Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (25 page)

The police officers were trying, Tess could tell. But they worked in the real world. Daytime TV was bound to defeat them. “Didn’t the buns get stale?” asked Selleck.

“Laura froze most of the batch when she got home. She’d bring in studio supplies to defrost in the fridge at
Artistes’ Reception
.”

“The café here?” said DCI Burns. He’d been questioning Backchat staff all day, remembered Tess. Someone had obviously pointed him the way of lunch.

“That’s right,” she nodded. “
Artistes’ Reception
is the posh canteen outside studio. Backchat run it for the crew and
Live With
guests, but anyone in the building can use it. Colin kept a fridge there, and his wife stocked it up before each show.

“My husband would have passed it on his way out last night, his pockets
loaded
with peanuts,” said Sandy. “Tampering with Colin’s pâtisseries would have been the work of a minute.”

“For
anyone,”
countered Tess. Mark Plimpton was no saint, but she was buggered if she’d let the only story suit Sandy. “Everyone in the industry knew about Colin and his dodgy fridge,” she told DCI Burns. “It was a TV landmark. Plus it stood between the Coke vending machine and the sandwich counter, so hungry studio guests were always fishing round in it by mistake. Anyone wanting to hurt Colin could shovel a few peanuts into the next batch destined for studio. Job done, they’d move up the queue, and wait for Colin’s luck to run out. Like in
The Deer Hunter,”
said Tess. “But with flan.”

DCI Burns frowned. Then seemed to come to a decision. “Mrs Plimpton, perhaps we could have a word somewhere quiet? While we are yet to rule out a tragic accident, there’s no harm in collecting a full statement -

“Of course, Detective Chief Inspector. We can talk in my office.” Sandy, stricken lover, was gone. Mrs Plimpton, executive producer / daytime star, was back; patting her straw-thin hair, and ironing out her smile. “I will need my agent with me, naturally. Together we can put out an official press release. You’ll want to talk to my husband, I presume – I can give you his contact details – while I get on to the channel about how best to play tomorrow’s show…”

Her voice trailed off. Her eyes widened – Tess saw they were actually a beautiful, pale blue, the colour of faded denim. It was enough to make Tess turn. She found Rutger Aarse stood in the dressing room doorway. Tess couldn’t remember what he’d been wearing when he arrived in studio, but he was now down to vest and jeans. And the hungry look he’d given Mr Flatts devoured Ms Plimpton.

“Pleesh, Mrs Schandy.” The muscular chef spoke in a strong, Dutch accent. “You have taken a big schock for schuch a schlim woman. I help you, ja?” In one fluid movement, he was across the room, and scooping Sandy up in his arms.

“How kind, Mr Chops,” she murmured, placing one trembling hand across his bulging, brown shoulders, the other against his tight, black vest. “Now
might
be a good time to discuss your launch on
Country Kitchen.
”

“I fink so.” Rutger swung her from the room. “Perhapsch we start with a liddle finger food?”

With visible distaste, DCI Burns followed his airborne witness into the corridor. Tess was left alone with Selleck. He ran a hand over his crop of brown hair, smoothing it back into place. He straightened his shirt. Time to go, thought Tess, but he stopped her. “Things got pretty rough out there.” He rested his hand on her arm. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

She shrugged it off. “You know me.”

“I’d like to.” He put his hands behind his back; looked squared ahead; blushed. “We still on for tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow?”

“You said I should pick you up from Backchat at 8pm.”

“I did?” Hazily, Tess recalled an earlier face-off. Concussed after Jeenie’s wake, had she really managed to bully the officer into a date? “8pm, yes, great,” she said. “If you’re still up for it?”

“Why not?” He met her eye. “It’ll keep you out of trouble for one night.”

She doubted it.

T
hree hours later, Tess was back to what she did best.

Swearing.

Colin Pound’s murder changed everything. DCI Burns could bang on about ‘ruling out an accident’, but soon enough the police would be on the hunt for a double-killer. When they did, Tess planned to be two steps ahead of them. As soon as she got off this wank-bus to Oxford.

“Come on man, have a heart!” She renewed her appeals to the coach driver. “We haven’t moved in half an hour. Open the doors!” Finally, the driver relented. Pushing a button, he let his troublesome passenger off at the High Street, and hoped she’d step into on-coming traffic.

Having given a statement to the police, Tess had got the hell out of Backchat. Ducking a first wave of reporters, she threaded her way through the back streets of Noho. Reaching Marble Arch, she swapped Oxford Street for Oxford. Boarding a shuttle bus to the City of Dreaming Spires, Tess spent the next two hours on a traffic-clogged motorway, trying to kid herself she was getting somewhere.

Staring out at the English countryside, she worked through the facts: Jeenie killed, then Colin. What if the two deaths
were
isolated incidents? Tess rolled her eyes at a passing cow. There was no such thing as an isolated incident in TV. It was an incestuous swamp that sucked in everyone – and no-one caught suckers like Rod Peacock. He was King Rat – so why his sudden scuttling round the set of
Live With
? Tess didn’t like it. Rod may not appear to have motive as obvious as either Sandy or Mark Plimpton, but if anyone possessed the evil energy required for two sensational murders, it was the bare-knuckled talent agent.

Whoever it implicated, Tess needed to establish a link between victims. On one level, the killings couldn’t be more different – Jeenie had been brutally smothered, Colin driven to a heart attack. Yet both killings had been painstakingly executed to entertain a live, TV audience. Why?

Jumping down from the coach, Tess didn’t know whom to look for: a showman, who

wanted to settle a score? Or an introvert outsider, jealous of their victims’ fame? Fat Alan fitted both profiles, of course. The one-time star of
Wacky House
now lived with his face pressed up against the screen. Alan had known TV heaven, only to be forever cast out…

Tess squashed the thought; ducked her head, and ploughed through traffic. Jeenie Dempster and Colin Pound, she muttered, what was the link? They were both awful, obviously, but that was standard for lower-grade TV presenters. While alive, Tess couldn’t recall the vainglorious victims exchanging a single word. Of course, this wasn’t to say Jeenie hadn’t seduced Colin on the quiet. Lord knows what she might have hoped to gain from it, but there was no doubt Jeenie had form: Colin wouldn’t be the first of Sandy’s men she’d muscled in on, would he?

Reaching the pavement, Tess pulled out a map she’d swiped from a fellow passenger’s bag. Bearings got, she moved off the busy thoroughfare of Oxford’s ancient high street. Entering the narrow network of lanes that made up the university town, she pursued the twisting facts of the case. A clandestine relationship between the victims
could
re-implicate Fat Alan. But if he’d struck from jealousy, why not target Mark Plimpton?
His
affair with Jeenie had been splashed across every newspaper… but never mentioned on the show. Sandy wouldn’t allow it. Had Alan never realized the ‘threat’ posed by Mark’? It was possible, concluded Tess. The deluded fan hadn’t occupied the real world, at all, had he? His horizons hadn’t extended beyond his TV screen, and the forecourt of Backchat.

Pounding down a series of dark alleys, Tess recalled all the nights Alan had staked out the return of the
Pardon My Garden
shoot van, hoping for a glimpse of Jeenie. She remembered what Fergal had told her: all those dark evenings, when Jeenie was mysteriously ‘working late’, had she actually been working on Colin? Tess pictured Alan’s devastation at seeing the woman of his dreams engaged in a doorway grope with the slobbery chef…

She turned down Turl Street towards Jesus College. Stone buildings spoke of academic glories past; a faint smell of urine and rotting kebabs hinted at the students now present. Dusk was starting to fall, bringing with it strange, Gothic shadows. Gargoyles leapt out at her; grim crenellations loomed through bare, winter trees. She recalled the accusations hurled by Colin Pound at the News 24 press conference:
Had
Alan Pattison threatened him with violence? At the time, Tess had written off Coin’s claims as so much bollocks and bluster. Now, she fought a looming sense of dread. Had she been
wrong
about Fat Alan? Was a vengeful brain concealed beneath all that fear and scurf?

Of course, Alan wasn’t the only candidate for sexual jealousy. Rod Peacock’s precious son, Aaron, had considered himself Jeenie’s ‘beginning and end’. He’d been left spurned, righteous and raging.

So what the fuck had he done with Miller?

Twenty-four hours it had been. Tess checked her phone: 24 hours, 38 minutes and counting, since Miller set out to find Rod Peacock’s fanatic son. Her friend’s phone was long dead. So was Colin. Tess had watched him die. Now, more than anything, she wanted to see Miller.

Arriving at Jesus College, Tess passed through a 500 year-old doorway and noticed a fresh-looking dent: Miller had been here. On asking the college porter after Aaron Peacock however, Tess was told to leave a message – then leave.

“Tess Darling, you beauty! It’s you, isn’t it? It’s her, boys! In the flesh – all that
gorgeous
flesh.”

Exiting the lodge, Tess found herself addressed by a ruddy-faced youth. He was wearing nothing but a Kangol fleece, lycra rowing pants and a knackered pair of trainers. He was surrounded by half a dozen lads in a similar state of rude health, and a clutch of grey-faced girls who looked like Emily Mortimer. Oxford undergraduates, Tess guessed; the acme of young, British intellect. “You’re the crazy bird off
LIVE WITH SANDY AND FERGAL,”
said Kangol. “Sign a picture for me and the lads, and we’ll treat you to a crumpet down the tea-bar.”

Tess would have declined – rudely – but her stomach grumbled before her mouth could. She’d not eaten since that morning, when she’d chucked up the better half of her duodenum in Make-Up Room 2. It was time for a crumpet. Nodding at Kangol, Tess followed him to a noticeboard, affixed to a wall of the porter’s lodge. Here, various college announcements and university flyers wrestled for space with more informal-looking fixtures: a screen grab of Amy Childs, a yellowing photo of Xena Warrior Princess, and a recent newspaper pic of
Pardon My Garden’s
producer, galloping at camera in a wet-look fan belt. “Tits,” she said.

“We thought so,” said Kangol. Slowly, Tess grinned. She’d scored, hadn’t she? And what a score – for who loved daytime TV more than students? They were the ones who bunked quantum physics for Jeremy Kyle, and watched every episode of
Countdown
in the hope they could one day spell ‘testicle’. Sure enough, Tess had barely finished signing her chest when she was swept down to the tea-bar, showered with crumpets and told she was ‘fitter than anyone off TOWIE.’ She just didn’t learn much about Aaron Peacock.

According to a quick poll of his college peers, Aaron was a ‘weirdo’ /’religious nut’/ ‘
total
virgin with frizzy hair’. When asked if they’d met Aaron’s father, his college mates looked blank. When asked if they’d ever seen him with
Jeenie Dempster
, they looked as if she were mad. “The only bird I saw him with was his scout,” said Kangol.

“Scout?” frowned Tess. How arrested
was
Aaron’s development? ‘Scout’ in Oxford terms however proved to mean ‘Babs’, a cheery blonde who tidied Aaron’s room every day. Tess found her in her cleaning cupboard at the top of Aaron’s staircase. Wary at first—”you’re that angry bird off the telly”–Babs warmed to Tess’ supplications on how to remove carpet stains, (“I got the red wine out from last Saturday,” explained Tess, “But not the grass, Branston pickle or paint”). When Tess confessed she used the ring round her bath as a guide to filling it, Babs looked alarmed. By the time Tess admitted she was looking for her lost friend, Babs was ready to help. “I won’t “say anything about Mr Peacock’s personal life – no matter what he—” She stopped herself. “It’s not my place to gossip. Certainly not to the press.”

This lady didn’t look like any reporter Babs had ever seen on the news, however. She looked more like one of her students – one of the lost girls who went out dancing when they should be at their books, and then had their hearts broken by some cocky lad who went on to get a First Class Degree, leaving the poor lass with thrush and a Third. “I haven’t seen Aaron since last night,” Babs yielded. “But if it’s your friend you’re looking for…Aaron was walking through the old quad with a big fella.”

“How big?” asked Tess. Babs blushed.

“
Big
big,” she said. “Like Hercules. But with glasses.”

“That’s him! That’s Miller. Where did they go?” The flush drained from Babs’s face.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve not seen Aaron since. I’m worried, to be honest. I’ve taken to checking on him, most mornings, since—” She stopped herself.

“Since what?”

“Never you mind.” She stiffened. “It’s for Aaron to tell you. It’s for Aaron to decide what company he keeps. But some company’s good for nothing, I told him. He didn’t want to hear it, of course. He got angry, he…” The kindly scout cowered. “He’s not been right since. He’s not right.”

“Let me help him,” said Tess. “Help me find them.” She wanted Miller back. She admitted it. “I’m scared.”

Babs looked away. She took a bottle of cleaning fluid from a shelf. “I’m just off to do his room now.” Briskly she pushed past Tess with her bucket. “I’ll be starting with the bathroom. Just make sure you’re gone when I come out.”

Aaron’s room was two flights down. While Babs got to work on the ensuite, Tess scanned the bedroom. Aptly for a theology student, it was like a monk’s cell: bleak, cold and utterly without ornament. Text books, bibles and hardback tomes were piled in neat rows around the floor; the windowsill held a candle. Glancing at the single bed, Tess saw it hadn’t been slept in. Wherever the reclusive undergraduate had taken Miller last night, there’d been no coming back.