Smokescreen

Chapter Eleven

I used a lot of the time I could have more profitably spent sleeping that night in coming to terms with the thought that someone might have tried to kill me.

Didn’t know who. Couldn’t guess why. And still was not certain whether my memory was complete: perhaps the other man in the stope had gone away again, and I had forgotten it.

Also, even if I had been a hundred per cent certain, I didn’t know what I should do about it.

Telephone van Huren? Start an investigation? But there had been so many people down the mine, all dressed alike, and half in darkness. Any investigation was going to produce more talk and doubt than results, and ‘Lincoln complains of attempted murder’ were gossip-column snippets I could do without.

Twice within a week, Conrad had said, ‘Close to extinction.’

It didn’t make sense. It was only in films that the chaps I played got threatened and attacked, and made miraculous escapes.

Yet if I did nothing about it, what then? If someone really had been trying to kill me, there was nothing to stop him trying again. How could I possibly protect myself every minute of every day... especially against unforeseen things like microphones and rocks in gold mines?

If... and I wasn’t altogether convinced... two murder attempts had been made, they had both been arranged to look like accidents. So it was of little use taking future precautions against things like poison and bullets and knives-in-the-back down dark alleys. One would have to beware instead of cars with no brakes, deadly insects in one’s shoes, and disintegrating balconies.

I shied away for a long time from thinking about who, for it had to be someone who had been down in the mine.

A miner who didn’t like my films taking steps to avoid sitting through any others? He wouldn’t have to kill me: could simply vote with his feet.

Someone smouldering from ungovernable professional jealousy? The only person I knew of who regularly swore undying hatred was Drix Goddart, but he was not yet in South Africa, let alone 4,000 feet under Welkom.

None of the people working in the mine had known I was going to be there, and before the incident, none of them had used my name.

That left... Oh hell, I thought. Well... it left Evan... and Conrad... and Danilo... and Roderick. And also van Huren, who owned a lot of souls and could have things done by proxy.

As for why... Evan’s professional resentment was surely not obsessive enough, and Danilo didn’t know my guess of what he was up to with the horses; and in any case, even if he did, he wouldn’t try to cover up such a minor crime with murder. More likely to confess and laugh, I would have thought, and meet a warning-off with a what-the-hell shrug.

Motives for Conrad, Roderick and van Huren took even less cogitation. I couldn’t rake up a decent one between them.

They had all (except Conrad who had been in the surgery) looked relieved when I stepped safely out of the mine... Could they possibly have looked relieved just because I said I couldn’t remember how I got knocked out?

It all seemed so improbable. I couldn’t imagine any of them plotting away in murky labyrinths of villainy. It didn’t make sense. I must, I concluded, be imagining things. I had been involved in too much fiction, and I had begun to project it on to reality.

I sighed. Realised that my head had stopped aching and that the unsettled feeling of concussion was subsiding, and presently, imperceptibly, went to sleep.

In the morning the night thoughts seemed even more preposterous. It was Conrad who had suggested a connection between the mike and the mine; and Conrad had got it wrong.

Roderick telephoned at breakfast time. Would I care to have dinner at his flat, with Katya, just the three of us and no fuss: and when I hesitated for a few seconds over replying, he added quickly that it would all be strictly off the record, anything I said would not be taken down and used against me.

‘O.K.,’ I agreed, with a smile in my voice and reservations in my mind. ‘Where do I find you?’

He told me the address, and said, ‘That chauffeur of yours will know where to find it.’

‘Oh. Yes,’ I agreed.

I put the receiver down slowly: but there was no reason why he shouldn’t know about the hired car-and-driver, and there was of course his source at the Iguana. Roderick had all along known where I was going, what I was doing, and how often I brushed my teeth.

Almost before I had taken my hand off it, the telephone rang again.

Clifford Wenkins. Could he, er, that was to say, would it be convenient for him to come to the club that morning to discuss, er, details, for the, er, premiere?

Er yes, I said.

After that, Conrad rang. Was I going to travel down to the Kruger Park with him and Evan?

‘How long are you staying there?’ I asked.

‘About ten days, I should think.’

‘No, then. I’ll have to come back by next Tuesday, at the latest. I’ll drive down separately. It will be better anyway to have two cars, with you and Evan concentrating on locations.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, sounding relieved: hadn’t wanted to spend a week at close quarters keeping Evan and me off each other’s throats, I imagined.

They would come around for a drink before lunch, he said. Evan, it appeared, was bursting with inspirations for his new film. (When was he not?)

After that, Arknold.

‘Look, Mister Lincoln. About Mrs Cavesey’s horses... Look...’ He petered heavily out.

After waiting in vain for him to start up again I said, ‘I’ll be here all morning, if you’d care to come over.’

Three heavy breaths. Then he said, ‘Perhaps. Might be as well. Yes. All right. About eleven, then, after I’ve watched the horses work.’

‘See you,’ I said.

Hot sunshine, blue sky.

I went downstairs and drank my coffee out on the terrace, and read the newspaper. Close columns filled with local issues, all assuming a background of common knowledge which I didn’t have. Reading them was like going into a film halfway through.

A man had been murdered in Johannesburg: found two days ago, with a wire twisted round his neck.

With a shiver I put down the paper. No one was trying to murder me. I had decided it was nonsense. Another man’s death had no business to be raising hairs on my skin. The trouble was, no one had told my subconscious that we were all through with red alerts.

‘Morning.’ said a fresh young voice in my ear. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Watching the flowers grow.’

She sat down opposite me, grinning all over her fifteen-year-old face.

‘I’ve come to play tennis.’

She wore a short white dress, white socks, white shoes, and carried two racquets in zipped waterproof covers. Her dark shoulder length hair was held back by a green head-band, and the van Huren wealth spoke as eloquently as ever in her natural confidence and poise.

‘Coffee?’ I suggested.

‘Rather have orange juice.’

I ordered it.

‘Didn’t you just love the gold mine?’ she demanded.

‘I just did,’ I agreed, imitating Danilo’s accent, as she had done his turn of phrase.

She wrinkled her nose, amused. ‘You never miss a damn thing, do you? Dad says you have an intuitive mind, whatever the hell that is.’

‘It means I jump to conclusions,’ I said.

She shook her head dubiously. ‘Uhuh. He seemed to think it was good.’

The orange juice came and she drank some, clinking the ice. She had long dark eyelashes and more cream than peaches. I stifled as always the inner lurch of regret that young girls like Sally gave me: my own daughter might grow up as pretty, but the zest and the flash would be missing.

She put down the glass and her eyes searched the hotel buildings behind me.

‘Have you seen Danilo anywhere?’ she said. ‘The swine said he’d be here at ten, and it’s a quarter after already.’

‘He was busy doing sums all yesterday,’ I said gravely. ‘I expect they wore him out.’

‘What sums?’ she said suspiciously.

I told her.

She laughed. ‘He can’t help doing sums, then, I shouldn’t think. All Saturday at the races, he was doing it. A living computer, I called him.’ She took another orange sip. ‘I say, did you know he’s a terrific gambler? He had ten rand on one of those horses. Ten rand!’

I thought van Huren had made a sensible job of her, if a ten-rand bet still seemed excessive.

‘Mind you,’ she added. ‘The horse won. I went with him to collect the winnings. Twenty-five rand, would you believe it? He says he often wins. He was all sort of gay and laughing about it.’

‘Everyone loses in the end,’ I said.

‘Oh, don’t be such a downpour,’ she exploded. ‘Just like Dad.’

Her eyes suddenly opened wider, and she transferred her attention to somewhere behind me.

Danilo joined us. White shorts, sturdy sunburned legs, light blue windcheater hanging open.

‘Hi,’ he said happily, including us both.

‘Hi,’ echoed Sally, looking smitten.

She left me and the half finished orange juice without a backward glance, and went off with the bright boy as girls have been going off since Eve. But this girl’s father had a gold mine; and Danilo had done his sums.

Arknold came, and the reception desk directed him to the garden. He shook hands, sat down, huffed and puffed, and agreed to a beer. Away in the distance Danilo and Sally belted the ball sporadically over the net and laughed a lot in between.

Arknold followed my gaze, recognised Danilo, and consolidated his indecision in a heavy frown.

‘I didn’t know Danilo would be here,’ he said.

‘He can’t hear you.’

‘No... but... Look, Mister... Do you mind if we go indoors?’

‘If you like,’ I agreed; so we transferred to the lounge, where he was again too apprehensive to come to the boil, and finally up to my room. One could still see the tennis courts; but the tennis courts couldn’t see us.

He sat, like Conrad, in the larger of the two armchairs, seeing himself as a dominant character. The slab-like features made no provision for subtle nuances of feeling to show in changing muscle tensions round eyes, mouth or jaw line, so that I found it as nearly impossible as always to guess what he was thinking. The over-all impression was of aggression and worry having a ding-dong: the result, apparent indecision about whether to attack or placate.

‘Look,’ he said in the end. ‘What are you going to tell Mrs Cavesey when you get back to England?’

I considered. ‘I haven’t decided.’

He thrust his face forward like a bulldog. ‘Don’t you go telling her to change her trainer.’

‘Why precisely not?’

‘There’s nothing wrong with the way I train them.’

‘They look well,’ I agreed. ‘And they run stinking. Most owners would have sent them to someone else long ago.’

‘It’s not my fault they don’t win,’ he asserted heavily. ‘You tell her that. That’s what I came to say. You tell her it’s not my fault.’

‘You would lose their training fees, if they went,’ I said. ‘And you would lose face, perhaps. But you would gain freedom from the fear of being prosecuted for fraud.’

‘See here, Mister,’ he began angrily, but I interrupted him.

‘Alternatively, you could sack your head boy, Barty.’

Whatever he had been going to say remained unsaid. His trap-like mouth dropped open.

‘Should you decide to sack Barty,’ I said conversationally, ‘I could advise Mrs Cavesey to leave the horses where they are.’

He shut his mouth. There was a long pause while most of the aggression oozed away and a tired sort of defeatism took its place.

‘I can’t do that,’ he said sullenly, not denying the need for it.

‘Because of a threat that you will be warned off?’ I suggested. ‘Or because of the profit to come?’

‘Look, Mister...’

‘See that Barty leaves before I go home,’ I said pleasantly.

He stood heavily up, and gave me a hard stare which got him nowhere very much. Breathing loudly through his nose, he was inarticulate; and I couldn’t guess from his expression whether what hung fire on his tongue was a stream of invective, a defence in mitigation, or even a plea for help.

He checked through the window that his buddy Danilo was still on the courts, then turned away abruptly and departed from my room without another word: a man on a three-pronged toasting fork if ever I saw one.

I returned to the terrace: found Clifford Wenkins walking indecisively about peering at strangers behind their newspapers.

‘Mr Wenkins,’ I called.

He looked up, nodded nervously, and scuttled around tables and chairs to reach me.

‘Good morning... er... Link,’ he began, and half-held out one hand, too far away for me to shake it. I sketched an equally noncommittal welcome. His best friend must have been telling him, I thought.

We sat at one of the small tables in the shade of a yellow and white sun awning, and he agreed that... er... yes... a beer would be fine. He pulled another untidy wad of papers out of an inner pocket. Consulting them seemed to give him strength.

‘Er... Worldic have decided... er... they think it would be best, I mean, to hold the reception before... er... the film, you see.’

I saw. They were afraid I would vanish during the showing, if they arranged things the other way round.

‘Here... er... is a list of people... er... invited by Worldic... and here... somewhere here... ah, yes, here is the Press list and... er... a list of people who have bought tickets to the reception... We limited the... er... numbers, but we have... er... had... I mean... it may be... perhaps... just a bit of a crush, if you see what I mean.’

He sweated. Mopped up with a neatly folded white square. Waited, apparently, for me to burn. But what could I say? I’d arranged it myself; and I supposed I was grateful that people actually wanted to come.

‘Er... if that’s all right... I mean... well... there are still some tickets left... er... for the premiere itself, you see... er... some at twenty rand...’

‘Twenty rand?’ I said. ‘Surely that’s too much?’

‘It’s for charity,’ he said quickly. ‘Charity.’

‘What charity?’

‘Oh... er... let’s see... I’ve got it here somewhere...’ But he couldn’t find it. ‘Anyway... for charity... so Worldic want you to... I mean, because there are still some tickets, you see, to... er... well, some sort of publicity stunt...’

‘No,’ I said.

He looked unhappy. ‘I told them... but they said... er... well...’ He faded away like a pop song, and didn’t say that Worldic’s attitude to actors made the KGB seem paternal.

‘Where is the reception to be?’ I asked.

‘Oh... er... opposite the Wideworld Cinema, in the Klipspringer Heights Hotel. I... er... I think you will like it... I mean... it is one of the best... er... hotels in Johannesburg.’

‘Fine,’ I said. I’ll be back here by, say, six o’clock next Tuesday evening. You could ring me here for final arrangements.’

‘Oh yes... er,’ he said, ‘but... er... Worldic said they would like... er... to know where you are staying... er... in the Kruger Park.’

‘I don’t know,’ I said.

‘Well, er... could you find out?’ He looked unhappy. ‘Worldic said... er... on no account... should I not find out...’

‘Oh. Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll let you know.’

‘Thank you,’ he gasped. ‘Now... er... well... I mean... er...’ He was working himself into a worse lather than ever over what he was trying to say next. My mind had framed one large No before the thought of Worldic on his tail had goaded him to get it out.

‘We... well, that is to say... Worldic... have fixed a... er... photographic... session for you... I mean... well, this afternoon, in fact.’

‘What photographic session?’ I asked ominously.

He had another mop. ‘Just... well... photographs.’

He had a terrible time explaining, and a worse time when I got it straight, that what Worldic wanted were some pictures of me reclining in bathing trunks under a sun umbrella beside a bosomy model in a bikini.

‘You just run along and tell Worldic that their promotion ideas are fifty years out of date, if they think cheesecake will sell twenty-rand seats.’

He sweated.

‘And furthermore you can tell Worldic that one more damn fool suggestion and I’ll never again turn up at anything they handle.’

‘But...’ he stuttered. ‘You see... after those pics in the newspapers... of you giving Katya the kiss of life... after that... see... we were flooded... simply flooded... with enquiries... and all the cheaper seats went in a flash... and the reception tickets, too... all went...’

‘But that,’ I said slowly and positively, ‘was not a publicity stunt.’

‘Oh no.’ He gulped. ‘Oh no. Of course not. Oh no. Oh no...’ He rocked to his feet, knocking his chair over. The beads were running down his forehead and his eyes looked wild. He was on the point, the very point of panic flight, when Danilo and Sally came breezily back from the courts.

‘Hullo, Mr Wenkins,’ Sally said in her adolescent un-perceptive way. ‘I say, you look almost as hot and sweaty as we do.’

Wenkins gave her a glazed, mesmerised look and fumbled around with his handkerchief. Danilo looked at him piercingly and thoughtfully and made no remark at all.

‘Well... I’ll... er, tell them... but they won’t... like it.’

‘You tell them.’ I agreed. ‘No stunts.’

‘No stunts,’ he echoed weakly; but I doubted whether he would ever have the nerve to pass on the message.

Sally watched his backview weave unsteadily into the club, as she sprawled exhaustedly in her garden chair.

‘I say, he does get himself into a fuss, don’t you think? Were you bullying the poor lamb, Link?’

‘He’s a sheep, not a lamb.’

‘A silly sheep,’ Danilo said vaguely, as if his thoughts were somewhere else.

‘Could I have some orange juice?’ Sally said.

Evan and Conrad arrived before the waiter, and the drinks order expanded. Evan was at his most insistent, waving his arms about and laying down the law to Conrad in the usual dominating I-am-the-director-and-the-rest of-you-are-scum manner. Conrad looked half patient, half irritated: lighting cameramen were outranked by directors, but they didn’t have to like it.

‘Symbolism,’ Evan was saying fiercely. ‘Symbolism is what the film is all about. And Post Office Towers are the new phallic symbol of national strength. Every virile country has to have its revolving restaurant...’

‘It might be just because every country has one, that the one in Johannesburg is not news,’ Conrad murmured, in a tone a little too carefully unargumentative.

‘The tower is in,’ stated Evan with finality.

‘Even if you can’t find an elephant that shape,’ I said, nodding.

Conrad choked and Evan glared.

Sally said, ‘What is a phallic symbol?’ And Danilo told her kindly to look it up in the dictionary.

I asked Evan where exactly we would be staying in the Kruger Park, so that I could be found if necessary.

‘Don’t expect me to help,’ he said unhelpfully. ‘The production department made the bookings months ago. Several different camps, starting in the south and working north, I believe.’

Conrad added casually, ‘We do have a list, back at the hotel... I could copy it out for you, dear boy.’

‘It isn’t important,’ I said. ‘It was only Worldic who wanted it.’

‘Not important!’ Evan exclaimed. ‘If Worldic want it, of course they must have it.’ Evan had no reservations towards companies that might screen his masterpieces. ‘Conrad can copy the list and send it to them direct.’

I looked at Conrad in amusement. ‘To Clifford Wenkins, then,’ I suggested. ‘It was he who asked.’

Conrad nodded shortly. Copying the list from friendliness was one thing and on Evan’s orders another: I knew exactly how he felt.

‘I don’t suppose you are intending to bring the chauffeur Worldic gave you,’ Evan said bossily to me. ‘There won’t be any rooms for him.’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said mildly. ‘I’m hiring a car to drive myself.’

‘All right, then.’

Even on a fine Tuesday morning with a healthy gin half drunk and no pressure on him at all, he still flourished the hot eyes like lances and curled his fingers so that the tendons showed tight. The unruly curly hair sprang out vigorously like Medusa’s snakes, and the very air around him seemed to quiver from his energy output.

Sally thought him fascinating. ‘You’ll love it in the game park,’ she told him earnestly. ‘The animals are so sweet.’

Evan only knew how to deal with girls that young if he could bully them in front of a camera: and the idea that animals could be sweet instead of symbolic seemed to nonplus him.

‘Er...’ he said uncertainly, and sounded exactly like Wenkins.

Conrad cheered up perceptibly: smoothed his moustache and looked on Sally benignly. She gave him an uncomplicated smile and turned to Danilo.

‘You’d love it too,’ she said. ‘Next time you come to South Africa, we must take you down there.’

Danilo could scarcely wait. Conrad asked him how much longer he was staying this time, and Danilo said a week or so, he guessed, and Sally insisted anxiously that he was staying until after Link’s premiere, surely he remembered he was going to the reception with the van Hurens. Danilo remembered: he sure was.

He grinned at her. She blossomed. I hoped that the sun kid dealt in compassion alongside the mathematics.

Evan and Conrad stayed for lunch, endlessly discussing the locations they had picked throughout the city. They were, it appeared, going to incorporate a lot of cinéma vérité, with Conrad humping around a hand-held Arriflex to film life as it was lived. By the end of the cheese, the whole film, symbolism, elephants, and all, seemed to me doomed to be a crashing bore.

Conrad’s interest was principally technical. Mine was non-existent. Evan’s, as usual, inexhaustible.

‘So we’ll take the Arriflex with us, of course,’ he was telling Conrad. ‘We may see unrepeatable shots... it would be stupid not to be equipped.’

Conrad agreed. They also discussed sound-recording equipment and decided to take that too. The production department had fixed up for a park ranger to show them round in a Land Rover, so there would be room to use everything comfortably.

Anything which they could not cram into their hired station wagon for the journey down, they said, could go in my car, couldn’t it? It could. I agreed to drive to their hotel first thing in the morning to embark the surplus.

When they had gone I paid off the car and chauffeur Worldic had arranged, and hired a modest self-drive saloon instead. A man from the hiring company brought it to the Iguana showed me the gear system, said it was a new car only just run-in and that I should have no trouble with it, and departed with the chauffeur.

I went for a practice drive, got lost, bought a map, and found my way back. The car was short on power uphill, but very stable on corners; a car for Sunday afternoons, airing Grandma in a hat.