Showstopper, page 3
“Did you get a description?”
“Of sorts. Forty, thin, pale, dark hair going bald, with a moustache.”
“You need to question someone more senior. Is there a foreman?”
“That’s who I spoke to, Fergus Webster, the key grip.” The bit of jargon sprang easily from Gilbert’s lips and amused Diamond.
“Are they back tomorrow?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Same stuntwoman?”
“It’s her job, isn’t it, if she’s recovered?”
“They should ask the woman who plays Swift to do her own stunt.”
“I don’t think it works like that, guv.”
“What’s her name—the star?”
“Sabine San Sebastian.”
Diamond’s eyebrows gave their verdict on the fancy name. “And the stuntwoman?”
“Ann Bugg.”
“Probably the moniker she was born with, poor thing. I suppose if she stands in for Sabine she looks like her?”
“A dead ringer. I’m hoping to speak to her today.”
“She’s that good-looking?”
Gilbert flushed. “I mean as investigating officer.”
Diamond fingered his right ear lobe as if to check that it was still there. “You’re assuming there’s a traitor on the team?”
“Aren’t you, guv? You don’t believe in the jinx, do you? Someone may have bopped Jake Nicol.”
“True, but speaking to the stuntwoman isn’t the best idea you’ve had. More than likely, her fall was her own fault and she won’t welcome questions about it. We’re treading on eggs here. They’ll have read what the papers are saying and we don’t want to ramp up the paranoia. We were asked to investigate the missing rigger. That’s what you do.”
“I was thinking she might have some thoughts on how it happened.”
“This isn’t the time. Your best bet is to find out who made the call to our lot. We need to know who it was who went to the flat and what their connection is to Jake Nicol.”
Gilbert’s mouth formed a perfect O. The boss was right, as usual. “You’re still happy for me to handle this?”
“Full confidence.” Straight speaking from Diamond this time. The young man deserved his respect. He’d been tested many times over and proved his worth.
ALONE IN HIS office, Diamond spent some time thinking about the old saying that misfortunes never come singly. Then he picked up the newspaper and reread the report about the so-called jinx. He reached for the latest directive from headquarters, turned it over and used the back to make a list of the incidents by date:
2013 STAR ACTOR (unnamed) pulls out
2013 ENGINEER BURNT by fire in sound equipment van
2013 STUNTMEN INJURED in rooftop chase
2015 DAVE TUDOR, assistant producer, missing
2017 MARY WROXETER, producer, dies suddenly
2019 DAN BURBAGE, actor, climbing accident
2019 DAISY SUMMERFIELD, actor, fatal heart attack
2019 JACOB NICOL, rigger, missing
After a moment’s reflection, he added one that wasn’t in the Post:
2019 ANN BUGG, stunt double, near drowning
No, he didn’t believe in jinxes. Accidents to stunt people were nothing. Every crime show has action scenes, and some go wrong, like the chase across the weir. Daisy Summerfield’s sudden death didn’t impress him either. He’d seen her on TV. Old age, excessive weight and working long hours would have got her into the coronary club for sure. As for that idiot who went climbing in January, words failed him. He was more interested in the two who had gone missing. The rigger’s absence from work had been reported to the police after someone noticed signs of a disturbance in the flat, but how about the one from four years ago, assistant producer Dave Tudor? Had his non-appearance ever become a police matter? Was Tudor ever registered as a missing person?
In spite of himself, he was getting caught up in this story.
He knew which of the team to ask. The newest addition, DC Jean Sharp, lived up to her name as a researcher. “Try the missing persons unit first,” he told her, “and then our own case files. I can’t recall anything myself, so I’m wondering if Tudor’s disappearance ever got reported to us by his family or anyone else. He may have quit the job without telling anyone, in which case it may not be recorded.”
“The newspaper heard from somewhere, guv,” Jean Sharp pointed out. “Have we asked the TV company?”
“I want to check the official records first.”
“If he was the assistant producer, he must have been a serious loss for them.”
“I’m not so sure. Job titles in TV can be misleading. Ever heard of ‘best boy’? It can be a fifty-year-old woman.”
Jean Sharp started working her keyboard and read out what she found. “‘The assistant producer’s duties are assigned by the producer. An AP may provide editorial and logistical back-up for the producer and liaise with writers and the talent. AP is the next grade up from researcher and is an excellent opportunity for learning how a production functions.’” She looked up. “It sounds lower in the pecking order than I thought. So the loss of Mr. Tudor may not have been such a setback.”
“He’s still a missing person, however unimportant he was. Report directly to me, Jean. I’m not involving anyone else at this stage. Do you watch Swift?”
“I’ve seen it. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan.”
“Me neither.”
He left her to start the check.
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.”
