He shook his head. ‘No. Nor, as I said, do I expect to. Stephen’s a bad lot. I had hopes for him, but he’s let me down all along the line. My last words to him were something about not darkening my door again.’ He glanced at Prim. ‘Only I didn’t quite put it like that.’
‘Do you have a photograph of him?’ she asked.
Donn nodded. Some of his colour had returned, I noticed, but he was still pale. ‘I should have. Hold on a minute; I keep my photographs upstairs.’ He hurried from the room.
We wandered into the conservatory as we waited, admiring his big, immaculate garden, amused by the practice golf net in the far corner. ‘Nice place this,’ Prim murmured. ‘D’you think we should buy something like it?’
‘What, in Motherwell?’
She give me her ‘Daft bastard’ look. ‘I was thinking of Florida, actually.’
‘We’ve got two houses already.’
‘But neither of them has a garden.’
‘Exactly.’
It’s a thing about Prim. She’d really love to have green fingers, but in fact she’s death to anything with roots. Last December, my sister Ellie gave us a poinsettia, and Prim announced that she would look after it. A week before Christmas, the one remaining red leaf fell off.
We were so busy admiring the place, we didn’t notice or care that Joe Donn’s minute had stretched out to fifteen. It was only when he coughed behind us that I glanced at my watch and realised how long he had been gone.
‘That’s a funny thing,’ he said, looking slightly puzzled. ‘I thought I’d plenty of photos of Stephen, and yet I can’t find one. Come back through here though; there’s one thing I do have. After we both left Gantry’s, I took him on a golfing trip to Portugal. I had my video camera with me and I shot some footage, with Stephen in it. If I lend it to you, maybe you could have a print taken off that.’
We followed him back into the study, where he opened a cupboard, revealing rows of neatly labelled Super 8 tape cassette boxes. I watched him as he pointed his way along the second row, until he came to a box labelled Portugal. He took it out, and flipped it open; it was empty.
‘What the hell?’
‘Could it still be in the camera?’ Prim asked.
‘No chance. I never took out the tape I used last time I was in Spain. It’s still there. I’m meticulous about my tapes. This one’s been pinched.’
‘In that case, Mr Donn,’ I told him, ‘it looks as if your Stephen’s a shy lad. He doesn’t want anyone to have his photograph. I appreciate that you’ve fallen out with him, but does he have a key to your house?’
‘Yes he has. I never bothered to have it off him; he’s my own flesh and blood all said and done. He could have nipped in any time I was at golf.’
I glanced at Prim. ‘Only one thing for it then, love. We’re going to have to go back to Barassie.’
Chapter 22
As it happened, she had to go to see Mira Donn on her own. The Global Wrestling Alliance circus was in London that weekend, and I had to head for Hillington to join up with the team before we caught the plane south. The Barassie trip was no problem for us, though, since I was travelling alone for once, Prim having decided that she had too much work on her hands.
I was looking forward to the trip, since Daze was back. Everett Davis, the Big Man himself, had signed himself off from the States for a few weeks to appear in the European shows.
He was at the front door of the headquarters building when my taxi arrived, all seven feet, two inches of him, supervising the loading of our team bus. ‘Hey, Oz, my man,’ he boomed in his deep, dark chocolate voice. ‘So how’s the movie business?’
‘Fascinating,’ I told him. ‘I’ve been shot at once this week already.’
‘You’ll have a quieter time this weekend,’ he promised me. ‘You got no action this time.’ I was relieved about that. A few weeks before, Darius Henke and I had staged a mock confrontation in the ring, which had ended with me being choke-slammed by the Black Angel of Death, as the marks knew him. There is a public belief that when wrestlers are slammed down hard on to the ring floor, or when they slam other people, somehow it doesn’t hurt. This is wrong: it does.
As usual, the roadies had gone ahead of us. When we arrived at the London Arena just before six p.m., it was set up and ready for us. The dressing-room accommodation there isn’t bad, better than most in fact, but for a troupe as big as ours it’s a long way short of one for one.
So when the doorman brought in the bouquet as the guys were changing for the Friday evening run-through, and brought it straight to me, I didn’t half take some razzing, I can tell you. At first, I assumed that it was Prim’s way of telling me she wished she was there, but I was wrong. When I glanced at the label I saw that it read, ‘For Oz, love Ronnie.’
Mrs Barowitz, the blonde toy doll who had started me on my voice-over career. I had arranged to send her the tickets I had promised her, and then I had forgotten all about her; ungrateful sod that I am.
‘Hey Mr Announcer,’ Bret Austin called out. He was one half of the current tag team champions. ‘Whatcha going to do wiff them?’ Bret’s a Londoner and his real name is Phil Mitchell; but he could hardly use that for wrestling, could he.
‘I haven’t a bloody clue, mate,’ I told him, honestly. ‘Why don’t you give them to your wife?’
‘I was ’oping you’d say that,’ he grinned. ‘I could use the brownie points.’
I handed him the flowers. ‘Don’t forget to bin the card.’
He glanced at it and frowned. ‘Who the ’ell’s Ronnie? You got a poofter admirer, Oz?’
‘Very far from it, my friend,’ I assured him. Even then I didn’t quite realise the truth I spoke. I found out, though, when I checked into my hotel suite after the rehearsal. I took my bag straight into the bedroom, and unpacked it carefully, hanging my ring suit in the wardrobe and putting the rest of my things in a drawer. I was closing it when I heard a sound from the bathroom; a soft, splashing sound.
Even then, I really did think when I opened the door, that Prim had decided to surprise me. But no, there she was in the bath, all of her, none of it covered discreetly by bubbles like you see on telly; Ronnie Barowitz.
‘Hello Oz,’ she simpered. ‘Surprise, surprise.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ I exclaimed. ‘How the hell did you get in here?’
She smiled. ‘It’s amazing what you can do with fifty quid and a porter. Even in a place like this.’ And then she stood up.
Most people look far better with their clothes on, no doubt about that. No doubt either that Ronnie belongs in the minority, even though she’s a fake blonde. She stood there, Venus risen, and I have to admit that I felt myself rising too.
She beckoned to me. ‘Come on in-’
‘Don’t say it, Mrs Barowitz — the water’s lovely.’ She laughed, but I heard it die in her throat as I turned and walked out of the bathroom. I was in the small sitting room, looking out over the Thames when she appeared in the doorway, draped in a hotel dressing-gown; it was unfastened.
She stepped close to me. ‘I’m sorry, Oz. Maybe this was too much of a surprise for you.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Okay.’ She looked up at me, blatantly, and let the dressing-gown fall to the floor. ‘But now you’ve got over it, what do you say?’
I bent, taking care not to bump into any part of her pink body, picked up the robe, and draped it around her once more.
‘I say thanks for fixing me up with that voice-over, Ronnie; but now I’m going to dinner. Please don’t be here when I get back.’
I turned as I reached the door. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are. Any other weekend, my fiancee would have been with me. If she’d walked in there and found you in the bath, she’d have fucking drowned you in it.
‘Give my regards to Richard.’
Before I joined the team in the bar I paid a call on the duty manager and told him that it would be a good idea if he fired one of his porters. When I went back upstairs two-and-a-half hours later she was gone; save for a small present in the toilet, she might never have been there.