Classic Calls the Shots

by Amy Myers

  ‘For ever?’

  ‘Sarah Bernhardt was still playing new roles at nearly eighty and with only one leg. She had fame and fortune enough and on she went. Still driven.’

  ‘But not wandering.’

  ‘No,’ she replied. ‘But then I’m not nearly eighty.’

  ‘For that,’ I said fervently, ‘I am most grateful.’

  I woke up the next morning wondering about the quibble over the cars that Nigel had come in to discuss with Roger. Something about them had definitely upset Angie, and insurance could well be the issue at stake. It would be a good place to start, and there was no time to waste, as Car Day was only three days away, so I headed for the Manor.

  Roger Ford had the privilege of a room in the house itself, not a caravan, courtesy of Sir John Biddington, who had allotted him a room at the side of the house overlooking the gardens.

  ‘What can I do for you, Jack?’ No mask today. Roger looked weary and was sitting by the window with the computer in front of him on a small table. The screen was blank.

  ‘Cars,’ I said.

  He heaved a sigh. ‘Talk to Nigel.’

  ‘Not yet. I need your impartial input.’

  ‘I’m not impartial. I’ve got a film to make without busting the budget.’

  ‘I need to speak to the top man. You.’

  ‘That bad? You got me, Jack.’ A glimmer of a grin.

  ‘You remember what Angie told Bill about the cars? That there was something wrong somewhere?’

  I didn’t feel comfortable talking to him about this, but couldn’t put my finger on why. I’m supposed to have a nose for trouble, but sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between trouble and having an off day.

  ‘Sure I do. Found out what she meant yet?’

  ‘Still plugging away. How much was Angie involved with that side of admin?’

  ‘Not at all, except over the Auburn. She was as mad as hell when it went missing. She took it personally.’

  ‘As perhaps she was meant to, but I need your take before I start jumping to conclusions.’

  ‘The buck stops here.’ Roger made a wry face. ‘Too right. But I’ve so many bucks pulling up here at present that cars don’t seem that important. But shoot away.’

  ‘You’ve got four very expensive motors out there. Is the insurance side of things in order?’

  ‘That’s done through Nigel Biddington. I’ve had enough to do over the Auburn in recent days so I know there’s nothing wrong with his service. The insurance company is secure enough. The fact that the car was undamaged cheered them up, but not me. It suggests it was pinched out of spite, which might put the others at risk. The company is happy with the precautions so far.’

  ‘Could the thief have it in for Oxley Productions?’

  ‘Oxley?’ That stirred him up. ‘That’s a crazy idea. Why?’

  ‘It’s worth taking seriously.’

  He stared at me as though I was the last straw in person. ‘I’ll step up security even more. I’ll have guards sleeping in those damned cars if need be.’

  ‘What insurance do you have for Car Day?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours only. Nigel’s taken care of it.’

  ‘Is Oxley itself insured?’

  He took my point. ‘Uninsurable for that degree of risk. Loss of the day’s filming could be covered but not all the attendant problems. A nightmare in fact if we can’t film. But it won’t happen, Jack. Maybe Bill misheard what Angie said.’

  I supposed that was just possible, but I had to go on. ‘She died, Roger. If not over the cars, what else? Tom?’

  ‘The police think so. They’ve hauled him into the station twice, but he’s not been charged. Anyway I gave him a job, so it would have blown over. Motive gone.’

  Time to tread delicate ground. ‘I gather your wife was close to Angie. She must have been very upset.’ This might be an implication too far, but I had to ask it.

  He didn’t seem to take offence. ‘Yeah. They were both background performers on Running Tides – that’s what brought them together. Maisie was brought up in the States and movie-mad, so she pleaded with her folks to let her see what the movie world was all about at first hand. She was real keen on Bill’s films, so that’s what she chose to go for. She met Angie and stayed friendly. Maisie’s a peaceable woman and dropping old friends isn’t something she’d do lightly.’

  Peaceable or not, I thought, Maisie and Angie had managed to clutch the producer and director respectively, I reflected. Not bad going.

  He was a smart man. He must have guessed what I was thinking. ‘During Tides Bill was a single man, and I was mid-divorce. Bill had been divorced for some years. No problem. I married Maisie in due course and here we are ten years later, no intention of changing the situation. Bill wasn’t so lucky. He never even noticed Angie on set – that came later – but he was obsessed with Margot, and that was a problem.’

  ‘That led to her suicide?’

  He hesitated, then said, ‘She was what I guess you’d call fragile. She was married, had a bust-up with her husband over Bill, but wanted to continue in a threesome with both husband and Bill. Husband was reluctant but prepared to go along with it. Bill wasn’t. He wasn’t trying to blackmail her into choosing him – not his style – he just decided he should go. She couldn’t take the shock of being rejected, as she saw it, and that was it. Bill took a long time to get over it. As for the Auburn, she and Bill very publicly went around in it all the time. Because she was the more public face, it became her car in a way.’

  ‘And later Angie’s,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yeah. Angie’s and Bill’s. Don’t take that too far, Jack.’

  But I did. A token of victory for Angie. Margot Croft’s car. Margot Croft’s man.

  As I drove back to Frogs Hill, I thought more about Angie’s death and where I (and Brandon) should be looking. There was undoubtedly a fork in our road ahead. The cars were one angle, the one I was officially following up. There must have been a reason for Angie’s words to Bill. Roger, however, had found nothing amiss with the insurance, so unless he was involved in some kind of fraud – which seemed extremely unlikely – there was no immediate way forward on that front. Saturday would be the day that might produce another lead.

  As for the second angle, scratch the surface of the Dark Harvest company and there could be quite a few who wanted Angie Wade out of the way, although that was a long way from using murder as the solution. Louise had pointed out that the past was indeed past, and people killed for reasons stemming from the present. That brought me back to happy-go-lucky Tom again, who had been ousted from the job he loved and suspected that he might not be saved another time. I had little doubt that Brandon was hot on his case. Apart from Brian Tegg who was teetering on the brink of losing his role of Lord Charing, there were no other obvious candidates in this category. I needed to scratch deeper.

  When I reached Frogs Hill again, I went straight to the Pits. It had not escaped my notice that there might not be enough in the kitty to pay the mortgage at the end of the month unless my work force was galvanized into meeting a few deadlines.

  To my surprise neither Zoe nor Len was there. I could see that they had been there, but nothing otherwise. Abducted by aliens? This was surely the only thing that would drag them away from their precious grease pit. I went outside again, and this time noticed a familiar car tucked round at the side of the Pits barn. I was glad it was out of sight. To have that monstrous canary-coloured horror desecrating the forecourt of Frogs Hill would put off potential customers.

  ‘Harry?’ I roared.

  No reply. Had Zoe and Len taken him into the farmhouse – not the Glory Boot, I hoped. Was he already ransacking it? Valuing it? I rushed straight to it, but thankfully it was undefiled by Harry. So where was everybody?

  There was only one place left. Grimly I went into the garden and out of the side gate to the barn-cum-garages where we keep Charlie (our old low-loader), my treasured Gordon-Keeble, and the Lagond
a. Sure enough, there were my staff and Harry, who was puffing away like a chimney before the clean air act.

  ‘Nice old jalopies.’ Harry grinned at me.

  ‘Anything I can do for you?’ I enquired.

  ‘You could do a lot for this place. I’ve been telling Len here and Zoe – good team you’ve got, Jack. I’d look after them like a shot.’

  I gnashed my teeth in frustration. Len looked a bit sheepish, but Zoe looked as though Harry were a knight in shining armour.

  ‘We could work up a nice little business here,’ Harry kindly offered. ‘You need capital, Jack. Don’t forget that. Spend money to make money. Any time you want to talk it over—’

  ‘The only thing I want to talk over with you, Harry,’ I countered pleasantly, ‘is Shotsworth Security.’

  He went rather pale. ‘What about it?’

  ‘You have the contract for the Gladden estate car park, haven’t you?’

  ‘So?’ he ventured cautiously. ‘I don’t run Shotsworth. I just co-own it. Heard you found your Auburn at Gladden though, so you owe me.’

  ‘Permitting property on the stolen list into the car park? I don’t think so. Especially if there are others.’

  There was a strange silence. ‘Stolen, Jack?’ Harry said at last. ‘I’m told it was a practical joke. Someone working there.’

  ‘Told by whom?’ I pressed. ‘Nathan Wynn, one of the security guards at Gladden?’

  Harry decided to put up a defence. ‘So what? They’ve been doing their job OK. No fiddling books there.’

  ‘Making anything on the side, though?’

  ‘Watch it, Jack. I’ve got witnesses,’ Harry pointed out virtuously.

  Bless them, Zoe and Len were chattering furiously to each other, thus rendering themselves incapable of bearing witness. Their dialogue drowned my next words too, which was just as well. ‘If you’re mixed up with anything, Harry, it won’t look good for you. Not with Dave Jennings after you. I’ve looked after you so far.’

  Harry promptly got down to business. ‘You know I’m straight, Jack.’

  ‘Within wavy lines,’ I agreed.

  ‘Keep in touch. I’ll look into it. If I find there’s a glitch –’ he gave me a sideways glance – ‘you won’t hear about it, but the problem will go away.’

  At least he went away. That was a start. Indeed he almost ran, and I wondered where his next destination would be.

  I knew where mine was – and hoped I didn’t meet Harry there. I took a brief detour to the Pits whither Zoe and Len condescended to return to tell them I had a date with Gladden Car Park, but I’d be back to discuss work schedules. Rob was hanging around so the word ‘schedules’ ran like water off a duck’s back where Zoe was concerned, and Len merely nodded and commented that the Porsche 356 just brought in needed attention.

  Later, I promised myself. Right now, there was something that needed my urgent attention at Gladden. Before Harry was able to have a chat with Nathan Wynn.

  Nathan wasn’t on duty when I drove into the car park and I didn’t recognize the new guard. He was big, and unlike Nathan didn’t even pretend jollity.

  ‘Police,’ I told him, flashing my pass, but he seemed uninterested. I drove on down to the lower level and parked. I then had a look around to see how many cars were under wraps today. There was a Focus parked where the Auburn had been, shining and sparkly clean. No wraps on that. Three cars were covered, however, so I went to investigate them. The Jag I had seen earlier was either no longer here or had moved to another place before donning its veil of tarpaulin. Of the three under wraps, one proved to be an ancient Renault that hadn’t moved since they stopped walking before cars with a red flag. It had on it a licence that was out of date by five years, and it had lost a wheel. Maybe the owner was never coming back or didn’t need a car up in paradise. The next one was an Aston Martin DB4, and the third—

  I never got a chance to find out. I was vaguely aware of two shapes whirling out of the shadows, then I was seized from behind with a hand round my throat and another one punching my stomach. Then I was on the hard concrete floor and saw a large boot heading straight for me.

  EIGHT

  A & E in a large hospital late in the evening invites no sympathy for its patients – to staff and other sufferers I was just a middle-aged lout who’d been in a punch-up. By the time I was unloaded from the ambulance, however, I was past caring about anyone save what was left of myself. In due course I was given various tests delivered with icy glances, kept in overnight for a further X-ray, and duly written off the next morning with severe bruising and a couple of busted ribs. My feelings weren’t noted on the official record.

  ‘What happened, Jack?’ Zoe asked when she duly picked me up in her old banger – a twenty-five-year-old Ford Fiesta. She looked concerned so I knew I did not present a handsome picture. It takes a lot to stir Zoe’s compassion – unless you’re Rob of course.

  ‘Someone objected to my strolling through the Gladden car park.’

  ‘Why go back?’ Zoe asked. ‘You’d found the Auburn.’

  ‘Wondered what else might be there.’ It would have sounded weak to anyone but Zoe. She was on my wavelength.

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘Not sure.’

  ‘Typical,’ Zoe said kindly. ‘Try harder.’

  ‘You try harder with three busted ribs.’ I had added one for luck. ‘I sniffed round cars under wraps, but don’t know what they told me.’

  ‘Old age, she said even more kindly.

  I tried to be more specific. ‘The Jag I saw the other day had gone. And under the other wraps were an ancient Renault Tourer with only three wheels and an Aston Martin DB4. There was another one I didn’t get to see. That’s why I’m not sure. OK?’

  ‘No common denominator. I told Rob you were going—’

  ‘Rob?’ I interrupted, horrified. My fate in Rob’s hands? ‘Zoe, he’s a chum of Nigel Biddington,’ I croaked. She isn’t usually such a dope.

  ‘So?’ She looked startled, and I remembered that I’d had to keep Angie’s doubts over the car scene to myself. As far as Zoe knew, Nigel was merely the insurance-broking son of the upright Sir John. Which of course he might be, I was forced to concede in fairness. Nevertheless, even if Nathan Wynn had been one of my assailants, there was another one to account for. Maybe Nathan kept a tame hit man for such events as my arrival, because someone had clearly known of my movements. I doubted whether Harry Prince could have got the message through in time, although I suppose it was theoretically possible.

  ‘Not wise to spread my movements around,’ I said as mildly as I could.

  She looked at me scathingly, as we drew up outside Frogs Hill. ‘You think Rob would stoop to bashing you up? Or Nigel? Have a look at the Kentish Graphic. It was published yesterday. She fished around on the back seat and produced one of the local rags. The front page blared out that the full story of the tragic death of film director’s wife Angela Wade could be found on page five. Page five, baulked of hard news on the said death, considered whether the theft and miraculous recovery of ‘her’ stolen and valuable car could be a clue to her killer. It was, the story cunningly continued, an interesting fact that the man who found Angela Wade’s body also found the missing vehicle, said to be ‘priceless’. It also provided ‘the man’s’ name and address. Mine.

  I groaned and slumped back in the car seat.

  ‘You always wanted to be on the front page and now you’ve made it,’ Zoe said encouraging. ‘Anyone in Kent could have been following you around yesterday.’ Then she glanced at my face and became more human. ‘You toddle off to bed,’ she offered, ‘and I’ll heat up some soup or make coffee or something.’

  Bed did not appeal – for one thing it reminded me of Louise, which was a painful memory in the circumstances. James Bond might manage to continue his love life no matter what, but we mere mortals aren’t so indefatigable. Hardly to my surprise, my mobile had disappeared, but luckily I don’t keep details of my sensitive
contacts in it for just this eventuality.

  Once inside the farmhouse, I crawled to the sofa and investigated the landline. It had six messages on it. Two were from Louise, wanting to know where I was. The mere sound of her voice was frustrating, both emotionally and physically. The second said she’d heard what had happened and would be over as soon as she could. I couldn’t ring back because she had explained that Bill banned mobiles within a dozen miles of his sets, on the grounds that he paid for his cast to stay in character. Taking time off for lunch was OK though, because it was shared with the rest of the cast and therefore in character. Mobile calls would take them out of it. I could leave a message but I’d rather wait until I could speak to her in person.

  Dave had rung me too, and the rest of the calls were from Bill Wade. I decided to get up to date with Dave first. After all, Gladden was on his turf. He was all sympathy.

  ‘Can’t pay you compensation, Jack. Budget, all that stuff. Bad news you being duffed up. Insured, are you?’

  I wasn’t actually. I told him what I’d found in the car park, then thought to ask him: ‘Have you got an Aston Martin DB4 on your stolen list?’

  He checked. ‘No.’

  Bang went that theory. ‘A Jag XK150?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Too late. It’s gone.’

  ‘Number?’

  Car numbers come easily to me, so I reeled that one off and for good measure the Aston Martin’s too. Dave checked both. ‘No Aston on the list whatever the number, but there was a Jag XK150. Not the same number, although that means nothing. Suspicious though.’ A pause. ‘I don’t like the smell of this, Jack. Want to do some more scouting?’

  ‘They know my form now.’

  ‘No problem,’ he told me cheerfully. ‘This Shotsworth Security . . .’

  ‘Owned by Harry Prince but not, I think, run by him,’ I supplied.

  ‘It isn’t. Know Mark Shotsworth?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You should do. He runs it. He doesn’t move in the rarefied circles of classics though. More in the grab everything you can nick line.’