What has he got himself mixed up in?
Not that he would admit this to Henk, or to Jeff, or to his therapist. But somebody has his number, in more ways than one.
In The Rose of Sarasota Max plays a soldier back from Vietnam, or possibly Korea, but Max can’t see what an American soldier would have been doing in Korea, so probably Vietnam. He has an illness; in the script it was cancer, but Max didn’t think that was glamorous enough, so in the end they left it vague. He remembers the key was it had to be an illness that wouldn’t cause him to lose weight, because he was filming Hercules versus Poseidon straight afterward. So he had this illness, and he was in a hospice, coughing, etc., telling old women he loved them, and he really thought, this is it, this is the Oscar, but no. The movie industry buried it—politics again—and it wasn’t even on Netflix last time Max looked (which was yesterday; he will check again this evening). The only country where it did good numbers was China, and that, Max later discovered, was because they edited in lots of clips of Max from a Second World War film he’d shot, and pretended they were flashbacks.
You do have to take the rough with the smooth, but Max had been very angry that The Rose of Sarasota hadn’t been a hit. Very angry and, just sometimes, when he woke in the middle of the night, very sad too.
Max doesn’t think about death all that much. Death to him is dummy guns and blood-spatter packs, and stuntmen falling onto crash mats. But he thought about death when he was filming The Rose of Sarasota.
And, in the brutal, lonely luxury of the Emirates First Class Lounge, he is thinking about death once again.
67
“I had to come and see you,” says Henk. “Because you wouldn’t return my calls.”
Henk had been waiting for them in the private dining room of the Rockgrove Vineyard. Amy should have known. They had just shaken Eddie off their tail, and now this.
“I wish to inform you that I have a gun,” says Henk.
“You’re not going to shoot me here, Henk,” says Amy. “So stop showing off.”
“Why would you want to kill Amy?” asks Rosie, sitting down. “I’m Rosie D’Antonio.”
“It is my great pleasure, Ms. D’Antonio,” says Henk. “I know many people enjoy your books, and surely they can’t all be wrong?”
“I might put that on my next front cover,” says Rosie.
“Steve Wheeler,” says Steve, shaking Henk’s hand. “Father-in-law.”
“Ah, the mystery man,” says Henk. “I hope I haven’t frightened you, Mr. Wheeler? You look pale?”
Steve waves this away and sits down.
“You’re here to kill me, Henk?” says Amy.
“Goodness, no,” says Henk, laughing at the very thought.
Amy isn’t laughing. “Then why do you have a gun?”
“To protect myself from you, and to deliver you to the relevant authorities,” says Henk. “I thought that would be obvious?”
“You think Amy has something to do with the murders?” Steve asks.
Henk nods. “Mmm hmm. I trust you visited the tree, as I did?”
Steve looks out of the window toward the tree. “They’ve done a lovely job with that wood glue.”
“Is that the first time you’ve seen that tree, Amy?” Henk asks.
Amy looks at him and nods.
“Haven’t nailed anyone to it?” asks Henk. “In recent memory?”
“No,” says Amy. “Same question to you.”
“No, dear me, no,” says Henk. “Why would you think I was involved? You must know quite the opposite to be true?”
Amy thinks about Jeff’s warning: don’t trust Henk.
“I know you split with Jeff, and then Jeff’s clients started dying.”
“And we know you’ve been very keen to track Amy down,” says Steve.
“Well, of course,” says Henk. “I’m trying to solve the murders and Amy is my chief suspect.”
“I’m your chief suspect?”
“You’re my only suspect, I would say.” Henk smiles. “That’s why I have a gun. Jeff was working with François Loubet. You all know that, surely? He took him on as a client, Jeff was able to have direct contact with him, and Jeff was able to know the whereabouts of all clients at all times.”
Amy shakes her head. Jeff can’t be Joe Blow. “Come on, the two of you were best friends.”
“That’s why I left Maximum Impact Solutions,” says Henk. “When our clients started to get arrested. It wasn’t difficult to fathom what was happening. And the information Loubet needed for his scheme could only have come from myself or Jeff. And it didn’t come from me.”
“Other people had access to those files,” says Steve. “Susan Knox?”
Henk shakes his head and pulls an envelope from a briefcase set down by his chair.
“You have proof it’s Jeff in that little envelope of yours?” Rosie asks.
