The Deadline Series Boxset

by Wendy Soliman

  ‘Sorry.’ Patrick held up his hands. ‘Stupid question. I should have asked if you were hanging in there.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Alexi sighed. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Have the police made any progress?’ Patrick asked.

  Alexi sat a little straighter, barely conscious of Patrick’s question, as a thought struck her.

  ‘What is it, hon?’ Cheryl asked. ‘You look like you just had a lightbulb moment.’

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing.’ Alexi wasn’t ready to share her fledgling idea just yet.

  ‘Well, if it’s any consolation,’ Patrick said, ‘the finest legal brains in the boss’s empire think the killer is someone with an axe to grind against Juliette; not a serial killer starting out on a spree because he has a grudge against racehorses, cooking contests, or alien spacecraft.’

  ‘Alien spacecraft.’

  Patrick grinned. ‘Just trying to lighten the mood.’

  Alexi sent him a droll glance. ‘Very comforting.’

  Patrick took the seat beside Alexi and nodded his thanks when Drew placed a mug of coffee in front of him. Verity started to grizzle, so Cheryl took her back.

  ‘She needs changing,’ she said, disappearing through the door to their living quarters.

  Drew mumbled something about having things to do, and left the room as well. Thanks a bunch, guys! Silence stretched between her and Patrick, taut and uncomfortable. Alexi made no effort to break it and concentrated her attention on her coffee.

  ‘You know, if I could have my time over, I’d do things very differently.’ Patrick had her full attention. Alexi had seldom heard him sounding so unsure of himself and he almost never apologised about anything because he was never in the wrong. ‘I was so wound up with the paper’s business, trying to juggle so many balls at once, that I lost sight of what was really important to me. I tried so hard not to discriminate in your favour that I finished up doing the precise opposite. I was a damned fool!’ He paused, holding her captive with an intense gaze. ‘I loved you absolutely. I still do.’ He shook his head, looking bereft and full of self-disgust. ‘But I blew it and I know you won’t come back to London.’

  ‘No, I won’t. Despite the fact that this sleepy little town appears to be murder central right now, I like it here. The pace is slower and I’m less likely to burn out. I have the book commission to keep me occupied, I can pick and choose the stories I pitch to you and other editors, and a business interest in this place to keep me motivated.’ She smiled. ‘I also have friends who care about me and a social life of sorts that doesn’t revolve around the next big story. There’s something to be said for that.’

  ‘I get the attraction.’ Patrick flashed a self-deprecating smile. ‘Who would have guessed?’

  ‘The pace of city life gets to everyone in the end so you did me a favour in some respects. If you’d fought my corner more vigorously, I’d still be slaving away on The Sentinel, not realising that I was running on empty.’

  ‘And loving it.’

  ‘Yeah, until I came down here and discovered there’s more to life than scooping the opposition.’ Alexi relaxed a little, even though she wasn’t entirely comfortable with the soul-searching nature of their conversation. ‘But you would miss the cut and thrust of the newspaper after a week, no question.’

  ‘Is that why you won’t consider taking me back? Because you’re no longer comfortable in my world?’

  ‘No, Patrick, what we had is beyond life support. It worked but we’ve changed, or I have, and so now it won’t.’

  ‘It could.’ He trapped her hand beneath his on the surface of the table. ‘London isn’t a long drive. I could come down a couple of days a week…’ He shook his head. ‘You’re going to say no, aren’t you?’

  She nodded. ‘It’s over, Patrick. Move on. You won’t have any trouble finding someone else.’

  ‘Is it Maddox?’ His frown emphasised the fine lines between his brows. ‘I know he’s staying at your place.’

  She snatched her hand from beneath his. ‘Have you been stalking me?’

  ‘I drove over your way yesterday evening, hoping we could talk away from this place, but his car was there.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with anyone else. It’s just that I’ll never be able to get past the fact that you put the interests of the paper ahead of our relationship.’

  ‘I know that.’ He lowered his head and shook it slowly from side to side. ‘Now.’

  He sounded so desolate that Alexi almost relented. Just for a moment she saw in him the certain something that had first attracted her to the dynamic editor. But she held firm, knowing that if she let him back into her life she’d eventually finish up being lured back to London. She was surprised just how adamantly she didn’t want to go.

  ‘Go back to London, Patrick. The show’s back on course here and hopefully Vickery will catch the murderer soon.’

  ‘I will go, but only because I have to and because I don’t believe you’re in danger.’ He skewered her with a determined look. The look she’d seen him adopt when he took it into his head that The Sentinel was going to scoop the opposition, no matter what it took. ‘But know this,’ he said, absently pushing a thick lock of hair away from his eyes. ‘I’m not giving up on you. I’ll give you some space and time but it is not over between us.’

  He stood up, squeezed her shoulders and headed for the door.

  ‘Take care,’ he said, turning to briefly look at her.

  Then he was gone.

  ‘Phew!’ Alexi leaned back in her chair, and expelled an extravagant breath. ‘Follow that.’

  Determined not to dwell on the ashes of her relationship with Patrick, Alexi finished her cooling coffee and tried to decide what to do next. It was still only ten in the morning. The contestants would be in the annexe, talking recipes, going over what they’d be doing that day. Marcel would be there with them, once again the complete Frenchman, no doubt. If Guy Salter wasn’t monitoring the cameras, he’d be around somewhere. He always was. Alexi knew he’d been questioned by the police but she had yet to question him herself. She pulled her sheepskin jacket on, and headed for the back door.

  ‘Not you,’ she said when Cosmo got up to follow her. ‘You’ll only cause mayhem.’

  Cosmo gave an indignant mewl, turned his back on her and curled up around Toby, looking as though he was about to smother the life out of the poor little dog. Laughing, Alexi opened the door to a blast of frigid air. Head bowed, she almost collided with someone coming the other way.

  ‘Sorry!’ She glanced up. ‘Oh hello, Mike. I didn’t know you were here today. No school?’

  ‘Teacher training day, or something. Drew said he needed some heavy lifting done, so here I am.’

  ‘He’ll be back in a mo.’ Alexi stepped back into the kitchen and closed the door again. ‘Help yourself to coffee.’

  ‘Thanks, I will.’

  Mike took a handful of biscuits too and slouched in a chair in the universally gangly pose of teenagers everywhere. The kid lived locally and helped out with the donkey work in return for pin money. Today, Alexi imagined, his appearance had less to do with Drew’s need for help and more to do with Mike’s curiosity.

  ‘Any developments?’ he asked, confirming Alexi’s suspicion. ‘The whole village is talking about it and I told Mum I’d see what was what.’

  ‘It’s early days.’ Alexi didn’t want to get held up or reveal anything she shouldn’t. Cosmo didn’t object to Mike so it was safe to leave the two of them alone. ‘Have to go. Catch you later.’

  Mike dunked his third biscuit in his coffee. ‘Yeah, later.’

  With hands thrust into her pockets, Alexi made her way to the annexe. The crime scene tape had been removed from the courtyard but she had to steel herself to walk through the area she had once loved. She couldn’t shake the knowledge that less than two days previously, a woman had lost her life in the haven of tranquil calm that Fay had created out of nothing. The water feature that Juliette had collapsed against l
ooked stark, almost sinister, in the brittle winter sunshine. The water that in summer would fountain into the air and tumble down the manmade water slide was turned off and the focal point of the courtyard had a neglected air about it. Alexi had been delighted with Fay’s design but would never again be able to look on it with the same pleasure.

  ‘Gives you the creeps, doesn’t it?’

  Alexi jumped at the sound of another voice. She’d thought she was alone. She turned to see Guy Salter leaning against the outside wall of the annexe. He wasn’t wearing a coat and had obviously just nipped out for a smoke, as evidenced by the cigarette burned down almost to the filter.

  ‘Yeah, it does.’ She was glad to have met Guy by accident as opposed to making it obvious she’d come to track him down. ‘I gather this is where she was found.’

  Guy straightened up and ground out his cigarette beneath the heel of his boot. ‘So they say.’

  ‘You working right now?’

  ‘Not for another hour until they move into the kitchen.’

  ‘The coffee’s on in our kitchen if you’re interested,’ she said, aware that Guy couldn’t help himself from the supply for the contestants supply if Marcel was in there and the cameras were recording. She’d also just seen Drew and Mike disappearing into one of the storerooms so she knew the coast was as clear as it would ever be.

  Guy grinned. ‘Lead the way.’

  ‘Have you been grilled by the police yet?’ Alexi asked as they sat across from one another with their coffees and Guy clearly struggled to overcome the urge to light up again.

  ‘Yeah. They seemed to think I must know something about the cameras in Juliette’s room going down. Kept on at me, they did, wanting to know how it could have happened, if anyone had asked me to do it, and stuff like that.’ He shuddered. ‘Talk about the third degree. If I told them once, I told them twenty times. Everyone on these fly-on-the-wall shows gets cabin fever sooner or later and—’

  ‘You’ve worked on shows like this before?’

  ‘Several times. I was contracted in for that reason.’

  Alexi permitted her surprise to show. ‘You’re employed by Far Reach Productions?’ She hadn’t known that and if Hammond’s investigators did, they hadn’t seen fit to mention it.

  ‘Nah. I’m a qualified sound engineer.’ Guy leaned back in his chair, apparently settling in for a good old natter. That was fine with Alexi. It would give her an opportunity to try and figure him out. She was usually good at assessing character—it was a necessary skill for any half-decent reporter—but Guy was a bit of an enigma and she couldn’t get a handle on him. ‘Worked for a while at Elstree,’ he said, referring to the British film studios that had hosted in their time such legends as Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, Alfred Hitchcock and various versions of James Bond. ‘Got to know my stuff there, made some connections and then went freelance.’

  ‘If your forte is sound, how come you finished up monitoring the cameras?’

  He sniffed. ‘It’s called multi-tasking or, put another way, the bosses being tight-fisted.’ Guy waved a hand from side to side. ‘Well actually, that’s not fair. With the advances in technology, not as many people are needed on these sorts of locations. So those of us that want to stay in the business have to move with the times. I know what I’m doing when it comes to sound, but have to do the grunt work as well.’

  Alexi studied him as he rambled on. In his early thirties, short and slightly overweight, with thin sandy hair that was already receding and eyes that were a little too close together, he was no oil painting. But he was friendly enough and, from what Alexi had seen over the past few weeks, seemed to get along with everyone.

  ‘You don’t mind living out of a suitcase all the time?’ Alexi asked. ‘Must play havoc with your home life.’

  ‘Nah, free spirit, that’s me. I go where the work takes me.’

  ‘How did you land this job then?’

  ‘I have an agency that touts my credentials but, on this occasion, I asked them to put me forward for it.’

  Alexi blinked. ‘Why? What’s so special about this show?’

  ‘I’m a local man. Born and brought up in Reading, so I do get to see my own bed occasionally. Of course, I knew from the buzz around the industry that What’s for Dinner? was likely to be a winning formula. The gossip mill seldom gets these things wrong. So I thought, why not?’ He slouched back in his chair, both hands clutching his coffee mug. ‘Won’t do the old C.V. any harm to be in on the ground floor with a Far Reach Productions winner.’

  ‘Glad you think it’s going to top the ratings. I had my doubts. I mean, cooking shows and Big Brother type scenarios have been done to death.’ Alexi clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘Perhaps I could have chosen my words more carefully.’

  Guy didn’t respond. He helped himself to another biscuit, dropping crumbs down his sweatshirt as he demolished it in two bites.

  ‘You weren’t involved with the heats then?’ Alexi asked, aware that the conversation was in danger of stalling.

  ‘Nah, I wasn’t needed for them.’

  ‘What did you tell the police about the cameras?’ Alexi expected him to get suspicious and ask why she wanted to know. Instead, he leaned forward and looked as though he was about to give her chapter and verse. Alexi refilled his coffee cup and pushed the plate of Cheryl’s homemade biscuits closer to him.

  ‘It’s like I said earlier. No one can live constantly in the limelight.’ He sniffed. ‘Everyone thinks they can, until they try it. There’re hours and hours of boring film but no one’s free to be themselves, to really relax, because the one time a person does something the slightest bit oddball, naturally the entire nation sees it. These artificial situations are deliberately created because the producers know people will blow a fuse eventually. Stands to reason the contestants will want a few minutes now and then to be themselves.’

  ‘Just a moment.’ Alexi folded her arms on the table in front of her and fixed Guy with a penetrating look. ‘Are you saying that the contestants often disconnect their own cameras?’

  ‘All the time. Officially, I’m supposed to go and check on them the moment they go on the blink.’

  ‘You get a warning light on your console?’

  ‘Yeah. Unofficially I cut them some slack and leave it half an hour or so.’ He grinned. ‘If, for example, someone wants a little privacy for…well, whatever someone wants to do in private in a bedroom, alone or otherwise, we don’t judge. But they certainly don’t want the entire nation to know about it.’

  ‘So Juliette’s cameras going down wasn’t that unusual?’

  ‘Nah, they all get told, off the record, that the occasional short respite is in order, just so long as they don’t abuse the privilege. I showed them all how to disconnect and reconnect the camera feed myself. Saves a lot of damage that way. Anyway, they can get away with doing it now and then, provided it’s not at a time when Dakin’s throwing his weight…sorry, I mean in depth questions at them. And obviously, he wouldn’t be doing that in the bedrooms.’ Guy treated Alexi to another grin. ‘Well, not on camera.’

  Alexi sat a little straighter. ‘You think he and Juliette had something going?’

  Guy shrugged. ‘He followed her around like a lap dog, so it wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘Had Juliette disconnected her cameras before?’

  ‘Actually no. She’s the only one who hadn’t. I think she enjoyed being caught in indiscretions.’ One side of his mouth lifted. ‘There’s always one.’

  ‘None of the others mentioned anything about disconnecting the cameras to me,’ Alexi said, almost to herself.

  ‘Well, they wouldn’t.’ He flapped a hand. ‘Technically it’s against the rules and they were all warned by me when I showed them how to do it, not to let on. I said I’d lose my job if they did. Not that I would, of course, but the production company like to keep the illusion going that the contestants have no respite.’

  ‘But someone died! The fact that her camera outage happe
ned at the same time could change the entire course of the investigation.’

  ‘Yeah well, I don’t think any of the others are shedding too many tears over Juliette’s demise. Heartless though it sounds, she was a right little madam and didn’t do anything to make herself popular.’

  ‘I recall your eyes popping out of your head first time you saw her.’

  Guy broke eye contact with Alexi. ‘That was before I knew her.’

  ‘I take it she didn’t come on to you?’

  ‘She was only interested in the movers and shakers.’ Guy examined his fingernails. ‘Guys like Marcel and Paul who she thought could help her to win.’

  ‘Hmm, so what do you think really happened to her?’ Guy simply shrugged one shoulder. ‘Come on, you must have a theory.’

  ‘I dunno, but I reckon it has to be a crime of passion of some sort. Why else dump her in her room and stick that knife in her…well, in her enhanced bits?’

  ‘You suspect Dakin?’

  ‘It has to be someone who was shagging her, but I don’t think it was Marcel. He isn’t stupid enough to leave evidence that points straight to him. Besides, far as I can tell, a chef’s knives are his Holy Grail. Seems daft to me. A knife is just a knife, one much like the other, but there you are. Anyway, I don’t know whether or not Marcel had reason to kill Juliette but I do know he wouldn’t desecrate one of his knives by using it on her.’

  ‘Which leaves Dakin,’ Alexi said pensively.

  ‘He was here and he was heard arguing with her, right in the spot where she was killed.’

  ‘By you?’ Alexi asked, acting on a hunch. She had only been told it was a member of the crew who’d seen them arguing but no one was saying which member.

  ‘Yeah actually.’ Guy looked mildly surprised. ‘How did you know?’

  ‘It’s your job to officially snoop.’

  ‘Yeah well, he was here but he doesn’t know I saw him. He thought he’d evaded the cameras, which goes against the grain for a narcissist like him. And he did avoid them, but I happened to see and hear him.’