“Er - thanks again - for the gig,” he backed towards the door. They ignored him.
He went straight to find Dabney Dorridge’s p.a. Jessica. He grabbed her by the wrist and took her to one side.
“We’ve got trouble,” he said.
***
Most of the cast were given the day off but told to stand by their phones (which they were no longer permitted to bring to the set) for word of the newly revised shooting schedule.
Julian chose to fill the time rehearsing a punch-up between Doctor Kilmore (Oscar Buzz) and the head terrorist (played by meaty stalwart of many a British flick, Paddy Loughran - a slab of meat with a heart as big as all Dedley and a killer recipe for cupcakes). As Oscar’s stand-in, Dan was also required to be present and to engage in the more physically demanding parts of the sequence.
It was fun learning the choreography slowly, move by painstaking move, and then gradually running the scene faster and faster.
“There’ll be sugar glass,” Julian promised. “Oscar, love, you’ll be thrown through it - or rather, you will, Dan.”
“I’ll show you how to fall,” said Paddy Loughran, wiping sweat from his shaved head. “In my trailer... ”
Oscar stepped protectively between his stand-in and the man-mountain. “I think Dan knows what he’s doing,” he said coldly.
Dan blushed. He thanked Paddy for the offer - although he wasn’t entirely sure what he’d been offered.
“Good work, gentlemen,” Julian looked pleased, “We’ll run it again tomorrow before we shoot it.”
“Er - ‘Julian’ is it?”
“Yes, Oscar?”
“Why am I fighting a man twice my size? What’s the conflict here? What’s his grievance?”
“Hospital parking charges,” said Dan. No one laughed.
Julian put his arm around Oscar. “It doesn’t matter. Not at this stage. I’m sure Monty will provide the back story very soon.”
“Wait! Monty?”
“Uh-huh.”
Oscar brightened immediately. “Oh, well, we’re in safe hands if Monty’s writing this puppy. Between you and me, I was worried it was a bit - you know - small, but now Monty’s on board, whew!”
“Whew indeed,” said Julian.
“Um,” Dan interrupted, “Who’s Monty?”
Oscar, Julian and Paddy looked at him in utter stupefaction.
***
“Calm down, sis!” Rob pinned Jessica’s arms to her sides. “This Julian bloke - let’s give him a chance, eh?”
Although Jessica worked in the movie business she didn’t want to make a scene. She suggested they get off the public street and into a nearby coffee shop.
Rob ordered his usual Queequeg’s skinny ‘Biggo’ with cinnamon dust and a marshmallow stick.
Jessica had tap water.
“Listen,” Rob tried to calm her down. “He’s English, right? He’ll know the show.”
“Dabney was English,” she pointed out, “is English,” she corrected herself quickly.
Rob was dismissive of Dabney Dorridge’s entire and extensive oeuvre. “Corsets and bustles and repressed emotion. The opposite of Hospital Corners.”
“Julian’s in the lap of the Yankee producers. He’s so tickled pink to get the gig, he’ll bend over forwards and stick whatever they ask up his sycophantic arse.”
Rob silenced his sister with a raised finger. “One sec... ” His thumb was a blur on his smart phone. “Just tweeting... Fans hopeful that new helmer Julian Farrow will keep the Hospital Corners spirit alive... ”
“Helmer?” muttered Jessica. “Helmet more like. The man’s a tool, Rob. I left him talking excitedly to some pyrotechnics boffin.”
“A tool we can use... ” Rob slipped his phone into his pocket.
“How do you mean?”
“Think about it... ”
“I am doing.”
“The current delays are because you’re all waiting for updates to the screenplay, no?”
“Yes.”
“And how will those updates arrive?”
“By fax. Why?”
“And who operates the fax machine?”
“Well, I do, but -” she stopped herself.
Rob grinned. There had always been a special understanding between him and his sister. “You intercept the sides as they come in from the States. Meanwhile, I’ll be faxing you pages from... ”
“No!” she was grinning too.
“Oh, yes!”
“Hospital Corners - a film by Robert and Jessica Bean!” they said in perfect unison. “After all these years, sis! It’s finally going to happen. You remember how we used to sit up all night perfecting every detail.”
Jessica clapped her hands excitedly.
“Just make sure you give Julian the copy with the cover sheet from the USA. He won’t know any different.”
“It’s brilliant! We’ll get - the fans will get - the Hospital Corners film they’ve always longed for.” Her smile faltered. “But it won’t be our name on the credits, will it?”
“What does that matter?” Rob dunked his marshmallow stick into his Biggo. “We’re doing this for the greater good, not for personal gain or acclaim. We’re doing this for posterity. We’re doing this for the world!”
They lifted their drinks to toast their endeavour. Jessica eyed a nearby menu board.
“Think I’ll have a muffin to celebrate,” she said. “Oh yes, I could murder a muffin.”
***
Oscar invited Dan back to the hotel with the promise of dinner and ‘a chance to get to know each other better’. Dan, of course, had said yes.
“It’ll be room service,” Oscar warned. “I can’t handle the restaurant. All those people.”
“You don’t like your fans?” Dan chewed his thumbnail.
“Oh, I love my fans!” Oscar adopted a mock PR enthusiasm. “No, I mean I am grateful they’ve given me this life and kept me at the top for all these years - my whole life, in fact. There aren’t many child stars whose careers continue into adulthood, you know. Drugs, prison terms and what-not. Many of them don’t survive... ”
“I know,” said Dan. “Your brother... ”
Oscar looked as if he’d been slapped in the face. “What did you say?”
“I was just -”
Oscar stood. “You never mention him in my presence again. Or out of my presence for that matter! Do you understand me?”
“Um, yes, I’m sorry, I - Oscar, please. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Oscar made visible efforts to calm his breathing.
“Hey, I’m sorry for blowing my top like that - Hey!” he laughed. “That’d be a great title for a gay porno, Blowing My Top. Ha ha! Luckily I’ve never had to release a sex tape to boost my flagging profile.”
“I bet millions would love to see that,” said Dan. “I know I would.”
“When you’ve got the real deal right in front of you? Lookit: you play your cards right, Dan-Daniel-Danny, and I might just throw myself at you. After dinner, of course.”
“Of course!” said Dan.
He couldn’t believe his luck.
But that luck was soon to run out.
Their pre-dinner drinks were interrupted by an insistent knocking at the door. Oscar and Dan looked at each other: they had yet to place their order.
“See who it is, would you?” Oscar lay back on the sofa. “If it’s another fucking chambermaid after another fucking selfie with me, tell her to go and fuck herself with her hoover.”
Laughing, Dan opened the door.
A slender figure with bouffant platinum blonde hair and a perfectly groomed pencil moustache glowered at him from the corridor. Mascaraed eyes flashed up and down.
&nbs
p; “Who the fuck are you?” said Pinkie Green.
***
Miller was flagged down by Bunny Slippers. The aged actress waved a bright chiffon scarf and called coo-ee until the younger woman approached.
“Finished for the day, have you, dear? I don’t think this shower know what’s what. Come in for this, they say. So you come in and they say they’re not doing this, they’re doing that. And they send you away again. And they keep changing the blooming script. Now, it’s no hardship for me; I was used to learning three hours of drama a week. Live, we used to do it, when we first started. But even when they started recording us, we had to do it ‘as live’ - there was no time to go back and do it again, you see. So of course I can cope with the pressure, love, and the lines. It’s the younger ones I worry about. That American. Pretty as a picture but I don’t think he’s got two brain cells to rub together.”
“Yes,” said Miller, finally able to answer Bunny’s initial question.
“Yes what?”
“I’ve finished for the day.”
“Me too. Let’s go to lunch, shall we? That’s a good idea. Let’s do lunch!” She linked her arm in Miller’s, taking the detective by surprise. “Unless you have somewhere else you’d rather be?”
“Oh, no,” said Miller. “Lunch will be lovely.”
There was nowhere else she would rather be in the whole world.
***
Harry Henry was in Serious, pounding the keyboards to find out everything he could about Hollywood actor Oscar Buzz. Most of it was salacious gossip. A lot of it was all lovelorn girls begging him to follow them on Twitter. There were filmographies, reviews and endless photographs of Buzz attending glittering red carpet events. There were newspaper articles documenting a ‘bad boy’ lifestyle of excess and high glamour. It was everything one would expect to find. Harry Henry felt as though he could have been reading about just about any film star he could think of.
Buzz had been a child star - Harry Henry had been unaware of this. As a toddler, Buzz had appeared in television commercials. By school age, he was the cute kid in a wise-cracking sitcom on the Disney Channel. By his teens, he was a heartthrob with a short-lived career as a pop singer already behind him.
There were no periods of unemployment. At every age, Oscar Buzz had found work. By his twenties he was a staple of made-for-TV movies in just about every genre. When he hit thirty, he got his first leading cinematic role. The hits had kept coming. As well as Pretzels From Space and Warriors of Thunder, critically panned by everyone, there had been some successes in low-budget independent films. I Was Addicted To Bubble Wrap had earned him his first Emmy nomination.
Again, Harry could find nothing atypical. Scandals were small potatoes: showing up at a film premiere with George Clooney’s girlfriend on his arm - that kind of thing. There was nothing to single out Oscar Buzz as either paragon or antithesis of virtue.
But then, none of us is that, Harry reflected.
Even the rumours of Buzz’s homosexuality were nothing special. Every major star swept those along in their wake. Buzz himself remained tight-lipped on the subject, thereby fuelling the fire.
Harry rubbed his eyelids behind his glasses.
If Brough was around, he’d know if Buzz was gay or not. I miss David, Harry Henry realised. We all do.
Wherever he is, I hope he’s all right.
He scrolled through yet another Facebook fan page in the vain hope of finding something new, something that might trigger a light bulb moment - or, as Wheeler called the, “a fucking buggery bollocks management-fucking-speak moment”.
Harry felt it was all a complete waste of his time
***
Stevens and Pattimore went around the crew who had not gone home early and set about asking questions about the missing and quite probably dead writer and director and the not-missing but definitely dead assistant director. Whoever they asked gave them a similar answer.
Principal photography had only just begun. The cast and crew weren’t knitted as a family yet. No one person was sure of everyone else’s names. Some of them had worked with others of them on previous projects. But no one knew the writer at all. They’d all at least heard of Dabney Dorridge - who hadn’t? - and some of them would have recognised Simon Popper by sight.
No one had any pertinent information.
“Let’s piss off to the boozer,” Stevens suggested.
“Might as well,” said Pattimore. “In a bit. There’s someone we haven’t spoken to yet.”
He nodded across the disused hospital car park. A young woman, her arms full of folders, bags and other paraphernalia was struggling to get her car keys from her mouth and into the lock.
“Hold up, Miss,” Pattimore jogged over.
“Yes?” Jessica looked the young man up and down. She smiled. Oh yes...
He flashed her his i.d. Her face fell. She dropped the folders, bags and other encumbrances. Of course, a nice young man like that would only take a professional interest in her.
“It’s about Dabney Dorridge,” the young man sounded sympathetic.
“And the rest,” his taller, older and coarser companion scowled from behind the most disgusting moustache Jessica had ever seen.
“I haven’t seen him,” she sounded flustered. “Is it bad news?”
“What news?” frowned Stevens.
“You tell me,” said Jessica Bean.
Pattimore cut through the confusion. “Just tell us the last contact you had with him, Miss Bean. And anything - however trivial - that might prove useful. Was he in the habit of staying late? Did he have a favourite boozer?”
“You’re talking about him in the past tense,” Jessica observed.
“Am I? Do you know different?”
“I just don’t want to think of him as gone, that’s all.”
Stevens leered at her, a little too close for comfort. “We need to see texts and emails, between you and Dobbin Doolally or whatever his name was. Is.”
“Uh, yes, of course. I’ll print them off.”
“Cheers, darling.”
Jessica shrank from Stevens’s cheese and onion breath.
“Thank you, Miss Bean,” said Pattimore with a look that acknowledged his partner was a pervert.
She led them back to the production office. Stevens ogled her buttocks and made grabbing gestures behind her behind. Pattimore slapped his arm.
The detectives waited while the p.a. busied herself with her phone and a computer. A printer churned out sheets of paper. Stevens nudged Pattimore.
“I’d flick that Bean,” he whispered.
Pattimore shuddered. And missed Detective Inspector David Brough even more.
7
“I’m Dan,” said Dan. “Who are you?”
“Oh, fuck me!” wailed Oscar from the sofa. He sprang to his feet and came to the door. “Pinkie! For fuck’s sake! What the fuck are you doing here? I mean, Christ -” Without waiting to be invited, Pinkie barged his way in. He turned on his three-inch heels like a diva in a night-time soap. “I told you I was coming! Yesterday. On the -” he flapped a wrist with far too many bangles around it at Oscar’s laptop.
“Er, I’m afraid that was me,” said Dan, sheepishly.
Pinkie’s painted eyebrows went up. “Oh, was it? And who are you, the Brits answer to Oscar Buzz?”
“I’m his stand-in,” said Dan. “I’m paid to look like this. What’s your story?”
Oscar laughed. Pinkie glowered at the pair of them.
“Well, I’ll thank you, Mr Stand-in to stand out while me and the genuine article have us a little tit-a-tit.”
“Oh, right; of course.” Dan made to leave but Oscar stopped him.
“Anything we have to say to each other we can say in front of Dan,” he said, looking Pink
ie directly in the mascara.
“Need a witness, do you?” Pinkie snapped. “Afraid I might hurt you? Or blurt out your darkest secrets?”
Oscar put an arm around Dan. “We have no secrets,” he declared.
News to me, thought Dan. There’s still plenty I have yet to disclose... If I ever get a bloody chance!
Unperturbed but still worked up, Pinkie delved a hand into his man bag and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He thrust them towards Oscar.
“Told him about these, have you?” his voice cracked. “Because you sure as hell didn’t fucking tell me.”
“What... ?” Oscar glanced through the papers. They were print-outs of online messaging conversations. His face fell. “Oh,” he said.
“Oh, in-fucking-deed!” Pinkie screeched. “You’ve been chatting to this whoever-it-is for the best part of a year. And he’s your top follower on Twitter - you favourite all his tweets. Who the fuck is he, Oscar?”
“Pinkie, listen: he’s nobody. Just some guy I got chatting with. And we hit it off. It was a change from all the ass-licking and the girly fans begging me to follow them. But it’s just online shit. I don’t even know his real name.”
“But you send him messages about how great he is, and how no one understands you like he does!”
“It’s just chat. I don’t even know the guy.”
“Well, if I ever see him... ” Pinkie snarled an unfinished threat.
“Actually,” said Dan, “I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s me. I’m the nobody!”
He wrenched the door open and hurried from the room. Oscar threw the papers at the seething Pinkie and rushed to the corridor, but Dan was already gone.
***
Miller and her new showbiz chum were in the snug of the Three Frogs. Bunny Slippers was on the sherry but Miller, ostensibly still on duty, had fizzy water with a slice. The room was decorated with signed and framed photographs of Bunny at various stages of her career - most of them were from the golden age of her long-running soap but there were earlier ones of her in sequins and ostrich feathers, as well as more recent ones: Bunny meeting the Queen, Bunny meeting Saddam Hussein and countless other celebrities.
Hospital Corners Page 6