Best Served Cold

by Sally Spencer

However, there were a couple of obvious absentees, Cotton noted, looking around the room.

  ‘Does anyone know where Ruth and Sarah are?’ he asked.

  ‘Sarah phoned me at home,’ Phil McCann told him. ‘She said they’ll meet us in Whitebridge.’

  Cotton frowned. ‘The plan was for us all to go together,’ he said. ‘But I suppose if they’re not here, they’re not here, so let’s get on with it. Two things will be happening in the next fortnight. The first is that we will be rehearsing – and then performing – The Spanish Tragedy.’

  ‘Really,’ Bradley Quirk said. ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘But the second thing,’ continued Cotton, ignoring him, ‘is that the BBC will be making a documentary about us. Now the hook on which this documentary will hang is that we’re all mates who’ve got together after twenty years to try and recreate the magic we had back then. If we play things right, it will be good for all of us – and I do mean all of us, even those no longer in the business. For instance, it wouldn’t do your prospects at the bank any harm to be seen in a favourable light on television, Phil. And as for you, Tony, your school governors will love it.’

  ‘Interesting choice of words, that “play things right”,’ Jerry Talbot said. ‘Are you suggesting we’ll be acting in front of the cameras? Because I thought a documentary was supposed to be about life as it actually is.’

  Cotton bit back an exasperated sigh. ‘Either we can tell the story our way or we can allow the television crew to tell it their way – and, believe me, our way is better for us. But that involves us managing things.’

  ‘Meaning what?’ Talbot asked.

  ‘That if we have any petty disagreements, we make sure we have them off camera.’

  ‘So everything will be filmed as being all sweetness and light?’ Phil McCann asked. ‘Won’t that make for a rather boring programme?’

  ‘Everything won’t be all sweetness and light,’ Cotton said. ‘We’ll have disagreements – heated ones – but they won’t be about whether you’ve eaten Bradley’s sandwich, or Lucy has been using Sarah’s make up.’

  ‘In other words, you’re not talking about the sort of stuff that really does go on,’ Bradley Quirk said.

  ‘That’s right,’ Cotton agreed. ‘Our disagreements will be about artistic differences, as each of us strives to produce the best performance we possibly can. They’ll be very dramatic while they’re going on – there’ll be a great deal of storming about and screaming in frustration, much as the public would expect from us – but eventually the arguments will end amicably, and everybody involved in them will come away looking good.’

  ‘I don’t see that happening,’ Jerry Talbot said, remembering the arguments over ‘artistic differences’ that they’d had in the past.

  ‘It will, if we plan it properly,’ Cotton said. ‘What we do is, we sketch out the basic disagreement the night before, and then we act it out when the cameras are rolling. We’ll already have decided how it will begin and end, so all we really have to do is improvise in the middle.’

  Bradley Quirk smiled sardonically. ‘Let me see if I’ve got this straight,’ he said. ‘We’re performing in a play in which the central point is that some of the characters, led by Hieronimo, pretend to be actors and put on a play of their own. That’s right, is it?’

  ‘Of course it’s right,’ Cotton said, a little snappishly. ‘It’s the play-within-the-play.’

  ‘But what you’re proposing isn’t just that you play the part of Hieronimo, who plays the part of Pasha in the play-within-a-play. You’re proposing that you play the part of an idealized – much nicer – version of yourself, who plays the part of Hieronimo, who plays the part of Pasha. In other words, the making of the play becomes a play itself.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have put it quite like that,’ Cotton said.

  ‘I don’t really think that there’s any other way to put it,’ Bradley Quirk countered.

  This time, Cotton did allow himself to sigh. ‘Look, we’re a company of equals, just like we were in the old days,’ he said.

  Bradley Quirk sniggered, and Jerry Talbot pretended to be sick.

  Cotton decided to ignore them both.

  ‘You all know I’ve sunk considerably more of my money into this project than all the rest of you put together, but that doesn’t give me the right to dictate how we do things.’

  ‘No?’ Bradley Quirk asked sceptically.

  ‘No,’ Cotton repeated. ‘I happen to think – as I said at the beginning – that my way is the best way for all concerned, but if the majority of you are against it, then I’m certainly not going to try and force it through. However, my career is at a particularly complicated balancing point as this moment, and I don’t want to put myself into any situation which isn’t at least partly scripted.’

  ‘What does that mean, exactly?’ Phil McCann asked.

  ‘It means that I will continue to subsidize the company until the end of the production, but – though I wish you all the luck in the world – I won’t be coming up to Whitebridge with you unless you agree to do things my way,’ Cotton said.

  He sat back and waited, and though he was seemingly oblivious to what was going on around him, he wasn’t missing a thing.

  He could see Jerry Talbot – his understudy for Hieronimo all those years ago – and could almost hear the way his mind was ticking over.

  If Cotton isn’t there, then I get to play Hieronimo, Talbot was thinking, and I’ll do a great job – better than he could have done.

  But then, who will come and see me doing that great job? he asked himself.

  If Mark Cotton wasn’t there, none of the London critics would make the trip up to Whitebridge to review the play – and neither would the London show business personalities make the effort. In fact, if Mark wasn’t there, the BBC might well change their minds about making the documentary.

  But what if Mark was there?

  If he was there, there was a chance he could be persuaded to give his understudy the chance to play the lead on one or two of the less important nights midweek, just as Phil McCann had promised – especially if that understudy had gone out of his way to be amenable (i.e. sucked up for all he was worth). And even on those midweek nights, there was always the possibility that someone important in the world of theatre or television might just be there to see him perform.

  Then, of course, there was the documentary itself. He would have to play the part assigned to him in that, but there would be every possibility he could play it in such a way as to upstage the rest of the cast.

  ‘I think Mark’s right,’ he said. ‘We would be better off doing a little preparation for the documentary.’

  And once he – one of Mark’s strongest antagonists – had given way, what choice did the others have but to follow suit?

  It was Charlie Woodend who had started the tradition of holding team meetings at the corner table in the public bar of the Drum and Monkey. It was at this table that they had sat and discussed, over pints of best bitter and shots of neat vodka, their most baffling murder cases; here that the first faint glimmerings of light had begun to shine in the corners of what had seemed dark, impenetrable mysteries.

  Now, Woodend was living in retirement in Spain, and, with apparent success, was battling the cancer which had invaded his body. But though Charlie had gone, the tradition endured, and for both Monika Paniatowski (who had been a member of the original team) and DI Colin Beresford (who had joined it later, as a fresh-faced detective constable), the meetings had become almost a sacred ritual.

  The meeting that lunchtime was far from a typical one. Firstly, there had been no murders recently, and the team were spending most of their time catching up on mind-numbing paperwork. And secondly, the leader of the team – who, it was wildly believed, could drink the rest of them under the table – was neither drinking nor smoking, and hadn’t been since the day she discovered she was pregnant. Still, it was an agreeable session in which four people who liked and res
pected each other could chat about matters of practically no consequence without feeling that they were wasting their time.

  It was Beresford who introduced a note of disharmony by asking a question which DS Kate Meadows could cheerfully have killed him for asking.

  ‘So when are you going on maternity leave, boss?’ he said.

  ‘Another two weeks,’ Paniatowski replied, in a tone which should have warned him to leave the matter there.

  ‘But you’re owed weeks and weeks of ordinary leave,’ Beresford said, oblivious.

  ‘We’re all owed a lot of leave,’ Paniatowski countered. ‘We’re a hard-working team.’

  ‘What I meant was, since there’s nothing much happening at the moment, you could go on leave now,’ Beresford explained.

  Paniatowski shuddered. The thought of being at home alone – with nothing to distract her as the lump continued to grow in her belly – was almost too horrible to contemplate.

  She climbed clumsily to her feet. ‘If you’ll excuse me, nature calls – and for only about the hundred-and-fourteenth time today.’

  They watched her waddle awkwardly towards the corridor which led to the ladies’ toilet.

  ‘I know women get big when they’re pregnant, but the boss is the size of a house,’ Beresford said. ‘Who do you think the father is?’

  ‘You mean she hasn’t told you?’ asked DC Jack Crane, MA, the youngest member of the team, who was tall and slim and looked like the poet that he actually secretly was. ‘I thought she told you everything.’

  ‘Well, she hasn’t told me that,’ Beresford replied, and there was a hint of hurt in his voice.

  ‘Actually, there’s a fair number of people back at the station who think you’re the father,’ Crane said.

  ‘Me!’ Beresford exploded. ‘Me!’

  ‘You have been close to her for a long time,’ Crane pointed out. ‘And you’ve got something of a reputation as a Don Juan.’

  And so he had, but there was good reason for that. Though Beresford was good-looking in an unassuming sort of way, with thick dark hair, eyes which were intelligent (if not always sensitive) and a jaw which was reassuringly square, he had devoted much of his twenties to caring for his mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, and as a result he had not lost his virginity until he’d turned thirty – and had been playing catch-up ever since.

  But for anyone to assume he was the father of Monika’s child …

  They’d been friends for a long time. That was true. And he loved her. Perhaps he was even in love with her; he certainly had been when he was younger. But even so, the thought of them going to bed together was inconceivable – it would have put at risk so much of what they already had.

  ‘The thing is, I’m not sure where she would have found the time to have a relationship,’ he said hastily, in an attempt to cover his own shock and embarrassment. ‘I mean, when she’s not with us, she’s with Louisa, and when she’s not with Louisa, she’s with us.’ He turned to the third member of the team. ‘What do you think, DS Meadows?’

  Meadows didn’t think, she knew – though Paniatowski was not aware that she knew. Dr Shastri, the police surgeon, had dropped enough hints for her to be able to work out what had happened to Paniatowski, and with the help of a motor cycle gang she had once ridden with, she had tracked down the rapists and extracted revenge. She still had the evidence of that revenge in a plastic bag in her deep freeze – and though she knew she should have thrown the frozen testicles out by now, she felt a strange reluctance to do so.

  ‘I said, what do you think, Kate?’ Beresford repeated.

  ‘I think that, with the greatest possible respect, sir, you should try and keep your foot as far away from your mouth as is physically possible.’

  ‘What have I said wrong now?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘You keep badgering the boss about taking leave, when it should be perfectly obvious to you that that’s the last thing she wants to do.’

  ‘Is that how you read the situation, Jack?’ Beresford asked Crane.

  ‘Pretty much, sir,’ Crane admitted.

  ‘I was only thinking about the baby,’ Beresford said defensively.

  ‘I know you were,’ Meadows said, softening a little. ‘Can we change the subject, sir?’

  ‘If you like. To what?’

  ‘There’s a woman who’s been watching the boss since she walked in, and I’m wondering why.’

  ‘Are you sure it’s Monika that she’s watching?’ Beresford asked. ‘She could have her eye on Handsome Jack here – lots of girls do.’

  ‘It’s the boss she’s studying,’ Meadows said. ‘Her eyes followed her to the corridor, and that’s where they’re still fixed, waiting for her to come back.’

  ‘Where is this woman?’ Crane asked.

  ‘Far corner,’ Meadows told him. ‘Take a look at her yourself, but don’t make it too obvious.’

  Crane used the lighting of a cigarette as his excuse to shift position slightly. He saw the woman that Meadows had been talking about, and immediately agreed with her assessment of the situation.

  The woman had auburn hair, and was in her middle to late thirties. She was very attractive – perhaps even beautiful – and her eyes were firmly fixed on the door to the corridor.

  ‘There’s something familiar about her,’ Beresford said quietly, from the corner of his mouth.

  ‘Do you think you know her, sir?’ Crane asked.

  ‘No, in fact, I’m certain I don’t,’ Beresford replied. ‘But like I said, I do know the face.’

  The woman turned, sensing their eyes were on her. When her suspicions were confirmed, she showed no sense of panic, but instead rose from her seat and exited in a calm – almost stately – manner.

  ‘Maybe she’s a reporter,’ Crane speculated.

  Meadows shook her head.

  ‘Reporters don’t move like that,’ she said confidently.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘With such easy grace and confidence – almost as if they were gliding. My guess would be she’s in the performing arts – probably a dancer.’

  ‘Do you know, I think you’re probably right,’ Crane said.

  ‘I’m absolutely certain that I’ve seen that face somewhere before,’ Beresford mused.

  When the train pulled into Whitebridge railway station, no one got on it, and the only people who disembarked were the members of the newly re-formed Whitebridge Players.

  It was unusual for Mark Cotton to arrive anywhere without there being hundreds of screaming fans already there waiting for him, and even though anonymity was part of the plan – which was why he was not accompanied by his usual minders – he still felt vaguely disappointed.

  He looked across the platform at the pile of luggage which was being unloaded from the guards’ van, and clicked his fingers to attract Phil McCann’s attention.

  ‘Get someone to transport all that stuff to the boarding house, will you, Phil?’ he asked.

  ‘You want your stuff taking there as well?’ McCann asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But you won’t really be staying at the boarding house, will you?’

  ‘True,’ Cotton agreed, looking down at the two battered suitcases which bore his name, ‘but then, you see, that isn’t my real luggage either, but merely part of the illusion.’ He turned to the rest of the company. ‘Come, children, let us march on the theatre.’

  Geoff Turnbull had arranged a greeting committee for the company. He had intended it to be comprised of himself, Joan, and the four stagehands – two men and two women – who he had recruited. But then Joan – for some reason of her own – had not wanted to be there, so there was just the five of them.

  Before they had assembled in the foyer, Geoff had given the stagehands a little talk.

  ‘Actors can be very temperamental and need to be handled with care, so don’t just go rushing up to them when they arrive, but wait until they approach you,’ he had said to them.

  The
stagehands had looked a little disappointed, as he had expected them to. He’d smiled, understandingly.

  ‘Look, I know the person you all most want to meet is the great Mark Cotton, and I promise you I’ll introduce each and every one of you to him personally.’

  He could see he had made them very happy, and he was pleased about that. They were a good bunch – stalwarts of local amateur dramatic societies. They all had other jobs, but had decided to take their annual holidays early that year, thus forfeiting their chance to roast on a warm Spanish beach in favour of two weeks’ theatre work in cold, miserable March. Yes, he would certainly introduce them to Mark, and he would also make it quite clear to Cotton how much he – the director – depended on them.

  The foyer door swung open, and the cast walked in. Mark Cotton was leading, of course – he was wearing a trilby hat and a woollen muffler, which was all the disguise that he needed on a freezing winter day – and the rest of the company trooped in behind him, like seagulls following an ocean liner.

  For all his warnings that the stagehands should restrain themselves, Geoff Turnbull found it almost impossible to keep his own emotions in check.

  ‘Mark,’ he said. ‘Mark Cotton! What a truly great pleasure it is to see you again.’

  Cotton took off his muffler, stuffed it into the pocket of his overcoat, and favoured Turnbull with a puzzled frown.

  ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.

  Turnbull heard one of his stagehands suppress a giggle, and felt his heart sink.

  ‘It’s me, Mark!’ he said, almost desperately. ‘It’s Geoff Turnbull! The director.’

  ‘Of course it is,’ Cotton agreed, slipping out of his overcoat and handing it to Turnbull. ‘It was stupid of me not to recognize you. Sorry about that.’

  ‘That’s all right, Mark,’ Turnbull said, conscious that the stagehands were still watching the scene, and wondering what the bloody hell to do with Cotton’s overcoat.

  ‘Has all the work inside the actual theatre itself been completed?’ Cotton asked. ‘Is it safe for us to go inside?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ Turnbull assured him. ‘It wasn’t easy, but the reconstruction has been finished on schedule. I made sure of that.’