by Linda Regan
‘Stop doing what?’ Fay asked.
‘Clapping your hands together like a penguin at dinner time. You’re giving me a headache.’
Maggie shook her head at Fay, behind Barbara’s back. Fay made no reply.
The girl dancers stood either side of the entrance at the back of the stage, arms bent at the elbow and hands above their heads, palms together in a prayer pose. They had quickly changed into their harem costumes, blue chiffon bodices with bare midriffs and baggy, hipster trousers, ankles and arms decked with jangling imitation jewellery. The tension was almost visible.
Barbara drew the stage sword and held it in a threatening pose toward Trevor.
‘Fight till the death,’ she said.
Alan touched Rory’s shoulder. ‘When Barbara picks up the sword and holds it at that angle you’ll need to stand well back, boy. That’s Maggie’s cue to run around and eat up all the little rats.’
Maggie looked bemused.
‘Mummy, all you do is sort of paw into the air.’ Fay demonstrated. ‘They’ll just run off the stage.’ She tittered nervously. ‘Well, they used to, anyway.’
Alan spoke again. ‘And that’s the moment when Barbara and Trevor start the big sword fight.’
‘We haven’t got any baby rats to chase off,’ Vincent said to Alan. ‘There aren’t any juveniles, remember?’
‘The swords are blunt, aren’t they?’ Rory asked Trevor.
‘’Course they’re blunt, mate,’ Trevor assured him. ‘They’ve been used in Michael’s pantomimes for years. They’re one hundred per cent safe, and the fight has been very tightly choreographed. Nothing can go wrong. It’s best to stay back though, if you don’t want to be hit by a swinging arm.’
‘Doesn’t sound too bad, then,’ Rory said with a nervous giggle and a wink. Trevor’s face broke into a lively smile, displaying his perfect pearl-like teeth.
Alan stared at Fay. ‘So we’ve no rats at all?’
‘Well, yes,’ Fay said. ‘Michael got those big furry hedgehogs. He was going to throw them on stage last time, but he forgot.’ She turned to Barbara. ‘I don’t know if I should remind him, or whether he’s got too much on his mind?’
‘It’s not your job,’ Barbara told her. ‘I’ll speak to him.’
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ Maggie said. ‘Have you seen those hedgehogs? They’re embarrassing. Couldn’t we just cut that bit?’
‘No, Maggie, you can’t cut that bit,’ Barbara snapped. ‘The show wouldn’t make sense. It’s part of the legend of Dick Whittington and his famous cat. The cat rids the island of rats, and Dick helps him by taking on King Rat. Dick wins the fight and they all get a pardon from the Sultan of Morocco and their freedom. Dick is made Lord Mayor of London and gets very rich, so he asks for Alice’s hand in marriage. That’s the story; you should know it.’
‘I do,’ Maggie said indignantly.
‘So no matter how bad the hedgehogs look, we have to leave them in.’ Barbara’s patience was fraying. ‘And the cat has to pretend to chase them off.’
Maggie gave a resigned shrug of her furry shoulders. ‘Fine.’
‘OK, that’s done,’ Fay said to everyone. ‘Now all we have to do is the walk-down. Rory, you go down after Dad. We’ll run through it quickly, and then we’ll do a sound check.’
‘I go down last in the walk-down,’ Barbara said to Rory.
‘That’s because she’s the star,’ Maggie added, ‘but she doesn’t get the biggest cheer from the audience.’
Alison slipped from her stool and decided to have a quick check around the backstage area while they were still rehearsing and bickering. She walked into the corridor, past the toilet and down to the end. The area around the haunted passage was still cordoned off with police tape. Barbara’s dressing room with the tarnished star and the number one on the door was next to it. She turned the handle; it wasn’t locked. Everything inside seemed as it should: make-up set out ready for the performance, costumes hanging on the rail by the far wall next to the sofa and fridge.
She closed the door and checked the toilets. Again, everything was fine. But when she opened the door to the chorus room she nearly jumped out of her skin. Michael Hogan was standing in the far corner by the clothes rail. He was as startled as she was.
Alison spoke first. ‘I’m just doing a quick check,’ she said.
‘I’m making sure there are enough costumes,’ he said flatly. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
‘You’ve got enough on your plate,’ she said. ‘But can I help myself when I do? I know where it is.’
‘Of course.’
She left the room, closing the door behind her. Next door, Rory Harrison had already made his space at the end of the shelving. Stephen’s few remaining possessions had been pushed into the far corner. There were three unopened bottles of lager, an empty pizza carton with a large letter S written across the front and a half-used box of tissues. She lifted the lid on the pizza carton; just a few crumbs were left, and a shrivelled piece of something that looked like ham or salami. She checked that the windows were locked and then left the room.
The Green Room obviously hadn’t been cleaned in weeks. The plastic Christmas tree with the lopsided fairy was full of dust, the shelf it stood on was grubby and the bin overflowed with used polystyrene cups, sweet wrappers and fast food containers. Alison pulled a face, checked that the windows were shut and left.
After checking the toilet on that floor, she knocked on Michael’s office door. No one answered, so she went in. The desk was as untidy as ever, with piles of papers weighed down by an assortment of props. Alison shifted a piece of what looked like stone; it was heavier than it looked, and the documents underneath were only the bank statements they already knew about.
The stone had left traces of oil on her fingers.She wiped them on a tissue and leaned over the metal filing cabinet to plug in the kettle for coffee. The plug was beside another overflowing waste paper bin; two large, flat pizza boxes stuck out of the top; the initials M and S were written across the top. So Michael and Sophie even ate their pizzas together, she thought. Another thought leapt into her head. She pulled a carton from the bin and opened it, then took out her mobile phone and punched a number in.
Stephen Coombs was a large man, but he looked hunched and sunken in the chair opposite Banham and Crowther. His arms rested on the desk with his fat, dimpled hands clenched into fists. Beside him sat the police duty solicitor, an undistinguished middle-aged man with hair toppling over his forehead and eyebrows a little too heavy for his small face.
Banham sat with an elbow on the desk, watching Stephen. Crowther glowered.
‘I’ve got enough evidence to put you away for Sophie’s murder,’ Banham said to him.
‘I didn’t kill her,’ Stephen said. ‘I’ve told you what happened.’
‘You’ve told it different each time,’ Crowther snapped at him.
‘I just went down there and panicked and ran away,’ Stephen said. ‘I only said I didn’t go down there because I was afraid this would happen, see.’ Stephen’s voice was cracking and fear filled his eyes. ‘I didn’t kill her. I swear I didn’t.’
Banham stared at Stephen. His mind was working overtime. He had enough evidence to charge him with Sophie’s murder, but not Lucinda’s. There was residue from the concrete weight on the black costume belonging to Stephen, but to get a murder charge to stick he needed Stephen’s DNA on it, and that test hadn’t proved positive. He needed a confession.
‘If you admit the charge it will go in your favour.’ He glanced at the dull-looking solicitor, who offered nothing in the way of advice to his client. ‘In the long run,’ he added.
‘Why should I?’ Stephen’s aggression was returning. ‘I didn’t do it, see. I couldn’t kill anyone.’
‘Oh, I think we all know that’s not true,’ Banham snapped. ‘You stabbed a man called Joseph Blake and received a suspended sentence. You must know that we’d find that out.’
Stephen lo
oked at the duty solicitor. He wiped his nose with his sleeve. ‘That was a one-off,’ he said, dropping his gaze.
‘Don’t insult my intelligence,’ said Banham. ‘We’ve got Sophie Flint’s diary; it’s written in black and white that you physically threatened Sophie, Lucinda Benson and Barbara Denis.’
Stephen’s eyes shifted from side to side. ‘That’s not true; Sophie was a liar and a troublemaker.’ When no one disputed this, he added, ‘OK, I’ll tell you what happened with Joseph Blake.’
Banham’s eyes fixed on Stephen and he became very still.
Stephen seemed to be picking his words very carefully. After a few seconds he said, ‘My brother Alan is married to Maggie. She’s a bit of a girl, see – has a colourful past. I warned my brother against her, but …’ He stretched his fat lips. ‘He was besotted, wouldn’t listen, see.’
Banham held eye contact. Stephen looked away.
‘Go on,’ Banham said.
‘Maggie was having an affair with that Joe Blake,’ Stephen continued. ‘She was having it off with Michael too. Alan didn’t know about either, see, but I did. I confronted her, but she begged me not to tell Alan, said it was over with both of them and she was pregnant.’ He sniffed hard. ‘I asked her who the baby’s father was, see. She said it was Alan’s, so I agreed to keep schtum. Then Maggie must have told Joe Blake that he was the father. He was rich, see, a property developer. And they needed money. He must have given it to her; she didn’t tell me, and I never asked. Then the baby was born. Fay Mary McCormack.’
He glanced at his solicitor and sniffed again, wiping the back of his hand across his nose before continuing. ‘Then Joe Blake bloody turned up, asking to see his baby. A fight broke out and he attacked my brother.’ He paused and uncurled his fingers. ‘Maggie rang me. She was hysterical, so I rushed round.’ The hands hit the table. ‘Joe had a kitchen knife in his hand. I went for him and in the struggle he got stabbed in the stomach. The police were called in, and Joseph said he wouldn’t press charges if he was allowed to visit his daughter. Maggie told him it wasn’t his daughter. DNA samples were taken from them, proving without doubt that he wasn’t the father. My brother was.’ He looked down at the table. ‘So the bastard pressed charges against me, and Alan too, for aggravated assault. Alan got a complete discharge, and I got a three-month suspended jail sentence. He made Maggie and Alan pay his money back too – said he’d get them done for deception.’ He looked from Crowther to Banham and shook his head sadly. ‘Alan’s drinking got worse than ever then, see, and they got heavier in debt. So Maggie went to Michael for help. Michael had been married to Valerie for a couple of years by then, and had already adopted Sophie – it was common knowledge how Sophie was the apple of his eye. But Maggie told him he was Fay’s father.’ Again he looked from Crowther to Banham. ‘She was desperate, see, she felt responsible for Alan’s drinking. She asked Michael for money. And said she wouldn’t tell Valerie Fay was his daughter if he agreed to keep Alan and me in work every Christmas and pay towards Fay’s upkeep. He didn’t want to break his marriage up, or lose Sophie, so what choice did he have?’ He looked again at Crowther and then back to Banham. ‘That’s been going on for years. Now he’s about to be declared bankrupt. And now you know the truth.’
‘And he isn’t even the father,’ Crowther added. ‘Poor bastard.’
Banham watched Stephen carefully but said nothing. He told the tape they were taking a break, and beckoned Crowther to follow him out of the room.
‘We’ll leave him to consult with his brief for a few minutes,’ he said dryly, setting off for the staircase.
In the incident room Isabelle Walsh was still at her computer. ‘Can you get me all the details on the suspended sentence that Stephen Coombs got for GBH?’ he asked her.
‘Guv.’
Crowther was ending a call on his mobile outside the interview room when Banham arrived back.
‘Alison’s just phoned, guv,’ he said. ‘She found a whole lot of pizza containers in the bins at the theatre. I rang the lab and checked with Penny; the crumbs on the shoe print in the basement are from salami pizza. The container in Stephen’s room was salami. Alison is sending her the remains of another one to check against the shoe print – from Sophie and Michael’s room.’
‘Stephen came up to Michael’s office when I was in there,’ Banham said. ‘That was before he went down into the basement. If the salami one came from Michael’s room, he could have walked on some crumbs.’
‘He only stood in the doorway, though.’
‘Yes, but he still could have walked in the crumbs. Did Alison ask Michael what kind of pizza he had?’
‘She said he’s walking around in a daze. He didn’t even remember eating one. So she’s checking out the orders with the Pizza Hut, see if they’ve kept a record of who ordered what.’
Banham blew out a breath. ‘You know, out of all of them Stephen’s the one with least motive. Or am I missing something?’
‘Sophie told us he hadn’t changed his costume during the UV. She knew he killed Lucinda. There’s your motive, guv, for Sophie at least.’
‘But what if she got it wrong? His dressing gown is green, I saw that myself. And Sophie’s mother’s the only person who mentioned that she wore contact lenses, and she said herself that she and Sophie weren’t close.’
‘I think that’s all irrelevant, guv. I think he meant to kill Sophie in the first place and got the wrong person.’
‘But why?’
‘Now that I don’t know, guv.’
The pantomime was in full swing. Alison watched from the wings, near Alan McCormack’s desk. The atmosphere throughout the first half of the show had been extremely tense, but the actors had got through, and the new dame seemed to manage with little problem.
From time to time Michael Hogan had walked into the wings, watched for a minute or so, then walked away again. Alan had made all his entrances, and hadn’t missed any of his lines.
At the interval the cast gathered on the stage again to walk through the second half of the show. Alison was surprised at how friendly Barbara Denis and Vincent Mann seemed to be. They stood side by side at the back of the stage talking quietly, while Fay and Maggie talked Rory Harrison through the routines.
The four dancers were going through the steps in the UV scene, and Alan and Michael were checking the fish. Alison assured the nervous cast that she would not leave the wings, and that the two uniformed police would be on the other side. The lighting technician had rigged up extra worker lights in the wings to make the cast feel more secure.
They finished their rehearsal with five minutes of the interval left, and all went off to change.
The uniformed PCs went to the Green Room to get coffees from the vending machine and to re-check the windows and the fire exit. Alison made another call to Penny. The lab had received the pizza cartons, but the tests would take another hour. Alison rang Pizza Hut again, but they hadn’t so far found anything which would tell her who ordered which toppings.
The door to the chorus room stood ajar, and as she passed she glimpsed her side view in the floor-to-ceiling mirrors reflected her image. The sight depressed her; the twig-like figures of the two chorus girls changing into their sailor outfits made her even more self-conscious.
Sonia put a cigarette to her mouth and lit it with a thick, gold lighter.
‘I didn’t have you down for a smoker,’ Alison said to her from the doorway.
‘I’ve just started again,’ Sonia told her. ‘It’s partly nerves. It stops me getting fat too.’
Alison only smoked five cigarettes a day, and her New Year’s resolution was to give up completely; but she decided there and then to scrap that idea. If she put on even one extra pound now, she’d look enormous.
‘Could I borrow a cigarette from you?’ she asked Trevor. ‘I’ll pay you back later. I can’t leave the building at present to buy some.’
‘No problem,’ he said passing her the Marlboro Lights with a packet o
f matches. ‘My lighter’s packed up again,’ he told her.
‘Here, use mine,’ Sonia said, passing her the gold lighter.
The nicotine had a calming effect, and made Alison feel thinner and happier. Her new resolution was to be more independent, she promised herself. She would stand up to her father when he tried to bully her mother, and ignore him when he tried to wear her down. And as for Paul Banham – he had made it very clear those few days before Christmas that he didn’t find her attractive. Crowther had the right idea; she would treat men like he treated women, and use them for a good time and good sex.
Suddenly she felt better.
By the time she had smoked the cigarette right down to the filter, the show was well into the second act. She ground the butt in the red sand bucket outside the stage entrance and went to stand beside Michael Hogan.
The UV scene was just ending, and the release of the tension was almost tangible. Michael congratulated the actors and told them they’d done well. She left the two uniformed PCs in the wings, and went upstairs to the Green Room. She bought herself a can of diet Coke from the vending machine, popped the can and enjoyed the sharp bubbles as the drink ran down her throat, then checked her mobile for messages. There were none, so she made her way back to the side of the stage.
When she reached the bottom of the stairs, a faint tapping noise made her stop in her tracks.
At first it sounded like someone playing ball against the outside wall of the building. She stood still and listened; no, it was coming from inside and on this floor.
The music playing over the tannoy was the opening of the Sultan of Morocco scene – the last scene of the show. Everyone was in it, so who could be making that noise? She closed her eyes and listened carefully.
It was coming from the chorus room.
She remembered that one person wasn’t on stage at this point. Trevor had to change into his rat’s costume.
She hurried along the corridor to the chorus room. The tapping was coming from inside the room, and the door was locked. ‘Trevor,’ she called, rattling the handle again. ‘Trevor, are you in there?’