Screen Savers

by Quintin Jardine

  And then, for God’s sake, she turned to me. ‘Oz, talk some sense into her!’ she appealed. I felt like the House of Lords.

  ‘I’ve done so already, Elanore. I know I’m crazy to risk a fall out with my future mother-in-law, but when Prim said “we” she meant it. She and I are agreed on this.’

  She gave me a long hard look; then, to everyone’s huge relief, she smiled. ‘At least you’re well matched, the pair of you. I remember the first time Primavera brought you here. She said, “He’s crackers, but I think you’ll like him.” She was right on both counts.’

  ‘Give your mother a clue, at least, my dear,’ David Phillips asked, unexpectedly; I guess he judged that it was safe to speak. ‘When?’

  ‘That depends on Miles,’ Prim answered. ‘Once Oz is finished with his bit of Project 37, we’ll get round to doing the deed.’ She turned to her mother. ‘It’s no big deal, Mum,’ she said, giving Elanore back a piece of the ground she had just cut from under her. ‘We’re living together already; all we’re doing is formalising things.’

  ‘Project 37?’ I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard Prim’s father ask two questions on the trot.

  ‘I’m a shade paranoid about my movies,’ Miles explained. ‘I like to keep a degree of security around them; that includes giving them working titles which don’t give any clue to their content. The one we’re shooting just now happens to be my thirty-seventh. Simple as that.’

  ‘What’s it going to be called?’

  ‘We’re probably going to call it Snatch. It’s about a kidnapping. Dawn’s the female lead. She’s a Scottish heiress who’s taken from her father’s estate on Deeside and held for ransom. I play her boyfriend, who happens to be a Special Branch cop.’

  ‘Christ,’ I gasped. ‘Art mimics life.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘Sorry. Shouldn’t have said that. The fact is, you’ve met one of those.’

  ‘Mike?’

  ‘Yes, but don’t mention it when you meet him again at our wedding. Here,’ I wondered, ‘won’t that title make some punters think it’s a porno job?’

  Dawn spluttered, and Miles grinned. ‘So what? It’s all bums on seats, Oz . . . or asses, as we say in the States. I wanted a one-word title, and since someone else used Ransom a few years back, and Dawn and I were in Stevenson’s Kidnapped three or four years back, this was the best we could come up with.’

  ‘What part will Oz play?’ asked Elanore. ‘A lunatic?’

  ‘No. He plays Dawn’s brother. My character spends most of the story trying to find her, but the whole thing’s seen from Oz’s point of view. We’ve written in some simple scenes to give his character some depth.

  ‘Towards the end I work out that Dawn’s being held on an abandoned oil platform in the North Sea, and I try to rescue her myself. Having Oz as narrator leaves open the possibility that I might not survive.’

  ‘Where’s the twist at the end? I’ve noticed that there always is in your work.’ I glanced at David. I’ve always known that there’s a shrewd mind under that reserved crust of his. He set me wondering too. I’d read the script: there was no big surprise ending, only a shoot-out, then happy ever after.

  Miles laughed out loud. ‘Nice one, Dad. Maybe it isn’t written yet,’ he replied, intriguingly. ‘We’ve done all the outside shots on the rig we’re using, to ensure consistent weather. The scenes on Deeside and Aberdeen will all be done on location too, in a mansion and in offices we’ve rented for the purpose. But the stuff at the end, and all the undercover scenes on the rig, will be shot on a mock-up in a major studio just south of London.’

  ‘So,’ said Elanore, ‘to return to the original question. When will these two be clear to get married?’

  Her official son-in-law glanced at me in a way which set me wondering. ‘That’ll depend on some late changes we might make, but maybe mid-October; early November, for sure.’

  I raised a mock eyebrow. ‘Should I be talking to my agent about this?’

  Miles laughed. ‘Maybe you should, mate. Maybe you should.’

  It had been niggling at me that I might have been a shade blasé about Project 37, that I wasn’t as nervous as I should have been in the circumstances. At that moment, my excitement switch was thrown, and my old friend the hamster began to do its familiar laps of my stomach.

  My cellphone was switched on too. I had forgotten, so I started in my seat when it rang. ‘Sorry,’ I said to the rest of the table as I stood and stepped through to the living room to take the call.

  ‘Where are you, Oz?’ said Mike Dylan. ‘I thought you’d be back from your GWA travels by now.’

  ‘I am. We’re up in Auchterarder, with Prim’s folks. Miles, Dawn and I are going up to Deeside in the morning to start work on this movie. Where are you right now? Spying on Commies?’

  ‘There’s none of them left. They’re all called Social Democrats now. No, I’m at home with Susie.’

  ‘How’s she doing?’

  ‘She’s okay. She was shocked for a couple of days after the bang, but she’s back to normal now.’

  ‘What about you? Still mourning for that jacket?’

  ‘Claimed that on my insurance, son. I’ve been too busy looking for that bastard Donn to think of anything else.’

  ‘So it wasn’t work-related?’

  ‘Nah, definitely not. My boss is still keeping the investigation in-house though, and he’s letting me handle it.’

  ‘So how are you getting on?’

  ‘That’s just it. I’m not. The fucker seems to have vanished from the face of the earth. I’ve been checking around the city nightclubs, and I’ve found a couple where he’s known. I’ve been leaning on known drug-dealers, since we think he was involved in that racket with Susie’s wayward cousin. Some of them admitted having heard of him: I even picked up a whisper that he might have been the trigger man in a heroin execution in Paisley three years ago.

  ‘But nowhere, Oz, have I picked up the faintest sniff of him. If anyone knows where he is now, they’re too scared to say. Even as I speak, my nose is right up against a brick wall, and our SAS guy is still on the payroll, on a twenty-four hour basis, now, just to be on the safe side. I wondered . . . and it hurts my pride to say this . . . whether you’ve got any ideas?’

  I’m sure he must have been almost able to hear my smile on the other end of the line. But I left it at that: this was too serious for triumph. I thought about his question for a few seconds. ‘Only one,’ I told him, eventually. ‘Given the link that you pointed out between our visit to his mother and the explosion, can you put a tap on her phone? The boy’s bound to phone his Mammy sooner or later. Maybe you should bug Uncle Joe too, and all the people who know Stephen.’

  Dylan whistled. ‘Jeez, Oz,’ he said, ‘I don’t know. Wiretaps are supposed to be for exceptional circumstances. If we ask for too many, eyebrows are raised.’

  I could not help but laugh. ‘What happened to Dylan the Decisive, the bloke we saw last Monday? Some guy’s trying to kill your girlfriend, Michael. Isn’t that exceptional? I suppose you could always take Mrs Donn down to headquarters and give her the rubber hose treatment, but I can’t help feeling that a phone-tap would be more discreet. Don’t bother with the rest if you’re worried; concentrate on her.’

  As he might have sensed my smile, so I saw him frown. ‘I suppose, since we don’t have anything else . . . I’ll ask my boss.’

  ‘You do that. Keep me in touch too. I’ve got an interest in this after all; the bugger melted a big chunk of my car park.’

  Chapter 16

  Although most of my scenes were to be shot in the mansion on Deeside, the first of them were set in the rented office space in Aberdeen. Miles took me straight there next morning, to pitch me head-first into the movie business, as he put it.

  He, Dawn and I left Auchterarder at sparrow-fart. I was excited, yet sad, too, as I kissed Prim goodbye, and headed for the bedroom door, with one last look over my shoulder at her sleepy, smiley face
on the pillow. It felt strange to be going somewhere on my own. For more than a year she had travelled virtually everywhere with me, to London for my Sly Burr gigs, and all over Europe with the GWA shows; but on this occasion she had decided that Lulu was just a bit short of experience to handle the business on her own, and that she had to go back to Glasgow to give the girl her support.

  We travelled to Aberdeen in a limo, complete with chauffeur. I hadn’t got used to the business of being rich; it struck me as extravagant. However Miles assured me that the last thing an actor needed was the hassle of driving when he should be getting his mind in tune for the day’s work. In his case, this was direction. He had no scenes himself; all the scheduled action was dialogue between me and the eminent Scots actor who was cast as my father.

  ‘We shoot in the afternoon, Oz,’ Dawn explained as the long black car pulled out of her home town. ‘We’ll spend the morning rehearsing.’

  ‘That’s right,’ said her husband. ‘You’ll be on camera, just to let you get used to your surroundings, but they won’t be rolling. Film stock is expensive, mate.’

  ‘And you don’t want to waste any on me fucking up?’

  Miles chuckled. ‘I wouldn’t have put it as bluntly as that. But yes, that’s what I mean.’

  I frowned. ‘You two are really taking a chance on me, aren’t you.’

  ‘We don’t think so. You don’t have any formal training, that’s true, but neither had I when I started out. Christ, I got my first part in Australia by answering a newspaper ad, just after I came out of the forces. What you do have is a great voice, and your experience in commercial work means that the narration side of the project will be easy for you. On top of that you’re great performing live on camera in your GWA shows; pro wrestling is a form of acting after all.

  ‘The only thing we don’t know is how quickly you’ll take to dialogue. I don’t have any worries there though. The people you’re working with, Dawn and me, and Scott Steele, the guy you’re with today, we’re all top-notchers; you’ll be able to feed off us.’

  ‘I’ve done dialogue, of a sort,’ I pointed out. ‘Live on air too. In-ring interviews with performers are a big part of my GWA work, and they’re all rehearsed.’

  Miles’ eyes widened. ‘Hey, I never thought of that, but you’re right. If you can work with those stiffs, you’ll have no trouble acting with Scott and the rest of us.’

  I was big-headed enough to agree with him, yet I was still a jangling bag of nerves when I walked on stage, in make-up and wearing a new Armani suit fresh from the costume department. Our studio for the day was a whole floor of the office block. It had been stripped out and a set built in one corner. In another, makeshift dressing rooms had been built. There were no stars on the doors; Miles is an ordinary guy at heart and doesn’t allow any airs and graces on his sets. There was something odd about the windows, I noticed. I asked the assistant camera operator what it was; she told me that nonreflective film had been applied to both sides of the glass.

  Working on camera in television and in movies are wholly separate experiences; for example, movie lights are much hotter, the cameras are bigger and much more threatening, and there are people crowding around the performers. The biggest difference, though, for me was this: performing on television in the way that I had done up to then, most of the time, I had to look directly into the camera, while, in the movies, that is absolutely the last thing you must do.

  This more than anything else was what Miles drummed into me during rehearsals. He was right about Scott Steele, too; my co-star was a real professional. He was stocky, silver-haired and a bit wrinkled under the slap, but there was an assurance about him which put me at my ease right away. There was nothing complex about my lines to begin with, but the way Scott delivered his seemed to draw them smoothly from me. His relaxation relaxed me, and when the time came in the afternoon for the cameras to roll, I had almost forgotten that they were there.

  Miles was a pro too, his direction was light and easy. Basically, he left Scott Steele to do his own thing and ease me through our scenes. Still, when it came time to wrap up for the day, I felt like a wet rag. ‘How did I do?’ I asked Miles, as the lighting people began to break down their gear.

  ‘You want to see? We monitor everything on video, so have a look.’ There was a monitor in the furthest corner of our studio. He plugged a lead from the video camera into the scart socket and switched it on. I couldn’t really believe it as I watched my first movie scene, for the first time. ‘Hey,’ I gasped, ‘it’s okay, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Miles, in his familiar, balloon-pricking drawl. ‘Scott’s terrific, ain’t he.’

  ‘You’re not too bad either,’ Dawn chuckled, taking my arm.

  Normally the main performers had accommodation on Deeside, in the rented mansion, or in a country house hotel in Aboyne, but for the next two nights, because we were due to film some street scenes next day in Aberdeen, and more studio stuff on the day after, we were all booked into the Treetops Hotel, not far from the city centre.

  Scott came with us in the limo, having changed out of the conservative Austin Reed suit which he had worn on camera, into jeans and a sweatshirt, the same gear as me in fact.

  ‘You’re a lucky bastard, young Blackstone,’ he said, sincerely but not unkindly, as the driver pulled out into the evening traffic. ‘I had to slog my guts out for twenty years in theatre companies, bit parts on telly, Edinburgh Festival crap, and dodgy pantos all over Scotland, to reach my present standing in the profession. You do a couple of years as an MC and a few voice-overs, and here you are getting equal billing with me.’

  He shot me an ironic smile. ‘The world’s fuckin’ ill-divided son, is it not?’ I noticed that off-screen, he had a Glasgow accent.

  ‘It is that, Scott.’ I agreed, returning his smile. ‘Did Miles tell you I won the fuckin’ lottery as well?’

  He stared at me for a few seconds, then realised I was serious and exploded with laughter. ‘Ah,’ he spluttered. ‘It was bribery, was it? That’s okay. I can live with that.’

  ‘Not at all,’ Miles protested. ‘He hasn’t got enough to bribe me. It was nepotism; he lives with Dawn’s sister.’ He paused. ‘That and the fact that he’s damn good.’

  ‘Aye,’ said my co-star. ‘That’s the saving grace, I’ll grant you.’

  At the Treetops, the old actor and I showered off our make-up in our rooms, then met downstairs in the bar to top up our fluid levels. Our denims drew a slightly disapproving look from the barman, but we ignored him. ‘Scott,’ I asked after a while, sat beside him on a high stool, ‘am I doing someone better out of a job? Should I be feeling guilty about all this?’

  He laughed. ‘Not for one minute, son. This is the most cut-throat business in the world . . . apart from the law, that is. You are where you are by sheer random chance, so accept it.’ He paused. ‘The truth is that there are two other young Scots actors who, I would say, could have played your part better than you, and who have names that would mean something in the billing. One’s working on another movie and the other one’s agent was daft enough to turn the part down because Miles wouldn’t bill the boy above the title.

  ‘You at least have a recognisable face through your grappling work, and a known voice from your commercials. The part’s no’ too difficult either, so you were a reasonably safe choice.’

  A short hoarse laugh sounded behind me. ‘Now is not that an ironic thing for someone to say about you, Oz.’

  I couldn’t help it, I gasped with surprise, even before I turned round towards her. ‘Noosh,’ I heard myself exclaim, astonished. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

  She hadn’t changed a bit in the three years since last I’d seen her. She was still dressed in the inevitable formal business suit, which seemed to highlight the austerity of her features: the high Slavonic cheekbones, the ash-blonde hair with the odd grey streaks, the silvery look about her eyes.

  ‘The same as you, I guess. I often drop in
here for a drink after work.’ The accent was still the same, slightly East European.

  ‘Last I heard, you were working in St Petersburg.’

  She nodded. ‘I did, for a while. I was transferred back to Scotland a year ago, to head the Aberdeen office.’

  I remembered my manners, and turned back to my pal. ‘Sorry, Scott. This is Anoushka Turkel, a friend from Edinburgh. Noosh, this is Scott Steele, a prince among actors.’

  The veteran slipped off his bar stool, shook her hand formally, with a short, classic bow. ‘Delighted to meet you. Now I’m going to be rude and bugger off. I like to dress a bit better than this for dinner.’

  As he left, Noosh climbed up on his vacated seat. I ordered a white wine for her and another pint of lager.

  ‘So . . .’ I said. Now that we were alone, the awkwardness returned. It had always been there between the two of us - inevitably, since we had both been Jan’s lovers, and in turn, she had left each of us for the other.

  ‘Yes, so indeed.’ She paused and her gaze, usually rock-steady, faltered, and lowered. ‘I heard, of course. But . . .’

  ‘No point in talking about it,’ I said, trying not to be abrupt. ‘We’ll never compare notes, you and I.’

  She laughed, short and brittle. ‘Indeed not.’ Then her eyes caught mine once more.

  ‘So now you are an actor. It doesn’t surprise me, you know. You were always a crazy guy, and always playing a part, I thought.’

  ‘Which one was that?’

  ‘The part of the young, free and single; as if you thought that was how you should be living your life and were determined to do it with style.’ She snorted again. ‘I mean, having a bloody iguana as a pet in your flat.’

  ‘Loft, please, Noosh.’

  ‘You see? Another part of the act. Everyone else lived in a flat, but you had to live in a loft. How is your old loft-mate these days? Did you put him in a zoo when you and Jan got married?’