Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (14 page)

More banging came from the front door. Tess’ head throbbed in concert. She fell back on her pillows, and yelled for her flatmate. “Mum! Where
are
you?”

“I’m coming, dear,” came the frail reply. Listening for Violet’s slow tread down the hall, Tess tried to focus. How had she got here? Who had she been with? Mark Plimpton! But why? All questions that needed immediate resolution, which wasn’t going to be achieved until that BLOODYBANGINGSTOPPED.

“
MUM!
There’s someone AT – THE – DOOR.”

A creak from the hall. “What if it’s another reporter?” her mother whispered through Tess’ bedroom door. “They keep coming. They’re hounding me, hounding me.”

Fearful and fragile at the best of times, Violet Darling was ill-equipped to cope with her daughter’s walk-on role in a murder. These past few days, Tess had done her best to dispatch any door-stepping press. Today, however, she needed back-up. “Can’t you set Miller on them, Mum? He’s always grisly before breakfast. Just open the front door, and push him out—”

“But Miller isn’t here.”

“
Not here?
You’re sure?” Tess frowned. She couldn’t recall the last time she’d awoken hungover, accompanied by neither her best friend nor a totally strange man. “Have you checked the loo? He can be awhile.”

“It’s just us,” said her Mum. “And that horrible banging. What shall I do?”

Tess thought quickly. “Tell them to fuck off. Whoever it is. And if they don’t fuck off… use the gun.”

“The
gun?!
”

“Under the kitchen sink. The Cillit Bang. Fling the front door open, and spray the fuckers. It’s harsh, but what choice do we have, Mum? I used all the Toilet Duck on the woman from
Tatler
.”

The banging at the front door was getting louder. Tess had to strain to hear the soft footfall of her mother’s slippers, as Violet moved away from her bedroom door – and back down the hall. “
Mother!
” Pulling herself up and out of bed, Tess opened the door of her room – just in time to catch Mum locking herself into the loo.

“I’m sorry, dear.” Peering out from behind the bathroom door, Violet Darling clutched the neck of her floral nightie. “I’m not good with people. I always left that to your father. I just confused them, he said.” She peered distractedly up the hallway, as if, even now, her darling Darcus might step in. “He’d know what to do.”

“
Do?
Get real, Mum, the only thing Dad wants to
‘do’
these days is his Russian girlfriend in his Cadogan Square flat.”

Violet clutched at her skimpy chest, and fell back into the loo like she’d been shot. Great, thought Tess, another milestone reached on the mother-daughter road to hell.

They’d never been close, her and her Mum, how could they be? For years, their relationship had been one of despondent rivalry for Darcus’ affections. When Tess realised they were both doomed to fail, she fled the battlefield. Taking the first step on what was to prove a three-year bunk, she caught a Ryanair flight to Dublin, and left her parents to their catastrophic, co-dependent clinch. Six months ago, Tess had made a rare phone call home from Australia, and found Mum getting evicted by Dad’s lawyers. Darcus, it turned out, had found someone else to ‘depend upon’. Irina was a beautiful, Russian TV producer, who made documentaries for BBC4, and was sufficiently international to respect Darcus Darling’s reputation, while misunderstanding just enough English to laugh at all his jokes.

Feeling a rage of protectiveness towards a woman she’d not properly spoken to in years, Tess had cursed her way up Bondai Beach, sworn her way on to a flight back to London, and set about saving her mother. Having got most of Violet’s most treasured furniture and belongings safely into storage, Tess had rented them this dingy flat in South Wimbledon. (It was cheap, near a dog-track and clinging to the bottom of the Northern Line).

Tess being crap however, it hadn’t turned out to be much of a rescue. Darcus, as ever, had won. Realising his daughter would take any job to support his deserted wife, he’d halted further proceedings towards anything like alimony. ‘Divorce would just upset your mother’, he explained magnanimously. Over the subsequent six months, mother and daughter had settled into a mutually compatible pattern of life: Violet Darling never left the flat. Tess Darling barely entered it. She could no longer kid herself her love life was a random romp fuelled by passion and pluck. It was an escape route, pure and simple. Now strangers in the night – brief encounters Tess could subsequently only identify to Miller as ‘Big Eye Small Eye’, ‘Scurfy Jim’ or ‘Martin of the Calves’ – were able to pull her with the shortest of lines: ‘Wanna come back to my place?’

But no-one had taken her home last night. No feckless prince had kissed her awake this morning. She was stuck in the same old horror story – only now there was a noisy knob-head knocking to get in. “Enough with the bloody banging!” Tess flung open her front door. “Or do you
WANT
me to smash your face in?”

“Not really,” blushed DS Selleck. “A cup of tea would be fine.”

There was a policeman on her doorstep. Tess gawped for a moment to allow her brain to catch up. (Why was he here? What had she done? Had it hurt?) The officer looked off-duty – wearing jeans and holding a sports bag – but his manner was stiffer than ever.

“Sorry not to call first,” he said. “Are you on your way out?” Tess looked at him, as if he were mad. “It’s just, you’re wearing—”

Following the officer’s gaze down her body, Tess saw she was still in her coat, mini-skirt and knee boots. “Oh forgodsake man, I woke up like this.” She turned indignantly on her heel, which promptly broke. “Come inside, if you have to. But shut the door behind you, will you? And pick up the rest of my shoe.”

Limping down her hall to the kitchen, Tess led the police officer past the bathroom. The sound of taps running didn’t drown out the sound of her mother’s tears. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” asked Selleck.

“No, just my Mum,” sighed Tess, feeling close to tears herself. “We’ve had reporters door-stepping the flat for days – she can’t cope with any more attention.” Truth was, of course, Mum hadn’t coped with pretty much anything since Dad left. As Tess hobbled into the kitchen in her broken boots, she wondered if the demons preventing Violet going out would forever stop her daughter staying in.

Entering the room behind her, DS Selleck placed the scuffed heel he’d been clutching on the sideboard. He didn’t know where to begin. The brassy blonde he was braced for had been replaced by a pale, vulnerable-looking girl on the brink of tears. Her huge, blue eyes were glistening. As she sat down on the kitchen sofa, her soft blonde hair pillowed her slender neck. A few, damp tendrils clung to her brow. For a heart-stopping second, Tess Darling looked like a damaged but beautiful heroine from ‘Game of Thrones’. (He’d watched the box-set a couple of weekends ago, and had been feeling war-like stirrings ever since). Tess looked the kind of lawless heroine who needed a good man to scoop her up, and sort her out. Then her coat fell open to reveal she’d completely lost her top. “Can I help you Officer?” she asked.

“Yes, sorry, yes.” He dragged his eyes from a black bra that wasn’t so much containing her breasts as underlining them.

“First of all, I’m here to assure you last night was just a terrible accident and I wish to apologise again for any harm caused.” Even to his ears, he sounded as if he’d been rehearsing. “That said, there are channels for this sort of thing and if you wish to press a complaint –”

“Hang on Officer.” She raised a hand.

“Please,” he said shyly. “Call me Dan.”

“Dan,” she smiled, and it was like a beam of sunshine, breaking through the worst day of the year. “What the
fuck
are you banging on about?”

“Last night,” he faltered.

“Yes,” she nodded. “Go on.”

“You remember—”

She held a hand up. “Have to stop you there, Officer. Last night is… what’s the expression? Total blank.” She punched her head, as if to dislodge something. “Nope, not happening.”

“You don’t remember
anything?
”

She put her lips together. They were like sticky raspberries, he thought, then realized she was speaking: “I remember Jeenie’s wake… then…”

“I knocked you out.”

“Oh.” She considered this. “Any particular reason?”

“I’d seen you leave Jeenie’s wake,” he said. “By the time I got out of the Soho Club, you’d disappeared, so I started asking along Frith Street. At the suggestion of a helpful waitress, I was entering the back room of her bar just as you decided to tip backwards, causing your head to collide with the doorknob.”

“So I’m just
concussed?
Thank the Lord.” Tess rubbed the back of her head. “I feel like I fell into a bucket of booze.”

“You did.”

“When?”

“On coming round,” he said. “You kept making the waitress fetch you whiskies ‘for the shock’. Then you demanded fresh air.” Tess nodded sagely. “You found this in something called
Karaoke Box
on Greek Street.”

“Ah…”

“Exactly.” Selleck had sat through five vodka shots, six Woo-Woos and seven increasingly sinister reinterpretations of “Annie, I’m not your Daddy,” before the Management asked him to escort her out. It was like trying to assist an airbag. Pneumatic parcels of flesh kept bursting out at him – she’d giggle voluptuously and then flail wildly, presenting him with a face full of thigh or a handful of buttock. “I didn’t like to leave you,” he said. “Not until I’d got you safely into a cab.”

“Thanks,” she said. She meant it. Smiling at the gallant detective, Tess was cheered when he smiled back. Not so uptight when he grinned, she noted, if only he’d ruffle his hair a bit – and not wear T-shirts that said ‘CID Basketball Sevens’ in the top corner.

“Back to business,” he coughed. “Before leaving the Soho Club, I had a little chat with Sandy Plimpton. She confessed she hadn’t been
entirely
open about your reasons for visiting Jeenie’s flat.”

“Please.” Tess shut her eyes. “Can’t we park it for a bit?” It was all very well DS Selleck turning official. But Tess was just a civilian. She had hangover concerns. He may want to talk ‘business’, but she needed fluids, sugar, and her feet to be higher than her head. “I was just fishing about in Jeenie’s flat for
Stop the World,”
she said. “It’s only telly.”

“It’s death, Tess, that’s what. A nasty, brutal death – and you’ve got no place in it.”

She opened her eyes, and found him staring at her. Something sparked between them, a connection. She broke it. “Where?” she blurted. “Where was Jeenie
actually killed?
Only when we ducked back to Squarey Street the other day—”

“So you
admit
you broke into—”

“We couldn’t help noticing your lot had nicked off with Mrs Meakes’ sofa, which made us think—”

“
Think?
” Selleck’s voice rang with scorn. Two seconds ago, she could barely walk, he thought. Now she wanted to tread over him? “How about I tell you what
really
happened? How your colleague
really
died?” The officer heard himself blurting out more than he should – just to give her a jolt, to win back some respect.

“Before dawn on Monday morning, Jeenie Dempster stood in Mrs Meakes’ sitting room and had the back of her skull caved in. The post mortem showed repeated blows from a blunt object. Blood patterns indicate she was struck down in the doorway, then dragged to the sofa where she was asphyxiated.”

A muscle flickered above his jawline. “It would have been messy. Having moved the body to the garden, the killer appears to have taken a bedspread from an upstairs room, and thrown it over the sofa to conceal the blood stains. Clumsy, but in the chaos of filming that followed, sufficient.”

Again, thought Tess, the killer had known what to expect from a
Pardon My Garden
shoot. She felt a bit queasy. “Was Jeenie strangled, or –

“Smothered,” said Selleck. “With some force. Forensics found fibres of brown dralon fabric in her nose and lungs.”

“
Dralon
? From a cushion, maybe? The killer could’ve thrown Jeenie down, then grabbed one of the sofa cushions—”

“Actually,” Selleck cleared his throat. “Mrs Meakes’ sofa is covered in a distinctive floral fabric. She got a bit cross when we suggested she might own anything pertaining to dralon.”

Tess could bet. Dralon was a dingy, poor quality fabric that had long passed out of fashion. If even old Mrs Meakes had eschewed it from her home, the conclusion was clear. “You’re saying the killer came armed with a cushion?”

“Can you drop the bleep bleep cushion!” said Selleck. “We believe the killer used an item of their own clothing to gag Jeenie, pressing down so hard they caused her to inhale telltale fibres before death. With any luck, Jeenie’s killer has no idea they left behind trace evidence. They could be walking round today in the clothes that’ll hang them – something as simple as a brown, dralon suit.” Fair enough, thought Tess, but who’d be seen dead in dralon?

The answer made her stomach turn. For though she couldn’t answer for his jackets, Tess knew where to find a man with a collection of very troubling slacks. Catching Selleck’s eye, however, she saw he’d got there first. “Produce your report if you must,” he said. “Pad it out with gossip and guesswork. But I warn you, Tess, for your own safety – stay away from our investigation. Stay away from our witnesses – and stay away from Alan Pattison.”

The officer’s warning did something. It electrified the air between them, sparking up a strange, new tension. Then: “Cock off,” said Tess. “Fat Alan is
not
a killer, just a harmless fan who got a small dollop of happiness every time Jeenie Dempster signed an autograph or told him to get the fuck off her foot.”

Selleck forced a laugh. “Sounds to me like you don’t know the first thing about your friend Alan”.

“What do you mean?”

“Just keep reading the newspapers,” he said. “I’m sure a
real
journalist will get there soon enough.” His missile landed. A flush exploded across Tess’ cheeks. It made her almost beautiful. Succumbing to an unprofessional impulse, the DS set off another. “Your famous father not giving you tips?”