Warhol's Prophecy

He kissed her lightly on the lips. ‘We’ll go in my car,’ he said.

‘No, let me drive. I—’

He cut her short. ‘My car,’ he insisted.

She nodded.

He watched as she turned and headed back to the waiting Saab.

Watched her slide behind the steering wheel and start the engine.

Watched her drive off.

He closed the front door and made his way back through the hall, but he bypassed the kitchen and made straight for his study.

The smell of paint was welcoming and he shut the door behind him.

His latest canvas was positioned in one corner of the room. It was already close to completion. Walker looked at it for long moments, taking in every detail, his face expressionless.

It was huge: fully fifteen feet across, and half that again in width.

But this was for no eyes but his.

Not yet.

It was almost complete.

Almost ready.

He studied it again and smiled.

102

HAILEY WALKED SLOWLY between the tables set out in the ballroom of the Pavilion Hotel. Every now and then she would pause to check the names on the place-card settings against those she carried on her own seating-plan. Satisfied that each was in its correct place, she then moved on.

Around her, staff dressed in white jackets and black trousers swarmed like monochrome bees inside a crystal hive. Hailey had been there for an hour already. She had run through the lists of hors d’oeuvres and canapes to be served. And what time they were to be served. She had checked that all the champagne was well chilled, that the smoked salmon was in perfect condition. And a hundred other jobs.

The ballroom looked magnificent. There was no other word for it.

She stood at the top of the small flight of stairs that led down onto the highly polished parquet floor, and afforded herself a smile.

This party was to honour James Marsh and his factory, but its whole organization was her doing. She had arranged the party, the backstage passes, the limos, the accommodation, the guest list . . .

Everything.

The centrepiece of the buffet was to be an enormous ice sculpture in the shape of a guitar. It would be brought into the dining room minutes before Marsh himself arrived, and then unveiled.

Hailey checked her watch. She had more than an hour to get home and change before she, Rob and Becky were due to leave for the Waterhole gig.

But everything had to run like clockwork.

She decided on one final inspection.

The explosive sound of drumstick upon cymbal brought a shout of approval from the waiting crowd.

The roadie who had struck the instrument smiled and looked out at the sea of faces before him.

He performed a couple of drum rolls, each of which met with a similar roar of approval, then contented himself with striking each of the floor toms and mounted toms once or twice – according to the instructions he was receiving through his headset.

Guitar technicians were performing similar tasks around him. Levels were being checked, and one man in black jeans and a T-shirt bearing the legend FUCK DANCING, LET’S FUCK spoke into each of the microphones set up on the stage.

The instructions came from the mixing desk. It was positioned high on a purpose-built gantry about a hundred yards from the stage itself, facing the platform that was flanked on either side by huge video screens.

‘Twenty thousand people,’ said James Marsh, looking out at the crowd from the wings.

‘Yeah,’ Ray Taylor mused. ‘Don’t remind me. When I think of the gate receipts we’re missing out on.’

Marsh grinned. ‘It’s for charity, you bastard. Look on it as a good deed.’

‘I’d rather look on it as more money in the bank,’ Taylor said.

Marsh took a couple of steps out onto the stage, peering first at the crowd, then across towards another purpose-built structure to the right. This was the VIP viewing platform. Designed to take over one hundred people, it was a covered construction filled with temporary seating that gave a clear view of the stage over the heads of the heaving crowd on the ground.

‘Let’s just hope it doesn’t rain,’ Marsh mused, looking up at the darkening sky.

‘That’s what outdoor gigs are all about, Jim, you know that. If the punters aren’t up to their knees in shit by the third song, they’re not happy. When can you remember it being dry at Reading or Donington? But no one gives a toss. They’re happy enough.’ He made an expansive gesture with his hand, designed to encompass the entire crowd.

‘And you’re sure this is going to work? This spectacular bloody entry?’ Marsh sounded concerned.

‘They did it in Paris,’ Taylor assured him, ‘they did it in Rome, and it worked a treat. Half an hour before Waterhole are due on stage, the chopper starts buzzing the crowd. They all know the band are inside it. Then, it hovers. The rope ladders are dropped, and they climb down straight onto the stage. Straight into the first song. It looks fucking great, and the crowd love it.’

Marsh nodded. ‘I trust you,’ he said quietly.

‘You wait and see,’ Taylor told him. ‘You won’t forget tonight in a hurry, I promise you.’

The cemetery was closing.

As Adam Walker swung himself out of the Scorpio, he saw that one of the main gates was already shut.

He hurried towards the entrance, noticing half a dozen people still inside the vast necropolis.

There was still time.

He walked purposefully along the wide tarmac thoroughfare that cut through the middle of the cemetery, then turned off on a gravel path that led to the newer plots on one side.

Many of the graves he passed were badly neglected, but he reasoned they were so old that many of those buried within would have been since joined by those who had previously tended their resting places.

He passed a middle-aged man on the narrow path, and saw he was carrying some dead flowers wrapped in paper. The man glanced at Walker and met his gaze.

Walker saw the sadness in his eyes and assumed he too had been visiting a grave.

A wife?

A sister or brother?

Possibly a child?

Who had he lost?

The man tossed the dead flowers into a nearby dustbin and wandered off, head down.

Walker could see his father’s grave just ahead. Flowers, wrapped in their cellophane, still lay on the plot, but most of them had begun to rot.

As he stood beside the grave, the stench of their putrefaction was strong in his nostrils.

‘They’re decaying,’ he said, looking down at the dark earth, ‘just like you. Lying there rotting . . . But, then, you were rotten even when you were alive, weren’t you? Deep inside you were rotten. Filth! Well, at least I’ll never have to see you again. And I hope that, wherever you’re watching me from, you can hear this.’ He smiled crookedly. ‘As if you’d be watching me.’

He dug his hands into his pockets.

‘Man of God,’ he grunted. ‘Do you think God would want you? What kind of God would have let you get away with doing what you did to me?’

Walker stood staring down at the grave.

‘Enjoy Judgement Day,’ he whispered.