A Reconstructed Corpse by Simon Brett Read Free Book Online Page B

Ringing her again would only increase the pain.
    He could have telephoned other friends, suppressed his envy to those who had work, indulged in mutual moaning with those who hadn’t. He could even have arranged to meet some of the unsuccessful ones, and continued the moaning over too many drinks somewhere. But it all seemed a lot of effort.
    So it was the crumpled glove puppet in the corner of the toy cupboard. He was not completely inert. He made it to the overpriced corner shop to buy the basic necessities for his solitary menu, in which toast, baked beans and breakfast slices figured more prominently than most
chefs de cuisine
would recommend. He also stocked up on the necessary bottles of Bell’s.
    Once or twice, driven by some childhood Calvinist conviction that drinking on one’s own was a bad thing, he adjourned to the pub. But the one he always went to, in Westbourne Grove, was, like the Black Feathers, ‘local’ only in geography. The bar staff, Australians who had always started the job that day, had a religious objection to recognising anyone over thirty.
    And the older customers, some of whose faces Charles had seen before, evidently came to the pub for a mystic private communion with their drinks. After twenty minutes sitting shrink-wrapped in his own isolation amidst the music and shouts of the young, drinking alone appeared an infinitely more sociable option.
    How long this torpor might have continued was impossible to know, because it was interrupted on the Tuesday morning by a dictatorial phone call from Louise Denning. Charles was commanded to attend a briefing meeting at W.E.T. House that afternoon. As usual in the medium, it was assumed that no one would have any more pressing calls on their time than the demands of a television programme. Charles, who of course had no more pressing calls on his time than the demands of a television programme, would nonetheless have preferred the summons be couched as a question rather than an order.
    â€˜Well, I am free as it happens,’ he conceded after some invisibly mimed diary-consulting, ‘but I thought I’d finished my bit.’
    â€˜There has been a new development in the case,’ Louise Denning announced mysteriously.
    â€˜Am I allowed to know what it is?’
    â€˜No. You’ll be given all necessary information at the briefing meeting.’
    â€˜Oh. Does this mean that I’m going to be involved in more filming? That I’m being booked for this week’s show too?’
    But Louise Denning was too canny to answer the actor’s instinctive question. Though the old-fashioned BBC tenet that an offer of work made over the phone was tantamount to a contract had, in harder-nosed commercial times, gone the way of most ‘gentlemen’s agreements’, incautious words could still pose a risk. ‘I’m afraid I’m unable to answer that, Mr Paris,’ the researcher replied primly. ‘But I’m sure everything will be made clear at the meeting this afternoon.’
    They’re so bloody arrogant, thought Charles, as he put the phone down. They think everyone’ll just drop everything to turn up to their bloody meetings. No contract, no talk of payment, and they expect me just to appear on the off chance. I’ve half a mind not to go.
    But, needless to say, the other half of his mind won. He appeared meekly at W.E.T. House in very good time for the three o’clock meeting.
    There’s something very pervasive about policemen. They quickly colour the ambience of any situation in which they are involved, and the briefing meeting at W.E.T. House that afternoon was a case in point. The television people – almost all the
Public Enemies
production team – easily outnumbered Superintendent Roscoe, DI Noakes and the man called ‘Greg’ (who was now identified as Detective Sergeant Marchmont), but the way the three of them sat behind a long table immediately