‘Fuck a duck,’ she said, eyes wide as she scrolled through the search results. He was a known casting director. He was Robert Baker CDG. She couldn’t quite remember what the ‘CDG’ stood for; she wanted to say ‘Casting Director General’, but that wasn’t right. Either way he was part of some union; he was legit. She saw that he did casting for films and TV and he worked out of the Cochrane Street Studios near Tottenham Court Road.
Beth’s Facebook profile clearly stated she was an actress; she’d uploaded showreel on there, several professional headshots, and it said that she was studying at one of the best drama schools in the country.
Why else would he friend me?
Beth believed her life was at the beginning of an exciting journey. A journey filled with infinite possibilities stretching ahead. Bad things happened to other people. She was destined for something life-changing. She always liked to remember where she was when something life-changing happened, and this had to be life-changing. Beth minimised the screen and placed a call to her friend, Heather.
‘You’ll never guess who I’m now friends with on Facebook,’ she said.
Chapter Sixty-One
The next day was Friday, and Darryl found himself in the evening rush hour traffic, driving slowly into Central London. He was astonished that Beth Rose had taken the bait so fast, and so enthusiastically.
He’d had a Facebook profile he’d been working on for several months in the name of Robert Carter, and all it had taken was changing the name and photo, and he’d become Robert Baker CDG, a casting director. Robert Baker was real, and he even had his own Facebook profile, but his profile photo was of a black Labrador. As always, it was risky, but Darryl had downloaded Robert Baker’s headshot from the casting studios website, all the time covering his tracks with his VPN software.
He’d found Beth Rose almost at random, clicking through the Student Spotlight Directory. Actors subscribed to the Directory so that casting directors could look them up, and a typical directory entry gave you the actor’s headshot, their eye colour, weight, height, and vital statistics. With some of the entries there was even a voice sample and a short showreel. He’d liked Beth very much, and her showreel was a scene recorded with a tall dark lad where she’d played a battered wife. It wasn’t from a stage show or a television programme, it looked like it had been made by a showreel service for actors. The production values were low, and Beth was far too well-groomed to play a victim of domestic violence, but she gave it her best shot, and Darryl had enjoyed her fake screams and tears. It was something he could work with.
She’d taken the bait so fast, responding to the friend request within two minutes. Messages had pinged back and forth all evening, and they’d even spoken on the phone. Now, this evening, he was due to meet her.
After seeing footage of his red Citro?n splashed across the news, Darryl had decided to take Morris’s car, a blue Ford. It had been sitting in the carport since Morris had been arrested and then bailed. His father said Morris was probably too embarrassed to come and get it, so he’d been taking care of it until he showed up, starting the engine each week, and checking the oil. He never did it with Darryl’s car, but then again, thought Darryl bitterly, Morris was a good milker.
* * *
He reached the outskirts of South London just after 7 p.m. The interior of Morris’s car had a whiff of horse and straw. It mingled in with the fresh scents of his shower gel and aftershave. Even though he knew this date wouldn’t end romantically, he still liked to pretend. He stuck to the speed limit. He could now drive into Central London without paying the congestion charge, but he tried not to think about the cameras which could scan each number plate, and wondered if they still scanned cars as they came into the capital during the evenings. He’d spent time poring over maps detailing the CCTV coverage, and whilst he couldn’t avoid them, he could certainly dodge the areas with the heaviest coverage.
His phone rang on the dashboard and he saw it was Beth. He was just driving through Camberwell, and looked to see if he could pull over, but it was a busy road with no stopping points. He checked for police cars, and answered.
‘Hey you,’ he said, his voice almost curling around the receiver. He’d decided that Robert Baker CDG had a deep confident voice with a transatlantic twang; after all, he did do castings for American productions.
‘Hi. Sorry! I’m just calling to say I might be a few minutes late,’ she said, flustered. But it was a confident flustered.
He gritted his teeth and forced a smile. ‘No worries. So what’re we looking at, 8.15?’
‘Yeah, I’m having a bit of a hair crisis…’
‘Hair on your head?’
There was silence. He cursed himself for using a bit of Darryl humour, and apologised. She laughed awkwardly and said she’d see him later, then rang off. He chucked the phone back on the dashboard.
‘Stupid, stupid IDIOT!’ he said, slapping the steering wheel. He glanced to one side and saw a man and a woman in a car on the opposite side, the woman in the passenger seat staring. He gave her the finger and put his foot down, accelerating past them.
* * *
He’d arranged to meet Beth outside the casting studio where the real Robert Baker worked. It was in Latimer Road, a quiet street in Southwark, next to a huge glass office block. Risky, but meeting her outside here was essential for her to buy into the lie.
He made his way slowly into Central London, and he reached Latimer Road just after eight. He saw the large, long glass office block, which dwarfed the casting studio of smart red brick beside it. A few dribs and drabs of office workers were coming out of the office block, and when he looked up he could see that the offices were empty. He carried on and turned off into the next street, where he found a parking space in front of a boarded-up row of shops.
Darryl breathed slowly in and out. As the minutes ticked by the inside windows of the car fogged up, his rhythmic breathing coming out in short bursts of vapour. He wiggled his toes and stretched, not wanting his muscles to seize up.
He was glad she said she’d be late. He thought of her long hair, how her skin and body might feel. Images of what he was going to do to her flashed into his mind.
At ten past eight he switched on the engine, and the hot air began to flow, clearing the condensation from the windows. He checked that he had his map and the leather sap in the glove compartment. He checked his reflection in the mirror. He was drooling. He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, and drove off around the block and back to Latimer Street. He passed the entrance to the office block, and saw Beth waiting outside the casting studio.
She was leaning on a small iron bollard. She wore a long tailored grey coat, black high heels, and her long dark hair was loose. She had her head down engrossed in her phone. He pulled past her, and parked by the kerb. She was now just a few metres from the boot of the car. The road was empty.