Score!

57

Late on Wednesday afternoon, PC Brown and PC Jones rolled up at Lucy’s caravan. Tracking down the relevant cast and crew had been a nightmare.

‘Miss Lucy Latimer?’

‘Yes.’

How nice to see a smiling face, thought PC Jones.

‘We’ve come to give you a DNA test. We’ll need identification.’

‘That’s fine. Thank God, I’ve just found my passport. I’ve been searching all day. Would you like a cup of tea? This is James, he won’t bite.’ She pointed to a shaggy red dog taking up most of the available seating.

‘Very nice lady,’ said PC Brown, as they ticked Lucy’s name off their list twenty minutes later. ‘Sergeant Gablecross said she was a cracker.’

‘Bit long in the tooth,’ said PC Jones, who was all of nineteen. ‘Never really fancied older birds, unless they look like Claudine Lauzerte or Joanna Lumley.’

By the time Lucy had finished making up the cast that night, she was really feeling her age, and her back was killing her.

‘I’ll have to go and see James Benson,’ she groaned.

‘Let me give you a massage in the break,’ said Rozzy, ‘might save you the money.’

Lucy stretched on the table, stripped to the waist, breathing in oil of rosemary, almost falling asleep as Rozzy’s wonderful healing fingers crept round the back of her neck, unknotting the muscles. Next moment she jumped out of her skin, as James let out a furious growl, hackles up, long teeth bared. Something loomed in the window. Was it Rozzy’s shadowy reflection? Then Lucy screamed as a lens crashed against the glass, and she saw the blurred outline of a cameraman. James continued to bark his head off.

A second later Hype-along barged in through the caravan door, and had used up half a roll of film before Lucy could grab a towel.

‘Now I know what you girlies get up to.’

‘You bastard,’ yelled Lucy.

‘Don’t do that to us,’ chided Rozzy. ‘Thank God we’ve got a guard dog. Good boy, Jamesie.’ She held out a hand, but James was still growling and barking.

‘You frightened him,’ said Lucy indignantly. ‘I’ve got a bad back.’

‘And a gorgeous front.’

‘Gimme that role of film.’

‘Naaah, nice for my scrapbook.’

Hype-along sat down in Lucy’s make-up chair and, picking up a powder brush, pretended to mop his brow. ‘Give us a drink.’

As Lucy got a bottle of white out of the fridge, he swung round to face them with shining eyes.

‘Latest gossip is that Rannaldini had the whole of Valhalla wired up like Fort Knox, and the police have the memoirs, and steam is coming out of Glamour Pants Portland’s very clean ears.’

Oh, God, thought Lucy numbly, that’s how they knew about Rozzy’s cancer. Had Gablecross and Karen already known about Maxim being Tristan’s father? Were they flying kites when they interviewed her?

‘Now, you’re not to spread naughty gossip,’ chided Rozzy, taking the dangerously tilting bottle from Lucy, ‘or I’ll water your flowered tie.’

‘Don’t be daft!’ said Hype-along. ‘This is the best fuckin’ publicity I’ve ever had on a film. If Don Carlos doesn’t earn out in its first weekend, I’m a flying Dutchman.’

Having interviewed so many people in one day and left poor Karen to type up their statements for tomorrow’s meeting, Gablecross felt too hyped up to go home and hung around the set, watching, listening and once again failing to nail either Rupert or Tristan, who were still bitching at each other.

For the fourth night running, therefore, guiltily aware that he hadn’t rung in, Gablecross drove through Eldercombe village long after midnight. After the splendours of Valhalla and the pretty cottages along Paradise High Street, with their front gardens full of phlox and standard roses, his house on the Greenview estate seemed humiliatingly poky.

Bought on a mortgage back in the seventies, a Hungerford house had been every young couple’s dream. Newly painted in pastel colours, with friendly neighbours and the morning sun streaming into a modern kitchen, it had had a genuinely green view across Eldercombe valley to Ricky France-Lynch’s house floating in woods like a grey battleship.

But in no time at all developer George Hungerford had started slapping more and more houses around them, blocking out any view, filling the estate with less friendly neighbours, where children took drugs, heaved bricks through windows and resented having a cop living so near.

The value of Gablecross’s house had plummeted and a move to a larger one, where the children could have rooms of their own and surrounded by fields, was only looking possible with the added boost of Margaret’s income as deputy head.

Tim was proud of his wife’s achievement, but he wished the name of the headmaster, Brian Chambers, a smiling leftie with a brown beard who drove a P-reg Volvo Estate, fell off her tongue a little less often. Chambers and Margaret shared a love of opera and swapped CDs. Tim knew he was getting a taste of his own medicine for spending so much time over the years with comely women witnesses. He knew Margaret longed to hear about the goings-on at Valhalla, how she would have given anything to meet Hermione, Chloe, Alpheus and Granville Hastings, but he was still resentful of Brian.

Gablecross thought the pack at Valhalla were crackers and he needed to mull over them with his wife. He hadn’t sussed Tristan de Montigny or Mikhail at all. Finding her awake last night, he had asked her if she’d ever heard of Baby Spinosissimo, but at the first ‘Brian thinks he’s remarkable’, he felt himself shutting up like a clam, and the signed CD from Hermione had stayed in the glove compartment.

Difficult crimes always pushed away the rest of Gablecross’s life. Over the years, Margaret had learnt to cope with the defensive walls, the pensive silences and the dawn homecomings. Her first pay packet had been spent on a microwave.

Expecting earache, Gablecross was amazed to be greeted by an empty house. Going into the kitchen, he found a tomato salad, a French stick, a quarter of Dutch cheese still in its Cellophane wrapping, and a Tesco’s lasagne awaiting him. Against the lasagne was propped a note: ‘Five minutes in the microwave, gone to a staff meeting.’

No doubt tucked up in some bar, or worse, with Brian Chambers, thought Gablecross savagely. He ignored the lasagne, making do with a pickled onion, a slice of ancient pork pie and the Rutminster Echo, whose first four pages were given over to the murder and, infuriatingly, included excellent photographs of Gerald Portland and fucking Fanshawe, grinning beside Gloria Prescott.

Tomorrow, he must go and see Tabitha, and try to pin down Tristan. He put aside the paper, and tried seriously to work out who might have killed Rannaldini, but he couldn’t concentrate with Margaret still out. It was only when he went into the lounge half an hour later for a large Scotch to calm his rage that he found his wife fast asleep on the sofa, the Independent open at the murder.

Fetching the duvet from their bed, he laid it over her. He mustn’t forget their wedding anniversary on Sunday.