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The Tooth Tattoo(4)

By:Peter Lovesey


Atmospheric? Paloma couldn’t argue with that. She just wished every film clip wasn’t punctuated with another head-numbing burst of the zither music.

‘Are you enjoying this?’ she asked Diamond in the faint hope that he’d had enough.

‘Brilliant.’

There was no opting out. This was not the best place to get lost if she tried returning to the stairs.

‘How’s your head now?’ Diamond asked.

‘About the same.’

‘I think I should warn you that at the end of the tour a man dressed as Harry Lime steps out and fires a gun at us.’

‘I can’t wait.’


That evening at the Prater they rode the Riesenrad, the giant Ferris wheel that had featured in the film. The worst of the clouds had rolled away to the south and Paloma’s headache had departed with them. She was actually enjoying the ride in the rickety old cabin. They were definitely cabins and not pods or capsules. Each was a little room like a railway compartment with a curved roof and windows. They shared theirs with an elderly man in a brown Tyrolean hat with a feather trim who was at the far end surveying the view with a benign smile. Below, ribbons of light stretched to infinity. The wheel itself periodically flashed silver and gold.

‘I don’t really mind hearing it again,’ she told Diamond with a smile.

‘What’s that?’

‘The Harry Lime speech about Switzerland, five hundred years of brotherly love, democracy and peace producing the cuckoo clock.’

‘I was going to spare you that. It wasn’t in the original script, you know.’

‘You tell me that each time.’

‘Orson Welles –’

‘That, too.’

He placed a hand over hers. ‘You’ve shown the patience of a saint all day.’

‘If I’m honest, I haven’t been feeling that way,’ she said. ‘But I can see how much it means to you, reliving the film.’

‘The old black and white movies have got it for me.’

‘I know. Giant shadows, sudden shafts of light.’

He took a deep, appreciative breath. ‘Like the night scene when Lime appears in the doorway.’

‘With a blast of zither music just in case anyone in the cinema isn’t paying attention.’

‘Er, yes. Well, it is called the Harry Lime Theme.’

‘And you grew up with it.’

He baulked at that. ‘The film was released before I was born. Orson Welles was old enough to have been my grandfather.’

‘Sorry.’

‘But that scene gets to me every time.’

‘Strange.’

He frowned. ‘Why do you say that?’

‘Harry Lime was the villain, selling adulterated penicillin. You’re supposed to be on the opposite side. You should identify with the Joseph Cotten character.’

‘But Welles had all the charisma. The film is clever, playing with your loyalties.’

She tried to see it from his point of view. ‘I suppose as a policeman you have to get inside the minds of bad people.’

‘Sometimes – but you aren’t supposed to admire them. Each time I see it, I really want him to stay at liberty. And today we walked in his footsteps.’

‘With great care, watching where we trod,’ Paloma said.

There was a movement at the far end of the cabin. The elderly man turned from the window and raised his hat. He may even have clicked his heels. ‘Excuse me. I heard what you said. You were talking about the sewers, am I right?’

‘You are,’ Paloma said. ‘We did the tour this afternoon.’

‘It wasn’t Orson Welles.’

There was an awkward silence.

‘Believe me, it was,’ Diamond told him. ‘I’ve seen that film more times than I care to count.’

‘Mr. Welles took one look and refused to work in such a place,’ the old man said.

Diamond was speechless, shaking his head.

‘Most of the scenes featuring him were filmed with a double, or in Shepperton studio in England.’ The old man seemed to know what he was talking about.

Paloma laughed. ‘Do you mean we traipsed through all those dreadful-smelling tunnels for no reason at all?’

‘I wouldn’t say that,’ the old man said. ‘They did hours of filming down there, but little, if any, with Orson Welles.’

‘Why not?’

‘He was being difficult at the time, playing – what is the expression? – hard to get. He had an agreement with Mr. Korda, the producer, to star in three films, but nothing much had come of it and he was annoyed. This was only a cameo role. He is on screen for less than ten minutes of the entire film. I believe he was taken down to the sewer once to see a place where water cascaded from one of the ducts. Harry Lime was supposed to run underneath and get drips running down his face. Welles absolutely refused.’