by Tim Weaver
But then something went wrong.
76
The movie came to an abrupt halt and, onscreen, a picture of the wooden angel appeared – one from the album at Korin’s place. Over the top of the image, there were four words: PLACEHOLDER – FOOTAGE TO COME.
‘No,’ I said. ‘No, don’t do this.’
I rewound it to the last moments of the Pierre Street footage and pressed Play. Hosterlitz was on voice-over: ‘I’ve been so weak all these years. I should have confessed to my part in this and taken my punishment, not waited until I was dying. I know I’ve wronged. I know I deserve everything that’s coming to me. But I have, at least, acknowledged it.’ He paused as, onscreen, the car slowed to a halt outside the orphanage. ‘Zeller will never admit to what he did.’
The Ring of Roses building came fully into shot.
‘So I have to try and make him.’
The film cut to the picture of the angel and the placeholder text, and as the seconds ticked by on the DVD player, it dawned on me: Korin only got this far.
I could only have you begin to look for me when I was ready for you to start looking. She meant once she’d edited this much of the film. It took me ten months to get to that stage, because Robert left instructions. But they were so hard. It’s so hard. He wasn’t only asking her to read through his confession and to sort out the detritus of his life, his secrets. He was asking her to piece it together for him.
He was asking her to make Ring of Roses.
She’d had to learn how to edit, how to follow his instructions, his wishes, his script. If sorting through the boxes had taken months, this had taken longer. It was why Korin had disappeared and never come up for air. Alex Cavarno had wondered why Korin, knowing what ‘Ring of Roses’ meant, never took what she knew to the police or the media. This was why. She was seeing out her husband’s dying wish. She’d been trying to finish the film because she knew that if she finished it, presenting the authorities with a movie – detailing the whole story, the evidence, in a format that would grip them – would be the most powerful testimony of all.
Even so, a sinking feeling grabbed hold of me. All of this, all of Korin’s efforts, and how did it help? Hosterlitz was dead. Korin was dying. There was still nothing here that could bring down Zeller.
Inside the silence of the annex, I heard more sirens – louder, closer, their blue lights painting the edges of the farm. I could see blue on the walls to my right and left, as if they were actually in the room. As I stared at the placeholder text, at the picture of the angel, I thought of how Hosterlitz had called the angel ‘the answer’, and how Korin had never been able to work out why. She’d hired me to find out what he meant. But I had no idea.
I still had no idea, even now.
But then suddenly, unnervingly, as if a ghost were talking from the corner of the room, Hosterlitz’s voice started up again, speaking over the placeholder image. ‘Instructions for loading film on to the flatbed editor are as follows …’
He started going through the process.
I was completely thrown by it – confused, off balance.
What the hell was this?
Instinctively, I glanced back at the door to the annex, wondering when the police would find me, when the net would close in on me completely – but instead my eyes came to rest on the angel. It was sitting where I’d left it. I looked at the placeholder image of it on the DVD screen, and then back to the real thing. Hurrying to my feet, I scooped it up off the floor – and, for the first time, something struck me about it.
Something that had never seemed important before.
It was hollow.
And not only that: the chips on it, the hairline cracks across it, what I’d thought had been evidence of its age – it wasn’t that at all.
It was where it had been glued back together.
In the background, Hosterlitz’s audio instructions continued – step five, step six, step seven.
I looked down at the ornament cradled in my hand.
The answer.
Gripping it, I brought the bottom half of the angel down hard against the solid oak of the bookcase. The impact levered open the crack, splintering it.
The bottom of the ornament fell away.
Inside was a roll of 8mm film.
77
As I took it out, some of the sirens outside stopped altogether, engines were switched off and there were shouts in the distance.
But I hardly heard them.
Hosterlitz had called the angel ‘the answer’ – but not just because of its history and what it meant to him and Korin.
Because he’d used it as a hiding place.
He knew, whatever happened, Korin would take the angel with her – she’d had it her whole life. When he deliberately broke it, inserted the film, and glued it back together, he must have spun some story for her, apologized for damaging it, acted like it was an accident. But it wasn’t an accident, it was an insurance policy.
He needed to ensure the safety of the film.
And whatever was on it.
Rewinding Hosterlitz’s instructions on the DVD, I started loading the film on to the flatbed editor. I had no idea what I was doing, but Hosterlitz’s audio instructions helped – their softness, their composure. He was precise and detailed, and as I looked closer at the flatbed, I saw that Korin herself had stuck masking tape to individual rollers and plates, adding arrows and explanations and warnings of what not to do. At one stage, she’d followed these same instructions herself.
I didn’t know much about looking after film like this, but I knew enough: damage it, and it stayed damaged. Because of that, I went more slowly, more carefully, than I might have done otherwise, even as I heard the voices in the distance grow nearer. A way into the film, I saw evidence of splice tape on it. This suggested that it had been cut and reassembled at some point – edited in some way.
Finally, I had loaded it in.
I paused there, terrified it would unravel straight away, or break up, or tear. But I knew I didn’t have a choice. It was now or never.
I started up the editor.
With relief, I saw the film image appear on the viewer. From speakers set into the top of the editor, there was a series of pops and then a soft, steady hiss.
It took me a second to work out what was I seeing.
The camera had been placed in between what looked like two plants. It’s in a flowerbed. I could make out a driveway, a closed gate, and then a figure on the floor, slumped under a tree next to a gatepost. I leaned in closer.
The figure was Hosterlitz.
The footage jumped a little, cracks and specks visible on the film, and then – from out of shot – a car pulled into the driveway. It was a Ferrari 288.
That was when I understood.
The car was a mid 1980s model. The house was in Los Angeles. Both of them belonged to Glen Cramer.
This was the night Hosterlitz had doorstepped him, drunk.
This was December 1984.
Hosterlitz had recorded it all.
78
The headlights from the Ferrari washed over Hosterlitz’s slumped frame. I leaned in closer to the picture viewer. Cramer got out, leaving his door open. ‘Bobby?’ he said, his voice crystal clear. ‘Bobby?’
There were spots and scratches on the film, the condition of the negative having deteriorated over time, but it was good enough to see what was going on. It was the sound that remained more impressive, though: even from this distance away, it was easy to hear Cramer. Hosterlitz must have used an external microphone.
He’d thought it all through.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Bobby?’
Cramer dropped to his haunches next to Hosterlitz, who moaned. When he got no response, Cramer used a hand to rouse Hosterlitz, to try and stir him. When he still got no reaction, he said, ‘Bobby, how much have you had to drink?’
As he asked that, I suddenly thought of something that Korin had said to me. I’d asked her about Hosterlitz being
drunk when he’d turned up at Cramer’s house that night. They told all sorts of lies to him, and about him, she said. That was just another one. I told you already, Robert never took another drink after 1976.
Hosterlitz had turned the lie around.
He wasn’t drunk that night – he was just pretending to be.
On the film, Cramer helped Hosterlitz to his feet. Hosterlitz stumbled a little, and then reached out to the wall for support, one hand planted against it, the other rubbing his face. For that night only, he must have drunk enough for the smell to stick to him, or maybe he’d sunk a non-alcoholic beer. Either way, it wasn’t enough for him to lose any control. He knew exactly what he was doing.
‘I’m dying,’ he said quietly.
Cramer stepped closer. ‘What?’
‘I’ve got cancer, Glen.’
‘Shit.’
Hosterlitz stood there, saying nothing.
‘Shit, I’m so sorry, Bobby,’ Cramer said, staring at the back of Hosterlitz’s head. You could hear the authenticity in his voice, the shock. ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘I’ve maybe got a year,’ Hosterlitz said. ‘No more than two.’
I watched Cramer, the colours on the film twitching as he moved closer to Hosterlitz. He’d been as culpable as Zeller, as culpable as Hosterlitz, in covering up the truth about what had happened to Életke Kerekes, and had destroyed his friend’s life in order to save his own. Yet, despite everything, it was hard not to feel something for him. Not sympathy exactly, but a sense that – like Hosterlitz – he’d never been able to bury his shame. He’d never been able to forget.
He knew he was guilty.
‘I’m so sorry, Bobby.’
Hosterlitz turned to face Cramer, unsteady on his feet. ‘I need you to tell me your part in what happened,’ he said, his words slurred. He took another step closer to Cramer. ‘I need you to tell me what Zeller did that night.’
A sudden cut to another driveway.
The shift disorientated me for a moment. The camera had been left in the same sort of place, next to a tree midway across a garden. A yellow Lamborghini Countach was parked in front of a pale cream Spanish-style house. Beyond the roof, the lights of the city twinkled in the dark. This was Mulholland Drive.
The engine of the Lamborghini was still running and, for the first time, I could see two people inside. Zeller was one of them. He switched off the engine and got out. He was in his late fifties, lean and fit, dressed in jeans and a short-sleeve button-up shirt. He was carrying a pile of papers – scripts maybe, or forms.
Billy Egan was the passenger. He was seventeen or eighteen. He opened his door, looking similar to the person I’d known, except for a covering of brown hair. He was thickset, muscly, intimidating. As he climbed out, in a shirt and a pair of jeans, he didn’t say anything.
‘Hello, Saul.’
Both of them jolted, Zeller almost dropping the papers, Egan spinning on his heel to face the shadows at the double garage adjacent to the house. Zeller pushed the door of the Countach shut, looking around for the source of the voice, when Hosterlitz stepped out of the blackness. He was acting again: he stumbled slightly, came around the rear of the car and placed a hand on it for support.
‘Bobby?’
‘I need to talk to you,’ Hosterlitz said, looking from Zeller to Egan. He seemed thrown by Egan being there. ‘I thought you would be alone.’
Egan’s appraisal of Hosterlitz was odd. He seemed to know exactly who he was, without the need for an introduction. He wasn’t shocked by him being there or the fact that he was drunk. He came around the Countach at the front, on the opposite side to Hosterlitz, and then perched himself on the bonnet, watching the two men, as if he was waiting for something to play out. Because Zeller had already told him everything. Zeller handed his son the pile of papers, which he took.
‘What the hell are you doing here, Bobby?’
‘I’m dying, Saul.’
Zeller’s first reaction couldn’t have been more different from Cramer’s. He glanced out into the road, looking for passers-by, for neighbours, for anyone who may have been able to place Hosterlitz at the house, and then came around the back of his car. ‘What the fuck are you doing in LA?’ he spat.
‘I’ve got cancer.’
‘So?’
Hosterlitz looked at Zeller; blinked. He glanced at Egan too, who gave no reaction to the news either. Hosterlitz seemed genuinely thrown by their lack of pity.
‘So?’ Zeller said again. ‘So what? Lots of people get cancer, Bobby. What I want to know is why you’re back in LA. Because I’m praying you’re not here as part of some final attempt to confess your sins.’ He looked out again at the road, as if expecting to see a police car there, as if expecting to be under surveillance. ‘Is that what this is, Bobby? Have you come back to talk to the LAPD? Have you come back to get a few things off your chest before they put you in a box?’
Egan pushed himself off the bonnet and walked up the driveway. He looked up and down the road – once, twice, a third time – and then turned back to Zeller and shook his head. He was saying, There’s no one around.
‘Saul,’ Hosterlitz said, using the Lamborghini for support. ‘I need you to admit to what you did.’
‘Get your hands off my fucking car.’
Hosterlitz didn’t move.
Zeller ripped his fingers away and pushed Hosterlitz back against one of the garage doors. It chimed against his weight. Shadows formed around them. Hosterlitz seemed to realize that he and Zeller weren’t going to be visible, so he pushed back at Zeller and stumbled after him, the two of them hitting the car with a dull thud.
In a flash, Zeller had thrown him to the ground.
‘Don’t touch me, you fucking prick!’
‘I want to hear you say it!’ Hosterlitz shouted up at him.
Zeller, teeth gritted, muscles taut, grabbed Hosterlitz by his coat, checked with Egan that the coast was still clear, and then started dragging Hosterlitz across the driveway and on to the manicured lawn. They were ten feet away from the camera, but on the edge of the shot. Again, Hosterlitz seemed to be aware of it: he rolled left and Zeller went after him. Now they were perfectly framed.
Come on, Zeller. Admit to what you did.
Say something I can use.
Zeller glanced out into the road again and then leaned over Hosterlitz. ‘What are you doing in LA, you drunken sack of shit?’ He’d whispered the words, but his proximity to the camera, to the mic, made them sound noisy and vicious.
‘I want you to admit to what you did, Saul.’
Zeller flicked a look out into the road again, then back to Egan, who was perched on the bonnet of the Countach, a half-smile on his face. ‘Do everyone a favour,’ Zeller said to Hosterlitz, ‘crawl away and fucking die.’
‘We killed Életke Kerekes.’
Zeller didn’t reply.
‘You killed her – and we framed her son.’
Zeller slapped Hosterlitz hard across the face, and then – just as Hosterlitz was recovering from that – he kicked him in the stomach. I glanced at Egan, still expecting a reaction from him, some response to what was happening, to the idea that his father had sent a kid his age to death row for a crime he hadn’t committed. But there was nothing.
Egan just watched, impassive.
‘The world needs to know the truth, Saul,’ Hosterlitz wheezed, lying on the grass in a foetal position at Zeller’s feet – small, pathetic, subdued.
The film cut again – back to Cramer.
It picked up at some unspecified time after Cramer had found Hosterlitz at his house. They were still at the gates, a brief silence passing between them.
‘I’m so sorry, Bobby,’ Cramer said quietly.
There was a tremor in his voice. This was nothing like the angry, drunken confrontation that he’d described to me. It had never played out like that. That account had all been a lie; a construct invented by him – or, more likely, Zeller. It just became another script to
Cramer; more lines he had to learn.
‘I’m sorry for what we did to Elaine.’
Hosterlitz didn’t say anything.
‘For what we did to Martin.’ Cramer swallowed, the name like chalk in his mouth. ‘For what we did to you. If I could take it all back …’
‘I believe you, Glen,’ Hosterlitz said, no indistinctness to his words any more. He seemed to have forgotten he was supposed to be drunk – and Cramer, emotional, exhausted even then at having to keep such a secret, had stopped noticing.
‘I need Saul to confess,’ Hosterlitz said.
‘Why?’
‘I want to hear him admit to what he did.’
‘You know he killed Elaine – what difference does it make?’
Hosterlitz glanced in the vague direction of the camera.
‘It makes all the difference in the world.’
The movie cut back to Zeller’s front lawn.
Hosterlitz had stumbled to his feet. He was unsteady, and not because he was putting it on. Zeller was at his right, watching him, eyes narrowed, as if trying to work out what was going on inside Hosterlitz’s head.
‘Everything you’ve built at AKI is based on a lie,’ Hosterlitz said.
He sounded groggy – not drunk now, but ill.
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about, Bobby,’ Zeller said, prodding a finger into Hosterlitz’s temple. ‘It’s the sickness – it’s screwed with your brain.’
‘You shouldn’t have been around,’ Hosterlitz mumbled. It was hard to tell whether he was acting or just dazed. ‘You shouldn’t have been around to build the company into what it is now. You shouldn’t have had this house, this car, this life. We should have been in prison. We should have taken the fall for what we –’
‘ “We, we, we” – what’s this “we”, Bobby? Huh?’ Zeller glanced at his son, who was looking faintly amused on the bonnet of the Lamborghini. Egan’s silence seemed to massage Zeller’s performance, his ego. He became even more aggressive. ‘You were the one who pushed that whore against –’
‘Don’t call her that.’
‘You pushed that whore against the wardrobe. You knocked her out.’