Merely Players

by J M Gregson

  ‘I see. And by the time of his death, he was in a position to return a few favours, I believe.’

  ‘I didn’t think of it like that. I knew I could do the part of this major villain who would oppose him throughout the next series. It was the director and the producer who wanted me for it, and they know their business. I knew I was right for the role, but it gives you confidence when hardened professionals like Joe Hartley and James Walton say they want you.’

  ‘It was a big break for you, wasn’t it, this part?’

  Dean, who had told Keith last night that he was going to give the CID as little as he could, found now that he wanted to explain himself. ‘It was a big part in a successful series. The one I needed. At forty-seven, I may not get another chance of something as big as this.’

  ‘Big money?’

  ‘It would have paid five times as much for each episode as I’ve ever been paid before. Plus repeat fees around the world.’ He looked at the door through which his partner had disappeared, then at the two very different but equally attentive faces. ‘You pretend that money doesn’t matter, when you’re starting in the business. But that attitude gets worn down over the years. When you come here, you see a couple of ageing queers making the best of things in a rundown flat. But Keith Arnold is the love of my life, DCI Peach. I don’t think either of us will want anyone else for the rest of our lives. But money is more important as you get older and Keith earns very little. I believe in him as an artist and I want him to go on trying to sell his paintings. This part would have made us secure. The role would have guaranteed us money and removed any uncertainties about our future together.’

  He spoke defiantly, like a man proud to assert his allegiance to Keith Arnold. Probably he had not had many opportunities to proclaim it publicly before. It was left to Peach to say quietly, ‘You do realize that you are declaring a perfect motive for murder?’

  Dean Morley forced a smile he could not feel. He had not intended to declare anything of the sort. He had intended to keep this interview low-key and unemotional, to behave as if the loss of this role was no more than par for the course, the sort of thing he had met many times before. Well, it was out now; at least he hadn’t been mealy-mouthed or evasive with them. He felt a strange need to make everything clear, to tell them exactly how strongly this had affected him and how badly he felt about Cassidy’s part in it. ‘The part was mine, you know. Not only was it right up my street, but I’d had it confirmed by Joe Hartley and James Walton, the people doing the casting, that the job was mine. It was Cassidy who changed everything, when he asserted his right of veto over casting.’

  ‘Have you any idea why he did that? Had you had some sort of row with him?’

  ‘No. We got on as well as we’d always done.’ He paused for a moment, motivated again by the need to make the justice of his case clear to them. ‘Adam did say a week or two ago that I shouldn’t take things for granted. Perhaps it was just a power thing. Actors can be very childish, you know. When they become stars – which Adam certainly had done – they sometimes want to stamp their feet and assert themselves, to see how far their new power extends. It’s childish, but the effects on smaller people like me can be dire.’

  Clyde Northcott cleared his throat, then said quietly, ‘Where were you overnight on Friday, Mr Morley?’

  ‘Was that when he was killed? I was here with Keith. Throughout the evening and through the night. We often go out on a Friday, but he wanted to finish a painting – he’d not been able to get on with it because he’d been busy decorating this room.’

  Too much detail, perhaps. The answer had come very promptly, as if Morley had been anticipating the question. But perhaps he just wished to tell them about the deeds of his partner; people who supported partners financially were often anxious to convince you that they worked hard and earned their keep. Northcott made a note of these details: it would be necessary to check out the alibi with the absent Keith Arnold. This was going to be like a wife’s corroboration of a suspect’s whereabouts: not necessarily believed by the police, but very difficult to disprove.

  Peach studied his man intently for a moment, digesting the fact that what had always seemed likely to be a puzzling case now had an extra layer of complexity added to it by the fact that many of the people involved were professional actors. ‘Did you kill Adam Cassidy, Mr Morley? If you did, it would be less harrowing for all of us if you admitted it this morning.’

  Dean replied as calmly as the question had been put. ‘No. I hear what you’re saying about motive, but I’m not the murdering type.’

  Sitting in the middle of this unexpectedly elegant room, with the original art on the walls, this slight, oddly dignified figure certainly seemed an unlikely killer. But he had been frank about his passion for his partner and his determination to make that secure. And passion often drives men to murder. Peach gave his man a small smile, inviting him for a moment to be on his side in the puzzle. ‘Then who do you think did kill him?’

  Morley did not give him the blank refusal which was the usual answer to this. ‘I don’t know. I’ve thought about it, not just to preserve my own skin, but because I was still quite fond of Adam, despite what he was doing to me. I know his wife, because she’s in the business, but I’ve scarcely seen her for years. As you would guess from his looks and his success, Adam had lots of offers from other women, and he didn’t refuse all of them. I can’t give you any recent details, because as you’ve seen heterosexual affairs are not an interest of mine.’ He paused for a moment, as if savouring this phrasing. ‘How Jane would react to his playing away, you must decide for yourselves. Or how any women he used and discarded might react, for that matter. I’m afraid a man who rises as fast and as ruthlessly as Adam did in our profession makes many enemies, Mr Peach.’

  He picked his words very carefully, his lips framing a little preciously what he had to deliver. They gave him the usual direction to get in touch with the Brunton CID if anything further occurred to him and left. Dean Morley stood in the big stone bay window and watched them go, as cool and unrevealing as he had been for most of the interview.

  He would have been surprised if he had heard what the Detective Sergeant he had seen as an archetypal homophobic said as the pair drove away. Clyde Northcott negotiated a badly parked van at the corner of the road, then said to Peach, ‘I know we have to keep an open mind about all the people we see, but I hope Dean Morley didn’t do this. He seems a pretty decent man to me.’

  The post-mortem and forensic reports gave the team what they had expected, plus a special precious piece of evidence which they hadn’t.

  The progress of rigor mortis in the corpse had been affected by the extremely low temperatures in which it had lain from the moment of death until its eventual discovery by the returning Stoke City football supporters on Saturday evening. However, the pathologist was satisfied that the fatal wound had been delivered some time between six p.m. and midnight on the night of Friday, the fourteenth of December. Police questioning had already established that Cassidy had been waved away from his home by his wife and children at around half past seven on that night. He could not have arrived at the lay-by beside which he was killed before nine o’clock. This left a time of death between nine and midnight. Assuming that he had driven straight to the site and been killed shortly afterwards, he had probably died between nine and nine thirty p.m.

  This meant that the remains had lain undiscovered for around twenty-one hours after death. This was a result of two factors: first, the extreme weather conditions prevailing, which meant that many fewer vehicles than usual had used the parking bay; secondly, the fact that death had taken place some fifty-seven yards from the edge of the tarmac, more than most people would have cared to venture in frost and snow.

  Peach looked up from the copies of the report which he and his two chosen colleagues from the team, DS Northcott and DC Murphy, had been reading. ‘First question: did Cassidy pick up someone and take them to that place – almost cert
ainly his killer – or did he meet someone there?’

  Brendan Murphy, flattered to be selected as a member of this elect trio, was anxious to contribute. ‘I think it’s unlikely that if he’d picked someone up he’d have driven to that particular spot with them – unless of course he was forced at gunpoint to do so. I think it’s much more likely that he’d arranged to meet someone there.’

  Northcott said, ‘I agree. Forensic say that whilst they can’t be absolutely certain, they think it unlikely that anyone had sat in the passenger seat of the BMW on that night. The only material they have gathered from the vehicle is older than that.’

  Peach nodded. ‘Let’s assume for the moment that our victim had arranged to meet someone there, or that someone contacted him whilst he was driving and asked for the meeting – the BMW like his other cars is equipped with a hands-free device, though his mobile was missing when forensic examined the car. That means he was almost certainly killed at nine o’clock or soon afterwards. And he was killed with his own shotgun. The Purdey was found within yards of him.’

  ‘But the PM says no chance of suicide.’

  ‘No. But we didn’t expect that, did we, DC Murphy? Did you ever hear of a suicide blasting his chest apart with a shotgun? They invariably put the muzzle either in the mouth or against the temple. In any case, the weapon was too far away from the body for this to be self-administered. It’s good that forensic are satisfied this was the weapon – it’s not always easy with shotguns. But the SOCO found the cartridge case, and forensic are satisfied from the imprint of the firing-head on it that it came from the Purdey.’

  Northcott said, ‘Doesn’t this eliminate hit men from the enquiry? They like to use their own weapons. The quick, anonymous bullet in the city back-alley is more their method.’

  Peach smiled. No CID man wanted a killing by a hit man. They were the most expert and most anonymous of killers; experienced, unemotional and professional. You might know it was the crime of such a killer, might even suspect an actual culprit, but you very rarely secured the evidence to bring a hit man to court. ‘We can’t rule out a hit man – probably employed by Tony Valento, who we know has used such men before. A hit man is a clear-sighted opportunist. If he saw the chance of killing Cassidy with his own weapon, he would take it, whatever he had previously planned. That way there isn’t even a bullet we can trace to a weapon. He leaves nothing of himself at the scene.’

  Brendan Murphy said glumly, ‘Whoever did this has left nothing of himself at the scene, it seems to me.’

  Peach smiled again. At least he had two people working with him who were delighted to be at the heart of a murder case, rather than part of the more peripheral team, as they had been previously. ‘Spoken with all the optimism of Tommy Bloody Tucker, that. You need to watch these Tucker tendencies, Brendan. This is the most high-profile victim we’ve ever had in a case, and our esteemed leader is duly shitting himself. Whereas we can be positive. We have a much more exact time of death than usual, and the instrument of that death in our hands. And forensic have come up with one unexpected gem for us.’

  ‘The group of hairs from the BMW,’ said Clyde Northcott.

  ‘Yes. Several long dark hairs from the same scalp, found on the carpet beside the passenger seat in the BMW. Gathered together, as if someone had cleaned out the contents of a comb. Probably female. And an indication that you shouldn’t be so anxious to assume our killer is a male, DC Murphy!’

  ‘You think the wife is still in the frame for this?’

  ‘I think we still need to check out the exact state of the fragrant Jane’s relationship with her husband at the time of his death, yes. But there are other women awaiting our most urgent efforts, are there not, DS Northcott?’

  ‘The car is ready to transport you, mein Fuehrer! Do you think we might snatch a flying sandwich in the canteen on our way to it?’

  Northcott reversed the police Mondeo expertly into the visitors’ section of the car park. They glanced automatically at the very regular elevation of the neat block of modern flats, but saw no watcher at any of the windows.

  Nevertheless, their arrival must have been observed, for the door of the flat nearest to the entrance opened almost before the double doors had shut behind them. Peach recognized the cool, oval face with its frame of dark hair from television, before she said, ‘I’m Michelle Davies. Please come in,’ and led them into the sitting room of her flat.

  A neat room, with a small bowl of fresh fruit on a low table in front of the sofa; a modern, brightly coloured print of a harbour with small craft at their moorings and the open sea in the background; a single photograph of a stiffly posed wedding couple, probably the actress’s mother and father. Conventional, comfortable, but not much ‘lived-in’, not telling you much about the occupant.

  As if she saw their scrutiny and divined their conclusion, Michelle Davies said, ‘I’m not here all that much, when I’m working. Which is most of the time, fortunately.’

  ‘You may be here a little more in the coming year than you had anticipated,’ said Peach evenly. He was quite ready to ruffle her, if he could. So far, the members of the acting fraternity were proving rather too good at masking their real feelings.

  Her reaction merely confirmed this. Michelle was in fact a little shaken by his directness, by the lack of any polite preamble, but she did not much show it. Like an actor denied the proper cue, she improvised and covered her excitement. ‘I presume you mean that I wasn’t going to get the part I’d been promised. You’re right about that. James Walton made it clear that it was no decision of his. But he couldn’t go against Adam’s wishes. Losing that role was a disappointment and I won’t deny it. Playing Alec Dawson’s regular girlfriend in the new series would have opened up lots of other possibilities, as well as being lucrative in itself. But no doubt something will turn up.’

  ‘It didn’t for Mr Micawber.’

  ‘No. And Dickens was a real ham – he’d love to have worked in the theatre. But television wasn’t around in Dickens’s day, or Mr Micawber might have had offers.’ A capable return from a challenging serve, Michelle thought.

  ‘How much money did you lose when this part was withdrawn?’ said Peach. Try the real shock for an Englishwoman, the financial one. British people would answer all kinds of questions about their sex lives, but pry into the state of their finances and they would be really shocked. And amongst the British, the English were prickliest of all.

  ‘I don’t think that’s any of your business.’

  The predictable, automatic reaction. Peach smiled, almost as if she had walked into his trap. ‘Everything’s our business in a murder enquiry, Ms Davies. But we can get the answer from someone else, if you want to be cagey.’

  ‘I never saw the full details of the contract, because we never reached the signing stage. But I was reckoning upon a quarter of a million; perhaps all told a little more, with repeat fees and worldwide sales virtually guaranteed.’

  Peach whistled softly at his DS. ‘Tidy sum that. Worth killing for, if it’s suddenly whipped away from you on the mere whim of your star.’

  Michelle realized now that this strange man was deliberately trying to nettle her. The tall black officer had looked to her much more dangerous, but he hadn’t spoken since the introductions; all the aggression was coming from this stocky ball of energy who was in charge. She could handle it, she told herself. She said coldly, ‘You obviously get your standards from the criminal fraternity, DCI Peach. I was disappointed when the part was withdrawn. I should have told Adam exactly what I thought of him, no doubt with the addition of a few unladylike words to underline my feelings. I never entertained the thought of murder.’

  Peach nodded calmly, as if he had expected exactly this reply. ‘Could you describe your relationship with Mr Cassidy for us, please? Take your time; it’s important that you get this right.’

  The last instruction was put in purely to increase her tension, she thought. Michelle was infuriated to find that it had suc
ceeded in doing that. The words she had prepared before they came here seemed suddenly inadequate and she felt herself fumbling for others to make herself convincing. ‘We were close colleagues.’

  ‘Even though you’d only been together for the final episode of the last series of Call Alec Dawson?’

  ‘Yes. We knew each other longer than that. Theatre and television are both still fairly small worlds, as far as actors are concerned. We’d done small scenes together in other things a few years ago. And even a single episode of a series can involve a lot of work. There were two or three weeks of studio work and several days’ shooting on location.’

  ‘So you would say a close professional relationship?’

  ‘Yes. And a friendly one.’

  ‘I see. And how far did friendship spread beyond the confines of your professional closeness?’

  Michelle felt the blood was rushing to her face and wondered if it could be seen. She hadn’t been troubled by blushing since she was a teenager, but this odious man might have prompted it. ‘You get close together as actors. I was his girlfriend, the damsel in distress he was rescuing, so we were acting together in most of my scenes.’

  Peach sat with his head a little on one side and let the seconds stretch. Then he smiled and said, ‘That is a politician’s answer, Ms Davies. In other words, no answer at all. I’ll rephrase my question: did you see much of Adam Cassidy off-screen?’

  Michelle told herself not to be so on edge. She’d anticipated this, hadn’t she? You never knew how much gossip was going on among the rest of the cast, particularly during those long periods when they had to sit around waiting to be called. She’d really no idea what had been said about her and Adam among the bit-part players, and how much the team of police officers had discovered in the last couple of days as they took statements from everyone in the cast. She was in too vulnerable a position to be caught out in a lie. ‘We were lovers.’ She glanced automatically towards the door of the bedroom. ‘He came here, after a day’s location shooting in the Pennines. It happens, DCI Peach. More often among actors than among the rest of the public. It’s the peculiar nature of the work we do, I suppose.’