Broken Heart: David Raker #7 Read online

  ‘Marc?’

  ‘Uh, well, I guess ultimately it came about because I met her at a convention in 2011,’ he said. ‘Have you heard of Screenmageddon?’

  ‘That’s the horror and science-fiction expo, right?’

  ‘That’s right. Back then, I was a freelancer for a horror magazine, so, when I managed to get some time with her, I mostly spoke to her about the Ursula films. But, after we were done, she gave me her card. A couple of years later, in 2013, I got in touch with her again, because I was working for Cine by then, and it was the sixtieth anniversary of The Eyes of the Night, and I thought it might be cool to do a retrospective on it, and to have her talk about Hosterlitz, about his films, about him as a person. She wasn’t keen on the idea at first, especially about inviting me into their marriage. I got the sense … I don’t know, I just got the sense that her marriage was sacrosanct.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’

  He paused, tapping a finger against the table. ‘I figured it had something to do with how she honoured her husband’s memory. You know, that she wanted to protect the things they did in their marriage, certain special moments between them, and she didn’t feel comfortable talking about any of that with a stranger. I understood that.’ He stopped again, flicking a look across at me, clearly weighing up whether to say whatever was coming. ‘When my dad was still around, he used to take me to Tynecastle to watch Hearts, and I’d come home and write these match reports for him, and I’d read them out to him – it was our little thing. I didn’t show them to anyone. Those moments were between him and me and no one else.’

  I could relate to that too, locking away the things that mattered from parts of your life you could never claim back.

  ‘But then she changed her mind?’ I asked.

  ‘Eventually, yeah. We kept in touch, on and off, and last summer I again floated the idea of doing a celebration of Hosterlitz’s career. She was still reluctant, but she at least agreed to have a chat, and so I went to her house, and we got on really well, and it developed into something much bigger. In the end, it turned out to be the first of two interviews. She was brilliant, basically – really open about everything, surprisingly honest. I just kept pushing and she kept answering questions. She never batted an eyelid.’

  ‘So you found her likeable?’

  ‘Yeah, definitely. She was smart, witty, generous. She was confident and interesting. And, well, she was …’ He smiled, but seemed uncomfortable for a moment. ‘Basically, she looked bloody good for her age.’

  I thought of the photograph I’d seen of Korin, taken for the magazine. He was right about that.

  ‘Have you ever heard of a Lake Calhoun?’ I asked, keeping things going. ‘It may have been a place Lynda mentioned to you during your interviews.’

  ‘Calhoun?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I spelled it out for him. ‘That ring any bells with you?’

  He shook his head. ‘No, none.’

  ‘It’s probably nothing,’ I said, although I didn’t really believe that. The name hadn’t been carved into a tree by chance. But, before we could get bogged down in a guessing game, I shifted things forward again: ‘There’s a section three-quarters of the way through your feature where Korin talks about what attracted her to Hosterlitz in the first place.’

  ‘I remember that, yeah.’

  ‘She said she thought he may have had a secret.’

  Collinsky nodded. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Did she ever say if she found out what that secret was?’

  ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘Because she dodges the question in the interview.’

  ‘Or she’s embarrassed that she never found out.’

  I studied him. ‘Is that what you believe?’

  He took a long breath. ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I just never got the impression she was lying to me. Not once. I’ve had lots of people lie to me during interviews, and I didn’t get that vibe off her. I mean, why would she lie?’

  Because people lie all the time, I thought.

  ‘Was there anything you left out of the article?’

  ‘I used most of what Korin gave me, especially about her years in Spain with Hosterlitz. That period of time – 1976 to 1984 – it’s a big black hole, information-wise. They did all those films together, then they came back to England when he retired, he got cancer soon after that, and he was dead by 1988. But there was one thing.’ Collinsky stopped and started to frown again. ‘I don’t suppose Lynda’s sister ever mentioned the name “Ring of Roses” to you, did she?’

  I shook my head. ‘Should she have?’

  ‘No. She wouldn’t have known about it. I don’t think anyone knows about it. That’s the point.’

  He stopped. Around us, the crowd in the deli had started to thin out.

  ‘What’s “Ring of Roses”?’

  He didn’t answer immediately, as if he were still trying to figure out the answer. ‘I did two interviews with Lynda, and she mentioned it in the first, but only as I was just about to leave. By then, I’d already stopped recording. Anyway, I was heading out and she points to the window, the one into her back garden, at this big old shed she had out there. It was more than a shed, actually – more like a garden room. It had windows and hardwood walls, and the roof was tiled. Anyway, she said to me, “In the years before Robert died, he started getting itchy feet. He missed it – the writing, the directing. So he’d sometimes take his typewriter out there, and he’d lock the door and he’d write – play around with ideas, experiment, whatever else. Those moments made him happy, even when he was ill.” ’

  ‘Did she ever see what he was working on?’

  ‘That’s what I asked her. She said, no, she didn’t. Then she says, “But he was always talking about this one idea.” ’ Collinsky paused. ‘Actually, I’m not sure if she called it an “idea” or a “project”, but whatever it was, she said it was similar to the type of stuff he was making in the fifties, when he was winning all those Oscars. She said it had the title “Ring of Roses”. At this point, obviously my eyes are lighting up, and I’m thinking, “I’ve got a potential scoop here.” But, actually, that was it. That was all she remembered. I think it must just have been a concept Hosterlitz was playing around with.’

  ‘Is that why you don’t mention it in the article?’

  ‘I thought seriously about writing a boxout on it. Like a “What is ‘Ring of Roses’?”-style thing. And, when I did the second interview with her, I pressed her on it again. I mean, even if it was just a few lines on the back of a napkin, it was still a great exclusive – this idea that Hosterlitz had gone back to the beginning, to the type of film he was making at the height of his powers.’ Collinsky stopped and took a drink of water. He shrugged. ‘But she didn’t know anything more than the name of it. I asked her if I could have a look at the shed, maybe take a few pictures, and she agreed, but it was just this dumping ground. There were still a few old movie props in there – a clapperboard, some bags of old junk with guff like vampire teeth, and blood, and make-up in them – but no sign of any scripts or equipment.’

  ‘So you didn’t do anything with that information?’

  ‘With the “Ring of Roses” stuff? The second time I interviewed her, a photographer came along with me, and while she was having her picture taken I went online for the seven billionth time to try and see if I could find anything on “Ring of Roses”. I’d spent the entire week preceding that trying to dig around for background on the name, to see if Hosterlitz had mentioned it before, or talked about the idea. I called up American Kingdom in LA – because they were who he worked with on The Eyes of the Night, Connor O’Hare and Only When You’re Dead – and someone there put me in touch with the archivist they had here in London, at the European office. So then I spoke to him – but that was another dead end.’

  ‘He’d never heard of “Ring of Roses” either?’

  ‘No. I’ve got his details if you’re interested.’

  I told him I was and he fou
nd me the number for the archivist. I wasn’t sure what he could give me that Collinsky hadn’t already, but I was definitely starting to think that Korin’s marriage to Hosterlitz, their time together, their history, wasn’t the wild goose chase I feared it might be. While everything else in Korin’s life was a dead end, there were unanswered questions about her career, about her husband’s, about their years together and what he was doing in retirement. And all the time, something continued to rub at me: that five-day gap between the publication of the Cine article and Korin’s disappearance.

  ‘So what did you do after that?’ I said.

  ‘What could I do? For a while, I had this grand idea of making “Ring of Roses” the centre point of the feature, to kind of bring everything full circle: all the Oscars that Hosterlitz won, the lean period, the shite he was peddling in the seventies and eighties, the drugs, his depression, and then the promise of a new start. But I couldn’t find anything about “Ring of Roses” anywhere. And even if I had managed to dig something out, from some corner of the Internet, I’d have got nowhere with Korin. She didn’t know anything. That’s the point. No one did.’

  Collinsky shifted on his seat, his finger tracing patterns through the crumbs on the table. ‘In the end,’ he continued, ‘I decided, without something meatier, vague speculation about what he may or may not have been working on in retirement didn’t belong in the magazine. The magazine needs to be better than that. Or, at least, I believe it does. But then, me and my editor were chatting a few days after the issue went to press, and I happened to mention the thing about “Ring of Roses”, and he said, “Why the hell didn’t you put that in the mag?” ’ Collinsky rolled his eyes. ‘So much for the integrity of print.’

  ‘So what happened after that?’

  ‘Long story short, my editor told me to write a separate piece for our website, and I ended up including “Ring of Roses” in that. We put it online a couple of days after the magazine went on sale – you know, in an effort to promote the print edition and try to drive people towards the issue. We’re always doing that kind of thing. Airy-fairy, fact-free “Best of ” lists are what the Internet drinks up these days, so I pulled a “Top 10 Best Unmade Films” list out of my arse to try and get some’ – he made quotation marks with his fingers – ‘ “social media buzz”.’

  ‘So, wait – you did mention “Ring of Roses”?’

  ‘Yeah, but only in that “Best of ” list online, not in the magazine.’

  ‘That was the first time anyone had ever run anything on it?’

  ‘It was the first time “Ring of Roses” had been talked about, ever.’

  ‘And the online feature went out a few days after the mag?’

  ‘Uh, four, I think.’

  Four days.

  He didn’t seem to realize the significance of what he’d just told me, but I saw it so clearly it could have been written in neon: the five-day gap between the magazine going on sale and Korin disappearing may not have been the thing that was relevant at all.

  It may have been the piece Collinsky posted online – telling the world about ‘Ring of Roses’ – twenty-four hours before she went missing.

  13

  As soon as I finished up with Marc Collinsky, I called Louis Grant, the archivist at American Kingdom’s European office, and asked if he could spare me an hour. I wanted to talk about Korin and Hosterlitz, and try to find out more about ‘Ring of Roses’. Collinsky said Grant didn’t know anything when the two of them had spoken, and had found nothing in the archives either – yet I still felt it was worth a shot. A polite South African, Grant said he was tied up until 5 p.m., but would happily meet me after that. He gave me an address in Southwark. Almost the moment I hung up, my phone rang again. It was a Minneapolis area code.

  Wendy.

  I grabbed my pad from my bag and pushed Answer. The line squealed briefly, then settled into a hum.

  ‘Wendy?’

  ‘David, hi. Sorry it’s taken me so long to reply. I’m at work.’

  ‘Are you okay to talk?’

  ‘Sure. I just got on my break. Fire away.’

  Very briefly, I gave her an overview of where I’d got to, without going into too much detail, and then asked her, ‘What do you know about Lake Calhoun?’

  She seemed slightly thrown. ‘Lake Calhoun?’

  ‘It’s near you, right?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s forty minutes up the road from here.’

  ‘Any idea why Lynda might be interested in that place? I found a reference to it. There’s no evidence of her paying for plane tickets, and her passport was found at her house, but maybe she visited the lake some time before she disappeared?’

  ‘No. No way. I mean, I guess we may have gone up on one of her trips out, but it’s been a couple of years since she visited, and we’ve got a lot of lakes in this part of the world. I don’t know why she’d only be interested in that one.’

  ‘You never went there as kids?’

  ‘Oh, sure. Mom and Dad would take us sometimes.’

  ‘Nothing happened there when you were growing up?’

  ‘One of us may have fallen over and grazed a knee or something – but major stuff?’ She paused. ‘Uh-uh. Nothing comes to mind, no.’

  It wasn’t what I’d been hoping for. I flipped back in my notes to the conversation I’d had with Marc Collinsky.

  ‘What did you make of Robert Hosterlitz?’

  ‘Bob?’ She was surprised by the change of direction. ‘I hardly knew him. We only met three times in the ten years he and Lyn were together. Most of the time, when Lyn came to visit, she came alone.’

  ‘Did she ever say what attracted her to him?’

  ‘To Bob? I don’t know. I think she found him enigmatic.’

  ‘Is that what she said?’

  ‘No. Not exactly. But he was nearly thirty years older than her, a bit scruffy and unkempt, so it was hard to imagine it was physical. Lyn was gorgeous. She could have had any man she wanted. But she’d never had a long-term relationship with anyone until she met Bob. So he had something.’

  ‘Something the other men didn’t?’

  ‘Right. Before him, she had this succession of boyfriends. Actually, even calling them “boyfriends” would be stretching it. She’d mention a guy to me on the phone, and then the next month it was someone else. She went through them quick and good.’ She paused, playing back what she’d just said. ‘That makes her sound slutty, I guess. But she really wasn’t like that. She didn’t go through them fast because she liked playing around, she went through them fast because she didn’t want to let them into her life. I think, basically, they just weren’t interesting to her.’

  ‘But Robert was?’

  ‘Well, she married him after six months.’ She stopped for a moment. ‘All I know is that she never talked about other men like she talked about him. Other men, she’d dismiss with a wave of the hand, but she was never like that with Bob. We only met him three times, but even then I could see a difference between the way she was around Bob and the way she was with other men she’d seen. Bob was very important to her. I mean, he must have been for them to get married so quickly. I’m just not sure if she saw him as a husband or some sort of father figure – or whether it was something more … unusual.’

  ‘Unusual how?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  I waited her out.

  ‘I think maybe she saw him as a challenge,’ she said.

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘He was like her – he didn’t give much of himself away – but whereas Lyn could disguise it well, Bob never could. Lyn always had something of the actress in her, but Bob was the opposite. He was quiet. He definitely wasn’t the life and soul of the party. In fact, the first time I met him, I remember thinking he was boring as all hell. But Lyn wouldn’t have dated him – and she definitely wouldn’t have married him so quickly – if he was boring. She wouldn’t have made that kind of commitment. She’d never made that kind of commitment to anyo
ne else, ever. That’s why I always thought there was more to Bob than met the eye – and I think Lyn found out what it was, and it really appealed to her.’

  I thought back to the Cine article, to the section in it where Korin hinted at Hosterlitz harbouring a secret she wanted to get at.

  ‘You couldn’t tell what it was that appealed to her so much?’

  Wendy laughed a little. ‘No. I was blind to his charms, I’m afraid. But he made her happy, which was the main thing. He was clearly a smart guy, he loved her, so maybe it was that.’ She paused. ‘But he could be weird too, discourteous.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘Well, I remember when Lyn and Bob came out to us one year … Jeez, this must have been Christmas 1984. Anyway, they stayed for a few nights, Christmas Day, and then Bob gets up on the twenty-sixth and just disappears for a week.’

  ‘Really? Where did he go?’

  ‘Northern Minnesota. Apparently, he went up to the state forests.’

  ‘Is that what Lynda said?’

  ‘She said he was scouting for work. I don’t know if that was true or not – I don’t even know if she really knew herself – but this was only the third time we’d ever laid eyes on him, and he couldn’t be bothered to spend more than a few days with us before driving off to wherever he thought he was going to scout for work in rural Minnesota. I’ll be honest, I thought he was damn rude.’

  I started to remember her mentioning the same thing to White, in the interview transcript I’d read.

  ‘That’s what Lynda said – he was “scouting for work”?’

  ‘I think so. I don’t know. It was a long time ago. That’s why I said we didn’t ever really get to know him. We saw him three times before he died, and one of those times he spent most of his vacation on some sort of road trip.’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, trying to put things together.

  Something’s definitely going on here.

  ‘Do you think this is about her marriage to Bob?’ Wendy asked.

  ‘No, I’m just trying to get some background.’