“Are you ready?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I gazed over the top of the piano. The truck was in the clear now, rumbling quickly away. The blue van slid forward toward us. I flexed myself. There was a bust of Beethoven or someone on the piano. He was frowning as if he knew what was about to happen. The blue van drew closer, slowing down as it prepared to park.
We pushed with all our strength. The piano shot forward. Its back leg went over the ledge and with a hollow jangle it teetered on the brink, the pedals digging into the carpet. The van was almost level with us now. I pushed again. The piano resisted. Then, with a wave of relief, I felt it topple over backward. I can tell you now, Bechstein grand pianos are not built with any consideration for aerodynamics. It must have been a bizarre sight as it plummeted through the air: a huge black beast with three rigid legs and no wings. It flew for all of two seconds. Then it crashed fair and square into the van.
It was the Bechstein’s last chord, but it was a memorable one. If you imagine someone blowing up an orchestra in the middle of Beethoven’s Fifth, you’ll get the general idea. It was an explosion of music—or a musical explosion. A zing, a boom, and a twang all rolled into one and amplified a hundred times. They heard it at the construction site. I doubt if there was anywhere in London that they didn’t hear it.
The Bechstein was finished and I somehow doubted that the van would be doing much more traveling either. It hadn’t been completely crushed, but it must have been disappointed. Steam was hissing out of the radiator and two of the tires were spinning away like giant coins. Black oil formed a sticky puddle around the wreckage. The exhaust pipe had shot away like a rocket and was lying about a hundred feet down the road. The whole twisted carcass of the van was covered in splinters of wood and wires. One of the piano’s legs had shattered the front window. I didn’t like to think what it had done to the driver.
“Quite a performance, honey,” Lauren said.
“Concerto for piano and van,” I muttered.
And now people did come running. Suddenly it was as if Bayly Street had become Piccadilly Circus. They came from the construction site, from the left, from the right, from just about everywhere. They looked at the carnage. Then they looked up. I leaned out of the window and waved.
It was about twenty minutes later that one of the construction workers appeared in the Germans’ living room. He was carrying a pair of industrial pliers, which he must have used to cut through the two padlocks. Lauren and I were sitting on the sofa waiting for him.
“The piano . . .” He gaped at us. “Was it yours?”
“Sure,” I said. “But don’t worry. I wasn’t much good at it anyway.”
We walked out of the room, leaving him standing there. Well, what was he expecting? An encore?
We managed to slip away in the crowd, but not before I’d heard that—miraculously—nobody had been killed.
Apparently the driver of the van would have to be cut away from the steering wheel, while the passenger had managed to impale himself on the gearstick. A doctor had already arrived, but Gott and Himmell were more in need of a mechanic.
We got a taxi back to the office, where I picked up the real Maltesers and then we went straight on to Lauren’s place. There were too many people looking for me in Fulham. From now on I’d have to keep my head down and my raincoat collar up. Lauren lived in a huge condominium in Baron’s Court—about a ten-minute drive away. It was one of those great brick piles with fifty doorbells beside the front door and fifty people who don’t know one another inside. She had a basement apartment that must have been all of five inches above the main Piccadilly subway line. Every time a train went past, the floor rumbled. Or maybe it was my stomach. I hadn’t had a decent meal in twenty-four hours and I was hungry.
She left me in the living room while she went into the kitchen to fix supper. It was a cozy room in a theatrical sort of way, with a gas fire hissing in the grate, a kettle on the floor, and odd bits of clothes thrown just about everywhere. The furniture was old and tired, with a sofa that looked like it was waiting to swallow you up whole.
The walls were plastered with posters from theaters and music halls where Lauren had appeared, either as a singer or as an escape artist’s assistant. It was a room with a past but no future. A room of rising damp and fading memories.
When she came back in she had changed into some sort of dressing gown and had brushed her hair back. For a woman old enough to be my grandmother she looked good. But then you should see my grandmother. The food she was carrying looked even better. She had it on a tray: omelettes, salad, cheese, fruit, a bottle of red wine for her, and Coke for me. We didn’t say much while we ate. We were just glad to be there. Glad to be alive.
“Thanks,” I said when I finished the omelette.
“I should thank you, Nick.” Lauren poured herself some more wine. Her hand was trembling a little. “If it hadn’t been for you . . . hell . . . they were going to kill me.”
“You were the one who got out of the ropes,” I reminded her. I glanced at the poster above the gas fire. It showed her with a flashy guy in a sequined straitjacket. He had greasy black hair, a mustache, and a toothpaste-advertisement smile. “Is that Harry Blondini?” I asked.
“Yes.” She stood up and turned the stereo on. There was a click and a solo saxophone slithered through the room. She’d lit herself a cigarette and the smoke curled in time to the music. Her eyes told me everything I needed to know about the escape artist. But she told me anyway. “I loved him,” she said. “For two years we worked together in the theater and we lived together for five. We were going to get married. But then, at the last minute, he ran off with a snake charmer. What did she have that I didn’t—apart from two anacondas and a boa constrictor? That was the day before our wedding—the day before we were meant to tie the knot.” She smiled a half smile. “Well, what should I have expected from an escape artist? He escaped. And he broke my heart.
“That was when I took up singing. I’ve been singing for twenty years, Nick. The same old songs. And in all that time I’ve only met two decent people. Johnny Naples and you. You’re a nice kid, Nick. If I ever had a son, I’d have liked him to be like you.
“All I’ve ever wanted is a place of my own—maybe somewhere in the sun, like the South of France. Look at this place! Thirty feet underground—I never get to see the sun. And the Casablanca Club’s the same. When they finally bury me, I’ll actually be going up in the world. But it’s a lousy world, Nick. Lousy . . .”
Maybe she’d had too much wine. I don’t know. I’d asked her a simple question and she’d given me her life history. It was lucky I hadn’t asked her anything tricky. We could have been there all night. I’d had enough. I was tired and I was dirty.
“I need a bath,” I said.
She shook her head. “Of all the baths in all the towns in all the world, you have to walk into mine. There’s no hot water.”
“Then I’ll just turn in.”
“You can sleep on the sofa.”
I took the tray back into the kitchen while she got me a couple of blankets. It was after she’d said good night and I was about to leave that I remembered the one question I’d meant to ask her. It was the whole reason I was there.
“Lauren,” I said. “Back in the Casablanca Club . . . you were about to tell me something. You told me that you were out with Johnny when he saw something. It made the Maltesers and everything else make sense.”
“That’s right.”
“Well . . . where were you?”
She paused, silhouetted in the doorway. “We were buying sausages,” she said. “In Oxford Street. In Selfridges. In the food department.”