'This.' Montgomery spread his hands vaguely. 'I swear… I never touched her.'
'But you knew her? You knew Gloria?'
There was silence as the policeman searched for an excuse and failed. I wondered if there was a release in surrendering to the truth, but if there was, no sign of it appeared on his face. Montgomery looked ten years older than the man I’d first seen in Bill’s club. He sighed and said, 'Yes, I knew her.'
Sheila gasped and I realised that until then, despite the photograph I’d shown her, she’d been unconvinced of her husband’s involvement. Montgomery took a step forward, looking up at the gallery like an aged ruined Romeo.
'I swear, as soon as I met you I knew the affair with Gloria had been nothing. She was nothing compared to you.'
Sheila shouted, 'You think I’m upset about that? You think I care about that? About the sex? You think I’m jealous of Gloria?' She gripped the balcony and fought for composure.
'What did you do, Jim?'
Montgomery talked on, as if he hadn’t heard her, or as if he’d been preparing his speech for a long time.
'We were young… Gloria was bored… she thought it was funny to seduce a policeman…
to have lovers on both sides of the law. I was naive… unsophisticated… easily flattered.'
Sheila’s voice was shrill.
'You’re blaming her? A dead woman?'
Montgomery whispered.
'No… no… I …'
'Tell me Jim or so help me God I’ll throw myself off this balcony. Did you and Bill Noon kill my sister?'
'No!' James Montgomery looked away from his wife, out into the empty stalls. 'No, I never killed her. It was Bill. He knew she’d been mucking around and he lost his temper.
She fell down the stairs. Nobody meant it, it just happened. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and he made me help him.' His voice was cracking now. 'He made me.'
'And young Bill?'
'I swear I had nothing to do with that.' He took another step forward. 'I never touched Gloria. All I did was help dispose of her body and I’ve been paying for it ever since.'
Heavy footsteps sounded across the stage. Montgomery looked at me, then towards the wings where the tall figure I’d been hoping to see all night was walking towards us.
'No, you haven’t.' Blunt was as scruffy as ever, but his voice was strong and sober.
'You’ve been avoiding it. But you’ll start paying pretty soon.'
Montgomery looked at Blunt blankly, then he saw the uniformed policemen behind him and realised what was happening. He edged backwards across the stage.
I said, 'There’s nowhere to go, Monty, you’ve got to face them.'
James Montgomery took a last step back. Sheila gasped and I reached out to grab him.
Our fingers touched and then he tumbled beyond my grasp. It was as fast and as sure as gravity. The feel of his hand was still upon mine even as I saw him twisting awkwardly and heard the sickening thump.
There was a clatter of police boots and a cackle of radios on the back stairs as the uniforms ran the slow route down. Blunt walked across the stage and looked into the audience pit.
'He’ll live.'
The sound of Sheila Montgomery’s sobbing drifted down from above. Blunt made his way wearily down into the stalls and started to recite the police litany.
'James Montgomery, I am arresting you on suspicion of murder. You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now anything you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence …'
I sank to the floor, put my head in my hands and shut my eyes.
Berlin
SYLVIE’S RED LIPS mouthed something that might have been I love you or Don’t do it or Do it quick. My consciousness shifted and I saw us both caught in a tableau. Sylvie afraid but determined, her pale skin shining as if it were drawing all the light in the warehouse towards her, and me in my ridiculous costume, right arm raising the gun level with my shoulder. Somewhere in the dark the stranger and Dix were watching, waiting for me to go through with the trick, and somewhere far off so was I; still sure the wax was in the chamber, but wondering what it was that I’d missed. I lowered the gun and took a step towards Sylvie. Scared as she’d looked, her fear had been nothing to the terror that suddenly shadowed her face.
'Come on, dear,' her voice shook with the effort of calm. 'Why don’t you show them our William Tell act?'
And I realised that the die was cast. I had been tempted with money and performance pride but something worse than humiliation would happen if I rejected the challenge now.
I slid from my position on the outside, back into myself, breathed deeply, raised my arm, slowly took aim, squeezed the trigger and fired. The glass shattered and the target flew backwards into the centre of an explosion of noise and red.
I sank to the floor, into the warmth of my own piss, putting my head in my hands, feeling a thousand shards of
