Wearing Purple (Oz Blackstone Mystery)

by Quintin Jardine

  ‘We got separate pads on each turn-buckle, on account of one of our standard moves is to grab the other guy and slam him into the corner, hard. The top pad is the thickest, ’cos that’s where the biggest impact is. It’s the foreman’s job to fix ’em on, to make sure they’re secure.’

  As we watched, Sonny Leonard was working on the corner nearest us, fastening on the pads, which were covered in red leather, and looked a lot like boxing gloves. Jerry pointed at him. ‘You make sure those is tight,’ he called out, meaningfully. ‘Daze is going to be tossing me into that corner tomorrow night, and I don’t want to wind up hittin’ no steel.’

  ‘Check ’em yourself, then,’ Leonard snarled back at him.

  ‘Okay, okay, okay,’ The Behemoth replied, holding up his hands in a mollifying gesture. ‘Don’t get so touchy. It ain’t your ass gonna get stomped in there - unless you screw up those turn-buckle pads, that is!’

  ‘I didn’t know you and Daze were on tomorrow,’ I said. ‘I thought you were keeping that for the next pay-per-view event.’

  ‘We are, really. Tomorrow’s just a warm-up. Rockette and I are taking on Daze in a handicap match.’ He grinned. ‘Tommy’s gonna get stomped again. Ev hasn’t quite forgiven him yet for that guitar stunt.’

  I looked at him. ‘You’re looking happy this week. Are things going all right with Sally?’

  ‘Yeah, great, thanks. Don’t need you to speak for me no more. I’ll need to watch out for looking happy, though. That ain’t The Behemoth’s angle. Gotta do some work on bein’ ferocious again.’

  Chapter 26

  I missed Jan like crazy, all that night. She’d have loved being with the crew in Barcelona, especially to see me being interviewed by a reporter from the Catalan television station. They were looking for Spanish speakers, so Daze took me along to the studio with him. His grip of Castillian was much better than mine, but I think I scored more points with the presenter by managing a few words in Catalan.

  We were happy to do the slot, since there were still a couple of thousand seats left in the big arena, and Everett was keen to have a full house.

  Jan would have loved our night on the town too, at a long table in one of the Catalan capital’s most famous restaurants, a big galleried place with some seats which let diners look down into the kitchen, with its huge, original, cast-iron range.

  Eventually I couldn’t restrain myself any longer. I dug out my mobile phone and called her, from the din of the restaurant. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Having dinner.’

  ‘In the street, by the sound of it.’

  ‘Naw, honey, the street’s quieter than this place.’

  ‘Well lucky you. Me, I’m still working on Susie’s papers.’

  ‘Turn it in love. There’s always tomorrow. You’re sleeping for two now, remember.’

  The satellite link was clear, but I could barely hear her against the background noise. ‘I suppose so. I’ve got the hairdresser in the morning, and I’m shopping in the afternoon, but I can always work in the evening, before your show.’ There was a roar from a table near ours, and I had to strain even harder to make her out. ‘I’m getting there, Oz. I’ll let you see what I’ve found when you get home.’

  Jan would have enjoyed the next morning too; a tour of the city on our chartered bus, with stops at the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi’s great cathedral, which has been under construction for over a hundred years and is still nowhere near completion, at the Ramblas, for coffee in one of the dozens of street bars, whose tables are set under the trees between the avenue’s twin carriageways, and at the enormous Camp Nou, home of Barcelona Football Club and a place of worship for most Catalans, where a light buffet was set out in a hospitality suite.

  By the time the bus arrived at the Arena, dead on one pm, I had decided to spend some of my windfall income from the GWA commission on a surprise spring weekend trip to the city for the two of us.

  Sonny Leonard was standing at the performers’ entrance to the stadium, smoking a cigarette, as we dismounted from our vehicle. ‘Everything ready?’ Daze called to him.

  ‘Yeah, boss,’ the foreman replied. ‘These Spanish guys know what they’re doing okay. The CWI crowd did a couple of tour events here last summer, so they had a good idea of what our business is like.’

  ‘That’s good. Take a break, Sonny. You and the bus driver take a cab back to the hotel, go into the five-star restaurant and have some lunch. Get back here for six.’

  ‘Yeah, okay. I’ll do that.’ He dropped his cigarette and ground it into the tarmac with his right foot, then headed towards the bus.

  Watching him go, Everett grunted. ‘CWI, huh? Guess we’d better show these people how a real wrestling promotion should be.’ He turned to the team. ‘Come on, Ladies and Gentlemen, let’s get inside and into the run-through. ’

  He beckoned to me. ‘Oz, while I get changed into my ring gear, you go find Barbara and ask her how the tickets have gone since Channel 33 broadcast our interviews last night. If there are any left, tell her to let them go half-price.

  ‘After you’ve done that, with Leonard off patch, I want you to do what you did last week. Go over the staging and look for problems - anything that shouldn’t be there.’

  I did exactly as he asked - everyone always did exactly as Everett asked - steadily through the afternoon; during breaks in the run-through action, and while I wasn’t polishing my minimally bilingual introductions for the show itself. As I checked the staging, I was careful to ensure that I wasn’t noticed by Liam Matthews, who had joined the commentary team for the event. However the Irishman seemed to be well on the way back to top form, which meant that if it wasn’t female, he didn’t notice it.

  ‘All clear, Everett,’ I told the giant as he stepped out of the ring after his last run-through with Jerry and Rockette, a heavily curtailed affair, with only the speed moves but none of the power stuff being rehearsed. It looked like a good match; I had never seen Daze and The Behemoth go at it before, other than that one time on television in Anstruther, and I was looking forward to it.

  ‘You didn’t find anything unusual?’

  ‘Nothing at all; everything seems fine. Did you check the whiz-bangs?’

  ‘We ain’t using them here; they’re against regulations. Just lasers, lights and noise . . . lots of noise. I’ll put four of our hired Spanish security guys on duty at the ring before we let the crowd in, to make sure than no one - marks or otherwise - goes anywhere near it.

  ‘With luck, we’ll get through this show clean.’

  Chapter 27

  Because of Central European Time, we were running an hour later by the watch than usual, and so it was after six when the doors were opened and the first of the curious public came filing in. I had just checked with Barbara: the last of the tickets had gone; it was a full house.

  The feeling from the crowd as it grew was different from either the languid Geordie curiosity of Newcastle, or the proprietorial buzz of the Glaswegians. The Catalan marks were full of Latin excitement, shouting and laughing among themselves, singing football songs and waving the home-made banners which seemed to be obligatory at all televised wrestling promotions. By six-fifty-five, as show time approached, they even had a Mexican wave going.

  It was on its third circuit of the arena when my own private wave swept over me. It seemed to begin in the pit of my stomach and radiate outwards. I felt my heart hammering, I seemed to explode into a cold sweat, my head swam, the arena seemed to fade to red, then back again, and I felt overwhelmingly weak. I had experienced stage fright before, but never anything like the pure dread of those moments.

  Fortunately, my attack vanished as suddenly and as completely as it had visited me. The lights dimmed, the wave stopped, the audience fell silent, and we were in business. I climbed into the ring, the lighting director found me, and my silver spot winked on. Wrestlers are judged, to a great extent, by the acclamation of the crowd. I’d guess there’s nothing new about that;
I imagine the same was true in the Coliseum of Ancient Rome. Today’s gladiators call it a ‘pop’. I’ll swear that in my third week as the GWA ring announcer, when the spotlight hit me, I got a ‘pop’ of my own. Or at least I thought I did; that’s how tightly my new role had taken hold of me.

  I got through my few welcoming words of passable Spanish, repeated them in English, then got on with introducing the first match. That was easy; it featured Sally Crockett, the first genuine, pan-European ring superstar.

  As usual she was superb as she worked over a beefy Swedish girl who wrestled under the name of Valkyrie and who came into the ring wearing a horned helmet and carrying a huge brass shield. At the end of the match, two of our Spanish roadies carried her out of the ring on that shield and up the ramp towards the dressing room, leaving Sally to milk the adulation of the crowd for all it was worth.

  As she stood perched on the middle rope I sneaked a glance towards the wrestlers’ entrance. Jerry was there, in a track suit and without his helmet, adulating with the rest of them. For a moment, I wondered how he would take it when the time came - as it would, in accordance with the laws of unpredictability which govern pro wrestling story lines - for her to lose.

  The crowd’s enthusiasm for Sally’s show carried on through the programme. I was still learning the game, and my lesson for the night was that sports entertainment is to a great extent about firing up the crowd to a point just short of hysteria, to the level at which it has an addictive effect on the viewing audience. They’ll be well hooked tonight, I thought as the excitement reached fever pitch with the entry of The Behemoth, flanked by Tommy Rockette and Diane, The Princess.

  She was wearing a specially made, skin-tight, nipple-pointing, ass-clinging, no-underwear number in the red and yellow stripes of the Catalan flag. Small wonder Everett was jealous, yet, I reminded myself, it was he who allowed his wife to appear in public dressed like that. As she approached the ring, I looked down at Liam Matthews, at the commentator’s table. He was gazing at her with a look of undisguised lust . . . but then so was every other man at ringside.

  And then the roof rose a couple of feet in the air, before settling back into position. There was no aerial entrance for Daze this time, since the structure of the arena ruled it out. Instead his music played and he marched slowly down the ramp in his ring suit and cape, looking like a small - no, medium-sized - army under a single red spotlight. Reaching the ring, he disdained the steps, leaping instead from a standing position up onto the surround, then stepping over the top rope. Arms raised high, he circled, facing each quadrant of the screaming audience in turn, as a pattern of sharp red and yellow laser beams flickered across his body, creating a flame effect.

  The television lights were still coming up, and I was barely out of the ring before Jerry hit him with a spearing shoulder-first football tackle, just above the right hip but below the ribcage, bearing him across the ring and into the ropes. But as they were catapulted back, by their own weight and momentum, Daze caught the top strand, steadying himself as Jerry went flying across the ring to the ropes on the other side. The force of his impact sent Tommy Rockette, who had been standing on the apron holding the tag rope, crashing down on to the floor beside my table, and rebounded The Behemoth back towards the centre.

  The black giant caught him in mid-ring, all close on four hundred pounds of him, swept him off his feet and round into a power-slam which sounded like the collapse of a large building. The referee knelt beside them and began to count; ‘One,’ pause ‘Two’. Theatrically, he mouthed the third and winning call, but the sound died in his throat as Jerry thrust his right shoulder off the canvas.

  Daze jumped to his feet, hauling The Behemoth upright after him and pushed him into the ropes once again, as if to set him up for another slam. This time, though, it was Jerry who used the top strand as a brake. He grabbed his opponent’s arm and made to hurl him into the corner, but the big man simply braced himself, reversed the hold and sent him, instead, flying backwards with impossible speed into the corner of the ring.

  The helmeted monster hit the red turn-buckle pads above me with a ‘Bang!’ which was so loud it was heard even above the howls of the crowd; so loud that it drew a great collective gasp. No wonder they don’t rehearse those, I said to myself. Daze followed up his advantage, sprinting into the corner to crash a lariat blow to the side of the other man’s head, then he stood back, waiting for him to fall forward.

  Fall forward Jerry did, but not according to the script, not in the exaggerated way I had seen them rehearse. Instead, his knees seemed to buckle; he began to topple to the ground, but Everett caught him first, turning him on to his back and laying him gently on the canvas.

  ‘Doctor! Now!’ he roared, as the crowd began to fall silent. ‘Medico! En seguido!’ I had my doubts. Two weeks earlier, when Matthews had needed one in Newcastle, there hadn’t been a single doctor in the house.

  I scented it as I ran up the steps into the ring; a sharp, burning smell, strong enough to make its presence felt even over the other odours which hung in the air; sweat, liniment, and humanity in general.

  There was yet another smell too. As I looked at Jerry, lying there on the floor I saw the blood as it welled from beneath him and began to spread; I saw it as it began to bubble on his lips. My dad has a thing about first aid. He believes that everyone should learn it, and he made damn sure that Ellie and I did. I knew what that bubbling meant.

  ‘Turn him over on his face!’ I shouted to Everett, who was kneeling beside his grey-faced friend. ‘I think his lung’s been punctured. Turn him, or he could drown on his own blood.’

  He didn’t look up at me, but stared out of the ring, his expression frozen, with shock, I guessed.

  ‘Do as he says!’ another Scottish voice called out. ‘I’m a nurse! Do it now!’

  The evening had become totally surreal. I blinked. It couldn’t be Primavera, there in the ring: but it was. She was tanned; her hair was longer than it had been when I had left her. And blonder; more bleached by the sun, yet it was Prim all right; blue eyes sparkling fiercely, trim little body encased in denim shirt and jeans. She stood beside Everett. Even kneeling he looked almost as tall as she was. Then she slapped him, hard, across the face. ‘Do it!’ she screamed at him.

  He snapped out of it at that, leaned over Jerry and rolled him over as gently as he could, Prim kneeling beside him, in the blood, helping him. The Behemoth’s tunic was saturated, but once he was lying face down I could still see the ragged wound in his back, just below the right shoulder-blade.

  As I watched I felt a hand on my shoulder; I looked round to see Sally Crockett, with tears streaming down her face. ‘What’s happened?’ she whimpered.

  ‘It looks as if he’s been shot,’ I answered; cruelly blunt, I know, but I was stunned too. At once I tried to reassure her. ‘Don’t panic though. Prim’s worked in a war zone. She knows what she’s doing.’

  As I spoke, my former lover turned and stared up at me. ‘Oz,’ she said, ‘give me a credit card.’ Her tone was so commanding that at that moment, if she’d asked for my right arm, I’d probably have unscrewed it and given it to her. Without a word, I took out my wallet and handed her my Tesco loyalty card.

  She took the stiff plastic and pressed it against the hole in Jerry’s back. ‘Thanks. This guy has a sucking wound,’ she explained to Everett. ‘We have to keep the air out.’ A pair of paramedics had appeared in the ring and stood, gazing down at her in professional admiration. She spoke to them in Spanish, astonishing me again, for she had very little when we had split. One of them replied. ‘Nada,’ he said, shaking his head.

  ‘Bloody magic,’ she muttered. ‘Oz, these guys have no bandages. I need something to pack this.’

  Sally was wearing a white silk shirt. Without a word she unbuttoned it, slipped it off, and handed it over. ‘Thanks,’ said Prim. ‘Now I need something to make it secure.’

  I looked across the ring. Matthews was standing on the apron outside t
he ropes, grim-faced, watching. I called across to him. ‘Liam, there was a roll of gaffer tape on the commentary table earlier. Find it and give us it in here.’ The Irishman nodded and called down to the commentators, who were still in their seats. A moment later, one of them tossed a thick roll of shiny brown tape up towards him. He caught it, threw it on to me, and I handed it down to Prim.

  ‘That’s good enough,’ she said, then looked at Everett. ‘You. I need you to get him into a sitting position, so I can strap this up. After that they can take him in the ambulance.’ She was in total command.

  Jerry Gradi in normal circumstances was a huge guy to handle. Unconscious, as a dead weight, he should have been virtually impossible, but Everett Davis was superhuman.With Prim still pressing the plastic card tight against the wound, he turned him over again, then lifted his great trunk off the bloody canvas.

  ‘Oz,’ she called. ‘Get down here and take over pressing on the card while I tape him up.’ Wincing as the blood soaked into my trousers, I knelt beside her, balled Sally’s shirt into a pad as she showed me and used it to force the card as hard as I could against the hole in Jerry’s back, staunching the flow. I held my thumb on it until she had covered the packing completely with the gaffer tape, winding it as tight as she could around the huge wrestler’s ribcage. Finally she tore the tape free from the roll with her teeth and spoke to the ambulance crew once again. One of them jumped down from the ring, and ran off. ‘Gone for a wheelchair,’ she explained.

  She went with the paramedics when, eventually, Jerry was loaded into their chair, and wheeled out of the arena. It was only then that I remembered the crowd: to an hombre and señora they had stayed in their seats, watching the scene, or as much as they could see, in silent fascination.

  I was still carrying my mike. I switched it on, and apologised in my best Spanish for the delay, and asked them to stay seated. ‘Might as well send them home,’ said Everett despondently, as he stood in the ring beside me as I made my announcement. ‘I’m screwed. The stations are gonna have to show back-up material. Bang goes one million dollars in penalty payment.’