Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (3 page)

“I’ll have to stop you there, Sir.” The first of the security guards placed himself between them. “We’ve been told to shut down the building to visitors. Mr Darling, I’m going to have to ask you to leave. Miss Darling, if you’ll come with me.”

Respectfully, he led Tess into the lift, where the second security guard was already waiting. As the doors closed, Tess looked over her shoulder at her father.

“I’m still on the old number, darling, so call me. I want to be here for you.” Then he turned back to the throng, as if the flashbulbs were meant for him.

Tess let her head fall back against the metal lift wall. It felt hard, cold and familiar. She hadn’t seen her father in three years. In all that time, he’d made no attempt to contact her. Now he suddenly thought she needed him? Well it had been a long time since she’d needed anyone, and she wasn’t going to start now.

Tess was still mumbling angrily to herself when the lift doors re-opened – and the security guards sprang into action. Before she could react, Tess was led down a dingy corridor towards a set of fire doors. Above them, an ‘ON AIR’ sign flashed red. Responding alarms went off inside Tess’ head but what could she do? One last push from her security escort, and she was plunged towards a searing light.

Basement Studio was the beating heart of Backchat – and home to
Live with Sandy and Fergal.
Off air, the studio was a dark and draughty space, littered with discarded scripts and plastic Starbucks lids. The TV cameras were shrouded in dust covers, and appeared to haunt the set, which took on the feel of an abandoned gold mine – sticks of cheap furniture and painted balsa wood held together by gaffer tape and lost hope.

On air, however, the magic happened. Vast racks of overhead lamps burnt away the scuff marks and dirt, and turned
Live with Sandy and Fergal
into TV gold. The hosts laughed, guests smiled and all was sweetness and light. Until the next ad break, at which point all hell broke loose.

“Kickbollockscramble.” That’s what the studio director called it. “Get the f*ck out of my way,” was what his crew now (variously) told Tess, as she tried to navigate the crowded hinterland behind the TV cameras. Floor runners in headsets and sneakers were darting to and fro, carrying messages, USB sticks and Evian water. Bangs sounded overhead as changes were made to the lighting rig. A pale-faced make-up lady speared Tess in the face with her bag of brushes, then a red-faced floor manager shoved her out of the way of Camera 2.

All three cameras were being wheeled into new positions, trailed by burly floor crew tugging huge electric cables; anyone caught in the way had to jump. Tess wasn’t built for American skipping however. Stumbling over a camera lead, she crashed into an assistant floor manager.

“Sorry!” she cried. The assistant floor manager just swore and got back to her job:,taping up a crack across a long, raised platform. Tess instantly recognized the studio catwalk – or ‘the plank’, as the studio crew called it, before pushing members of the public – invariably a size 18 plus – down its length for items on high street fashion and weight loss parades. Seeing it now, Tess realized the discomfort of these ‘real-life models’ could only be increased by the proximity of ‘plank’ to patisserie. Following a recent studio re-vamp – and a surge in home-baking shows – a
Country Kitchen
had been erected in a small space just to the left of the catwalk. (Luckily the camera crew specialized in tight angles). Every morning, resident chef Colin Pound whipped up something gorgeous in choux-pastry or sourdough for hungry viewers. Even now, manhandled by security, berated by studio crew and needing a wee, Tess took a moment to savour the smell of warm pain au chocolat.

The moment passed. The security guards gave her one, last shove – past the cameras and into the spotlight. Tess faced a fuschia pink sofa –
the
sofa upon which rested the hopes, dreams and bottoms of
Live with Sandy and Fergal,
aka hosts Sandy Plimpton and Fergal Flatts.

“What took you so long?” Sandy pulled Tess down on to the couch between them. “Tell me everything. Jeenie’s really dead?”

“Yes,” said Tess. To her horror, she felt tears spring into her eyes. The horror? These tears weren’t for Jeenie.

Sandy Plimpton was Daytime TV. She’d been the face of
Live with
since the show’s inception seven years before. Of course, it hadn’t been
Live with Sandy and Fergal
then. Much had changed, and it wasn’t just Tess who thought it for the worse. Though Sandy’s face was starting to sag, her grip on the show was getting tighter – and the results weren’t pretty. Determined to ‘inject values of serious journalism’, she’d recently introduced jaunty hybrid items such as ‘Bikini Mum Tums in Aid of Darfur’ and ‘EU Fashion Hour’. Ratings, already in decline, had started to plummet and the channel was talking about pulling the plug. If
Live with Sandy and Fergal
sank, it took Sandy with it – but not without a fight. “I’ve been trailing you as a World Exclusive.” She pulled back Tess’ mop of blonde hair. “You might have thought to use a brush.”

“Thirty seconds till we’re back from break,” the floor manager shouted from his spot beside Camera 1.

“You smell of damp,” added Sandy. “And what’s with the skin-tight top and Puffa jacket? You look like a Polish casual worker.”

Tess’ sense of horror was climbing. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until a soundman approached the sofa, stuck one hand down the back of her skirt and another down her cleavage – depositing a battery pack and clip mic respectively – that vertigo hit. The world lurched, a red light flicked on Camera 1, and
Live with Sandy and Fergal
came back from the ad break.

“Isn’t it desperate?” lilted Fergal, in his Irish brogue.

“Horrific,” agreed Sandy Plimpton. “Tragic. As we bring today’s
shocking
show to a close, it is still hard to believe – just three hours ago – we witnessed the discovery of Jeenie Dempster’s body, live on
Pardon My Garden
.” She turned to Tess.

“Producer Tess Darling was right on the scene. One of Jeenie’s
closest
colleagues, she has come straight from Croydon Police Station to update us on the morning’s tragedy.”

“Yer poor girl,” sighed Fergie, when Jeenie’s closest colleague failed to do much more than blink. “You’re still in shock, are yer not?”

But Tess was in a much worse place than that. Her clothes were damp and stinking. Meeting her father had added to her chill, but ten seconds under the studio lights and she was burning up. Her head was throbbing and her throat was dry. When she shut her eyes, all she could see was a murdered woman. Opening them, she got Camera 1.

“Here in studio, we have been replaying the fatal footage for viewers,” continued. Sandy. “Each time, it gets more disturbing, more harrowing.” She nodded to camera. “Let’s play it again.”

From vantage points around the studio, TV monitors clicked into life. For the first time, Tess saw the scenes witnessed by viewers. Rain lashed down on a dark and formless landscape, as Jeenie’s corpse was pulled from the earth like a meaty plug. Thick clumps of dirt dropped from her face and neck. Her soiled blouse rucked up to expose a meagre bra and a grey, undernourished stomach.

Watching it, Tess felt she was part of some terrible violation. As if feeling it too, the picture shook, veered up towards the heavens and then crashed back down to earth – towards a very different body. This one belonged to a blonde, blue-eyed Amazonian, emphatically alive and knee-deep in mud. A mini-skirt clung to her thighs like a sodden loin cloth – and it wasn’t just the mini-skirt clinging: The camera climbed up the wet, wild woman. Viewers rode a curve of hip – a dip of navel – to a swell of breasts beneath a banner, ‘
Lick my Green Finger’
.

“MILLER, YOU TWIT!” roared the Amazonian. “Cut your BEEPING camera, you BEEPING great BEEP.” A loud, snapping noise followed, then an agonised scream as the picture cut to black.

Back in studio, Tess stared at the ground, and willed it to swallow her up as it had done her dead colleague. Instead, Sandy Plimpton opened her mouth. “Now’s not the time to hold back, Tess, a terrible crime’s been committed. The last time you spoke to Jeenie – was anything worrying her?”

“No, I mean… Jeenie was…” Tess forced her mind back to last Friday – and her last shoot with the murdered presenter. Jeenie had been rude to their punter and mean to the crew. Come wrap time, she’d lit up a Camel cigarette, swapped her wellies for a pair of kitten heels and teetered off to her waiting car. “Just her normal self.”

“Tanks be ter God, she’s gone,” said Fergal. “To a far better place. Let us all take a moment to remember – Jeenie Dempster.”

On cue, a tribute VT started to roll, (Tess presumed it must have been compiled in the last half hour). While viewers enjoyed a slow-mo montage of their fallen star – Jeenie smiling to camera, and then laughing at a fat person bent over a Japonica – those still battling in studio took the chance to speak, free of their mics.

“Utterly heartbreaking, isn’t it?” said Sandy. “I don’t think I can watch”.

“Ach, you’re kidding aren’t you?” said Fergie. “You may’ve kept it together for the cameras, Sandy, but I saw your face when Jeenie’s body rose up out of the ground. You lit up like a Roman candle!”

Tess could have sworn it was Fergie Flatts who was glowing however. Squashed beside his plump body, she felt a damp heat of excitement coming off him. It was adrenaline, she presumed, the petrol required to fan the flames of live TV. With millions watching, Tess guessed Fergal couldn’t afford to feel real grief. (As her own great father put it, “If I start to care too much about the bomb victim on my left, dear, how can I focus on the next countdown to break?”) Even so, Tess detected a sour note to Fergal’s clowning.

He’d arrived on the show only recently, charged with being a cuddly, comic foil to serious Sandy. In TV terms, Ms Plimpton remained the heavy-hitter – interviewing politicians and ‘serious’ actors, while Fergal gossiped with soap stars and One Direction. In real life, however, the genial Irishman had swiftly won round the studio crew with his filthy, off-camera jokes (and on-air dedication to teasing Sandy). Jeenie alone had taken against him. Calling him the Fat Queen or Old Mothball, her spite had reached a zenith at the Backchat Annual Party. Fergie had strolled into the marquee with his new boyfriend – a swarthy, Spanish scaffolder with tattooed arms and ebullient chest hair. Gideon had christened him ‘Furry Paolo’. Jeenie did one better: Midway through the after-dinner toasts, she’d ‘outed’ him as a notorious Soho prostitute. Furry Paolo had made a swift exit, leaving Fergie heartbroken – and humiliated. He subsequently discovered a guest at the party had recorded every word of Jeenie’s drunken invective on their mobile phone. (Until Flatts’ lawyers moved in,
“Fergie-get-your-hairy-hooker-off-my-Pimms’
had been THE ringtone round Dean Street).

Could Tess blame him for not mourning her death? Especially when Sandy seemed set to do it for the both of them. “Heartbreaking,” she repeated, louder now, as viewers returned from VT. “And shocking. We have all of us witnessed a terrible event today. Having shared this…this…outrage, I consider it only right you at home learn the truth behind it. Jeenie, you see, had a secret.” Sandy leant in to Camera 1.

“This secret, as her friend, I swore never to divulge. But now she is dead – dead in the most
suspicious
circumstances – I feel a duty to reveal what I know. Jeenie—” Sandy waited for the close-up. “Was being stalked.”

As a cliffhanger, Sandy couldn’t have timed it better. With credits about to roll, a visibly-started Fergie thanked viewers for watching and closed the show. Back in studio, no-one moved. From the lowliest runner to the toughest grip, they waited for Sandy to finish what she’d started.

They were to be out of luck. A curt nod from Sandy to the floor manager put her crew back to work. It was left to Tess to ask the questions. “Jeenie had a stalker?”

“That’s what I said.”

“She confided in
you?”

“Of course,” flushed Sandy. “Why wouldn’t she?”

The answer hung in the air. Three months ago, Jeenie Dempster had stolen Sandy Plimpton’s husband. Losing him had struck Sandy to the core; worse, it had threatened her career. For Mark Plimpton was not just the love of Sandy’s life, he was her co-star.

The Plimptons had met while presenting a telethon for Anglia TV. Back then, Mark was the most dashing reporter on the local news. He subsequently proved to be the only man with enough foresight to seduce Sandy, the plain but passionate host of its weekly consumer bulletin. Vain enough to want it all but unsure how to get it, Mark had placed himself in Sandy’s strong, albeit slightly twitchy hands and, when Backchat Productions started casting round for a ‘cosy duo’ to front their new morning show, his new wife had pitched The Plimptons as the perfect pair.

So they had proved. Online polls regularly voted them Happiest Couple in Showbiz, as viewers thrilled to their daily marital sagas – from last-night’s row over the remote control to Mark’s reversed vasectomy (a Bank Holiday special). Swept up in the Plimpton’s desperate battle to conceive, the nation had cooed over the eventual birth of their twins. While Sandy had been only too relieved to sink her splintered pelvic floor back on to the
Live With
sofa however, Mark was to prove more restless…

Shortly after Jeenie Dempster bagged the
Pardon My Garden
slot, she’d bedded Mark. Three months ago, in a scandal that devastated Sandy and rocked the pages of ‘TV Quick’, he left his wife and twins for her. Worse still, he left the show.

Sandy had promptly demanded Jeenie’s dismissal, claiming she couldn’t work on-screen with her husband’s mistress without
Stop the World
turning into some low-rent soap opera (precisely the reason Backchat refused). To mollify their humiliated star, they offered her the role she’d always coveted: Executive Producer. She took it. Day in, day out, the nation watched Sandy link to the woman who’d stolen her husband, while her hair got thinner, her waist fatter and her lip liner increasingly disconnected from her lips.