Star Struck (27 page)

The waiter removed the bill and the credit cards. “Two receipts, please,” we chorused. He nodded. He’d served us enough times to know the routine of two self-employed people who liked to eat together. “That’s bollocks, you know,” Richard said. “That might be what Turpin’s telling them, but it’s bollocks. If you leak upcoming storylines, what happens is you get a buzz going. First one paper breaks the story, then all the rest follow it up, then the TV magazines pick it up and run with it and before you know it, everybody’s buzzing. Don’t you remember the whole ‘Who shot JR?’ thing back in the eighties? Or the furor over Deirdre Barlow and Mike Baldwin’s affair on
Coronation Street
? The whole nation was watching. I bet Turpin got the idea when Freddie’s exclusives started hitting the headlines and the viewing figures rose along with them.”

“He wouldn’t dare,” I breathed.

“Where’s the risk? He’s in charge of hunting for the source of the
Northerners
stories. Turpin knows there’s a real mole as well as himself, so if he does uncover anything, he can pin all the guilt on the other one. There’s no way Tina Marshall is going to expose him, because he’s the goose that lays the golden eggs. She’s probably not even paying him much.”

I leaned across the table and thrust my hand through his thick butterscotch hair, pulling his head towards mine. I parted my lips and planted a warm kiss on his mouth. I could still taste lemon and ginger and garlic as I ran my tongue lightly between his teeth. I drew back for breath and said softly, “Now I remember why I put up with you.”

The waiter cleared his throat. I released Richard’s head and we sheepishly signed our credit card slips. Richard reached across the table and covered my hand with his. “We’ve got some unfinished business from last night,” he said, his voice husky.

I ran my other thumbnail down the edge of his hand and reveled in the shiver that ran through him. “Your place or mine?”

Just before we slipped under my duvet, I made a quick call to Gizmo, asking him to arrange for some background checks into the exact extent of John Turpin’s financial involvement with NPTV. Then I switched the phone off.

Sometime afterwards, I was teetering on the edge of sleep, my face buried in the musky warmth of Richard’s chest, when his voice swirled through my mind like a drift of snow. “I’ll tell you one thing, Brannigan. If a few juicy stories can push up the ratings, just think what murder must have done.”

Suddenly, I was wide awake.

Sandra McGovern, née Satterthwaite, had inherited her mother’s flair for ostentation. The house where she lived with her husband Keith and their daughter Joanna had definite delusions of grandeur. Set just off Bury New Road in the smarter part of Prestwich, it looked like the one person at the party who’d been told it was fancy dress. The rest of the street consisted of plain but substantial redbrick detached houses built sometime in the 1960s. Chateau McGovern had gone for the Greek-temple makeover. The portico was supported by half a dozen ionic columns and topped with a few statues of goddesses in various stages of undress. Bas reliefs had been stuck on to the brick at regular intervals and a stucco frieze of Greek key design ran along the frontage just below the first-floor windows.

They might just have got away with it on a sunny summer day. But the McGoverns clearly took Christmas seriously. The whole house was festooned with fairy lights flashing on and off with migraine-inducing intensity. Among the Greek goddesses, Santa Claus sat in a sled behind four cavorting reindeer, all in life-size inflatable plastic. A Christmas tree had been sawn vertically in two, and each half fixed to the wall on either side of the front door, both

There was a long silence. I was steeling myself to ring again when I saw a figure looming through the frosted glass. Then Donovan opened the door. But it was Donovan as I’d never seen him before, swathed in a plum silk kimono that reached just below his knees. A fine sheen of sweat covered his face and he looked extremely embarrassed. “Bah, humbug,” I muttered. He seemed baffled, but what else could I expect from an engineering student?

“Hiya, Kate,” he said.

I pointed to his outfit. “I hope this isn’t what it looks like,” I said drily.

He rolled his eyes heavenwards. “You’re as bad as my mother. Give me some credit. Come on in, let me get this door shut. We’re through the back,” he added, leading the way down the hall. “You think the outside is over the top, wait till you see this.”

I waded after him through shag pile deep enough to conceal a few troops of Boy Scouts. I tried not to look too closely at the impressionistic flower paintings on the walls. At the end of the hall was a solid wooden door. Donovan opened it, then stood back to let me pass.

I walked from winter to tropical summer. Hot, green and steamy as a Hollywood rainforest, the triple-glazed extension must have occupied the same square footage as the house. Ferns and palms pushed against the glass and spilled over in cascades that overhung brick paths. Growing lamps blazed light and warmth everywhere. The air smelt of a curious mixture of humus and chlorine. Sweat popping out on my face like a rash, I followed the path through the dense undergrowth, rounded a curve and found myself facing a vast swimming pool, its shape the free form of a real pond.

“Hiya, chuck,” Gloria screeched, raucous as an Amazonian parrot.

She was stretched out on a cushion on a wooden sunbed, wearing nothing but a swimsuit. Beside her, a younger version reclined on one elbow like a Roman diner, a champagne glass beaded with condensation hanging loosely from her fingers. Gloria beckoned

We nodded to each other and I told a few lies about the house and swimming pool. Sandra looked pleased and Gloria proud, which was the point of the exercise. Donovan reappeared carrying a fourth lounger which he placed a little away from our grouping. Self-consciously, he peeled off the robe, revealing baggy blue trunks, and perched on the edge of the seat, his body gleaming like a Rodin bronze. “No problems today?”

Gloria stretched voluptuously. For a woman who was fast approaching the downhill side of sixty, she was in terrific shape. It was amazing, given what I’d seen of her lifestyle. “Not a one, chuck. Nowt but pleasure all the way. We went to Oldham police station and I spoke to a lovely young inspector who couldn’t see what all the fuss last night had been about. Any road, young Don’s in the clear now, so we don’t have to worry about that. And then we went shopping for Christmas presents for Joanna. We had to get a robe and some trunks for Don and all, because our Keith’s a tiddler next to him. We’ve not seen a journalist all day, and there’s nobody more pleased than me about that. What about you? Any news?”

“I wanted to ask you about something,” I said, side-stepping the question. “You remember when I came to fetch you from Dorothea’s van the night she was killed? Well, I was busy wrestling with the umbrella and keeping an eye out in case anybody jumped us, so I wasn’t really paying attention to individuals. Besides, I don’t really know anybody at NPTV, so even if I had noticed who was around, it wouldn’t mean anything to me. But you …”

“You want me to think about who I saw in the car park?”

“It might be important.”

Gloria leaned back, closing her eyes and massaging her temples. “Let’s see …” she said slowly. “There were two women getting into a car a couple of bays down from Dorothea’s. I don’t know their

I reached for my sweater. “More than you can imagine, Gloria. Much more than you can imagine.”

“So what’s going on?” she demanded. “Do you know who killed Dorothea?”

“I’ve got an idea,” I said. “I don’t want to say too much yet. I’ve got stuff to check out. But if you get Donovan to bring you to the office first thing tomorrow morning, I think I might be able to give you your money’s worth.”

Donovan gave me a look of resignation. “You want me to stick with Gloria?”

“Oh, I think so,” I said. “You make such a lovely pair.”

SATURN IN PISCES IN THE 11TH HOUSE
She is comfortable with her own company and works best alone. Her friends are valued as much for their experience as for their personal qualities. She has a single-minded concentration on objectives, but has a flexible and sympathetic mind. She is intuitive and imaginative. She can be moody.
From
Written in the Stars
, by Dorothea Dawson

When Freddie Littlewood got home from work, I was waiting for him. Stacey of the big eyes and trusting soul had made it back fifteen minutes ahead of him and she’d let me in without a moment’s hesitation. She’d shown me into the dining room again, presumably because that was where Freddie and I had spoken before. She’d been back inside five minutes with a tray containing teapot, milk, sugar and a china mug with kittens on it.

“It can’t have been easy for Freddie, the last few days,” I said sympathetically.

She gave me an odd look. “No more than usual,” she said. “Why would it be difficult?”

Until that moment, the idea that Freddie might not have mentioned his mother’s murder to Stacey hadn’t occurred to me. People have called me cold in my time, but I don’t think I could plan to spend the rest of my life with someone I trusted so little. “I meant, with the police everywhere,” I improvised hastily, remembering I was supposed to work for NPTV too. “It’s been really disruptive. They walk around as if they own the place, asking all sorts of questions. And it’s not even as if Dorothea Dawson worked for NPTV.”

Seemingly satisfied, Stacey drifted off, saying she was going to get changed and get the dinner on, if I didn’t mind. I also couldn’t

Freddie stepped into the doorway, looking gray-faced and exhausted. “What’s so urgent it couldn’t wait for work tomorrow?” he asked brusquely. More for Stacey’s benefit than mine, I suspected.

“I needed the answer to a question,” I said. “I won’t be at NPTV first thing in the morning, so I thought you wouldn’t mind if I caught up with you at home.”

He closed the door behind him and leaned against it. “Have you never heard of the telephone?” he said, exasperation in his voice.

“It’s much harder to tell when people are lying,” I said mildly. “Sorting out the truth is difficult enough as it is.”

Freddie folded his arms over his chest and glared. “Since you’re here, I’ll answer your question. But in future, if you want to talk to me, see me at work or call me on the phone. I don’t want Stacey upset by this, OK?”

“That’s very chivalrous of you,” I said. “There’s not many men who are so concerned for their future wives’ wellbeing that they don’t even tell them their prospective mother-in-law’s just been murdered.”

“What goes on between Stacey and me is none of your business. You said you had a question?”

“You told me that it wasn’t you who leaked the advance storylines to the press, and I believe you,” I said. “But somebody did. I was wondering if Dorothea had ever indicated to you that she knew who the mole was?”

He gave me a long, considering stare, running his thumb along his jaw in the unconscious gesture I’d already become familiar with. “She once told me that it wasn’t hard to work out who the mole was if you looked at the horoscopes. She said there weren’t that many people connected with
Northerners
who had the right combination of features in their charts. If you excluded people who

“Did she mention anybody’s name to you?”

He shook his head. “Not then. She said she didn’t seem to have much choice about passing me other people’s secrets but that she wasn’t going to ruin somebody when she had no evidence except her own instinct. But then later …” His voice tailed off.

“What happened, Freddie?” I asked urgently.

“Turpin was in make-up one day and somebody said something about one of the stories in the paper and was it true he was going to get rid of the caterers because they were the moles. Turpin said he wasn’t convinced that would solve the problem. I turned round and he was staring at me. I thought maybe he suspected me. So I went round to Dorothea’s house and told her. I said she’d probably be glad if Turpin did find out, because then she’d be off the hook and wouldn’t have to break her precious client confidences any more.”

“She wasn’t though, was she?” I said gently.

He shook his head and cleared his throat. “No. She said she wouldn’t let Turpin destroy my career. She said she was as certain as she could be that he was the storyline mole and she was going to confront him.”

“She was going to expose him?” I couldn’t believe Freddie was only revealing this now.

“No, she wasn’t like that. I told you, she was obsessed with trying to do her best for me, supposedly to make up for all the bad years. No, she said she’d do a deal with Turpin. If he stopped hunting the mole, she’d keep quiet about her suspicions of him.”

“But she didn’t have any evidence apart from an astrological chart,” I protested.

“She said that if she was right, there had to be evidence. All it needed was for someone to look in the right place and Turpin would realize that once she’d pointed the finger, he’d be in trouble. So he’d have to back off and leave me alone. Except of course she wasn’t going to come out and say it was me, not in so many words. She was just going to tell him that she was acting on behalf of the mole.”

“When was this?” I asked, trying to keep my voice nonchalant.

Freddie shrugged. “A couple, three weeks ago? She told me afterwards he’d agreed to the deal. That he’d seen the sense of what she was saying. You don’t think that had anything to do with why she was killed, do you?”

“You don’t?” I asked incredulously.

“I told you, it was weeks ago.”

I couldn’t get my head round his naiveté. Then I realized he wasn’t so much naive as self-obsessed. “There’s a lot at stake,” I pointed out. “You know yourself you’d never work in TV again if I told NPTV what you’ve been doing. And there are a lot of people involved with
Northerners
who have a lot more to lose than you do. If somebody thought Dorothea was a threat …”