The Dead Side of the Mike Read online

  Table of Contents

  The Charles Paris Mystery Series

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Charles Paris Mystery Series

  CAST, IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE

  SO MUCH BLOOD

  STAR TRAP

  AN AMATEUR CORPSE

  A COMEDIAN DIES

  THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MIKE

  SITUATION TRAGEDY

  MURDER UNPROMPTED

  MURDER IN THE TITLE

  NOT DEAD, ONLY RESTING

  DEAD GIVEAWAY

  WHAT BLOODY MAN IS THAT?

  A SERIES OF MURDERS

  CORPORATE BODIES

  A RECONSTRUCTED CORPSE

  SICKEN AND SO DIE

  DEAD ROOM FARCE

  THE DEAD SIDE OF THE MIKE

  A Charles Paris Mystery

  Simon Brett

  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 in 1980

  by Victor Gollancz

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

  Copyright © 1980 Simon Brett.

  All rights reserved.

  The moral right of the author has been asserted.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0005-1 (epub)

  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.

  TO DORIS who will understand that I’m only giving the hand that fed me an affectionate nibble (and with thanks to John for the title and to David, Peter and Richard for their help)

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHARLES PARIS PAUSED at the top of the steps leading down to the Ariel Bar, momentarily unable to see a path through its voluble mass of humanity to the source of alcohol. Mark Lear, with the assurance of a BBC native, plunged into the thicket of people, a rhetorical, ‘What do you want?’ thrown over his shoulder. Rhetorical, because he had known his guest long enough to supply the answer, ‘A large Bell’s.’

  Charles managed to wedge himself against a high ledge just inside the door. It was hot; the weather had suddenly changed and, for the first time that year, in early July, offered the possibility of a summer. Above the babbling surface of heads, he could see the room’s fine ceiling, which still boasted the building’s ancestry, its luxurious past as the Langham Hotel, where elegance had occasionally reigned and Ouida occasionally entertained guardsmen. But now the petalled roses and coving of the ceiling had been painted in the institutional colours of a hospital or government office. Proper BBC austerity. By all means let the staff enjoy themselves, but let them not be seen to enjoy themselves. For a moment the drab paint over the fine curlicues of the ceiling seemed a symbol of the organisation, of flamboyant creativity restrained by proper Civil Service circumspection.

  Still, it was comforting. Charles always felt on BBC Radio premises as he did on entering a church: not that he shared the faith of the celebrants, but that it was reassuring to know such faith still existed. He relaxed. He had found the afternoon a strain. It was always difficult to explain to fellow-actors who hadn’t done radio why one should feel tension working with the permanent safety-net of a script, but total reliance on voice, without any of the rest of an actor’s armoury, imposed new anxieties. Even when working with a producer as sympathetically cynical as Mark Lear.

  Mark worked in Further Education (a department whose exact function and intended audience Charles could never grasp) and that afternoon they had been recording a programme on Swinburne. It was one of a series called Who Reads Them Now?, in which various faded literary figures were reassessed to see if they had anything to offer to the modern reader (not much in most cases). Mark, remembering a feature on Thomas Hood called So Much Comic, So Much Blood which Charles had written some years previously, had rung and asked if there was anyone he’d like to re-assess. The Paris diary being as unsullied by bookings as usual and his long-running hare and hounds race with the tax man reaching a point where the latter was no longer going to be fobbed off with any scraps of paper other than banknotes, he assented, mentioning, off the top of his head, Swinburne, whose works he had not glanced at since leaving Oxford nearly thirty years before.

  He had enjoyed researching and writing the programme. It was a long time since he had become so involved in a project. And, after the strains of recording, he felt distantly confident that it had worked. A little enthusiasm insinuated itself into his mind. There was something there. Why shouldn’t he turn it into a one-man stage show, as he had with So Much Comic, So Much Blood? Why shouldn’t he write more for radio? The basic money really wasn’t bad, and always a good chance of repeats. It was just a question of getting himself organised.

  Simultaneous with this thought arrived what most frequently prevented him from getting himself organised. Mark handed it over. ‘Cheers. Thanks for doing the programme. I think it really worked.’

  Charles drank gratefully. ‘Hope so.’

  ‘No, I felt satisfied with it. All seemed to fit. Came out of the studio feeling we’d really made a programme. Don’t often get that. The Beeb puts out so much rubbish these days.’

  ‘I have to confess I don’t listen much.’ It was true. For a moment, Charles wondered why. The radio would be an ideal companion for those (increasingly frequent) days when he just mooched round his bedsitter. And yet it was hardly ever switched on. Maybe he didn’t want to be distracted from his mooching.

  ‘Radio Three and Four are okay, I suppose, rapidly going downhill, though. But it’s Radio One and Two that are really awful.’ Mark gave the little pause of someone about to swing a leg over his hobbyhorse. ‘Yuk, “Nation shall speak piss unto nation”.’

  Charles smiled politely at this distortion of the BBC’s motto, which Mark obviously kept polished in a little box for dinner parties, in the way his father might have kept pearl shirt studs. It was strange seeing Mark after all these years. Charles had forgotten the anti-establishment pose. Or at least, it had used to be a pose; now it seemed to have hardened into something beyond cynical phrase-making. But how old must Mark be now? Thirty-seven, thirty-eight? Perhaps he saw himself trapped, fully wound up, and pointed on an unswerving course towards his pension. In the old days he had always been complaining about the amount of dead wood at the top of the BBC; now perhaps he was feeling incipient Dutch Elm Disease himself. In the old days he had said he would never stay in the BBC. Only a couple of years, anyway. And then .
. .

  ‘Of course, I’m not going to stay,’ Mark went on. ‘As I say, today was good, but most of the time I’m producing totally predictable rubbish. I can’t think when I was last surprised by anything I did. No, I’ll get my own thing going, I don’t know, I’ll . . .’

  He returned to his drink. Maybe he could have finished the sentence, but Charles had a feeling that there was nothing more to add. Mark only wanted the negative benefit of escape; he had no positive thoughts of where he could escape to.

  Time to move the conversation on to a less morbid plane. ‘How are the wife and kids?’

  ‘Oh, they’re fine, fine.’ Mark Lear’s mind was elsewhere. His eyes kept scanning the swirl of heads. Looking for someone specific? Or just looking. Yes, there was quite a lot of talent around. Another piece of Charles’s memory of Mark fell into place. He’d always had a roving eye.

  The eyes roved on as he continued, ‘Vinnie is as ever, you know, full of good works, and the children are – well, you’ve had children . . .’

  ‘One.’

  ‘That’s enough to know that they are alternately tiresome and endearing. And always present. You must come and see us soon. We’re only up in Chalk Farm.’ The invitation was given automatically, without expectation of acceptance. ‘You haven’t gone back to Frances, have you?’

  ‘I see her sometimes.’ Charles didn’t want to be reminded of his own marriage. Not that he hated his wife. Far from it. He was probably as near to loving her as anyone else. But when they lived together, they bickered and things didn’t work. And he stumbled into affairs and . . .

  When it was all working, when he was secure of Frances’s love in the background and he had some nice beddable little actress in the foreground, it seemed an ideal relationship. But the balance was rarely achieved. Recently, beddable little actresses had become rare enough to qualify as an endangered species. And Frances, who had just been appointed headmistress of the school where she taught, had developed a new career dynamism, which seemed to leave little time for an intermittent husband. Charles felt ruffled, fifty-one and failing.

  He tipped his drink back, so that the ice clunked down on to his lips. ‘Another of those?’ he pointed at Mark’s dry white wine. ‘You haven’t got to rush away?’

  ‘Oh no.’ The Producer grinned with primary-school slyness. ‘I told Vinnie the studio was booked till ten. Since it’s now twenty past six, that gives me a bit of time.’

  Charles edged his way to the bar, elbow to the fore, wishing, not for the first time, that the human body had been built to a more triangular design. He achieved base camp of one elbow in a pool of beer, and immediately assumed his customary cloak of invisibility. Maybe the barmen really could not see him. Or maybe part of their induction into the mysteries of the BBC was rigorous training in recognising and ignoring people without grades and staff numbers.

  A tall man in a brown corduroy bomber jacket appeared at his shoulder, immediately drawing a barman’s eye. ‘Yes, Dave, what can I get you?’

  Charles turned to remonstrate, or rather, being English, turned to debate inwardly whether or not to remonstrate, but, fortunately, the man behind was a gentleman. ‘I think you were ahead of me,’ he said with a well-crowned smile.

  The voice was clear and professional, with an overtone of some accent. Scottish? American? But it carried authority. The barman grudgingly supplied Charles’s drinks, still resolutely ignoring his presence. ‘Saw you on the telly last night, Dave. On the quiz show.’

  ‘Oh yes. Owzat? Hope you liked it.’

  ‘Certainly did, Dave. Thought it was very funny. So did the wife. Is it going well, Dave?’

  ‘Pretty good reaction, I think. They seem happy with the ratings. Happy enough to book another series, anyway.’

  ‘Good for you, Dave. Oh, you’ll be leaving the radio soon, won’t you?’

  ‘No chance, no chance. Radio’s where I belong.’

  ‘I hope you’re right, Dave. The wife’d certainly miss your Late Night Show if it came off. She loves that Ten for a Tune competition.’

  ‘No danger of me going – unless the Beeb decides they’ve had enough of me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t worry about that, Dave. Now what can I be getting you?’

  Charles saw that he had his drinks and change. The latter had been deposited in a little pool of Guinness. The barman didn’t believe in handing money to people who were invisible.

  The man called Dave gave his order. ‘Perrier water for me – I have to work tonight. And what was it, girls?’

  He turned to two women, hooked on either arm of a short man in a sleek toupée. ‘Riesling please, Dave,’ said the older one, pronouncing it ‘Reisling’. Her inclusion in the appellation ‘girls’ was generous. She was a middle-aged lady of pleasant dumpiness, with long hair of a redness unavailable on the colour chart offered by God.

  ‘Right you are, Nita,’ said the man called Dave. ‘And for you?’ He turned to the second girl with a charm that almost disguised his ignorance of her name.

  This one was much more a girl, a shapely little wisp in a cream crochet dress. ‘Well, I’ll –’

  ‘No, I don’t think we’d better have another,’ interposed her thatched escort in a strong American accent. ‘We’re just about to go out to eat.’

  ‘Right you are, Michael.’

  ‘Then we’ll come along and see the show go out. Would you like that?’

  The girl giggled and said she would. ‘As the guy’s agent I don’t get many perks, but at least I can organise that,’ said the American with a laugh. ‘And who knows, maybe I can twist his arm, to play you a request. Even get you the Dave Sheridan Bouquet.’

  ‘Ooh.’ The girl squirmed.

  Charles shielded his cargo of drinks back to Mark, negotiating the rare stepping-stones of carpet through a maelstrom of handbags, briefcases and legs. Mark, predictably, was talking to a girl.

  She was short, probably not more than five foot three, and dark. Centre-parted black hair, well cut, framed an olive face dominated by enormous brown eyes. Once you saw the eyes, you didn’t notice the rest of her. Charles was vaguely aware of a boyish body in trim cord trousers and Guernsey sweater, but he was mesmerised by the eyes.

  She was talking animatedly as he approached. ‘But come on, of course it’s a political issue. No education is apolitical. None of it’s pure information; there’s always some dressing-up, some emphasis . . .’ She broke off and looked enquiringly at Mark.

  ‘This is Charles Paris. Charles – Steve Kennett.’

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Steve works in News. The World Tonight, that sort of thing.’

  ‘What do you do on it?’

  ‘Produce.’

  ‘Ah.’ Hardly looked old enough to listen to the programme, let alone produce it.

  She didn’t seem inclined to pick up her previous polemic, so Mark explained Charles’s part in the feature on Swinburne.

  ‘Algernon Charles,’ she said.

  ‘That’s the one.’

  She wrinkled her nose. ‘The only thing I remember about him was he was into flagellation, wasn’t he?’

  Charles smiled. ‘He certainly had a fascination for the relationship between pain and pleasure.’

  Mark recited,

  ‘I would find grievous ways to have thee slain,

  Intense device and superflux of pain;

  Vex thee with amorous agonies, and shake

  Life at thy lips and leave it there to ache.

  Good sado-masochistic stuff, isn’t it?’

  Charles was surprised by this sudden long quotation, until he realised that Mark was simply showing off. The resonant declamation was part of a cock-dance for the girl’s benefit. Unaccountably, he felt a little twinge of jealousy.

  But Steve didn’t react to any sexual message there may have been in the quotation. ‘Is sado-masochism an okay subject for Radio Four these days? I can never remember whether we’re in the middle of a new permissiveness or a Reithian Purit
an backlash – it changes from day to day.’

  ‘Doesn’t worry me,’ Mark replied. ‘We’re on Radio Three. There is no smut on Radio Three – by definition. As soon as it’s there it becomes Art. Anyway, we’re Further Education. Anything goes if it’s in a proper educational context.’

  ‘Or if it’s on Woman’s Hour,’ added Steve. ‘They can get away with murder.’

  ‘Murder.’ Mark smiled. ‘I heard rather a good line the other day – if there was a murder in the BBC, who do you think would have done it?’

  ‘No idea.’

  ‘The Executive Producer.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, he must have done something.’ They laughed. Mark pointed to Steve’s glass. ‘What’s that – a lager?’

  ‘Yes, but only if you’re getting one.’

  ‘Certainly I am. Charles and I are going to get resolutely and gloriously pissed tonight.’

  ‘You mean you’re not going to the Features Action Group Meeting?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You hadn’t forgotten? John Christie’s thing. Today’s Thursday.’

  ‘Oh shit.’

  ‘You had forgotten.’

  ‘Yes. Oh, Charles, I’m sorry, it had completely slipped my mind. I’ve got to go to this meeting.’

  ‘Don’t worry about it.’ Charles was still determined to spend the evening drinking, and he felt confident he could find other companions. There’s always someone to drink with in the BBC club.

  ‘Oh shit,’ said Mark again. He looked at his watch. ‘At seven, isn’t it? Well, if I’ve got to sit through that, I’m certainly going to need another drink.’ He dived back into the crowd.

  Charles raised a questioning eyebrow to Steve, who smiled and began apologetically, ‘It’s very BBC. You probably wouldn’t understand it. The fact is, in the great glorious past of radio, back in the days when people actually listened to it, there was a department called the Features Department, which produced various landmarks in sound like Steel and Under Milk Wood and other forgotten masterpieces. It was full of various brilliant producers, who, so far as one can tell, spent most of their time drinking in the George and arguing about whose sports jacket Dylan Thomas had puked over most often.