The Dead Side of the Mike by Simon Brett

airports and factories and stores all over the world. Harmless, soulless, dull.
    â€˜You don’t think she brought this back for you, Steve? Pandering to your popular taste.’
    â€˜Give me a bit of credit, Charles. My taste isn’t this debased. Maybe she brought it back for me as a joke, a reinforcement of her oft-stated view that all pop music sounds the same.’
    â€˜Would that be in character?’
    â€˜Not out of character. Or maybe she brought it over for one of the other SMs. Some technical quality that she knew would interest one of the sound buffs. There are some great specialists among that lot.’
    â€˜Yes, maybe.’ Charles sighed. ‘Still, I suppose we’ll never know. Anyway, it doesn’t sound like an explanation for suicide.’
    â€˜I don’t know.’ Steve was now sufficiently in possession of herself to make a joke. ‘If I had to listen to that sort of stuff for long, I think I’d pretty soon get suicidal.’
    They flipped through the tape, playing little bits to see if it changed, but the same unremitting treacle covered both sides. Charles ejected the cassette and made to put it back in its box.
    As he did so, he stopped. There was something on the inside of the paper cover. He pulled it out. It was written just below the address of Musimotive, the firm which had perpetrated the music.
    DANNY KLINGER, 4th–11th Nov, 1977. 14th–22nd April 1978 and NOW.
    Steve had come to look over his shoulder. ‘Is it her writing?’ he asked. She nodded.
    â€˜Then what the hell does it mean?’
    â€˜God knows.’
    â€˜Did she know anyone called Danny Klinger?’
    â€˜Not to my knowledge.’
    â€˜Do you think maybe she met this man, had an affair with him in New York and that’s why she suddenly got so depressed when she got back?’
    â€˜All things are possible,’ Steve replied drily, showing up the flimsy nature of his conjecture.
    â€˜Yes, and what could the dates mean?’
    They discussed the possibilities for another half-hour, but they didn’t get anywhere. Andrea’s connection with Danny Klinger, whoever he might be, remained as ‘inexplicable’ as her suicide.
    Shortly after, Charles left. ‘I hope tomorrow’s not too bad,’ he said as he stood in the doorway. ‘With Andrea’s mother.’
    â€˜I’ll survive.’
    He mused, ‘It’s strange. Everything you’ve said tonight about Andrea makes her seem a less likely candidate for suicide.’
    â€˜I know. If you had asked me a week ago if I thought her likely to do it, I would have said, under no circumstances. But we are all constantly being proved wrong. I mean, she did it, didn’t she?’
    Charles nodded glumly, but as he walked back to Hereford Road, a little voice in his mind kept saying, ‘Did she?’

CHAPTER FIVE
    WITH THE PASSAGE of time, the suspicions that had been germinating in Charles’s mind started to shrivel from lack of nourishment. For the rest of that week he heard nothing more from anyone at the BBC, except, through Maurice, the confirmation of his booking on
Dad’s the Word
(and yes, radio fees had gone up a bit, but not that much).
    He began to think that he had been romanticising about Andrea’s death, excited by its recent shock and the crusading spirit which Steve’s brown eyes had inspired in him. The next morning, the Thursday, he had woken up full of St Georgishness, determined to track down the dragon which was distressing that particular damsel, but as the day passed, it was his determination rather than his knighthood which proved errant. By the Friday morning he had forgotten any idea of a quest, or perhaps he had come to see through it as a simple ruse to keep in touch with the damsel.
    So he did nothing in the way of investigation. The idea receded and the arrogance which had made him think of pursuing the girl shrank into