by Jo Bannister
Rosie nodded. “Not if I resign.”
Impatience flickered across Sale’s face. “Rosie, the last thing I want is your resignation! And the second-last thing I want is for you to do something you’re uncomfortable with, and I suppose that includes leaving him to cope alone with whatever mess he’s got himself into. If he has. Maybe he hasn’t, maybe it’ll all work out all right. Damn it, maybe he’ll identify the killer and make heroes of us all! But I feel we should be prepared in case that isn’t how it happens.”
From this perspective it was hard to remember how they’d let a discussion of the options deteriorate into a slanging match. Rosie nodded slowly. “If the worst comes to the worst, would it get the Chronicle off the hook if you fired me then? As publicly as necessary?”
He thought about it. “Probably. But I don’t want a sacrifice. You’re worth more to the paper writing your page than hung out to dry to appease the mob. I think we have to brazen it out. Keep emphasising that we’ve done nothing wrong, that you stood by a friend at a time when there was no evidence against him, that when that changed – if that changes – you behaved honourably in a difficult situation.”
In every way that mattered he’d come round to her point of view. Which was ironic, really, because the more she thought about it the more she thought he was right first time. “I appreciate that, Dan. And like I said before, I don’t think I have much choice as to what I do now. But you have to protect the paper. If this blows up in our faces, I’ll go. Alex will run the page. With any luck people won’t see her as involved, so when I go they’ll want her to succeed.”
“Rosie, you haven’t listened to a word I’ve said!”
“I have, Dan. And I really do appreciate it. But I’m not going to put thirty people’s jobs and Matt Gosling’s investment at risk. If we find out that Shad killed that girl, you can have my resignation or you can fire me, but one way or the other I’ll go.”
Sale didn’t say anything because he hoped, even in that extremity, he’d be able to persuade her not to.
After a moment Rosie spoke again. “Dan, tell me if it would be a mistake. But I think maybe I ought to go over to PVF and talk to them. If – and God forbid – Shad stabbed that girl, the most likely reason is that she was pursuing him for their poxy programme. If I ask her face to face, I think maybe Marta Frank would tell me. If she was – well, at least we’d know the worst. If she wasn’t, then it was someone else and we could start breathing again.”
Sale too would be glad to know, one way or the other. And one way or the other, he thought it could take some of the heat out of the situation if the Chronicle and PVF were seen to be on speaking terms again. “All right. With one proviso.”
“Which is?”
“However much she annoys you, you don’t deck her too.”
Chapter Eleven
PVF was a very small television company: the receptionist had to ask someone in a back office to watch the desk while she showed the visitor upstairs. If it hadn’t been Rosie Holland she might simply have given her directions, but she was uneasy about giving Rosie free rein in this place.
You’ve Been Had wasn’t the only show they made but it was the only one with much of a following. As its producer, Marta Frank was entitled to a decent office on the second floor and her initial in the company logo. The others were Peters and Vaughn, but the partnership was known throughout the industry as Puff TV, which was unfortunate, but better than not being known at all.
Frank was waiting at her door, showed Rosie warily inside. She didn’t know what to expect of this meeting, only that it was better to get it over than to avoid it.
All the way over Rosie had been rehearsing what to say, and how to say it without getting thrown out. In the event it wasn’t a problem. Whatever else Marta Frank was, she was a professional – she wanted to know why Rosie had come. If she decided to throw her out after that, she’d get someone bigger to do it.
Rosie kept her voice low and stuck rigidly to the point. “I suggest that, as far as we can, we put past differences behind us and concentrate on the present situation. The murder of Jackie Pickering makes everything that’s gone before vanishingly trivial. I don’t know if it’s anything to do with me or you; I think we’d both feel a lot better if we could establish that it wasn’t.”
It was a promising start. Frank dipped her head in fractional acknowledgement. It was Rosie’s turn again.
“All right. I don’t know how much the police told you about how Jackie was found. Did they tell you who found her?”
This time Marta Frank shook her head fractionally.
“Shad Lucas.”
Rosie left his name hanging in the air. If it meant nothing to Frank, their business was largely complete: Pickering wasn’t hunting Shad and it was merest coincidence that he stumbled on to her murder. In that case both women could down a stiff whisky in celebration and get on with their lives.
Marta Frank’s narrow eyebrows rocketed up her alabaster brow, and Rosie’s heart plummeted. Her voice was leaden. “I see the name means something to you.”
“Of course it does! I read about him in your newspaper. I didn’t know he found Jackie.” A pause while she thought about that. Rosie saw a shock wave travel through her eyes as the implications struck. “You mean … he didn’t just find her?”
“I don’t mean anything of the kind,” said Rosie roughly. “I don’t know what happened. He doesn’t know what happened. He can’t remember. But the same thing occurred to me that’s just occurred to you – that if he went to the station to meet Jackie it was because of what occurred between you and me. If she lured him there to have a shot at him for your programme and he panicked and lost control, then you and I are not blameless in her death.”
Frank’s voice was thin with shock. “Ms Holland, what exactly do you want me to say?”
“I want you to say that I’m imagining this. That it never occurred to you to get back at me by hounding a vulnerable young man who has the misfortune to be a friend of mine. That Jackie may well have annoyed someone on your hit list, but it wasn’t Shad and therefore it wasn’t because I hit Dick Chauncey. That’s what I want you to say. What I expect you to tell me is the truth, however unpalatable it may be.”
She didn’t get a reply for so long she was beginning to think she wouldn’t get one. It wouldn’t be difficult to draw an inference from that. Rosie was beginning to fear the worst.
Then Frank drew a slow breath. “All right. Cards on the table? We considered it. I knew we wouldn’t get under your guard again; I thought that turning our attentions to a friend of yours might be just as rewarding. Shad Lucas was an obvious choice because of who he is, what he does. What he’s done for you. If you use the services of a psychic you have to expect raised eyebrows. From our point of view, it was a win/win situation. If he’s genuinely clairvoyant it would make an amazing programme; and if he isn’t it would be screamingly funny, not least because of how it would rebound on you.
“So yes, I thought about doing a programme on him; and I knew he wouldn’t cooperate so it would involve subterfuge. But the more I thought about it, the more uneasy I became. I decided we weren’t justified in exposing him to ridicule primarily in order to embarrass you.”
“That was generous,” murmured Rosie.
Frank twitched a brief grin. “Not really. If it went off half-cocked, we’d have got the backlash. What we do, it’s only funny if nobody gets hurt. You weren’t hurt by what we did: annoyed maybe, but not hurt. Most of our subjects aren’t even annoyed. When they’ve got over the surprise they enjoy the joke. It’s their fifteen minutes of fame. I don’t want to see anyone damaged.”
“And you knew you could damage Shad.”
“So I decided not to do it. He’s a very private young man, isn’t he? I don’t know if that’s from choice or necessity or just how it’s worked out, but I was afraid he’d be unable to cope with either the fame if he acquitted himself well or the ridicule if he didn’t. I have no
idea if he’s a real psychic, or even if there is such a thing, but the more I learned about him the surer I was that he’s not entirely normal. After that I didn’t see how we could use him. It would be like making fun of the mentally handicapped – too easy for it to be amusing.”
Rosie hadn’t expected her to have scruples, even these rather pragmatic ones. “I’m glad you recognise that people are entitled to their privacy.”
Marta Frank bridled. “The pity is that you didn’t reach the same conclusion three months ago. Shad Lucas lived here in total obscurity for six or seven years until you came along. You used him. You hurt him two different ways: you got him shot and you made him famous. Now everyone in Skipley knows it’s not just water he can find, it’s missing persons and dead bodies. That’s a lot of fame for someone whose only ambition for eight years was to keep his head down.”
That hurt; and it hurt because it was true. Rosie’s voice actually trembled. “You think I don’t know that? That’s why I’m here. Because I’m scared shitless that I started a sequence of events that led to a killing. I don’t think, in his right mind, he’d harm anyone, however much they threatened him. But I can’t quite dismiss the possibility that someone threatening him with that – notoriety, exposure, the full glare of publicity he wouldn’t begin to know how to handle – would drive him momentarily crazy. That that’s what he daren’t remember: a moment’s madness in which he struck out at something that terrified him and Jackie ended up dead. That’s what I need from you, Ms Frank: your word that, whatever they were both doing that evening, they hadn’t gone to the station to meet one another.”
Occasionally Frank did cruel things but she wasn’t a cruel woman. She could have prolonged this for her own satisfaction, but she didn’t. Her voice warmed a little. “Rosie, I understand how you feel. I feel the same way: if you’re implicated, so am I. So I’ll tell you everything I know. We looked at the possibility of doing a programme on Shad Lucas, and we dismissed it. I can’t swear that Jackie wasn’t there to see him, but she wasn’t there to see him for me.”
The relief was almost enough to make Rosie cry. She cleared her throat instead. “Um … OK. Fine. Then what was she working on?”
“For me? Nothing that could have got her into any trouble.”
“Could she have been working for someone else as well? Doing research for another programme? – something hard-hitting enough to pitch her against someone with more to lose than his dignity?”
Frank considered. “She wasn’t working on any other programmes for us. She just might have been working on her apprentice piece.”
“Apprentice piece?”
“Researcher isn’t the best job in television. It’s hard work, long hours, it can get unpleasant and it doesn’t get the recognition it deserves. Mostly you only get noticed when you’ve cocked up. But it’s a good way to get started. It puts you where the action is, and if you’re good enough at some point you get the chance to show what you can do. An ambitious researcher is always looking for the story that everyone else missed. You get a good one and you may not be a researcher much longer.”
“So Jackie could have been looking for her ticket to a better job?”
“I’m sure she was. No one ever accused Jackie of lacking ambition. But if she found it, I don’t know what it was.”
Rosie thought about it; and as she thought she felt the sense of relief that none of this was her fault begin to grow thin and dissipate like morning mist burning off. “There’s one possibility – that Jackie thought she could land Shad after you’d given up on him. She knew you wanted another crack at me; she knew you quite fancied Shad until the difficulties became obvious. If she thought she could land him safely, that could have been her apprentice piece.
“She was a bright girl, I gather, and Shad isn’t much of a ladies’ man. He hasn’t a lot of friends: if she took the time to cultivate him he’d have flowered for her. But if he thought she liked him too, and then it turned out she was only using him to get at me …” Rosie shook her head unhappily, the brown curls dancing. “If she was complaining he’d slapped her face, that I could believe. But a knife? Whatever she did to him, I don’t believe he stabbed her.”
“Somebody did.”
“Then it was somebody else.” She wasn’t sure if she genuinely believed that or was trying to convince herself. “So maybe her story was on someone else too. Would she have told anyone in the office?”
Frank doubted it. “I think she’d keep it to herself. This was her bid for the top, she’d be scared of someone muscling in.”
“What about notes? Did she keep any?”
“The police looked when they came here on Thursday. They took her diary, her notebooks and her computer. But I don’t think they found anything. I wouldn’t expect them to.”
“The other researchers – might they know anything?”
“Again, nothing the police found helpful. But you’re welcome to talk to them.” She led the way down the corridor to the large room shared by the junior staff. Four of the desks were occupied; another was empty and unnaturally tidy.
Marta Frank didn’t need to tell them who Rosie Holland was but she did anyway. She asked them to help if they could.
They were young, around Jackie’s age, keen and bright, and they filled in the gaps for themselves. Frank wanted this sorted quickly and the blame lodged if possible on someone unconnected with You’ve Been Had.
“I’ll leave you to it.” The producer smiled. “Just in case there’s something the GC know that senior management isn’t supposed to.”
“GC?” asked Rosie when she’d left the room.
“Gophers Club,” said one of the researchers. “It defines our status in the organisation so aptly that no one even thinks of it as a joke any more.”
Rosie sympathised. “Which is why, I suppose, researchers want to become producers.”
“That and the money.”
“And the best way is by pulling off a coup.”
“It’s about the only way, at least around here.” That note of sourness in the girl’s voice reflected the frustration which had driven her colleague to hunt a dangerous quarry.
“Would a psychic gardener have been a suitable candidate?”
“Ms Holland,” said a young man in a bow tie, “if Jackie’d said she could get Shad Lucas we’d have killed her, and scrambled over the body to get there first.”
Someone said, “Tom!” disapprovingly, but no one contradicted him.
“Did she ever mention what she was working on for this apprentice piece of hers?”
“Not to us. I wouldn’t expect her to: television is a dog-eat-dog world. Maybe to a personal friend?”
“Who were her friends?”
A chorus of shrugs went round the room. “There was Debbie,” suggested Tom.
“Debbie?”
“Debbie Burgess. They did their degree together. I don’t know where she lives but they talked by phone at least once a week. Jackie tried to get her a job here, but Marta didn’t think she was tough enough. There was a bit of a history, I think.”
“A history?”
“I think so,” said Tom. “I’m only going off what I overheard, but yes, there was something. I could never quite make out if it was a mental illness, trouble with the law or what. For obvious reasons Jackie kept her voice down when they were talking about it.”
Rosie nodded, just absorbing information. She went and stood by Jackie’s desk, hoping for inspiration. “How did she seem? In the last week or two, say.”
“All right,” said one of the girls.
But Tom knew better. He seemed to have taken rather an interest in Jackie Pickering. “I thought she was preoccupied.”
“Really? In what way?” But he wasn’t able to be specific. Rosie tried putting words in his mouth. “As if, maybe, there’d been developments in something she’d been working on?”
He nodded. “That could have been it.”
“But she didn’t talk ab
out it, and she didn’t keep notes.”
“’Fraid not.”
Defeated, Rosie’s gaze dropped to the desk. At length she said, “Chicken fried rice, spring rolls, lychees.”
They stared at her as if she was mad. The boy in the bow tie ventured, “Pardon?”
“Chicken fried rice, spring rolls, lychees. It’s what it says on the phone pad.”
They thought it was pretty obvious why. “It’s what she ordered for lunch.”
“When?”
One of the girls knew. “Wednesday. I had some of her lychees. It was the last day she was here.” She sniffed.
“So she’d have phoned the order in … when – about midday?”
“Nearer eleven thirty. Why?”
“Because it isn’t the last thing she wrote on this pad. Over the top, and therefore after eleven thirty, she scribbled, ‘Got you, you bastard!’”
Nobody knew what it meant, but clearly the police had missed it when they cleared her desk. Rosie found an envelope and manoeuvred the pad into it with a pencil. “I’ll take it round to Superintendent Marsh. Just in case it’s significant.”
Marsh was in his office when she arrived so she took it up and explained how she’d come by it. He listened patiently, giving little away. She couldn’t tell if he thought it meant anything or not.
But he was glad she’d brought it to him. It occurred to him she might have served her own cause better by concealing it. He felt moved to offer something in return.
“Forensics have come back on the samples we sent them. The fingerprints on the knife were Lucas’s – all of them. And the blood on the front of his shirt was Jackie Pickering’s.”
Neither was unexpected. Shad had tried to help her and she’d bled on him. The absence of any other prints on the blade could suggest merely that the killer had been more careful than the man who discovered the body.