“I was told Mary was forever changing her mind. Must have been a pain for the crewmen like you.”
“Fair comment.”
“And Dave Tudor did his best to smooth the way and stopped you all from downing tools and coming out on strike?”
Fergus tried to grin and it was more of a grimace.
“Or murdering her?”
Now he turned ashen. He wasn’t ready for a low punch like that.
“Joke,” Diamond said. “We all know Mary died from the drink.” He’d noted Fergus’s alarmed reaction and it was enough for now. “Everyone seemed to like Tudor. What do you think happened to him?”
A shrug. “He moved on, that’s all.”
“Really? You make it sound as if he’s still alive. He wasn’t heard of again. All his experience was in television. If he’d got a job with another company one of you would have picked up the news on the grapevine.”
“You reckon?”
“He didn’t pack up and go. His stuff was still in his flat.”
“I wouldn’t know about that.”
“Get away. Your girlfriend knows. Candida was sent up to Kipling Avenue to look for him. Or did she volunteer?”
Fergus’s eyes made tiny, troubled movements.
“Was she upset when she came back?”
No answer.
Diamond knew when he’d touched a raw nerve. “You were jealous of Tudor, this charming guy everyone liked. He and Candida were too close for your liking. Was he seeing her outside work?”
He chose not to answer.
“Or is that only what you suspected?”
Fergus clenched his fists and the serpent tattoos rippled. Baiting him was a dangerous game, but Diamond wasn’t stopping now.
“When Tudor disappeared from the scene, you wouldn’t have shed any tears. The field was clear for you to move in with Candida, or were you two already an item?”
This triggered a response from Fergus. A strong one. “Are you stitching me up?” He slung his coffee cup aside, swayed back, braced himself and made a grab for Diamond’s shirt front.
Before Diamond could react, a hand grasped Fergus’s wrist and gripped it. Paul Gilbert had stepped between them. He wasn’t allowing his boss to be headbutted. “Don’t even think about it.” He wasn’t built on the same scale as the rigger, but he was strong and fiercely loyal. He leaned towards Fergus and the pressure forced the big man to take a step back, a step that defused a dangerous confrontation.
Gilbert had saved both men from an outcome they would have regretted. You don’t get away with assaulting a police officer. And this wasn’t the time or place to make an arrest.
Fergus seemed to come to his senses. He jerked his arm free of Gilbert’s hold and muttered something about his rights.
“What’s going on here?”
Greg Deans must have been watching. He’d moved fast across the lawn, leaving the director and his team staring after him.
“Nothing serious,” Diamond told Deans. “Fergus and me catching up on a few things, that’s all.”
“What about? Nobody told us you were coming.” Here, in front of his actors and crew, the short, red-bearded man with the carrying voice was every inch the boss.
Cool as outer space, Diamond produced an answer. “Didn’t your office get the message?”
This piece of hokum disarmed Deans. He frowned and shook his head.
“A communications cock-up, obviously,” Diamond said. “Your people or mine, who’s to say?” Far from shaken by the dust-up with Fergus, he was energised and ready for more. “Now that you’re here, Mr. Deans, do you have a few minutes to spare?”
“It’s not convenient.”
“You’d better make it convenient, then. You’re the senior man here, aren’t you?”
Senior as Deans was, he didn’t have the authority to stand in the way of a police investigation. “Keep it short, then. We’re on a tight schedule.” He turned to Fergus. “Get your team ready to start scene seventeen as soon as I join you, please.”
Fergus didn’t need more encouragement. A convict on the run wouldn’t have moved off any faster.
“About Dave Tudor’s disappearance,” Diamond said to Deans. “When we spoke in your office, I didn’t appreciate how new you were to the show at the time he went missing. You couldn’t have known him.”
“I didn’t know anyone. I’d just started.”
“So you wouldn’t have understood what the fuss was about?”
“There wasn’t much at first. Candida filled in for him. After a few days Mary got worried and sent Candida to check the flat.” He stopped. “I’m sure I told you this.”
Diamond shook his head. “Her name didn’t come up when we spoke.”
“That’s understandable, pet. No one has seen her for years.”
The “pet” rankled, but blandishments like that were built into the persona Deans had developed to deal with everyone. There was no point in objecting, so Diamond stayed on track. “You will have seen her the evening before Mary died. She joined you in the Shield and Dagger.”
Deans raised a finger as if his memory was working again. “You’re right. We’d finished filming an entire episode and Candida turned up out of the blue. I don’t think I spoke to her apart from a hello darling and a quick peck when she came in. I feel sure I told you about that evening.”
“You did, but we didn’t go into who else was there.”
“The usual suspects.” He grinned and added, “As they say. The Shield is our favourite watering place.”
“Crew as well as actors?”
“Decidedly. There’s no discrimination.”
“Fergus?”
“Sure to have been. He likes his drink and Mary was buying. She was always generous.”
“Who else? Sabine?”
“All the cast for sure. Even dear old Daisy Summerfield, bless her. They didn’t all stay late. In fact, Mary herself left about nine.”
“Well tanked?”
Deans flapped his hand in dissent. “I told you before, sweetie. She’d had a few vodkas, that’s all, but she bought an extra bottle at the bar and took it with her. I guess she drank it all at home. Solitary drinking. Isn’t that the saddest thing?”
“She was definitely alone, then?”
“Not when she left the pub. Candida offered to drive her home — which was only a short walk away — but Candie was on soft drinks and we learned later that she was pregnant and being extra careful.”
“Yes, she told me herself she didn’t go inside the house. So if Mary got through that entire bottle, how many shots was that? Twenty? It depends on the size of the glass, I suppose.”
Deans nodded. “Dylan Thomas’s famous last words come to mind: ‘I’ve had eighteen straight whiskies. I think that’s a record.’”
“Did Candida feel responsible for Mary, offering to take her home?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just a vague theory. She didn’t announce her pregnancy in the pub that evening, did she? She told me she shared the good news with Mary in the car.”
“I can understand that. I expect she wanted her old boss to know first. She’d been Mary’s AP for over a year after Tudor left, so they were close.”
“That would explain it, then.”
“So,” Deans brought his hands together in front of his chest, “what’s your theory, officer?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“I can guess. You think Mary was so thrilled to hear about the baby that she went home and sank the rest of the vodka in one session. It seems as good an explanation as any, thinking back.”
Diamond gave the slight nod that said his mind had been there already.
Deans sighed and said with genuine pathos in his voice, “Candie had quit the job when she first got pregnant a couple of years before, but she miscarried not long after, poor love. Conceiving another baby must have made her very excited. She kept it from the rest of us because she wanted to share her feelings with Mary first. We never heard who the father was.”