‘Which one’s she?’ Portland peered at the blow-up.
‘That one. She’s blinking but her boobs aren’t,’ said DC Lightfoot excitedly, and got punched in the ribs by DC Smithson.
‘Go and see Dame Hermione, Tim,’ said Portland. ‘You’re good with middle-aged nymphos too, but remember, her alarm’s wired by umbilical cord to the Chief Constable’s navel, so watch it.’
Gablecross ground his teeth. The rest of the team laughed.
The French crew had evidently been hopeless to interview. Their English, which had improved so dramatically during filming, had deteriorated equally dramatically when confronted by DC Smithson’s truculence.
‘“I was weeth heem, and he was weeth me and other heems, and heem was with heem,”’ snapped DC Smithson. ‘They’re more obstructive than that appalling Campbell-Black.’
‘But not quite as gorgeous,’ sighed Debbie.
‘We have a host of suspects.’ Portland rubbed his hands together. ‘Priority is to find the memoirs and Rannaldini’s safe.’
‘Clive may have got them,’ said Gablecross. ‘He was whispering to that ugly cow from the Sentinel yesterday.’
‘Well, nobble him today.’
While Portland gave the others lines to follow, Gablecross’s mind drifted back to something old Miss Cricklade, who took in washing, had told him when he’d given her a lift into Rutminster that morning. What with Dame Hermione, Miss Bussage in Abingdon, Clive, if he could catch him, Rupert Campbell-Black on the set this evening, it was going to be a long day.
He was brought back to earth by DC Smithson whining that everyone at Valhalla was a publicity-obsessed nutter.
‘Well, as one not unacquainted with the media,’ Portland examined his fingernails, ‘you have to know how to use them. I suggest we ask the help of Lady Rannaldini to appeal to the nation for info.’
‘She was in bad shape yesterday,’ said Gablecross quickly.
But Portland wasn’t listening. He loved press conferences and publicity. He couldn’t wait to wrap up the meeting so he could gloat over the smashing photographs of himself in the morning’s papers.
‘Doubt if you’d learn much,’ Gablecross was saying. ‘Certain it’s an inside job.’
‘I’m the best judge of that,’ said Portland coolly. ‘Lady R’s a lovely lady, she’s chairman of Enid’s NSPCC committee.’
‘She could start by paying more attention to her own child,’ snapped Gablecross.
49
Few people had seen inside Hermione’s pretty Georgian Mill — which stood, hidden by trees, two hundred yards from the river Fleet — because she was far too lazy and tight with money to entertain.
Gablecross was surprised therefore to find the dark green front door open and his wife’s favourite singer standing radiant and smiling in the hall. Only when he’d waved his ID card at her did he realize that he was about to shake the outstretched hand of a replica of Hermione’s waxwork in Madame Tussaud’s.
‘Pack it in,’ he hissed, as Karen burst out laughing. ‘Show some fucking respect.’
Dame Hermione, veiled and clad entirely in black, lay on a dark red chaise-longue, with Sexton and Howie dancing attendance. Hermione had not forgiven Howie for being in the know about Pushy’s top notes and espousing her cause as Delilah, and was determined he shouldn’t get any cut out of her newspaper deals, offers of which were pouring in from all over the world and being handled by Sexton. Howie, who loathed the country, was equally determined to hang in.
Spurred on by Gerry Portland’s mockery and having often been impeded in car chases by Dame Hermione’s limo, parked slap across Paradise High Street, Gablecross was determined to stand no nonsense. This excited the hell out of Hermione, who loved her men masterful. Whipping back her veil, she patted the sofa beside her. ‘I know we’re going to be friends, let’s call each other by our given names. Mine’s Hermione, and yours is…?’
‘Officer,’ said Karen tartly.
‘Shut up,’ snarled Gablecross. ‘It’s Timothy.’
‘Does she have to be in here?’ Hermione glared at Karen.
‘Yes,’ said Gablecross regretfully.
‘I’ve just been talking to my very good friend Chief Constable Swallow,’ announced Hermione.
Which, translated, thought Karen, means, ‘Mess with me and you’re a dead duck.’ Looking round the room, she decided, you could fall asleep counting the photographs, paintings and sculptures of Hermione. Magazines with her face on the cover lay on a nearby table. Among the trophies on the shelf was the Artist of the Year award she’d won in October.
‘I urged the Chief Constable to call a press conference,’ Hermione was now telling Gablecross, ‘so I can beseech people to come forward and shed light on this dreadful crime. My son, Little Cosmo, has lost a father, I a cherished friend.’
‘Lady Rannaldini might want to do it,’ said Sexton, as he whisked out of the room to get to the telephone before Howie.
‘Lady Rannaldini has no experience of the media,’ said Hermione dismissively.
‘Nor is she as universally beloved as you, Dame Hermione,’ lied Howie.
‘Indeed.’ Hermione bowed, then turned to Gablecross. ‘I have had a thousand and twenty-three letters already, Timothy, and lost ten pounds in weight.’
Sexton, thank goodness, was as adept at twiddling the knobs on her weighing scales as Rannaldini had been on her recordings.
‘I feel I owe it to my public, and to Rannaldini, to appeal to the nation on television,’ went on Hermione.
‘I wouldn’t, Hermsie.’ Sexton trotted back into the room and squeezed her hand. ‘They always turn out to be the one wot’s done it.’
‘Sexton, Sexton.’ Hermione gave a low laugh. ‘How wise you are.’
‘It’s the Guardian on the phone,’ whispered Sexton.
‘I’ll tell them you’re out.’ Howie leapt to his little feet.
‘Out?’ thundered Hermione, as if she’d sallied forth on some junket. ‘I shall never go out again. I must speak with them, for Rannaldini’s sake.’ She seized the telephone. ‘Mr Rusbridger? Alan?… No, my producer has brought me fresh fruit and Belgian chocolates to keep up my strength for the sake of my public.’
‘Do you know what Helen is wearing for the funeral?’ she asked Sexton, as she came off the telephone five minutes later. ‘Could you ask Lady Griselda to pop in this afternoon? I shall wear black, of course, and a veil.’
‘Thin enough to show the tragedy etched on your lovely features.’ Howie was laying it on with a JCB.
Karen got the giggles again, and had to take her notebook over to the window and gaze at the dried-up river as Gablecross tried to pin down Hermione on her movements on Sunday night. People had seen her returning around eight in Rannaldini’s helicopter.
‘I had been concertizing at an open-air gala in Milan. Because the proceeds were going towards a new hospital,’ added Hermione virtuously, ‘I only charged my charity fee of sixty thousand pounds.’
That’s more than I earn in four years, thought Karen in disgust.
‘Around the time Rannaldini died,’ Gablecross pressed on, ‘at about ten thirty, several witnesses heard you singing a number from Don Carlos in the wood. They said a voice had never sounded more exquisite.’
‘Then it must have been mine,’ twinkled Hermione.
‘Did you walk through the wood on Sunday night?’
‘Timothy, Timothy, if I sang pianissimo from the garden at River House, my voice would float across to Valhalla, but I didn’t go out. It must have been a tape or a CD. Rannaldini had plenty. He was clearly comparing them with the rushes.’