‘But is he a killer?’

‘On the evidence of this?’ There was a shifting of shoulders in the darkness. ‘He is a poet.’

‘Funny kind of poet,’ said Macadam, as the violin case containing the damned tailor was carried off to Hell. The film flapped and clattered out its last few feet.

There was a brief interlude during which Macadam rewound the film and set up the next.

It was another short. The title again appeared in German: Totentanz.

Dr Casaubon translated: ‘The Dance of Death. Or Danse Macabre.’

The film appeared to be a light comedy about madness and death. It concerned a man, again played by Berenger, who took pleasure in dressing up as Death in order to play pranks on his neighbours. He donned a black costume and hood, on to which a luminous white skeleton and skull had been painted.

The first neighbour he called on dropped down dead from a heart attack. The second victim was so frightened that he ran upstairs and threw himself out of a first-storey window. He broke his neck in the fall and died. When the prankster knocked on the third door, he was met by a figure dressed exactly the same as him, also carrying a scythe over his shoulder. The two Deaths confronted one another. The practical joker held his sides and mimed laughing, punching his counterpart on the shoulder, joshingly.

There was an inter-title in German, which Dr Casaubon was good enough to translate for them: ‘I see you have had the same idea as me!’

The prankster then pulled off his mask, inviting the other Death to do the same with a merry laugh. But the neighbour refused. The practical joker made a grab for the supposed hood of the other figure. His fingers sank into the empty eye sockets of a real skull. A pile of bones collapsed on the floor, together with an empty cloak and discarded scythe. The practical joker’s hilarity turned to terror. He began to scream.

The next scene showed him confined in a lunatic asylum, surrounded by other lunatics.

Quinn was aware of a sense of premonition. Perhaps he had seen something in the background of the scene that prepared him subconsciously for what was to come: the entrance of a man he recognized as the first Dr Casaubon, the very same man who had whisked away the wounded woman a few nights ago in Cecil Court. A moment later, he saw her too. She was there as one of the lunatics closing in on Berenger’s character. In a final coup of trick photography, all the inmates and medical staff of the asylum peeled away the masks of their faces, revealing their death’s head skulls beneath.

The prankster was not in an asylum. He had died and gone to Hell. The director of the asylum – the first Dr Casaubon – was the Devil.

FORTY-TWO

Konrad Waechter looked up at the vast concave entrance to the Islington Porrick’s Palace, a kind of gigantic gilded conch shell set into the black, soot-grimed facade of Upper Street. He could not suppress a smile at the sheer visual splendour of it. It seemed to promise as much as it presented, leading kinema viewers into a grotto of fantasy and spectacle, away from the grim sordid reality of their lives. Indeed, it would make an attractive location for a scene in a motion picture. He closed his eye on the vision, as if overwhelmed by it. The darkness that overtook him was filled with the abstract, teeming shapes created by a film of living flesh drawn over a bright day. His mind began inventing scenarios.

Perhaps he had underestimated Porrick. He began to think this was a man he could go into partnership with, after all. And at least he had stopped trying to push that nasty little dog on him.

He heard Porrick’s voice. ‘At night we switch on the lights and the whole thing lights up like a beacon for kinema-goers.’

Waechter kept his eye closed, imagining rather than contemplating the countless electric bulbs that ran around the edge of the entrance. He always preferred his vision of a subject to the reality of it. ‘Und this is vere you intend to hold der Waechterfest?’

‘It’s actually the largest capacity of my theatres. Seats eight hundred. I am sure we will be able to fill it, given the … well, given the circumstances.’

‘If the authorities allow you to go ahead.’ Waechter recognized the voice of Kirkwood, Porrick’s accountant. Kirkwood had come along to handle the financial side of the negotiations for Porrick. For his own part, he had brought Hartmann. It had been Hartmann’s idea to have Eloise and Berenger there too. He knew how to impress a potential investor. The one other member of the party was Diaz, Waechter’s trusted cameraman. In many ways, Diaz was Waechter’s eyes, as well as his technical brain. Wherever he went, Waechter was always mulling over potential scenes and locations for future motion pictures. He liked to have Diaz there to advise.

‘They’ll allow it,’ asserted Porrick. ‘And we’ll fill the place. Several times over. And even Mr Kirkwood will be happy.’

‘I like it.’ Waechter opened his eye and nodded decisively to his producer. ‘We can make picture here.’

He gestured for Porrick to lead them inside. The kinema owner produced a large bunch of keys to unlock the several locks and padlocks securing the high ornate double doors.

The doors opened with a creak of protest on to a chill interior darkness. The kinema was evidently not open yet. But surely, Waechter thought, the matinee should have been underway by now? Their footsteps echoed cavernously as they progressed inside. The pungent whiff of charred air assailed his nostrils, mingled with the fresher smells of construction: sawn timbers, cement and plaster. There was the smell of something else too. Something organic. Not quite the smell of rotting. But possibly the smell of death. Certainly the smell of wet fur and piss. As if an animal had crawled in there to die. He expected to hear its whimpering. No doubt the workmen had put down poison for vermin. He imagined a doomed rodent twitching out its last in some dark forgotten corner of the building.

A thin silvering of feeble light seeped in from somewhere high up to leaven the gloom. It tinged the black figures moving through the treacly darkness.

‘Can we have the lights on, Kirkwood?’ demanded Porrick.

‘Ah, well, no, Mr Porrick … actually we cannot. Not until we settle the outstanding account with the electrical company.’

‘But that’s absurd! Why hasn’t it been paid? Pay it immediately!’

‘We don’t—’

But Porrick cut his accountant off. ‘I don’t want to hear any of your excuses. I know I authorized the payment. I consider it very remiss on your part not to have made it.’

Waechter heard his producer’s voice in the darkness. ‘Is it that the kinema is not in use at the moment, Porrick?’

‘We have only just finished the refurbishments.’

‘Haven’t finished them, actually,’ put in Kirkwood. ‘In fact, we didn’t get any further than restoring the entrance before we ran out of funds.’

Hartmann was not impressed. ‘This does not bode well, Porrick. How can you expect to hold a festival here?’

‘There are only one or two small jobs outstanding. I feel that if we are to go into partnership, Porrick’s Palaces and Visionary Productions, perhaps the funds could be found from your side of the business?’

‘But this is absurd! You have wasted our time. We came here to talk to you about your investing in Visionary Productions, in order to secure an exclusive distribution deal. You cannot expect us to put money into your failing business. Come, Waechter, we have seen enough here.’

‘Vait!’ Waechter knew how to command, even with a single word. ‘It is better for my film that it is not … perfect. We can dress it, ja? I have an idea. I vill turn your kinema into a vision of Hell. Ja? You like?’

‘I … I’m not … That sounds rather …’