Blood in the Wings

by J. L. O'Rourke

  “This way,” I urged, turning left as we got to Gloucester Street. “We’re in the carpark building. Hurry!”

  Severn had been right, vampires can move fast. Holding his hand as tightly as I could, I was dragged along the street, my feet barely making contact with the pavement. We crossed the road at a run, against the green light, and raced into the welcoming gloom of the carpark stairs.

  “Level four,” I explained, puffing. “Hang on, I need to get my breath back.”

  “Grant’s okay,” was Severn’s only comment as we slowly climbed the stairs and unlocked the car.

  My reaction to his comment was to have one of those moments when a whole heap of images and thoughts all explode in your head in a fraction of a second. A memory of Mum and Dad in Australia, fighting as usual. A picture of Grant’s spaniel smile. Grant at his computer, trying to sound like he knew what he was doing. Mum and Grant in the kitchen, singing duets. Mum smiling. Dad’s letter wanting me to move back to Oz. A new baby. Grant carrying the groceries. Grant in the garden. Mum smiling.

  “Yeah,” I answered. “Grant’s okay. You, on the other hand, are a dumb-arse! What on earth did you think you were doing, turning up at the theatre? Let me guess – you’ve got Seth all sussed so everything else will be sweet? Did you forget you are at the top of Detective Frogface’s hit list of prime suspects?

  Severn didn’t even attempt to answer. He was as angry as I was. Great, I’m alone in a deserted carpark building with a gorgeous man who is about to be whisked away to the other side of the world and we sit, too angry to speak to each other. Excellent, Riley! Brilliant move! After a few minutes of stony silence, the whole thing got to me and I started to laugh. He looked sideways at me, the tension evaporated and he began to laugh too. Then he kissed me. Not a bad way to apologise. I kissed him back. After all, we had to do something to fill in the time while we waited for Mum and Grant, who appeared, slightly flustered looking, about thirty minutes later.

  “Well, that was my best acting role all season,” Grant began as he settled himself into the driving seat and clipped up his seatbelt.

  “What happened?” I wanted all the details.

  “Oh, a couple of constables arrived clutching a warrant for your arrest, Severn. Luckily for you, and unluckily for them, it took them about fifteen minutes to get the three or four blocks from the police station to the theatre, so my explanation that you had left already seemed quite reasonable. I don’t think anybody had even the slightest idea that good old Grant Watson was being anything other than the helpful society president.”

  “What did you tell them?” I asked.

  “I just said that Severn had spoken to me briefly than left, and then I added, ever so helpfully, that he had asked what bus to take to get to Sydenham.” Grant chuckled and I realised he was enjoying this immensely.

  “You lied to the police? You sent them to the other side of the city?” I said incredulously. I was going to have to totally re-think my opinion of Grant, there was a lot more to him than I had realised.

  “Noooo,” Grant acted the innocent. “I may have been economical with the truth but I didn’t lie. I’m sure Severn asked me once about buses to Sydenham. It may have been a week ago and, come to think of it, it may have been Aiden, but ...” his sentence trailed off into a shrug of his shoulders. “But,” he continued, his tone changing to businesslike, “now we need to make plans. Where do we go from here?”

  “If you’ve sent the police off on a wild goose chase, can’t we just go home?” Mum asked. “I’m hungry.”

  Grant shook his head.

  “I don’t think it’s the best place to take Severn right now. I have a feeling they could turn up and if they do, they’ll be carrying a warrant. I think we need to find somewhere else to stash Severn for a couple of days.”

  “Just till later tonight, actually,” said Severn. “David has arranged for me to go and stay with some, ah, friends of his. All I need to do is get to the airport by 2 o’clock in the morning.”

  “In that case,” Grant started the car, “we’ll go to my office. Don’t worry,” he smiled at Mum, “we won’t starve, there’s a takeaway just around the corner, we can grab some fish and chips. It’ll be like a picnic.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Grant’s choice was a good one. His company had a building on the edge of the Central Business District. The street was a mixture of commercial offices and light industrial warehouses so, early on a Sunday evening, it was deserted. Also, Grant’s building had its own underground carpark, making our presence undetectable by anyone passing by. Grant punched the buttons on the security panel and slid the car into the garage when the huge metal doors opened temporarily to let us in. Another button push and they closed behind us, locking automatically. We piled out of the car and followed Grant as he led the way to his office on the seventh floor.

  “Make yourselves comfortable,” he invited. “Sue and I will go out and get some food. Back soon.”

  As they left, Severn hauled the envelope from his pocket and began to open it.

  “Let’s see what David has come up with,” he said, pulling out the passport.

  It was even more realistic than I had expected. I mean, I knew it was going to be good – it had to fool Customs, but I somehow expected it to be new. Instead, it was suitably worn, as if it had been well used, and inside were lots of different customs stamps. Brother John-Benedictine was well travelled.

  “That makes sense,” I said, pointing out the stamps. “If you work for the Vatican, and you’re leaving New Zealand, you must have arrived here in order to leave again.” It made sense to me.

  Severn nodded. “Yeah, right.”

  I recognised the passport photo from the sullen expression on Severn’s face.

  “That’s cut out and blown up from the cast and crew photo,” I laughed. You looked so grumpy.”

  “I was. If you remember the photo that well, you will remember I was standing next to Tasha. She had her hand on my buttocks!”

  ‘What? Like this?” I grabbed his bum playfully.

  “No,” he replied in kind. “More like this.”

  We were still deciding this issue when Mum and Grant returned with the food, although by the time they had covered the distance from the lift to the office, we were sitting innocently, Severn reading a computer magazine that was lying on Grant’s desk and me swivelling happily in his big executive chair. I don’t think Mum was fooled at all.

  We spread the fish and chips out on Grant’s desk.

  “What’s next?” Mum asked around a mouthful of fish.

  Grant chewed thoughtfully on a chip before answering.

  “I think we, you and I,” he indicated to Mum and himself, “should go home for a few hours and act normally. Just in case the police do decide to turn up there. We can say we haven’t seen Severn since he left the theatre. Worst they can do is search the place and he won’t be there. These two,” he indicated Severn and myself, “can stay here and keep each other company for a while. Then we can come back in a few hours, pick them up and deliver Severn to the airport.”

  Mum nodded her head in agreement.

  “I have a feeling that, as responsible parents, we shouldn’t be leaving our poor, defenceless little girl alone in the dark with a strange male, but I have a sneaking suspicion she can cope.”

  “Yeah but can I?” asked Severn “Will I be safe?”

  I threw a chip at him.

  “Obviously not,” Mum replied. “Come on Grant, let’s go.”

  I stopped them just as they were about to leave.

  “Grant?” I tried to sound innocent. “I don’t suppose you could let me have your theatre key?”

  “Why?” He was immediately suspicious.

  “Oh,” I said as casually as possible. “I’ve just realised I left my jacket and some other stuff in the theatre and I’ll need it for school tomorrow. If you let me borrow the key, I can pop back and get it.”

  I don’t think Grant wa
s fooled for a minute, and I could tell by the look on her face that Mum wasn’t taken in at all, but I think Grant was so weirded out by everything he had done in the past couple of hours – telling lies to the police, stashing a wanted man in his office – that Severn spreading his wings wouldn’t have phased him. He just shrugged his acceptance, fished in his pocket and handed over the key.

  “You’ll need this as well,” he said, returning to his desk and hurriedly writing a sequence of numbers on a memo pad and handing it to me. “That’s the security code to get you back in here. Top one’s the gate, bottom one’s the door to the stairs.”

  “Thanks,” I said, and I actually meant it.

  “That was easy,” Severn commented as we heard the lift doors close. “How long have we got?”

  I looked at my watch.

  “About three and a half hours.” I grabbed one of the last few chips and threw out a question. “Do you still have to get on this plane?”

  Severn fielded his one-eyebrow-raised questioning look. I continued.

  “Originally you ran away because Seth is obviously some kind of psychopath and you thought he was going to kill you. Right? And then we hid you because by then we knew the cops wanted you for killing Tasha. Right? But you’ve already decided that you can handle Seth. And after tonight we’ll be able to give the cops proof you didn’t kill Tasha. So give me three good reasons why you still need to get on that plane.”

  I had hoped that the question would throw him and he wouldn’t be able to come up with an answer. Instead, he stood up and began to pace around the small office, ticking the reasons off on his fingers.

  “Reason one. Fingerprints. Mine. On their records and on the sound board. Plus that damned body the girls left at New Brighton that’s just too close to the other one in Dunedin. That’s just going to get too messy and I don’t want to have to go there.

  “Reason two. Seth may not scare me any more but he is still, as you said, a dangerous psychopath and right now, a very pissed off one. I am not so stupid that I don’t want to keep some distance between us for a while.

  “And reason three. The main reason. I am very, very, very angry about this whole deal. I want to see this monastery place. I want to find out what it’s all about. And I want to get there before the others. Before the Reverend Father David Rochester. He’s got these great plans to go back and haul Seth up on whatever charges he’s concocting. And he’s going to be the big guy. Not if I can help it. If I get there first, it’ll be my side of the story they’ll be getting, not his, and he will not come out looking good. What about that rubbish he was spouting to Finn about Meredith getting counselling? Come on! She’s twice as evil as Olivia and he knows it. She kills people for kicks! That’s just a blatant lie of David’s to get them on his side for now because he’s physically more scared of Seth than I am. He’ll change his tune as soon as he doesn’t need their support. No, I’m looking forward to getting on that plane. This could be fun!”

  “Which is more than I can say for tonight. I’m getting nervous. Let’s go and set up the theatre.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY ONE

  After all the running and hiding, it seemed a bit surreal to walk casually down the street. Not that we were really being casual, just trying to look that way. Severn was in full hunting mode, tuned to every sound, choosing the best route with the fewest observers. I was so nervous. At every corner I expected to see a cop car. I think I held my breath all the way to the theatre. I felt relieved when we got there safely, but it was short-lived and quickly transmuted itself into a different kind of nervous. The game was on.

  “I’ll power up the lights and sound,” Severn instructed. “You take the curtain up.”

  He bounded off to the equipment panel by the stage manager’s station and started pushing buttons while I hauled on the rope that lifted the huge velvet curtains, opening the stage to the body of the theatre.

  Watching Severn, he could have been preparing for any normal show, running through all the usual pre-show checks. Position himself behind the lighting board at the back of the audience, he pushed slider after slider, making the different lights glow and fade alternately. Finally a pool of amber lighting created a focal point on the centre of the stage.

  “That’ll do it,” he said cheerfully, fading the lights and turning his attention to the soundboard.

  “Sound check, please,” he called to me and I obediently moved around the various microphones, talking into each one in turn and hearing my voice return to me over the speakers.

  “Check one two,” I repeated over and over till Severn was satisfied.

  “Check one two, check one two,” his voice came over the speakers as he ran identical checks on two of the portable radio mics.

  “Here,” he held one up to me, “clip this on.”

  I took it, clipping the tiny pack to my jeans, feeding the wire under my sweatshirt and clipping the microphone to the neckband.

  “A slight change of plan,” Severn suggested. “About the camera. I know you were thinking of using that one,” he indicated vaguely in the direction of the Gods – the top tier of audience seats, “but it’s a very wide-angle shot. I don’t know if you are aware that there are two other cameras.” I shook my head. “On the central lighting bar. One’s focussed for close-ups on the back row of the chorus and the other is for side shots in the office scene. If I re-position those...”

  He didn’t need to finish the sentence, I was already nodding in agreement.

  “I’ll have to go up to the flys to drop in the lighting bar,” he added, moving towards the ladder and beginning to climb.

  After a couple of rungs, he reversed directions back to the stage floor and began to unbutton his shirt.

  “It’s a bit narrow across the shoulders for climbing ladders in,” he explained as he draped it over a piece of set. “I can’t afford to turn up at the airport with a ripped shirt.”

  ‘Fair enough.” I wasn’t complaining.

  He climbed the ladder quickly and deftly lowered the lighting bar. Which just proves that vampires are stronger than they look because I know it usually took two men to haul one of those fully laden. Lights are heavy. Then he climbed back down and together we swung the cameras so they would both focus on the centre stage. Severn climbed back up the ladder to haul the massive bar back into place in the grid and I completed by scene setting by unlocking the stage door and wedging it slightly open. Maybe I’ll take up directing. My show was starting to take shape. All I needed now was the star.

  CHAPTER THIRTY TWO

  The star came early. I had expected it. I would have done the same. I mean, if someone sends you a threatening letter telling you to be somewhere at a certain time, the most sensible thing you can do is arrive early, hopefully before they do. So, although my note said midnight, I was always working towards an eleven-thirty kick-off. Even so, I was grateful for Severn’s vampire ears, as from my chosen vantage point in the flys, I didn’t know anyone had arrived until Severn flicked on the lights to reveal my murderer, elegantly posed centre stage in a wash of flattering amber.

  “Glad you could make it,” Severn’s voice, soft and menacing through the speakers, floated from everywhere and from nowhere.

  “Where are you?” the figure on the stage looked around desperately, unable to penetrate the dazzle of the stage lights.

  “Here.” Severn’s voice came from the left side of the stage. “And here,” Now from the right. He was panning the sound from one speaker to another.

  “And here,” I added, knowing that he would have my radio mic channel up as well.

  “What do you want?” Panic was setting in.

  “The truth,” I said, my voice eerily emanating from opposite to where I was hiding. “Why did you send Tasha that note? Why did you want to meet her here?”

  “I didn’t. What note?” My victim looked genuinely confused. My theory was right.

  “The one Tasha had stuffed down her bra. ‘Backstage, midnight’, remember
that? It was your handwriting. I recognised it. Tell you what, I’ll tell you what I think happened and you can correct me when I go wrong. Okay?”

  Severn was doing amazing things with my voice through the special effects unit. It was impossible to tell if I was male or female, or even human, and he was panning the speakers quickly, moving the sound around. Down on the stage my poor victim seemed to deflate in defeat. Sounding like some spooky theatre ghost, I continued.

  “That note had nothing to do with Tasha did it? You gave it to Jason Broderick. You were meeting him here at midnight. Tasha found the note and she recognised your writing, just as I did. Didn’t she?”

  “All right! Yes!” Dilys Davenport threw up her hands in surrender. “The little bitch found it in his pocket. She was always putting her hands in men’s pockets.” I thought back to the incident with the screwdriver. Dilly was telling the truth. She continued.

  “She must have found it. She got here first. She was up in the fly tower with a camera. We were ... ah... here for a while ... before we realised she was there. Jason saw the flash. She laughed at me. Said the negatives would be worth an A pass on her exams. Talked about putting them on a website, or posting them to the school board of governors.

  “Jason tried to coax her down. He suggested a threesome. She took her knickers off, threw them down to us, and suggested we come up to her. She was goading us. Let’s do it in the fly tower. I pretended I thought it was a great idea and climbed up.

  “She’d put the camera down to take her knickers off, so I grabbed at it. But she did too and we ended up both pulling at it. I had the camera and she had the strap. Then she tugged extra hard and the strap broke. She staggered backwards and fell over the railing. It was an accident. I didn’t mean to kill her. It was an accident.” Dilly broke down in tears.

  I was about to tell Severn we had all we needed and we could wrap it up when, as Dilly always did, she rallied and came back on the attack.