Peter James - Not Dead Yet

‘Right, from the High Tech Crime Unit’s examination of Royce’s computer, so far, he would appear to have been one of a small group of obsessive Gaia fans who exchanged information and constantly bid against each other for everything that came up for auction. And it seems that he had one particularly acrimonious rivalry with a character called Anna Galicia. Which is where this gets interesting for us.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘This rivalry developed into an email slanging match with this woman. A really nasty, bitchy exchange over some item of Gaia’s they had both been bidding for that she wore in one of her shows. The High Tech Crime Unit’s still working through the email trail. But meantime I asked Annalise Vineer to run a name check on Anna Galicia, and she got a hit.’ He nodded at her.

‘Last Wednesday evening,’ Annalise Vineer said, ‘uniform attended a Grade 3 call at The Grand Hotel. It was a woman complaining she had been assaulted by two of Gaia Lafayette’s security guards. She gave her name as Anna Galicia. Following the information of the link between her and Royce from the High Tech Crime Unit, two uniformed officers were sent to her address to interview her. But it doesn’t exist. She gave a false address.’

Glenn Branson frowned. ‘Why would she have done that if she was making a genuine complaint?’

‘Exactly,’ Roy Grace said. ‘By all accounts she was pretty angry. So why give a false address?’ He looked around at his team. ‘Any ideas?’

‘Doesn’t make sense to me,’ Graham Baldock said.

‘Nor me,’ Guy Batchelor said. ‘If you’re making a complaint, you’re making a complaint. If you have something to hide you don’t make a complaint in the first place. I mean, do you?’ He shrugged.

‘I’m not at all happy about this person,’ Grace said. ‘We need to find her quickly. Very quickly.’

‘How can I make my multi-million-dollar movie with a goddamn lead actor who’s off his goddamn face, for fuck’s sake!’ Larry Brooker yelled at the top of his voice, across the floor of the Banqueting Room, at the hapless Third Assistant Director, Adrián González. ‘You wanna tell me?’

González raised his hands in a gesture of despair. His role was to deliver Gaia, Judd Halpern and the other principal actors to the set, and escort them back to their trailers when they weren’t required. He was an earnest, fresh-faced twenty-eight-year-old, with a shock of short, unruly ginger hair, dressed in a blue T-shirt emblazoned in white with the words THE KING’S LOVER, tatty cargo shorts and trainers. He wore a headset with an earpiece and microphone, had a mobile phone and a pager clipped to his belt, and was clutching a call sheet. He shrugged helplessly at Brooker.

There was a pathetic ego thing going on between the two stars, who had taken an instant dislike to each other from day one. Halpern had already kept Gaia waiting twice, so now she refused to come out of her trailer, for any scenes she was doing with him, until it was confirmed to her that he was on set and ready.

The director, camera team and the rest of the crew watched Larry Brooker’s latest tantrum. The bald, tanned producer, in a black Versace shirt open halfway down his chest, displaying his gold medallion, black chinos and Cuban-heeled boots, strode over towards Gonzá-lez, like a pocket dictator, and gripped him by the front of his T-shirt. ‘What the fuck’s going on? Thirty minutes we’ve been waiting for this goddamn asshole. We have a schedule to keep to. We’ve got two busloads of extras sitting out there!’ Still gripping González’s shirt he turned to the Line Producer, Barnaby Katz, a short, tubby man in his early forties, with a barren dome rising from a sparse tundra of fuzzy hair, who looked close to a nervous breakdown. He was dressed in a shapeless lumberjack shirt, baggy jeans and old desert boots. ‘What the fuck are you doing standing there with your thumb up your ass?’ he shouted at him. Then he released González, who stood still for a moment, as if unsure what to do next.

‘I’ll go and have a word with him,’ Katz said.

Brooker tapped his chest. ‘No, I’m going. Okay?’

He stormed out of the Banqueting Room, left the building and strode across the grounds towards the trailers. Along the street, beyond the Pavilion lawns and the cordon manned by the security guards and the row of trucks, was a large crowd of people waiting to catch glimpses of the stars – mostly waiting for Gaia, he guessed.

Judd Goddamn Halpern . Jesus, how he hated actors. Judd Halpern didn’t do public transport, his agent had informed them. Which meant they’d had to put in the budget 150,000 bucks to fly the jerk, his assistant, and some girl he was currently screwing, over to London in a goddamn private jet. Then, because he was, apparently, a method actor, he had demanded that there was unpasteurized milk on the plane, as King George would have drunk, so he could get himself into character.

Fuckwit.

He strode up to Judd Halpern’s motorhome and banged on the door. Without waiting for an answer he pulled it open and stormed up the steps. Inside was a fug of cannabis smoke that took him back to his student days. Through it he could see Halpern, seated at his dressing table, staring bleary-eyed into the mirror that was lit all the way round with bare light bulbs. Today’s script pages, lime green, lay fanned out in front of him, with markings all over them, like a corrected school essay. A bottle of bourbon sat on the desk, alongside a plastic ballpoint pen with the nib and ink tube removed.

Halpern was dressed in bulbous white pantaloons, a velvet, gold-braided jacket with a high collar and a cream neck ruff secured with an ornately jewelled brooch. His wavy black wig sat on the dresser in front of him. A female make-up artist was working on his face, while a joint burned in the ashtray. Standing in front of them, as if trying to block his path, was Halpern’s effete personal assistant, and behind him, slumped over a table, with a cocktail glass in front of her, and a Grey Goose vodka bottle next to it, was a scantily clad girl of barely legal age.

By the relatively tender age of forty-two, Judd Halpern had already blown his career twice. The first time was after being the child star of a global hit US television series, Pasadena Heights , when he had become so impossibly arrogant, no one would work with him. Then, having recovered from that in his early twenties, helped by his almost absurdly handsome looks, which had been compared to those of silent screen star Rudolph Valentino, and his unquestionable acting talent, his career had been reborn with two successful movies. Then it hit the skids after a series of drug convictions ending in a four-year spell in jail, when once again he had become a Hollywood pariah.

Now, according to his agent, he was clean, over it, remorseful about his past, anxious to make a fresh start, and had just made a movie with George Clooney that was a slam-dunk to totally relaunch his career. Which was how Brooker Brody Productions had secured an actor with A-list history for only a couple of hundred thousand dollars above scale.

‘Judd,’ Brooker said, more civilly than he felt. ‘Like, we’re all waiting for you.’

‘Ready when you are, CB!’ Halpern said, staring back, with dilated pupils, at his own handsome, if borderline flaccid, reflection in the mirror. He reached for the joint, but before his fingers touched it, Brooker snatched it and crushed it out in the ashtray, stubbing it, snapping it, then stubbing it again for good measure.

‘Hey, man!’ Judd Halpern protested.

‘You have a problem?’

Halpern glared at him. ‘Yeah, I have a problem.’

‘Yeah? Well I have a problem, too. My name isn’t CB, it’s LB. Larry Brooker .’