Showstopper

4

Everyone was back at the weir for a new day of filming, including the stuntwoman rescued the evening before. Ann Bugg was a true professional, willing to go again and get it right. DC Paul Gilbert also wanted to impress as a pro, back and ready for more, eager to solve the mystery of the missing rigger. He still hadn’t discovered who had called the police in the first place. Steering clear of the crew members he’d met before, he headed towards the fleet of TV trucks and vans parked along the river bank. A bunch of technicians chatted, coffees in hand, opposite the food truck.

“Jake who? Never heard of him,” was the first answer. “Got a picture?”

Gilbert was forced to admit he hadn’t. “I was hoping someone would know him.”

“You’d best speak to the grips.”

“I did and all they could tell me is he’s about forty, thin, dark-haired and with a bit of a moustache.”

“Could be almost anyone.”

“They don’t seem over concerned. I think he’s new to their team.”

“Couldn’t hack it, I daresay.”

“I don’t think he was inexperienced, or he wouldn’t have been hired.”

“The others could have given him the elbow. They’re a surly mob.”

Gilbert didn’t need telling. “I went to his lodgings and he hasn’t been back there.”

“He won’t if he jacked in the job. He’ll have left Bath by now.”

The same possibility was in Gilbert’s mind. His big opportunity as investigating officer could end with a whimper. “We don’t know who reported he was missing.”

“Housemate, I expect,” the techie said.

“He rented his own flat. I’m thinking someone from here.”

“It could be fuck all to do with work.”

“Right, but I have to start somewhere. On the day he disappeared, were you filming here?”

“No, mate. We only started here Monday. We was at the old airfield off the A46.”

“Charmy Down?” Gilbert knew the long-abandoned site of World War Two fighter operations, a bleak, exposed place north of Bath he had cycled to as a boy and hardly ever visited since. He remembered pillboxes and a ruined control tower.

“Charmy it ain’t,” the techie said. “This is heaven compared to up there. Wind, rain, thick mud. Her ladyship didn’t like it one bit.”

“The woman who plays Swift?”

“She had her motorhome up there and refused to come out one day it was blowing a gale. Typical British summer. We all froze to death waiting to see if she changed her mind.”

“And Jake Nicol was there?”

“I told you I don’t know the guy.”

“He only lasted a couple of days.”

“Can’t say I blame him.”

“I’m hoping someone has a photo of him.”

“Try the production office. Like as not, they’ll have his mugshot. We’re all in their rogues’ gallery.”

“Where’s that — local?”

“The Colonnades. Second floor.”

He could walk it in five minutes. After the warning about treading on eggs, Gilbert decided he’d better check first with the boss, so he moved to a quiet spot behind the food truck and phoned in.

Diamond told him to stay put. “Between you and me, Paul, I’m looking into the other guy who went missing, the assistant producer.”

“Dave Tudor? Four years ago, guv?”

“Right, but there could be a connection. Thousands of people go missing each year, I know, but if there’s anything fishy in all the misfortunes in this show, the two who disappeared are the ones worth looking at.”

Gilbert made a sound of agreement, as if he’d already reached the same conclusion.

“This is still sensitive stuff,” Diamond said. “Keep your interest low key. We don’t want the luvvies getting alarmed.”

“They’ll have read the paper, same as the rest of us, won’t they?”

“Yes, and some nervous ones will worry, but the majority will laugh it off as a scare story made up to sell papers. However, if we take this to the next level, I want to be well briefed. That’s why I’m looking to you to dig up all you can on Jake Nicol.”

“It’s difficult without knowing what he looked like. I was told the production office have a photo.”

“Yup, it’s a chicken and egg situation. Bear with me and stay right where you are.”

Another egg metaphor. Gilbert was tempted to point out that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, but he didn’t.

Jean Sharp’s searches had found no listing of Dave Tudor as a missing person, so where had the Post got its information? Diamond called his ex-journalist sergeant, Ingeborg Smith, to the office and asked if she still had contacts at the newspaper. She said she would need to find out who was still on the staff.

“I’d like to know where the jinx story comes from,” Diamond told her. “Sounds like someone with an axe to grind. Some of these incidents go back to 2013. Old news. I was going to say ‘dead and buried’ but in the circumstances...”

“You think there’s something in it — the jinx stuff?”

“Oh, come on, Inge. Someone has an interest in fanning the flames. It’s not all deaths and disappearances. They’ve scraped the barrel for some of these. I don’t blame the paper for running the story, but who’s behind it and why?”

“Somebody with a grudge against the show?”

“And a strong imagination.”

“The editor will have checked that everything really happened before they went public.”

“What I’m asking, Inge, is who fed them this.”

“Reveal the source? That’s the one thing a journo is unlikely to do.”

An hour later, with the phone to her ear, she looked up at Diamond and shook her head. Like Jean Sharp, she’d got nowhere.

Which was why, not long after, Diamond himself pressed the door-phone button for Swift and Proud Productions in the Colonnades. The voice on the intercom snapped from a bored drawl to full attention when he spoke the word “police.” “Come right up. Our suite is on the second floor opposite the stairs.”

A short, smiling, red-bearded man in denim shirt and jeans was waiting inside the door. “So... an inspector calls.”

Diamond summoned up a smile to show he got the reference, but made sure his proper rank was noted when he announced himself. “And you are...?”

“Greg Deans.”

“The producer of Swift?”

“The producer of everything here, my dear, including rabbits from hats when needed.”

Diamond didn’t smile a second time. He wasn’t here for laughs and he didn’t appreciate being anyone’s dear, least of all a man he’d only just met. He wanted straight answers.

He wasn’t going to get them from Greg Deans. “I’m a disappointment to you, I can see. You expected someone twice my size with a loud suit and a large cigar. Actually our executive producer, Saltus Steven, fits the bill better. The bad news is that Saltus isn’t in. The good news is we can use his office.”

The room at the back was spacious enough for five leather armchairs as well as a desk the size of a flat-bed truck with nothing on it except a two-foot-high clay sculpture of Charlie Chaplin. The wall opposite was dominated by a framed montage of photos of a grinning overweight man enjoying the company of princes, prime ministers and film stars.

“Mr. Steven?” Diamond asked.

“Glad-handing champion of the world.” Spoken with a touch of envy that Deans glossed over by adding, “Of course, it’s good business to keep in with the great and the good.”

“Leaving you to run the show here?”

“That’s the way I like it.” He waved his visitor towards a chair and offered tea, coffee or “something stronger,” which Diamond declined.

“How did Swift come about? His doing or yours?”

“Neither. All the credit goes to Mary, who had this job before I did.”

Diamond recalled the name from the press report. “Mary Wroxeter?”

“She was a one-off. Came up with the concept, found a fantastic scriptwriter and saw it through every stage of development, virtually directing as well as producing. The casting, the music, Mary knew exactly what she wanted. Believe me, it took genius to achieve all that. Sadly, she needed liquid fuel to keep going. Except it didn’t keep her going. The vodka killed her.”

“An alcoholic?”

Deans looked down, as if the memory was too painful to put into words. “We all knew and she seemed to cope with it. The night she died she had some in the pub — we were there with her — and she bought an extra bottle to take home with her. What could any of us say? She was the boss.”

“Was she alone?”

“So I was told. One of the other women drove her home, but didn’t go in.”

“Who was that?”

“Her former assistant, Candida. She appeared at the inquest along with several others and the pathologist who revealed the cause of death as alcohol.”

Diamond made a mental note to learn all he could about that inquest. “You knew her personally?”

“I was one of her assistants, forever trying to keep up. A lot of Mary’s best ideas weren’t in the script. She liked to improve a scene on the hoof, changing the lighting, shooting from angles no one had considered and axing chunks of dialogue. She’d win over the director with a smile like the sun rising and it was my job to square it with the cameramen and the cast.”

“Tough.”

“It’s a miracle I didn’t hit the bottle myself.”

“People like that can be a nightmare to work with.”

“But she was always right. After her death, I was asked to take over. Talk about a hard act to follow. I was totally unprepared. Season six with me in charge was rubbish and the critics said so. We only kept going because Mary had laid such good foundations. I was learning as I went and I improved, but they were tough times for me and I don’t mind admitting the episodes I produce still aren’t the equal of hers.”

“The show is extremely popular.”

“Top of the ratings, thanks be to God — and Mary. She won our audience in the first place. Do you watch it? Don’t worry, love, I won’t stamp my foot if you don’t.”

Put on the spot, Diamond scarcely noticed the endearment. “We work irregular hours. I can never settle down to a series.”

“Likewise,” Deans said. “I ought to be looking at other people’s shows to check what the opposition is doing. Never do.”

With that pitfall avoided, Diamond got down to business. “I’m here about one of your crew, Jake Nicol, the rigger who is missing.”

“Have you found him?”

“Not yet. We wouldn’t normally get involved, but we were told there was a possibility of violence, some blood at his lodgings, which we’ve since confirmed.”

“Oh my hat, that’s so disturbing.”

“And now I need to know more about his life outside work.”

“You’re asking the wrong person, I’m afraid. I hardly know him. He joined the crew only two days before he went absent. New staff sometimes find the work is all too much.”

“You say you hardly know him. Wouldn’t you have hired him?”

Deans shook his head. “The rigging company finds its own people. We use a firm who go by the delightful name of Gripmasters, which turns me all of a quiver when I hear it. They supply the equipment and the staff. We’re a bit stretched at this time, with units filming here and in Bristol, so they will have brought him in to make up the numbers.”

“I’ll need to speak to them.”

“They’re based at Cold Ashton. I can give you the details.”

“So you won’t have a picture of him here?”

“Au contraire, chéri. Everyone on site is in the system for security reasons.” He took out his phone, tapped, scrolled and found a JPEG of a pale, thin-faced individual with signs of middle age around the eyes, a receding hairline and a Clark Gable moustache that had looked better on Clark Gable. “Jacob Nicol.”

Success. A first sight of the elusive rigger. “Could you copy this to my phone?”

“I don’t see why not.” Deans was more phone-wise than Diamond and had it done in seconds.

Diamond felt he was on a roll now. “Would you by any chance have a photo of the other man who went missing some years back, when the third season was being filmed, the assistant producer called Tudor?”

“Dave? I’d almost forgotten he existed until I saw that article in the Post.” Deans worked his phone again. “I’ve got my doubts. We don’t keep everyone online.” He shook his head. “Sorry, I can’t access him. Your best chance is with personnel records in the old-fashioned filing system in the next room. I’ll show you.”

“Before you do, I’d like your opinion on the jinx story.”

Deans shrugged. “Horsefeathers, isn’t it?”

“Any thoughts who might have fed the story to the press?”

“Well, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t a PR stunt by the production company.”

“What do they hope to achieve?”

“The Post?”

“Their source.”

“Who knows? There’s no shortage of disappointed people in our industry. For everyone who gets to work on Swift, there are plenty who don’t. But I’m thinking it must be an insider. Not all those incidents were public knowledge before the story broke.”

“You don’t seem too troubled.”

“Too late to get fussed now it’s all over social media, the ultimate rumour machine. They say any publicity is good publicity. We’ll find out. In confidence, my main worry is how our leading lady will take it. Sabine has some weird superstitions, like refusing point-blank to work with anyone called John. We ask any Johns in the crew to call themselves Jack while filming is going on, but you can’t ask that of well-known actors. It’s a pain for the casting director.”

“Is that why you turned down Mr. Depp?”

Deans grinned.

“Has Sabine seen the newspaper?”

“I wouldn’t know. If she has, she’s probably reading the tea leaves right now to see when it’s safe to come back. She’s been off for four days. We’re filming with her stunt double.”

“Did the show turn her into a star?”

“She already had a profile on stage and screen, but nothing as big as this. Between ourselves, Sabine has become quite the diva. Owns an American motorhome the size of a bus that she takes to shoots so she has somewhere to relax between takes, but that’s not enough. Employs the toughest agent in the business who insists we pay her driver as well. What’s more, she is booked into the best suite at Homewood during filming.”

Diamond knew about Homewood, a five-star hotel at Freshford in ten acres of beautiful gardens.

Deans was working up quite a sweat about his leading lady. “You should see her contract. We have to fund a private trainer for her, so that she looks strong enough to perform the stunts she refuses to do for safety reasons. She’s fitter than Wonder Woman.”

“Do the superstitions make much difference when you’re filming?”

Deans rolled his eyes. “Don’t get me started.”

They returned to the outer office, where a photo of Dave Tudor and a paper file were found. The missing assistant producer looked more like a rigger than the rigger had. Thick tattooed neck, buzz cut and the beginnings of a beard. “And he just failed to turn up for work, like Jake Nicol?”

“Except we recruited Dave ourselves, so there was more of a hoo-ha.”

“That would have been in Mary Wroxeter’s time?”

“She took him on, yes. We all got on all right with Dave. He may look like a bruiser in the picture, but he was a sweetie.”

Allowing for luvvie-speak, Diamond took that to mean he caused no trouble. “Was he reported as missing?”

“Officially? No.”

“You said there was a hoo-ha.”

“What I mean is that unlike Mr. Nicol, Dave was on the company payroll and we felt we had a duty to find him. Correction, we were desperate to find him. He was one of us, for pity’s sake, but we had no success at all. To this day, no one knows what happened and I’m afraid he’s almost forgotten now. The television industry works on short contracts. People come and go all the time.”

“But in a long series like Swift there must be some continuity.”

“Of the main talent, yes, unless they fall off the perch like dear old Daisy, bless her, and we’re forced to write them out of the series.”

“How will you do that?”

“The writers are already working on it. The next episode starts after the funeral with Caitlin Swift sorting through her mother’s old letters and photos remembering what a character she was. We use flashbacks from footage made earlier in the series. It’s a kind of tribute.”

“Clever.”

“It’s the best we can think of. We did something similar for Dan Burbage. Let’s face it, any of us are replaceable and we live with that uncertainty. I expect it’s the same in your line of work.”

“I hope not.”

“Ours is a cut-throat business.”

“Even you could be replaced?”

“Even me.” But he smiled as if the prospect was as likely as being hit by debris from outer space. “If Saltus took against me, I’d be history, my dear, believe me.”

“What would Dave Tudor’s duties have been?”

“Legion. An AP can be involved in any and every part of the production from words on the page to what you see on the screen, taking care of all the nuts and bolts issues a producer deals with, booking the studio and locations, distributing scripts and call-sheets, liaising with the crew, the talent, the script editor, costumes, makeup, set design, lighting. Do I need to go on?”

“I’m tired just listening.”

“But it’s the ideal way to learn the business. Oh brother, when I got the job, did I learn fast.”

“Was Tudor up to the job?”

“Fully. He was very experienced.”

“Happy in his work?”

“So far as one can tell.”

Diamond glanced at the few details on the file. “The address here is Kipling Avenue. That’s up at Beechen Cliff. Was he local?”

“Now you’re asking. I haven’t a clue. I expect it was a rented room. Most of us find temporary accommodation if we don’t live here.”

“And his personal file would have been kept here, in the Colonnades?”

A shake of the head. “We’re talking four years ago. The production office was more humble in those days. We were on a trading estate at Saltford, midway between Bath and Bristol.”

“Did he ever say anything about his personal life? Family? A partner?”

“If he did, I never heard of it.”

“Can you think of anyone else who might remember him?”

“All these questions.”

“The actors? Miss San Sebastian?”

The name prompted a sudden raspberry from Deans. “In Sabine’s lofty world, production people are only there on sufferance. She barely passes the time of day to me, so an AP wouldn’t have made any impression whatsoever.”

“Unless their name happened to be John?”

Deans snorted. “That would have got her attention, for sure.”

“Who else? Any other actors?”

“Daisy, but she died, poor darling. And Dan Burbage, who was the sergeant, had the fall in Snowdonia and doesn’t remember his own name.”

“The director?” Diamond wasn’t giving up. He felt sure somebody must remember Dave Tudor.

“Directors change with each episode. I rotate them to keep the series fresh.”

“The one who was making the show when Tudor went missing.”

“I don’t have a computer memory, ducky. I can’t say without looking back through any number of working scripts.”

“Would you do that,” Diamond said through gritted teeth, and it was more of an instruction than a request. All the negativity from Deans was tiresome, bordering on obstructive. “I’ll need a list of everyone Tudor worked with.”

Shaking his head, Deans moved to another filing cabinet. “Do you have any idea how many episodes we’ve made? It’s a new production team each time.”

“Up to the time he went missing.”

Deans started tugging out bulky scripts and slapping them on top of the cabinet. “These are busy people. They’ll be scattered to the four winds.”

“That’s no problem.” Diamond picked one off the stack and saw that the title of the episode and the names of the production team were printed on the front. “What I’m looking for is here on the top sheet.”

“I’ll get photocopies made for you. Are we done? Because I’m running late. We’re filming at a new location tomorrow and there are a million people I need to see.”

“When I’ve got these, and the contact details for Gripmasters, that’ll do... for now.”