The Final Curtain (8 page)

Responding to her unspoken thought without comment Diana Tong passed across a yellowing newspaper cutting. Joanna read it and passed it to Korpanski, who also read it wordlessly then handed it back to her. The headline screamed:
Child Star's Late-Husband's Request
.

Underneath it detailed the whole damned lot, that Gerald Portmann, the late husband of ‘child star' Timony Shore, had asked to have his beloved Rolex Oyster (Perpetual
Air-King
) to be strapped to his right wrist and buried with him. It went on to describe the clothes he should also be wearing, and underneath that a perfectly tasteless picture of the dead man in his coffin wearing the (also prescribed) dark pinstriped suit, white shirt and tie, the right sleeves of both jacket and shirt pushed up just enough to expose the shining face and dark strap of the watch in question.

Joanna looked down at the item in Timony's shaking hand. She and Mike exchanged looks and messages. His head gave an almost imperceptible jerk towards the newspaper. She could interpret his comment only too well.
So the whole bloody world knew about it.

Even so, Joanna tried to put the point over to Timony. ‘You can't be sure that this is
his
watch.'

‘Oh, but I can. The scratch across the glass.' Staring ahead of her, as though she was a blind person, Timony's fingernail followed a line, a scratch on the watch glass which reached from the top of the one to the bottom of the line which represented four. ‘That happened when he had the car accident in which he died,' she explained. ‘He was wearing it then too.' Her eyes flicked upwards to meet Joanna's with a mute appeal to be believed. ‘He
always
wore it, Inspector. He hardly ever took it off. He just loved it. To him it was the ultimate star status symbol.' Her fingers stroked it and her face looked far away, pillow-deep in memory. Joanna glanced across at Korpanski and could barely resist rolling her eyes. Korpanski, for his part, gave her an innocently bland smile, as though to say,
Well you're the boss, Boss. And I'm just the lackey
. She scowled at him.

‘The watch isn't proof of anything,' Joanna said calmly. She wanted to take the item from her but even
she
was a little spooked by the thought of touching a watch which had lain around the wrist of a dead person for …?

‘How long ago did your first husband die?'

‘Gerald died forty years ago, Inspector,' she said calmly, ‘in nineteen seventy-two.'

Joanna's eyes locked on the item. Common sense told her that this could not be the watch that had been strapped to Gerald Portmann's dead wrist. But superstition argued with common sense. Common sense won. She slipped on a pair of gloves and reached out for it.

‘May I?'

Timony Weeks handed it over with a tiny shiver of revulsion.

Joanna looked at it. She'd never really seen what all the fuss was about Rolexes but there was something about the feel of it, the elegance and stark cleanness of its dial. Then, using her much-mocked magnifying glass, she peered closer. Embedded around the dial was what looked like soil.

Grave soil?

And the watch itself was ticking, as though it had an unstoppable, malevolent life of its own. A mechanical heart. Had it ticked away in the grave, Edgar Allan Poe like? For a fraction of a second in the room they were all silent, listening to the quiet but insistent tick of the watch. Joanna passed it to Mike, who'd put a glove on his right hand and stretched it out.

Joanna looked back at Timony Weeks. ‘Why are you so afraid, Mrs Weeks? What exactly are you afraid of? And if you are that afraid why continue to live out here in this lonely spot?'

Timony Weeks looked at her with her doll-like, expressionless face. ‘OK, Inspector,' she said. ‘I'll answer all your questions as best I can.' Her voice was quiet, low and husky, but Joanna had the feeling that you could use this voice to create an effect. It could be low and husky, it could also be sexy and strident. Her choice. She continued: ‘First of all, why do I stay out here when I am uncomfortable and being hounded?' she began.

Joanna felt on safer ground. This was her beat. ‘Well, it would seem logical, Mrs Weeks, whether these episodes are real or part-imagined, to move into the town.'

Mrs Weeks seemed impervious to Joanna's attempt to bring things down to earth and hurry the interview along. But the detective's displayed impatience did not have the effect of hurrying her through her statement.

‘You need to understand about my life,' she said, and again Joanna felt her temper simmer towards boiling point. Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble. She and Korpanski had more than enough work to do. The theft of luxury cars in and around Leek was moving towards epidemic proportions. They simply didn't have the time to listen to a prolonged and drawn-out life history, however eventful that life had been. Child star … And yet, as she glanced across to pick up Korpanski's take on the situation, Joanna could see from his expression of studied indifference and the gleam in his very dark eyes that, like herself, he felt some curiosity towards this strange woman.

Whether Timony picked up on this or not she began the story like an episode of
Listen With Mother
. ‘In nineteen sixty,' she began, ‘when I was eight years old, I was signed up as a child actress to what would become the biggest …' she smiled to herself, ‘I suppose these days you'd call it a soap.' She paused (for maximum effect?) and continued, ‘There weren't many TV programmes then and it was one of the few series aimed at …' She paused, and mocked, ‘“the family”. It was called
Butterfield Farm
. It was a huge hit and ran for twelve years. I was the little Shirley Temple in it. I played Lily Butterfield. I was very small for my age. When I was eight I looked about five. I wore tiny nylon dresses, sometimes dungarees. I sang and I danced and I had a mop of curly red hair.' She laughed. ‘Not that you could tell it was red. Television then was all in black and white.'

For the first time they saw her really smile with her porcelain teeth. And although her mouth was surgically stiff and swollen, something of the pretty child peeped out from behind the face that had become a tight mask.

She continued, ‘The series ran until I was nearly twenty, finally folding in early nineteen seventy-two. I always looked young for my age and the studio managers made sure I stayed even younger. I was on a strict diet and when my breasts began to form they were bandaged up.' Again she smiled but this time her expression was tinged with cynicism and an element of disgust. She looked as though she expected either Joanna or DS Mike Korpanski to interrupt but neither did. They knew they were in for the full version. They were both thinking the same thing – that they may as well sit this one out and then, perhaps, all would be resolved and the call-outs would stop.

After scanning them both, Timony went on: ‘These days they're more likely to put fake boobs in the young stars, I suppose. They seem to want kids to look sexually active from the age of eight.' She paused, a shadow straining her face. ‘Or even six.' She rubbed her forehead as though it itched. ‘Anyway, the show brought its rewards. I was earning in excess of a thousand pounds a week, which was riches in the early sixties.' She smiled, or at least her lips curved upwards. ‘Looking at it nowadays, the storylines would seem a bit bland and derivative of American imports, cattle rustling, a lost lamb, a cow that calved.' She humphed, ‘With a lot of mooing and groaning. Even a murder. Some poor cowhand was found at the bottom of the well.' Suddenly she looked vague, her forehead struggling to frown. ‘I think …' She attempted to retrieve her story with a smile. ‘There were so many episodes – one a week every week for twelve years. Along the way I've had five husbands.' She gave a wry smile. ‘Not all of them very satisfactory. I'd had two by the time I was twenty-one. My first husband was a lot older than me. He was my screen Daddy on Butterfield.' She smiled at the memory. ‘It almost felt incestuous but Gerald was one of the loves of my life. I adored him. Unfortunately he died in a road accident in the States, on the Santa Monica highway. He'd been working on a film out there. I'd been due to join him.' Her finger massaged the area between her eyebrows as though searching for a frown line and failing to find it. ‘The movie never happened. I did try the movies later on but I could never settle in the States. Anyway …'

She waved her hands around, crossed her legs and pulled a frown, then continued. ‘By the time I was eighteen I'd made enough money and Gerald was wealthy anyway. After Butterfield folded – we shot the last few episodes late in nineteen seventy-one – I didn't really need to earn any more so I had little to do except get married and divorced and make the odd “B” movie. At nineteen I was basically redundant and watched my celebrity fade. A light, first bright, dimming quick.' Showing a tinge of cynicism she looked straight at Joanna. ‘Let me tell you how it is, Inspector,' she said, holding up an index finger. ‘This is how it happens. At first newspapers, magazines, interviews, opening supermarkets, meeting royalty, cutting ribbons. They were happy days.' She spoke quickly. ‘Everyone wanted a little piece of me. And then, poof.' She exploded her hands. ‘Suddenly, no one did any more.' She gave a wry smile and looked both bleak and cynical. ‘At twenty I was history. You see, I committed the unforgivable sin, Inspector.' She turned her head to encompass Korpanski too. ‘Sergeant, I got older. From being the darling of the universe I was thrown out like an old sock with a hole in the toe. You see, no one wanted me to grow up. Ever. My adoring fans couldn't forgive my ageing. They didn't want to know the adult me but preserve my memory in aspic as that sweet little girl.' Again she looked straight at Joanna. ‘The only way to keep a little girl a little girl is for that little girl to never grow up. In other words, to die young. Then she remains the child. For ever Timony Shore or Lily Butterfield. Take your pick. Beautiful, sweet little child.' The cynicism in her voice was as toxic as mustard gas.

She paused again, then looked directly at Joanna and then at Mike, as though to satisfy herself that they were listening. ‘You have to understand how big and famous I was. There was hardly any family TV in those days, not a great deal of choice, so practically everyone in the UK was tuned into
Butterfield Farm
on a Saturday evening.' She tossed her head. ‘I was mobbed everywhere. It was celebrity culture in the early sixties. It brought its pains and gains.' Her face twisted. ‘At one point I was threatened – stalked – by a fan who tried to gouge my eyes out as I came out of the studio one evening. I was almost fourteen at the time.' Her finger touched a tiny scar at the edge of her right eyebrow which Joanna would not have noticed unless she had drawn her attention to it in this abstract way. ‘After Gerald died I married husband number two, Sol Brannigan, who was as tough as they make them.' Her eyes flickered dangerously at the memory. ‘He liked to treat his women rough but he did protect me.'

Joanna recalled that it was Sol Brannigan who had liked to taunt her by smoking just outside her window, and who Timony thought could still possibly be playing tricks.

Timony Weeks leaned forward and appeared to address her next statement to DS Mike Korpanski who was now standing up, his head on one side, looking at her as though he was wondering whether to believe her story and also preparing to leave.

Whether or not Timony Weeks had picked up on the sergeant's scepticism, she carried on with her story anyway. She was now in full flow. ‘Robert Weeks, husband number three,' she gave a cheeky smile, ‘was already married, to a friend, when he “fell in love” with me.' Her mouth twisted. ‘He was a lovely man but after thirteen happy years together he died of cancer.' She gave a rueful smile. ‘I like to think that it would have lasted if he'd lived.'

‘You've kept the name Weeks.'

Timony's eyes looked shrewd and impressed and then mischievous. ‘Yes,' she said. ‘I liked the name. It seemed to go rather well with Timony. Besides … I knew it would annoy Carmen.' She stopped speaking for a moment, smiling at her private joke before continuing. ‘Adrian McWilliams, number four, was married on the rebound and was a horrible mistake. Violence, alcohol, drugs, gambling – you name it. I was lucky to get rid of him. And then,' another cheeky smile, ‘my only foreigner, Rolf Van Eelen, number five.' She snorted. ‘A bit of poetic justice here. He walked out on me with one of
my
friends, Trixy, the bitch. I made their life hell until I got used to the fact that marriage really wasn't for me. Then I let them go.' She almost looked shame-faced now. ‘So you see, Inspector Piercy and Sergeant Korpanski, I've made a lot of enemies along the way. And not too many friends.' She glanced, almost questioningly, at Diana Tong, who was standing behind the piano, leaning forward slightly, as though to catch every word in a net of attention. Joanna followed the glance and wondered. No softness or reassurance was beamed back from the dogsbody.

Joanna interrupted the reverie. ‘Are you trying to tell me that someone from your distant past is trying to exact revenge on you?' she demanded. ‘Either an ancient fan who belatedly has decided he or she doesn't want you to grow up or something to do with your multiple marriages and divorces, the feathers you've ruffled?' The words sounded vaguely silly and quite insulting even as she spoke, as though she was ridiculing the entire idea. And this tone did not escape Timony Weeks. She moved her head slightly so she watched Joanna from the corner of her eye.

‘We're talking about events that happened years ago,' Joanna pointed out. ‘The people involved would be—' She was going to say elderly but Diana Tong cleared her throat very deliberately at that precise moment so Joanna said instead, ‘Why wait until now?'

Timony Weeks didn't answer but gave a stiff smile.