The Dead Side of the Mike (24 page)

‘Ah, that's because you've got it switched round to Line.'

Charles nodded, mystified.

‘Look.' Brenda clicked round a switch on the wall until the now-familiar sound of the Musimotive tape filled the office. Then she assumed her talking-to-trainee-production-secretaries voice. ‘You see, the points on the wall correspond to Radios One, Two, Three and Four, Radio London, even Capital' – she giggled naughtily – ‘and the Playback Lines. It was switched to Playback.'

Charles nodded sagely, Moses receiving the tables of testimony on Mount Sinai.

‘And,' Brenda continued, ‘the first tune's
On A Clear Day
. How many points do I get for that?'

‘Oh, lots,' replied Charles waggishly, and wrote it down.

While unpacking the discs and filing them according to some obscure system known only to herself, Brenda identified from the tape
Gingerbread Man; The Rhythm of Life; Send in the Clowns; Here, There and Everywhere
; and
Love Is Blue.
Charles could discern no pattern or meaning in the sequence. He felt as he did on those hangover mornings when
The Times
crossword was just a patchwork of accusing blanks and might as well have been in Finnish for all the sense it made to him.

But his attention was abruptly shifted from the puzzle by Brenda's action. She had finished putting the LPs away and was now opening a new box, from which she drew another package of records. They all had green sleeves and they were packed in a sandwich of cardboard squares, tied with coarse string.

‘What are those?'

She looked up with surprise at the intensity of his question. ‘Archive Discs. We had them out for one of the competitions.'

‘May I have a look?'

She handed him one of the green-sleeved records.

‘No, at the cardboard.'

For the first time an expression of doubt replaced the simper which she had been training on him all afternoon. But she handed over the cardboard.

It was identical to the squares which he had found in the old mill by the stream.

‘What are these used for, Brenda?'

She looked bewildered. ‘Well, packing. Like this.'

‘Always packing discs?'

‘Discs or tapes.'

‘Tapes are this size too?'

‘Bit smaller. Ten inches, but we use the same packing. They're like that.' She pointed to a thin square blue and white box.

Before Charles could complete the deduction running through his head, he heard a voice behind him. ‘Why are you playing this?'

It was Nita Lawson. Brenda blushed, as if she and Charles had been caught in
flagrante delicto
, then said, ‘Charles just wanted to know what some of the titles were.'

‘I thought you were having a playback. Gave me a turn, I thought it might be something I'd forgotten.'

‘Oh no.'

‘That's all right then. Hello, Charles.'

‘Hello.' She sat down at her desk. ‘I'm sorry, Nita, did I understand you correctly? You recognise this tape?'

A new number had just started. Nita conducted the intro. ‘Seventy Six Trombones in the Big Parade . . . Yes, it's Sounds Sympathetic.'

‘Sorry?'

‘That's the name of the group.'

‘Oh. And you recognise this actual tape?'

‘I should do. The recording's from six months ago. I produced the session.'

‘And now I know what the crime was,' Charles announced to Steve with triumph. ‘I don't mean the murders, but the crime that precipitated the murders, the crime that the murders were meant to cover up.'

‘Amaze me, Sherlock,' said Steve with a grin, and poured him some more of the Frascati. It seemed very natural to sit in her flat drinking Frascati. The sort of thing that could very easily become a habit. Perhaps was already becoming a habit.

She was wearing a skirt for once, which made her look less of a child. More of a woman. She seemed more relaxed. Maybe it was just that the shock of Andrea's death was receding. Whatever the reasons, the welcome in those huge eyes was genuine and warming.

And Charles felt pleased with himself, ready to show off a little as he presented his conclusions. ‘It all fits in, you see, fits in with things you said, fits in with things Fat Otto said in New York, things Ronnie Barron said here – it just ties up the whole package.'

‘You'll have to spell it out for me, I'm afraid. I'm not there yet.'

‘No.' He paused with satisfaction. It was like playing one of those terrible party guessing games, once you know the solution, you greet the continuing ignorance of everyone else with smug condescension. But he didn't want to be cruel, least of all to Steve. ‘I should have worked it out from what you said about Keith once getting into trouble for illicit tape-copying. That's what he continued to do, take copies of sessions recorded for Radio Two. But he wasn't just doing it for a surreptitious quid from the MD, he was into a bigger league.'

‘When he went over to the States and met Danny Klinger, they worked out the deal. I would imagine Danny suggested it – the whole set-up, with the clues and everything, bears his stamp. What they agreed was that Keith would keep up a regular supply of BBC Radio Two session tapes, and they would become the Musimotive repertoire.

‘From Klinger's point of view it was very attractive, because, if he didn't have to make the major outlay of setting up music sessions and paying musicians, the only expenses of his business were tape-copying, advertisement and despatch. He would make trips over to this country to pick the stuff up and, to avoid direct contact and because he liked that sort of game, he and Keith would never speak, but arrange the pick-ups by the old code system Klinger had devised all those years before with Mike Fergus. Dave Sheridan, unwittingly, was their messenger boy.

‘I've checked through with the files of the programme, and the dates which Andrea wrote on the Musimotive cassette were all times when Klinger must have been over here, because during each span, there was a
Dave Sheridan Late Night Show
which began with
Danny Boy.

‘So they'd got a nice little system going. Klinger would come over here every now and then to pick up tapes that would cost him thousands of dollars to make properly, and Keith was presumably getting some sort of pay-off for setting the thing up. Keith ran the risks of copying the tapes and leaving them in these obscure hideouts, but since he never made direct contact with Klinger, he wasn't in much danger of being found out.'

‘Then why did this workable little system have to break up?' asked Steve.

‘I'm not absolutely sure, but I would imagine it was because of the investigation into the company. I talked to Nita a bit about musical copyright and what have you, and it seems both sides of the Atlantic there's been a clamp-down on what they call bootlegging or pirating music. It may have been just that Musimotive came under the scrutiny of some general enquiry which discovered there was something fishy about its sources of music.'

‘Like . . . that no studios or musicians were ever booked to produce the stuff?'

‘Exactly. As I say, it may just have been a random check. However, I think it more likely that your friend Andrea had something to do with it.'

‘Really?'

‘Yes. Think of all the things she said about investigative journalism and being on to something big and the truth coming out. You see, I found out from Nita that Andrea actually worked on the Sounds Sympathetic music session which appeared on the Musimotive tape. She recorded it. So what I reckon happened – and this can only be a conjectural reconstruction, unless she actually spoke to anyone about it – was that she heard the tape playing somewhere – could have been anywhere – in a hotel lobby, in a lift, in a restaurant, in a store – and, with her fine musical ear, she recognised it as the session she had recorded. That's what led her to Musimotive to try and investigate further.

‘I assume Fat Otto was as ignorant for her as he was for me, but she did manage to get from him a copy of the tape as evidence and also the dates of Klinger's most recent trips to this country. Armed with that, she returned here to investigate the BBC end of the business, possibly alerting a lawyer or someone in New York to the situation and suggesting that Musimotive might bear investigation.'

‘So then you reckon she came home and confronted her ex-husband with her findings and he –?'

‘No, I wouldn't have thought so. She had no reason to make any connection with Keith. I would think she just saw him on the night of her death and told him about her investigations. You said they were very competitive and she went to the States partly to show she could do anything he could.'

‘Yes.'

‘Wouldn't it then be in character for her to crow to him about her achievements over there?'

Steve shook her head sadly. ‘Yes, I'm rather afraid it would.'

‘So, as soon as she told him of the connection she was making, Keith realised he had to keep her quiet or it was only a matter of time before the investigation got to him.'

‘But just a minute,' Steve objected, ‘there's something that doesn't work in all this.'

‘What?' said Charles, slightly aggrieved to find any obstacle in the course along which he was bowling so happily.

‘You say that the first
Danny Boy
message was in the programme which went out on the night Andrea died?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, that must have taken quite a bit of preparation on Keith's part. If he only heard about the investigation into Musimotive from Andrea, who got back into the country that day, then surely . . .'

‘I agree. That worried me for a bit. And I confess I haven't got a complete answer to it. I can only assume that Keith heard about the investigation from somebody else, maybe Klinger himself.'

‘I suppose he must have done.'

‘I admit there are quite a few details which haven't slotted into position yet, but I'm pretty certain that the outline's right.'

‘It sounds very convincing. Congratulations.' Charles glowed under her smile. ‘So what do you do next?'

‘I think I talk to Keith.'

‘Is that wise?'

‘I think it'll be all right, if I do it in the right place. Anyway, I have no choice, really. Though I'm convinced I know what happened, I haven't a shred of evidence that would stand up to serious scrutiny.'

‘No, I suppose not. What about the booby trap in that shed?'

‘I don't think that'd be enough on its own.'

‘No.' She mused. ‘One thing about that . . . why was the package full of cardboard?'

‘I think Keith did that to obscure the evidence. He didn't want to leave real tapes there, only to leave something that looked sufficiently like a package of tapes for Klinger to reach forward and get it. Then if Klinger's body was found the next morning, the package of cardboard would mean as little to the police as it did to me.'

She nodded, smiled and stretched like a little cat. ‘Well, don't do anything silly when you talk to Keith. I don't like the idea of him killing two of my friends.'

‘No.' Charles rose, warmed by the avowal of friendship. He looked at his watch and hesitated. ‘I must go. It's late.'

‘Yes.' She rose too.

He went towards her and put his arms round her. It was very natural. He met no resistance.

She was tiny without her shoes on. She laid her head against his chest and purred, ‘That's nice.' Echoing his thought.

He felt very gentle and paternal. ‘How are you?' he asked fatuously.

‘Not at all bad,' she replied. ‘In fact, pretty good. I'm surviving very well.'

‘Surviving what?'

‘I mentioned a young man called Robin.'

‘Yes.'

‘He's been away for a month or so. He's now been back in this country ten days. And he hasn't phoned me.'

‘And that's good news?'

‘That is wonderful news. You've no idea how good that news is.' She looked up at him. Close to, she was all eyes. Big, brown eyes. ‘Soon,' she said softly, ‘very soon I think I'll be leading a normal life again.'

‘Good,' he murmured. He understood her completely. She was saying, no, not now, not yet, just give me a little more time to flush Robin out of my mind. And then . . . there seemed to be a promise in her words too.

He kissed her gently on the lips. They were soft and giving. They did not draw away from him, but he had understood her message, and kept it as just a gentle kiss.

‘I must go,' he said. And went.

‘HELLO, CHARLES, IT'S GERALD.'

‘Ah, hello.'

‘What gives?'

‘Gives?'

‘I last saw you on Wednesday, after the worst meal ever perpetrated on a human being, and you were about to charge some disc jockey with murder. Have you done so yet?'

‘No, Gerald. Things have moved on a bit since then. But I have the feeling they are coming to a head. A confrontation will take place this afternoon. After that, I think everything will be a lot clearer.'

‘Can I do anything to help? Or can we meet so that you can fill me in on the details?'

‘Meet, certainly.'

‘What, a drink this evening?'

‘I think I'll need a good few, yes. If I'm still in one piece.'

‘Well, would you like to come to the Garrick and . . .?'

‘Yes, fine. Oh shit, no.'

‘What's the matter?'

‘I've suddenly remembered, I'm booked to do some radio recording this evening. A six-to-nine booking for something called
The Showbiz Quiz.
I'm the Mystery Voice.'

‘Oh, I often wondered who it was. Well, look, why don't I come along to the recording? You know how keenly I like to follow your career.'

‘Ha ha. Okay, if you can stand it, come along. It's at the Paris Studio in Lower Regent Street. I'll leave a ticket in your name at Reception.'