‘Why did you want him on the programme, though?’
‘It was a chance to see him,’ she said, and sighed again. ‘I hadn’t had a moment with him for weeks, and I’d hardly even spoken to him for days. It was so difficult to find time to be together, with both of us so busy, so it seemed too good a chance to miss.’
‘You arranged the whole programme just to spend a few minutes with him?’
She blushed. ‘Oh, I know that sounds awful and teenagery, but I just needed to be with him. Haven’t you ever been in love?’
‘Yes.’
Fiona studied her face as if to test how likely that was to be true, and then, apparently satisfied, said, ‘Well, then, you’ll know.’
‘How long had you been seeing each other?’
‘A year,’ she said with faint pride, as though the length of time added legitimacy. ‘Well, I’ve known him for ages, but it was just a year since we first – since we fell in love.’ She looked defiantly at Norma as though she might challenge the phrase.
Obligingly, Norma did. ‘Was he in love with you?’
‘We were going to be married.’
Norma felt sad. She had heard this bilious tale before. ‘But he was already married.’
‘Yes, but he didn’t love her. It was all over between them, really – had been for years. Just a marriage of form. They didn’t sleep together or anything.’
‘So she knew about you?’
‘Well – no. He had to keep it secret from her. I mean, he was going to tell her, but he had to wait for the right moment. You see, everything was in her name – the house and everything – and if she wanted to be vindictive, she could have made it very difficult for him.’
So could you, Norma thought, marvelling yet again at the unquenchable silliness of even the most intelligent women in the quest for lerve. ‘And in the meantime, you and he slept together, when he could spare the time.’ When it was said, she wished she hadn’t, for she didn’t want to alienate her.
‘I suppose it’s your job to put the worst gloss on everything,’ Miss Parsons said with dignity, ‘but I can assure you that Roger and I were in love and were going to be married. It’s just—’
‘Yes?’
Fiona hesitated, evidently unwilling to spoil the picture she’d painted. ‘It was difficult for us to get time together,’ she said as if it were the beginning of a sentence.
Norma finished it for her. ‘And just lately it had got more difficult?’
‘Yes.’
‘You began to wonder whether he was avoiding you?’
‘Yes. No! Well, yes, all right. I did wonder if he was cooling off a bit.’
‘Seeing other women.’
‘He wouldn’t have done that. He loved me. But – but I did wonder if he was trying to back out of marrying me. He didn’t like discussing it. Sometimes he got angry if I brought the subject up. We had rows. He said it spoilt our time together, arguing about it, and I suppose it did, but somehow when I thought he was trying to avoid the subject it seemed to be the one thing I couldn’t get out of my mind.’ Norma nodded encouragingly. ‘It was wonderful at first. He used to come here – John was sweet about it – and it was bliss, he’s a wonderful lover, and then we’d go to a restaurant – there are lots of really great ones in Chiswick – and we’d talk about where we’d live when we were married and what we’d do, and then we’d come back here and he stayed quite late, sometimes all night.’ She sighed. ‘We had a terrible row about three weeks ago. I wanted us to go on holiday together. I’d been talking about it for ages, and he’d sort of not said yes or no, so I assumed it was all right, and I got the brochures and everything, and when I showed him and tried to get him to agree on a date, he told me it was absolutely out of the question. And I flared up, and all the old stuff came up again, and we quarrelled – and—’
‘And after that you didn’t see him and he was offhand on the phone and you were afraid he was going to drop you. So you thought if he was invited on the show he’d have to come and you’d have a chance to talk to him,’ Norma finished for her. Fiona, looking shamefaced and much younger than her years, nodded.
‘It sounds awful, doesn’t it?’ she said in a small voice.
‘We’ve all been there, love,’ Norma said sadly. ‘So tell me what happened on the night.’
‘I’d asked him to come early, and I was so pleased when he did. I went down to meet him, and I could see straightaway he was in a good mood. We went up to green, and as soon as we were inside with the door closed he started kissing me. I tried to talk to him, but he kept stopping me by kissing me, and in between he said, “No talking tonight, all right? Let’s just be happy like we used to be.” And then he said, “I’ve missed you, darling Fee. Let’s have tonight to remember.”’
‘What do you think he meant by that?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t want to think. It sounded so final, I thought maybe he meant to drop me.’ She raised appalled eyes to Norma’s. ‘You don’t think he meant that he was going to kill himself, and that it would be our last time?’
‘No, I don’t think he meant that.’
The appalled voice was down to a thread. ‘It wasn’t suicide?’
‘I don’t think so. Do you?’
‘I didn’t want it to be,’ she said voicelessly. ‘But if it wasn’t – who could have killed him?’
‘I was hoping you might tell me,’ Norma said with grim humour.
‘You don’t think – I did it?’ Fiona stared. ‘You can’t! I didn’t. I wouldn’t! Why would I?’
‘It was one way of stopping him leaving you. After all, this way he’ll never belong to another woman. If you weren’t his first love, at least you’re his last.’
Fiona Parsons did not burst into tears, for which Norma liked her better. She seemed, rather, puzzled by the accusation.
‘But I could never have done that. Not however angry I was with him.’
‘And were you angry?’
‘I suppose – yes, I was underneath. It was treating me like an object. I mean, I loved our lovemaking, but he kept stopping me from talking. He wouldn’t discuss things with me. It wasn’t treating me like an adult.’
‘So where were you between seven o’clock and twenty past? Where were you during the time Roger Greatrex was out of the greenroom, supposed to be going to make-up but never arriving there?’
She was still staring, her brain evidently working behind her stationary eyes. ‘You think—? Oh but that’s absurd!’
‘Where were you?’ Norma insisted.
‘Well, with him, of course.’
Norma was wrong-footed, but caught herself up quickly. ‘Naturally you were. But where with him?’
Now Fiona blushed richly. ‘In the properties room on four. I had the key, and there was a chaise-longue in there. I said I’d meet him in there. He said he’d make sure he went up to make-up alone, and instead of going up he’d come to me.’
‘So you were making love with him on a chaise-longue in the properties room while Philip Somers was scouring the building for him, and you never thought to tell us?’
‘I – I couldn’t – I didn’t like to—’
‘Where is this properties room?’
‘It’s on the left just past stairway five. That’s left out of the greenroom and past the stairs. Past—’
‘Past the gents where he was found.’ She nodded painfully. ‘Let’s have some times, then. You met him when? And left him when?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I went to the props room when I left green, and he arrived a few minutes later. And we made love, and then straightaway he went. I wanted to talk, but he just smiled and put his finger on my lips – like this – to stop me – and he went. And that’s the last time I saw him.’ She was fighting tears now.
‘So how long were you making love? Ten minutes? Fifteen?’
‘I don’t know. How long does it take?’
Norma was afraid any minute something gagworthy about eterni
ty might be said, and let it go. Clearly Miss Parsons was not going to put her lover against the clock, but Norma betted it was on the shy side of a lingering experience, to judge from the peripheral mood that had been described. ‘When you came out of the props room, was he anywhere in sight?’
‘No. The corridor was empty.’
‘And you went—?’
‘Down stairway five to the ladies on three, and then to the studio.’ She bit her lip to keep it from trembling. ‘I dodged around a good bit in the studio, so that no-one would know where I’d been. And also because I didn’t want to speak to anyone. I was too upset.’
‘I should think you were,’ said Norma. Then, remembering Slider’s last minute instruction to her before she left the station, she asked, ‘What form of contraception did you use?’
She blushed furiously. ‘What business is it of yours?’
‘Believe me, it’s important. I’m not asking for thrills. What did you and Roger use?’
‘I’m on the Pill,’ she said.
‘Despite the fact that he was sterile?’
‘He wasn’t,’ Fiona said, indignantly, as though it was a slight.
‘One of his closest friends says he was sterile, that he and his wife couldn’t have children.’
‘They didn’t have any,’ Fiona said – evidently she didn’t know about Jamie – or didn’t know Norma did – ‘but that’s because he didn’t want them. He told me so. He said his wife had always wanted a family, but he hated the idea, so he took precautions.’
‘He told you that – but you don’t know it for a fact?’
‘Why would he lie?’ she asked simply. ‘In fact, we used condoms at first, but he hated them so much he made me go on the Pill. If he was sterile, why wouldn’t he have told me so?’
Pride, Norma thought; but Fiona had a point. Maybe he hadn’t been lying. Maybe Palliser had got it wrong. Maybe it wasn’t all that important anyway – except that the guv’nor wanted it asked, and he usually had his reasons.
‘Well,’ Norma said at last, ‘my guv’nor won’t be happy with the fact that you’ve been withholding information. You’ve wasted a lot of our time.’
‘I couldn’t talk about it. It’s too important to me to have you people picking over it like ghouls. I knew you would make it sound sordid.’ The eyes were filling again.
Quickly Norma asked, ‘Were you ever in the Girl Guides?’
‘Yes, I was. Why?’ The surprise of the question had the effect of stopping the tears in their tracks.
‘Oh, I just thought you might have been,’ Norma said shortly. She’d taken quite a dislike to Miss Starry-eyed Parsons.
McLaren put his head round the door. ‘Did you call me, guv?’
Slider looked up. ‘Why would I call you guv? I’m the boss.’ McLaren didn’t quite roll his eyes, but it was close. ‘What’s this note on my desk? I can’t read it. I wish you people would learn to write clearly.’
‘Victim of child-centred teaching methods, guv,’ McLaren said smartly, in the manner of one asking for two bob for a cup of tea. He studied his note for a moment with frowning concentration. ‘Oh, yeah, it’s about the audience lists. It might be nothing, but there’s a discrepancy between the names the tickets were sent to, and the names we took up in the hospitality room.’
‘I imagine there’d be some no shows.’
‘There were eight. But this is something else. There was a ticket sent to a Mr James Davies, spelt “ies”, but the name he gave in the hospitality room was John Davis, and spelt with an “is”.’
‘Could be a mistake. Who actually took it down?’
‘I haven’t worked that out yet. I don’t recognise the handwriting, and there were a lot of them up there. But it’s SOP to check spellings, so I thought I’d better mensh.’
‘Whoever it was might have misheard, or even heard it right and written it wrong. These things happen.’
‘Yeah. All the same—’ McLaren said hopefully.
‘Of course, check it out. It’s the unturned stone that gathers the moss,’ Slider said. ‘No luck from the search parties, I suppose?’
‘No, guv. But they’ve still got the big outside bins to check.’
‘Joy to the world. And no witnesses?’
‘It’s hard to find out who was actually in the building at the time. I’m glad I’m not their security chief.’
‘We really need some more general appeal.’
‘TV? Crimewatch?’
‘I think it’s early days for that. Anyway, I didn’t mean that general. I’d like to leaflet every BBC employee but that’s out of the question, both from the time and the expense point of view.’
‘Sandwich board, then, in reception?’
‘Yes,’ Slider said. ‘That might be best.’ The difficulty would be to persuade Honeyman to it. Once you went public, the stopwatch started ticking, and your performance was under scrutiny. ‘Check out this Davis, anyway. Clear as you go along. On the subject of which, Somers and Palliser are both supposed to be coming in to give their fingerprints. Ask the counter to let me know as soon as they arrive.’
‘Rightyoh.’
‘She obviously thought telling me was letting herself out,’ Norma said in the canteen, hunching forward over her cup of tea with the urgency of persuading him, ‘but she could still have done it. Reading between the lines, what Greatrex was after that night was a quick dip, not extending of the frontiers of sensuality. I reckon a few minutes, ten at the outside. There was still time for her to kill him afterwards and tidy herself up.’
‘Whoever killed him,’ Slider pointed out fairly, ‘did it after he left her, so there must have been time.’
‘Right, guv. And, you see, I was thinking: what’s the first thing a man does when he’s finished making love?’
Slider pondered. ‘Goes home to the wife?’
‘Very funny,’ Norma said loftily. ‘He goes for a pee, doesn’t he? It’s the most natural thing in the world. Greatrex bonks her, says goodbye, then heads for the make-up room, popping into the loo on the way. It’s the first one he’d pass. It explains why he went there, and not the one upstairs nearest to make-up. And Parsons, furious with being treated like a substitute Mrs Palmer, follows him straight in there and whacks him. It makes sense, doesn’t it?’
‘So far.’
‘And she admits she deliberately foiled her own trail in the studio. So she’s got no alibi, and she had the motive, and we know she was in the vicinity. A big, strong, baseball-playing girl,’ she reminded him.
‘Yes,’ Slider said. ‘But you’re talking spur of the moment, not slow burn—’
‘Both. She’d been building up a fury for weeks.’
‘But she’d have had to bring the knife with her. That means planning.’
Norma leaned towards him so eagerly that one or two others in the canteen ostentatiously didn’t look at them, in case it was an assignation. ‘I had a thought about that, and it makes her very attractive for the frame. The knife could have been lying about in the properties room where they had their hump. Or she could have got it from any of the props stores. She started at the Beeb as a properties buyer – who better than her would know? And those places are full of junk – you just never know what’s in ’em. And they’re not locked – anyone can walk through.’
‘I wish you hadn’t said that,’ Slider complained. ‘Now someone will have to check whether such a knife is missing.’
Norma’s face fell a little as she realised the work involved. ‘I doubt whether you could ever say conclusively it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘Even if anyone knows what should be there, they wouldn’t be able to say what never had been.’
‘I get your drift. But what about the blood?’
‘I’ve been thinking about that, too – need there have been that much? Standing behind him, reaching round, and making one quick, hard slash – I wonder if there’d have been more than a bit of blood on the hands? Remember she was wearing three-quarter sleeves. And she sa
ys herself she went to the ladies before going back to the studio – she could have washed and checked she was all right there.’
Slider sighed. ‘It’s all very plausible, but you know that’s not enough, don’t you? We’ve got to have evidence.’
‘Yes, guv. I’ll check out the properties to start with for the knife. And we could ask for her watch and bracelet – even if she’s washed ’em, there might be traces of blood in the links.’
‘It’s possible. All right, you can ask her.’
‘Thanks, guv.’ She jumped up energetically, and then thought of something. ‘By the way, why did you ask me to ask her about Greatrex being sterile?’
‘Oh, just a little stream I was meandering along. Probably leading nowhere.’
‘Never mind,’ she said comfortingly, ‘we might still find a witness.’
Palliser did not show up, but Somers came in, looking more ill than ever, and allowed his fingerprints to be taken, looking down at the operation as though it were happening to someone else. Slider took the opportunity to question him more closely about exactly where he had been to look for Greatrex, and whether he had passed anyone on the way, but he was of little help, seeming to have slipped into a deeper state of shock than he was in on the night in question.
Slider showed him out. Nicholls, the sergeant on duty in the front shop, let Slider back in behind the counter and said, ‘That bloke – I know him from somewhere. What’s his name?’
‘Somers,’ Slider said, pausing to look at Nicholls with interest. Nutty had a capacious memory for detail. ‘Philip Somers. One of the witnesses in the Greatrex case. He found the body, in fact.’
‘Somers. That name rings a bell. I’m sure I’ve seen him before.’ Nicholls pondered.
‘I’ve checked his record. He’s got no previous,’ Slider said. ‘I had ’em all checked. Greatrex himself was nicked a couple of times for possession of cannabis in his young and heady days, which is just what you’d expect, but everyone else is as clean as a whistle.’
‘Och, don’t worry, it’ll come to me. Somers – Greatrex.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘It’s all in here somewhere. The mind’s a computer, Bill – a computer of fabulous power.’
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