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  “I’m interested. If I put a movie on, could you make it with me?”

  “I could make it with you regardless.”

  She gives me a long look from behind the glasses.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says.

  “Honestly—”

  “Look,” she says, “you don’t have to prove anything to me. I understand.”

  “It’s not that. Since my wife—since my wife left, I haven’t made love. Not with anyone else. I haven’t been interested.”

  “Oh, it’s the old mental impotence bit, is it? Erection rejection.”

  “It’s not that. It’s—”

  “I’ve told you. I don’t mind. Things like that I understand.”

  It’s no use arguing with her so I pour myself another drink. She slips out of her seat and on to the floor and picks a few boxes out of the stack in the cardboard box, sifts through a few of them, reading the titles, looking at those with pictures on the boxes.

  She looks up at me.

  “Do you want to put one on and see what happens?” she says.

  She’s so keen to keep me sweet for whatever she wants she’s even prepared to go along with what she thinks I want her to go along with.

  Which is the greatest irony of all. Because, since Jean, I’ve never had the faintest desire for another woman. And here’s Lesley, thinking that I’m suffering from impotence, offering to run one of the Blues I brought here for mine and Jean’s entertainment. And after my previous behaviour, I suppose I ought to go along with her.

  I can always plead impotence. And the way I feel at the moment, maybe it won’t be merely a plea.

  “Yes, all right,” I say.

  “Any particular one?” she says.

  “It’s up to you.”

  She looks through the boxes.

  “I thought you might have a particular favourite,” she says, looking up briefly, exhibiting her faint amusement again.

  I do, I think. And, Christ, how I need her.

  I watch her as she keeps sifting through.

  I drain my glass and go back to the drinks.

  All right, I think. Let’s play Russian Roulette. If she comes up with it, I’ll run it.

  I need her.

  How it would affect me, I don’t know.

  In any case, it would be a forty-to-one chance, if she came up with Jean.

  I fill my glass and drink, fill it again, with my back to her.

  “All right,” she says. “Let’s go blind. How about this one?”

  THE SMOKE

  JAMES LOOKED SURPRISED WHEN he let me into the Penthouse. I wasn’t surprised he looked surprised.

  He got me a drink and himself a drink and sat me down and sat down opposite me.

  I told him what had happened.

  “Jesus Christ,” he said, when I’d finished. “Jesus Christ.”

  He got up and took our glasses over to the drinks. While he was pouring, he said, “What a mess. What a ber-loody mess.”

  He brought the drinks back and handed me mine and sat down opposite me again. He drank some of his and said, “An way, at least they’re all cleared out. There’ll be no more trouble from that quarter.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Look,” James said, “about Jean. It doesn’t necessarily follow that—”

  “It follows, James,” I said. “It follows.”

  “Not necessarily. Look—”

  I held up the spool of film.

  “Why do you think they went to all this trouble?” I said. “Just what do you think is on here?”

  “Well, it could be—”

  “It could be. It could be anything. But it isn’t. They wanted me to see this. They didn’t expect the girl would panic. They shot her, to be sure I’d see it.”

  James concentrated on his brandy, frowning.

  I stood up.

  “Wait here, will you,” I said. “I’m going to run this.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  He began to get up.

  “No,” I said, stopping him. “Wait for me in here.”

  I went through into the projection booth and loaded the spool on to the eight-mill projector and when I’d done that I went and sat in the theatre, in the chair with the control panel on the arm.

  The lights dimmed, and up on the screen grainy black-and-white leader began to scratch its way across the screen.

  THE SEA

  I TURN ROUND TO face her.

  Still kneeling on the floor, she’s holding out one of the boxes in my direction.

  It’s the one with the film of Jean inside.

  I don’t move.

  “What’s wrong?” Lesley says. “You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.” If she only knew.

  I still don’t move. I’d gambled. While I’d been getting my drinks I’d said to myself, if she comes up with Jean, I’d run it. I’d made a bet against myself. A forty-to-one shot. And now it had come up.

  I’d promised myself.

  I take the plain box from her and look at the title. It’s one of the early ones. Jean and two other girls. The first one she ever did, just with other women.

  “All right,” I say. “Why not?”

  I walk over to the projector and slip the spool out of the box and fit it on to the projector’s arm.

  How am I going to feel?

  I thread the leader on to the sprockets and press the automatic and the film glides through and takes up on the pick-up spool. White light blurts out onto the screen.

  I switch off the projector. Lesley looks round, mild surprise.

  “The lights,” I tell her, going over to the panel. “There’s no definition with the lights on.”

  I switch off the lights. The room is illuminated only by the flames flickering in the fireplace.

  “Cosy,” she says.

  I go back over to the projector. What she doesn’t know is that I’ve turned the lights out to veil any reaction I might not want her to see.

  I switch on the projector and the white light glares out again, briefly, then is diluted by the grey monochrome of the exposed film.

  The moment that happens, I close my eyes. For a while, I can’t look. I’m like a man with a ghost at the foot of his bed, hiding under the blankets.

  You’ve got to, I tell myself. It had to happen. You have to look. You’ve got to face it, some time.

  I force open my eyes.

  I stare at the screen. I don’t understand.

  I squeeze my eyes tight shut, to help me understand.

  I open them again.

  It’s not imagination.

  I haven’t gone mad.

  It isn’t one of the early films.

  It’s a print of the final film that was made of Jean.

  But not made by me.

  And I’d destroyed the only print I’d had of that, the final one.

  THE SMOKE

  THE FIRST IMAGE WAS a close-up of Jean.

  She was looking straight into the camera, frightened.

  Her mouth was taped shut.

  The camera zoomed back, shakily, to reveal Jean in the centre of a grubby basement. There was a chair and a table. On the table there was some rubber tubing and an axe and some other things.

  Jean was sitting on the chair, naked, except for her jewellery. Her hands were behind her back.

  Three men stood around the chair, hooded, but I could tell who they were. Jimmy must have been the one operating the camera.

  One of the men, Charlie, reached out and grabbed Jean by the hair and struck her. Then all three of them lifted her out of the chair and pushed her over to and on to the table.

  And then they started.

  I watched, because there was nothing else I could do.

  For almost twenty minutes I watched.

  Watched what they did to her.

  Then, twenty minutes later, the camera angle changed. Changed to a close-up of her feet, looking down, as they protruded over the edge of the table.

>   Her feet were very still.

  The camera panned up her legs, up her bruised and lacerated torso, arrived at her neck, hesitated slightly, then completed its movement, to reveal that now her neck didn’t end with her head, just a bleeding stump that gushed black blood on to the table top.

  CUT.

  To the chair, a long shot.

  The Shepherdsons, naked except for their hoods, stood round the chair, looking at the camera. On the chair seat, at a slight angle, was Jean’s head.

  THE SEA

  I SCREAM.

  At the point where the Shepherdsons manhandle Jean on to the table, I scream.

  And, screaming, I realise the only way the film could have got to me, into this house.

  But at my screaming, she is on her feet, already darting away into the darkness, and my dive at her through the projector’s monochrome channel is already futile. I hit the piano stool and draw myself to my feet via the keyboard, giving silent-movie accompaniment to the events up on the screen. My hand finds the gun on the piano top and as Lesley flies down the steps into the room’s lower depths I fire three shots after her, but in the room’s semi-darkness she still appears to be moving towards the door. The dark rectangle at the room’s lower corner opens and I fire three more shots.

  The rectangle slams to and I run down the steps and pull open the door just as at the other end of the hall the front door crashes closed behind her. I fire two more shots at her rippling shape beyond the frosted panels, shattering one of them completely, and then she is gone.

  I stand there for a moment.

  Then I scream again. While I’m standing there, up on the screen, in the lounge, they’re doing those things to Jean.

  I’ve got to stop them.

  Still screaming, I rush back into the lounge and up the steps, firing at the screen as I go. One of the Shepherdsons is beating her with a hose while the other two hold her down.

  I reach the screen and tear it from the ceiling but the images keep on screaming from the projector, flowing all over me, sticking to me, like old blood.

  I aim at the white-heat centre of the projector’s lens and fire.

  Everything stops. Only the echoes of the gunshots remain.

  I sink to my knees and crawl to where the telephone is and pick up the receiver and dial and listen to the ringing tone.

  You’ve got to be there. You have to be.

  I clutch the receiver against my face.

  You’ve got to be there. Answer.

  At the other end of the line the receiver is lifted.

  “Hello,” James says, “James Morville speaking.”

  “James,” I say. “You’ve got to help me.”

  James’s tone changes.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Listen,” I say, “they’ve got to me. They’ve—”

  “Who? Who’s got to you? Who could?”

  “I don’t know. But she—”

  “She?”

  “Lesley. She got the film to me. Into the house.”

  “Lesley? What film?”

  “I don’t know what’s happening. Now I’ve seen the film, they’re probably coming for me. Outside. I need help. James, you have to send help. I need help quickly.”

  There is silence at the other end of the line.

  “James?”

  I hear James breathing in, then out, like a man who’s just surfaced for air.

  “James?”

  Again, his tone has altered slightly.

  “Yes, I’m here,” he says.

  “You’ve got to help me.”

  “I will. I’ll get some people together. In fact I’ll come myself, if you want.”

  “Anything. Just hurry.”

  “Yes,” he says. “Now. What’s the address?”

  I tell him the address and give him precise instructions how to find it when he gets close.

  “Good,” he says. “Good. I’ve got all that. Now, how long do you think it’ll take us?”

  “Four hours. No more than four hours.”

  “I don’t know how long it’ll take to collect people,” James says. “People we can trust.”

  “Just hurry.”

  “I will. You were saying, about outside … there may be someone waiting.”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what’s happening. Just get here. I can keep anybody away till then.”

  “I’m leaving right away. We’ll be careful. And George?”

  “What?”

  “You be careful, too,” James says, and hangs up.

  I put the phone down.

  I stand up and look at the shattered projector.

  Then I go over to it and take off both spools and kneel down in front of the fire and unwind the celluloid and tear it into short strips and throw the strips into the flames, piece by piece.

  After I’ve done that I reload my Browning and go down into the basement and wait.

  THE SMOKE

  AFTER A WHILE, I was conscious of a tapping noise. It stopped. Then it started again. Stopped.

  Then the door to the theatre opened.

  “George?” James said.

  I vomited, just once.

  I sat there, perfectly still, and one single jet of vomit streaked towards the screen, descended on the seats in front of me.

  James didn’t move.

  After I’d done that, I stood up and walked towards the door, where James was standing.

  “James,” I said. “I wonder if you’d do me a favour? I wonder if you’d take that reel off the projector for me?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t run it. Just bring it to me in the lounge.”

  I walked past him and through into the lounge and walked round the sunken area, to where the open freestanding brick fireplace was, square beneath its hood.

  I put a match to the permanently set fire. By the time James came through it was blazing away quite nicely.

  James gave me the reel, and I began to unwind the film, tearing off little bits of celluloid at a time, dropping them piece by piece into the flames.

  “Jean’s dead,” I said.

  For a while James was silent. Eventually, when he spoke, he said, “What will you do?”

  I threw same more celluloid into the flames. Black smoke rushed up into the hood.

  “You ought to go away for a while,” James said. “I can take care of things. For a while you can be missing, presumed dead. I’ll be able to square things in the long run. There’s no evidence against you. Farlow won’t feel like providing any, not with his support no longer around.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “When everything’s cooled down, they’ll probably put you up for the Queen’s medal when you come back. I mean, the entire Shepherdson family.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “And don’t you worry about me. I’ll keep everything ticking over. Everything’s very straightforward. I’ll even be able to run rings round Parsons at the same time. But for the moment, I think it’s safer, just in case Parsons does anything rash and out of character, like trying to fit you up.”

  I tore off another strip of celluloid.

  “And it’s better, as far as the Shepherdsons are concerned. There may be some young heroes on their books that would like to make a name by topping you.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Go to the place in Wales. You’ll be safe there. You’ll be able to keep in touch. I’ll be able to come and see you and tell you what’s happening.”

  “Yes.”

  “Nobody else knows about Wales?” he said. “Besides me?”

  I shook my head.

  “Good,” he said. “You’ll go to Wales, then?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ll go to Wales.”

  But I didn’t.

  I went to Mablethorpe instead.

  Where nobody, not even James, knew I had a place.

  THE SEA

  IT’S COLD IN THE basement.

  I look at my watch. In an ho
ur it’ll be dawn.

  What’s keeping them?

  Where are they?

  I take the top off a fresh bottle of scotch and tumble some of it into the glass and drink.

  I’m sitting at the far end of the basement, my back to the wall. Ahead of me, at the other end, are the steps, in full view.

  Anybody wants to come and get me, they have to come down those steps.

  There’s been no activity from outside. Nobody trying to get in. I can’t understand that. But at least when James gets here, he’ll be able to talk to me, make suggestions, help in that way.

  Where are they?

  What’s keeping them?

  I take another drink, stop in mid-gulp.

  Is that the sound of a car? Or is it my imagination?

  I get up and go to the foot of the steps and listen.

  It’s the sound of a car. Getting nearer, slowing, as it bumps along the track between the trees.

  I lift the trapdoor slightly.

  Yes. It’s the sound of a car.

  The sound stops.

  I push back the trapdoor and climb up into the garage.

  Silence.

  Then, beyond the garage door, the sound of a car door opening.

  Nothing.

  Then footsteps.

  Cautiously walking to the flight of steps that leads to the bungalow’s front door.

  I go over to the switches and flip one. Whoever is outside will now be illuminated by the outside light.

  “Christ,” from outside, as whoever it is dashes back to the cover of the car.

  Silence again.

  I wait, by the switches.

  Eventually a voice says, “George?”

  I close my eyes and lean against the wall.

  “George?” James says again.

  I flip the switch that elevates the garage door and, still holding the Browning, I walk forward to the edge of the garage light.

  A car door opens and James gets out.

  “George,” he says. “Are you all right?”

  I just stand there, glad.

  The faint dawn light begins to define and separate the trees behind James and the car.

  Two more cars’ doors open and two more figures get out and begin to walk towards the starker light of the garage. They’re both carrying shotguns.

  Well prepared.

  Then I squint into the darkness as the taller of the two figures comes closer to the light.