Not Dead Yet

by Peter James

  ‘My problem,’ Brooker said, coolly, ‘is actors. You ask an actor to walk down the street, and he turns round and he says, “Why exactly am I walking down this street?” You know what I tell him?’

  Halpern stared at him, clearly struggling to hold focus. ‘No, what do you tell him?’

  ‘I tell him, “The reason you are walking down this street, is because I’m fucking paying you to walk down this street.”’

  Judd Halpern gave him an uneasy smile.

  ‘So listen to me good, Mr Big Shot Actor. You’re trying to rebuild your busted career. That’s fine by me. For the rest of this production, when you are called, you’re going to come out of this trailer like a goddamn greyhound out of its gate, walk straight on set, and give the performance of your life. You know what will happen if you don’t?’

  Halpern looked at him a tad sheepishly. He said nothing.

  ‘You’ll be history. There won’t be a production company in the world that’s going to want to work with you by the time I’ve finished telling them about you. I promise you. You reading me loud and clear?’

  ‘I am, but the script is still not right.’

  ‘Then you’d better use your acting genius to turn it into something magical.’

  ‘You think I can?’ Halpern said, his demeanour changing.

  ‘Sure you can, kiddo. You’re the world’s Greatest Living Actor! That’s why I goddamn hired you.’

  Halpern stiffened and preened. ‘You really think so?’

  ‘I don’t think so, Judd. I know so.’ He gave him a winning smile.

  ‘Cool,’ he said. ‘Let’s rock and roll!’ He reached for his wig.

  ‘On set in ten minutes, okay?’ Brooker said.

  ‘I’m there!’

  ‘You’re goddamn terrific, you know that?’

  Halpern smiled and attempted a shrug of modesty. But he wasn’t very good at modesty.

  Brooker closed the door behind him and headed back to the set. You total asshole, he was thinking.

  92

  ‘That is so much better!’ Gaia said, sitting wrapped in her silk dressing gown as her hairdresser, Tracey Curry, standing on killer black heels, finished cropping her blonde hair.

  Gaia stared approvingly in the mirror at her new cut, which was even shorter than a few days ago.

  ‘You’ll find that a lot more comfortable under that wig,’ the hairdresser said.

  ‘You’re a treasure!’ She turned to her assistant, Martina Franklin. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘It kinda suits you!’

  Eli Marsden, her make-up artist, nodded approvingly. ‘It looks terrific!’

  Gaia turned to her little boy, who was seated at a table further along the motorhome, watching a video on his iPad. ‘Roan, hon, you like Mama’s new hairstyle?’

  ‘Uh huh,’ he said glumly. ‘I’m bored. Can I go take a look around the palace?’

  ‘Sure, hon. Go take a wander, I’ll be in soon. Ask one of the security guys to walk you over there.’

  Roan, dressed in a baggy blue THE KING’S LOVER T-shirt, jeans and trainers, jumped down from the table and scampered out of the air-conditioned chill of the trailer into the warm, clouding over, evening air. Deciding to ignore his mother and explore alone, he walked jauntily across the Pavilion lawns and up to the front door. The security guard looked down at him. ‘You’re Gaia’s son, right? Sloan?’

  ‘Uh, Roan,’ he corrected.

  ‘Sorry, Roan.’

  The boy shrugged. ‘S’okay. Mama said I could take a look around.’

  He gestured. ‘Go right ahead, Roan. Turn right when you go inside and follow the corridor and you’ll get to the Banqueting Room where your mum’s going to be filming.’

  ‘Okay.’

  93

  ‘Okay, everyone, clear the doubles, please, the cast are coming on set.’ The voice came out of the baby monitor, loud and clear for some moments, then distorted by a feedback squawk.

  Perched up at the top of the dome’s wooden frame, watching and listening, Drayton Wheeler began trembling with nerves and excitement. Now! Now! Have to do it now! He was never going to know for sure exactly when the cast would all be assembled around the table. He was going to have to rely on a calculated judgement – and luck. But this moment now was, in his view, the best shot he was likely to get.

  He picked up the San Pellegrino bottle, his hands shaking so much he was scared of slopping some of the mercuric chloride acid on himself. Pointing it away, he unscrewed the metal cap, and it slipped from his fingers. He could hear it tumble all the way down the wooden slats, rat-a-tat-tatting, then as it struck something metallic, a loud ping.

  He held his breath. Listened. Static came through the baby monitor. Then Larry Brooker’s voice, talking to the director. ‘We gotta make some time up. We’ve lost two hours thanks to that asshole.’

  ‘We can work on, Larry, keep everyone late,’ Jack Jordan said. He had a soft and precious voice that Drayton Wheeler found particularly irritating.

  ‘Don’t go there.’ Brooker was thinking about the budget and the overtime rates for some of the crew if they went over the maximum number of hours, Wheeler guessed. ‘You’ll just have to take some shortcuts,’ Brooker commanded.

  ‘Darling boy, this is not the scene to take shortcuts on.’

  Wheeler could hear the disdain in the director’s voice, and thought, Don’t have a fucking argument, not now!

  Another voice said, ‘Are we ready to fill the table?’

  ‘I want to see if Judd’s compos mentis enough to film before I bring everyone else in,’ Jordan said.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Brooker said. ‘I just spoke to him. He’s gonna be a pussycat tonight.’

  ‘He’s just leaving his trailer now,’ one of the Assistant Directors announced.

  Wheeler listened to the words. Then very carefully, holding his breath, he tipped the entire contents of the San Pellegrino bottle on to the towel which he had wound around the single aluminium support shaft for the chandelier.

  Instantly a wisp of smoke rose from the towel as it began to discolour into brown and grey blotches. Some of the acid ran further down the shaft. He continued to hold his breath, partly to avoid inhaling any of the fumes the acid released, and partly out of terror that it might drip down on to the table, way below, and get noticed.

  More curls of smoke were rising. He moved down several slats, until he was below the level of the acid, then checked his watch. 7.04 p.m. If his calculations were right, at around 7.35 p.m. the acid would have eaten through enough of the shaft for the chandelier to plunge.

  Through the monitor he heard the conversation between Larry Brooker and Jack Jordan continuing.

  ‘I’m telling you, darling boy, I cannot possibly shoot tonight if he’s wrecked.’

  ‘He’s fine, Jesus, I just spoke with him!’

  ‘You said that he was fine last night. He couldn’t remember his lines for more than ten seconds. You know who this is going to reflect on? I don’t work this way, Larry. I just can’t connect with him. Do you understand?’

  ‘He’ll be fine. Good as gold.’

  ‘He was complaining to me yesterday that Gaia was chewing raw garlic before their kissing scene. I think I should go and talk to him off set, before everyone else arrives.’

  Shit, shit, shit, Wheeler thought. Just get the jerk on set. And everyone else!

  He watched Jordan walk out of the room. One of the Assistant Directors said into his microphone, ‘Hold all cast.’

  No! Wheeler urged, silently. Bring them on, bring them on, get them into position!

  Suddenly he saw a small boy, with mussed-up brown hair, wearing a T-shirt and jeans, walk into the room, duck under the ropes and walk towards the table. Gaia’s little brat, he recognized from earlier.

  Fuck off kid! Get out of here! Clear off, you little bastard!

  The boy wandered, curious, around the table. He peered, nosily, at the hams, chickens, haunches of venison, suckling pig, sil
ver flagons of ales and wines, and bowls of fruits. Then he pulled up a chair at the table, sat down, and stared around him, with a regal air, as if imagining himself back in time.

  Clear off, kid!

  He looked just like his own son.

  Suddenly there was a strange sound directly above him. A sharp hissing. He looked up, and to his shock, the entire interior of the dome above him had disappeared in a swirling mist of acrid smoke. He could feel it burning his lungs, parching his mouth.

  Sudden panic gripped him.

  There was a piercing, creaking sound.

  He looked down for an instant, and the chandelier was trembling.

  No, no, no.

  His careful calculations had come out at thirty minutes. What had he got wrong?

  It was shaking even more now, and the creaking was getting worse.

  The damned boy was still sitting there, lifting a silver goblet as if pretending to drink from it.

  He coughed, the acid fumes burning his eyes and searing his throat. Half blinded, tears were streaming from his eyes. He coughed again, a long, deep, choking, hacking cough. Get lost, kid! Scram!

  His goddamn calculations were wrong. Had he screwed up on the acid strength? The calculations of the diameter of the aluminium?

  There was a terrible screech of stressed metal, right below him. He looked down and to his horror could see the whole chandelier had moved, several inches, and was now off-kilter.

  The shaft was about to snap.

  The whole chandelier, as he had planned, was about to fall. But on to Roan Lafayette.

  No. ‘Kid!’ he yelled. ‘Get away! Get away! GET AWAY!’ But no one could hear him from up here.

  The boy continued to play happily with his goblet.

  Of course he could not hear him from up here.

  There was another piercing metallic shriek.

  Through his observation hole, he could see the chandelier was swaying now. Any moment it would plunge down. No one had noticed. It was going to kill the kid and that was never his intention.

  Oh shit, shit, shit, shit.

  This was screwing up all his plans. He launched himself down the rest of the wooden slats, knocking over and then accidentally treading on and splintering the baby alarm speaker, squeezed back out through the narrow hatch, and then clambered down the ladder.

  He felt surprisingly energized and clear-headed.

  I am not killing a child. I am not killing a child.

  He sprinted along the steel walkway, ignoring the handrail this time, then clambered in through the hatch to the apartment beneath the big dome. He ran through the main room, past the dust sheets, over the trapdoor secured by the two bolts, then down the spiral staircase, keeping well clear of the rickety handrail. Then he burst out through the door at the bottom, into the central hallway.

  Two security guards standing there looked at him in astonishment.

  As Wheeler ignored them and sprinted down the corridor towards the Banqueting Room, the guards ran after him. ‘Hey! Hey, you!’ one shouted. ‘Let me see your ID!’

  Three grips, unwinding a cable drum, were blocking the entrance to the room. One guard caught up with Wheeler as he tried to barge past them, and grabbed him by the shoulder. ‘Hey!’

  Drayton Wheeler turned and punched him in the nose so hard he bust it, sending the guard reeling back, and at the same time agonizingly dislocating his own thumb. But he barely even noticed. He ran on into the Banqueting Room and looked up.

  The chandelier was swaying as if suspended by a solitary, fraying piece of string.

  At any second it was going to come down.

  The stupid kid, in a world of his own, was now pretending to eat with a knife and fork. The rest of the crew in here were well clear of the table.

  Wheeler clambered over the rope.

  ‘Hey!’ The other security guard shouted at him.

  Wheeler ignored him. Ignored everything but the kid at the table and the looming, swaying shadow above him. He threw himself across the room and grabbed the boy, yanking him clean out of his chair by his arm, his knife and fork clattering to the ground.

  ‘Hey!!’ Roan shouted, furious and bewildered, moments before Drayton Wheeler, gripping him by the shoulder and buttocks, threw him, with all the force he could muster, across the polished wooden floor, sliding and spinning like a human curling stone.

  Roan shrieked in protest as he crashed into a brass upright supporting the rope.

  Then, before Drayton Wheeler had a chance to move, the chandelier dropped.

  He sensed, fleetingly, the shadow, descending on him, enveloping him, far too fast for him to cry out. The full force of the chandelier struck him on the head, smashing him to the floor a split second before it demolished an eight-foot-long portion of the centre of the table.

  The floor shook under the massive, splintering crash, as if a bomb had gone off in the room. There was a jangling, reverberating boom. Hundreds of the 15,000 glass drops shattered, sending a glittering, shimmering display of coloured light into the air, for an instant, like a firework. Lights in the grand room flickered. Goblets on the table crashed over, shattering, spilling their contents; plates, chandeliers and tureens slid down into the tangled mess of chains, gilded metal framework and glass. Then there was a gentle, almost absurd tinkling sound. As if someone had just dropped one single glass. That was all and nothing else.

  It was followed by a brief instant of absolute silence. No one moved.

  Then a male voice cried out in shock, ‘Oh shit, oh no!’

  A female voice screamed, ‘There’s a man under there! Oh my God, there’s someone under there!’

  There was another moment of stunned, awed silence. It was broken by a hideous, whooping, hysterical screaming from the film unit’s continuity woman. Bug-eyed, she was standing, pointing at a dark red pool of blood spreading out from under the mangled wreckage where the centre of the table had been only moments ago.

  A single streak of stark white light flitted across the scene. Someone had taken a photograph.

  94

  Several of the film unit’s lights had been beamed on to the fallen chandelier. Under their glare, two paramedics in green uniforms, Phil Davidson and Vicky Donoghue, were picking their way through the shattered glass and twisted metal, trying to locate the victim’s head, being careful not to put any additional weight on the wreckage that could crush the man further. There was blood everywhere beneath them, spreading slowly outwards, and a terrible stench like a bad drain. Both of them knew what that meant. That the man’s stomach and bowels had been split open.

  They could glimpse the man’s clothes in a few places. Repeatedly, Vicky Donoghue asked, ‘Sir, can you hear us? Help is on its way. Can you hear us, sir?’

  There was no response. Outside, she could hear a cacophony of sirens winding down. Hopefully the fire brigade had arrived with lifting gear. Then she saw flesh. A wrist.

  Carefully she eased her gloved hand in between the jagged leaves of glass palm fronds, and held the wrist lightly. It was limp. ‘Can you hear me, sir? Try to move your hand if you can’t speak,’ she urged. Then she curled her fingers around the wrist, feeling for the radial artery.

  ‘I’ve got a pulse!’ she announced after some moments in a low voice to her colleague. ‘But it’s weak.’

  ‘We’ve got to get this mess lifted off him. How weak?’

  She counted for a few seconds. ‘Twenty-five.’ She counted again. ‘Going down. Twenty-four.’

  He mouthed the question at her without actually saying the words. He didn’t need to. They’d crewed together for long enough to be able to read each other’s signals. FUBAR BUNDY?

  The words were an acronym for Fucked Up Beyond All Recovery, But Unfortunately Not Dead Yet. The gallows humour of the ambulance service that helped them cope with horrific situations like this.

  She nodded affirmative.

  Jason Tingley, with his boyish mop of hair brushed forward, white button-down shirt with black b
uttons, and narrow black tie, every inch a twenty-first-century Mod, was at his desk in the CID department on the fourth floor of Brighton’s John Street Police Station, nearing the end of his twelve-hour shift as the on-call Detective Inspector. At the forefront of his mind was yesterday’s disturbing development of the emailed death threat against Gaia.

  He yawned; it had been a busy day, starting at the beginning of his shift with a woman claiming she had been raped after having a row with her boyfriend, and leaving a party at 6.45 a.m. Who the hell partied until 6.45 a.m. on a Monday night – or rather, Tuesday morning – he wondered? Then at midday the Road Policing Unit had stopped a car in the city with its boot filled with bags of cannabis. And at 3 p.m. there had been an armed robbery on a jewellery shop in the city centre.

  He was still dealing with the paperwork on that now, and was almost finished. He was hoping to be able to get home in time to see his two children before they went to bed, and enjoy a meal and a quiet evening in front of the television with his wife Nicky. Then his phone rang.

  ‘Jason Tingley,’ he answered.

  It was the Ops 1 Controller, Andy Kille. ‘Jason, there’s been an incident at the Royal Pavilion just come in that I thought you, the Chief Superintendent and Roy Grace might want to know about.’

  ‘What’s happened?’

  He listened with great concern to the sketchy details that Kille had been given. It seemed a strange coincidence that a chandelier which had been in situ for almost two centuries should suddenly fall down this week, of all weeks. Unless the film crew had been meddling with it and had damaged something?

  ‘Do we know anything about the person under the chandelier, Andy?’ he asked.

  ‘Not at this stage, no.’

  ‘I’m going to take a look,’ he said. ‘I’ll keep Roy Grace and Graham Barrington informed.’ He ended the call, stood up and hooked his jacket off the back of his chair. By the time he had reached the car park out the back, and belted himself into one of the grey Ford Focus cars from the detectives’ pool, he had notified the Chief Superintendent of Brighton and Hove, who was away for the day attending a course, but had not managed to get through to Roy Grace.