The Bullet Trick (29 page)

After a while the sightings of Gloria diminished, though over the years people continued to claim to have glimpsed her. Generally after the press had resurrected her story, something that happened whenever a respectable married woman went missing. Though, unlike Gloria, these women always seemed to turn up, in some form.

Gloria Noon had become her disappearance, a bundle of newspaper clippings, a police file, a chapter in true crime books and an entire Pan paperback, The Friday the Thirteenth Vanishing. The police denied her case was closed, but admitted there was little they could do with no evidence, no witnesses and no body.

The most spectacular resurrection of the publicity surrounding the case had come with Bill Noon senior’s remarriage twelve years after his first wife’s disappearance. Several newspapers had run a copy of the wedding photo. Bill junior acted as best man. He stood at the front of the group photograph, handsome face stiff and unreadable. And if you looked closely, it was possible to spot a younger, thinner James Montgomery in the back row of the bravely smiling wedding party, grinning like a man who’d just come into a good thing.

I took all the clippings I had managed to get copied about the disappearance of Bill’s mother and laid them across the floor of my room. Then I took out the map and the photograph that I’d filched from Montgomery and laid them side-by-side. I lifted the photograph and stared at the newspaper held in Montgomery’s hand. The print was small, but it was still possible to read the headline and the date, 13th March 1970, the day of Gloria’s disappearance. I looked again at the map and felt certain that this was the last resting place of Gloria Noon.

Bill had been nothing to me, Sam was a friend that I hadn’t seen for a year and Gloria a woman who vanished when I was still a child. I didn’t owe them any debt and nothing that I could do would bring them back. But maybe I held the solution to their deaths, and perhaps in helping to bring them justice I would find some peace of my own. Montgomery was out there somewhere, eager to get his hands on evidence that might damn him. Was I in mourning for what I’d done in Berlin? Or just a coward, hiding from a man who’d been playing dirty since before I was born? I’d been spending a long time on my decline. This could be my chance to redeem myself or go out Butch-Cassidy-and-theSundance-Kid-style, in a blaze of glory.

I left everything lying the way that it was, washed my face, locked the door, turned out the light and went to bed.

The cuttings were still splayed across the floor when I woke the following midmorning. I stepped over them, mindful not to stand on any of the photographs of Gloria and Bill Noon, the laughing wedding guests or the carefully coiffured sister, then fumbled in the dressing table drawer until I found an unopened pack of playing cards and slid away the red scarf I’d used to cover the mirror. I leaned in close and looked at myself properly for the first time in months. My face was drink-bloated and unshaven, my eyes puffy behind their glasses. I rubbed a hand across my bristles, wondering if the old William was lost forever, then pulled up a chair, slit open the pack and threw the jokers to one side. I shuffled the deck and started to perform some basic sleights of hand. My fingers were clumsy, but after a while they began to remember the familiar tricks and I knew that with practice they would regain their old knack. I shaved, showered and then went out to ring Johnny.

Eilidh sounded distracted.

'Oh, William, John’s a bit busy, can he ring you back?'

'I’m calling from a phone booth.'

There was a smile in Eilidh’s voice.

'That’s novel these days.'

I looked out at the crowds of shoppers rushing along Argyle Street and realised it was a Saturday.

'I guess it is.' I paused, hoping she’d drag Johnny from whatever task he was caught up in. When she didn’t I said. 'It’s just to say I’ll do the gig.'

'That’s brilliant, William, he’ll be delighted.'

I felt myself go gruff.

'Aye, well, he’ll maybe not be so chuffed when he sees me; I’m a bit rusty.'

'Nonsense he’s always going on about how brilliant you were when you were both at uni.'

I stored this nugget of praise away amongst my depleted stock.

'Johnny didn’t tell me the kick-off time.'

'It’s a week today, 3.30 in the Old Panopticon.'

'A matinee?'

The voice on the other end of the line sounded concerned.

'Is that a problem?'

I hesitated and then realised that it would make no dif ference to my purpose what time the show was at.

'No, not really, it just threw me that’s all.'

'There’ll be a lot of kids there, families, it should be fun.'

'I’ll temper my act accordingly.'

Eilidh laughed.

'See that you do.'

Eilidh thanked me again and I realised she wanted to go. The pips sounded and I fired more change into the slot, holding her there.

'Johnny never said what the benefit was in aid of.'

'Did he not?' Eilidh’s voice was bright. 'We’re trying to raise funds for a charity catering for children like Grace.'

'Like what?'

It sounded flippant and inwardly I cringed.

'You really didn’t talk much did you? Grace has Down’s Syndrome.'

I felt a quick hit of pity, infused with embarrassment. The words were out before I knew I was going to say them.

'I’m sorry.'

'Don’t be,' Eilidh’s voice was serious. 'We consider ourselves blessed.'

Berlin

THE THREE OF us stood in the wings, Sylvie on one side of me trembling in a silky robe, Ulla on the other dressed in a close-fitting vest and tight leggings that had been severed at the knees. Both girls were wearing the same bottle-green fishnets and high shiny red sandals just as Sylvie had promised. Out on stage the clowns started to fling their buzz-saws around. I turned to Ulla.

'Ready?'

She nodded and I could sense her nervousness. I moved to help her into the hollow top of the table, but suddenly Kolja was beside her. He lifted her gently into his arms and deposited her safely in the compartment like some fairytale prince laying his new-won princess into their honeymoon bower. Sylvie leaned over to check something and her robe fell open. Beneath it she was almost naked. The green stockings were held up by a red satin suspender belt, which matched her high-cut shorts and the scarlet tassels, secured by mysterious means over her nipples.

Ulla made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a spit and Kolja smiled. He winked at me as if to ask, what could you do when women were around? Then leaned over and kissed Ulla quickly on the lips, ruffling her hair. I’d never suspected him of a sense of humour and would have liked him better for it if I hadn’t noticed him meeting Sylvie’s eyes as he rose out of the kiss.

Whenever cinema cameras go behind stage they show chaos. Half-dressed gaggles of showgirls tripping into departing acts, harassed stage managers pointing the odds with one hand and messing their hair into Bedlam peaks with the other. The reality probably doesn’t look so different to the untrained eye. It’s like watching a motorway from a pedestrian overpass. You wonder how the cars can snake from lane to lane without colliding, and yet when you’re the driver the switch can be effortless.

The curtains dropped and the clowns ran off stage making lecherous faces at Sylvie as they passed. The propshifters swept away the debris, then moved the table behind the lowered curtain. Our music started up, Sylvie dropped her robe, I took her hand and we strode out in front of the curtains to greet the audience.

Something about the way the high heels made Sylvie’s bottom stick out as she walked across the stage, spine straight, small breasts carried high, a diamanté tiara glinting from the top of her sleek head, made me think of a show pony. The crowd cheered. I turned her into a twirl and she stood sunning herself in their applause. I wondered if I was just a flesh bandit pimping a skin act, but there was no denying it was the best greeting I’d got in a long time.

Sylvie waited for the clapping to die down and our music to shift to a slower tempo, then handed me a deflated red balloon. I looked at her lithe body and held the balloon up to the audience displaying its limpness. They laughed and I raised it to my lips and started to blow.

The balloon expanded into a massive scarlet Bratwurst. I stopped, puffing theatrically, struggling to regain my breath, marvelling at the balloon’s Priapic fullness, raising my eyes and looking at Sylvie’s tits. The crowd belly laughed.

I raised the balloon back to my lips and kept on blowing. Sylvie covered her ears waiting for the explosion. Just when there was a danger of the crowd getting bored it burst, scattering red sparkles across the stage. I stepped back smartly, producing a bottle of champagne from its wreckage before the shreds of rubber had even hit the ground. The crowd applauded, two champagne flutes were flung from the wings and I caught them, slick as any juggler. I’d opened the bottle, passed Sylvie a drink and had downed one myself by the time the applause faded.

Sylvie nodded to the remnants of burst balloon lying dead on the stage and grinned, 'That reminds me of last night.' I looked outraged and the audience laughed. Sylvie winked and said in a conspiratorial whisper that echoed to the very back of the room. 'Not for much longer though, just you wait until you see the big athlete in act three.'

'That’s what you think.'

I pulled a wand from the inside pocket of my suit and pointed it towards the audience. There was a quick flash of red at the front of the stage and the music switched to a graveyard moan. Sylvie’s hands flew to her mouth. The curtains behind us slid back to reveal the table where Ulla lay hidden. Before the audience had time to stare too closely, two of the ninjas jogged on, their features concealed by bandito scarves stretched black across their lower faces, each of them carrying one half of the sparkling blue cabinet. The first ninja handed me his half, I opened the lid and displayed its empty interior to the audience while he rolled the table centre-stage. I placed the box on top, exhibited the emptiness of its twin, then laid the two halves end to end. My ninja helpers slid out both boxes’ fronts, fixing the two parts together, turning them into one long coffin.

Sylvie stood frozen.

I said, 'Remember the rumours about my first wife?'

Then, as if she’d suddenly realised what we were about to do, Sylvie turned and tried to run towards the wings. The ninjas moved quickly. They grabbed my sexy young assistant and forced her high above their heads, ferrying her back to me. Sylvie’s pleas for help cut across the room. Her body looked white against the black of the ninjas’ costumes and the midnight-blue of the backdrop. She freed one leg and swung into an athletic turn, standing upright on one of her tormentors’ shoulders for a split second, like an art deco figurine caught in the moment, but the ninjas regained their hold and pulled her down. I rubbed my hands as they lowered the kicking, screaming girl into the sparkling coffin, latching her in tight, her head and hands at the top, secured like a witch in the stocks, feet poking out through the holes in the other end.

Sylvie turned her face to the audience appealing to them. I forced fake champagne into her then twirled the table sickeningly fast until the top of her head was facing towards the audience. This was the girls’ cue to do the fancy foot switch, while the bottom end of the box was out of sight. Sylvie cried for help, wiggling her hands, and I birled the table in the opposite direction so the audience could see Ulla’s shoes kicking madly at the other end. I gave the table a final twist, laying the cabinet side-on to the audience, so they could see the whole arrangement now — Sylvie’s frightened face and Ulla’s kicking feet.

The lights dropped, leaving the stage in darkness save for one golden pool in the centre where the table lay. I got a sudden vision of Sylvie’s half-naked curves lying above Ulla’s svelte form. The thought of the women’s closely packed flesh sent a thrill through me that had been absent in rehearsals. I shook myself against the distraction of my own excitement, took a massive swig from the water in the champagne bottle and gave an evil cackle. One of the ninjas jogged on with a giant two-handed saw. We wobbled the saw between us, showing the audience its evil-looking teeth and then set to work, he at one end, I at the other, the only noise in the room the sound of metal eating through wood and Sylvie’s petrified sobs. Ulla wiggled her feet frantically, the red shoes glinting as if they were desperate to separate themselves from the encumbrance of a body and begin a whirling, dancing life of their own.