The I-Spy Murders

by David W Robinson

  “The women are shopping right now,” Joe said, “so how about we plan for noon?”

  “Fine. I need to speak to the other seven Housies, anyway. But make sure it’s not too long after.”

  Joe agreed and rang off, then dialled Brenda and arranged to meet the women at the main entrance on Foregate Street, in sight of the old clock tower sitting on its ornate arch.

  An hour later, after dropping their purchases at the Victoria Hotel, they were on their way to Gibraltar Hall.

  “Chief Inspector Hoad didn’t say what he’d learned?” Sheila asked as the driver pulled out of the hotel grounds and onto the single track Old Dee Bridge to cross the river.

  “No.” Seated up front with the driver, Joe half turned in his seat to look at Brenda. “Marc wore that god awful dressing gown at breakfast most mornings, didn’t he?”

  “Every morning as far as I can recall,” Brenda said.

  Joe noticed she had suddenly become more reserved. “Look, Brenda, I know this isn’t easy for you, but let’s think on the positive side, huh? Frank doesn’t suspect you. He has to take a statement, true, but you’re not in the frame. All we can do now is help find this woman’s killer. She may have been a grade one slapper, but she didn’t deserve to die like that.”

  Brenda drew in her breath and nodded.

  “That’s the spirit,” Joe smiled. “Now, I’m wondering, when did anyone take that cord from the dressing gown. In fact, I’m wondering did anyone get that cord from the dressing gown.”

  Brenda gawped.”You think it may be Marc? Come on, Joe. He’s as gormless as young Lee. I don’t think he’d have the guts, never mind the gumption.”

  “Brenda, you’ve only known him a week. You’ve been in a false situation, and all you really know about each other is what you’re told by each other. He tells you he’s a… what is he?”

  “An accountant from Northampton.”

  “Right. He tells you he’s an accountant from Northampton, but you only have his say so for that. He plays the part right down to the wire, letting everyone think he’s a gawp but for all you really know, he could be a… well I don’t know. An actor from Musselburgh.”

  “Why Musselburgh?” Brenda asked.

  “It was the first place I thought of.”

  “And why an actor?” Sheila demanded.

  “So he could play the part,” Joe responded. “Anyway, Ursula was an actress and if he was an actor, he might have known her from the past.”

  ***

  When they arrived at Gibraltar Hall it was to learn that Chief Inspector Hoad was locked into a conference call between himself, his superiors and representatives of both the production company and the TV station. Seeking out Helen Catterick, Joe suggested they take a walk in the garden, were he could enjoy a cigarette while they talked.

  Agreeing to his request, she said, “I’m not sure what I can tell you that I haven’t already told the police.”

  “We have different methods, Helen, and sometimes one of us sees things others don’t.”

  They stepped out into the garden where workmen were already busy removing the high fence that separated the two halves.

  “The police authorised it,” Helen explained. “It takes us several weeks to set up properly, but when the show is over, which it would have been today, we have one week to restore it to its former condition. Ursula’s death has terminated the show early, and we thought we may as well get on with it.”

  Joe drew on his cigarette. “It’s bad for you, isn’t it?” he commented. “This whole business.” He mentally rebuked himself for his lack of small talk. Helen was dressed in a dark jumper and skirt that reached below the knee, and she would have made a perfect date, if he ever felt comfortable talking to such women.

  “We don’t know what the ramifications will be,” she said. “It could mean the end of I-Spy altogether.”

  “Or at the very least more careful selection of Housies,” Joe suggested.

  With a nod, Helen leaned forward and rubbed at her leg.

  Joe followed the movement and picked out a three-inch scar of white flesh over her tanned calf. He caught her watching him and felt the colour rush to his cheeks. “Sorry. I wasn’t… you know… the scar.”

  She laughed good-naturedly. “It’s all right, Joe. May I call you Joe?”

  “Better than the names some people call me.”

  Helen rubbed the leg again. “An accident in my childhood. I think I was about three years old when it happened. Nothing really, but I remember making such a fuss at the blood. It doesn’t hurt, but when I have a tan – did I tell you I’d recently had a holiday in Crete? – it really annoys me.”

  “Scar tissue,” Joe said. “It never tans. I have a similar one on my right knee, but it’s only tiny. Fell on a broken bottle when I was a kid.”

  Silence fell and they savoured the glorious sunshine and hot, morning air.

  “You’ve demonstrated that our security team could be at fault,” Helen said suddenly.

  “What?” Joe emerged from some of the more dangerous meanderings of his mind which involved legs. “Oh. Yes. It was all obvious to me from the start.” He grinned sheepishly. “My brain’s wired up differently, you know. I knew that whoever got in had to get past security and that told me one of them was probably absent and the other asleep.”

  Helen frowned. “It doesn’t surprise me. The younger one, Driscoll is she called? She was pestering me from day one about getting time off for her children. I told her to take it up with her employers, not me. We’re not responsible for them, you see. They’re contractors.” Her eyes narrowed on Joe. “Someone on the inside must have spotted it and used it to their advantage.”

  “It’s more complicated than that. Someone called her and tricked her into leaving the house.” Joe crushed out his cigarette. “And I’m sorry, but yes. The finger does point at your people.”

  She shrugged. “We can’t help the, er, actions of our colleagues, can we?”

  “No. No, we can’t.” Joe gazed at the trees beyond the rear wall, and birds flittering to and fro between them. “How well do you know the people who work for you?” he asked.

  “As well as I can, I think. Scott’s ex-army who feels his job is beneath him, Katy is a frustrated director who doesn’t want to wait until she’s fully matured within the industry.”

  “She’s twenty-seven,” Joe countered, “And she looks pretty mature to me.”

  “You’re talking physical maturity. I’m talking professional. She has only five or six years in the industry. I waited over twenty years before I got my major break.”

  Joe shrugged. “Well, you know your business. Tell me, how fit are they both? We’re looking for someone who’s nimble enough to get over that rear wall and then make their way to the door without being seen.”

  “I should imagine either of them could,” Helen speculated. “I’m not sure whether I could. I keep myself fit, certainly. I’m a member of a gym near my home and I work hard to keep myself in good, physical condition. Scott, as I said, is ex-army so I should imagine…” she trailed off. “Come, Joe, you don’t seriously imagine that either Scott or Katy had anything to do with this business, do you?”

  Joe took out his tobacco tin and began to roll another cigarette. “We don’t know anything really, other than she was murdered, and I knew that much the instant I heard of her death. It’s only when we began to ask deeper questions that it became apparent it was one of the crew.” Licking the cigarette paper, completing the smoke, he put it between his lips and lit up. With a crooked smile, he told her, “Hoad will get there. And if he doesn’t, I will. I have a lot of experience dealing with this kind of crime, and trust me, all killers make mistakes. Soon as I spot that mistake, we’ll have our man.”

  They ambled on around the garden, and Joe paused to studied some of the topiary.

  “Are you married, Joe?”

  Her question took him by surprise. “Divorced. You?”

  “The same,�
�� she replied.

  “Is it relevant to anything?” he asked.

  “Hmm.” Helen nodded vaguely. “I think you and I are as much alike as we are different, and the both of us are like the man who created this.” She aimed her arm up at the bush carving. “Whoever he was, he had no distractions. It takes a wealth of patience and time and absolute dedication to produce something like this. I think he had no wife to distract him, and you’re like that. So am I. You run your business, you become involved in crimes such as this and you have no wife in the background pestering you to take her shopping or decorate the back bedroom. That’s why you’re so good at it.”

  Joe grunted; a noise that could have been anything from a complaint to a laugh. “I’ve a feeling my ex-wife would agree with you, only it wasn’t decorating the back bedroom with her. It was fancy, foreign holidays.”

  “So what happened to her?”

  “She left me and took a permanent foreign holiday,” Joe confessed with a sigh. “She lives in Tenerife these days.” He drew on his cigarette. “Tell me about Marlene Caldbeck and Ryan Rivers.”

  “I don’t know them terribly well,” Helen admitted, “but I do know that I don’t particularly like either of them. They were not appointed by me, or even my bosses, but by the TV station. They cost a fortune and to give credit where it’s due, they hold the show together quite well. But neither of them are particularly easy to work with.”

  Helen frowned and for a moment Joe wondered if she were simply screwing up her eyes against the strong sunlight.

  “You know…” her face relaxed. “No. I shouldn’t say anything. It’s not right.”

  “Helen, if you know something you have to speak up,” Joe assured her. “Ursula may not have been everyone’s cup of tea, but she has a right to justice.”

  “Well, it’s just that… On the…” Helen stopped, turned and faced him. “On the day before the Housies came in, we had our final meeting, and for a brief moment, it looked as if Marlene recognised one of the Housies. I tore her off a strip for it, but she insisted she had made a mistake. She didn’t know them. It’s important, you see, to us. None of the presenters, no member of the crew, can have had any dealings with the Housies at any time in the past. If they do, it automatically disbars them from working on the programme, and that would have cost Marlene money.”

  If the eyes really were windows to the soul, then all Joe could read was honesty. “You’re thinking if she did know one of them, it may have been Ursula?”

  Helen nodded. “It’s an intriguing thought, isn’t it?” The producer looked back at the garden wall. “But how would someone with Marlene’s disability get over that?”

  “She might have been able to do it,” Joe said. “But if she did, would she know how to work the stock feeds, how to knock out the cameras and stuff?”

  “Oh, yes,” Helen assured him. “Both her and Ryan are quite conversant with the technical side. Ryan produced his own one-man show for long enough, and Marlene has done all sorts of work on TV, including assisting the post-production editing staff.”

  Joe stroked his chin. “Interesting. Thanks, Helen. You’ve given me food for thought.”

  He followed her back inside to the control room where Sheila and Brenda sat off to one side talking with Katy, and Naughton was skimming through the day’s newspapers, most of which concentrated on Ursula’s death and the damage done to I-Spy.

  “I’m told you’re ex-army,” Joe said after scrounging a chair and sitting with the director.

  “What about it?” Naughton demanded.

  The slightly confrontational attitude Joe had found in previous encounters with him was stronger now, as if he found Joe’s very presence an irritation.

  Joe met him head on. “You must have heard we’re looking for someone who not only knew how to operate all this gear,” he said flinging his arm out at the morass of equipment surrounding them, “but also someone fit enough to get over that back wall. Someone who’s maybe ex-army.”

  Naughton nodded cynically.”Oh. Right. And I fit the bill. Wrong track, Murray, try again somewhere else.”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because it wasn’t me.”

  “You say. Where were you the other night between say midnight and two a.m.”

  “At my hotel,” Naughton snapped, “and if you want to know whether anyone can confirm that, the answer is no. I was alone.”

  Joe backed off a little. “Sounds like your life is as sad as mine.”

  “No. It’s sadder. At least you do what you want. I do what I have to.”

  “What? And you don’t like it?”

  “You want the truth? I’d rather be back in the army. All my life, all I ever wanted was a career in the military. I made it through Sandhurst, did my first two years and got my second pip. Lieutenant Scott Naughton. Had a certain ring to it. Then there was an argument in the officer’s mess. It turned to a fight. I was court-martialed. Can’t have an officer who couldn’t control his temper.”

  “So you were cashiered?”

  “It’s called dismissal these days,” Naughton said.

  “What was the argument over?” Joe wanted to know.

  Naughton scowled. “A woman.”

  “Some things never change, huh. So how come you ended up working in TV? Did you have a special bent for this stuff, or what?”

  “I got lucky, is all. I had no background and no qualifications in film, TV or even theatre, but I landed a job as a gopher on a movie, and I used the money I earned to get myself a little training. That was twenty years ago, but it was enough. Listen to me, Murray, everything I have, I’ve worked for, and I mean worked. Like a dog. I wouldn’t throw it away for a little tramp like Ursula Kenney.”

  “Did you know Ursula before she came here?” Joe persisted.

  “Not that I’m aware.”

  Joe was puzzled. “Not that you’re aware? What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Do you know how many people I’ve worked with over my years in TV?” Naughton demanded. “Thousands. Maybe hundreds of thousands. Ursula claimed to be an actress, but no one here can recall anything she ever appeared in. No one on the crew here could remember her. It’s possible that she was an extra in a crowd scene when we put together a drama documentary on the sermon on the mount, ten years ago, but there were about a hundred such extras in that programme. Helen asked, the day before we went live, whether any of us knew any of the Housies, and the answer from all of us was no.”

  “Not according the Helen,” Joe retorted. “She said Marlene was having second thoughts.”

  “Marlene is a bigger cow than Ursula, but she’s a professional. Yes she hesitated for a moment because she thought she recognised one of the Housies, but I don’t know that it was Ursula. Whether it was or not, Marlene eventually said she was wrong and she did not know any of the Housies.”

  “Let’s think about Thursday night,” Joe suggested. “You said to me that if and when you needed stock feeds, you could locate and run them in a matter of seconds. Anyone else would have to find them first.”

  “Therefore I’m the chief suspect,” Naughton sneered. “If you listened, Murray, I also said that both Katy and Helen could do it. I know neither of them did, and I didn’t either, so where does that leave your theory?”

  “Nothing wrong with the theory, Scott,” Joe replied, “because I don’t have to believe you. I showed you how it was done. All I’m saying beyond that is you, Helen and Katy are the people who could have done it most efficiently.”

  “There’s so much more you don’t know,” Naughton snapped back. “Everyone can see the sense of what you’re saying, but to get where you think the killer got wasn’t simply a case of jumping over the wall and past security. Do you know how awkward it is to go from this backroom area to the Housies’ side of things?” Naughton got to his feet. “Come with me.”

  He led the way from the control room, along the lower corridor to the security station by the rear entrance. />
  “Morning Ray,” he said to the officer on duty, the same one as had been there the previous day. “Can you open the key cupboard, please?”

  “Certainly, Mr Naughton.” Ray got to his feet, unhooked a key chain from his waistband, and reached up to a wall-mounted, metal cupboard on the back wall. He opened it and Joe studied the contents with a growing sense of annoyance.

  It was packed with keys, some long, some short, some deadlock, some mortise, others obviously designed for lockers or cupboards.

  “I don’t know how many keys there are,” Naughton said to Joe, “but the theoretical killer would have needed three. One for the control room, one for the lower door to gain access to the stair case, and a third to get off the staircase into the Housies’ area once he got to the first floor.” He glared at Joe. “How long could he risk hanging around in the security office, here? It could have taken him anything up to twenty minutes to find the right keys unless he knew exactly which ones to take, and I’ll tell you something else, I wouldn’t know which ones they are, and neither would Helen nor Katy.”

  Joe shot a glance at Ray, then back at Naughton, and finally Ray again. Taking out his mobile phone, calling up the stopwatch, he barked, “Get me those three keys now.”

  Ray began to sort through the keys, checking the labels on each one. At length he chose a key, then a second, then a third. Finally, he passed them to Joe.

  “Less than a minute,” Joe said. “The theory holds, Naughton.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Joe was in the garden again exercising his mind and enjoying another cigarette when Hoad found him.

  “Sorry about the delay, Joe,” the chief inspector apologised. “Bloody politics.”

  “What’s the problem?” Joe asked.

  “The production company and the TV station want to use the hall for the final goodbye this afternoon,” Hoad explained.

  “D-Day,” Joe translated.

  “Whatever they like to call it,” Hoad sneered. “Can’t allow it, especially after what we’ve learned overnight. I have scientific support going over the Housies’ area with the traditional fine-toothed comb. We’ve had a bit of argy-bargy over it. They even rang the Chief Constable, but I’m sticking to my guns. I can’t have anyone, not even the Housies now, disturbing anything in the Romping Room or the upper landing. Not until forensic have finished their work.”