The Dead Side of the Mike (7 page)

‘Oh. Oh, well, thanks.' He hesitated momentarily. ‘I'd better be off then.'

‘No. At least come in and have a drink, now you've dragged yourself all the way over here,' she said, exactly as she should have done.

Charles didn't point out that ‘dragging himself all the way over' meant a pleasant five-minute stroll, bit back his disappointment at not being able to participate in a Features Action Group Sub-Committee meeting that evening and, almost too readily, said he'd love a drink.

The drabness of the landing was sharply contrasted by the skilful use of colours inside the flat. The walls were yellowish-brown, which offset the brightness of the multiplicity of hangings on them. Crude rugs from North Africa, bark paintings from Mexico, a blood-red shawl with mirror decoration and two Italian string-puppets in silver armour mixed with a wealth of posters and prints. Old
Good Housekeeping
covers, a couple of Norman Rockwells from
Picture Post,
a map of the world, a metal advertisement for
Virol: For Anaemic Girls
and, over the fireplace, a huge print of Hieronymus Bosch's
Garden of Earthly Delights.
On the wall furthest away from the window, orange plastic milk crates had been stacked to make storage units for records, stereo equipment, books, telephone directories and so on. In this structure a desk surface had been cleared. A typewriter nestled there with a half-finished sheet of paper in it.

On the tiny balcony outside the tall open window was a rich profusion of geraniums. Their dry scent permeated the room.

The lack of co-ordination amongst the objects in the room should have made for a terrible mess, but they had been disposed with such skill that it worked.

‘I'm afraid I can only offer you wine,' said Steve, picking up a one-and-a-half litre bottle of Frascati. ‘Just come out of the fridge, so it's still pretty cold.'

‘That's lovely. Thank you.'

She poured him a healthy measure into a high bell-like glass and topped up her own. Then disappeared to put the bottle back into the fridge. When she came back, she raised her glass. ‘Cheers. Sorry there's no meeting.'

‘I'll survive. I hope I'm not keeping you from anything.'

‘No, I was just doing the odd letter. Nothing important.'

Charles sipped the cool wine. It was pleasant sitting there with an attractive girl. Oh dear, immature again. He had seen enough of Steve to recognise that she was at ease in a man's world, that for her being alone with a man would not carry the overtones it had for someone of his generation. A good career girl with a mind uncluttered by old sexual stereotypes. He must try to attain her maturity and not keep thinking in sexual terms. Which was easy enough to do in principle – good God, he had worked with enough women, actresses and so on, for whom he had never had the slightest sexual interest. That was easy. It was only when he fancied them that he got all these immature thoughts. And he did fancy Steve very much.

Partly to get away from such distractions, he broached the subject of Andrea. They were going to get round to her sooner or later. Why not sooner? ‘I'm still pretty shaken by what happened last week.'

Steve nodded. ‘So am I. It's strange not having her around the flat. I mean, we never saw that much of each other, we led completely different social lives, but, you know, she was . . . around. I find when I go to sleep at night, I'm sort of half expecting to hear the door when she comes in. I don't think I've really taken in that she's dead.'

‘It must be very sad.'

‘I suppose so. Sad isn't really the word, though. I haven't felt sadness, not sort of weepy sadness. Just a strange sort of . . .' Her hands felt for the word. ‘Disbelief. I keep thinking it didn't really happen, that I just imagined it. And then something forces me to know, or face the fact that it is true, it did happen. And then I just get furiously angry at the injustice of it, how unnecessary it was. But I don't feel sad. Yet. I suppose I will in time.'

‘How long had you known her?'

‘Since university. What, six, seven years. We were both at Cambridge and did lots of journalism there. That's how we met. Then we both applied for the BBC and I was lucky and she wasn't.'

‘How do you mean?'

‘I went straight into production, got a trainee course, and she became an SM. Just luck really. We had pretty much the same qualifications.'

‘I don't fully understand what you're saying.'

‘Well, round that time, they were saying at the Beeb that if you wanted to get into production, the idea was to get in as an SM and then, after a little while, you'd make the jump to producing.'

‘But the jump wasn't as easy as it sounded.'

‘Some people made it. But it was all tied in with the economic situation. The BBC was hard up, had to make economies, even cut down on staff. It meant there was less job movement, so people tended to get stuck with whatever they were doing.'

‘So Andrea stuck as an SM, with all the frustrations that entailed.'

‘Yes. I mean, she quite enjoyed it. It's not a bad job and the people are nice, but I think she did get frustrated a lot of the time. She used to be quite ambitious. You know, in journalism. She was very intelligent.'

‘Yes.'

Steve Kennett stretched her small body and blinked her enormous brown eyes. ‘I'm quite glad to talk about her, you know. I mean, just about her. At work everyone is either treading on such discreet tiptoes that they won't even mention her name, or else gossiping so shamelessly that . . . Hmm. And when the police asked me about her, they didn't seem to be talking about a real person, just some sort of specimen or courtroom exhibit.'

‘Did you have long with the police?'

‘I suppose so, yes. They have to, don't they? Have to find out why. I suppose an apparent suicide could be a murder disguised.'

‘Could be. Did they seem to think this one was?'

‘Oh no. I think they were just eliminating possibilities.'

‘And what about you?'

‘Me?'

‘Yes. What do you think?'

‘You mean whether Andrea really did commit suicide or not?'

‘Yes.'

This was a new idea. ‘Well, I'd assumed she did. It seemed pretty inexplicable, but I can't really see any other explanation. Particularly when you consider the alternative. Andrea wasn't the sort of girl who made enemies; she made friends. She had a unique ability to make friends. So no one would have had a motive to murder her. Okay, some murders are committed without motive, but they tend to be psychopathic ones and I don't think a psychopath would have set up such an elaborately disguised crime.'

‘Depends on the psychopath. But no, in principle I agree with you.' They were silent. Steve seemed to be thinking round the possibility.

Charles continued, ‘One thing you just said interested me. You said Andrea's death seemed “inexplicable”.'

‘Yes, I meant, knowing her, it seemed very strange. She didn't really have any reason to do it.'

‘The affair with Mark was completely finished, was it?'

The brown eyes looked at him shrewdly. ‘I didn't know you knew about that. Did he tell you?'

Charles nodded. ‘The night she died. I had it all poured out.'

‘Yes, I'm sure he made a meal of it. He likes doing the poor suffering misunderstood routine at the best of times. Given a real tragedy like that to be upset about, I'm sure he . . .' She stopped apologetically. ‘I'm sorry. He's a friend of yours.'

‘Yes, but don't worry. You seem to have a fairly accurate estimate of how he works.'

‘Oh, he made me so angry!' The outburst revealed a long-standing irritation. ‘Needless to say, I saw a lot of him round here while the affair was on. Well, okay, they hadn't anywhere else to go at first and I didn't mind. But it went on for over a year. And this flat wasn't really designed for two, let alone three. I took Andrea in when her marriage broke up, and we got on pretty well, but I hadn't counted on Mark mooning round trying to look attractive and interesting all the time.'

‘I didn't know Andrea had been married.'

‘Oh yes, to Keith. A fellow SM. At least he was. He's got an attachment.'

The instant image was of some artificial limb or aid to continence. Charles mumbled that he was sorry to hear it.

Steve looked at him blankly for a moment and then, when she understood, burst into an unexpectedly childish peal of laughter. ‘No, no, he's got an attachment as a producer. He's producing in Radio Two for six months. If it works out he might stand a chance of getting a permanent producer's job.'

‘I see. I'm sorry, I still need an interpreter in BBC matters. How long were they married?'

‘Oh, I think it dragged on for a couple of years. It was a bad time for Andrea. Keith, whatever his other virtues – and, come to think of it, I don't think he has any – was not given to fidelity. Very immature, as if he had just discovered sex and wanted to see just how many little girls he could have in the shortest possible time. A purely quantitative approach to the subject. He should never have got married. I must say, poor Andrea did pick them.'

‘Yes, I have a theory that there's a kind of girl who almost deliberately goes in for kamikaze relationships with unsuitable men. It's some sort of deep self-hatred, as if they feel they should be punished for their own sexuality.'

He had hoped this might elicit some information from Steve about her own relationships with men, particularly her current state of attachment, but it didn't. ‘Yes, I'm afraid Andrea did seem a bit like that. With men she had this – I was going to say “death-wish”, but it's rather uncomfortably appropriate.

‘You see, that's what I find so strange, that's why I said her death was inexplicable. I mean she'd had a really rough time over the last four years – first when she was married to Keith, then when they broke up, then more or less straight into the interminably unsatisfactory affair with Mark and then an awful patch when that finally came to an end.

‘Throughout all those times she'd come and have sob-sessions with me and often I'd see her in a really low state. Then she'd talk about suicide, but not in a real way, just as a kind of intellectual resolution to whatever impossible situation she was in at the time. Even then, when she was at her most abject, I never worried about that. I never really thought she would do it.' She shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose that shows how wrong you can be.'

But this conclusion didn't satisfy her and she continued, ‘What I think I'm saying, in my long-winded way, is that, if she was going to commit suicide, I would have been less surprised had it happened on any one of a dozen previous occasions, when she was in a really bad state. But she seemed in such good form when she came back from the States.'

‘As she said, on a high.'

‘Exactly. She was talking so much more positively than she had for months. As you know, I drove her back from the airport and she talked non-stop. She was in an incredibly optimistic state, really excited about things she wanted to do. She was going to steer clear of men for a bit and just concentrate on her career. It wasn't the talk of someone about to do away with herself.'

‘She seemed pretty manic when I met her.'

‘Yes, I suppose that's it. The mood swung round and she couldn't cope with the depression. Being back at work, sitting on her own for the first time, exhausted after the flight, it must have all just seemed too much.'

‘I suppose so. That seems the only solution.'

‘The police were evidently happy with it. It tied up all the loose ends.'

‘Yes.' Charles took another sip of his wine and looked out at the geraniums. ‘Did you find out anything from the police . . . I mean anything you didn't already know?'

‘Not much. Except medical details. I mean, like that Andrea had taken a couple of Mogadon before she did it. Apparently she'd crumbled them up in her coffee and taken them that way. With those and the alcohol and lack of sleep, she must have been in a pretty woozy state. I suppose that's what they mean by the balance of the mind being disturbed.'

‘Yes. You weren't surprised that she had the Mogadon on her?'

‘No. She always carried them. Her doctor prescribed some when she was going through a rough patch just after the marriage ended, and I'm afraid it was repeat prescriptions ever since. She always had difficulty sleeping, especially when she was emotionally upset or excited.' Apparently reading some sort of disapproval in his eyes, she added, ‘I'm sorry, I'm making it sound a real
Valley of the Dolls
set-up.'

‘Don't worry. But basically you don't reckon her taking the Mogadon was strange? At that time.'

‘No, she had said she'd take some. They take a bit of time to work, so it's quite likely that she would have had a couple to ensure that she went straight off to sleep when she got home.'

‘Except that presumably it wasn't her intention to go to sleep, or indeed to go home.'

‘No, of course not. I was forgetting. I suppose she must have taken them to make it that much easier. Or perhaps she took them with a view to going home and then was seized with such a terrible wave of depression that she cut her wrists on an impulse.'

‘Maybe.' Charles didn't feel it all made sense yet. ‘But it was quite carefully set up. I mean, the razor blade was placed in position. Anyway, I can understand somebody slashing one wrist on an impulse, but it seems to me the sight of all that blood might stop them short before doing the next one.'

‘I agree. The whole thing is odd. But what else is there to think?'

‘I don't know. That something happened to change her mood.'

‘I don't follow.'

‘Well, what's the situation? We both saw her, just back from the States, in an almost manic state of euphoria. If we assume that there was no outside influence, we must take it that that mood shifted and turned to a depression of suicidal proportions. That's the bit you described as inexplicable – right?'