spoiled one take by making a noise flapping the script. Jardie squatted just out of camera range and offered Butler massive support with her eyes and hands. He lapped it up. I decided I’d rather make the tea than act, write or direct.
Fuller put down the phone and beckoned me over; he was smiling.
‘Good news from the distributors,’ he said.
‘Does that mean my cheque won’t bounce?’
‘You don’t know how true you speak. No, everything should be all right now.’
‘How many people are actually sleeping here, say tonight?’
‘Let’s see. McLeish, Kurt and Jardie; Roxie and Heathcliff
‘Heathcliff?’
‘Heathcliff Hathaway, one of the support actors.’
‘Will he ever get to be star with a name like
Heathcliff?’
‘With his talent, any thing’s possible.’
‘He’s got talent?’
‘None. Bob Space tells me he’s moved his things in for a bit… if you’re planning something boring like gathering everyone together for a rap session it won’t work, not tonight anyway.’
‘I wasn’t, but why wouldn’t it work?’
‘There’s a dinner on tonight at EJs, everyone’s going. What are you planning?’
‘Something sneaky,’ I said.
It’s my belief that when you find out someone’s secrets, you find out what they are. Someone with no secrets may be what they seem-few are. I went back to Glebe the way homeowners do, to make sure it hadn’t burned down or had the doors stolen; but, by 9 o’clock I was back in Leichhardt, wording up the security men to let me poke around for a while.
I did McLeish’s caravan first; it bore all the signs of being occupied by a sort of filmic hit man. He was here to do a job and he’d brought enough clothes and enough money and the booze he could get on the spot. He might have a full life back in the old Dart, complete with photos of the wife and dog, but here he was just passing through. There were some uncomplimentary remarks scrawled on a copy of the script, a bit of correspondence with his agent about fees and a cupboard full of hangover remedies. His passport photograph was of a younger, more hopeful man.
Jardie Butler had trouble sleeping; she kept her Mogadon close to hand; there was a pile of books by the bed of the kind that poor sleepers flip through-short stories, pop biographies and Woody Allen scripts. There was also an eye mask and a vibrator. The Butlers had a lot of casual clothes and a lot of casual money; two passbook accounts were healthy, as were a keycard account and a building society deposit. They’d also left carelessly lying around the kind of money I usually count, fold and put carefully in my wallet.
Kurt Butler’s effects included weights, running gear, a chest expander, various liniments and more jockstraps than socks. His only reading matter was a carefully kept scrapbook about his very favourite film actor. He had a copy of Space’s script with his lines heavily underscored; there had been some editing done in Jardie’s hand-all to make the speeches shorter.
Space’s part of the caravan he shared with one of the technicians was a crazy jumble of books, papers, credit cards and clothes. He seemed to have no ability to keep things in separate compartments: He had pipe tobacco in a cup, ball point pens in a shoe, and razor blades in with a packet of tea bags. Under his bunk though was a locked metal box. I eased it open with a piece of wire and found a book inside which had been carefully wrapped in tissue paper, like a Shakespeare first folio.
The book was a paperback, published twelve years before by MacRobertson amp; MacRobertson. It was the first in a mystery and adventure series, and I vaguely remembered the fanfare of announcement at the time. Entitled Death Games it was written by Deryck Hyclef and told the story of a private detective who had three clients in succession murdered. It seemed like a faster way to go out of business than the slow grind of the recession. I had my souvenired copy of Bob Space’s script in my pocket and I sat down on his bunk and compared the two pieces of writing. Even with name changed (and he hadn’t bothered to change them that much-Dirk Balfour becoming Dick Balmain for example), it was easy to see that Death Feast was a direct pinch.
There was no mention of Hyclef on the script, in fact it was called ‘an original screenplay’. Space had tried a few minor plot changes but, without knowing anything about film editing, it seemed to me that if the cutter of the film wanted a backbone he’d end up with a plot very like that of Hyclef’s book. In any case, the book was underlined and annotated in Space’s writing. I rummaged in the mess and found an earlier draft of the script which included passages virtually transcribed from Death Games. If the Scriptwriter’s Guild, of which he was a fully paid-up member, had any teeth, Mr Robert Space would have a very bloody neck.
I telephoned EJs to ensure that Fuller would come to the set rather than slope off to his penthouse; then I got a bottle from McLeish’s caravan and the security boys and I had a few belts and swapped stories. I told them the one about the amusement park that had a ferris wheel stolen and they told me the one about the drunk who went to sleep on wet cement.
Fuller and Space turned up around midnight; the writer was drunk and unsteady, and his face seemed to dissolve when I laid the book in front of him. We were in the kitchen of one of the houses, and I got him a glass of water. I put the script down beside the book and didn’t say anything. Space gulped the water and looked miserable.
‘What’s going on?’ Fuller said.
‘Bob pinched the story from this book. He pinched the characters, atmosphere, the lot.’
‘Jesus,’ Fuller breathed. ‘Anything to drink besides water?’
We got McLeish’s bottle and I poured two drinks, leaving Space with more water.
‘Let’s hear it, Bob,’ I said.
Space sipped water and a little dribbled down his chin; he’d been running his hands through his high-rise hair, flattening it and making him look more normal, younger and afraid. ‘I didn’t think the thing’d get to production. I was just after the development dough, thought I might get a first draft fee from some producer, you know.’
Fuller nodded.
‘Well, it all took off. It moved too fast for me-suddenly it was final draft and then we were in pre-production. I didn’t know what to do. I wouldn’t really have hurt Jardie, you know that.’
I nodded this time.
‘I just wanted to stop the bloody thing. I tried to make a lot of changes but Jardie and McLeish blocked a lot of them. If we make it like this,’ he lapped the script, ‘someone’ll spot it for sure. It’ll be the finish of me.’ He mustered a little spirit and looked at Fuller. ‘You too, probably,’ he said.
I drank some of McLeish’s good whisky and thought about it. Space was flicking through the book. There was a picture of the author on the back cover-he looked youngish, thin and thoughtful.
‘Why didn’t you get on to this Hyclef bloke? Do some sort of deal with him?’
‘I thought of that,’ Space said. ‘I gave it a try; but the firm went out of business. I asked around but no one’d ever heard of Hyclef. It could’ve been a pseudonym. I don’t know.’
Fuller was sinking whisky and looking desperate; he could see his investment slipping away. I let it slip a little, and then cleared my throat noisily.
‘Missing persons is one of my specialties.’
Fuller took the biggest punt of his life, and they went on with the shoot while I looked for Hyclef. I found him teaching at a school out from Broken Hill. He’d never had another word published-the collapse of MacRobertsons had hit him for six. He was a nice, naive man, disappointed in his thirties. He was thrilled with the deal Fuller and Space worked out with him for the film ‘based on’ his novel. There was talk of a re-issue of the book by another house with Kurt Butler’s craggy features on the cover.
The film finished on schedule, and just over budget. It did good business and they even found a small part for me-I’m the one who shouts ‘Look out!’ when Dick Balmain misses death by inches up in the Centrepoint tower.
