Stagestruck

by Peter Lovesey

  ‘Has anyone threatened you recently or in the past?’

  ‘I’d remember, wouldn’t I? Of course they haven’t.’

  ‘Crazy fans? Someone else’s fans?’

  ‘I’m coming up to thirty. My last album was two years ago.’

  ‘Three, I think,’ Ingeborg said, and got a glare for her accuracy.

  ‘I was about to say my fans have grown up with me,’ Clarion said. ‘People of my age don’t do crazy. They’ve grown out of all that hormonal silliness.’

  ‘How did the theatre people treat you in rehearsal?’ Diamond asked, moving it on, but not confident of shaking the self-esteem of someone who’d basked in admiration for years. She couldn’t believe anyone would want to harm her. ‘You’re an outsider, in a way.’

  ‘I was at drama college, a good one. I’m not a total novice.’

  ‘Yes, but you’re not known for your acting and you walked into a starring role. How did they take it?’

  ‘With good grace. They’re professionals. My name sells tickets. Few of them would pull in an audience. That’s how it is in the commercial theatre and they accept it.’

  ‘Jobbing actors,’ Ingeborg said.

  ‘I wouldn’t say so in their presence, but yes.’

  ‘So do you recall any hostility while you were rehearsing?’ Diamond asked. ‘I’m thinking of others besides the actors. Anyone from the management down to the stage hands?’

  ‘If there was any bad feeling, I didn’t pick it up.’

  ‘Let’s talk about Monday evening,’ he said. ‘You arrived at the theatre at what time?’

  ‘Before five. I went to my dressing room and sat going over my lines until about a quarter to six. Then I changed into my first costume.’

  ‘Was the dresser there?’

  ‘Denise? She came later with the clothes. She had to collect them from wardrobe. There are six changes between scenes.’

  ‘What time did she turn up?’

  ‘When she said she would. About forty-five minutes before curtain up.’

  ‘Did anyone else come in?’

  ‘There were two or three interruptions from call boys delivering bouquets from well-wishers.’

  ‘Certain flowers can cause allergic reactions, can’t they?’ Diamond said, more to Ingeborg than Clarion.

  ‘Oh, come on, I didn’t bury my face in them,’ Clarion said. ‘I think I’d know if they were responsible.’

  Ingeborg showed by her expression that she, too, thought the flower theory was garbage, so Diamond abandoned it. ‘You’d met Denise before?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘In rehearsal.’

  ‘I see what you mean.’

  ‘She made you up for the dress rehearsal the previous day?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And did your face react then? Any discomfort?’

  ‘None whatsoever. And I didn’t notice her doing any different on the opening night. She brought her box of colours and brushes with her. She cleansed my face of day make-up and then put on a thin layer of moisturiser followed by the foundation and the highlights and the liners for the eyes and mouth and so on. I felt no discomfort.’

  ‘What cleanser did she use?’ Ingeborg asked.

  ‘Cold cream and astringent, she told me. It all felt normal.’

  ‘What make was it?’

  ‘How would I know that, for Christ’s sake? I was thinking about my lines.’

  ‘Then what? The moisturiser?’

  ‘Didn’t I just tell you? The stage make-up feels dry without it.’

  ‘And the foundation? Cream or pancake?’

  ‘Cream in cake form. She applied it with a sponge. She told me she was experienced and I’m sure she was.’

  ‘So there was this delay before you felt your face burning,’ Diamond said. ‘How long?’

  ‘Between twenty minutes and half an hour.’

  ‘You were all right until you got on stage?’

  ‘Perfectly.’

  ‘This is the mystery,’ he said. ‘If we’re right in assuming the make-up damaged your skin, why didn’t it happen in the dressing room when it was being applied?’

  ‘Slow-acting,’ Clarion said.

  ‘We’ll get advice on that, but I’ve got my doubts.’

  Her glare could have drilled a hole through his head. ‘You can doubt all you want. I’m left with a face like a fire victim and there’s no doubting that. I’m suing for loss of earnings and disfigurement and you won’t stop me.’

  7

  Glarion hadn’t endeared herself to Diamond. He sympathised with her injury and understood her anger at the probable loss of her looks and career. He also knew no member of the public welcomes being questioned by the police. Even allowing for that, she’d come across as hostile and unappreciative of the need to get to the truth. She obviously thought her lawyers and her private security people were better placed to take care of her interests. Almost every statement she’d made had been barbed with reproach. But it’s impossible to put yourself in the place of someone who’s had such a shock, he told himself, trying to be charitable. Easier to feel sorry for the dead victims he usually dealt with. They weren’t capable of striking attitudes.

  ‘Back to Bath now?’ Inge said, to jog him out of his silence.

  ‘Not yet. Call Bristol police and ask them to supply a roundthe-clock guard for her.’

  ‘She has her own guard, guv.’

  He gave her a look that said all she needed to know about the competence of private security guards.

  She took out her phone.

  ‘And now we’ll find the pathology lab,’ he said.

  ‘We’d better ask.’ She stopped a porter wheeling an oxygen cylinder along the main pathway and they were soon heading in the right direction.

  The technician who greeted them inside the door was clearly a junior, but he showed them in to the scientist in charge, a large, bearded man called Pinch, who was sitting on a bench eating a banana. He eyed them as if they’d come to ask for money. When they showed their IDs he jumped to attention, tossed the peel into a bin, wiped his hands and offered them coffee.

  All Diamond wanted was the test result, but Ingeborg accepted for them both. The kettle was hot and the coffee was instant, so it shouldn’t delay them long.

  Pinch explained that his staff supplied their own mugs and there weren’t any spares. ‘Hope you don’t mind drinking from a glass beaker. I promise you, they’re clean. Haven’t contained anything of human origin. Not today, anyway.’

  Diamond wouldn’t touch his, he decided.

  ‘So how can I help?’

  They asked about Clarion’s towel.

  ‘That’s been tested, yes.’

  ‘With what result?’

  ‘Traces of glycerine-based make-up, for sure, and face powder, but also a corrosive I wouldn’t recommend putting anywhere near your face.’

  ‘Acid?’

  ‘Alkali, in fact, but no less dangerous. Sodium hydroxide.’

  ‘Caustic soda,’ Ingeborg said with a sharp intake of breath.

  A shocked silence followed.

  Finally Diamond, appalled, said, ‘Isn’t that what they use to unblock drains?’

  ‘Right. We didn’t believe it at first, so we repeated the tests. That’s why we took so long.’ Pinch poured the coffee. ‘Help yourselves to sugar.’

  Neither reached for the spoon. Ingeborg’s face had drained of colour.

  ‘There’s no question, then?’ Diamond said.

  ‘It’s caustic soda for sure, available from your friendly, neighbourhood hardware store. As you doubtless know, it comes in powder form as tiny flakes or granules. Add a solvent such as water and you’ll remove most blockages.’

  ‘And most of your skin.’

  ‘If you come in contact with it. In these safety-conscious times it’s a wonder the public is still allowed to buy the stuff.’

  ‘How does it work?’

  ‘It’s inert until added to water.’
r />   ‘So it could be mixed with something dry, such as face powder, and it wouldn’t react?’

  ‘Correct.’

  ‘And being white in colour it would blend in with powder,’ Ingeborg added. Horrible as it was, the presence of caustic soda on the towel had to be fitted into a scenario.

  ‘What would have activated it?’ Diamond asked.

  ‘Assuming it was applied to her skin?’ Pinch said. ‘The surface moisture may have been enough. If she was wearing a moisturiser, that would certainly have done it.’

  ‘She had another layer over that, the glycerine-based cream you mentioned,’ Ingeborg said. ‘If it was mixed with that -’

  ‘I’m not sure it was,’ the scientist said. ‘We recovered a number of dry particles from the towel. Actors powder their faces, don’t they?’

  ‘If they do, it’s over some layers of make-up.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I understand it gets warm under the theatre lights. If she started sweating, the process would begin for sure and she might not be aware at first. It forms a slime on the surface and the action can take out the nerve endings as well as the skin tissue. By the time she became aware, it would already have been well advanced.’

  ‘This may explain the delay we’ve all been puzzling over,’ Diamond said. ‘Nasty.’

  ‘Worse than nasty,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It’s fiendish.’

  ‘Does she know yet?’ Diamond asked.

  Pinch shook his head. ‘We needed to confirm the results. This is tricky territory. We report to the medics, not the patient or her representatives. We informed the doctor treating her after we ran the first tests, but when there’s likely to be legal action, you have to be certain.’

  ‘The medics will tell her?’

  ‘Have to.’

  ‘And it can’t have been an accident,’ Diamond said. ‘The lawyers will be aware of that. You don’t add caustic soda to face powder through carelessness. This was deliberate.’

  ‘And vicious,’ Ingeborg added, her voice thick with emotion.

  When they left, they took the towel with them in a sterile box that served as an evidence bag. It would go to the forensics lab at Chepstow for them to run their own tests.

  In the car, Diamond said, ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘I thought I was going to throw up when he told us,’ Ingeborg said. ‘I can handle a murder scene, but this is worse, considering we just spoke to the victim. What a thing to come to terms with, learning you were hated this much by somebody.’

  ‘I know. It’s repulsive and impossible to justify. But our job is to find out why it was done and who is responsible.’

  ‘Okay, guv. I won’t let it do my head in. What do we do about this?’

  ‘We’ve got enough now for a search warrant to get into Denise’s house and seize her make-up kit. And we need to know a whole lot more about her.’

  ‘Do you want to call Keith?’

  He called CID on Ingeborg’s phone and got Dawkins, that windbag, announcing that the department was at his service, as if it was menswear in Jolly’s.

  ‘Diamond here. Is Keith in the office?’

  ‘Keith?’ From the bemused way Dawkins repeated the name, it could have been Julius Caesar.

  ‘DI Halliwell.’

  ‘Would he be the gentleman with sideburns?’

  Diamond gripped the phone harder. What could have possessed Georgina to dump such a nutcase in CID? ‘That’s Leaman. If he’s there, hand the phone to him.’

  ‘He is not.’

  ‘This is urgent, Fred. Is anyone with you?’

  ‘There is another officer with a more restrained haircut and by what you said I can only deduce he is DI Halliwell.’

  ‘Put me onto him, for God’s sake.’

  Halliwell was on message at once. He said he’d organise the warrant directly. There was no shortage of local magistrates to contact.

  ‘Any success tracing her car?’

  ‘She owns a silver Vauxhall Corsa. It’s not on the street right now. The neighbours say that’s where she parks it when she’s at home. They’re pretty sure it wasn’t there overnight. I’ve got the registration and put out an all units as agreed.’

  ‘What’s the address?’

  ‘Excelsior Street in Dolemeads. By the time you get back here, the warrant should be ready.’

  ‘We’ll join you as soon as we can.’

  He updated Ingeborg.

  She said, ‘I can’t think why Denise would do something as dumb as this. She’d know we’ll soon catch up with her.’

  ‘We’ve yet to find out the background,’ he said. ‘I sense a history of ill-will behind this. You get people with a grudge and they lose all sense of proportion. This could have been a personal spat with Clarion, or something quite different, like a grievance against the theatre.’

  ‘So she scars Clarion for life?’ she said on an angry, rising note.

  ‘Stay cool, Inge. Up to now, nobody has said a word against Denise.’

  ‘Because she’s only known to us as a functionary. The dresser. We’ll find out a whole lot more shortly.’

  They got to the end of the Keynsham by-pass and started the Bath Road stretch of the A4. Ingeborg was driving too fast by Diamond’s reckoning. ‘You can take it more steadily now,’ he said. ‘We’ve made good time. I haven’t heard what you dug up on Clarion.’

  ‘I can talk as I drive, guv, and I’m inside the speed limit.’

  ‘Not my limit.’

  ‘It’s open country for some way ahead.’

  ‘I’ll look at the country. You keep your eyes on the road. Does she have any obvious enemies?’

  ‘I can only go by what’s on the internet and in print. She’s not controversial, like some pop stars.’

  ‘Relationships?’

  ‘There was a live-in boyfriend for a couple of years. He was Australian, supposedly touring Europe after getting his degree. They split up when he wanted to go back to Sydney and do a Ph.D. He’s still out in Oz, as far as I’m aware. If there’s anyone else she’s serious about, she’s kept them well hidden.’

  ‘Does she do drugs?’

  She laughed faintly. ‘Don’t they all at some point? Put it this way: she’s not well known for it.’

  ‘How does she spend her money then?’

  ‘Property. She has apartments in London and New York and a manor house near Tunbridge Wells.’

  ‘A home-loving girl, then.’

  ‘It doesn’t stop her from eating out and clubbing.’

  ‘Who with?’

  ‘Lately with the agent we met, Tilda Box.’

  That intrigued him. ‘They go to nightclubs together?’

  ‘There are plenty of magazine pictures to prove it. Tilda entered her life last year when the singing career seemed to be on the slide. She steered her into acting.’

  ‘Is Tilda successful as an agent?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, except she doesn’t seem to have any well-known clients apart from Clarion.’

  ‘And she’s very protective of her. Is Clarion bi, do you think?’

  ‘I haven’t seen it suggested anywhere. The media are quick on anything like that.’

  ‘If she’s straight, she’d surely not want Tilda with her on a regular basis.’

  ‘You could be wrong there, guv. A lot of women feel more comfortable with their own sex as company. If the break-up with the Australian guy hurt her, she may be pleased to coast along for a bit with this Tilda, who smooths the way and makes her feel better about herself. Do you want to hear her sing? I picked up one of her singles last night. Top of the stack.’

  ‘What do I do?’

  She told him how to insert the disc, and Clarion’s chirpy notes took over, balanced by an energising drumbeat. The words were hard to follow and the voice didn’t sound anything special to Diamond’s ear, but pop music wasn’t one of his strengths.

  ‘Is this from the latest album?’

  ‘To be fair, it’s not her best. She’s trying fo
r a hip-hop sound and it doesn’t come off.’

  ‘This was made before Tilda came on the scene?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Who was advising her then?’

  ‘There would have been a creative team looking after the music. She had a manager called Declan Dean and he should have been on top of the business side. Somewhere it wasn’t working and she left him.’

  ‘At some point every singer’s career tails off,’ he said. ‘It’s a competitive market.’

  ‘Highly. Yes, it may just have been the laws of commerce working, but someone has to carry the can.’

  ‘She blamed this Declan?’

  ‘It wasn’t so obvious at the time, but it’s been seeping out since, in her blog.’

  ‘She has a blog?’

  ‘They all do and most of them are dire. It’s about digital exposure in the pop landscape. If you don’t blog, you won’t survive.’

  ‘What kind of stuff does she write in the blog?’

  ‘You wouldn’t find it instructive. Films she’s seen and would tip for an Oscar. Good meals she’s eaten.’

  Clarion’s singing was getting too much. ‘How do I turn this down?’

  She pointed to the volume switch. ‘She was a tad more interesting last week, doing her best to plug the play. She was on about learning lines and rehearsing. Of course the blog stopped on Monday. She could easily start up again now, but I guess the lawyers will have closed her down.’

  ‘How would she blog from a hospital bed?’

  ‘Using her iPhone. It would ease the boredom.’

  They drove back into Bath and Manvers Street. Before anything else, Diamond arranged for the box containing the towel to be driven to the Home Office forensic lab at Chepstow. He’d been impressed by Pinch, but he still needed official confirmation of the findings.

  As promised, Keith Halliwell had the authorised search warrant ready.

  ‘Inge will drive us to Dolemeads,’ Diamond said.

  ‘Actually, guv, I was hoping for a few words in private,’ Halliwell said.

  ‘No problem. You can drive me there and we’ll talk on the way. I’ll tell Inge to meet us. I want her in on this.’

  In the car, it emerged that Sergeant Dawkins was the problem.