‘A young Fräulein …’

‘Eloise?’ wondered Porrick.

‘Off courssse!’ Waechter bowed steeply towards the silhouette of his leading lady. ‘Your character, she loves the kinema. It is a drug to her. She comes every night. Spends all of her money. She must prostitute herself to pay for her habit.’

Eloise pretended to be scandalized. ‘But what will my grandmother say when she sees it!’

‘Der golden entrance to your kinema, Herr Porrick, is a shining bright entrance to Hell. Inside, it is a dark palace. We have torches, burning torches, on the walls, ja? Mephistopheles is in the box office. Beautiful demon girls light the way for her to her seat. She sits and watches film. Der screen is filled with flames. Der flames come out of the screen and burn down the kinema. Everyone dies … Und goes to Hell. The manager of the kinema is der Teufel. Ja? The deffil. Berenger will play him.’

The darkness swirled exuberantly as Berenger doffed his bowler hat and executed a swooping bow in a gesture of gratitude.

Porrick was less appreciative. ‘I … hmmm … I think we need to work on the scenario somewhat. Can it not be a little more cheerful? I’m not sure I like the idea of a fire in one of my Palaces.’

‘It vill not be real fire. We create illusion, ja? Diaz, it can be done?’

The Chilean’s response was obscure. Perhaps he nodded. Perhaps he shrugged. It seemed he sighed.

‘There is problem?’

‘No, Señor Waechter. Whatever you ask, I do. You know that.’

Waechter nodded tersely. That was all he needed to know. All he cared about. Any hint of pain or grief that he might have detected in the little man’s hesitancy was no concern of his.

‘But … uhm …’ Porrick spoke in a whisper out of the corner of his mouth. ‘You do know that there was a fire here, in which a man died? That’s why we have been refurbishing the place.’

‘I cannot help that.’

‘I do not believe that the English motion picture viewing public will pay good money to see such a depressing subject enacted. Hartmann, what do you think?’

‘Waechter is Waechter. His vision is his genius. If you want to make films with Waechter, you must surrender to his vision.’

‘Look here, what if she is inspired by the films she sees to become a motion picture actress? She falls in love with her leading man … uhm … and is a great success. And they … they …’

‘They all live happily ever after?’ said Kirkwood sarcastically.

‘Yes!’

‘This is not a Waechter film,’ pronounced Waechter. ‘In a Waechter film she becomes prostitute and goes to Hell.’

‘I don’t see why it has to be like that.’

‘If you do not wish to make Waechter film, you do not go into eine Partnerschaft mit Waechter!’

‘Amen to that!’ said Kirkwood.

‘You vont Waechter films to save you from ruin?’

Porrick’s voice receded as he turned away from Waechter and led the way further inside. ‘You haven’t seen the auditorium.’

There was a metallic clatter. In his haste, and anger, Porrick had walked into something: a metal pail or a tin box, by the sound of it. He gave a pained yelp of surprise as he sprawled headlong to the ground. ‘What the devil!’

Waechter closed his eye and sniffed. He prided himself on his keen senses of taste and smell. The organic odour he had identified earlier had suddenly intensified, as if it had been released by Porrick’s accident.

‘Are you all right, Porrick, old chap?’ It was Hartmann, fussing over the fallen businessman.

‘I tripped over something. Kirkwood, are you sure we can’t muster a light in here? I wouldn’t want anyone else to come a cropper. Mademoiselle Eloise, for example.’

‘There may be some candles in the box office. I shall investigate.’ The scrape of phosphor against sandpaper gave a brief moment of match light as Kirkwood located the box office and headed off towards it. The match went out before he reached his destination. But before too long a second was struck, and in its brief flare, the candles were found.

Kirkwood came back holding two lighted candles, one of which he gave to Diaz, the other he waved vaguely towards Porrick, who was sitting on the floor groping blindly around him. ‘I’ve lost the keys. They were in my hand and I dropped them.’

He gave a sudden cry of disgust. His hand had found something unpleasant, it seemed. ‘Bring that candle down here, will you, Kirkwood.’

The accountant moved swiftly to obey. The candle flame flickered and left a swathe of light in its trail, demonstrating the principle of the persistence of vision upon which they all depended for their livelihoods.

And now they could all see what Porrick’s hand had found. A tin box lay on its side, its lid splayed open, the contents tipped out. Waechter felt his mouth twitch up in a tight curl of satisfaction. The animal hadn’t been dead long. Its little legs stuck out stiffly as if it had been frozen in mid bound. Its loathsome snout was stuck open as if it had choked on one last detestable yelp.

‘Scudder!’ cried Porrick.

They came back out blinking into the sorry light. All except for Waechter who kept his eye closed, savouring the darkness in which his imagination flourished. He had enough of a sense of direction to carry him on to the pavement without having to look where he was going. He knew that Porrick was clutching the black tin box. He knew that the dog was inside it. In his mind’s eye, he could see both the outside of the box and its grim contents.

He was aware of a car pulling up at speed in front of them. He opened his eye to see the rear door fly open and the troublesome detective bound out.

‘Konrad Waechter. You will come with us, please. We have some questions we wish to put to you.’

The car they had brought for him was as black as a hearse. He felt that if he accepted the detective’s invitation he would be taken to some dark place from which he would never return. He imagined an oubliette in the basement of Scotland Yard.

Before he got into the car, he tried to catch Berenger’s eye. But his leading man avoided meeting his own singular gaze, so studiously that he must have believed it cursed.

FORTY-THREE

Quinn had Inchball and Macadam escort Waechter to the Special Crimes Department, rather than an interview room. The projector and rheostat were still set up there. It was the most convenient place to show him Totentanz.

‘Vy are you showing me this? I make this film. You think I haff not seen it before?’

‘I would like you to watch the final scene carefully. You are familiar with the final scene?’

‘Off coursse! I tell you, I make this film.’

Quinn walked over to the patch of glowing movement on the wall. At a prearranged moment, Macadam stopped the mechanism, so that a single frozen image was projected on the wall. Quinn pointed to the woman whom he had last seen being led away from Cecil Court as he held her eye in a handkerchief. ‘You see this woman?’

‘Ja.’

‘She is the woman who was attacked last Friday.’

Waechter waited a beat before replying: ‘She vos not attacked.’

‘Her eye was not gouged out of its socket?’

‘Nein.’

‘I held it in my hand.’

‘Zat is vot you beleeff. But it is not vot happened.’

‘Who is she?’

‘She is eine … actress. Her name is Lyudmila Lyudmova.’

‘A Russian?’

‘Off coursse.’

‘I don’t understand. I looked into the empty socket where her eye had been. I saw … I saw the black emptiness there.’

Waechter shrugged. ‘She lost her eye when she vos a child. In Totentanz she has glass eye. You can see. Her eyes do not alvays look … um … too-gehtter.’

‘Well, blow me, she’s boss-eyed!’ exclaimed Inchball.

‘Ja. Is so. There vos no attack. It vos … ein Streich, ein trick, ein gag, ja?’