Dead Giveaway

by Brett, Simon

  She sat back in her chair, relieved, as if the worst part of the narrative was over.

  ‘It was a girl. Blonde girl. Pretty, I suppose. I didn’t recognise her.’

  ‘Had she got on a light-grey sort of all-in-one suit . . . cut like the one you’re wearing?’ Trish nodded. ‘That was Chippy, the one who’s been charged with his murder.’

  ‘Good heavens. Was it? I didn’t really look at her. You know, I was flustered, pulling my clothes around me. It was . . . well, it was embarrassing.’

  ‘And was that what made you cry?’

  ‘No. It was what Barrett said to me.’ She looked once again tearful at the recollection.

  ‘Can I ask . . .?’

  ‘I won’t tell you exactly what he said, but he dismissed me, as if I were . . . I don’t know, a waiter, a taxi-driver . . . no one . . . as if I wasn’t a person at all.’

  ‘I’m rather afraid that’s how he treated most people.’

  ‘Yes.’ She seemed listless, tired out by her account.

  ‘So you left the dressing room and went out into the corridor?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Where you met Roger Bruton.’

  ‘I saw him. I turned away. I didn’t want him to see I was crying.’

  ‘Any particular reason, or wouldn’t you have wanted anyone to see you crying?’

  ‘I wouldn’t want anyone to, but . . .’ She let out a little cough of laughter. ‘. . . I particularly didn’t want him to. I was afraid he’d get Joanie to come along and ask what the matter was. I couldn’t have faced her understanding me. God knows how he’s stuck it all these years. What hell it must be for a man whose wife really understands him.’

  ‘Most men complain of the opposite.

  ‘Do you?’ Her brown eyes found his.

  ‘Complain that my wife doesn’t understand me? No, I’m rather afraid she does. But, since we’ve been separated for fifteen years or so, the point’s really academic.’ He needed to break the link between their eyes, so he looked away and moved briskly on. ‘You left Barrett’s dressing room at about twenty-five past six. You weren’t back up in the Conference Room till twenty to seven.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What did you do? Can you account for that quarter of an hour?’

  ‘I went to the Ladies, the one near Make-up. I was crying. I didn’t want people to see me crying. I went to sort of pull myself together.’

  It was a fairly shaky alibi, but she said it so ingenuously Charles felt inclined to believe her. ‘Did you see anyone apart from Roger Bruton before you got back to the Conference Room?’

  ‘I saw Bob Garston.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘After I’d come out of the Ladies. While I was waiting for the lift. It took ages to come. Bob came and waited too.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Commented on how inefficient the lifts were, that sort of thing. I was still trying to hide the fact that I’d been crying, so I didn’t want to make conversation.’

  ‘No. And this’d be . . . what? Round twenty to seven?’

  ‘Must’ve been by then, yes.’

  ‘And when the lift finally came, did you both travel up to the fifth floor together?’

  She nodded.

  ‘I don’t suppose you saw where Bob came from? Did he walk all the way along the corridor to the lifts?’

  ‘Oh no. He came out of one of the doors half-way along.’

  ‘Do you remember which one?’

  ‘Yes, certainly. The door from Studio A.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Charles, as non-committally as he could, smothering the surge of excitement inside him.

  Trish Osborne did not seem aware of the portent of her words. She stretched her arms behind her neck and yawned.

  The movement emphasised what Barrett Doran had thought unsuitable for family viewing. ‘That’s really tired me out, going through all that again. Let’s have a real drink now.’

  Charles didn’t refuse, and was soon equipped with a large glass of Chivas Regal. Trish had a schooner of sherry. She sat down on the sofa beside him and looked at her watch. ‘That’s not bad. Kept off the booze till half-past five today.’

  This remark, like some of her earlier ones, seemed designed only to shock. Charles did not react. He reckoned he had got what he came for. Bob Garston had been seen coming out of Studio A at exactly the right time. The investigation was proceeding.

  ‘Nothing else you can remember struck you as odd during the studio day? Nothing that happened just before his actual death or . . .?’

  ‘I wouldn’t have seen it if there had been anything. I was eliminated, remember.’

  ‘Oh yes, of course. Well, did your husband see anything from the audience?’

  She let out a short, bitter laugh. ‘He wasn’t there. He’s not interested in any of my activities.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘The only thing that interests him is his work. That’s why he gets home at ten every night. “Working late at the office.” Classic cover-up for an affair. I sometimes think I wouldn’t mind if it was an affair. At least that’d give another dimension to him, he wouldn’t be one hundred per cent boring. But I’m afraid, in his case, no, it really is work.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Charles. Trish seemed closer to him now on the sofa, her shoulder brushing against his. He sat forward. ‘Really should be off. I’m very grateful to you for . . .’

  ‘There’s no hurry. Have another drink.’

  ‘Oh no, I shouldn’t, well, just a small one.’

  It wasn’t a small one. Trish’s refill wasn’t small, either. She suddenly giggled as she bounced down on to the sofa beside him. ‘Awfully embarrassing, wasn’t it, in the studio, that business about my blouse? I bet you didn’t know where to look.’

  ‘Oh, it was . . . all right. I’m sure you were more embarrassed than anyone else was. I’ve seen that sort of thing happen a lot before.’

  ‘Oh?’ She arched an eyebrow.

  ‘Well, I mean, I’ve been to lots of costume calls and photo calls where that kind of thing arises – I mean, happens.’ He didn’t think he was doing this very well. ‘There are always problems like that. Men have to be told to put jock-straps under their tights and ladies . . . well . . .’ He found his eyes were ineluctably drawn to the objects of discussion. ‘Happens all the time in the theatre,’ he babbled. ‘Always has. Dr Johnson told David Garrick he’d have to stop going backstage because the actresses’ breasts unsettled him.’

  Trish Osborne did not seem over-interested in this snippet of literary anecdote. Instead, she looked down at her cleavage. ‘Barrett Doran was wrong, actually.’

  ‘Oh. What about?’

  ‘Well, he said they’d gone like that because I was panting for it.’

  ‘Oh yes, so he did. I remember vaguely.’

  ‘That wasn’t the reason. It was just nerves, you know, being in the studio and all that.’

  ‘Oh. Well, there you go.’

  ‘I mean, the effect is the same, but it was nerves.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘It’s not nerves now,’ she said.

  Charles felt bad as he entered the restaurant in Hampstead. In spite of her apparent sophistication, it turned out that he was the first man with whom Trish had cheated on her husband, and that had led to a few tears. Also the brazenness of her approach, and the fact that he was clearly not an individual but some rite of passage into her fifth decade, left him feeling soiled.

  And he was late. Twenty to nine.

  There was no softness in Frances’s face as she demanded, ‘Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Billericay.’

  Chapter Ten

  BOB GARSTON’S CAREER was on an upward spiral. His early success as an on-screen researcher for a pop consumer programme had given him public recognition. People stopped him in the streets, turned their heads as he passed, pointed to him in restaurants. He loved all the attention.

  And he got more of it when he
started his own series. A shrewd producer, recognizing how readily people identified with Bob Garston, had devised a format which used his populist qualities to the full. The show was called Joe Soap and its piously avowed intention was to explain the workings of bureaucracy to the general public. Each week Bob Garston in his faux-naïf role as Joe Soap would attempt some enterprise – to have a house extension built, to take the Gas Board to court, to set up his own minicab business – and go through the necessary bureaucratic hoops to realise that ambition.

  His interviews with the various officials were filmed, and these film inserts linked in the studio by Bob, whose wry commentary was interspersed with recollections and horror stories from ‘ordinary people’ who had been through the same processes. As ever in television programmes dealing with members of the public, their contribution was edited with professional cunning to extract the maximum humour and, almost always, to leave them looking stupid.

  The series was an instant success. Its format skilfully provided the audience with a justification for laughing at their fellow human beings. Like an investigative television sex programme, and with the same degree of calculation on the part of its makers, Joe Soap was watched by most of its viewers for the wrong reasons.

  The series, like the earlier consumer programme, was made by the B.B.C. Bob Garston’s only work for I.T.V. had hitherto been a few guest appearances on quiz show panels. His assumption of Barrett Doran’s mantle on If The Cap Fits would be an important stepping-stone towards the big money and wider audience of commercial television.

  These thoughts went through Charles Paris’s head as he sat with Sydnee watching the recording of the latest Joe Soap. She had had a legitimate excuse for contacting Bob Garston, since John Mantle had delegated her to check through the format of If The Cap Fits with its new host. Long circular harangues from Aaron Greenberg and Dirk van Henke had led the Executive Producer to make a few revisions in the proposed presentation of the show. Patience and his customary diplomacy had ensured that these changes were minimal and cosmetic, but he had given straight-faced assurances to the copyright-holders that every detail would be communicated to the new host.

  (The Americans had not been convinced that Bob Garston was the right man for the job. They saw little evidence that he possessed the ‘pazazz’ which, to their minds, Barrett Doran had lacked. Once again, John Mantle had had to spend many hours of cajoling and apparent concession over expensive food before he got his own way. At least one good thing had emerged out of the first pilot, however; the Americans had been so concerned about other details that they put up no further objections to the English title for the show. On that point, John Mantle’s slow, wait-and-see diplomacy had paid off, and he felt confident that, given time and patience, it would pay off on the other details too.)

  Though Sydnee had a perfectly legitimate reason for going to see Bob Garston, explaining Charles’s presence at the recording was going to be more difficult. Bob had suggested a meal after the show to Sydnee, secure in the glamour of his television persona (and not realizing that her long exposure to the medium had left her a little more cynical than most women about that glamour). Charles had, needless to say, not been included in the invitation, and he had a feeling his being there would cast him in the unwelcome role of gooseberry. Whether or not Bob Garston had sexual designs on Sydnee, he was the kind of man whose ego would be massaged by dining alone with any attractive girl.

  On the other hand, the way their investigation into Barrett Doran’s death was pointing made both determined that they should confront their suspect together.

  Sydnee reckoned their best approach would be an edited version of the truth. They should voice their suspicions that Chippy had not killed Barrett and say that they were trying desperately to clear her. For that reason, they were talking to all those who had been involved in the show, trying to find out if anyone had seen anything that might help their case. They would not make any direct accusation to Bob, but hope that something he said might confirm their suspicions.

  Charles thought this was pretty risky. If Bob Garston were guilty, it would only alert him to his danger and lead him into evasion. But, try as he could, Charles couldn’t come up with another, safer approach, so he had been forced to accept Sydnee’s suggestion, unsatisfactory though it was.

  He sat back and watched the show. Bob Garston, with the mock-innocence of Joe Soap, was on film, applying to a Local Council Planner for permission to build a greenhouse in his back garden. ‘But suppose I just put the thing up, I’m sure you wouldn’t really mind . . . You’d turn a blind eye. Don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, I couldn’t do that.’

  Charles, who knew a lot about vocal inflections, could recognise that the Planner had been going to say more, but had been cut short by the edit. The effect was exactly as the programme-makers intended. The man sounded as if the thing he ‘couldn’t do’ was ‘to think’. The audience duly roared their approval of this ambiguity.

  Cut back to Bob Garston in the studio. ‘Well,’ he said with a wolfish grin, rubbing in the joke for those too slow to understand first time round, ‘he said it!’

  The audience around Charles again roared sycophantically.

  Getting ‘a television person’ on his own is never easy. Programme-making always involves a lot of people and those who work in the medium tend to hunt in packs. To see a single person, or even just a couple, in a television bar is a rarity; instead there are clusters, large groups representing different production teams.

  There was a large Joe Soap group round Bob Garston in the B.B.C. Television Centre bar that evening after the recording. Sydnee and Charles were the exception, just two people, drinking respectively white wine and Bell’s whisky. Bob had waved recognition at Sydnee through the crowd in his dressing room, led her up with the crowd to the bar, and joined the crowd at the entrance to sign her in. Charles had taken advantage of the crowd to sidle in without benefit of signature. Bob had shown no sign of recognizing him. The problem of explaining his presence remained.

  Beyond buying her a drink, Bob Garston had made no attempt to include Sydnee in his group. As a television person, she understood this completely. She knew the wild laughter and gesticulation around him was part of that mutual release of tension that came at the end of a long studio day. She knew that all the conversation would be of late cues, shadows from microphone booms, recalcitrant interviewees, references and in-jokes that could have no meaning for those who had not lived through the same day.

  Charles had no expectation of being included. His dominant worry remained how to explain himself, how to make sure that he and Sydnee got a chance to talk to Bob alone. He looked around the bar, and saw a couple of actors he knew buying drinks for Light Entertainment producers. He felt the recurrent wave of despair that came over him whenever he thought about his career. He knew actors should keep a high profile, be seen by the people who mattered, the people who controlled that arcane magic of employment. On the rare occasions when his agent ceased to think of him as a lost cause and proffered advice, Maurice Skellem always said, ‘Put yourself about, Charles, get yourself seen. Got to be up front as an actor, you know. Remind people you exist. Actors got to let their light be seen, shine upon producers, dazzle them. Whereas all you seem to do is find thicker and thicker bushels to hide yours under.’

  He knew partly it was true. Some of his failure in his chosen career could be attributed to the eternal problem of too many actors chasing too few parts, some perhaps to only an average talent, but within him there was also the fatal flaw of diffidence, a kind of laziness that kept him from hustling as hard as he knew he should.

  Sounds of an argument at the bar shook him out of this orbit of self-pity. Time had been called, but one of the Light Entertainment producers was vigorously asserting that he needed another drink. People were starting to look around for abandoned handbags and briefcases. The party was breaking up.

  With many good-humoured waves and shoulder-slappings, Bob
Garston detached himself from the Joe Soap group and came across towards them. ‘Sydnee, hi. You set?’

  ‘Sure.’ She indicated her companion. ‘This is Charles Paris.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ There was no interest and no recognition in his glance.

  ‘You remember, he was one of the “professions” in the first If The Cap Fits pilot.’

  Bob gave a nod which recognised this fact without giving it any importance. With a perfunctory grin at Charles, he reached out an arm to Sydnee. ‘Shall we be off then?’

  She looked at Charles with an expression that told him he had to get out of this one. ‘Bob,’ he said. ‘We want to talk to you.’

  ‘Sydnee and I are just going off to talk. I don’t see where you fit in.’

  ‘We want to talk about Barrett Doran’s murder.’

  Bob Garston’s eyes narrowed. The hearty public face slipped away, to be replaced by something more furtive.

  ‘You’d better come along then,’ he said.

  Bob Garston’s car was directly in front of Television Centre, where only the highly privileged were allowed to park. It was a new Jaguar. Bob and Charles sat in the front, Sydnee in the back.

  ‘Right, what is this?’ The voice was unrecognisable from the confident, insinuating tones of Joe Soap. It was breathier, tighter; and the note of tension could have been fear.

  Charles explained evenly, without specifying their reasons, that they didn’t think Chippy had killed Barrett.

  ‘Are you going to make your suspicions public? Are you going to the police?’

  ‘We will eventually, yes. We’d rather go with the name of the person who did kill him and some evidence to prove it. But if we can’t get that fairly soon, we’ll just have to go and tell them why we know Chippy’s innocent.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘We have our reasons,’ Charles replied infuriatingly.

  Bob Garston was silent for a moment. Then he said, ‘You realise that, if the girl’s eliminated, I become the obvious suspect?’

  This was too easy. ‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘That’s the conclusion we were coming to.’