Ancient Images Part 4

She dug for almost an hour in her patch of flower bed before she was convinced the hole was deep enough to keep the bodies safe. The stray dog might still be roaming Queen's Wood, even though the accountants had complained to the police, and it might try to dig up the grave. She peered through the railings whenever shadows stirred. Too many bunches of roots appeared to be crouching bonily, but she could never catch sight of a watcher, only flowers s.h.i.+fting in the dark. Every time she peered she had to dab at her eyes.

At last she finished digging. Holding each bag at both ends, so as not to feel how broken the cats were, she laid the bodies in the trench. "Goodbye," she said, "you rest now." She gazed down at the glint of plastic, then she replaced the disinterred soil gently and patted it smooth. "Look after each other," she said, and eventually went back into the house.

The smell was gone from her silent rooms. She went down on all fours to the feeding bowls, but could find no trace of it there. Nevertheless she found the empty tin and sc.r.a.ped the remains into it to be a.n.a.lyzed, then she sat on the 60 bed and wept for a while. Afterward she picked up the fragments of Graham's notebook, but they were indecipherable. She remembered most of the details, she told herself, not just the names, except that her head was aching too badly at the moment for her to recall. Her nostrils felt stuffed with rust. She went to bed so as to close her aching eyes.

When she managed to sleep she kept wakening convinced that the cats were near her. Remembering why they weren't made her feel hollow and frail. Once she dreamed that one of them was outside the window of the main room. She saw a thin lithe shape leap from a treetop and grasp the sash, dragging it down, and awoke with a cry that left her heart quaking.

In the morning she felt so empty that she ached. Why couldn't she have stayed at home last night instead of wasting time on her frustrating visit to Roger? Everything seemed meaningless, no longer worth her trouble, and that frightened her. On the Underground she hugged the carrier bag that contained the tin of cat food and clenched her fist on the overhead strap.

The host of the consumer-advice program was Piers Falconer. On screen he wore a permanent concerned frown, but when she looked into his office his large round face was almost blandly welcoming. He frowned when he heard her story, and took the tin from her. "I'll send it in today for a.n.a.lysis and let you know the outcome the moment I hear."

She went upstairs and tried to interest herself in editing a tape shot at a soccer match, where spectators attacked the away team as they came onto the pitch. The people around her left her alone when she kept answering them monosyllabically, until Lezli came looking for her. "Phone for you."

"Sandra? We've been meaning to call you. How are you? Still enjoying your work?"

It was her father. His voice made her feel unexpectedly homesick for the house in Mossley Hill, the log fires he would light as soon as the winds off Liverpool Bay turned 61 chilly, the long evenings when she had been able to discuss all her adolescent problems without holding anything back. Homesickness solved nothing--her parents didn't even live there now--and she didn't want him to know how upset she was when, at that distance, it would only make him feel helpless. "Oh, pretty well," she said.

"We heard that your friend died. We remembered how fond you said you were of him, how he helped get you known and so forth."

She wasn't quite sure of his tone. "Graham and I had a lot of respect for each other."

"Well, there's nothing wrong with that. We tried to bring you up to appreciate all kinds of people, within certain limits." He cleared his throat and made her think of the pipe he smoked, whose smell had made Bogart and Bacall restless when he and her mother had stayed overnight. "A neighbor pointed out a comment in the paper to us just yesterday. The person searching for the film your friend claimed he found--that isn't you, is it?"

"Yes, it is. Why?"

"For your mother's sake, Sandra, I hope you'll leave it alone."

"Because of what the paper said about it, you mean? I've met the man who wrote that and he's harmless, don't worry."

"But we do. Surely an old film isn't worth the fuss."

"It might be, and Graham's reputation is. You wouldn't want me to let a friend down."

"Time always confirms the reputation of the deserving. Think of Bach. Why risk your own good name? If the film was objectionable when it was made, it may still be, if it even exists. Neither your mother nor I have heard of it, though it's the kind of thing we would have lapped up before the war changed all that. You'll give it up, won't you? Let it rest, and then your mother can."

"Does mother know you're phoning?" 62 "She won't even admit she's anxious, but I know her as well as I know you."

"Then you know you brought me up to do what I thought was right even if you disagreed."

"How can this be right--some trash with two old hams in it? What can be right about a horror film?" He sounded desperate with realizing she'd outgrown him. "Won't you promise?"

"Daddy, I'm sorry, but I already have."

"G.o.d help you then," he said heavily, and rang off.

She was staring at the speechless lump of plastic in her hand and feeling as if guilt were gathering as solidly inside her--guilt at leaving him anxious, at reminding him that she and her mother understood each other more than he often did, even at being almost as upset about her cats as she had been by Graham's death--when Lezli murmured, "Boswell wants to see you."

Emma Boswell was Deputy Programme Controller. "I can do without being told how much use I am," Sandy said.

"I don't know if that's what she wants. She sounded a bit guarded."

"I wish I were," Sandy said, and trudged to the lift, trying to think how to do better with the tape of the soccer match. When the doors let her out she walked automatically down the corridor to Boswell's outer office. Two newsmen were sitting at opposite ends of one of the unyielding couches, arguing about Enoch's Army. "We need an interview with Enoch Hill before the story goes stale on us," one said.

"We've tried, and not only us. He won't be filmed, don't ask me why, even to put his side of things."

"We've committed too many resources to the doc.u.mentary to kill it now. His father's a banker, isn't he? Has anyone gone after him?"

"Good G.o.d," Sandy cried, "can't anyone choose not to be filmed? Isn't there anything else to life?" 63 They stared at her as if she had betrayed them or herself, and Boswell's secretary told her, "Ms. Boswell will see you now."

Sandy must have been audible through the secretary's intercom, and Boswell's plump yet delicate face was quizzical. She indicated a chair with a gesture like a conductor muting an orchestra, and leaned forward. "Tea for two," she said, and switched off the intercom. "Some trouble outside?"

Sandy refused to talk to the top of her head or even to the silver fingernails she was running through her graying hair. When Boswell looked up, Sandy responded, "Just over invasion of privacy."

"A difficult decision sometimes, but a decision professionals have to make. Is it your privacy you feel is being invaded?"

"Should it be?"

"Or did you actually talk to the newspaper?"

"I met the film reviewer once and we had an argument, that's all."

"You seem p.r.o.ne to those currently. I'm sure you know what I'm really asking. Did you tell him you were hunting for this film on our behalf?"

"I didn't, no. He made that up. He obviously wants to make things difficult for me."

"Why should he want to do that?" There was a hint of bedside manner in Boswell's voice. "You do appreciate you mustn't claim to be doing research you aren't authorized to do, or we'll have the unions complaining. Let's say it slipped out in the heat of your argument with the reviewer and forget about it. I'm sure the world already has. In any case, it doesn't sound the kind of film we'd want to transmit."

"Graham would have."

"You miss him, don't you?"

"Especially when he can't defend himself."

Boswell held up a hand as if to forestall any more 64 answers she would rather not hear. "I wonder if we've made enough allowance for your being there when he died. I shouldn't like it to affect your work. Ah, the tea."

When her secretary had left the tray and closed the door, Boswell brought Sandy a cup. "I wasn't implying your work has been suffering. I feel you haven't let yourself live through what you saw, you haven't let it get to you, which means it's still there inside you, waiting."

Sandy felt almost suffocated by Boswell's need to comfort her. "Maybe," she mumbled, and sat back, away from the other woman, who went back to her desk as if nothing had been meant to happen. "What do you think you could do with a couple of weeks off?" Boswell said.

"Try to clear Graham's name."

Boswell sighed. "On whose behalf?"

"His and mine, if n.o.body else cares."

"I want you to understand that if there's even a suggestion that you're acting for us it will be viewed extremely seriously. I can't forbid what you do as a private individual. I trust it's what you need, that's all."

She gazed at Sandy, who sipped her tea, telling herself that she wouldn't be forced to reply or even to drink faster. "Thanks for being understanding," Sandy said, and stood up. "When shall I take the time off?"

"Start now, on full pay." Sandy was at the door when Boswell added "I hope you liked the tea."

"A lot," Sandy said, and the newsmen stared at her. She let her face relax into a grin. She felt as if she'd just survived an interview with a headmistress and been given a holiday into the bargain--but it wouldn't be a holiday, she promised herself. 65 She told Piers Falconer and Lezli she was leaving, and then she ran across to the park and sat on a bench. A glinting knife crossed the whitish sky with a sound like a proposal of thunder. She dug an electricity bill out of her handbag and scribbled on the envelope all the names she could remember from Graham's notebook. Several brought names of towns with them, but those were as much as she could recall of the addresses. Perhaps more details would return to her once she stopped straining to retrieve them. A dog or a tramp was lying down behind a nearby clump of bushes, and kept distracting her. She went back to Metropolitan and downstairs to the switchboard room.

The switchboard clicked like restless claws while she leafed through various British telephone directories. She found all the names on her list, in some cases by remembering the full addresses once she saw them in the directory. She was tempted to make the first call at once, but she didn't want to antagonize Boswell. She called from a wine bar in Wigmore Street instead.

The only London number was for a Walter Trantom of Chiswick. She carried her gla.s.s of lager to an oaken alcove that enshrined a white telephone, and dialed the number. As soon as the ringing was answered, the shouts of the drinkers around her were joined by a huge blurred distant roar. Sandy pressed her free hand over her free ear. "Is Mr. Trantom there?"

"It's for Wally. A woman for Wally," the man yelled, 66 and he and several others chortled. What sounded like a giant door slid back and let out another male voice, this one high and stumbling higher. "Er who, er who, er who's there?"

Sandy knew there must be smothered mirth behind him. "Mr. Trantom?" she said as gently as the hubbub would allow. "Did you know Graham Nolan, by any chance?"

"Graham er, oh yes. Who?"

"I believe you may have been some help to him."

"I hope," Trantom said, and turned wary. "I mean to say, I don't know. Who says?"

"I'm a friend of Graham's. Sandy Allan. He used to show me the films he found."

"Did you see the horror film?"

His lurch into enthusiasm was as sudden as his wariness had been. "No, but he told me about it," Sandy said, "and I'm looking for it now."

"You're a friend of his from where he worked, aren't you?"

So Trantom had read about her. "This has nothing to do with where we worked, this is for him and me."

"So what's it got to do with me? I can't talk long, I've left a car up in the air."

"I thought you might be able to give me a lead, but I take it--was "No, wait. I should meet you, and there's someone else who'd want to. Can you tonight?"

"If you're free, I am."

"I'm free all right," he said with a nervous giggle, and gave her an address in Chiswick as one of his workmates whistled meaningfully. "About eight," Trantom said, and rang off.

Chiswick was on the same side of the river as her flat, but distant as half of the Northern line added to half of the District. Driving tonight would give her more freedom and more control, and less time to be distracted. As she waited 67 for the train at Marble Arch, she thought she saw a workman in the dark between the token lamps in the tunnel beyond the platform. It must be something else entirely, for even if any workman was that thin, he wouldn't keep so still.

The cats' grave was untouched. All the same, she didn't like to leave it so unprotected while she searched for the film. A broken flagstone from the garden path was leaning against the house. She dragged it to the flower bed, where it landed with a moist thud which, she told herself quickly, didn't remind her of anything. It was like a horror film, she preferred to think, some film in which they laid weights on the earth to make sure the dead couldn't rise. "n.o.body can touch you," she whispered.

She played a Billie Holliday alb.u.m while she made herself coffee. When the music and the coffee were finished she sat in the window seat, the sunlit window warm against her back, and set about calling the numbers she'd listed. The first was for Harry Manners, less than an hour's drive away. His phone rang twice, and a voice boomed "Aye?"

"Harry Manners?"

"Present."

"You're the actor?"

"So long as I'm out of my casket I am, and then I'll hope for a curtain call. To what do I owe the pleasure of hearing such a sweet young voice?"

"I'm trying to locate a film you appeared in," Sandy said, and held her breath.

"Do you say so? Well, you brighten my day. I must be ent.i.tled to a few more performances as long as I'm still remembered. Are you here in Hatfield? Will you dine with me?"

"I'm busy in London tonight, I'm afraid."

"Lunch tomorrow? Tell me which picture it is and I'll sort out whatever I have."

"The one with Karloff and Lugosi."

"Ah, those old troupers. What was the name of it? 68 Tower of of Fear? Fear? By all means come. I've something that will interest you." By all means come. I've something that will interest you."

He gave her directions to where he lived and made her promise not to let him down. His eagerness was infectious, and she made two more calls that proved encouraging. An antiques dealer in Newark said that his uncle had been a film cameraman before the second world war, and that though he was walking by the ca.n.a.l just now he would probably be pleased to talk to her. The retirement home in Birmingham where the stuntman lived had had its phone repaired, and the receptionist expected that Leslie Tomlinson would talk. At last, Sandy thought, a day when things began to go right for her. Even the Toyota started first time, though she hadn't driven for weeks.

She drove with the windows down, to feel the breath of the reddening sky on her face, and came off the urban motorway near Gunnersbury Park. Walter Trantom lived in a box of flats on Chiswick High Road. Its dozens of identical rectangular panes appeared to be emitting the blurred roar she'd heard when she had spoken to him--the roar of the motorway beyond. As she locked the car, two youths with Dobermans strutted by, jerking their thighs at the air. A green light's worth of cars sped past in the direction of the airport, and their individual notes were swallowed by the monotonous roar of the landscape.

Sandy stepped over trodden chips and hamburger cartons in the entrance to the flats, and rang the bell for Trantom. The intercom mumbled at her, its words almost indistinguishable because of the remains of a cheeseburger that had been stuffed into the grille. "Sandy Allan," she said, having poked the answer b.u.t.ton gingerly with one fingernail, and peered at the entrance hall through safety gla.s.s smeared with ketchup. The man who plodded down the unlit concrete stairs was almost at the gla.s.s before she saw his face. 69 Even allowing for the way telephones shrank voices, he hadn't sounded nearly so large. He was at least a head taller than Sandy, and twice as broad. He wore faded green check trousers and a frayed purple cardigan, spectacles poking out of the torn breast pocket. He opened a crack between the door and the frame and lowered his balding head toward it, blinking fiercely. "Who, er who did you say?" he demanded.

She could see pimples under the stripes of mousy hair. "Sandy Allan. We said eight o'clock."

"It's only five to," he said inaccurately, glancing at his wrist.w.a.tch. It had string in place of a strap. He dragged his cuff down as if he'd exposed too much of himself to her, and widened his eyes to stop them blinking. "How about some proof?"

When she turned her digital watch toward him, he snorted like a horse. "Not the time. Who you are."

She dug her credit card wallet out of her handbag and nourished it at him, staff identification card uppermost. "All right," he said with unexpected relish, and led her upstairs, trailing a smell of the motor oil that blackened his fingernails.

He lived one floor up. As he knocked on his door, a dull fat sound, a dog snarled and clawed at the inside of the door across the corridor. A woman with rubber bands dangling from her undecidedly colored hair, and eyes bruised by lack of sleep, answered Trantom's knock. She gave Sandy a disinterested stare and trudged back into the kitchen, a cramped room which smelled saturated with Brussels sprouts. Despite her apathy, her presence seemed welcome when Sandy heard another woman screaming in the next room.

Trantom struggled along his corridor, past a bicycle and a coatstand whose fractured upright was bandaged with insulating tape, and emitted a sound somewhere between a 70 warning cough and a roar. The screams were drowned out by a dis...o...b..at, and a man said loudly "That disemboweling was a load of tripe."

"This is good, look, where they gouge her eyes out," a younger man said.

Trantom opened the door noisily and sidled around it, jerking his head to indicate that he wasn't by himself, not noticing that Sandy had already ventured after him. Two men were sitting in armchairs that looked carved of cork, facing a television and videorecorder. The teenager wore jeans and a T-s.h.i.+rt printed with the slogan I WANT YOUR BODY (COS I'm A CANNIBAL); the man in his thirties might have been a businessman, dressed as he was in a dark suit and waistcoat, white s.h.i.+rt and black tie. "It's all there," he said to Trantom. "Here's where the one with the big t.i.ts gets them chopped off."

Trantom jerked his head again, and noticed Sandy as the others did. The teenager craned to see her, his Ts.h.i.+rt flapping about his undernourished torso. "That's her, is it?" he said.

Trantom stepped forward as if her nearness were forcing him into the room, and she followed him. "I'm Sandy Allan."

"What do you reckon to this, then?" the man in the suit challenged her, pointing one gleaming shoe at the screen. All she could see was what looked like a tin of pale red paint that had just been opened to the accompaniment of the dis...o...b..at and screams: sharper details had been lost between transfers from a foreign tape. "It does nothing for me," she said.

"You'd censor it then, would you?"

"I can't imagine being given the option."

"But if your lot bought it," the teenager said, brandis.h.i.+ng his knuckly face on its wiry neck at her and narrowing his bloodshot eyes, "you'd cut it, no question."

"No question that it would ever be bought." 71 "If the films you buy aren't that bad, why the f.u.c.k cut them?"

Wearied by the way the conversation was progressing, Sandy turned to Trantom. "May I sit down? Then you can introduce me to your friends."