The Death Pictures (12 page)

He had a well-planned procedure, all about priorities. First, the call to Nigel. He could do nothing without his cameraman.

‘Urgent story, central Plymouth. Get going, will call you en route with details and directions,’ was all Dan needed to say.

‘On my way,’ came the reply.

Then Rutherford into the garden for a wee. You never knew when you’d be coming back. The dog could hold out for up to twelve hours, plenty of time to call his downstairs neighbour if Dan was going to be away for longer. Grab his satchel and into the car. He always kept a coat, maps, some snacks and water in the boot, along with a basic overnight bag. There was a black tie and jacket too, in case the scramble was a Royal death. He could call the newsroom on the way to let them know what was happening, but the priority was to get to the scene.

It was only a few minutes to Royal Gardens. Dan remembered nothing of the drive, his mind full of Joseph McCluskey and what could have happened to him. Was it something to do with the riddle of the Death Pictures? Whatever, it was going to be a hell of a story. He’d heard the panic at the end of the line when he’d called the newsroom to tell them.

A line of three police cars and a van were parked untidily in the road, a cordon of blue tape already set up around the house, a couple of constables on sentry duty. Dan pulled up opposite and clambered out of the car.

A gang of neighbours had gathered at the end of the street, some pointing, some shaking their heads. The number of police here said the death of Joseph McCluskey certainly wasn’t being treated as suicide. Dan checked his watch. 8.45 it read, so it was probably just before nine. The outside broadcast van was on the way, a report and live broadcast demanded for the 10.25 bulletin. They’d have to shift.

A familiar face bobbed up from behind a car, a camera slung around his neck. Dirty El, grinning as ever at the scent of a big story. Dan had expected him to be first on the scene. He was a keen scanner of police radio frequencies.

‘Evening, El. So what’s the low-down? Doesn’t look like a suicide to me.’

The smile broadened.

‘Suicide my arse,’ said the photographer gleefully. ‘They’ve scrambled a load of detectives and all the Scenes of Crimes lot, along with forensics. Kerching! El can hear the cash register calling.’

As if on cue, a couple of white-overalled figures emerged from the door of the house, knelt down and started checking over the porch. Their fingers brushed across the steps and probed the cracks in the paving. They were frozen in jerky strobes of flashlight as El instinctively raised his camera and loosed off a series of snaps.

Two cars pulled up fast, a journalist from the
Standard
and another from the
Western Daily News
. The pack was gathering. Word got around fast on a big story like this. Dan heard a familiar voice and turned, saw Nigel jump out of his car, run around to the boot, fish his camera out, hoist it onto his shoulder and come running over in time to get some shots of the forensics men. Dan stood behind him, watching his back. They could work up a plan in a minute. For now, they’d see what pictures they could get.

The white-suited figures rose and walked carefully back inside. Nigel put down his camera and turned to Dan, who couldn’t help but burst out laughing. He was wearing a blue, paisley swirled pyjama top.

‘You said scramble, so I scrambled,’ Nigel said huffily. ‘I’ve got a T shirt in the car.’

Dan patted his friend’s shoulder and just about managed to control his laughter. ‘Thanks for moving so fast,’ he said soothingly. They walked back to the Renault to get the tripod and microphone and give Nigel a chance to change. Dan tried Adam’s number as he stood by the car, but it was engaged.

‘We don’t know much, apart from that McCluskey is dead and although it looks like a classic suicide, there are some suspicious circumstances,’ he said, as they walked back to the edge of the cordon. ‘So whatever it is, we’ve got a story. If he’s killed himself, it’s just a big one. If it looks like he’s been murdered, it’s very big indeed.’

‘Understood,’ replied Nigel, slotting his camera onto the tripod and pointing it at McCluskey’s house. ‘What’s the plan then?’

‘The outside broadcast truck will be here in a minute. We’ve got to cut a report and do a live bit.’

They’d got enough pictures of the scene, Dan thought. A few bits of interview would be useful, even if it was just neighbours voicing shock. They walked over to the gang of onlookers and got a couple of clips of exactly what he’d expected, ‘Oh, it’s terrible something like that could have happened here. Who’d have thought it? Such a lovely man.’

As he finished the interviews, Dan noticed a flash of colour lingering at his side. Loud Jim Stone, the outside broadcast engineer had, arrived. ‘I was about to go off shift,’ he grumbled through the thicket of his twitching beard. ‘Bloody inconvenient time for a death.’

Dan hid a smile. Loud’s nickname came from his love of wearing Hawaiian shirts and his unrelenting grumpiness. In full, it was ‘Loud and Furrow-Browed’, but it was usually shortened for simplicity.

‘Yeah, I was just about to get in a bath,’ Dan replied. ‘But we’re stuck with it, Jim, so we’d better get on with it. Park the truck as close as you can to the cordon and set up the satellite link. We’ve got to edit a report and do a live.’

He checked Nigel’s watch. Nine twenty. Allow 20 minutes for the edit, another 10 to get ready to go on air. That gave them about another half hour’s filming. ‘I’ll be in the truck by ten at the latest.’ Loud huffed again and lumbered sulkily back to the van. Dan thought he looked like a caveman with a toothache.

They rejoined the pack. All the journalists were comparing speculation and rumours. It always happened on a big story. What they didn’t know, they invented, and usually with wishful thinking. The
Standard
reporter told them he’d heard McCluskey had been knifed by someone who’d knocked at the door and went mad when the artist refused to give him another clue to the riddle. Dan replied he thought it was a harpoon.

What they really needed now was some reliable information and a brief interview with Adam. Dan could call him, but knew the detective would be busy setting up the initial investigation and would come out when he could. Give it a few minutes.

El was back, beaming this time. He beckoned to Dan who stepped away from the pack to share the secret. The paparazzo loved mystery.

‘What have you got then?’ asked Dan.

‘A double whammy I think you’d call it mate. I’m in clover.’

Dan had long given up trying to interpret El speak. ‘Meaning?’

‘Got a lovely snap round the back. All the lights are on and I got some silhouettes of what looks like forensics people through the frosted glass of the bathroom. That’ll be worth hundreds to the nationals.’

‘How’d you get round the back? Haven’t the cops got it all sealed off?’

El bounced from foot to foot as if he was about to lift off.

‘Yeah. But I knocked on a neighbour’s door and asked if I could use their garden. And they wanted to know what was in it for them?’

‘I dread to ask,’ said Dan, ‘but what did you tell them?’

‘I saw a wedding list in the hall. Their daughter’s getting married. So I asked if they’d got a photographer and the bloke said no, not yet, they’re so bloody expensive, hundreds of quid a go. I offered El’s services for nothing more than a few beers at the do and the use of their premises now. They couldn’t get me into the garden fast enough.’

El cradled his camera like a Crusader with a holy relic. He began warbling a tune to himself, grinning all the while. Dan sensed one of the photographer’s bizarre and usually dreadful limericks was about to be born. After a few seconds thought, El spread his arms in the manner of a thespian and burbled,

‘There once was a snapper named El,

Who was devious and scurrilous as hell,

He spotted a tree,

Thought – that’s for me,

And clicked off some piccies darned swell!’

Dan just shook his head.

‘Got to be off now, going to file the snaps, and collect the cash,’ El chirped. ‘Wanna meet for a beer at the weekend?’

‘Oh yes,’ replied Dan. El was generous with his money when he’d had a good week and a blow out sounded great. Then he remembered Kerry and the date he’d promised. Well, he could work something out. Probably. But he knew what would give if he couldn’t.

‘Hang on El, you said a double whammy. What was the other bit?’ Dan asked.

‘I’ve got a commission, a lovely, luscious, lucrative one from a broadsheet. It could be worth thousands. I’ve got to find out who the mystery women were in the Death Pictures and snap them. I might need your help on that one. Seeya, mate, call you Friday.’

Dan rejoined the pack. He checked his watch. Half past nine it said, so probably nine forty now, and still no reliable information. What would he write? He jotted down a couple of notes. He could say it was McCluskey’s house, that someone inside was believed dead in suspicious circumstances. That would give the viewers the idea of what was going on. Could he say it was the artist? He turned to talk it over with Nigel when the pack surged forward. There were a couple of shouts, ‘Mr Breen, Mr Breen...’

Adam had emerged from the house and was walking towards them, straightening his tie. It was already impeccable. He held up his hands for quiet. Nigel pushed his way to the front of the crowd, camera on shoulder. Dan followed, attached by the cable of the microphone he was carrying. He shouldered a radio reporter aside and stuck the microphone under the detective’s nose. The word hypocrite lingered in his mind as he remembered the row with the
Daily News
man at McCluskey’s studio. But this was a big story and he couldn’t risk not catching Adam’s words.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, good evening. You want to know what’s going on here, but I’m afraid there’s only a limited amount I can tell you. We received a call from a man which brought us to the house just before eight o’clock this evening. We found a 66-year-old male dead. The circumstances of his death are unclear, so we’ve begun a full investigation. That’s all I can tell you for now, apart from to ask anyone who may have any information, or might have witnessed what happened here to get in touch with the police. Thank you.’

There was the usual barrage of questions from the pack. ‘Is it McCluskey? Is it suicide? Was he murdered?’ but Adam turned away and walked back into the house.

Good timing, my friend Dan thought, and wondered if Adam was trying to help him. He knew exactly when their news bulletins were, had featured on them often enough. It was 9.50, time to get into the van and edit the story. Nigel would stay out here, just in case anything else happened and to set up the cabling and their position for the live report. There was just one thing he had to do first, the key to the story. He picked up his phone.

‘Dan mate, I’m busy.’ Adam sounded stressed. Not surprising, this would be a big case, the High Honchos watching carefully, and he had the rapist to think about too.

‘I know. Just a quick one, I need to be sure for my report. Is it McCluskey?’

‘Yes.’

‘Suspicious?’

‘Yes.’

‘Despite initially looking like a suicide?’

‘Yes.’

‘Thanks mate. Call me when you can.’

Loud shifted his bulk as Dan stepped up into the van. ‘Start with a couple of shots of the house, the police cars and the officers on guard, please,’ he said. ‘I’ll write something to go with them.’

Loud huffed, and began spooling through the tape, picking the shots. Dan scribbled some words on his notepad, keeping an eye on the monitors, trying to blend his script with the pictures. Most journalists would have started with the obvious, ‘The police were called here at eight o’clock tonight...’ He prided himself on not doing it like most journalists.

‘The initial reports were of a suicide,’ he read in his best deep and authoritative voice. ‘But detectives now believe there may be suspicious circumstances involved in the death of Joseph McCluskey at his house here in the Hartley area of Plymouth.’

Loud finished laying the pictures and they put in a couple of clips of interview of the onlookers. ‘Mr McCluskey has become a famous artist, particularly with his works which became known as the Death Pictures. He painted them – and donated the hundreds of thousands of pounds proceeds to good causes – after being diagnosed with terminal cancer.’ Dan paused.

‘Don’t put any pictures in there Jim. I’ll ask them to drop in some shots of the paintings they’ve got back at base,’ Dan said. He picked up the microphone again. ‘Mr McCluskey had been given perhaps another couple of months to live. But this evening it looks as though his life might have ended in an unnatural way.’

Loud edited a shot of the press pack and Adam talking to them over that part, then a bit of Adam’s interview. Dan continued, ‘Tonight forensics officers are checking Joseph McCluskey’s house for clues as to how he died, and detectives are beginning their investigation. This is Dan Groves, for
Wessex Tonight
, in Plymouth.’

He called the newsroom while Loud edited the last shots in, dictated a cue for the newsreader to introduce the report and instructions on dropping in the sequence of the Death Pictures. 10.15 now. Time to get ready for the live broadcast.