A Sprinkle of Sabotage

by Fiona Leitch

  I looked at him, trying not to think of the six-pack lurking under his (clean and dry) frilly shirt, and snorted. ‘You? Lucky? Does she know about your track record with women?’ I saw him stiffen and immediately regretted it. Why was I being nasty to him? He was my best – certainly my oldest – friend in the world. It wasn’t like I was jealous of him spending time with Faith or anything – why should I be? And to bring up his past relationships, both of which had ended in disaster, was just mean. Being Mrs Penhaligon, it seemed, wasn’t a job for the faint-hearted, but that was hardly his fault. ‘I am so sorry. I didn’t mean it to come out like that.’

  ‘I know you didn’t,’ he said shortly, but I still felt bad.

  ‘So how come she needs a lucky charm?’ I asked, hoping to smooth things over by charging on with the conversation and ignoring it.

  He smiled. ‘Actors are so superstitious. You know how you have to say ‘break a leg’ instead of ‘good luck’, and how you’re not allowed to say the name of the Scottish play—’

  ‘Macbeth,’ Debbie and I chorused, loudly. A couple of cast members nearby gave us murderous glances and we giggled.

  ‘I thought that were just in the theatre?’ asked Debbie. He nodded.

  ‘It is, normally. But everyone’s on edge here now because of the curse.’

  Debbie and I exchanged looks.

  ‘What curse?’ I said.

  ‘It’s proper daft,’ said Tony, ‘but Faith and some of the others have got it into their heads that the production’s cursed. You hear about some film shoots being really unlucky, people having accidents, even dying—’

  ‘What a load of rubbish,’ I scoffed, but he shook his head.

  ‘No, you should google it. You know Poltergeist?’

  Debbie and I looked at each other and grinned. ‘They’re here…’

  ‘I knew you’d do that. There’s this bit in a swimming pool, where all these skeletons pop up—’

  ‘I know the bit you mean. Do you remember, Tone, we got it out of Blockbusters when it came out on video and watched it round mine while my mum and dad were at a dinner party.’ I suddenly also remembered that it had been during the two weeks in 1994 when we’d been boyfriend and girlfriend. We’d been fourteen and had held hands and kissed, but no tongues. He certainly hadn’t had a six-pack back then. I swallowed. ‘It scared the bejesus out of us.’

  ‘Of course I remember…’ He looked at me and I knew he was also remembering the first few awkward moments after deciding that we were officially going out together, when we’d sat on the sofa, neither of us knowing what exactly being boyfriend and girlfriend entailed. We’d given up trying to work it out after a while and had just watched the film, throwing Maltesers at each other during the scary bits, exactly as we had done a thousand times before when we were just friends. ‘Anyway, they used real skeletons. Real live dead people. Not a good idea. Lots of unexplained accidents, even deaths.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ said Debbie.

  ‘And then there was The Omen, and The Crow, and—’

  I shook my head. ‘Tony, love, you need to stop looking up rubbish on the internet.’

  ‘It’s all true! Anyway, the thing is, these stories spread, don’t they?’

  ‘Because people look them up on the internet,’ I pointed out, pointedly.

  ‘Well, yeah. But what with Faith getting locked in, the dog escaping and nearly drowning, and now Gino falling down the stairs and breaking his arm…’ He leaned in conspiratorially. ‘They think this shoot’s cursed too.’

  Debbie and I stared at him, then at each other, and then burst out laughing.

  ‘Oh, come on! The Omen and that, they’re horror films with loads of spooky stuff going on, but this film…’ Debbie threw her hands up in exasperation. ‘The scariest thing about this film is your frilly shirt.’

  ‘Thanks a lot…’

  ‘Honestly, what does this remind you of?’ I said.

  He looked mystified. ‘I dunno, what’s it supposed to remind me of?’

  I put on a terrible American accent. ‘‘I’d have gotten away with it too, if it hadn’t been for them pesky kids!’’ He still looked mystified and I felt indignant. ‘It’s all a bit Scooby Doo, innit?’

  ‘The local sheriff’s been dressing up as the ghost of Polvarrow House and terrorising the actors with phantom pasties,’ said Debbie, laughing.

  ‘Exactly,’ I said. Tony looked at me, his eyes narrowing.

  ‘You know something. What do you know?’

  ‘Nothing…’ I didn’t really want to mention my suspicions until I spoke to Nathan. But then, if I was right, I should warn them… I looked around to make sure no one else was listening, and then beckoned the two of them closer. ‘I think maybe someone is trying to sabotage the shoot.’

  Nathan looked at me keenly. ‘What makes you say that?’

  The cast and crew, including Debbie and Tony, had finished lunch and gone back on set. A few stragglers hung around, chatting, but other than that Nathan and I had the picnic tables to ourselves.

  I held up the broken-off piece of step. ‘What do you think of that?’

  He studied it, then looked up at me. ‘That’s a suspiciously clean break, if we’re meant to believe that it broke under someone’s weight.’

  ‘Someone sawed through the middle of the step, didn’t they? Not all the way through – someone might have noticed that – but just enough that when a certain amount of weight was put on it, or someone stood right on the cut, it would split in two.’

  ‘Do you think someone was out to get Gino?’ Nathan put down the wood and picked up his mug of tea. I shook my head.

  ‘I don’t think so. Why would they be? He’s the caterer; everyone loves him because he feeds them. And it’s a bit of a hit-and-miss method, isn’t it? There’d be no telling when it would break, or even if it would be Gino who stood on it. There are probably other people who come up and down those stairs – delivery people maybe, I dunno. And when you add to it the other things that have happened… You heard about the lock on Faith’s caravan—’

  ‘We should have a look at that.’ Nathan grinned. ‘I mean, I should have a look at it. I’m the copper round here. I keep forgetting… And you think someone let the dog out deliberately?’

  ‘Yes. I think they may have even chucked her in the lake.’ Nathan looked horrified. ‘I know, that’s a really nasty thing to do. But Kimi’s sister didn’t leave Princess alone for very long. How she managed to get the door open, get all the way over to the lake, and end up swimming in the middle of it, in that short a time… I just don’t think a dog of that size could cover that much ground in so little time, especially not without being spotted.’

  ‘Which leads on to the next question,’ said Nathan. ‘How could someone do that without them being spotted? We’re in the middle of a busy film shoot; there are people everywhere.’

  ‘I was thinking about that,’ I said. ‘When we saw the dog, most of the crew were in the ballroom, setting up for filming. Not all, of course: the make-up and wardrobe staff were in their trailers, and there would have been some cast members with them getting ready. The rest of the main cast would have been in their trailers, and the extras were either getting dressed or heading for the ballroom.’

  ‘Would they have passed the lake?’

  ‘No. We only did because I was feeling rebellious and wanted to have a walk about before having to stand in one spot for hours wearing a potato sack.’ Nathan raised an eyebrow. ‘That’s another one of my long stories. Put it this way, they obviously don’t think I’m leading-lady material.’

  ‘That’s a travesty. So who else was near the lake when you spotted the dog?’

  I thought hard. ‘There were a few crew members; I don’t know who they are. And the bloke who owns the house.’

  ‘Hmm… I’ll have a quiet word with him, see if he’s seen anyone lurking who shouldn’t be here. Even if there weren’t many people about, you’d think someone would have spot
ted a person carrying a dog.’

  ‘Not if it’s someone who was meant to be there,’ I said. Nathan nodded.

  ‘Yes. A crew member. But I don’t understand what the point of these little ‘accidents’ is. They haven’t really caused any problems, have they? I mean, apart from Gino breaking his arm. They haven’t stopped filming.’

  ‘No, but they’ve made everyone uneasy. Ridiculously so.’ I told him about the curse and he laughed.

  ‘These creative types, they do let their imaginations run away with them,’ he said. ‘No common sense.’

  ‘Much better to be a completely unimaginative copper,’ I said, and he grinned.

  ‘You said it. At least there’s one thing we can be sure of: it’s not the local sheriff dressing up as a mummy. I know Sergeant Adams likes to dress up when he’s singing in the fishermen’s choir, but I think I’d notice if he’d gone full-on Ancient Mariner on us. But if a gang of teenagers and their weird talking dog turn up in a psychedelic van, let me know…’ I laughed; I was glad Nathan was on my wavelength, and I wasn’t the only one who could see just how Scooby Doo the situation was. Nathan stood up. ‘I’d better go. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to do. Obviously I can’t do anything about any of this unless someone wants to make a formal complaint. So far, apart from causing Gino to hurt his arm, it comes more under the heading of ‘annoying pranks’ than any real crime.’ He looked around, but by now the last of the crew had left and we were alone. ‘Still, be careful, yeah? Keep an eye out and let me know if anything else suspicious happens.’

  ‘Wait,’ I said, as he turned to go. ‘Why did you call me earlier? Was there something you wanted?’

  He smiled awkwardly. ‘No, no, I just wanted to thank you again for last night.’

  ‘No worries, I really enjoyed it.’ Fancy coming round tonight as well? I thought, but I didn’t say it because that might come across as desperate.

  ‘Me too.’ Nathan looked at me for a moment, and I thought he was going to say something else. But he didn’t. ‘I’ve really got to go. I’ll see you later.’

  The rest of the day was busy but uneventful. I had kept some food on the hotplate for any cast and crew who wanted dinner, but the shoot wrapped for the day at 5 p.m. amid mutterings about ‘the light’. Apparently the ballroom scene was done – it may have taken most of the day, but according to Tony there were only six lines of dialogue and the whole scene would probably only last about two minutes on screen – and they were ready to move on to an outdoor scene, but it would start to get dark before they’d even set up.

  I decanted the leftover curry and chilli into Tupperware containers – it saved me having to cook dinner when I got home – and washed everything up, conscious that it wasn’t my kitchen and that I needed to leave it in good condition. I’d just taken out the keys and locked up when I heard movement behind me. I whirled around, my heart pounding, to find Zack standing behind me.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said, a rueful grin on his face, ‘didn’t mean to startle you. Do you know what’s happening with Gino? Is he gonna be back tomorrow?’

  I took a deep breath as my heart rate returned to normal. All this talk of curses must have got to me. ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘To be honest though, I doubt it. It looked like his elbow was broken, which is really nasty. He couldn’t move his fingers or anything. Looks like you’ll have to put up with my cooking for another few days.’ Or the rest of the shoot, I thought; a broken elbow would take some time to heal.

  ‘Bugger,’ said Zack.

  ‘Oh, come on, my curry wasn’t that bad,’ I said, affronted. He laughed, a big booming laugh that made me smile along with it.

  ‘Ha! Nah, I dint mean that,’ he said. His accent was pure South London, and I wondered if he’d grown up around the area I’d worked in. Coppers hadn’t always been very popular round there – in some cases with good reason. Maybe I wouldn’t mention that I’d been in the Met. ‘Nah, Gino was going to help me with something.’ I raised an eyebrow. With what? ‘I’m meant to be holding a dinner party tomorrow…’ He saw the look of surprise on my face and laughed again. ‘Yeah, I know, it’s not something I do a lot of, cooking fancy stuff, but it’s Kimi and Aiko’s birthday tomorrow and I wanted to do something special for them. Gino said he’d ordered the ingredients for me and he was going to help me out.’ He looked at me. ‘I don’t suppose you fancy it? I’ll pay you. I was going to pay Gino.’

  I wasn’t sure I fancied being around movie stars after hours if I could help it. Zack was nice enough, and I loved that laugh of his, but Kimi seemed like a right diva, and if the rest of his co-stars were there… Well, I’d gone right off Faith after that business with Tony (not that I was jealous or saw her as competition or anything), and Jeremy Mayhew, who I’d admittedly only seen outside her trailer, had so far done nothing to dispel my image of him as a sexist old drunk.

  Zack saw the expression of doubt on my face but he was clearly desperate because he said, ‘Please? It’ll only be two, three hours work max, and I’ll pay you two hundred quid.’

  Two hundred? That just happened to be the price of the photography software I wanted to get Daisy for her birthday…

  I smiled at him. ‘It would be my pleasure.’

  Chapter Eight

  So the next morning I found myself at Polvarrow House at 7 a.m., making breakfast for the crew and for Daisy. Mum had spent a rare night in her own house the night before, so Daisy had been forced to come with me. I planned to feed her and let her have a nosey around the set (like mother, like daughter) before packing her off to school in a taxi.

  She was slightly disappointed.

  ‘Where’s all the actors?’ she said, as she sat at a picnic table picking at a bacon butty. The other tables were quiet – just some crew members wandering over to grab a sandwich before going off to set up lights and props. Nearby, serious-looking men strode around doing technical-looking things with screwdrivers and duct tape, while behind them David Morgan, the owner of the house, strode through the courtyard. I thought at first that he was just watching the comings and goings, but he looked angry, and he was clearly looking out for someone amongst the crew. He did not look like the excited, smiley-faced man who had welcomed us to the casting session the other Saturday.

  ‘Mum?’ Daisy sighed. ‘I said, where are the actors? I thought I might bump into … some of them.’

  I grinned. ‘I think Zack likes to have a lie-in. You’ll have to come back after school.’

  ‘Can I?’ She looked at me, excited, and I nodded.

  ‘I’ll still be here, working. You could go back to Nana’s, of course, if you’d rather do that…’

  ‘No!’ Daisy said immediately, and then she laughed. ‘I mean, no offence to Nana, but…’

  ‘I’ll get the taxi to pick you up after school,’ I said. ‘I’ve got to help Zack with this dinner-party thing, so you’ll definitely get to meet him.’

  ‘Oh my God!’ said Daisy. ‘Jade is going to spew when she finds out.’

  Just then the taxi driver – Magda Trevarrow, who was married to my old school friend Rob, from the garage – arrived to whisk Daisy off to school. I kissed my beautiful daughter goodbye and smiled to myself as I heard her chattering to Magda about coming back later to meet Zack Smith. Magda looked bemused and I got the impression that she’d never heard of him. I also got the impression that by the time she dropped Daisy off she’d know all there was to know about him.

  I cleared away Daisy’s plate and looked up as I heard voices. Three crew members were chatting over mugs of tea.

  ‘I told you, this shoot is cursed,’ said one. He was wearing a baseball cap and a worried expression. The other two laughed but he shook his head angrily. ‘I mean it! I set up those three tungstens yesterday for the kitchen scene and left them there overnight, and when I went to test them this morning every single one had blown.’

  ‘Bulbs blow all the time,’ said one of his companions dismissively, a heavy-set man with a pockmarked face, the
legacy of a teenage acne problem. Baseball Cap shook his head.

  ‘Not overnight when they’re not even turned on,’ he said. ‘They were all new bulbs. Apart from about twenty minutes yesterday when I was setting up, they were unused. All shattered.’

  ‘That’s the problem with tungstens,’ said Pockmarks, knowledgeably. ‘They’re good if you’re going for natural light but they get too hot and BANG! You’re left in the dark and your cast is covered in glass. Happened on the Live and Let Spy shoot. Right in the middle of a torture scene, the bulb blows and there’s Tom Hardy jumping out of his skin and nearly hitting his head on the ceiling. Power surge.’ His companion nodded wisely, but Baseball Cap shook his head again.

  ‘No, you’re not listening.’ He sounded exasperated, probably by his colleague’s blatant name-dropping, I thought. ‘They didn’t blow when I turned them on. I didn’t need to turn them on to know they weren’t working. I walked in and I immediately saw glass all over the floor where the bulbs had shattered. They’d all exploded.’

  Curiouser and curiouser, I thought. It sounded like the saboteur had struck again… I cleared the tables and took the dishes back to the food truck to wash up.

  ‘Got any more ketchup?’ The crew member with the pockmarked face was helping himself to a sausage and bacon bap. I smiled and handed him the bottle, then peered round him as I spotted David Morgan engaged in a heated debate with Lucy. So that was who he’d been looking out for. The first AD held her hands out in a placatory gesture to calm him down, but he still looked annoyed. So of course I had to go over and find out what was going on. I lurked nearby, pretending to clear a table.

  ‘It was agreed,’ he was saying to Lucy. ‘No one is to enter the kitchen garden. It’s my private space. I know you’re filming in the old kitchen, but there’s really no need for anyone to go in the garden.’

  ‘I’ll ask around and find out who it was,’ she said. ‘I’m terribly sorry. Do let me know if it happens again.’ And she rushed off. I wandered over to the tea urn before returning to the angry house-owner.