by William Boyd
“Brilliant stuff, babe,” he said. “Oh. By the way, I’ve just been told two people need to speak to you urgently. Police or some such. Is everything OK?”
“It’s all under control,” she said. “I’m meeting them in my trailer.”
“Fine. See you tomorrow.”
“I’m not on tomorrow.”
“Oh, yeah, that’s right.” He thought. “Oh, Jesus God, it’s Sylvia tomorrow. Wish me luck!”
“Good luck. And then it’s the weekend.”
“Of course. Brain’s packing up. See you next week, sweetie pie. Be good!”
He gave her a hug—he seemed genuinely excited by what he had shot tonight—and she wandered off to change out of her costume and have her make-up removed. Her hair was wild, full of small twigs and leaves from her passage through shrubs and bushes, her face was smudged with dirt and mud—she had to return to normal. While she was in make-up she had a message sent to have her car brought round to the make-up caravan. When she was done, scrubbed and clean, hair glossy and combed, she slipped away, found her car and was driven back to the hotel. She told her driver he wasn’t needed any further and she reckoned she had a forty-five-minute to one-hour start on Desmondson and Radetski. She imagined them sitting in her trailer, waiting, being fed coffee and cookies by Shirley. After half an hour or so Shirley would go and look for her in make-up, return and say Miss Viklund had gone back to the hotel. Then her ruse would be exposed and only then would the alarm be raised.
At the hotel, she quickly packed a bag and went down to reception where she left a note for Troy. She had the hotel call her a taxi, giving no destination, and once it arrived she told the driver to take her to Gatwick airport.
She sat in the airport all night—finding a dark corner in the terminal, not risking checking in to a hotel—and managed to doze off for a couple of hours on an upholstered bench before the early-morning cleaning staff woke her up. Then she bought a ticket on the first flight leaving for Paris. She was pretty damn sure no one would have any idea what had become of her.
She only began to truly relax once the plane had taken off. She knew exactly why Radetski and Desmondson had come to the set. They had warned her during their interrogation at Dorian Villiers’ party—despite her vehement denials it was obvious they didn’t believe her.
“You do understand, Miss Viklund, that Cornell Weekes is a fugitive from justice. A wanted man,” Desmondson had said, patiently, as if lecturing a child. “We had an ‘All Ports Warning’ out on him. That’s how we got him.”
“A ‘most wanted’ man,” Radetski had emphasised. “He’s an escaped convicted criminal. A terrorist.”
“I haven’t seen him since our divorce,” she repeated. “So how could I have helped him? How could I have given him money? He’s just trying to incriminate me.”
She had known that her shrill refutations of their implicit accusations would only take her so far. She imagined that the information Cornell had supplied about their encounters would have been so precise regarding locations, times, incidental details—the autograph-hunter trick, room service, the decor in her suite—that his claims, his testimony, would have seemed overwhelmingly convincing to the detectives. It was only her good acting and her status as an American film star that had bought her some extra time. They would have to be 100% sure before they accused her of aiding and abetting, then charged her and arrested her. In the event, those couple of days had allowed her to formulate a plan and confirm—via a quick phone call to Jacques—that it was almost impossible to extradite a citizen of the United States of America from the République Française. They could delay it for years, for decades, he said, pas de problème.
So she would be safe—that was the first priority—and then she could assess what damage Cornell had done to her life and her future. She sat there, looking at the cloudscape outside the oval window, thinking bitterly that everything had changed for the bad so quickly—that fucking bastard of an ex-husband had gotten his revenge, all right. But where there was life there was hope, she told herself. Where there was hope there was life.
She asked the stewardess for another cup of coffee and thought about the film and her role and what her sudden abandonment of Emily Bracegirdle’s Extremely Useful Ladder to the Moon would mean to everyone involved. She was sorry. And she was sad—because of Troy and what he would be thinking and feeling about her. One thing she was sure of was that she would see Troy again, come what may. She was absolutely sure about that. It was just a fucking mess. She had been landed in a giant nightmare goat-fuck of a mess that was not of her making, but she owed it to herself not to become a victim, not to be sucked down into the swamp of that mess.
Pire hypothèse. Force majeure. Sauve qui peut. That’s what Jacques had said to her on the phone. How would you translate that? Worst-case scenario. Out of your control. Run for your life…The noise of the plane’s engines changed slightly as they banked and began their descent. Paris, safety and Jacques awaited. She couldn’t waste what remained of her precious energies thinking about what she had left behind.
4
“You’re making a terrible mistake, Mrs. Tipton. Please reconsider. It’s not safe.”
“I’m perfectly happy to take full responsibility,” Elfrida said.
“We were unable to contact your husband, I’m afraid.”
“He’s away making a film. Abroad,” she lied. Knowing full well why he was uncontactable. “Thank you for everything,” she continued, “I’m very grateful for your concern. Goodbye.”
Elfrida smiled at the young consultant—she’d forgotten his name, he seemed very young indeed.
“I’m perfectly well,” she said. “Don’t worry about me, oh no.”
She gave him a brisk wave of farewell and made her way through the corridors and stairs of the Royal Free Hospital and found the reception area where she formally checked herself out and stepped out onto Gray’s Inn Road, looking around for the nearest pub.
She found one a couple of hundred yards away up the road towards King’s Cross called the Heart of Albion. It was suitably depressing and seedy, which was what she asked of pubs. Spirits should be lowered on entry so that spirits could raise them anew, was her rationale. She saw Lincoln-green Anaglypta wallpaper hung with etchings of historic martial triumphs—Trafalgar, Balaclava, the Torres Vedras lines, Blenheim, Dunkirk, Malta GC, Waterloo—all battles, she registered, all to do with war and conflict, as if that was what defined a nation rather than its culture. There was the usual boldly patterned carpet halfway on its long journey to monochrome and in corners bulky gambling machines blinked and beeped. It was just after opening time and the pub was practically empty.
She ordered half a pint of lager shandy simply to gently initiate the old receptors and calculated that she hadn’t drunk a drop of alcohol since she had passed out in her kitchen two and a half days previously. It was strange and not a little unsettling to have a blank passage of time in one’s personal history, she thought. Two days lost forever. Her final memory was of pouring a shot of gin into her glass (she was definitely going to go to bed after this one, she had told herself) and then nothing. Her consciousness stuttered into life when she woke up in a ward of the Royal Free some forty-eight hours later.
While she was in hospital a young man called Lonnie had come to visit her. He was the man—an Australian, it turned out—who had saved her life, apparently. He was employed by the gardening firm she hired to mow her patch of lawn and deadhead and weed the borders once a fortnight. He had gone into the garden through the side door in the morning and had seen that the TV was still on in her sitting room—the test card showing in the empty room. Thinking Elfrida must be at home and reluctant to surprise her if she was, he had tapped on the glass doors that gave on to the garden. Peering in, he had seen, through the French windows, Elfrida’s legs prone in the kitchen. She was lying in a spreading pool of he
r vomit and urine, so the young consultant had told her, maximising the obloquy and the shame, she thought, in a wholly unnecessary way. Lonnie had called the police and they had broken in, carefully, found her still comatose and had her swiftly swept off to Accident and Emergency at the Royal Free.
Her house was secure, so she was told, neighbours had been alerted to her absence, and—miraculously—she had been provided with her own clean clothes and her house keys were in her handbag. It was as if she had been in a trance, or drugged—two whole days lost to anaesthetic oblivion. She was already feeling better after a couple of mouthfuls of shandy and went to the bar to order a schooner of Bristol Cream sherry. Bristol Cream sherry with a lager chaser provided the fastest route to a wonderful world of carefree lack of responsibility, so an old Welsh writer had once informed her. And she needed to be in that world again, to shut out the facets of her life that disturbed her—at least for a while.
The curious blend of lager and sweet sherry seemed to be working on her. She felt at once calmer, more cogent and more organised. She would stay in this pub for a while and maybe order something to eat, a pie or a sandwich, and then return home, sort everything out and, after a cup or two of tea, resume writing her novel. She had made a start after all—she had put black on white as old Guy de Maupassant had enjoined—she had a subject and she had inspiration. Nothing stood in her way other than the eternal problem of her procrastination and that was a thing of the past, she told herself. Those days were gone. Those ten years of literary stasis and creative inertia were over and done with. What a waste. What might she have written? What a waste of precious time.
She fished in her handbag for her notebook and found it, a fact that made her wonder again how come she had a handbag with her notebook in it and money in her purse to pay for her drinks. It must have been some efficient policewoman or paramedic. No matter, she had everything she needed including her notebook and pen. She opened the notebook at an empty page and started to write.
Novel—finish.
Reggie—finish.
House—sell (money).
Calder—alert (money).
Jessica—hire (divorce).
Future—discern.
Well, that was her life sorted out. She was a bit amazed at the rush with which she had written everything down. She hadn’t really thought but, reading back through her list, it looked as if something of a sea-change in her existence was underway. And quite right too. Time to rid herself of this sham of a marriage; time to ponder and envisage the novels she was going to write; time to block out a new happy life that she so manifestly needed. Everything would change. New life, new novels, new independence, new home, new aspirations. Everything was in her power—she had the agency—right was on her side so she should take control. The sweet sherry and lager chaser had worked its peculiar magic—she now felt ready for a gin and tonic.
5
Ken Kincade telephoned Talbot at his hotel before he had even shaved.
“We’re all sorted, chief,” Kincade said.
“What do you mean?”
“We’re ready to rumble. I know what’s happened to your film stock.”
He told Kincade to meet him in the dining room of the Grand at nine o’clock and fill him in over breakfast.
“Wilco,” Kincade said. “You won’t be happy, man. Just a warning.”
Talbot went down to breakfast in a curious and apprehensive mood. He felt oddly nervous—what revelation would Ken Kincade spring on him?—and at the same time resigned. This was the story of his life in cinema: ordinary norms of behaviour did not apply.
He ordered his usual breakfast and Ken Kincade appeared at the same time as Talbot’s kipper. He was wearing a short black leather jacket and a white t-shirt, black jeans and silver-toed cowboy boots with Cuban heels.
“Hungry, Mr. Kincade?”
“I am actually. I’ll take one of them brown fish you’re having.”
As they ate their smoked herrings, Kincade explained how he’d found out what happened to the missing film stock. He had infiltrated the film store—he didn’t specify how—and had indelibly marked all the unused reels of film stock kept there. All reels subsequently found outside the store would be traceable to Ladder to the Moon—or not.
“I see the logic,” Talbot said.
“The rest was simple surveillance, Mr. Kydd. Very boring, very time-consuming but—nine times out of ten, ninety-nine times out of a hundred—just sitting there on your ass watching, looking on, paying attention, solves the most difficult cases.” He went on. “These cans of film are very bulky and very heavy. It struck me that whoever left the film store carrying something that looked bulky and heavy was the man to follow.”
“Sounds sensible.”
“It is, Mr. Kydd. There’s a time to fish and a time to cut bait.” He pushed his half-eaten kipper aside. “I saw this guy, this bozo, walk out of your film store carrying a bag that looked like it was filled with lead weights. I followed him home. I followed him to his other place of work the next day.”
“But I trust these people,” Talbot said, a little aggrieved squeak of outrage in his voice, realising at once how feeble he sounded. “I pay them well.”
“You have zero security,” Kincade said. “It’s like—forgive the expression—stealing candy from a baby.”
“What does he—this person—do with the film stock that he steals? Does he sell it to other films that’re being made? Undercut the opposition? Agfa? Kodak? Eastmancolor? A kind of black-market deal?”
“I don’t think so,” Kincade said, mysteriously. “But why don’t we go and find out.”
They left the hotel and Kincade suggested they travel in his car. Talbot recognised it as a Ford Mustang, all black, left-hand drive, with an orange lightning strike down both sides. He eased himself cautiously into the passenger seat.
They drove to Peacehaven, east of Brighton, and parked in a residential street two blocks away from the South Coast Road.
“Where exactly are we?” Talbot asked.
“Telscombe Cliffs is the name of the area. Eleanor Avenue is where we find ourselves.”
Talbot looked at a modest street of modest bungalows and houses, some of them larger, with two storeys. He checked his watch. It was 9:40 on a Friday morning, people were walking their dogs, mothers were pushing prams with babies inside, a municipal lorry with an aerial work platform containing two overall-clad workers was engaged in changing a bulb on a street lamp. It couldn’t have been more ordinary.
He and Kincade stepped out of the car and were greeted with the sonic version of the suburban world that they’d just contemplated: a barking dog, the annoying buzz of an electric hedge-trimmer, the chimes of a distant ice-cream van. It was almost parodic, Talbot thought.
“Number 43,” Kincade said and they walked towards it, one of the larger houses—two storeys and a high concrete wall around the garden.
“Are you coming in with me?” Talbot asked.
“I reckon it’s your rodeo, Mr. Kydd. I’ll wait outside. My job is over.”
“Fair enough.” Talbot thought for a second. What if there was trouble? Fisticuffs? “Stay close.”
“A-OK.”
Talbot left Kincade on the street and opened a low iron gate and walked up a paved path to the frosted-glass front door of number 43. He rang the bell and waited, glancing back. Ken Kincade had lit a cigarette—he gave Talbot a thumbs-up. Talbot rang the bell again.
A young blonde woman in a dressing gown opened the door a few inches.
“Yes?”
“Hello.”
“Can I help you?”
“I think so.”
He had no idea what to say next. He wondered if Kincade had got this right. Then the young woman came to the rescue.
“Are you here for the film?”
“I�
�m one of the producers,” Talbot said. It was a near-infallible password, he’d found. Rarely queried.
“Oh. Right. You’d better come in, then. Everyone’s upstairs.”
Talbot stepped into the hall. The young woman in the dressing gown indicated the stairway.
“Like a cup of tea?”
“I’m fine thanks,” Talbot said and climbed the stairs to the upper floor.
On the top landing, two naked men—one very hairy, one very thin—were gently massaging their flaccid penises as they chatted to a naked middle-aged woman with enormous sagging breasts. As far as he could tell they were talking about vandalism in the locality. He heard mention of smashed telephone boxes, washing being stolen from washing lines. The general tone of outrage was strong. He saw thick black electric cables snaking all over the floor and there was an unnatural glare of powerful arc lights coming from a room behind the men.
They looked round as Talbot appeared from below.
“Excuse me,” Talbot said. “I’m one of the producers.” He held a finger to his lips. The men parted to give him access and Talbot slipped into the bedroom of number 43, Eleanor Avenue, Peacehaven.
Tony During—his director of photography—was hunched over a 35 mm camera, peering through the viewfinder at an unmade bed. Two young women—naked—were lying on it, their arms uncertainly round each other. Three other men stood looking on, chatting in low voices. One of them raised a boom mike over the two in the bed.
“Fucking quiet!” Tony yelled without looking up and the conversation about vandalism ceased outside.
Another man stepped forwards with a clapperboard and clicked it.
“Scene twenty-one, take two.”
“I want you to kiss. With tongues,” Tony said to the young women on the bed. “It doesn’t work if you don’t kiss.”
“I’m not kissing. You said no lesbian kissing.”