by Tim Weaver
Nothing about that made sense.
I tried to clear my head, to put everything into some sort of order, but as I did, my phone beeped once. It was an email from Collinsky. He was replying to my message about the garden room, to the pictures I’d sent him of how it looked now – how it had been cleared out, repainted, fixed.
Subject: Re: Garden room
Date: Saturday 29 August 2015 – 16.13
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Looks completely different. Wonder why she cleaned everything out, even the tools etc? Back wall wasn’t like that when I saw it, at least as far as I can remember. That looks like the original wall panel that she’s repainted there (is that right?) – 90% sure there was no wall panel on view when I saw it, and that a piece of plain plasterboard had been covering it. Think she’d attached shelves to the plasterboard, and the shelves were full of junk.
M
I left my laptop where it was, heading out across the garden to the shed. Once I was back inside, I returned to the repainted wall panel. In the very top and very bottom corners, I found slight indentations where screw holes had been plugged with Polyfilla and painted over. The work was good. Even in the right light, it was hard to see where the plasterboard had once been secured.
One possible explanation for the wall panel being repainted was obvious: Korin had prised the plasterboard from it when she’d cleared it out, and the wall panel underneath had discoloured more than the others. Its need for repair was greater.
But somehow, given what else I’d just found out – the deceit, the carefully constructed lies – I doubted that was the real reason.
29
Just as I’d suspected, Tony Everett – the MD of Roman Film – didn’t even know Lynda Korin by that name. To him, she’d been Ursula Keegan, a marketing manager for an advertising firm in London, who was looking to use the security footage in a pitch she’d be making to the Department of Transport.
It was hard listening to Everett talk about her, not least because – in not so many words – it sounded like he thought they’d had a connection, beyond just client and customer. I hadn’t told him the truth about who she was, because it invited fewer questions that way and because it felt cruel to twist the knife. He said he’d asked her out for a drink when the work was complete, and she’d told him the next time she was down in Bath, she would love to do that. But, like everyone else in the world, he’d heard nothing from Lynda Korin for the past ten months.
In truth, this whole thing left me cold: it wasn’t the direction I’d expected the case to take, it wasn’t the person I’d expected Lynda Korin to be, even as both her sister and former friend talked about her being hard to break down, about her and Hosterlitz being odd as a couple, having secrets, behaving strangely. Those things hadn’t rung alarm bells the first time I’d heard them, because a lot of missing people were like that. All of them had quirks, and they all had secrets. But this was more than that. This was deceit.
By the time I got off the phone to Everett, I was halfway back to London, the motorway less affected today by the crush of bank holiday traffic. On the seat beside me was the box I’d taken from Lynda Korin’s, the photograph of the angel I’d removed from the album, and the DVDs of Korin’s four horror films.
As I ate up the miles, I thought about those films, about the ending that connected them all, about Hosterlitz’s strange, whispered repetition of ‘You don’t know who you are’ hidden on the soundtrack. I thought about the Post-it note that Korin had left in the teak box too, the timecode for Kill! on it, and the two lines of letters above that. XCADAAH. EOECGEY. Were the letters related to Kill!? How was I ever going to find out, even if they were? Without a clear line of sight on whoever Microscope was, I had no idea who else might know, especially as six of the eleven films Hosterlitz had made in Spain after 1979 were gone for ever.
I decided to phone the guy at Rough Print again.
After reintroducing myself, I cut to the chase: ‘Any idea where I might find copies of any of Hosterlitz’s so-called “lost” films?’
‘Hmm’ was all he said.
‘That doesn’t sound good.’
He chuckled. ‘Those films … well, the general consensus seems to be that they’re unrecoverable. The original negatives – basically, what Hosterlitz shot – got lost when the production company closed in 1986. It’s not necessarily the end of the matter if you’ve still got, say, distribution prints – they’ll be inferior in quality, but you can still make a dupe negative from a print – it’s just that this didn’t happen either. Those films were designed to be made quickly and on the cheap, and one of the results of that, I’m afraid, is that the places that showed them at the time didn’t treat them with much in the way of reverence. That included returning them in a decent state, on time, or – in this case – at all. It happens more often than you might think. There’s a film called Symptoms …’
But I’d already tuned out and started thinking about my next move. In the copy of Dias de los Muertos, there had been the transcript of the panel Korin had done at Screenmageddon. Someone from a movie website in San Diego had asked her a question. Maybe I could get in touch with him next.
‘… all sorts of other examples as well. The British Film Institute have got a list of seventy-five lost films on their website which they want to find, preserve and make available. Quite a few of them ended up going the same way as Hosterlitz’s horror movies.’
‘That’s really interesting,’ I said, trying to sound genuine. ‘So how likely do you think it is that someone could have copies of all eleven of those films?’
The man blew out a jet of air that crackled down the line. ‘I mean, I guess it’s possible. Even the six “missing” films existed at some point, and no one knows for sure what happened to them. Not one hundred per cent. If the negatives didn’t just get thrown in the bin when Mano Águila closed, maybe they got passed on to someone – a collector of some sort – but how you even start to look for that person, I don’t know. Plus, if someone has those films, why sit on them for thirty years? Why not share what you have with the world?’
We chatted a little longer and then I thanked him and hung up, frustration starting to eat at me. As it festered, I noticed something in my rear-view mirror.
A black Mercedes, about five cars back.
It had got on to the motorway behind me at Bath, but that had been ninety minutes and eighty-five miles ago. I was skirting the northern edge of Windsor now, an hour from home, and it was still there.
It had been there the whole time.
I let a couple of miles pass, keeping an eye on the vehicle. Its windscreen was reflecting back the bright sun and the blue of the sky, so it was impossible to see who might be inside. But the further I went, the less concerned I became by it, the Mercedes slowly dropping back, cars changing lanes in front of it. Before long, it was eight cars behind me, a blob in the shimmering evening heat.
I glanced at the clock. Five forty-five.
I pulled into the middle lane and eased the accelerator down, wanting to get home now, to shower, to change, to get something to eat.
As I did, the Mercedes started pulling out too.
It was mirroring my movements.
30
A mile ahead of me was Heston services.
I kept my foot to the floor, flicking a look behind me at the Mercedes. It was subtly trying to close the gap between us. As the sun went behind a cloud, I caught a glimpse of a shape at the wheel – a man, broad, darkened by the shadows of the interior – and then the sun appeared again, and all I could see was a windscreen full of sky. As it did, my mind spooled back to what Veronica Mae had said about the cop who’d come to see her; and then to the forest I’d stopped at on my way out from her house, to the flash of movement I’d seen among the trees.
At the turn-off for the service station, I waited for as long as possible and then pulled a left, coasting up the slight rise and
slowing down to see whether the Mercedes reacted. It did. As it pulled off the motorway, I rounded a corner – following a curved road into the car park – and the Mercedes disappeared from view. Accelerating, I whipped into a parking space as close to the service station building as possible, got out of the car and immediately popped the boot. I started going through my rucksack, pushed aside my clothes, washbag, a second notepad – and then finally found what I was looking for: a spare mobile phone. I always brought it with me as back-up, just in case my current one packed up.
Pocketing it, I slammed the boot shut, checked to make sure the Mercedes hadn’t arrived yet, and headed inside the service station.
It was busy. I made a beeline for the main shop and soon found what I was looking for: packing tape. Duct tape would have been better, but I’d make do. Paying for the tape, I headed out of the opposite side of the building, on to a small paved area with a few wooden benches and a dreary-looking Travelodge. As quickly as possible, I worked my way around the back of the motel, tracing a very rough circle until I was in the car park again, looking across at my BMW.
The Mercedes was about twenty-five feet away from me, slightly off to my left, parked under the shade of a tree.
There was no one inside.
Keeping my eyes on the service station entrance, I approached the vehicle at a half-run and cupped my hands to the glass as soon as I got to the driver’s side. In the passenger footwell I could see a red card folder, white paper edging out from it. I made my way around the front of the car, checking for the returning driver – even though I had no idea what he looked like – and then peered inside the Mercedes for a second time. Closer up, I could see the sheets of white paper had handwriting on them, and that there were two, maybe three photographs stapled to a sheet of pale yellow card. I tried the door in the vain hope that it had been left open, but it was locked, so I started to rock the Mercedes gently instead, hoping not to set the alarm off. I was aiming to shuffle some of the paperwork out from under the card covers.
A few seconds later, I had something.
The white paper was a diary, or a table of some description. There was handwriting inside boxes, some numbers too, and although it was untidy and difficult to make out, the longer I looked at it, the more it began to make sense. It was a time chart. I leaned even closer to the window, my breath fogging up the glass, trying to read the entries on it. Then I realized something: the same word was repeated over and over again.
Raker.
I felt something curdle in my stomach. There were mentions of the Mendips, the address of Veronica Mae’s house, my hotel in Bristol. Whoever the Mercedes belonged to, they’d been following me the entire time.
Stealing a quick look at the entrance to the service station, I gave the car another rock, harder this time. The piece of yellow card strayed further beyond the perimeter of the file, two of the photographs stapled to it coming into view.
It took me a second to process what I was seeing.
The first one was a photograph of Alex Cavarno, the COO of AKI Europe. I’d met her in the Comet cinema two days ago. I paused there, a little thrown. Why the hell was there a picture of her? It had been taken without her knowing, outside the entrance to the Comet. She had a takeaway coffee in one hand and was talking on her mobile. As I looked at her, frozen within the boundaries of the snapshot, I remembered the short, unspoken moment between the two of us, the fizz of a connection. Dismissing the feeling, and then forcing the memory away too, I tried to concentrate, to connect the dots, to work out why she was being followed, just the same as me, but I couldn’t put it together.
I switched my attention to the second photograph.
It sat adjacent to the one of Alex Cavarno, half still hidden beneath the cover of the folder. I tilted my head, trying to work out what was going on in it, and realized it was a blurry shot of an old man, slightly crooked, at the front door of a house. The walls either side of him were constructed in London stock brick, so it must have been somewhere in the capital.
The man was probably in his nineties, although it was difficult to tell for certain. He was very tall, had a thin covering of white hair, and was smartly dressed in a navy jacket and brown trousers. He had a walking stick pressed between his arm and his ribcage, and was half turned to the door, as if locking up.
Just like the picture of Alex Cavarno, this one had been taken without the subject knowing, cars out of focus in the foreground, as if the photographer had been stationed across from the old man, on the other side of the street.
I glanced towards the service station again, and then back to the picture, and – when I looked at it a second time – something clicked into place. Immediately, like a match igniting in the darkness, I was transported back to Hosterlitz’s noirs, to the actor I’d seen in Connor O’Hare and The Eyes of the Night.
It was Glen Cramer.
This was the person Hosterlitz had discovered in an off-Broadway show; the man who had won two Oscars for his roles in Hosterlitz’s noirs. In fact, Cramer was unique, a record-breaker – the only male actor in Hollywood history to have ever won four Academy Awards for acting. But why would anyone want to photograph him like this, as an old man? Why do it in secret? What connection did he have to Alex Cavarno? To me? To any of this?
I finally stepped away from the car, knowing that I had to get clear of the vehicle before the owner came back. Looking around to make sure I wasn’t being watched, I moved to the rear bumper.
Tearing off a strip of packing tape, I turned the phone on and then taped the handset to the underside of the Mercedes, making sure the mobile was out of sight. I then layered the phone with more packing tape, ensuring there was no give and that it was properly secured to the belly of the car. Once I was satisfied, I headed back across the car park to the side of the Travelodge, retreating into the shadows, still trying to work out what I’d seen.
Cramer had been signed to AKI in the early 1950s, and he’d returned to do films with them over and over again throughout his career. But he hadn’t just worked for AKI – he’d done work across all the Hollywood studios. So why was he being photographed now? Why was Cramer even in London in the first place? He was American, he lived in LA.
But then another memory started to form, a shape gliding towards the surface of a lake.
Royalty Park.
The blockbuster television show, co-funded by AKI and the BBC, had been the most-watched programme of 2014, and the fourth series was just about to drop. It was filling ad breaks, billboards, web pages – and, when I’d talked to Alex Cavarno, she’d said the launch party for the new series was on Monday. That was why. Cramer had come out of retirement in 2010 to play the role of a retired American ambassador. I wasn’t a regular viewer of the show, which was why I hadn’t made the leap straight away – but that was the reason he was living in London. So why was he being followed? Why was Alex? Why was I?
Suddenly, I clocked movement near the Mercedes.
The driver.
He was approaching the vehicle, but not looking in my direction. Instead, his eyes were on my BMW, parked thirty feet from him. He looked from my car back to the entrance, and then out across the rest of the car park. He’d clearly looked for me inside but been unable to find me.
I stepped back even further into the shadows, slowly, so he didn’t register the shift, and then he came around to the front of the car and got inside.
Wait a second, I thought. I know this guy.
Yet, because I wasn’t immediately sure where I knew him from, I began to doubt myself. He was wearing a baseball cap, a tan jacket and a black turtleneck, none of which rang any bells. He had a shaved head. He was stocky, like a boxer gone to seed, in his late forties, with grey stubble. He was chunky and powerful, craggy and unattractive. Did I really know him? From where?
He glanced across at my BMW again, and then he finally fixed his gaze on the entrance to the service station, his face turned further towards me.
Shit. I know
where I’ve seen him before.
I know who he is.
He’d been inside the Comet cinema the day I’d first met with Alex and Louis Grant. He’d been at the front of the auditorium with a tape measure. He was supposedly drawing up plans for AKI’s office renovation – except he hadn’t been doing that at all.
He’d been listening to my conversation.
The man in the Mercedes was the architect at the Comet.
31
I left a message with Alex Cavarno’s PA and told her I needed to speak to Alex as soon as possible. But, the moment I hung up, I was gripped by panic. What if she was involved in whatever this was? What if the architect was there that day on her instructions? Every case I’d ever worked had been populated by lies and liars – what if she was the same?
But if that was what was going on here, it didn’t make any sense. If she knew who the architect was and why he was following me, then why was he taking photos of her without her knowledge? Why invite him to the Comet so that I could see what he looked like? As I retreated further into the shadows, beneath the rattle of an old air-conditioning unit at the side of the Travelodge, my phone began buzzing again.
It was her.
I let it ring a couple of times, trying desperately to draw links between the things that I’d found out over the course of the last few days, but nothing led me back to her. The only link I could see was American Kingdom itself: Alex was running the European office, Cramer had starred in some of its most-renowned films, and I was trying to find the wife of a director who once worked for them.
I pushed Answer. ‘David Raker.’
‘David, it’s Alex Cavarno.’
Her accent sounded stronger over the phone, the hint of her West Coast roots coming through, and I replayed an image of her walking towards me inside the Comet: olive skin, shoulder-length black hair; a blue skirt and white blouse.