Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (29 page)

“It’s all my fault,” said Tess. “For forgetting”.

“Forgetting what?”

“That I’m crap. I forgot, you see – in all the hoopla. I started trying.”

“What’s wrong with trying?”

“Nothing,” conceded Tess. “Till you get to the bit where you fail.” Like her first and only worthwhile job. Straight out of college, Tess had volunteered to work at a women’s refuge in Queen’s Park. The people she met – the stories they’d told – had blown apart her mild, middle class life. But she’d not run – not then. She’d learned, listened and worked. Tess had started to believe – her efforts
might
come to some good – then she’d made a mistake – the same mistake she’d been making for years. She’d told her Dad about it.

Falteringly, Tess now told Mrs Meakes how she’d hoped for his approval.
He’d
smelled a story. “Dad persuaded BBC2 to commission a documentary following the shelter’s work. I’d been accepted by the women and the staff, so Dad made me a researcher.” She spoke rapidly, scared to take her eyes off her failing friend. “He put me in charge of liaising between the shelter and the TV production team.”

Tess hated the way, even now, the memory made her heart beat faster. Pumped up by Dad’s faith in her, Tess had developed fragile relationships with women ready to talk about years of suffered violence and domestic abuse. Having earned their trust, Tess handed it over to Darcus. Her crusading father would help them. He’d make world-shaking TV.

“And did he?” asked Mrs Meakes. “Shake the world?”

“Yep,” said Tess. “He did that.”

Back in the dark. A BBC edit suite. Tess recalled the rich black quality of the room, as she crept in, keen to learn. “Auntie Beeb wants controversy,” she heard her father chuckle to his editor. “Darcus Darling wants a new series of
World Inaction
. So how about we cut that
dreary
section with Rita sobbing about how her husband tried to iron her face – and replace it with thirty seconds of Rita dragging on a fag and admitting to a Magners cider habit?”

“What did you do?” asked Mrs Meakes.

“Nothing. And I continued to do nothing when our righteous ‘feminist’ director joined the edit, and Dad started stroking her thigh. I’d always wanted to see the famous Darcus Darling at work, hadn’t I?”

She felt Mrs Meakes squeeze her hand, but couldn’t tell if it was in sympathy or pain. Nice one Tess: the poor woman’s dying and you make her listen to
your
problems? “The finished film was a ratings hit,” she wrapped. “Aired at 9pm peak, the documentary presented the women’s refuge as a mix between a single mothers’ crack den and a ball pit for wayward kids. The narrative was led by interviews with silhouetted men, all lamenting how they’d been ‘made to snap’ by nagging wives and the stress of a regular commute.”

Three of the women had to be removed for their own safety straight after the film went to air, the rest when the refuge shut down due to a knee-jerk withdrawal of funding.

Under cover of the furore, Darcus Darling moved his ‘feminist’ director (now doting girlfriend) into a flat in Cadogan Square. While he briefed his journo pals at The Ivy about the “amicable break-up” of his twenty-five-year marriage, Mum had shut herself in the living room. “I’m still waiting for her to come out,” finished Tess.

Why bore Mrs Meakes’ with the rest? Tess had been twenty-one, not a baby. She’d not needed her mother to assist her through the basic stages of bereavement: horror, grief, and kicking down the door of her father’s flat. Rifling Darcus’ desk, Tess found gushing love letters from previous paramours, plus a solicitor’s letter confirming Mr Darling’s completion on a purchase of a 6-bedroom house, advertised as ‘in need of love and repairs but marketed at a very reasonable price, due to its recent use by a women’s charity in the delightfully up-and-coming Queen’s Park.’

Of course when confronted, Dad had offered up some
perfectly
reasonable explanation, delivered in his paternal, ‘I love you from above’ tone. Even now, it rang in her ears, deafening her -

“So,” coughed Mrs Meakes. “Your mother hid from her shame. What did
you
do?”

“Me?” Tess looked down
.
She was wearing yesterday’s clothes and Monday’s body odour. She was nursing a headache, and clutching a bag that contained half a kilo of seed potatoes and a hole-punch (both of which she’d just stolen – pointlessly – from her desk at Backchat). “I became an investigative reporter”.

“Exactly,” said Mrs Meakes. “A murdered woman was buried in my garden. Now another poor man has been killed, I can’t go easy to my grave until you tell me. What do you know?” Her grip tightened. Tess felt herself held in a rigor mortis embrace, and when she looked into the widow’s cloudy eyes, she saw death.

“Colin was effectively poisoned,” she answered. “Jeenie knocked unconscious, and then asphyxiated. Based on what you’ve just told me, I’m guessing the killer used their own jacket to smother her, and then tossed it away among the rubbish.” Tess tried to picture what had happened that dark morning in Squarey Street. She imagined Sandy twitching off her tailored jacket, and thrusting it into Jeenie’s mouth. Then the picture dissolved and re-formed. Now it was Aaron Peacock hunched over Jeenie’s prone form. He was stroking her skin, then peeling off his jacket to form a deadly gag…

Fishing out her mobile, Tess checked it for the fiftieth time – but Miller still hadn’t called. The screen just showed a text from DS Selleck, re-routing tonight’s date to his Kentish Town flat, for a ‘romantic, home-cooked meal’. Great, she grunted with frustration. Today’s carnival of crap would end with her fighting off polite conversation over a low-lit Chicken Kiev.

She pushed herself up from Mrs Meakes’ wheelchair. There was nothing more she could do for the patient. Nothing she could do for anyone. Reaching the door, however, some lonely compulsion stopped her. “What do
you
think, Mrs Meakes? You’ve done all the reading.” She gestured at the widow’s bookcase – at her library of murder mysteries. “Who’s our killer?”

“Someone full of hate,” she murmured. “Someone in pain perhaps… who wants others to share that pain… if only to understand…” The brave widow slipped into a drugged sleep. Tess took a last look round the meagre room – a dusty water-cup, a box of tissues and a faded family photo: Mrs Meakes’ daughter and her freckled-faced grand-child. The widow had mourned them so long. Now reunion beckoned.

The killer may have acted out of hate, but Tess doubted they were capable of pain. Closing the door, she just hoped Mrs Meakes would soon be out of hers.

As for Tess?

She needed an anaesthetic, fast.

Striding out into the hall, Tess headed for a hit.

T
ess couldn’t recall the last time she’d been asked out – actually gone on a date, as opposed to simply grabbing a man on his way from the Gents. GGuessing DS Selleck had exacting standards when it came to the fairer sex– and buggered if she was going to don her best underwear only to get ruled out on a technicality – Tess went home, and set about a full body-trim. Half an hour later, she’d nicked herself in places not seen since she last slipped badly in the shower, but fuckit: This was a depilation powered by rage as much as lust. Tess needed to feel that furious, sweaty release which left her, no matter how briefly, shattered and still.

Also out of range of her mother. “I saw your report, dear,” said Violet through the bathroom door. (Why, mused Tess, was their relationship conducted mostly through doors?) “On
Live With Sandy and Fergal.
I couldn’t follow a lot of it, but you looked very smart on the sofa. Your father will be so proud of you.” Tess banged shut the door of the bathroom cabinet, and started lacquering on mascara. “Though you
know
how I feel about too much make-up,” said her mother. “That poor, poor chef!”

“It wasn’t my eyeshadow killed him, Mum. It was anaphylacticshock.”

“That’s what the News said. But I don’t believe it, Tess, I’m scared.

“When you didn’t come home last night, I started to think the worst. What if the killer was to come after
you
?” Tess zipped up her knee boots, almost missing the next question. “Perhaps you could stay at home tonight?” Tess stared at the closed door. Her mother good as sighed with relief whenever her daughter left the flat. Now suddenly she was trying to keep her
in?

“Just the two of us,” Violet’s voice grew pleading. “We could talk about old times… enjoy a proper catch-up.” Now Tess was scared too, (for it was fear prompting Violet’s request, wasn’t it? Not a sudden urge to find to trip down Memory Lane, and find out if her daughter had passed GCSE Maths).

“Sorry Mum.” Tess flung open the bathroom door and practically trod on her. Violet, diminutive as ever, presented a hopeful smile above a pink, floral dressing gown and mauve, furry slippers. She looked pretty and crumpled, and exquisitely sad, like a dusty museum-piece of the girl Dad had once fallen in love with. Only a heartless bitch of a daughter could turn her back on that. But hell, what would staying achieve? Being confined together by suffering wasn’t sharing it.

“It’s no good, I can’t stay.” Tess pushed past her. “It’s a work thing.” Grabbing her Puffa jacket from the hooks by the front door, Tess headed out with a grunt that tried to capture affection and regret, but just made her Mum back into the coats.

Slumped in her cab to Kentish Town, she felt panic grip her. The urge to talk to Miller was turning into a physical ache. S She tried his mobile one last time – still dead. She phoned the lodge at Jesus College – still no sign of Aaron Peacock. In the end, she reached inside her Puffa for the envelope left on her desk at Backchat. She may not have Miller but goddamnit, she had some bits of paper he’d printed off the internet.

Sure enough, Miller had googled her proud. All the gen on
Wacky House
was here, especially the scandal that had killed the popular, Saturday morning kidss’ show after just three series. Miller had cut and paste entries from various online TV archives, including ITV’s own website, which explained
Wacky House
had run from 1989-1991, and listed the main presenters as Jeenie Dempster, Alan Antony and Kathy Bush. He’d also printed out several photos of the happy trio – sharper, brighter versions of the faces now fading on Fat Alan’s bedroom walls. A very blonde Jeenie Dempster showed schoolgirls how to pierce their ears. An even blonder Alan Antony joked his way through a phone-in. Kathy Bush was jumped by a geriatric.

That didn’t look right, thought Tess. Peering closer, she saw the
Wacky House
stunt-girl was harnessed to an old man, who looked proud as punch and oddly familiar, the way all old men do.
Kathy Bush celebrates Father’s Day,
declared the caption underneath,
By jumping out of an RAF plane with her Granddad.

Wondering how hard one would have to torture Darcus Darling before he’d share a parachute with
his
daughter, Tess read on.

Not even ‘I HEART THE 80s’ pulled its punches about what followed:
“
Wacky House
was cancelled after its two most popular stars were exposed in a drugs and underage sex scandal. Kathy Bush and Alan Antony were childhood friends, discovered by
Wacky House
producers, while working the 1988 summer season at Minehead Butlins.”
This was news to Tess. Telling her son’s story, Alan’s mother had made no mention of his closeness to Kathy. Bit cold, wasn’t it? (Or just tough?)

“
Today, Jeenie Dempster is a gardening presenter on morning magazine show, Live with Sandy and Fergal,”
proclaimed TVGold.co.uk, “
Chirpy Alan and his daredevil pal have disappeared from our screens for good
.” In fact, Kathy had managed a season of provincial panto, according to Wikipedia, before being properly cast adrift. Several years of cabaret on cruise ships led to a back injury. Kathy ended up serving breakfasts on a cross-channel ferry line. It proved one fried egg too many. Ten years after her last appearance on
Wacky House,
Kathy pulled one final stunt – and took a dive from a Dover-Calais ferry.
“An inquest in December 2001 returned a verdict of death by drowning,”
concluded the online encyclopedia.
“Although suicide could not be ruled out, Kathy’s surviving family were denied a full inquiry.”

Returning Miller’s print-outs to the envelope, Tess shut down her last line of enquiry. Kathy Bush was a dead girl. The
Wacky House Two
were down to one. If Alan’s desperate mum wanted to fight to clear her son, she was on her own.

Alone.

Tess knew that feeling.

Fuckit.

As her cab pulled up outside DS Selleck’s block of flats, Tess started peeling off her Puffa.

The clean-cut policeman opened his door to a blonde bombshell. Her smile was broad, her shoulders naked. She wore a silky, cream slip that looked like it had been poured over her curves, and then frothed up around her thighs with an egg whisk. She handed him her coat. He took it. She strode past him to the lounge. Following, Selleck considered grabbing a whisky to steady his nerves. He didn’t get the chance. Tess had swiped the Glenfiddich off his drinks tray, and was crossing her legs on his couch before he could say “nice dress,” or ask if she’d hit traffic on the way in.

Somehow, he never seemed to regain his footing. Tess subsequently got him to serve dinner on their laps (‘cosier’), open two bottles of Pinot at once (‘we’re not students – why share?’) and then dispatch the bulk of both herself. “Not hungry?” she murmured, leaning forward to suck another lump of chicken from his plate of chasseur.

“Not massively,” he said hoarsely, watching her skirt rise like the tide… just before a tsunami hit. Sheer, black hold-ups and a squidgy stretch of thigh greeted him. Selleck was a man of neatness and order. He liked girls who wore flowery skirts and smelled of Timotei. Tess Darling was wearing very little, and smelled of Savlon antiseptic cream, yet he just wanted to stick his head in her lap and inhale. Panicking slightly, he tried put his mouth to more professional use.