Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (4 page)

Beneath this increasingly shaky exterior, however, lay breeze blocks of ambition. Hiring a second nanny and her first personal trainer, Sandy started to see less of her children and more of her feet. Her comeback was crowned with the wet kisses of Colin Pound but still Jeenie haunted her; taunted her over the satellite link-up. “Twins been keeping you up again Sand?” she’d simper over a seed-tray. “What you do! Makes me feel embarrassed to be young.”

The women hated each other. Everyone knew it. Showbiz websites regularly reported their latest round of sniping. Gossip magazines that had once gushed over the Plimptons’ perfect marriage gloated over their
Divorce at Daytime.
Now Sandy expected the world to believe Jeenie had rushed to
her
when a stalker threatened?

“Whatever our
personal
differences,” she continued. “Jeenie was no fool. When she started receiving disturbing mail, she knew she had a duty to report it.”

“To the
police,
” said Tess.

“To her Executive Producer,” corrected Sandy. “After all, it was her role on
Live With
that had prompted the unwelcome attention: It appears some deranged fan was pestering her – had been for some time.”

Tess felt Fergie stiffen beside her. “He’d been following her, yer say?”

“Yes,” snapped Sandy. “Probably.”

Tess rubbed her forehead. “What the hell does
that
mean?”

“It means Jeenie couldn’t be sure. This fan – this stalker – whoever he was – hadn’t approached her directly. He could have been shadowing her for weeks, but all Jeenie could be sure of was the letters.”

“He was writing to her?”

“Threatening her – sexually – nasty stuff, you know—”

“Shit.” Tess took this in. “You told her to keep the letters? As evidence?”

Sandy nodded, a fraction too fast. “Unfortunately, Jeenie was… so distraught, yes? She burnt the lot – destroyed each one as it came – didn’t want the police involved,” she said rapidly. “Ironic, considering the whole
world
is now involved – thanks to you.”

“Me?”

“Finding her body, live on air.” Sandy rocked. “Your stunt has been rolling news on Sky all morning – God knows how many hits we’ve clocked up on Youtube. Tomorrow there won’t be a single newspaper that doesn’t lead with Jeenie’s death – and follow up with a shot of you stumbling over the body.”

“Hang on Sandy—”

“I don’t need to wait for the overnights to know
Live With
has just achieved its highest ratings in years.” The baggy skin under Sandy’s chin was starting to pulse. “This is my chance to save the show – and you’re going to help me.”

“I am?”

“You’re going to cover the story for me,” she nodded. “I want you filing regular reports – here on the sofa – for as long as the police investigation runs.”

“Are you nuts? I produce a gardening slot, Sandy, I film
plants
dying, not people.”

“You dug the wretched body up, didn’t you? You filmed
that
damned effectively.”

“But –”

“I don’t expect you to crack the case, for God’s sake, you’re
not
your father’s daughter.” It was a low shot – and it hit.

“When were
you
speaking to my Dad?”

“Oh, Darcus and I go back years,” said Sandy. “
Serious
journalism bonds you – you seek each other out – swap stories, you know?” She breathed on Tess. “He tells me the one time he put you to work on a documentary, you sabotaged the whole production. He warned me then never to place any trust in you.”

Tess felt herself burn red – and hated herself for it. Almost as much as she was starting to hate Sandy Plimpton. “If you can’t trust me,” she said. “Why the crap turn me into a
reporter
?”

Her boss dismissed the question with a wave. “Let’s just say I
believe
in you.”

“You
believe
I’ll bring in the viewers – as soon as they figure out who my father is—”

“Agreed then?” said Sandy. “I’ll provide the serious analysis. You supply gory details for our female viewers, and a pair of legs to hold the men. I’m slotting your first report on to next Monday’s show.”

“And if I say no?”

“You’re fired. Along with your
Pardon My Garden
team. The whole screwy lot of them.”

“You wouldn’t!”

“I would,” she smiled. “And as for your oversized cameraman…”

“Miller?” said Tess. “You leave him out of it!”

“Oh, I intend to,” she said. “Once I’ve blackballed Miller round every production company in Soho, he’ll never pick up a camera again. The choice is yours, Tess: Let everyone down again?” She gave a hard laugh. “Or prove Daddy dear wrong?”

T
ess hadn’t always been a scowling trollop in a Puffa coat. The privately-educated child of a ‘serious’ celebrity, she’d grown up in a house where
The Guardian
was good, ITV was evil and being intellectually mediocre was akin to crapping in the orange bowl. ‘Don’t be so stupid’ was pretty much the response she got for everything from trying to build a skateboard to asking why Mum was crying into the cat. How her parents had ended up together, she never did fathom. While Darcus Darling wanted to rescue the world, his wife just wanted to save him the last biscuit, which generally meant taking it off Tess.

Not that Tess had complained. If Dad had ever stuck around long enough to covet her biscuits, she’d have given him the packet. That was the thing about Dad. He could ignore her for six days out of seven, only to hound her into the kitchen for a photo shoot with
The Observer Magazine
. She forgave it all for the smile he gave her when the flash went off.

Growing up, Tess felt special only when Darcus Darling turned his full beam of charm on her. It never lasted. All too soon, his beam swung on to more exciting, more gratifying projects than trying to teach his clumsy daughter how to navigate her way through life. Tess was left lonely, stupid… and determined. After years of watching her mother try – and fail – to earn Darcus’ love with tepid suppers and tentative smiles, Tess decided to go big – and save the world. Just like Dad.

Aged 11, she started subscribing to Amnesty International magazine and gave herself nightmares for a year. At 12, she ran away to join a Greenpeace protest, only to have Dad complain when the police brought her home, because she trod mud into the rug and the Dimblebys were coming for dinner. At 15, she started a petition against mobile phone masts. Despite forging 36 signatures in 12 shades of pen, she failed to get her father’s support. “He’s a git,” said Miller, when she returned crestfallen from Darcus’ study. “But please don’t cry. There’s always telly. Look, there’s a new show coming on – there’ll be singing, I bet, and dancing,” he said. “It’s called the Sopranos.

When Darcus Darling finally
did
take a chance on his unsatisfactory daughter, he did it on a major scale. He staked his professional reputation on her, and the resulting catastrophe saw her parents’ marriage crumble, and Tess bolt. For three years, she bummed round the world, tending bar and waiting tables from Dublin to Bondai. Fleeing a failure, she discovered the joy of booze – and everything that came with it. “Man alive!” she thought, sliding down a well-oiled lifeguard by the Pacific Rim. “Isn’t this
glorious
?”

Previously, Tess had not had much to do with Things of the Flesh. She’d spent her formative years trying so hard to be good, she’d not realised how much fun could be had heading in the other direction. Sex, it turned out, was something she
could
get right. Admittedly, she may not score too high on technicalities, but a sturdy combination of ardour, amazement and sheer bounceability generally ensured her – and him – a wonderful time.

Relieved to find an outlet for her passionate nature, Tess was a generous lover. In return, she received two things she’d never got from her parents: affection and applause. Too much of either, however, and she’d start to panic, get grumpy and bugger off. Since returning to England, even her immediate after-glow was starting to fade. Lying in a man’s grateful grip, she’d find herself calculating another hour spent with him was an episode of
America’s Top Model
she could never get back – and she’d be off.

To find Miller.

Twenty-four hours after digging Jeenie’s body, he was the reason Tess was now parking her battered Fiat across the road from 13 Squarey Street. Because ever since Keith Chegwin had married Maggie Philbin and proved dreams could come true, Miller had wanted to work in TV. Having serenely skipped most of school, he’d not been able to pursue an academic route to media success. While Tess graduated college–and then worked her way round the world–Miller stayed in South London and got a job in his local DIY store. By day he stacked shelves and polished lawn mowers to raise the money for a professional-grade DV camera. By night, he took this camera to film school. Over the next three years, he attended a series of gruelling and intensive film courses that left him, if possible, even more inspired and inept than he’d begun.

When offered the job on
Pardon My Garden,
Tess had taken it on condition she could hire Miller as assistant cameraman. On their first shoot, he’d tripped over unexpected hazards (like his feet), before admitting he still wasn’t “100% on top of” his zoom button. Tess had suggested he simply
run
his camera at Jeenie for close-ups. (“Run hard.”) Watching 14 stone of unleashed enthusiasm bear down on their titchy, bitchy presenter, Tess swore to stick at the job for as long as he needed her.

Now it looked as if it wasn’t just Miller who needed her. Tess had got used to mucking in with Di, who looked like a tiny Welsh doll and swore like a merchant seaman. She’d fight corners for Gideon, an aspiring star who kept losing focus by taking ketamine at GAY. Bonded by the horror of the
Pardon My Garden
production line, they’d started to feel like a proper, dysfunctional unit. It was as close to a family as Tess had got – and she wasn’t about to see it shafted by Sandy.

Turning off the ignition on her car, Tess tried to quell the churning in her stomach. She was back at the crime scene, true, but she was no longer floundering in mud and panic. She was a reporter with a public profile, an exciting brief – and an investigative cameraman.

“Wotsit?” offered Miller. Squashed into the back seat of her car, he was balancing the dual demands of a professional DV8 camera and a huge bag of cheese puffs. “We need brain food.”

“We need
witnesses
.” Taking the bag off him, Tess started shoveling cheese puffs. “You can’t just bury a body in someone’s back garden and not get spotted.”

“Why not?” he munched. “Mrs Meakes didn’t actually
live
there, did she?”

It was a fair point: Their ill-fated participant had applied to
Pardon My Garden
over a year ago, as a surprise for her husband. Unfortunately in the time it took for the work experience to extract Mrs Meakes’ application from their slush pile, Mr Meakes had died and his widow moved to a Residential Home down the road.

The lonely widow had sounded so excited at the prospect of seeing her dear Reginald’s garden restored to life, however, Tess had pressed ahead. 13 Squarey Street was lying empty, it’d be easy enough to ship Mrs Meakes back for one day’s filming and
Pardon My Garden
hardly prided itself on authenticity. (Last month, a makeover had gone so badly, Tess had forced her crew over the next-door fence to fake the crucial ‘transformation’ shots. Later that day, the neighbours returned to find their Cedar tree missing, and a border of plastic roses staple-gunned to the lawn).

“Come to think of it…” Miller prodded a Wotsit at the car window. “Nobody would have been watching from next door either, see?”

He was right. 13 Squarey Street was an end-of-row house, and its only neighbour looked just-renovated – a freshly-painted, empty shell, sporting a ‘For Sale’ sign. The scene was one of peace and pebble-dashing – until a vast, black cloud rolled overhead, sweeping Tess back to Monday. She heard Mrs Meakes’ moans, like a gruesome incantation summoning Jeenie’s corpse up from hell, and suddenly wished the street wasn’t so deserted. A couple of Panda cars were parked outside the house itself, but where were the reporters and TV crews? Yesterday’s live disinterment had, as Sandy Plimpton predicted, dominated every media outlet going. Yet this morning, the only camera in sight was Miller’s. Had the press simply shot their fill of “Croydon’s House of Death” – or did they know something she didn’t?

Bound to be the latter, wasn’t it? Tess took another Wotsit from the bag, and sucked ruminatively. What had she missed? “We spent every day with Jeenie. If she was being stalked, she’d have never shut up about about it,” she said to Miller. “Sod what Sandy says: Jeenie would never have destroyed those letters – she’d have taken them straight to the tabloids.” After all, just days after bedding Mark Plimpton, didn’t Jeenie sell
The Story of Our Love
to the Sunday Mirror in two parts? Week One–
Forbidden Love at Daytime
. Week Two –
Forbidden Love at Night-Time
, which sold much better and featured highlights like Jeenie’s preferred style of lingerie (“
silky and naughty for my man
”) over Sandy’s (“
stiff like asbestos,” claimed Mark, “as if she was off to battle a fire
”). “Jeenie would have done anything for attention, wouldn’t she?”

“I dunno,” said Miller. “She’d not had much attention for a while, had she? Before she got to us.”

He had a point. Truth was, like all great monsters, Jeenie Dempster had been a mystery to those she terrorised. Her TV incarnation had started as a kid’s presenter in the late ’80s.
Wacky House
was THE Saturday morning show at a time when there were only 4 TV channels, and two of them ran horse-racing. When
Wacky House
finished, so did Jeenie’s career. Four months ago, however, the ageing wannabe had been drafted in as
Pardon My Garden’s
new presenter. Everyone in the industry had been surprised, none the least Jeenie, who’d crowed at her TV comeback, and relished the shot at Outdoor Broadcast because it would let her smoke.