SILENT (a psychological thriller, combining mystery, crime and suspense) Read online

  ‘Goat-glanded – what’s that?’ Mason asked.

  ‘Predominantly silent, but with a significant section included that has sound. Yes it’s new, it might fail, but we feel it marks the next big stage in motion picture production, and Metropolitan wants to be at the head of things if it takes off, which we feel certain it will.’

  Some pieces started to fall into place, Mason thought. If they were going ahead with an experimental film they couldn’t afford to spend over the odds in case it flopped big time; they couldn’t afford to risk going to their stable of big names and use them – that might be like killing the golden goose if the star went down with the movie – so they were opting for a safer bet by starring a relative unknown. Damage limitation. If the system took off they’d throw more money at it, and their bigger names, too. It could be the final nail in Rick Mason’s movie career coffin, or it could be the break he desperately needed.

  ‘OK, so how come my accent is so important?’ he asked. ‘What is it you’re planning?’

  ‘Horror, Mr Mason,’ said Bremner. That’s what we’re planning. Have you seen Chaney’s The Phantom of the Opera?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m a big Chaney fan.’

  ‘Audiences can’t get enough of that kind of thing,’ Bremner explained. ‘They like to have the pants scared off them. Chaney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame was the ninth biggest-grossing film of ’23. There are big bucks in horror. It’s a genre that’s only just beginning to be explored to its full potential. That’s the area Metropolitan wants to go into next. Metro Monsters! Got a certain ring to it, eh? More than that, we’re going to have sound. You are going to be our first ever horror star, Mr Mason. And what’s more, you’ll speak!’

  ‘Starring in what, exactly?’ he asked, rather dumbfounded at what he was hearing.

  ‘That has yet to be decided,’ cut in Jefferson. ‘We’re toying with a few ideas around similar characters to the phantom, set the movie abroad, maybe, the main character will definitely be a foreigner – they make perfect horror material. We’d need to carry out sound tests on your voice, but your European accent would be perfect, and with your ability to act it should bring everything neatly together. We’re still in the process of preparing for all this, nothing really coming together just yet, but what we propose is to work with you on creating the perfect monster to launch Metro Monsters. We’ve seen the way you breathe life into characters. We want to wrap this first one around you, so it fits like a glove. What’s more we want to offer you a three-movie contract with Metropolitan. We’ll double the pay they gave at Prima, with a pay review after the first movie. How does that sound?’

  Rick Mason didn’t have to think about it. ‘Sounds good, Mr Jefferson.’

  ‘A rather apt phrase, is it not?’ said Jefferson, grinning broadly and revealing a gold tooth. ‘And if all goes well, that would be a really big one in the eye for Prima, eh? Take their no-hoper and turn him into a star!’

  Another piece fell into place with a loud bang. To get one over on the Dillons was irresistible to Jefferson. But what the hell, Mason thought, let them play their puerile politics all they want; if he could benefit off the back of it then he wasn’t complaining any.

  ‘I still need to sort things out at Prima,’ Mason explained. ‘But that shouldn’t be a problem. When do you want me at Metropolitan?’

  ‘Like I said, we’re in the early stages of development yet,’ said Jefferson, ‘but we’d like you on the books as soon as possible. We can start getting together advance publicity, that kind of thing.’

  ‘So I’ve another month or two before things get under way?’

  ‘What’s the problem?’ said Bremner.

  ‘I’ve got some unexpected family business to sort out in Europe.’

  ‘You’ve got time, kid,’ said Jefferson. ‘Take a vacation. Once you’re started at Metropolitan things won’t let up much. We’ll sort out some kind of advance in the meantime, but don’t worry we’ll work the details out with your agent.’

  Mason let out a whistle. ‘You know, Mr Jefferson, I think I’ll take that drink now.’

  Hal Bremner poured out spirits and all three raised their glasses. ‘Here’s to our new movie, whatever that’s going to be!’ said Jefferson.

  ‘In with sound, out with silent,’ said Bremner, his voice low and meaningful.

  ‘Here’s to horror!’ said Mason, downing the fiery liquid and gasping.

  * * * *

  9

  Dump the Past

  ‘I can’t go with you to Europe, Rick – that’s a ludicrous idea!’ she said.

  ‘Betsy…’ he pleaded, going to her and taking a light hold of her arm. He noticed Davey didn’t take too kindly to the contact. ‘I’d like you to come along.’

  ‘She doesn’t want to,’ Davey said, standing up from his chair and advancing on Mason. ‘And get your hands off her.’

  Mason lifted his hand. ‘No problem,’ he said. ‘What’s with you, Davey, you got a razor stuck up your ass?’

  Betsy rolled her eyes at them both. ‘For goodness sake, boys, give it a rest. Davey, sit down; I’ll decide what’s best for me. Rick, I simply can’t go with you to Slavonia, or whatever other goddamn country nobody’s ever heard of.’

  ‘Why? Give me one good reason.’

  ‘I hardly know you, for one thing.’

  ‘She don’t know you,’ echoed Davey, slumping down on to the chair. He stared daggers at Mason.

  ‘Yeah, I think I heard that much, thank you, Davey.’ He paced the small room. ‘OK, Davey can come too. That way he’ll be happy and you’ll be happy. Please, Betsy, think of it as a vacation. When was the last time you took a trip to Europe, huh? It would be the trip of a lifetime.’

  ‘I haven’t got the money, Rick,’ she said. ‘Even if I did want to go with you.’

  ‘I’ve got money. There’s the severance from Prima, then an advance from Metropolitan coming through, and this guy Horvat tells me I’m going to be a very wealthy man. See, from nowhere I get all the money I need. What do you say, Betsy?’ He turned to Davey. ‘Come on, man, lighten up!’

  ‘Why us?’ he returned. ‘I ain’t your friend.’

  ‘Because you’re the nearest thing to friends I’ve got right now. I don’t want to go alone. Hell, the last time I made a trip across the Atlantic I was a kid coming over here, and that wasn’t exactly a picnic in steerage. It would be good to have company. Even yours, Davey.’

  Davey glowered at him. ‘I dunno. I’ve got to stay here. I’ve got jobs to hold down.’

  ‘Those sorts of jobs are ten-a-penny, Davey. Look, I’ll even pay you what you’d have earned.’

  ‘I don’t take charity,’ he growled.

  ‘And I’ve got my career to think about,’ said Betsy.

  ‘Career? There isn’t any career yet. And didn’t I get Victor Wallace to take you on?’

  ‘So now there’s a price to pay?’ Her expression went frosty. ‘You think you can buy me that way? You think I’ll do anything you want out of gratitude?’

  ‘I didn’t mean that. Hell, it came out all wrong. Look, Betsy, I’m asking you to come because I want to be with you. There, I’ve said it. I want to be with you. Even if that means having your watchdog around all the time.’ He put his hat on. ‘Suit yourself,’ he said to her. ‘But you can’t always do what Davey says you’ve got to do. You’ve got to think for yourself once in a while.’ He went to the door. ‘I’m meeting Horvat again to make travel arrangements. There’s still time to change your mind.’ He hesitated, perhaps hoping Betsy would say something, but she remained silent so he shouldered his disappointment and went out.

  Davey watched him from behind the curtain at the window. ‘I don’t like him,’ he mumbled.

  ‘You don’t like any man who likes me,’ she said.

  ‘And why is that?’ he said, his voice low and filled with many things left unsaid. ‘You know we have to keep low. Why do you insist on drawing attention to yourself? All this motion picture busi
ness, it’s not safe…’

  ‘Correction; you have to keep low. I’m not going to be a recluse because of some idiot thing that happened.’

  His cheeks flushed red. ‘Idiot thing? You’ve only got a life because of me – don’t ever forget that!’ He stormed away into his bedroom and slammed the door.

  She stifled a squeal of exasperation, closed her eyes and tried to calm down. She went to the door and tapped quietly on it. ‘You know, maybe Europe’s not such a bad idea. I mean, I ran into a couple of strange guys down at the drug store yesterday…’

  There was silence, then the sounds of shuffling from his room. The door opened. ‘What guys?’

  She shrugged. ‘Maybe I was imagining things.’

  ‘What guys? Why didn’t you tell me before?’

  ‘I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘Jesus, you don’t think they’ve found us, do you? What did they look like?’

  ‘Hard to say, regular guys, but they kinda spooked me.’ She sighed. ‘It’s this constantly having to look over my shoulder, that’s what gets to me. Maybe it was nothing. One of them made small-talk, but he started asking questions.’

  ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Whether I was from around these parts, where I’d come from, that kind of thing.’

  ‘We’ve got to leave,’ he said, his eyes terrified.

  She placed a calming hand on his arm. ‘No we don’t. All we need do is disappear for a while. I played hard-to-get when Rick was asking us, but I was thinking this trip with him might not be a bad thing. No one’s ever going to find us in Slavonia, are they? If it was them then they’ll sniff around, find nothing and leave. It might be wise to go, just to be on the safe side.’

  ‘Do you trust him; trust Rick?’

  ‘I like him. He’s an OK guy.’ She put her arms around his waist. ‘It’s not as if I don’t appreciate everything you’ve done for me. You’ve done more than any brother has a right to. But I’m tired. We have to stop running at some time, make a new life for ourselves. We can do that if you’ll let us. We can be different people, start all over again. Dump the past. Rick might be just the ticket we need to do that. Please, let this be the place where we finally stop running.’

  ‘And Mexico? That was always the plan. This place was only a stop-off.’

  ‘But I could be an actress!’

  ‘You have to stop that. It’s not real. Can’t you see that’s what got us into this mess in the first place?’

  ‘You’re blaming me?’ she shrieked. ‘Blaming me for what he did to me?’

  ‘No…’ he said, hanging his head. ‘I wish it had never happened.’ He stared hard at his fingers. ‘I had his blood all over my hands. I can’t stop thinking about it. It’s with me every day…’ His lower lip started trembling. ‘It haunts my dreams. I see his face. I see the blood. There was blood everywhere…’

  She shook him by the shoulders. ‘But it did happen and there’s nothing we can do about it now. You have to forget all about it. Do you hear me? Behaving like you do only draws attention to you. To us. They’ll still be looking for you and we don’t need that attention, do we? Do you want to go to the chair? Is that what you want?’ He shook his head. ‘Then we have to act normally, and that means you have to try to forget everything that happened. We’re different people now. We can have a new life.’

  ‘A man was murdered,’ he said quietly. ‘I can’t simply forget that.’

  ‘He was an animal,’ she said coldly. ‘He deserved to die.’

  ‘No one deserves to die like that.’

  ‘I’m not listening to this again.’ She left him and went to the door.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going to see if I can catch Rick up, tell him we’re going with him. Rick’s right, we can’t go on living in each other’s pockets, it causes even more suspicion and we don’t need that.’ She put her felt hat on, stared at him straight in the face. ‘And you’ve got to watch that temper, keep it in check for both our sakes. You know where losing your temper can lead…’

  ‘Please be careful, sis,’ he said. He went back into his room and closed the door on her.

  * * * *

  Part Two

  Dragutin

  10

  A Friendly, Generous People

  The village of Krndija was small, the mean cottages constructed of wood and stone spread along a single dirt-track road occupied only by a pig and two goats chewing at weeds. The air was crisp and clean and Rick Mason sensed snow in the air. The village sat at the foot of the Krndija Mountain, which loomed dark and oppressive before them, its base swathed in bleak-looking forest. The cloud hung low, sweeping the mountain top and streaming down its craggy side like a slow-moving river of steam. The cry of strange unseen birds fell from a still white sky and echoed around the steep mountain sides.

  ‘See that?’ said Franz Horvat pointing out the mountain. ‘It is at present being swallowed by the cloud, but that peak there, the highest, is called Kapovac.’ He hardly seemed breathless, the old man enduring the walk up the track to the village better than Rick, Betsy or Davey. Each of them was pausing to catch their breath. Mason could see now why they had to abandon their car about a mile away; the place wasn’t meant for automobiles and there was no way their old thing would have been able to make it. It looked like most of the road – such as it was, a collection of hard-packed rocks and small boulders – had been recently washed into deep criss-crossing channels by heavy rain.

  Rick Mason placed his suitcase on the ground and sat on it, waiting for Betsy and Davey to catch up.

  ‘Vacation of a lifetime?’ Betsy panted, dropping her case by his and sitting on it.

  ‘You should have let me help you carry that,’ he said.

  She looked exhausted. They all were. Everyone except old man Horvat, who was standing looking at them impatiently. It had been a long haul to Slavonia and they hadn’t finished yet.

  The first week or so of travel had been the easiest and most pleasurable. A long haul to the east coast, then a seven-day crossing of the Atlantic on the White Star Line’s RMS Majestic – or the Magic Stick as someone had nicknamed her. They docked at Southampton, England, then crossed over the channel to France and took to the train on a gruelling journey across Europe, heading south and eventually reaching Zagreb, the capital of Croatia. They rested up a day before heading out by train again to the city of Slavonska Pozega. The city sat in the Pozega Valley, surrounded by the Slavonian Mountains.

  ‘You are close to home,’ Horvat had said as Mason stared out of the train’s window to the miles of rolling countryside beyond.

  ‘This is no longer home,’ he said quietly. ‘America is now my home.’

  ‘You were born in Slavonia,’ he returned. ‘The place of our birth burns in the heart always. It is a flame that never goes out.’

  Franz Horvat had his offices in Slavonska Pozega, and he suggested the small party rest up for a day or so in the city while he sorted out and picked up a number of legal papers. The city was small by Californian standards, thought Mason, and the buildings far older. There were fewer automobiles, a great deal of the traffic still being pulled by horses. There were signs that it was a city on the cusp of change, but reminders of its more primitive beginnings and its mix of cultures were never very far away. Mason felt he was on the verge of a different, very alien world.

  Horvat had explained that it was a stipulation of the will that its full contents had to be disclosed within the walls of Castle Dragutin itself, which they’d reach the following day, so he would see at first hand what he had inherited. There were some restrictions as to what he might do with the property, but he refused to say what those were till the proper time.

  The next day, reasonably refreshed, they hired a car and driver to take them as far as they could to the village of Krndija, which, they discovered, couldn’t get as close as they would have preferred. They had to abandon the car and make the rest of the way on foot. M
ason looked around him at the village and wondered if it had all been worth the effort. The further away from Slavonska Pozega they travelled the more remote and inaccessible it felt; almost as if the countryside itself tried to deny them access. Which was an idiotic thought, of course, and brought on by tiredness. What had initially started out as a jolly adventure had turned into something of an endurance test. And Franz Horvat’s irritatingly healthy constitution didn’t make him feel any better.

  The one enduring benefit of the lengthy travelling was his time spent with Betsy and how they’d grown closer with every day that passed. And with every day that passed Davey grew more protective of her. He remained sullen and aloof throughout, sitting alone and occupied by his writing, the subject of which remained a mystery to Mason. He went to great lengths to prevent even the most tentative of intimate contact between him and Betsy. Mason tried sneaking down the corridor to her cabin, but as if Davey possessed some kind of sixth sense he would spring from his own cabin to confront him and Mason found himself constructing ever more elaborate and unbelievable excuses why he should happen to be there.

  On one particular evening, when he raised his hand to knock on Betsy’s cabin door, having arranged to be with her at a certain time, Davey’s cabin door across the corridor opened. He was in his dressing gown. He didn’t say anything, simply leant in the doorway passing one of his trademark sultry looks at Mason.

  ‘Got some kind of alarm rigged up, Davey?’ he asked, irritated by the man’s continued claustrophobic presence. He didn’t reply. ‘Always silent, eh, Davey? Why is that? Is it because there’s some danger of revealing too much if you talk? What have you got to keep quiet about, Davey?’