The Dead Side of the Mike (6 page)

Irritation pushed Charles on to another barb. ‘You might as well tell her. It's going to be fairly difficult to keep it from her when the police come round to interview you.'

That winded Mark like a punch in the stomach. ‘Police,' he gasped. ‘What do you mean – police?'

‘Andrea's was a suspicious death. I would think it unlikely they'd just let it pass without talking to the people nearest to her.'

‘But I wasn't nearest to her. I mean, as far as anyone knew.'

‘Oh, come on. In the BBC? There is no way you could keep an affair a secret in a place like that.'

‘Well, okay, maybe one or two people knew, but not anyone who . . .'

‘Look, I believe Andrea shared a flat with Steve Kennett. She'll be the first person they interview about her state of mind. You're not going to tell me Steve didn't know what was going on.'

Mark spoke slowly, planning, calculating. ‘No, no, she knew. I wonder . . . Oh God, this could ruin everything. I mean, to have kept it a secret this long and for Vinnie to find out just at the moment when there was nothing actually to worry about.'

‘You don't regard Andrea's death as anything to worry about?' He couldn't resist it.

‘I didn't mean that.' Mark wasn't really listening; he was still working things out. ‘I know. If the police come and see me at work, Vinnie need never know. That's it. They're more likely to interview me at work, aren't they? I mean, because that's where it happened?'

Charles felt very tired. Why not give him that comfort? ‘Yes, yes, Mark, I'm sure they'll interview you at work.'

The shock of the girl's death had passed and he now felt the exhaustion of reaction and the depression of waste. She needn't have died. If she hadn't got mixed up with a selfish shit like Mark, she needn't have . . . Oh, what was the point? She was dead. ‘I must go. Thank you for the drink.'

‘And thank you for letting me go on like that. I'm sorry, but I had to. You see, I did love her.' Yes, maybe after all, in his way he did. ‘I suppose I'll survive without her. It won't be easy.'

Charles bit back an unsuitable rejoinder to this maudlin play-acting. But worse was to come. ‘It's Swinburne again,' Mark went on. ‘“I shall never be friends again with roses.” That sums up the sort of emptiness I feel at the moment.' Already the loss had become fictionalised, drained of blood and embalmed in the mausoleum of Mark's memory.

‘My feelings would be summed up in a different passage.' And Charles recited, not without irony:

Mark nodded lugubriously. ‘Yes, Charles, yes.' Irony was wasted on him.

There was a note by the payphone when Charles got back to the house in Hereford Road where he had a bedsitter. He recognised the scrawl of one of the Swedes. All the other bedsitters in the house seemed to be occupied by Swedish girls. But not Swedes of lissom thighs and sauna baths and aftershave commercials; these were more like the vegetables.

The timed light on the landing went out as he took up the paper, and he fumbled for the switch. The note was full of the usual Swedish misspellings, but its message was clear.

FRANCIS RING. URJENT. RING WENEVER YOU COME BACK.

Oh God, no. Not Juliet. His first instinct was for his daughter. Maybe it was having seen Andrea dead that evening, Andrea, who must have been about the same age as Juliet. Suddenly he felt again that awful panic, like when she was a tiny baby and he had woken in the morning with a terrible rush of fear and torn into her bedroom to see that she was still breathing.

He was almost praying as he dialled the familiar number in Muswell Hill. The phone was picked up on the first ring. ‘Yes?' Her voice was tight almost to breaking.

‘Frances.'

‘Oh, it's you.' A degree of relief. ‘I thought it was America.'

‘America? Why, what's happened?'

‘It's Mummy. She's had a heart attack. Rob rang about seven this evening. He was practically beside himself.' Charles breathed again with a guilty feeling of relief. He was fond of Frances's mother, but at least she was of a generation where illness might be expected. Not like Juliet. He was surprised by the power of his feeling for his daughter. It was a feeling that he had never had much success in expressing in her company. Still, nice to know it was there.

Frances's father had died some twenty years previously and her mother married a charming American art dealer called Rob some four years later. They now lived in Summit just outside New York. Charles hadn't seen them for at least ten years.

Frances filled in the details. Apparently her mother had suffered a severe heart attack while out in the garden that morning. She was in hospital, still alive, but the doctor was afraid she might have another one. Frances was just waiting further bulletins.

‘It's awful being so far away. I feel there's something I should be doing and yet . . .'

‘There's nothing you really can do, love.'

‘I know. I may have to go over, I don't know, see how she is. I'm incredibly busy at school with the end of term coming up, so I don't know if . . . Oh, it's impossible to plan anything.'

‘Yes.'

They talked further and Charles felt very close to her, as if they were still properly married. In a crisis they were. He felt he needed to be near her, to protect her.

She sounded calmer, talking to him had helped. She said they'd better get off the line in case Rob was trying to ring through.

‘Is there anything I can do, love?'

‘No, it's all right, Charles. Just ring me. Keep in touch.'

‘Of course. Are you sure you don't want me to come up to Muswell Hill and . . .'

She paused for a moment, and then said firmly, ‘No, no, I'm okay. Just ring me in the morning.' And she rang off.

He topped up his whisky level straight from the bottle and went to bed. Rather to his surprise, sleep came. But dreams came too. He was in an American hospital like something out of
Dr Kildare
. On a stark white bed, with her wrists being systematically bled into huge transfusion bottles, lay Andrea. But her face was Juliet's.

HE WAS WOKEN by a Swede thumping on his door. He had slept late. Half past ten. He must have been exhausted.

‘Telephone. Telephone,' sang the voice outside. He staggered out. A lardy Swede in a blue nylon quilted housecoat scurried upstairs, mortally shocked by the sight of his pyjamas.

He picked up the dangling receiver and said a gravel-voiced ‘Hello'. Always good at Orson Welles impressions first thing in the morning.

‘Charles, it's me, Maurice. How are you, dear boy?' His agent. The ‘dear boy' assorted ill with the shabbiness of Maurice Skellern's outfit.

‘Not so bad. What is it?' It was almost unprecedented for Maurice to ring. It certainly couldn't be that the agent had actually found a job for him; that never happened; someone must have rung in an enquiry.

And so it proved. ‘Listen, Charles, something I've been hoping for's come up. Part in a radio thing. Sit. com. called . . .' A note was consulted. ‘. . .
Dad's the Word
. Not a big part, but a nice little cameo. Thought it could be right up your street. I was glad to get the call, because it means my new policy's paying off.'

‘Policy?' asked Charles drily.

‘Yes, you know, I keep mentioning your name around when I hear series are coming up and . . .'

‘Sure.' Charles was used to Maurice's protestations of how much work he did for his clients. And equally used to the fact that he never did anything at all. This booking was obviously a result of Charles's meeting with Nick Monckton the night before. Maurice, as usual, had had nothing to do with it. What surprised Charles, though, was the promptness of reaction. Nick must have put the call through as soon as he got in. And of course he'd been going straight in to rehearse an episode of
Dad's the Word.
God, maybe somebody hadn't turned up that morning. ‘Is it for today, Maurice?'

‘Today? Good Lord, no. It's in about ten days. Monday week. I just had a call from the producer, pleasant young man called . . .'

Charles saved another recourse to the notes. ‘Nick Monckton.'

‘That's right.' Maurice showed no curiosity as to how Charles knew. ‘I haven't heard from the booker yet, but he hoped they'd be through within the day. I'm not sure what they're likely to offer. I know the rates have gone up recently, but it's some time since you've done a radio, so I don't know what your fee is.'

‘Well, I was in doing something yesterday and –'

‘What?' Oh, damn, fatal mistake. He had been determined not to tell Maurice about the Swinburne thing. Since it had been set up privately between him and Mark, he didn't see why he should give his agent ten per cent of a fairly modest fee for doing absolutely nothing. He always made resolutions that he would only let Maurice get commissions on things that he had personally set up. But if he were to do that, the agent would never get anything. Charles often wondered why he had an agent. But always, as on this occasion, when he heard Maurice's aggrieved ‘What?' down the phone, his resolution crumbled.

‘Oh, it was a feature on Swinburne. I was going to tell you about it.'

‘I see.' Maurice sounded hurt and, to his fury, Charles felt guilty. Guilty, for God's sake. ‘Swinburne, Swinburne . . .? That's where they do all the operas out of doors, isn't it?'

‘No, that's Glyndebourne. Swinburne was a nineteenth-century poet of considerable lyrical virtuosity and mental confusion.'

‘Oh,
that
Swinburne,' said Maurice, hearing the name for the first time. ‘So, well, no problem about this thing, is there? Nothing else in the diary for Monday week?' He didn't even pause for the answer he knew so well. ‘It's a nine-thirty call for a lunchtime recording. You'll be through round two.'

‘Only possible thing that might be a problem is that I heard last night Frances's mother's pretty ill in the States. I suppose if the worst happens, I might be involved in funerals and things. But can't really predict about that. Accept, anyway.'

‘Right. Shall I be difficult about money?'

‘Not too difficult. The BBC hasn't got any.'

Having reminded himself of Frances's mother, he rang the Muswell Hill number. There was no reply, which either suggested that everything was okay and Frances was at school as usual, or that the crisis had worsened and she was already on a plane across the Atlantic.

So he rang his daughter Juliet down on her executive estate in Pangbourne. She was busy doing something with his two-year-old twin grandsons and sounded more than a little preoccupied. But yes, Mummy had heard again from Rob. It seemed that Granny's condition had stabilised and the worries of the night before were partially allayed. So Mummy had gone off to school as usual. And yes, they were all fine and he really must come and see them soon and oh God, she'd have to ring off because Damian was about to pour a tin of Golden Syrup over Julian's head.

After the panic and dreams of the night before, Charles felt let down to speak to the real Juliet. She sounded as distant as ever.

And when he spoke to Frances that evening, to confirm that there was no change in her mother's condition, their closeness of the night before seemed to have dissipated too.

The Paddington address was not far from Hereford Road, so Charles walked round on the Wednesday evening for his Features Action Group Sub-Committee meeting. He tried to pretend that was the reason for his going, but, self-confronted with his frequently expressed views on committees and the fact that he had never found out what this one had been assembled to discuss, admitted that really he just wanted to see Steve Kennett again.

And maybe to find out a bit more about Andrea Gower and why a pretty girl of twenty-seven should want to kill herself.

It was one of those big frontages with Palladian porticoes, built as family houses in more gracious days. Since now only a millionaire family could afford to live in one, they had all been converted into hotels with very British names for German tourists, private nursing homes for Arabs or, like this one, honeycombs of small flats.

Only the name ‘Kennett' appeared in the little window by the entry-phone button. Charles wondered for a moment if the ‘Gower' had been removed as a prompt mark of respect, but the dust on the plastic suggested that it had been that way for some time. He pressed the button.

‘Hello.'

‘It's Charles Paris. I've come for this sub-committee meeting.'

‘Oh.' There was a reservation in the crackly voice. ‘Oh, well you'd better come up.' There was a buzz and he quickly put his shoulder against the door.

Steve was standing on the second landing, holding open the front door of the flat. A heavy white-painted fire door, matching the bareness of the staircase and landings, clean and lifeless. She grinned as she saw him. ‘I'm afraid you've had a wasted journey.'

‘In what way? Have you managed to create a Features Department without me?'

‘No, but I'm afraid our meeting's been cancelled. Ronnie Barron's tied up with some farewell party he'd forgotten about and Harry Bassett's got some emergency in Leeds. So I'm afraid it all got called off. I wanted to contact you, but no one seemed to have your phone number.'

‘Mark Lear would have had it.'

‘Yes, I didn't ask him.' It was said casually enough, but she hesitated and there was a slight edge to her voice.