Death on Daytime: A Tess Darling Mystery (The Tess Darling Mysteries) Read Free Page A

without make-up.

CHAPTER TWO
    I t took forever for the police to arrive. Herding her shocked and silent crew into the relative warmth of Mrs Meakes’ kitchen, Tess headed back into the garden. There was the shooting equipment to think about – a crime scene to protect –
Jeenie dead, hell
– and the electrics to secure. Heart pounding, feet slipping, Tess crossed the churned-up ground to find Miller bent over Jeenie. His head was bowed, the head of his duffel coat fallen back and filling with rain; his broad back shielding the dead woman from the rain.
    “Shit, Miller,” said Tess, as he moved to cover the half-naked corpse with a tarpaulin. “Should you be doing that?”
    “Yes.” He tucked Jeenie in. Tess felt her manic energy subside. Jeenie Dempster may have just segued from bitch to corpse, but she’d been a little girl once. She’d had hopes and dreams. These, if nothing else, should be respected.
    Tess came to stand beside Miller. Together they listened to the staccato of raindrops on the plastic sheeting until the whine of sirens approached. After that, things happened quickly. Scene of Crime officers in zip-up, plastic overalls were already moving out to the garden, as the
Pardon My Garden
crew were led through the house and driven to Croydon Police Station to give witness statements, cede swabs of their DNA and use the loo.
    Formalities over – for now – Tess ordered a fleet of cabs to get her traumatised team home. Promising Miller she’d meet him later for a stiff drink, she checked her mobile for messages. In the light of ‘this morning’s tragedy’, the TV channel had shaken up the lunchtime schedule to grant
Live With
an unprecedented extra forty minutes of airtime. Tess was to direct her taxi straight to Backchat Productions. And no, she was not allowed to stop for a burger.
    Backchat Productions had been making TV for almost thirty years. A big supplier of factual programming in the late ’70s, it had floundered in the face of reality TV and talent shows. Though it still occupied a squat concrete tower, just off the Tottenham Court Road, half the building was now leased out to a call centre; the other dominated by
Stop the World
, its only long-running commission. Six months ago, Tess had arrived at
Pardon My Garden
as a secretarial temp on a week’s booking. Committed to getting the job done – so she could go home – she’d promptly uncovered a budget deficit, haggled a deal on studio equipment and started organising shoots. She’d also smashed the water cooler, groped an editor and lost £200 of petty cash on the Northern Line. (A lot can happen in one night). Come Friday, Tess had everyone so charmed, cowed or covered in teeth marks, they’d bumped her up to Producer/Director on a rolling contract.
    Tess had worked in TV before, however. The experience had been so painful, she’d only returned with great doubts. As her cab now pulled up outside Backchat Towers, Tess felt a sickening certainty: the worst was yet to come.
    Press were thronging the entrance to the production company, pointing cameras and jabbing boom mics. When Tess opened the door of her taxi, they swarmed. Flashbulbs stung her eyes, and lens shutters beat the air like giant, mechanical wings. Starting to panic, Tess prayed for Miller to appear; failing that a miracle.
    She got the latter. As sunlight split the clouds overhead, the crowds parted to allow the progress of an elegant, silver-haired man in his late fifties. Like Moses in a Burberry mac, he held his hands out to her. She took them. What else could she do? He was Darcus Darling, one of nation’s most respected broadcasters.
The Times
had recently named him ‘the foremost investigative journalist of his generation’. Tess called him ‘Dad’.
    “So good to see you, darling, it’s been too long!” He embraced her. “Why didn’t you tell me you were back in the country?”
    Face pressed against a coat button, Tess spoke into his lapel. “I got