‘NAH, IT WAS just a laugh,’ said Shelley. ‘Daryl’s always doing stuff like that. His sense of humour’s bleeding mental.’
‘So he wasn’t making any point by getting the video shown?’
‘No, Chowss, he doesn’t work like that. Daryl was just miffed that he had to go and sit through hours of rehearsal when all he was going to have to do was say “Thank you very much for my car”. So he thought “What can I do to liven things up a bit? I know, bung the bloke in the control box a flyer – get him to show a smutty video.” That’s how his mind works. It’s only a joke – that’s Daryl all over.’
She looked affectionately across the bar to where her husband was drinking and swapping either scatological jokes or custom car minutiae with a bunch of fellow salesmen.
Charles was inclined to believe her. It would have been in character for Daryl to stage that kind of meaningless prank. And there was no reason to believe that the Top Salesman had any suspicions about Dayna Richman’s death, so he really had no other motive for doing it.
For Charles, on the other hand, the video – or rather Ken Colebourne’s reaction to it – had triggered an avalanche of new thoughts.
The Marketing Director’s first response, before he saw what was actually being shown, was the one that mattered. He had panicked, thinking what was on the screen was not a commercial product, but a secretly-filmed video of a man and a woman making love.
Charles only knew of one person in the Delmoleen set-up who had ever been into that kind of stuff. Dayna.
She had tried to persuade Trevor to film her with a sexual partner, and blackmail seemed to be a speciality of hers. Even though the forklift operator said he’d refused her request, it was quite possible that she’d found someone else more ready to co-operate. Or indeed she could have set up the apparatus herself. It wouldn’t have been a problem; camcorders were getting easier to use all the time.
Assuming then that such a blackmailing tape existed – and Ken Colebourne’s reaction suggested he knew it did – the question arose as to who was Dayna’s co-star.
And Charles didn’t reckon he had to look far for the answer. Dayna Richman had made no secret of her intention to screw her way to the top. She had confronted Brian Tressider in an unequivocally sexy way in the warehouse on the day she died. And, what was more, he had been on the premises at the time when her ‘accident’ happened. The scandal her disclosure of their relationship might cause to a man in his position was quite sufficient motive for murder.
All the evidence suddenly seemed to be pointing in the same direction.
“Well, all that looks bloody boring.’
Shelley’s words brought him back to the present. She was looking disparagingly at a printed sheet of paper.
‘What’s that?’
“The Wives’ Programme.”’ Her voice was heavy with irony. ‘Always at these conferences they set up some exciting things for the little ladies to do while the men are stuck in meetings.’ She held the paper out. ‘Look – “Visit to the Royal Pavilion and tour of its kitchens; Shopping in the Lanes; Lunch; then a Tour of a Local Winery, followed by Cream Tea” . . . Well, stuff that for a game of soldiers!’
‘Doesn’t appeal?’
‘No, bleeding boring. Got all the other wives to cope with, apart from anything else. Dreary load of old bags most of them are. And dear Brenda Tressider leading us on, like some bleeding Chief Guide or Brown Owl. Won’t catch me doing any of that, I can tell you.’
‘So how’re you proposing to spend tomorrow?’ asked Charles.
Shelley grinned a rather mischievous little grin. ‘Thought I might look for some entertainment here.’
‘Here? What, at the conference, you mean?’
‘Nah. Upstairs in my room is what I mean. Do I make myself clear?’
She certainly did. Charles was once again struck by how very attractive she was. Shelley Fletcher had that overt sexiness which can always override masculine better judgement.
She chuckled throatily. ‘Might you be free then during the day tomorrow, Chowss?’
He was hooked instantly. ‘Well, yes. I’ve got to do the Confectionery presentation, but that’s first thing in the morning, so, say, after eleven . . . yes, I am pretty well free.’
She turned the full beam of her blue eyes on to his. ‘Good. Good.’
‘Good,’ Charles echoed.
“Cause Daryl and some of the lads’ll be able to sneak out from the odd session, I’m sure.’
‘Oh?’ said Charles.
‘And some of the secretaries, and some of the wives ’n’ all – there are a few who swing a bit and wouldn’t be that keen on the Royal Pavilion, if someone suggested the right alternative . . .’
‘Ah.’
‘No, I think we could have a nice time tomorrow, Chowss,’ she purred.
‘Tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow. Oh, Damn,’ he said, preparing to lie. ‘I’ve suddenly remembered Will Parton, my partner in this business, is insisting that I should sit in on as many of the conference sessions as possible tomorrow.’
He’d had no alternative. He knew it was a hopelessly old-fashioned reaction, but – much though he would have relished an individual encounter with Shelley Fletcher – Charles Paris had never been able to come to terms with the idea of sex as a community activity.
Perhaps because his day’s drinking had started so late, Charles did find he was rather making up for lost time. Or it may have been the company. The Delmoleen salesmen and their wives seemed determined to enjoy their employers’ hospitality to the full, and round of drinks followed round with astonishing fluency.
It was only when he crossed the hotel’s reception area to find a Gents and felt a blast of cold air from outside, that Charles realised how drunk he was. Must slow down, he thought. Mustn’t cock up the Confectionery presentation in the morning. A speech delivered by someone with a really bad hangover wouldn’t be much improvement over one delivered by a man with a stutter.
‘Excuse me,’ asked a voice from the reception desk, ‘are you Mr Paris?’
‘What? Oh. Yes.’
‘There was a telephone message for you. Could you ring Mr Skellern as soon as possible, please?’
‘Right. Thanks,’ said Charles, as he stumbled on towards the Gents.
Very unusual, he thought as he peed copiously, for Maurice to be ringing him. But he didn’t have the warm feeling that an actor traditionally gets from a message to ring his agent. His first thought was not that the National Theatre had suddenly decided they wanted him to do his Hamlet. Nor that Hollywood had finally made a decision in his favour about who the new James Bond was to be. No, his first thought was that Maurice had somehow found out that his client was working without telling him.
Yes, Charles would return the call. But ‘as soon as possible’ might not be very soon.
Thinking of phone calls, he must ring Frances too. Been a bit unfortunate, their last encounter. Well, their last two encounters, come to that. The day at Wimbledon hadn’t been a major social triumph. No, little bit of minor fence-mending might be needed there. Must ring Frances and sort things out with her. Soon.
But not tonight. Always better to be sober when attempting reconciliation with his wife.
One more drink, he thought as he re-entered the bar. Just one, then I’ll stop. Need a clear head for the morning.
But with the number of such good intentions he had formulated in his life, Charles could have laid out a five-lane motorway to hell. The one drink became four, and those escalated into Room Service bottles of whisky in his bedroom with Will Parton and a bunch of salesmen whose precise names Charles couldn’t recall but whom he knew all to be very good chaps.
Rendered incautious by alcohol, Charles and Will started saying what they really thought about the corporate world. All the giggling they had been carefully holding in for the last weeks burst out, and Charles found the salesmen an easy and indulgent audience for his impression of Robin Pritchard.
‘It’s so big,’ he was saying. ‘I mean, big on a global scale. You know, we’re talking cosmic outreach here. I mean, on a scale of one to ten, the concept scores a cool hundred. We are not talking ordinary muesli bar here, we are talking galactic muesli bar.’
The salesmen roared their appreciation, encouraging him to continue.
‘And the revolutionary thing about this new muesli bar – I mean, the, like, globally, cosmically different element in its concept – is that the new Delmoleen “Green” tastes exactly like a pan-scourer!’
The salesmen loved this too. They roared again. In fact, the hilarity was so general and so raucous that none of them heard the door open.
‘Could you keep the noise down, please!’
In the doorway, with a face like a glacier, stood Brenda Tressider.