Free Killings on Jubilee Terrace by Robert Barnard Page A

will be remembered. Tell me about the part he played, Bert Porter.’
    ‘Oh, Bert was a Terrace stalwart. He’d been in the cotton trade, with a sideline as a comic and a vocalist on the club circuit. That way we kept and capitalised on Vernon’s showbiz connection. Bert was now retired, with the occasional engagement in clubs or pubs. He and his wife, Gladys, were comfortable, apart from the odd row, and were founts of popular wisdom whenever there was any trouble on the Terrace .’
    ‘And there’s always trouble int’ Terrace ,’ said Melvin, lapsing into a Northern dialect.
    ‘Is it true that pushing people under a bus or acar is a failsafe way of getting rid of them?’ asked Reggie. Charlie shrugged.
    ‘If it were that good a way of killing someone, the killing wouldn’t be in our records. If people are all around you it’s a lot more dangerous than our know-it-all letter writer admits. Anyone may see or feel the arm that does the pushing. If it was me I’d push him in front of an underground train in rush-hour. Ill-lit platform, great mass of surging humanity. A shove is part of life there.’
    ‘Vernon Watts hadn’t used the Underground since 7/7,’ said Melvin. ‘He was an asthmatic, and he didn’t want to die in a smoke-filled tunnel.’
    ‘Ah – thanks for the info. Now what about the statement that he was the most generally hated actor on the Terrace sets?’
    ‘I imagine that’s what you’ve been talking to people about,’ said Reggie. ‘Well yes – it was true until Hamish Fawley came into the show.’
    ‘That’s the one I’ve just seen on his deathbed – I guessed he was dying of AIDS but I was wrong.’
    ‘That’s the one. He’s dying of tuberculosis. We have to move with the times. British soaps have done AIDS over and over again. Tuberculosis is a new thing, except for the very old who remember how deadly it once was.’ He pulled himself up, obviously feeling this was becoming a lecture. ‘Still, AIDS was a good guess. And you’re spot on about Hamish’s nature. He’s a nasty piece ofwork and thrives on it. He’s just come back for a second stint. Vernon was less nasty, less confident in his brutality to others, but he was on the same lines. Just a bit less sure of himself in his bitchery and malevolence. The fact that his first career had folded under him may explain the lack of confidence.’
    ‘Is Mr Fawley’s main base London?’ asked Charlie.
    ‘Well yes’ – Reggie’s answer was palpably reluctant – ‘it is.’ Charlie waited. ‘Actually he has a flat in Hampstead, inherited from his parents. He lets it out when he’s playing or filming elsewhere, like now.’
    ‘And at the time of Watts’s death?’
    Reluctance again.
    ‘He was in London in School for Scandal at the Haymarket.’
    ‘Very interesting,’ said Charlie.
    ‘May we ask,’ said Melvin with his usual courtly diffidence, ‘whether there were signs of a hefty shove on Vernon’s back?’
    ‘No, there were not. Otherwise there would have been an inquest. The Metropolitan police autopsy showed he had a heart attack, but it could have happened either before or after he fell or was pushed into the road. Let me ask you one: was Mr Watts a dodderer, or becoming doddery?’
    Both men nodded vigorously.
    ‘Oh yes,’ said Reggie. ‘Everyone says that back in the past he had limitless energy. When he was on the club circuit he could do half an hour, even three quarters, as a solo turn: jokes, songs, dance – even some conjuring tricks. You name it, he was in for it. I’m told he still had a lot of that energy when he joined Jubilee Terrace , but he’d lost most of it by the time he died. Perhaps that soured his temper. He and Marjorie who played his wife had many a slanging match, but that was the main outlet for the energy he had left.’
    ‘Not sex?’
    ‘Well, he was still up for it,’ said Reggie with a leer. ‘But everyone in the studio knew what he was after, and that he’d make