He was sitting on the bottom level of the black platform in the center of the stage, a towel round his neck, holding the white Fender, plucking a string, plucking another, playing a chord as if some ghostly remnant of that shouting, ecstatic audience still sat out there in the rows of empty seats, as if there were the lingering echo of applause.
Perhaps because of the way he sat there, looking out, the theater seemed not so much empty as abandoned. In the aisles a couple of lads were cleaning up the detritus of the concert, but they left, lugging plastic bags behind them. A clutch of roadies were standing at the rear of the stage looking out, smoking, talking. Wondering, probably, what the hell had gone on in here tonight.
When Jury sat down beside him, he didn't turn to look. "Wes is a great drummer. He's got the quickest reaction time of anyone I know."
"Quicker than mine, certainly."
"I never knew anyone to pull off anything like that."
"What about you, Charlie?"
He looked down, strummed one chord, then another. He looked out through the semidarkness much the way Nell Healey had stared beyond that broken wall, as if someone might materialize before her eyes.
" 'I was trying to pull myself up by my bootstraps and the bootstraps broke.' Stevie Ray Vaughan said that. Great guitarist."
"Stevie Ray Vaughan mended the bootstraps. You're quitting at the height of your career as some sort of penance, that it?"
He didn't answer, just picked a few more notes, struck a few quick chords.
"Or was the penance learning to play that,"-Jury nodded toward the guitar-"in the first place?"
There was a long silence, and then he said: "Every morning, sometimes twice a day, since I've been in London I've gone to Waterloo. Go into the buffet, get a cup of tea, go out, walk around and look at the departures. There must be a train to Leeds nearly every hour." He took his hand from the strings and reached into the back pocket of his jeans. "I bought these." He fanned out four tickets-day-returns to Leeds. "For eight years I tried to come back and tell her what happened." He was silent. "I couldn't face her."
Jury waited, let him hold on to his guitar, strum the chords to "Yesterday's Rain," and stare out over the emptiness as blighted, perhaps, to him as Haworth Moor.
"The last time I saw her was when I was looking down from my window that faced the sea and she stopped on that cliff path and looked up and waved. She had a way of waving and smiling that was so,"-he shrugged-"joyful you'd think she hadn't seen you in ages. Like mums on station platforms when the kids come down from school on their holidays. You know." He looked over at Jury then, who was looking down. "I really loved her. Hard to believe, but I'd have died for her."
Jury raised his eyes and looked out over the empty seats. "You did."
"I was getting my clothes on when I looked out the other window, the one facing the rear and saw her,"-he looked up toward the corner of the circle-"walking down that back road. I wondered what in hell the aunt was here for; no one said she was coming. Then she disappeared inside, into the kitchen. I started down the stairs-the room was at the top of the kitchen stairs-but then I stopped. I still don't know why I didn't just clatter on down. I could only hear muffled voices and in a minute the door slammed. The kitchen door. I went back into my room and saw his Aunt Irene and Billy walking up the road, and Gnasher, his terrier, padding behind him. I nearly raised the window and shouted but something stopped me, again. It was just, I don't know,wrong."
"Then I ran down and looked for Mrs. Healey. Nell. She must have walked farther along the cliff and I thought, no, I'd just waste time looking for her. So I went round the house and up the road, trying to catch up and stay out of sight at the same time. Then I saw the car, the aunt's car; I recognized it from seeing it at the Citrine house. It was parked nearly all the way up to the entrance and they got in. It looked like they were having an argument about the dog, but Billy pulled it in. Anyway, it gave me a chance to get to the shed and get the bike and an old slicker. It was getting dark fast. Where the car ended up-"
He stopped. He looked down at the guitar as if he'd never seen it before.
Jury turned and said, "Was a disused graveyard."
He nodded. "It came on suddenly, the dark. The only light came from the car's headlamps and an electric torch. It was held by a man but I couldn't make him out; it was like the torch was shining right in my eyes, had me pinned down. But they hadn't heard me. The rest was like broken-off images in a dream. I could hear Billy, saying something, and then crying. I could hear Gnasher, he just barked once and then nothing. But I didn't hear them, I mean they went about all of this in silence while I was ducked down behind a grave marker. It was all so nightmarish I read over and over the words on the marker."
"Billy was lying on the ground, and the little dog was lying beside him. His aunt pushed the dog down into the ground." He stopped. "Did you ever have one of those feelings you become two different people? It's as if one part of you is sitting in a chair and the other part gets up and walks across the room? That's what happened to me. It was like part of me still hid behind that stone and the other part ran toward the grave. I was yelling; but even my voice didn't sound like my voice. I still couldn't see his face, the man's, because he was down in the grave, but hers-good God, I'll never forget that look."
"And then it all happened in slow motion: she brought out a gun, a small one, from her pocket and turned it on me; I backed up against a tree and she fired. But she must be as good a shot with a revolver as she is with a rifle-" He laughed ruefully, "-because she missed. Missed killing me, I mean. The bullet only nicked my ear, but, my God, the blood…"
He stopped to pluck a few more notes on the Fender, then to search for a cigarette. Jury shook one out of his packet. "She thought she'd killed me, though, I think. I slid down the tree and crumpled. He was running over now, shoving her back, calling her a bloody stupid bitch and while they were exchanging names, I managed to edge myself away from the tree, get up, and run. You've got to understand, I thought Billy was dead. I ran back to the road, thinking maybe I could stop someone. I was holding a piece of my ripped-off shirt up to stop the blood with one hand and hailing a car with the other. Brilliant." Here he played a flashy riff in a burst of anger at himself. "Did you ever try to outrun headlamps?"
"No. I take it the car was theirs."
"I don't know how she missed me again, but she did. This time with the car. What would I have been but another hit and run?"
"You'd have been hard to explain, in the circumstances."
"I veered off the road and ran toward the coast, toward the cliffs. There wasn't much she-or he-could do by way of following in the car. I probably wasn't losing as much blood as I thought. I managed to stagger along for a mile, maybe two, maybe more; I wasn't counting. And then I had the best piece of luck I've ever had: ran into a party of campers. There were five of them, sitting round a campfire. They were Americans, backpacking round the British Isles. All of them young, in their twenties." Charlie grinned. "And all of them stoned. They were absolutely fascinated by this bloody-literally-Brit who stumbled into them. Again, literally. I'll never forget them: Katie, Miles, Dobby, Helena, Colin. They had some stuff in their backpacks to take care of the wound. They thought I was hallucinating, they really did, when I kept talking about getting the police, told them I'd just seen someone murdered. I'll never forget Miles looking at me, blinking. He handed me a roach-clip and said, 'Hey, man, mellow out."
"I mellowed out, all right. I passed out. Slept through the next day and when I woke up, Dobby and Miles were jamming on their guitars. Still stoned. Only the girls were beginning to take me seriously, but just as seriously they told me to stay away from the cops. I didn't see a newspaper for six days and didn't know about the ransom demand. And I don't mind saying I was terrified. I was a witnessand I suppose I'd seen too much telly."
Jury said, "Whose idea was it to identify somebody else's body?"
"Mine and Uncle Owen's. I couldn't stand him thinking I was dead, like Billy, so I rang up, finally."
"You mean he knew Irene Citrine had done this and didn't go to the police?" Somehow that didn't sound like Owen Holt.
"He didn't know. I didn't tell him. I was afraid for him and Aunt Alice. I told him… I didn't know who they were."
"But your aunt didn't know. Your uncle didn't tell her. Why?"
There was a silence. "He was going to, but then he thought, in the long run, it might be easier for her just to think I was dead than that she'd never see me again, probably." He looked at his guitar. "And you've met Aunt Alice. Do you think she'd really have been able to keep it to herself? Uncle Owen was afraid she'd go to the police. She'd hardly have been able to talk to you without telling you. Maybe it was cold-blooded, I don't know."
"None of you strike me as that. Go on."
"Uncle Owen said not to worry. To leave things to him, to lie low-he'd find some way of getting money to me. He did. A lot."
Jury smiled. "Your uncle never did strike me as a gambler."
"What?" The boy frowned.
"Nothing. You went to Ireland?"
"I did. From Stranraer to Larne. And I met Wes." He smiled. "Wes had more than talent. He had contacts-like someone in the U.D.C. who knew someone who knew someone who could forge passports."
Back at the rear of the auditorium, light fanned briefly across the wall as one of the doors swung open and shut. Whoever it was was standing back there or had sat down.
Mary Lee, Jury bet, and smiled. Then the memory of Charlie writing on the clear surface of the shoe came back to him.
"The longer I kept quiet about it, the more guilty I felt," Charlie was saying. "And the more guilty I felt, the harder it was to do anything, to come back, to tell the story. The old vicious circle of guilt. Why didn't I do something to save him?"
The question was rhetorical, but Jury answered it anyway. "Because you knew damned well they'd kill you."
Charlie rested his forehead against the guitar frets, eyes closed. "But not to do anything about it later-"
"You did. You thought if he'd lived, Billy Healey would have gone on to have a highly successful career as a concert pianist-"
"He would have." Charlie brought the guitar back up to his lap.
"I doubt it."
Charlie looked round, sharply. "That was the whole idea."
"His father's idea. Not Billy's. And not necessarily Nell Healey's. Wasn't it hard to get him to practice?"
"Yes. But he was a natural."
"Come on, Toby. You, of all people, would know that even a 'natural' has to practice like hell to get where Roger Healey wanted his son to go. Billy was lazy. Irene Citrine said that. On the other hand youwere just the opposite. Determined. Or as your aunt put it, pigheaded."
He had to smile. "I expect I was."
"You 'expect' you were? You weren't a 'natural'; you couldn't play anything. That is, you couldn't play anything until you were so driven by guilt to pick up on a career that Nell's son had lost; there roust have been times when you wished you could have died in his place."
"There were."
"And you did. In a sense you became Billy. It must have been hell. No musical inclination, no background, presumably no talent. I thoughtyou were Billy."
"You thought I was-why?"
Jury told him about the poetry, the picture, and the impression Charlie himself had given him about the Healey case. "Let's say I thought you were Billy because you couldn't possibly have been Toby Holt. And Toby would have been the only other one who knew all of that."
"If you practice twelve, thirteen hours a day, you don't need background. Sometimes the fingers of my left hand would bleed and I'd just wrap gauze round them and put on a surgical glove and keep going. Some martyrdom, right?"
"Which you apparently plan to complete by quitting at the top. You told me you'd got as far as you needed to and I wondered what that could possibly mean. So now you're quitting. And to do what? Live in West Yorkshire and become a shepherd? A groundsman?"
"I have to go back; I have to tell them what really happened; I want to see her."
"Yes, I know. But for God's sakes, don't think of staying there. It's not meant for you, Charlie. This time, it could really kill you."
"That's pretty dramatic. I was thinking about Abby. With her aunt dead, well, she could use some help."
Abby. Yes, she could have used it a long time ago. "Nell Healey will see to that." Jury turned from trying to see into the shadows of the back to look at Charlie. "You've paid up, Charlie. And, anyway, you haven't done what you'd sworn you'd do."
Charlie cut a bleak smile in Jury's direction. "I haven't?"
"No. You haven't quite peaked. Sirocco hasn't played Wembley Stadium." Jury called to the rear of the auditorium, "Isn't that the order, Mary Lee? The Marquise, Town and Country, Odeon, Arena, Stadium?"
A shadow moved and she started down the aisle. "What about the Ritz?"
Jury shaded his eyes and looked back.
"Remember me?" asked Vivian.
Vivian had Marshall Trueblood's Armani coat slung about her shoulders. Underneath was a gown Jury could see as she moved closer to the stage that the Princess would have approved. It was burgundy, fluid, semitransparent and fit her body like a second skin to just below the hips where it flared out. It had a languid, pre-Raphaelite look. Her hair was done up partly on top of her head, partly down, as if the hair had escaped its entrapment on top. She wore long emerald earrings.
The combination of her appearance (which was gorgeous) and the surprise of seeing her here made Jury's mind go blank. "Why in hell are you wearing Trueblood's Armani coat?" That was a sporty question, he thought, cursing himself.
But she took it in stride. "Because I had the coat-check ticket for it in my bag. I'm supposed to have gone to powder my nose during the entree; we started dinner without you, but no one will have finished, not if Agatha had her way about the seven-course meal and Melrose orders one more bottle of wine. He told me you were here." Vivian beamed up at Charlie Raine, whose own smile would have lit up the Embankment. "I was cheated. They got to hear you; I didn't."
"I can always fix that."
"You wouldn't!"
"I would." Charlie strapped the Fender round his neck. "What do you want to hear?"
Vivian thought for a moment. " 'Yesterdays'-not the Beatles' one, the one by Jerome Kern. Do you know it?"
Charlie thought for a moment, shook his head, "I know the Beatles'. Will that do?"
"It'll do," said Jury, sitting down in the front row with Vivian beside him. He wrapped his arm over the back of her seat.
As Charlie, twenty-three years old, sang about a day when his troubles had been far away, here in the building where the last briefing for D-Day had taken place, Jury was drawn back to the flat on the Fulham Road, Elicia Deauville, and the rubble that once had been his and his mother's parlor.
He was just as glad he hadn't been there on the moor to see the black-clad arm of Ann Denholme lying against the white backdrop of snow.
He feared, as the song said, that all his troubles might be here to stay.