The Ghost in the Electric Blue Suit (17 page)

Colin might have seen Luca chatting with Pinky, in which case he would have realized that Luca was not his man. If he hadn’t seen them I feared that he would attack the Italian tenor on leaving the theater. Colin was a violent man. Terri had told me of previous convictions for grievous bodily harm and a whole number of assaults for which he’d never been brought to book. I lay in my cowardly hiding place praying that at least he’d spotted Luca outside the theater before going inside.

I stayed there for a long time. Not daring to move. It occurred to me that he was waiting; that he had an almost supernatural instinct for knowing that I was still in the vicinity; that he could smell my fear. Eventually I started to hear more and more people draw up outside the theater doors below. I was already late for my next duty. My heart had stopped hammering and I came to a decision that I should go.

It was then that I heard tiny steps making their way up onto the roof. They were very slow steps, as if made by someone who was trying not to be heard. I had to strain my ears to hear them over the hum of the ventilator. But my hearing was so focused that the steps were unmistakable. I had to still myself all over again.

The steps reached the rooftop. And though they were still small steps, they were easier to distinguish now because of the gravel on the roof that crunched very lightly underfoot. I held my breath. The steps seemed to approach me and then moved away again, toward the edge from where I’d almost
fallen. I tried calibrating the steps. Was it a tiny step, suggesting that Terri had come up onto the roof to look for me? Or did the step belong to Colin, rolling his foot like a hunter in the woods?

I lay there in agony as the steps moved across the dusty, graveled surface of the roof. I considered raising my head to see if I could look around or across or through the humming ventilator. But I was afraid any movement might alert the hunter. Then a ladybug flew directly into my mouth, into my throat. I reflex gagged and I managed to roll the bug out of my mouth on a tiny wave of saliva.

The footsteps had stopped. I felt certain that I had alerted the hunter to my presence. Surely enough, the footsteps started to approach me. I quickly decided that if discovered I would spring to attack. It seemed better than lying down to be beaten. I coiled myself in readiness.

The footsteps stopped close to the ventilator. I felt a scratching on the side of the humming metal. Then a slight tapping, like fingers drumming. Slowly a head appeared from around the side of the ventilator.

I sprang to my feet. But it wasn’t Colin at all. Neither was it Terri. It was a child, a small boy. I had startled him and he put his hands to his face to protect himself though he made no noise. For a moment I thought it was one of the holidaymakers’ children who had wandered up onto the roof.

When he took his hands from his face, I saw that his eyes were clear glass. I saw through the glass. When I say clear glass, I mean I could see through them to the cloudless blue sky behind him.

Inconceivable. But that’s what I saw.

Of the boy’s father this time there was no sign. Though his face was distorted with fear, the boy was no longer cast in gray shadow. I recognized him easily. I knew perfectly well who he was. And as soon as I recognized who he was, he rose slowly into the air, like a helium-filled balloon. He went higher and higher into the warm summer air, rising steadily into the blue. At last he waved at me, a tiny gesture, like the time he had waved at me on the beach during the sand-castle competition from which he was excluded. The pinkness of his sunburned face was the last thing I remember as he rose even higher in the early-evening sky, until at last he was the tiniest dot in the blue, and then he was gone.

I don’t know how long I stayed there. Ultimately I had to go and face whatever was down there waiting for me. I decided that if Colin attacked me I would do my best to defend myself and hope that there would be other people around to help me. I got up from my hiding place, dusted myself off, and cautiously made my way down the steps from the roof.

12

BLACKER THAN NIGHT WERE THE EYES OF FELINA

I stepped lightly as I made my way down from the roof but my head was broiling. I was short of breath. My anxiety had given everything an intensity of color and sound and my senses seemed super-sharp. I made certain that no one was at the bottom of the stairs or hanging around by the back door before I followed the wall of the rear of the building. Of course I was expecting Colin to call me back at any moment. I kept walking and turned up the side of the building, eventually breaking free from the shadows into the sizable crowd moving into the theater. My heart hammered, though there was comfort to be had in the crowd.

The ladybugs were even now dotting the early-evening air but their numbers had dropped massively. The task force was still sweeping the carcasses into piles, and some of the workers had incinerators with fuel tanks strapped to their backs. The insect piles crackled and sent up twists of black smoke as they burned.

A friendly holidaymaker walking to the theater with his wife and three children stopped on the way. He looked concerned. “You all right?” he said to me.

“Touch of migraine,” I said.

“Coffee,” he said. “My mother used to swear by coffee. She got migraine. She always said—”

“I’ll try it,” I said, skipping away and forcing a laugh at the same time. I hurried into the theater. I was late for my evening duty. My hands were quivering. I took a deep breath and knew I was going to have to quiet myself.

That evening we had the talent show. The holidaymakers were the stars: They made up the evening program with singing and dancing routines and the winner walked away with a decent cash prize. Tony and all of the revue performers had an evening off while the talent show was run by my fellow Greencoats. Sammy with the wig acted as the show’s compère. I was supposed to be there ahead of the others, taking names and forming a schedule.

The talent show always seemed to feature a tiny five-year-old performing some cute but charmingly inept dance routine that they would forget halfway through. The idea of one of them being onstage while Colin beat the crap out of me in the auditorium had me sick with anxiety. But the talent show was scheduled to start within five minutes.

I made my way to the front of house where Nikki presided behind a desk, doing my job of listing a schedule from the queue of would-be performers. Mike, the organist with the Beatle haircut I’d met on my first day, was sitting next to her making his own running order.

Nikki was cross. “Where have you been?” She jabbed a pen in the direction of the folk in the queue. “Find out what music they want Mike to play for them.”

I was so relieved to see Nikki. I knew that I should tell her what was happening. But right then I did exactly as I was told. I shuffled down the line asking what compositions were wanted. Most of them didn’t know. One man was doing a song from the musical
Fiddler on the Roof
but he couldn’t remember what the song was called. When it was hummed for me I recognized “If I Were a Rich Man.” Another man said he wanted to do an American country song called “Rosa’s Cantina,” but when he sang a few bars for me I knew he meant “El Paso.”

I didn’t even look up for Colin. I was running on autopilot. I could see myself from an astral point twelve feet above my head, and I could hear my own muffled voice from a short distance saying, “That’ll be fine, just tell Mike you want ‘El Paso’ and Nikki over there will give you a number, okay, good, thank you, who’s next then?” A very large elderly lady said she was going to perform “The Laughing Policeman.” Seven-year-old twins wanted to do “On the Good Ship Lollipop.”

I somehow got to the end of the line but then I came unglued.

“You look really pale,” Nikki said.

I hurried to the toilets and managed to reach the porcelain in time. I rinsed my mouth from the taps and threw up again. Sweat rolled from my face in great beads and yet in the mirror my face was white like the moon. I splashed water
on my cheeks and neck and rinsed my mouth a second time. I looked in the mirror and gave myself a stiff talking-to, cut short when someone else came in.

It was another friendly holidaymaker, not one I knew. A burly man with a red face and ringlets of blond hair. “So this is where all the big knobs hang out then, is it, heh heh heh.” It was a mirthless laugh. A spoken laugh.
Heh-heh-heh
. That was what my life as a Greencoat had become. One weak joke after another. One forced smile beyond that. I grinned back at him, but I knew it was the smile of a skull. I felt too weak to speak.

By the time I returned to the front of house everyone had gone into the theater. I heard the muffled report of Sammy, in his bad toupee, patting the stage microphone, not to see if it was working but to advertise his authority over the event.

“Grab one of the punters,” Nikki said, “ ’coz we need a third judge.”

I patrolled the front row looking for a likely suspect to agree to do it and finally found a heavily made-up lady who was delighted to be steered into the limelight. The houselights came down, the stage lights went up, and at last the show got under way. Sammy made a lot of himself. He told a couple of weak jokes that just made me want to shit. With his spittle darting in the limelight he introduced the first turn, which was “If I Were a Rich Man.”

At this point I was visited by a curious calm. I wish I could say that it was the performance of the singer, but it wasn’t. In fact the singer was hopeless. The pop-eyed, rotund figure onstage swaying slightly in a minor concession to the theatrical demands of the song did, for just a moment, make
everything seem all right. He was up there faking it. He must have known he was a poor singer. The audience certainly knew he was a poor singer but they were all generously prepared to forgive. The only thing they didn’t know was the drama that had taken place backstage and up on the roof a short while ago. I knew those details only too well, but I could almost fool myself into believing it had all been a piece of theater. Inept and ill-managed, yes, but still theater. It was all right. It was all going to be all right. Colin and Terri would have a furious row, but strong girl that she was, she wouldn’t identify me.

It was all going to be all right.

I don’t know where my thoughts had been but when I looked up onstage the next turn was already in progress. It was seven-year-old twins shouting out “On the Good Ship Lollipop” and Mike on the organ was whipping up a nice noisy storm in support. Mike went early for the big finish on the organ and the audience showed wild appreciation for the children. Sammy took the microphone and advised the audience that they should keep an eye on those two young ladies because they were destined to go far.

My mind wandered again because the next time I blinked up at the stage an elderly gentleman was playing
Ave Maria
on the musical saw, eerie and unaccompanied. I knew I was losing small sequences of time. My mind was like a bingo card, with only certain numbers belonging to the full set. I would come back to consciousness to find another act in progress. After a few bars of ethereal saw music, Mike started to come in with his organ.

After the musical saw came the gentleman who wanted
to sing “El Paso.” He’d chosen to appear onstage wearing a massive straw Mexican sombrero. The song was a ridiculous, warbling gunfighter ballad, but at least the singer had a reasonable voice. Something about a challenge for the love of a maiden and a handsome young stranger lying dead on the floor.

Life, in a sombrero, was mocking me. The elderly woman I’d pulled from the audience to be a judge put her hand on my knee. “Looks like we have a winner,” she said.

AFTER THE TALENT SHOW was over I had to work the bingo in the Slowboat. Nobby did the calling and all I had to do was check the winning tickets. I scanned the rows of tables of people with their heads down, ostensibly scrutinizing the players but really I was hunting for any sign of Colin or Terri. There were two doors into the Slowboat and I planted my back against the wall so that I could survey both entrances.

Up there on the microphone Nobby was an enthusiastic proponent of bingo lingo. “Five and nine the Brighton line.” I had no idea what some of these things even meant, though I started to ascribe my own meanings. Nobby’s microphone had a bad echo to it and everything he said sounded sinister, like he was in on a joke. “Was she worth it, fifty-six.” My paranoia made me “see” Colin come into the Slowboat a couple of times, but it was just someone with the same stocky frame.

I didn’t know what he would do to me. I didn’t know whether his style was to make a public fist-and-toecaps full-frontal
assault, or whether he was more likely to wait for me in the dark, with a blade at the ready. Either way I was no street fighter and I hadn’t much idea of how I might defend myself if and when the attack came. My mouth was dry, I was in an advanced state of fear, but I was super-alert.

I got through the bingo session and was supposed to do the lights again at the Golden Wheel. I cried off sick. George agreed to cover the lights. I couldn’t face walking back from the Golden Wheel through the dark to the staff quarters. Instead I stayed with the crowds and, checking over my shoulder every yard, made my way back to my room. Even before I got there I had an idea that maybe Colin had already let himself in. I unlocked the door and checked through the crack at the hinge that Colin wasn’t standing behind it with his back to the wall. I stooped down to make sure he wasn’t under the bed. I gave the flimsy wardrobe a push to test its weight before opening it. Then I closed my door, turned the key in the lock, checked the window was bolted, and drew the curtains.