Score!

49

Few people had seen inside Hermione’s pretty Georgian Mill — which stood, hidden by trees, two hundred yards from the river Fleet — because she was far too lazy and tight with money to entertain.

Gablecross was surprised therefore to find the dark green front door open and his wife’s favourite singer standing radiant and smiling in the hall. Only when he’d waved his ID card at her did he realize that he was about to shake the outstretched hand of a replica of Hermione’s waxwork in Madame Tussaud’s.

‘Pack it in,’ he hissed, as Karen burst out laughing. ‘Show some fucking respect.’

Dame Hermione, veiled and clad entirely in black, lay on a dark red chaise-longue, with Sexton and Howie dancing attendance. Hermione had not forgiven Howie for being in the know about Pushy’s top notes and espousing her cause as Delilah, and was determined he shouldn’t get any cut out of her newspaper deals, offers of which were pouring in from all over the world and being handled by Sexton. Howie, who loathed the country, was equally determined to hang in.

Spurred on by Gerry Portland’s mockery and having often been impeded in car chases by Dame Hermione’s limo, parked slap across Paradise High Street, Gablecross was determined to stand no nonsense. This excited the hell out of Hermione, who loved her men masterful. Whipping back her veil, she patted the sofa beside her. ‘I know we’re going to be friends, let’s call each other by our given names. Mine’s Hermione, and yours is…?’

‘Officer,’ said Karen tartly.

‘Shut up,’ snarled Gablecross. ‘It’s Timothy.’

‘Does she have to be in here?’ Hermione glared at Karen.

‘Yes,’ said Gablecross regretfully.

‘I’ve just been talking to my very good friend Chief Constable Swallow,’ announced Hermione.

Which, translated, thought Karen, means, ‘Mess with me and you’re a dead duck.’ Looking round the room, she decided, you could fall asleep counting the photographs, paintings and sculptures of Hermione. Magazines with her face on the cover lay on a nearby table. Among the trophies on the shelf was the Artist of the Year award she’d won in October.

‘I urged the Chief Constable to call a press conference,’ Hermione was now telling Gablecross, ‘so I can beseech people to come forward and shed light on this dreadful crime. My son, Little Cosmo, has lost a father, I a cherished friend.’

‘Lady Rannaldini might want to do it,’ said Sexton, as he whisked out of the room to get to the telephone before Howie.

‘Lady Rannaldini has no experience of the media,’ said Hermione dismissively.

‘Nor is she as universally beloved as you, Dame Hermione,’ lied Howie.

‘Indeed.’ Hermione bowed, then turned to Gablecross. ‘I have had a thousand and twenty-three letters already, Timothy, and lost ten pounds in weight.’

Sexton, thank goodness, was as adept at twiddling the knobs on her weighing scales as Rannaldini had been on her recordings.

‘I feel I owe it to my public, and to Rannaldini, to appeal to the nation on television,’ went on Hermione.

‘I wouldn’t, Hermsie.’ Sexton trotted back into the room and squeezed her hand. ‘They always turn out to be the one wot’s done it.’

‘Sexton, Sexton.’ Hermione gave a low laugh. ‘How wise you are.’

‘It’s the Guardian on the phone,’ whispered Sexton.

‘I’ll tell them you’re out.’ Howie leapt to his little feet.

‘Out?’ thundered Hermione, as if she’d sallied forth on some junket. ‘I shall never go out again. I must speak with them, for Rannaldini’s sake.’ She seized the telephone. ‘Mr Rusbridger? Alan?… No, my producer has brought me fresh fruit and Belgian chocolates to keep up my strength for the sake of my public.’

‘Do you know what Helen is wearing for the funeral?’ she asked Sexton, as she came off the telephone five minutes later. ‘Could you ask Lady Griselda to pop in this afternoon? I shall wear black, of course, and a veil.’

‘Thin enough to show the tragedy etched on your lovely features.’ Howie was laying it on with a JCB.

Karen got the giggles again, and had to take her notebook over to the window and gaze at the dried-up river as Gablecross tried to pin down Hermione on her movements on Sunday night. People had seen her returning around eight in Rannaldini’s helicopter.

‘I had been concertizing at an open-air gala in Milan. Because the proceeds were going towards a new hospital,’ added Hermione virtuously, ‘I only charged my charity fee of sixty thousand pounds.’

That’s more than I earn in four years, thought Karen in disgust.

‘Around the time Rannaldini died,’ Gablecross pressed on, ‘at about ten thirty, several witnesses heard you singing a number from Don Carlos in the wood. They said a voice had never sounded more exquisite.’

‘Then it must have been mine,’ twinkled Hermione.

‘Did you walk through the wood on Sunday night?’

‘Timothy, Timothy, if I sang pianissimo from the garden at River House, my voice would float across to Valhalla, but I didn’t go out. It must have been a tape or a CD. Rannaldini had plenty. He was clearly comparing them with the rushes.’

‘People have said your voice was unaccompanied.’

‘I often sang for him alone.’

‘So you didn’t leave home at all?’

‘Certainly not. I rushed back from Milan to spend quality time with my son Cosmo. I spent the rest of the evening recharging my spiritual batteries. I needed to be fresh for Monday, in case Rannaldini wanted to reshoot Act Five. Or, if he’d carried on with the schedule, I had an important ballroom scene in Act Two, Scene Two. I won’t pass for nineteen if I don’t get my eight hours,’ she added skittishly.

‘What else did you do?’

‘I was tucked up in bed with camomile tea, like the Flopsy Bunnies,’ Hermione put on a soppy face, ‘by nine o’clock, to watch Pride and Prejudice. It’s my favourite novel.’

‘Who’s your favourite character in it?’ asked Karen innocently.

‘Emma Woodhouse,’ replied Hermione, without missing a beat. ‘She’s beautiful and headstrong. Fans have often compared us.’

For a second, Karen’s eyes met Sexton’s. She wondered if she recognized pleading.

‘And my husband Bobby rang me from Australia for a chat around ten forty-five,’ said Hermione airily.

‘Does your husband mind Little Cosmo being Rannaldini’s son?’ asked Gablecross.

‘Not in the least. We have a very close and open marriage, Timothy. Bobby is devoted to Little Cosmo.’

Gablecross couldn’t dent her. Rannaldini’s playing the evil tape on Friday night, his flirtations with Pushy, Serena, Cheryl, Lara, even Tabitha, his threats to replace her with a younger singer had been all part of a game to goad her into singing more beautifully.

‘What he loved about me, Timothy, was my ability to rise to the challenge. Ours was a special relationship. Are you married?’

‘My wife’s your greatest fan,’ blushed Gablecross.

Surreptitiously scraping a sticker saying ‘American Bravo Library Copy, Do Not Remove’ from its case, Hermione brandished a CD called Only for Lovers.

‘What’s your wife’s given name? I’ve had two thousand five hundred and twenty-two letters and lost over a stone, you know. I simply can’t eat.’

‘I’ve roasted a little chicken for lunch,’ said Sexton, bustling in in a striped apron.

‘Well, perhaps I could manage a slice,’ admitted Hermione, as she wrote her name on the CD sleeve.

Shoulders shaking frantically, Karen was gazing intently at the river again.

‘We’re off, Karen,’ said Gablecross icily.

‘Leave the poor child,’ cried Hermione. ‘She is only weeping, like the whole world, for Maestro’s death.’ Then, catching sight of Rannaldini’s photograph on the CD case, handsome and smiling with his hands on her bare shoulders, Hermione broke into genuine tears of despair. ‘You will bring his killer to justice, won’t you, Timothy?’

On the way out, Sexton made a brief statement.

‘I ought to fill you in on my movements on Sunday night, Tim. Frankly it was Sunday, Bloody Sunday. I ’ad a hellish day trying to drum up money. Rannaldini had fucked us with his delaying tactics, refusing to release any dosh until Tristan gave in to his demands.

‘I left London after midnight, shattered. But I wanted to be there on Monday morning in case fings turned nasty after Rannaldini playing that evil tape on Friday night. Anyway, Wally and I was about to come off the motorway wiv only the hard shoulder to cry on, when Bernard rang and said Rannaldini’d copped it.’

‘What time was that, sir?’

‘One fifteen. I called Rupert Campbell-Black. Luckily he’d just got back, and agreed to come in and save the movie.’

‘Just like that?’ asked Karen.

‘He’s that sort of bloke. Then we belted down to Valhalla, as Bernard and I agreed’, there was pride in Sexton’s voice now, ‘I should be the one to break the sad news to Dame Hermione.’

‘Look after her,’ Gablecross was amazed to hear himself saying.

‘The fat cow’s lying through her teeth,’ fumed Karen, as they walked back to the car. ‘Imagine thinking Emma Woodhouse was the heroine of Pride and Prejudice. The only thing the silly bitch reads is rave reviews and the directions on the Prozac bottle.’

‘And Sexton had a lot to lose if the film went belly-up,’ mused Gablecross.

‘And Rupert Campbell-Black had only just come in at one fifteen,’ said Karen. ‘What was he doing in the meanwhile?’ She wished Gablecross would loosen up. As a cop you often had to laugh to stop yourself crying. She wasn’t looking forward to him wincing over her driving all the way to Abingdon to see Miss Bussage.