The TV Detective

by Simon Hall

  If, as Dan suspected, it was a final attempt to lure him along, it sounded as appealing as an invitation to an astrophysicists’ party.

  They walked back to her house and had another glass of wine while Dan waited for a taxi. He’d deliberately asked to visit her rather than have Kerry come to the flat. It was always easier to make an exit yourself than to try to usher someone else towards a door.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to stay?’ she asked gently, cuddling into him as the car drew up outside.

  ‘No and yes,’ was all Dan could say in reply. ‘But I just don’t think I‘m up to it. Sorry.’

  She smiled understandingly, they kissed goodnight, he gently freed himself and made his way to the waiting cab. She stood on the doorstep and waved until he was out of sight. Dan wondered what she’d be thinking when she got back inside.

  The evening had been dry, but on the short drive home the rain started to sweep in again. The season just wasn’t the same without the snow Dan could have sworn was far more common in the distant days of his youth.

  If the song had been written, “I’m Dreaming of a Wet Christmas” it would never have been a hit, he thought.

  Back at the flat, Dan let Rutherford out into the garden, then settled on the sofa with a glass of whisky. So many thoughts were careering through his mind that he had to take out a pad of paper and pen and try to marshal them into some form of order.

  The clock slipped past midnight. Christmas Day had arrived. Across the city, fireworks showered their colours over the dour night sky and a cacophony of horns blared. But Dan noticed none of it. It was only after half an hour’s uninterrupted writing that he looked up from his pad.

  ‘We’ve got one thing in common, Gordon Clarke and me,’ he told Rutherford. ‘We were both set up. Subtly maybe, but undoubtedly nevertheless.’

  After that final interview with Eleanor Paget, Dan had driven back to the newsroom. He had a couple of sentences to add to the end of the report from lunchtime, that Clarke, Hicks and Stead had been remanded in custody by magistrates. Despite the pleas of their lawyers for bail, the seriousness of the charges meant the men would be spending Christmas in a prison cell.

  Even with Dan’s repeated and increasingly irritable inquiries, the enigmatic Adam still wouldn’t talk about what the interview with Paget meant. He said he needed to do a little more work on his suspicions, but that Dan should come back to Charles Cross later for a final discussion.

  He had been left with a couple of hours to kill, and wandered around the newsroom, chatting to a few colleagues, finding the strength and forbearance to wish most a happy Christmas, and even filling out an expenses form. It was one of his personal definitions of boredom. When he felt the need to do some paperwork he knew life was far from its pinnacle of excitement.

  He took the sheet of paper and its attendant envelope full of receipts into the management office. Louise, Lizzie’s cheerful and loyal secretary was away from her desk, so he left it on her chair to ensure she wouldn’t miss it and would appreciate the urgency of the matter. He was owed hundreds of pounds. Dan was about to stroll down to the canteen to get a coffee when a piece of paper caught his eye.

  It was the letter of complaint, the one which had seen him summoned to Lizzie’s office, rebuked, and told his employment would change or would rapidly become extinct. He could hardly miss it, those moaning capital letters describing his behaviour;

  “DISGRACEFUL … DISGUSTING … APPALLING … SCANDALOUS …”

  And now he knew where he recognised the handwriting from. It was Louise’s.

  Dan took a quick look around. The office was empty and there was no sign of anyone returning. He shifted the letter to see what was underneath. There was just one more piece of paper, a note from Lizzie.

  “Good spy work, thanks. The “complaint” gave me just the pretext I needed. But better shred it now.”

  Dan stood, staring at the note. He thought back to that late afternoon, the rain pounding down and his interview with Rose, the prostitute. There had been a car parked opposite, he was sure, and it had driven off,just after he handed over the money.

  And then had come the showdown with Lizzie, which had seen his job change and all that had grown from it, a true turning point in life.

  Wessex Tonight , by common consent, needed a new Crime Correspondent. He’d been asked, but had refused.

  And then he’d been cornered. In just the way which someone who knew him well, who had been forced to deal with many a complaint about his ways in the past might readily anticipate. Lizzie could be sure he wouldn’t come back to the newsroom without the story and all the constituents needed to make a good report.

  Dan swore loudly, forced himself to walk downstairs, get that cup of coffee, and take it to the Quiet Room to think.

  His first instinct was to confront Lizzie, but it didn’t take long to reconsider. Fighting the news demon was something you did out of necessity, not choice. Perhaps it was better to file away the advantage, ready to use sometime in the future, a buried weapon to unearth when he really needed it.

  And of one thing he was sure. Given the vagaries of his life, that day would come.

  Plus, if he was honest, there was something else. Inadvertent and unexpected though it might have been, could Dan Groves, sitting here on this comfortable chair, excited apprentice in a new world, going back over the remarkable events of the last ten days, really deny that he was enjoying this job he had never asked for? Perhaps even delighting in it?

  Dan nodded to himself, finished his coffee and set off down to Charles Cross to see Adam.

  The detective’s spirits had improved markedly. Dan wondered whether to ask if he wasn’t the only one who suffered with depression and mood swings, but decided against it. It might prompt an argument, or perhaps just a discussion, but certainly a delay and he very much wanted to hear what Adam had to say about Eleanor Paget without any unnecessary interruptions.

  It was the case’s final mystery.

  ‘Don’t get comfortable,’ Adam said, as Dan walked into the MIR and began taking off his coat. ‘Let’s goand have a pint.’ He got up from the chair, patted Dan on the shoulder.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve, and after all, a decent beer in a pub is pretty much how you managed to worm your way into the sanctum of my confidences.’

  ‘I’d say it has a certain symmetry, yes,’ Dan replied.

  On the walk, Adam talked about how much he was looking forward to Christmas, a few days off and time with Annie and Tom. He would be spending the whole of Christmas Day with them, and perhaps, maybe, just possibly, if he played it right … Annie had said to bring his overnight bag.

  As hints went, it was as subtle as a drum roll with a cymbal crash added for good measure.

  Better times lay ahead. It was an old cliché, but often true. The advent of another year did prompt people to consider their lives and think about a new start. Or, in Adam’s case, a new old one.

  The detective was smiling once more and looked much less tired than earlier. He even pointed to some newspapers racked up outside a supermarket. The picture of the Scoutmaster smoking away in the cage at the back of the police station was on the front of each.

  ‘Anything to do with you, that?’ he asked, airily.

  ‘Pleasant evening, don’t you think?’ Dan replied.

  ‘I don’t want you thinking you can get away with anything, whatever kind of understandings we might occasionally reach.’

  ‘Christmas is great, isn’t it? I’m looking forward to a few days off. A bit of excessive eating and drinking, taking Rutherford for a good walk.’

  It felt like a verbal version of those Red Arrows displays, when the pilots approach each other at right angles and only just miss colliding.

  Adam walked on in silence, then said, ‘Well, just so long as whatever scurrilous tricks you might get up to are good for the police and the public.’

  ‘You mean like getting a picture of a paedophile published? So all the
local parents will know?’

  ‘He is an alleged paedophile. He hasn’t been convicted of anything yet.’

  ‘But the evidence is pretty strong, according to what “senior police sources” have told me.’

  ‘There is that.’

  ‘And you’re a father yourself.’

  Adam didn’t reply, just began humming a little tune. A couple of women passed, one stopping to thank the detective. He had investigated a prowler on the loose in her neighbourhood five years ago and got the man sentenced to twelve months in prison. She was evidently extremely grateful. The kiss she planted on Adam’s cheek was long and lingering.

  And he didn’t look in the slightest abashed.

  At risk of denting his mood, Dan asked again about Paget, which prompted a shrug. ‘I’ve been thinking about it all afternoon,’ he replied. ‘I can’t honestly say to you that she’s committed any offence, not legally speaking anyway. Morally maybe, but not legally. I think she’s certainly been devious and manipulative, but if they were crimes …’

  ‘Then all our politicians, leaders, most senior managers, business people and the like would be in prison by now,’ Dan added.

  ‘Not to mention journalists,’ Adam concluded.

  And Dan didn’t demur.

  At the double doors to the chosen bar Dan quickly studied each and picked the right one, shiny as it was with wear. The place was filled with a group of office staff, their work clothes all askew, and one of whom, a young man, was attempting to perform a pole dance. The cheering and clapping was quite out of proportion to the skill and dexterity on show, and even more so the sexual allure, but then it was Christmas Eve and the group had clearly been here for a while. Dan and Adam watched for a couple of minutes while they waited to be served before retreating to a table at the back of the bar.

  ‘Cheers!’ Dan said, holding up his glass.

  Adam clinked it. ‘Cheers!’

  They each took a deep draw at their beers, then Dan produced his best expectant look.

  ‘Are you alright?’ Adam chuckled. ‘You look in pain.’

  ‘I was trying to prompt you to tell me about Paget.’

  ‘I’m aware of that. Subtlety isn’t your strongest suit.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of the dubious art of delayed gratification?’ Dan countered, with heavy irony.

  ‘I may have done. I might even confess to practicing it occasionally.’

  ‘So then?’

  ‘So what?’

  Dan sighed. The burgeoning desire to throttle the maddening detective was back. ‘Tell me what you know about Paget, and what that little scene in her office was about?’

  Adam leaned back on his chair, took another sip of beer, and finally he did.

  Eleanor Paget was not all she seemed, or certainly not quite the person she liked to present herself as. Her commitment to the hospice was not in doubt Adam said, but as so often with people, there was a subtext, an agenda or way of working hidden beneath the fine public face.

  Her history had been examined and a series of interesting events revealed. Several years ago, probably as her initial move into the world of business, she had run a successful interior design company. It was a relatively small business, but still employed a dozen people, was well thought of and appeared set for considerable expansion.

  Then had come a problem. The company’s major customer went bust and the cash flow faltered markedly and dangerously. Paget struggled to keep the business going. She had done well from it in just three or four years, to the extent she had a lovely house on which the mortgage had been paid, and a fine car.

  The bank had offered to refinance the company to keep it going, but the price would be Paget’s home as security.

  She closed the business and made the staff redundant.

  ‘OK,’ Dan said. ‘So she’s ruthless. She protected herself. But so what? It was her company. That’s a tough stance, but it’s a judgement call and entirely defensible. Isn’t being tough part of the brief if you’re in business?’

  ‘Listen on,’ Adam replied calmly. ‘I’m only just starting to build up the picture for you.’

  Paget had taken a couple of other jobs at companies, one as a Marketing Manager, one as a Development Executive. At this stage, her CV had a sense of someone treading water, dabbling in work to keep busy and solvent while she waited for the next opportunity to come along. But then, what plans she had were knocked off course, in a way familiar to anyone who has walked the surface of this earth and breathed the planet’s air.

  Relationship troubles.

  The man she had been living with in that fine house, a Stephen Wicks, had been seeing another woman and decided to leave her. But, although the house was in her name and they didn’t have children, he had been working, contributing to the upkeep of the place, supporting her in her career, and thus in the view of the lawyers was entitled to a share of the property. Naturally they weren’t going to be living together any more and she didn’t have the money to buy him out, so a sale was mooted.

  At this point, the story of Eleanor Paget became markedly more interesting.

  She got involved with a new man, and one of no fine repute. Jimmy Masters was a local lad, good looking enough, but not averse to stepping onto the wrong side of the law to make a living, and even less concerned about settling a score with his fists.

  The view of her friends was that Eleanor was upset, a little unbalanced by the break-up of her relationship, and that this was just a fling, one which would help to restore her self-confidence. She would soon be back on track and move on.

  Then came the sting in the tale.

  Masters met Wicks in a pub one night, and there was a fight. Wicks came off very much the worse, courtesy of a swinging bar stool to the head. He was put in hospital for several months, before beginning a slow recovery at his brother’s house. Masters was charged with grievous bodily harm. He was sentenced to a year in prison.

  The only one who emerged from the episode well was Eleanor Paget. With Wicks out of the way she was able to raise the money to buy him out of the house. Anyway, he was hardly in a state to want to make an issue of it. And while Masters was in jail, Paget found herself another man and on her life moved.

  ‘OK,’ Dan said. ‘So things got nasty. They sometimes do in relationships.’

  ‘Indeed,’ Adam replied. ‘So let’s continue. Let me tell you a little about Masters’ trial.’

  The sentence the man had been given was probably on the lenient side, and much of that put down to the eloquent pleadings of his barrister. Jimmy Masters, he said, had been blinded by love. He’d fallen deeply for Eleanor Paget, held out great hopes for a future with her, and it was, in Masters’ view, only Mr Wicks who stood in the way. Paget, it was alleged, had told poor Jimmy she could never commit to a future with him so long as she was locked in such a bitter dispute with Mr Wicks.

  Dan almost spat out his beer.

  ‘Bloody hell,’ he said. ‘That sounds more than a little familiar.’

  Adam nodded hard. ‘Doesn’t it just? For Jimmy Masters, read Gordon Clarke. It took us a long time to find that info. It was all down to a very fine up and coming detective called Claire Reynolds, an officer I tend to send on some of the more tricky inquiries as I know I can trust her entirely. Because obviously Paget wasn’t mentioned in the charges, only at the trial – where she refused to appear as a witness, by the way – it wasn’t on the police computer and so took quite some digging out. That case was where I’d recognised her name from, and gave me the nudge to look into her past a little more.’

  Dan swirled his drink and tried to concentrate on the information he’d just heard, rather than the word “Claire”. It wasn’t easy. It was echoing through his mind like a harp solo played by a virtuoso angel.

  ‘OK,’ he said, finally. ‘It sounds interesting, to say the least. But being Devil’s advocate here, that Jimmy Masters business still doesn’t necessarily mean anything. It could all just be an
unfortunate coincidence.’

  ‘Yes, it could,’ Adam said, with a raised eyebrow of scepticism. ‘So let me continue with the story.’

  Then came the next revelation. St Jude’s Hospice was in secret talks with a large healthcare firm about a takeover. It would still be run largely as it always had, but now charges would be introduced. The trustees were seriously considering the proposal, as it would ensure there was unlikely ever again to be a cash crisis which could threaten the hospice’s future.

  Eleanor Paget was in favour of the takeover. The business case, she had concluded, was compelling. The current guests would not be affected by the change, only new ones. There would be minimal disruption to the hospice, if indeed any, but maximum financial security in being part of a far larger empire.

  Adam said he thought that was probably a genuine position, that she really was passionate about protecting St Jude’s and believed it to be the best way.

  There was though one other little fact which shouted its doubts.

  Paget would stay on as Chief Executive, with an enhanced salary package and also lucrative share options. Ironically for such a driven businessman, a free-market thinker to the core, Edward Bray had been vehemently against the move. Adam suspected that was probably because of his emotional attachment to the hospice and his desire to see it continue to run just the way it always had. He had been resolved and resolute in his determination to fight the takeover.

  ‘Hell,’ Dan spluttered. ‘Another reason for her to want him out of the way. This is getting worse. I need some more beer.’ He got up to head for the bar, then stopped, turned back.

  ‘But wasn’t the hospice going to be OK anyway? It had Bray to fund it – when he was alive, at least – and when he died, his will provided for it.’

  ‘The will he’d only recently changed,’ Adam said meaningfully.