by Simon Brett
The Black Feathers, in which Martin Earnshaw had last been seen, was in the hinterland of the Lanes between the Royal Pavilion and sea front. It wasn’t one of the highly tarted-up pubs of the area, but retained a proletarian – and indeed slightly deterrent – grubbiness.
The landlord and staff, however, had proved infinitely cooperative to the W.E.T. team, led by director Geoffrey Ramage. This was not pure altruism. While a positive disadvantage for someone trying to sell a house, murderous connections in a pub are good news for business. And if those connections are advertised to millions on nation-wide television, the potential boost to trade is enormous. The viewing public is notorious for seeking out any location featured on the small screen, regardless of the context in which it was seen.
In the cause of verisimilitude, Geoffrey Ramage had asked the landlord to get together all the regulars who might have been present on the evening of Martin Earnshaw’s disappearance. To Charles’s surprise, when he spoke to those who had been assembled, none had any recollection of seeing the missing man.
The actor’s instinctive suspicion about this was quickly allayed by further conversation. It turned out that very few of the other drinkers had actually been there on the relevant night, but the lure of television coverage had prompted them to finesse the truth a little.
The sighting of Martin Earnshaw in the Black Feathers had not, as it transpired, come from one of the pub’s regulars. An anonymous caller had passed on the information to Chloe Earnshaw, and this had been corroborated by a subsequent telephone call – also unidentified – to the police.
It became increasingly clear to Charles that the Black Feathers was in fact one of those pubs which doesn’t have many regulars. In spite of the landlord’s attempts to give the impression of a convivial community, the pub was – like Charles’s own ‘local’ in Westbourne Grove – a joyless and anonymous environment.
The landlord himself stoutly maintained that he had seen the missing man sitting with two others on the night in question, though he was vague about further details.
Not for the first time, Charles had brought home to him the fallibility of human witnesses. Recollection is quickly clouded and distorted. From his own experience – and this wasn’t just due to the Bell’s whisky – Charles Paris knew how difficult he would find it to report accurately what he had been doing even a few days before. So the landlord’s vagueness did not surprise him. Cynically, he even wondered whether the man was making up his story. From the point of view of trade, it was certainly in the interests of the Black Feathers that he remembered Martin Earnshaw.
Charles Paris’s role in the filming was not onerous, though Geoffrey Ramage, in the self-regarding way of television directors, made as big a deal of it as he could. Dressed in clothes and fake Rolex watch identical to those worn by the missing man, Charles had to sit at a gloomy corner table with two other extras and drink. It could, uncharitably, have been called ‘typecasting’.
There was an element of character-acting involved, though, because Charles had to drink draught Guinness rather than the more instinctive Bell’s. This was on the advice of Chloe Earnshaw. Her husband, she insisted, had always drunk draught Guinness.
Having Chloe on hand did nothing to drive away the lustful thoughts which Brighton always inspired in Charles. She was there to advise on the filming and they had been introduced by Geoffrey Ramage in the lounge of the hotel that was the Public Enemies base.
In the flesh she was even smaller than her photographs and television appearances suggested, but somehow more robust, more curved, more tactile. She was simply dressed in black, as if already anticipating the news she feared to hear, and her blonde hair was scraped back into an artless ponytail.
A tremor ran through her when she was introduced to Charles and an involuntary hand half reached out to touch his arm. She gave a little shake of her head. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just . . . They’ve cast you very well. I mean, you don’t really look like Martin, but there’s something . . . Your height, the way you stand, it’s . . .’
Tears once again welled up in the dark blue eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I’m not being very brave.’
‘Oh, but you are.’ The words formed instinctively and were out before Charles was aware of them. ‘I mean, you’ve been very brave from the start – coping with the trauma of your husband’s disappearance. And then there’s the risk you take by speaking out at all. The same risk that your husband exposed himself to . . . I mean, that is, assuming what you are afraid has happened to him has happened to him.’ Her brow wrinkled in pain. ‘I’m sorry, I’m saying all the wrong things.’
‘No, no. Not at all, Charles,’ she reassured him softly.
And Charles Paris was hooked. Just like the rest of the public. There was something mesmerising about the woman’s vulnerability. Anyone meeting her in ordinary circumstances would have found Chloe Earnshaw only moderately attractive. It was the knowledge of her jeopardy that gave her such charisma.
The onlooker was drawn to her, but at the same time felt guilty about being drawn to her. She looks fanciable, the thought process ran, but how awful of me to entertain ideas like that about a woman in such distress. It’s dreadful to take pleasure from someone else’s suffering.
Though of course the pleasure taken from someone else’s suffering was the dynamo generating the success of programmes like Public Enemies.
Chapter Two
CHARLES PARIS was used to the atmosphere of television hospitality suites, but this one was different. During the transmission of the first of the new series of Public Enemies, there was the usual undercurrent of showbiz excitement in the room, the usual panic elaborately disguised as cool, but there was also a more robust coarseness in the general badinage. It was because the police were there.
Public Enemies collaborated closely with the police – Bob Garston kept banging on about how closely they collaborated with the police – and the police took this as a licence to bring as many of their number as possible to the W.E.T. studios when the shows were being transmitted. Some of the force justified their presence – the on-screen presenters obviously, the police researchers, those uniformed figures bent over computers and telephones who filled out the background of the set – but others were just along for the ride, attracted by their colleagues’ involvement, the glamour of television and the prospect of free drink.
Charles Paris was there just for the free drink. He’d been meant to be there working. Geoffrey Ramage, fresh from the excitements of the Brighton filming, had had Charles called for the live transmission. He was proposing a moody background silhouette of the actor dressed as Martin Earnshaw while Chloe did her latest heart-wrenching appeal.
Geoffrey Ramage was actually always proposing moody background silhouettes. Like all television directors, he really saw himself in the movies and, though his only actual experience in cinema had been doing soft porn, he had been bitten at an early age by the film noir bug. The opportunities to indulge this obsession in Public Enemies made him feel like a child with limitless credit in a sweet shop.
Charles’s only brush with the genre had occurred when a seventies movie he was in had been hailed as ‘a British homage to film noir’ by a critic who didn’t realise that the film’s budget hadn’t stretched to more lights. The actor’s own contribution – a mere spit and a cough – had been characterised by the same critic as ‘unthreateningly menacing’, and Charles had spent a long time puzzling over whether that was a good notice or a bad one.
Geoffrey Ramage’s moody background silhouette had been rejected by Bob Garston first thing in the morning, but since Charles Paris had been called, that meant he’d have to be paid another day’s fee. The money was nothing to get excited about – Martin Earnshaw was unfortunately not called upon to speak in the reconstruction of his last known movements, so Charles Paris was being paid as a mere extra – but any money was welcome to his morbidly undernourished bank account.
Because he’d written off the day – and bec
ause there was the W.E.T. bar at lunch-time and the prospect of free hospitality later – Charles decided he’d stick around and watch the proceedings. Television studios are always full of so many people with unspecified roles that one more or less ligging around wouldn’t provoke comment.
So he had a pleasantish day, watching the Public Enemies egos battle it out on the studio floor. Roger Parkes was the self-appointed voice of reason, Geoffrey Ramage the self-appointed enfant terrible, but Bob Garston rode roughshod over both of them. It was his show, and he wasn’t going to let anyone forget it. With no attempt at tact or even awareness that other people might have opinions, the ‘man of the people’ continued on his workaholic course.
And Charles Paris sat benignly in the bunker of an audience seat, watching the flak fly overhead. He liked the atmosphere of a television studio, and he liked it even better when he had no responsibility for anything that was going on in it.
The free hospitality, when it came, was a bit meagre. Commercial television companies used to lay on wall-to-wall food and drink, so that working on a production would ensure Charles didn’t have to go near a supermarket for its duration. The ready availability of spirits even slightly diminished his Bell’s whisky bill.
But the new austerity which followed the reallocation of their franchises brought ITV companies’ generosity down to BBC standards – or even lower. The only foodstuffs on offer in the Public Enemies hospitality suite were crisps and nuts. The booze was limited to wine and beer. And, seeing how vigorously the police hangers-on were getting stuck into that, supplies weren’t going to last very long.
Charles wondered whether this parsimony came from W.E.T. or from Bob’s Your Uncle Productions. Given the way Bob Garston dominated all other aspects of the production, he probably also controlled the hospitality bill. Its niggardly provisions were certainly in character with his teetotal righteousness.
In the circumstances Charles Paris resorted to an old trick. He took a half-pint beer glass, filled it with wine and sat cradling it unobtrusively in the corner.
He needn’t have worried about drawing attention to himself. The police contingent were far too caught up in their own banter and camaraderie to take any notice of anyone else.
There were about a dozen of them. Two were silent, though the remainder made noise enough for many more. Only a few were in uniform, but the others had that distinctive rectangular look which always gives away a policeman.
One of the silent ones was a thickset, mournful-looking man in his forties, who wore plain clothes and was tucking into the booze with a single-mindedness Charles could not but respect.
The other wore uniform, with a few extra flourishes on his jacket which presumably betokened higher rank, and sat apart from the rest, nursing a beer. He was an older man, probably round Charles’s age, which in police terms must have put him near retirement. The attitude of his colleagues to him mixed a perfunctory deference with covert insolence. At times they seemed almost to be sending him up. From their banter Charles picked up that the man was called Superintendent Roscoe.
The mob reserved their greatest derision, however, for the colleagues who actually appeared on the screen, and here there was no attempt at concealment. The figure who provoked most raucous response was the one introduced by Bob Garston as ‘our resident expert from Scotland Yard – Detective Inspector Sam Noakes’.
‘Yeah, and we all know what she’s expert in, don’t we?’ shouted one of the younger policemen.
‘Will you let me take everything down for you and use it in evidence, Sam?’ asked another fruitily.
‘I’m afraid I must ask you to accompany me to the bedroom,’ giggled a third, bowled over by his own wit.
The object of their offensive was certainly attractive, but there was about her a toughness which made Charles think they wouldn’t have made the sexist remarks to her face. DI Sam Noakes had red hair and those pale blue eyes which the television camera intensifies. Though a detective, she wore uniform, presumably because she looked so good in it. The entertainment element is always paramount in programmes like Public Enemies, and there are a good few male viewers out there who are turned on by – and will therefore turn on for – a pretty woman in uniform.
Immediately she started speaking, it was clear that DI Sam Noakes was more than just a pretty face. She had a distinctive voice, deep, with a rasp of efficiency in it, as she enumerated the police successes prompted by the last series, and gave bulletins on the cases that remained unsolved. She was good, and her performance gained an extra glow from the fact that she knew she was good.
Even the sexist banter in the hospitality suite recognised her quality. Through the innuendo ran a thread of respect, at times verging on awe. DI Sam Noakes was already a power to be reckoned with inside the force before television brought her skills to a wider audience.
Public Enemies was scheduled at prime time, ITV Thursday evening, just after the nine o’clock watershed which in theory protected children from sex and violence – and in fact encouraged them to stay up and watch it.
The programme’s format was a magazine. Live updates on cases, reports on stolen goods, reconstructions of crimes and appeals for witnesses were intermingled with more general features. These were mostly consumer advice, presented with that distinctive smugness which characterises all television consumer programmes. The subjects covered might be a report on tests for home security devices, tips on how to recognise forged bank notes, lists of the right antique markets to check out for stolen property, and so on.
But for the first programme of the new series, Public Enemies did something different. As Bob Garston put it grittily (he put everything grittily – he was constitutionally incapable of speaking without grit): ‘We’ve all watched a lot of television detectives, haven’t we, and I’m sure we’ve all got our favourites. But in fictional crime there are two traditions – that of the professional police detective conducting an investigation and that of the gifted amateur doing the business. On the one hand we’ve got, if you like . . . Morse – and on the other, say, – Poirot. Presumably, Sam,’ he continued, turning a gritty smile on DI Noakes, ‘Morse is a bit closer to the real world than Poirot?’
‘Not that much closer, Bob,’ she replied with a knowing grin. ‘I still want to know how Morse gets hold of that car. Last time I asked down the car pool for a red Jaguar, they laughed in my face.’
Bob Garston let out a gritty chuckle of complicity. ‘Yes, but come on, Morse conducts his investigations with all the back-up of computer records and forensic laboratories. Surely that’s a bit closer to real police methods than relying on “the little grey cells”.’
‘We don’t actually call it “relying on the little grey cells”, but if that expression means respecting intuition and responding to sudden lateral thoughts, then it’s certainly a very important part of police investigation.’
‘Good, thank you, Sam.’ Bob Garston turned smoothly to another camera. ‘Well, here on Public Enemies, we like to keep you up to date with everything about crime and its investigation, so we thought it’d be interesting to talk to an amateur sleuth, and maybe compare his methods with those of a professional police investigator. So I’m very glad to welcome to the studio – Ted Faraday.’
The shot opened out to include Sam Noakes and a rugged-looking man in his late forties, casually dressed in jeans and baseball jacket. ‘Evening, Bob.’
This greeting prompted a roar of obscene responses from the hospitality suite.
‘Now, Ted, would you say that your methods as an amateur –?’
‘Sorry, I have to interrupt you there, Bob. That’s twice you’ve referred to me as an “amateur”. I’m not an amateur. I’m a professional private investigator.’
Bob Garston’s face clouded. This was not how the item had been planned in pre-programme discussions, and it rather made nonsense of his neat link about Morse and Poirot. He shoehorned a smile on to his face. ‘All right, point taken. Would you say that your met
hods as a professional private investigator differ very much from those used by the real police force?’
Ted Faraday opened his mouth to reply, but before he could say anything, Sam Noakes interposed, ‘I think it should be pointed out that Ted is an ex-copper, so his methods are based on the training he had in the Met, anyway.’
Bob Garston seemed glad of this support against Faraday. ‘You two know each other?’
‘And how!’ shouted a raucous voice in the hospitality suite.
‘Yes, we do,’ Sam admitted.
Bob Garston turned his attention to the private investigator. ‘Well, Ted, how do you react to what she says?’
‘When I’m allowed to get a word in . . .’ Ted Faraday began with lazy charm, ‘I would like to say, yes, I was trained by the Met, and it did teach me some very useful lessons. I would also like to say that, now I’m outside the place, I realise just how rigid it is in its thinking, and how much easier it is to respond rapidly to situations without being strangled by bureaucracy when you’re out in the real world.’
The discussion continued. Charles had no means of knowing their past history, but Sam Noakes seemed determined to score points off Ted Faraday. It made for a lively exchange, which climaxed when she coolly announced, ‘I think this is all kind of sour grapes, Ted. You’d actually rather be back in the Met than faffing around on your own . . . assuming you still had the option.’
If ever there was a remark which demanded a follow-up question, that was it, but Bob Garston, concerned about the other items yet to be fitted into the programme, curbed his hard-bitten journalistic instincts and moved on to wrap up the interview.
