Dead on Cue Read online

  Table of Contents

  Recent Titles by Sally Spencer from Severn House

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Monday Evening

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Tuesday

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Wednesday

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  An American Interlude

  Thursday

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Friday

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Recent Titles by Sally Spencer from Severn House

  THE DARK LADY

  DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

  THE GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

  MURDER AT SWANN’S LAKE

  THE PARADISE JOB

  THE SALTON KILLINGS

  THE SILENT LAND

  Dead on Cue

  Sally Spencer

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain and the USA 2001 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  Copyright © 2001 by Sally Spencer

  This eBook edition first published in 2012 by Severn Select an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Spencer, Sally 1949–

  Dead on cue

  1. Woodend, Chief Inspector (Fictitious character) – Fiction

  2. Police – England – Fiction

  3. Detective and mystery stories

  I. Title

  823.9’14 [F]

  ISBN: 978-1-4483-0053-2 (epub)

  ISBN 978-0-7278-5706-4

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  For Ingerbrit

  Monday Evening

  One

  There were three of them in the room when it was announced that Jack Taylor would shortly have to die.

  The announcement was made by the eldest of the trio, a man in his late forties with a shock of greying hair and a nose which wouldn’t have looked out of place on the face of a Roman patrician. The other two men, who had both just begun to edge towards thirty, looked suitably shocked, as he’d expected they would. For perhaps fifteen seconds neither of them seemed able to find any words at all, then the one with the fluffy blond hair – which he carefully combed over his bald spot at least ten times a day – spoke.

  ‘Are you sure that’s a wise decision, Bill?’ he asked. ‘I mean to say, are you absolutely, positively sure?’

  Bill Houseman nodded. ‘Yes, I am absolutely, positively sure,’ he said. ‘Or at least I’m sure that someone has to die – and our research unit seems to believe that Jack Taylor is the best candidate.’

  The third member of the group, a red-haired, ruddy-faced Irishman, had been focussing his eyes on the corner of the room, as if seeing in it somewhere he’d much rather be. Now he shifted his gaze to the table.

  ‘Something wrong, Paddy?’ Bill Houseman asked.

  ‘I’m a writer,’ the Irishman replied. ‘I take a situation, and I develop it according to what I understand about the human condition. I don’t like having that process interfered with by a so-called “research unit”, which, in reality, is nothing more than a couple of girls with clipboards who ambush busy people as they cross St Peter’s Square.’

  Bill Houseman frowned, and rose to his feet. He would probably have liked to pace the conference room agitatedly, but the table took up most of the available space, and instead he had to content himself with walking over to the window and looking out at the concourse which ran down the centre of the studio. As he gazed on the busy scene outside, his body relaxed, and his confidence seemed to return.

  He swung round to face the other two men again. ‘That was a very nice little speech you just made, Paddy,’ he said. ‘And no doubt it was appropriate for a writer starving in his garret for his art’s sake. But you’re not that kind of writer any more, are you? You’re a well-paid member of a team now – a team that I run. And if you ever find that that’s too much for your integrity to stand, well, nobody’s stopping you from going back to your garret, are they?’

  Paddy Colligan felt a shudder run through him. Bill was right, he thought. He could leave the show any time he wanted to. The problem was that since he was neither the founding father of Madro, as Houseman was, nor a university gradate with other avenues open to him, like Ben Drabble, a future without his regular pay check looked decidedly bleak.

  ‘So what’s it to be?’ Houseman demanded, sensing his weakness. ‘Do you go along with my idea? Or should I start looking for a replacement?’

  Paddy Colligan swallowed hard enough to get down the humble pie he was being forced to eat. ‘Sorry, Bill,’ he said. ‘I know it’s a team effort. Must just have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.’

  Houseman ran his left hand through his white hair, and smiled the smile of an emperor watching his gladiators making their ritual submission. ‘Forget it,’ he said graciously.

  Was he actually feeling as superior as he was acting? Paddy Colligan wondered. Or was he using that smile to mask the worry and uncertainty which had plagued him for the previous few weeks?

  Houseman took a deep breath and resumed his seat. ‘Look at it this way,’ he said to Paddy Colligan. ‘Larry wants to leave the show in a few weeks anyway, so even if we didn’t kill him off, we’d still have to write him out.’

  ‘If we wrote him out, we’d always have the option of writing him in again if he decided to come back,’ Paddy pointed out.

  ‘And do you think it’s likely that he will?’ Bill Houseman asked.

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘Well now that’s settled, let’s get back to the matter in hand,’ Houseman suggested. ‘The question is not
whether Jack Taylor should die, but how he dies.’

  ‘We could have him run over by a corporation bus,’ Ben Drabble suggested.

  ‘It’s a good idea, but I don’t see how we could do it technically,’ Paddy Colligan said, making an attempt to redeem himself in Houseman’s eyes – and hating himself for it.

  ‘Quite right,’ Houseman agreed, giving him an encouraging nod, which showed he had already forgiven the earlier revolt. ‘Now if we were talking about a show which was on the wireless, it would be an entirely different matter. The roar of the engine! The sudden screech of brakes! Perhaps a muted grunt from the Laughing Postman as a couple of tons of metal slam into him. All very effective. But as big as this place is, I don’t think we’re up to bringing a double-decker bus in here.’

  ‘We could always use an outside location,’ Ben Drabble said.

  Bill Houseman shook his head. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea at all. We have created a world which our audience feels comfortable in. Take them outside it – step beyond the genre – and we might start to lose some of our appeal.’

  So we’ll play it safe, like we always do, Paddy Colligan thought. We’ll pretend we’re presenting a picture of the real world, but it will actually be no more realistic than the children’s puppet show Bill Houseman used to run.

  He thought it – but this time he did not put his thoughts into words.

  ‘Could we have an accident in the home?’ Ben Drabble asked.

  ‘Now you’re thinking!’ Houseman said enthusiastically.

  ‘We could have Jack doing the ironing,’ Ben Drabble continued. ‘There’s something wrong with the iron, and he gets a terrific electric shock. He squirms around for a while, then falls to the floor.’

  ‘We roll the credits, leaving the viewers asking themselves whether he’s survived or not,’ Bill Houseman said. ‘When they tune in for the next episode, they find out, of course, that he hasn’t.’

  Jack Taylor had largely been Paddy Colligan’s creation, and now the Irishman felt another bubble of revolt bursting inside him.

  ‘Jack would never even think of doing the ironing,’ he said sullenly. ‘He’s simply not that kind of man. It would be like seeing Hopalong Cassidy doing the ironing.’

  ‘He’s not a cowboy, and he doesn’t ride around on a white horse,’ Bill Houseman said. ‘I don’t see the parallel at all.’

  He doesn’t get it, does he? Paddy Colligan asked himself. He’s in charge of the whole thing, and he simply doesn’t get it.

  ‘Jack’s like Hopalong Cassidy in as much as he travels around solving other people’s problems,’ he argued. ‘He’s something of a hero on Maddox Row. And you wouldn’t expect a hero to be doing anything as domestic and commonplace as ironing. And Dot Taylor wouldn’t like it, either,’ he added, playing what he considered his trump card. ‘The house is her domain. She’d think Jack had gone mad if he started helping her around the home.’

  Bill Houseman sighed. ‘We are going out of our way to make difficulties today, aren’t we, Paddy?’ he asked.

  ‘No!’ Colligan countered. ‘I’m just pointing out that—’

  ‘There’s something in what both of you are saying,’ Ben Drabble interrupted hurriedly. ‘Couldn’t we perhaps steer a middle course?’

  ‘Like what?’ Bill Houseman asked.

  ‘The iron is broken,’ Drabble said, improvising furiously. ‘Dot . . . Dot wants to take it down to Wally Simpson’s repair shop, but Jack says that’s a waste of money and insists on fixing himself. That would be in character, wouldn’t it, Paddy?’

  ‘Yes,’ Paddy Colligan agreed reluctantly. ‘I suppose that would be in character.’

  ‘He does fix it, but he makes a bad job of it. Still in character?’

  ‘Still in character.’

  ‘He decides to try it out. He would never, of course, think of doing the ironing himself – you’re quite right about that, Paddy – but this is more in the nature of an experiment to see if he’s really repaired it. It’s while he’s conducting this experiment that he’s electrocuted.

  ‘That would work,’ Bill Houseman said. ‘Don’t you agree, Paddy?’

  ‘It would work,’ Colligan said grudging. ‘But if we’re really going to kill anybody off, then I think it should be—’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ Houseman interrupted. ‘Make sure that Jack Taylor has a prominent part in next Friday’s episode, and then we’ll give him the chop the following Monday.’ He checked his watch. ‘That about wraps it up. See you on the set just before we go on air.’

  He stood up again and bustled importantly out of the room, leaving the two scriptwriters staring at each other. For a while, neither of them spoke, then Ben Drabble said, ‘Well, it was his idea.’

  Yes, Paddy agreed silently, it was his idea. Maddox Row had been Bill Houseman’s baby right from the start – and getting on the air at a time when glamorous American shows like Seventy-Seven Sunset Strip were all the rage had been no easy task.

  A series based on the lives of people who live in a street in a northern industrial town? the programme planners at NWTV had asked incredulously. How could that possibly be of interest to anybody? And if it’s such a good idea, why hasn’t it been done before?

  But despite Houseman’s relatively lowly position in the corporate hierarchy – he’d been known as ‘Squeaky’ Houseman in those days, after one of the three glove puppet mice who’d appeared in his children’s show – the man had stuck to his guns and insisted that it would work. And he’d been proved right! Unquestionably right! Maddox Row, originally scheduled for one thirteen-week run, had been continuously on the air for over two years. It went out twice a week, and drew a regular audience of over twelve million devoted fans.

  Ben Drabble picked up his pencil and made a couple of abstract doodles on the notepad in front of him.

  ‘So what do you think we should do to draw particular attention to the Laughing Postman in his last appearance before we fry him?’ he asked.

  Paddy Colligan, giving into the inevitable – even if he knew it was wrong – sighed resignedly. ‘I suppose we could make Jack have a stroke of good luck,’ he suggested.

  ‘Why, especially?’

  ‘Because tragedy’s always more poignant when it comes right on the heels of happiness.’

  Drabble nodded. ‘True,’ he agreed. ‘So what kind of luck did you have in mind? A win on the football pools?’

  ‘Yes, that would do,’ Colligan said wearily, wishing he could summon half the enthusiasm he’d once felt for the show.

  ‘A big win?’ Drabble asked.

  ‘No, the viewers wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t be ordinary – the kind of man you could bump into on the street – any more.’

  ‘A modest win, then? Something he could buy a bigger house with?’

  ‘Except that he’d never even think of buying a bigger house – because that would involve moving away from the Maddox Row he loves,’ Colligan warned. ‘He wouldn’t give up his job, either – not for all the money in the world.’

  ‘So he goes on just as normal,’ Drabble said. ‘And even though he could afford to buy a hundred new irons if he wanted to, he repairs the old one himself – and that’s what kills him. Nice!’

  The two scriptwriters spent another half hour sketching out the sequence of events which would lead to the Laughing Postman’s death just before the final credits rolled. There was still more work to do, but by the time the following Monday night came around, they would have it timed down to the last second.

  The victim would be seen to jump suddenly. There would probably be a close-up of the shock and agony on his face. But realism would not be taken too far. Though the make-up department was undoubtedly up to the job, the camera would not zoom in on a hand whose flesh had been burned away to reveal the bones, because, at half-past seven on a Monday evening, such gruesome details were to be avoided. Thus, the scripted death was planned.

  The unscripted death – the dea
th that only one person in the entire studio knew was about to occur – would be an entirely different matter. The shock it would deliver to the cast and crew of Madro would be much sharper and much deeper than the shock that same cast and crew were planning to inflict on their twelve million viewers. And unlike the carefully sanitised death of the Laughing Postman, it would be a messy affair. In fact, there would be blood everywhere.

  Two

  There were four actors in the rehearsal room – two men and two women – that particular late Monday afternoon. The men were standing on their marks, already playing out their scene. The woman stood against the wall, fairly close to one another, but conspicuously not together.

  The two men were roughly the same age – in their early forties – but one of them, George Adams, had adopted the stance of a much older man, and was leaning forward as if it required an effort for him to hear what the other man, Larry Coates, was saying.

  ‘I heard about that row you had with your niece, Sam,’ Coates said in a serious, almost mournful voice. ‘It’s not right that families should fall out like that, you know.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Adams agreed gravely, ‘but now it’s happened, I don’t know what to do about it.’

  ‘I didn’t think you would,’ Coates told him. ‘That’s why I popped round an’ had a word with her meself.’

  ‘An’ . . . an’ what did you say to her?’ Adams asked tremulously.

  ‘I said you never meant to hurt her canary, an’ she should know that as well as I do. I pointed out that when somebody gets to your age it’s very easy to mistake birdseed for rat poison. An’ I reminded her about all the things you’ve done for her in the past.’

  ‘An’ what did she say?’

  ‘She agreed she should never have lost her temper like that, an’ she’s comin’ round this afternoon to apologise. An’ Sam . . .’

  ‘Yes, Mr Taylor?’

  ‘You could have been more careful when you were feedin’ that bird of hers, now couldn’t you? So when she does come round, don’t to be too hard on her.’