Best Served Cold

by Sally Spencer

  ‘Leave the trolley by the table,’ he says, and although he normally enjoys being waited on hand and foot, he adds, ‘I can serve myself,’ because – in all honesty – the woman’s face is enough to put him off his breakfast.

  The maid parks the trolley, and then stands next to it.

  ‘You can go,’ Cotton said.

  But she shows no sign of leaving. Instead, she unbuttons her dress, lets it fall to the floor, and stands there naked.

  ‘Look what Santa’s brought you,’ she says in a grotesque parody of a coquette.

  Her breasts are large and floppy, her stomach sags, and her legs are thick and ungainly.

  ‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ she asks, with a hint of puzzlement in her voice.

  ‘I shall report you to the management,’ he says.

  She smiles. ‘Oh, I don’t work here. I’ve bribed the real maid to let me take her place.’

  ‘How much did you give her?’ he asks, knowing it’s a stupid question and wondering what could have induced him to ask it.

  ‘I gave her a hundred pounds,’ the woman says.

  And now he is getting seriously worried, because, as successful as he is, a hundred pounds is still quite a lot of money to him, and must be a small fortune to the woman.

  ‘You really do have to go,’ he says.

  She walks over to the door, still naked, and then, having effectively cut off his retreat, she turns round again.

  ‘You know you want to,’ she says. ‘Any man would.’

  He is so horrified that even the little tact that he has in him simply melts away.

  ‘You’re disgusting,’ he says. ‘I’d rather screw a greyhound than have sex with you.’

  ‘You don’t mean that,’ she says – and she sounds like she really believes that’s true.

  There is a knock on the door, and then he hears Edgar Gough’s voice say, ‘We need to leave in ten minutes, Mr Cotton.’

  ‘Get in here now, Gough!’ he shouts. ‘I’m about to be attacked by a crazy woman.’

  The door bursts open, knocking the woman off her feet. Gough quickly assesses the situation, then strides across the room and picks up the dress.

  ‘Tell him to go away, Mark,’ the woman says.

  Gough pulls the woman to her feet, and wraps the dress around her.

  ‘Tell him to go away, Mark,’ she says. ‘Tell him to go away.’

  She is still saying it as Gough bundles her into the corridor.

  ‘What did you do next?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘I took her to the room I was sharing with one of my operatives. We managed to get the dress back on her, then we frogmarched her down to my car, and drove her to the other side of Leeds – where we dumped her.’

  ‘And that was it?’

  ‘That was it.’

  ‘But you saw her again?’

  ‘Oh yes, we most certainly did.’

  They are filming the season closer of DCI Prince, a few weeks before Mark Cotton is due to go to Whitebridge. Now that the show is so popular, they have a far bigger budget than they had for the early series, and are doing much more filming on location.

  This final episode is set in a seaside village in South Wales. Filming has finished for the day, and Cotton decides he would like to take a walk along the cliff top.

  Gough goes with him, but not by his side, because Cotton has made it plain that he has no wish for conversation with the hired help.

  They start the walk separated by a distance of five yards, but there is no one else on the path, so Gough drops back further, to give Cotton more space.

  There are fifty yards between them when the woman rises up out of the bracken.

  ‘Here I am, my darling,’ she says.

  It is only the fact that she is so very ugly that makes Cotton recognize her.

  ‘You again!’

  She rushes over to him and throws her arms around him, thus effectively pinning his arms to his sides.

  He tries to break away.

  It should be easy, but it isn’t, because the woman has the strength of the insane.

  And then she starts to push forward, moving him towards the edge of the cliff.

  He is no longer trying to push her away, because there’s a chance that even if he succeeds, the force will pitch him backwards and over the edge.

  Instead, he tries to manoeuvre them both away from the drop – but it isn’t working!

  ‘Please,’ he blubbers, ‘if you want me to sleep with you, I will. I promise I will.’

  And in the time it has taken him to say that, he has lost another few precious inches of firm ground.

  Suddenly, the woman’s head jerks to the side and her grip slackens. And at almost the same moment he feels a strong pair of hands grab him and pull him away from the edge.

  He looks at the woman – felled by a punch in the face – who is lying on the ground and groaning.

  He looks at the man who has saved him.

  His first feeling is relief, but that quickly turns to anger.

  ‘You took your bloody time getting here,’ he says.

  ‘I take it that this time, you reported it to the police,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘No,’ Gough replied. ‘I didn’t.’

  ‘Have I got the wrong end of the stick?’ Paniatowski wondered. ‘Are you saying she wasn’t trying to push him over the cliff after all?’

  ‘No, you’ve not got it wrong.’

  ‘Then how could you not report it?’

  ‘Mr Cotton wouldn’t let me. He said he didn’t want his fans thinking that there were people out there that hated him.’

  ‘Was that the real reason?’

  ‘It was part of the real reason. The other part was that he didn’t want them to know he’d had to be rescued from a mere woman. So what he said was, we’d let her go and I’d better do a more effective job of protecting him in the future, or I’d find myself down at the labour exchange.’

  ‘It sounds like he wasn’t a very nice man,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘He wasn’t nice – but his money was delightful,’ Gough said. He paused. ‘Do you know, I’m almost certain that I saved two lives that day.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Well, I don’t think she was just intending to push him off the cliff – I think she was planning to go with him.’

  ELEVEN

  ‘We’ve investigated cases before in which we’ve started out with eight possible suspects, and in at least half of them the man or woman we ended up arresting wasn’t even on the list,’ Paniatowski said. ‘What makes this case unique is that this time the killer simply has to be on it.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re ruling out the stagehands?’ asked Beresford, lighting up a cigarette.

  Paniatowski tried not to hate the fact that he could drink and smoke while she couldn’t. In some ways, she thought, it might be nice to be Meadows, who didn’t do either, and who, but for her habit of occasionally inviting strangers in leather masks to whip her, could almost have been called a Puritan.

  ‘Give us a quick thumbnail sketch of the stagehands, Kate,’ she said to her sergeant.

  ‘They were all born and bred in Whitebridge,’ Meadows said. ‘One’s a shop assistant, one’s a fishmonger, and two work in the council offices. They’re all married with teenage kids. A couple of them have picked up the odd parking fine, but that’s it as far as brushes with the law go.’

  ‘We’ll interview them, simply because they might have seen something suspicious backstage, but I’d be amazed if one of them turned out to be the killer,’ Paniatowski said.

  ‘Are you also dismissing the idea that the nutter we found in the prop room could have done it?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? According to Gough, she tried to kill him once before.’

  ‘Yes, and look at the way she tried to kill him,’ Paniatowski said. ‘She was attempting to push him over a cliff – which is just about as crude a way of murde
ring somebody as you could think of. Now, if we’d found Cotton’s body with a knife sticking in it, I might have been prepared to consider her as the prime suspect. But what actually happened was much more sophisticated, and the murderer would have needed some knowledge of how the hanging trick worked.’

  ‘Besides, he was killed by someone from the theatrical tradition who was operating within that tradition,’ Crane said.

  Beresford looked uncomfortable. He always did when the DC started showing signs of erudition, because while he knew that he himself was a pretty good bobby, he recognized that Crane was good, too – and Crane, in addition, had a first-class honours degree from Oxford University.

  ‘What do you mean, Jack?’ Paniatowski asked.

  ‘The Spanish Tragedy is a revenge play,’ Crane said, ‘and the central character, Hieronimo, uses the-play-within-the-play as the vehicle for getting his revenge. And that’s just what’s happened here. Whoever killed Mark Cotton used the play as his vehicle in much the same way.’

  ‘You’re serious about this, aren’t you?’ Beresford asked.

  ‘Absolutely. Hieronimo could have killed Balthazar and Lorenzo at any time, yet he chose to kill them when he had an audience. Now look at our murder from the same perspective – the killer could have run Mark Cotton over, or poisoned him, or got hold of a gun and shot him. But he didn’t do any of those things – because he wanted an audience.’

  ‘Jesus, who thinks like that?’ Beresford said.

  ‘Actors,’ Crane replied.

  ‘Normally, we need as many bobbies as we can drum up to pound the streets and knock on doors,’ Paniatowski said. ‘But there’s no call for that kind of legwork on this investigation, because we know where to find Mark Cotton’s killer – he, or she, is either in the boarding house two doors down from the theatre, or at … where do the Turnbulls live, Kate?’

  ‘Twenty-seven Ashley Close.’

  ‘Or at twenty-seven Ashley Close. So here’s how we’ll run the investigation. Inspector Beresford will take an overview of the whole case. He’ll contact Scotland Yard to see if any of the suspects has a criminal record, and – if they have – what kind of criminal record. In addition, he’ll ring up each suspect’s local nick, and use his famously silver tongue to charm the DCI at that nick into assigning some of his lads to a background check. And if any of those background checks throw up anything interesting, he’ll pack his little suitcase and follow up that lead himself.’

  ‘Got it,’ Beresford said.

  ‘Sergeant Meadows and I will interview suspects,’ Paniatowski continued, ‘DC Crane will spend a couple of days as a couch potato.’

  ‘Sorry, boss?’

  ‘The BBC has been filming the production for over a week. I want you to go over every foot of film they’ve got, and then I want you to go over it again – and again – until you find something useful.’

  When Geoff Turnbull walked into the living room of twenty-seven Ashley Close at half-past twelve, he was wearing his best suit.

  ‘You look like you’re dressed to go somewhere special,’ said Joan, who was doing the ironing in front of the television.

  ‘I am,’ Geoff agreed. ‘I’m going down to the town hall first, and then I’m going to police headquarters.’

  ‘Whatever for?’

  ‘I want to know from both of them when they’ll allow us to put the play on again.’

  ‘You want to know what?’

  ‘I realize that the police still have things to do in the theatre – looking for fingerprints and suchlike – but I’d imagine they’ll be out of there by Wednesday, or Thursday at the latest. So we could open again on Friday night and put on a special matinee on Saturday. With the professional cast reduced by one, I’ll have to take over some of the stagehands’ jobs, thereby freeing them up to play a few more of the minor parts, but I don’t mind that, because—’

  ‘Have you gone mad?’ Joan interrupted him. ‘Have you completely lost your mind?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Geoff said.

  And from the expression on his face, it was clear that he didn’t.

  ‘There’s been a murder in that theatre, for God’s sake!’

  ‘True, but they always say, don’t they, that whatever happens, the show must go on?’

  ‘Even if the police had no practical objections, the town council would never agree to it.’

  ‘They might.’

  ‘If they gave you the go-ahead, everybody from local church groups to the national press would be down on them like a ton of bricks. What you’re suggesting is bad taste, Geoff – and you know, deep down inside, that it’s bad taste.’

  Turnbull’s lower lip quivered. ‘But I do so want to direct again,’ he said. ‘I really do.’

  ‘I know you do – and you will,’ Joan promised. ‘The council won’t waste a good theatre now that they’ve got one, and in a couple of months – when all this has died down – they’ll start thinking about setting up a permanent repertory company. And that’s when you should approach them.’

  ‘Maybe you’re right,’ Geoff agreed.

  ‘And you can use the time between now and then to straighten yourself out,’ Joan said.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’m talking about your drinking, Geoff.’

  ‘I do like the occasional drink, sweetheart, I’ll readily admit to that, but to say that I …’

  ‘You’ve been drinking this morning, haven’t you?’

  Turnbull suddenly looked very uncomfortable.

  ‘Just the one,’ he said.

  ‘It’s got as bad as it was in those last few weeks of the old Whitebridge Theatre,’ Joan said. ‘I understand. I really do. But if you’re to have any chance of getting your job back, you’re going to have to rein the drinking in again. Will you do that for me?’

  ‘I’ll try,’ Turnbull promised, ‘but it won’t be easy.’

  ‘Maybe it won’t,’ Joan agreed, ‘but it should be considerably easier, now that the reason for all that heavy drinking is no longer around.’

  Based on his appearance the doctor could have been thirty-five or thirty-six, but there were so many framed certificates mounted on his office wall that Paniatowski assumed he had to be older.

  ‘So how’s the pregnancy going?’ he asked.

  ‘Fine,’ Paniatowski said, non-committally.

  ‘How many other children do you have?’

  ‘One. A daughter. But she’s adopted.’

  ‘So this is the first time you’ll have given birth.’

  Paniatowski smiled. ‘With deductive powers like yours, you’re wasted in medicine,’ she said, and then, hoping to change the subject, she added, ‘Why don’t you jack all this doctoring in and join the force?’

  But the doctor was very much in professional mode and was not to be diverted.

  ‘Since you are relatively mature for a first birth, I assume you’re having regular check-ups,’ he said.

  ‘I’m doing all the things my own doctor told me to do,’ Paniatowski replied. ‘I’ve stopped smoking and drinking, I’m eating properly, I’m getting plenty of rest, and I’m avoiding doing anything that might be physically straining.’

  ‘All that’s very good, but since this is the first time for you, I really think you should—’

  ‘Good heavens, what a scatterbrain I am,’ Paniatowski interrupted. ‘I was supposed to be going to the psychiatric unit, and yet somehow I’ve ended up in obstetrics.’

  The doctor smiled. ‘You’re telling me to shut up about your condition, aren’t you?’ he asked.

  ‘That’s right,’ Paniatowski agreed. ‘I’m not here to talk about me – I’ve come to talk about Maggie Maitland.’

  ‘Ah yes, our theatre bag lady.’

  ‘If it’s at all possible, I’d like to ask her a few questions.’

  ‘It’s perfectly possible. As far as I’m concerned, you can question her until you’re blue in the face. But if you’re expecting her t
o answer your questions, you’re in for a big disappointment, because she’s still traumatized.’

  ‘What caused the condition?’

  ‘There’s no physical reason for it, as far as we can tell, so the chances are she was reacting to some kind of shock.’

  ‘Like seeing the man who she loved murdered?’

  ‘That would certainly have done it.’

  ‘Do you think there’s any chance she might have killed Mark Cotton herself?’ Paniatowski said, because even though she’d pretty much dismissed it as a possibility herself, she had to ask.

  ‘Could you describe to me the way in which the murder was actually carried out?’

  Paniatowski sketched out what had happened.

  When she’d finished, the doctor said, ‘Whoever it was who killed Mark Cotton had to be both cold-blooded and logical. Would you agree?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If Maggie Maitland had had that kind of mind, you wouldn’t have found her surrounded by a heap of rubbish.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Absolutely not. She’d have worked out some way of getting rid of her empty corned beef tins and water bottles, because she simply wouldn’t have been able to live with them.’

  ‘What’s happening to her now?

  ‘She’s currently undergoing treatment.’

  ‘Could you be a little more specific?’

  ‘Would you like the fancy medical name for it, or should I just put it in layman’s terms?’

  ‘I’d prefer it in layman’s terms.’

  ‘We’re pumping her full of all kinds of drugs, and waiting to see how she reacts to them.’

  ‘When can you expect results?’

  ‘It might be half an hour before she’s normal again, or it might take much longer. And a word of warning here – when I say normal, what I mean is, as normal as she ever gets.’

  ‘You think she’s mentally ill?’

  The doctor smiled again.

  ‘Strictly speaking, none of us are completely sane, which means we are all mentally ill, Chief Inspector – so what we have to assess is the degree of that illness – and anybody who’s so obsessed with an actor that she’s been hiding in a theatre for perhaps as long as a couple of weeks isn’t going to win any sanity Olympics, now is she?’