The I-Spy Murders

by David W Robinson

  Brenda’s sigh interrupted him. “I know that feeling so well.”

  Fading the Frankie Vaughan track, Joe called up the Rolling Stones Nineteenth Nervous Breakdown and left his audience to it.

  “I was saying Katy is young and frustrated,” he repeated. “She’s eager to get on. Did her mother commit suicide? I don’t know, but I know she’s young enough and fit enough to get over the wall, which is more than can be said for Helen Catterick.”

  “Really?” Sheila asked. “You wouldn’t have thought so earlier today.” Joe raised his eyebrows and Sheila explained, “When we got back from shopping this afternoon, we met her in the lobby while we were waiting for the lift. She wouldn’t wait and took the stairs two at a time.”

  Joe thought about it. “Climbing stairs and jumping over an eight foot wall are different propositions, you know. My money is on Scott Naughton, with Katy second favourite.” He drained his glass. “I’ll go to the bar. You know how the system works. When the Stones are through, just pick a track.”

  Joe made his way around the packed dance floor, smiling here, nodding there, to those members who acknowledged him. At the bar, he edged his way in alongside George Robson who was talking to Katy Flitt.

  “Gimme half a lager, a Campari and soda, and a gin and it,” he ordered, and nudged George in the back.

  George twisted his neck to look over his shoulder. “Hey up, Joe. What do you want?”

  “I want a word with Katy before you try to seduce her.”

  George laughed but his eyes beamed a fiery anger at Joe. “She’s young enough to be my granddaughter.”

  “Never stopped you in the past,” Joe commented. “Now come on, George, shove off. I need to speak to this girl. Go hit on Helen Catterick instead.”

  Grumbling to himself, George picked up a pint of bitter and wandered off.

  “You don’t seriously think he could pull me, do you?” Katy asked as Joe edged closer to her in the space vacated by George.

  “Stranger things have happened on a STAC outing,” Joe told her.

  “STAC?” she asked.

  “Short for the Sanford 3rd Age Club,” Joe explained, and gestured around the room. “Almost everyone you see is a member. Except for you and your two pals.”

  Katy smiled thinly. “You don’t mind, do you? Only one of your members, the old army officer, told Scott it would be all right.”

  Joe laughed. “It’s no problem, honestly. Besides, I needed a quick word.”

  He was distracted by the barman delivering the drinks. He handed over a ten pound note, and collected his change.

  “So what did you want to know?” Katy asked when she had his attention again.

  “How’s your mother?” Joe asked.

  In the act of raising a glass of sparkling white wine to her mouth, she paused, frowned and put it down again. “That’s an odd question.”

  “I’m an odd bod,” Joe replied.

  “Well, as far as I’m aware my mother is fine and healthy and still living in Welwyn Garden City. But then, I haven’t seen or spoken to her for a few weeks. Do you know something I don’t? Do you know my mother, even?”

  Joe grinned. “No. But I do know you probably didn’t kill Ursula.”

  “So that’s what it was about?” Katy scowled. “All you had to do was ask. I could have told you. I’ll tell you something else, too. I don’t believe it was any of the crew. Have you thought about the security people? Rebecca and Ernie? It would be lot easier for them to do it from the inside rather than have one of us pole vaulting over the back wall.”

  “Oh, yes,” Joe assured her. “But how well can the security wallahs handle the stock feeds?” He picked up his drinks. “Enjoy the evening, Katy.”

  Joe rejoined his companions on the stage as the Rolling Stones faded out.

  “That’s another suspect crossed off the…”

  He trailed off as Michael Holliday rang from the speakers singing The Runaway Train and was greeted with howls of protest from the dance floor.

  “What the hell are you playing at?” he cried, reaching for keyboard and stopping the music.

  Sheila shrugged. “You told me to play anything, so I just put some numbers in.”

  “For god’s sake, you should look at them first.” Joe picked up his microphone. “Sorry about that folks. Numerical confusion on the computer. Tell you what, we have a great view over the River Dee here, and it’s such a beautiful evening, so let’s slow the tempo down with Danny Williams telling us all about Moon River.”

  The music began to play, couples began to sway to the gentle rhythms, and Joe fumed at the two women. “Much more from you two, and there’ll be another murder in Chester. A double murder this time.”

  “By the time you’re big enough, you’ll be too old,” Brenda warned him.

  “Mind the store for a while longer, will you?” Joe said, his eyes scanning the room. “I want a word with Scott Naughton.”

  Fixing his target, he ambled through the slow moving dancers and joined the director at a table near the bar entrance where Naughton brooded over a glass of scotch.

  “What do you want, Murray? Come to throw me out of your private party?”

  “Nothing of the kind,” Joe said. “I just told Katy, you’re more than welcome, and as it happens, I need some information from you.” He made a show of rolling a cigarette. “Tell me about the Housies. How are they chosen?”

  Naughton clucked. “What is it with you? Why can’t you just leave it to the law?”

  “Because they don’t know where they’re going half the time. If you don’t answer me, I’ll get Frank Hoad to ask you, and you’ll answer him or suffer for it.”

  Having rolled his cigarette Joe waited for Naughton to respond.

  With a sigh, the director said, “They all send in an application along with a recent photograph. That’s our first line filter. The one’s we like the look of are invited for audition as near to their homes as we can arrange.”

  “I remember Brenda had to go to Leeds,” Joe agreed. “Go on.”

  “From those auditions, we select our long list, and then audition them a second time. It’s a sterner test. We put them through various situations and scenarios, and how they cope determines whether they’ll make the short list. That short list comprises sixteen people. Eight Housies and eight reserves. If any of our first choice drop out for whatever reason, then we go to the reserve list and pull someone in. Dylan, for example was on the reserve list, but the lad, the original choice, Neil, er…” Naughton strained at his memory. “Sorry, can’t recall his surname. Anyway, he was involved in a car accident about eight weeks ago. Laid up in hospital. He assured us he’d be fine, but his doctors wouldn’t commit, and we didn’t have time to take chances, so we contacted Dylan and drafted him in.”

  As Danny Williams finished and Sheila put on The Moody Blues signing Go Now, Joe asked. “Does that happen often?”

  Naughton nodded. “On almost every series. There is always someone who drops out. Usually their bottle goes, but we’ve had other issues in the past. One girl found out she was pregnant just after she’d been selected, and her boyfriend didn’t want her coming on the show.” The director laughed at the memory.

  “So who votes on the auditions?” Joe wanted to know.

  “There are teams working at every audition. But when it comes to the final selection, we use a team of five judges. Helen, Katy, me and two executives from the TV station.” Naughton’s stare turned suspicious once more. “What are you getting at, Murray?”

  “What I’m getting at doesn’t make sense,” Joe confessed. “From all you’re telling me, there is no way any Housey could, er, wangle his way onto the show.”

  “It would be almost impossible for him to do it, and if you’re hinting that he was trying to get to Ursula, that, too, is impossible. The Housies know nothing about each other until they meet on the day they move in.”

  Joe stood. “Thanks. You’ve just blown me out of the water,
again.”

  Leaving Naughton, he called back at the podium where he picked up Ursula Kenney’s laptop. “I’m going outside for a smoke, and I’ll give this the once over while I’m there. Keep the music going. Something lively. I won’t be long.”

  He stepped out through the open doors onto the terrace, lit his cigarette, and sat at a nearby table, the laptop in front of him.

  The view combined immediately and almost hypnotically with the memory of Moon River to carry him off for a few brief seconds to a teenage holiday on the Norfolk Broads, when he, George Robson and Owen Frickley had hired a motor cruiser for the week and plodded along the rivers Yare, Bure and Waveney. Memories of overnight stops at busy, riverbank pubs, the popular music of the early seventies blaring from George’s portable radio accompanying their East Anglian journey.

  “Whatever happened to it, Joe?” he asked the night.

  “They lock you up for talking to yourself, you know.”

  Joe looked up to find Helen Catterick stood in the doorway. “Hi Helen.” He waved at the seat opposite, inviting her to sit with him. “I was thinking about a holiday back, oh musta been, seventy-two, seventy-three. Great times. Fun times. Hectic as hell, but wonderful. Where did it go? That zip, that zest?”

  “Life takes it out of you, Joe. You’re a businessman, and even back then your father must have been training you for the day when you would inherit his café.”

  “Probably,” Joe agreed, and found himself thinking of Sarah Pringle and the Beachside Hotel in Filey. She, too, had had that air of ‘business comes first’ doom about her. “Not the same in your job though, is it?”

  Helen wagged a disapproving finger at him. “It’s much worse. Everyone hears how tough it is for actors to get their break, but you know, it’s just as hard, perhaps harder for the production crew. I was getting on for forty before my break came along.”

  Joe scanned the river again, and a group of young men larking about on the far bank. He thought about the number 40. Forty years ago he would have joined them. Now he wanted to scold them.

  Bringing his focus back to Helen as a method of forgetting them, he said, “I was talking to Katy at the bar. I didn’t realise you people were staying here.”

  “We’ve been here for the last five or six weeks,” she confessed, “and we have another week or so, while everything is dismantled at Gibraltar Hall. Then it’s on to Norwich.” The bright smile faded. “If the company decide to go ahead.”

  “There’s some doubt?” Joe asked, and she nodded. “Ursula?”

  “Yes,” Helen replied. “I have to be in London tomorrow afternoon for a meeting. I’ll be back on Tuesday morning, of course. Whatever the company decide regarding the series, the removal work at Gibraltar Hall must go on, and as producer, I have overall responsibility for our equipment.” She crossed one elegant leg over the other knee. “You still suspect one of us, don’t you?”

  He grunted and relit his cigarette. “No. I suspect a member of your production crew. I’m not saying it’s you, Scott or Katy.” He tapped Ursula’s computer. “I’m hoping this might tell me something. It belonged to Ursula.”

  “You think she knew her killer?”

  Joe nodded and puffed smoke into the evening air. “She definitely knew her killer, but she also knew the someone in your team who helped the killer. I’m sure of it.”

  “She was a very devious woman, Joe. It’s unlikely that she kept anything on the computer.”

  “It’s a shot in the dark, true, but you never know.” He puffed again on his cigarette. “So what will you do if I-Spy is cancelled?”

  “Go back in the pool, and bid for work with all the other producers and directors.” There was more than a hint of resignation about her words, and Joe thought again of Sarah Pringle. “It’s a tough business, Joe, and even with my list of credits, it’s not easy finding work. That’s why I must be in London tomorrow. I’ll do whatever I must to save the programme.” She smiled indulgently. “I know you don’t approve, Joe. You’re from a different generation; one that experienced the golden age of TV. I remember those days, too, but nowadays, the executive attitude is take it or leave it, and most youngsters will take what we offer.”

  “Because they’ll spend money whether they have it or not, and that’s what the advertisers aim for.”

  “Very astute,” Helen congratulated him. “Also probably accurate, although you won’t hear anyone in TV admit it.” She glanced at her watch. “It’s almost half past ten. Time I was getting some sleep. I’ve a long journey in front of me tomorrow. Goodnight, Joe.”

  He watched her leave the terrace, then turned his attention to Ursula’s computer, lifting the metal finish lid and switching it on.

  It was slow to boot up, and when the desktop screen finally appeared, he checked the taskbar and found the battery depleted to 10%. He wondered briefly whether the adaptor from his disco laptop would work, but decided against it. Pushing music out through so many channels caused considerable drain on the batteries and if anything else went wrong, he could not rely upon the good folk of the Sanford 3rd Age Club to keep their collective temper.

  There was little on the machine. A copy of Ursula’s CV, one or two other, innocent documents relating to properties for sale in and around her home city of Liverpool, and a collection of photographs, mainly from her days in the theatre and on TV. None were of any use, and as far as he could see there was nothing to indicate or implicate members of the I-Spy production team.

  He rolled another cigarette, lit it and stared up at the clear sky. There had to be something, somewhere to give him a clue.

  “Joe.” It was Brenda’s voice. “Joe, are you coming back in, or what?”

  “Yeah. Right with you.” He reached for the computer’s power button.

  Brenda’s eyes widened. “Well, look who it is.”

  Joe looked around. There was no one else to be seen on the terrace and anyway, Brenda was staring at a photograph on the laptop screen. Joe, too, studied it. The caption read, Millennium Eve Amdram Group, Liverpool.

  “What? Who? Where?” he demanded.

  “There.” Brenda pointed.

  Joe followed her finger. His eyes widened and his face split into a broad grin.

  Gotcha!

  ***

  Joe woke suddenly. His mouth tasted like sandpaper and he felt groggy and in need of the lavatory.

  “Too much lager,” he diagnosed accurately.

  The moment he thought about it, his bladder reminded him that it was time to relieve some of the pressure.

  Reaching across to the bedside table, he groped for the lamp. He was surprised at how dark the room was. Probably because it overlooked the river, he guessed. There were few street lamps this side of the hotel.

  “Where is the damn lamp?” he cursed.

  His fingers closed over something long and flat. Certainly not the brass base of the lamp. His mobile phone. He snatched it up and felt along the right hand edge for the button which would unlock the screen. The second he pressed it, light burst from the phone along with the photograph of the Lazy Luncheonette which he used as wallpaper. Now he could see the whole room.

  “Almost as good as a torch,” he muttered, reaching for the lamp and switching it on.

  Rolling out of bed, shivering in the sudden chill, he made his way to the bathroom.

  Something began to nag at him. What was it? It was something which should have occurred naturally to him, and it had happened only recently. Whatever it was, it could not fight its way through the lager-induced fog in his brain. So sharp and intuitive most of the time, whenever he had a little too much to drink, it began to wander.

  Of course! The cold. He had felt it the moment he threw off the duvet. Did it mean that Marc Ulrich could legitimately have used a dressing gown?

  Even as he thought of it, Joe dismissed the idea. Yes, he had felt the chill when he got up, but he wore only a pair of shorts to bed, Marc had worn pyjamas, and anyway, even though the initial
loss of the duvet’s insulation had caused him to feel cold, he was all right now. It wasn’t really chilly. It was simply an effect of the temperature differential between lying under the duvet and the cooler room air. Like stepping out of the Lazy Luncheonette’s kitchen and into the rear yard on a summer’s afternoon.

  Memories of Marc’s overbearing, socially conscious mother assailed him. The perfect cover for using a dressing gown. My mother insists on it. No. Marc Ulrich was still in the frame.

  Satisfied that he had the answer to his worry, he flushed the lavatory and made his way back to bed.

  Dragging the duvet over himself, he killed the light, then groped for the phone again, to check the time. Once again, the room was illuminated by a surprising amount of light.

  Just after 3:45. It had been almost one by the time he bid Sheila and Brenda goodnight. Right now, he’d had less than four hours’ sleep. Pressing the button to lock the phone again, he left it on the bedside table, and rolled onto his back to go to sleep.

  Waiting for his jackrabbit mind to switch off again, he thought about the mobile phone. Hadn’t he read somewhere that in total darkness, the human eye could detect the light of a candle at 10 kilometres. Hardly surprising that the minimal light of a tiny LED screen could illuminate a hotel room. And it was one in the eye for those cameras. They could see nothing without giving out light of… their… own.

  He rolled over, reached to the table, groped about until he found the mobile phone and hit the lock button again. While the main screen was active, he glanced around the room. He could see everything. Even the slim, black mains lead for his netbook snaking down from the table to the wall socket below. The human eye did not work well in near darkness, and he would not swear to it, but he thought he could detect the colour of his jeans and shirt, draped over the back of the chair beside the table.

  He checked the time again. A few minutes to four. It was way too early. He knew he would not sleep again this night. He needed to be out at Gibraltar Hall, but it would be another four hours before the crew would be there to let him in. Brenda had identified one for him, and he wanted to be out there, working to pin down the other.