Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (35 page)

“
Colin?
”

“The very same,” he grinned. “Pound was forever inviting the great and the good to his Tudor chalet in Kent. He’d flap his fat tongue, while his poor wife pissed round the potted shrimp.”.

Tess still wasn’t making the connection. “And Rutger was a
guest?
”

“He was the feckin’ catering,” chuckled Fergie. “With an eye to the main chance. Rutger spent most of last night bragging about it, and can yer blame him? He only landed in London, two months ago. Caught an episode of
Live With,
and decided
Country Kitchen
should be his. So he followed Colin from Backchat—” Tess held up her hand.

“You’re saying Rutger
stalked
him?”

“No,” snapped Fergie. “
You
are.
I’m
saying Rutger asked for Colin’s autograph, as a fan and fellow-chef. They got talking – Rutger got charming – and offered to cater his next party at cost. Fast forward a fortnight: Rod Peacock’s munching calamari in the Pounds’ conservatory, when Rutger leans over the buffet to slip him his showreel.” Even Tess was impressed.

Horribly so.

Everything about the priapic chef was sinister, she thought, his appearances fleeting but fatal. Rutger Aarse had arrived in the Backchat studio just in time to see Colin murdered. He’d returned to kill the careers of Tess and her friends. Last night he’d disappeared into the darkness, just as Fergie was knifed? No wonder Flatts was in pieces. “I need you to find him for me, Tess.” He licked back tears. “I need to know he’s safe.”

“So tell the police?”

“And risk our fling getting out? Rutger would never forgive me.” No, he wouldn’t, agreed Tess. Rutger didn’t strike her as the forgiving type.

Moving toward the window, Tess needed to think – to see past the pain. She got a view of landscaped grounds. The wealthy star had been admitted to a ground-floor wing of the private, North London clinic. An avenue of young lime trees cut across the lawn, and as her eyes adjusted to the November gloom, Tess saw a figure slip between the furthest trunks: tall, wearing a long coat with a peaked hood… or cap. The figure was heading towards a gap in the boundary wall. As they disappeared from view, a gust of wind caught their coat. It flapped out like the wings of a bat.

Her mobile rang: ‘BORIS’. (Tess had saved the number o the Russian cleaner, now her eyes and ears at the Soho Club). “What have you got for me?”

“Nussing,” said Boris. “I see nobuddy.”

“Great,” she said. “How much am I paying you?”

“Enough,” he laughed. “Enough to make me ask around some. One of the girls cleaning the private lounge – she see him, da? The man with the half-big box.”

Tess tensed. The man who’d left ahead of Laura? “Did she say what he looked like?”

“Nyet,” said Boris. “My friend, she has no work visa, da? She cleans, keeps her head down, don’t look at man’s face.” Silently, Tess vowed to waste her next £50 the usual way – on spilled drinks and nightbuses to nowhere. “But she did look in the half-big box.”

• • •

Hanging up several minutes later, Tess stared out through the darkening glass. The shadows were sharpening, weren’t they? She could glimpse the truth. To hunt it down, however, she must cross a line – abandon the world she knew, and enter territory both sick and shocking.

Lucky for Tess, she knew
just
the sick, shocking bloke to help her.

T
ess and Miller headed straight for the Rod Peacock Talent Agency. Having boarded a bus to Soho, they both got on their phones. Tess wanted to check in with Di and Gideon: How was the trawl through the Backchat archives going? Had anything shown up on Mark Plimpton? Miller, meanwhile, was negotiating with Tess’s mother. Having driven back in from Kent, he and Tess had decided to catch the tube across London to Fergal’s clinic. Now Miller had a special task for Violet.

“Find the car keys. Wherever Tess left them.” A long pause. “On top of the loo? Good. Now go out to the car, unlock the boot – and open the parcel.”

“What you
doing?
” Tess mouthed over her phone. “It’s not our parcel to open. It’s for Laura.”

“Exactly,” said Miller. “Something about it stinks.” Before Tess could dispute further, her own caller picked up.

“Gid?” she said. “Are you in?”

Both phone calls were finished by the time the pair reached the agency building. Striding through reception, Tess made for Rod’s private office – just as her father emerged from it. Escorted by a fawning Cleo, Darcus looked predictably smug. “Darling, I was hoping I’d bump into you! A little bird told me you’d been attacked.” A bird like her Mum? growled Tess. He laughed. “I bought you these.”

He passed her a small yellow Selfridges bag. From it, Tess pulled a huge pair of Jackie O sunglasses. “To hide behind,” he explained. “My
Panorama
exposé airs tomorrow. Those should get you through the first
flurry
of interest. After that, however, I’d say your best friend was EasyJet.”

“Time for me to resume the world tour?”

“Who am I to get in the way of your dreams? Such a shame, really. I’ve just come from the online edit, and there’s no doubt the camera likes you. You have… impact.”

Even now, a hateful hope sprang up within her. Seeing it, Darcus smiled. “You’re car-crash TV.”

“And you’re standing under my feet,” said Miller, moving in front of Tess to tread on her father’s toes.

“Seriously?” squeaked Darcus. “Seriously, I can’t stop.” He tried – failed – to lever his crushed brogues out from under the monolith that was Miller. “Violet is cooking me supper, tonight. I’ve offered to help her ‘re-launch’. Woman’s got it into her head she needs employment. She’ll never find anyone prepared actually to
pay
her, of course, but doubtless there’s a charity shop needing volunteers to pair socks. So, if you don’t mind?”

Miller rocked back on his heels. “Be nice about her pudding,” he said. “And leave some for Tess.”

As Darcus limped out on to the street, Tess saw her parents’ date panning out: Dad laying on his broadcast-quality charm, Mum falling for it. Not that Tess could blame her. Wasn’t Darcus the only Western journalist who’d got Vladimir Putin to admit to crying over
Beaches
? Violet stood no chance. A kind word from her estranged husband, and she’d tell how Tess had been sacked, then attacked in the street because she was too drunk even to find her way home. As for Peacock -

“I want a word with you.” Having tasked Miller with ‘containing’ Rod’s assistant, Cleo, Tess strode into the agent’s private office. She found Rod leaning back in his swivel chair, feet up on desk. “What did my Dad want with you? More dirt on me?”

“Why not? There’s so mooch of it.” But he wiggled his steel-capped winklepickers. “Don’t worry, love, I sent him packing. I’m an evil shit, but I won’t help a man kick his kid. Especially when I owe ’er.”

“Good,” she said. “I was hoping I’d find you in a grateful mood.” She shook off her Puffa coat. Straightening her mini-skirt, she smoothed her hands over her hips, and then shook out her shirt, as if trying to free crumbs from her cleavage. Rod’s mouth fell open, as if to catch them. She leant across his desk. She raised her arms. He disappeared briefly into her shirt, as she drew the blinds behind him.

When Tess stepped back, the glass-walled room had turned grey. Rod’s cheeks, however, were red. “Let me guess,” he said. “You’ve come to ask a favour?”

She shook her head. “I’ve come to strike a deal.”

Back at reception, Miller was growing bored. He’d successfully diffused the threat of Cleo, (only slightly countermanding Tess’ original order to ‘lock the snotty cow in a cupboard.’ Instead, he’d made her a cup of tea, and then offered to cover, while she nipped out to get her eyebrows threaded). Turning idly to the reception computer, he hit the space bar to bring the machine out of hibernation. Carefully saving the document upon which Cleo had last been working (a holiday packing list forVal d’Isère) Miller clicked on to the Internet and tried to Think Clever Thoughts. He’d never seen Tess as excited as she’d been over these past couple of weeks… or as cross. His friend might not want to admit it, but hunting down a killer had provoked a force of passion in her never previously inspired by anything – or anyone. For a second, Miller was struck by a profound sadness.

He shrugged it off. (What else were big shoulders for? he thought wryly). He focused on the case. Was there something they were missing? Something hidden just out of reach? So far, his attempts to ‘go deep’ had produced a crap few pages of research on
Wacky House
. (They must have been crap, he reasoned, because he’d spent hours working on them, yet all Tess had done was tick him off for going to Alton Towers).

No, decided Miller. He’d watched enough of
The X-Files
to know the answer was out there somewhere. And he’d watched enough of
The Rockford Files
to know mysteries were always solved in the last five minutes. His large, unlovely hands hovered over the computer keyboard. Where to start? He typed ‘Sandy Plimpton’ into the search engine – and resolved to work through everyone on the
Live With
cast list.

It took more than five minutes. In fact, it took close to an hour. He was just rising up from the computer when Tess emerged from Rod Peacock’s darkened office. Her expression was haggard. She looked as if she’d lived through something terrible – and was still trying to make sense of it. Gently, Miller guided her to his chair. She sank into it like someone shell-shocked.

For a second, Miller felt doubt.
Should
he reveal what his search had thrown up? Did he risk downloading the horror? Tess looked so weak, so shattered. Could she take it?

Fuckit, he grinned, Tess could take anything.

A
s day dawned on another episode of
Live With,
Tess prepared to storm the citadel. Outcast, out-gunned, she knew there was one way back into the world of TV.

Lycra.

Striding towards Backchat Towers, Tess was fully-lycra’d, and totally crapping herself. Pushing past a fresh influx of reporters, she entered the glass doors of the TV production company. “Hello boys,” she winked at the the two security guards. “It’s good to be back.”

But had she the front for it? Tess was squeezed into a low-backed mini-dress that clung to every hollow and made love to every curve. Peacock blue, Miller had chosen it to pick out her eyes. Tess had turned it round to pick out her chest, and then pulled on a pair of stiletto heels. Now, as she passed the security guards, she felt their eyes slip from her breasts to her bottom. They were still jammed between her buttocks, as she entered the Backchat lift and hit ‘Down’.

The ground dropped beneath her feet. Panic, only ever a heartbeat away, struck. What was she doing? What was she
thinking –
trusting to Miller? He’d goaded her to make a plan last night – he’d kidded her she could pull it off. But the plan was already leaking water – and Miller was already left behind, struggling to patch a potentially disastrous hole. Now she was hurtling down to the
Live With
studio – to Sandy Plimpton’s basement kingdom, where no-one could hear her scream. When those lift doors opened, what horror would be waiting for her?

“You’re late. We’re ruined,” said Gideon. “But your breasts look amazing.”

Tess stepped out of the lift to find Gid and Di, waiting for her as planned. She couldn’t believe it. Nor, from the sound of it, could they.

“Where you bluddy
been
?” said Di, checking anxiously down the deserted corridor. “It was murder, getting back in again. The second Sandy sees us, we’re out.”

“I’m sorry,” said Tess. “We couldn’t get the boot of my car open. Miller’s camera was inside – the lock must’ve jammed or something – I left him banging it with a tin of beans.”

“You mean you haven’t got it?” Gideon clutched himself. “You need it, Tess, you can’t go on without it!”

“I have to, OK? Let’s just hope Miller gets here in time.”

“Hope?
Hope?
We are way beyond hope, love. It’s time for you to have this.” Di thrust a bulky, manilla envelope at Tess. “Take it as thanks for every scared, skinny runner you wrapped up in that smelly, warm Puffa of yours. Now go. I’m off to the Gallery. Let’s pray Miller has the sense to come find me there.”

As her ex-production manager turned, and marched bravely towards the fire escape, Tess knew she
could
still call things off – protect her sacked team from one last humiliation at least. Instead, she shoved Di’s envelope up her skirt. What choice had she?

“You’ll have to strike when they come out of the ad break.” Gideon prodded her down the corridor to studio. “At the last count, we had 6.2 million viewers watching, so flash your legs, and hoist your bangers.”

“
Then
what?”

“Save the bloody day.” He pushed Tess through the fire doors, just as the Floor Manager was counting back to air. Studio crew moved silently through the darkness behind the cameras. All was as it should be; everyone in their rightful place. Only Tess knew she was three leggy strides from a murderer.

“Hello, and welcome back to
Live With.
” As the red light flicked on Camera One, Sandy Plimpton greeted her viewers. Her heart no longer seemed in it, however… nor did her hair. To Tess’ trained eye, Sandy looked like she’d slept in a stable, and come out badly after two rounds with a horse.

Still, she looked better than Fergie. As the red light flicked on Camera Two, he responded to his prompt, like a dead man reading from Autocue.

How the hell had he persuaded his doctors to let him out for the morning? Doubtless Fergie paid for the kind of health insurance that let him write his own prescription. Perhaps, with his attacker still at large, the
Live With
sofa was the only place he felt safe. Fergie sat stiffly though; his bandages bulky under his shirt. A faint, crimson line running across his stomach showed where the stitches were starting to bleed.

Fortunately for Flatts, Tess doubted the next studio guest would prove a big hugger: Pale, tense and butch as ever, Laura Pound sat across from Fergie, as if waiting to collect her School Wrestling Cup. Over a crisp white shirt, she wore a navy-blue cardigan, tightly-buttoned over her slab-like chest. A navy-blue skirt skimmed her boulder-like knees. She was as massive and immoveable as ever, except for her bright, green eyes, which flickered fearfully between Fergie on the couch, and
Country Kitchen
behind him. There was a clank of metal upon non-stick metal. A man rose up from behind the oven, clutching a bread knife. It was Rutger Aarse. His hair was oiled slickly back, exposing his sharp cheekbones and brooding, deep-set eyes. Seeing Tess, he smiled, and ran his thumb along the serrated edge of his blade.