by Fiona Leitch
Top story on the site, underneath the lurid headline ‘Award-winning Producer in Sex-for-Roles Scandal’, was a video, secretly and inexpertly filmed. It was slightly blurred and out of focus, but still clear enough to recognise the man at the centre of it. Mike Mancuso, clad in a loose-fitting bathrobe, sitting on a sofa in a tastefully bland but expensive-looking hotel room. There was an ice bucket with a bottle of champagne in it on the coffee table in front of him. Also on the table was a small heap of white powder. And opposite him sat a handsome young man in his early twenties.
The young man held some pages of a script in his hand. He read from them, pouring emotion into every line; he had real presence and professionalism, which can’t have been easy with the sweaty New Yorker sat across from him, his legs open wider than any middle-aged-man-in-a-bathrobe’s legs should be. At the end of the reading he stopped, expectantly. You could almost sense his feeling of hope, that his dreams might be about to come true. But underneath that, in his demeanour, in his body language, seemed to lie the unwelcome realisation that it wasn’t going to be as easy as that. Or was that just the old cynic in me? Because I had the horrible feeling I knew what was coming next.
‘You did good,’ said Mancuso, on the screen. ‘You got that quality, kid. You could be a big star.’
‘Do you really think so?’ said the young man. His eagerness was almost heartbreaking.
‘I do.’ Mancuso shifted, moving his legs further apart, and I really, really wished he was wearing underpants. ‘But you know, I know a lotta young guys like you – great actors, good-looking guys. Why should I give you the part and not one of them?’
The young man also shifted, but instead of spreading out he looked like he was trying to physically withdraw into himself. ‘Well, I-I got great reviews when I played Romeo—’
‘Yeah, these other guys got great reviews too,’ said Mancuso, inspecting his fingernails, bored. ‘That ain’t how it works though, is it?’ He looked up with a frank expression on his face. ‘Come on. You know how it goes. You scratch my back…’
‘You want me to scratch your back?’
Mancuso laughed. ‘You know what I want.’
The young man was still for a moment, and I thought, Tell the big fat bully to stick his part where the sun don’t shine! Get up and leave!
But obviously the young man hadn’t left, otherwise we wouldn’t have been here watching the video. I won’t go into details about what followed. Unless you’re terribly sweet and innocent (sweeter and more innocent than me, anyway), you can probably guess. The Hollywood casting couch might have suffered a dent with the advent of #MeToo, but the video showed that it hadn’t completely gone away after all. Underneath the video was a quote from the ‘unnamed source’ who had sent in the video:
The games played by the powerful men in this industry continue, despite our best efforts. The younger generation of actors and creatives should not have to go through what we did.
Nathan and I watched the video – or enough of it, anyway – open-mouthed with shock. We weren’t the only ones. The whole crew were glued to their phones, many of them tapping away – sharing it, I assumed. Daisy and Jade ran over with their phones in their hands, but thankfully they hadn’t clicked on the link (I had instilled in Daisy a fear of cybercrime, online bullying, and hacking that had really come into its own today) and I was able to delete it before they did. There was no way I wanted them to see it.
Mike Mancuso stepped out of the production-office trailer, phone in one hand, car keys in the other. He was obviously planning to get out of there as quickly as he could, away from the shocked, judging eyes of the cast and crew who were even now turning to look at him.
Nathan approached him and I followed at a trot, after asking Jade to call her mum to pick them both up. I might be here a while…
‘Excuse me, Mr Mancuso, sir!’ called Nathan. Mancuso ignored him, but we could see where he was heading. Nathan reached the car first and stood in his way.
‘Mr Mancuso, I think you and I need to have a little chat, don’t you?’ And there wasn’t much that the producer could do, other than agree, especially when Matt Turner emerged triumphantly from the dumpster behind the office clutching an empty sake bottle wrapped in a plastic bag.
Faith opened the door to her trailer. She looked quite happy to see me, but her smile slipped a little as she spotted Nathan behind me.
‘Jodie, DCI Withers, you do look serious. I think you’d better come in.’
She sat down and gestured to us to take a seat. I did, but Nathan stayed standing. Power move, I thought.
‘Ms Mackenzie,’ said Nathan, ‘we’d like to ask you about your relationship with Mr Mancuso.’
‘I didn’t have one,’ she said. She smiled at me, but there was a hint of sadness behind it. ‘You of all people know I have much better taste in men than that.’
‘We don’t mean a sexual relationship,’ I said. ‘We mean—’
‘You mean, you want to know if I blackmailed him or not?’
Nathan and I exchanged surprised glances.
‘Well, yes,’ he admitted. ‘Although it’s really a rhetorical question, because we’ve just spoken to him and we know you did.’
‘Does it still count as blackmail if I never actually asked for money? Or for any type of personal gain?’
‘Technically, yes,’ I said. ‘But you did ask for money.’
She shook her head vehemently. ‘No, I didn’t. Not once. Did he know it was me? Or was it the video that led you to me? I did tell the website people not to lie about where they got it from if it was going to get them into trouble.’
‘I recognised your words,’ I said. ‘The younger generation shouldn’t have to go through what we did…’
‘I just wanted him to come clean and admit what sort of man he is.’
Nathan looked at her sceptically. ‘Really? A man like Mike Mancuso was never going to admit to something like that, was he? What did you expect him to do?’
‘I don’t know. I just wanted him to know that we were on to him, and he couldn’t carry on that way anymore.’ Faith looked a bit vague, and I got the feeling she’d acted before she’d had a chance to really think it through. ‘I thought maybe he’d retire, or make some big thing of going into rehab for sex addiction or something. He could have controlled how it came out, made it look like he was really sorry. Hollywood can be very forgiving if you’re contrite enough, and rich enough. At least it would have meant people knew what he was like.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I was naive. I never wanted the video to come out, but when I realised what he’d done… I thought, maybe he thought Jeremy was behind it all, and when he realised it wasn’t him, I would be next. At least the news site had the decency to blur the poor boy’s face.’
‘Who is he?’ I asked.
‘He’s a fan. My Mile End character, Clara, has a big following amongst the gay community. It’s the clothes, you know. And the big heart. Anyway, he had a meeting with Mike about a role, but one of his friends worked in the hotel in London he always uses for his ‘casting’ sessions.’ Faith grimaced, as if the words had left a foul taste in her mouth. ‘His friend had heard rumours and he wanted to protect him, so he hid a camera in the room, and… Well, you saw what happened. He sent the tape to me because he was upset and he didn’t know what to do. He wanted Mike held to account but he’s a no one; nobody would take it seriously. And of course he wasn’t physically forced into doing it. I mean, technically it wasn’t rape, was it? So I sent it to Mike anonymously and told him that if he didn’t own up, I would leak it to the press. The gay community needs their own #MeToo moment.’
‘So how did you end up getting a hundred and forty thousand pounds from him?’ asked Nathan, clearly not buying her story. But I almost believed her.
Faith almost choked. ‘Is that how much he said he’d given me? Cheeky bugger! More like fifty thousand. Sounds to me like he’s been lining his own pocket in case it did come out.’
‘But you’re not denying you received some money?’
‘Oh no, although it didn’t come to me. It was never about money for me. He immediately offered me some to keep quiet, but I said no. He just kept coming back with higher and higher offers.’
‘For a man like Mancuso, it would always be about money, and it would never occur to him that someone might have different motives,’ I said. ‘He thought you were playing hardball, trying to get him to offer you more.’
‘And he did,’ she said. ‘He kept going until he got to an amount that I just couldn’t turn down. So I got him to pay it into a PayPal account that I’d set up under a charitable trust, and then I paid it into a couple of charities I’m a patron of—’
‘A women’s refuge and a rainbow youth centre?’ said Nathan. She nodded.
‘Yes. See, I’m hardly a criminal mastermind, am I? You’ve obviously been able to trace it already. I was only worried about Mike finding out. I knew he wouldn’t go to the police.’ She sighed. ‘It’s such a shame. I love this film. The script, the cast, everything. And it’ll all just stop now, won’t it?’
I nodded, thinking, It’s the end of the movie, and the end of the investigation, but is it also the end of me and Nathan?
We sat outside the food truck. It was starting to get late. Nancy had picked up the girls and taken them back to her house for tea, so I sat with Nathan waiting for Mum to get out of her costume. She’d been on set throughout the whole drama, along with Tony, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that her acting debut probably wouldn’t make it onto the screen now.
Germaine scouted about in the grass, looking for scraps of food. The crew stood around in groups, some lethargic and depressed about the shoot being cancelled, others talking animatedly about the day’s events. Gino whistled cheerfully enough as he packed everything away, but there was none of his trademark singing; it would have been a little inappropriate.
Tony joined us. I smiled at him, knowing that I would never again see him in the Mr Darcy-esque outfit that had caused me so much hormonal bother – although to be honest, now that we’d kissed I didn’t think it would have quite the same effect on me anymore. I could look at him now and appreciate that he was a nice-looking bloke, but … he was my mate.
‘Proper shocking turn of events,’ he said. Nathan nodded.
‘I think you might’ve missed your shot at fame, mate,’ he said. Tony shrugged.
‘I’m getting used to missing chances,’ he said, with a rueful grin at me. I was glad Nathan didn’t notice. His phone rang.
‘Not another video, I hope,’ joked Tony. Nathan smiled tightly.
‘Nothing quite as exciting,’ he said, and declined the call. I could guess only too easily who the caller was…
‘What have I missed?’ asked Mum, sitting down next to me. ‘Is it really all over?’
I nodded. ‘Yeah, I’m afraid so. Did you see the video?’
‘Ooh, the one on here?’ She took her mobile phone out. Up to now it had always annoyed me the way she held it suspiciously in her hand like it was about to explode, but now I welcomed her ineptitude with anything more technical than the kettle (honestly, nothing to do with her age, she just always had problems with anything that had an on-off switch). She opened the message and her finger hovered over the link. ‘Should I click on this?’
‘NO!!’ we all cried, and she looked mildly surprised.
‘Okay then, I won’t,’ she said. ‘So what’s going on? Why is the shoot cancelled?’
Nathan and I exchanged glances. This was likely to take some time.
Mike Mancuso was a powerful man, and powerful men are used to getting what they want, especially in the movie industry. One of the things he wanted was – how to say this nicely – favours of the more sordid variety (that’s how my mum would probably have put it, had she been discussing it with her friends at the OAPs’ coffee morning, probably in a loud stage whisper to show how shocked she was). And he usually got them, too, because most of the people he pursued were desperate enough to agree to almost anything.
This particular young man had agreed, reluctantly, but had regretted it immediately. I wondered how many other young men (and women) had been through the same thing, having been convinced by a sexual predator like Mancuso that this was how things worked in the film industry. From what Faith had told me before, it had almost been par for the course in the early days of her career, but that hardly made it okay.
The hidden camera had caught the whole thing, but when it came down to it, even with the video as evidence, what could they do? There was nothing illegal on that video – apart from the white powder, but for all we could prove it could have been icing sugar, or talcum powder. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Mancuso hadn’t physically forced the victim to do anything. It was coercion rather than assault, something which ethically was clearly wrong, but legally considered a ‘grey area’. The police, said Faith, did not have a good track record in such cases, and to my eternal shame, Nathan and I both had to admit she was right.
But she was an actor, and she still wanted a career, so she couldn’t do anything openly. She’d sent Mancuso a copy anonymously and told him that his days were numbered if he didn’t do the right thing and come clean. He’d immediately assumed that the unknown blackmailer had wanted money.
He’d begun to put funds aside from the production budget, not just to pay off the blackmailer but also as a little nest egg for himself if it did all come out and he suddenly found himself without a career. Not that he really needed that hundred grand (although, when the production accountant went through the figures later they would discover it was more like two hundred and fifty thousand pounds that were unaccounted for), but he had thought it was best to be prepared.
Only the production manager had begun to ask questions. Bills were due, and suddenly there wasn’t enough money to pay them. The budget was blown and they hadn’t even finished shooting. It would all come out. The investors would want their money back, and it was no longer there.
The series of ‘accidents’ and talk of the curse had been a godsend. If Mancuso could arrange one big accident that would stop filming for a few weeks, maybe even a month, then the accident insurance would pay out, the creditors would be satisfied, and it would give him enough money to pay off the blackmailer once and for all – or time to find them (and do what to them he did not divulge to Nathan, but it couldn’t have been good). And with his teenage daughter coming to stay with him in sleepy Cornwall after being released from rehab, along with her medication, the final part of his plan – the tetrodotoxin – had fallen into place. It had felt like fate, lending him a hand. He’d been so sure of the brilliance of his scheme, and so convinced that no one would ever suspect it was anything other than pufferfish poisoning, that he’d carelessly tossed the sake bottle into the dumpster outside his office.
No one was supposed to die. It was sheer bad luck that Jeremy, the recovering alcoholic who had only fallen off the wagon because of Mancuso himself, had drunk more than he was meant to and ruined the plan.
‘Well, I don’t think much of him,’ said Mum sniffily as Nathan and I finished the sorry tale, and we couldn’t disagree with that, either.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
It was too cold really to be out in the garden at this time of night, but I’d got used to finishing the day sitting on the wall and staring out at the ocean, and I missed it when I couldn’t. It was too cold to sit on the stone wall, though, so I leant on it and looked out across the sheep field onto which my house backed. I could smell the sea beyond the field (and the sheep as well, to be honest), but it was too dark to see anything other than the odd ripple of the waves in the distance as the moonlight glinted off the sea. The stars were bright overhead. It felt desolate somehow, but still romantic. I felt like I was on the cover of some romance novel, a lone woman staring bravely out to sea – an image that was spoilt slightly by the gastric explosions emanating from a nearby huddle of my woolly neighbours. S
urely they shouldn’t smell that much, just from eating grass?
‘You all right?’ Tony stood by the back door of the house, silhouetted against the light from the kitchen behind him.
‘Yeah, course,’ I said. ‘You joining me?’
He pulled the door shut, then came over and leant on the wall next to me. ‘Getting cold at night now, innit?’
‘Yeah.’
We were both quiet for a minute.
‘Have you seen Zack’s social media appeal?’ he asked.
‘No! What’s that all about?’
‘He’s launching a crowd-funding campaign, to finish the film.’
‘Really?’ I said, pleased. ‘That’s brilliant! I hope they raise the money.’
‘Me too,’ said Tony. ‘I can’t bear to think of Shirley’s big-screen debut going to waste.’
‘I wish I’d seen it,’ I admitted. ‘I feel bad about not watching the filming.’ He shrugged.
‘You were catching a murderer, to be fair.’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘I have to say, you did miss a right treat.’
‘Was she good?’
‘You know your mum. She were magnificent. A proper Elizabeth Taylor. You should get her to do her line for you. Did she tell you what it was?’
‘No. Go on!’
‘She had to look at Zack, all haughty like, and say,’ – he put on a high-pitched, aristocratic voice that would have made Lady Bracknell sound like an extra from Mile End Days – ’‘Young man, you happear to have something protruding from your britches.’’
I stared at him for a moment, and then we both burst out laughing. Then he turned to me.
‘You and me, we’re good, yeah?’
‘Of course we are,’ I said. We really were. ‘Good as gold. I meant what I said before, Tony.’
