Authors: M. J. Trow
‘Tony?’ It was Hart’s voice.
‘Do you have a problem with a sitting target?’ the magician’s voice boomed.
‘What do you think? On the table, Maxwell. The one behind you. Nothing extreme now, nothing sudden. Or it’s your head all over the stage.’
‘Ah, the head shot.’ Maxwell smiled. ‘Glad you’re back on track now.’
‘What?’
‘Just a little something, a little intellectual problem my niece was chewing over recently. The killing of JFK. Six shots, at least five in Dealey Plaza, but only three did the damage. The shot to the back – Larry Warner. The one to the throat, Chris Logan. That leaves the head shot; me.’
Maxwell lowered his arms to his sides his hands drifting from his hips. Every move now was crucial. He was rattling them, slowly, picking them off one by one, but he had a fair way to go and death followed him. He eased himself backwards, his shoes creaking leather on the planks. He felt the table rim against his bum and hoisted himself up. Hart had not moved. Neither had the red spot.
‘Where was I?’ Maxwell gave them his best Frankie Howerd. ‘Just get comfy. Ah, that’s better. Ah, yes, the prologue.’ He was Maxwell again. ‘Dear old Larry. Just a threat Jewish, just a tad of a left footer. I wonder any of you could stomach him for long. But the real bitch of the thing was that he’d sussed you, hadn’t he? Found out where the Charity Arts group was really sending its cash donations. That’s when you played this little charade of yours. I have to admire you, Harold,’ Maxwell called. He couldn’t see Wiseman and that bothered him a little. ‘You coached them all bloody well. Such improvisation. Such ability to think on their feet. Whichever one of you was probed by a busybody – Larry Warner, Chris Logan, Peter Maxwell – you’d string them along with a load of guff and draw us all the deeper. I’ve seen it done before of course – the Tottingleigh Players are dab hands – but never for real,’ and he swept off his hat in acknowledgement.
‘That’s enough now,’ St John said. Maxwell could see the photographer beginning to fidget at the far side.
‘Now here I’m guessing,’ Maxwell was on a roll, one that he still hoped would save his life. ‘Amy’s the soft one, aren’t you darling?’ he smiled broadly, teeth dazzling in the spotlights. ‘You went to see Larry I would imagine, unbeknownst to his secretary or his housekeeper, who made no mention of any female visitors.’ The poetess was chewing her nails, pacing backwards and forwards, her eyes now on the gunman, now on his target. ‘Or it could have been you, Bob, calling yourself Jeff. I suppose with hair as short as yours you could pass for the army man Warner’s secretary supposed Jeff was. Anyway, one of you blabbed – as you did to me. As perhaps you did to poor old Chris Logan, I don’t know. You suckered Warner in. Yes, it was terrible. Archie Godden was an unscrupulous bastard and you’d only just discovered it yourself. You had hard evidence of his financial chicanery and you’d gladly give it to Warner, only the meeting place was tricky. Not his office, not the Garrick. Not here, Harold, because you told me you had the builders in. The post was far too risky. And phones have ears. What about Magicworld? Ideal. Thousands of punters. Open air. The perfect place.’
‘This is getting tedious,’ Godden yawned ostentatiously.
‘Oh, bear with me, Archie,’ Maxwell put his head on one side cutely. ‘This is better than a play, isn’t it, Harold?’ Where the fuck was he? ‘Where was I? Oh, yes. So Bob puts on his technician’s overalls and packs his Ruger into his tool bag and off he goes. Warner had instructions to take certain rides and to sit by himself in a car. Number Four, I believe it was. What did you do, tell him there was a brown paper package under the seat?’
‘Bravo,’ said Hart.
‘That’s why – and I shall be grateful to him for ever – he had to be alone in the car, so that he could find it and take possession. He kept my girls away. You were in the rocks, high to the left. If anyone had seen you, you were a repair man, just doing your job. You probably assembled the Ruger in seconds and pow! Goodbye Larry. And this is where dear Hilary came in.’
‘I was waiting for my cue,’ the photographer mumbled.
‘Tiffany was looking that way down the Wild Water,’ Maxwell went on. ‘She saw a flash. She’s a bit sensitive, my Tiff,’ and he wondered where she was now, perching in the beams over his head. ‘Got thoroughly hooked on the Kennedy killing at school. Up there on your grassy knoll, you got the back shot in. Clean and fatal. And you did it precisely how only a physicist could tell me, with that natty gadget on your sights that’s glowing red on my shirt now. Some ultra beam of some kind. Invented, I believe, by Hilary St John. Or so it says in the Great Book of Unbelievable Inventions I consulted in the library on my way to Amy’s a few days ago. You’re not a bad shot, Bob, but you’re no Annie Oakley. With that gadget on board, however, even Archie couldn’t have missed.’
‘Thank you so much,’ Godden grunted.
‘So,’ Maxwell leaned back, cradling his knee in both hands. ‘White Knights, One. Larry Warner, Nil. Then I got involved. Oh, forgive me, I know it sounds a little arrogant. So did the boys in blue, but then, you expected that. Me, you didn’t expect. Harold tipped you off when I came a-sleuthing, on this very spot, in fact. It must have been a bit of a facer when dear old Deirdre brought me into your lair, so to speak, at the Garrick. For one brief, delicious moment, I thought she might be in on the whole thing, but alas, no. But I was a problem because I brought Chris Logan into it – and I shall regret that to my dying … well.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Because Chris remembered something. I got hold of a police video – which of you has that, by the way?’
There was silence.
‘Very well,’ Maxwell lapsed into his schoolmaster, ‘you will all be staying behind until the culprit owns up. The video was of Tony’s “creature” – Neil Hamlyn. He appeared to be on drugs, except he never used drugs. Chris recognized it straight away because of the series of articles he’d once written on Anthony LeStrange. But he made a mistake, did Chris – he tried to go it alone. It was hypnosis, Tony, wasn’t it? That was where the library was helpful yet again. I never thought it was possible to persuade someone to do what they didn’t want to do – you know, drop their trousers in the Albert Hall, that sort of thing. But an ex-SAS man who has been trained to kill. And a hypnotist of Tony LeStrange’s calibre … Yes, it’s possible. Amy said it – “I suspect his best work is done behind the scenes.’”
‘I thank you,’ LeStrange boomed over the speakers.
‘Let’s get on with it!’ Amy Weston spoke for the first time, her voice brittle, her eyes bright in the auditorium’s dim light. ‘I can’t stand any more of this. It’s got out of hand, for God’s sake. I’m not a murderer!’
‘Get a grip on yourself,’ Godden growled at her.
‘Yes, a bit of a weak link, aren’t you, Amy, my dear? The token woman. You know, I’m a little disappointed. I hoped you might turn out to be the brains behind all this, but no. One of you bastards got Chris to talk you, Tony, I suspect – by hypnosis would be poetic, wouldn’t it? You found out about the tape and you needed to know what else Logan knew. One of you, Bob would be my guess, broke into Chris’s flat and then my house to get the tape. You needed to know what Hamlyn had told the police. You were safe there, of course. He’d given nothing away. But Logan? Well, Logan had to die.’
‘Precisely where you are now,’ Hart said, the rifle lifting just a threat in his hands. Maxwell saw the red glow slide up his chin and along his nose. It must have been resting between his eyes about now.
‘Of course,’ Maxwell said, not daring to move, ‘the wooden splinters in his hair. From dear Harold’s stage. You dumped him like so much rubbish under the Arches, somewhere winos die every day. But Amy cracked. Felt sorry for him. Amy?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Well, I’d like to think so. Hence the rose and the Rupert Brooke. That was the clincher, of course.’
‘It was?’ her voice was steadier now, but he sensed she was inches away from snapping. ‘Why?’
‘You couldn’t help yourself. You gave it all away. That last line – “And lived from laugh to laugh, I too, when you were there, and you, and you.” You were confessing, weren’t you, Amy? Trying desperately to salve your conscience with as little pain as possible. You were there,’ he pointed at her, ‘and you,’ he jabbed a finger at Hilary St John, ‘and you,’ he pointed at Hart’s cold muzzle that was pointing back at him. ‘It’s some sort of schoolboy ritual – I expect Archie invented it back at Oxford. That’s the sort of puerile bollocks I’d expect from the dark blues. You all had to be there to witness punishment, like some bloody deranged regiment parading in hollow square. I expect I walked past you all at Magicworld, didn’t I? And I didn’t even notice.’
‘Two flies in the ointment,’ Godden said. ‘Drowned. You’re the third, Maxwell.’
‘Ah, yes,’ the Head of Sixth Form nodded. ‘My turn. After Logan you hoped I’d lay off, frightened away by it all. Well you played that badly, children. Because I’m Mad Max, for fuck’s sake. I have a reputation to maintain. If I didn’t round you bastards up, I couldn’t look Year Seven in the eye again.’
Godden was on his feet now, shaking. ‘That’s enough, for Christ’s sake. Hart, are you going to pull that fucking trigger or am I?’
Maxwell roared with laughter as Hart blinked, trying to steady his nerve, hold the red spot centre-forehead. ‘That,’ Maxwell was suddenly serious again, ‘is when you snatched Tiffany. And that really had to be you, didn’t it, Amy? Tiff’s a bit silly, a bit soppy, a bit of a romantic. But she’s a Maxwell deep down and no Maxwell in living memory has gone off with a strange man. Oh, except Great Uncle Piers, but we all made allowances for him. Now that was clever. You knew by now I wouldn’t go away, so you guessed, rightly, I’d come looking. And you were good, all of you, stringing me along, shopping each other like it was going out of fashion. Harold, wherever he is, breathing heavily down the phone to Sylvia Matthews, one minute a Yorkshireman, the next … you going to give us your Ian Paisley then, Harold? I remember your Terry Wogan was legendary when you gave us a talk at dear old Leighford.’ Maxwell was in full Ulster by now. ‘You know, teeth will be provided!’ and he rolled sideways, off the table with a thud, rolling in the dust of the Duchess of Malfi. He heard the ping of Hart’s bullet hit metal behind him. A second thud from the silencer and splinters ripped into his hand. Then he was gone, into the darkness of the wings, listening to the rising panic of the White Knights.
‘You stupid bastard!’ That was Godden.
‘He’s there, in the wings.’ That was LeStrange, his voice less echoing as he ducked back from the intercom mike to peer into the bowels of the stage.
‘He can’t get out,’ the luvvy tones of Wiseman. ‘Every door’s locked.’
‘Maxwell,’ LeStrange was back at the speakers again, commanding, imperious, like the voice of God. ‘Give it up. You know you’re finished.’
The Head of Sixth Form left his hat where it had fallen and eased himself backwards, crawling over coiled leads and edging towards the door he could just make out behind him. To his left was the floodlit stage, naked now and abandoned; to his right, a breeze-block wall. He raised himself up on one knee, careful to keep the Malfi flats between himself and the sniper in the auditorium. Please God, Maxwell thought, don’t let Bob Hart have seen
Magnum Force
, where dear old Clint Eastwood puts two bullets of his legendary .44 through an aircraft fuselage. The Wyndham woodwork was flimsy enough, God knew.
He trusted to luck. He’d have one hit at the back door before Hart’s sights found him. He saw the red spot wandering over the flats next to his shoulder, next to his head. No one spoke. No one, except for Hart and Maxwell, moved. He felt like Billy Bones in Treasure Island, that rattling good yarn of his youth. Only the spot had changed colour. The message was the same. He was upright now, crouching like a naked ape, exposed, alone. Then he rammed his bum backwards and bounced off the door. Damn. It opened outwards. There was a splintering of wood and a shattering of glass as the Ruger bullet hit the door and demolished a light beyond it. Maxwell was scrabbling at the handle and out of the wings before Hart could realign his shot.
He was in a corridor now and the lights went out with a thud as he stood up.
‘Wiseman?’ he heard LeStrange’s voice still near the mike. ‘Where’s he gone?’
He couldn’t hear the reply, but he knew he had options. There were doors to his left, costume stores, green rooms, who knew? He tried the first one. Locked. Each step was silent. Each step an agony of indecision. Where was she? The golden girl. She couldn’t actually be in the rafters. Magic or no magic, that wasn’t possible. He tried the second door and it clicked open under his weight.
‘Green Room Two.’ It was Wiseman’s voice, loud, sharp, near. And it was followed by a thudding of feet. Maxwell’s heart thumped, his pulse pounding in his head. He jumped four, five steps down, managed to catch his balance at the bottom and look around. There was light here, the morning sun filtering through slatted windows. He ran to it, cutting his fingers on the shutter’s edge, ripping it from its hinges. Shit! Bars. There was no way out there. He doubled back, throwing himself in the crawl space under the stairs and he waited.
Above him in the half light, the door crashed back.
‘He’s here.’ It was Wiseman again. Then all Maxwell heard was whispering. Two voices? Or was it three? He heard the steps creak with someone’s weight. Only one of them had a gun. Only one of them was a danger. Archie Godden was no threat. He’d probably already keeled over with a coronary watching the action upstairs. Unless Maxwell had the worst luck in the world and Amy Weston added black belt karate to her poetic skills, he could handle her. Wiseman? Too old, too frail (Maxwell hoped). St John and LeStrange were younger men, leaner, hungrier than the creaking Head of Sixth Form. He’d have to trust to luck with them. But his real problem was Bob Hart and more importantly Bob Hart’s bullet. Nothing could outrun that.
He heard footsteps hit the bottom. Flat, silent, concrete ground. His hand flailed in the darkness of the curtain he’d slipped behind, desperate for a weapon of some kind. His mind froze and his heart stopped as he saw the red spot creep upwards along the curtain’s folds.