Dead on Cue (19 page)

‘Was she?'

‘A great actress?'

‘A very warm human being.'

‘Of course she was. When she wanted to be. And as long as someone was watching.'

‘Is that just another way of sayin' that you didn't like her very much?'

‘People who didn't like her make natural suspects as far as the police are concerned, so I'd have to say in my own self-interest that I personally worshipped the ground she walked on,' Adams replied. ‘But I will tell you this – one of the two most important lessons you learn in prison is who to trust and who not to trust, and I didn't trust Valerie Farnsworth.'

‘Any particular reason for that?' Woodend asked.

‘If you bite the hand that feeds you, you'll bite anybody's hand.'

‘An' is that what she was doin'?'

‘Yes, if the rumours I've heard are true.'

‘Whose hand was she supposed to be bitin'? Bill Houseman's?'

‘That would be a fair assumption. His was, after all, the hand that fed her.'

‘So what was she plannin' to do? Abandon him? Run off to Hollywood like Larry Coates wanted to do?'

Adams shook his head. ‘No. Nothing like that. Her betrayal was of a more
personal
nature.'

‘That's a bit vague, isn't it?' Woodend asked.

‘Yes,' Adams agreed. ‘And that's exactly how I intend to keep it.'

‘Don't you want Valerie Farnsworth's killer caught?'

‘The second valuable lesson you learn in prison is that if you want to survive, the best thing to do is say nothing and keep your head down. And that's what I'm doing right now – saying nothing and keeping my head down.'

Deputy Chief Constable Henry Marlowe noticed the cream-coloured ambulance, with its light flashing dementedly, the second he pulled into the Whitebridge Police Headquarters' car park. The ambulance was parked close to the back door of the station, and the driver and his mate, having unloaded their stretcher-trolley, were on the point of entering the building.

Marlowe wondered if some keen young bobby had been a little too ‘enthusiastic' while questioning a suspect. And if he had, how the bloody hell would they handle it?

In the old days, it would have been easy enough to deal with a situation like that. He, personally, would first have torn a strip off the officer in question, and then blandly told the press that the suspect had fallen downstairs, and he could produce half a dozen witnesses to prove it. But the old days – sadly – seemed to be gone forever. Now that squeaky-clean John Dinnage was in charge of the force, everything had to be done by the book.

Marlowe parked his car and walked over to the crowd. ‘What's going on here?' he demanded.

‘It's Mr Dinnage, sir,' one of the uniformed constables said.

‘What about him?'

‘His secretary found him slumped over his desk a few minutes ago. They think he's had a heart attack.'

Christ, that was better news than hearing he'd won the football pools, Marlowe told himself.

But even as the thought flashed across his mind, his face assumed the troubled expression of a senior officer who has just learned that one of his valued colleagues has been struck down.

‘I didn't realise you'd all had medical training,' he said, addressing the small crowd in general.

‘We haven't, sir,' said the constable who'd spoken earlier.

‘Then you're not much use here, are you?' Marlowe asked. ‘Look, I know you must all be as shocked as I am,' he continued, lowering his voice and blunting the edge on his tone a little, ‘but there's really nothing you can do, so wouldn't it be a good idea to go back to your duties?'

It was more of an order than a suggestion, and recognising it as such, the group began to disperse, leaving Marlowe in sole charge of the car park.

The DCC lit up a cigarette, and waited. It was less than two minutes later that the ambulance men emerged with their patient. The Old Man didn't look good, Marlowe thought, glancing down at the stretcher. His skin was as white as flour, his facial muscles had collapsed, leaving his features almost flat. It was possible that he would make a full recovery, but a betting man would think twice before putting any money on it.

The ambulance crew loaded the stretcher into the back of the vehicle. The driver's mate followed it, and knelt down by the sick man. The driver himself closed the doors and strode quickly round to the front of the vehicle.

As Marlowe watched the ambulance drive away, it was only the knowledge that he was being observed from every window in the station which preventing him from dancing a jig.

He jangled the change in his pocket as he thought about the grave words he would use at the press conference later in the day, and, because there was no one close enough to hear it, he permitted himself the luxury of whistling a cheerful tune.

F
or the first part of the drive to Sladebury, Constable Pickup seemed to be rather intimidated by the fact that he was sharing a car with an inspector, but the closer they got to the village in which both he and Valerie Farnsworth had spent their childhoods, the more voluble he became.

‘The place has really grown since I was a kid,' he told Rutter. ‘There was only one shop back then, but now there's three, includin' a branch of Co-op. There's a petrol station, an' all.'

‘It's obviously becoming quite a little metropolis,' Rutter said, with a slight smile playing on his lips.

‘You're right, there,' Pickup agreed enthusiastically. ‘It's getting' so that people don't really need to go into Whitebridge at all.'

They entered the village. The houses were all built of the dressed stone which Rutter – as a man raised in the land of red brick – had found strange at first, but now was getting used to. There was a pub called the Red Lion just ahead of them, and the inspector indicated, then turned on to its car park.

‘Do you fancy a drink before we get started?' he asked Pickup, as they got out of the car.

‘I wouldn't say no,' the constable replied, then quickly added – as if he'd begun to suspect this might be some kind of test, ‘That is, I wouldn't mind one if it's all right with you, sir.'

‘I'd never have suggested it if it wasn't,' Rutter replied – and found himself wishing that he didn't always feel the urge to turn round and see who was standing behind him when anybody called him ‘sir'.

Pickup seemed to assume his new boss –
being
a boss – would prefer to drink in the best room rather than the public bar, and Rutter, still lacking Charlie Woodend's confidence, didn't contradict him. The landlord, a jolly-looking, red-faced man of around forty, greeted the young constable warmly and said wasn't it a terrible thing about Val Farnsworth. Pickup agreed it was, and Rutter ordered two halves of best bitter.

‘Where would you like to start, sir?' Pickup asked, when the landlord had served them their drinks.

Rutter ignored the twitch in his neck muscles which told him to glance over his shoulder, and said, ‘It'd probably be best to start with the immediate family.'

Pickup looked distraught. ‘I'm afraid there aren't any, sir,' he confessed.

‘What? None?'

‘None at all. The Farnsworths were off-comers to the village. Came from Rawtenstall, or somewhere like that. There was only her an' her mam an' dad, an' both the parents are dead now.'

‘But there are still people in the village who knew her, aren't there?'

‘Oh yes, there's plenty of them,' Pickup replied, looking relieved. He turned towards the bar, where the landlord was polishing glasses. ‘You knew Val, didn't you, Mr Gilgrass? Personally, I mean.'

‘I knew her all right,' the landlord confirmed. ‘Knew her
very well
, as a matter of fact. We were in the same class at school.'

‘What was she like?' Rutter asked.

‘Very determined,' the landlord replied, without a second's hesitation. ‘She always knew exactly what she wanted, an' was always willin' to do whatever was necessary to get it.'

Rutter grinned good-naturedly – a trick he'd learned from Woodend. ‘Used her feminine wiles to get her own way, did she?'

‘Oh no, she wasn't like that back then,' the landlord said. ‘Not at all. She was a bit of a tomboy, if the truth be told. As willin' to use her fists as any of the lads – an' better with them than most of the boys, too.'

‘You must be very proud of her in the village,' Rutter said.

‘We are. There's not many people can say they've known somebody as famous as Val Farnsworth.'

Pickup put his glass down on the counter. ‘If you'll excuse me, sir, I think I'll just have to nip out the back for a minute,' he said.

The landlord watched Pickup disappear through the door which led to the toilets, then turned his back to Rutter.

‘Not got the bladder for drinkin', these young lads, have they?' he asked. ‘They get one half pint in them, an' they're peein' for a good fifteen minutes.'

‘That's the younger generation for you,' Rutter said, choosing to overlook the fact that he was far closer to Pickup's age himself than he was to the landlord's. ‘Did you see much of Val in the village?'

‘Not really,' the landlord admitted. ‘In fact, I can't remember the last time she was here.'

‘And people didn't resent that? Didn't they feel she must have decided she was too good for Sladebury?'

‘No, not at all. We understood that she must have been very busy, what with
Maddox Row
an' all the public appearances she had to put in all over the place. You'll not find one person in Sladebury who's got a bad word to say against Val Farnsworth, I can assure you of that.'

‘No one? Not a single person?'

The landlord frowned. ‘Well, there is
one
,' he admitted reluctantly.

‘Who?'

‘Funnily enough, it's young Pickup back-there's Uncle Arthur.'

‘And what's Uncle Arthur got against her?'

‘Well, this was years ago, I'm talkin' about now. He was engaged to a lass called Ellie Tomkins, and when she broke the engagement off, a few months before the weddin', he blamed Val for it. But nobody took much notice. To tell you the truth, everybody round here thinks he's a bit do-lally.'

Woodend made his way up the central concourse to the studio. After his slightly unpleasant encounter with George Adams, he'd had just about enough of Houseman's ‘aristocracy' for one morning, he decided, and it was about time he had a word with the peasants.

The studio was full of hectic activity. Some of the sets he'd seen the day before were being taken down, and the moment the flats had been removed, new ones were being constructed in their place. Woodend watched, fascinated, as an empty space began to take the shape of the living room he'd so often watched Madge Thornycroft spread her salacious rumours from.

With a gait that would have seemed aimless to anyone who didn't know him, he wandered over to Jack Taylor's front room. The carpenters seemed to have finished their work there, and a young man with a bouffant hairstyle was fussing over the ornaments on Dot's sideboard.

‘You're that policeman, aren't you?' he said.

‘That's right,' Woodend agreed. ‘Won't put you off if I watch you work for a few minutes, will it?'

‘Not at all,' the young man replied. ‘A true artist always appreciates an audience.'

The set dresser picked up a photograph which was lying on the sideboard, studied it for a moment, then moved a Toby jug a couple of inches to the left.

‘Do you have to be that careful?' Woodend asked.

‘Oh God, yes,' the young man said. ‘If anything's even the tiniest bit out of place, we get letters. It's the same with the corner shop. If we don't have Valentine's Day cards on display there at the beginning of February, you can be sure one of our eagle-eyed viewers will complain. I've got a friend who works in prop buying, and he wakes up in a cold sweat worrying that one of the washing powder companies might have changed their packaging without him noticing.'

Woodend grinned. ‘Sounds like a tough life.'

‘You don't know the half of it,' the young man said earnestly. He stepped back from the sideboard, cocked his head first to one side then the other, then nodded with satisfaction. ‘That should do it. Now all that's left is the blowing down – if you'll excuse the expression.'

‘The what?'

‘I have to spray the light switches and door handles with a fine film of dark water paint. It looks strange to the naked eye – pardon the expression again – but on camera it takes away the pristine edge and makes them seem used.'

‘All is not what it seems.'

‘You're telling me! In one episode we had Harry Sugden getting the daft idea of building a goldfish pond in his back yard . . .'

‘Aye, I remember that.'

‘Well, we got a tin bath, surrounded it with fake bricks, and filled it with water. The bricks looked fine on camera, but the water just didn't seem right. We tried different lighting and different camera angles, and it was still no good. So do you know what had to do in the end?'

‘I've no idea.'

‘We tipped the water away, and spread a plastic sheet across the top of the pond. And that really
did
look like water.'

Woodend suddenly realised he was enjoying himself so much that he was in danger of forgetting why he was there. ‘What can you tell me about Val Farnsworth?' he asked.

‘Not a lot,' the set dresser said. ‘Our job's finished by the time hers starts. But if you want to talk to somebody who knew her
outside
work . . .' He searched around the studio, and his gaze fell on a short-haired woman who was dressing a set close to his. ‘Can you come here a minute, Susan?' he called.