Free Killings on Jubilee Terrace by Robert Barnard

highlight their strengths. The tabloids say what a united and close-knit lot we are, and on the whole they’re right. In this case any rotten apple there may have been hasn’t affected the whole barrel.’
    ‘God’s in his heaven, all’s right with the world,’ said James, getting up and walking eloquently away. Charlie watched the walk – all panther grace and glorious, self-conscious elegance. The boy would make a very high-class gigolo, he decided. Suddenly James stopped and turned round. ‘Liza, you didn’t mention that Bill Garrett, your mate, is letching after Susan, did you? Why not? Didn’t fit with your rosy picture, I suppose.’
    ‘Hello – making yourself at home I see. Excellent.’ The voice was Reggie Friedman’s, arriving with Melvin Settle and looking with raised eyebrows at the departing back of James.The welcoming note had got into Reggie’s bearing and stance, but Charlie noticed there was still an edge to his voice. ‘If you’ll come along we’ll give you all the help we can.’
    They led Charlie not to the office where they had talked earlier but to one of the Terrace ’s hospitality suites, where they sat in light, clean, easy chairs, and where a coffee machine was already switched on and biscuits were neatly arranged on plates. Something had happened in the script conference, Charlie thought, or, more likely, they had thought things over and decided that nothing could be gained by stonewalling or offending a police officer. And perhaps particularly a black police officer, since the Terrace had not, over the years, been particularly welcoming to minorities. Maybe in this thinking the Inspector title had helped. It was always more impressive to outsiders than it was to other serving policemen who knew that inspectors usually got the rather boring cases.
    ‘So you’ve had an anonymous letter,’ said Reggie Friedman, sitting down and gesturing to another chair. ‘It was about Jubilee Terrace I take it?’
    ‘Exactly.’
    ‘Was it from a member of the public, do you think, or from one of our people here?’
    ‘From an insider, we thought, or someone close to an insider.’
    ‘Many of our fans are so well up in the series, from its start in 1976, that they can sound like insiders.’
    ‘Point taken. We’re keeping an open mind.’
    ‘Are we allowed to know what it said?’ asked Melvin Settle.
    ‘Yes. I’ve had it transcribed, and I’d like the copy back.’ Charlie fumbled in his briefcase and handed over a copy. ‘We don’t want it to go round from person to person so that people can prepare their response. It was very clearly written, so you can rely on the transcript.’
    The pair took the single page and looked at the computer text.
     
    ‘Why did the police take Vernon Watt’s death as natural causes? He was the most hated man on Jubilee Terrace. Pushing someone in front of a bus is the easiest way of killing him. The London police should have investigated all the people on the traffic island.’
     
    ‘Hmmm,’ said Melvin. ‘Gets the apostrophe wrong in Watts’.’
    ‘Nobody gets that right these days,’ said Reggie. ‘Except you, Melvin.’ He looked at Charlie. ‘Not much there I’d have said. Of course you know your job best, but…’
    ‘You’re quite right,’ said Charlie, with easycandour. ‘Normally with an anonymous letter, very unspecific and ungrounded, we’d have done nothing. We might have paid some attention if it was signed, and we could question the writer. The unusual thing here, the reason we’re taking it up at all is, as I said earlier, that Watts was something of a national figure, partly from his early life on the music halls—’
    ‘But mainly because of Jubilee Terrace ,’ said Reggie Friedman.
    ‘I was going to say that. The music halls and the variety shows are I gather a happy memory for older people. Even the working men’s clubs, which are a Northern phenomenon, are not what they were. So it’s for Jubilee Terrace he