The Bat(62)

‘Didn’t understand that one,’ Watkins whispered.

Harry might have appreciated the performance if he hadn’t been tense. However, as it was, he sat following his watch more than the events on the stage. Besides, several of the numbers contained political satire of a more local flavour and went over his head, but the audience greatly appreciated them. At the end, the music piped up, the lights came on and all the performers appeared onstage.

Harry and Watkins apologised to the row of people who had to stand to let them out, and hurried to the door at the side of the stage. As agreed, it was open and they went into a corridor that ran in a semicircle behind. At the furthest end they found the door with Otto Rechtnagel, Clown on it and waited. The music and the stamping from the auditorium were making the walls shake. Then came a brief crackle from Watkins’s walkie-talkie. He picked it up.

‘Already?’ he said. ‘The music’s still playing. Over.’ His eyes widened. ‘What?! Repeat! Over.’

Harry knew something had gone wrong.

‘Stay where you are and keep an eye on the stage door. Over and out!’ Watkins slipped the walkie-talkie back into his inside pocket and took the gun from his shoulder holster.

‘Lebie can’t see Rechtnagel onstage.’

‘Perhaps he can’t recognise him. They use quite a bit of make-up when they—’

‘The bugger’s not on the stage,’ he repeated, tugging the dressing-room door handle, but it was locked. ‘Shit, Holy. I can feel this ain’t good. Fuck!’

The corridor was narrow, so Watkins pressed his back against the wall and kicked the lock on the door. After three kicks it gave with a shower of splinters. They lurched into an empty dressing room full of white steam. The floor was wet. The water and the steam were coming from a half-open door clearly leading to a bathroom. They stood on either side of the door; Harry had also taken out his gun, and was fumbling to find the safety catch.

‘Rechtnagel!’ Watkins shouted. ‘Rechtnagel!’

No answer.

‘I don’t like this,’ he snarled under his breath.

Harry had seen too many detective programmes on TV to like it much, either. Running water and unanswered shouts had a tendency to presage less than edifying sights.

Watkins pointed to Harry with his forefinger and the shower with his thumb. Harry felt like signalling back with his middle finger, but acknowledged it was his turn now. He kicked open the door, took two paces into a baking hot steam bath and was saturated in a second. Before him he glimpsed a shower curtain. He pushed it aside with the muzzle of his gun.

Nothing.

He burned his arm as he switched off the water, and swore loudly in Norwegian. His shoes squelched as he manoeuvred himself into a better position to see through the receding steam.

‘Nothing here!’ he yelled.

‘Why’s there so much bloody water then?’

‘There’s something blocking the drain. Just a moment.’

Harry put his hand into the water where he thought the blockage might be. He rummaged around, but then his fingers met something soft and smooth jammed in the drain. He grabbed it and pulled it out. Nausea rose in his throat; he swallowed and struggled to breathe, but it felt as if the steam he was inhaling was suffocating him.

‘What’s up?’ Watkins asked. He was standing in the doorway and looking down at Harry crouching in the shower.

‘I think I’ve lost a bet and I owe Otto Rechtnagel a hundred dollars,’ Harry said quietly. ‘At least what’s left of him.’

Later Harry recalled the rest of what happened at St George’s Theatre through a mist, as though the steam from Otto’s shower had spread and invaded everywhere: into the corridor where it blurred the outline of the caretaker trying to open the props-room door, in through the keyholes leaving a reddish filter over the sight that met them when they broke open the door and saw the guillotine dripping blood, into the auditory channels where it made the sound of screams strangely muted and fuzzy, as they were unable to prevent the other performers from entering and seeing Otto Rechtnagel scattered across the room.

The extremities had been slung into the corners like the arms and legs of a doll. The walls and floor were spattered with real, viscous blood that would coagulate and go black in no time at all. A limbless torso lay on the guillotine block, flesh and blood with wide-open eyes, a clown’s nose and mouth and cheeks smeared with lipstick.

The steam had adhered to Harry’s skin, mouth and palate. As if in slow motion he saw Lebie emerge from the mist, come over and whisper into his ear: ‘Andrew’s done a runner from the hospital.’