Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (9 page)

For a big man, Miller had a thin skin. (There was too much of him to stretch over, Tess guessed. While Medical Science sought a cure, she could only keep glucose levels high, and cinema trips limited to Pixar productions and nothing involving Bruce Willis and/or Hobbits). Seeing Miller slumped in the street below, she feared the worst. This was a man who apologized to daisies when he trod on them. Yesterday, he’d filmed his colleague’s corpse being pulled from the ground. Suspecting she may be witnessing a case of post-traumatic shock, Tess bid a curt goodbye to DS Selleck and Rod Peacock. Running down the stairs to the street, she cursed her lack of care, and rummaged through her pockets for an emergency Snickers.

“Miller?” She crouched down beside him in the gutter. He didn’t so much as look up. “What is it?”

“Jeenie’s killer.”

That’s when she saw it – Miller’s DV-camera, clamped between his knees. He’d not been hunched over a knot of grief, she realized, but his camera’s viewfinder. He was watching playback, cupping his hands round the tiny screen to stop the glare from a weak, October sun.

“Jeenie’s killer,” he repeated, only this time he looked up. “I know how he got her.”

He produced a satisfied grin. It threw her. Tess wasn’t used to Miller looking proud of himself. She was used to him bowling along beside her, nodding genially while she talked. On the rare occasions he
did
cut her off, it was to scoop her out of the way of a dog poo/ puddle/ defenceless daisy. Now here he was, being enigmatic and almost…cocky? For a second, Miller looked rugged, like a cowboy who’d just roped his first bull. Then his trousers rustled, and he went back to being her big, dopey friend squatting in the gutter. “What do you mean?” she snapped. “
Got
her?”

“The morning Jeenie died,” he said. “A car came to take her away.”

“‘Course it did. I sent it – just like I sent a car every shoot day – only yesterday, she stood us up, didn’t she? The driver banged on her door, tried her mobile, and then gave up. No Jeenie.”

“Because someone had
already come to pick her up
. I’ve found a witness.” Angling his viewfinder towards Tess, Miller scrolled forward. “When you went to Jeenie’s flat, I went to the dry cleaners.”

“And they let you in?”

“Mr Diamond thought I’d come to move his fridge. When I showed him my camera, he said he had nothing to tell the police or the press. So I told him we weren’t
proper
journalists – we were daytime TV. He said that was fine then, and could I get Fergie Flatts’ autograph for his auntie?”

“Go on.”

“I asked him if he’d ever seen anyone bother Jeenie at her flat, but Mr Soapy said there’d been nobody – no fans, no stalkers, nothing. He’d seen Mark Plimpton a few times, then even he’d stopped coming. So then I asked him about Monday – if he saw Jeenie the day she died… here it is!”

Putting his camera earphones on Tess, Miller stopped scrolling through his footage, and let it play out. A tiny, green man appeared in the viewfinder, like a gremlin in the works.

“You’ve ballsed up the white balance,” murmured Tess. “And framed the shot like a monkey.”

“Got the sound though.” He turned it up.

“The car came
very
early Monday morning,” said Mr Diamond in a clipped, Indian accent. “I saw Jeenie get in the back seat of the car – always the back seat for her – like the Queen, you know?”

“Fuckinell Miller,” said Tess. “Do you know what this means?” Mr Diamond cocked his tiny green head. A low mumbling indicated Miller asking a question.

“Oh no!” the drycleaner replied. “Much earlier than that! I saw the car driving her off at…quarter to six, say? Very big laundry day, Monday, it could have been no later than six o’clock. I was still pulling up the shutters.” Miller’s mumbling grew excited – another question, Tess guessed.

“Shiny,” replied the drycleaner. “New-looking, like a limousine. A fancy car, you know?” Miller’s mumbling went up a notch.

“No, no,” said the drycleaner. “I did
not
see the driver’s face. It was dark, I was working. I can say only that they were
chunky
, you know, like they were wearing a big coat?” He peered through the gloom of a remembered dawn.

“It was very odd, I thought – to come and collect a television personality in a fancy car like she was the queen, but to wear a scruffy coat – oh yes, and a scruffy cap on top – like some football yob, you know?” The picture shook suddenly. “Please,” he said, “That is a customer you are standing on.”

Hastily, Miller shut his viewfinder – but Tess didn’t care who he’d trodden on. “No wonder Jeenie didn’t answer her door. She’d been picked up.” Tess did the maths. “A good ninety minutes earlier. By a man who matches the description we got from Mr Weaver – the estate agent, remember? He told us a bulky guy was seen leaving Mrs Meakes’ house just before dawn.”

“Looking furtive,” said Miller. Their eyes met. He was as excited as her, thought Tess. They were on to something. So she panicked.

“This is stupid,
we’re
stupid. We should bring it back to 390A Bayswater Road. The bloke who picked up Jeenie could have just been a friend – giving her a lift to work.”

“So why did Jeenie sit in the back?” countered Miller. “That’s what you do when you’re paying the driver. Besides, Jeenie didn’t
have
friends. Everyone knows that – even the drycleaner.”

He was right.
This
was right. “OK,” said Tess. “I’m listening. I’m thinking…”

“Fat Alan?”

“It
can’t
have been him, can it? Fat Alan thinks Jeenie lived in a big, white house in the pages of
Hello
.” They’d tried to tell him otherwise half an hour ago, and practically tipped him over the edge. Of course, there was always the remote possibility Alan had been feigning – both his ignorance and fragility.

“But even if he
had
got hold of Jeenie’s home address,” she reasoned. “Can you see Fat Alan managing to hire a limo? Wearing Green Flash plimsolls, and scratching his belly through his grubby
Choose Life
T-shirt? Not that the police would see it that way, of course. DS Selleck thinks Fat Alan is the Jackal in slacks.”

“He may have slacks,” said Miller. “But can he drive?”

“Sod that, can he
think?
We’re talking real premeditation here. If your drycleaner’s telling the truth, it was an ambush. Whoever rang Jeenie’s doorbell
counted
on her expecting a car – to take her to the
Pardon My Garden
shoot. Would Jeenie have registered the car was an hour early?” Tess shrugged. “You know how poorly she prepared for each shoot. She used the ring on her doorbell as an alarm call. She’d stagger out of bed, topple regally into the back seat of her car, and then pass out again until reaching location. Which is where it gets weird…”

“How?”

“Having lured Jeenie into the back of his car, why didn’t the driver hit the child locks and head for the hills? He could have killed her on some patch of scrubland, and kept it hidden for weeks. Instead, he
follows
our shooting schedule. He drives Jeenie to Monday’s location,
knowing
our lot could tip up any minute. Despite this insane level of risk, he then kills her in Mrs Meakes’ front room – because don’t tell me the police have taken her sofa away for re-upholstering, Miller, they’re not that kind. All that, and the killer still has to push it. Taking Jeenie’s body into Mrs Meakes’ garden, he digs a shallow grave in the exact place he
knew
we’d be filming.”

“Why?”

“Because the killer didn’t hate Jeenie just enough to murder her,” said Tess. “He wanted her body found in the most public and humiliating way possible.”

“But on live TV?”

Tess shrugged. “You could say the killer got lucky, didn’t he?”

F
or Jeenie’s Memorial Service, two days later, Sandy Plimpton joined forces with Rod Peacock to secure the presence of key media players, the major press and a discreet smattering of reality drunks.

With a flurry of air-kisses and mobile ringtones, the showbiz alumni converged outside the old French Protestant Church on Soho Square. Jeenie had been neither French nor Protestant, but Soho Square was just one blessed fag away from the Soho Club and, today at least, massed with mourning bystanders. (A few were genuine – shop staff from Oxford Street making the most of their lunch-break – but most were street-sleepers, hired by Rod Peacock to turn out for the cameras. “The nation will be watching,” he’d told them. “So treat it like a postcard home. And if you fookin’ throw oop, I’ll have me fiver back”).

The service itself was briskly concluded. There was no body to bury, as the police were yet to release it, and no apparent family to care. Tess wasn’t surprised. In the days since Jeenie’s death, Tess had asked what remained of her production team to dig up what they could on their dead colleague’s background. Researcher Gideon had ‘researched’ his way round a Factual Department leaving-do in the Backchat Bar. He’d not found a single co-worker sorry at her passing. He had, however, found a tall, French sound engineer, and taken him off to supper at
Garlic and Shots
. (‘Because if we’re going to spend the night together, it’s important we’re both drunk and resistant to colds’).

Welsh Di had pursued a similar policy, and taken a friend from Backchat’s HR department out for drinks. Di discovered Jeenie had no family. Her father, a drinker, had succumbed to liver disease in 1985, followed by her mother, a smoker, to lung cancer in 2003. Privy to Jeenie’s real CV, (as opposed to the biog composed for the press) Di’s HR mate confirmed the presenter had worked only fitfully since her first and only major presenting gig – as co-host on Saturday morning kids’ show, Wacky House. “And you know how
that
ended.”

Di did not. Nor was she to, as her friend promptly spilled her Daquiri and slid off her chair.

Now, as Jeenie’s Memorial Service groaned on, Tess kicked herself for not having followed up. It was all such a blank – Jeenie’s present, her past – like the glass coffee table in her flat: you looked through it, and saw nothing but smears. Take today’s congregation. On the surface, they looked right. Black coats over black suits, navy raincoats over knee-length skirts. No-one spoke. Stilled by grief, industry heads were bowed alongside celebrity shoulders and Peter Andre. Look down, however, and the media world was already moving on. Mobile phones were out, tiny screens flashing as thumbs flew – texting, tweeting or taking selfies. (‘Me at Jeenie Dempster funeral! Check out my fascinator!!’ ‘So cold, wish I’d worn pants#XFactorHopeful’). Everything happened at waist-height these days, mused Tess, save for the likes of Mrs Meakes. Their last
Pardon My Garden
participant was parked up in her wheelchair at the front, hands folded stiffly on her lap. Despite Tess’ best efforts to dissuade her, the doughty widow had insisted on attending Jeenie’s Memorial Service. “She was buried in my garden, possibly killed in my house,” said Mrs Meakes. “I want to see her off.”

In the event, the old woman appeared the only guest to show a vestige of grief. More than a vestige, noted Tess. As the vicar concluded the service, Mrs Meakes was growing visibly distraught. She was shaking, tears running down her face. Tess remembered the husband she’d recently lost, the grand-daughter taken from her too soon, and guessed it wasn’t just Jeenie’s death she was mourning.

So where the hell was Maggie? Tess had insisted Mrs Meakes make the trip with her carer (otherwise it would be Miller bumping the old lady back into a cab, and wheels were bound to come off). Mrs Meakes looked very alone up here, however. Presumably, Maggie had wheeled Mrs Meakes into position, then locked her brakes and ducked off for some shopping on Oxford Street. So much for ‘saintly’ Maggie, thought Tess, getting up to go to Mrs Meakes’ aid. She moved too late, however, the church doors were opening; the congregation heading out to get papped, and then pissed.

Swept outside, Tess found Soho Square taking on a carnival atmosphere. Showbiz reporters were hailing their favourite stars, people in the street were cheering, and snapping away with their phones. Jostled on the church steps, Tess clutched her bag – and looked up for the confetti. It was like a perverted wedding, she thought, all these guests gathered to celebrate Jeenie bagging a dishy death. She’d pulled the Grim Reaper, and won fame everlasting. Who cared she had to honeymoon in Hell?

The church steps emptied soon enough. Moving off to pose for photos, the VIP mourners allowed paparazzi to tilt back the brims of their hats, or arrange them in ‘family’ groups. (“Can we have the girls from
Coronation Street
in front of this lamp-post? Lovely.” “Judges from
X Factor
, if we could just get you grouped round this bin…”). Hair and make-up was checked in the windows of parked limousines; soundbites delivered to appropriate boom mics, (“Jeenie was a
phenomenal
gardening presenter.” “I never met her, sadly, but I was a great admirer of her work on
Fat Camp
.” “She shone, you know? The world is a darker place without Jenny. Julie. Can we do that again?”).

Soon enough, however, the cold bit. Realising no number of flashbulbs could keep them warm, the celebrity crowd started to move towards the venue for Jeenie’s wake. On the corner of Old Compton and Frith Street, the Soho Club was
the
member’s club for the media industry, and known to every paparazzo in town. As if already smelling the gin and networking opportunities, guests picked up speed as they walked down the street towards it. Undaunted, the photographers and TV crews ran backwards, darting between parked cars to get further ‘reportage’.

Having lost her
Pardon My Garden
crew in the church, Tess seized the chance to pull them back into her protective orbit. Armoured by her high heels and Puffa coat, she strode through celebrities like a knife through sponge. Failing to find Miller, she guessed he was still in the church, chairlifting Mrs Meakes – and chair – to safety. Welsh Di, however, seemed relieved to feel the strong arm of Tess. (Though indomitable behind a production desk, Welsh Di was a mere 4 ft 9 in front of it). “You OK?” said Tess, pushing a paparazzo away by his face.