Val Mcdermid - Star Struck

Linda’s eyes widened and I could see her forcing her body not to react. Jackson scowled. “That’s neither here nor there. Take my word for it, the prints on the murder weapon are a perfect match for Gloria’s here.”

I shook my head. “You’ll have to do better than that.” I glanced at my watch. “Otherwise I’m going to call Ruth Hunter and get this whole shooting match on the record. And I don’t have to tell you how much Ruth hates having her lunch interrupted.” I knew the last thing Jackson wanted now was to get to the “lawyers at dawn” stage. He was relying on Gloria being confident enough to think she could handle this alone, and even with me along to stick a spoke in his wheel, he still thought he was the one holding all the cards. You’d think he’d have known by now. “So where did you get a verified set of my client’s prints?” I demanded again.

“You gave her a glass of water in the green room on Friday night when we had our initial interview,” Linda said. Jackson glared at her, but he must have known they’d reached the point of put up or shut up.

“And you helped yourself to it after we left,” I said, shaking my head in a pretense of sorrow at their deviousness. “So how do you know it’s not my prints on the murder weapon?”

Linda allowed herself a small moment of triumph. “Because you were still wearing your leather gloves.”

OK, so I’d forgotten. I didn’t think Gloria was going to sue me. At least the conversation had provided enough of a diversion for my client to pull herself together. “Of course my fingerprints were on the crystal ball,” she said. All three of us turned to stare at her.

“Gloria,” I warned, stifling a momentary panic that she was about to confess.

“It’s all right, chuck. There’s a simple explanation.”

My favorite kind.

“I’d just had a consultation, hadn’t I? I’d been sat opposite Dorothea, with my fingertips touching the crystal ball. That’s what we always did. I suppose she did it with everybody, but she must have buffed it up between times because it was always sparkling,

I grinned. Usually when I’d been present to watch Jackson get shafted, I was the one doing the shafting, which meant the pleasure was always tinged with a degree of apprehension. This time, the delight was entirely unadulterated. Jackson looked like a man whose cat just ate his prize canary.

“I bet it was just my fingertips on that crystal ball, wasn’t it? Not my whole hand,” Gloria said. She sounded as if she was half teasing, half scolding a naughty schoolboy. “You’ve been trying to get me going, haven’t you? You’ve been stretching the truth to try and get me to confess.” She wagged her finger at him. “I don’t like people that think they’re smart enough to get clever with me. Brenda Barrowclough might have come up the ship canal on a bike, but I’m not so daft. I’m not talking to you again, Mr. Jackson, not without I’ve got my solicitor with me.”

“I can’t believe you tried that on, Jackson,” I said. “Wait till Ruth Hunter hears about this. You better thank your lucky stars that you didn’t drag us down the nick for this bag of crap.”

Jackson turned dark red, his eyes narrowing as I’d seen them do too many times before. Just before the geyser of his rage erupted over us, the door behind him jerked open, nearly tipping him backwards towards the slushy car park.

John Turpin stepped back, not prepared to stand between Jackson and a nasty fall. At the last minute, Jackson grabbed the steering wheel and hauled himself back into the seat. “Jesus,” he exclaimed. “You nearly had me on the floor there, Mr. Turpin.”

Turpin’s broad face was wearing a scowl that matched most of the tales I’d heard about him. “I’m very disappointed in you,” he said, his voice as sharply clipped as a topiary peacock. “I had thought we’d reached an accommodation. We’ve bent over backwards for you and your team. We’ve given you space to work in, we’ve offered you full access to our site and to all NPTV staff. The one thing I asked was that you didn’t disrupt filming.” He shook his head sorrowfully.

Jackson was at a major disadvantage, stuck in the van seat well

Turpin snorted and jerked his thumb at Gloria. “That’s your murder suspect?” he said, his voice a suppressed laugh. “My God, man, you must be grasping at straws. This is the woman who’s so timid she’s hired a private detective because she’s had some hysterical hate mail. Even if she had the nerve to commit murder, I don’t think she’d be doing it when she’s got a minder on her tail. Unless of course you think Gloria hired Brannigan and Co to commit murder for her?” I couldn’t repress my smile. Linda broke into a spasm of tactical coughing, but Jackson couldn’t see the funny side. He probably thought Turpin’s sarcastic suggestion was a promising line of inquiry. “It wouldn’t have hurt to have waited for a natural break in filming. I mean, she’s hardly dressed to go on the run, wearing Brenda Barrowclough’s wig,” the TV executive continued with genial sarcasm. “Did you think she was going to take a cameraman hostage with her handbag?”

“This is a police inquiry,” Jackson said obstinately. “Only the case dictates the timetable I work to.”

Turpin gave Jackson a thoughtful look. When he spoke, his voice had a kindly tone at odds with his words. “The press is always interested in anything that affects Northerners and this company is a notoriously leaky sieve. You might think your murder investigation is the most important thing in this city, but there are far more people interested in the outcome of Monday night’s episode of Northerners than in who killed some stargazing charlatan. You might want to think about how dumb you could be made to look by some news-hungry journalist.” Without waiting for a reply, Turpin bent forward, head and shoulders into the van, forcing Jackson to step hastily aside, with the cavalier lack of concern most big men display.

“Gloria, my dear,” he said coldly. “Time to earn your grossly inflated salary. Mustn’t keep Helen waiting, must we?”

Gloria squared her shoulders, gathered her coat around her and made a nimble exit. “Ta-ra, Linda, chuck,” she said, leaning back into the van. “I won’t be talking to you again without a lawyer, but I don’t hold that sneaky trick with the glass against you. You were only doing your job, and we both know what it’s like to work for complete shits, don’t we?”

Turpin’s stare was surprisingly malevolent. “The people you have to deal with in this job,” he sighed, including us all in his comprehensive glower.

“Never mind,” I said sweetly. “If NPTV sell out to cable or satellite, you’ll be able to retire to the South of France on your profits.”

His calculating eyes made the snow look warm and welcoming. “You really shouldn’t believe actors’ gossip,” he said. He turned on his heel, brushing past Jackson, and made for the catering truck. I didn’t envy Ross if the coffee was stewed.

Jackson spun round to close the door, his face still scarlet with rage. It was clear he regarded my continued existence on the planet, never mind in his eyeshot, as pure provocation. Rather than wait to be arrested for behavior likely to cause a breach of the peace, I slid along the seat and out of the opposite side of the van. Sometimes, bottling out is the sensible course of action.

I gave the catering van a wide berth too and trudged across to the knot of people round the director. Gloria and Ted were already heading back across the snow to begin their long tracking shot again. At this rate it was going to take all day to film one scene. I didn’t have to be an accountant to work out why that would piss Turpin off, especially if he was obsessed with making the balance sheet look good to possible bidders for the show.