Killings on Jubilee Terrace

by Robert Barnard

  Shirley the private, the withdrawn, the observing, had always seen Bet as a terrible source of evil and heartbreak. That was what came from the canvas: the quality of inhumanity that almost disqualified its possessor from being part of the human race.

  The viewer who could see this wondered why Shirley Merritt seemed to have hated Bet so much. Because the force of the image led anyone who knew Shirley to question the depth of her detachment from the world of emotions.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Kinds of Loving

  ‘She was ace,’ said Sharon, sprawled on the large bed in her pad over a shop near the market. It was the second day after the fire. Charlie made notes from the depths of a Lloyd Loom chair which had been made oddly comfortable with the aid of two cushions. ‘She had everything, did Sylvia. She knew what she wanted and she knew how to get it.’

  ‘And was what she wanted being a prostitute?’ asked Charlie, feeling he hadn’t phrased that in the best way possible.

  ‘Escort,’ corrected Sharon. ‘No, ’course it wasn’t. Some of the girls enjoy it, but they know it’s only short term. An aim but not an end, if you get me.’

  Charlie thought he should go more carefully.

  ‘I think I get you,’ he said. ‘I suppose being an escort brings you a sort of independence and sufficient money – you hope – so you can start planning on being something else.’

  ‘Well, something like that,’ said Sharon. ‘But don’t be obsessed with money. We’re not. That’s only part of it. I’d say it wasn’t even the most important thing. I’d say the most important is contacts.’

  ‘Right,’ said Charlie. ‘But before we get on to them, could you give me some idea what sort of…escort Sylvia was?’

  ‘Bloody brilliant,’ said Sharon. ‘She was up in every possible preference, if you follow me, and she was willing to do whatever it was that was asked of her.’

  Sharon, Charlie was finding, was a wonderfully communicative witness. He had half expected that. Sharon had heard the presumed identity of the other fire victim on Radio Aire in the eight o’clock news that morning. She had rung the police and told them Sylvia was her ‘best mate’ and said she was willing to do anything to help them catch her murderer. People who do that are either true friends or anxious to deliver the dirt on a rival under cover of helping the authorities. So far Sharon had been undeniably in the first category. Indeed, she seemed to have taken Sylvia as her role model.

  ‘So Sylvia was versatile, could minister to every taste,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Pretty nearly,’ said Sharon. ‘Homosexuals didn’t have much use for her, natch.’

  ‘I suppose not. She presumably earned a fair bit of money.’

  ‘A fair bit about covers it. She wasn’t on the game for every hour God sends – she had lots of other interests, not like some.’

  ‘One of the interests would be acting, I suppose.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Sharon, ‘that was the main one, no question.’ But she wriggled as she said it.

  ‘Was she trained?’

  ‘Nah. She started at that Manchester School or College, or whatever, but it got in the way.’

  ‘Of her…escort work?’

  ‘Yeah. They didn’t combine well.’

  Charlie felt he was being given the picture of a girl who was into high class prostitution to put by a nest-egg of money that would enable her to train as an actress, but she gave up the training to concentrate on her escort work. That hardly made sense, and he didn’t get the impression that Sylvia was a muddled thinker.

  ‘I suppose she was going to break into acting some other way,’ he said.

  ‘’Course she was. Didn’t you see her on Jubilee Terrace?’

  ‘Watching soaps doesn’t sit easily with a policeman’s job. Either we’re on duty and preparing for a busy night, or we’re catching up on family life.’

  ‘Well, you missed a treat. She was brill.’

  ‘Her parents have just seen the scene. They found it very disturbing.’

  ‘I bet.’

  ‘It was like having the old Sylvia back, but they knew that at that age she was…quite different.’

  ‘I’ll say. I met her back then, when she was in school. She discovered sex, or sex discovered her, when she started High School. Wham Bang!’

  She laughed appreciatively.

  ‘This scene she had with Vernon Watts—’

  ‘Is that the old git the wrinklies go on about? Used to be on the music halls – gasp, gasp. Cue for gypsy violins and sobs into grubby handkerchiefs. I don’t get the sentiment. If it died the death it must have been because it couldn’t attract audiences. Where were the grubby handkerchiefs then? I’d bet the music halls were the last refuge of really crap comedians and singers, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Probably,’ agreed Charlie. ‘By the end anyway. Did Sylvia talk about Vernon Watts?’

  ‘She said he propositioned her.’

  ‘She must have had plenty of experience of that.’

  ‘Oh, she did. But she never let on about her escort work to Watts. It would have been round the cast, and done her no good, and especially not with the Powers That Be. She just turned him down flat – she’d got experience of that too, though you might not believe it.’

  ‘I do. Sorting out clients into the safe and the dangerous is one of the escort’s first priorities. But what did you mean: “done her no good”?’

  ‘I mean in getting on in television. That’s what she wanted. She’d had a client two or three years ago who’d promised to get her on. At the time she’d gone on and on about that, how she couldn’t wait, and so on. Then he’d been written out. It devastated Sylvia. And it was a real humiliation, because she’d gone on about it so much. She kept stumm when the chance came again.’

  ‘Was this another of her clients?’

  Sharon shook her head.

  ‘Same one, so far as I know. He was pulling strings from a distance. So the chance came again. Sylvia was brilliant at doing children – for clients I mean, those that were that way inclined. And she auditioned and got this part in Terrace. She was over the moon.’

  ‘She only had a short scene, didn’t she?’

  ‘That’s all she’d done so far. She was promised that this relationship was going to develop over the months, and the old git was going to get obsessed with her. She knew all about that, did our Sylvia. She was devastated when he fell under a lorry or whatever it was.’

  ‘Was that the end of her TV career?’ asked Charlie, thinking the role of innocent might pay dividends.

  ‘I don’t think so. She told me a week or two ago that she’d got another part lined up in Terrace.’

  ‘Same girl or different?’

  ‘Different. They couldn’t think of anything for a twelve-year-old so they gave her some other part more her own age. No more than a few words, though, in the script.’

  A new idea struck Charlie.

  ‘Was she under contract?’

  ‘Yer what?’ It was a surprising descent into Sharon’s native dialect.

  ‘Did she have a contract with Northern Television for a certain period?’

  ‘I dunno. But she mentioned six months a lot.’

  So she’d got much more than Reggie had let on about.

  ‘Right. So maybe she got this second role, as a florist’s assistant, to give her some employment in the time for which she already was under contract.’

  He’d strayed beyond Sharon’s apparently formidable know-how.

  ‘Search me. But I bet the git who’d got her the earlier job took all the credit for the later one.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Because he was like that. A lot of the clients are. They take credit if you pick up a 5p piece off the pavement.’

  ‘Are you saying you knew him?’

  ‘No. I’m saying Sylvia talked about him a lot.’

  ‘Did she give him a name?’

  ‘No. We don’t if we’re talking about clients. It’s a quest
ion of confidentiality, and not getting robbed of good customers. We invent names sometimes. Syl often called this one Mr Fixit.’

  ‘I see… Because he could get her jobs on TV?’

  ‘Because he said he could.’

  ‘Seems to me he’d proved he could.’

  ‘S’pose so.’

  ‘Did she tell you anything else about him? About his sexual tastes perhaps?’

  ‘No. We like to keep quiet about that. Confidentiality again, but also to protect our territory. Say I make a speciality of some service that one of my best customers always requires. It doesn’t do to be too open, too explicit like. Someone else can go after this customer and persuade him she could give him an even better service.’

  ‘So you don’t know anything more about this man who claimed to get her jobs?’

  ‘Not that much.’ She frowned, trying as always to give satisfaction. ‘I think she liked him as a customer. He could do something for her, instead of it always being the other way round. I think often money didn’t change hands, but promises did. And he was as good as his word, wasn’t he? He got her the jobs. But I don’t think she liked him as a person.’

  ‘Why not, do you think?’

  ‘Too sarky. Always getting some sly dig in. Always reminding her of what she did, and how a lot of people wouldn’t think it a legit trade. As if Syl would care about that! He enjoyed hurting people, even people he liked. Was he the man who killed Sylvia, do you think?’

  ‘I think he may have been the one who died with her.’

  Sharon thought about this. She was a girl who would have puzzled Charlie if he had not come across many prostitutes in the course of his work. Her speech varied from coarse street jargon to quite sharp argumentation. The background that she came from and the class she now mingled with were fighting a messy battle in her mind. There was no doubt in Charlie’s mind about her attitude to Sylvia. There was no question she admired her, but he wondered whether she actually liked her: there were traces of jealousy in her tone, and Charlie had never had the impression that Sylvia had been a likeable person. He thought that probably since she had discovered her body at the age of twelve she had had the driving ambition of using it to get wherever she wanted to go. And it had got her to that charred bedroom in Hamish Fawley’s rented accommodation.

  ‘How would you sum up Sylvia?’ he asked, getting up.

  ‘Dead clever… Sorry, I didn’t mean that as a joke. She had an ambition and she kept her eye on it. And she would have made it, I know she would. She wouldn’t let anything hold her back.’

  ‘And you? Will you take your A-levels? Will you get a job worth doing?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll do it. In time. There’s plenty of time.’

  ‘Well, don’t be like Sylvia: she dropped out of education.’

  ‘I guess she thought she could get the same career perks for far less hassle.’

  Charlie sighed. That meant Sylvia had preferred to be on her back to sitting at a desk. He wouldn’t mind betting that Sharon would make the same career choice.

  ‘Where are you on your way to?’ Felicity asked Charlie.

  ‘Ilkley,’ said Charlie into his mobile. ‘I’m just approaching Ben Rhydding.’

  ‘Nice place, Ilkley.’

  ‘I’ve always liked it. But I won’t be taking the waters.’

  ‘Harrogate cured you of spa water.’

  ‘Whenever I’m in a spa I thank the Lord for my hardy stomach.’

  ‘Who are you talking to?’

  ‘The guy who supervises the scripts and writes a lot of them. A chap by the name of Melvin Settle.’

  ‘Ah. Wrote two goodish mainstream novels around about the mid-Eighties. Couple of sci-fis since then, no great shakes.’

  ‘What it is to have a wife who’s into literature. I’ll bear it in mind. Could be a self-loathing intellectual who despises himself for slumming it.’

  ‘Are you any further?’

  ‘An inch or two. It doesn’t help that we have two possible intended victims. It doesn’t make for clear thinking.’

  ‘I’m just sorry for the girl.’

  ‘Thought she was sleeping her way to a meaty part, and instead found herself burning her way to an early grave? It’s not quite like that. A bit more complicated. The tabloids will all be on to it by tomorrow or the next day. Save your tears till you’ve got the whole story.’

  ‘What would we do without the tabloids? They save us an awful lot of tear-shedding. How old was the girl?’

  ‘Nineteen.’

  ‘I think I’ll shed one or two.’

  When he got to Ilkley, Charlie, who believed in doing his work in advance if possible, drove confidently through the handsome and busy centre of the small town and then up one of the roads leading to the moors. It never did a policeman any good arriving at a suspect’s house poring over town guides or listening to sat.nav. and peering at numbers on gates. If seen and in plain clothes he was put down as a burglar immediately.

  Melvin Settle was certainly not a suspect, or at least not in the front line of them. Everyone connected with Jubilee Terrace had a wisp of a cloud of suspicion hovering over them, but Melvin had struck Charlie as amiable, clearheaded and inclined to be helpful. Up to a point, he corrected himself. Most of the people connected to Jubilee Terrace seemed with part of their minds to be protective of the soap, of its popular image as actor-friendly as well as viewer-friendly. It liked having the reputation of a place where a new actor is welcomed with smiles and hugs and one who is getting past it is eased out with tact and follow-up care. Since after night-duty he was often stranded at home with only daytime television, Charlie was used to seeing new characters and much-loved veterans telling the nation what a lovely and talented lot they all were, and how working in the team was an unmitigated joy.

  Funny about the murder then.

  He stopped confidently outside Moorland Hill, number 24. It was a commodious nineteenth-century house, designed for a Victorian family with several servants – stone, solid, exuding comfort and durability. Melvin did pretty well out of his commanding place in the Terrace hierarchy, then. Probably not regretting his well-thought-of mainstream novels at all. Charlie could hear nothing from the road, but as he approached through the well-kept front garden he heard the sound of a child screaming – what he, with his own children, called ‘creating’. This sounded like a much older child, though – probably a teenager. As he rang the doorbell his stomach rumbled, and he wished he’d stopped for a sandwich.

  ‘Yes?’ shouted a woman’s voice as he rang the bell.

  ‘Inspector Peace, Leeds CID. I’d like to speak to Melvin Settle.’

  ‘You’re welcome… MEL!’ She screamed up the stairs, then when steps were heard on them seemed to go up to comfort the yelling child. Charlie was kept waiting a minute or so before the front door opened.

  ‘Ah, Inspector Peace. I wasn’t expecting you. Do come in. We’re having a bit of a domestic at the moment, nothing we can’t cope with.’ He led the way through a high, dark hall, then when they were halfway up the stairs screamed at his wife, up in the attic area: ‘Keep that bloody child quiet. She should be at school.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ came the female voice. ‘Infecting the whole school, I suppose?’

  Melvin shut the door of another high room, this time a handsome one, with oak bookshelves covering whole walls, and plenty of easy chairs.

  ‘Becky hasn’t got anything to infect them with,’ he muttered to Charlie with a conspiratorial wink. ‘One day Irene will realise this happens every second Tuesday, when she has to either hand in or get back Physics homework. I bet she hasn’t done any for the last six months. Either nobody has noticed or nobody has bothered.’

  Charlie wondered why Melvin had not enlightened his wife about this, but he decided not to ask. He had no ambitions as a marriage counsellor and he had enough questions that were really relevant. He sat down in one of the capacious armchairs, and Settle sat at his desk, fiddling with a pen.


  ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m interested at the moment in Mr Friedman.’

  Settle shrugged.

  ‘Oh yes? Then why don’t you go and talk to Reggie. He’s been very open with you so far, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Apparently so. But I think one of my ancestors must have been a crab. I like to approach things sideways, get a nice mass of information so that I can judge a person’s answers. Probably you do the same with new characters on the Terrace. Now it strikes me, thinking back on several conversations I had at Northern TV’s studio, that Mr Friedman was one of the people who were really closely involved with Hamish Fawley.’

  ‘Does it? I don’t think he’d quite agree with that.’

  ‘But he gave me all the necessary information about their relationship: he had brought him back into the soap, he had been willing to employ someone (admittedly in a small part) entirely on his say-so. If he gave Sylvia Cardew the role of florist’s assistant after Hamish had brought his influence to bear, then quite probably he had given her the role of the newspaper girl for the same reason – the influence, then, being exercised from London, Hamish being out of the series at the time.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Not necessarily, no: casting isn’t your job. And then there is the question of two years ago. I’ve been talking to Sylvia’s best friend – also in the same profession. She says that Sylvia had real hopes of a job in Terrace two years ago – confident of a role, sure it was in the bag. Then the chap who was getting it for her was written out and nothing materialised. What does that suggest to you?’

  Melvin shifted uneasily in his chair.

  ‘That Hamish was doing the pushing then too.’

  ‘It does seem likely, doesn’t it?’ said Charlie genially. ‘What else does it suggest?’

  ‘Look, I’m not Reggie’s best mate or anything like it. It’s not up to me to say what it suggests.’

  ‘Fair enough. Well I’d say that, to the outside eye, it suggests that there was a close connection between the two – not necessarily friendship. It does seem as if Hamish Fawley was quite incapable of friendship – didn’t do it, so to speak. But there surely must have been something, and the likelihood is that it was either some matter that Hamish held over Mr Friedman, used as a weapon to get what he wanted. Or else that there was a community of interest between them, something that was criminal, or bordering on it, that both of them shared.’