Wild Horses Part 26

O'Hara explained, and asked me, 'What made you think of these padded jackets?'

'Fear,' I said truthfully.

They almost laughed.

'Look,' I said reasonably, 'This knife had to go through my windproof jacket, a thick sweater, two body protectors designed to minimise impact and also one shirt in order to reach my skin. It has cut into me a bit but I'm not coughing blood and I don't feel any worse than I did an hour ago, so... Robbie... a bit of your well-known toughness... please...'

'Yes, all right,' he said.

He spread open the front of the body protectors and found my white shirt wet and scarlet. He pulled the shirt apart until he could see the blade itself, and he raised his eyes to me in what could only be called horror.

'What is it?' I said.

'This blade... it's inches inches wide. It's pinning all the layers into your side.' wide. It's pinning all the layers into your side.'

'Go on then,' I said, 'Get it out.'

He opened the bag he'd brought with him and picked out a pre-prepared disposable syringe which he described briefly, sticking the needle into me, as a painkiller. After that he sorted out a surgical dressing in a sterile wrapping. The same as for Dorothea, I thought. He checked his watch to give the injection time to work, then tore off the wrapping and positioned the dressing ready inside my shirt and with his left hand tugged on the protruding handle of the knife.

I didn't budge and in spite of the injection it felt terrible.

'I can't get enough leverage from this angle,' Robbie said. He looked at O'Hara. 'You're strong,' he said. 'You pull it out.'

O'Hara stared at him, and then at me.

'Think of moguls,' I said.

He smiled twistedly and said to Robbie, 'Tell me when.'

'Now,' Robbie said, and O'Hara grasped the knife's handle and pulled until the blade came free.

Robbie quickly put the dressing in place and O'Hara stood as if stunned, holding in disbelief the object that had caused me such trouble.

'Sorry,' Robbie said to me.

I shook my head, dry mouthed.

O'Hara laid the knife on the kitchen table, on the discarded wrapping from the dressing, and we all spent a fairly long silence simply looking at it.

Overall it was about eight inches long, and half of that was handle. The flat blade was almost three inches wide at the handle end, tapering to a sharp point. One long side of the triangular blade was a plain sharp cutting edge: the other was wickedly serrated. At its wide end the blade extended smoothly in co a handle which had a s.p.a.ce through it big enough to accommodate a whole hand. The actual grip, with undulations for fingers to give a better purchase, was given substance by bolted-on, palm-width pieces of dark, richly-polished wood: the rest was shiny metal.

'It's heavy,' O'Hara said blankly. 'It could rip you in half.'

A stud embellishing the wider end of the blade bore the one word, 'Fury'.

I picked up the awful weapon for a closer look and found it was indeed heavy (more than half a pound, we soon found, when Robbie weighed it on Dorothea's kitchen scales) and, according to letters stamped into it, had been made of stainless steel in j.a.pan.

'What we need,' I said, putting it down, 'is a knife expert.'

'And what you need first,' Robbie said apologetically, 'is a row of staples to stop the bleeding.'

We took off all my protective layers for him to see what he was doing and he presently told me consolingly that the point of the blade had hit one of my ribs and had slid along it, not slicing down into soft tissue and through into the lung. 'The rib has been fractured by the blow but you are right, and lucky, because this injury should heal quite quickly.'

'Cheers,' I said flippantly, relieved all the same. 'Maybe tomorrow I'll get me a bullet-proof vest.'

Robbie mopped a good deal of dried blood from my skin, damping one of Dorothea's tea towels for the purpose, then helped me into my one relatively unharmed garment, the wind-proof jacket.

'You look as good as new,' he a.s.sured me, fitting together the bottom ends of the zip and closing it upwards.

'The mogul won't notice a thing,' O'Hara agreed, nodding. 'Are you fit enough to talk to him?'

I nodded. It was necessary to talk to him. Necessary to convince him that the company's money was safe in my hands. Necessary to confound all suggestion of 'jinx'.

I said, 'We do, all the same, have to find out just who is so fanatical about stopping the film that he or she will murder to achieve it. It's possible, I suppose, that the knife was meant only to frighten us, like yesterday's dagger, but if I hadn't been wearing the protectors...'

'No protection and an inch either way,' Robbie nodded, 'and you would likely have been history.'

'So,' I said, 'if we take it that my death was in fact intended, I absolutely must must find out who and why. Find it out among ourselves, I mean, if we're not bringing in the police. Otherwise...' I hesitated, then went on, '... if the reason for the attack on me still exists, which we have to a.s.sume is the case, they he or she or they may try again.' find out who and why. Find it out among ourselves, I mean, if we're not bringing in the police. Otherwise...' I hesitated, then went on, '... if the reason for the attack on me still exists, which we have to a.s.sume is the case, they he or she or they may try again.'

I had the feeling that the thought had already occurred to both of them, but that to save my peace of mind they hadn't liked to say it aloud.

'No film is worth dying for,' O'Hara said.

'The film has stirred up mud that's been lying quiet for twenty-six years,' I said. 'That's what's happened. No point in regretting it. So now we have the choice of either pulling the plug on the film and retiring in disarray and where is my future if I do that? or... er... sifting through the mud for the facts.'

'But,' Robbie said doubtfully, 'could you really find any? I mean, when it all happened, when it was fresh, the police got nowhere.'

'The police are ordinary people,' I said. 'Not infallible supermen. If we try, and get nowhere also, then so be it.'

'But how do you start?'

'Like I said, we look for someone who knows about knives.'

It had been growing dark while we spoke. As Robbie crossed to flip the light switch, we heard the front door open and close, and footsteps coming heavily along the pa.s.sage towards us.

It was Paul who appeared in the kitchen doorway: Paul annoyed, Paul suspicious, Paul's attention latching with furious astonishment onto my face. The indecisiveness of our last meeting had vanished. The bl.u.s.ter was back.

'And what do you think you're you're doing here?' he demanded. 'I've told you to stay away, you're not wanted.' doing here?' he demanded. 'I've told you to stay away, you're not wanted.'

'I told Dorothea I would tidy up a bit.'

'I will tidy the house. I don't want you here. And as for you, Dr Gill, your services aren't needed. Clear out, all of you.'

It was O'Hara's first encounter with Paul Pannier; always a learning experience.

'And where did you get a key from?' he demanded aggrievedly. 'Or did you break in?' He looked at O'Hara directly for the first time and said, 'Who the h.e.l.l are you? I want you all out of here av once.'

I said neutrally, 'It's your mother's house and I'm here with her permission.'

Paul wasn't listening. Paul's gaze had fallen on the table, and he was staring at the knife.

There was barely a smear of blood on it as it had been more or less wiped clean by its outward pa.s.sage through many layers of polystyrene and cloth, so it seemed to be the knife itself, not its use, that was rendering Paul temporarily speechless.

He raised his eyes to meet my gaze, and there was no disguising his shock. His eyes looked as dark as his pudgy features were pale. His mouth had opened. He found nothing at all to say but turned on one foot and stamped away out of the kitchen down the hall and out through the front door, leaving it open behind him.

'Who was he? he? O'Hara asked. 'And what was that all about?' O'Hara asked. 'And what was that all about?'

'His mother,' Robbie explained, 'was savagely cut with a knife in this house last Sat.u.r.day. He may think that somehow we've found the weapon.'

'And have you?' O'Hara turned to me. 'What was it you were trying to tell me yesterday? But this isn't the knife you found on the Heath, is it?'

'No.'

He frowned. 'I don't understand any of it.'

That made two of us; but somewhere there had to be an explanation. Nothing happened without cause.

I asked Robbie Gill, who was tidying and closing his medical case, 'Do you know anyone called Bill Robinson who mends motorbikes?'

'Are you feeling all right?'

'Not a hundred per cent. Do you?'

'Bill Robinson who mends motorbikes? No.'

'You know the town. Who would know?'

'Are you serious?'

'He may have,' I explained briefly, 'what this house was torn apart for.'

'And that's all you're telling me?'

I nodded.

Robbie pulled the telephone towards him, consulted a notebook from his pocket, and pressed some numbers. He was pa.s.sed on, relay by relay, to four more numbers but eventually pushed the phone away in satisfaction and told me, 'Bill Robinson works for Wrigley's garage, and lives somewhere in Exning Road. He tinkers with Harley Davidsons for a hobby.'

'Great,' I said.

'But,' O'Hara objected, 'What has any of this to do with our film?'

'Knives,' I said, 'and Valentine Clark knew Jackson Wells.'

'Good luck with the mud,' Robbie said.

The mogul proved to be a hard-nosed thin businessman in his forties with no desire even to look at the growing reels of printed film. He didn't like movies, he said. He despised film actors. He thought directors should be held in financial handcuffs. Venture capital was his field, he said, with every risk underwritten. Wrong field, I thought.

He had demanded in advance to have an accounting for every cent disbursed or committed since the first day of princ.i.p.al photography, with the result that O'Hara's production department had spent the whole day itemising such things as food, transport, pay for stable-lads, lipsticks and light bulbs.

We sat round the dining table in O'Hara's suite, I having made a detour to my own rooms to exchange my windproof jacket for a shirt and sweater. Robbie had stuck only a light dressing over the mended damage. I still felt a shade trembly, but apparently nothing showed. I concentrated on justifying Ziggy's fare and expenses in Norway, while sipping mineral water and longing for brandy.

'Wild horses!' the mogul exclaimed in near-outrage to O'Hara. 'You surely didn't sanction bringing horses all the way from Norway! They're not in the script.'

'They're in the hanged woman's fantasy,' O'Hara explained flatly. 'Her dream life is what the company thought best about the plot, and what you expect on the screen. Viking horses hold glamour for publicity, and will earn more than they cost.'

O'Hara's clout silenced the mogul, who scowled but seemed to realise that if he antagonised his high-grade producer beyond bearing, he would lose him and scupper the whole investment. In any event, he moderated his aggressive approach and nodded through the bonus for the winning jockey with barely a grimace.

The accounts audited, he wanted to discuss Howard.

I didn't.

O'Hara didn't.

Howard proving to be usefully out of the hotel, the subject died. I excused myself on the grounds of the regular evening meeting with Moncrieff, and the mogul said in parting that he trusted we would have no further 'incidents', and announced that he would be watching the action the next morning.

'Sure,' O'Hara agreed easily, hardly blinking. 'The schedule calls for dialogue and close-ups, and several establishing shots of people walking in and out of the weighing-room at Huntingdon racecourse. No crowd scenes, though, they're in the can. No jockeys, they've finished also. The horses will be shipped back here tomorrow afternoon. Thanks to fine weather and Thomas's good management, we'll be through with the racetrack scenes a day early.'

The mogul looked as if he'd bitten a wasp. I wondered, as I left, just what would make him happy.

The Moncrieff session swelled with the arrival of both Nash and Silva, each wanting to continue with the private rehearsals. Nash had brought his script. Silva wore no lipstick and a feminist expression. I wondered what she and O'Hara were like together in bed, a speculation that didn't advance my work any, but couldn't be helped.

We went through the scenes. Moncrieff and Nash discussed lighting. Silva thrust forward her divine jaw and to her pleasure Moncrieff a.s.sessed her facial bones in terms of planes and shadows.

I drank brandy and painkillers with dedication: possibly medicinally a bad combination, but a great distancer from tribulation. When everyone left I went to bed half-sitting up, and stayed awake through a lot of o'clocks, throbbing and thinking and deciding that in the near future I would stand with my back to a wall at all times.

O'Hara woke me from a troubled sleep by phoning at seven-thirty. Late.

'How are you doing?' he asked.

'Lousy.'

'It's raining.'

'Is it?' I yawned. 'That's good.'

'Moncrieff phoned the weather people. It should be dry this afternoon. So we could watch all the Huntingdon rushes this morning, when the van comes from London.'

'Yes... I thought the mogul couldn't be bothered.'

'He's going to London himself. He's not keen on waiting for Huntingdon this afternoon. He told me everything seems to be going all right with the movie now, and he'll report back to that effect.'

'Jeez.'

O'Hara chuckled. 'He thought you were businesslike. That's his highest word of praise. He says I can go back to LA.'

'Oh.' I was surprised by the strength of my dismay. 'And are you going?'

'It's your movie,' he said.