normal. Ready to have a good show.’
‘And what was normal, for Mr Clough?’ The DI glances at the empty wine bottles.
‘Yes, erm, well, on studio days, he liked a drink, you know. Or two. Um. Well, on other days, as well, if I’m honest.’
‘And so he’d been drinking this evening?’
‘Well actually, I’m not sure how much he had… Until he started shaking and slurring his words, I thought he was sober. But then he just keeled over.’
‘And other than wine, did you notice Mr Clough take anything else this evening?’
Elizabeth looks across at Matthew, who is staring back at her with an unreadable expression. She chooses her words carefully. ‘Well, um, he never eats before the show. He likes to go out for dinner afterwards. I mean, he’s got quite an – appetite. So he picks at stuff before the show – Percy Pigs mainly, Yellow Bellies, Smarties…’
Elizabeth glances around the room. She can’t see any of the usual sweet-shop detritus, just one bowl of fruit slowly mouldering under its cellophane wrapping. ‘We did have some food props on the show. We were going to do a tasting because we had the celebrity chef, Paolo Culone, on the show.’
‘Never heard of him,’ DI Watson says flatly.
Elizabeth looks at her helplessly. ‘I’m not sure if Ricky actually ate any of it. I mean, he made out like he did, for the show, but…’ DI Watson looks at her sceptically.
The Controller has had enough of not being included. He adopts a pose and an expression Elizabeth knows only too well and speaks as if addressing a small child instead of a senior officer of the law. ‘Detective Inspector – Watson, is it? As I’m sure you know, Ricky Clough was a man in his late forties, erm, early fifties, who was quite a bit overweight and drank too much for his own good. I’ve known him for years. He was also under a lot of stress, you know, ratings and so on. I think you’ll find that’s a classic coronary case, right there.’
Elizabeth understands that Matthew wants nothing more than for the network to escape any further interrogation. He doesn’t want Ricky’s appetite for the high life exposed and examined. He wants the police off the premises and the network’s reputation unsullied.
The policewoman looks at him without saying anything. The silence hangs heavily in the room and Elizabeth begins to feel hot and itchy. The sergeant is looking miserably at his boots. ‘You may be jumping to conclusions, sir.’ The detective inspector is icily sarcastic. ‘It would be foolish for us to do so. And as yet…’ she nods briefly at her colleague, who struggles thankfully to his feet. ‘And as yet, the cause of death is not established.’ She looks stern as she turns at the door. ‘So we’ll see you both tomorrow morning. We’ll come to your offices first thing.’
Elizabeth glances anxiously at her boss. Matthew clearly doesn’t like the idea of the police arriving in full view of everyone at the TV studios. He says very hastily, ‘We’ll come to the police station.’
DI Watson looks at him as if considering this, but then shrugs. ‘Alright, if you prefer. Paddington Green, 10 a.m. Don’t expect any tea. It goes without saying that this is an ongoing investigation so please say nothing in the meantime. Our press people are liaising with yours. This room is now being sealed for evidence. Goodnight.’ And with that, DI Watson strides out of the room, ushering Elizabeth and the Controller ahead of her, and slams the door behind her with an almighty bang.
Back in the Green Room, most of the production team have left for a spontaneous wake at the King’s Head, except for Lola, who’s being comforted on the sofa by Robin. His eyes are also red-rimmed but, as Elizabeth comes in, glitteringly alert to the prospect of further drama. Kevin, the Head of Press, is still in the corner, talking into his mobile. Matthew moves to the drinks table, now laden with empty wine bottles, and shakes a few to see what dregs are left. ‘Christ, is there no whisky here?’
‘It’s a banned substance.’ Elizabeth reddens at the sudden realisation that the principal reason it’s banned is now lying in a hospital morgue.
‘Banned? Who banned it?’ He turns on her accusingly.
‘You did.’
Various measures, not many of them successful, have been taken to curb Ricky’s excesses. A complete ban on alcohol was deemed unworkable – providing it for the guests before the show produced the sort of loose-tongued talk that gives a chat show its headlines – so they’d tried instead to empty Ricky’s dressing room of all bottles, but he’d simply taken to stealing them from the Green Room. In the end Matthew decided a firm line needed to be drawn – and he had drawn it at Scotch.
Elizabeth realises that their intern, Sam, is sitting miserably on the sofa by herself. She’s always the last to leave because although she isn’t awarded a London Living Wage, she is awarded the responsibility of locking up the Green Room at the end of the night.
‘Sam,’ Elizabeth says pleadingly and the intern jumps up, grateful that someone has finally spoken to her. ‘Please could you find some whisky… somehow… somewhere?’ Sam nods quickly and runs out of the room. Elizabeth puts her arm around Lola while Matthew sits on the edge of a chair, uncertain how to interject himself into the emotionally charged scene. He hasn’t got where he’s got to without previously keeping all his presenters alive and kicking.
Lola begins to sob on Elizabeth’s shoulder. ‘I mean, Ricky seemed so fine this afternoon! Like really normal, you know? He’s not been drinking or you know, doing – anything else.’ Her mascara begins to run in deep black rivulets down her cheeks. Elizabeth has never seen her friend so unkempt. She’s always impressed that Lola can turn up for any crisis with her face done, her hair plaited or piled, and in clothes so tight and heels so high that Elizabeth is surprised she can move or breathe. Elizabeth, in contrast, keeps her hair cut short so that she can simply dry it by running her fingers through it each morning and wears a combination of short skirts and pumps that allow for running, since she always seems to be going at twice the speed of everyone else. (‘We should put a battery pack on you,’ Hutch once said as she came hurtling down the street, bumping into passers-by and tripping into his arms. ‘I could plug into you and charge my mobile phone at the same time.’)
‘Ricky was really together and just – well, you know – not that tipsy, really.’ Lola gulps.
Elizabeth nods. The dress run had gone well in that Ricky hadn’t had a tantrum. He’d managed to keep the camera crew on side with a couple of well-aimed quips against his guests, especially the celebrity chef Paolo Culone, whose very fashionable and pretentious Soho restaurant had just opened. It was Ricky who’d come up with the idea of bringing some of Paolo’s food on to the show for a tasting and, he promised, a pasting. ‘Piquant cockle ketchup?’ he’d sneered in the rehearsal. ‘Little nuggets of calf’s tail? Blimey! Who wants to eat this stuff? What’s wrong with a tidy pie from Greggs?’ And the crew had laughed and egged him on, surprised at the host’s new-found enthusiasm for his show. Many of them had been at the receiving end of Ricky Clough’s bad humour over the last few weeks, when he’d found everything wrong and everyone else to blame. This was a welcome change.
Matthew begins to pace around the Green Room. He’s small and completely bald but muscular and full of a kind of attractive adrenaline. Two weeks ago he was the victim of a mugging and has since developed a slight limp. He’s in his mid-fifties and every morning a personal trainer comes to his Hampstead Heath mansion with a gym bag full of rubber resistance bands. As a result, Matthew has gained some nicely bulging triceps, a flat(ish) stomach and, Lola claims, a new-found interest in S&M (she’d heard it from his secretary, who found a bag of sex toys stashed in the secret, locked, bottom drawer of his desk – a drawer to which she’d taken the precaution of cutting a duplicate key). Matthew hasn’t got where he’s got to without flexing a few muscles and he likes people to notice them.
‘Christ, we’ll have to put out a repeat this week instead of the show,’ he says despairingly, but then his eyes brighten. ‘Maybe a compilation? The Best of Ricky Clough?