Mouse (9 page)

But there was only one Laura Leach and now she’d been snatched away from him by another. Faint heart never won fair lady, he pondered bleakly. Why couldn’t he have plucked up the courage to talk to her? Yet he never had the chance, did he? No, that’s not true; he could have made the chance. That was just an excuse. His entire life was one big excuse, he thought, feeling doubly sorry for himself.

The sight of his cold, lonely home didn’t make him feel any better either. So he carried on pedalling around the streets till exhaustion finally forced him inside. He went to bed without eating. He felt he would never be able to eat again. What was the point?

*  *  *  *

One of the most dangerous jobs at the Empire had to be changing the light bulbs in the ceiling high above the auditorium. Vince remembered the time the Deputy Chief Projectionist took him on his first tour of the old building. They ascended a flight of rickety old stair
s
and
passed
through a tiny door at the top.
Michael
, sucking loudly on a sugared almond, flicked on his torch.

‘Follow me, and be careful,’ he said. He was a man of few words and every one of those was like he was spitting out something that was causing a bad taste. ‘Tread only on the joists,’ he warned. ‘If you put your foot in the middle you’ll go right through the ceiling and kill yourself.’

That alarmed Vince.
That and the dark. There could be anything lurking up here – mice, spiders, rats. Michael went on to show him how to reach the units that held the bulbs in place, how to remove the spotlights and replace them. Vince remembered how Michael pointed through the hole. Way down below, too many feet to be comfortable, he saw the auditorium seats looking like they’d been made for dolls. He felt sick with apprehension and overcome with giddiness. Michael, he recalled, chuckled at his discomfort. But he had to overcome his fear, because when a bulb popped it was his job to replace it. He’d actually gotten quite used to it over the years, no longer afraid of the dark or the imagined rats. He still didn’t like the feeling of looking all those feet down to the floor, so he avoided the temptation to peep through the holes when he changed the bulbs. And he was always very careful, of course, to only step on the joists.

He felt a little like the Phantom of the Opera, scuttling through the dark bowels of the ancient theatre. What he did eventually discover during these excursions was that he could access other areas of the cinema via a small door at the far end of the vast expanse of ceiling. He found most of the ceilings of most of the upper-storey rooms could be accessed in this way.

On this particular morning he heard the hum of faint voices carrying up from below. The ceilings were thin and if you listened carefully almost every word could be discerned. He’d learned an awful lot about the lives of the cleaners from snatches of overheard conversations. All about their periods and it being that time of month; about not being able to get cheap stockings to stay up; about buying tins of paint for the bathroom and where fig rolls could be bought the cheapest.

These particular voices, though, weren’t discussing how to get the cheapest anything. There was some kind of an argument going on and it appeared to come from the direction of Martin Caldwell’s office. Vince crept silently across the joists, bending down to where the sounds were the clearest.

‘So what am I supposed to do?’

He recognised
Caldwell
’s voice straight away. There was no mistaking Monica’s shrill tones either as she responded with some gusto.

‘What are you supposed to do? Well you’d better think of something because it takes two to make a bloody bargain!’

‘You told me you were on the pill!’ he said.

‘I must have forgotten to take them!’ she fired straight back.

‘You dozy mare! Are you serious? You forgot to take them?’

‘That’s not the point,’ said Monica. ‘I’m up the duff and that’s all there is to it.’

Vince heard
Caldwell
moan. ‘You can’t be pregnant…’ he said dejectedly.

‘What did you expect? I ain’t no fucking Virgin Mary. You were there, remember?’

‘But you weren’t supposed to get fucking pregnant!’ he said. ‘I’m a married man, in heaven’s name! You’ll have to get rid of it.’

‘Not a chance. I’m many things, Martin, but I’m not a murderer. You put the thing there so you can do something about it.’

‘Like what, Monica? What is it you expect me to do?’

‘Leave your wife.’

There was a moment’s silence filled with all sorts of menace, then Vince heard
Caldwell
give a cough, like he was choking on a chicken bone or something.

‘You can’t be serious!’ he said breathlessly.

‘Don’t come over all John McEnroe. The ball was definitely in,’ she replied. ‘I’m not walking the streets of Langbridge as a single mother, not for you or anyone, so you can do what’s right by me.’

‘And divorce my wife? No way, Monica. I love my wife.’

She snorted in a way that Vince was very familiar with. ‘Like you thought about that before you had your bloody way with me, and not just the once either. You weren’t loving her then, were you?’ There was the sound of a cupboard being slammed shut, a drawer being opened, something clattering on a desk.

‘Monica, be reasonable…’

Vince flinched when he heard something heavy crash against the wall. ‘Reasonable?’ she screamed. ‘Are you forgetting I’ve also been helping you in other ways; helping you and your friends by giving you details about Laura fucking Leach?’

‘Jesus, Monica – that’s my bloody Oscar you’ve just gone and dented! That was a present from my wife. And they’re not my friends…’

‘Who cares what stuff you’re involved in with them, friends or not. What will your wife say when she finds out about you and me? When she finds out about the other dodgy stuff you’re involved in?’

‘You wouldn’t…’

‘Oh no?’

There was the sound of the office door being yanked open.

‘Monica, please…’

Then the door slammed with such force Vince felt the ceiling shudder. He thought it best he creep quietly away. He’d already heard far more than he felt comfortable with. The stuff about Laura, though – what was that all about?

Later that afternoon, as Vince was preparing for the afternoon screenings,
Caldwell
knocked on the projection booth’s door and entered. He looked unusually haggard. His tie was undone at the neck, like someone had grabbed it and tried to mug him; the top button of his shirt was unfastened. Vince had never seen him like this. A sweet smell of some spirit or other wafted in with him. His bleary eyes looked like he’d been at the bottle some time.

‘Hi, Vince,’ he said, a little unsteady on his feet.

‘Good afternoon, Mr Caldwell.’

‘What are you up to?’

Vince frowned, then shrugged. ‘Doing what I do, Mr Caldwell. I’m working.’

Martin Caldwell went over to sit on the old wooden stool by the workbench. He toyed with the handle of the film winder. He looked at the projector. ‘You know, I wouldn’t have the faintest idea how to lace up one of those things,’ he revealed. ‘I don’t know much about film either. The only things I know about are balance sheets and budgets.’ He shifted his attention to playing with a roll of sticky-tape. ‘You’re lucky, you are, Vince.’

‘I am, Mr Caldwell?’ He didn’t feel
lucky. He felt like luck and Vince Moody
existed in different hemispheres of the planet.

‘Your life’s so uncomplicated. You’re not married. You’ve got a mindless, simple job…’ Vince was tempted to interrupt at that point but the moment passed.
Caldwell
sighed. ‘You don’t even have a blasted car to worry about. Me, I’ve got it all: debts, pressure, a wife, all sorts of complications. So many fucking complications I’m drowning in them.’ He sat in miserable silence for a while and then dropped down from the seat and headed for the door. ‘Anyhow, good to talk,’ he said, slinking quietly away. Vince heard the dull tramp of his world-weary footsteps echoing down the corridor.

One part of Vince said it was the man’s own stupid fault. If you play with fire you can expect to get burned. But at least
Caldwell
had had the opportunity to get burned; Vince hadn’t been close to lighting a single match.

At the end of the evening Vince closed down the projection booth as normal, checked the auditorium for any stragglers, turned off the lights and did the same in the toilets. He’d once locked a woman in the cinema by mistake, because she’d got caught short and had emerged from the toilets to find the cinema in darkness and all locked up. She inadvertently set off the alarms with her panicked banging on the doors and
Caldwell
wasn’t too pleased with having to turn out again because the police had called him back to the Empire to let her out. The woman was in a terrible state and it made front page of the Langbridge Gazette.

‘Get a fucking phone so they can call you next time!’
Caldwell
had told Vince.

Vince had locked everything up, checked the toilets for stray women and was about to leave when
Caldwell
came staggering down the stairs in the dark. He wobbled across the foyer.

‘I thought you’d gone home hours ago,’ said Vince. ‘I nearly locked you in.’

‘I’ve got keys,’ he said absently. ‘Tons of bloody keys.’

‘Are you OK, Mr Caldwell? You don’t look well.’

‘It’s a cold brought on by Smirnoff’s,’ he said, suppressing a burp. He went to the large plate-glass doors and stepped away from them in horror. He hid behind a false marble pillar. ‘Fuck! He’s here!’ he said.

‘Who is?’

‘Him. The man. You know, outside…’

‘The man who called the other day? The one you didn’t want to see?’

‘Yes, yes, that’s the bugger. I’m trying to avoid him. He mustn’t see me.’

‘Shall I call the police?’

‘What? The police? God, no! Not the pigs.’ He waved for Vince to come towards the door. ‘Have a look and tell me if he’s still there.’

Vince did as he was told. Stared through the glass doors. ‘There’s nobody out there, Mr Caldwell.’

‘You sure?’

‘All clear. Not a soul. Are you sure you saw him?’

‘Yeah, of course I’m sure!’ He ran the back of his hand across his damp forehead, crept up cautiously to the doors. ‘I’m certain he was there. Maybe he’s waiting for me. Check out the back yard
,
will you? He could be round there.’

Vince said OK and came back minutes later. ‘Nobody there. Maybe you imagined it. Brought on by the Smirnoff’s, perhaps.’

Caldwell
glowered hard at him. ‘Very fucking funny, Vince. Very fucking funny. I’m going out the back way. Make sure you lock up after me.’

Vince watched as
Caldwell
’s MG burst out of the open yard gates like he was in an episode of
The A-Team
and roared down the road headed for home. Vince mounted his Carlton Criterium. He’d found it difficult to forget Laura, leave her to her new man. The same man that appeared to be haunting his manager. It was as if his old life was like an unmade bed, with crumpled sheets so uncomfortable he didn’t like the feeling of getting back into it.

There was no real reason he could furnish that excused his night-time cycling out to
Devereux
Towers
. He just knew he had to go there. He had to see the place where she lived, to know she was in there, to know she was near. One last look then maybe he could forget her once and for all.

And that was all the reason he needed. He pedalled out to the track that led to the house. It was completely dark now, the building like a black smudge against the faintly lighter sky. He turned off his cycle lamps and trundled his bike along the rutted track till he got close enough to make out two cars parked outside. One was Laura’s blue Hillman; the other was the white Ford Cortina. Both of them snuggled up close together like two pairs of slippers under a bed.

*  *  *  *

The
re
was a perceptible change in the weather as the year took a steep nosedive into autumn. The field in which
Devereux
Towers
stood had been scraped bare, the trees and hedgerows fringing the field beginning to turn amber. Despite a log fire crackling energetically in the large grate of the stone Tudor fireplace, the room could not quite shoulder away the growing cold of the evening.

The dining room was large, originally fitted out to resemble some kind of medieval baronial hall, but Laura had attempte
d to temper the effects of
bleak stone with patterned
wall
paper, uplifting pictures, thick rugs and functional contemporary furniture that sat uncomfortably in the room. They were sitting on chrome-framed ch
airs with cushions of brown corduroy,
seated at a large oval smoked-glass table mounted on
tubular
chrom
e legs,
as far from medieval as it was possible to get.