Dead on Cue

Table of Contents

Recent Titles by Sally Spencer from Severn House

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Monday Evening

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Tuesday

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Wednesday

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

An American Interlude

Thursday

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

Chapter Thirty-Five

Friday

Chapter Thirty-Six

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Epilogue

THE DARK LADY

DEATH OF A CAVE DWELLER

THE GOLDEN MILE TO MURDER

MURDER AT SWANN'S LAKE

THE PARADISE JOB

THE SALTON KILLINGS

THE SILENT LAND

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 and the USA 2001 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

Copyright © 2001 by Sally Spencer

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

The right of Sally Spencer to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Spencer, Sally 1949–

Dead on cue

1. Woodend, Chief Inspector (Fictitious character) – Fiction

2. Police – England – Fiction

3. Detective and mystery stories

I. Title

823.9'14 [F]

ISBN: 978-1-4483-0053-2 (epub)

ISBN 978-0-7278-5706-4

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.

For Ingerbrit

T
here were three of them in the room when it was announced that Jack Taylor would shortly have to die.

The announcement was made by the eldest of the trio, a man in his late forties with a shock of greying hair and a nose which wouldn't have looked out of place on the face of a Roman patrician. The other two men, who had both just begun to edge towards thirty, looked suitably shocked, as he'd expected they would. For perhaps fifteen seconds neither of them seemed able to find any words at all, then the one with the fluffy blond hair – which he carefully combed over his bald spot at least ten times a day – spoke.

‘Are you sure that's a wise decision, Bill?' he asked. ‘I mean to say, are you
absolutely, positively
sure?'

Bill Houseman nodded. ‘Yes, I
am
absolutely, positively sure,' he said. ‘Or at least I'm sure that
someone
has to die – and our research unit seems to believe that Jack Taylor is the best candidate.'

The third member of the group, a red-haired, ruddy-faced Irishman, had been focussing his eyes on the corner of the room, as if seeing in it somewhere he'd much rather be. Now he shifted his gaze to the table.

‘Something wrong, Paddy?' Bill Houseman asked.

‘I'm a writer,' the Irishman replied. ‘I take a situation, and I develop it according to what I understand about the human condition. I don't like having that process interfered with by a so-called “research unit”, which, in reality, is nothing more than a couple of girls with clipboards who ambush busy people as they cross St Peter's Square.'

Bill Houseman frowned, and rose to his feet. He would probably have liked to pace the conference room agitatedly, but the table took up most of the available space, and instead he had to content himself with walking over to the window and looking out at the concourse which ran down the centre of the studio. As he gazed on the busy scene outside, his body relaxed, and his confidence seemed to return.

He swung round to face the other two men again. ‘That was a very nice little speech you just made, Paddy,' he said. ‘And no doubt it was appropriate for a writer starving in his garret for his art's sake. But you're not that kind of writer any more, are you? You're a well-paid member of a team now – a team that
I
run. And if you ever find that that's too much for your integrity to stand, well, nobody's stopping you from going back to your garret, are they?'

Paddy Colligan felt a shudder run through him. Bill was right, he thought. He could leave the show any time he wanted to. The problem was that since he was neither the founding father of
Madro
, as Houseman was, nor a university gradate with other avenues open to him, like Ben Drabble, a future without his regular pay check looked decidedly bleak.

‘So what's it to be?' Houseman demanded, sensing his weakness. ‘Do you go along with my idea? Or should I start looking for a replacement?'

Paddy Colligan swallowed hard enough to get down the humble pie he was being forced to eat. ‘Sorry, Bill,' he said. ‘I know it's a team effort. Must just have got out of the wrong side of bed this morning.'

Houseman ran his left hand through his white hair, and smiled the smile of an emperor watching his gladiators making their ritual submission. ‘Forget it,' he said graciously.

Was he actually feeling as superior as he was acting? Paddy Colligan wondered. Or was he using that smile to mask the worry and uncertainty which had plagued him for the previous few weeks?

Houseman took a deep breath and resumed his seat. ‘Look at it this way,' he said to Paddy Colligan. ‘Larry wants to leave the show in a few weeks anyway, so even if we didn't kill him off, we'd still have to write him out.'

‘If we wrote him out, we'd always have the option of writing him in again if he decided to come back,' Paddy pointed out.

‘And do you think it's likely that he will?' Bill Houseman asked.

‘No, but . . .'

‘Well now that's settled, let's get back to the matter in hand,' Houseman suggested. ‘The question is not whether Jack Taylor
should
die, but
how
he dies.'

‘We could have him run over by a corporation bus,' Ben Drabble suggested.

‘It's a good idea, but I don't see how we could do it technically,' Paddy Colligan said, making an attempt to redeem himself in Houseman's eyes – and hating himself for it.

‘Quite right,' Houseman agreed, giving him an encouraging nod, which showed he had already forgiven the earlier revolt. ‘Now if we were talking about a show which was on the wireless, it would be an entirely different matter. The roar of the engine! The sudden screech of brakes! Perhaps a muted grunt from the Laughing Postman as a couple of tons of metal slam into him. All very effective. But as big as this place is, I don't think we're up to bringing a double-decker bus in here.'

‘We could always use an outside location,' Ben Drabble said.

Bill Houseman shook his head. ‘I don't think that would be a good idea at all. We have created a world which our audience feels comfortable in. Take them outside it – step beyond the genre – and we might start to lose some of our appeal.'

So we'll play it safe, like we always do, Paddy Colligan thought. We'll pretend we're presenting a picture of the real world, but it will actually be no more realistic than the children's puppet show Bill Houseman used to run.

He thought it – but this time he did not put his thoughts into words.

‘Could we have an accident in the home?' Ben Drabble asked.

‘Now you're thinking!' Houseman said enthusiastically.

‘We could have Jack doing the ironing,' Ben Drabble continued. ‘There's something wrong with the iron, and he gets a terrific electric shock. He squirms around for a while, then falls to the floor.'

‘We roll the credits, leaving the viewers asking themselves whether he's survived or not,' Bill Houseman said. ‘When they tune in for the next episode, they find out, of course, that he hasn't.'

Jack Taylor had largely been Paddy Colligan's creation, and now the Irishman felt another bubble of revolt bursting inside him.

‘Jack would never even think of doing the ironing,' he said sullenly. ‘He's simply not that kind of man. It would be like seeing Hopalong Cassidy doing the ironing.'

‘He's not a cowboy, and he doesn't ride around on a white horse,' Bill Houseman said. ‘I don't see the parallel at all.'

He doesn't get it, does he? Paddy Colligan asked himself. He's in charge of the whole thing, and he simply doesn't get it.

‘Jack's like Hopalong Cassidy in as much as he travels around solving other people's problems,' he argued. ‘He's something of a hero on Maddox Row. And you wouldn't expect a hero to be doing anything as domestic and commonplace as ironing. And Dot Taylor wouldn't like it, either,' he added, playing what he considered his trump card. ‘The house is her domain. She'd think Jack had gone mad if he started helping her around the home.'

Bill Houseman sighed. ‘We are going out of our way to make difficulties today, aren't we, Paddy?' he asked.

‘No!' Colligan countered. ‘I'm just pointing out that—'

‘There's something in what both of you are saying,' Ben Drabble interrupted hurriedly. ‘Couldn't we perhaps steer a middle course?'

‘Like what?' Bill Houseman asked.

‘The iron is broken,' Drabble said, improvising furiously. ‘Dot . . . Dot wants to take it down to Wally Simpson's repair shop, but Jack says that's a waste of money and insists on fixing himself. That would be in character, wouldn't it, Paddy?'

‘Yes,' Paddy Colligan agreed reluctantly. ‘I suppose that would be in character.'

‘He does fix it, but he makes a bad job of it. Still in character?'

‘Still in character.'

‘He decides to try it out. He would never, of course, think of doing the ironing himself – you're quite right about that, Paddy – but this is more in the nature of an experiment to see if he's really repaired it. It's while he's conducting this experiment that he's electrocuted.

‘That would work,' Bill Houseman said. ‘Don't you agree, Paddy?'