Killings on Jubilee Terrace (7 page)

‘There’s just one more scene. Just a couple of
minutes. Here, Stephen, Winnie – read this over and tell me if you could have a conversation roughly along these lines.’

Winnie looked terrified for a moment, then reluctantly removed her spectacles from her handbag. Stephen came from his snug position over near the darts board and took the page with a confidence which, if only apparent, was at least convincing.

‘I think we could do that, don’t you, Winnie?’ he said, without a break in his voice. Winnie looked up anxiously at the producer.

‘Let me get this right, Reggie. You want us to have a few words, which we make up ourselves, about the state of Cyril’s mind and likely death in the next few days?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Nothing on paper, and we just make up something appropriate?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Well, I suppose we can try.’

Reggie sent Stephen over to the main door, and the cameras rolled. Stephen went outside, then opened the door, looking nervously from end to end of the public bar, the quintessential
unsure-of
-himself cleric in a strange pub. He finally saw Winnie on her own at a small table, and went over to her with more confidence.

‘Do you mind if I join you, Lady Wharton?’

‘Not at all. I’d be delighted. Beer? A pint of Thornbury’s, Bob.’

The curate waited until the beer was in front of him before he said: ‘I’m sure I don’t have to tell you, Lady Wharton, that Cyril is quite a bit worse than when I saw him the last time.’

Winnie shook her head miserably, with a strangled ‘No.’

‘I don’t expect you to feel as strongly as I do about his mental state—’

‘You mean his spiritual state, don’t you?’

‘Yes. My hope is that he might come to terms with God and his approaching death before he is beyond thought.’

Lady Wharton pursed her lips.

‘I’m an Anglican myself, of course, but Cyril has never been interested. And no – I can’t say that’s much in my mind, his spiritual state. I’ve faced up to what is going to happen, and what I want is for him to have as easy a death as possible.’

‘Believe it or not that is what I want too.’

Stephen leant forward in order to discuss matters of faith when ‘CUT’ called Reggie from the door. He came down to the centre of the Duke of York’s set. ‘That was perfect. Just what I wanted: both of you entirely natural and convincing. It went much better than most scripts. We must think over what that means for
the scripts generally. Right – that’s it for tonight.’ He looked at his watch. ‘I’m sorry for the evening shoot, but it was the only way we could fit it in. Sleep well, my children, or whatever else you choose to do.’

The actors began a brisk exodus from the set, aiming in the direction of the Northern TV building’s main exit. Bill and Liza dallied behind the bar, as if there was unfinished business they wanted to talk over. Finally Bill said:

‘You got half an hour or so, Liza?’

‘You know I always have for you, Bill.’

‘Come on, then. Let’s go and find a pub.’

The figure came out of the front door of the house, and a dim light from the hall, immediately shut off, was the only illumination that it got. It slipped to the side of the house and picked up something from just inside the open garage. The hood of its anorak was pulled over the face, and its right hand now carried not only a can of some kind but also some tightly folded paper. It scuttled to the gate and headed in the direction of the city centre, pulling now and then at the hood and keeping its head well down, as if studying the configuration of the pavement.

The walk was not a long one, perhaps twenty minutes, but it just stopped short of central
Leeds – slowing down as it neared the area with a view towards the West Yorkshire Playhouse. The streets here were mean, but mean these days meant affordable, and individuals or organisations that had bought some of them up made sterling efforts to clean the brickwork, install bigger windows, freshen the outer paintwork. Through the windows of some of them could be seen cheerful interiors, brightly lit, dashingly papered. The figure stopped some way from its goal, cautiously pushing the hood back a mite, gazing intently.

There was a light on in the targeted house, one of a terrace. But there was only one light, upstairs. Perhaps it was in one of the bedrooms. The figure put its twin burdens down by the wall of a disused factory, and hid them as well as possible by standing near them. Twenty minutes later the light in the terraced house went out. The figure did not stir.

It was a quarter of an hour later, during which all had been quiet in the house, when the shape suddenly reached into its left-hand pocket and took something out, then into the
right-hand
one and did the same. Two minutes later it replaced them, then looked towards the house, number nine. It was in darkness. The figure bent to pick up paper and can, and moved cautiously forward. Standing for a moment outside the
front door the observer (if there had been one) might have seen that the paper was a tabloid – maybe
The Sun
, maybe
The Times
– whose pages had first been torn apart, then torn in half. Several of them were taken, soaked from the can, then pushed through the door. Finally one of the sheets was folded up as a spill, lit with a cigarette lighter, then stuffed hurriedly through the door.

As the flame lit up the open letterbox the figure hared off down the street in the direction it had come, leaving the can behind to add to the conflagration when the door collapsed. It had been a very thorough job, a credit to the planning which had gone into it. It did what it was intended it should do.

The pub that they found was the Red Deer, just off Upper Briggate, in the centre of Leeds. In its brasswork, its faded sepia photographs and its heavy wood tables and settles, it was not unlike the Duke of York’s, which may have been its attraction to Bill and Liza. Bill looked around contentedly.

‘Makes me feel at home, this place,’ he said. Liza laughed.

‘You always say that. But the Duke of York’s is not your home.’

‘It’s as much a home as I’ve had since my first
one. The girls are the only things that give the present one any feeling of home. God forgive me for never giving them a real one.’

‘You’ve given them quite as good a home as most kids have these days,’ said Liza loyally. Bill stirred uneasily in his chair.

‘Well, me and Angela have done what we could, and not done bad. But it’s not fair on Angela, is it? She’s forced to be old before her time…One good thing, though: at least I’m cured of that snotty little bitch Susan Fyldes.’

‘That wasn’t what you said back at the Duke of York’s, after she’d given you a right squashing, as far as I could see.’

‘I’ve thought it over since. It’s the best thing that could have happened. Fine thing it would have been, wouldn’t it, if I’d introduced her into the family, she only five or six years older than Angela. Not to say one that was no more motherly than the bitch I’m married to now.’

‘So what makes you think you’re over her?’ asked Liza carefully. Bill didn’t respond well to scepticism about his resolutions.

‘I was getting over it already. Really I was. Then tonight she told me to get out of her space, said I was a nothing man. It wasn’t just the words, it was the tone of voice, the expression on her face. Reminded me of Bet.’

‘Well, that’s a relief, I admit. Now at least you
can go forward. Concentrate on getting custody of the children in the divorce.’

Bill bent forward over the table, his face red with anger.

‘It shouldn’t even be an issue! Bet’s never been interested – they’ve always been a burden to her, nothing more than that. Her application for custody must be pure mischief. Or someone else is putting her up to it.’

‘Who would?’ asked Liza thoughtfully. Then she said: ‘Of course, there is Hamish Fawley.’

‘Her supposed fiancé. But why would he? I’ve never done him any harm.’

‘I don’t suppose Stephen Barrymore has either, but it doesn’t stop Hamish being poisonous to him.’

Bill shifted uneasily again, an agonised expression on his face.

‘Unless he’s serious about the marriage, and wants…wants to get control of three young girls.’

It was out – the nightmare from the back of his brain.

‘But why would he? The fact that he’s bedding Bet doesn’t suggest he’s the type who’s attracted by schoolgirls.’

Bill just shook his head.

‘The attraction may not be sex so much as… tormenting them, torturing them by pressing sex on them – sex with someone they fear and hate.’

It was Liza’s turn to shake her head.

‘Well, all I can say is I’ve never heard that perversion alleged of Hamish, and I’ve heard practically every activity on God’s earth attributed to him at one time or another. Snap out of it, Bill, or it will affect the girls.’

‘Yes, yes,’ muttered Bill. He shook himself. ‘It was just worst case scenario imaginings. And really the girls are fine, not worried because their mother’s gone. The worst thing that could happen is they’ll have a rotten diet. Angela has grown up thinking “food” means takeaways. And she and I will stop that if the younger ones start putting on weight.’

‘Of course you will. You will come through this, and with flying colours. I know you will.’

Liza was experienced in conversations with Bill, and was adept at hiding any reservations she might feel. She knew him so well. When he said ‘I’ve got to go to the loo’ she knew he was going to ring his daughters. They were the three women more important to him than her.

The figure scurried through the near-deserted streets, confidently negotiating the winding and intersecting highways as if it was the keeper of a maze. The anorak was clutched around its body and the bottom of its jeans were getting dusty from the ill-swept roads. The hood was kept
pulled down over head and face, which continued to look intently at the road. Because, behind it, now several yards away, a red glow in the sky suggested a fire. And in the distance sirens started, coming nearer and fast. But in the end the figure knew they would arrive too late. One of the firemen expressed on television the same fatalism the next day.

‘There was nothing anybody could do,’ he said.

Surveying the scene next morning, in the chilly and grimy light of day, Charlie Peace was struck by the meanness of it all. The house where Hamish Fawley died was new and spruce, yet the skimped space for all the activities of life made it seem mean – a mean house, in a mean little street, in a mean area of Leeds, with the hideous modern palace of the Department of Work and Pensions within all-too-easy walking distance. All this, and then the burnt entrance area, with burnt door and window frames, evidences of a hatred, or a fear, or a contempt that condemned a man and a woman to a hideous death – all seemed to add up to an appropriate end to Hamish Fawley, in tune with the meanness of spirit of the man, as Charlie
had seen it in action in the studios of Northern Television.

He had been called at home in Slepton Edge and sent to an address in Leeds, where his least favourite policeman, Superintendent Birnley, was waiting for him. Waiting, he had no doubt, to offload on him the grind of the investigation, while retaining for himself all the glory of publicity that could be milked from the very public nature of the victims. With a sigh that developed into a groan Charlie donned his white protective clothing, and went into the blackened and smoke-smelling hallway, then upstairs to the bedroom. Birnley acknowledged his arrival with a grunt, then resumed his random survey of the charred room, in particular the two bodies – one half-on and half-off the bed, the other over by the window.

‘Right,’ said Birnley finally. ‘I’ve got to go back to HQ. There’s going to be a lot of public interest in this: second-highest ranking soap in the ratings, behind
Corrie
, of course, but way ahead of
EastEnders
. What have we got here that I can tell a press conference? I don’t think there’s any doubt it’s a bloke called Hamish Fawley, who was renting this little love nest from Northern Television. The woman is his fiancée, Bet Garrett, also currently in
Jubilee Terrace
. I’ve had a few words with the producer, Reggie Friedman,
and I’ll wise up with someone who watches the programme and try and sound as if I did when I talk to the meeja.’

Charlie had also been surveying the room.

‘I’ve phoned the casting people at NTV, on the way here. Just to get a few basic facts. Bet Garrett is the estranged wife of the man who plays Bob Worseley in
Terrace
. He’s a middle-aged man, and these clothes don’t suggest they’d be worn by his wife.’

He gestured to a chair in the corner of the bedroom, badly singed, on which lay a very skimpy skirt decorated around the waist (or groin) with chains, beads and buckles. Birnley favoured him with an elaborate sigh.

‘Laddie—’ (Charlie particularly disliked his habit of calling him that – Birnley not having a drop of Scottish blood in his veins) – ‘have you never heard of mutton dressed up as lamb? Or for that matter, have you never watched a middle-aged man making a fool of himself, even unto marriage, with much younger meat?’

‘The Garretts have teenaged children.’

‘Well, you’ll find it’s her, all the same. Friedman was pretty sure.’

Charlie felt he need do no more to enjoin caution on his superior. It ought to be the other way round, he thought.

‘Well, I’ll be on my way,’ said Birnley,
picking up his papers. ‘I could easily walk to police headquarters from here if I was that way inclined.’ He smirked round the little group. ‘Very considerate of our murderer.’

‘Are we quite sure it was murder?’ asked Charlie.

‘Oh, no doubt in the world. Didn’t you smell the petrol? Pretty funny way to commit suicide, eh?’

Charlie thought he could be in for a right rollicking if he recommended caution on two fronts. Anyway, he felt pretty sure that on this matter Birnley was right. He had not often met a more murderable victim than Hamish Fawley.

‘What did Reggie say? What did you learn?’

The cast of
Jubilee Terrace
were scattered around the canteen with but a single thought in their head. Les Crosby, who played Harry Hornby the newsagent, had been seen talking to Reggie as they went up the steps of the Northern Television studios, and had gone together to Reggie’s office. That was enough to make them shout their questions. He turned and came over.

‘What are you talking about? I didn’t
learn
anything. There is a new plot-line for Young Foulmouth – a strike of newspaper boys and girls. He wanted to be sure I was happy about the
way things were being planned, and we got on to possible consequences later on: maybe one of the girls becoming a sort of surrogate daughter for Lady Wharton.’

‘But what did he say about Hamish?’

Les Crosby frowned in bewilderment.

‘Why should he say anything about Hamish? We don’t all need to discuss him morning, noon and night, you know. As a matter of fact he didn’t mention him.’

‘In other words, you haven’t heard—’ put in Garry Kopps.

‘Haven’t heard what?’

‘Hamish has died in a fire in his house,’ said Shirley Merritt, ‘Bet Garrett died as well.’

‘Good God.’ Les Crosby sat down, and started drinking someone else’s coffee. ‘How did the fire start? And where was Hamish living?’

‘Hallway we heard,’ said Garry Kopps. ‘And in one of those NTV houses not far from the West Yorkshire Playhouse.’

‘You’re thinking what the rest of us are thinking,’ said Winnie Hey to Les.

‘Probably. But remember Vernon. We all thought someone had pushed him in front of a bus when we heard about his accident.’

‘Not all of us – only some. And who’s to say we were wrong?’ said Carol Chisholm.

‘Point taken. I wasn’t around when this copper
came sniffing. But one anonymous letter doesn’t make a murder case.’

‘Nobody said it did,’ said Philip Marston calmly. ‘I think we should put a bung into speculation like that. Say someone put petrol and a lighted match through the letterbox and so killed Hamish and Bet. They’re the most hated members of the cast. Who’s going to be the first to come under suspicion?’

They thought about this.

‘I didn’t hate Bet Garrett,’ said Marjorie. ‘I hardly knew her.’

‘Exactly,’ said Philip. ‘
Because
you hardly knew her you didn’t hate her… Actually a lot of us loathed her for what she did to Bill and the children.’

‘We only have Bill’s word for most of that,’ said Garry Kopps.

‘But we believe it because Bill is the straightest of us all, and the moralist in the
Terrace
. He’s a good man, and Bet was a cheap tart.’

‘You’re committing the vulgar error that all fans make, of confusing the actor and the part he plays,’ went on Garry Kopps. ‘Bill is a moralist and a model to us all when he is playing Bob Worseley – the man who can keep order in a public bar and shame any man – or woman – who steps out of line. But I wouldn’t give tuppence for any morality that issued from the
mouth of Bill Garrett. Look at the kind of woman he married, for a start.’

‘It’s because of all he suffered and learnt while he was married to Bet that I’d accept what he said as moral guidance,’ said Philip Marston.

Several of the cast nodded: they’d listen to, if not necessarily follow, moral guidance from good old Bill. No one analysed their reactions to the man. If they had they would have realised that they were really unsure where Bob Worseley ended and Bill Garrett began. And the same, though he showed no awareness of the fact, was true of Garry Kopps. He played a similar role as moral arbiter in the corner shop, where people gathered. And other cast members often talked about him as if he
was
Arthur Bradley, and ought to be given a five-minute God-slot on Radio Four.

Charlie Peace, alone in the bedroom of the charred house, stood and looked around the last resting place of Hamish Fawley. He hated murder scenes, but had got used to suppressing his nausea. They were a regular but not a frequent part of his job. He preferred other sorts of cases that required from him pretty much what a murder case (other than a crime of passion) did: insight into ingenuity and ambiguity; psychological perception: ability to sort out the relevant from the merely incidental.

He crossed to the upright chair under the
window. Hamish’s jeans and shirt were under the women’s clothes that he had noticed before, and also a handbag. He looked into that first, his hands protected by the latex gloves. He always thought he looked like a down-market chef in his protective gear. The handbag turned out to be the nearest thing to a make-up case. He put his hand into the tight pocket in the front of the ridiculous shirt. There was a card there. Gingerly he pulled it out. It was an Equity card – that prized permission-to-act for all would-be professional performers. Only this one was in the name of Sylvia Cardew. A tentatively smiling teenage face grinned out from the card. Charlie whistled.

He went through in his mind all the possibilities: that Bet Garrett acted under a stage name, or possibly her maiden one, and this was an old picture of her. Whence ‘Bet’ though? That Bet had had a marriage earlier than the one to Bill, maybe even a marriage that had produced some or all of the three daughters, and this was her first married name, and a photograph that flattered her and concealed her age.

But somehow, from the little Charlie knew of Hamish from his brief encounter with the
Jubilee
cast, the alternative explanation seemed to be the most likely one: that Hamish was playing away from his fiancée, that this was indeed a genuine and recent picture of the woman whose
burnt body still lay on the bed, and that she was a teenager, or a not-long-since teenager as the photograph suggested – naive, keen to get ahead in the acting profession, and willing to do anything to ensure that. Sad.

‘If you want to get ahead, go to bed,’ he said, adapting an old advertising slogan. He took his mobile from his pocket.

‘Rani? It’s Charlie Peace. I need to get a message through to Superintendent Birnley. As quick as you can. I believe he’s going to hold a press conference.’

‘He is. Pretty premature I’d say.’

‘Yes, well, there’s no holding an old trouper back. The message is that I’ve found in the clothing of the woman found in Hamish Fawley’s bed an Equity card with the name Sylvia Cardew on it. He needs to keep stumm and not give any name to the female victim – OK?’

‘OK. I’ve got a minute or two before the press conference opens. Enjoy yourself, Charlie.’

Detective Constable Omkar Rani went straight to the press room which was already crowded and stuffy. No policemen at the top table. He went and stood outside. Within seconds he saw, at the end of a long corridor, the figure of Superintendent Birnley: his walk showed intense enjoyment of the coming publicity, the set of his shoulders suggested
he was about to announce the winning of a war. As he approached, the expression of intense self-satisfaction on his face became nauseatingly apparent to DC Rani, who stepped forward, proffering the paper with Charlie’s message on it.

‘Sir, I have an important message from Inspector Peace which he thinks—’

Birnley snatched the paper, gave an almost imperceptible nod, and marched ahead into the press room. Rani, looking through the still-open door, saw him shoving the message into his trouser pocket.

‘Oh well, stuff you,’ he thought, and marched away, determined to let him stew. Too few of his underlings had done this in the course of Superintendent Birnley’s less-than-shining police career.

The set for the back rooms of the Duke of York’s was one that few of the soap’s actors saw in the course of filming. They were usually sacred to ‘the Worseleys,’ the bar staff, and occasionally the bar staff’s emotional entanglements of the moment.

Today all the currently being-filmed staff were crowded into them. There was still only one topic of conversation: the death of Hamish and Bet Garrett. It was spoken of as murder, and hardly anyone doubted for a moment that that was what
it was. There were slightly different verdicts on each corpse however.

‘There’s no doubt whatever that Hamish asked for it,’ said Carol Chisholm, her voice half-way between its natural tones and those of Norma Kerridge. ‘He tried to insult and diminish everyone involved in the show.’

‘Except maybe Reggie,’ put in Philip Marston, her
Terrace
husband.

‘He was dependent on Reggie for employment,’ said Carol. ‘However much he stressed he was slumming it, it was work, and a good regular wage. Have you heard of offers to him from the National or the Royal Shakespeare? And we would have… But Bet I don’t feel so sure about. I didn’t know her at all well. OK, she’d married unwisely, and she led Bill a merry dance and invited in anyone who looked in her direction, including more than one who’s here now.’ She looked around, and met with only glances of wide-eyed innocence, a well-practised expression. ‘But to a greater or lesser degree most of us here have been there, done that.’

‘Speak for yourself,’ said Marjorie. ‘My husband and I split up because we were fed up with each other. I hated everything he did, his gestures, his expressions, his opinions. And yet in a way we are still good friends. After all, everyone has friends who bore or irritate them.
And I certainly never led him a merry dance, whatever that implies.’

‘The thing about Bet,’ said Les Crosby, ‘was that she was totally and entirely for herself, and that was allied with a peculiar and usually sadistic sense of humour.’

They considered this.

‘Sounds the ideal mate for Hamish Fawley,’ said Garry Kopps. ‘They could torment each other.’

‘You do realise she was supposed to be filming today, don’t you?’ said Marjorie. ‘Another
flower-shop
scene, for after Cyril’s death. I suppose they could just use anyone, as one of whatever-
her-name’s
assistants.’

‘Rita Somerville, that’s what her name is,’ said Philip Marston. ‘Oh – here’s Stephen. I think he’s been talking to Reggie. Oh God – look. He’s got Young Foulmouth with him.’

Young Foulmouth had a baptismal name which hardly anyone knew or could remember. In fact it was Theodor Mossby. In the
Terrace
he played the only child of Bill Garrett and his
Terrace
wife Liza Coombe. His soap name was Jason, and his antics, cheek and elaborate tricks filled many a vacant five minutes of
Terrace
time. His unlovely counter-tenor voice (he was fourteen but playing twelve, and was adept at masking the effects of a broken voice) floated across the studio to them.