Dead on Cue (24 page)

‘Well, you know . . .' the safety officer said embarrassedly.

‘No, I don't know,' Woodend told him. ‘Are you saying that it's common knowledge that Diana Houseman has been having an affair?'

‘
An
affair!' the safety officer repeated.

‘You're telling me she's had more than one?'

‘I'm not going to give you any names, because I've no proof one way or the other, but if the rumours are to be believed, nobody in trousers was really safe from her.'

Woodend nodded. ‘Let's get back to the buildin' check that you did,' he said. ‘Apart from this couple grabbin' the chance for a spot of nookie in the cupboard, did you see anybody else?'

‘Nobody. But that doesn't really prove a thing. If somebody didn't want me to see them, there are dozens of places in this studio where they could hide until I went off to check somewhere else. The only reason I found that couple I told you about was because they were more intent on what they were doing to each other than they were on what was happening around them.'

Despite his general feeling of despondency, Woodend grinned. ‘What instructions were the staff told to follow once they were outside?'

‘Their
instructions
were for them to form up in their assigned groups,' the safety officer said. ‘All the kitchen staff should have been in one group, all the props people in another, and so on. That way, we can do a head count to make sure nobody's gone missing.'

‘But I take it that didn't happen.'

‘The big trouble with this kind of thing is that nobody ever takes it seriously,' the safety officer complained. ‘They hear the bell ring, and their automatic assumption is that it's nothing more than a drill. So they leave the building like they're supposed to, but once they're outside, all procedure goes by the board. It never occurs to them that this time it
could
be the real thing, you see. It never enters their heads that the people responsible for their safety need to know if there's anybody left inside.'

‘In other words, instead of doin' what they're supposed to do, they do pretty much what they feel like?'

‘That's about the long and short of it,' the safety officer admitted sadly. ‘Oh, I've no doubt that some of them assembled at the correct points, but the majority probably didn't. You know what people are like. They drift off to their cars to listen to the racing on the wireless. They go and chat with their mates from other departments. It wouldn't surprise me if some of them didn't slip off to the nearest pub for a quick one.' He sighed heavily. ‘It's not easy, under any circumstances, to get the general public to co-operate with safety procedures in the proper disciplined manner, but with this lot from the entertainment industry—'

‘You think you've got problems?' Woodend interrupted. ‘You should try conductin' a double murder investigation among this lot from the entertainment industry.'

T
he ragged queues outside the studio's conference rooms were shorter than they had been earlier, but there was still a fair number of people waiting to have their statements taken down.

Woodend, standing in front of the safety officer's room, wondered how long it would take Bob Rutter's team to complete their work. Probably no more than an hour or two, he decided. Not that he was entertaining any great hopes that the statements would actually lead anywhere. He'd seen the confusion in the car park for himself, and was well aware of just how easy it would have been for the killer to slip back into the building for a couple of minutes without anybody else noticing.

‘We need to have a word, Woodend!' said a self-important-sounding voice to his left.

The chief inspector turned towards the man who'd addressed him. ‘Do we, sir?' he asked. ‘An' exactly what word might that be? I can think of several that might fit the bill.'

‘You know what I mean,' Wilcox said, flushing slightly. ‘We should have a talk. Right now!'

‘Aye,' Woodend agreed. ‘I rather think we should.'

‘The best place for it would be my office,' Wilcox told him, and without waiting to see whether or not that was acceptable, the director turned on his heel and strode back to his lair.

Woodend followed. When he entered the office, the first thing he saw was Monika Paniatowski, sitting in the corner and trying to look as shocked as a civilian who'd just heard about a murder would.

Wilcox noticed her, too. ‘Get lost for about half an hour, Monika with a K,' he said, off-handedly.

Paniatowski was just about to rise from her seat when Woodend shook his head.

‘Stay where you are, Monika,' the chief inspector said. ‘You might come in useful.'

‘Since when have you assumed the authority to order my girl around?' Wilcox demanded furiously.

‘She's not
anybody's
girl, Mr Wilcox,' Woodend told him. ‘But she is
my
sergeant.'

‘Do you mean to say . . . do you actually have the nerve to tell me . . . that you've planted one of your police spies in my office?' Wilcox asked, outraged.

‘We much prefer the term “undercover officers”,' Woodend said mildly. ‘But yes, in general terms, that's what she is.'

‘I shall complain!' Wilcox said.

‘Who to? Your bosses or mine?'

‘To both of them. I'm sure Lord Throgmorton will be as angry as I am when he learns that—'

‘Horry Throgmorton's known about it all along,' Woodend interrupted. ‘It was my idea, but he seemed to think it was quite a good one.'

The information seemed to knock the wind out of Wilcox's sails. ‘I see,' he said, slightly shakily. ‘Well, in that case, I have no objection to Monika – to your
sergeant
, I should say – staying.'

‘That's very kind of you, I'm sure,' Woodend said dryly. ‘Now what was it you wanted to see me about?'

‘I'd like to know how long all your PC Plods will be here, getting underfoot and generally buggering things up.'

‘Or to put it another way, you want to know how long my officers will be here investigating two separate cases of murder,' Woodend said. ‘An' the short answer to that is that I've absolutely no idea.'

Wilcox sighed theatrically. ‘Look, I'm trying to be reasonable about this,' he said.

‘Reasonable?' Woodend repeated incredulously. ‘Is that how you see yourself? As bein' reasonable?'

‘What else would you call it?' the producer countered. ‘The next episode of
Madro
goes out tomorrow night, as you're well aware. We've already had to cope with the radical change in the script necessitated by Val's death. Now I'll have to take over Bill's duties as well as my own – and having all
my
people tied up answering
your
people's questions isn't helping me at all.'

‘You don't seem too daunted by the prospect of runnin' the whole show yourself,' Woodend commented.

‘Why should I be? If I didn't have confidence that I could do the job well, I'd never have taken it on. But that's not what I got you in here to talk about. What I want to know is whether you can at least tell me how long it will be before I have all my staff back?'

‘Aren't you even the tiniest bit curious?' Woodend wondered.

‘Curious? About what?'

‘About whether it'll be the Russians or the Yanks who put a man on the moon first!' Woodend said. ‘Or could I have meant curious about who killed Valerie Farnsworth and Bill Houseman?'

‘Well, of course I'm curious about that,' Wilcox said exasperatedly. ‘Anxious, too. But I have to put first things first. It won't help Bill and Val if I allow
Madro
to fall to pieces, now will it? In a way, going on with the show will be a sort of tribute to them.'

‘So you're doin' it for purely unselfish reasons, are you?'

‘No! Frankly, I'm doing it for myself as well. In a couple of years' time, my memories of Val and Bill will have started to fade, but if I mess up this opportunity I've been given, I'll wake up every morning for the rest of my life bitterly regretting it.'

‘So you're curious, but not
too
curious,' Woodend said. ‘You mentioned a moment ago that you were anxious, too. Is that because you think you might be next on the killer's list?'

Wilcox looked genuinely shocked. ‘Of course not! That's a preposterous suggestion.'

‘So what
are
you anxious about?'

‘That you might arrest one of the key members of the cast – and leave me with a huge hole in the script just before we go on air.'

‘You really
don't
care about the murders, do you?' Woodend asked.

‘Let me ask
you
a question, Chief Inspector,' Wilcox replied. ‘When you're working on a case like this, does anything apart from finding your killer really matter to you?'

‘No, but . . .' Woodend said uncomfortably.

‘But nothing!' Wilcox said. ‘We're both professionals. We give our jobs our all. And because our jobs are so different, so is our view of the world. You see your policemen as instruments of even-handed justice – I see them as nothing more than an obstacle standing in the way of the creative process.'

‘You were with Bill Houseman when the fire alarm went off, weren't you?' Woodend asked, changing tack.

‘Yes, I was.'

‘Where were you when he was killed? Out in the car park with all the other people?'

‘All those details are in the statement I gave up so much of my valuable time to dictate to one of your officers.'

‘I'm sure they are,' Woodend agreed. ‘But I've never been much of one for studyin' paperwork. When a man answers one of my questions, I like to be lookin' him in the eye at the time.'

‘I was here,' Wilcox said, resignedly. ‘In this very office.'

‘So you ignored the fire alarm, just like Mr Houseman?'

‘As, I'm sure, did several other members of the senior staff. We're operating on a very tight schedule, as I've been at pains to point out to you.'

‘All right, let me ask you another question,' Woodend said. ‘You're worried that I might arrest one of the more important members of your cast for the murders. Why?'

‘Because, as I've already explained, it would leave a big hole in the—'

‘No, you misunderstand me. What I meant is, why do you assume that it's one of the actors who will turn out to be the murderer?'

Houseman shrugged. ‘I haven't really thought about it, but I suppose it's because I can't see why anyone else in this building would want to kill Bill and Valerie. What interest would a carpenter or a make-up girl have in murdering them?'

‘You mean that leadin' characters are usually killed by other leadin' characters, not by somebody with a walk-on part?'

‘Yes, I suppose that's what I do mean,' Wilcox agreed.

Aye, Woodend thought, Bill Houseman might be dead but, as in the case of Shakespeare's kings, some of his spirit lived on in his successor.

‘I'll do my best to get my lads out of the way as soon as possible,' Woodend promised, ‘but I'd like somethin' in return.'

‘What?'

‘If you come across any information which will help my investigation, you'll pass it on to me – even if it does land one of your leadin' actors in lumber.'

Wilcox nodded. ‘You can rely on me to do my duty,' he said ambiguously.

Jane Todd was standing alone on the concourse. She smiled uncertainly as she saw Woodend and Paniatowski emerge from Wilcox's office.

‘You look lost,' Woodend said.

‘I am, in a way,' Jane replied. ‘I've given one of your nice young men my statement, so I'm free to return to work. The only problem is that, with Mr Houseman dead, I don't have a boss to work for anymore. I suppose if I could get back into the office I could find something to do, but it's been sealed off. I can't even get a cup of tea, because the cafeteria has been sealed off too, so that your men can dust for fingerprints – or whatever else it is they do. So here I am, wandering lonely as a cloud.'

‘An' hopin' to get a chance to talk to me,' Woodend said.

Jane's smile changed from uncertain to mildly amused. ‘Am I really that obvious?' she asked.

‘Only to a trained observer,' Woodend told her, with a slight grin.

Paniatowski coughed discreetly. ‘Do you still need me?' she asked.

‘No, I don't,' Woodend replied. ‘So, to borrow a phrase from the charmin' Jeremy Wilcox, why don't you get lost for half an hour, lass.'

‘Will do,' Paniatowski said, turning towards the studio and walking away.

‘Shall we stroll down towards the Actors' Garden?' Woodend suggested to Jane Todd.

‘If you like.'

They set off at a leisurely pace. ‘So what's on your mind, lass?' Woodend asked.

‘I feel such a fool for telling you that if there was another murder – and I never thought there actually
would be
one – the most likely victim was Larry Coates. Well, I couldn't have been wronger, could I?'

‘Perhaps not,' Woodend agreed, ‘but what interests me is why you came up with Coates's name in the first place.'

‘I thought he was in the way.'

‘That's why most people are murdered – because they're in the way,' Woodend agreed. ‘How does Larry Coates fall into that particular category?'

‘Back at the beginning, when nobody expected the show to run for more than six weeks, there weren't any such things as stars,' Jane said. ‘The writers were just feeling their way as they went along, so one week it would be Queenie Dobson from the corner shop who had the biggest part, and the next it would be Madge Thornycroft, the Row's gossip, who got most screen time.'