‘Damn you! Get off this phone! Or so help me – ‘
‘So help you what? What can a fat girl like you hope to do in a situation like this, except blubber?’
‘You fucking creep.’
‘My pleasure.’
‘Do I know you?’
‘Yes and no,’ the tone of the voice was wavering.
‘You’re a friend of Ricky’s, is that it?’ One of the dope-fiends he used to hang out with. Kind of idiot-game they’d get up’to. All right, you’ve had your stupid little joke,’ she said, ‘now get off the line before you do some serious harm.’
‘You’re harassed,’ the voice said, softening. ‘I understand …” it was changing magically, sliding up an octave, ‘you’re trying to help the man you love . . .’its tone was feminine now, the accent altering, the slime becoming a purr. And suddenly it was Garbo.
‘Poor Richard,’ she said to Birdy. ‘He’s tried so hard, hasn’t he?’ She was gentle as a lamb.
Birdy was speechless: the impersonation was as faultless as that of Lorre, as female as the first had been male.
‘All right, I’m impressed,” said Birdy, ‘now let me speak to the cops.’
‘Wouldn’t this be a fine and lovely night to go out walking, Birdy? Just we two girls together.’
‘You know my name.’
‘Of course I know your name. I’m very close to you.’
‘What do you mean, close to me?’
The reply was throaty laughter, Garbo’s lovely laughter.
Birdy couldn’t take it any more. The trick was too clever; she could feel herself succumbing to the impersonation, as though she were speaking to the star herself.
‘No,’ she said down the phone, ‘you don’t convince me, you hear?’ Then her temper snapped. She yelled: ‘You’re a fake!’ into the mouthpiece of the phone so loudly she felt the receiver tremble, and then slammed it down. She opened the Office and went to the outer door. Lindi Lee had not simply slammed the door behind her. It was locked and bolted from the inside.
‘Shit,’ Birdy said quietly.
Suddenly the foyer seemed smaller than she’d previously thought it, and so did her reserve of cool. She mentally slapped herself across the face, the standard response for a heroine verging on hysteria. Think this through, she instructed herself. One: the door was locked. Lindi Lee hadn’t done it, Ricky couldn’t have done it, she certainly hadn’t done it. Which implied-
Two: There was a weirdo in here. Maybe the same he, she or it that was on the phone. Which implied –
Three: He, she or it must have access to another line, somewhere in the building. The only one she knew of was upstairs, in the storeroom. But there was no way she was going up there. For reasons see Heroine in Peril. Which implied –
Four: She had to open this door with Ricky’s keys.
Right, there was the imperative: get the keys from Ricky.
She stepped back into the cinema. For some reason the house-lights were jumpy, or was that just panic in her optic nerve? No, they were flickering slightly; the whole interior seemed to be fluctuating, as though it were breathing.
Ignore it: fetch the keys.
She raced down the aisle, aware, as she always was when she ran, that her breasts were doing a jig, her buttocks too. A right sight I look, she thought for anyone with the eyes to see. Ricky, was moaning in his faint. Birdy looked for the keys, but his belt had disappeared.
‘Ricky . . .’she said close to his face. The moans multiplied.
‘Ricky, can you hear me? It’s Birdy, Rick. Birdy.’
‘Birdy?’
‘We’re locked in, Ricky. Where are the keys?’
‘. . . keys?’
‘You’re not wearing your belt, Ricky,’ she spoke slowly, as if to an idiot, ‘where-are-your-keys?’
The jigsaw Ricky was doing in his aching head was suddenly solved, and he sat up.
‘Boy!’ he said.
‘What boy?’
‘In the John. Dead in the John.’
‘Dead? Oh Christ. Dead? Are you sure?’
Ricky was in some sort of trance, it seemed. He didn’t look at her, he just stared into middle-distance, seeing something she couldn’t.
‘Where are the keys?’ she asked again. ‘Ricky. It’s important. Concentrate.’