“Noni?”
“Yes. What’s she like?”
She clenched her hands in her lap to stop them from flying about like angry birds. When she spoke her voice was full of malice with a note of fear. Maybe she believed Noni had actually killed the boy.
“She’s a blonde, thin, a bitch and a bloodsucker. She acts freaked-out, you know? But she’s really ice-cool. Know what we call her down here?”
I shook my head.
“White meat,” she hissed. She opened the door and started to get out of the car.
“See you Penny,” I said.
“Not here you won’t.”
She slammed the door and moved off. I watched her go through the collapsed gate and up the overgrown path. She was an elegant parcel of brains, bone and muscle wrapped up in hate. Seventeen. I drove away.
7
I had two fast Scotches in a pub in Kensington and bought a half bottle for company, so I was feeling better when I parked in the lane beside the Capitol theatre. The Capitol is a grimy old matron on the outside; it hasn’t had a face-lift for a good many years and the layers of old posters splattered over its walls seemed to mark its age like the rings in tree trunks. The posters for Saul James’ musical were up now covering over last year’s spectacular and greatest shows on earth long forgotten.
A chink of light showed through the door at the side of the building. I pushed the door open and went up a flight of stairs that ascended nearly as steeply as a ladder. I moved slowly, smelling unfamiliar odours, not the usual urine and garbage smells you get on dimly lit stairwells, but something richer, more exotic. The stairs ended at a corridor that had rooms going off it on both sides. One of the rooms was showing a light and I could hear soft voices. I paused outside and placed the odour, a combination of perfume and the sweet herbal smell of marijuana smoke. The door at the end of the passage opened out onto a backstage area behind a massive green velvet curtain. A few props, a coffee table, some chairs, a bookcase and a wheelchair, were scattered around. Against the wall, on the floor, was a big tape deck flanked by two king-size speakers and connected by a heavy cable to a power point that bristled with double adaptors. I could hear voices through the curtain and I stepped forward to where its two sections met.
“It has to go in there,” I heard a woman’s voice say. “If you move it it’ll be out of place and you’ll cut it later. I know you bastards.”
“We won’t Liz.” a high voice, wheedling. “I swear to you darling that the song stays in, whatever happens.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice rose to a near-shriek and I took a peek through the curtains. She was wearing body paint and a spangled G-string; her nipples, showing through the paint and tinsel, looked linked and obscene. She was lean and sinewy like a stockwhip and she was stalking up and down in nervous, gliding strides. Saul James, wearing jeans and a striped, matelot-style T-shirt, was sitting on a turned-around chair. Another man squatted on the stage. His fat thighs bulged in brown corduroy and his body was heavy and gross inside a flowered Hawaiian shirt.
“It’s an essential song Liz,” James said quietly. “It won’t be cut, it can’t be. You do it superbly.”
The woman stopped prancing. James’ mild tone seemed to calm her down and I was interested to see that he had some authority when operating professionally. She moved smoothly up to the actor and stood in front of him, her breasts almost touching his chest.
“Alright Saul,” she purred. “I’ll take your word for it, and if the song doesn’t stay in I’ll hold him responsible.” She pointed to fatty who got creakingly to his feet. The stage lights were dim but I could see the flesh shaking on his red face.
“Now that’s not fair sweetie, I…”
“Don’t call me sweetie, you slob,” she snapped. “Half of those fancy boys of yours can’t sing for shit and you know it.”
She turned and marched off the stage to the right as if she’d just delivered the last line in the first act. The fat man pulled out a flowered handkerchief and wiped his face.
“Nerves,” he said. “Jitters, highly strung. It’ll be alright.”
James nodded. He seemed to have lost interest in the scene and its implications very quickly. I opened the curtain and walked forward. The fat man stared at me.
“More trouble,” he said.
“Why do you say that?” I asked.
“Your face, your eyes. You want money. You’re going to threaten me.”
“You need to watch your guilty conscience, sport. I don’t care if you’re the Woolloomooloo flasher and keep an unlicensed dog. I want to talk to Mr James here.”
James looked at me. His face was pale and more Leslie Howard-like than ever; he looked as if Scarlet O’Hara had just given him the latest piece of bad news.
“Have you found her?”
“No. But I’ve been close. We have to talk some more. Here?”
James glanced across at the fat man who was looking on with interest. He seemed to be enjoying James’ distress.
“Lost her again have you Jamie?” he said maliciously. “I do hope you find her. This gentleman looks… capable.”
“Just shut up Clyde or I might sic him on to you.”
“Charmed I’m sure.”
I didn’t like being their verbal plaything and said more roughly than I needed: “The talk, James. Where?”
He swung off the chair and walked through the curtains without giving Clyde a glance. I followed him down the passage and into one of the rooms on the right. He turned on the light which showed the room to be pretty bare apart from a cupboard, a make-up table in front of a mirror and coffee-making things on a card table. There was a chair in front of the make-up table and I hooked it out and sat down. James looked at me, then went out of the room and came back with another chair. I rolled a cigarette and lit it. James tried to let go one of his boyish smiles but it came out thin and strained as if only half the required voltage was available. He got up and shook the jug, it responded and he plugged it in.
“Coffee?”
I shook my head. I was wondering how to play him. I needed more information on the girl. Maybe he had it, maybe he didn’t. I didn’t want to tell him too much, possibly out of sheer habit, but I must have looked worse than I felt.
“What happened to you?” He spooned instant coffee into a mug and added boiling water. He held up the other mug. “Sure?”
“I’m sure.”
He shrugged elaborately and anger flared in me.
“Listen, I’ve been bashed and seen a man dead on the seashore while you’ve been poncing about on the stage. I’m not in the mood for games.”
His eyes looked moist and he spoke softly. “Sorry.”
He was a deal too sensitive and raw in the nerve endings for my comfort. He wasn’t a kid. Late twenties probably. I remembered how well he’d handled the scene on the stage and wondered whether his per sonality was completely professional. His private role looked to be a bit beyond him and he seemed to need to set up a particular emotional atmosphere in order to operate. I didn’t want to play along and he wasn’t employing me, but somehow I’d begun to feel responsible for him and the feeling irritated me.
He sipped his coffee and tried again. “You said you’d come close to Noni. What did you mean?”
I gave him a version of the events of the past couple of hours. He looked concerned when I mentioned the
