***
Enjoying the fresh air and sunshine of the gardens, puffing contentedly on a cigarette, Joe expressed his doubts.
“You made a mistake, Frank. You let her goad you into action, and I’ll bet she’ll have even more lawyers lining up to sue you for false arrest.”
“She’s not under arrest,” Hoad corrected him. “Merely cautioned for her behaviour during the interview. She deserved it, Joe.”
“Couldn’t agree with you more. I was thinking of you.”
“Yes, well, let me worry about that, eh? What did you think of the bits we got out of her?”
“I think we’re skating on very thin ice,” Joe admitted. “You established a connection between her and Ursula. You established that she’d lied, not only to you but to the TV company when she said she didn’t know the woman. But that’s all you’ve done. You can’t tie her to Victor Prentiss, you can’t tie her to climbing over the wall here, and if she can vouch for her whereabouts on Friday night, Saturday morning, you’ve lost her.”
He gazed beyond the garden wall. Away over to the west, ominous, heavy cloud was building. The threatened end to the heat wave appeared to be materialising.
Joe frowned. “There’s something about this whole scenario that isn’t quite right.”
“It was your thinking that led us along this route,” Hoad complained.
“I don’t mean that,” Joe said. “Someone did come over the wall and interrupt the live feeds. It’s the only way it could be done. No, it’s the Marlene Caldbeck thing I’m talking about.” He puffed agitatedly at his cigarette. “Think about it. Ever since the movies were invented, the casting couch has figured large in the legend. I don’t know how much it’s been blown out of proportion, but you have to think it went on sometimes. Now, suppose we go back twenty years. Marlene is a struggling actress and she’s looking for the big break, yeah? She offers to jump Prentiss, he accepts. What difference would it make to her now if it all came out? When he croaked, why would she go to the trouble of trying to cover it up? Why didn’t she and Ursula just pack up and leave and let someone find him in his own place?”
“We don’t know that he was in his own place,” Hoad replied. “He could have been at her place.”
“All right, I accept that.” Joe puffed on his cigarette, learned it had gone out and dug his Zippo from his pocket to relight it. When he could take a satisfactory drag from it, he went on, “But come up to date. On the surface, Marlene is the champion of the disabled, but she’s also slept with more men than I’ve turned out egg and chips. And she doesn’t care who knows it. Why? It’s the old adage; there’s no such thing as bad publicity. All this bed hopping keeps her name on the front pages of the tabloids and celeb magazines. So why would she give a hoot about Ursula Kenney threatening to tell what happened to Victor Prentiss twenty years ago? You already said, your boys never suspected murder, and Marlene could make a packet out of the story.” Joe described speech marks with his fingers in the air and put on a high-pitched, squeaky voice. “I was young and silly, but all I really did was try to protect my reputation.” He reverted to his normal voice. “See what I’m saying? She’s an actress. If she threw in a few tears, the disapproving public would soon take her side. And even if you pressed charges for failing to report Prentiss’ death, she’d get no more than a slap on the wrist. It just doesn’t make enough sense.” He stared at the clouds again. “Unless Prentiss was murdered.”
Hoad disagreed. “Post mortem at the time said there were no signs of violence on him. If someone had strapped that belt round his neck with the intention of killing him, he would have struggled, and there would have been indications, but the pathologist found none. The only prints on the belt were his, too. After twenty years, it would take a bloody miracle – or a confession – to prove it, Joe.”
“Have you checked Ursula’s home yet?”
The chief inspector nodded. “We searched it yesterday. Nothing untoward. A laptop, but nothing on it that would hint at any involvement with Prentiss. No journal, no diary, and no documents addressed to anyone on this show threatening them with exposure. Rest of the flat turned up nothing… well, nothing of any importance. The usual stuff for an actress. Publicity stills, CV. That kind of thing.”
“No houses for sale?” Joe smiled.
“Yes, one or two,” Hoad replied. “You don’t think it’s important, do you? Her employer told us she took work home now and then.”
Joe’s smile faded. “To be honest, I was joking. Listen, Frank, is there any chance I could see this laptop?”
Hoad shrugged. “Don’t see why not.” He frowned. “You do think there may be something important on it, don’t you?”
The clouds took Joe’s attention once more. “I don’t know. But it would be interesting to look it over.”
“I’ll have Rahman bring it to you.” The chief inspector stood up. “I can see your point, Joe, but Marlene bloody Caldbeck is not out of the woods, yet. I’ll keep the little bitch hanging on until I can clear her, at which point I’ll probably let her off with a caution.” He grinned. “Teach her a lesson.”
Joe laughed. “It’s one she’ll never learn, and next week, she’ll be on breakfast TV telling the world what a gang of Nazis you people are.”
“So what’s your master plan, now?” Hoad asked.
Joe shrugged and tossed his cigarette away. Crushing it underfoot, he said, “We’re at a loose end, really. Maybe I should do some digging on this Prentiss guy, huh?”
“As you wish,” Hoad said, “but I don’t know what you’ll learn that we couldn’t.”
Joe laughed. “I have my ways.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Why do I keep seeing lights flashing on the screen?” Joe asked.
He had spent an hour staring at footage from the dorms taken at around the time of Ursula’s death. The monitor showed the familiar monochrome view from night vision cameras, tinged occasionally with light which showed a pale green in colour. But frequently there were other, transient flashes of light. Earlier, Joe had been irritated by one from Anne Willis’s bed and he had just spotted another from Greg Ingham’s end of the men’s dorm.
He re-ran the scene for Scott Naughton’s benefit.
“Any number of reasons,” the director said. “Tiny flickers of light getting in from somewhere, a lens trying to adjust the focus, anything. It’s one of the problems with night vision cameras.”
Naughton’s attitude had not mellowed significantly, but when dealing with the technical aspects of movie-making, Joe nevertheless found him enthusiastic and happy to explain.
“You see,” the director went on, “night vision cameras don’t rely on infrared, which actually traces heat, not light. And, contrary to what most people think, cameras can see nothing in total darkness. So they emit a tiny light of their own, which allows the camera to focus. If that light impinges on something else, maybe a speck of dust in the air which reflects it back, it tricks the camera into believing there’s more light that there actually is. It switches modes for a fraction of a second, but it’s enough to give the fuzzy, out of focus effect that you see.”
“And there’s no way round it?” Joe asked.
“Only by manual focussing, but we can’t focus them manually because there’s no one here during the night.”
Joe paused the video and spun his chair round to face Naughton. “Is that usual? You know. Having no one present, not even a technician, during the night?”
A deep frown etched itself into the director’s brow and he chewed his lip. “No. It’s not. In fact, this is the first time it’s ever happened. In previous shows, we’ve left one or two guys here overnight, but Helen, who as producer is responsible for bringing the show in on budget, made the decision after that budget was cut.”
“Save her much money?” Joe asked.
“Over the duration of the program, no, but if you take the long view, say over the year, it will probably cut fifty thousand off the wage bill. C
ome on, Murray, there’s nothing sinister about this. These are tough times for the country as a whole. Most employers cut back on staff first.”
“Which is why TV turns out so much of this cheap and nasty crap, isn’t it?” Joe grumbled.
Naughton sighed. “Reality TV is what the public wants.”
“And even if it doesn’t, reality TV is what it gets,” Joe riposted. “You can churn out this dross for pennies at the cost of, say, a major drama series. Am I right?”
“Yes, but there’s nothing strange about that either if you think about it.” Naughton paused a moment to gather his thoughts. “TV production is labour-intensive. It takes a lot of people to produce quality drama, and I’m not talking about the big stars with their giant egos and expensive entourages. I’m talking backroom bods. We don’t need so many for reality TV, especially on a show like I-Spy because we can automate so many of the processes. You don’t need a man behind each and every camera. We run a hundred and fifty lenses in the I-Spy house. Can you imagine the cost of 150 cameramen? It’s automated, and they can be driven from these boards by two or three people.”
“Let’s leave the ethics aside for a moment,” Joe suggested. “Let’s talk about cutting in stock feeds instead. Earlier, you told me that they’re stored on these computers.” He waved at the set up. “If they’re cut in for whatever reason, would the computer have a record of that?”
“A manual record, yes. I checked and there is no record.”
“Could that record have been tampered with?” Joe asked.
“Yes. Anyone of a dozen people could have erased it, but if anyone were up to no good, it would be simpler not to log it.”
“But there’s another log, isn’t there? An automatic one on the computer.”
Doubt crossed Naughton’s features. “I’m not, er, sure.”
“I wasn’t asking,” Joe said. “I was telling you. There are these, er, things in computers called event logs. They record every tiny thing that happens from switch on to shut down.”
“Ah, I see what you mean. Yes, it would be in the event logs, but you’d never trace it. Well never in less than a year.”
“Why?” Joe demanded.
“Because the event logs track thousands of items every second.” Naughton pointed to the server. “What you’re looking for, Murray, is in there, but it’s one event in millions, and you can’t narrow down the time sufficiently to narrow down the search. At best you can get it to a half hour gap on Thursday night, Friday morning. Do you know how many events the machine will have logged in that time frame? I’m telling you, it’s millions. You’d be here until doomsday.” The director checked the time. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to cover the D-Day ceremony from the entertainment field.”
“Yeah. Sure. No problem… oh, Naughton?”
“What?”
“Is there an internet connection I can hook up to in here?”
The director shook his head. “Sorry. No. We can’t have web interference from here. We beam by satellite back to the TV channel, and they put out the web content.”
“Right. No problem.” Joe shut down the monitor. “I’d better join Sheila for D-Day.”
***
Under normal circumstances, the Housies would celebrate D-Day from the studio where they first entered the house, but as Hoad had told Joe, because of Ursula’s death and the continuing police work in Gibraltar Hall, it had been transferred to the entertainment field. The Housies were driven round by bus, and also because of the unusual circumstances, family and friends, who would normally greet the Housies at the gates, were permitted to wait offstage in the arena.
“But we have to make our own way here,” Joe grumbled as they fought through the crowds to the front of the stage.
Hoad had briefed the Housies earlier and had been quite specific in his instructions. “Like last night, you’re permitted to leave the hall but not the area. Certain facts have come to light over the last twenty-four hours and we may need to recall any of you at short notice, for further questioning. You’ll be allowed to return to your hotels only, at least for the time being.”
“And how long will we be held, Chief Inspector?” Ben Oakley asked. “I have a business to run, you know.”
“A matter of forty-eight hours, sir. No more, unless something else comes to light.”
By 2:45 Joe and Sheila were stationed in the wings on the entertainment field, with friends and family of the other Housies, waiting for Ryan and Marlene to take the stage and begin the closing ceremony. Joe occupied his time trying to second guess who would be greeting whom. It was an engaging, if pointless exercise. The large woman in the ill-fitting business suit was of the right age to be Mrs Oakley, but then he remembered that Ben was a widower. The slimmer one in the dark trousers and white blouse would not look out of place alongside Greg, and the down at heel man in the scruffy jeans was almost certain to be Anne Willis’s husband.
The Housies would come from the far side of the stage as their names were called out, but before that, Ryan and Marlene had their bit to do.
“Coming through, get out the way,” Marlene ordered pushing her way through the crowded offstage area.
Joe ignored her but nodded to Rivers as he passed.
There was a huge crowd in the field, greeting the presenters with loud cheers as they took to the stage. Joe noticed that although the side stalls were still selling food and souvenirs, the fairground rides had ceased doing business and were in the process of dismantling.
“Hello Chester,” Ryan roared into the microphone. He was greeted by another rousing cheer from the audience.
“Well, it’s been another startling week for I-Spy, hasn’t it Marlene?” Ryan went on when the cheering subsided.
“A remarkable week, Ryan,” she responded, and Joe marvelled at her ability to mask the bitchiness that underscored her persona. “Marred with tragedy, unfortunately, and you know, I think now would be the appropriate moment to show our respects for poor Ursula.”
“That’s right,” Ryan agreed, marching about the stage. “We thought about a minute’s silence, but we know you lot. No way could you ever be quiet for longer than five seconds, so what we’d like you all to do is join with us in a minute of applause for Ursula Kenney, who, before her tragic death, lit up our lives for the last week.”
Joe noticed a quick movement of Ryan’s hand, switching off his radio mike, before he and Marlene led the clapping.
As the applause died out (Joe reckoned it to nearer thirty seconds than the full minute) Ryan reach to his ear again, presumably to switch his microphone back on, while Marlene took front and centre stage.
“Ursula’s death has shocked everyone on I-Spy, not least her fellow Housies, so let’s have another round of applause for her friends from the house, Tanya, Greg, Brenda, Ben, Marc, Anne and Dylan.”
As their names were called out, the Housies walked onto the stage to be greeted by more cheers from the vast crowd.
When the applause died down, Ryan took up the story. “As you know, we usually present the winner with their cheque at this stage of the proceedings. This time, because of Ursula’s death, the phone poll was suspended and there is no winner. So it was decided that each of the Housies should be presented with a cheque for three thousand pounds and that four thousand would be paid to Ursula’s family. Right now, we haven’t been able to trace her family, but we’ll continue to look and if we don’t find anyone, the money will be handed over to various charities.”
This received another round of applause but Joe noted that Ryan did not specify which charities.
There was a brief interlude while Ryan and Marlene took it in turns to hand over the cheques and deliver the standard theatrical air kiss, and then the two presenters stood in front of the Housies, to work the audience once more.
“Ladies and gentlemen…” said Ryan.
“Boys and girls…” said Marlene.
“That’s the end of this series of I-Spy.” Ryan concluded. “
So join us again in two months when we’re in the fine city of Norwich.”
“In the meantime, for the last time, let’s say goodbye to the…” Marlene paused and then raised her voice. “I-Spy Housies.”
The theme tune from I-Spy burst from the speakers all over the stage and the field, the two presenters stood to one side, leading the applause, and the Housies filed from the stage, waving to the crowds.
Pleased that the farce was, at last, all over, Joe was equally pleased to see that at least one of his deductions was correct. The woman in the trousers and blouse was Greg’s wife or partner. The large woman, however, turned out to be Marc Ulrich’s mother and the scruffy young man was not, as he anticipated, Anne Willis’s husband, but Tanya Drake’s brother.
“Your husband didn’t make it, Anne?” Brenda asked.
“What? Oh. No. One of the kids is ill,” she replied. She smiled weakly down at her cheque. Not to worry. The minute that policeman says we can go, I’ll be home a few hours after, and this will make up for it?” She kissed the cheque.
“We have a big party on at the Victoria Hotel tonight,” Brenda said. “You’re more than welcome to join us, isn’t she, Joe?”
Joe snapped out of a puzzled reverie. “What? Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He smiled encouragingly. “Guest of honour. Listen, girls, I have to get back to the hotel. I’ve had wind of another angle on this business and I want to follow it up.” He felt the presence of another and swivelled his neck to find Dylan standing behind him.
“Sorry, mate,” Dylan said. “Just wanted to say goodbye to Anne and Brenda.”
“Carry on,” Joe invited and backed off a pace.
“Information?” Sheila asked while Dylan got into conversation with the two women.
“There was something iffy with a producer about twenty years ago,” Joe explained. “Hoad thinks Ursula was mixed up in it. Might be significant, might not, but I thought I’d best check it out on the web.”
The I-Spy Murders Page 18