Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 143, No. 1. Whole No. 868, January 2014

Limelight by Howard Halstead

Already a well-published author of non fiction, British writer Howard Watson, who’s chosen to use the pseudonym Howard Halstead for his mysteries, makes his fiction debut this month. And it’s a special debut from EQMM’s standpoint, since it was a subscription to our magazine that got this talented author interested in writing mysteries. His latest nonfiction is 2013’s The World Atlas of History’s Greatest Heroes and Villains — which we imagine may have left him with plenty of ideas for crime stories!

He was there too early, of course. He knew he would be, but he couldn’t help himself, his nervous energy propelling him forward to get dressed too quickly, to get the bus too soon, to walk too fast. Never mind, he thought. After all, this could be the day that changes my life, and that’s not the sort of day for which you want to be late. He held his secret close amongst the other riders on the five A.M. bus, amongst the office cleaners on their way to another despondent day, the two quiet, head-lolling young men he suspected were still drunk, the jolly old lady who did not sit alongside her jolly old friend but shouted news of the weather and a surprising death across the aisle in the same jolly but slightly mystified voice. He hid his sheen from them, he hid his small smile. He played at being just another weary man who had to take a chilly, early-morning bus before the decent folk, the worthy folk, awoke to the pre-timed, central-heated warmth of another satisfying day.

He found the location easily after stepping off the bus, drawn to the familiar huddle of large white vehicles cattling together in the half-light and drizzle on a vacant lot in the heart of the city. He still did not let on when the day-glo — vested security man looked at him as he walked through the gap in the hoardings surrounding the site. The man sharply jutted forward his shaved, swarthy head by way of interrogation. “Background,” Hugh replied, and the bullethead nodded once again to show his reluctant acceptance of the answer. Background, Hugh thought, as if that word could sum him up, on today of all days, when he would be stepping into the limelight and playing with the gods.

He crouched there, suddenly aware of what he had done, another man’s blood soaking into his clothing, and he felt nothing but the visceral, earthy thrill of it pulsing, fresh and vital, through the newly awakened core of his being.

He ignored the catering van and turned and swivelled amongst the puddled pathways created by the dozen white trucks that had formed their own little township of departments — costume, hair and makeup, production office, and the Winnebagos of the stars. A piece of white A4 was tacked to the door of each Winnebago announcing, as usual, the character-name of each occupant rather than the name of the actor. He tried not to notice the names, knowing that if he saw one in particular a wave of nerves would wash through him and leave him standing staring, stultified before the door. No, there would be plenty more opportunities for the surprising transgression of boundaries: He would meet “Meybrick” later, and real names would be exchanged — not for the first time — before battle would commence.

First, he had to announce himself to the production office, preferably to the second assistant director, the 2nd AD. He mouthed the words, making sure he kept the tone friendly, casual, as if this was just another day, a walk in the park: “Hi, I’m Hugh Simmons. I’m your ‘Colin’ for the day.” That would be just right, establishing who he was and what he was doing here in just a few seconds, and not really making a big thing about not being just background, a “supporting artiste,” an extra.

He saw the production-office sign stuck on a glass door halfway along the side of one of the trucks, and was glad to see that the light was already on and there was some indistinct movement from within. Against his natural inclinations, he knew that it was best to appear confident in these situations, so he bounded up the three metal steps and was rapping on the glass door, sliding it across, and announcing himself before he had time for the nerves to kick in. He got as far as a bungled, “Hi, I’m Colin...” before he realized that he had stepped into a tense meeting between three people, none of whom looked at him, even while one of them cut him off with a terse, “Wait on the dining bus.” The speaker was younger than Hugh, perhaps only twenty-five, but Hugh was no match for his stem jaw, his aristocratic dismissiveness, and, not least, his deliberate lack of eye contact. Cowed, Hugh stumbled down the steps again and landed squarely in a puddle, the water lapping over his shoes and flushing cold through his socks.

Three-quarters of an hour later he was still sitting alone on the dining bus. He had used the time wisely, preparing himself for this extraordinary day. The wheels had been set in motion just twenty hours earlier when the agency had phoned and asked whether he was free. “You’re all right with dialogue, yeah?” In truth, he had no idea. No scripted word had ever passed his lips even though he had graced film sets with his slight presence a thousand times, his forte being silently to fill a few pixels, to move inconspicuously from A to B while the heroes performed their magic and moved the plot forward by a few beats. To make the background plausible by endlessly walking to and fro fifty yards from camera, to sit in a bar or office, miming away, to provide a tiny, plausible bit of ambience as the real-deal action commenced, but most of all to turn up on time, to bring the right sort of clothes, to never ask questions, to never speak to the stars or the director, to not do anything that disrupted the precious filming process — this was his lot and he was glad of it. Unlike many other extras, he had never previously wanted to be the star, to speak the words, to have the bovine adulation of the masses; he had never stood there in the shadows cursing, finding fault and thinking he could do better, if only someone would notice him and give him a break. But today was different. He was ready to take centre stage.

The agent had taken his momentary silence to mean that of course he was happy with dialogue, that he would not make a fool of himself in proximity to a star, and folded the conversation with: “They just need someone short to say a couple of lines to Simon Styles, as apparently he’s a midget who hates tall people. They sacked the proper actor. Details later.” His first reaction was to think that, actually, Simon Styles was not as short as everyone said he was, and his second was to almost black out with the words “SIMON STYLES, SIMON STYLES” screaming through his head, over and over again. Fortunately, the agent had already terminated the call as Hugh would stand there for the next five minutes — mind fractured, mouth agape, bowels turning to water — as he dumbly held the silent phone to his ear.

Sitting on the dining bus, he looked at the single, precious page of script once again. He knew the words — in fact, he had known them backwards within five minutes of the agency emailing them through — but still he read them again, one last time, just to be sure, and another last time, just to be surer.

And now they were streaming onto the catering bus as if by some unseen cue: overweight, fry-up bearing crew members — noisy, rambunctious, owning the space — and a few extras, who were more tentative and careful not to sit at the same tables as the crew. More extras drifted in, all male, and sought out their own kind, even if they did not know each other, to form their little satellite planets at the edge of the universe. A desultory young runner, who didn’t bother identifying herself, walked towards him and said, “Hugh?” When he smiled she slapped the day’s stapled call sheet and script on the table and walked off again without further comment. He couldn’t help but fee! a slight frisson of pride to see his name alongside “COLIN” on the front cover, and turned to the script to make sure nothing had changed overnight. Hugh recognized some of the faces around him, yet no one shared his table as he sat there conscious that he had not taken off his coat, that his feet were cold and wet, that when his mind scrabbled for the lines he knew so well a moment ago he could now find nothing, nothing at all, just a desperate black void. Suddenly

He felt powerful and calm. He inspected the cut across the victim’s neck and placed two fingers just below it. Nothing. If he had found even the faintest pulse he knew that the rage would have boiled up again. He knew with absolute certainty that he would have taken the man’s head in his hands and beaten it against the toilet bowl, the walls, the floor, until his face was an unidentifiable mush, until even the weakest glimmer of life had been entirely extinguished.

He felt acid burning in his stomach and he was ravenous. He returned from the catering truck with a plate piled high and managed to defy gravity by also carrying two full polystyrene bowls. A soldier’s breakfast, he told himself, to set himself up for the day; after this they could throw anything at him and he would be ready. In twenty minutes’ time the whole breakfast — the scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, burnt fried tomatoes, crispy fried bread, greasy hash browns, mushrooms, porridge, yoghurt, and fruit — would be rushing through his throat the wrong way in a continuous stream that threatened to block the chemical toilet. In eighteen minutes’ time, Lee Taylor would step onto the dining truck.

After the initial jolt, Hugh told himself not to panic. Lee, wearing his customary leather biker’s gear and heavy boots, swaggered his way down the aisle of the dining truck, barely pausing as he slapped an extra on the back of the head. The young man, who had been studying a bacon sandwich slightly warily, managed to look shocked, ready for a fight, and delighted in the course of a second.

“Hi, Lee. Ha-ha.”

But Lee had moved on and was already saying to another extra, “Saw you on the telly last night. Big closeup.”

The extra, a heavily built East Asian with an over-gymed neck, tried to muster nonchalance in his “Yeah? What was that then?” but his huge smile gave the game away.

“So close I saw right up your nose. Pretty sure there was an ounce of coke jammed up there.”

The whole bus laughed in ribald communion, except straight-faced Hugh, who knew that Lee would keep on walking right up to his table and take a seat opposite him. A cat toying with a mouse for its morning exercise. But Hugh would be strong today. He still had his little secret; he knew that the near future held events that would give Lee more than a little pause for thought.

“Nigel,” Lee said, smirking at his own familiar joke. Sometimes he called him Trevor, sometimes Sebastian, but never, ever Hugh. His leather trousers creaked as he sat down and looked directly into the eyes of Hugh, who was forced to look away. “Bet you’re glad to see me.”

The blood was running along the dirty linoleum floor, finding the line of least resistance amongst the piss stains and shoe marks old and new, dried and wet, its redness looking fresh, vibrant, and so cruelly full of life as it made its way towards Hugh’s boots.

He steeled himself to look into Lee’s steady, amused eyes, and that was it. The world blackened and he was hit by overwhelming nausea. He stumbled to the honeywagon in a haze, his legs propelling him forward, his mind a scattering of thoughts, of the word honeywagon evolving as the name of a mobile toilet, of Lee’s smile, of the wetness of his socks, of his mother telling him not to pick his nose, of Grace kissing him for the first time, out of the blue, with him stunned and amazed, of the overladen breakfast plate, shining with grease, of the Christmas party, of the words of the script jumbling on the page, of being at the Christmas party with Grace on his arm, of his foot slapping into another puddle, of the vomit lurching through his epiglottis and being desperately swallowed, of being drunk at the Christmas party and trying to find Grace, of the prospect of meeting Simon Styles with the smell of vomit on his breath, of pushing through a door, this toilet-cubicle door and the bedroom door merging into one, and finding Lee with his hand inside Grace’s trousers, of the wet dirty floor and the marks that would be left on his trousers as he knelt down, with his throat and mouth involuntarily forced wide by the Magimixed breakfast.

To me belongeth vengeance and recompense; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.

He was stunned as the hair and makeup assistant simply buzzed the clippers from his hairline over his crown and right down to his neck, leaving a comical wide tramline of stubble straight through the middle of the thick thatch of mid-length auburn hair that his mother had always said was his best feature. The tramline was widened by another flowing sweep of the clippers, followed by another and another until he saw a gaunt, shaven Auschwitz victim staring back at him in grim, wide-eyed surprise. He had been given no warning. The young female assistant had just said, “You’re playing Colin, right?”, affixed a shiny black cloak around his neck, and commenced to give him a number one without uttering another syllable. The transformation from Hugh to Colin had taken less than a minute. Before entering the hair and makeup truck, he had already been to costume and been laden with army gear — combat fatigues, helmet, boots, belts, rucksack, attachments whose function he would never know — but he had still felt like Hugh just wearing a fancy-dress outfit. He would be handed his gun just before filming commenced, and he thought that perhaps that would be the time, once fully adorned, that he would truly feel like Colin. But no, the haircut did the job. He felt weak, scared, put upon and out of his depth; he knew it was just a shadow of what a young man must feel like emerging from the confusion and hurly-burly of war preparations to find himself on the front line, facing real terror and ashamed of his fear. At the first buzz-through of the clippers, he felt quietly angered that no one had asked his permission, or even warned him, before completely changing his appearance for months and months to come, just for the sake of one day’s work. He managed to say, quietly, too quietly, “But I think I will be wearing a helmet,” but there was no way back after the first valley had been sheared along the length of his scalp. The assistant just shrugged without a trace of sympathy and carried on mowing.

As she proceeded to smear brown, grey, and green makeup onto his face, he stared at himself. It’s fine, he thought to himself. All this — the hair, the rucksack they had filled with bricks to give it authentic weight, the wet socks, the too-tight boots, Lee’s smug face — would soon be worth it. An opportunity of pure beauty — beyond mathematics, science, or the plotting of history — had opened itself up before him and everything was going to plan.

Alice had exclaimed in shock as he said it and he wondered, just for a moment, whether he had done the right thing. Earlier, he had tried to tease her, telling her that she was going to have an important visitor in a few moments, but not letting her know who it was. But his mother’s face remained impassive and she kept her eyes shut, although he knew that she was awake — her index finger and thumb continually rubbed the small St. Christopher’s medal she always wore on a delicate chain around her neck, as if the saint alone could ease her final journey. In his rehearsals she had been geed up just by the mention of a visitor and by the time he revealed the truth, unfurled in finely judged, delicate layers, she had forgotten her world of pain entirely, her colour was blooming once more, and she was bursting with excitement. In reality, she seemed barely to know he was there, lost in the intricacies of the pain not masked by morphine and weighted beyond pleasantries with the crushing prognosis. After so many years of sharing such a deep bond, an unspoken and unbroken understanding of which they were so proud, after all the troughs of trouble they had faced together, she had moved beyond him in the last couple of days; for the first time in his life, from mewl to disorientated adolescent to quiet, careful, adult Hugh, he could not touch her.

When his clues that “you know him and yet you do not know him” and “he is two-dimensional at work but will be three-dimensional at exactly eleven o’clock” were just left hanging fatuously in the close, sickly-sweet air of the hospice room, he abandoned the plotted scene. He held her thin hand delicately.

“Simon Styles is coming to see you in just a minute.”

And there it was. An audible intake of breath. When her eyes opened, always so bloodshot and dry these days, they were full of fear, and she now held her St. Christopher’s medal tightly in her fist. Then she focused on Hugh for the first time in more than three days, and a smile slowly widened. She closed her eyes again and giggled.

“Don’t tease me, Hughie,” she said, gripping his hand as hard as she could. She opened her eyes again and looked at her serious, imploring son, and she knew he was not teasing. He had listened to every word she had said in the last month as the destination of her illness became all too inevitable, and he had sieved soft for anything he could turn into a moment of joy. “What are your favourite flowers in the world?” “What are your top ten favourite films?” “Who is your all-time favourite actor?” All asked in the same artlessly casual, all-too-important tone as he moved the beaker so she would not have to stretch or adjusted the blinds to coax sunlight into the room. He knew the answer to the last question only too well. Only one man brought a youthful, girlish, hopeful look to her eyes.

She tried to keep up her energy as eleven-fifteen came and went without a visitor. Her boy tried not to seem tense, but looked at the time on his phone every minute. By eleven-thirty Alice was slowly rubbing her medal again and was slipping back into her other world, unable to hang on any longer even for the sake of her son, who still stood, holding her other hand, but was now staring fixedly at the door.

In the closing miasma she saw something new in him, something terrifying, an anger fuelled not just by an unreliable actor who had made a promise he did not keep or by the horror of losing his mother, but by a growing tumour of hatred for every part of the careless world. She prayed that Grace, who seemed to her so odd and so fickle, would save him.

Yes, he was Colin now all right. Loaded with the paraphernalia of army belts and bags, he found it difficult to sit back down on the dining bus in any comfort. Something would be digging in his back, but if he shifted position, another hard object attached to his belt would take over its role. It didn’t help that he had decided to keep the army helmet on in order to hide the devastation that had been wrought to his hair. The helmet didn’t fit properly and sloped at an angle across his eyes, but he had no idea how to adjust it, trusting that the costume department would sort it out before the cameras rolled. He felt humiliated, ill at ease, and scared whether he would be able to do his duty when the time came. No one else on the dining bus gave him any attention. The crew had disappeared to perform their roles in the magic of film, leaving only extras straggling back from costume, awaiting the order to go to set. He had seen the ritual transformation many times before: As soon as some of the extras — even the more mild-mannered of them — had adorned a uniform or been given a replica gun, they would become boisterous, pally and ribald, assuming the mantle of real men who were in their own exclusive club of soldiers who protected the nation, who sure-footedly and valorously strode the fine line between life and death. Their newfound self-importance choked the air, and all because they were going to be filling a few pixels in a battle scene in which not even their nearest and dearest could possibly recognize them. Hugh knew that Colin would have been perpetually cowed by such men throughout his training and on the journey to war. He looked at his lines again and this time knew them off by heart without focusing on the print. He knew what Colin felt in the instant that he uttered those few words. Yes, he was Colin.

Seemingly out of nowhere, Lee banged his helmet down on the table and sat down opposite him.

“What you got there, then?” Before Hugh had a chance to react, Lee had grabbed the sides out of his hands. He read the scene slowly. Hugh could see him mouthing the words as he read. He knew without doubt that he had struggled at school and had hid his shame by thumping his classmates in the playground. The insight ignited a flicker of superiority but Hugh knew it would soon be dampened.

“You?” Lee looked at him incredulously. “You’re Colin?” He then broke into fulsome laughter and reached over with both hands to woggle Hugh’s cheeks. “All grown up now, then. Lines and everything.” As he stood up, he batted Hugh’s helmet off his head, revealing his shaven dome. It was only at that moment that Hugh realized that Lee’s hair had remained untouched, that he had somehow managed to keep a mid-length haircut that no one in the army would ever get away with. Lee turned to address the whole truck. “Pretty little skinhead here has got lines, can you believe it? He’s running with the big boys now.” Each and every one of the extras looked at Hugh and smiled or smirked. “Spielberg’s got his number too. Wants him to star in ET Two. Figures he can save money on makeup.” And with that the truck exploded with laughter.

Lee turned back to Hugh and gave him a light double slap on the face. He leaned in close, far too close, and whispered, “Try not to shit yourself.” As Lee walked down the aisle to the exit, laughing loudly and prompting another wave of conjoined hilarity, Hugh imagined taking out a knife, grabbing Lee’s hair, and pulling his head backwards as he calmly ran the blade across his throat.

He looked up and saw that the blood spray had arced a single thin line along the ceiling and down the wall. He stood still, allowing himself time to admire the fine, artful delicacy of the evenly spaced dots of red. Such astounding beauty in nature; such intricate patterns amongst the chaos.

As the 1st AD led Hugh over the rough terrain to meet Simon Styles, he really wished he could walk properly. The army rucksack was surely improbably heavy for an infantryman, the boots were scorching his heels with every step, his helmet kept sliding down and obscuring his vision, and he was now additionally encumbered by a rifle, which was also far heavier than he thought probable. Just a hundred yards from the trucks, the location was the site of a demolished building. The ground was gnarled and pitted, and there were enough concrete blocks, strewn bricks, pieces of buckled ironwork, and mud to immediately conjure wartime devastation without the set designers having to explore the wilder outreaches of their imagination. As Hugh stumbled in the wake of the 1st AD, trying to straighten his helmet while continually threatening to overbalance, he realized that he was more nervous about this moment than about remembering the lines. He looked up to see the 1st reach Simon Styles and turn around to introduce Hugh. He was clearly annoyed that Hugh was still twenty yards away rather than at his shoulder. As Hugh attempted to quicken his pace by half jogging towards them, the butt of his rifle got caught between his legs and almost sent him sprawling. He could clearly see the 1st AD mouth, “For God’s sake!”

Simon Styles stood there in his immaculately presented army uniform, smiling benignly. He raised his hand and Hugh thought for a second that he was about to give him a wave of recognition, but the hand continued its slow, measured path towards a curling forelock, which he gently moved a couple of millimetres away from his left eye. Colin was clearly the only character in the entire film for whom the authenticity of a severe scalping was deemed necessary. As Hugh stumbled again, he saw that his progress had become a source of entertainment for Lee and a group of a dozen other extras who were standing to the side of the lot, awaiting instructions.

As he finally reached the pair, the 1st AD said, “Simon, this is...” He had to look down at his call sheet for a prompt. “Hugh.” He didn’t feel the need to add his surname. Hugh was glad. He didn’t want to be recognized — it would spoil the surprise — and his full name might have triggered a memory. He needn’t have worried. Simon’s steady appraisal showed not one jot of recognition. The helmet, scalping, and uniform had transformed Hugh, and Simon clearly hadn’t made the link to a strange event three months ago when a short, angry, twenty-nine-year-old man steamed down a corridor towards him with a look of vengeance in his eyes. He was calmness personified and his face broke into the smirking smile that had wooed millions of cinemagoers across the globe. He seemed to be in control of every cell of his body, continually ready for anything — a closeup, an aggressive paparazzo, a bedraggled extra given an audience with the king. He showed no sign that just yesterday his love life had been the subject of front-page tabloid conjecture alongside photos of his girlfriend, emerging starlet Kathleen Harrison, outside a nightclub in the arms of another man. Simon reached out to squeeze Hugh’s shoulder and gave him the No. 2 Smile, the full works, a generous, gracious expression of pure, open delight at the privilege of being in another’s company, a smile rarely seen in performance but which was almost always gifted to a chat-show host. “Good to meet you, Hugh. Looking forward to working with you.”

Hugh was unable to speak, and found that his head had taken the unilateral decision to just keep nodding repeatedly. He told himself that the unbidden muteness didn’t matter right now. He had already decided that he would wait until the end of the scene, after they had spent a couple of hours filming together. Then Hugh would do exactly as the actor had done just now — place his hand on Simon Styles’ shoulder, give him his own version of the No. 2 Smile, and say, “Hey, Simon, remember when you were asked to take an hour of your precious time to fulfill the final wish of a dying woman?” Yes, that would be perfect. There would be a look of genuine surprise on Simon’s face, a surprise that would erupt into a whole new expression once Hugh had reached into his pocket and delivered his coup de grâce. It would be a fitting, filmic moment.

Hugh tried to be calm, tried to control himself, but as he sat on the dining bus during the lunch break, still ignored by every other extra, his mind kept on skittering back to the events of the morning. The shame. The injustice. But more than anything, the lost opportunity. He knew he was unlikely to get that close to Simon Styles ever again. The carefully scripted moment had suddenly evaporated and the chance of the coup de grâce had washed away in the persistent drizzle. The first rehearsal hadn’t gone well, he realized that. Just before “Action,” he had been distracted by seeing Lee laughing with the 1st AD. How did they know each other? Hugh wondered. How could the 1st, who seemed a sane enough person, lower himself to joke with this particular extra of all people? In Hugh’s experience, filmlandia was the most hierarchical place on earth and extras were ritually treated like the crap beneath the bottom of the barrel. Suddenly the action was underway and Styles was tearing across open ground, swerving around dead and dying extras dramatically to throw himself down onto a carefully placed mat beside Hugh, who had been positioned behind a small pile of rubble. Hugh had said his lines the wrong way round, blurting out, “Save us, Meybrick,” as soon as Styles had landed by his side. He heard the director — beer belly, beard, and a look that managed to combine graceless stupidity and the surefire knowledge of his own genius — growl with some malice, “This gentleman know his lines?”

But then Hugh mustered his concentration enough for Simon to say, “Well done, kid,” after the third rehearsal. They were both still lying prone behind the rubble, so close their bodies were touching, and for a second Hugh wondered whether this was the moment. He could say his piece, quietly, right here, right now, reach into his pocket, and, before anyone could stop him... but Styles was already getting to his feet and the heads of the hair, makeup, and costume departments were swarming all over him. Meanwhile, the assistant who had shaved Hugh’s head that morning was brusquely grabbing him by the shoulder, turning him onto his back, and roughly smearing more huge goblets of green and brown makeup onto his face. He wasn’t looking forward to the later shots that would reveal his wound, when presumably they would use industrial glue or three-inch nails to secure the prosthetic pieces onto his face.

During the first real take, it dawned on Hugh that he was actually doing this right, that it felt real, that an instant connection and understanding between the characters of Colin and Meybrick was coming through. He managed to give extra gravity to the turn of his head towards Meybrick and deliberate weight into his final line, “Save us, Meybrick. Save us all.” The only problem, he realized as soon as he heard an angry “Cut,” was that he had said “Simon” instead of “Meybrick.” He sat up to see the 1st AD look up to the heavens and then nod towards Lee. In a matter of seconds, Lee was lying in Hugh’s position, while Hugh was being told by the 3rd AD to pretend to be a dead soldier lying facedown in the mud at the very edge of shot. He realized that perhaps Lee had somehow managed to manufacture this, had plotted it out since the moment he had seen the script in Hugh’s hand.

For the next two hours, he lay there during take after take while long-haired, bulky, clearly-nothing-like-Colin Lee sometimes messed up his lines — but nobody seemed to mind. Worse, between takes he was immediately friendly with Styles. The actor seemed to take all this in his stride, responding to Lee’s overbearing banter, laughing at his jokes, and flashing the No. 2 Smile to all and sundry to show how comfortable he was with the situation, that he was, despite the fame, a man of the people. He even laughed when Lee said, loudly, “Saw your girlfriend in the paper yesterday. What a tart.” Styles then shook his head, smiling and tutting as if to say, “Women, hey, what can you do?” Lee pushed on further, way over the line. “Man, she’s been around. I think I might have had her last week.”

Styles’ expression was frozen, just for a millisecond, but then creased into laughter as he lightly jabbed Lee in the stomach. He then shouted to the director, “Hey, Barry, you’ve had Kathleen too, haven’t you?”

“Oh yeah, Simon, that sweet girl sure likes them large.”

As Simon laughed, Hugh wondered whether he had ever felt the way he had after he had seen Grace with Lee. He looked at the actor, with his smooth, seemingly unaging skin, his confident, calculated movements, his easy laughter... perhaps he could ride over the end of a relationship so easily because he knew there would be another amour along any minute, another actress on the way up, and that it was all just part of the game. For Hugh, there wouldn’t be another one along in a minute — there wouldn’t be another Grace in a lifetime — and it wasn’t a game. He then realized that Simon was looking at him — he hadn’t been forgotten after all, lying there in the mud — and that his face was now expressionless, calm and impassive as the crew’s tittering continued unabated. He then turned back to Lee, and quietly said something that had the extra doubling over and choking with laughter. Gasping, Lee gestured towards Hugh. “I’ve had his girlfriend too! Seriously!”

As he pieced together his memory of the morning’s events on the dining bus, Hugh’s splintered mind was hauled into focus by a single, overbearing emotion: rage. Direct, pure, and total. It grew and it burned over the next ten minutes. When Lee swaggered down the dining bus, put his arm across Hugh’s shoulders, and said deliberately loudly, “Sorry, Laurence, first your girlfriend and now this. Not a good year for you, is it?” Hugh found himself on his feet, his hands around the larger man’s neck, attempting to throttle the life out of him. As Lee bent his fingers back and the bullnecked Asian extra pulled him away and held him, Hugh was sent into even wilder paroxysms of fury because Lee had managed to keep on laughing throughout the attempted throttling. Hugh thrashed his arms in an effort to reach Lee once more, but the extra held him tight. Suddenly all his energy disappeared, and he became despondent and limp.

“Let him go,” said Lee. “He’s finished.”

“Not yet,” Hugh wanted to say, but he just walked off the bus, unable to make eye contact with any of the stunned, staring faces.

There was blood on his hands, his boots, and his uniform jacket, but he would make no effort to cleanse himself, for this blood was justice, this blood was truth. He stood looking down at the corpse for a long, final time. No acting was necessary. He felt calm. He felt complete.

He returned to the dining bus, sat by himself at the familiar, empty table, and waited for the future to unfold. He laughed to himself. Write and rewrite the script, rehearse and rehearse over and over again in your mind, and yet all plans can flutter away in an instant. Then chance, coincidence, fate, the dark spirit of the world, or perhaps simply the chaotic collision of atoms — call it what you will — will conjure a new trick, seemingly on a whim, beyond the possibility of the scripted aforethought. He came here to do one thing, and one thing alone, and here he was now, at the heart of something far deeper. He laughed again. The laugh must have been out loud, for the Asian man was studying him warily. Perhaps he hadn’t seen the blood drying on Hugh’s hand and crusting on his uniform, but he knew that something was off-kilter, that the spinning of the universe had been jolted for a second, just enough to threaten chaos.

Fifteen minutes earlier, Hugh had been standing alone in the wasteground nearly a hundred yards away from the group of white film vehicles when a flash of movement caught his eye, and he saw Simon Styles walk up the three steps into the honeywagon. He stood there dazed for a second, wondering what was wrong with this picture. Then it occurred to him. Why was Simon using the communal honeywagon lavatory when he could use the one in his own private Winnebago? Only then did the importance of the scene make its way through to his brain. This was his opportunity. It had been presented to him on a plate, and the setting was far better than the middle of a film set — a lavatory, yes, but private and discreet. He recalled the line — “Hey, Simon, remember when you were asked to take an hour of your precious time to fulfill the final wish of a dying woman?” — and felt in his pocket once more. And then he was running over the open ground again, stumbling through potholes, but this time without a care as to who saw him. This time, he would not be stopped.

But then, as he pressed on and his lungs were already protesting, Simon was already stepping down from the honeywagon, straightening his jacket and walking away. Hugh found extra speed, the uneven ground stopped hindering him, and he reached shouting distance.

Simon Styles, now twenty yards away from the honeywagon, turned around to face him, No. I Smile — the half-smile, half-smirk — at the ready. Hugh stopped in his tracks, almost at the honeywagon door, as the smile faded from Styles’ lips.

“Hugh,” he called. “I’m sorry about your mother.” And then he nodded, his face grave, portraying his regret that he had not said anything earlier, that he had recognized him all along, that the world was a terrible place, that the loss of a mother was a terrible thing. Hugh reached into his pocket, but he was too far away, and he was suddenly crying and blubbing. He only managed to nod and turned to walk up the steps into the honeywagon. Simon moved as if to follow him.

Hugh looked down at Lee’s prone body. He must have had his throat slit from behind but had fallen onto his back, with his head near the toilet bowl, his torso wedging open the cubicle door and his legs protruding towards the urinals. An artery must have been severed. Blood was still flowing freely from the wound but it was clear from his open eyes that Lee had already gone to meet his maker. Nonetheless, Hugh felt for his pulse. He was transfixed by the clean edges of the slit. He stood up again and looked around the honeywagon door, but Simon had disappeared. Hugh could have walked away then. He could have called out, raised the alarm, and named names, and surely Styles’ uniform would have at least minute speckles of blood. But he simply returned to the body and looked again at life departed for the second time in three months. How different it was on this occasion. He felt no remorse, no pity — nothing but a strange surge of power and delight. He knew what to do. He was about to step into the limelight. He would act out the scenes with unparalleled brilliance, and no one except one other man would ever know the truth.

The overweight, desultory runner stepped onto the bus.

“Anyone seen Lee? He should be back on set.”

Hugh thought she said it far more quietly than the situation merited. No one answered, but the bullnecked man continued to look at Hugh, and was now intermittently focusing on the dark, rusty crust of blood on Hugh’s hand. Hugh did not remove his hand from view. He merely smiled and raised one eyebrow slightly. The extra got up and said to the runner, “He went to the honeywagon awhile ago. I’ll see if I can find him.”

Hugh leaned back and closed his eyes. He thought back to his last meeting with Simon, three months ago. Hugh had stood in the hospice room, staring at the closed door, holding his mother’s left hand until she had stopped rubbing her St. Christopher’s medal and fell into a deep sleep. He had to do something, anything. His rage could not be contained anymore. He let go of his mother’s hand, pulled open the door, and, furious at his own impotence, hurtled down the corridor, straight into Simon Styles. “You’re too late, you’re too goddamn late. She’s asleep.”

“God, I’m so sorry.” There were no smiles, no smirks. There was no doubt that the apology was genuine. “I’ve been in traffic, stuck behind an accident. I couldn’t get hold of my agent to warn you.” He proffered flowers, chocolates, grapes, and a box of DVDs. He refused to allow Hugh to wake his mother, and said that he would wait alone in the coffee shop across the street, reading scripts, until his mother woke up naturally, no matter how long it took.

And he did just that. He was still there two hours later when Hugh went to find him. Hugh desperately wanted to be in the room with them, to talk about films, to gossip, to become friends, but this was his mother’s treat and he could not bear to sully it with the demands of his own ego. He knocked on the door an hour later, and found his mother with her eyes closed, but a smile upon her lips, and Simon Styles holding her hand in both of his own.

She died two days later, but she went softly, so softly.

When he detected the change in the atmosphere outside the dining bus, Hugh put his hand in his pocket and took out the box he had never managed to give to Simon Styles. He opened the box, delicately placed the St. Christopher’s medal around his own neck, and waited.