Elizabeth and I have been to watch Stop the Clock being filmed. They filmed three episodes, and I saw the second and third one. The first one was interrupted by Elizabeth pretending to faint. All in a good cause, as it turns out. The couple in the second show won two thousand seven hundred pounds, and they are getting married, so it is going towards their wedding. He must have been fifteen years older than her. I know you shouldn’t judge but really. I wanted to shout to her, ‘Get out while you can!’
Through a combination of pretending to faint and showing her a gun, Elizabeth persuaded Fiona to speak to us afterwards. We sat in her dressing-room, and somebody who can’t have been long out of school brought us all a herbal tea. I had chamomile and raspberry, because it was the first one I was offered and my brain switches off when someone reads me a long list.
Now, I didn’t dislike Fiona Clemence, let me say that. She is not as warm as you might think when you watch her on TV. I think some of that is just for the cameras, but she wasn’t rude, even though she had every right to be after the fainting and the gun.
She had only half an hour, because she was heading off to interview Bono, so Elizabeth and I took it in turns to ask questions. I left all the Bethany Waites questions to Elizabeth, because I probably won’t get another chance to meet Fiona Clemence, and I wanted to make the most of it.
So the whole thing went something like this.
ELIZABETH: Tell me about your relationship with Bethany Waites.
FIONA: We disliked each other.
ME: What’s the most money anyone has ever won on Stop the Clock?
FIONA: I don’t know. About twenty grand, I think.
ELIZABETH: Why did you dislike each other?
FIONA: She disliked me because she thought I was an airhead. And I disliked her because she thought I was an airhead.
ME: A few weeks ago on the show you were wearing red shoes, I don’t know if you remember them? But I wondered where they were from?
FIONA: I don’t know, sorry.
ELIZABETH: Were you aware you might be next in line to present the show were Bethany ever to leave?
FIONA: I’d done a screen-test. I knew they liked me. But, and forgive me here, Joyce, co-hosting South East Tonight was not a particular ambition of mine.
ELIZABETH: Didn’t do you any harm though?
FIONA: OK, I murdered her so I could read the local news.
ME: Are people talking to you through an earpiece on the show?
FIONA: Yes.
ME: What are they saying?
FIONA: All sorts. Reminding me of the scores, telling me to cheer up, letting me know someone in the audience has fainted.
ELIZABETH: Where were you on the night of Bethany’s death?
FIONA: I was doing coke in a hotel with a cameraman.
ME: We bought ten thousand pounds’ worth of cocaine recently. Who’s the nicest person you’ve ever interviewed?
FIONA: Tom Hanks.
ELIZABETH: What do you know about notes that Bethany received before her death? At work?
FIONA: What sort of notes?
ELIZABETH: ‘Get out’, ‘Everybody hates you’. That sort of thing.
FIONA [laughing]: She got those too? I thought it was just me.
ELIZABETH: You got the same notes? Any idea from whom?
FIONA: No idea, but no one pushed me off a cliff, did they?
ME: What was it about Tom Hanks?
ELIZABETH [tiring of me, I think]: Is there anyone else you can think of who might have had reason to kill Bethany?
FIONA: The fashion police?
ME: You know on Instagram, where you do your live videos, and everyone can watch and comment? How do you do that? I can’t find the button for it.
FIONA: It’s called ‘Stories’, you can look it up.
ELIZABETH: Is there anyone else we should talk to who was there at the time?
FIONA: Carwyn, the producer. Even if he didn’t kill her, they should lock him up. And Mike’s make-up artist. Pamela, something like that. Always a weird atmosphere there.
ELIZABETH: Pauline?
FIONA: If you say so.
ME: Would you ever do Strictly?
FIONA: Only if I was hosting it.
So, you see, she wasn’t rude exactly, given the circumstances, but she wasn’t exactly a thrill a minute. I just looked up how to do those live videos on Instagram, but I couldn’t really make head nor tail of it. I will stick to photographs, I think. Ron made me post a picture of Alan today with two balls in his mouth. Joanna liked it, which is a first.
We made our way back to the station via the Wimpy, and I had a snooze on the train. I told Elizabeth she could snooze, and I would keep an eye out for our stop, but she wanted to stay awake.
I wonder when Viktor will be back? I hope he is having luck with Jack Mason. Elizabeth seems to have great faith in him. I asked her if they had ever slept together, and she said that she honestly couldn’t remember, but they probably did. I told her I carry around a picture of everyone I’ve ever slept with in my purse. Then I opened it, and showed her that the only picture in my purse was one of Gerry, and she said, ‘Yes, I got it the first time, Joyce.’
I wonder if Viktor will remember if he slept with Elizabeth. I think one probably would.
54
The three men are sitting on Jack Mason’s verandah in the moonlight, with a strip heater and a tumbler of whisky each, keeping them warm. Lights blink out at sea. Ron feels the whisky warm his chest, and his eyelids begin to droop. Give him this over a massage any day of the week.
What a lovely day they’ve had. BBQ on the heated terrace, snooker, cards. Couldn’t wish for more. Viktor gently prodding here and there, Jack avoiding his questions.
The snooker is over for the evening. The first, everyone hopes, of a regular game. Three old men, three new friends. The gangster, the KGB colonel and the trades union official.
‘It must be a burden, Jack,’ says Viktor.
‘What’s that?’ Jack asks.
‘Your scheme,’ says Viktor. ‘It should have been so clean. Then Bethany dies. And now Heather dies. That must weigh on you. Your responsibility?’
Jack nods, and raises his glass.
‘I don’t kill people, Viktor,’ says Jack. ‘Some people do, but I’ve never got a thrill from it. I like breaking the law, I like making money, I like getting one over on people.’
‘A man after my own heart,’ says Viktor. ‘Perhaps it haunts you,’ says Viktor. ‘Just a touch.’
‘A touch,’ agrees Jack.
‘I understand,’ says Viktor. ‘And you must be angry, I think I would be, with the killer?’
‘It was stupid,’ says Jack. ‘It was unnecessary.’
‘Just the thought,’ says Viktor, ‘of Bethany going over that cliff. It must wake you at times?’
‘Nah,’ says Jack. ‘You got it wrong.’
‘I sometimes do get it wrong,’ agrees Viktor. ‘I am eager to know why I am wrong now though? That vision would trouble me.’
‘Lads,’ says Jack, with a small smile, ‘can I tell you something? Unburden myself a bit?’
This sounds like it might get uncomfortably close to discussing feelings, Ron thinks, but he sees that’s how Viktor works. And they’re investigating a crime, so he’s going to have to put up with it.
‘This is not for the police,’ says Jack. ‘It’s for the three of us. What you choose to do with it, that’s your business.’
‘No one here is speaking to the police,’ says Ron. ‘Go on, Jack.’
‘There was no one in the car when it went over the cliff,’ says Jack Mason, and takes another sip of his whisky. ‘Bethany Waites was dead hours before that.’
Ron is awake now, that’s for sure. He looks at Viktor, knowing the KGB officer might have better questions than he does.
‘Well, this is an interesting development,’ says Viktor. ‘You know this for a fact, Jack?’
‘I know it for a fact,’ says Jack Mason. ‘I know who killed her, I know why, and I know where she’s buried. I know where the grave is.’
‘It sounds an awful lot like you killed her, Jack? Wouldn’t you agree?’
‘I would agree,’ says Jack. ‘But that’s just the point, isn’t it? More whisky, gents?’
Viktor and Ron both agree that’s exactly what the doctor ordered. Jack Mason pours the drinks, and settles back again.
‘You’re missing someone,’ says Jack. ‘Someone else involved in my little scheme.’
‘Man? Woman?’ asks Viktor, very casually.
‘One of those, yeah,’ says Jack Mason. If you want someone to resist questioning from a KGB officer, a Cockney isn’t a bad choice, Ron thinks.