Stagestruck

11

An alert policeman spotted Denise’s Vauxhall Corsa late the same evening when the huge Charlotte Street car park was just about empty. It was in the top section near the path linking with Royal Avenue, below the Crescent.

Bath Central phoned Diamond at home. He hadn’t been in for long and was microwaving a TV dinner. He turned it off and said he’d come at once. ‘You can never relax,’ he told Raffles, who had just been fed and was actually quite relaxed. ‘You know the real reason I’m going hungry tonight? Because Georgina wants to tread the boards in Sweeney Todd. That’s the hidden agenda here.’

It was dark when he arrived. Keith Halliwell was there with a torch and so was the young constable credited with the find.

‘Nice work,’ Diamond said, trying to raise his own spirits. ‘Have you looked inside?’

Halliwell shone his torch over the interior. ‘Nothing to see.’

‘Let’s have the boot open. Got the tools?’

Halliwell unfurled a cloth containing a set that had belonged to a housebreaker. He selected a jemmy.

With the job under way, Diamond told the constable they could manage without him now. ‘Top result,’ he added as an afterthought.

‘Thanks, sir.’ But the young officer lingered, shuffling. ‘Would you like my torch?’

‘Don’t you need it? You’re still on patrol, aren’t you?’

‘I can easily get a spare.’

‘All right, then.’

‘I was thinking…’

‘No harm in that.’

‘Well, wondering, actually, if there are any openings in CID.’

‘You what?’

‘That’s my ambition, sir, to do plainclothes work.’

‘Bloody hell. Another one. What’s your name?’

‘Pidgeon, sir. PC George Pidgeon.’

‘Well, Pidgeon, I’ll bear you in mind, but right now we’re trying out Sergeant Dawkins. Do you know him?’

‘I’ve worked for him, yes.’ From the tone, the experience hadn’t been a rip-roaring success.

‘And it may be a while before we take on anyone else.’

‘Understood.’ George Pidgeon’s face said it all. He nodded and walked off into the darkness.

Halliwell meanwhile was bending metal, mutilating the car. One extra heave on the jemmy and the boot-lid sprang open to reveal a large, soft bag and the leather case Kate had described.

‘Huh,’ Diamond said with satisfaction. ‘You know what this means?’

Halliwell shook his head. It was near the end of a long day. ‘You’d better tell me, boss.’

‘She had no intention of reporting for work when she returned to the theatre or she’d have taken this lot with her.’

‘She’d made up her mind to kill herself already?’

‘Looks that way.’

‘Why not do it at home?’

‘What with?’

‘Sleeping tablets.’

‘There weren’t any. She didn’t take them. The theatre was a better place.’

‘Like her second home, you mean?’

‘For the jump.’ Sentiment didn’t wash with Diamond. But he wasn’t always clear-headed in his personal actions. He was in the act of reaching for the make-up case when Halliwell said, ‘You ought to be wearing gloves.’

‘Raw caustic soda? You’re right. These fingers are old friends.’

‘I was thinking about handling the evidence.’

‘Think what you like. I’m never too proud to take advice.’

Halliwell didn’t say a word.

Better protected, Diamond reached for the leather case and shone the torch inside, over a neat arrangement of brushes, combs, lipsticks and eye-liners strapped to the side. Lower down, jars and tins, a roll of cotton-wool pads and a black cylindrical box that he lifted out. ‘Remarkably like the one Belinda was using.’

‘Careful, boss.’

He handed Halliwell the torch. ‘Hold this.’ Then he opened the box. A small amount of white powder lay inside.

‘I wouldn’t sniff it if I were you.’

‘Could be harmless.’ He moistened his gloved forefinger with spit and dipped it in the powder. ‘It’s supposed to form a viscous slime that burns through skin.’ He rubbed thumb and finger together. ‘Doesn’t feel slimy.’

‘We’d better get it tested properly,’ Halliwell said.

‘Only if they’re quick about it. I’m not waiting a week for results. Can you get some of this to an analyst first thing tomorrow and stay with him till it’s done?’

A shake of the head. ‘Sorry, guv. I’m down for the post-mortem.’

A fixture not to be altered. The only other detective of senior rank was Diamond himself. ‘So you are. We’ll get one of the others to visit forensics. Anyone will do as long as they insist on an instant result.’

‘Fred Dawkins?’

There was a pause for thought. ‘I don’t think so. He makes a song and dance out of anything. Give it to Paul Gilbert.’ He replaced the lid and put the powder box aside.

The cloth bag was the other part of Denise’s dresser’s kit, a collection of sewing materials, sticky tape, clothes brushes, scissors, paper tissues and medical items for almost any emergency. He didn’t spend long with it once he had checked for caustic soda and found none. ‘Can you force one of the doors? I want to see if there’s a parking ticket.’

‘She’ll have taken it with her,’ Halliwell said. ‘At one time this car park was pay and display. These days you take your card to the machine when you return.’

‘Which is why the car wasn’t noticed before this by a parking attendant,’ Diamond said. ‘I still want to check the glove compartment.’

The jemmy was put to use again. The interior, when they got to it, contained nothing of genuine interest. Denise had been too organised and too tidy.

‘Where would she have left her handbag, I wonder?’ Diamond said. ‘I reckon it contains the parking ticket, her credit cards and her mobile phone, any of which could settle this.’

Halliwell gave him a faintly amused glance. ‘In spite of all, you’re not a hundred per cent confident about the suicide, are you?’

He ignored that. ‘Women hate being parted from their handbags.’

‘She wouldn’t have climbed up the ladder with it.’

‘It wasn’t lying around there. Maybe someone picked it up.’

‘Nicked it?’

‘Or handed it in as lost property. It could be as simple as that. We’ll make enquiries in the morning.’

The meal was uneatable when he got home. He settled for his staple fare of baked beans on toast and went to bed. Raffles was already curled up asleep in the centre of the quilt. Getting in without disturbing him was a tricky manoeuvre and then he was left closer to the edge than he liked. He wasn’t sure why he gave that cat more respect than any of his team. Maybe it was because it had belonged to Steph.

On Thursday morning he woke late and with a headache. For much of the night he’d been unable to sleep and had finally got off about five. His brain had been in overdrive, trying to remember things from his childhood. The phone call to his sister Jean had raised more questions than it had answered. What could have triggered the incident at Llandudno when he’d first exhibited signs of this panic about theatres? It had been a variety show, for pity’s sake. What was sinister about that? More than a year later he’d been able to face Treasure Island at the Mermaid. No qualms about Long John Silver and the black spot and poor Ben Gunn, which you’d think might have unsettled a nervous kid. Then there was that one-act play about Richard III that Jean had recalled. It hadn’t been a school play. The art teacher – whose name he couldn’t remember – had belonged to some amateur dramatic society in Surbiton. They’d needed two boys and he’d been recruited along with another kid from his class. They’d rehearsed in some old army hut and the performances were one weekend in a church hall and that was as much as his memory would dredge up. He couldn’t even bring back the name of the other boy. He felt it was somewhere in his brain. It began with G, he thought. He wouldn’t remember the first name; boys all called each other by surnames then.

In the small hours when he should have been asleep he was going through the alphabet, trying different letters after G. When he’d been through the vowels he tried consonants. At G with L he felt he was getting closer. Not Glass, but something roughly like it. Gladstone, Glaister, Glastonbury.

And then it came to him: Glazebrook.

Having got the surname, the rest followed. Mike Glazebrook.

At three in the morning, he was downstairs going through phone directories looking for Glazebrooks. Ridiculous. He didn’t have directories for the whole country and anyway a lot of people were ex-directory these days. He made tea and went back to bed and still didn’t sleep. In the night hours a simple query can easily be magnified into a compulsion. It became a matter of urgency to find Glazebrook. How would you trace a schoolboy more than forty years later? Secondary schools mostly had old boys’ associations, but primary schools seemed not to bother. He’d heard of the Friends Reunited website and never looked at it until this night at 4.15 a.m. No joy. No Glazebrook. His contempt for websites was confirmed. It was beginning to seem a lost cause. If only Mike Glazebrook had progressed at the age of eleven to the same grammar school as Diamond, he’d have been sharper in the memory. He must have gone to some other school. Go through the local schools, then, and see if they had any record of the boy and what had become of him.

Before setting off for work he was phoning schools in the Kingston area. The second he tried came up trumps. ‘We have a Mr M.G.Glazebrook on our board of governors,’ the secretary said. ‘I believe he attended the school as a child.’

‘The M – does that stand for Michael?’

‘I believe it does.’

‘And does he live near the school?’

‘I’m not at liberty to tell you where he lives.’

‘If you’re worried about Data Protection, I’m a police officer and a one-time friend of Mike’s. He’s not in any trouble, by the way. What age would this gentleman be?’

‘Fiftyish, I would say.’

‘He was ten when I saw him last. Listen, I’m not going to press you for his contact details, but would you do me a great favour and phone him now and tell him his school friend Peter Diamond would like to hear from him today if possible? I’m at Bath Central police station.’

He was late getting in and slow to get a grip. Worse, the CID

office was empty except for a civilian computer operator.

‘Am I missing something? Was there a bomb alert?’

‘They were all in first thing, sir.’

That comment shamed him into checking the clock. Already Halliwell would be an hour into observing the postmortem, getting to the gory stage, and Paul Gilbert would be standing over a forensic scientist analysing the contents of the powder box. Someone else, presumably, was at the theatre searching for Denise’s handbag.

‘Sergeant Dawkins ought to be in.’

‘He was, but earlier, sir. He’s out on an assignment with Ingeborg Smith.’

‘Doing what, for Christ’s sake?’

‘They didn’t say.’

He had his answer five minutes later when Ingeborg walked in with a fashion plate: Fred Dawkins, transformed, in a black leather jacket, white T-shirt and jeans.

‘Strike a light!’

‘Cool?’ Ingeborg said.

He couldn’t bring himself to say so. ‘He needs a haircut and the brown shoes look wrong. Aren’t they the same ones he was wearing yesterday?’

‘Give me a break, guv,’ she said. ‘I can’t fix everything.’

‘Where did you go?’

‘Charity shops mostly. The jacket is Oxfam.’

‘How do you feel?’ Diamond asked Dawkins.

‘Like the proverbial pox doctor’s clerk,’ the fashion victim answered. ‘However, if it gets me out on active duties, I shall be more than compensated.’

‘It’s taken ten years off you,’ Ingeborg said.

‘It’s added ten to me,’ Diamond said. ‘I’m promising nothing, Fred. We’ll see how the day develops. Is John Leaman in?’

‘At the theatre with two from uniform searching for the hand bag,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Keith said you suggested it last night.’

The nitpicking Inspector Leaman was ideal for that job. If the bag was lying anywhere, John would find it. ‘Okay. By the end of the morning we may be able to put this case to bed. The evidence is stacking up that Denise used the caustic soda on Clarion and killed herself when she realised the full extent of her action. Any ideas why?’

‘Why she wanted to maim Clarion?’ Ingeborg said. ‘Can we agree it couldn’t have been a mistake?’

‘The intent is clear,’ Dawkins said. ‘Malice aforethought.’

The phrase conjured a momentary image of Fred as a judge. With his ponderous delivery he’d be well suited. Ermine would have looked better on him than black leather. ‘It’s not a particularly intelligent crime, is it?’ Diamond said. ‘Anyone could work out who did it.’

‘Angry people lose all sense of proportion,’ Ingeborg said. ‘We don’t know her motive. She may have been at her wits’ end, wanting to stop Clarion.’

‘But why?’

‘God knows what went on between them. Denise had worked there as a dresser for six years. She was under instructions to nursemaid Clarion. She may have felt her effort wasn’t appreciated. Clarion is used to people idolising her.’

‘A lot of actors are prima donnas,’ Dawkins said. ‘A dresser would be able to cope with that.’

‘Yes, but most actors are good at what they do. They’re entitled to some respect. Clarion was no good in the role and still wanted the star treatment.’

‘Allow me to propose another motive, then.’

A sigh. Tolerant as she was, even Ingeborg showed signs of losing her patience. ‘Go on.’

‘It requires an open mind.’

‘We can manage that, I hope,’ Diamond said, exchanging a look with Ingeborg.

Dawkins said in slow time, as if addressing a jury, ‘By sabotaging Clarion just before she went on she was doing her a good turn, saving her from a mauling from the critics.’

‘Saving the theatre, too,’ Diamond said and admitted, ‘That’s not bad, Fred.’

Ingeborg shook her head. ‘No woman behaves like that, deliberately damaging someone’s face as a so-called good turn.’

‘We’re assuming she didn’t expect the stuff to leave permanent scars,’ Diamond said. ‘When it happened, and she realised the theatre could be sued, she was devastated.’

‘Driven beyond all,’ Dawkins added in a sepulchral tone.

Ingeborg shook her head. ‘You guys need to get out more.’

The call from Mike Glazebrook came soon after eleven. Diamond wouldn’t have known the voice, but it didn’t take long for the two to convince each other that they were the former princes in the Tower. ‘And you’re a detective,’ Glazebrook said. ‘I think I know what this is about.’

‘I’ll be surprised if you do,’ Diamond said. ‘Anyway, what’s your line of work?’

‘Surveying and structural engineering. I look at old buildings and assess their safety. I’m often in Bath, as it happens. We have the contract for the Abbey.’

‘And where are you now?’

‘Finishing off a job in Lacock. If you’d care to meet, I could see you this afternoon, say in front of the Abbey about three? It’s on my way home.’

‘How will I recognise you after all this time?’

‘Look for the short, fat guy in a pork-pie hat.’

At the theatre, DI John Leaman failed to find the missing handbag. Kate in wardrobe gave him a description – a shoulder bag in pale calf hide about the size and shape of an A4 filing wallet. She also allowed him to search the wardrobe room. The disruption of her overstocked headquarters must have horrified her, but she took it without complaint. Leaman didn’t do things by halves. He upset a few others backstage as well by insisting on being admitted to every room in the entire complex. The actors wouldn’t like it when they found out. Dressing rooms are supposed to be sacrosanct. The cast are given their own keys and they bring in their own comforters, ranging from teddy bears to joss sticks to racks of wine to personal friends.

Hedley Shearman demanded to know what the search was all about. ‘Why would she have her handbag with her if she was intent on killing herself?’

‘It wasn’t in the house or her car, so where is it?’ Leaman asked, as if Shearman ought to know.

‘Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t take it,’ the little manager said.

‘Maybe one of your staff did.’

‘I take offence at that. We’re not dishonest here.’

‘I wouldn’t count on it.’ Tact wasn’t John Leaman’s middle name.

Shearman offered to mention the missing bag at a meeting he’d called at noon. Asked about the purpose of the meeting, he said he wanted to give everyone a chance to talk through what had happened and generally to reassure them it was business as usual. ‘Your poking around this morning had the opposite effect,’ he told Leaman. ‘People are behaving as if a crime has taken place, alarmed that they’re coming under suspicion.’

Leaman phoned the police station and told Diamond about the meeting.

‘I’ll come,’ Diamond said at once without even a thought about his aversion. This opportunity couldn’t be missed.

‘I don’t know if they’ll welcome you, guv.’

‘I’m not asking for a red carpet.’

But even before Diamond arrived, psyched up and with pulse racing, the meeting had been cancelled. He wasn’t the only one in a state of tension. The entire place buzzed with it. ‘What happened?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been trying to find out,’ Leaman said. ‘No one is saying. All I know is that the theatre director has been given a bloody nose.’

‘Shearman? Literally?’

‘Yes, it’s a right mess, I was told. He had it coming to him, if you ask me. Bumptious little sod. I didn’t get much co-operation out of him.’

‘Where is he now?’

‘In the wardrobe department being patched up. The woman in charge won’t let anyone near him.’

‘We’ll see about that.’

Diamond tried the door of wardrobe and found it locked.

‘Piss off, will you?’ Kate’s voice yelled from within.

‘It’s the police. Superintendent Diamond. Open up, please.’

There was a pause, followed by her voice again. ‘He says it’s not a police matter. He doesn’t want to lodge a complaint.’

‘Unlock the door.’

‘It’s not him you should be coming after. He’s the victim here.’

‘If you don’t open it, I’ll force my way in.’

More hesitation and voices inside followed by the sound of unlocking.

‘He can’t speak,’ Kate said, blocking the way. ‘He’s in no state to see anyone.’

‘I’ll be the judge of that,’ Diamond told her, pushing the door wider.

He was presented with the bizarre spectacle of Hedley Shearman lying face upwards on an ironing board holding a bloody tissue to his nose.

‘Vicious and unprovoked,’ Kate said. ‘It won’t stop bleeding. Is it broken, do you think?’

‘I’m not a doctor. Has he tried pinching it?’

‘What for? That will cause more pain.’

‘It has to form a clot. Try gentle pressure against the side the blood is coming from.’

Shearman did so, and groaned.

‘Who did it?’ Diamond asked Kate.

‘Preston.’

‘Preston Barnes?’

‘You’d think he’d learn to control himself. He was with the Royal Shakespeare.’ She leaned over Shearman and said, ‘How are you doing, duckling? Has it stopped yet?’

‘I don’t know,’ Shearman said without opening his eyes. The fact that he could speak was enough for Diamond to start the questioning.

‘What was this about?’

‘About Preston’s dressing room being searched,’ Kate said.

‘I’ll hear it from Mr Shearman,’ Diamond said and got closer. ‘Preston objected, did he?’

Shearman responded on a low, nasal note, pitiful to hear. He was another creature from the rampant stud seen in wardrobe the previous evening. ‘He said some of his personal things had been moved. He blamed me. I told him everyone’s room had been searched and he said I should have stood up to the police.’ A pause. ‘He didn’t say “police”, in point of fact.’

‘Where did this fight take place?’

‘It wasn’t a fight,’ Kate said. ‘It was a brutal, unprovoked assault.’

‘In the auditorium,’ Shearman said.

‘In front of several witnesses,’ Kate added. ‘Hedley was getting ready for the meeting, having the house lights put on.’

It was impossible to shut her up.

‘I didn’t stand a chance,’ Shearman said. ‘He was in a blazing temper before he started.’

‘You’ll make yourself worse with this talking,’ Kate said.

Diamond said, ‘It’s your talking that bothers me, ma’am. If you don’t button it, I’ll ask you to wait outside. Now, Mr Shearman, what is it with Preston? What’s behind this?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘He was secretive from the first day of rehearsals, insisting he was given time to psych himself up for the role. I’m not sure what he does, but he’s there in the dressing room at least an hour and a half before curtain up and he turns off his phone and refuses to answer the door.’

‘Weirdo,’ Kate added.

‘I won’t warn you again,’ Diamond told her. He turned back to Shearman, now with his eyes open and looking as if he might survive. ‘When you secured him for the part was he okay about acting with Clarion?’

‘That was never an issue.’

‘There’s no history between them?’

‘They hadn’t met before coming to Bath. This is about Preston and his obsessions, not Clarion. He came with a reputation for awkwardness. I should have paid more attention, but we have a tradition here of welcoming all sorts. We’re friendly.’

More than friendly in your case, Diamond thought, recalling last night’s romp. He continued to ask about Preston. If the man had been acting secretively, he might be a serious suspect. ‘How was he in rehearsal?’

‘I’ve no complaints about him as an artist. He does his job and does it well. In fact, until this morning we were on civil terms.’

‘I’d better speak to him.’

‘Don’t,’ Shearman said in a horrified gasp, trying to raise his head. ‘It will only make matters worse, and we have four more performances to go. The theatre comes first. As far as I’m concerned, the episode is closed. It didn’t happen.’ He removed the tissue. ‘Look, it’s stopped bleeding.’

‘Sorry, but my show has to go on as well as yours.’

‘I don’t want the board to know.’

‘Who said anything about the board?’

Another locked door – to Preston Barnes’s dressing room -

frustrated Diamond, but not for long.

‘Shall I ask for the pass key?’ Leaman said.

‘No need.’ He knew the layout. Along the corridor he went and through the side door that had once been the theatre entrance in Beauford Square. The principal dressing rooms are at ground level and look out on a quiet lawn enclosed by railings. He picked the right window. As he’d anticipated, the casement was open at the top for ventilation. Nothing was fastened. He slid the lower window up and climbed in. Leaman followed.

Barnes was on the chaise longue wearing only a pair of jockey shorts. A tarantula might have crawled onto his chest from the way he sprang up. ‘What the fuck…?’ He was across the room and grabbing a bathrobe before they spoke a word. He wrapped it around himself as if playing the storm scene from Lear.

Rather than trading obscenities Diamond made a point of introducing Leaman and himself, adding, ‘It was obvious you weren’t going to open the door. We need to speak.’

‘If that little turd has reported me, I’ll kill him.’

‘I wouldn’t issue death threats, not in my hearing. As it happens, Mr Shearman wants to forget the incident.’

He switched the attack. ‘You’ve no right breaking in here.’

‘Nothing is broken. What’s your problem, Preston?’

Actually Diamond had noticed one problem in the short interval before Barnes had wrapped himself up. Another was that this young man would never be right for the classical roles. He was too small and too long in the nose. If he stood up, he wouldn’t be much taller than Hedley Shearman. Very likely there was bitterness here as well as a hot temper.

‘I like to prepare before I go on. Is that asking too much?’

‘What form does the preparing take?’ There were no obvious props, no incense burners, violins, tom-toms, chest-expanders. Plenty of space, though. It looked a bigger dressing room than the number one.

‘That’s personal.’

‘Someone said you psych yourself up.’

‘It’s much more than that.’

‘You’d better tell us, then.’

‘I need to school myself for the test to come. Focus my energy, my emotions. Visualise the role. Become the character. Have you heard of Stanislavsky? Brecht? Lee Strasberg? I think not. What’s the point in trying to make a policeman understand the guiding principles of my art? Oh, God.’ He gave an exaggerated yawn. ‘I’m a method actor, if that means anything. In simple terms, I take a mental journey to Berlin in the thirties. By a supreme exercise of will power Preston Barnes becomes Christopher Isherwood, or as close as any actor is capable of getting. Does that make sense to you?’

‘All this is going on before the show?’

‘It’s fundamental.’

‘To you – or all actors?’

‘Not all. We’re individuals, each with his own style. Some choose to go on without the sort of preparation I undergo.’

‘Richardson,’ Leaman said, surprising each of the others.

Barnes shot him an ill-tempered look. ‘Which Richardson is that?’

‘The late Sir Ralph.’

‘What do you know about Ralph Richardson?’

‘He was a biker, like me. Rode a Norton for some years, then a BMW. He’d turn up at the theatre, go on, do his stuff, get on his bike and ride home.’

Barnes and Diamond were too stunned to comment.

Leaman added, ‘I don’t think he was a method actor.’

Diamond picked up where he’d meant to be. ‘With all this preparation, you guard your privacy, obviously.’

‘That’s no crime,’ Barnes said.

‘It is, if it leads to an assault.’

‘But you said – ’

‘Yes, Mr Shearman is willing to overlook it, he told me.’ He glanced about him. ‘What’s so special about this room?’

‘It’s mine. That’s what.’

‘Inspector Leaman didn’t find the handbag he was looking for.’

‘Are you being offensive?’ Barnes said. ‘I’m as straight as you are.’

‘Denise the dresser’s handbag. It’s missing.’

He almost spat out the words, ‘So I was informed.’

‘You think we used it as an excuse to get in here? We’re not as subtle as that. Did you know Denise?’

‘We met. She was Clarion’s dresser, not mine. I don’t need one.’ He pointed with his thumb to the shabby sports coat and grey flannels on a hanger beside the dressing table. ‘That’s the only costume I wear in this production. I change my tie a few times and that’s it.’

‘Did you know Clarion before joining the cast?’

‘No, and her singing sucks, but it doesn’t mean I wished her any harm.’

‘Were you worried about the play? I’m told she wasn’t much good in rehearsal.’

‘Wasn’t much good? She was crap. But I’ve been in the business long enough to know it can be all right on the night.’

‘But it wasn’t. What an experience you must have had.’ Deliberately Diamond was playing to Barnes’s ego. This was all about him.

‘It wasn’t something I want to repeat,’ he said. ‘One minute she seemed to have forgotten her lines and the next she was screaming in pain. I defy any actor to cope with that.’

‘After the curtain came down, were you one of the people who went to her dressing room?’

‘No. I waited in the wings to see what would happen next. They gave Gisella the part, as you know. I steered and coaxed her through it in ways you wouldn’t even begin to appreciate.’

‘She was ready to go on?’

‘Scared, obviously. In fact, she saved the night from total disaster. And she gets better with each performance. Have you seen it?’

‘Not yet.’

‘You should.’

‘Your own performance is worth seeing, I was told.’

‘Thanks.’ The actor glanced in the mirror. Flattered, he was off guard.

‘What do you inject before the show?’ Diamond asked in a matter-of-fact tone.

‘What?’ He swung back to stare at Diamond.

‘I noticed the needle marks.’

‘I’m diabetic.’

‘I don’t think so, Preston. And I don’t believe the horseshit you told us a moment ago about locking yourself in to visualise the role. You come here early to jack up.’

‘You can’t prove a damn thing.’

‘I’m not investigating your habit. I know why you flew into such a rage over the search. You thought we’d find the syringe. And why you were so quick to cover your arms when we came in just now.’

He’d turned ashen as Diamond was speaking. ‘You people have no idea of the stress actors are under night after night.’

‘Heroin?’

‘Methadone, on prescription.’ His manner switched from aggression to supplication. ‘I’m fighting the addiction. I can give you my doctor’s name if you keep this to yourself. I don’t want the management finding out. Please.’

‘Does anyone else in this theatre know?’

‘Absolutely not. It would destroy my career.’

‘We can count on your co-operation, then?’

In a voice otherwise purged of defiance he managed to say, ‘Bastards.’