Simon Brett - Star Trap

There was a silence. ‘Hmm. Yes, I can feel a sort of foreboding too, but I don’t know why.’

As he spoke, light spilled across the road from the stage door. Christopher Milton, Dickie Peck, Wally Wilson and the show’s musical director, Pete Masters, came out, escorted by Milton’s driver, who smartly moved forward to the parked Corniche and opened the doors. They all got in. ‘Let’s follow them,’ whispered Charles, more to satisfy Gerald’s love of the dramatic than anything else.

They let the Rolls disappear at the junction on to the main road, confident that Leeds’ central one-way system would make it difficult to lose their quarry, and started up in pursuit.

Gerald’s ‘Follow that car’ routine was as exaggerated as his ‘I am waiting unobtrusively’ one, involving many sudden swivels of the head and bursts of squealing acceleration alternating with dawdling so slowly that it drew, hoots of annoyance from other road-users. But the inhabitants of the Rolls did not appear to notice them. There were none of the sudden right-angled swerves up side-roads beloved of gangsters in movies. They drove sedately round the one-way system and into Neville Street, where they swung off the main road and came to rest at the entrance of the Dragonara Hotel. Gerald, who hadn’t been expecting the stop, overshot, screeched to a halt and reversed to a spying position, flashed at by the righteous headlights of other drivers in the one-way street.

The party disembarking from the Corniche still did not take any notice of their pursuers. The four of them walked straight into the foyer and the driver slid the car away to the hotel car park.

‘Well…’ said Gerald.

‘Well, I guess we’ve found out where he’s staying.’

‘Yes. Yes, we have.’

‘I could have asked him and saved us the trouble.’

‘Yes, but at least this way we can tell if he’s lying.’

‘What on earth do you mean? Why should he lie about staying in the newest, poshest hotel in Leeds?’

‘I don’t know.’ They both felt very foolish.

‘By the way, Gerald, why aren’t you staying at the Dragonara? I thought that was your usual style.’

‘I didn’t know it existed. Polly, my secretary, booked me into the Queen’s. More traditional, I think… I’m only here for the one night. I suppose I could try and get transferred, see if there’s a room here.’

‘What good would that do?’

‘Well, then I’d be in the hotel, I could spy, I…’

‘What are we spying on? What do we want to find out?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘All we want to do is see that Kevin McMahon doesn’t get a chance to have a go at Christopher Milton.’

‘Yes.’

‘And since he’s got Dickie Peck and his driver in the hotel there with him, I think we’re superfluous.’

‘So what should we do?’

‘Go to our several beds,’ said Charles, with mingled desire and depression at the thought of his.

‘All right. I suppose we’d better. Mind you, we’re going to feel pretty silly in the morning if we hear that Christopher Milton’s been murdered.’

They needn’t have worried. Christopher Milton survived the night unharmed. But Kevin McMahon was found beaten up in the car park by the bus station.

Charles didn’t hear about the new accident until he reached the theatre for rehearsal. A silent breakfast with Ruth had been followed by a silent lift in her Renault 5L to the city centre. She started work at nine, so he had time to kill. They parted in silence and he wandered off in the direction of the Dragonara for no apparent reason.

To occupy his mind with trivialities, he pretended he was trailing the man in front of him. The head he followed was completely bald with enormous ears like the handles of a loving cup. Charles varied his pace, playing a game with himself, committing details to memory, checking the time. At five to nine the man went in the front entrance of the Dragonara and the game was over.

Charles looked round for someone else to use as a dummy and then felt a wave of hopelessness. What was the point of playing at detectives when his performance was so abysmal on occasions that required real detective abilities?

The ‘what was the point?’ gloom deepened to embrace his emotional life too. Another night of angry sex with Ruth had depressed him. What was the point of it? He had left Frances to get away from the ties and twists of a ‘relationship’, hoping to find some kind of freedom. And he had accepted the limitations which the emotional free-lance shares with all other free-lances — delays between engagements and sudden terminations of contracts. But it wasn’t just that. Casual sex didn’t give him enough and anything deeper soon got claustrophobic. If he was going to go through all the hard work of making something work, he might just as well try again with Frances. At least he had got a start there.

But Frances had got a boy friend. So the rumour went, and he had no cause to disbelieve it. And that seemed to change it all. It twisted his emotional outlook. He would not admit to himself that he was prey to so simple an emotion as jealousy, but the fact that Frances was not floating unattached in the background made any other relationship more threatening, as if now he was really looking for something lasting. Which he wasn’t… Oh, hell, why couldn’t he just think of Ruth as a nice time in Leeds, all to be over and forgotten in a week? But guilt crept in, and though he was conscious of his depression over-dramatising everything, he was unable to get out of the pointless spiral of his thoughts.

He quickly got news of Kevin’s accident when he arrived at the theatre. The police were there. They had taken over one of the dressing-rooms, where they were questioning members of the cast. There were constant assurances that no one in the company was suspected, but certain facts had to be established — who Kevin was, where he was staying and so on.

The details of the beating spread quickly. Kevin was in the Infirmary though he was not seriously hurt. Apparently he had spent the evening drinking, moving on to a small club when the pubs closed. He had been kicked out of there at about two, and wandered round for some time — he couldn’t remember how long — and then been jumped by someone who punched him in the face, kicked him about the rest of his body, left him unconscious and stole his wallet. The police regarded it as a simple mugging and were looking for someone local.

They did hear about the altercation between Kevin and Dickie Peck and when the agent arrived with his protege at ten-thirty, he was questioned. But it transpired that the two of them, along with Wally Wilson and Pete Masters, the young musical director, had been up most of the night working on a new number to replace Liberty Hall. They had mutually dependent alibis.

That was a blow to Charles’ simple reading of the situation. He had leapt to the conclusion that Dickie Peck must have got at Kevin, continuing the scene that had started in the green room. And if there had only been Christopher Milton and Wally Wilson to corroborate Dickie’s alibi, he would still have believed it. But if Pete, the M.D., also vouched for him, that changed things. He was not one of the star’s immediate entourage and the most unlikely person to submit to intimidation. So maybe it was just an attack by a mugger unknown. But it did seem too much of a coincidence.

And if it was a coincidence, it was a very happy one for Christopher Milton. There was no dissenting voice when he announced that Liberty Hall was to be dropped and that the whole day until the evening performance would be spent rehearsing the new number which had been written overnight.

He was very ebullient and cheerful. He made no pretence now that David Meldrum was directing the show and leapt around the stage telling everyone what to do and demonstrating. He showed no fatigue after the long night and was supremely creative. His enthusiasm for the new song was infectious and they all worked hard to give it life.