Killings on Jubilee Terrace (6 page)

‘It was an identity card,’ said Charlie, showing it to the pair of them. ‘Satisfied?’

‘Well, well,’ said James, stirring it as was his wont. ‘A black policeman. Wonders will never cease. What are you: a traitor or a stooge?’

‘Well, well, a black actor in a soap. I’ll hold back on the supplementary questions.’

‘If you’re a policeman you must be investigating something,’ said Susan.

‘If you only knew how much time I spend
not
doing that… But today’s not one of those times. Let me jump ahead and say it’s an investigation prompted by an anonymous letter we received at police headquarters. It made allegations that we thought needed looking into.’

‘What sort of allegations?’ demanded James.

‘Shall I ask the questions? How long have you been working on
Jubilee Terrace
, sir?’

‘Eighteen months, or a bit over.’

‘And you, madam?’

Charlie gave their honorary titles a gently ironic tinge.

‘Nearly four years. I’ve been given bigger and better things to do since I finished at drama school.’

‘Who would you say has been most helpful to you since you started?’

The pair thought.

‘Melvin is very good,’ said Susan. ‘If I have trouble with a line, maybe think that a teenager wouldn’t say it, Melvin is—’

‘Yes, I’ve met Melvin Settle,’ said Charlie. ‘And you, sir?’

James shrugged.

‘I’ve just got on with the job. It’s not—’

‘Rocket science. Yes, I get the point. What about the people who’ve been less helpful? The ones you wouldn’t think of going to if you had a problem. The ones that are a problem?’

‘Well,’ said Susan, ‘you’ve just seen Hamish, and what he can do to a newcomer. Crude, nasty, but depressing all the same, and confidence-robbing. Vernon Watts was the elderly groper in the cast. I gave him his marching orders on my first day. I had a sort of chaperone then, but she was surplus to requirements. I can take care of myself.’

Charlie turned to James and waited.

‘Oh, I was approached by Vernon too. Could have guessed he was into Variety. I told him I wasn’t into being fucked by wrinklies. Hamish has tried a few sneers in the Vernon Watts mode. It’s all water off a duck’s back. I know where I’m going. Vernon must have known where he was going too, and now he’s gone.’

‘Don’t take any notice of him.’

Charlie swivelled round and noticed a little band of actors and studio-hands gazing at them. The actors included Marjorie, the young curate, and a fresh-faced woman of an age somewhere between youth and middle-age.

‘You are?’

‘I’m Liza Croome. I play Sally Worseley in the
Terrace
. Wife of the landlord of the Duke of York’s.’

‘And you don’t like the way James is talking about Vernon Watts and Hamish Whatever?’

‘Fawley. I just think he’s giving a wrong impression. James is…still quite new here. On the whole this is a wonderful team. We all – nearly all – pull together extremely well. We’re actors, bumped-up extras, comedians, whatever. And we do play together, hide one another’s weaknesses, highlight their strengths. The tabloids say what a united and close-knit lot we are, and on the whole they’re right. In this case any rotten apple there may have been hasn’t affected the whole barrel.’

‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’ said James, getting up and walking eloquently away. Charlie watched the walk – all panther grace and glorious, self-conscious elegance. The boy would make a very high-class gigolo, he decided. Suddenly James stopped and turned round. ‘Liza, you didn’t mention that Bill Garrett, your mate, is letching after Susan, did you? Why not? Didn’t fit with your rosy picture, I suppose.’

‘Hello – making yourself at home I see. Excellent.’ The voice was Reggie Friedman’s, arriving with Melvin Settle and looking with raised eyebrows at the departing back of James.
The welcoming note had got into Reggie’s bearing and stance, but Charlie noticed there was still an edge to his voice. ‘If you’ll come along we’ll give you all the help we can.’

They led Charlie not to the office where they had talked earlier but to one of the
Terrace
’s hospitality suites, where they sat in light, clean, easy chairs, and where a coffee machine was already switched on and biscuits were neatly arranged on plates. Something had happened in the script conference, Charlie thought, or, more likely, they had thought things over and decided that nothing could be gained by stonewalling or offending a police officer. And perhaps particularly a black police officer, since the
Terrace
had not, over the years, been particularly welcoming to minorities. Maybe in this thinking the Inspector title had helped. It was always more impressive to outsiders than it was to other serving policemen who knew that inspectors usually got the rather boring cases.

‘So you’ve had an anonymous letter,’ said Reggie Friedman, sitting down and gesturing to another chair. ‘It was about
Jubilee Terrace
I take it?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Was it from a member of the public, do you think, or from one of our people here?’

‘From an insider, we thought, or someone close to an insider.’

‘Many of our fans are so well up in the series, from its start in 1976, that they can sound like insiders.’

‘Point taken. We’re keeping an open mind.’

‘Are we allowed to know what it said?’ asked Melvin Settle.

‘Yes. I’ve had it transcribed, and I’d like the copy back.’ Charlie fumbled in his briefcase and handed over a copy. ‘We don’t want it to go round from person to person so that people can prepare their response. It was very clearly written, so you can rely on the transcript.’

The pair took the single page and looked at the computer text.

‘Why did the police take Vernon Watt’s death as natural causes? He was the most hated man on Jubilee Terrace. Pushing someone in front of a bus is the easiest way of killing him. The London police should have investigated all the people on the traffic island.’

‘Hmmm,’ said Melvin. ‘Gets the apostrophe wrong in Watts’.’

‘Nobody gets that right these days,’ said Reggie. ‘Except you, Melvin.’ He looked at Charlie. ‘Not much there I’d have said. Of course you know your job best, but…’

‘You’re quite right,’ said Charlie, with easy
candour. ‘Normally with an anonymous letter, very unspecific and ungrounded, we’d have done nothing. We might have paid some attention if it was signed, and we could question the writer. The unusual thing here, the reason we’re taking it up at all is, as I said earlier, that Watts was something of a national figure, partly from his early life on the music halls—’

‘But mainly because of
Jubilee Terrace
,’ said Reggie Friedman.

‘I was going to say that. The music halls and the variety shows are I gather a happy memory for older people. Even the working men’s clubs, which are a Northern phenomenon, are not what they were. So it’s for
Jubilee Terrace
he will be remembered. Tell me about the part he played, Bert Porter.’

‘Oh, Bert was a
Terrace
stalwart. He’d been in the cotton trade, with a sideline as a comic and a vocalist on the club circuit. That way we kept and capitalised on Vernon’s showbiz connection. Bert was now retired, with the occasional engagement in clubs or pubs. He and his wife, Gladys, were comfortable, apart from the odd row, and were founts of popular wisdom whenever there was any trouble on the
Terrace
.’

‘And there’s always trouble int’
Terrace
,’ said Melvin, lapsing into a Northern dialect.

‘Is it true that pushing people under a bus or a
car is a failsafe way of getting rid of them?’ asked Reggie. Charlie shrugged.

‘If it were that good a way of killing someone, the killing wouldn’t be in our records. If people are all around you it’s a lot more dangerous than our know-it-all letter writer admits. Anyone may see or feel the arm that does the pushing. If it was me I’d push him in front of an underground train in rush-hour. Ill-lit platform, great mass of surging humanity. A shove is part of life there.’

‘Vernon Watts hadn’t used the Underground since 7/7,’ said Melvin. ‘He was an asthmatic, and he didn’t want to die in a smoke-filled tunnel.’

‘Ah – thanks for the info. Now what about the statement that he was the most generally hated actor on the
Terrace
sets?’

‘I imagine that’s what you’ve been talking to people about,’ said Reggie. ‘Well yes – it was true until Hamish Fawley came into the show.’

‘That’s the one I’ve just seen on his deathbed – I guessed he was dying of AIDS but I was wrong.’

‘That’s the one. He’s dying of tuberculosis. We have to move with the times. British soaps have done AIDS over and over again. Tuberculosis is a new thing, except for the very old who remember how deadly it once was.’ He pulled himself up, obviously feeling this was becoming a lecture. ‘Still, AIDS was a good guess. And you’re spot on about Hamish’s nature. He’s a nasty piece of
work and thrives on it. He’s just come back for a second stint. Vernon was less nasty, less confident in his brutality to others, but he was on the same lines. Just a bit less sure of himself in his bitchery and malevolence. The fact that his first career had folded under him may explain the lack of confidence.’

‘Is Mr Fawley’s main base London?’ asked Charlie.

‘Well yes’ – Reggie’s answer was palpably reluctant – ‘it is.’ Charlie waited. ‘Actually he has a flat in Hampstead, inherited from his parents. He lets it out when he’s playing or filming elsewhere, like now.’

‘And at the time of Watts’s death?’

Reluctance again.

‘He was in London in
School for Scandal
at the Haymarket.’

‘Very interesting,’ said Charlie.

‘May we ask,’ said Melvin with his usual courtly diffidence, ‘whether there were signs of a hefty shove on Vernon’s back?’

‘No, there were not. Otherwise there would have been an inquest. The Metropolitan police autopsy showed he had a heart attack, but it could have happened either before or after he fell or was pushed into the road. Let me ask you one: was Mr Watts a dodderer, or becoming doddery?’

Both men nodded vigorously.

‘Oh yes,’ said Reggie. ‘Everyone says that back in the past he had limitless energy. When he was on the club circuit he could do half an hour, even three quarters, as a solo turn: jokes, songs, dance – even some conjuring tricks. You name it, he was in for it. I’m told he still had a lot of that energy when he joined
Jubilee Terrace
, but he’d lost most of it by the time he died. Perhaps that soured his temper. He and Marjorie who played his wife had many a slanging match, but that was the main outlet for the energy he had left.’

‘Not sex?’

‘Well, he was still up for it,’ said Reggie with a leer. ‘But everyone in the studio knew what he was after, and that he’d make promises about using his influence which he couldn’t keep because he had none. He was a shabby, comic figure.’

‘But physically he was doddery – no longer firm on his feet, unsure where he was going, what he was doing?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Melvin. ‘He was
old
, and like all but a few old people. What are you trying to say?’

‘I’m not sure,’ said Charlie. ‘The physical decline works two ways: he could be projected forward into the path of a car without any difficulty, or any bruise; on the other hand, he could have just wimbley-wambled himself into the road.’

The two men thought this over.

‘He wasn’t mad,’ said Melvin, ‘or even a bit soft in the head. He had all his marbles, and you could hear that in any of the rows he had.’

‘Nobody has suggested he was mad,’ said Reggie.

‘No, that’s right,’ said Charlie, getting up. ‘I think we’ve gone as far as we can go. I didn’t expect to get any great distance, but we have put a marker down. If something turns up that makes us think there was anything in this letter-writer’s allegations then at least we can say we didn’t bin them without giving them a go. It’s the most they can expect.’

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Reggie. ‘Nobody here thought it was anything but natural causes.’

‘Not quite true, Reggie,’ said Melvin. ‘Garry Kopps says that the first thing he thought when he heard the news was that Vernon had been done in.’

‘He’s got an overactive imagination,’ said Reggie.

‘And who is Garry Kopps?’ asked Charlie.

‘Our resident gay – in real life. Also our resident intellectual. In the soap as Arthur Bradley, the keeper of the corner shop.’

Charlie nodded, said he’d got everything he needed and didn’t imagine there would be any need for him to come back. So much for policeman’s instinct.

‘Good evening Peter. And how are you this fine evening?’ Bob Worseley’s arm had gone automatically to the draught Guinness, Philip Marston’s regular tipple. ‘And is the gorgeous Mrs Kerridge in her usual fine fettle?’

‘Cut the crap, Bill. They’ve not even finalised the camera angles yet. And anyway your pub landlord is fatally dated. All you get these days is a horrible little man with a short-term contract and about as much warmth and bonhomie as the Pope receiving an official visit from the Reverend Ian Paisley.’

‘Everything about
Jubilee Terrace
is dated, right down to white people running the corner shop,’ said Bill Garrett, unperturbed. ‘Hadn’t you noticed?’

‘You’re right,’ said Marjorie Harcourt-Smith, sitting with her ‘sweet sherry’ (actually a neat cognac) at a table beside them with Winnie Hey. ‘How often do you see people in the Terrace talking into their mobile phones or listening to music on their iPods as they walk along. Only the teenagers, just occasionally. But go out into the real street and everybody is at it.’

‘She’s hit the nail on the head as usual,’ said Philip Marston, who loved double-meanings. ‘Go out on the street and everybody is at it.’

‘Don’t turn me into a smut-merchant,’ said Marjorie. ‘Smut’s not your line at all, and not mine either.’

‘Ah, now this brightens my day,’ said Bill, polishing a glass ‘A new customer at the Duke of York’s. What’s the betting he drinks orange juice?’

Marjorie and Winnie looked around. All the characters for the pub scene that was shortly to be filmed were already there: Norma Kerridge, Arthur Bradley and his still-new wife Maureen, Dawn Kerridge, tonight without James, all supervised by Reggie Friedman, being everywhere at once.

And there, over by the door, was the new curate.

‘What’s he doing here?’ asked Marjorie. ‘He’s not in this scene.’

‘Maybe he is,’ said Winnie. ‘Melvin could have done a little re-write. He was awfully good in those scenes with my Cyril.’

‘I know he was. I was there,’ said Marjorie but Winnie was not listening.

‘Only a filmed run-through. But
awfully
good, and really very moving. Though maybe I was especially moved because it was the last of Hamish… No, I don’t think it was that. It was because this youngster’s an actor, a real actor.’

‘Do you know, I don’t think I even know his name,’ said Marjorie. ‘I just think of him as the curate.’

‘He’s Stephen Barrymore, and he’s in his last year at the Music and Drama College here in Leeds. His
Terrace
name is Kevin Plunkett.’

And by then he was standing by Winnie’s shoulder, talking to Philip Marston and downing a pint.

‘I hear you did a good job with Hamish’s death scene,’ said Philip.

‘It was just a first run-through, but I thought it hit the right buttons,’ said Stephen. ‘I got the usual bullshit from the man I shared it with, but I’d been warned and I just took it with a clerical sweetness.’

‘I suspect you’re getting the soap bug,’ said Philip.

‘I think I might be, just for a year or two.’

‘Wouldn’t even a year as a well-meaning clergyman be a bit limiting?’

‘Oh, I wasn’t thinking necessarily of
Jubilee Terrace
,’ said Stephen, obviously trying not to sound cocky. ‘I’ve got three weeks’ work on
Emmerdale
coming up when I sign off here.’

‘Good Lord!’ said Philip, genuinely impressed. ‘Jobs on two soaps and you haven’t even finished drama school!’

The young man’s cherubic face assumed a deprecatory expression.

‘Oh, it was luck. You were there in the church, weren’t you? And I heard that
Emmerdale
was looking for a young Australian. Pure good fortune.’

Philip Marston gaped.

‘You’re not Australian, are you? I heard nothing—’

‘I’m as Aussie as they come, cobber. Watch your mouth when you mention God’s own country or I’ll land one on you that you won’t forget in a hurry.’

Philip Marston pondered.

‘When people say they’re as Aussie as they come I usually find their people went out there when he or she was two or three. Oh and, by the by, you haven’t got the regulation tan either.’

Stephen Barrymore looked shamefaced.

‘Actually that is what happened to me. As to
the tan, you must have heard the word ‘pommies’. Most of the English who emigrate go red in the Australian sun, or pink like a pomegranate. I’m surprised you didn’t hear any Australian in the accent though.’

‘Lots of Australians are very good at English pronunciation, but they usually slip up on something or other: “salt”, for example, or “school”.’

‘Oh, I can say ‘sawlt’ with the best of you English. But if it comes up in the
Emmerdale
scripts I’ll rhyme it with ‘colt’. At home we always pronounced in the English way. My parents have never adapted. They’d die rather than spend Christmas day on the beach. My mother has sleepless nights when someone takes her for an Aussie.’

‘So when are you recording
Emmerdale
?’

‘A month’s time.’

‘And who are you playing?’

‘Louise’s kid brother. Come over to see all the people she’s mentioned, which means mostly the people she has slept with. Chance to bring him back again later on – once he’s been around and taken his fill of The Old Country.’

‘Well, well: doors are opening for you.’

The same idea had occurred to Marjorie Harcourt-Smith. She had left her table near the bar and nipped across to where Reggie was
standing, near the door to the
Terrace
. Marjorie had a surprising turn of speed when she was after something.

‘I don’t think you can have heard that, Reggie—’

Reggie sighed.

‘Get to the point, Marjorie. We’re busy.’

‘The new curate, Stephen Barrymore: he’s got a bit part in
Emmerdale
. Starts when he finishes with us, playing Louise’s brother from Australia. He is Australian, though he’s been keeping it quiet. There’s already talk in the
Emmerdale
camp of using him again later in the year.’

She was delighted to see she had caught Reggie’s attention at once.

‘Really? The snakes! Jumping in like that.’

‘Reggie,
please
could he come and lodge with me? It would be ideal—’

‘Marjorie, I’m surprised at you. At your age. And I happen to know you’ve only one bedroom.’

‘Don’t be silly, Reggie. I mean on the
Terrace
. Gladys Porter desperately needs someone to react to, someone of the opposite sex to talk things over with, have special little scenes with.’

‘You rat, Marjorie.’ The voice was Winnie’s, from behind her left ear. ‘Jumping the gun like that. Reggie, if he is to lodge anywhere on the Terrace it should definitely be with me. With Lady Wharton. We formed a close bond during
the terrible time he was visiting the dying Cyril. He’s become quite a second son to her. And a good deal nicer than the first one.’

Marjorie turned, rather condescendingly, to her.

‘Winnie, darling, you’re being quite unreasonable. You were on your own all the time Cyril was in San Francisco or wherever it was. And it suited you. As a
Lady
you feel alone in the
Terrace
. But I’ve only just lost Vernon – Bert I mean – and I’m finding it very difficult. It would be natural for Gladys to offer Stephen her spare room. I’ve been talking to Melvin about Gladys’s need, and I’m sure he’ll back me up.’

‘I’ve heard he was thinking of bringing on someone you’ve met at the University of the Third Age,’ said Reggie, mischievously. ‘There’s any number of more-or-less male would-be actors who’d give their right arms to play him. Now go away and squabble elsewhere. I’ll think this over when I’ve got this scene in the can.’

Philip Marston, who by now was sitting at a table by the window with his
Terrace
wife Carol Chisholm, had watched this exchange with a cynical smile on his face (an expression which was never allowed to cross it when shooting
Terrace
, for which he had a small repertoire of dependable and concerned expressions). He said to Carol:

‘Marjorie and Winnie are both bearding Reggie. I bet I know what they’re after.’

‘What’s that?’

‘
Who
, more like. They’ve heard that this new curate has got an in-and-out job on
Emmerdale
, and they want Reggie to step in now and offer him a six-month contract, probably with an option of a further six.’

‘Why should they care?’

‘They want to be his landlady on the
Terrace
. They both lack a regular partner – in the widest sense – who they can build a relationship with, have sparring matches with, or just humorous exchanges. They think young Stephen seems eminently likeable, and they both covet him.’

‘Likeable actors frequently turn out to be anything but underneath the veneer. Anyway, we can acquit them of lust. He is not exactly a sex bombshell… Still, he might add something to the Kerridge household. Be a replacement for the son in the merchant navy.’

‘You forget we’ve only got two bedrooms. Both taken.’

‘Can’t we get rid of that bitch Dawn? Isn’t she just the type to go to university? Nobody does in soaps, and a woman doing it might even be a first. I think Ken Barlow was the last to go in
Corrie
, and that must have been in the early Sixties. But in real life everybody’s going, and
studying all sorts of quite outlandish subjects. Dawn could go and study the History and Social Significance of Cosmetic Surgery, and this Stephen could have her room.’

‘That’s no go.’

‘Why not?’

‘She’d never leave Leeds, wouldn’t Dawn.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because our Susan would be years before she could get another job that paid as well, and gives her national exposure.’

‘That’s not in Susan’s hands.’

‘She’d use every weapon, and Susan has many weapons, including a high degree of adhesiveness.’

‘That’s the only one of her weapons she never uses on Bill Garrett. Every muscle in her body says
Noli Me Tangere
.’

They giggled – close, almost like real married people. They watched as Bill slipped from behind the bar and went over to Susan Fyldes’s table. He stopped by it, obviously wondering whether he could sit companionably on it, then did exactly that. Susan sat back in her chair, clearly disenchanted by Bill’s hind quarters.

‘Good that you can come into the Duke of York’s at last,’ he said. Susan removed the plugs and wires from her ears with palpable reluctance.

‘What?’ she asked. It was not the yobbish
teenager’s ‘what?’, but a middle-class matron’s ‘what?’ addressed to a social inferior not eligible for ‘I beg your pardon’.

‘I said it’s good you can come into the Duke of York’s at last,’ repeated Bill, his heart already sinking.

‘You know I’ve been going into pubs for years,’ said Susan.

‘But that was Susan. I’m just saying I’m glad that Dawn has caught up with Susan, and I can expect scenes with her.’

Susan rummaged in her handbag and took out her mobile phone.

‘Do you mind – I’m busy. I’ve got to ring my mother – my real mother, who gave birth to me, not my soap mother. That shouldn’t have to be explained every time my mother’s mentioned, but apparently it has to be. You’re old, Bill. You’re played out. You’re a nothing guy, so in future, Bill, will you please stop wasting my time, because I certainly won’t be wasting yours.’

‘Fuck you, madam,’ was Bill’s comment, but only in his mind.

‘Have you noticed,’ he said to Liza Croome, his soap wife, when he was back behind the bar, drawing his forearm across his forehead and looking at Garry Kopps and Shirley Merritt who were sitting on stools on the public’s side of the bar, ‘that the English have become incapable
of communicating with each other? They plug crap music into their ears to prevent encounters of any sort. They don’t want to talk to people face to face, they don’t even want to talk to them by phone, so they do it by mobile, where you’ve got a rotten line that robs the voice of any individuality and frequently fades entirely. They advertise free mobile calls under the slogan “Widen your social circle”. Nobody cooks, they just watch cookery programmes. They live out a surrogate life through television, watching
setup
situations, which they laughingly call “reality TV” and then they—’

‘Bill,’ said Garry Kopps.

‘Yes?’

‘She slapped you down, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. Told me to get lost. Said I was a nothing guy.’

‘And you knew perfectly well, didn’t you, that that would be the result, made more likely by your planting your fat arse on her table?’

‘Well, I wasn’t expecting her to throw her arms around me.’

‘Why can’t you ever learn?’ said Liza. ‘That’s what Garry is trying to say.’

‘Because I don’t want to, Liza, I suppose. I’m not that old. If only she’d—’

But at that point Reggie bellowed out a call for action, and everyone took their allotted
instead of their chosen places. The filming of the scenes went ahead with the rather unexciting efficiency that long familiarity with characters and settings inevitably produces. During the session the camera jumped from group to group in the old-fashioned bar: over by the window the Kerridges were joined by Gladys Porter, and the three of them discussed the latter’s loneliness and the progress of Dawn’s romance with James. The question of James’s colour did not come up, and neither did the question of whether they had slept together. The second of these subjects would come up, but the first never would. Meanwhile their screen daughter was filmed on her mobile, talking not to her mother but to James, with whom she had some sub-Juliet love talk.

Over the beer pumps the Bradleys from the corner shop moaned to the Worseleys, the only bar staff on that night, about the difficulty of getting and keeping casual workers. They went together well, being all in the service-with-
a-social
-conscience line. Meanwhile Lady Wharton, alone as Gladys had proclaimed her to be, drank her gin and tonic in a dignified and benign manner.

When the scenes in their scripts had been filmed, Reggie held up his hand for silence.