Fade to Black (36 page)

“It’s a brilliant move, that’s all I can say,” Arthur said, feeding Riley’s ego.

Riley’s chest puffed out. “It’s a new deal, Arthur. How does ‘Sir Raymond Riley’ sound?”

“Fucking unlikely,”
Wendell held Riley’s gaze despite Black’s inner voice.

“Brilliant! The Earl of Chelsea?” Arthur quipped. “Or maybe The Duke of Earl?”

Riley laughed uproariously. “Perfect—see to it would you, Arthur?”

Britt swept out of his dressing room outfitted in a simple white cloak, a garland of daisies encircling his head, no shoes on his feet. Frowning, he strode toward them.

“Jesus Christ!” Ray shouted with a laugh.

Britt got straight down to business, ignoring Wendell. “Have you got it?”

Riley put his arm around Britt and led him to a darker corner. “Of course,” he said, digging a plastic packet from his jacket. “Here, go for it.”

Britt snatched it, mumbled his thanks and hustled back to his dressing room.

Riley was all smiles as he came back to Arthur. “That’s what I call Total Quality Management—only the best stuff for the little Messiah.”

Arthur heard a snort of laughter somewhere in his brain.

“Would you mind if I took a wander through the stage area, if there’s time?" Arthur asked Riley. “I used to play a bit of guitar. I wouldn’t mind a look at the gear.”

Riley looked at his watch and hesitated, but then said, “Okay, be quick though, we’re already running late.”

Arthur said, “Great,” and disappeared toward the back of the stage as the tech crew left the area, their final checks complete.

Arthur crouched and stole to the front of the darkened stage to the microphone stand that he reckoned had to be the main one for Britt. The heavy curtain hid him from the crowd. He poured most of the can of coke around its base. He lifted the big retro-style microphone off the stand and crept back to the point where the power lead joined the mixing board. He peeked over the top of the board and saw the red power indicator. The light was off. Hidden from view, he unscrewed the base plate from the microphone.

He was pleased to see it was British gear. Electricity, he still loved it. He knew the earth wire would, therefore, be the green and yellow one. He pulled out a tiny pair of electrician’s pliers from his trouser pocket and snipped through it.

"Nice, Arthur."

He then stripped the brown wire—the live one—and made sure it touched the metal of the microphone housing. He bobbed up to look around. The crew were probably shooting up somewhere backstage. He was alone. He straightened up and walked once more to the microphone stand. He placed the mic back in its holder. This would work well with what his partner was doing with the big cable under the stage. He hoped it would rain some more.

“Hey! You! What the fuck are you doing?”

Arthur jumped and looked to his left. A huge man, wearing a denim jacket, ponytail and a name tag, lumbered towards him. Arthur quickly approached him; the last thing he wanted was the security guy spotting the wet floor. “All ok,” he said, a placatory hand extended towards the very bothered security guy. “But thanks for being so vigilant.” He struck a conspiratorial pose. “Just between you and me, Mr. Riley asked me to do a last-minute gear check. He’s kinda nervous, as this is Jase’s first gig under his management. You can understand that, can’t you?”

The security guard looked momentarily unconvinced, then smiled.

“You’re Riley’s man? Ok, yeah.” He laughed. “He has been jumping about, issuing orders and getting in our way. He’s as nervous as a butcher’s thumb.”

Arthur laughed and led the guy towards the backstage exit. “He’ll be fine as soon as the show starts. It’ll be quite something.”

"The hottest act around.
"

Arthur shook the man’s hand firmly. “Thanks again, for your understanding. I’ll tell
Ray
he has one security guy who really knows his stuff.”

Ponytail guy beamed and showed Arthur how to exit the stage from the rear stairs. Arthur hurried away through the brown slush. He wouldn’t stay for the show; he had another place to be.

*****

“Good God!” Alvira Goodman said to her new boyfriend. “Is that a
car
?"

Seventeen-year-old Teddy Portman looked to where she pointed. It
was
a car, at least part of one, about fifty feet from where they lay. Lights from the Festival perimeter bounced off the water and illuminated the rear-tail reflectors. The car was sinking in the lake with just the rear-end poking above the water. He sighed. So much for getting laid; the mood had been broken.

He looked at perky Alvira. She had already unbuttoned her floral blouse. He was halfway there, but now she was all excited for the wrong reasons. Coming down here by the lake, which was screened from the main Festival area, had seemed a good idea. Although in truth, the grass wasn’t as dry as he’d hoped. Alvira buttoned herself up and stood.

“Let’s check it out, Ted!”
She really is a child
, he thought.

Skirting the slippery bank in the half-light they came to within twenty feet of the light-colored car. It bobbed gently, popping air bubbles, which escaped from underneath it.

“It’s a Mercedes,” Ted observed. “An old one, but the paint looks good, at least in this light.”

Ted’s father was a panel beater at a major London auto repairer and he was still fond of announcing to anyone who cared to listen that : 'When it comes to cars, our Teddy knows the difference between shit and clay.’ Mixed metaphors aside, it was true. Ted knew this was no heap of junk abandoned through lack of interest. Ted had one fat, roll-your-own ‘cigarette’ left in his jacket and now seemed as good a time as any to light it.

“Do you have to?” Alvira said, frowning.

“I might as well; there’s no reason to save it!”

“You smoke that stuff too much,” she persisted. “You’ll damage your brain.”

He laughed. “Too late—I’m here with you aren’t I?”

She huffed and returned her attention to the car. “My eyes are stinging a bit,” she said, squeezing them shut. Teddy lit his bong and threw the still-lit match at the water.

She sniffed noisily again. “What is that horrible smell?” It’s not…
petrol
is it?”

The farm dam erupted in a fireball. Alvira’s lank, dark hair was engulfed in orange flame and Teddy’s eyebrows vanished. The heat induced an elemental roar and the nice, light blue paint on the Mercedes blistered.

Allie’s head whirled around at the sound of the explosion. "Jacinta!” she cried. None of the crowd surrounding them took any notice, their attention on the main stage. Jase Britt’s huge backing band had stormed into its massive intro with more sound than Pink Floyd ever managed. But Allie heard the roar and ‘saw’ the flames. She pointed back behind the striped refreshment tents.
“There, Michael, there!”

She was, at once, lifted into the air, straight up, no messing about. She saw the crowd below her look up and applaud, all thinking it was part of Jase Britt’s Midnight ‘Touched by the Angels Show'. They rose higher and saw the farm dam; it was maybe five hundred yards away. She felt forward movement, then a
rush
towards the fireball at breathtaking speed. Michael’s arms were around her waist and chest. She was secure. Within seconds, they swooped low over the farm road fringing the dam.

“Land, land!” she screamed at Michael. He dived to within a few feet of the ground, pulling up like an eagle alighting to a nest. He released his grip and she catapulted out of his arms into the water. The fire tore at her face. She fell forward, her face submerged for a moment. She felt fire scorch across her back. Rising to her feet, she felt a tornado-like wind from behind her. She stumbled forward with the force of it. She looked behind her. The sight left her stunned. Michael, bathed in orange reflected light, stood on the muddy bank bracing himself with his legs apart, rotating simply massive, pure-white wings that were perhaps thirty feet across. The gale he produced created waves on the water and pushed the flames up and away from the bubbling, now black, boot of the car. She could not tear her eyes from him. It was a vision from both Heaven and Hell.

“Do it!” he yelled.

Snapping out of it, she waded into the water. Steam rose from the car as water was hurled onto it. Bracing herself for the pain, she hooked her fingers under the boot lid, which was now just a foot above the water. The pain was brain-snapping—it felt as though the skin on her fingers was sizzling away down to the bone. An unearthly scream pierced the air and she pulled upwards. The boot lid tore away from its lock, smashing against the rear window housing.

A large, silver metal box lay half submerged in the boot compartment. She wrenched it out and, holding it above her head, spun and waded through the waist-deep water back towards the shore, the weight of the box no issue. She saw the two teenagers face down on the bank, just above the waterline. She flopped to her knees, now lowering the box into the mud. She tore at the lid. Inside, Jacinta Wilkinson lay scrunched up in a ball, her hair sodden, nostrils half submerged in brackish water.

“Jacinta!” Allie yelled at her as she lifted her face free of the filthy water in the box. There was no response. Allie looked at Michael with tear-filled eyes. “She’s…”

Jacinta coughed. Water spewed from her. Michael reached in and lifted her out of the box and laid her on the mud bank. She gurgled and vomited more water. She opened her eyes and tried to scream.

Allie looked around at Michael; his wings were still out.

“Put them away!” she yelled, pulling Jacinta to a sitting position and shielding her from Michael. She shook her gently. “Jacinta! You’re ok; it’s me, Allie!”

Jacinta opened her eyes wide. “Thank God! Allie… I knew you’d find me! I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I saw a magnificent angel! I tell you, it was—” She threw-up again. Allie hugged her tightly, despite her own seared hands. She looked around as a police car pulled up behind the trees.

“You’d better go, Michael. I’ll find you back at the Britt Show.”

He looked over his shoulder at the police car, then the stage in the distance. “Ok, but hurry, Allie; our boy’s about to appear.”

She nodded, still cradling Jacinta in her arms. “Michael,” she said, causing him to turn back to her, “thank you for this.” He ran through the long grass, disappearing behind the trees.

The sergeant and the PC Allie and Michael had met at the entrance gate scrambled down the grassy bank. The smoldering ruin that was the 1965 Mercedes saloon finally submerged, releasing clouds of steam to roll across the water and join the acrid smell of burned rubber. A long, black bag floated at the surface. The PC waded out and returned to the shore with it. He opened it and recoiled. The stench was breathtaking. Allie reached over and peered inside. It was as she thought—it was the bag she had seen on the Earl’s Court CCTV footage. In it, she knew, was poor Georgie Konstanzo’s decomposing tongue. The sergeant came to her; the PC raced to the two teenagers now stirring into life some distance away. Allie was relieved to see they were alive.

“An ambulance is making its way here from the other side of the grounds,” the Sergeant said. “It should be no more than three minutes.”

Jacinta looked up at him. “I’m fine, really.”

“No, you’re not,” Allie said firmly. “Take the ride in the ambulance. You’ve been through enough.”

Wilkinson smiled and agreed easily enough. Allie helped her to her feet. “Before I go, tell me what you can about this guy who abducted you. He’s Arthur Wendell, by the way.” She pointed at the car in the farm dam. “That’s his pride and joy under there.”

Jacinta looked back at the spot where the car had sunk.

“There are two of them, Allie.”

“Yes," Allie said, “I figured that. Did you get a look at the second guy—assuming it’s a guy?”

“Oh yes, it’s a guy, alright, but no, I’ve not laid eyes on him. His voice is familiar though and he sounds… organized. He doesn’t waste a word.”

“What type of voice?

“Deep-ish, at least deeper than Wendell’s.”

Allie fished out the photo of Wendell from her jacket and showed it to Jacinta, just to be sure.

“That’s him, I guess, but that could be his father. He’s younger than that. He has more hair and it’s darker.”

“A hairpiece, possibly?”

“Definitely not. He just looks younger than that photo. That’s all I can say, really.”

It confirmed what Sarah Blascombe from the Black Crow had said. It was Arthur and he was
changed.
The ambulance arrived. Despite her protestations, Jacinta was loaded into it. Allie waved to her and turned to the police officers.

“Quickly, can you get me back to the main stage area now, please?”

A minute later, Allie jumped out of the still-moving police car, vaulted the fence surrounding the main stage area and pushed her way to where she and Michael had stood fifteen minutes earlier. She found him farther towards the front. The crowd went wild as brilliant blue lighting burst from the stage. The music changed to an apocalyptic orchestral arrangement. A bunch of teenage girls nearby squealed when they saw the white-cloaked Britt descending onto the stage from high above. His arms extended to his flock, Britt gazed beatifically about, every inch the new-age messiah.

“Hope he’s had his needle full of Christianity,” Allie shouted to Michael.

“You don’t have to yell, remember.”

“Sorry,” she whispered. She looked up at Britt and it struck her that here was a hugely popular biblical figure and Wendell was here. Surely, he wasn’t going to go after Britt, his employer’s protégé?
Not now? Of course he was.

"Oh Jesus,” she said. “I’ve missed the obvious! I was focused on Jacinta!”

Michael turned to her, having read her distress. “And so you should have. But you might be right. If it makes you feel better, I didn’t think of it, either. I’m not picking up anything from a distance… must be the music.”

“It
interferes
with you?”

“Yes. I should have remembered.”