‘Tally tiring you out?’ Brooker said, unable to resist the barb.
Brody was on his fifth wife, a twenty-two-year-old with gargantuan breasts and a brain smaller than her nipples, a wannabe actress he’d met waiting tables in a café on Sunset.
‘Do you think she could play George’s real wife?’
‘George’s real wife was a dog.’
‘So?’
‘Get real, Max.’
‘Just a thought.’
‘Right now we need our male lead. We need goddamn King George.’
‘Yuh.’
‘Yuh. Are you with us? On planet earth?’
Brody nodded. ‘I’ve been giving it thought.’
‘And?’
Brody fell into one of his habitual silences. They infuriated Brooker because he could never tell whether his partner was thinking, or had momentarily, in his drug-addled brain, lost the plot. Without their male lead the whole shooting match was in danger of crashing and burning around their ears. At the period of their movie, George IV was in his late twenties, with Maria Fitzherbert six years older. So Gaia was perfect, if a little thin. To get a major male star in the right age range who either was English or who could pass as English, was proving even harder than they had anticipated, and they were running out of options. In desperation, they’d cast their net wide. They weren’t making a biopic, for God’s sake, this was a movie, fiction, George IV could be any damned age or nationality they chose. Besides, weren’t all those Brit royals foreign?
Tom Cruise wasn’t available. Colin Firth had passed, so had Johnny Depp, Bruce Willis and George Clooney. They’d even tried a different tack and put an offer out to Anthony Hopkins, which had come back with a curt no from his agent. That completed the most bankable names on their sales agent’s list. Now, focusing on Brits, they were looking at a wider roster of stars. Ewan McGregor did not want to work outside LA while his kids were growing up. Clive Owen was unavailable. So was Guy Pearce.
‘Gaia Lafayette is screwing some hunk. What about him?’ Brody said, suddenly.
‘Can he act?’
Brody shrugged. ‘How about Judd Halpern?’
‘He’s a drunk.’
‘So? Listen, we got all the presales we need on Gaia’s name – does it matter who plays fucking George?’
‘Actually, Maxim, it does. We need someone who can act.’
‘Halpern’s a great actor – we just have to keep him off the juice.’
Larry’s phone rang. He picked up the receiver. ‘I have Drayton Wheeler on the line for you,’ Courtney said. ‘It’s the fifth time he’s called.’
‘I’m in a meeting. Who is he?’
‘Says it’s very urgent, to do with The King’s Lover.’
He covered the mouthpiece and turned to his partner. ‘You know a Drayton Wheeler?’
Brody shook his head, preoccupied with removing the lid of his coffee bucket.
‘Put him through.’
Moments later a voice at the other end of the phone, the tone aggressive and nasty, said, ‘Mr Brooker, do you have a problem reading emails?’
‘Who am I talking to?’
‘The writer who sent you the idea for The King’s Lover.’
Larry Brooker frowned. ‘You did?’
‘Three years ago. I sent you a treatment. Told you it was one of the greatest untold love stories of the world. According to Variety and the Hollywood Reporter you’re going into production. With a script based on my treatment that you stole from me.’
‘I don’t think so, Mr Wheeler.’
‘This is my story.’
‘Look, have your agent call me.’
‘I don’t have a fucking agent. That’s why I’m calling you.’
This was all Larry needed today. Some jerk trying to cash in on the production. ‘In that case, have your lawyer call me.’
‘I’m calling you. I don’t need to pay a lawyer. Just listen to me good. You’ve stolen my story. I want paying.’
‘Sue me,’ Brooker said, and hung up.
10
Eric Whiteley was remembering every second, as clearly as if it were yesterday. It all came back every time he saw a news story about bullying, and his face felt flushed and hot now. Those ten boys sitting on the wall chanting, ‘Ubu! Ubu! Ubu!’ at him as he walked by. The same ten boys who had been on that low brick wall every evening since the start of his second term at the school he hated so much, some thirty-seven years ago. Most of them had been fourteen – a year older than him – but a couple, the smuggest of them all, were his age and in his class.
He remembered the paper pellet striking him on the back of his head, which he had ignored, and just carried on walking towards his boarding house, clutching his set of maths and chemistry books which he’d needed for his afternoon classes. Then a pebble hitting him really hard, stinging his ear, and one of them, Spedding Junior it had sounded like, shouting out, ‘Great shot!’ It was followed by laughter.
He had walked on, the pain agonizing, but determined to get out of their sight before he rubbed his ear. It felt like it was cut open.
‘Ubu’s stoned!’ one of them shouted and there had been more laughter.
‘Hey Ubu, you shouldn’t walk around stoned, you could get into all kinds of trouble!’ another of them had shouted and there were even more guffaws and jeers.
He could still remember biting his lip against the pain, fighting off tears as he carried on along the tree-lined avenue, warm blood trickling down the side of his neck. The main school grounds, with the classrooms and playing fields, were behind him. Along this road were ugly boarding houses, big Victorian mansion blocks, accommodating sixty to ninety pupils, some in dormitories, some in single or shared rooms. His own house, called Hartwellian, was just ahead.
He could remember turning into it, walking past the grand front entrance, which was the housemaster’s, and around the side. Fortunately there had been no boys hanging around to see him crying. Not that he really cared. He knew he was no good, useless, and that people didn’t like him.
Ubu.
Ugly. Boring. Useless.
The other kids had spent all of the previous term – his first in this school – telling him that. John Monroe, who had the desk right behind him in Geography, had kept prodding him with a ruler. ‘You know your problem, Whiteley?’ he said, each word emphasized with a prod.
Whenever he’d turned around he got the same answer. ‘You’re so fucking ugly and you’ve no personality. No girl’s ever going to fancy you. None, ever, you realize?’ He remembered how Monroe’s horsey face would then break out into a snide grin.
After a while, he had stopped turning round. But Monroe used to keep on prodding, until Mr Leask, the teacher, spotted him and told him to stop. Five minutes later, when the teacher began drawing a diagram of soil substrates on the blackboard, Monroe’s prodding started again.
11
Detective Sergeant Glenn Branson was struggling to insert his thirty-three-year-old, six-foot-two, nightclub bouncer’s frame into a white protective paper suit. ‘What is it with you and weekends, boss?’ he said. ‘How come you always manage to screw them up for both of us?’
Roy Grace, perched alongside him on the rear tailgate of the unmarked silver Ford Focus estate car, was struggling equally hard to get his protective suit up over his clothes. He turned to his protégé who was dressed in a shiny brown jacket, even shinier white shirt, a dazzling tie and tassled brown loafers. ‘Lucky you never chose farming as a career option, Glenn,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t have been your style.’
‘Yeah, well, my ancestors were cotton pickers,’ Branson retorted with a broad grin.
Glenn was right about the weekend, Roy thought ruefully. It seemed that every damned murder he had to deal with came in just when he had his weekend all sorted out.