Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (28 page)

She rubbed her eyes, and that’s when she saw it. On her desk – among the crap – a large, brown envelope,”Tessie” written across the front, in Miller’s big, loopy hand.

Her heart twisted in her chest. Tearing the envelope open, she pulled out a thick wad of internet print-outs. Flicking through them, she realized Miller had fulfilled his brief to research the
Wacky House
scandal. The internet connection at her flat was hopelessly shonky – she could only presume he’d come into the office to finish the job. When, though? After leaving her at the KFC restaurant? Before heading for Oxford on the
next
fool’s errand she’d sent him?

Shamed, Tess shoved the dossier into her Puffa. How had she ever cared about a couple of kids’ TV presenters, caught in some ancient tabloid sting? Jeenie Dempster’s ensnaring of Alan Pattison and Kathy Bush seemed like a fairy tale from a distant time and place. The present was proving much more frightening.

Tess was returned to it by the ring of their office phone. Her newly-redundant production manager grabbed it. Hanging up seconds later, Di looked like she’d fielded her last blow. “That was the Happy Cypresses Retirement Home,” she said. “Mrs Meakes wants to see you.”

“Great, “said Tess. “That’s all I need. What’s she got for me? Finished another
Miss Marple?”

“She’s dying.”

D
i didn’t speak to Tess again. Nor did Gid. The three of them cleared their desks in silence. When Di and Gid left to get pissed in the pub, Tess set off for Croydon. Squarey Street and its environs had proved an early grave for Jeenie Dempster. Now it looked like the last stop for Mrs Meakes.

Getting to the Happy Cypresses Retirement Home took almost 2 hours however, via tube, tram and bus; a dismal journey, made wretched by Tess’ thoughts. “How?” she asked, on arrival.

“Cancer, I’m afraid,” replied Miss Baker, the kindly Residential Care Manager.

“But I saw her just last week,” said Tess. “At Jeenie Dempster’s Memorial Service.” Crying, she recalled guiltily.

“Oh, Mrs Meakes is a trouper, I’ll give you that.” Miss Baker gestured for her to follow. “But the end often comes very swiftly with these things – mercifully so.”

As they walked, she explained Mrs Meakes had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, shortly after the death of her husband. The grieving widow had refused any attempt at treatment, confining herself to six months to live, “at best.”

No ‘best’ about it, thought Tess. She heard how recent weeks had been marked by an increase in pain; more frequent spells of suffering. The past twenty-four hours had brought one such: Mrs Meakes was now sedated but asking for Tess. “Normally, we would only allow family.” Miss Baker ushered Tess down a quiet corridor to the widow’s room. “Mrs Meakes has no remaining relatives, however, though Maggie is as good as a daughter to her…”

“Maggie?” Tess was struggling to get her head round it all. “You mean her care assistant – the girl who pushes her about?”

“Oh, it’s been a long while since Maggie was called a girl.” Miss Baker allowed herself a chuckle. “That’s her, now, heading off!” Tess caught a glimpse of a matronly rear in gingham overalls turning the corner from the patient’s room, before they themselves were in it.

The place was darker than Tess recalled from her previous visit. Thin, institutional curtains were drawn across the window; a single lamp guided her towards the dying woman’s single bed. Tess passed her bookcase, still groaning with well-thumbed murder mysteries, and saw newspapers still piled up by the bed. The pages were closed, however, the tabloids consigned to a table – for several vials of pills and a plastic jug of water. Tess thought back to her first visit to this room: She’d thought the thrill of Jeenie’s murder was giving Mrs Meakes a new lease of life.

Had the excitement actually finished her off?

“Don’t lean so close.” A plaintive mutter issued from the bed. “You smell like Cocktail Hour.”

Fair enough, thought Tess, who’d stopped off for a G&T midway between train and tram. Scouting round for a seat to pull up to Mrs Meakes’ bedside, Tess found none. Miss Baker had discreetly vanished.

Keen not to quibble about place settings in the House of Death, Tess lowered herself into Mrs Meakes’ vacant wheelchair – poignantly, the cushion on its seat still bore her dent – and wheeled herself gingerly to the bed.

The patient looked half her previous size. Unbrushed, unloved, Mrs Meakes’ hair was exposed as a few grey wisps clinging to a skull. Beneath her eye sockets, the skin of her face had crumpled like a tissue; her soft cheeks were latticed with broken blood vessels. Her fragility reminded Tess of their first meeting on that fateful Monday ten days ago – when Mrs Meakes had been just another trembling geriatric to be manhandled through a
Pardon My Garden
shoot. “Why didn’t you tell us you were ill?” said Tess. “We’d have never let you go out in the storm. Not without a Pac-a-mac.”

Mrs Meakes stirred under her blankets. “If I’d told you I was riddled with this… this horrible thing… you’d have called the whole show off. And I’d promised Reg.” Her eyes shut. “I promised Reg.”

They sat in silence for a bit. Tess felt a familiar pain: that, just by being here, she was making things worse. “Are you sure it’s
me
you want to see?” she said, at last. “Haven’t I done enough already?”

Mrs Meakes’ response surprised her. Slowly – infinitely slowly – the old woman raised her hand, and placed it over Tess’. Staring down at the knobbly knuckles, Tess felt her throat constrict. She tried to recall the last time someone had held her
hand.
Not counting Miller at busy crossings, it was probably Dad. (He left everyone with that damned papal squeeze: “Darcus Darling. So
good
.” For you to meet me). He’d be in the edit now, she guessed, demanding a cropped shot of his daughter puking in a bin.

Hit with a hot rush of shame, Tess tried to pull her hand away. But Mrs Meakes wasn’t giving up her grip yet. “You’ve got to help,” she urged hoarsely. “Before it’s too late.”

Her free hand crawled slowly – infinitely slowly – down her bedspread. She gestured to a drape placed over her knees. Tess picked it up – and saw a copy of today’s
Mail
hidden beneath. The newspaper was open at a double-spread: grainy screen grabs accompanied a lurid description of Colin Pound’s death,
live on TV. A second casualty for the daytime TV show
. “
DEAD WITH SANDY AND FERGAL,”
screamed the headline. “
Is a double-killer at large?”

“Who would want to kill
Mr Pound?”
whispered Mrs Meakes. “What did that silly chef ever do to anyone? Apart from that terrible thing with cheese sauce and sourdough.” She gave a long sigh. For a surreal second, Tess feared it was her last. Then she spoke: “I suppose there is
one
consolation…”

“Yes?” Tess could have hugged her.

“The police will
have
to stop hounding that poor Mr Pattison now.”

“They will?” Tess doubted it. Sandy Plimpton may have accused Mark of murder but she had no proof – particularly as forensics had failed to date the planting of the nuts in Colin’s pastry fridge. On the other hand, just days before his death, Colin had appeared on a televised press conference to accuse Alan of threatening his life. The circumstantial evidence continued to pile up against the hapless fan, but
still
no-one had answered the crucial question….

Tess cleared the medical supplies from Mrs Meakes’ bedside tabloids. She got at the newspapers, rifling through last week’s reports, tearing pages to get to the paparazzi’s last known sighting of Alan Pattison. Anorak soiled, hood up, he was waddling away from reporters, straight into the path of a recycling bin. “How did
this
poor sod spring through your kitchen window to break in?” said Tess. “How did he lay his trap, then get Jeenie
to
it? He couldn’t pass for a limo driver. He could wield a blunt object, I grant you. But with the stealth and precision required to lay Jeenie unconscious with one blow? As for smothering her to death with something he was wearing – Christ on a bike – Alan would ‘CHOOSE LIFE’ and a good anorak over dralon any day.”

“Dralon? What do you mean,
dralon
?”

“She was smothered, Mrs Meakes. Fibres of the stuff were found in her windpipe.”

“Her windpipe? So
that’s
why the police kept asking me if Reginald had a dralon suit. I wish they’d said why. Why didn’t they say
why
.” Her head started to tremble. She clawed at her sheets. “I might have remembered sooner.”

“Remembered what, Mrs Meakes?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’ll turn out to be nothing – it’s only being stuck here in bed that it came back to me – what we found—”

“
What
did you find?”

“A dralon jacket. A damp, dralon jacket – Maggie said it must be the rain – but thinking about it now,” she frowned. “It could have been blood.”

Mrs Meakes was struggling for every breath. Tess knew she should come back another time. But would there be one? In the end, the dying woman took the decision from her hands. “It was Bin Day, you see. The morning you came to film,” whispered Mrs Meakes. “7 o’clock it was, Maggie wheeling me up Squarey Street, and my neighbours’ rubbish bags all put out in the street for the Bin Men. That’s where we saw it – a jacket. Such a smart jacket – from a suit, you know? But it was rolled up… in a ball… in the rubbish. On the kerb outside my house.” She paused, as if to drag some last reserve of air from her corroded tanks.

“I asked Maggie to hold it up – the jacket – it looked rather good against her, I thought, but she shuddered – said it smelt rotten, it was wet-through. She dropped it back down among the rubbish and I thought nothing more of it…. but it
couldn’t
have been the rain, could it?” Her agitation was growing. “We didn’t have our umbrellas up, you see – the storm only got going
after
we let ourselves into the house, so it
couldn’t
have been rain soaking it.”

“But blood?” Tess felt her skin turn clammy. “Wouldn’t Maggie have seen it – on her hands–?”

“It was dark – so dark – she dropped it in a flash, of course. Said the jacket would never fit her anyway – far too small.”

Tess recalled the earlier comment from Miss Baker: Maggie was no girl. “Just how big
is
Maggie?”

“Well, she’s no twig,” conceded Mrs Meakes. “But she’s nothing compared to
him
.” Her cloudy eyes moved to the newspaper Tess was holding. “Him. In the photo. What do you call him?”

“Fat Alan.”

“Exactly.” Mrs Meakes closed her eyes. “I spent sixty years buying suits for my Reg. I know a man’s measurements, and believe me, dear, your Fat Alan could
not
have worn that jacket to kill Jeenie.”

Of course, it didn’t rule out the possibility he’d brought it with him. But why would anyone – even someone as daft as Alan–
deliberately
transport a dralon jacket as a murder weapon? It’d be like a soldier going into battle with a sponge.

Tess felt a spike of hope. If Alan
was
too fat for that jacket, she knew two men who weren’t: Mark Plimpton – aggressive and whippet-thin from weeks of stress. Rod Peacock – hard-as-nails but the size of a child.

Another thought occurred to her: What about Sandy? The Executive Presenter owned a long line of ‘power-jackets’. Perhaps dralon, French-tailored, was chic? It was more likely than Sandy’s swoon at Colin’s death. Because Tess knew her boss. She’d been driven by her relentlessly – and seen her sharp turn at Jeenie’s wake. Surprised in the toilets, Sandy had shrugged on her latest power-jacket, and shrugged
off
the death of Jeenie. In fact, she’d crowed over the murder of the woman who’d stolen her husband – and vowed to conceal the lover she’d taken to replace him… the lover she wanted to discard.

The lover who’d just ended up dead.

“You’re sure the jacket
was
taken away by the bin men, Mrs Meakes?”

“Oh yes.” She gave a faint nod. “We heard their lorries come while we were tidying up for your crew – all that crashing and banging…”

All that tidying away of crucial evidence. Tess swore. She imagined Jeenie’s killer slipping out of 13 Squarey Street in the early hours of Monday morning. Seeing the rubbish put out by neighbours the night before, they could have counted on its collection, long before any police arrived. “Now it’s so much landfill,” she said. Over a week had passed since Jeenie’s murder. Who knows where the rubbish from a small South London street had ended up? “Not even New Scotland Yard could dig it up now.”

“Good.” Mrs Meakes eyes sought Tess. “If anyone’s going to catch Jeenie’s killer, I want it it to be you.”

“Me?” frowned Tess. “
Me?
”

“Yes dear, why not?” Expectation suffused the face of the dying woman.

Faced with such a rare profession of faith, Tess felt the old panic rise up, and snap something worn and thin snap inside her. “I’ve spent two
weeks
trying to investigate Jeenie’s murder, Mrs Meakes. All I got for my efforts was a ringside seat when the killer struck again.” She chucked down today’s
Sun.
“On the other hand, I
have
won a starring role in Darcus Darling’s new documentary about his investigative cretin of a daughter – and got my entire production team fired.”

“You
did
dear?” Mrs Meakes sounded faintly impressed.

“To try and save your
poor Mr Pattison
, I ended up shafting the
few
people who trusted me.” Tess thought of her sacked crew – Di heading back to Mumbles, Gid price-checking shoes at JD Sports. “My Dad’s right,” she said. “I’m a big, saggy tit.”

Her words exploded into the room. Mrs Meakes recoiled. “Forgive me, dear, I’m dying – but what’s your father got to do with it?”

“Nothing. Everything.”

Silence.

“As I said, dear, I’m dying,” coughed Mrs Meakes. “I haven’t got all week.”

Tess laughed. Sort of. She shifted in Mrs Meakes’ wheelchair. Tess didn’t
do
chats. Not personal ones. She talked to Miller, of course, about the day-to-day stuff. (Where’d he put the Ginger Nuts? How
did
all those Fraggles fit on that rock?) That was kind of it. Obviously, the whole mother-daughter thing was out – Darcus cast too big a shadow. (Not that Tess’ Mum saw it that way: as far as Violet was concerned, it was her Amazonian daughter she couldn’t get round. Tess got close, and she clutched at her solar eclipse glasses). Mrs Meakes, though, she
was
maternal. Even now, she was like a picture book-granny – concerned eyes above a nightie – unaware the wolf was coming.