On the screen, Harry Sugden was bending over his whippets’ pen and looking worried. But he didn’t look half as worried as Madge Thornycroft and Sam Fuller had looked just before the commercial break, Woodend thought, taking a drag on his Capstan Full Strength.
‘What do you think went wrong earlier?’ the chief inspector said to his wife. ‘Somethin’ technical?’
‘What’s point in askin’ me?’ Joan replied. ‘How d’you expect me to know anythin’ about anythin’, when I spend all my time cookin’ an’ cleanin’ up after you?’
Woodend chuckled. ‘Don’t come that “little woman stuck in the kitchen” line with me,’ he said. ‘You’ve got twice the brain power I have, an’ you know it, don’t you?’
‘Well of course I know it,’ Joan replied. ‘How could it be any other way, when I’m a woman an’ you’re nothin’ but a mere man?’
Woodend chuckled again. ‘Quite right,’ he agreed, and turned his attention back to the screen.
Sam Fuller had appeared at Harry Sugden’s back gate. ‘Have you heard about Liz Bowyer?’ he asked, looking straight ahead of him as if he were reading the words off a card.
‘No! What’s happened to her?’ Harry Sugden asked, his own eyes focussed on the middle distance.
‘She’s had a funny turn.’
‘Is it serious?’
‘I don’t think so. I shouldn’t be surprised if she’s already back on her feet.’
Woodend laughed.
‘What’s so funny?’ Joan asked.
‘They’re actin’ so woodenly at the moment that they sound like bent bobbies givin’ evidence in the witness box. “An’ then, m’lud, the prisoner said that he’d done it, it was a fair cop, an’ I should put the bracelets on him.”’
‘I sometimes worry about that sense of humour of yours,’ Joan told him.
Lucy Smythe sprinted down the mill’s central concourse towards the dressing rooms, and tried to calculate how long she’d got left. It was true that Val Farnsworth wasn’t due to appear again until just before the closing credits, but even so it was going to be a push to get her in the studio on time, even assuming she was in her dressing room. And if she wasn’t in her dressing room? She had to be – there was nowhere else for her to be.
Without slackening her pace, she turned left and dashed down the alley which ran along the side of the dressing room block. Nearly there, she told herself.
She took a right at the end of the block, and saw one of the trainees standing uncertainly in front of Valerie Farnsworth’s door.
‘She missed her cue, didn’t she?’ the boy asked worriedly.
‘Bloody right she missed her cue,’ Lucy panted. ‘And it was your job to see that she didn’t. Mr Wilcox will have your head for this.’
‘It’s not my fault,’ the boy whined. ‘I gave her a knock forty-five minutes ago, just as I was supposed to do. An’ then I gave her the last call ten minutes before she was due to go on.’
‘Did she seem all right to you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘She didn’t answer either of my knocks. I tried the door – but it was locked. I thought she must already have gone to the set.’
‘You’re not paid to think,’ Lucy Smythe said. ‘You’re paid to make sure.’ She hammered on the door. ‘Val? Val? Can you hear me? What in God’s name do you think you’re doing in there?’
‘Shall I . . . shall I open it?’ the boy asked tremulously.
‘What!’ Lucy exploded. ‘You mean to say you had the bloody key on you all along?’
‘Yes . . . I . . .’
‘Then why didn’t you go in there when you got no answer?’
‘Miss Farnsworth doesn’t like . . . she doesn’t like . . .’
‘Open the bloody door!’ Lucy said furiously.
The boy took out his set of keys with trembling hands, and slid one into the lock. Lucy pushed him to one side, and flung the door open.
The first thing she saw was that Valerie Farnsworth was still in the room – and was slumped over her dressing table. The second thing she noticed was the blood. It had stained the back of her dress. It had trickled down her arm. And it had formed glistening puddles on the floor.
Lucy fought back the scream that was building up in the back of her throat, and clutched the doorjamb for support.
This couldn’t really be happening, she told herself. It had to be one of those practical jokes that members of the crew were always playing on her – jokes which she had never dared to report because she knew it would only make her look foolish.
But all those jokes had been played during rehearsals, when it didn’t matter. Surely nobody would pull such a stunt when they were on air – when Valerie should actually have been appearing before millions of people.
Yet it had to be a joke, she told herself desperately. It just had to be!
Then she saw the electrical screwdriver, lying on the floor next to the pool of blood. It was a long, sturdy, professional tool, and at least half of its twelve-inch shaft was stained red.
No joke then. No joke at all.
Lucy Smythe closed her eyes and tried to decide what she should do next. She was still working on the problem when her brain shut down, her legs crumpled beneath her, and she fell to the floor.
Five
It was just after eight fifteen that Detective Chief Superintendent Richard Ainsworth of the Central Lancashire Constabulary answered the telephone in his lounge and found himself talking to John Dinnage, his chief constable.
‘Were you watching Maddox Row tonight, Dick?’ Dinnage asked.
‘Maddox Rowe?’ Ainsworth repeated, mystified. ‘Who’s Maddox Rowe, and why should I have been watching him?’
The chief constable sighed. ‘It’s a television series,’ he explained. ‘It comes on every Monday and Friday at half past seven.’
‘Oh that!’ Ainsworth said.
He sounded dismissive – and he was. He came originally from the garden county of Kent, and felt he got more than enough ‘gritty realism’ from just living in the North, without adding to it by watching it on the telly.
On the other end of the line, the chief constable let out a sudden gasp.
‘Something the matter, sir?’ Ainsworth asked.
‘Indigestion,’ Dinnage told him. ‘It’s been playing me up all day.’
Pity! I was hoping it would be a heart attack, Ainsworth thought. But aloud he said, ‘I’m really sorry to hear that, sir.’
‘Goes with the job, I suppose,’ Dinnage replied, through clenched teeth. ‘I’m surprised I don’t have a peptic ulcer as well. But to get back to the point of this call, am I to take it from your tone you didn’t see the programme tonight?’
‘No, I didn’t. Why, did I miss anything?’
‘You missed one of the characters not appearing on cue because she’d just been murdered.’
‘Nasty,’ Ainsworth said.
More than nasty. In all probability, he thought, it would turn out to be one of those celebrity murder cases where the police couldn’t conduct a proper investigation because they were knee-deep in reporters watching them like hawks and just waiting for them to make a wrong move. It was like playing ‘pass the parcel’ with live hand-grenades – you never knew when the whole thing was going to blow up in your face. Which was why he was delighted that this particular mess wasn’t about to fall in his lap.
‘I expect the Manchester police aren’t exactly over the moon at getting something like that dropped on them,’ he said cheerfully, having long ago reached the conclusion that the best way to fully appreciate your own good fortune was by contemplating the misfortunes of others.
‘It hasn’t been dropped on them,’ the chief constable said heavily. ‘It’s been dropped on us.’
‘I beg your pardon, sir?’
‘NWTV’s main studios are in Manchester . . .’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘But they broad
cast Maddox Row from an old cotton mill which is a couple of hundred yards outside Manchester’s jurisdiction – and a couple of hundred yards inside ours.’
‘Still, I don’t expect the Manchester force will be too fussy about a couple of hundred yards,’ Ainsworth said hopefully.
‘They’re being very fussy. In fact, they’re insisting that the case belongs to us.’
Which is just what I’d have done if I’d been in their situation, Ainsworth thought.
‘That’s not very friendly of them, is it, sir?’ he asked. ‘I would have thought that in the best interests of cross-jurisdictional relations—’
‘They’ve promised to co-operate with us, if and when the need should arise – which is another way of saying “Don’t call us, we’ll call you”,’ the chief constable said. ‘Face it, Dick, whether we like it or not, we’re stuck with the case. So you’d better alert your lads.’
Who should he assign to the investigation? Ainsworth wondered. Who on his team was best equipped to sail through choppy waters without making any waves himself?
‘I’ll put DCI Whittle on the case, right away, sir,’ he said.
‘The only difference between Whittle and an undertaker is that while they’re both oily, an undertaker at least knows one end of a shovel from the other,’ the chief constable said contemptuously.
‘Whittle knows how to handle—’
‘You’ll put Charlie Woodend in charge of the team.’
‘Woodend!’ Ainsworth exclaimed.
‘Woodend!’ Dinnage repeated firmly.
Ainsworth gripped the phone tighter. He did not like Woodend. He didn’t like the way the man dressed, deliberately kitting himself out in hairy sports jackets and cavalry twill trousers instead of wearing smart lounge suits like everyone else of his rank. He didn’t like the way Woodend conducted his cases – abandoning the office from which he should be directing his team in order to wander around the scene of the crime himself. He didn’t like—
‘Are you still there?’ the chief constable asked.
‘Yes, sir, but I think I may have misheard you. You didn’t actually say I should put Chief Inspector Woodend in charge, did you?’
‘Indeed I did.’
Ainsworth shook his head to the empty room. ‘Look, I know Woodend’s an old friend of yours, sir,’ he said, remembering that it was Dinnage who had brought the bloody man up to Lancashire when Scotland Yard had kicked him out, ‘but even so, given the circumstances—’
‘You think that Charlie goes about things like an angry bull rampaging through a china shop?’ the chief constable said. ‘You think that when he’s pursuing a particular line of inquiry, he’ll steamroller anybody who gets in his way, and that that might not be the best approach in a case like this?’
‘Exactly, sir,’ Ainsworth agreed.
‘You’ve never really given Cloggin’-it Charlie his due . . .’
‘I like to think I give all the officers serving under me their due.’
‘However, in this case, I happen to agree with you,’ the chief constable continued, ignoring Ainsworth’s obviously insincere comment. ‘Woodend really doesn’t react well to outside interference.’
‘That’s putting it mildly.’
‘But . . .’
‘But what?’
‘A few years ago, when he was still working for the Yard, he investigated a fishmonger’s murder up in Accrington. It was quite a famous case at the time, and the man who was mayor of the town during that investigation was Horace Throgmorton.’
‘So?’
‘So he’s gone up in the world since then. Now he’s Lord Throgmorton, and, among other things, he’s the chairman of NWTV.’
‘I still don’t see where you’re going with this.’
‘Horace Throgmorton was very impressed with the way Charlie handled himself in Accrington, and he’s put in a personal request that Woodend investigates this case.’
‘And can’t you tell him to get stuffed?’
‘Would you be prepared tell one of the richest and most powerful men in the North West to get stuffed?’
‘I suppose not,’ Ainsworth conceded.
‘And neither am I. So set Cloggin’-it Charlie loose on it.’
‘If that’s what you want, sir.’
‘It’s not what I want, necessarily, but it’s certainly what we’re going to do.’
As soon as he’d hung up, Ainsworth walked over to his cocktail cabinet and poured himself a very stiff whisky. He took a gulp, and suddenly began to see things from a more rosy perspective.
He had been ordered to put Woodend on the case, he reminded himself. Which meant that when the chief inspector rode roughshod over any obstacle which stood in his way – as he undoubtedly would – no blame could be attached to his commanding officer. Which, in turn, meant that all the blame would fall on the man himself.
Ainsworth walked over to the window. It wasn’t just that he disliked Woodend, he thought. The man worried him – and with good reason.
Any man in Woodend’s position should be able to see police work as a delicate balancing act. Crime had to be dealt with, of course – that was what the law was there for. The public expected murderers to be arrested, so it could walk the streets without fear. It wanted burglars locked up, so it could feel secure about its property.
But not everything was so black and white. For example, a respectable businessman might, after a hard day working for the good of the community, have a few drinks too many and cause a road accident. That was unfortunate, but most responsible police officers would probably recognise the fact that the man’s own conscience would provide punishment enough, and there would be little point in putting him through the indignity of being dragged through the courts.
Of course, the businessman would not escape the consequences of his actions completely. There would, no doubt, come a time when the lenient policeman would require a professional – or personal – favour in return, and the businessman would have no choice but to smile and pay up. There was nothing wrong with that. It was the way things worked in the real world. In order to ensure progress, wheels had to be greased and backs scratched.
But Woodend, with his holier-than-thou attitude, refused to see things in that light, and Ainsworth’s main fear, ever since the chief inspector had been posted to Whitebridge, was that Woodend would come across some of his own particular back-scratching and blow it up out of all proportion.
Now – although he had not recognised it as such at first – he was being handed the opportunity to do what he’d wanted to do all along. To put Cloggin’-it Charlie in a situation through which he would ensure his own destruction.
Ainsworth took another generous slug of his whisky. Murder was a terrible thing – as he had often pointed out in public – but this particular murder might turn out to be a real stroke of luck.
Six
It was shortly after the final credits for Maddox Row had appeared on the screen that the first policeman – Detective Inspector Hebden – arrived at the studio. He was quickly followed by several more detectives in unmarked cars and a dozen uniformed constables in a Black Maria. Under Hebden’s guidance, the policemen swarmed all over the old mill like busy worker ants. A specialist team examined Valerie Farnsworth’s dressing room, taking measurements and dusting for fingerprints. Other officers made lists of names and took down the details of what would, hopefully, prove to be alibis. At half past eight, the police doctor arrived and examined the body. By nine o’clock, both the corpse and the murder weapon had been removed.
‘So what happens now?’ Hebden’s sergeant asked him at a quarter past nine.
‘Not a lot,’ the inspector replied. ‘We’ve done about as much as we can ourselves. The rest will be up to the Big Cheese that headquarters sends down in the morning. Post a few lads at key points around the studio to make sure that nothin’s disturbed, and send everybody else home.’
‘What about the television people?’
‘
They can go as well.’
‘But one of them might be the murderer.’
‘One of them probably is the murderer, but if he’s not done a runner already, it’s unlikely he’ll go missing now.’
Hebden positioned himself by the main exit, and watched the cast and crew troop out. Reactions to Valerie Farnsworth’s death were as varied as the people themselves, he noted. Some had eyes which blazed with the kind of wild excitement you always saw in the eyes of crowds gathered near the scene of a crime. Others left the building almost like zombies, as if they still found it hard to accept that violent death could ever impinge on their secure little lives. As he had told his sergeant, one of these people had probably killed that night, but watching them, Hebden found himself totally unable to point the finger.
‘Is that it?’ the inspector asked, after the initial flood had become a trickle, and then even the trickle had dried up. ‘Is the building empty now?’
‘Not quite,’ his sergeant said. ‘The producer and a few of his team asked if they could stay on. There’s no harm in that, is there, sir?’
‘No harm at all,’ Hebden replied. ‘But why should they want to stay on? I’d have thought they’d have had enough for one night.’
‘It seems they have a problem,’ the sergeant told him.
‘They have a problem!’ Hebden repeated, incredulously.
There were five of them in the conference room. Bill Houseman sat at the head of the table, Jeremy Wilcox at the other end. Paddy Colligan and Ben Drabble, as befitted their status as mere writers, sat together along the left-hand side, and a secretary, her eyes red with tears, was positioned at Houseman’s right.
‘This has been a terrible shock for all of us,’ the producer said sombrely, ‘but even in the face of tragedy and loss, life still has to go on. And as distressed as we are by Val’s death, we still have to face the fact that several of the plot lines we’ve developed for future episodes will have to be abandoned.’
Yes, they will, won’t they, Paddy Colligan thought. And why? Because every time Val asked for more lines, you gave in without a fight, until Maddox Row had become less of a portrait of a Northern working-class street and more a personal showcase for Valerie Farnsworth. He thought it – but, wisely, he said nothing.
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