by Tim Weaver
Some days, I’d be at the back of a room while Korin and the director went through Hosterlitz’s script – page by page, line by line – and, when Korin started to flag, I’d do my best to help out if I was asked. Most days, though, I’d just watch. I’d look on as they discussed individual scenes, I’d see rough cuts projected on to a conference-room wall, and I’d see the emotion in Korin’s face as the director invited a composer to play her the music he was proposing for the soundtrack.
It took two months and twenty-two days but, on Monday 7 December, I finally got a call from Lynda, asking me to come over early in the morning the next day.
The first complete cut of Ring of Roses was ready.
Hosterlitz had collated as much footage as he could before his death, he’d written the script and recorded the narration, but it had been left to Lynda Korin to make sense of it all. She’d opened a garage door and found a world she never knew existed, the shadows of a man she’d barely glimpsed, and a history she never knew she had. It said a lot about her, a lot about how she felt for her husband – even after all that he’d told her in the letter – that she hadn’t walked the other way.
She’d studied the basics of film editing, using technical manuals she’d found in second-hand bookshops, and YouTube videos she accessed via the farm’s Internet connection. Editing was so complicated, such a specialized skill, that she could only ever learn the bare minimum, but the bare minimum had been just about enough. She learned how to use the editing table and she’d cut sections according to the instructions that Hosterlitz had left her. She’d then found an old VHS unit at a car-boot sale, had bought a VHS-C adapter using the farmer’s eBay account, and had watched the day, in December 1984, when her husband had been to interview Ray Callson, the cop who had never forgotten the case.
I looked Callson up afterwards.
Until then, I’d always assumed that he’d agreed to do the interview with Hosterlitz in exchange for what Hosterlitz knew about the Kerekes murder, and the framing of Martin Nemeth. It made me wonder why he hadn’t passed any of that information on to ex-colleagues of his at the LAPD as soon as it was over.
The reason turned out to be a sad one, not entirely out of place among the tragedy of the case. His wife had been dying in a nursing home near Hancock Park, and he hadn’t wanted the last months of her life to be filled with interviews and court dates that would take him away from her bedside. In the information I could find on him, he once described his wife as his rock and his sanity.
The day she passed away in her sleep, he took an overdose of sleeping pills. Staff at the nursing home found them lying next to one another.
They were holding hands.
On Tuesday 8 December, at just before 10 a.m., I watched from the back of the screening room as the final minutes of Ring of Roses played out. The last words of Zeller’s confession were over, and now a shot of the flowers at the Ring of Roses fountain had replaced it. They swayed in a slight breeze, a sea of colour perfectly moving in time – soundless, hypnotic, beautiful.
After a time, the movie cut to Korin.
She was on her knees at a flowerbed, the house in Somerset visible behind her, a trowel and a spade next to her. She was in her mid thirties and looked absolutely beautiful, her skin shining, her eyes flaring with the brightness of the sunlight. She said something into the camera but there were no words any more, no background noise – just a gentle melody on the soundtrack. This footage, and more like it, was what had been on the rolls of 8mm film in the fridge at the farm: just hours and hours of her.
I turned and looked at her, to the left of me in the screening room. She was leaning over in her wheelchair, her good arm taking her weight. The far side of her face was bandaged, covered over – but on this side I could see everything.
Every tremor. Every moment.
Every tear.
When I looked back at the screen, the camera had been placed on a wall and Korin was getting to her feet. From the side of the shot, Hosterlitz appeared, joining her. He was an old man – sick and thin and grey – but he was smiling. The smile filled so much of his face it seemed to transform him somehow. He was bigger and healthier all of a sudden; there was a new colour in him. He slid his arm around his wife’s waist and brought her into him so they were side by side, and then he whispered something into her ear. She burst out laughing, and they both looked into the lens of his Super 8 camera.
Slowly, the screen faded to black.
The credits started rolling.
And thirty years after he’d first begun making it, Ring of Roses – the last ever Robert Hosterlitz film – was finally complete.
Robert Hosterlitz Filmography
1949 – My Evil Heart (Monogram)
1951 – Connor O’Hare (American Kingdom Inc.)
1952 – Only When You’re Dead (American Kingdom Inc.)
1953 – The Eyes of the Night (American Kingdom Inc.)
1954 – My Life is a Gun (American Kingdom Inc., unfinished)
1957 – West End Knife (Wick Films/ABPC)
1960 – Das Geheimnis des Schwarzen Himmels (Rialto)
1961 – Die Leiche im Fluss (Rialto)
1961 – Der Teufel von London (Rialto)
1963 – Petticoat Junction, ‘Honeymoon Garden’ (CBS, TV)
1964 – Bonanza, ‘The Kid from New Orleans’ (NBC, TV)
1964 – Bonanza, ‘Exit, Stage Left’ (NBC, TV)
1964 – The Twilight Zone, ‘Don’t Look Now’ (CBS, TV)
1964 – The Defenders, ‘Ashes to Ashes’ (CBS, TV)
1964 – Bonanza, ‘No Room at the Inn’ (NBC, TV)
1965 – Bonanza, ‘Cardinal Sin’ (NBC, TV)
1965 – The Defenders, ‘Court of Law’ (CBS, TV)
1965 – The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, ‘Eagle Snare’ (NBC, TV)
1965 – Bonanza, ‘The Hanging of Jessie Lee Jones’ (NBC, TV)
1965 – Bonanza, ‘A Man Walks into a Saloon …’ (NBC, TV)
1966 – Bonanza, ‘Chase’ (NBC, TV)
1966 – Bonanza, ‘When the Devil Comes Calling’ (NBC, TV)
1967 – The Ghost of the Plains (Paramount)
1968 – Bonanza, ‘Lonesome Heart’ (NBC, TV)
1968 – Judd, for the Defense, ‘Color of Money’ (ABC, TV)
1968 – N.Y.P.D., ‘44 Minutes’ (ABC, TV)
1968 – N.Y.P.D., ‘The Dead Can’t Speak’ (ABC, TV)
1969 – Judd, for the Defense, ‘Sampson and Delilah’ (ABC, TV)
1971 – House of Darkness (Amicus)
1972 – Blood of the Undead (Obelisk)
1972 – Werewolf! Werewolf! (Obelisk)
1973 – Princess of Monsters (Obelisk)
Under the alias Bob Hozer
1977 – Ursula of the SS (Olympia Filmproduktions)
1978 – Ursula: Queen Kommandant (Olympia Filmproduktions)
1978 – Ursula: Butcher of El Grande (Olympia Filmproduktions)
1979 – Cemetery House (Mano Águila)
1979 – Hell Trip (Mano Águila)
1980 – The Drill Murders (Mano Águila)
1980 – Axe Maniac (Mano Águila)
1980 – Beware of the Woods (Mano Águila)
1981 – Kill! (Mano Águila)
1981 – Cemetery House 2 (Mano Águila)
1981 – Zombie Outbreak (Mano Águila)
1982 – Savages of the Amazon (Mano Águila)
1982 – Die Slowly (Mano Águila)
1984 – Death Island (Mano Águila)
2015 – Ring of Roses (American Kingdom Inc.)
Author’s Note
As I’m a huge fan of the movies, Broken Heart was an incredibly interesting book to research. I’d particularly like to thank Vic Pratt at the British Film Institute for his endless patience as yet another email about 35mm negatives dropped into his inbox.
As always, I’ve taken some small liberties in the interests of the story – both in terms of film history and film production, and in terms of the s
tructures and processes of the UK police force – but I hope it’s done subtly enough for it not to cause offence.
Acknowledgements
I feel blessed and very honoured to be published by the team at Michael Joseph, who are among the nicest, most talented and most brilliant people in the industry. Thank you to each and every person there (and across the whole of Penguin) who has had a hand in bringing Broken Heart to life. In particular, I’d like to give a shout-out to my incredible editor, Emad Akhtar (aka Ricky C), who waded into the swamps of very early versions of this book without even batting an eyelid, and my copy-editor, Caroline Pretty, who makes my life a thousand times easier by knowing David Raker back to front.
Huge thanks, as always, to Camilla Wray, the loveliest, funniest, smartest and bulldog-iest agent in London, who’s also a black belt in dealing with my many and varied mid-manuscript meltdowns. I’d also like to thank the ladies of Darley Anderson too, particularly Sheila David in Film and TV, and Mary and Emma in foreign rights.
To Mum, Dad, Lucy and the rest of my amazing family: thank you so much for all your love and support. To my daughter, Erin, who makes me so proud, and my wife, Sharlé, who keeps me going when The Doubts kick in – which is every time I sit down in front of my computer – thank you both for keeping me sane.
And, finally, the biggest thanks of all go to you, my readers. Without your support, Raker would be nothing more than an idea on a scrap of paper.
THE BEGINNING
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PENGUIN BOOKS
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Penguin Books is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com.
First published 2016
Copyright © Tim Weaver, 2016
The moral right of the author has been asserted
Cover images: Woman © Maria Heyens/Arcangel; Grass © Rekha Garton/Trevillion Images
ISBN: 978-1-405-91783-4