Araluen (53 page)

But then she heard the cameraman whose zoom lens was focused on Marcel. ‘Oh my God, oh Jesus, oh my God!’ She watched dumbfounded as he fell to his knees in a state of shock.

People in the crowd closest to the motorcade were screaming. Emma saw Stanley leap from the following vehicle into Marcel’s car but it wasn’t the way they’d rehearsed. He was yelling at nearby police and pointing up at the Frick building. He was also screaming at the driver to pull the vehicle out of the procession and up onto the footpath. Something’s gone wrong, Emma thought. Something’s gone terribly wrong.

It was on the news later that day. Marcel Gireaux had been shot through the head. Assassinated by a person or persons unknown while filming a sequence in his latest movie,
Earth Man
.

O
N THE MORNING OF
the procession, many of the people living in the block on the corner of 70th and 5th had invited friends up to their apartments. It was the perfect vantage spot – the newspapers had reported that the ‘assassination’ was to be filmed from the rooftop of the Frick Gallery.

The commissionaire had his time cut out buzzing up to everyone’s apartment to get a clearance on each of the visitors. No names were recorded. ‘A Mr Harris to see you, Mr Weinberg,’ was one in dozens of requests.

‘Thanks, Norman. Send him up.’

The man Judd let into his apartment was neatly dressed in a polo-necked sweater and sports jacket and carrying a briefcase. He could have been a business executive on a Saturday appointment when suit and tie were not mandatory.

‘Mr Harris, isn’t it?’ Judd said jovially. ‘Come – ’ The man was inside the room and the door closed before Judd could offer the invitation. He thought it was rather rude. ‘My name’s Judd,’ he beamed and he held out his
hand, expecting the man to offer his Christian name. The man offered neither name nor hand, but walked over to the front windows and looked down through the curtains at 5th Avenue. Then he walked through the door to the right, the room in the very corner of the apartment. It was the bathroom and it looked over 70th Street, the Frick Gallery and up 5th Avenue.

Well, if he wanted to go to the bathroom, Judd thought, why didn’t he just say? He waited until the man came out of the bathroom, no longer carrying the briefcase, and was about to offer him a drink, but didn’t get the chance. ‘Thank you,’ the man said curtly. ‘That will be all – I don’t need you.’

‘Oh.’ Judd wasn’t due at Felicity’s apartment, which was only one floor down, for another fifteen minutes or so. He’d expected to have a drink with the chap. It was only hospitable, after all. ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t…’

‘You may go now.’

‘Oh. Right.’ Bloody rude, Judd thought. Still, it was a business arrangement, after all, and if leaving the chap the apartment for an hour meant clearing a fifty thousand dollar debt, who was he to argue? Besides, the man didn’t look like the sort of person one would want to argue with. Eerie sort of guy. His speech was accentless; it was impossible to tell where he was from. He was of average height and weight, but obviously fit. He moved effortlessly, like a boxer or a dancer, with the lazy grace of a person whose body was prepared for anything. And, although the pale grey eyes didn’t dart about, it was
apparent he was taking in every detail of his surrounds.

‘Well, I’ll leave you to it then.’

‘Take your key,’ the man reminded him. Judd picked his keys up from the hall table and made as dignified an exit as he could.

An hour later, when the shot rang out and all hell broke loose, Judd felt sick. Could this have anything to do with the man in his apartment? All he could see from Felicity’s window was pandemonium. ‘Binoculars,’ he snapped, ‘give me your binoculars.’ Felicity wasn’t used to being snapped at and certainly not by Judd. ‘Hurry it up, woman.’ He snatched the binoculars she sulkily handed to him and focused on the car which had been driven up onto the pavement. Marcel Gireaux was slumped in the back seat and a man was beside him screaming orders to the police who were racing towards the Frick Gallery. He focused on Marcel Gireaux’s head, but there didn’t seem to be one. Just blood, masses and masses of blood and … Judd dropped the binoculars, turned away and started to vomit, all over one of Felicity’s Persian rugs.

Judd’s heart was pounding as he let himself into his apartment. Not with fear for his own safety – he knew the man wouldn’t be there. It was pounding with horror at what he’d seen, and with terror at his involvement in the whole ghastly business.

He looked around the apartment. There was no trace of the man. He went into the bathroom. The window was open two inches just as he always left
it and the chintz curtains were flapping gently in the breeze just as they always did.

He didn’t dare look down at the street below. Could he just pretend that this had never happened? That’s what he was expected to do, wasn’t he? Of course he was. It had never happened; the man had never been there – he must put it out of his mind. He’d witnessed something horrific, certainly, but then so had many others. He’d had nothing to do with it. There had been no man in his apartment. That was the part he must forget.

He drank half a bottle of scotch that afternoon and had the presence of mind to ring Felicity and apologise for the rug. Then he read and listened to music. In the evening, he didn’t send out for the paper or turn on the news as was his habit. He took two Nembutal instead.

The next morning he’d nearly convinced himself that it had all been a bad dream. Then he made the mistake of turning on the television. There it was, graphic footage of the horror he’d witnessed. He needed a brandy. He took the bottle of Hennessy XO from the cabinet, poured himself a healthy measure into a whisky glass and gulped it down greedily. He looked back at the television set. Oh God, the images were still there. He went into the bathroom, opened the window and looked out. It had happened from here, he told himself. It had happened from here.

It was then that he noticed the brandy balloon, rinsed and left to drain upside down on the bathroom shelf. And he remembered that the Hennessy XO had been unopened yesterday. Ready cash was
short these days and he’d been saving it for a special occasion.

He picked up the brandy balloon and stood staring out of the window at the street below. This was what the man had done yesterday, he thought. The man had stood right where he was now, looked out of this same window, held this same brandy snifter in his hand. And he’d quietly sipped twenty–year–old cognac while he watched and waited. Judd wondered whether he’d finished the brandy and rinsed the glass before or after he’d …

He slammed the window shut. He took two tranquillisers and then he picked up the telephone receiver. He had to talk to someone. He looked back at the television set as he dialled. The ghastly pictures were no longer there but the news item was still on the murder of Marcel Gireaux. A reporter was harassing a senior police officer in the street outside police headquarters. ‘Captain Macfarlane, can you explain how…’

Come on, come on, Judd thought as he heard the bell ringing at the other end of the line. It took him three telephone calls over the period of an hour to get through. By then his nerves were strained beyond endurance. ‘Wait there,’ he was told. ‘Just sit tight and everything’ll be fine.’

It wasn’t long before the parcel arrived, delivered by special courier. Judd opened it. Inside the heavy packaging was an hermetically sealed syringe and a small plastic bag containing one ounce of heroin.

He looked at it for a full ten minutes and started
to sweat. Judd had been off the hard stuff for over a year now. But it took him only ten minutes to make a decision. It was what he needed. Just one good hit to take his mind off things, to clear his brain of the awful images.

The death of Judd Weinberg III, only son of one of America’s most prominent financiers, would have been news five years before. But Judd Senior had been in retirement for nearly six years now and, to those who knew his son, death by heroin overdose came as no great surprise. Judd had been flirting with hard drugs for so many years now that it had really only been a matter of time. There was a small byline in several of the papers, but that was all they could afford to run. Every centimetre of space was taken up by the murder of Marcel Gireaux. Even the coincidence of the apartment block on the corner of 70th and 5th barely rated a mention.

The assassination of Marcel Gireaux continued to make headlines and monopolise television screens all around the world. There was footage to cover every angle – from the gruesome impact of the bullet which had blown Marcel’s head away to the crowd hysteria and the ghoulish news crews scrambling to film the bloody scene.

The police were in chaos. Where had the bullet come from? This hadn’t been expected. They were there to govern crowd control. This was a movie,
for Chrissakes. If an assassination had been even a remote possibility the secret service would have been there. And the intelligence division.

On Stanley’s instructions, several officers had raced towards the Frick building while others tried to stem the spreading panic. The emergency squad was called in and the gallery was surrounded, but no trace of the assassin could be found.

Ballistic tests later showed that the shot could not have been fired from the rooftop of the Frick Gallery. The weapon had been aimed from a greater height and the bullet had entered Gireaux’s head from more of a frontal angle. It was deduced that the assassin must have fired from one of the upper apartments or from the rooftop of the block on the opposite corner of 70th and 5th.

The newspapersj which were quick to publish the findings, further concluded that the assassin or assassins had been in the pay of some extremist group who opposed what Gireaux stood for. Marcel Gireaux had died the way he had lived, they announced dramatically. Playing a role. And his final role had been that of a martyr to his cause.

The inquest was two weeks later. They all attended: Michael, Emma, Stanley, Derek, Mandy, even Franklin Ross. And Annette Gireaux was there.

Emma watched her. She was a handsome woman, despite the fact that her face showed great fatigue. Her eyes mirrored the strain she was under but she was strong, obviously determined not to give in to her grief.

The findings of the inquest were just as the newspapers had hypothesised. Marcel Gireaux had been shot down by a person or persons unknown. There was no link with the film he had been making. But the judge was quick to voice his disapproval of the fact that the publicity surrounding the film had obviously afforded the assassin information and accessibility.

As they left the courtroom, Annette walked straight up to Emma and introduced herself.

‘I am Annette Gireaux,’ she said, but didn’t offer her hand.

‘How do you do,’ Emma replied. ‘I’m Emma Clare.’

‘Yes, I know. The writer. Marcel spoke of you.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ Emma said. ‘It’s a terrible thing. I don’t know what to – ’

‘There is no leading lady in
Earth Man.’

Annette’s eyes were drilling into hers and Emma had no idea what it was she was expected to say. ‘No.’

‘Marcel always worked opposite a leading lady. This time it was opposite sea turtles and gulls and terns. One wonders what he got up to during all that time on an island in the South Pacific’

Still Emma didn’t know what to say. But Annette saved her the trouble. ‘Did you sleep with my husband?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Nothing in Emma’s face betrayed the lie. And yet she had never knowingly lied in her life before. Even the fibs, the ‘white lies’ of her childhood, had caught her out. She’d always become flustered and confused by deception. Now, all of a sudden, it was so easy. Why?

It was the pain inside Annette Gireaux which made it easy. Behind the bold challenge in the woman’s eyes was the desperate plea to know that her husband had belonged to her at the end. And he had, Emma thought – so where was the lie? He’d always belonged to Annette. Annette and her children. What had two nights of lust meant in the scheme of things? What had Marcel’s infatuation meant? ‘La folie du filmage’ – that’s all it had been. And as soon as he’d returned to his home he would have recognised it himself.

‘No, I didn’t sleep with your husband,’ she said. ‘But we talked a great deal. A lot about work, but mainly about you and the children. He loved you very much.’

Annette held her gaze. It was a test. But Emma didn’t flinch from it. Why should she? She was telling the truth. And Annette knew it.

‘Yes, he did.’ The smile was tight, strained. Maybe, deep inside, Annette sensed there had been something between Marcel and Emma, but she also sensed that this young woman was telling the truth and relief flooded through her. For the first time since she had received the news of Marcel’s death, she wanted to weep. She wanted to cry for her dear peasant boy. Her dear foolish, self–deluding child of a man. If only he hadn’t believed the roles he’d played – if only he hadn’t let the world believe them – he’d be alive today. But then he wouldn’t have been her Marcel, would he? Annette knew she had to leave. Before the tears.

She offered her hand. ‘Thank you.’ The handshake was firm, businesslike. ‘I must be going,’ she said and she turned and walked briskly down the
marble-floored corridor before Emma could say another word.

‘Irresponsible, Michael. The judge said as much.’ Franklin had requested that Michael accompany him to his office after the inquest. It was more of an order than a request. ‘The story should never have been given to the newspapers.’

‘Why not, for Christ’s sake?’ Michael had found the inquest interminable despite the three uppers he’d taken that morning so he’d snorted a hefty line towards the end of the day’s court proceedings. He was still on a high and not in the mood for a Franklin Ross lecture.

‘One of the world’s leading actors was placed in jeopardy, that’s why not,’ Franklin barked. ‘And he was
murdered,
that’s why not. The publicity surrounding the filming afforded the assassin accessibility – they were the judge’s very words. It was damned irresponsible of you.’