The Dead Side of the Mike (25 page)

‘Okay. And by then you'll have solved both the murders?'

‘Yes. Or I'll be the victim of the third.'

Charles was beginning to know his way around Broadcasting House very well; soon, he reflected, he'd be calling it BH like a native. The security man on the door seemed happy with the pink pass that Brenda had given him, so he got into the art deco lift and pressed the button for the fifth floor. Steve had been able to consult the SMs' schedules and give him Keith Nicholls's bookings for the day.

They were not without irony. From two-thirty to six he was scheduled to do music editing in the very channel where his wife had died. And from nine till midnight he was booked to route the telephone calls for the
Dave Sheridan Late Night Show.
Charles received confirmation of the feeling that he had confided to Gerald, that things were coming to a head.

He felt strangely calm. Although he was about to confront a double murderer, he did not feel afraid. Somehow it'd work out.

As he walked along the corridor from the old part of Broadcasting House to the Extension, he saw a familiar figure coming towards him. If he hadn't recognised the face, he would have recognised the unnatural gloss on the toupée.

‘Michael Oakley, isn't it?'

‘Yes,' came the mystified reply. The American accent seemed even stronger in the flesh.

‘Charles Paris. We talked on the phone yesterday.'

‘Oh yes, I've just been having a meeting with Dave and his Executive Producer.'

‘Ah. I'd really like to take you up on that offer of following Dave around for a day.' Difficult as it was to think beyond the next hour, Charles supposed at some point he was going to have to get together his Radio Three feature.

‘Sure. Whenever you like. Today he's . . . well, he's just gone off to the
Teen Dreams
office to check this week's column, but of course he's doing the show tonight. I'll be along, because I'm bringing a friend who wants to take a look at the programme going out, so come then if you'd like. Studio B15. Or anytime. Give me a buzz.'

‘I'll do that. Thank you.'

Nothing in the editing channel had changed since the night of Andrea's death, except that four new carpet tiles made an accusingly aseptic square on the floor.

Keith was on his own. A script was open on a lectern beside him and he was cutting tape with a razor blade. He looked up as Charles came in, with his customary scowl.

‘Hello. Charles Paris. We met on that sit. com. I was doing the other week.'

Keith nodded. He remembered the incident, but didn't see its relevance.

‘I wanted to have a talk.'

‘What about?'

‘Are you busy?'

Keith shrugged. ‘Just making cuts in these programmes for a shortened repeat. It's not frantic.' Then he added with resentment, ‘Notice the bloody producer doesn't even turn up. Arrived at nearly three with the tapes and marked scripts, asking me to “use my judgment” about the edits. Huh, SMs aren't paid enough to use their judgment. When I see wankers like that who've got producer's jobs . . .' He grimaced. What he thought about the subject was too deep for words.

‘I want to talk to you about copying tapes,' Charles said bluntly. It would have been more effective if he'd said ‘I want to talk to you about your wife's murder', but he hadn't quite got the confidence for such a frontal attack. Build up to it slowly.

The effect of his remark was good enough, anyway. Keith froze for a moment, his razor blade poised in space, and then bent back to his work, saying, with an effort at casualness, ‘Oh yeah.'

‘Copying tapes of BBC music sessions and then selling them.'

‘Look, who are you? Have you been planted in this place as some sort of copper's nark?'

‘No, I'll explain my involvement in a minute. Let's just talk about this tape-copying for a start. You've been warned for it before. Do you deny that you've been doing it recently?'

Keith looked at him defiantly, but maybe with a hint of relief. Perhaps for a moment he had feared a more serious accusation. ‘Okay. So I've copied a few tapes. It doesn't do anyone any harm. Good God, on the money they pay us, it's hardly surprising I try to make a few bob on the side.'

‘I'm not talking about a few bob on the side, I'm talking about a highly organised business.'

Keith looked at him blankly, so Charles gave a nudge. ‘I'm talking about Musimotive.'

Keith gave a good impression of bewilderment.

‘Are you saying you've never heard of Musimotive?'

‘No, sure I've heard of it. I went to their offices when I was over in New York last autumn.'

‘Yes. And may I ask why?'

‘I'm interested in the music business. I wanted to find out how it all worked in the States. So I got names of contacts from everyone I knew and just looked around. Musimotive was pretty useless from my point of view. Just some kind of muzak outfit. I'm more interested in creative pop.'

‘And of course you met Danny Klinger over there.'

‘Yes, I think that was the guy's name. Yes.'

‘Oh come on, Keith, I'm not bluffed that easily. You may not have met Danny Klinger too often face to face, but you've had rather a lot of indirect contact with him.'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.' Keith Nicholls turned back to the green tape-recorder on which the razor blade that had killed his wife had been fixed. He pressed a button to spool back a reel of tape.

Charles spoke firmly. ‘I'm talking about the deal which you set up to supply Klinger with music tapes, the sweet profitable little deal that by chance your wife Andrea found out about. Which was why you had to kill her and why you had to kill Danny Klinger.'

Keith turned, his face red with fury. ‘What the hell are you –' But he got no further. His words were cut off by a cry of pain. The top of one of the fast spinning ten-inch spools on the tape machine had come loose and shot off towards him, a fatal frisbee with an edge as sharp as the razor blade in his hand. With an involuntary, but life-saving, reflex, he raised his right arm to shield his face. The spinning disc sliced through the flesh on his forearm like a circular saw, was deflected by the bone and continued its career towards Charles. He just had time to duck and heard the whirring metal graze his hair before slicing through the sound-proofing fabric on the wall and falling to the ground with a diminishing clatter.

Keith looked with horror at the gash on his arm. Its clean line was soon distorted with welling blood, which dripped from his fingers on to the new carpet tiles. ‘Good God,' he said. ‘If I hadn't had my arm there, it would have taken my head off.'

Charles rushed an inadequate handkerchief to the wound. ‘Is there a doctor in this place?'

‘Surgery. First Floor,' Keith replied dully, his face white with shock.

‘Can you walk?'

He nodded.

They walked along the corridor, a small cortege, dripping blood, attracting looks of amazement. As they waited for the lift, Keith asked, still without intonation, ‘What was all that about me killing Andrea?'

Shock had stripped off all the layers of cynicism, contempt and anger; his question was simple, childlike.

Charles pressed his accusation, gently, but firmly.

‘I know you did, Keith. You had to. Because she had found out about your deal with Klinger. I also know that you weren't in the studio that night for the hour before the Dave Sheridan Show.'

Keith looked at him and the colourless lips smiled. ‘No, I wasn't. I was moonlighting.'

‘What?'

‘Producing an album session at a studio in Berwick Street, group called Scrap Metal.'

‘What?'

‘Session was from nine to one in the morning. 8, Berwick Street. Check if you like. There are six witnesses in the group and one engineer. The police have already checked it.'

‘What?'

‘I told them when they asked. But they agreed to keep it quiet here. Don't want to get me into trouble. Nice of them.'

The lift arrived and they got in. They were the only passengers. ‘Anyway,' Keith continued softly, ‘I wouldn't have killed Andrea. I . . . I don't know, I always hoped, in a few years, we'd get back together again.'

‘Tell me,' asked Charles abruptly, ‘have you ever known a spool to come apart like that before?'

‘No. I've heard of it happening in the old days. But now they're firmly screwed down.'

‘Perhaps you got a faulty one.'

‘Unlikely. I'd been spooling it back and forth all afternoon and nothing happened.'

‘So what does that mean?'

‘I don't know.' Keith looked very faint, unwilling to pursue thoughts to their logical conclusions.

‘That someone unscrewed it?' Charles suggested softly. Keith did not reply. The lift stopped. Keith staggered as he stepped out and Charles put an arm round him for support. As they walked along the corridor to the surgery he asked, ‘Did anyone have a chance to tamper with it in the course of the afternoon?'

Keith answered as if in a trance. Each word had equal emphasis. ‘I went out to get a coffee. When I came back, there was someone in the channel I knew. He said he was looking for Dave Sheridan.'

‘Who was it?' asked Charles, but he knew the answer. There was one other person who had been in Broadcasting House on the night of Andrea's death, who had been down at Brassie's for the Opening Nite All-Nite Disco Party, whom Charles had even met leaving the scene of his latest crime.

Keith's trembling answer confirmed it. ‘Dave's agent, Mike Oakley.'

The new casting had such a powerful effect on his script that Charles virtually reckoned he had a new play. But it was one with a much better chance of West End success than all his previous out-of-town try-outs.

The more he thought about Michael Oakley in the leading role, the better he seemed to fit it. He had definitely been on hand to commit both murders, and probably on hand with far fewer calls on his time than any of the other suspects.

And it was not hard to sketch in his motivation. Throughout the case Charles had been looking for someone with an American connection to explain the link with Klinger. Oakley was American by nationality. It was much more likely that he had known Klinger a long time before than that Keith should have set up their elaborate criminal connection in the course of one very brief meeting.

Desperately Charles thought back over his conversation with Fat Otto, and, as he did so, a breathtakingly exciting new possibility suggested itself.

Fat Otto had talked about Danny Klinger's companion in crime back in the days when they worked in the New York radio station. Mike Fergus had been the name.

Mike Fergus – Michael Oakley. Just a change of surname. Sufficient if you wanted to take on a new identity in a new country, though. If you wanted to hide your past.

And what was the past that needed to be hidden? Fat Otto had spoken of some financial scandal which had led to the disappearance of both Klinger and Fergus from their radio station. Nothing was proved, but they were both reckoned to have had their hands in the till. So they were joined by crime.

Charles's mind raced on. Suppose the two had parted after that, lost touch, then remet in London, where Klinger found Fergus doing very nicely thank you in his new identity. Successful agent in one of London's biggest agencies. What would be more in character than for Klinger to apply a little pressure, to work out an ingenious system of payment for his silence about past misdemeanours? Oakley, with his contacts in the BBC, could provide tapes of music sessions in exchange for Klinger's silence. That at last would explain the elaborate system of clues and hiding of the tapes. They needed the secrecy and reverted to the code they had used in their radio-station days.

And the relationship could have stayed balanced like that indefinitely . . . if Andrea Gower hadn't had such a trained musical ear. She started the investigation which was to put paid to the Musimotive operation. Klinger heard about the arrival of the police from Fat Otto while he was in London, contacted Oakley and maybe suggested that the blackmail payments should be made some other way. His demands were too high, so Oakley decided he was too much of a threat and would have to be eliminated.

Then he heard of another danger. His client Dave Sheridan mentioned a story which Andrea Gower had told him during a music session on the afternoon of her return from New York. It was about an elaborate musical fraud and, as Sheridan unfolded it, Oakley realised that Klinger was not the only threat to his safety. The girl had to go too.

He had tried to mop up both threats on the same night, Andrea directly and Klinger indirectly. He would have done it too, if Klinger's radio hadn't cut out when his car got delayed under a road bridge on the M23. So he had to try again. The second time he succeeded.

Charles tried to slow his brain down. It was all too fast, too manic.

And yet he couldn't help being excited by it. If Klinger's contact in England were his old friend Mike Fergus under a new identity, the whole case made sense in a way it hadn't begun to previously.

And he was going to see Michael Oakley that evening in the
Dave Sheridan Late Night Show
studio.

THE SHOWBIZ QUIZ was what its name implied, a quiz about showbiz. (There was a fad at that time in the Light Entertainment Department for descriptive rather than wacky titles.) A jovial personality chairman posed questions about famous showbiz personalities to a panel of famous showbiz personalities (or less famous showbiz personalities or whoever happened to be available and didn't think the fee for recording two shows in three hours too derisory).

The questions were devised by a senior Light Entertainment producer, who made a tidy packet from payments called Staff Contributions for this work. At one stage there had been grumblings that he was doing rather too well out of this little racket, so the Head of Light Entertainment had clamped down and controlled him by putting another producer in charge of the show. Since the other producer was the young, nervous and amiable Nick Monckton, the older producer was even better placed. He still got paid as much for devising the questions, he still had artistic control (because Nick was too deferential to his experience to argue), and he was relieved of the tedious responsibility of actually producing the show.