‘What about you? Still mourning for that jacket?’
‘Claimed that on my insurance, son. I’ve been too busy looking for that bastard Donn to think of anything else.’
‘So it wasn’t work-related?’
‘Nah, definitely not. My boss is still keeping the investigation in-house though, and he’s letting me handle it.’
‘So how are you getting on?’
‘That’s just it. I’m not. The fucker seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. I’ve been checking around the city nightclubs, and I’ve found a couple where he’s known. I’ve been leaning on known drug-dealers, since we think he was involved in that racket with Susie’s wayward cousin. Some of them admitted having heard of him: I even picked up a whisper that he might have been the trigger man in a heroin execution in Paisley three years ago.
‘But nowhere, Oz, have I picked up the faintest sniff of him. If anyone knows where he is now, they’re too scared to say. Even as I speak, my nose is right up against a brick wall, and our SAS guy is still on the payroll, on a twenty-four hour basis, now, just to be on the safe side. I wondered. . and it hurts my pride to say this. . whether you’ve got any ideas?’
I’m sure he must have been almost able to hear my smile on the other end of the line. But I left it at that: this was too serious for triumph. I thought about his question for a few seconds. ‘Only one,’ I told him, eventually. ‘Given the link that you pointed out between our visit to his mother and the explosion, can you put a tap on her phone? The boy’s bound to phone his Mammy sooner or later. Maybe you should bug Uncle Joe too, and all the people who know Stephen.’
Dylan whistled. ‘Jeez, Oz,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. Wiretaps are supposed to be for exceptional circumstances. If we ask for too many, eyebrows are raised.’
I could not help but laugh. ‘What happened to Dylan the Decisive, the bloke we saw last Monday? Some guy’s trying to kill your girlfriend, Michael. Isn’t that exceptional? I suppose you could always take Mrs Donn down to headquarters and give her the rubber hose treatment, but I can’t help feeling that a phone-tap would be more discreet. Don’t bother with the rest if you’re worried; concentrate on her.’
As he might have sensed my smile, so I saw him frown. ‘I suppose, since we don’t have anything else. . I’ll ask my boss.’
‘You do that. Keep me in touch too. I’ve got an interest in this after all; the bugger melted a big chunk of my car park.’
Chapter 16
Although most of my scenes were to be shot in the mansion on Deeside, the first of them were set in the rented office space in Aberdeen. Miles took me straight there next morning, to pitch me head-first into the movie business, as he put it.
He, Dawn and I left Auchterarder at sparrow-fart. I was excited, yet sad, too, as I kissed Prim goodbye, and headed for the bedroom door, with one last look over my shoulder at her sleepy, smiley face on the pillow. It felt strange to be going somewhere on my own. For more than a year she had travelled virtually everywhere with me, to London for my Sly Burr gigs, and all over Europe with the GWA shows; but on this occasion she had decided that Lulu was just a bit short of experience to handle the business on her own, and that she had to go back to Glasgow to give the girl her support.
We travelled to Aberdeen in a limo, complete with chauffeur. I hadn’t got used to the business of being rich; it struck me as extravagant. However Miles assured me that the last thing an actor needed was the hassle of driving when he should be getting his mind in tune for the day’s work. In his case, this was direction. He had no scenes himself; all the scheduled action was dialogue between me and the eminent Scots actor who was cast as my father.
‘We shoot in the afternoon, Oz,’ Dawn explained as the long black car pulled out of her home town. ‘We’ll spend the morning rehearsing.’
‘That’s right,’ said her husband. ‘You’ll be on camera, just to let you get used to your surroundings, but they won’t be rolling. Film stock is expensive, mate.’
‘And you don’t want to waste any on me fucking up?’
Miles chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put it as bluntly as that. But yes, that’s what I mean.’
I frowned. ‘You two are really taking a chance on me, aren’t you.’
‘We don’t think so. You don’t have any formal training, that’s true, but neither had I when I started out. Christ, I got my first part in Australia by answering a newspaper ad, just after I came out of the forces. What you do have is a great voice, and your experience in commercial work means that the narration side of the project will be easy for you. On top of that you’re great performing live on camera in your GWA shows; pro wrestling is a form of acting after all.
‘The only thing we don’t know is how quickly you’ll take to dialogue. I don’t have any worries there though. The people you’re working with, Dawn and me, and Scott Steele, the guy you’re with today, we’re all top-notchers; you’ll be able to feed off us.’
‘I’ve done dialogue, of a sort,’ I pointed out. ‘Live on air too. In-ring interviews with performers are a big part of my GWA work, and they’re all rehearsed.’
Miles’ eyes widened. ‘Hey, I never thought of that, but you’re right. If you can work with those stiffs, you’ll have no trouble acting with Scott and the rest of us.’
I was big-headed enough to agree with him, yet I was still a jangling bag of nerves when I walked on stage, in make-up and wearing a new Armani suit fresh from the costume department. Our studio for the day was a whole floor of the office block. It had been stripped out and a set built in one corner. In another, makeshift dressing rooms had been built. There were no stars on the doors; Miles is an ordinary guy at heart and doesn’t allow any airs and graces on his sets. There was something odd about the windows, I noticed. I asked the assistant camera operator what it was; she told me that nonreflective film had been applied to both sides of the glass.
Working on camera in television and in movies are wholly separate experiences; for example, movie lights are much hotter, the cameras are bigger and much more threatening, and there are people crowding around the performers. The biggest difference, though, for me was this: performing on television in the way that I had done up to then, most of the time, I had to look directly into the camera, while, in the movies, that is absolutely the last thing you must do.
This more than anything else was what Miles drummed into me during rehearsals. He was right about Scott Steele, too; my co-star was a real professional. He was stocky, silver-haired and a bit wrinkled under the slap, but there was an assurance about him which put me at my ease right away. There was nothing complex about my lines to begin with, but the way Scott delivered his seemed to draw them smoothly from me. His relaxation relaxed me, and when the time came in the afternoon for the cameras to roll, I had almost forgotten that they were there.
Miles was a pro too, his direction was light and easy. Basically, he left Scott Steele to do his own thing and ease me through our scenes. Still, when it came time to wrap up for the day, I felt like a wet rag. ‘How did I do?’ I asked Miles, as the lighting people began to break down their gear.
‘You want to see? We monitor everything on video, so have a look.’ There was a monitor in the furthest corner of our studio. He plugged a lead from the video camera into the scart socket and switched it on. I couldn’t really believe it as I watched my first movie scene, for the first time. ‘Hey,’ I gasped, ‘it’s okay, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah,’ said Miles, in his familiar, balloon-pricking drawl. ‘Scott’s terrific, ain’t he.’
‘You’re not too bad either,’ Dawn chuckled, taking my arm.
Normally the main performers had accommodation on Deeside, in the rented mansion, or in a country house hotel in Aboyne, but for the next two nights, because we were due to film some street scenes next day in Aberdeen, and more studio stuff on the day after, we were all booked into the Treetops Hotel, not far from the city centre.