Play to the End (29 page)

Then the light went out.

It was 4.38 p.m." according to the luminous dial of my wrist-watch the only source of light in the room when I took my coat off, rolled it into a pillow and lay down on the floor. Being locked in a room you can't break out of is frightening, even if you're not prone to claustrophobia. There's the fear you can't reason away that you'll never be released, that this is the room you'll die in. I guess every prisoner must sometimes have the same nightmare: that the gaolers will vanish overnight, that the door will never reopen. Freedom isn't the greatest loss, I realized, there, alone in the darkness and the silence. It's the control of your own destiny, however partial, that you miss the most, suddenly and savagely.

Time, meanwhile, becomes an instrument of torture. You don't know how much of it you have. Your future is no longer yours to determine. And there's no way out, unless your captor deigns to provide one. There is no escape. Turn the problem over in your mind as long and hard as you like: there is no solution.

But there is sleep. I can't have appreciated just how tired I was. At some point, fatigue overcame anxiety. And I slept.

I was woken by the flashing of the fluorescent light before it fully engaged. Then I was bathed in cold, white brilliance, the faint hum of the tube confirming that power had been restored. I blinked and winced from the ache in my neck, rolled over onto my side and squinted at my watch. It was 9.43 p.m. I'd slept for five hours. Lodger in the Throat was into the second act of its Friday night run, sans Toby Flood.

"Shit," I murmured, struggling to my feet. The panic and chaos my absence must have caused burst into my thoughts. Letting the others down again was bad enough. But there'd been no stand-in this time. I'd left them comprehensively in the lurch. "Shit, shit, shit."

Then I heard the key turn in the door-lock. I stared at the knob, expecting to see it revolve, to see the door open. But nothing happened. There wasn't so much as the creak of a floorboard from the passage.

I reached out, grasped the knob, turned and pulled. The door opened.

There was no-one waiting on the other side. I stepped into the passage and, in the same instant, the door at the far end, leading to the stairs, clicked shut.

"Colborn?" I shouted.

There was no answer, no response of any kind. I went back for my coat, then started walking along the passage, hesitantly at first, but faster with every stride.

There was no-one on the staircase. I headed down to the first floor and along the passage to the landing at the top of the main stairs. The door to the drawing room stood open. The fire had been lit within. I could hear the crackle of burning logs.

"In here, Toby," came Roger Colborn's syrupy, summoning voice.

I stepped into the room. Roger was sitting in a fireside armchair, smiling in my direction. The chair opposite him was dwarfed by its occupant: a huge, broad-shouldered man dressed in black leathers, a mane of greying hair tied back in a ponytail to reveal a pitted face from which dark, deep-set eyes stared neutrally towards me. He tossed the cigarette he'd been smoking into the fire and stood up slowly, the leathers creaking faintly as he did so. He must have been six foot seven or eight and my immediate impression was that he'd have been able to break down the darkroom door without greatly exerting himself. He was Michael Sobotka, of course. But I wasn't supposed to know that.

Roger stood up too. "Glad you could join us, Toby," he said.

Sobotka was fast as well as big. He was next to me in two strides, grabbing my shoulders and hauling me across to the couch, where he plonked me unceremoniously down as if I were no more than a recalcitrant child.

"What do you want?" I demanded, trying not to sound as powerless as I felt.

"Just a little more of your time, Toby," said Roger. "That's all, I promise."

"Who is this guy?"

"He's someone your late friend Denis Maple ran into earlier this week.

Considering how Maple ended up, you'd be well advised to watch your step. My friend here is remarkably even-tempered, but brutal by nature. Isn't that so?"

This last question was directed at Sobotka, whose only reaction was to throw a fleeting glance at Roger while he busied himself with putting on a pair of tight leather gloves. The gloves worried me more than his sullen, menacing demeanour. A lot more.

"If you'd done your stuff Monday night and fallen for the honey-trap,"

Roger continued, "I wouldn't have had to dip deep into my well of generosity and offer to buy you out. But you didn't have the common sense to take advantage of your good fortune, or even to lay off Jenny, which as her future husband I was entitled to expect you to. You've inconvenienced me, Toby. You've strained my tolerance. In fact, you've forced me into this. Remember that. You've left me no choice.

Here." He tossed something to Sobotka, who caught it nimbly in a gloved hand. It was a wineglass, wrapped in a clear plastic bag.

"What the hell's going on?"

"You'll see soon enough."

Sobotka took the glass out of the bag, grabbed my right hand with vice like force and squeezed my fingers and thumb against the bowl of the glass, rotating it as he did so. The surface felt greasy to the touch.

After several seconds or so of this, Sobotka held the glass up to the light, nodded with evident satisfaction, replaced it in the bag and tossed it back to Roger, who stood it on the mantelpiece.

"You entered this house covertly this afternoon," said Roger. "I have the CCTV footage to prove that. You hid until the staff had gone home.

Then you emerged and attacked me."

"What?"

"You took me by surprise. It was a vicious and unprovoked assault."

"You're mad. Nobody's going to believe that."

"I think they are, actually." He nodded to Sobotka. "I'm ready."

Sobotka moved back to where Colborn was standing and, to my astonishment, punched him in the face. The blow, landing near his left eyebrow, sent Colborn reeling, but he steadied himself and stood upright again. A second punch took him somewhere between the jaw and cheekbone. He yelped, staggered, shook his head, then held up his hand in a signal of surrender and sank slowly into his chair.

Blood was oozing from the side of his mouth. He dabbed at it with a handkerchief and raised his other hand to the already reddening and swelling mark above his eye, wincing as his fingertips made contact. "I reckon a spectacular black eye's guaranteed," he said, lisping slightly. "And there's a tooth loose as well. The split lip should look very impressive. Jenny's going to think you've seriously lost it, Toby. And she'll be right. You have lost."

I stared at him, unable for the moment to speak. The man was mad. He had to be. Mad and very dangerous. If he was willing to have this done to him, what was he prepared to do to me?

"Let me sketch out your evening for you, Toby. After leaving me here to nurse my wounds, you went back to Brighton and killed a few hours getting seriously stoned. You didn't show up at the theatre, or even bother to warn them you weren't going to. Then you hooked up with a prostitute and went back to her place. Something went badly wrong there. Maybe you couldn't get it up after all that booze. Anyway, you got angry and stuck a wineglass in her face. Nasty. Very nasty. And very stupid too. She'd recognized you from the poster outside the theatre. And you didn't take the broken glass with you when you left.

Fingerprints all over it, I'm afraid. Your fingerprints."

"You won't get away with this," I protested.

"Jenny's going to want to have nothing to do with you after she learns what you're capable of, Toby. It's not going to do a lot for your career either, is it? They won't send you down for long. First offence, previous good character, etcetera, etcetera. You might even get away with a suspended sentence. But acting? Forget it. I've been in touch with your boss, Leo Gauntlett. I've offered to put some money into Lodger in the Throat. Enough to give it a chance in the West End.

I've suggested he recast James Elliott, though. Bring in someone more reliable. Maybe you got to hear about that. Maybe that's why you came here this afternoon. To have it out with me. If so, all you've done is make certain he'll take up my suggestion."

"You bastard." Anger finally won out over shock and fear. I launched myself at him. But Sobotka stepped between us and grabbed me, doubling one arm up behind my back, sending a lance of pain through my shoulder.

"Let's get him out of here," said Colborn. "We're done."

Pinning both of my arms behind me with such ease that I sensed the slightest resistance on my part could lead to a dislocation or worse, Sobotka frog marched me out of the room and down the stairs. He paused at the bottom long enough for Colborn to overtake and open the front door. Then Colborn led the way across the terrace to where a Ford Transit had been backed up in position at the edge of the drive. He swung one of the rear doors open and turned to face me.

"You'll be dropped on the edge of town. What you do then is up to you.

It won't make any difference. You could try getting your story in with the police first, but they'll see through it fast enough. The evidence is all one way. Denials and counter-accusations will count against you in the long run. You could make a run for it, of course. That's another option. Gatwick's only half an hour away by train. You might be able to get on a plane bound for somewhere exotic before they raise the alarm. Or you could just sit tight at the Sea Air and wait for them to come for you. They're all losing bets, believe me. I've fixed the odds."

"What if I offered to leave Brighton now, tonight, for good?" The plea must have sounded as desperate as it truly was. "I could save you the bother of setting me up."

Colborn chuckled. "It's too late for that."

"You don't need to do this."

"Oh, but I do. You pushed me too far, Toby. It's as simple as that."

"What about Derek Oswin? What are you going to do with him?"

"Don't worry about Oswin. Worry about yourself." He nodded to Sobotka. "Get going."

Sobotka levered me backwards, raising my feet off the ground until they were above the level of the floor of the van, then rammed me in through the doorway, giving a final shove that sent me on a bruising roll against a boxed-in wheel arch. The door slammed shut behind me. The lock clunked into position.

I sat up and felt my way forwards until I reached the plywood screen blocking off the cab. The back of the van was empty. I was the only cargo.

The van sagged to one side as Sobotka climbed into the driving seat. He started the engine, then paused to light a cigarette. I heard the click of the lighter through the screen. There were two thumps on the side of the van a signal from Colborn. Sobotka ground the engine into gear and started away.

Sobotka's priority clearly wasn't the comfort of his passenger. The journey into Brighton was a bone-jarring purgatory. All I could do was cling to one of the wheel-arch boxes and wait for it to end.

I had no idea where we were when the van slowed, bumped up onto a verge and came to a halt. The engine was still running as Sobotka climbed out of the cab. A few seconds later, one of the rear doors opened.

Sobotka's gigantic shadow loomed before me.

"Out," he said. It was the first word he'd spoken to me. And the last.

I made a stooping progress to the door. He stepped back as I clambered out. Then he moved swiftly past me, slamming the door as he went.

I heard the driver's door slam a few seconds later. The gearbox grated. The van lurched down onto the roadway and accelerated away. I stared after it as an awareness of my surroundings seeped into me. I was at the edge of an unlit single-carriage way road. Ahead of me was a roundabout, bathed in sodium light. The van crossed it, moving fast, as I watched.

Then a dark-blue saloon car completed a slow revolution of the roundabout and took the same exit as the van. There was no other traffic in any direction. It was a strange, hypnotic scene. The van.

Then the car. I didn't know what to make of it. And my mind was too beset by other matters for me to dwell on it.

I started walking towards the roundabout.

Sobotka had dropped me just short of an interchange on the Brighton bypass. There was a roundabout either side of the dual-carriage way cutting. I glanced down at the surging traffic as I trudged across the bridge above it towards the amber dome of the city.

I was on Dyke Road Avenue, heading south through empty suburbia, destination uncertain, determination undone. The choices Colborn had so generously set before me were each as poisonous as the other. If I went to the police, I'd lose the small amount of room for manoeuvre I had left. It wasn't as if there was anything I could do to help the prostitute I was going to be framed for assaulting Olga, presumably.

The police were on to Sobotka, of course, which set me wondering again about the car on the roundabout. But that didn't mean they'd believe me, given that to have any hope of convincing them I'd have to admit to lying when Addis and Spooner questioned me this morning. Making a run for it was crazy, though undeniably tempting. Yet where would I run tol What would I run to? I had to prove to Jenny that I was telling the truth. But how could I convince her? And how was I to survive until I got the chance?

I walked for what must have been at least two miles past silent houses, to any one of which theatre-goers might soon be returning, complaining as they came about the last-minute change of cast in Lodger in the Throat.

It was well gone eleven o'clock by now. The Dyke Tavern was chucking out. I passed Dyke Road Park and the Sixth-Form College. I had my bearings in one sense, but in another not at all. I'd more or less come to the conclusion that going back to the Sea Air was about the best way to demonstrate my innocence. I might phone the police from there. I wasn't sure, though. I wasn't sure about anything.