Val McDermid - The Wire in the Blood

So he whetted her appetite and kept her on the leash. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you last night. You’d be absolutely perfect as the co-host. With a two-handed show, we need contrast. Dark-haired Donna, fair-haired Jacko. Petite Donna, hulking great brute Jacko.’ He grinned, she giggled. ‘What we’re working on is a new game show involving parent and child teams. But the teams don’t know they’re in the show until we turn up to whisk them off. A total surprise, like This is Your Life . That’s part of the reason why we need to be so sure that whoever I end up working with is absolutely trustworthy. Total discretion, that’s the key.’

‘I can keep my mouth shut,’ Donna said earnestly. ‘Honest. I never told a living soul about coming here to meet you. My mate that was at the opening last night with me, when she asked what we were talking about for so long, I just said I was asking whether you had any advice for me if I wanted to break into TV.’

‘And did I?’ he demanded.

She smiled, beguiling and seductive. ‘I told her you said I should get some qualifications behind me before I made any decisions about a career. She doesn’t know enough about you to realize you’d never come out with all that boring shit that I get off my mum.’

‘Good thinking,’ he told her appreciatively. ‘I can promise you I’ll never be boring, that’s for sure. Now, the problem I’ve got is that I’m desperately busy for the next couple of days. But I’ve got Friday morning free, and I can easily set up some screen tests for you. We’ve got a rehearsal studio up in the north-east and we can work there.’

Her lips parted, her eyes glowed in the dimness of the car interior. ‘You mean it? I can be on telly?’

‘No promises, but you look the part and you’ve got a beautiful voice.’ He shifted in his seat so he could fix her with a direct gaze. ‘All I need to prove to myself is that you really can keep a secret.’

‘I told you,’ Donna replied, consternation on her face. ‘I’ve said nothing to anybody.’

‘But can you keep that up? Can you stay silent until Thursday night?’ He put his hand inside his jacket and produced a rail ticket. ‘This is a train ticket for Five Walls Halt in Northumberland. On Thursday, you catch the 3.25 Newcastle train from the station here, then at Newcastle, you change to the 7.50 for Carlisle. When you come out of the station, there’s a car park on the left. I’ll be waiting there in a Land Rover. I can’t get out to meet you on the platform because of commercial confidentiality, but I’ll be there in the car park, I promise. We’ll put you up for the night, then first thing in the morning, you do the screen test.’

‘But my mum’ll panic if I stay out all night and she doesn’t know where I am,’ she protested reluctantly.

‘You can phone her as soon as we get to the studio complex,’ he told her, his voice rich in reassurance. ‘Let’s face it, she probably wouldn’t let you take the screen test if she knew, would she? I bet she doesn’t think working in TV is a proper job, does she?’

As usual, he’d calculated to perfection. Donna knew her ambitious mother wouldn’t want her to throw her university prospects away to be a game-show bimbo. Her worried look disappeared and she peered up at him from under her eyebrows. ‘I won’t say a word,’ she promised solemnly.

‘Good girl. I hope you mean that. All it takes is one wrong word and a whole project can crash. That costs money, and it costs people’s jobs too. You might say something in confidence to your best friend, but she’ll tell her sister, and her sister will tell her boyfriend, and the boyfriend will tell his best mate over a frame of snooker, and the best mate’s sister-in-law just happens to be a reporter. Or a rival TV company executive. And the show’s dead. And your big chance goes with it. Let me tell you something. At the start of your career, you only get one bite of the cherry. You screw up, and no one will ever hire you again. You have to have a lot of success under your belt before the TV bosses forgive a bit of failure.’ He leaned forward and rested a hand on her arm as he spoke, invading her space and making her feel the sexual thrill of his dangerous edge.

‘I understand,’ Donna said with all the intensity of a fourteen-year-old who thought she was really a grown-up and couldn’t understand why the adults wouldn’t admit her into their conspiracy. The promise of an entrée into that world was what made her so ready to swallow something as preposterous as his set-up.

‘I can rely on you?’

She nodded. ‘I won’t let you down. Not with this or anything else.’ The sexual innuendo was unmistakable. She was probably still a virgin, he reckoned. Something about her avidity told him so. She was offering herself up to him, a vestal sacrifice.

He leaned closer and kissed the soft, eager mouth that instantly opened under his primly closed lips. He drew back, smiling to soften her obvious disappointment. He always left them wanting more. It was the oldest showbiz cliché in the world. But it worked every time.

Carol wiped up the remaining traces of chicken jalfrezi with the last chunk of nan bread and savoured the final mouthful. ‘That,’ she said reverently, ‘was to die for.’

‘There’s more,’ Maggie Brandon said, pushing the heavy casserole dish towards her.

‘I’d have to wear it,’ Carol groaned. ‘There’s no room inside.’

‘You can take some home with you,’ Maggie told her. ‘I know the kind of daft hours you’ll be working. Cooking’s the last thing you’ll have time for. When John was made up to DCI, I considered asking his Chief Constable if the family could move into the cells at Scargill Street since that seemed to be the only way his kids would ever get to see him.’

John Brandon, Chief Constable of East Yorkshire Police, shook his head and said affectionately, ‘She’s a terrible liar, my wife. She only says these things to guilt-trip you into working so hard there’ll be nothing left for me to worry about in your whole division.’

Maggie snorted. ‘As if! How do you think he ended up looking like that, eh?’

Carol gave Brandon a shrewd look. It was a good question. If ever a man had been born with a graveyard face, it was Brandon. His countenance was all verticals, long and narrow; lines in his hollow cheeks, lines between his brows, aquiline nose, iron-grey hair straight as the grid line on a map. Tall and thin, with the beginnings of a stoop, all he needed was a scythe to audition for Death. She considered her options. It might be ‘John’ tonight, but on Monday morning it would be back to, ‘Mr Brandon, sir .’ Better not push her informal relationship with the boss too far. ‘And there was me thinking it was marriage,’ she said innocently.

Maggie roared with laughter. ‘Diplomatic as well as quick, eh?’ she got out at last, reaching across to pat her husband’s shoulder. ‘You did well to get Carol to abandon the fleshpots of Bradfield for the back of beyond, my love.’

‘Speaking of which, how are you settling in?’ Carol asked.

‘Well, this is a police house,’ Maggie told her, waving a hand at the brilliant white walls and paintwork, a depressing contrast to the hand-marbled paintwork Carol remembered from their Bradfield dining room. ‘But it’ll have to do us. We’ve rented out the house in Bradfield, you know? John’s only got another five years till he has his thirty in, and we want to go back there. It’s where our roots are, where our friends are. And the kids will all be out of school by then, so it’s not like they’ll be uprooted again.’

‘What Maggie isn’t saying is that she feels a bit like a Victorian missionary among the Hottentots,’ Brandon said.