The writer dropped his suitcase in the hall deciding that he would unpack later. Right now all he wanted was to pour himself a drink and flop down in a chair.
He passed into the sitting room, pulling off his shirt as he did so. It was warm in the room despite the fact that it had been empty for a fortnight. He drew back the curtains and the dull twilight dragged itself into the room.
Biake switched on the lamp which perched on top of the TV. He poured himself a large measure of brandy, topped it up with soda and took a hefty gulp, then he selected a record from his massive collection, dropped it on to the turntable and switched on the Hi-Fi. While Elton John warbled away in the background, Blake skimmed through his mail. The bills he noted and then stuck in a bulldog clip on the shelf near the fireplace, the circulars he balled up and tossed into the nearby bin. Then he opened his letters. There was one from his accountant, one from a group calling itself ‘The Literary Co-operative’ (a bunch of struggling local writers to whom Biake had spoken before) and what looked like a couple of fan letters. Blake was always happy to receive mail from the public and he read them both with delight.
He finished his drink, re-filled his glass and wandered into the kitchen.
Peering out of the back window he saw several lumps of dark matter on his patio.
‘Cat shit,’ he muttered, irritably. ‘I’ll buy a cork for that bloody thing.’
He was referring to the overfed Manx cat which belonged to the family next door. It had taken to using
his garden as a toilet whenever it could and, obviously, while he’d been away, had taken full advantage and dotted its calling cards about in abundance.
The writer opened his freezer and took out a pizza which he stuck under the grill. He didn’t feel particularly hungry and, being basically lazy anyway, frozen food was heaven sent for his purposes. He left the pizza beneath the glow of the grill and returned to the sitting room.
It was large but comfortable and ‘lived in” like the rest of the house. On the walls, framed carefully, were a number of film posters. Taxi Driver hung near the hall door whilst the wall nearest the kitchen bore an American print of The Wild Bunch. Beside it was Halloween.
But, pride of place went to a yellowed poster which hung over the fireplace.
It was Psycho, and it bore Hitchcock’s signature. Blake had been given it as a gift from a friend in the film business last time he had visited L.A.
The writer was not a man to overindulge in luxuries but, when he did, three things occupied him more than most. Films, books and music. His bookcase bulged, not with learned tomes and priceless first editions but with pulp creations. He read for entertainment, nothing more. Alongside the books, each one in its individual case, were video cassettes of his favourite films. Up to 300 in all.
His study, however, was a different matter.
Blake had been pleased, when he had bought the house, to discover that it not only possessed an attic but also a double cellar which ran beneath the entire building. He had converted the subterranean room into his study. Every day he retreated down the steps to work, free of the noises and distractions of everyday life.
Buried beneath the ground as it was, it reminded him of working in a giant coffin.
He kept the door locked at all times. The cellar was his private domain and his alone.
The smell of pizza began to waft from the kitchen. He ate it from the foil wrapper, saving himself any washing up. Then, still clutching his glass, he headed through the sitting room into the hall where he unlocked his case.
His notes were on top and Blake lifted them out carefully, hefting them before him. They had a satisfying heavy feel.
The fruits of so much research. The hard part was almost over. Another week or so of note-taking and preparation and he could get down to the serious business of writing.
As it was, there was one more thing be had to do.
Blake opened the cellar door, peering down into the blackness below. He smiled broadly to himself and flicked on the light.
‘Welcome home,’ he murmured and walked in.
Before he descended the steps he was careful to lock the cellar door behind him.
The silence greeted him like an old friend.
New York
Across the untarnished brilliance of the azure blue sky the only blemish was the thin vapour trail left by a solitary aircraft.
There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sun, even so early in the morning, was a shimmering core of radiance throwing out its burning rays to blanket the city in a cocoon of heat.
The heavens did not weep for Rick Landers but there were others who did.
There were a handful of people at the graveside as the small coffin was lowered into the hole. Toni Landers herself stood immobile, eyes fixed on the wooden casket as it slowly disappeared from view. The only part of her which moved was her eyes and, from those red-rimmed, blood-shot orbs, tears pumped freely, coursing down her cheeks and occasionally dripping on to her black gloved hands. There was a photograph of Rick on the marble headstone but she could not bring herself to look at it. Every now and then, the rays of sunlight would glint on the marble and Toni would squeeze her eyes tightly together but, each time she did so, the vision of Rick flashed into her mind —memories of that
day a week or more earlier when she had been forced to identify his remains.
She had gazed on the mangied body of her child, stared at the face so badly pulped that the bottom jaw had been ground to splinters. The skull had been shattered in four or five places so that portions of the brain actually bulged through the rents. One eye had been almost forced from its socket. The head was almost severed.
It would have taken a magician not a mortician to restore some semblance of normality to a body so badly smashed.
Toni sucked in a breath, the memory still too painful for her. She shuffled uncomfortably where she stood and the two people on either side of her moved closer, fearing that she was going to faint. But the moment passed and she returned her attention to the gaping grave which had just swallowed up her dead child. The priest was speaking but Toni did not hear what he said. She had a handkerchief in her handbag yet she refused to wipe the tears away, allowing the salty droplets to soak her face and gloves.
Against the explosion of colours formed by countless wreaths and bouquets the dozen or so mourners looked curiously out of place in their sombre apparel.
Toni had deliberately kept the number of mourners to a minimum. She had phoned
Rick’s father in L.A. and told him but he had not condescended to put in an appearance. Amidst her grief, Toni had found room for a little hatred too. But now as she watched the ribbons which supported the coffin being pulled clear she felt a cold hand clutch her heart, as if the appalling finality of what she was witnessing had suddenly registered. Her son was gone forever and that thought brought fresh floods of tears from the seemingly inexhaustible reservoir of her pain.
This lime her knees buckled slightly and her two companions moved to support her.
One of them, Maggie Straker, her co-star in her last film, slipped an arm around Toni’s waist and held her upright. She could hear the other woman whimpering softly, repeating Rick’s name over and over again as if it were a litany.
It was Maggie who first noticed that there was a newcomer amongst them.
The grave stood on a slight rise so his approach had been masked by the mourners on the far side of the grave.
Jonathan Mathias stood alone, a gigantic wreath of white roses held in his hand. He looked down at the final resting place of Rick Landers then across at Toni.