Quintin Jardine - Wearing Purple

‘Around four weeks ago, we were two thirds of the way through the taping of BattleGround in Dortmund, Germany, when the technicians discovered that they had been running for half an hour with empty video cassettes.’

‘Jesus,’ I whistled. ‘So what did you do?’

‘We stopped the taping, kept the audience there, and put the whole thing out live. We got away with it, by the skin of our teeth. I raised hell with our production contractors. They were full of apologies; they assumed that they’d been given duds by the tape supplier.

‘I accepted their guarantee that there would be no repeats, and got on with business. Then, a week ago, in Nottingham, this happened.’ There was a television set with an integrated video player in a corner of his office. He reached across, switched it on and pressed the play button.

A wrestling match sprang into life on the screen. ‘This is a tag-team fight — that’s two wrestlers on each side, one in the ring at any time — involving our hard-core guys, the Rattlers, and Chris and Dave, the Manson Brothers, who are really cousins. Watch it.’

I did as I was told. The Rattlers, big guys in jeans and workshirts, seemed to be taking a real pasting from the non-brothers. As I watched, the Rattler in the ring was slammed across the ring into the padded corner turn-buckles, caught by the combatant Manson as he rebounded off and slammed to the canvas with a crash which seemed to shake the ring.

The referee began the count, until he was distracted by a small man in a grotesque jacket, who jumped up on to the ring apron. I had seen him before, in that Boxing Day match with Daze. The ref stopped counting and went across to the ‘manager’ with a show of remonstration. The winning Manson, who had ‘Dave’ emblazoned across his trunks, stood up from his flattened prey, and as he did, the other Rattler stepped through the ropes, a metal folding chair in his hands.

The wrestler swung his weapon at full force, slamming the seat into the back of the Manson Brother’s head. There was no commentary on the tape, but there was sound. And what a sound. The bang rang out from the set, bringing a gasp from the crowd.

I was a novice at this game, but even I could tell that something was wrong. There was nothing theatrical about the way Dave Manson went down. He dropped to his knees first, then pitched forward, slowly, on to his face. As I watched, the referee turned and waved to the ringside timekeeper, who rang the bell.

Everett reached over once more and stopped the tape. ‘We have special chairs for that sort of action, made of very thin metal sheeting, but looking just like the normal folding seats we use at ringside. That wasn’t one of them. That was the real McCoy: Dave wound up in hospital.

‘Someone switched the goddamn chair, Oz. In the middle of the fight, Sven, the Rattler, didn’t notice the difference in weight.’

‘Did you lose the recording?’ I asked.

‘No, we got away with it. We got the paramedics down there with a gurney, and took Dave outta there. That happens, every so often, as part of the choreography, so the crowd swallowed it. We didn’t have to stop the taping.’

He shook his head and scowled. ‘No, we didn’t lose the show, but I lost one half of my biggest drawing tag team. Dave has a fractured skull, so he’ll be out for months. On top of that, his shrewd little wife is looking for compensation. We have a form of insurance against accidental injury, but in these circumstances, it may not pay out.’

‘But surely, since it was an accident-’

Daze, not Everett, looked at me. ‘That was no accident, man. I questioned the roadies who set up the ring and put all the props in position. And believe me,’ he repeated grimly, ‘I sure did question them. Those guys were sweating bullets, but they swore on their mothers’ lives that a trick chair was left there.

‘For sure, Oz, someone switched them over. I guess it was the same person who switched the real tape cassettes in for duds in Germany.’

‘But couldn’t they both have been accidents?’ I protested. ‘Couldn’t the first thing have been a supplier’s mistake? Couldn’t someone have picked up the spoof chair before the show and sat on it, then put another one back by mistake? Couldn’t the whole thing just be coincidence?’

‘If a kid sat on one of those chairs it would bend. A full grown adult would go right through it. That was not an accident, I tell you; any more than the thing with the tapes was. Someone is out to wreck my organisation, and me.

‘I believe in the existence of extra-terrestrial beings, I believe in life after death, I believe in God and I believe in myself. But I do not believe in this sort of coincidence, no way sir; not when there’s money involved.

‘Look man, my contracts with the satellite companies have huge penalty clauses if I fail to deliver fresh product every week as promised. It happens once, it costs me one million dollars. Two million for a second breach. Three million for a third. Any further failures it’s another three million, plus my customers give me one month’s notice of termination, although I still have to supply during that period, subject to the same penalty rate.

‘It would never come to that, though. I could take a million-dollar hit. I could take a two-million-dollar hit on top of that, just. But one more, and I’d be done. The GWA would be bust. Someone’s trying to bring that about, and I’m damn sure I know who it is.’

‘Who?’

‘Tony Reilly. I reckon he’s taking me seriously now. He’s worked out my strategy and he’s out to take care of the Global Wrestling Alliance before it takes care of CWI, and him. Somewhere in my organisation he has a mole, put here to start kicking in those penalty payments.’

I stared at him. ‘Isn’t that a bit extreme? Would the guy really go to those lengths?’

He. . Everett, this time. . looked at me again, without a flicker of a smile. ‘Oh yeah. I reckon Mr Reilly would go to any lengths to break me.’

‘But yesterday you said he made you an offer once to go and work for him.’

A shadow passed across the huge face. ‘Sure he did; because he wanted to control me. There was money to be made out of Daze, and he was determined that no one but him was going to make it.’

‘But why?’

Everett glanced at the wall. ‘Reasons, man. Reasons.’ And then he looked back at me in a way that precluded further questioning. ‘It’s him behind my troubles. I know it.

‘I want you to help me find out who my enemy is; who Tony’s man is, in my camp.’

‘But how? You can’t expect me just to walk in and start questioning people. . especially not the sort of people you have here.’

‘Of course not. I want you to be around when it matters, keeping your eyes open. To pull it off, you need to be a member of the team. But like I said earlier, I’ve thought of a cover story.’ A huge grin spread slowly across his face.

The penny dropped. ‘You mean you really want me to. .’

I’ll never forget the way Jan’s eyes widened. ‘He’s asked you to be what. .?’

‘Ring announcer. We’d call it Master of Ceremonies. The guy who calls out the names of the contestants, then the result.’

Even as a wee girl my wife was always very cool and resourceful, never getting rattled or flustered, always thinking before speaking, always weighing her words. In all the years since we were kids, I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times I’ve seen her really incredulous. Looking at her across the bar table, I knew I was going to have to start using the other hand from that point on.

‘Is he serious?’ she gasped, almost choking as she fought to hold back her laughter.