Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (17 page)

“You know the police came yesterday with a warrant?” said his mother. “The bastards took one look at this lot, and thought all their Sundays had come at once, didn’t they? Photographed everything, cleared out half his stuff.
Then
they took his clothes – every suit, every jacket he owned. My poor boy’s going to be stitched up all over again, isn’t he? This time, though, I
can
save him. I’ve got you, haven’t I?” Her tired eyes narrowed. “You’re on TV. And that means power. You’ve got to help us. You’ve got to know the truth. After all this time…”

From beneath the tea-tray, Mrs Pattison pulled a large, manilla envelope. It looked worn, the paper softened and stained with age. “I warn you, love, it’s not pretty.”

Silence fell, like a dead weight, pushing Tess down on to the bed. Taking the envelope, she shot Miller a look of dread. Were they being subpoenaed into something they’d both live to regret?

Mrs Pattison incepted the look. “The pair of you, you’re still kids, you’ll find it a shock. Both of you were too young to read the papers back then, I suppose?” She didn’t wait for an answer.

“‘Course
Alan
blocked it all out years ago. Denial, the psychologist called it. Bloody snot-nosed cow, telling me about
coping mechanics
–how Alan was
trying to make sense of things
by turning Jeenie Dempster into his best friend – but where the bloody sense is in
any
of this I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I kept this stuff. Kept it from Alan, at least.” She nodded at the envelope Tess was opening. “Too late, of course…”

Tess pulled out a piece of yellowing newspaper. She unfolded it. A double-page spread, dated 17 June 1988, showed rising young star, Alan Antony: young, handsome, and slumped over a table lined with cocaine. “WACKY HOUSE PERVERTS IN DRUGS AND SEX RING” screamed the headline over his bowed head. “ALAN ANTONY AND KATHY BUSH EXPOSED.”

Kathy Bush? Tess frowned. “Over here,” said Miller. She looked up to see her friend pointing at Alan’s shrine. “Kathy was the third presenter. The nice-seeming one,” Miller added sadly.

He was right, realized Tess, comparing the newspaper shots with the pictures lining Alan’s walls. But if Miller wanted to know what ‘nice-seeming’ looked like, he’d have to join her on the bed. (Fat Alan may still have seemed absorbed in his posters, but Tess sensed this story wasn’t one for reading-aloud).

With Miller leaning over her shoulder, Tess skimmed the salient points of the newspaperexposé: two teenage boys had been picked up outside a nightclub by
Wacky House
stars, Alan Antony and Kathy Bush. The boys had then been lured back to a ‘dingy flat’ for a night of illegal drug-taking and sex. From the handful of grainy snaps accompanying the piece, Alan seemed to have dipped into the drugs while Kathy dabbled with the boys. In one particularly graphic shot, ‘vile, red-headed temptress Kathy’ appeared to be satisfying both at once.

“You didn’t get this when you googled
Wacky House?”
Tess asked Miller. “What about your great background check on Jeenie?”

“I googled Jeenie. Not
Wacky House
. We’re talking about the olden days, remember, before the Internet. News was made of paper. And even then, most of it got rubbed out.” He nodded at the last couple of pictures: the faces of the ‘innocent paper-boys’ had been blacked out to protect their identity. To Tess, however, Kathy’s look of startled ecstasy rang a bell. “She did the stunts didn’t she? On
Wacky House,
I mean.” She tried to recall the nostalgia shows she’d watched about ’80s and ’90s TV. None of them had referenced Kathy’s subsequent disgrace. Libel fears, possibly? If the story hadn’t ended in a prosecution, perhaps broadcasters had to rein in their reminiscing? Kathy’s legacy remained one of courage under live TV fire. “Wasn’t Kathy Bush the daredevil of the trio? She was always being sent up a chimney, or pushed off a cliff.”

Mrs Pattison gave a grim nod. “The kids loved her for it. So did Alan. Jeenie destroyed them both.”

Tess looked at Alan, face-down in coke; Kathy, tits up in paper-boys. “They destroyed themselves, surely?”

“Bloody ‘ell, girl, don’t
you
believe it too!” Mrs Pattison shifted angrily on the bed, tilting the tea-tray balanced between them. “Can’t you see it was a set-up?”

“I—”

“
Wacky House
had just finished its last series, and Jeenie was getting desperate. BBC was lining up work for Kathy – ITV were talking to Alan – but no-one wanted
her.
Already had a bad reputation, didn’t she? Lazy little troublemaker. ‘
Course
she got jealous. Worse, she got scared.”

“Of what?”

“Losing it. Losing it all.” Mrs Pattison slammed down a careworn fist on the tea-tray. Biscuits jumped, tea spilled. “I was acting as Alan’s manager by then. I saw how telly worked: lots of people desperate for fame, only a few shows to get ’em there. This was the days of terrestrial, remember, you could count the good presenting jobs on the fingers of one hand. Competition was fierce. With Kathy and Alan out the way, Jeenie would be two places closer to her next big break.” Tess eyed her with new respect. Mrs Pattison saw it.

“I clean toilets for a living,” she said angrily. “I change soiled sheets, and wipe old dears’ bums. It makes me a few quid. It don’t make me stupid.”

“No,” said Miller, leaning over her tea-tray. “It makes you kind.”

“It makes me tired, that’s what.” But when Miller picked up the teapot, and re-filled her mug, she took it.

“The end, when it came, were quick. Night of some TV awards show, Jeenie invited Alan and Kathy back to her flat for an after-party. She had a room above Berwick Street Market – grubby little place it was – I told Alan not to go.”

“You were there?”

“At the Awards Show? I was his manager, love, I was stuck on a table between Jeenie Dempster and that mad-eyed Michael Barrymore – collecting every gong going – and even then, I could tell Jeenie was up to something. Sniffing like a drain, her eyes darting to Alan and Kathy every time a big producer approached them. She snatched them off the second the lights went down. Next morning, Alan rolled home, looking like death, saying he must’ve drunk something funny last night because he couldn’t remember anything – no more could Kathy. Next day, this came out.” She nodded at the newspaper article.

Tess looked back at the yellowing paper in her hand. “No mention of Jeenie,” she observed.

“Good, weren’t she?” sighed Mrs Pattison. “Fed Alan and Kathy to the lions, and then ducked behind the splatter. I never did see Kathy again – and Alan shut himself in his room for the best part of a year. When he came out, he was… he was…” She gestured uselessly at her son, now rocking gently in front of his wall shrine, one hand creeping down his trousers. “Like this.”

Shit, thought Tess, what did you say? Nothing, it turned out. You just gave her a biscuit, and looked like you meant it. As Miller stepped back, Mrs Pattison chewed gratefully on the Hob Nob he’d given her. The combination of glucose and good intention seemed to power her through. “About a year later, I saw Jeenie opening a supermarket down the road,” she finished. “So I confronted her”.

“And?”

“Bitch laughed in my face. Didn’t even
try
to deny it. Crowed about it, in fact, said she set the whole thing up with a couple of rent-boys she found down the Trocadero. Jeenie drugged the drinks, and took the photos. Then she paid the boys to flog the story and disappear.”

“She
said
that? Hell…” It was a bitter tale, Tess conceded, but did that make it true? Staring at the coke-addled shots of Alan ‘Antony’, she could see how his Mum might be in denial. More than twenty years on, she was still dealing with the wreckage. She needed someone to blame. But Jeenie Dempster? Tess tried to picture the lazy, selfish woman she’d known drugging drinks and hiring rent-boys. Where was the proof?

Shaking her head, she was pushing the newspaper back to Mrs Pattison when Miller stopped her. “Look, Tessie, the boy’s tattoo – don’t you recognise it?”

Tess followed his gaze back down to the page – to the lurid photo of Kathy with her ‘headless’ paper-boys. Though the newspaper described them as ‘young innocents’, the bigger lad, now Tess looked closer, had a distinctly hairy chest. Closer still, on one hairy arm, he had a tattoo. A colourful one: Mickey Mouse, no less. Doing something filthy to Tweetie Bird.

Miller’s eyes flashed behind his specs. “Come on, Tessie. You’ve seen this tattoo before!”

“I have?” Tess looked at him apprehensively. On darker nights, Miller wasn’t just her eyes and ears, but her memory banks. What was he about to tell her?

As Miller leaned down to her on the bed, she bit her lip. When he whispered in her ear, her whole neck tingled. It took a second, in fact, to get a purchase on what he was saying. “It’s Furry Paolo.”

Her head jerked up. “You what?”

“Furry Paolo! He had a tattoo of Mickey Mouse on his arm. Hurting Tweetie. This boy in the picture – it’s him.”

“Tits.” She looked back down at the page. “You’re right. It’s Furry fucking Paolo.”

They’d only met the man once – but the encounter had been pretty unforgettable. It was the night of the Backchat party. Keen to show off his hot new date, Fergal Flatts had introduced everyone to hunky, Spanish scaffolder, Paolo. Parading round the marquee, Paolo had flexed his hairy, tattooed biceps – and his mucky Mickey – for all to see. JJeenie had apparently chafed at any competition for the spotlight, however. As the after-dinner speeches commenced, she took over the mic to splash Sancerre and spite over Fergal, ‘my lovable but lonely co-host. I’m happy he finally earns enough to
buy
himself a boyfriend. Let’s toast the happy couple – Fatty Flatts and his length of Spanish Scaffold.’ Jeenie went on to claim she knew Paolo from old, and the only erections he produced cost £100 an hour. Paolo had not denied it. Instead, he’d given Jeenie a gesture somewhere between an insult and a salute. Then he’d shaken a horrified Fergie off with a shrug, and exited through the nearest tent-flap.

At the time, Tess – like everyone else – had assumed Jeenie had been casting her usual slurs, and inadvertently got lucky. (Spread enough shit, and some will stick). Now met by the proof of a much-younger Paolo – in an even more sordid clinch – Tess sensed an injustice may have been done. When it came to the Spaniard’s real trade, had Jeenie, for once in her life, been telling the truth?

“How old was Furry Paolo?” she asked. “At the Backchat party, I mean. What age did he look?”

Miller blinked. Like the shutter action of an old-model camera, thought Tess; surprisingly effective. “35-40,” he said. “No more.”

“It fits.” She re-checked the date on the yellowing, newspaper cutting. “June, 1988. Paolo could have easily been a young boy on the make.” Of course, there
may
have been other males with tattoos of Mickey Mouse rough-loving Tweetie Pie, but in the same square mile of Soho? Covered in
that
much hair? Jeenie crawling over both like a big, black spider…

“You’ve got to help him!” Mrs Pattison sounded scared: She was losing them, the newspaper story had been too much. “The police know everything now. It’s just a matter of time before it starts again.”

“What starts?” asked Miller.

“The threats, the rubbish – crap posted through our door. For days, weeks after the story, Alan got spat at in the streets – and worse. Come here, love, show them.”

Getting up from the bed, she pulled her son round from the wall. She reached up, and gripped his jaw, as she might the muzzle of a dog. “Lost half his teeth when some louts smashed his face in, nineteen years ago.” Her grip relaxed. Her strong hand cradled her son’s soft, scabied face.

“I got him out,” she said. “Moved halfway across London. Left the place I’d grown up – the place
he’d
grown up – and got him away from it all. I killed off Alan Antony. Got my boy back. But he wasn’t my boy any more, was he?” Alan jerked his face from her hand. His mother looked tired and pushed him down on to the bed.

“He shut himself up in here, didn’t he? Got fat. Grew his ruddy moustache. Built his wall. Hid behind it.” She gestured at the fading pictures, the peeling memories. “All this for the woman who’d destroyed him? It was a sick joke. But then our whole
lives
had turned into a sick joke, so why fight it? His…
thing
for Jeenie was the only thing kept him going. Now it looks like it’ll finish him off. Him or me.”

Mrs Pattison dropped her arms. But her hands were balled into fists, Tess noted. Strong hands, they were worn with hard work; cracked with detergent. They’d had a lot to bear, thought Tess. But the woman didn’t want her pity. She wanted her to save her son. “Mrs Pattison,” she said. “Where
was
Alan, the morning Jeenie was killed?”

“Here,” she said. “With me. Like we told the police. In’t that right, son?”

Alan had started rocking on the bed; started scratching at the inside of his wrist. “It’sch true,” he rasped through broken teeth. “I never followed Jeenie. How could I?”

Tess threw up her hands. “You had the bloody call sheet, man!”

“It was just a schouvenir,” he wimpered. “Just schomething – schomething Jeenie – becaush I loved her…
I loved her!
” Alan’s gaze grew imploring – but what could Tess do? She had only a super-human ability to disappoint. The old familiar sense of failure rushed her. Who was Tess, after all, but an erring TV producer turned Youtube prat and idiot sleuth? Alan Pattison/Antony had barricaded himself into his flat for the last twenty years. Now that Her Majesty’s Prisons looked set to take over the job, how was
Tess
supposed to spring him?

Staring desperately round Alan’s shrine, however, she saw how she
could
save herself.

Dad’s challenge had been straightforward. Darling Senior versus Darling Junior. Could the might of broadcast news survive the interference of modern media? Jeenie’s body had been dug up on live TV. Now who would crack the case? Darcus, BBC darling and establishment figure – or Tess, a tabloid TV burp turned online sensation? The odds were against her. Darcus Darling may have been the Old Guard but he had serious back-up – forty years’ investigative experience, powerful friends from Scotland Yard to Fleet Street, and the trust of the Great British Public Over the Age of 40. Tess had a lumbering cameraman, buoyant breasts – and Fat Alan.