“He’s still a missing person, however unimportant he was. Report directly to me, Jean. I’m not involving anyone else at this stage. Do you watch Swift?”
“I’ve seen it. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan.”
“Me neither.”
He left her to start the check.
4
Everyone was back at the weir for a new day of filming, including the stuntwoman rescued the evening before. Ann Bugg was a true professional, willing to go again and get it right. DC Paul Gilbert also wanted to impress as a pro, back and ready for more, eager to solve the mystery of the missing rigger. He still hadn’t discovered who had called the police in the first place. Steering clear of the crew members he’d met before, he headed towards the fleet of TV trucks and vans parked along the river bank. A bunch of technicians chatted, coffees in hand, opposite the food truck.
“Jake who? Never heard of him,” was the first answer. “Got a picture?”
Gilbert was forced to admit he hadn’t. “I was hoping someone would know him.”
“You’d best speak to the grips.”
“I did and all they could tell me is he’s about forty, thin, dark-haired and with a bit of a moustache.”
“Could be almost anyone.”
“They don’t seem over concerned. I think he’s new to their team.”
“Couldn’t hack it, I daresay.”
“I don’t think he was inexperienced, or he wouldn’t have been hired.”
“The others could have given him the elbow. They’re a surly mob.”
Gilbert didn’t need telling. “I went to his lodgings and he hasn’t been back there.”
“He won’t if he jacked in the job. He’ll have left Bath by now.”
The same possibility was in Gilbert’s mind. His big opportunity as investigating officer could end with a whimper. “We don’t know who reported he was missing.”
“Housemate, I expect,” the techie said.
“He rented his own flat. I’m thinking someone from here.”
“It could be fuck all to do with work.”
“Right, but I have to start somewhere. On the day he disappeared, were you filming here?”
“No, mate. We only started here Monday. We was at the old airfield off the A46.”
“Charmy Down?” Gilbert knew the long-abandoned site of World War Two fighter operations, a bleak, exposed place north of Bath he had cycled to as a boy and hardly ever visited since. He remembered pillboxes and a ruined control tower.
“Charmy it ain’t,” the techie said. “This is heaven compared to up there. Wind, rain, thick mud. Her ladyship didn’t like it one bit.”
“The woman who plays Swift?”
“She had her motorhome up there and refused to come out one day it was blowing a gale. Typical British summer. We all froze to death waiting to see if she changed her mind.”
“And Jake Nicol was there?”
“I told you I don’t know the guy.”
“He only lasted a couple of days.”
“Can’t say I blame him.”
“I’m hoping someone has a photo of him.”
“Try the production office. Like as not, they’ll have his mugshot. We’re all in their rogues’ gallery.”
“Where’s that — local?”
“The Colonnades. Second floor.”
He could walk it in five minutes. After the warning about treading on eggs, Gilbert decided he’d better check first with the boss, so he moved to a quiet spot behind the food truck and phoned in.
Diamond told him to stay put. “Between you and me, Paul, I’m looking into the other guy who went missing, the assistant producer.”
“Dave Tudor? Four years ago, guv?”
“Right, but there could be a connection. Thousands of people go missing each year, I know, but if there’s anything fishy in all the misfortunes in this show, the two who disappeared are the ones worth looking at.”
Gilbert made a sound of agreement, as if he’d already reached the same conclusion.
“This is still sensitive stuff,” Diamond said. “Keep your interest low key. We don’t want the luvvies getting alarmed.”
“They’ll have read the paper, same as the rest of us, won’t they?”
“Yes, and some nervous ones will worry, but the majority will laugh it off as a scare story made up to sell papers. However, if we take this to the next level, I want to be well briefed. That’s why I’m looking to you to dig up all you can on Jake Nicol.”
“It’s difficult without knowing what he looked like. I was told the production office have a photo.”
“Yup, it’s a chicken and egg situation. Bear with me and stay right where you are.”
Another egg metaphor. Gilbert was tempted to point out that you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs, but he didn’t.
Jean Sharp’s searches had found no listing of Dave Tudor as a missing person, so where had the Post got its information? Diamond called his ex-journalist sergeant, Ingeborg Smith, to the office and asked if she still had contacts at the newspaper. She said she would need to find out who was still on the staff.
“I’d like to know where the jinx story comes from,” Diamond told her. “Sounds like someone with an axe to grind. Some of these incidents go back to 2013. Old news. I was going to say ‘dead and buried’ but in the circumstances...”
“You think there’s something in it — the jinx stuff?”
“Oh, come on, Inge. Someone has an interest in fanning the flames. It’s not all deaths and disappearances. They’ve scraped the barrel for some of these. I don’t blame the paper for running the story, but who’s behind it and why?”
“Somebody with a grudge against the show?”
“And a strong imagination.”
“The editor will have checked that everything really happened before they went public.”
“What I’m asking, Inge, is who fed them this.”
“Reveal the source? That’s the one thing a journo is unlikely to do.”
An hour later, with the phone to her ear, she looked up at Diamond and shook her head. Like Jean Sharp, she’d got nowhere.
Which was why, not long after, Diamond himself pressed the door-phone button for Swift and Proud Productions in the Colonnades. The voice on the intercom snapped from a bored drawl to full attention when he spoke the word “police.” “Come right up. Our suite is on the second floor opposite the stairs.”
A short, smiling, red-bearded man in denim shirt and jeans was waiting inside the door. “So... an inspector calls.”
Diamond summoned up a smile to show he got the reference, but made sure his proper rank was noted when he announced himself. “And you are...?”
“Greg Deans.”
“The producer of Swift?”
“The producer of everything here, my dear, including rabbits from hats when needed.”
Diamond didn’t smile a second time. He wasn’t here for laughs and he didn’t appreciate being anyone’s dear, least of all a man he’d only just met. He wanted straight answers.
He wasn’t going to get them from Greg Deans. “I’m a disappointment to you, I can see. You expected someone twice my size with a loud suit and a large cigar. Actually our executive producer, Saltus Steven, fits the bill better. The bad news is that Saltus isn’t in. The good news is we can use his office.”
The room at the back was spacious enough for five leather armchairs as well as a desk the size of a flat-bed truck with nothing on it except a two-foot-high clay sculpture of Charlie Chaplin. The wall opposite was dominated by a framed montage of photos of a grinning overweight man enjoying the company of princes, prime ministers and film stars.