Score!

‘Want to work in movies?’ quipped Sexton, as he ushered her into his office.

DC Needham giggled. Gablecross looked boot-faced and asked Sexton what he had been up to last night.

‘Dining at my house in town, then driving back to Valhalla,’ lied Sexton happily, as DC Needham started scribbling in her notebook. ‘Me and my driver, Wally, had just stopped for a sandwich and some petrol around one o’clock. We’ve got all the receipts. When Bernard rang me wiv the sad news, we agreed I should be the one to tell Dame Hermione.’

‘What was her reaction?’

‘Gutted. She and Rannaldini go back a long way.’

And up a long way, thought Gablecross irrationally, remembering the rampant cock.

‘How did she spend the evening?’ he asked idly. ‘Several people heard her singing in the wood around the time of the murder.’

‘Must have been a tape or the rushes. Dame Hermione came ’ome from Milan around seven thirty, watched Pride and Prejudice on the telly. A Jane Austen freak is Dame Hermione. What the hell’s happened to Tristan?’ he added, with unusual irritation. ‘The fucker’s always turning off his mobile because he wants to think.’

Driving towards Paradise through the deluge Tristan noted spiky conkers on the horse-chestnuts and a tangle of purply-blue cranesbill and pink willowherb on the verges, echoing Alpheus’s dressing-gown. Rounding a corner, he suddenly saw a flotilla of pizza cartons, plastic coffee cups, fag ends and beer cans hurtling down the overflowing gutters towards him, and went slap into a rugger scrum of paparazzi, shouting, scribbling, banging tape-recorders and lenses against his windows. Tristan ducked in horror. Had his hideous secret been rumbled?

The policemen on the gates refused to admit him until he had given them his name and address. As he stormed up the drive, police and Alsatians were weaving in and out of Hangman’s Wood. Ahead, the German and Italian flags drooped at half mast. Gripped by a terrible fear that Tab had taken an overdose, Tristan dived into the house. Two minutes later he stormed into Sexton’s office.

‘What the hell’s going on? They’ve dismantled the Great Hall and the royal box, and we haven’t reshot. What’s that fucker Rannaldini up to now?’

Tristan had triple bags under his cavernous bloodshot eyes, his lank, damp hair looked as though it hadn’t seen a comb for days. The buttons of his faded peacock-blue shirt were done up all wrong. He had only slotted his belt through one loop of his jeans, which were far too loose. He was frantically chewing gum. He looked wild, angry, dangerous, a tramp off the street, reeking of sweat and sex.

Gablecross opened his mouth, but Sexton was too quick for him.

‘Rannaldini was murdered last night.’

Tristan’s suntan seemed to drain into his black stubble leaving his face dirty grey. ‘Oh, mon Dieu, who killed him?’

‘That’s Sergeant Gablecross’s job,’ said Sexton, almost too cosily. ‘Let me introduce him, and his charmin’ sidekick, DC Needham.’

Tristan nodded then sat down in one of Sexton’s leather armchairs. In an instant his face was wet with tears. ‘I cannot believe it. Rannaldini was father to me. Often I wish him dead for fucking up my movie, but he was great man. You are not having me on?’

Mindlessly parking his chewing-gum on the front of Sexton’s desk, he groped for a cigarette, then dully slapped his pockets. ‘I lose my lighter. When did he die?’

‘Around ten thirty last night.’ Sexton reached forward with a match. ‘Someone torched the watch-tower.’

For a second Tristan’s face, like Lady Rannaldini’s last night, showed a flicker of something other than horror. Had he also skeletons? wondered Gablecross.

‘Everything was destroyed,’ confirmed Sexton.

Tristan breathed in smoke so deeply he almost choked, then opened his eyes in horror.

‘He didn’t die in fire?’

‘No, he was strangled and shot,’ said Sexton quickly.

Shut up, you fat git, thought Gablecross furiously. Let me get at him before he organizes his alibi.

But Tristan had jumped to his feet, pacing round the room, firing all the same questions, not taking in any of the answers. Someone had sewn a patch of a greyhound’s head on the back pocket of his jeans.

‘I told Detective Sergeant Gablecross we’d be shooting in the maze when the weather’s cleared,’ interrupted Sexton.

This pulled Tristan together, as the drug of the film kicked in.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions, sir,’ began Gablecross. Karen Needham whipped out her notebook.

‘Got to have a shower,’ murmured Tristan and, before they could corner him, was out of the door.

Twenty minutes later, showered, shaved, reeking of Eau Sauvage and looking again like Calvin Klein’s favourite model, he had disappeared into the production office with Sexton and a euphoric Bernard, delighted to be needed and included again.