Merely Players (10 page)

The traffic thickened on the M62 as they approached Manchester, but he had no difficulty in following her red Mazda sports car as she turned off at junction 17 and headed north towards her eventual destination of Darcy Lever, an exotic name for a village on the outskirts of Bolton. She waited for him whilst he parked the Mercedes, then led the way into the ground floor flat nearest to the outer door in a newly erected block. Neither of them turned down their collars until they were inside the flat. It was one of the prices of television fame that you were likely to be stopped by strangers at inopportune moments.

‘This is nice!' he said conventionally, as he eased himself out of the sheepskin and looked around the place. And it was. The rooms were much more spacious than in most modern developments; the fittings in the kitchen he could see to his left were of excellent quality.

She smiled at him, grateful for the fact that even the man who played the suave Alec Dawson seemed as uncertain as she was over the next move. ‘I'll put the kettle on and get the whisky out.'

As she turned her back to move towards the sink, he slid his arms round her waist and put his face against the back of her head. Her long dark hair was still damp from the hills and the winter darkness; he fancied he could smell the wildness and freedom of the Pennines still upon her in this civilized, comfortable place. He breathed the single word ‘Later!' softly into her ear and felt the face he could not see breaking into a smile.

The heating was on in the bedroom and he pulled the thick curtains swiftly shut. He slid beneath the silk sheets on the big double bed with scarcely a shiver and took her naked into his arms. Her love-making was urgent and direct. He had no need for foreplay or any skilled technique. She led the way, urging him on as much with her movements as with her brief and scarcely intelligible cries. His contribution was but to synchronize his excitement with hers, ensuring that they came together, then held each other afterwards for a long, delicious moment of climax and satisfaction.

A few minutes later they lay contentedly upon their backs and stared at the ceiling. ‘You needed that,' he said with a smile.

She did not respond, so that for a moment he thought she had been offended by the comment. Then she said softly, ‘It's been a while.' She gripped his hand beneath the sheets for a moment, then slid away from him. ‘I shan't be long. Don't go away.'

He heard the cistern flush in the bathroom, then muffled movements in the kitchen they had left so peremptorily. It was ten minutes before she was back, carrying two china beakers upon a small silver tray, her face filled with the concentration of a schoolgirl bringing her latest triumph before admiring adults. ‘Irish coffee! You really meant it!' he said with delight.

‘I never default on a promise,' she told him earnestly. ‘The skill is to get the whisky beneath the cream, so that you can drink it through it. It's not the Irish brand, as it really should be, but I defy you to tell the difference.'

She watched him as he took his first exploratory sip, knowing well what was required of him. The hot, sweet coffee with its generous lacing of whisky and its subtle touch of cream passed deliciously down his throat, warming his chest an instant later. He took another sip, expanding the joyous, silly tension of the moment as she waited for his verdict. ‘Best I've ever had!' he said. He took a third sip before he set the beaker carefully on the bedside cabinet and reached out to enfold her in his arms and tumble her back into the bed.

She still had her dressing robe on and they dissolved into laughter at the confusion of its removal. ‘You actors know how to please a girl!' she said mockingly. ‘But we never know whether to believe what you say, do we?'

‘Oh, it's true all right. Best I've ever had.' Then a moment later, ‘The Irish coffee, I mean, of course!'

She punched him playfully on the chest and they chatted contentedly about the director and the people they worked with in the ten minutes it took them to finish the coffee. Then, as both of them had known they would do, they made love again, slowly and less frenetically this time, as confident as if they had done this many times before rather than a breathless once.

They were looking at the ceiling again when she said, ‘Shouldn't you be looking at your watch about now?'

‘My watch?' He had in fact been wondering what the time was, but he was too experienced to make the mistake of searching for it.

‘Isn't this the moment which reminds the mistress of her place? The moment when the married man takes over from the randy lover and she realizes she's just the bit on the side?'

He didn't want her to consider herself his mistress. Even his bit on the side was running a little too far for the moment. He said, ‘It was all spontaneous today, you know. It wasn't planned.' Even as he said that, he wondered if it was exactly true.

‘Was it, Adam? I don't think I can really claim that. I hadn't planned anything, but I suppose I was wondering what it was like all through this episode of the series.'

‘Yes, it's been good. Pity it's the last one.'

‘There's another series planned though, isn't there?'

‘Oh yes. Already commissioned. Many of the storylines are already in place. I haven't had time to look at them yet. I believe in giving all my attention to the work in hand.'

‘Yes. I noticed that tonight!' She giggled a little, feeling her thighs and her side tight against his. ‘Still, we should be able to work together more regularly in the next series, when I'm your regular girlfriend.'

There was a pause which was a little longer than she had hoped it would be. Then he said in a carefully neutral voice, ‘Been cast, has it?'

‘I believe so, yes.' Suddenly she was trying to keep it light, to keep any anxiety out of her voice. ‘James Walton seemed to think it was a done deal.'

‘Did he, indeed? Well, what the producer says goes, as we are all aware. Speaking of which, as you so tactfully reminded me, I must be on my way.'

He was abruptly distant and cold when she wanted him to be intimate. He dressed quickly, held her for a few seconds in an embrace, kissed her forehead, and was gone. He had smiled at her before he went, had said something conventional about doing this again.

But he had said nothing more about working together. Half an hour later Adam Cassidy was nearing his house and his wife and his sleeping children. And Michelle Davies was still trying to thrust from her mind the producer's final reminder to her that the star still had the final veto over casting.

SEVEN

C
hief Superintendent Tucker would never have admitted it, but he was not immune to the celebrity culture which seemed to have captured British society in the second decade of the twenty-first century.

He was as anxious to catch his first glimpse of the actor who played Alec Dawson as any of the eager audience for the afternoon chat show. He had accepted his wife's injunction to have his hair cut specially for the occasion. He decided he was pleased with the effect, as he surveyed himself in the mirror after the make-up girl's rather perfunctory attention to his solid fifty-four-year-old features. His hair was thinning a little, but still plentiful enough when brushed skilfully; the silvering at the temples would give just the correct degree of gravitas to the considered opinions of a senior policeman.

He realized by the polite applause which greeted his introduction that he was to be merely the warm-up act for the eagerly awaited appearance of Adam Cassidy, but he didn't mind that. It would take the pressure off him in a television world where policemen were sometimes not the most popular presence. And he had confirmed that he was to stay on set even when Cassidy appeared. Barbara would be delighted to see him accorded equal status with the great man, sitting beside him in the studio armchairs and exchanging friendly conversation.

The host of the programme was Gerry Clancy, a bright Northern Irish man who had for ten years risen at four each morning to present the early morning show on Channel Four. It was his liveliness there which had earned him the right to this more relaxed and leisurely afternoon ITV assignment. The vehicle was ideal for him; he had a quick wit and an ability to mine the richest veins of ore among a wide variety of guests. Clancy knew the importance of preparation; one of the paradoxes of television chat was that to appear spontaneous you had to put in a modicum of research and the proper degree of forethought. Gerry had noted that Chief Superintendent Thomas Bulstrode Tucker was a senior policeman who was a little nervous and a little pompous. He was even more aware than his guest that policemen were not the most popular of public servants.

He said as much to Tucker as soon as he had greeted him and set him politely in the chair opposite his.

His interviewee had resolved to picture a doting wife rather than the sprightly and hostile Percy Peach as his audience. He smiled patronizingly at this man who was fifteen years his junior and plainly in need of enlightenment. ‘The public needs us and we need them, Mr Clancy. Our job is more difficult than it has ever been, and we do not always receive the cooperation we deserve from the public.' He shook his head sadly.

‘Deserve, Superintendent? Surely trust has to be earned? If suspicion of the police is greater now than it has ever been, there must be good reasons for that.'

Tucker allowed his eyebrows to lift a fraction, indicating surprise and disappointment. His demeanour conveyed that he wasn't going to be worried by this modern tendency towards aggression in his interviewer. He was never at a loss for a platitude. ‘There is an unfortunate tendency in modern society to resent any form of authority, Gerry. Police officers suffer from that, as do teachers and anyone who has to enforce the rules. But I assure you, there would be chaos without us.'

‘I think everyone accepts that, Mr Tucker. Otherwise we shouldn't be paying millions of pounds each year for your services. But some of us have begun to wonder whether that money is being well spent. We have more police officers each year. If we take account of the huge amount of what was formerly police work but which is now being done by civilians, we have almost twice the number of officers we had ten years ago. And yet the clear-up rates for so many crimes seem to get not better but steadily worse.'

Behind his professionally calm exterior, T.B. Tucker was trying hard not to panic. They should have warned him that the man intended to say things like this. But he could hardly say that now. ‘Oh, I'm sure that if you compare like with like and examine the real figures—'

‘What would you say is the crime which besets and worries most people in their daily lives, Mr Tucker?'

‘Well, I'm sure that you'd get a variety of—'

‘Burglary, Mr Tucker. The criminal most likely to affect most people's lives is the burglar. I should have thought you might have known that.'

A titter among the audience, alerting Tucker to the fact that things were moving against him, that in this bear-pit he was the amateur and Clancy the professional. He cleared his throat. ‘In the modern climate, where terrorism and all sorts of other violence threaten our society, burglary has necessarily assumed a lower profile than in former years.'

‘Indeed it has, Mr Tucker. It is an increasingly attractive proposition for our youth, many of them hooked on the illegal drugs you also seem unable to control. If I were a young man with no morals and in need of quick money for drugs, I should consider burglary a very easy option. Especially in view of the fact that well over eighty per cent of burglaries go undetected.'

Laughter and applause, this time. Gerry Clancy let it run for a moment, then held up his hand, signifying to his audience that he wanted the chief superintendent to have a fair opportunity to refute this view. Tucker smiled a superior smile. ‘Statistics can be very deceptive, Gerry.'

‘And in what respect is this particular one deceptive, Chief Superintendent?'

Tucker sighed, then offered the patient smile which was meant to convey that mere amateurs couldn't expect to understand these things. ‘One has to allocate resources economically. Burglary is one of the pettier crimes, you know. It cannot always be accorded a high priority.'

This time there were murmurs of discontent in the audience, many of whom had suffered from this crime. Clancy nodded thoughtfully. ‘So the public just has to accept that even a much enlarged police service is incapable of dealing with petty crime.'

Tucker's smile was now covering an increasing desperation. ‘I did not say we were incapable.'

‘No, you didn't admit to that. Then are we to presume that you
choose
to neglect burglaries, Mr Tucker?'

‘We have to allocate resources, Mr Clancy. It is part of every senior police officer's duty to decide on priorities.'

Gerry Clancy turned directly towards his audience. ‘And it seems that this particular senior officer chooses not to prioritize the very crime which every survey shows the citizens of Britain find most disturbing. Food for thought there, certainly.' He shook his head solemnly, then let his face light up. ‘But now to happier things. It is time for us to meet the actor who was last year voted Britain's favourite television star. Ladies and gentlemen, Adam Cassidy!'

Adam gave it a full two seconds, whilst the clapping swelled in volume. Then he walked briskly on to the set and smiled with modest thanks at the studio audience. It might be some time since he had appeared on a stage, but he hadn't forgotten how to milk applause. He sat down carefully between his host and Tucker, making sure that the adulation lasted for a few seconds more, plucking at the trouser creases of his superb light-grey suit, smiling first briefly at Tucker and then more warmly at his host.

Clancy radiated good humour and welcome; this was a good star to hitch your wagon to. ‘We've all seen what Alec Dawson's been up to. Haven't we?' He flung the question at his audience, who roared an enthusiastic affirmative, and then turned back to Adam. ‘How does it feel to be a national institution?'