The Festival Murders

by Mark McCrum

  ‘OK,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s important. This isn’t some cosy little murder mystery, the sort I might write for my clever-clogs detective George Braithwaite, for the amusement of a bunch of readers who would freak out if they saw a road accident, let alone a murder. Actual people are dying here.’

  ‘I know they are.’

  ‘You didn’t see Grace, flat out on the gravel, but believe me, it was a chilling sight.’

  ‘That taped outline was enough for me …’

  ‘Something horrible and evil is going on and I – we, Priya – might be in a position to do something about it.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, quietly.

  Francis returned to his sofa and let his head sink back onto the pillow he’d taken from the bed. He lay there for awhile thinking about Priya’s story, which certainly explained why Conal had never met her family. The only question was: was it true? Or was it possible that this apparently lovely, switched-on young woman was some kind of fantasist? God knows, Francis had met that type before. Dated them, even. He remembered one highly strung – and very beautiful – ex of his who had specialised in making up convincing tall tales: about her past, her present, the works. Quite often, for no apparent reason at all. Francis had finally given up on her when she’d told him she’d gone to spend a weekend with an aunt in Paris and a friend had run into her at a fancy dress party in Balham.

  But if Priya’s story were true, why had she told him? Especially if it really were the case that neither Bryce nor Conal had ever known. In his journalistic days, when he’d specialised in long interviews for magazines, Francis had always been marked down as the guy who could pull the extra confession out of this or that actor or celebrity. So should he chalk it up to that? His famous empathy? Or was Priya, so bright and collected on the surface, much, much more traumatised by Bryce’s death than she’d been letting on?

  As for him, he was already regretting that he’d revealed as much as he had. But there it was; somehow she had pulled it from him. The truth was, he felt better for it. Now, despite himself, he wanted to tell her more. He was feeling something he hadn’t in a long while: an almost visceral desire to trust and be trusted; to get, as people always said so blandly, close to someone again.

  He could get up and go over there now. He wanted to; god, did he want to.

  Across the room the numbers on the digital clock glowed red. 3.12.

  A surprisingly loud click. And it was 3.13. He put his hands together in a gesture of prayer and rolled over onto his side.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘So how can I help you?’ asked Detective Chief Inspector Julie Morgan, after a little preliminary banter in which she’d volunteered, almost flirtatiously, that she was a fan of Francis’s work. Now she leant forward from the black leather chair that was about the only decent bit of furniture in this makeshift incident room, tucked away at the back of a trading estate behind the Dewkesbury ring road. She was in her own screened-off corner, but it wasn’t much protected from the noise beyond, where a string of six or so plain-clothes officers made phone calls and exchanged banter as they worked at computer screens. ‘Or rather,’ she added, ‘how can you help us? I gather you have some new information.’

  ‘We do,’ said Francis, glancing over at Priya, who looked both businesslike and sexy this morning in a tight-fitting black suit and knee-high boots. In the cold light of day, he was proud of the self-control he’d exhibited in the small hours.

  ‘OK,’ said Julie, putting up steepled hands to cover her mouth, ‘I’m listening.’ Close up, she looked more life-battered than when seen from a distance. That mane of dark hair contained a good few grey strands; through her Touche Eclat the bags under her eyes were black.

  ‘As you know,’ Francis replied, ‘Priya here was Bryce’s girlfriend.’

  ‘Yes, and we’ve been grateful for your cooperation and your very helpful statement, Ms Kaur. Which you now want to add to, is that right?’

  ‘May I ask first,’ Francis chipped in, ‘are you still treating both these deaths as murder enquiries?’

  ‘As a professional crime writer, Mr Meadowes, I’m sure you understand that all the details of our investigation have to remain confidential until we either arrest and charge suspects or else establish that there is no reason to pursue further enquiries.’

  ‘I thought you might say that. But I imagine you are treating the two deaths as linked?’

  DCI Julie’s impatience was tangible. ‘I’d love to spend the morning gassing with you about these cases, but as you see we’re pretty frantic out here. I was told you had some important new information for us.’

  ‘We do. In relation to that, have you had the post-mortem results for Grace yet?’

  ‘I really can’t comment, Mr Meadowes. Now please, what is this “crucial new evidence” you mentioned to DS Povey over the phone?’

  ‘Priya, d’you want to tell the Chief Inspector what Bryce was planning to talk about on Sunday afternoon? To his eager public and any representatives of the national press who were in the audience?’

  Francis enjoyed watching the DCI’s face as Priya filled her in.

  ‘I see,’ said Julie, when she’d finished. ‘And you seriously think that these revelations would have been damaging enough to make someone of Jonty Smallbone’s calibre contemplate murder?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Francis.

  ‘With all due respect, Mr Meadowes, this isn’t a George Braithwaite novel. What you’ve given me is pure speculation. I was told you had evidence.’

  ‘There should have been a copy of Bryce’s speech in our room somewhere,’ said Priya. ‘As well as drafts on his laptop – and an accompanying PowerPoint presentation.’

  ‘That should be easy enough to check.’ DCI Julie pressed a button on her phone. ‘Steve. Can you come round here please.’

  It was the same DS whom Francis had first seen in the dining room of the White Hart, the blond prop-forward with the thick eyebrows. No, Steve said, once the DCI had brought him up to speed, he wasn’t aware of a hard copy of any speech having been found in Room 29. ‘So what are we looking for on the laptop?’ he asked.

  ‘In his main Documents section Bryce had a folder called Talks,’ Priya said. ‘It would almost certainly have been in there, probably called something like Mold Festival Talk rather than Celebrity and Hypocrisy, which was the title in the programme.’

  ‘OK, Steve,’ said DCI Julie. ‘Quick as you can on that, please. We’ll see what he comes up with,’ she said, once DS Wright had gone. ‘But even if this speech does turn up or we find a draft on the computer, and it’s as damning as you say it is, it’s hardly evidence of murder, is it? At best, it’s circumstantial.’

  ‘Bear with us,’ said Francis, ‘because this leads directly to the second thing we wanted to share with you. Grace phoned her newspaper at three fifteen on Sunday afternoon to tell her editor that she was about to email a seriously damaging story about a major celebrity.’

  Now they had got the DCI’s full attention. ‘So how did you know about this?’ she asked.

  ‘We spoke to the editor. Priya also works for the Sentinel, so we were able to do it informally.’

  ‘And this editor hadn’t thought of telling the police?’

  ‘No,’ said Priya. ‘He’s up in London. He wasn’t sure whether he should.’

  ‘Of course he should. When did he contact you about it?’

  ‘He didn’t. We contacted him.’

  ‘I don’t quite follow,’ said Julie.

  Francis looked over at Priya. She shrugged. But her eyes and pinched mouth said: Tell her, whatever the consequences for the others.

  ‘We found out about all this,’ Francis said, ‘because we were talking to some of the young people who were out at Wyveridge on Sunday. Grace apparently came back to the Hall at around half three in a state of excitement and told them that she had this scoop and she was going upstairs to file it.’

  ‘File it? I’m sorry. Where?’
/>
  ‘“File” is journo-speak for “send it to her newspaper”,’ said Francis.

  ‘I see. And this was at half past three?’

  ‘Around that time, yes.’

  Julie had already pressed the buzzer on her desk. ‘Brian. Could you come in here, please.’

  Now DS Brian Povey appeared round the corner. Today he was casual in jeans and a blue T-shirt that read DIVE CAYMAN over some badly drawn tropical fish. He nodded a hello to Francis and Priya.

  ‘You supervised the Wyveridge statements, didn’t you?’ Julie said.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘I thought you said there was nobody out there after one thirty except for the housekeeper and gardener.’

  ‘That’s what we were told.’

  ‘I think a couple of the guys might have got their timings a bit wrong,’ Priya said. ‘One thirty is what they told us too, at first. Then they remembered that they’d left for town mid-afternoon.’

  ‘They remembered,’ said Julie scornfully. ‘Who exactly are we talking about here?’

  ‘I’d rather hold back on that information for the time being,’ said Francis, looking over at Priya.

  Julie sucked in her breath. Her fingers tapped impatiently on her desk. ‘Your call,’ she said. ‘But we will obviously need to know at some point …’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ said Francis. You scratch my back, he thought. ‘Now we realise,’ he went on, ‘that you guys took away pretty much all of Grace’s stuff from the room she was sleeping in. So, may I ask, was there anything on her laptop that would show either that she’d started writing this email to her editor, or that she had in fact written it?’

  ‘That’s easily found out,’ said Julie. ‘What’s the editor’s name?’

  ‘Matt … Matthew Ashcombe,’ said Priya.

  ‘Check that out for us, would you please, Brian?’

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ The DS turned on his heel and departed.

  DCI Julie turned back to Francis and Priya. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘let’s just see if I’ve got your theory right. You’re saying that Jonty Smallbone, the well-known TV personality, having done away with Bryce in order to safeguard his priceless reputation, then goes out to Wyveridge Hall at tea time on Sunday and somehow persuades this young journalist to take hallucinogenic drugs. Having established a believable cause of death, he takes her up onto the battlements with him and pushes her off?’

  ‘More or less,’ Francis replied. So they had had Grace’s post-mortem back; and by the sounds of it found hallucinogens in her bloodstream. Had Julie slipped up, or just decided it was time to cooperate? ‘Though there wasn’t necessarily any persuasion involved,’ he added. ‘Grace could have been given such drugs unwittingly – or even, more likely, after she died.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ said Julie. ‘That the murderer fed them to her as she lay dead on the ground?’

  ‘Seems like the most likely supposition. Given that all of them agree she wasn’t a drug taker.’

  ‘Interesting …’ For a moment Francis thought Julie was about to share something else with them; but then the professional mask descended again. ‘The main question then is this,’ she continued. ‘Whether Grace had taken drugs or not, knowingly or not, why did she agree to go up on the battlements with Jonty when she was supposed to be writing an urgent story for her newspaper? I mean, did she even know him?’

  ‘She’d met him,’ said Francis. ‘At a party that was held at Wyveridge Hall on Saturday evening. She also interviewed him on Sunday morning, about his reactions to Bryce’s death. But you’re right, she didn’t know him well. However, there is a close associate of his whom she might have been much more likely to trust: Jonty’s ghostwriter, Anna Copeland.’

  ‘Anna!’ said Priya, leaning forward. ‘You think she was involved?’

  ‘Hang on,’ said DCI Julie. ‘You’ve lost me. Who’s this …?’

  ‘Anna Copeland,’ Francis repeated. ‘She’s a ghostwriter, who’s “worked with” Jonty on several of his books, including his most recent, Wild Stuff.’

  ‘You’re saying she wrote it for him?’ said Julie.

  ‘In a word, yes. Now Anna has also been staying at the White Hart, along with her new boyfriend, Marvin Blake, an ex-Marine who’s also a client of hers.’

  ‘The black fellow?’ said Julie, and then looked immediately as if she wished she’d phrased it another way. ‘I mean …’

  Francis put her out of her misery. ‘Muscly geezer who looks as if he could strangle you with his bare hands – or in his case his bare four fingers. He’s a bit of a romantic departure for Anna. Before that, she was, for a long while, the girlfriend of Bryce Peabody.’

  Now the DCI looked puzzled. ‘My information was that Bryce’s, er, long-term partner was Scarlett – hang on, where’s my list?’

  ‘Paton-Jones, yes,’ said Francis. ‘As Priya here can confirm, Bryce’s love life was a bit complicated. Besides his partner, he also had a girlfriend.’

  ‘I thought that was you, Ms Kaur?’

  ‘Another one,’ said Francis.

  ‘Another one!’

  ‘I replaced her,’ said Priya.

  ‘And the partner?’

  ‘Both of them.’ Priya explained about the open marriage, Anna, and her ultimatum.

  ‘Crikey!’ said DCI Julie, when she’d finished. ‘Good for you.’

  Priya shrugged and smiled weakly. ‘It was a high-risk strategy. But it worked.’

  ‘So how did Anna take that?’ asked DCI Julie.

  Priya looked over at Francis. ‘You’ve spoken to her recently,’ she said. ‘You probably know better than me.’

  ‘She was furious,’ Francis said. ‘She’d been Bryce’s loyal bit on the side for five years and suddenly along comes Priya here and gets him to leave Scarlett within three weeks.’

  DCI Julie whistled. ‘Pretty gutting. So what did she do?’

  Francis explained, sparing no detail, especially not the invasion of Bryce’s workplace.

  ‘OK,’ said Julie, ‘so she was happy for everyone to know she hated him. Doesn’t make her a murderer, though, does it?’

  ‘Not necessarily,’ said Francis. ‘However –’

  The door had swung open. Steve Wright was back, hovering with a heavy-looking laptop. ‘Yes, Steve?’ said Julie.

  ‘This is Bryce’s Dell, ma’am. I’ve booted it up and given it a cursory search, but there’s nothing under Celebrity and Hyprocrisy or Mold Talks or even anything with Mold in the title. I’ve also been through the inventory and we haven’t found a hard copy of a speech either. Anywhere.’

  ‘Could I just have a peep?’ Priya looked hopefully at the DCI.

  Julie nodded and Steve put the machine down on the edge of the desk. Priya’s hands were shaking visibly and she was breathing deeply. For a moment Francis thought she might be about to break down again.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Seeing all these icons on his desktop. It’s almost like he’s back.’

  ‘Take your time,’ said DCI Julie.

  Priya clicked open Documents and found a file called Talks and Lectures.

  ‘Here it is,’ she said, opening it; and there, listed, were all the things Bryce had done recently. Critics Circle Lunch. Bath Festival. Ways With Words. Hay. Bogstandard After-Dinner (funny). There was nothing about Celebrity and Hypocrisy or Mold. ‘This is very odd,’ she said. ‘All the other festivals he’s given talks at are here. I’ll run a wider search for Celebrity.’

  This brought up a raft of documents.

  Celebrity autobiographies – the horror goes on

  Too Many Celebrity Chefs Spoil the Jus

  Celebrity Chocaholics

  Nothing New Under The Sun – Celebs of the 1890s.

  ‘Hang on, what’s this?’ said Priya. ‘Double Standards of Celebrities. Author. Bryce Peabody. File: More Serious Work. Date created: 20/12 … that’s way back last December. Date modified: 17/1. Let’s have a look.’

  She double-clicked and
they all leant into the screen as it opened.

  Celebrity culture is no longer optional. However much we struggle to avoid its cheesy embrace, it is there waiting for us. We can give up newspapers and magazines. We can give up radio and television. But wherever we turn, the tinsel gods and goddesses of Medialand pursue us, yelling from every white van parked on every corner, forcing their all too tedious ‘secrets’ upon us …

  Francis’s eyes flicked down the page. ‘And as if all this wasn’t enough,’ he read out loud, ‘there lies, at the heart of each and every one of these narratives, an undeniable hypocrisy … You’re right, Priya. This is it. Don’t you think?’

  ‘The germ of it,’ said Priya. ‘Once Bryce realised it was going to be a talk rather than a piece he’d have transferred it to the Talks file.’ She paused and looked around at the waiting trio. Her eyes were bright, her lips in a resolute pout. ‘I’d say somebody’s been at this computer. Deleted all the drafts of the talk itself, but didn’t realise that this was there too, in a different file.’

  ‘Mightn’t Bryce have deleted these drafts himself?’ asked Julie. ‘Once he’d printed up his speech and was about to deliver it?’

  ‘No way,’ said Priya. ‘For a start, he’d have wanted the latest one there, so he could add in any changes in the morning. And then, knowing Bryce, he’d have hung onto everything for ages anyway.’

  She clicked on the icon in Talks which read Bath Festival. It opened to reveal a long list of files. ‘See,’ she said, ‘Bath Festival 1, 2, 3 … Seventeen drafts of that one. All still there. And Bath was back in March.’

  ‘So what are you saying?’ asked Julie. ‘That Jonty deleted them?’

  Priya shrugged. ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it? And then removed the hard copy from the room.’

  ‘Removing his motive at the same time,’ said Francis.

  Julie turned to the waiting DS. ‘OK Steve. Could you get this over to Dipika in Bristol, please. Right away. We’re looking for anything with Mold Talk or Celebrity and Hypocrisy in the title.’ She turned back to Francis and Priya. ‘These techies are pretty impressive. If a file has ever been registered on the hard disk they can usually find it.’