‘Hmm. Reminds me of home – the poverty, that is, not the happiness part.’
‘I know you think I’m a spoiled brat. Because of my father, everyone always does.’
‘I don’t think you’re a brat,’ he sounded sincere, ‘but I don’t think any film producers live here either. So let’s just leave it, eh?’
She stopped by one of the blocks. ‘This is it: Heston House. We want number nineteen.’
‘Och, why bother?’
‘What’s the matter? Now that we’re here, we may as well check it out.’
‘Fine, fine.’ He started up the rough concrete stairs. ‘I recommend skipping the lift – unless you’re partial to knives and piss.’
The third-floor balcony overlooked an abandoned children’s playground. Corrupt black paint peeled from the door of number nineteen. The window beside it was boarded with cheap ply.
‘Great,’ Proctor muttered, ‘I bet this L. Miller turns out to be an unemployed body-builder or a Yardie drug-dealer. You best stand well back.’ He knocked at the door and stepped back himself, as far as the balcony would allow. The figure who eventually opened it was slender, big-nosed and had close-curled grey hair; he was in his sixties or early seventies, wore grey slacks burgundy carpet slippers, an off-green cardigan and a stained cream shirt buttoned up to the neck. He peered out fearfully.
‘I don’t want any!’ His eyes bulged. ‘Whatever it is, I don’t want any!’
‘Err…sorry, Sir, we’re just looking for a Mr LeonMiller. You wouldn’t happen to know him, would you?’
‘Who’s asking?’
‘I am.’ Annalise lowered her hood.
The man’s expression changed. ‘Well, well, well, look who it is!’ He studied Annalise from head to toe as he held the door open. ‘You are most welcome to my humble abode! Deeply humble, I’m afraid!’ Proctor followed Annalise across the threshold. As he did, the man stopped him. ‘Do I know you?’
‘I doubt it, pal.’
‘Funny. I’ve normally got a good memory for faces. Never mind. Princess Palatine!’ He closed the door and shuffled after Annalise, rubbing his hands together. ‘Well, well, well!’
The flat was a meagre two-up two-down and as claustrophobic as a tomb. The narrow hallway was stacked with cardboard boxes; these brimmed with metal film canisters, crumpled paper, video tapes and faded magazines. The living room was worse: added to the jumble were mounds of books, crooked towers of DVD cases, a smelly little dog and a blazing electric fire, both bars of which radiated a sickly pink glow. The dog leapt up and began to yap frantically, spinning around amongst the mixed-media detritus. One corner of the room was entirely taken up by a gargantuan flat-panel television which Miller turned off. It emanated a hideous blankness.
‘Quiet, Brutus!’ he barked at the dog. ‘shut up!’
But Brutus yapped even more loudly so Miller lifted it with a slippered toe and propelled it towards the hall. It yowled, then sulked. Annalise froze. Her father looked down at her from every wall, wearing an assortment of monocles, black-tie evening wear, uniforms and silly ethnic clothing. The room was plastered with old film posters.
‘DAVID PALATINE IS…FANSHAWE AND GROVEL.’
The artwork varied from hand-painted seventies-style to eighties Bond pastiche, replete with dolly-birds and exotic backdrops.
‘Holy shit!’ Froggy remarked from under her cloak. She slapped her stomach hard.
‘Pardon?’ Miller asked.
‘She said,’ Proctor leapt in, ‘she needs to sit!’
Miller wheezed as he cleared newspapers and magazines from a low, uncomfortable-looking sofa. It took them a few seconds to realise that the sound coming from his chest was laughter – at least, his mouth stretched in a rictus-like grin. His teeth were so regular, they had to be false.
‘Bit of a shock, eh? Seeing the old man after all these years?’
‘Y-yes…’
‘Original posters are quite rare; collector’s items, most of ’em. I get a lot of collectors, writing to me, looking for stuff.’ He indicated a messy mountain of mail, spread across a dining table. What looked like a week’s worth of dirty dishes fought the correspondence for space; more assured in its squat occupancy was a dirty, cream-coloured computer. Awkwardly, Annalise and Proctor sat down. ‘Drink!’ Miller announced. ‘This definitely calls for a drink!’ He shambled off towards the kitchen, throwing them another vampiric smile before closing the adjoining door. The kitchen, they assumed, was so bad he didn’t want them to see it. They heard the clatter of cupboards and glass, then what sounded like their host talking to himself. Brutus exploited the opportunity to launch a second offensive, slinking in from the hallway and growling at them from the far side of the room.
‘Come over here and do that,’ Proctor growled back, ‘ye wee shite. Jesus, I hate ratty dogs – where I come from, they get thrown off high buildings.’
Annalise opened her cloak.
‘This place is bad ju-ju!’ Froggy rasped. ‘Bad ju-ju!’
‘For Chrissakes put him away!’ Proctor snapped, before lifting a DVD case, which he flicked at the dog, hitting it square on the nose. It yelped and slunk off again, defeated. With his unnerving smile, Miller clanked through the kitchen door bearing a tray with three not-very-clean glasses and a half-bottle of white wine. The wine was warm and cloyingly sweet. Miller sat opposite them in an upright armchair and raised a toast. Annalise wanted to spit the wine back into the greasy glass, but Miller’s eyes devoured her. Proctor sank lower and lower into the sofa.
‘Well, well, well,’ Miller gloated for the third time. ‘Shooting in London?’
‘Shepperton,’ she nodded. ‘Sorry for dropping in on you like this.’
‘Oh don’t apologise!’ His eyes gleamed, black like a bird’s. ‘A most welcome honour! As you can probably see, I don’t entertain much these days. Hahh!’ He started to wheeze again. ‘That’s a good one, isn’t it? Entertain! I used to entertain audiences all over the world…’
She gave a weak smile and ventured, ‘I suppose the royalties no longer amount to much…’
He set down his glass and spread his hands. They were like a pair of giant white spiders. ‘I wouldn’t know!’ He smiled, but now it was a false smile that masked – she could tell – anger and bitterness. ‘I no longer get any! I haven’t received a penny in years! From my own films!’
‘But surely–’
‘It can hardly be news to you that I’ve been fighting your father’s estate since he died. Fighting for what’s mine! Is that why you’re here?’ He cocked his head. ‘With an offer?’
‘An offer? N-no…’
‘But if they didn’t send you…’
‘They?’
‘The solicitors, the ones handling your father’s estate! Babcock and whatever-you-call ’em! Scum!’ His eyes widened. ‘Vicious, lying scum! I’ve spent a fortune fighting for what’s rightfully mine, but they always find a way to string the case along, to tie everything up in knots! More money for them, you see, the longer it goes on!’
‘I know nothing about that, Mr Miller – I’ve never had anything to do with my father’s affairs. When he died, it was all such a mess – there was no will or anything. I just… walked away, I suppose.’
‘Did you now? Then what do you want?’ He wheezed. ‘You want to work with me? I’ve seen all your films; much better than anything your father and I ever made. Although not, I expect, nearly as lucrative.’
‘Um, nice of you to say so, but at the moment I’m busy with this–’
‘The Perfect Heresy! Oh, I still read all the trade magazines.’ He indicated one of the many piles choking the room. ‘One doozy of a big-budget movie… and how’s that going for you?’
‘Err… fine.’
‘What’s Emerson like to work with? Bit of an ego, I’d imagine?’
‘He’s definitely… an interesting person.’
‘We all have an ego, don’t we? But that’s the thing about actors,’ now his
smile turned malicious, ‘it’s your job to have so many!’ For one horrible second, she thought he knew about Froggy, but he waved at his posters. ‘David Palatine is Fanshawe and Grovel! But they were my characters too! I helped create them!’
‘My father hated them.’
‘Ah! “Dogs love their friends and bite their enemies!”’
‘Sorry?’
‘Freud, my child. The rest of the quote is, “unlike people, who always have to mix love and hate”. Your father was a very difficult man to work with, but he loved those characters as much as he hated them.’
‘Is that why he kept making the films?’
‘No, that was for the money. When you spend a lot, you’ve got to make a lot. Believe me – I speak from long experience.’
‘Maybe that’s why you found him difficult to work with – because he knew he was selling out?’
‘And what, pray, is wrong with selling out? We all strive for success, and when it comes our way,’ his white spider hands clenched, ‘we seize it!’
‘Success killed my father!’
‘How so? He lived like a king for nearly thirty years!’
‘What happened in Tunisia?’ She felt herself close to tears. ‘Why did you let him fly his own plane all that way? Why didn’t you make him travel by airline, like everyone else?’
‘Believe me, if I could build a time machine,’ Miller’s face darkened, ‘and go back to December 2001, I would buy a gun, put it to your father’s head and force him to travel on a scheduled flight with me. His accident,’ now his black eyes bulged, ‘cost me three million dollars of my own money, plus whatever that film would have made. That was the beginning of the end for me. The beginning of what, I can assure you, has been a painful decline! You’re on your way up, young lady; let me tell you – it’s a lot less fun coming down. But to answer your question, did you ever, in your life, meet anyone who could tell David Palatine what to do? Because I couldn’t.’
‘He used to listen to me,’ she whispered, ‘when I was little.’
However, Miller was on a rant. ‘I suppose it was my fault – the whole thing, I mean, not the accident as such. I was very well-established before I met him; learned my trade on Ealing comedies, but I financed quite a lot of serious stuff, too. Actually, I didn’t think the first Fanshawe film would fly; it was just a punt between bigger projects. Do you know, your father only got the part because Peter Ustinov turned it down?’
‘I had heard that, yes…’
‘By giving him a chance, I made him a star. But by making him a star, I unleashed the monster. I’m a producer, so, almost by definition, I’m a bad person who’s done some good things. But fame drove David mad. He became a bad person who did bad things. But he also knew that no matter how badly he behaved, he couldn’t be replaced. He was Fanshawe and Grovel and the studios always wanted more. Every time we thought the franchise was exhausted, someone would offer us millions to revive it. For the first film, your father was so compliant and charming, so eager to please. But by the time we started the third, he was out of control. Always demanding more money, always behaving like a prima donna. We would build sets and he would demand that they were torn down again. He treated the rest of the cast with contempt; he would mimic them to their faces, to destroy their confidence. He’d steamroll them with his sheer talent, then become angry when they were nervous of him or if they faltered in any way. You know when you hear unknown actors praise a more established one for being so generous? Well, your father was the exact opposite – the least generous man who ever lived. He would argue with the director then retreat to whatever luxurious hotel we had him booked into and refuse to come out until whoever displeased him was fired. When I complained to him, he would sulk, not know his lines and carry on as if everyone else was at fault. Then, he’d disappear, and we’d find him in Rome, having a massage. Or in Ireland,’ Miller’s black eyes gleamed, ‘hiding in that big old mansion of his. Smart move – I heard he bought it for next to nothing. Artists in Ireland don’t pay tax and any fool can claim to be an artist, can’t they? What was the name of that grotty little village? Kill something?’
‘Kilnarush.’
‘Yes. You probably don’t remember – you were young at the time…’
Only then did the recollection strike her. ‘You came to Whin Abbey.’
‘Yes. I once stayed in your home for nearly a week, to persuade your father back to work. Me and Donald Pleasance, actually, he was there too. That would have been the early nineties, and your father hadn’t made a film in three years.’
‘That was you! It was you who took him away from me!’
‘Actually, my recollection is that your father rang me, then went all coy. The studios had given up on him, but when they heard he might be interested, they were as keen as always. Then I had to fly over and twist his arm, as if it was my idea to relaunch his career, not his. Do you know, on the last night of our visit, he got you out of bed and made you stand on a footstool in the drawing room, and you recited – I’ve never forgotten this, you were standing on this stool in your pyjamas, holding a cuddly toy – and you recited a chunk from The Tempest. What was it now? “If by your art…’”
‘“…my dearest father,”’ she took up, ‘“you have put the wild waters in this roar, allay them. The sky, it seems, would pour down stinking pitch, but that the sea, mounting to th’ welkin’s cheek, dashes the fire out. Oh, I have suffered…’”
‘“…with those that I saw suffer!”’ he finished for her, laughing like a ruptured accordion.
‘Please. Tell me about Tunisia. Tell me what happened.’
Miller’s face turned grave again. ‘What can I possibly tell you that you don’t already know?’
‘Please…’
He sighed. ‘We were waiting for him – waiting to start Fanswhawe, Grovel and the Mystery of the Vanishing Harem. Oh, I see you make a face, but believe me, no one ever lost money underestimating the public taste and when a formula works, there’s always room for another revival!’
‘Please. Tunisia…’
‘We were in Tunis. Shooting was scheduled to start in the Old Town but your father as usual didn’t want to arrive until the last possible minute. He said he had business to take care of in Nice, something about his boat; then he flew from there to Sicily…’
‘To Palermo.’
‘Yes. I spoke to him that very last night, on the telephone. Funny, the thing I remember most is what a good mood he was in. Very chipper, laughing, doing his funny voices – not at all morose. I hadn’t heard him like that in ages, especially after the arguments we’d had, trying to get him to sign up. The usual nightmare – how many millions he wanted for this, how many percentage points for that. He was a tough negotiator, but we were both Yids, we understood each other. We always came to an arrangement in the end, your father and I.’
‘But he was happy?’
‘He was ebullient. “Just a hop across the pond, Leon.” That’s what he said, when I asked him about the flight. It’s less than 250 miles, you know, much less than flying from Nice to Palermo and no problem for an experienced pilot. The weather was fine and he was due in at three in the afternoon, local time. He’d insisted I put him in the Residence – Tunisia’s finest hotel – and we’d booked dinner there for seven. I was on location, watching preparations for the next day, when, around about five, one of my assistants told that me his plane hadn’t landed. The driver had called her from the airport, wondering what to do. I told her to contact his hotel in Palermo, in case there had been a delay. But they said he’d checked out, so we rang Palermo airport. It took ages to get through to the control tower, but eventually we established that he had taken off at midday – everything normal, his plane fully fuelled, good conditions and all the rest. We explained that he hadn’t arrived, so they tried to raise him on the radio, but no luck. Then,’ and now Miller’s spider hands fidgeted on his knees, ‘we had that awful time, when you’re worried sick but you still want to beli
eve that everything is all right, that there’s a simple explanation. Everyone had a theory: his radio was broken, he’d had to divert back to Palermo, he’d accidentally flown to Algeria or Libya instead, although someone suggested that maybe he’d fallen foul of Libyan airspace. It was only slowly, reluctantly, that we started to accept that something bad might have happened – a mechanical failure, maybe. It took many hours to persuade the Tunisian authorities to actually do something. The Italians made an effort, but, by then, it was dark, so it wasn’t until the following morning that they finally found…’
‘Found what?’ Annalise felt nauseous – the heat, the revolting wine, the unbearable oppression of Miller’s hovel.
His gimlet eyes pierced hers. ‘They found wreckage, off the coast.’
‘And…?’
‘And not much else.’
‘Tell me what they found.’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘Yes,’ she lied, ‘I do.’
‘I think Mr Miller is right,’ Proctor interrupted, ‘there are some things you’re probably better not–’
‘I want to know!’ she insisted.
‘Bits of tattered clothing,’ Miller spoke quietly, ‘floating in the water, with scraps of human flesh stuck to them. But nothing worth burying – whatever happened, it was quick, final and only the sea knows the rest.’
The three sat in silence. Suddenly, Miller’s doorbell rang and Brutus barked, making them jump.
‘Bloody yobs!’ Miller muttered, unfolding himself from his seat. ‘They have nothing better to do around here than pester us senior citizens… excuse me.’ Pushing Brutus back into the hallway, he closed the living-room door behind him. Annalise stared at the ceiling. Even that was grimy. Proctor reached out and squeezed her hand.
‘I think we should leave soon…’
‘Yes,’ she whispered, ‘we should leave soon.’
He opened his mouth to say something else, but she never found out what, because the living-room door burst open and a man came charging through it; not Miller, but someone younger, heavier, with a beanie hat, bushy eyebrows and a golden earring in one ear. Proctor leapt up like a scalded cat, but the man’s crushing punch caught the side of his face and he went straight down again, falling into the electric fire with an almighty clatter. Annalise screamed. The man kicked Proctor in the stomach. She screamed again and another, older man rushed into the room, wearing a navy suit and glasses. He grabbed her arm and snapped a metal bracelet on her wrist. She tried to pull away but he stuck a needle into her and she squealed in pain and terror. The man attacking Proctor now sat on top of him but could barely keep him down. Proctor’s face was bleeding and he roared incoherent curses. The little man took the needle out of her arm and slapped her skin. She tried to bite his hand but her face felt numb and she missed. Proctor yelled at them to leave her alone, then something about Miller having a bastarding phone in his kitchen. The man on top of him took a syringe from his pocket and stuck it in his shoulder; Proctor swore a lot more but stopped writhing. Brutus barked hysterically. Annalise tried to speak but couldn’t. She saw red concentric circles. The little man holding her wrist said something like, ‘Calm down we’ve got them now’, then Miller came into the room, followed by Frost, who looked intently at her, then handed Miller an envelope. Her vision seemed to go bendy as Miller tore this open and counted banknotes onto his messy dining table with his white spider hands. She couldn’t focus. The concentric circles turned green, then she saw nothing more at all.
Darling Sweetheart Page 33