Classic Calls the Shots Read online

  ‘Not for Dark Harvest. Believe me, if I could do without that car, I would. There’s no way,’ Roger said. ‘Agree with that, Bill?’

  Bill studied me for a moment or two and must have decided I was worthy of his full attention, because he stopped playing Montgomery and became reasonably human.

  ‘One hundred per cent, I agree.’ He sounded almost buddy to buddy. ‘I do stories, Jack. Film’s the only medium that can show them the way I want: the whole story. That’s why I’ve been in love with movies since I was a kid. In my films you don’t just see what happens; you see why and how without even being consciously aware of it. But it’s there all right and it comes over if I strike the right mood. We use sound and lighting to get that mood and I layer one story over another story. The Auburn’s in the second story. Background if you like, but vital. That’s why I need it back. It’s part of the movie. See?’

  I didn’t, not completely anyway. What I could see was why Bill was a great director. He knew where he was going.

  ‘Dark Harvest is all about revenge, Jack. It lurks in the shadows,’ Bill continued. ‘The movie’s set in 1935, around the time of your George V’s Silver Jubilee, a time when everything looked reasonably hunky dory for Britain. Right?’

  ‘Yes.’ I knew the Jubilee had been a rave success – rather unexpectedly so, even for the King himself.

  ‘It wasn’t hunky dory. Waiting in the wings were Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Oswald Mosley, all gearing up for fascism and in Adolf’s case revenge for Germany’s humiliation over the 1918 Armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. Add to that mix, by May 1935 the Prince of Wales’ affair with Wallace Simpson was well under way and he was beginning to cosy up to Germany. Ahead lay deep trouble. He became King, then abdicated, all within a year of his succession. So all seems jolly rejoicing in May 1935 but in fact the past is catching up and is ready to explode into the future. That’s the second layer. Understand?’

  Not hard. I could manage so far.

  ‘The cars are chosen for the second layer. Every time the audience sees one of them they’re reminded of that. That’s why we have a car adviser.’

  Car adviser? Not Jack Colby, I noticed. Why didn’t I ever get cushy jobs like that? ‘What part does the Auburn play?’

  ‘It’s a bright new sleek American car, and it’s seen with the formidable German Horch, Cabriolet Type 670, an Italian Fiat Tipo 508S, and the good old English Bentley, a 1933 Silent Sports Car. All reflecting the political situation.’

  If Bill had set his mind to this weird theme, it was going to work. I was sure of that.

  ‘That’s why we need that Auburn,’ Bill continued. ‘Plus, as Roger says, we’ve shot several scenes with it. We already have a line on a replica but that doesn’t interest me. Not one bit, Jack. We start filming on location next Monday with my Auburn.’

  Director and producer aimed the full force of their considerable will at me, as if expecting me to produce it out of a hat. I only hoped I could. ‘Not much time, eh?’ Roger said grudgingly.

  ‘No,’ I agreed, poleaxed at this understatement.

  ‘You’ll do it, Jack. Want to see the scene of the crime? I’ll get Tom to give you the tour.’ Bill’s lined face cracked into a grin, but it wasn’t meant for me. Nor was it meant to be jovial. ‘Keep him busy, eh, Roger?’ He picked up his phone.

  Whatever Dave had meant by his ‘something wrong somewhere’, I agreed with it. For all Bill Wade’s undoubted leadership skills, so far this didn’t strike me as a happy company. There could be trouble in store. The term ‘film noir’ might acquire a whole new meaning.

  Tom proved to be the man I’d seen at reception. He seemed friendly enough, but abstracted, which was hardly surprising if, as seemed likely, his job was under threat. He introduced himself as Tom Hopkins, deputy assistant director. ‘And before you ask me what that means,’ he added gloomily, ‘I’ll tell you. Nothing. Assistant director is a big deal. Deputy doesn’t exist in the deal stakes.’

  ‘Power without responsibility?’ I quipped as we set off. I was still brooding about this car adviser, and wondering whom they had chosen.

  ‘Power?’ He considered this. ‘You could say that,’ he said at last, as we walked over to the garages where the Auburn had been stored. ‘You know what I was before I got this nothing job? Storyboarder. Now that’s responsibility. Each one drawn by me after consultation with Bill.’

  I knew about storyboards, the translation of a script into a series of artist’s drawings to capture the proposed mood, continuity and action of the film and spot potential problems ahead. They are or were the great standby of the director and production designer. ‘Aren’t they digitalized now?’

  ‘Can be, but not for Bill, they’re not. We’ve worked together too long. He still uses film and hand-drawn storyboards. Trouble with computers is that they tell you something, but stop right there. No mood. My sketches fire Bill’s imagination, and that’s what he wants.’

  ‘So what went wrong with that job?’

  ‘Angie did. His blooming wife. You probably heard her in full force when you came in. So-called script supervisor, script editor and historical adviser. She’s all for computers, got some kid wet behind the ears to rework my drawings.’

  ‘You’re very frank.’ Extraordinarily so, I thought. I hadn’t exactly sought this confidence, even though it was another useful indication that all was far from well at Stour Studios. Bill might well only want me to get the Auburn back and no questions asked, but my success with that might well depend on what was going on right here.

  ‘Nothing to lose,’ Tom replied. ‘Everyone feels the same about our Angie. She got me sacked as storyboarder, while we were shooting in London, on the grounds that she was script supervisor and Madam objected to the way I conveyed the mood. Too much emphasis on Louise Shaw’s role, she said, which according to her threw the other relationships in the story out of kilter. I wouldn’t change it, and she got me sacked.’

  ‘It sounds like something that should have been sorted out.’

  ‘Not when Madam falls out with Louise Shaw – the whole plot centres on her role. Besides, Bill was busy fighting with Madam over the time he was spending with Miss Shaw.’

  Now that made sense. I like situations boiling down to straight human failings. I’d heard of Louise Shaw – who hadn’t? – and she was a terrific actor. Is that why Angie disliked her? I wondered. Did she hanker after playing lead herself?

  ‘So what are you still doing here?’ I asked.

  ‘Roger, Bill and I go back a long way, so they gave me a non-job to compensate. You’ll see what it’s like here. Shooting only began in Kent last week, after two weeks in London, but down here it seems different. We’re cooped up together too much. We’re at each other’s throats, all of us, not just me and her. The chap playing Lord Charing, Brian Tegg, is fighting for his job too. Only one of his scenes has been shot as yet, and Madam didn’t like it.’

  ‘Isn’t it always like that on film sets?’

  ‘No,’ he said simply. ‘There’s a lot of real nastiness here, but we don’t know where it’s coming from. Now this garage you wanted to see.’ He stopped at one of the red-brick buildings that had been converted into a garage. ‘Used to be the milking parlour, this lot,’ he told me. ‘Now we milk the Fords.’

  I dutifully managed a laugh and he chuckled. All good-natured fun, perhaps, but perhaps not. Perhaps he too was embroiled in the ‘real nastiness’.

  The garage Tom led me to was the second last in a row of six, adjoining the canteen I’d already seen. They were obviously converted from stables, and at first glance they looked solid enough. Certainly the Auburn one was very firmly locked now with a large secure-looking padlock and security lights.

  ‘Bill said there were four classics. Are the other three cars here?’ I asked.

  ‘Not yet. They arrive Monday.’

  ‘It seems a given that someone got access to the key left at the security booth,’ I said as Tom struggled wit
h the padlock.

  ‘Maybe. Maybe not. Could have gone out the other door. Here you are.’ He flung the door open to reveal a now-empty garage.

  Other door? I thought I must have misheard, but sure enough at the far end there was another double-doored entrance. I walked over to it, and found it merely bolted.

  ‘Very useful,’ I commented, and Tom grinned. ‘I take it that was found bolted after the Auburn’s theft?’ That could be the only reason that Dave or Roger hadn’t mentioned it.

  ‘Yes. Easy enough to unbolt it during the day. The car was out for a while.’

  ‘And then bolt it again during the kerfuffle after the theft was discovered.’

  ‘If you say so. Police weren’t interested.’

  ‘Why on earth not?’

  ‘Go outside and have a look.’

  I pushed open the doors and he followed me on to the gravelled area outside. I saw the reason the police must have dismissed this exit. Staring me in the face were the waste bins and a rubbish dump on concrete hardstanding. There was just about room to get a car out here from the barn, but it would have had to turn sharply towards the rough grass bordering the boundary fence. With less than adequate headlights by today’s standards, the Auburn wouldn’t like that, but it could be done. What could not be done was to drive it straight through a fence with no gate in it. Like this one.

  Aware that Tom was watching me, I walked over to it. It was of solid wood, about four foot high, running along about thirty yards before its job was taken over by a six-foot-high hedge. With his eyes on me, I checked every support post and cross-strut, without success. I could see no signs of anything being disturbed. On the other side of the fence was a farm track but for a car there was no way of reaching it.

  I couldn’t work out Tom’s attitude. He wasn’t eager for me to find any explanation of how the Auburn had disappeared, but on the other hand he seemed so devoted to Bill that he surely could have had no hand in its disappearance himself. ‘Nothing there,’ I said. ‘Where does the track lead though?’

  ‘Nowhere much. Joins up with another track and eventually winds up on the Lenham Heath road. The other way, it stops when it reaches the wood. No way through to a road there.’

  He made no other comment. I can be pig-headed at times (Zoe and Len who work for me claim this is all too often) and I hate giving up so I took another look at that hedge: tall, prickly, green. No place for an Auburn. Then I noticed that some of the bushes didn’t look in tip-top condition, so I took a walk alongside the hedge where the grass was long, but the ground not that bumpy, and there were no ditches. The closer I got, the unhappier the bushes looked. I got down on my knees and found that it wasn’t my imagination. The ground had been disturbed here for a distance of about twelve feet or so, and on the other side of the hedge ran the farm track. It wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility that someone had carefully dug up these bushes, left them roughly in place, and removed them to take the Auburn through last Thursday night.

  I decided not to share my discovery with Tom and he didn’t pursue the matter. What I was doing must have been fairly obvious, however, and so I tackled it another way. ‘How well known was it that this door was only bolted, not locked?’

  ‘Anyone in the cast or crew – and staff, of course.’

  ‘All three hundred of them?’

  ‘You got it, Jack.’

  In fact I might have got him. ‘If Bill Wade is as popular as you imply, why should any of them want to pinch his car?’

  ‘Bill’s popular, but his wife isn’t. I told you that. The Auburn is Bill’s but Angie fancies herself in it and drives it around all the time. No one else is allowed to touch it without her say-so – even Miss Richey who drives it in the film.’

  ‘So the thief is more probably someone who has it in for Angie.’ Like Tom, I thought. ‘Or could someone want to ruin the film?’

  ‘No one wants that, Jack. Don’t get that idea. It’s going to be a winner – if Madam doesn’t muck it up first. Want to see the rest of the place?’

  The subject was being turned, and he took me over to the main leg of Stour Studios, opposite the garages. These were much taller, much grander buildings, and although one was the converted granary and another a barn conversion, the other two were purpose-built, as was the canteen opposite it.

  Behind them in a field adjoining the complex stood what looked like the bottom half of the Eiffel Tower and in another corner the Brandenburg Gate with part of the Unter der Linden. ‘That’s where we shoot the exteriors,’ Tom told me.

  I dismissed this area as an exit route, as there was no way the Auburn could have reached it.

  ‘Are these the studios or the production offices?’ I asked Tom as we walked towards the nearest of the four buildings.

  ‘Studios. Numbers One and Two for intimate scenes, Number Three for the big productions. Dressing rooms, Costume and Make-Up are here too. Next to this building is construction, set-dressing, storage, props, gaffer’s and best boy’s stuff and audio equipment. The next is the production offices, and the one after post-production. You’ve seen the canteen; above that is the green room and hospitality.’

  There’s jargon for you. Luckily I knew the gaffer and best boy were in charge of lighting, and the green room was where the cast could retire and meet guests. Every speciality has its own jargon, the combined shorthand and code of the trade. Even the car world has some. Jargon helps sort the insiders from outsiders, and here at Stour Studios I was definitely among the latter. That was good – I needed to be. Nevertheless I had to find the missing Auburn quickly, and I wasn’t going to do it by hanging around admiring the place from the outside. I needed to get the measure of this cast and set, and the studio buildings were where they would be working.

  I followed Tom eagerly as he went in through the door of Studio One. They’d just finished shooting there, but it was still full of crew and cast as well, judging by the thirties’ costumes. I was so busy looking around me at the set (a rather splendid bedroom) and the overhead lighting, cameras and cranes that I forgot to look down as well. Which is why I wandered on to the carpeted set and tripped headlong over a cable stretched thoughtfully an inch or two above the floor level between a daybed and the set’s wooden wall.

  I partly saved myself from crashing headlong by grabbing at the bed, but still collapsed ungracefully on to the floor, sprawled out and staring straight at a pair of elegant feet shod in thirties’ high-heeled ankle-strapped sandals.

  TWO

  I’d seen photos of Louise Shaw before, even seen her in a film or two, but nothing prepared me for the real thing.

  Louise Shaw would not win any run-of-the-mill beauty contests, but that did not matter one whit. Dark curls escaping from a red beret, warm concerned eyes – concerned for me – and a face as calm and perfect as Mona Lisa’s. She was, I guessed, about thirty but in her case age was immaterial. ‘Age cannot wither her . . .’ I must have spoken out loud because she looked startled.

  ‘Just worshipping at your feet,’ I said cheerily, sitting up and checking my ankle which had twisted in the fall.

  ‘You’d find that more comfortable if you stood on your own.’ Concern had changed to amusement. ‘Are they intact?’

  I experimented by getting upright again. ‘They are.’ The black curls clustering at the nape of her neck and peeping out from the beret entranced me, but I tried not to stare. She was wearing a peach-coloured silk pyjama-type cocktail outfit, and it suited her.

  ‘That’s good.’ She hesitated, clearly wanting to talk to Tom privately.

  ‘He’s OK, Miss Shaw,’ Tom obliged. ‘He’s with the police.’

  ‘Jack Colby,’ I introduced myself, as Louise still looked uncertain. ‘I’m working with the Car Crime Unit on the missing Auburn. Tom’s showing me round the studios.’

  ‘Losing that car was the last straw,’ she murmured, then she couldn’t hold back. ‘What is going on round here? Tom, be careful. Angie’s on the warpath. I’ve had an
other spat with her over my scene with Cora. She wants to have a go at you now.’

  ‘She’s already had it,’ Tom said. ‘It looks like the dole queue for me this time for sure.’ He grimaced.

  She looked horrified. ‘She can’t do that. Not again. I’ll speak to Bill and Roger.’

  ‘No use. She’s got them both where it hurts. You don’t need enemies like her.’

  ‘Too late, I have. Anyway, it’s right to speak out,’ Louise said firmly, and won my heart for ever.

  Then who should appear but Roger Ford himself. His assured look was in place, but it must be a necessary mask in his position. ‘Sorry, Louise, sorry, Jack, but I need a word with you, Tom.’

  Louise didn’t move. ‘Tom seems to think he’ll lose his job again, but he’s surely mistaken?’

  Roger had conveniently already turned away, indicating that Tom should follow him off the set. Left alone (apart from a studio full of crew), Louise, clearly furious, looked ruefully at me. ‘How about I finish the tour with you, Jack? I’m not needed by Costume for another hour and a half; it will help me cool off. Give me five minutes to change.’

  It was an offer I couldn’t refuse, much as I suspected she needed down time between calls. I waited outside in the sunshine, watching all the comings and goings. This inner courtyard was mostly paved and a decorative fountain now adorned the spot where I seemed to remember there had once been a well. There were many people around, but I didn’t get the impression of general bonhomie. Far from it. Heads were down, any conversation seemed muted.

  Louise returned right on cue, however, now clad in jeans and T-shirt which were somewhat at odds with the film make-up.

  She must have read my thoughts. ‘Working girl,’ she quipped.

  By the time she had given me the tour round both the production and post-production, not to mention the construction buildings, I wondered how films ever managed to get made. There were so many departments, so many different trades at work, and so many offices each with its own grand name that it was a miracle any one person could manage to be in charge. It also brought home to me just how many people might have been in a position to steal that Auburn – and in consequence that I needed to put aside all lustful thoughts about Louise and concentrate on my job. I made a supreme effort.