About That Night

Elizabeth nods. Deniz Pegasus steps forward as if to speak to her, but she firmly turns her back on him to face the network’s Head of Press, Kevin, who is talking into his mobile with his hand over his mouth. He tells her the police have arrived and want to talk to her. They’ve been put in Ricky’s dressing room. Elizabeth wonders whether Kevin has been brazen enough to do a quick clean-up before the police went in – she wouldn’t put it past their wily head of press. Then Matthew, the Controller, bursts into the Green Room, ready to do some controlling. Elizabeth, truly glad to see him, moves quickly towards him and is pleased to see his arms opening to receive her. He hugs her and for a brief moment, Elizabeth longs to rest her head on his chest and weep but instead, she straightens and stiffens.

‘Elizabeth! The police are here! They want to see the most senior person here. That’s obviously me. But I think you should come too, you know, to fill in some of the detail.’

‘Yes, Kevin just told me, I was about to go and see them.’ She’s aware that she’s sounding overbrisk, even though she’s on the verge of shaking uncontrollably.

‘Okay. Let’s go.’ Matthew’s voice is now also curt in response to hers and he turns away.

‘Do you think you should maybe say something to the team? They’re all quite upset.’ Elizabeth gestures to the researchers, who are now mostly sitting silently on the floor, staring at them. Robin is posing palely against the wall, an embroidered handkerchief in his hand. Lola is curled up on the sofa, clutching a glass. Matthew immediately squares his shoulders and begins:

‘People, listen up! I realise tonight has been traumatic for everyone involved in the show. Ricky was a great guy. I’ve known him for years.’ He pauses for effect, which fortunately gives him just enough time to remember that this speech isn’t really about him. ‘Many of you will know how much Ricky cared about the show and how hard he worked.’ A few of the researchers shuffle their feet and Matthew decides to err on the side of honesty. ‘And of course, he had his demons – but we loved him for it, right?’ A few miserable heads nod. ‘Needless to say, we have to keep this absolutely confidential at the moment while Kev sorts it.’ Elizabeth looks across at Kevin, Head of Press, who is feverishly texting, and wonders if sorting it means that he can somehow miraculously bring Ricky Clough back to life. ‘So please stay off Twitter for now, nothing on Facebook, don’t talk to ANYONE about this yet. Okay?’ Matthew looks to Elizabeth for approval and she raises an eyebrow questioningly. ‘Oh,’ continues the boss graciously, ‘and don’t worry about coming in tomorrow. Take the day off.’

‘We always have the day off after recording the show,’ says one fearless researcher.

‘Yes, exactly,’ says Matthew. Elizabeth adds gently, ‘I’ll call you all in the morning, when we know more.’ She hugs Robin, blows a kiss to the rest of the team, her eyes full of tears, and then follows her boss out of the room.

Chapter Two (#ulink_b159f4d7-10fa-5026-9aa5-d0d917bc77e6)

The police officers, a man and a woman, are sitting uneasily on the leopard-print cushions in Ricky Clough’s dressing room. His day clothes, a crumpled sports shirt and some jeans, are hanging on a hook and the desk is piled high with weekly magazines, scripts, his laptop, as well as empty bottles of white wine. Two scented candles still burn by the mirror and the air in the small room is thick with the smell of hairspray, aftershave (Colonia, Acqua di Parma) and something else, something sticky and fetid. If Kevin managed a clean-up sweep, Elizabeth thinks grimly, it was fleeting.

As they walk in, Matthew immediately holds out his hand to the policeman, who is looking hot and bulky in a padded vinyl bomber jacket, but he simply looks anxiously across at his female colleague. Matthew continues to address the policeman. ‘Hello. I’m Matthew Grayling, Controller, All Channels, here at the network. Sorry about this, we can go upstairs to my office, if you’d prefer?’

‘No, this is fine.’ The policewoman speaks. She stands up. She is really quite tall. ‘I’m Detective Inspector Watson and this is Detective Sergeant Rafik.’ She turns her back on the Controller and instead looks directly at Elizabeth. ‘And you’re Elizabeth Place? The producer of the show?’

‘Yes.’

‘Right. We’re going to need to talk to you again tomorrow morning when we have the results from the hospital. But if you wouldn’t mind just answering a few questions now?’ DI Watson has an estuary accent, the missing t’s giving her voice an abrasiveness which Elizabeth suspects works rather well in her line of work. Although she’s technically asking a question, Elizabeth understands there’s only one possible answer.

‘Of course not.’

She sinks on to a velvet stool and remembers that she’d hidden one of the still-full wine bottles under the couch. She can’t help glancing down and sees that it’s still there, unopened. DI Watson’s eyes follow Elizabeth’s.

‘So I’m afraid that the emergency services were unable to save Richard Clough when he collapsed on the floor of studio 4 at 20.15 this evening. I believe you’re aware of this?’

‘Yes,’ Elizabeth says faintly.

‘And how had Mr Clough appeared to you earlier this evening?’

‘Well, I’d say, better than normal. Ready to have a good show.’

‘And what was normal, for Mr Clough?’ The DI glances at the empty wine bottles.

‘Yes, erm, well, on studio days, he liked a drink, you know. Or two. Um. Well, on other days, as well, if I’m honest.’

‘And so he’d been drinking this evening?’

‘Well actually, I’m not sure how much he had… Until he started shaking and slurring his words, I thought he was sober. But then he just keeled over.’

‘And other than wine, did you notice Mr Clough take anything else this evening?’

Elizabeth looks across at Matthew, who is staring back at her with an unreadable expression. She chooses her words carefully. ‘Well, um, he never eats before the show. He likes to go out for dinner afterwards. I mean, he’s got quite an – appetite. So he picks at stuff before the show – Percy Pigs mainly, Yellow Bellies, Smarties…’

Elizabeth glances around the room. She can’t see any of the usual sweet-shop detritus, just one bowl of fruit slowly mouldering under its cellophane wrapping. ‘We did have some food props on the show. We were going to do a tasting because we had the celebrity chef, Paolo Culone, on the show.’

‘Never heard of him,’ DI Watson says flatly.

Elizabeth looks at her helplessly. ‘I’m not sure if Ricky actually ate any of it. I mean, he made out like he did, for the show, but…’ DI Watson looks at her sceptically.

The Controller has had enough of not being included. He adopts a pose and an expression Elizabeth knows only too well and speaks as if addressing a small child instead of a senior officer of the law. ‘Detective Inspector – Watson, is it? As I’m sure you know, Ricky Clough was a man in his late forties, erm, early fifties, who was quite a bit overweight and drank too much for his own good. I’ve known him for years. He was also under a lot of stress, you know, ratings and so on. I think you’ll find that’s a classic coronary case, right there.’

Elizabeth understands that Matthew wants nothing more than for the network to escape any further interrogation. He doesn’t want Ricky’s appetite for the high life exposed and examined. He wants the police off the premises and the network’s reputation unsullied.

The policewoman looks at him without saying anything. The silence hangs heavily in the room and Elizabeth begins to feel hot and itchy. The sergeant is looking miserably at his boots. ‘You may be jumping to conclusions, sir.’ The detective inspector is icily sarcastic. ‘It would be foolish for us to do so. And as yet…’ she nods briefly at her colleague, who struggles thankfully to his feet. ‘And as yet, the cause of death is not established.’ She looks stern as she turns at the door. ‘So we’ll see you both tomorrow morning. We’ll come to your offices first thing.’

Elizabeth glances anxiously at her boss. Matthew clearly doesn’t like the idea of the police arriving in full view of everyone at the TV studios. He says very hastily, ‘We’ll come to the police station.’

DI Watson looks at him as if considering this, but then shrugs. ‘Alright, if you prefer. Paddington Green, 10 a.m. Don’t expect any tea. It goes without saying that this is an ongoing investigation so please say nothing in the meantime. Our press people are liaising with yours. This room is now being sealed for evidence. Goodnight.’ And with that, DI Watson strides out of the room, ushering Elizabeth and the Controller ahead of her, and slams the door behind her with an almighty bang.

Back in the Green Room, most of the production team have left for a spontaneous wake at the King’s Head, except for Lola, who’s being comforted on the sofa by Robin. His eyes are also red-rimmed but, as Elizabeth comes in, glitteringly alert to the prospect of further drama. Kevin, the Head of Press, is still in the corner, talking into his mobile. Matthew moves to the drinks table, now laden with empty wine bottles, and shakes a few to see what dregs are left. ‘Christ, is there no whisky here?’

‘It’s a banned substance.’ Elizabeth reddens at the sudden realisation that the principal reason it’s banned is now lying in a hospital morgue.

‘Banned? Who banned it?’ He turns on her accusingly.

‘You did.’

Various measures, not many of them successful, have been taken to curb Ricky’s excesses. A complete ban on alcohol was deemed unworkable – providing it for the guests before the show produced the sort of loose-tongued talk that gives a chat show its headlines – so they’d tried instead to empty Ricky’s dressing room of all bottles, but he’d simply taken to stealing them from the Green Room. In the end Matthew decided a firm line needed to be drawn – and he had drawn it at Scotch.

Elizabeth realises that their intern, Sam, is sitting miserably on the sofa by herself. She’s always the last to leave because although she isn’t awarded a London Living Wage, she is awarded the responsibility of locking up the Green Room at the end of the night.

‘Sam,’ Elizabeth says pleadingly and the intern jumps up, grateful that someone has finally spoken to her. ‘Please could you find some whisky… somehow… somewhere?’ Sam nods quickly and runs out of the room. Elizabeth puts her arm around Lola while Matthew sits on the edge of a chair, uncertain how to interject himself into the emotionally charged scene. He hasn’t got where he’s got to without previously keeping all his presenters alive and kicking.

Lola begins to sob on Elizabeth’s shoulder. ‘I mean, Ricky seemed so fine this afternoon! Like really normal, you know? He’s not been drinking or you know, doing – anything else.’ Her mascara begins to run in deep black rivulets down her cheeks. Elizabeth has never seen her friend so unkempt. She’s always impressed that Lola can turn up for any crisis with her face done, her hair plaited or piled, and in clothes so tight and heels so high that Elizabeth is surprised she can move or breathe. Elizabeth, in contrast, keeps her hair cut short so that she can simply dry it by running her fingers through it each morning and wears a combination of short skirts and pumps that allow for running, since she always seems to be going at twice the speed of everyone else. (‘We should put a battery pack on you,’ Hutch once said as she came hurtling down the street, bumping into passers-by and tripping into his arms. ‘I could plug into you and charge my mobile phone at the same time.’)

‘Ricky was really together and just – well, you know – not that tipsy, really.’ Lola gulps.

Elizabeth nods. The dress run had gone well in that Ricky hadn’t had a tantrum. He’d managed to keep the camera crew on side with a couple of well-aimed quips against his guests, especially the celebrity chef Paolo Culone, whose very fashionable and pretentious Soho restaurant had just opened. It was Ricky who’d come up with the idea of bringing some of Paolo’s food on to the show for a tasting and, he promised, a pasting. ‘Piquant cockle ketchup?’ he’d sneered in the rehearsal. ‘Little nuggets of calf’s tail? Blimey! Who wants to eat this stuff? What’s wrong with a tidy pie from Greggs?’ And the crew had laughed and egged him on, surprised at the host’s new-found enthusiasm for his show. Many of them had been at the receiving end of Ricky Clough’s bad humour over the last few weeks, when he’d found everything wrong and everyone else to blame. This was a welcome change.

Matthew begins to pace around the Green Room. He’s small and completely bald but muscular and full of a kind of attractive adrenaline. Two weeks ago he was the victim of a mugging and has since developed a slight limp. He’s in his mid-fifties and every morning a personal trainer comes to his Hampstead Heath mansion with a gym bag full of rubber resistance bands. As a result, Matthew has gained some nicely bulging triceps, a flat(ish) stomach and, Lola claims, a new-found interest in S&M (she’d heard it from his secretary, who found a bag of sex toys stashed in the secret, locked, bottom drawer of his desk – a drawer to which she’d taken the precaution of cutting a duplicate key). Matthew hasn’t got where he’s got to without flexing a few muscles and he likes people to notice them.

‘Christ, we’ll have to put out a repeat this week instead of the show,’ he says despairingly, but then his eyes brighten. ‘Maybe a compilation? The Best of Ricky Clough? Only the early shows, obviously. Kev – would we have enough time to publicise it? Get everyone to watch it while they’re still upset? We could be in for bumper ratings!’ The two men huddle together around Kev’s vibrating mobile.

‘Lola, what time did Ricky actually arrive at the studio this afternoon?’ Elizabeth tries to think back over the day’s routine. She’d been in the production office till the early afternoon, trying to sort out next week’s show. She’d only joined for the dress run when Ricky was ready to rehearse his monologue at the top of the show.

Lola looks at her miserably. ‘I didn’t like to call him.’ She looks defensive. ‘You know, it’s not MY job to chivvy up the presenter…’ Her eyes well up again and Elizabeth strokes her back.

‘Of course it’s not. It’s just that you do it so well. Normally.’

‘But he was only an hour late. And you know, sometimes it’s been worse than that. And he was in such a good mood when he arrived.’