Bite The Wax Tadpole Read online

  The ambulance drove off, lights whirling, siren screaming. Hard to imagine Ulysses being bewitched by a song such as that, mused Rob as he joined Leo and Scott in a sombre walk back towards the Rickety Street set. Rob had often thought that one of the benefits of a sedentary lifestyle, a high cholesterol diet and stress was that you were more likely to join the choir invisible via a heart attack. Though painful it had the advantage of being quick and therefore preferable to most of the other awful diseases lying in ambush, waiting to carry you off. But he didn’t fancy this not quite fatal variety of coronary heart disease that Cris seemed to have. Ending up in a wheelchair connected to an oxygen tank didn’t seem to be much of a way to spend your declining years. Maybe he really should get himself fit, eat healthy, reduce his stress levels and hope to get run down by a truck when he was eighty five and training for the City to Surf.

  “So...”, said Rob to Leo. A short word, a mere syllable but containing in its DNA the message: “well, that’s a bit of a blow, especially for poor Cris. However, you are the producer so it’s up to you to come up with some plan for ensuring the show – the incredibly important live show – goes on without the merest hint of a hitch.”

  You don’t get to be line producer of a TV series without people coming up to you on a fairly regular basis and saying “So...” so Leo shook off his impending apoplectic fit and turned to the young, ashen-faced fellow next to him.

  “You, what’s your name... Todd?”

  “Scott.”

  “How long have you been doing this directing apprenticeship?”

  “Umm...”

  “That’s long enough, you’re in the box.” In days of yore, prisoners at the bar who’d just heard the judge tell them they were off on a one way trip to the gallows must have reacted in much the same way as Scott.

  “Cris has got it all blocked out, hasn’t he?” Scott managed a vague nod accompanied by a vague look. Rob held up the clip board he’d prized from Cris’ grip as he lay on the floor. He’d read about cadaveric spasms and death grips and he didn’t want to see the show’s blueprint going off to the mortuary if Cris succumbed. Again, he wasn’t sure why. If the actors bumped into the furniture or exited stage left instead of right it wasn’t his problem.

  “I’ll make sure you get a credit”, Leo told Scott. “Well, a half credit anyway. Look, you know Jan, the Vision Mixer, don’t you? She’s been here since Pontius was a pilot. All you’ve got to do is start at 7.30 and finish round about 8. Anything else’ll be a bonus”

  Scott nodded again.

  “Well, go on then, go off and direct.”

  Scott directed himself in the direction of the cast who all seemed to be staring at him, looking for direction.

  “Umm, could someone tell me which colour script we’re on?

  Chrome gleaming in the afternoon sunlight, the old, familiar Holden pulled up at the Security Hut. Craig, the Security Guard, looked up from the copy of Rugby League News he surreptitiously kept under the desk as Terry rolled down the car’s window.

  “G’day, mate. What you doing back? Thought you’d be sunning yourself in the Bahamas by now.”

  “Next week”, grinned Terry. “Just came in to pick up a few things.”

  “No worries”, said Craig, pressing the button to raise the barrier. “Half your luck, eh?”

  “Be seeing you”, said Terry as he pulled away even though he knew the sentiment was extremely unlikely to eventuate. Craig went back to his magazine and the article on why urinating in public is wrong.

  Terry parked in a shady spot near the old tennis courts and took a holdall out of the boot. He patted the bonnet of the FJ affectionately and held back a sentimental tear as he made his way up the steps towards the studio. He wore a golfing cap with a long, curved peak which he pulled down low. Coupled with not being in his usual overalls it meant he could make the safety of his former domain without being stopped and chatted to. The time for chat, indeed, talk of any sort, was over.

  In a quiet area of the props department, Bob the Firearms Wrangler, placed a steel case on a table and opened the combination lock. Inside were two identical handguns which those with cordite in their brain chemistry would have immediately recognised as Glock 17, 9mm short-recoil operated locked breech semi-automatic pistols with a modified Browning cam-lock system.

  “These”, said Bob to Bruce, the actor playing Mad Tony, “are Glock 17, 9mm short recoil operated locked breech semi-automatic pistols with a modified Browning cam-lock system.”

  “Cool.”

  “Difference is, these have got solid barrels. But the slide, hammer and trigger all work so when you fire it the gas vents through the slots and the cartridge case gets ejected just like the real thing.”

  Tony picked up one of the guns and went into a crouching, two-handed stance aiming the gun at the cardboard cut out of Mel Gibson.

  “Try not to point it at anyone. We both know it’s harmless but we don’t want to give anyone else a coronary, yeah? Okay, let’s go and try out the squib.”

  Terry was back in his domain, his lair, his bolt-hole. A thin layer of grime had already descended on everything. Just as he’d expected. He took a packet of J-cloths and a tin of Mr Sheen out of his bag and began dusting and polishing. He paid particular attention to the pipes and dials of the G-Tech 2000.

  Satisfied that everything met at least the minimum acceptable standard, he returned Mr Sheen to the holdall and took out a framed wedding photo of himself and Marge. He set it on the table and gazed at its fading colours, her white dress yellowing, his brown three piece suit turning to sepia. He didn’t have much time left in which to forget but in that time he’d never forget his wedding day which happily coincided with the first ever One Day International between Australia and England at the MCG. He and his groomsmen had watched on a tiny black and white TV set in the back room of the pub where the reception was held while Marge and her bridesmaids danced and drank gin in the so-called reception centre. They’d really understood each other right from the word go.

  Smiling to himself, he took a bottle of champagne, zipped up in a cool bag, and two crystal-cut glasses out of the holdall. He was going to go out with a bang but it was a bang that would be preceded by a pop and some fizz.

  With healthy eating once more on the backburner next to the exercise saucepan, Rob grabbed an egg and bacon roll from the canteen and found a quiet, shaded bench in the studio grounds. He really, really, most sincerely, did not want to be part of this madness any more. Unfortunately, the choices outside the asylum seemed to be limited. Six thousand dollar advances wouldn’t even keep body and soul within spitting distance of each other. He needed a plan to get him out of the situation he found himself in but the reason he was in the situation he was in was that he never planned anything. Things just happened. Sure, he dreamed and hoped but that fell far short of being a strategy for progressing in life. What he really needed was to go back to a time in his life when a six thousand dollar advance would have seemed like the answer to all his prayers. He could write a half hour script in two days and get six thousand dollars. What was wrong with the world? Its values were all wrong, distorted.

  A large bird, black and shiny as an oil slick, was staring up at him with defiantly white eyes. What was the Poe poem? The Raven, of course. Nevermore, quoth the Raven was all he could remember of it. That and that it was about some bloke going mad. Well, no-one stayed sane in a work of Poe’s for very long, did they? It was coming back to him, yes, the young bloke was lamenting his lost love, Lenore. Her name was a stroke of luck for the poet, of course, as it rhymed with “nevermore” which was the only word the Raven could say. If she’d have been called Barbara, the poem wouldn’t have got past the first stanza. And Poe himself was off his head, wasn’t he? Turning up naked on parade at West Point... drinking... marrying his thirteen year old cousin... dying delirious and mysterious in someone else’s suit. That was proper madness, the sort that writers should suffer from. Rob’s madness was of the w
rong sort, an ordinary, everyday madness.

  Anyway, was this cocky thing strutting in front of him even a raven? Ornithology was not Rob’s strong suit. If it was a raven, maybe it would absorb his soul and fly away with it. He bit into his roll. Fat chance.

  Rob’s mobile rang and the Raven flapped its wings in alarm before strutting away in search of some other soul to pester or egg and bacon roll to plunder.

  Rob checked the caller ID. Well, at least she was still alive. Or maybe it was the Coroner’s Office going through her calls to see who had last spoken to her before she leapt off the Gap.

  “Hello?”

  “Sorry about last night. I was a bit dramatic, wasn’t I?”

  “A bit. And a bit bloody lucky. If that bus...”

  His attention was momentarily taken by Bruce, the Firearms Wrangler, and Tony striding across the grass. Tony, Rob noticed, was wearing some sort of padded waistcoat. Yes, well, given the effect this place had on most people it was surprising that the rooms weren’t padded, really.

  “So...”, said Niobe with a fairly obviously forced jollity. “How are things? Live episode today, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, apart from one of the actors mutilating himself and the director having a coronary it’s all going gangbusters. Listen, are you all right? Really all right?”

  “Fine, fine, fine. I was just wondering if there was any chance that you’d change your mind, that’s all. About me. About coming to Greece.”

  Out of the corner of his eye Rob could see Bruce backing away from Tony with long, deliberate strides.

  “Not really, no. I mean, if Alison wasn’t...”

  “Pregnant.”

  “That’s the word. Then maybe, possibly...”

  Rob watched idly as Bruce raised a gun and pulled the trigger. The explosion was quite startlingly large. Blood, or what is known in the trade as Kensington Gore, spurted out of Tony’s chest and he called out “Mother of Mercy, is the end of Rico?” before sinking to his knees.

  “What was that?”, cried the startled Niobe.

  “Just an actor getting shot, nothing to worry about.”

  “So, you’re definitely spurning me then?”

  “Spurning you? I wouldn’t say spurning...” Well, let’s face it, who would these days?

  “Very well. I accept your spurning. But I want you to know that my days with you were the finest days of my life. Remember those times when the sun sank down to rest beside the margins of the bay, the fragrant odours of the lemon trees; and then, by night, on the terrace we gazed at the stars and made plans for the future. Yes, there are certain places on earth which naturally bring forth happiness as though it were a plant native to the soil which could not thrive elsewhere.”

  “Are you talking about the night we spent at the Mudgee Writers’ Festival?”

  “But now life is as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north and ennui, like a spider, is silently spinning its shadowy web into every cranny of my heart.”

  Her pause may have been for dramatic effect but Rob decided to fill it.

  “Have you thought about, you know, seeing a doctor? There are these tablets these days...”

  “No, no doctors!”, she screamed. “If they don’t cripple you, they bore you to death. Adieu, mon amour, adieu.”

  The call ended abruptly; Rob looked at the phone as though it were the mystery object in an antiques quiz show. What on earth was all that about lemon trees and attic windows? The poor girl was clearly unhinged and he fervently hoped that her adieu was really goodbye.

  In the kitchen of her flat, Niobe plugged the stopper into the top of the blue jar which was now full of white crystals. Deep in her soul, the very fibre of her being, she knew that she and Rob were fated to be together. Or, if not together, to be fatally but romantically parted. And fate was going to bring them together or render them apart that very night. At the special time of 7.30.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Nev Beale rattled the loose change in his trouser pockets as he stared out of the window at the helicopter taking off. It hovered briefly before rising swiftly and heading off towards the coast. Leaving his shrapnel alone, Nev began to scratch his arms. He’d be bloody glad when this Dutch deal was done and dusted and that was a fact. Ruud and Johann were not the sort of people he ever wanted to do business with again. Oh, they seemed friendly enough but since he’d started negotiations with them he’d done a bit of digging and there was blood on the carpet with these blokes when things didn’t go their way. Real blood. Christ, what was he thinking of? No, after tonight he’d ever have anything to do with Holland again and that included eating Edam, which he was partial to, or listening to Andre Rieu, who he found quite soothing, or... or... he couldn’t think of anything else Dutch except putting your finger into a dyke and that possibility seemed extremely remote however you interpreted the word.

  The gardener, turning away from the bush he was pruning and making a mobile phone call, didn’t swim at all into Nev’s ken. Why would it? Why indeed?

  He wrenched open the bar fridge and snapped open a Red Bull. There was something else happening tonight... what was it?... oh, yeah, the “Rickety Street” live episode. He took a long swig. Good luck to them. They’d need it. Who Goes Next? They bloody well do.

  As the hands of the clock outside the “Rickety Street” set clunked towards 7 pm, the cast, crew and extras milled about like runners before the City to Surf. There were about 79, 950 less of them but they still went through similar pre-event routines: stretching, yawning, keeping up their fluids, psyching themselves up, calming themselves down, nipping off to the dunny every five minutes to jog up and down at the end of a long queue.

  Rosanna looked to be relaxing with a copy of “Woman’s Weekly” but her line of sight was over the top of the magazine to where Karl stood drinking from a bottle of mineral water and chatting to a young female extra. Hah! If he thought she’d be warming his toes tonight then he had another think coming if she, Rosanna, had anything to do with it. God, he was insufferable. When she’d first met him she’d disliked him so much she thought that it was the sort of loathing that was bound to turn into the passionate longing that kept Hollywood romcom writers in constant employment. Well, she’d certainly got that one wrong.

  Karl put down his drink, gave Little Miss Nubile Groupie a smile and headed off towards the gents. Rosanna wandered casually over to where the girl, who was presumably playing some sort of drunken bimbo, stood. In her hand, concealed behind the magazine, she carried a bottle of “L’eau des Marais”. Typical of the stuck up little toad to drink ridiculously expensive French mineral water while everyone else drank the studio supplied tea, coffee or tap. But it was an affectation which had given Rosanna the idea which she was now putting into practice. No-one took any notice of her as she switched Karl’s bottle for the one she had prepared earlier, taking off the top and pouring some into a nearby plastic cup so that the levels matched. Grinning, she walked off. She was going to enjoy the live show.

  Karl, meanwhile, crept into Wardrobe. He’d kept an eye on Rosanna while ostensibly chatting up one of the extras and when he was sure she was preoccupied he’d slipped off to put his plan into action. He ran his hands along the rack of costumes lined up for quick changes between acts one and two. There weren’t many so he had no difficulty in quickly finding the dress Rosanna would change into. From out of his pocket he took a plastic container and stealthily sprinkled the powdery contents inside the back of the dress. Stuck up little cow. Jeez, he was going to enjoy this live episode.

  Angus, in his costume as Police Sergeant Black, exited the gents and saw Phyllida, in her Police Constable’s uniform, standing in the doorway twixt corridor and set. Grinning, and with cat-like tread, he came up behind her, put his arms round her, cupped her breasts and said, in a comic voice, “Hello, darling”.

  Her response, much to his surprise, was to swing round and plant a straight right into his nose. There was a crack as he staggered back. Then t
here was a ping as he crashed into the fire extinguisher. Then there was a groan as he slipped down the wall and into heap on the floor.

  “Do that again and I’ll cut your balls off.”

  In the way that streams gush from beneath glaciers when spring comes to the fjords, blood gushed from Angus’s nose.

  “What the hell did you do that for?”, he croaked as he held his hands in close proximity to his already swelling proboscis but not daring to touch it.

  “You grabbed my tits, you pervert!”

  “You never complained before.”

  Whoops, shit! Phyllida and Angus were some sort of item. She hadn’t picked up on that one. Maybe this was going to be a bit more difficult than she thought. She’d definitely have to give her sister the third degree before she did do whatever it was she was eventually going to do with her.

  “Ow, I think it’s broken.” Angus slid slowly back up the wall. The front of his crisp police shirt had shifted from the blue end of the spectrum to the red, almost black. “It is! Look, it’s moving about. Aagh!”

  “Sorry, sorry, I thought you were someone else.”

  She’d seen more blood than this in the past, of course. You don’t spend time locked up with people who think they’re made of Belgian chocolate or that aliens disguised as Hereford Bulls have mated with them without seeing the occasional artery opened up. But on those occasions there had been trained staff to deal with that sort of thing. The best she could do at the present time was hover indecisively as he swayed in front of her.

  For Angus, this was the most pain he had ever experienced. It was as though a red hot and very angry lobster had clamped itself on the front of his face. He felt nauseous. And dizzy. And possibly delirious. Phyllida seemed to have gone cross-eyed.