Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) (34 page)

Sod the world, Colin’s publishing advance hadn’t got him much past Folkestone. Chapters were headed ‘Pastry in Paris’, ‘Croissants in Calais,” and “Mille-Feuilles in Marseilles.’ Meagre photos showed him no further afield than Europe. There was some tomfoolery with a German sausage in Frankfurt; Colin wielding a baguette like a golf club on the Costa Brava; huddled under a grubby hotel awning in Amsterdam–‘going Dutch with Laura… my tasty wife!’

She turned back to the opening page. The book had only come out last month and was dedicated “To the love of my life. You know who you are: it’s time the world knew too.” Colin may have dragged his poor wife on his ‘world tour’, but Tess didn’t doubt those words were aimed at Sandy. Had Sandy read them too? Felt her tiresome lover’s noose tighten around her neck, and then ducked out to buy a bag of KP nuts…

Tess shut the book, as a motorbike roared up the drive towards them. It skidded to a halt in the gravel. “Delivery,” mumbled the courier. Without removing his crash helmet, he yanked a clipboard from his pillion. “Sign and print here.”

Spying Laura Pound’s name at the bottom of the delivery sheet, Tess forged accordingly – and took delivery of a large, spherical parcel. “Uggh,” she grunted. It weighed a ton. Rolling it into Miller’s arms, Tess stepped back while he performed the exacting, forensic procedure he applied to all suspicious substances she brought him.

He sniffed it.

“And?” said Tess.

“Stinky.”

Shouldering him out of the way, she buried her nose in the package. “Christ on a bike,” she recoiled. “You’re not wrong.” There was something very bad occurring within. Tess may not know what
,
but the package wasn’t screaming ‘Gift for Widow’. Perhaps people mourned differently on the Continent? The parcel bore a foreign franking, she now saw. Had Colin’s culinary travels won him a global following, after all? His local one was certainly growing. Roused by the arrival of a motorcycle courier, reporters were moving up the driveway, hungry for copy.

“We can’t leave it on the doorstep now,” said Tess. “These guys will be all over it. Put it in the car, and we can give to Laura when we find her.”

Lobbing the smelly parcel at Miller, Tess felt her phone vibrate. Pulling it from her coat, she saw the call was from Di. “What you got for me, woman?”

“The killer,” said Di. “There’s no stopping them. The evil bugger – oh, Tess – the poor lamb—”

“Di. Please. Tell me.”

“Fergie Flatts,” she sobbed. “He’s been attacked. Slashed open like a kipper.”

T
hey found him at a private clinic, tucked away on an elegant Pimlico terrace. Softly-lit and perfumed with roses, Fergal’s room could have been at a five-star hotel.

“The police will be back in a moment,” said a nurse, who was adjusting a bag of fluid hanging from the IV drip by the bed. “We’ve just had to up his pain relief, so try not to agitate him. I’ll be just down the hall if he needs anything.” Smiling briefly, she left them to it. Tess and Miller crossed the room towards one of Britain’s cheekiest presenters. Looking like he’d never laugh again.

“Jayzus, I thought my time was up.” Fergal Flatt’s voice shook as they approached his bed. “When I saw that knife coming at me, I swear, I cried like a feckin’ baby.” He looked ready to cry again. Tess suspected the jovial TV host was still in shock. His eyes were lit with terror. His once ruddy cheeks were grey and clammy, and spotted with blood. A padded dressing had been taped across the top of his forehead.

“Is that where…?” A lump rose in Tess’ throat. By the time she’d swallowed it, Fergie’s fingers were trembling over the tape.

“They were going for my face,” he said. “But I got my hand up. So they went for my stomach – much bigger target.” He tried to laugh. It turned into a cry of pain. “Funny thing,” he gasped. “It hurts like hell, now they’ve stitched me up. But then, back then…I thought they’d dropped the knife, you see? They were just punching me. But when they’d gone, I put my hands to my stomach and it was wet. Warm.”

“Sshh,” said Tess. But Fergal plucked at his bandage, as if pulling a barb.

“I pressed down – to stop the bleeding – and I could feel my guts, Tess. I was lying in the road, trying to hold my guts in – but they kept slipping – they—”

Fergal’s body started to shake under the sheets. A machine next to the bed started to beep, and the door to the room swung open, admitting two furious-looking police officers.

“What are
you
doing here?” asked DCI Burns. The senior detective was accompanied by DS Selleck. In their thick overcoats and gloves, they looked like a pair of well-dressed heavies.

Or nightclub bouncers, thought Tess, cheering up. “You can’t throw us out,” she said. “We’ve been invited. Fergie got the nurses to track us down. Isn’t that right, Fergie?”

The patient just looked at Miller. Miller took a seat beside the bed. “Bless you, man” sighed Fergie. “You’ll keep close for a bit?”

Miller nodded. He pulled a bag of battered onion rings from his duffel coat, and set it down on the bed. “No-one gets between me and my onion.”

Seeing Miller tend to the victim, Tess dealt with the police. “What happened to him?”

“That is
not
your concern, Miss Darling,” said DCI Burns.

“I want her to know,” Fergie cut in. The effort made him wince. “Spare me having to relay the fecking details, will yer?”

Obviously reluctant, but unwilling to unsettle the victim further, DCI Burns communicated the bare facts to Tess. “Mr Flatts was leaving a nightclub at approximately 1am, this morning. Suspecting he was being followed, he turned round to find his assailant raising a knife to strike. Unfortunately, Mr Flatts did not see their face. Just the knife.” A noise came from the bed. The DCI lowered his voice.

“They left him for dead. He should be, by rights – we’re talking a pretty savage attack here – multiple stab wounds to the chest and stomach. A few more minutes, and Mr Flatts would have bled to death.”

“And he didn’t see
anything
?”

“It was dark,” shrugged DCI Burns. “Mr Flatts had been drinking. He thinks the perpetrator was wearing a hooded coat – zipped up to cover the face. Mr Flatts couldn’t see their eyes.
Just a shadow
, he says.
A shadow where their face should have been.
”

A shadow, sure enough, but a vicious one: Tess still bore the wounds. Two attacks in one night? The killer was accelerating. “Any witnesses?”

“Not yet.” This time, it was Selleck who spoke. “Mr Flatts went to the club alone. He drank a few pints, listened to the music and left. Alone.”

“He was found by a group of revelers, as they headed home,” said Selleck. “He was lucky.”

But Fergie didn’t look lucky. He looked terrified, even with Miller as a dufflel-coated bulwark between him and further attack. Tess couldn’t imagine what the soft-skinned clown had gone through in that stinking alley: trying to cram his lacerated guts back into his belly, while music pulsed out from the nightclub behind. “What club?” she asked. “Not the Soho Club?”

Not this time. “Fergal had just come out of
Madame Zanzibar’s
,” said Selleck. “It’s a jazz club, apparently, just off Frith Street. Are you alright?”

Tess had started coughing. Beating her chest, she turned to Fergie. “How about you and me have a chat?”

Miss Darling,” intercepted DCI Burns. “Mr Flatts still has to finish his statement, so I am afraid it is
you
who will have to—”.

“Leave.” Fergie addressed the officers with a frail attempt at dignity. “I’ve told you all I know. Now I’m tired. I want to be alone with my friend.” The police looked about to protest. “Later,” said Fergie. “Please.”

The anguish in his voice seemed to touch even Burns. “We’ll be back in the morning, but I’ve put a man on your door. You’re safe. Now rest.” The DCI delivered it like an order, then strode back out into the ward, signalling for his detective sergeant to follow. Selleck paused, however.

“Are you OK?” he asked Tess. “When I rang to check you’d got in last night, your Mum was—”

“Wrong to worry,” said Tess. She’d humiliated herself to Selleck enough last night. Sobbing on his shoulder now would make her sound even more of a victim. Having witnessed Fergal’s injuries, Tess felt embarrassed about her own: a couple of scrapes and a sore head? Even a serial killer didn’t think her worth the effort. “I got myself home eventually. You know how it is,” she said. “Detours make the trip.”

Selleck, however, was not a man who took detours. He gave her a searching look. When it returned nothing, he set off after his boss.

Tess watched his back; realised no-one was watching hers; got on with it. “What do you mean, you were
reading quietly
in Madame Zanzibar’s?” she turned to Flatts.

“I had my new Kindle Paperwhite,” he said. “I like to read while listening to jazz.”

“Jazz, my tits, Fergie. I’ve been to Madame Zanzibar’s – you
took
us there, remember?” On the occasion of Fergie’s fiftieth birthday, he’d led Tess and her
Pardon my Garden
crew down some narrow steps from Frith Street to a strobe-lit disco bunker. Several months on, Tess could still feel the throb of Euro Trance and Viagra. “Even Gideon felt faint. What’s going on?”

The comic cowered in his blood-stained sheets. A pink tear rolled down his cheek.

“Och, you know. Love. Stupid, hopeless feckin’ love.” He looked up at her. “Always the same, isn’t it?”

Yep, sighed Tess. “Who was it this time?” Another bit of rough trade like Furry Paolo – or a TV posh boy, some ambitious intern who told the lonely star he reminded him of his old house master, and could he swing him a job on
Top Gear
?

“This time, it was different. I t was…difficult,” said Fergie. “That’s why I couldn’t tell the police.”

“So tell me.” Different and difficult were her world. And Fergie knew it.

“Jayzus, Tess,” he relented. “It was only our first date.
His
idea, mind, to meet at Madame Zanzibar’s. I wanted somewhere quieter, where we could get to know each other, but he just laughed – said he knew enough already.” A glitter filled his bloodshot eyes. Flatts hadn’t just been struck down, thought Tess. He’d been smitten.

“You left the club together?” she said. “Did
he
see what happened? This is important, Fergie, you can’t play silly buggers.”

“I’m not playing at anything.” He tried to sit up, but the pain of it took his breath. “I’m terrified, Tess,” he gasped, as Miller pulled the sheets back over him (much as a field doctor might bind a wound). “He – my friend – left the club just before me. Said he didn’t want to attract any bad publicity for me – he’d call as soon as I got home – but I’ve heard nothing – nothing! The nurses have tried his mobile a thousand times but, Christ, it just rings and rings. I’m scared, Tess, so feckin’ scared.”

“Of what?”

“The killer! Aren’t you listening? He – my friend – left
just before
me. He’d have cut through the same alley to find a taxi. How do we know this maniac didn’t attack him first?”

“But why would they?” Tess couldn’t even see why they’d attacked
Fergie.
The cuddly Irishman just sat on a sofa, didn’t he? Cracking jokes, and egging on Sandy. “Your friend’s safe, as long as he has nothing to do with
Live With.
”

“But that’s just it–
he does.
At least, he will.” Bound by Miller’s determined bed-making, Fergie could only shake his head. “He starts tomorrow.”

“He starts
what
?” Tess placed a hand against his cheek: skin softened by legions of make-up ladies, now caked with dirt and dry blood. “What are you saying?”

“My friend—”

“Oh, will you stop calling him your sodding
friend,”
she said. “You love him, don’t you?” His cheek rose in her hand. “Who
is
he?”

It took a heartbeat. “The name’s Rutger,” he said. “Rutger Aarse.”

For once, Tess had no words. If she’d felt lost two seconds ago, the ground itself was now slipping out from under her. Rutger Aarse and Fergie? In love? The podgy Irish comic may have a sharp tongue, but inside he was soft as marshmallow. Rutger would have him for dinner.

“What on earth were you doing with
Rutger Aarse?
” she asked. Fergal looked hurt.

“I know he’s younger than me, but he has an old heart.”

“He does?” Tess daren’t ask where he kept it. She doubted there was much beneath Rutger’s organic apron but a tight vest and a nipple ring. She was guessing Sandy had already been introduced to both. Sandy, shit – did Fergie know? “This was your
first
date?”

Fergie nodded proudly. “Rutger asked
me
.”

“He didn’t say he was seeing anyone else?”

“Of course not,” Fergie bridled. Then outrage ceded to his natural urge to gossip. “Between you and me, the poor boy was a tortured soul. Desperate to attract the Great British Housewife. He’d decided to try and hide the fact he was gay. Of course, I warned him he’d not fool anyone.”

Well, he’d sure fooled Sandy, thought Tess. She’d fallen into Rutger’s arms, following Colin’s murder, hadn’t she? Promoted him to the role of her Chief Henchman and pâtissier. First commission? Sacking the
Pardon my Garden
team.

Recalling the care which the chef had lavished over his ‘U ARE TOTAAL FIRED’ cake, Tess guessed he was enjoying the role. “I suppose it was Rutger’s idea to meet on the quiet?”

“Ach, no,” said Fergie. “It was Rod who suggested Madame Zanzibar’s. Last night was the best of the week, he said, he even got Cleo to book us a table.”

“Rod
Peacock?
”

“He introduced us,” nodded Fergie. “Of course,
he
was the one who told Rutger he could play gay, but had to cook straight. No doubt, Rod hoped I’d help the wee innocent Dutch boy with both. Turns out Rod isn’t quite as clever as he thinks.” Fergie gave a faint titter. In return, Tess gave him the tenderest of pokes.

“Jayzus, woman, I’m bleeding already. You wanna know
where
Rod discovered his precious, new talent? At a party thrown by Colin Pound.”