Dead Alone - Gay Longworth

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shit either – the one from the machine. Put it in a proper mug with a bit –’

      ‘Yeah, I know.’ It was always the same when Ray wanted to speak to one of his – Tarek searched for a word – associates. Associate was a good word. Hood was another. He opened the door and stepped down the aluminium steps into a potholed and heavily weeded car park. Walking towards him was Ray’s research assistant. Associate. Hood. He was a strange bloke. Somewhere in his thirties, Tarek thought, though it was difficult to tell. He was short and thin, but there was nothing weedy about Alistair Gunner. He was built like a featherweight fighter and showed no fear of the man everyone else shied away from. He didn’t talk much, had no friends and seemed to shadow St Giles. Tarek and Alistair eyed each other. He wasn’t sure who was more suspicious of whom. All Tarek did know was that Alistair had an ability to discover things about people which would make the News of the World weep.

      ‘Morning, Alistair,’ said Tarek.

      ‘Ray in?’

      ‘On the phone.’

      As always he just pushed the door open and walked in. No knock. No waiting for the summons. Bold as brass, walked on in.

      ‘Face down in the mud, eh?’ said Ray before Alistair closed the door on him. Tarek walked round the interconnecting Portakabins to the main studio and office building. Alistair Gunner had appeared one day from nowhere; he had no c.v., no experience in TV and no qualifications. But Ray St Giles had given him a job anyway. Just like that. Gunner had so much information on other people, Tarek found himself wondering whether he’d got something on the main man himself. They were close without being close, like a couple in an arranged marriage. Very occasionally, Tarek caught Ray staring at Alistair with a look of apprehension. It was as if he needed him around but didn’t trust him. Ray St Giles probably didn’t trust anyone.

      In the shoddy reception area there was a coffee machine. Tarek put his own money into the slot and waited for it to regurgitate the pale, foamy drink. Somewhere inside the studio real programmes were being made. But not by him and not by the cable company that had put their trust in Ray St Giles and his shadow. Tarek carried the drink back and knocked on the door. Ray and Alistair were leaning over an open file. He’d seen the type of file before. Marked ‘Cadell’. In it, Tarek had glimpsed a photograph of a man in a pinstripe suit checking into a hotel with a young blonde. Shortly afterwards Henrietta Cadell’s agent had rung up out of the blue and offered her for the ‘Mother’n’Son’ slot. Whatever he might say, Henrietta Cadell was the sort of guest Ray would pay good money for. Looking at Alistair’s shiny new leather jacket, Tarek guessed he had.

      ‘Tarek, get my agent on the line, tell her yes to the Yardie special, and tell her no more fucking supermarkets and cancel my talk at the young offenders’ unit. I’ve had enough of that shit. We are changing gear.’

      ‘Ray, you’ve got to –’

      ‘Just do it, Tarek. Who is paying your salary?’

      Tarek picked up the phone. ‘This shitty cable company,’ he whispered.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      Alistair Gunner was staring at him with his cold eyes. Tarek needed another job. This one was killing him.

       CHAPTER 13

      Jessie, Jones and P.J. emerged from the underground playground and walked back out into the hall.

      ‘Do you mind if I check her room?’ asked Jessie.

      ‘Whose?’

      Was he being deliberately obstreperous, or just downright stupid? Unless he thought she meant Bernie’s room. ‘Your wife’s room,’ she said deliberately.

      ‘Sorry,’ said P. J. Dean. ‘It’s up the stairs, on the right.’

      ‘Would you mind accompanying me?’

      ‘Oh, okay. This way.’

      ‘I’ll wait in the car,’ said Jones, already reaching for the front door.

      Jessie followed the billowing dressing gown up the stairs. At a half-landing the stairs split in two directions. A tall window reached up to the ceiling, giving an incredible view of their hundred-foot garden. The stone wall at the end backed directly on to Richmond Park.

      ‘The boys and I watch for deer,’ said P.J., pointing to the three pairs of binoculars on the table below the window. ‘You can usually find them in the vicinity of the Isabella Plantation. See, the clump of oaks over there on the left?’ P.J. was pointing out of the window now.

      Jessie looked at her watch. ‘If you don’t mind …’

      ‘Shit! Sorry, I keep forgetting why you’re here.’ He shook his head. ‘Does that seem weird to you?’ His green eyes were staring into hers.

      ‘It’s probably shock,’ she said quietly.

      ‘You don’t really think that, do you? You probably think I’m a law unto myself, that my marriage was a farce and I screwed every backing singer that walked through my door.’

      ‘I’d like to see the room now,’ said Jessie.

      ‘I’m a good father to those boys.’

      Jessie didn’t know what to say. He turned away from her and took the right-hand staircase two steps at a time. Jessie followed him along a galleried landing until they reached a corridor, at the end of which was a set of double doors. There was a key in the lock. P.J. pushed both doors open wide and stood back. Jessie walked into the forty-foot bedroom.

      ‘My room is down the other end,’ said P.J., before Jessie could ask.

      There was an awful lot of space for one small, insecure woman. Too much space. Immaculate. Soulless, like a hotel room. Huge white pillows were puffed up on a huge white bed, white sheets, white duvet, white bedspread. Thick white curtains were draped over an old boat mast; too long for the window, the material cascaded on to the white carpet. Jessie couldn’t decide whether it was virginal, marital or sacrificial. Whatever it was, this white, sunlit room was now a mausoleum. Verity Shore was dead, Jessie knew it, from the hairs on the back of her neck to the chill in her bones.

      The walk-in wardrobe was the size of Jessie’s bedroom and bathroom combined. Row upon row of designer labels and stacks upon stacks of shoe boxes. Jessie was momentarily awestruck. Maggie would have wept at this sartorial altar. The sickly sweet aroma of Estée Lauder’s White Mischief emanated from the clothes.

      ‘Obscene, isn’t it?’ said P.J. ‘Half this shit, she never even wore. The arguments we’ve had about that.’

      Jessie turned to him. He was walking slowly towards her, his eyes on his wife’s clothes. ‘I think she did it to shock me. The price tags. They all came up on my credit card, of course. How can anyone spend twelve grand on a top?’ Jessie watched him close in on her and said nothing. ‘Where I come from, that could practically buy a house. I swear those shops saw her coming and licked their greedy lips. Talk about the emperor’s new clothes.’ He stopped walking, but continued to talk to his hanging hundreds and thousands. ‘Eventually I had to put a limit on any individual spend. Anything over a thousand and the bank rang me to verify it.’ He turned to look at Jessie. Those piercing green eyes a few centimetres from hers. ‘She didn’t like that one bit.’

      ‘Are you telling me your marriage was over?’

      ‘Not over, poisoned.’

      ‘By Verity?’

      ‘By everything, I suppose. My own stupidity, for thinking that she would change.’ He pinched the bridge of his nose with his finger and thumb and bent his head forward. ‘My own stupidity for believing that women like her married men like me for anything other than money and position.’ He laughed drily. ‘The oldest profession

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