seemed to relax for the first time since he’d grabbed her off the street. “Privacy is just what I’m after,” he explained “We need to talk.”

“We do?” Warily, Tess allowed herself to be led into a windowless snug, even gloomier than the main bar.

“You found my girlfriend’s body, didn’t you?” he said, as she stubbed her toe in the dark. “My wife’s got you reporting on her murder,” he said, as she fumbled for a seat. “Who better to tell my side of the story?”

“So there
is
a story?” said Tess, as archly as she could manage, having just sat down in a waste paper basket. “My cameraman’s just down the road. Let me call him and—”

“No cameras. Just you and me.” He closed the door behind her. “And Jeenie.”

Mark Plimpton didn’t speak again until the barmaid had brought in the wine, and lit a candle for their table. The introduction of a spotlight, no matter how flickering, seemed to energise him. The old, self-assured smile played across his lips; the famous blond mane cascaded from his widow’s peak. This was more like the dashing Mark Plimpton the public knew – an accessible, modern-day hero who occupied the mythical space somewhere between Aslan and Chesney Hawkes.

A hero who’d also developed quite a thirst. Tess counted two more glasses of wine disappearing down Mark’s throat in the time it took her to locate a pen and paper. (Despite her stellar promotion, she’d obviously not got round to buying anything useful like a reporter’s pad). Rummaging through her bag, Tess found an ancient leaflet from the GUM clinic, and scribbled ‘MARK PLIMPTON INTERVIEW’ in the blank space underneath
Chlamydia – Have You Got it Yet?