In the café two uniformed police officers catch my eye as they wait for coffee at the counter. I feel myself tensing even though I’ve done nothing wrong. Although, I suppose, I am now involved in a serious crime. I have listened to an audio recording of a rape; I have heard evidence and I know the victim disappeared shortly after the assault and her only friend in California took her place. Is not coming forward if you have knowledge of a crime a crime in itself or is it just morally questionable?
I watch the officers talk as they wait for their orders, weapons on their hips. I don’t think I’ll ever get used to seeing guns strapped to people in such everyday settings as cafés and shops. I try to imagine a local policeman back home in England wandering down a high street with a semi-automatic weapon capable of instantly killing without trial or real repercussions. But all my mind can muster up is some kind of ineffectual Frank Spencer or Rowan Atkinson character, and the idea morphs from chilling to ridiculous.
It’s funny to be scared of guns given my job. Given the number of times I’ve worked with firearms on TV shows. I know how to load one, aim it, dismantle it, and reassemble it. Most actors do. You learn on the job, hours of safety briefings with weapons specialists and armorers for a single scene with a gun. All so that you look like you know what you’re doing. Even if you don’t.
I find myself wishing I had one for this meeting with Marla. The hour, the circumstances, and my uncertainty about her involvement in Emily’s disappearance are making for a perfect storm of fear. A gun, just as a prop, not to use, heavy in my pocket, lifeless and bullet-free. A last resort. I think of Marla’s text and the implication that I’m not safe from Ben. It’s impossible to know at this stage who I’m more at risk from. Could Ben have had my car tampered with? Or are the pair of them in on all of this together? Either way I’d like to know I have a way of protecting myself tonight even if I know it’s all a bluff. I just need something to show that could buy me a second to run away.
Of course, there’s no way a tourist like me would be able to get hold of even an imitation weapon in this country. So hopefully I won’t need one. I’m not going to need any protection in a public place. I’d only need it if I let Marla take me to Emily. But then the sensible thing to do is to just not go with Marla if I feel unsafe.
Back in the car park the Audi mechanic pulls the repaired car around and talks me through the issue. Tampering isn’t mentioned, of course, though it turns out there was a loose ECU relay, the small pluglike electrical unit that controls the functions of the car. It was an easy fix once he worked it out, he tells me. He just had to reconnect the loose connection.
“It just happens sometimes.” He shrugs. I wish I had his confidence.
* * *
—
Two hours later, dressed and carrying a nice bottle of wine from Guidi Marcello, I slip into the driver’s seat and set off for Nick’s house.
The journey up to Bel Air is an education, the location setting off alarm bells in my already frazzled mind. It’s the same affluent area of North Hollywood that hosted the New Year’s Eve party that changed Emily and Marla’s lives. But I tell myself Nick is no Ben Cohan. Not everyone who lives in Bel Air is necessarily a monster. Regardless, Mulholland Drive mansions, under-lit and monstrous, peek out from behind lush jungled gardens, mock-medieval Gothic turrets spiraling up and out through tree lines with only their tips visible behind dense, shrouding vegetation. Fever-dream architectural structures made a reality with cold hard cash and pure bloody-mindedness. I try to picture the inhabitants of each house as I glide past their edifices. Some might say they have more money than sense, but winding through the night, these wild extravagancies go some way to giving Hollywood its dark magic, the blue velvet background on which to mount its iridescent stars.
I can’t help wondering if Nick was aware of that party on New Year’s Eve. Was it near his house? Could he hear the pounding of music from where he was? Could the low rumble of voices and shrieks of delight reach him?
I take the sharp corners and blind bends carefully, terrified of the barrier-less drop and jagged hillside flanking the unlit road ahead.
The satnav informs me the next turning is Nick’s but as I approach and slow I see no turning for the house—only a thick cedar fence running flush to a whitewashed wall. I slow to a crawl. It’s only as I pull up to it that I see the fence is actually a gate with a tiny gray call button mounted at car window height. Above it blinks the tiny black iris of a security camera. I lower my window and pop my head out, trying to catch a glimpse over the wall, but it runs straight up fifteen feet high, obscuring everything beyond.
I assumed Nick was rich, producers tend to be, but I had no idea he was this rich.
I take a fortifying breath, check myself in the wing mirror, and push the gate call button. A buzz then silence, save for little bursts of birdsong from the surrounding canyons. The button’s edges glow green and the cedar gate glides back, sliding into the whitewashed wall. I close my window, slip into gear, and crawl into Nick’s immaculate herringbone-bricked driveway; beyond it his concrete-and-glass house glows, welcoming, into the night. I can see straight through its glass walls to the rugged canyon beyond the living room where an open log burner hangs suspended from the ceiling. The building itself seems to float, suspended in the air, on the rock of the hillside.
I park, grab my wine, and head for the already open front door. I think fleetingly of my one-bedroom Victorian flat back in Clapton and wonder why, unlike Nick, I have so little to show after almost three decades on this planet.
Nick greets me with an effusive warmth that instantly settles me, and after a whirlwind tour of the house, we crack open the wine and he pours us both a glass. He looks good, laid-back casual in a soft cashmere sweater and trousers, no suit in sight, his tousled hair just the right side of messy. For the first time since we’ve met, I’m not wearing shoes with a heel and I notice how much taller he is than me, his chest broad and strong. There’s an unspoken frisson between us tonight, we’re both unsure if we should be picking up from where our date left off the previous night or if we should be starting from the beginning again. I sip my wine and compliment the house.
“Yeah, I got it about two years ago. Can’t take any credit for the design. The previous owner had it built but never moved in. Sold it brand-new. I got a steal, if I’m honest.”
I grin, taking it all in. “I won’t ask what constitutes a steal in this case!”
He chuckles and seems to relax slightly. “How was today?” he asks.
He means the screen test but unsurprisingly that’s not the first place my thoughts go. I consider telling him everything that happened today: about Emily, about Marla, about meeting Ben Cohan earlier, about the break-ins and threats and car tampering.
But then he’d either tell me to stay out of it like Ben did or, worse, ask me why on earth I hadn’t gone to the police sooner. I would have to explain my plan, which I know is dangerous and pigheaded, but I can’t leave LA until Wednesday and I want, no, I need to know what happened to Emily. I need to know how I’m involved in all this, and then once I know I’m going to wait until the last possible moment and report everything just before I leave.
I take another sip of wine and answer his question. “I don’t want to jinx it but I think the screen test went really well!” I beam.
He gives a cheer of triumph and high-fives me with gusto.
“Yeah,” I continue. “And I took your advice. I went to Guidi Marcello; thanks for the tip-off. He was great, my co-star. He just made the scenes so easy. I’ve got to stick around here until the test screening on Wednesday for an answer but hopefully they’ll offer a contract then.”
He nods, something on his mind. “And after that?”
The question throws me slightly. “After that…?”
“Are you staying in town?”