A Theatrical Murder

by David W Robinson

  Nat shook his head. “You’d have to ask Edgar or Irma… oh. The one thing I can tell you. It was the very hot summer.”

  “Seventy-six.” Joe toyed with his glass a moment. He wanted his next question to stun Nat, and a relaxed pause would add to the shock value. “Tell me about Harriet Deakin.”

  Stunned or otherwise by the sudden and invasive change of subject, Nat maintained his calm aplomb. “I don’t want to tell you about Hattie.”

  Joe leaned forward turning up the pressure. “Well, you’d better because if you don’t you’ll leave me to draw my own conclusions and when I take them to the cops, they’ll be knocking on your empty head for answers.”

  Nat drank lazily from his glass. “You’re clutching at straws, so do what you want. I have nothing to say.”

  “But I have. This business, the two killings is all about drugs, so the police say, and they also reckon they’re getting close to Sedgwick’s source and his British contacts. They can’t work out how he transfers the drugs from him to them, so they’ve been watching him, checking on who he meets and where. The one set of people they didn’t check on was the cast of Hamlet. One possible explanation is you and this Deakin woman. You’re the inside man, she’s the distributor.”

  Nat went from complete disinterest to outrage in a second. “What? Are you out of your mind?”

  “What am I supposed to think? I have a girl, Teri, who’s suddenly afraid of her boyfriend. Why? Because he’s acting secretively. Hiding his emails from her, disappearing for meetings he won’t tell her about, leaving the room to take telephone calls. There are two possible explanations. You’re screwing around with this Deakin woman, or you’re dealing in drugs.”

  Nat’s features clouded and his knuckles tightened on the glass.

  “Y’see, Nat, we’re a cliquey lot from Sanford. We don’t like those people who put on our own. I’ve known Sylvia Goodson all my life and I’ve known Teri since she was a little girl. I’m no scrapper, but I have friends who are, and we’re not worried about the drug pushing gangsters backing you up. We’ll take ’em on. Anything to protect our own.”

  Nat released his grip on the cup, and he too sat forward, glanced around and lowered his voice. “Let’s get a few things straight. I repeat, I have nothing to do with any drug dealing. I never have. I knew Malcolm was using and probably dealing, but it’s had nothing to do with me and certainly nothing to do with Hattie.”

  “So you’re just bedding this Deakin woman, are you? Ready to drop Teri the minute you have the chance?” Joe shook his head. “It changes nothing.”

  “I am not bedding Hattie, as you put it. I’m not doing anything with Hattie, other than working with her.”

  With the rising feeling that he may have made a mistake, Joe frowned. “What? Working? What on?”

  “You mean on what.”

  “Never mind my English. Explain yourself, man.”

  “I will.” Nat paused again. “Do you know what I mean by star quality?”

  “A phrase you use when you’re trying to charm the knickers of a young woman.”

  Refusing to rise to Joe’s barb, Nat said nothing for a moment. It was as if he were rehearsing his material and delivery. When he did speak, his natural enthusiasm began to show through.

  “Star quality is what shows like The X Factor and Britain’s Got Talent are all about. It’s impossible to define but you know it when you see it. Teri has it. She is star quality… or rather, she could be. She could be the next Judi Dench, Maggie smith. If she hits the heights over the next few years, she will stay there. Forever. She will still be taking on starring roles when you and I are long dead and buried.”

  Joe absorbed the information. “What does this have to do with Harriet Deakin?”

  “I’m getting there. Let’s keep talking about Teri for the minute. She’s still quite green, but she’s maturing quickly, and what she needs is a platform. Something to catapult her into the nation’s collective consciousness. I have that something on my laptop. A drama on the life of Kathy Kirby. Don’t pretend you don’t know who Kathy Kirby is… or was.”

  “I remember Kathy Kirby a damned sight better than you do, son.”

  “Yeah you’re the right age.” Nat scowled and went on with his tale. “I’ve researched it, I’ve written the first draft. I did most of it before I even met Teri. Sedgwick got in touch regarding this production of Hamlet, and we were searching for an Ophelia. I saw Teri in a production of Shelagh Delaney’s Taste of Honey at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds, and the moment I saw her I knew she was Ophelia. More than that, I knew she was Kathy. I got her into Hamlet. All right, so at the time I didn’t plan on our becoming, er, an item. That happened quite naturally. And if you know Teri as well as you say you do, you’ll know that you can’t pressure her into dropping her knickers on the promise of a major role. Her casting was completely above board.”

  Again Joe considered the information. Drinking off his beer, he said, “Let’s say I accept all this. You still haven’t mentioned Harriet Deakin.”

  “Hattie is a producer and director. She’s well known in TV circles, and she has the ear of many people in the commissioning departments of not only the BBC and independent channels, but a lot of smaller, independent production companies, many of whom would readily snap up any work she brings to them. I approached Hattie in September. She was all for the project, but she’d never heard of Teri, so she came along to our opening night in Newcastle, and she raved about this new girl. If anyone can make Kathy happen, it’s Hattie. If anything can make Kathy come alive on screen, it’s Teri. And I’ll let you into another little secret. The reason you can’t find Harriet Deakin on the web is because she works under her maiden name of Harriet Fothergill.”

  Joe’s ears coloured. He had to silently admit to himself that the tale had a ring of authenticity about it, and what he knew about TV productions could be written on a table napkin.

  “So why all the secret meetings?”

  “Major TV productions don’t just happen, and this will be major. They’re planned in minute detail, and the first stage is the script. It doesn’t have to be one hundred percent, but it has to be ninety-nine. I’ve spent my free time working on it and consulting with Hattie.”

  “You were heard to say, ‘now that Sedgwick is out of the picture’—”

  “We have to get a move on,” Nat interrupted. “It’s true. When Hamlet comes to an end, we have no income. None of us. I don’t want Teri shooting off to Barbados to film an advert for foreign holidays. We need to get this project before the commissioning editors as soon as possible.”

  The more he listened, the more Joe believed he had misjudged Nat. “Why the hell didn’t you tell Teri all of this?”

  “Because I didn’t want to kill her ambition before it got started. Listen to me, Joe, I know what it can do to a young actor to have his hopes dashed.”

  Joe noticed he was suddenly the more familiar and friendly, ‘Joe’ again.

  “When I was about Teri’s age, I was up for the lead in a new drama. The life of a young copper in Herefordshire. I got the part. When the series aired, the world would see just how great an actor I could be. I was made.”

  “Sounds a bit like Heartbeat.”

  “A lot like heartbeat, but twenty first century, not nineteen-sixties, and set on the Welsh border, not in Yorkshire. Good, early evening drama.”

  “So what happened?”

  “The company pulled the plug. Too expensive. This was a time when reality TV was establishing itself as the new driving force. Not a fraction as expensive as drama. We lost out and whatever hopes I had, crashed when the TV company backed down. Everything I had planned was in pieces. I didn’t want to know television. I didn’t want to know acting. I almost gave it up for good. It was only the efforts of my agent that stopped me throwing in the towel. But I didn’t work for eighteen months and when I did come back, it was to bit parts. I know how badly that hit me, Joe, and I didn’t want the same
to happen to Teri. So I kept it secret. The only people in the world who know about this project are Hattie and me… and you now.”

  “Teri said you’d mentioned the project to her.”

  “Once. I was drunk at the time.”

  Joe tutted and shook his head. “All right, son, I believe you. Now you’ve had your say, I’m gonna have mine. Teri is undecided. Right now she thinks you’re a drug dealer who’s murdered Sedgwick, and she’s scared that she may be next. Tell her what’s going on. Bring her into your confidence.”

  “And if the deal falls through?”

  “She’ll deal with it. Trust me, I know her. She’s from Sanford. She’s tough. Didn’t you say you could never have pressured her into sleeping with you? That’s how we bring our kids up. Determined, single minded, used to getting up and fighting back when they’re kicked in the teeth.” Joe swilled down the last of his beer. Putting the glass down, he nodded in the direction of the ballroom and got to his feet. “I’d better get back to Sheila and Brenda, and you need to get back to Teri. Tell her what you’ve just told me.”

  Nat, too, stood up. “I’ll think about it.”

  Chapter Ten

  The bingo was over and Emms had left music playing, to which some of the club members were already up and dancing. As Joe entered, the music shifted from Louis Armstrong’s What A Wonderful World to Billy Ray Cyrus’ Achey-Breaky Heart, a signal for half the room to hit the dance floor, and inside a matter of half a minute, there were three rows of line-dancers performing the same, and in Joe’s opinion silly, movements roughly in time to the music.

  Sheila and Brenda had wasted no time getting to the dance floor. So, too had Sylvia, Teri and Michelle Arran, leaving Nat and Les Tanner with each other for company, a pair who had so little in common that they sat on opposite sides of the table, nursing their drinks and saying nothing.

  Les appeared ill at ease, and Joe knew why. Teri had been talking to Sylvia, who had passed the message to Les, and the ex TA officer dearly longed to give Nat a piece of his mind, but he could not. As a departmental manager for Sanford Borough Council, Les understood the principle of neutrality, and Teri was a family matter. Les was not family. It was therefore incumbent upon him to keep his nose out. On the other hand, his relationship with Sylvia had endured a good few years now, and he felt protective of her. Anyone causing pain to a relative of Sylvia’s naturally hurt Sylvia by default, and Les felt duty-bound to champion her. Left alone with Nat, Joe felt it was as good a time as any for Les to have a go, but instead, he fumed silently, and Joe smiled at his self-imposed impotence.

  He smiled even more at the efforts of the line dancers trying their best to keep up with the simple rhythm of two or three steps, a kick or a turn and another repetition, all performed with thumbs hooked into jeans’ pockets… or imaginary pockets on imaginary jeans if you happened to be wearing a suit or a dress.

  “Keeps you fit, Joe,” George Robson declared as the music ended and he came off the dance floor bathed in sweat.

  “I’ll stick to slinging pies and mugs of tea,” Joe retorted and retired to the bar for refills while Sheila and Brenda took their seats.

  With the final third of the night now ahead of them, service was a little quicker. Most people would have stocked up on drink immediately after the bingo or while the dancers were on the floor. Joe found himself second in line behind Michelle Arran.

  Coming away from the bar with a Bacardi and coke, she gave him a half embarrassed smile. “A last quick one. Before we go back to our digs. We expect to be moving tomorrow.”

  “Nat told me.” Joe wondered why she felt the need to explain anything to him. Ordering his drinks, he dismissed the notion as a facet of her character, and said, “Nat also told me you worked on the same production of Oliver Twist as him and Sedgwick and Raif Dempster. Come to think, you told me about it, too.”

  Gulping down a generous slug of her drink, she nodded. “Hmm. Yes. Nat played Noah Catchpole. Minor part. He was only on set for a few days.” She turned to leave.

  “Long enough to pick up the aggravation between Sedgwick and Dempster?”

  She gave a curious, grunting little laugh. “You only had to be there for a few hours to pick that up.” Again she made to move away, but Joe stayed her.

  “It was that bad?”

  “I really do have to get a move on, Mr Murray, but to answer your question, yes, it was that bad. It was vile. Both men were professional and if you watched the scenes between them, you would never guess just how much they hated each other, but it made life very uncomfortable for the rest of us.”

  “But how would Dempster get to the theatre while he was on stage in Mablethorpe?”

  Joe was simply thinking out loud, but Michelle took it as another cue.

  “Raif Dempster wasn’t in the theatre, Mr Murray. He would have been seen and recognised.”

  “Would you have seen him?” Joe demanded.

  She shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. I was in the wings, stage right. If he’d been opposite me, yes, I would have seen him. If he’d been in the flies, or behind me, no I wouldn’t, but others would. He had no backstage pass so he couldn’t or shouldn’t have been there.” She gulped down more Barcardi. “Besides, as you just said, he was on stage in Mablethorpe at the time.”

  He watched her return to Sylvia’s table then paid for and collected his drinks.

  “Looking very pensive, Joe,” Sheila said when he returned from the bar.

  “Just thinking how people can acquit themselves without realising it,” he said. “Michelle wossname, Arran, was just telling me how Raif Dempster can’t have been in the theatre last night. She was standing in the wings stage right and she’d have seen him.”

  “And how does that clear her?”

  “The shot that killed Sedgwick came from the left.”

  “Ah.”

  On the dance floor Brenda and Owen Frickley were jiving to Jailhouse Rock while the audience clapped, urging them on. Tucked in the corner from where he controlled his equipment, Emms appeared ready to take the stage again, and Joe suddenly felt very tired.

  “Trying to cram too much into a short time,” Sheila diagnosed. “Joe, the murder of Malcolm Sedgwick is not your problem. I’m sure they’ll clear Teri’s name when they catch the real culprit.”

  “I don’t think Teri’s innocence is in question.”

  “Then why so determined?”

  “I don’t like to be beaten.”

  When she returned from the dance floor, Brenda was in agreement with Sheila. “If you like to win so badly, you should be concentrating on this investigator from the insurance company. Help her prove who burned down The Lazy Luncheonette so you can keep your money.”

  Joe did not reply, but watched Nat, Teri and Michelle bid Sylvia and Les goodnight, then checked the time.

  “Think I’ll turn in,” he said.

  “Only ten o’clock, Joe,” Brenda said. “Bit early.”

  “Tired,” he lied. “I’ll catch you at breakfast tomorrow morning.”

  “Leave your phone on, Joe,” Sheila ordered. “Just in case. We don’t want a repeat of that time in the café when you couldn’t breathe.”

  It was one of those incidents he had forgotten about, but which came back to him as he made his way to his first floor room. A series of minor health matters conspired to send him to A & E one night, convinced he was having a heart attack. It wasn’t, but it might have been. The outcome was a week in Torremolinos during which he managed to stop smoking. The fatigue he felt now was nothing like he had experienced then, and anyway, he was not in any pain. Giving the matter wider consideration, he conceded to himself that his two friends may have had a point. Perhaps he was letting the whole Sedgwick thing get to him.

  In the sanctuary of his room, he booted up his computer, and hooked into the hotel’s wi-fi, promising himself that all he was going to do was follow up on the car accident involving the four actors.

  He found only two references.r />
  The first was a purely factual report from a date in the long hot summer of 1976.

  A driver lost control of her car last night, and the vehicle ran into the river near Bill Quay. Four passengers, Irma Karlinsky, Edgar Anderton, Malcolm Sedgwick and Ralph Dempster, survived but the driver, Ms Fay Lierman (22) drowned while attempting to escape the sunken vehicle. Her body was found 100 yards downstream from the site of the accident. Early reports indicate that all five occupants of the vehicle were under the influence of narcotics at the time.

  The second report came from several weeks later at the inquest into Fay Lierman’s death.

  The coroner had returned a verdict of death by misadventure, concluding that the accident would not have happened had Fay Lierman not ingested large quantities of marijuana before driving the car to Bill Quay.

  As he delivered the verdict, a young woman, later identified as the victim’s sister, Rachel Lierman (19) stood and remonstrated with him.

  “This inquest is a travesty. A whitewash. No way would my sister ever be driving that car when she was stoned.” Ms Lierman pointed an accusing finger at the four survivors. “One of them was driving. One of them murdered her. They should be on trial.”

  Ms Lierman had to be restrained and escorted from the court.

  Once he read the second item, Joe then searched for Rachel Lierman, but could find no other trace of her, and although it was a tempting alternative to drug smuggling, he ultimately dismissed the notion. If Fay Lierman’s death were the killer’s motivation, Sedgwick would have been dead a long time ago, and not just him, but the other three as well.

  Joe checked the time and it was still pre eleven o’clock. Notwithstanding the early morning and long hours he worked at The Lazy Luncheonette, he rarely went to bed until after eleven, and he saw no reason why his current fatigue should persuade him otherwise, so he began to search for the production of Oliver Twist in which they had all been involved.