Dead Room Farce

by Simon Brett

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘And it probably means you are the same. Still drinking too much?’

  ‘I have been cutting down on that recently.’

  She barked out a short, disbelieving laugh. ‘Won’t last. And I assume you’re not back with the wife?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘I see. Still juggling with a series of women, are you?’

  At most times during recent years he could have denied the allegation hotly. But, given what had been happening the last couple of weeks . . . silence seemed the best option.

  ‘I see,’ she said again, in a tone of despair at the unerring predictability of humankind – or of mankind – or of Charles Paris, anyway. ‘You’re in this show with Bernard Walton?’

  ‘That’s right. not on your wife!’

  ‘He’s good, Bernard Walton. Makes me laugh on the telly.’

  ‘Mm. Well, of course, I can organise tickets for any night you fancy.’

  ‘Thanks. I’d enjoy that. Free most evenings these days, but I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Fine. Are you still working?’

  ‘No, no, I stopped that.’

  ‘Ah. And you aren’t in any kind of, er, permanent . . .?’

  ‘Relationship?’ That got the derisory laugh it deserved. Though there had been quite a few men in Ruth’s life since her divorce from a central heating systems salesman, none had raised her opinion of the subspecies.

  The look she fixed on him was as it had ever been, expecting nothing, because she knew that expectations with someone like Charles Paris could only lead to disappointments.

  After the first performance in Leeds, Charles didn’t have a drink with the company, and when he got back to Ruth’s semi in Headingley, he saw that her bedroom light was on and the door ajar. On previous occasions those signs had been tantamount to an invitation, and he did hover on the landing for a nanosecond of indecision.

  But no. God, no. His life was complicated enough at the moment. The last thing Charles needed was to start hurting someone else. He’d spent the previous night with Lisa. Then he’d had a rather sticky confrontation during the day with Cookie. And somewhere, lurking in the mists of guilt that filled his mind, was an indistinct image of Frances. Charles Paris went straight to his own bedroom.

  ‘The Beeb was never very generous,’ said David J. Girton. ‘Almost mythic reputation for meanness, actually. All the comedians used to come on and say to the audiences, “I’m wearing my BBC suit today – small checks!” Boom-boom!’

  He and Charles were in the theatre bar after the Wednesday night’s performance. The director had managed to fit in a large dinner at the Queen’s Hotel before the show, so all he was now in need of was a few ‘little drinks’. He was on the red wine again, a Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon he’d got the barman to open specially. Very acceptable, David J. Girton had opined after the first sip. Charles Paris, who was sharing it with him, did not disagree.

  ‘No,’ the director went on, everyone was strapped for cash in those days, so, although it was deeply against BBC rules and potentially a sacking offence, a lot of moonlighting went on. Pop music was really booming, for one thing, and some of the Radio One stage managers made a very healthy living from producing commercial sessions for various bands.’

  ‘And was Mark Lear into that?’ Charles prompted.

  ‘No, music was never really Mark’s thing. All the stuff he produced was speech-based. Mind you, he got involved in his own unofficial, don’t-say-a-word, readies-in-the-back-pocket work as well.’

  An interrogative movement of the head was all Charles needed to make David J. Girton continue. ‘The porn industry was also expanding exponentially at the time. Mark got involved in producing dirty audio cassettes.’

  Good to have it confirmed. Maurice had been getting very close to the truth. Might be bugger-all use as an agent, but the quality of his gossip was impeccable.

  ‘And presumably, for that kind of work, Mark would have been paid a fee per session?’

  ‘I assume so. As I said, readies in the back pocket. Nothing official, nothing that ever appeared on the old taxman’s books, that’s for sure.’

  ‘No, of course not.’ Charles took a long sip of red wine before remembering that he’d told Lisa he’d stay off the stuff. Oh well, too late to make changes that evening. And it was only wine, after all, not spirits. He went on, ‘Tell me, David, I heard a rumour that Mark actually got involved in the management side of the porn tape business, put money into the company . . . Ring any bells?’

  David J. Girton shook his head. ‘No reason I would have heard if he had done, though.’

  ‘No. You’ve no idea what other actors and actresses he might have been working with on these tapes, have you?’

  ‘No idea. Anyone who was around at the time, I would imagine. Not many young actors would object to picking up the odd unofficial tenner for a quick session at the microphone, would they? And with that kind of stuff, there wasn’t much danger of them ever being identified from their performances.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Not many actual words involved, I would imagine. Lots of panting, groaning, and the odd grunt of “I’m coming!” Hardly Shakespeare.’

  ‘No. Not to mention the wet newspapers.’

  ‘Ah, you heard about that?’ The director chuckled. ‘Yes, Karen Cohen was telling me about that.’

  ‘Karen Cohen?’

  ‘Actress who’s in Neighbourhood Watch. Don’t you know her?’

  ‘Know the name.’

  ‘Well, she’s a . . . what shall we say? She’s a larger-than-life character. Larger than life in every way. Foul-mouthed, utterly disgusting, very funny. She’s always telling us at rehearsal about her wicked past. I’m sure she makes half of it up, just to shock people, but it can be very entertaining. Anyway, she mentioned that wet newspaper thing. She says she did a lot of porn tapes back in the early 1970s – and I think she’s probably telling the truth about that.’

  ‘Well, could you ask her if she’s got any names for other actors who were involved?’

  ‘Sure.’ David J. Girton looked at him with curiosity. And with something else as well. A caution, a guardedness, had come into his manner. ‘Why do you want to know all this?’ he asked. ‘Are you writing the definitive history of moonlighting in the BBC?’

  ‘No, no,’ Charles came up with a quick lie. It was distressing how glibly he could sometimes lie. ‘No, I was just talking to Mark’s girlfriend about it. You remember – Lisa Wilson from the studio in Bath?’

  ‘Didn’t meet her.’

  ‘No, no, of course you didn’t. She wasn’t there that Thursday afternoon. Anyway, she just wants to find out all she can about Mark’s past. I suppose it’s her way of coping with the bereavement.’

  He felt marginally guilty about attributing these spurious motives to Lisa. On the other hand, in the cause of finding out how Mark died, she probably wouldn’t mind.

  David J. Girton’s anxiety had passed. He’d decided that his own moonlighting wasn’t the subject of Charles Paris’s investigations. Relaxed, he chuckled at another recollection. ‘Karen’s very funny when she gets going on her days as a porn star. Because she did a lot of video work as well as the audio stuff. Featured in lots of little epics catering for those whose tastes run to the “bigger woman”.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Well, if you’d ever seen Karen, you’d know it was perfect casting.’ He giggled. ‘She said some of the “bigger men” she worked with were so fat she had difficulty actually finding their dicks, let alone doing anything with them!’

  ‘And she’s not ashamed of talking about that stuff?’

  ‘You try and stop her. No, “shame” and “inhibition” are two words Karen Cohen just does not understand. She takes great delight in talking on chat-shows about the most intimate details of her life.’

  ‘Whereas other actors might try to cast a veil over some of the things they did just for the money?’

&n
bsp; ‘Too true. Come on, Charles, I’m sure there must’ve been a few jobs in your past you wouldn’t exactly boast about . . .’

  ‘In my case, that’s rather an understatement, David.’ Charles Paris tried to think which of the many had been absolutely the most embarrassing. Could it have been his performance as a burnt chip in an advertisement for cooking oil? Or his rendering of the role of a turd in an experimental work entitled Sewer Fantasies (‘An evening of which I would like to flush away all memories’ – Time Out). Charles wasn’t even sure whether he’d boast about recording over a hundred thousand words and phrases for a Thesaurus on CD-ROM.

  ‘And with those tapes that Mark Lear produced,’ David J. Girton went on, ‘there might be even more reason for the actors involved to keep quiet.’

  ‘Why? Just because they were porn?’

  ‘No, Charles, because they were gay porn.’

  Chapter Twelve

  ‘MAURICE, I’ve now got information that definitely ties Mark Lear in with the audio porn cassettes.’

  ‘Really?’ Down the telephone his agent’s voice sounded disgruntled. ‘I was getting close to a result on that myself.’

  ‘So if I can tie in the Ransome George strand, you know, prove that he got Mark Lear involved on the financial side . . .’

  ‘Yes, all right, Charles. If you can do that, so what? How’s that going to help you?’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  He wasn’t. All he knew was that Ransome George was now at the top of his list of suspects. Everything seemed to come back to Ransome George. First, there was his character, entirely amoral, out to get any money he could by any means.

  Then there was the conversation Charles had overheard him having with Bernard Walton in Bath. Ran knew something that Bernard wanted him to keep quiet, and Ran, presumably because of some financial arrangement with the star, also wanted to keep it quiet. If the challenge Mark Lear had thrown down in the studio threatened that cosy little set-up, then Ran was quite capable of using any means to neutralise that threat.

  What the secret was that Ransome George and Bernard Walton shared, Charles didn’t know. Bernard certainly couldn’t have had anything to do with the porn tapes, because Mark had specifically denied ever working with him. But the tapes were the link between Mark and Ran.

  Charles was confident that it would soon all be clear to him. Though he hadn’t got the fine detail of motivations worked out yet, he felt certain that Ransome George had murdered Mark Lear.

  ‘Maybe it’d make things easier,’ he was aware of Maurice Skellern’s voice going on, ‘if you told me why you were trying to get this information.’

  ‘Yes, yes, perhaps it . . . No, I’m sorry, Maurice. Have to keep quiet about it for the moment. I think I’d better talk to Ran.’

  ‘All right, but when you’re with him, just make sure you don’t open your wallet.’ Maurice’s laugh wheezed away at the hilarity of the idea.

  ‘Yes, yes, all right, very funny. Anything on the other names I mentioned?’

  ‘Nothing that ties them up with Mark Lear, no. David J. Girton may have been involved in some overnight expenses fiddles, but no worse than most BBC producers of the time got up to.’

  ‘What about Bernard Walton?’

  ‘Nobody’s ever got anything on Bernard Walton – well, except for insincerity, egotism and being a workaholic. Anyway, all those just go with the territory of being a star. Otherwise, dear old Bernard remains Showbusiness’s Mr Squeaky-Clean.’

  ‘Never anything dubious on his sex-life?’

  ‘Charles, the general view is that Bernard Walton doesn’t have a sex-life, that he’s so obsessive about his work Mrs Walton would get more action in a nunnery.’

  ‘But they’ve got three children, haven’t they?’

  ‘Yes, and the consensus is that those three times were the only three times it’s ever happened. I mean, I’m not one to spread gossip, but . . .’

  Why is it that people say things like that, Charles wondered. Why do they say exactly the opposite of what they mean? Why do the shiftiest characters in the world always begin sentences with ‘Honestly . . .’ and ‘Trust me . . .’?

  But, as Maurice Skellern rambled on with more details about the supposed aridity of Bernard Walton’s sex-life, Charles Paris was reminded of something else he had to check up on. He must find out precisely what place Pippa Trewin had in the star’s life.

  He finally located Ransome George in the pub near the stage door before the show that evening. He indicated Ran’s gin and tonic glass. ‘Another one of those?’

  ‘If you’re buying, Charles, I would be honoured.’ He did it in his obsequious-funny voice. Had there been other people there to hear it, the line would have got its certain laugh.

  They settled with their drinks. Instinctively, Charles had bought himself a large Bell’s. It was only as he was carrying the glasses back to their table that he remembered his pledge to Lisa. Oh well, time enough. If he didn’t drink on the Friday or Saturday, then when they met on the Sunday, he’d have survived nearly three days without booze.

  Anyway, he was conducting an investigation. He had to relax the person he was pumping. If Ran noticed Charles wasn’t on the Bell’s, that might put him on his guard.

  Even as he shaped these justifications, Charles Paris knew they were nothing more than the casuistry of the alcoholic. He raised his glass to Ran. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘Down the hatch.’ Again, the timing and the voice were funny. It was difficult to consider someone who could be so consistently funny in connection with a murder enquiry. But then so impermeable was Ransome George’s humorous defence that it was difficult at times to think of him as a human being, or to get near the real human being who must lurk somewhere in the middle of all the funny faces and funny voices.

  ‘Was talking to my agent about poor old Mark Lear . . .’ Charles began.

  ‘Uh-uh.’ Ran’s reaction was entirely without attitude. He didn’t sound anxious or guilty. He didn’t sound anything. ‘Who is your agent?’

  ‘Maurice Skellern.’

  Ransome George just giggled.

  ‘Maurice used to know Mark way back in the early 1970s,’ Charles lied. ‘I gather you did some work for him back then . . .’

  Ran didn’t deny it. ‘Odd little bits here and there, yes.’

  ‘Agent mentioned something about some audio porn tapes . . .’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Do you remember making those?’

  ‘Vaguely. I’ve done all kinds of stuff over the years. Never been out of work for more than the odd month.’

  ‘Lucky you.’

  ‘Partly luck. Partly grafting away, following up leads, making the right friends, you know how it is.’

  ‘Oh yes. Were you actually involved in the production company that made the porn tapes?’

  For the first time there was a wariness in Ransome George’s eye. ‘May have been. Why you asking?’

  ‘To be quite honest, I think there was something funny about Mark Lear’s death.’

  ‘Funny?’

  ‘Not to put too fine a point on it, I think someone may have helped him on his way.’

  Ran nodded slowly, weighing the idea. ‘I suppose it’s possible. What’s this got to do with the porn tapes?’

  ‘Well, that afternoon Mark talked about writing a book, exposing things that went on in the BBC, or amongst people who had BBC connections . . . Do you remember?’

  ‘Uh-uh.’

  ‘And in retrospect I’ve come to the conclusion that what he was actually doing was issuing a threat. He was saying he would expose something he knew about someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘That’s what I don’t know. Obviously someone who was in the studio that afternoon.’

  ‘Mm.’ Ransome George caught his eye. ‘You’re not looking at me, are you? I never worked for the BBC.’

  ‘Not on the staff, I know, but you did the odd radio as an actor.’

  ‘Very
few. Pretty quickly realised my face was going to be my fortune and concentrated on the telly.’

  Charles took another sip of his whisky. It did taste good. The idea that he could ever give the stuff up permanently seemed more remote than ever. ‘I’ve just a feeling, Ran, that what happened to Mark is somehow tied in with events at the BBC in the early 1970s.’

  Ransome George shrugged, without much interest in the subject. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘So I want to find out all the detail I can, particularly about the time when Mark was involved in producing those porn cassettes.’

  ‘Well, good luck. I don’t see that it has anything to do with me.’

  ‘You were involved in making those cassettes, so you could fill in a bit of the background.’

  ‘Yes, possibly I could. Doesn’t mean I will, though, does it?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Ran didn’t answer that straight away. Instead, he asked, ‘What kind of stuff do you want to know?’

  ‘Anything. Everything. Names of the other actors involved, for a start.’

  ‘It’ll cost you.’

  ‘What do you mean – it’ll cost me?’

  ‘I’d have thought the words were clear. We live in a consumer society. Most things have a price. Information’s certainly a marketable commodity. I’ve got information you want. So, to get it, you’re going to have to pay me.’

  ‘How much?’

  Ransome George stretched out a ruminative lower lip. ‘Say five hundred quid per actor’s name.’

  ‘What? But I haven’t got that kind of money.’

  ‘Didn’t think you had. Means you haven’t got that kind of information either, doesn’t it?’

  Charles was too dumbfounded by this reaction to press his point. Instead, he said, ‘Incidentally, Ran, talking of money . . . there’s still the small matter of that twenty you borrowed from me on the last day of rehearsal in London.’

  Ransome George looked up, his face full of shock and injured innocence. ‘Oh, now come on, Charles . . .’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I paid you back that money when we were in Bath. Don’t you remember, just before the first night? You were hurrying to your dressing room and I thrust a twenty into your hands.’