Killings on Jubilee Terrace

by Robert Barnard

  ‘Keeping an eye on your tame poodle?’ came a voice in Charlie’s ear. Standing beside him was Stephen Barrymore, the curate who had suddenly taken over as the representative of spiritual values in the soap. He looked inoffensive but lively as usual.

  ‘If you want to think of it like that,’ said Charlie. ‘Hargreaves is more like a rottweiler than a poodle in my eyes.’

  ‘We don’t like police in Australia,’ said Stephen. ‘Corrupt as hell, and vicious with it.’

  ‘People say it’s getting like that in this country,’ said Charlie. ‘But I don’t think we’re any more corrupt than the Church of England.’

  ‘Don’t take me as a symbol of the church, for God’s sake,’ said Stephen. ‘I’ve never even been christened.’

  ‘Are you just here tonight because the whole thing’s taking place around a church?’

  ‘No, I’m not. Much better and more lucrative than that. I have a vital role in the action.’

  ‘Fair enough, I suppose. We do quite often use ministers of religion in hostage-takings.’

  ‘I’m told,’ said Stephen, in his demure way, ‘that Leeds Metropolitan University has a course in Hostage Crisis Situations Management.’

  ‘Christ! That’s a course in itself?’

  ‘The use of men of the cloth features quite prominently in it, I’m told… Oh, there’s Reggie. He’s gone up the tower to do last minute adjustments I suppose. We should start filming soon, then he’ll try to get it all over in a matter of twenty minutes or half an hour.’

  Charlie had fixed his eye on the tower, where Reggie was fussing with the New Zealand actor. He kept his eye on them, but kept the conversation on Stephen Barrymore. He noticed that the young man was already feeling at home in television work: he called Friedman ‘Reggie’, and knew all about the sequence of events in one of his filming sessions.

  ‘You’re nicely bedded down,’ he said.

  ‘If you’re hinting that I’ve been bedded down with Reggie I deny it absolutely. I’m not at all his preferred sex and I’m not at all his type.’

  ‘And what, may I ask, is his type?’

  ‘I plead permission to be silent, being a minister and a representative of the All-Highest on this earth.’

  ‘Bully for you…Oh!’ said Charlie.

  Reggie, talking to the supposed ex-partner of Maureen Bradley of the corner shop, had bent over and taken the child hostage into his arms. He now turned him round to give him a look at the panorama of Leeds after dark. Charlie saw for the first time that the boy was a Down’s Syndrome sufferer.

  ‘Yes,’ said Stephen, and he sounded almost parsonical. ‘It’s a bit surprising, isn’t it? They pride themselves on being pioneers. He was the first Down’s Syndrome child to get a part in a major soap.’

  ‘I’m fed up with “firsts”,’ said Charlie. ‘From what I hear Jubilee Terrace has token blacks in its cast, and the number of blacks never rises significantly above one.’ His eye strayed significantly to James Selcott. ‘I’m a lot more interested in percentages than in “firsts”.’

  ‘Ah, you’re thinking of the hugely popular James,’ said Stephen. ‘Hugely popular with the public, that is. Pity nobody in the cast would put out a hand to save him from an oncoming bus.’

  ‘Ah, you’re thinking of the traffic accident in Terrace,’ said Charlie. ‘Wait a minute though. That wasn’t in Terrace. It was in real life.’

  ‘Easy to confuse the two,’ said Stephen.

  Elsewhere in the churchyard Bill Garrett, who had been avoiding his soon-to-be ex-wife, became aware that she was approaching him. There was no avoiding Bet when she was in a determined frame of mind.

  ‘Hello Bill.’

  ‘Hello Bet.’

  ‘Why are you keeping out of my way? You’ve no reason to. You’ve heard from my solicitors, haven’t you?’

  ‘Yes, I have.’ He had been keeping out of her way so as not to feel the need to thank her. ‘Thanks Bet. It’s a weight off my mind.’

  ‘I bet it’s a weight off the little horrors’ minds as well. Now they’ll only have you to torment – and I bet they’ll get their way one hundred per cent of the time.’

  ‘Well, you won’t have to worry your head about that,’ said Bill. ‘I hope to give them a happy childhood.’

  But he said it to Bet’s departing back.

  Sergeant Hargreaves had very good hearing. He had never ruined it by having crap music played at him at high volume in a confined space. So though James Selcott, talking into his mobile, kept his voice low, Hargreaves, standing a few feet away, could hear every word.

  ‘And what did my favourite piranha fish do with its evening? Did it go to some hideous club long since blackballed by all right-thinking young people of Leeds?’

  ‘No, actually I didn’t. I went to Club Monterey, with its crowds of fashionable youth.’

  ‘It’s as I thought.’

  ‘And by the way, if I were you I’d try to avoid the word “blackballed”. Rumour has it you are about as undermanned in that department as Adolf Hitler.’

  ‘Rumour, as usual, speaks false.’

  ‘And did my pit bull terrier friend find anyone willing to endure his perpetual monologue on himself and his prospects, or did he stay home and nurse his self-love in his usual isolation?’

  ‘When I can find company suitably intellectual and talented I’m always happy to share myself with her. And did you have the company of your leading (and only) fan last night? And did you find his cretinous adulation perfectly to your taste?’

  ‘He’s actually with me now, and he heard that and—’ she paused. ‘Oh, watch it. Shooting is starting.’

  Hargreaves, preparing to reconstruct the other half of the conversation from the half he had heard, noticed that too. Reggie Friedman was back on the ground and doing some last-minute rearrangements in the crowd, most of which seemed to give special prominence to Stephen Barrymore. So the Church was going to play a crucial role in the happy resolution. In soaps, hostage situations always involved the young and always were resolved happily. You really couldn’t imagine a Down’s Syndrome child being thrown from a church tower in a soap. There would be questions in Parliament and in general a gruesome mixing of fact and fiction the like of which had not been known since Tony Blair pleaded for Deirdre Barlow to be released from her horrendous woman’s prison.

  Cameras rolled, and Stephen Barrymore moved to his central position in front of the church’s main entrance, carrying a loud-hailer. He raised it and began speaking.

  ‘Brian, I’m here to help. We’re all here to help. You’ve been to me these last few weeks, and I’ve tried to do all I can for you. The reason we want to help, all of us, is that we know you love Colin. You do, don’t you?’

  There was an inarticulate choking sound.

  ‘Yes, I know that because we’ve talked about it when you came round. Only last week. And you said you were off your head with worry because you were afraid your former partner wanted to stop you having access to Colin. Now I’ve talked to Maureen and she’s said she would never do that. She’s adamant about that, Brian.’

  There was a spate of invective from Brian Whiteley, in which the only comprehensible sound was ‘bitch’.

  ‘You know that’s not true, Brian. You and she lived lovingly together for six years. You’ve got to get it into your head that the only person threatening to take Colin away from you is yourself.’

  ‘I’d go too.’

  ‘What good would that do, if you killed your son? This is a terrible situation you’ve got yourself into – and got your son into too. We come from the same part of the world, you and me. We love our children Down Under. We’d do anything for them, because we know they’re our future…’

  And so it went on. The scriptwriter had reproduced in condensed form the sort of conversation that goes on, sometimes for hours at a time, at hostage-takings. Charlie, who had been at several, had no doubt that the nation would be glued to their screens. For once in a soap a
clergyman would be something more than a well-meaning twerp. A first! And Charlie had no doubt that the scene would be the making of Stephen Barrymore. He, in one leap, would be transformed from drama student to nationally known face. Such fairy-tale metamorphoses were in the gift of Reggie Friedman and Melvin Settle.

  Charlie strayed through the crowd, staying as far as possible from the cameras, but fascinated by the developing scene. Soon Brian was clutching his son again, and Charlie got another glimpse of the boy’s plump, puffy face. He hoped if he and Felicity had such a child they would be able to love him or her as strongly as Brian Whiteley did – and more wisely, he added to himself.

  Hargreaves, half a churchyard away, was finding it difficult to act up to his instructions. The crowd of extras and others was on its best behaviour, and there were only brief exchanges to be heard between members of it, not extended conversations. He stopped trying, and slowly and circumspectly wheeled round to survey the scene. One member of the crowd had withdrawn from the majority and was now over by the lich-gate taking out his mobile. Hargreaves, who knew the churchyard well as a place where druggies congregated at night, made his way as quickly and silently as his bulk allowed round to a clump of trees a few feet away from the gate. It was a Terrace actor who he thought, from Charlie’s introduction, was the pub landlord. Garrett, that was the name – biggish, pot-bellied, but with a lined and frown-marked face. He was the one whose wife that prat Birnley had announced as the dead victim of the fire, only to have her turn up at the TV studio. What a cock-up!

  ‘Is she all right, darling…? You’re sure it was nothing worse than a graze…? Yes, I know it’s the kind of things kids like Rosie pick up in the school playground.’ Bill Garrett was totally absorbed, and now took a deep breath. ‘Yes, I’m an old worrier. You can be a pretty good worrier yourself, Angie… How are you then?’

  The conversation then got on to domestic details. The children had had something from the freezer for their ‘tea’, and Angie had just put the two younger ones to bed. Rosie was still young enough to have a story read to her, and Angie had chosen one of her favourites. Hargreaves was nearly ready to pack it in, not being a domestic kind of chap himself, but he was pulled up by a note of steel in the voice in the next words.

  ‘What’s that?’ he said, his voice still low, but strong. ‘No, they haven’t… I expect they will soon, but they seem to be concentrating on Reggie Friedman at the moment… No, I don’t think he does, and nobody dares to tell him.’

  Garrett took another long breath.

  ‘Angie, there’s nothing for you to worry about. I had a hand-delivered letter from her solicitor saying she was withdrawing her claim to custody. If they come you can tell them what we talked about. You remember it, don’t you…? You’re a great lass, Angie. I don’t know what I’d do without you… Looks as if the scene is ending. Bar reshootings I could be home in twenty minutes or so… Love you too, my darling.’

  And he kissed into his mobile phone.

  The whole unreal scene was breaking up. Colin, the boy, was back down on terra firma and reunited with his real mother, to whom he was talking volubly. Most of the rest were drifting, or in the case of Terrace regulars hurrying, away to buses and cars. Hargreaves went toward his boss, confident he would have at least one nugget of information that would be of interest: it seemed that Bill Garrett had been coaching his daughter what to say to the police.

  But it was later on the car-trip back to the station, when his news about Bill Garrett had been received with grunts by Charlie, and also a ‘Well, you’d expect that: the innocent and the guilty prepare what they’re going to say to us’, that Hargreaves finally struck gold.

  ‘You’ve met Friedman, haven’t you, sir?’

  ‘Oh yes. Before and after the murder.’

  ‘Would you say he was a likeable man?’

  ‘Hmmm. Efficient, good at his job, every aspect at his fingertips. But likeable – I never got any vibes that suggested he’s that. Why?’

  Hargreaves shifted in his seat.

  ‘Looking at him up the tower reminded me of someone I once played rugby with. A big forward, no particular character that I knew of, and I can’t say I disliked or liked him. Then, after I’d seen him with a mentally handicapped girl, daughter of one of the fans, I was told he was a man who got his kicks from sex with handicapped children. Kids of either sex, mentally or physically handicapped.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I didn’t do anything… I try to be broadminded. But this was beyond anything I could accept. This man, I couldn’t go near him. I felt – revulsion I suppose is the best word.’

  ‘Difficult in rugby. It’s a very tactile sport.’

  ‘I gave it up. I should have done that two or three years earlier, when I was really fit and still quite fast. But I’ve always remembered that chap… And seeing this producer chappie Friedman with the lad, holding him…it reminded me.’

  Charlie was glad that it had.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  A Special Case

  Charlie enjoyed being on the road. He decided that he was a nature man at heart, though whether he would actually enjoy trudging through the fields and woodlands around him was another matter. He had just bypassed Keighley and was on the motorway towards Skipton, and the truth was he probably enjoyed driving fast through the nature he thought he worshipped. But some way up from Steighton he began looking for an exit road.

  The rather primitive way led through a tiny village, then became a virtual cul-de-sac, with only dirty paths branching out in both directions. Charlie, who had talked to Keighley police, took the left path, bumpy but quite navigable, and eventually landed up in front of a stone farmhouse – perhaps eighteenth-century, large but basic, and probably modernised inside into a perfect media person’s residence, expressing every aspect of his personality and lifestyle as he wanted those two aspects of him to be perceived.

  Just what he needed, Charlie thought, to get a handle on the enigma that was Reggie Friedman.

  He left his car beside the other one – an old Honda Civic, small and dirty – in the dirt square which was the parking area. He sensed he was watched from a window, but he refrained from waving or smiling and rang the doorbell like a casual but not unfriendly visitor.

  As the door opened slowly he could hear from a distant room a child crying. When it was fully opened he saw a small, thin woman in a baggy frock looking at him appealingly.

  ‘Are you the police?’

  Charlie flipped round his ID card, and she looked at it with interest.

  ‘Detective Inspector Peace,’ said Charlie. ‘Is Mr Friedman at home?’

  She shook her head vigorously.

  ‘No. He is on his way. He is annoyed you came here without telling him in advance.’

  ‘We like to talk to people if we can in their home environment, away from interruptions.’

  This was less than the whole truth, and no answer to her. He had got Reggie’s home address from the offices of Northern Television, and then only by pulling police rank and muscle. ‘He likes to keep his home life separate,’ the secretary had said. ‘Don’t we all,’ he had replied, adding: ‘This is a murder case. Perhaps a triple murder case. I don’t think Mr Friedman would want obstacles put in our way. Not if he’s wise he wouldn’t.’ She had caved in.

  ‘Could I come in and wait for him?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She stood aside and let him into a high hallway. Her English was verbally perfect, but accented. She walked with him across to an open door, leading to a sitting room with tea things laid out on a low table. Orders from Reggie, Charlie thought. He sat down and she sat opposite him and pressed the switch on the electric kettle.

  ‘Why don’t we wait until your husband arrives?’ Charlie said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘Reggie doesn’t like tea. And yours is not a social call, is it?’

  ‘Not really. Milk and sugar, please.’

  ‘How I
like it too.’

  It seemed to Charlie like a shy advance.

  ‘Your English is very good,’ he said, taking up his cup.

  ‘Thank you. There was good teaching in Romanian schools. Maybe a little old-fashioned, because we were cut off for so long, but good.’

  ‘Cut off? Do you mean during the Ceausescu years?’

  ‘Yes. Years, you say. When I talk to older people they make it seem like an age, an eternity. Half a lifetime, with nothing happening.’

  ‘How did you meet up, you and your husband?’

  ‘Reggie had leave from the Terrace. He was to make a documentary film on the Romanian orphans. That is what everyone knows about Romania, and sometimes it is the only thing.’

  ‘And what were you doing?’

  ‘I was liaising between his crew and the Romanian television company. Also with the Romanian staff in the orphanages. It was very interesting, but also very upsetting. All of us were very much moved by what we saw.’

  Charlie found the faint, breaking voice moving too, though the manner was rather that of reciting a lesson.

  ‘And did you get married over there?’

  ‘Oh yes. We were married by the British Consul in Timisoara. With some of the British cameramen as witnesses. It was very simple and very emotional.’

  ‘How do you like living in England?’

  Once again the suggestion of reciting a lesson was strong.

  ‘I am very lucky. Most of my friends in Romania would have given anything for the chance I have had. I live very well, and I learn all the time.’

  Charlie noticed she had not answered the question.

  ‘And you have a child,’ he said.

  ‘Yes – so lucky. A lovely boy. Perfect. And I have a little car of my own, and we can go, he and I, to Keighley or to Skipton, and I can do shopping. One day I will be able to go into Leeds, but Reggie says driving there is very, very difficult, and I am not to try it yet.’