The Vanishing Game Read online

  THE VANISHING GAME

  By William Boyd

  “It has been my philosophy of life that difficulties vanish when faced boldly.”

  Isaac Asimov

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE: The Girl with the Broken Ankle

  PART TWO: Headlights in the Mirror

  PART THREE: Welcome to Scotland

  PART FOUR: The Church of Death

  PART FIVE: Night on Clachan Mor

  PART SIX: Knowledge is Power

  PART SEVEN: The Trap

  PART EIGHT: The Edge of the Cliff

  It’s all about perception, so they tell you. Was I the right guy in the wrong place? Or was I the wrong guy in the right place? From my point of view – my perception – I was the wrong guy in the wrong place, so it was no surprise that my troubles multiplied. But this is all with the benefit of hindsight and its 20/20 vision. At the time I thought my luck had changed. At last, I thought, things are going my way. And I needed a break; I was due a break, or so I thought.

  *****

  London. October. Three days after my flat had been burgled and five days after my car had been sideswiped by a white van that didn’t stop, my agent, Gervase Somerville, called.

  “Alec, darling boy, you’ve got an audition. An “American” movie, no less.”

  I tried not to let my excitement overwhelm me.

  “What’s it called?”

  “Ah…” Rustle of papers. “Um…Yes, Transfigured Night.”

  “Isn’t that a sextet by some composer?”

  “Quite possibly. Anyway, it happens to be the title of this fillum.”

  The script was embargoed, he said. I thought this a good sign. And the producers were in final negotiation with an A-list director, he added, they would announce next week.

  “Where’s the meeting?”

  “The Metropole Grande, Mayfair. 10.30, Monday morning.”

  “Any idea what this film’s about?”

  “A ‘dystopian thriller’ is all they told me.”

  Story of my life, I thought.

  “I’ll be there.”

  Now, I have appeared in many films and I know the industry’s cruel and ruthless disappointments as well as anyone but, despite my better judgement, I allowed myself a little frisson of pleasurable anticipation. After all this bad luck – the burglary, the totalled car – here was the world paying me back. I liked dystopian thrillers – I’d already had minor roles in at least two – and I sensed that something about my looks, my track record, word of mouth, had paid dividends this time. I hadn’t worked in three – no, five – months and money was running very low and, despite my better judgement, I allowed myself to fantasize that I’d get this role. What do they say? Earn your own luck. I reckoned I’d earned it, all right.

  The Metropole Grande was one of those smoked-glass eight- storey blocks just off Park Lane. On entering, you left London and could have been in Singapore or Dubai, Tokyo or Acapulco. Granite, marble, palm trees, chilled lounge-muzak, foreign staff in black, zipped jumpsuits and a curious transnational clientèle.

  I was shown up to the conference suites on the third floor where a young woman called “Shirlee”, according to her name badge, asked me to wait in an anteroom. “Is there a script I could read?” I enquired. “I’m afraid the script is embargoed at this moment of speaking,” she said. I handed over my resumé and she disappeared behind heavy teak doors.

  I drank some water from the watercooler. I looked down at the traffic circling Hyde Park corner. I switched my brain to neutral – it’s work: don’t be picky, don’t be pretentious, I told myself. Be nice to everyone.

  Shirlee opened the teak doors and ushered me in. A thickset man, 40s, swarthy, unshaven, in a loose v-neck t-shirt and carefully distressed and torn jeans came round from behind a desk piled high with scripts and shook my hand.

  “Hi,” he said, introducing himself. “Ron Suitcase. There’s been a blunder. I’m so sorry.”

  “A blunder?”

  “I’m expecting a twenty-three-year-old young woman called Alexa Dunbar.”

  I felt like falling to the floor. This had happened on three previous occasions.

  “I admit,” I said, “I am not a young woman. But I am a thirty-five year old man called Alec Dunbar. Any good?”

  “Thereby lies the error,” Ron Suitcase said with a sad smile. “One vowel. Coffee? Iced tea? Water?”

  I sat down and Shirlee brought me a double espresso as we commiserated. Casting agents – you’d think they’d do their bloody homework. Tell me about it. Nightmare. Alec/Alexa Dunbar. I recounted my Alec/Alexa anecdotes – the misdirected (obscene) fan mail; the twenty-five paparazzi waiting outside a restaurant for me to emerge and their collective rage; the phone calls offering me swimwear modelling work.

  “One of you should make a change,” Ron suggested.

  “I was there first,” I said. “Apparently her real name is Agatha Duguid.”

  “What can I say?” Ron rose to his feet – the meeting was over. “If there’s a part for you in Transfigured Night, I’ll call your agent. Stay in touch, Alec. Be well. Take great care.”

  He handed me his card and I glanced at it: Ronaldo Sudkäsz, Alzacar Films. There was an address on Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. I slipped it into my jacket pocket and we shook hands amiably – for the last time, I assumed.

  Shirlee showed me out and handed me back my resumé. I was feeling that leaden sense of failure that we actors experience occasionally: a kind of existential certainty that somewhere early in our lives we had taken the wrong turning.

  “How did it go?”

  I looked round. A young woman sat there on a sofa, a script open on a coffee table in front of her. She had thick shaggy blonde hair and one of those long lean faces with a nicely prominent jaw. I’m drawn to long lean faces with a nicely prominent jaw.

  “A sex confusion,” I said. “I’m meant to be a twenty-three-year-old woman called Alexa. Alas, I’m not.”

  “Didn’t they spot it instantly?” she said. “I did.”

  I was intrigued and sat down opposite her, stuffing my resumé into my rucksack.

  “You’ve a script, at least,” I said. “Good role?”

  “I’ve got pages. I get to speak,” she said. “That’s a plus.”

  For some reason I unburdened myself, telling her about the persistently annoying Alec/Alexa confusion, my run of bad luck, how I was stupidly counting on this part in Transfigured Night to put everything right and that I was now bracing myself for the next kick in the teeth.

  She listened sympathetically, not interrupting. She had green eyes.

  “Burgled as well,” she said. “Did you lose much?”

  “Funnily enough, they only stole my clothes – my best clothes. Strange selection. Three suits, an old leather jacket that I loved, a pair of new, unworn shoes, swimming trunks, t-shirts. I think they were going to steal my computer – someone had been fiddling with it – but I guess they were spooked and ran off.”

  “Yes. What did Shakespeare say? When sorrows come, they come not as single spies – “

  “— But in battalions. Yeah. Tell me about it. I’d better go,” I said. “Thanks for hearing me out. And good luck.”

  I stood, gave her my little brave soldier salute, and just as I turned away she said:

  “How would you like to earn £1000 in 24 hours?”

  I paused and then sat down again.

  “That depends,” I said. “I charge more for a contract killing.”

  “I need something hand-delivered, something precious. It has to be in Scotland tomorrow.”

  “Can’t you courier it?”

  “Too fragile.”

  “Catch a plane?”

  “It would have to go in the hold. That’s impossible. It has to be driven north. Hand-delivered, as I said.”

  “Why don’t you do it yourself?”

  She eased her posture and drew her right leg out from under the coffee table. Her ankle and lower leg were encased in a black plastic boot leg cast.

  “I’ve broken my ankle.”

  “Ah. I see,” I said.

  We looked at each other. I was definitely attracted to this pretty young blonde woman in the leg cast, but I tried not to let that affect my judgement.

  “Look, it was just a spontaneous idea,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll find someone else. Not a problem.”

  “Cash?” I said.

  “In advance,” she said.

  Shirlee appeared at the teak doors.

  “Miss Devereaux?”

  “I’ll be right there,” Miss Devereaux said, standing with some difficulty. I had a name. She smiled at me. “Nice meeting you,” she said. “Good luck yourself.”

  “I’m in,” I said, quickly. One thousand pounds, twenty-four hours. Maybe my luck was indeed on the turn.

  “Do you have a car?” she asked.

  “Ah. No. It’s off the road.”

  “OK. I can lend you mine.” She glanced at Shirlee then lowered her voice.

  “Meet me at the Peace Pagoda in Battersea Park this evening at six o’clock. We’ll sort everything out.” And with that she limped into the room for her audition with Ron Suitcase.

  The Peace Pagoda was constructed in Battersea Park in 1985. When I first saw it, when I moved to London to go to drama school, I thought it a shocking affront, an act of vandalism. An oriental temple in a stretch of landscaped Victorian urban greenery facing the select mansion flats of Chelsea across the River Thames. How had it o
btained planning permission? Who had been bribed? But, over the years, I became used to it, and started to rather like it, and now as I stood there looking at it, set in its backdrop of autumnal plane trees, the river at high tide, I thought it was rather wonderfully inappropriate – a symbol of London’s easy welcome to the polyglot, multicultural presences drawn to this great sprawling city. Bring it on – we can take it, the city seemed to say. Pagodas? Yeah, no problem.

  I leant on the embankment wall looking at a cormorant diving for fish. It was twenty past six, and no sign of my actress and her thousand pounds. Some kind of sick joke, I thought, another young woman messing with my head, another sign of my bad –

  “Alec!”

  I picked up my rucksack and headed towards Miss Devereaux. It was absurd that I didn’t know her first name. She was standing in the car park to the east of the Pagoda, leaning against an old grey sun-bleached, weather-battered Land Rover Defender, long-wheelbase variety. The door on the driver’s side was a pale salmon pink. On the door, still legible, was a faded black, stencilled codenumber: KT-99. Legacy of some trans-Sahara 4x4 rally, I assumed, or something. This motor had had an interesting life, clearly.

  We shook hands.

  “What’s your first name?” I asked. “By the way.”

  “Stella,” she said handing me the keys. “You’re insured to drive it, by the way, also.”

  “Good. What am I delivering?”

  She opened the rear door and took out a coolbox, unclipped the top and lifted out a thick glass flask about nine inches tall. Its lid was sealed with rubber and held down by metal clamps, rather like a bocale of foie gras, I thought – airtight. It contained a pint of clear fluid, I calculated.

  “This is water from the River Jordan,” Stella Devereaux said. “My godson is being christened tomorrow in Scotland and this is my gift to him and the family. Holy water. I’d have driven it there myself, but – ” she pointed to her plastic leg cast.

  “Where in Scotland?”

  “The west coast, south of Skye.” She reached into the front seat and brought out a plastic envelope file. “A church, St. Mungo, in a small village called Alcorran.” She showed me maps, addresses, a slip of paper with her telephone number and email address on it. “You’ve got everything there. But it’s a long drive,” she said. “You’ll need to go all night.”

  “I’ve done it before,” I said, half lying. I’d endured a three-day, non-stop ‘drive’ across the USA in a film called Beyond the Edge (2007) so I vaguely knew what was required to keep you going. “No worries.” I said, smiling reassuringly at her – she was really rather attractive; such thick, unruly hair…

  “Did you get the part?” I asked.

  “What part?”

  “Transfigured Night.”

  “Oh. They’re calling me back,” she said.

  “Bravo,” I said. “When are they shooting?”

  “Ah… Later this year.”

  “We’re already in October.”

  “Or early next year.”

  “Well, your ankle will be fixed, at least.”

  “Yeah. Of course.” She smiled and rummaged in her pocket, taking out a crumpled envelope and handing it over. I glanced inside. A wedge of £50 notes, twenty of them.

  “You’re very trusting,” I said.

  “You’ve a trustworthy face.” She leant forward and kissed me on the cheek. “Bon voyage, Alec Dunbar.”

  She limped off into the dusk, heading for the gate on Chelsea Bridge Road.

  I sat in KT-99, familiarising myself. I’d driven a Land Rover Defender in Delta Five Niner, an SAS, behind-enemy-lines film (I played a sergeant) that was never released, not even as a DVD. “Straight to radio,” as we say in the business, but at least I felt at home behind this wide wheel and dashboard. I eased the seat back from Stella’s cramped driving position (I’m six feet two) and looked at the many maps of Scotland she had given me.

  London to Glasgow, then the A 82 up the west side of Loch Lomond. To Arrochar and Loch Fyne and on to Inverary. Then Loch Awe and on up to Oban, Fort William – and there was Alcorran, south of Mallaig, right on the coast across the sound from the southern tip of Skye… I should be there by noon, all being well. That gave me eighteen hours, all told. If I made good going I could even have a nap on the way.

  I felt strangely excited: this was an adventure, out of the blue. A beautiful woman had offered me this bizarre opportunity – and a lot of money for one day’s work. This was what life was all about, I told myself – to be lived to the full, come what may. Happenstance. The roll of the dice. I had £1000 in my pocket and I was sitting at the wheel of a Land Rover Defender in Battersea Park ready to drive through the night to deliver holy water to a small church on the west coast of Scotland.

  Route determined, I searched my rucksack for my iPod. Every type of driving music was available to me. All I needed now was an overdose of caffeine. I started the engine, revved it, flexed my shoulders. Off we jolly well go, I said to myself, and pulled out of the car park, onto Chelsea Bridge Road, crossed the river and headed for Marble Arch and the north.

  I drove steadily out of London following the A 40 to Hangar Lane and then right onto the North Circular and on up to the start of the M1 north. It was dark by now and I was listening to my music, bubbling marimba noises and electronic beeps. I found these cool, minimalist ostinatos perfect for long drives. The mesmeric loops kept me awake, paradoxically, as if my brain were searching for a moment when they would break down rather than endlessly repeat themselves. It maintained me at a nice pitch of concentration.

  My first stop was at the Watford Gap service station. London was eighty miles or so behind me now and I was well on my way. I strolled into the fluorescent, swarming echo-chamber of the cafeteria and ordered three double espressos and a bottle of Evian. I took them to a table, let the espressos cool and then necked them as if they were cough medicine and washed them down with a gulp of water. I felt I could drive all week.

  I sat there looking at my fellow human beings – as they scoffed food and drank sweet liquids, as they laughed and chatted – conscious of the unique nature of my business, here, on the road north to Scotland and feeling somewhat distanced from all this routine banality of driving, of getting from A-Z. I often experienced this sensation of slight remove from everyday life and I wondered if it was because of my profession. If you act in movies for a living then sometimes everything you do seems like a scene from a movie – even if you’re pouring milk on your cornflakes, having a shave, posting a letter or taking your shirts to a dry cleaner. It can be fun – this sense of a heightened reality – as if you’re lit and made up, that there’s a camera turning over somewhere; but it can also be dangerous: real life is different. Real life is never, never as simple as a movie.

  I was thinking about this as I motored down the exit road from the service station and saw the small band of hopeful hitchhikers with their signs: rare beasts in this day and age. There were three young soldiers in their fatigues, a car-delivery man with his special numberplate and, most oddly, a girl dressed in white. Not so much a girl, I noticed as I slowed instinctively, passing her, but a young woman in her late 20s. This was what I was trying to express: all of a sudden I felt I was taking part in somebody’s film.

  She had dark short tousled hair and was wearing a white denim jacket and grubby white jeans and trainers. She was holding a piece of torn cardboard with “Scottlan” scrawled on it. Nice touch. Who thought of that? She had a pretty, gaunt, feral face and, somewhat disturbingly, seemed to be staring right at me.

  She was fourth behind the three soldiers. Could I stop for her? Should I stop for her? No, Dunbar, you fool, I told myself – your agenda is clear. Concentrate.

  I pulled onto the motorway and accelerated off into the night, a sawing two-note violin exchange and thumping timpani keeping me company.

  North of Manchester on the M6, now, I saw the fuel gauge was dipping below a quarter. Also, I had run out of chocolate. I turned into the next service station and filled up. I paid at the counter and bought more chocolate. Sugar, coffee, music – all I required. I felt surprisingly alert and I was making excellent time – no traffic, no roadworks. I’d be in Scotland in an hour or so, at this rate. Perhaps I could pull up for a snooze.