by Amy Myers
‘Which side of it? Harry’s normally our side.’
‘The other. Did GBH a few years back.’
‘And runs a security firm?’
‘Reformed character.’
I felt my ribs protesting. ‘Maybe.’
‘Just a guess, Jack. Talking of classics, there’s another local wee lamb out there bleating for its mother.’
‘Name?’
‘Bugatti Type 57. Year 1937.’
Something between a gasp and a whistle emerged from my lips. ‘They’d be crazy to hide it down there.’
‘Some people are crazy, Jack. Does no harm to keep an eye out.’ With a few more kind words he rang off – which left only Bill to call.
Bill didn’t waste time in sympathy in the messages he’d left. Each time he merely said: ‘Ring me, Jack.’ When I did so, he got to the nub of the matter immediately. ‘Gladden car park. That where you found my Auburn?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why? Did you ask yourself that?’
‘I did. There could be several reasons. I’ll find the right one.’
‘I already have. Angie was right. The cars, Jack. Something stinks.’
My body reminded me of that all too painfully.
For all Bill’s eagerness for me to be on the hunt, I slept a lot of that day, missing a call from Louise, who had sneaked a mobile into her caravan.
I woke up at about six on Thursday evening with the setting sun streaming in the window and forced myself to read the offending article in the local paper again. Stour Studios were always a prime source of material for the local press one way or another, but seldom quite so dramatically or horrifically as in these last eight days. The national press and TV had been present in force at the studios and most of the reporters had found their way up to Syndale Manor. Which can’t have pleased Sir John. Nor Bill. Fortunately security was heavy, with police and guards at the gate and patrolling the grounds. Not surprisingly, Brandon’s press conferences had not satisfied press hunger, but intensified it. Murder on a film set is newsworthy enough, let alone when the victim is the director’s wife and the director is Bill Wade. Years ago rumours that Marlon Brando had been spotted in east Kent had set off a kerfuffle of speculation and rumour that ran and ran for many a long year. It was a given therefore that the Kentish Graphic would make the most of local drama. Its territory is wide, covering the whole of east Kent and most of the west too.
I knew who was responsible for yesterday’s article, without even looking for a byline. This was Pen Roxton’s work. I’ve known Pen for years on and off. She is a redoubtable journalist; she’s physically tiny, slender, hair in varying shades of yesterday’s blonde, sharp-nosed, squeaky-voiced and eagle-eyed, and she has the ability to melt into the background at will. It’s when she emerges out of the undergrowth in one tremendous rush that the ferret in her takes over. One word, and she is in for the kill. I know quite a few who have crossed swords with her, but never before had the pleasure of either seeing her at work or being the rabbit she was hunting.
I suspected that moment had come, as I read her current handiwork skilfully blending fact and fiction. Super-sleuth Jack Colby had apparently told ‘our reporter’ Pen Roxton that I was hot on the trail – not specifying whether of the murderer or car thief, but somehow also managing to imply that the finger of suspicion for both was firmly pointing at me. Fortunately Pen has more than one finger, and nor does she like events to prove her wrong, so she was also pointing at several other people. The tragic Bill Wade had his turn. Pen had done her homework on Running Tides. The tragic Bill had first lost his great love Margot Croft to suicide and now his beloved Angie who had been an extra on the same film. My italics, but I could hear Pen panting her eagerness to promote suspicion loud and clear.
Roger Ford came off lightly, portrayed as the embattled producer dogged by scandal and trauma. Nevertheless, he was putting a brave face on it. ‘I believe in Dark Harvest,’ he had apparently confided to Pen. ‘I believe in Bill; I believe in his ability to surmount this devastating tragedy.’
Devastating? I wasn’t yet on Roger’s wavelength, but one thing I was sure of was that he wouldn’t speak of ‘devastating tragedy’ to Pen, even if like most people he took refuge in the familiar when grappling with events that lay outside expectations of what life should offer.
Pen had a go at Joan Burton too, having cottoned on to the fact that she too was in Running Tides. ‘So I asked Joan what the great star Margot Croft had been like to work with. She has been compared with Greta Garbo, but off set what was she like? “She was my friend,” Joan told me quietly. “How could I describe her? Her loss was a devastating tragedy and for me still is. We all adored her, men and women. That link still holds us together – Bill, Roger, Chris, Graham, Tom, Brian – we seldom speak of her, but we know we are all thinking of her.”’
I could imagine how Bill had reacted to this story, if he had even bothered to read it. My guess was that he would ignore it by blitzing his way through to what was more important: solving Angie’s murder, and getting the film produced as an antidote to the pain of her death.
How I was going to react was a different matter. No point in raging against Pen, or ignoring it. I favoured phoning her. Pen can be surprisingly helpful if she chooses. She usually doesn’t so choose.
‘Hi,’ she squeaked, when I announced myself on the phone. ‘What d’yer think of the article?’
‘Devastating, darling.’
Pen’s sharp. She giggled. ‘Always good to hear from you, Jack, and don’t say you don’t return the compliment.’
‘Touché,’ I said politely.
‘Want to be my man?’
I know Pen. No sex involved here, not even as a joke. She must be in her early forties now and of her private life I know and care little.
‘Would if I could. But no way,’ I answered. Be a temporary tame poodle for Pen? Absolutely not.
‘Pity. What’s your take on Angie Wade?’
‘No comment,’ I replied. ‘I’ve been quoted enough without my saying a word.’
To do her justice, Pen laughed. She always does. Criticism runs off her like water off a duck’s back. ‘Keep in touch, Jack.’
‘I will,’ I assured her. ‘You might be able to help me.’
A silence as she rapidly assessed this. Then: ‘OK.’ A pause. ‘Get me an interview with Louise Shaw and I’m yours for life. I hear there are wedding bells for you two.’
‘Get lost, Pen,’ I said less than amiably.
I dozed off again, lost in a nightmare in which I murdered Pen, but woke up when the doorbell rang. I didn’t answer it. It might be Harry Prince. My caller came round the back of the farmhouse and appeared at the French windows, knocking gently. Fortunately it wasn’t Harry. I awoke from another nightmare and saw Louise, clutching a box in both hands with a bottle tucked under her arm.
Every bone in my body cried out while I rushed for the door.
‘Can you eat?’ she asked anxiously.
‘If I mash it up with a fork,’ I managed to joke. ‘I think so.’ It occurred to me that I hadn’t eaten all day save for the soup Zoe had heated up for me.
‘Good. You just sit back there on the sofa.’
No further urging needed, as I watched her unpack an array of interesting looking dishes from their insulated box. ‘Cooked by your own fair hands?’
‘I wish. The catering staff packed it up for us.’
‘What’s happening up there?’ I enquired once I had dispatched a couple of glasses of wine, a large portion of lasagne, salad, and strawberry mousse.
‘Not going well. Bill is getting rattled. We did the takes of the hunting scene where we gather in front of the Manor and Julia makes her bid for Robert’s attention. That didn’t go well and we haven’t got much time left at the Manor. The police say we can go back into the studios from this weekend, which in effect means Monday, but we might not be ready to leave Syndale by then. So Roger’s rattled too.’
She hesitated. ‘I’m not sure when I’m on all next week.’ She looked at me hopefully. ‘But I’m free on Sunday, if we don’t have an emergency shoot.’
That was all I needed to know. ‘Are you on call for Car Day?’
‘Yes, briefly. Incidentally the news about us is getting around. Bill and Roger asked me to pass on their good wishes for your speedy recovery.’
‘Fine by me, provided the Kentish Graphic doesn’t print the story.’
She regarded me pityingly. ‘It will. And it will spread further. Give it a day or two.’ What she didn’t point out, being Louise, is that she was a star and thus fair game everywhere.
‘Do you mind?’ I asked.
‘Only if it stops us being together.’
‘Together?’ How long, I wondered. For tonight, for the duration, for ever?
‘In the quiet places. Beside the still rivers, the green forests, and the silent meadows. With you, Jack.’
She did not return to the hotel that evening, but stayed with me for that quiet time in the quiet places of the night.
When I awoke on the Friday morning, Louise had already left. Bearing in mind that it was only twenty-four hours to Car Day, I experimented on moving like a human being. It was a tad easier than yesterday, and I reminded myself that I had a job to do that wasn’t going to wait for those twenty-four hours. If there was indeed something amiss with the car situation, then tomorrow was crunch day, and as yet there were far too many unanswered questions.
I could understand the thief’s annoyance with my finding the Auburn, but why should that extend to my returning to check out the rest of the car park? Two possibilities. Either my assailants had it in for me personally and the car park had been their choice of venue for making their point, or there was something in or about it that they didn’t want investigated further. Or both could be true. So how did Car Day fit in with that, if at all? I could see why someone would not like a car detective prowling around, but what could be suspicious about an old Renault? There had been the Jag XK150, but that had gone. It had been worth quite a bit, and so of course was the Aston Martin DB4. That did not mean the cars were necessarily hot, because people often choose to keep their cars under wraps. It was odd, however, to keep such expensive pleasures in a car park like Gladden, although not unknown in such small ones. Was that significant, or coincidence? Nothing for it; I would have to take another look at Gladden car park – and it would have to be today.
As the old joke goes, it felt like déjà vu all over again as I drove into the car park. I’ve never been one for heroics and I wondered just how heroic I was being in hobbling in here one more time. Who was watching the CCTV cameras, for instance? Maybe no one was, because the car park was currently manned.
When I had been carted off to hospital, Zoe and Len had come over here to fetch the Alfa back to Frogs Hill and I had been agreeably surprised that it hadn’t been ripped to pieces by my assailants. Zoe had reported to me that whoever was on duty it was not Nathan Wynn, judging by my description of a short, jolly thickset man. Nor had there been any interesting cars there, she said. That, I had thought, was odd. What about the Aston Martin? She hadn’t seen it.
Nathan was not on duty when I arrived either. This guard was tall, thin and lugubrious. He didn’t even blink as I drove in and drew a ticket. I decided to waive announcing myself with a police pass. I leaned my head out of the window and yelled conversationally, ‘Where’s Nathan, mate?’
‘Gone,’ came the sullen reply. There was a certain satisfaction in his voice.
‘Where to?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Left the firm?’
‘Dunno. Boss likes switching us around. Safer.’
‘Who for?’
A pause. ‘Business.’ He did look rather puzzled, however, as if he too wondered why business was safer without job continuity.
I poked a little further. ‘Best not to be guarding Stour Studios, eh?’
It got a reaction. ‘What’s up with Ken? Had another murder there?’ He looked at me suspiciously.
‘You know him?’
‘Sure. Works for the same firm. Used to be here before Nathan.’
Did he indeed. I drove off to find myself a parking space, wondering whether this location turnover was an interesting fact or normal for a firm in a restricted locality. I parked on the lower level again, clambered ungracefully out of the car and walked over to where the Aston Martin had been. It wasn’t there today. Nothing else seemed to have changed; it looked as it had when I came here last. A motley collection of modern and recent cars plus two under wraps. The Renault still greeted me, perhaps hopeful of an end to its solitary life here. Which was the second car? The Aston Martin had vanished, and the second car proved to be not Dave’s missing Bugatti Type 57, but a Morris Minor.
Dave had had no record of a stolen Aston Martin on his list and presumably that meant the one I had seen was legit. Not necessarily, though, but with no proof to the contrary there was no use my wasting time on it. My wistful hope that Dave’s Bugatti might have been the Auburn’s successor in whatever scam was taking place was dashed. I would be driving into Syndale Manor on Car Day with a body full of aches and a mind empty of theories. Except, I grudgingly admitted, the possibly interesting fact that Ken Merton had once worked here. The car park where the Auburn had lain hidden.
NINE
It was time to pay my overdue visit to Ken Merton. I can’t say I was eager, as my body was crying out for rest, but with Car Day looming over me, I had to keep going. I had not seen him at Syndale Park and presumed therefore that he was still working at the Lenham studios, crime scene or not.
When I checked in at the studios the police presence was still strong, although it was over a week since Angie’s murder. I could see vans in the car park, and police cars by the entry barrier, and the police had to clear me for entry. On the basis of Nathan’s swift move, I had an uneasy feeling that Ken might have followed suit, but I saw him installed in his cubby hole, looking morose. I smiled at him genially as the police checked me through, but decided to view the crime scene activity first.
I walked unchallenged into what had once been a humble farmyard with chickens, dogs and the occasional pig. No one even looked surprised to see me. White-suited figures flitted to and fro like ghosts in a sci-fi film, mingled with one or two uniformed and several plain-clothes police. It made an odd contrast to the colourful scene here last week. This was the unvaunted side of policing, the careful painstaking work that few ever saw, the sifting inch by inch, the poring over every detail, any one of which might be the vital clue to the truth. Len Vickers could well have learned his trade here.
The farmhouse and the paved yard that continued beside it to the garden gate were still cordoned off. There was no one stationed there to repel unwanted entrants, but from the point where I was standing I could see all I needed to be sure this was no opportunist murder. It had been planned even perhaps down to using the same model of gun as Bill’s, a Smith & Wesson .38, although that was a common enough model. Brandon would be following that up if he thought it had significance. I knew he’d established that it wasn’t Bill’s. The second problem I considered as I stared from the cordon tape down to that open gate. What was Angie doing in the garden? Had she been in Roger’s office with him, or merely used that door because the regular one was locked? Unless the murderer was Roger himself, it was reasonably certain that the killer had come in through the garden gate, and since this part of the yard faced the post-production block, he was unlikely to be noticed by curious eyes there. The reason Angie had come down from her own office was still a mystery. It would be an odd place and time for a meeting. I remembered Clarissa’s comment about ‘a woman driving . . .’ Connected? Too tenuous. The gardeners had been ruled out, and the most likely explanation was that someone had called Angie on her radio, with which all crew and cast seemed to be equipped.
I would get no further h
ere, and so I walked back to have my word with friend Ken. He wasn’t in his booth. Instead there was a lad who looked wet behind the ears, and the police on duty thought it suspicious that I wanted to speak to Ken in person. Their looks implied that being under contract to Dave Jennings was no guarantee that I wasn’t the murderer come back to view the scene of his crime, especially when one of them remembered I was the chap who found the body. ‘Always first suspect,’ he told me jovially.
I replied equally jovially that in that case policemen must often be in the same position. Smiles promptly disappeared and no one wanted to tell me where Ken was. Luckily my powers of detection hadn’t deserted me. I saw his car still in the car park and deduced that he was probably either in the loo or the canteen. I checked the first unsuccessfully and the second proved but a poor shadow of itself as I had first known it. All it offered was one lady to serve tea, coffee and some uninteresting buns and sandwiches.
I found Ken by the window, gloomily regarding a dry-looking sandwich. He must have noticed something odd about the way I was walking towards him – rather like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz – because he fixed distinctly wary eyes on me.
‘Been in the wars, have you?’ he enquired.
I joined him uninvited with my mug of coffee. ‘Several of them at the same time,’ I told him pleasantly. ‘Beaten up in a car park – strangely enough the one you used to work in.’
‘Oh yeah?’
It was clear this was not news to him.
‘Gladden car park at Charing,’ I added.
‘Yeah. Think I did once,’ he said carefully. ‘They shift us around a lot.’
‘Nice cars there,’ I observed.
I’d hit a nerve. ‘That’s what car parks are for,’ he mumbled.
‘It’s where I found the Auburn.’
That wasn’t news either, but he took it on the chin. ‘I weren’t there,’ he said in an end-of-subject tone.
‘Of course not. You work here now.’
That established, he became friendly. ‘Our job’s to guard cars from being nicked; we don’t mind ’em being found.’ He might have thought this dry wit would establish his honesty, but he’d have to work harder than that.
