Judd Halpern and Gaia both nodded in turn.
The First Assistant Director, headset on, strode across the floor and called out, ‘Right, first positions everybody!’
The Camera Operator announced, ‘Rolling!’
The Clapper Boy jumped in front of the camera lens with the digital clapperboard. ‘Scene One-Three-Four, take three.’ There was a sharp crack, and he moved clear.
Jack Jordan called out, ‘Action!’
‘Gaia,’ she said, addressing first the king, then everyone at the table, before turning dramatically around and addressing Jack Jordan. ‘You never were a queen! You were always just a posh tramp! Just a poser! You made people believe you loved them just for your ego, didn’t you? Well, you’re not special, see, anyone can do what you do. Look at each one of you in this room!’
Faces froze. There were looks of astonishment, bewilderment. Jack Jordan took a step towards her. ‘Gaia, love, do you want to take a few minutes’ break?’
‘You see?’ she was screeching now. ‘You can’t tell! You really can’t tell! So you don’t need her any more, anyone would do!’
She turned and ran, stumbling, from the room.
Jordan turned in bewilderment to Larry Brooker, then to the Line Producer. ‘That – that’s not her,’ Barnaby Katz said. ‘That’s not Gaia!’
Brooker was shaking his head. ‘Has she goddamn flipped?’
‘That’s not her – that wasn’t her!’ Katz said again. ‘Shit, I’m telling you, that was not Gaia!’ He sprinted for the corridor and ran down it, into the hallway where there was the door to the public toilets. Brooker and Jack Jordan followed closely behind him.
‘Not Gaia?’ Brooker called out.
‘No!’
‘Then who the hell was it?’ Brooker said. ‘Is this her idea of a goddamn practical joke or something?’
‘Where’s she gone?’ Katz pushed open the door to the ladies and peered in, then the men’s room. Then he hurried across to the front entrance, and out to the two guards. ‘Did you guys see anyone come out? About a minute ago?’
Both men shook their heads. ‘No one’s been in or out in the past fifteen minutes, on your instructions, sir.’
‘You didn’t see Gaia – or someone resembling her?’
‘No one.’ They looked adamant.
He squeezed past them, followed by Brooker and Jordan. A few yards away, he saw Roy Grace standing beside a tall black man in a sharp suit. ‘Neither of you saw Gaia just now?’ he asked.
‘Gaia?’ Grace said. He did not like any of their strange, baffled expressions.
‘Or someone dressed as her?’ Katz asked.
‘She ran out of the Banqueting Room and goddamn vanished,’ Brooker said.
‘No one’s come out of this entrance since we’ve been here,’ Glenn Branson said. ‘Not for at least the last seven or eight minutes.’
Roy Grace stared at Brooker. ‘Would you mind telling me what’s going on? What do you mean, you can’t find Gaia?’
‘I would if I goddamn knew.’
‘Gaia came on set looking very strange, and acting completely out of character,’ Jack Jordan said. ‘Then she went totally off-script, spouting a whole load of nonsense, and ran out of the room.’
‘It wasn’t her,’ the Line Producer said. ‘I’m certain.’
‘Everything’s secure, the whole building,’ one of the security guards said. ‘All the keys have been removed from the locks – one of the measures we were advised to take by your colleagues. We did that as soon as the public had left. If she was in the building five minutes ago, she is still there, I can assure you.’
‘If you’re saying it wasn’t Gaia,’ Grace said to the Line Producer, ‘then where is Gaia?’
He shrugged. ‘I dunno. Maybe still in her trailer?’
Grace felt his earlier panic returning, gripping and twisting his insides. Still in her trailer?
Jordan and Katz went back into the building.
‘Want me to go and check?’ Katz said to Grace.
‘No, I’m going.’ He turned to Branson. ‘Glenn, get the building surrounded, put someone on every exit, no one leaves, okay? Not even the damned Curator until I say so. No one leaves the grounds, either – I want a total lock-down, and right now.’
‘Right, chief.’
Grace ran along the drive then across the lawns, then stopped by the two police officers standing guard near the front of Gaia’s motorhome. Two of Gaia’s own security guards were chatting a little further back, one smoking a cigarillo.
‘Has anyone gone in or come out of this since you’ve been here?’ he asked the two officers.
Both shook their heads. ‘Not since Gaia left to go on set, sir,’ said one.
Grace went up to the door and rapped hard on it. He waited a moment, then rapped again. Then he pulled it open, calling out a cautious ‘Hello? Hello?’
Silence greeted him.
He climbed up the steps and entered. And felt as if a fish hook had suddenly and viciously snagged him in the gullet.
For an instant the entire interior of the motorhome seemed to swivel on its axis, its walls shrinking in, then expanding again. His ears popped in terror at what he saw.
‘Oh, Jesus,’ he said. ‘Oh, sweet Jesus.’
117
Grace shouted at the two officers on guard outside the mobile home. ‘In here, quick!’
Then he dashed over to the three bodies on the floor, each bound head-to-foot, and gagged, with a mixture of twine and grey duct tape. The eyes of all three were moving, thank God, he thought. One he recognized as one of Gaia’s assistants. But neither of the other two was Gaia.
‘I’m a police officer, are you all right?’ he asked each of them, in turn, and got frightened but positive nods back. Carefully removing the tape from their mouths, he established these other two were the hairdresser and the make-up artist.
He turned to the two officers behind him. ‘Call for three ambulances, then try to free them, but be careful, that tape’s bloody painful.’ Then he went through to the rear, pushing through a curtained-off section, checking that a shower on one side and a toilet on the other were both empty, and then opened a door into what appeared to be the master bedroom, which smelled of Gaia’s perfume but was empty. A few clothes were strewn on the unused bed. He looked around carefully, pulling open cupboard doors, then went down on his knees and peered under the bed, just in case, but to no avail.
Gaia wasn’t in this motorhome.
He radioed Ops 1, and moments later was through once more to Inspector Andy Kille. He gave him a quick summary.
‘So we can’t be sure of the time she was abducted, can we, Roy?’ Kille asked.
‘Any time between 4 p.m. and two minutes ago.’
‘Over three hours. She could be anywhere. I don’t think there’s much value in road blocks – they could be too far away by now.’
‘I think the perp’s in the Pavilion with her,’ Grace said. ‘I agree, no point in road blocks. Is Hotel 900 or Oscar Sierra 99 available?’ Hotel 900 and Oscar Sierra 99 were the call signs of the two helicopters of the South East Air Support Unit.
‘Yes.’
‘Get one up and over the Pavilion, in case he’s up on the roof somewhere. There are lots of spaces up there. They can also see if he tries to leave.’
‘I’ll have it overhead within ten minutes, tops.’
Please God let her be alive, Grace prayed, silently. His mind was spinning, trying to get traction. He’d worked on child abductions and on kidnap cases, and was a qualified hostage negotiator. From his experience, he knew how badly the odds were stacked against them. In child abductions, forty-four per cent of the victims died within the first hour. Seventy-three per cent were dead within three hours. Just one per cent survived more than one day. And forty per cent were dead before they were even reported missing.
Those figures applied to children, but if the psychologist Dr Lester was right, inside Eric Whiteley’s warped mind, now that Gaia was no longer his lover, he might well be viewing her as a child who needed to be taught a lesson.