‘I said I would be, didn’t I, Scout?’ Brooke replied. ‘And I keep my word. Give me the gun.’

This was it. Bruce stared at the cushion that hid Scout’s hand. Was her hand moving? Was she going to bring out the gun? Her hand was moving.

Scout’s voice was quiet and scared. ‘OK,’ she said, the sweetest two letters Bruce ever heard.

Closeup on Scout’s hand emerging from under the cushion, holding a gun.

Close up on Scout’s face, which has totally changed. No longer docile and teary, it fills suddenly with naked hate and fury.

Wideprofile two shot. Scout on the couch, Brooke kneeling before her. In one extremely fast, shockingly sudden movement, Scout pulls back her gun hand and then slams the butt of the gun into Brooke’s mouth. There is a nasty crunch as metal connects with gum, bone and tooth. Brooke is propelled backwards out of shot as Scout rises.

Pull back and pan across to bring Scout fully into frame. She is standing over Brooke, hand raised to strike again. Brooke is bleeding heavily at the mouth.

SCOUT

I sure fucking gave it to you, didn’t I, you bitch? You my friend now? Huh? You always keep your word, don’t you! So now you’re my friend, right?

Cut to Brooke’s POV of Scout’s face, contorted with fury, staring down at her.

SCOUT

Say it!

Cut to Scout’s POV of Brooke, lying face up on the carpet, bleeding, stnugglingto reply.

BROOKE

I’m your friend.

SCOUT

Well I don’t want you for my friend, you whore! Because you tried to turn me against my man and that is unforgivable! Maybe you want him for yourself. Is that it? Are you coming on to my Wayne? If you try it, bitch, I’ll kill you.

While Scout was working herself up over the unlikely idea that Brooke might ever make a pass at Wayne, Detectives Jay and Crawford, having left Susan Schaefer to her breakfast, were pondering their next move.

‘Well, I guess we drew a blank,’ Crawford said sympathetically, for he knew how seriously Jay took his work. ‘Don’t feel bad, though. It was kind of a cute idea. I mean, the papers have been linking our murderers with that movie for weeks.’

‘We have one more call to make,’ said Jay. ‘The Oscar guy.’

‘Delamitri?’

‘Yeah. In fact, thinking about it, I guess we should have tried him first. I mean, the directors are the damn stars these days, aren’t they? They get to be more famous than the actors.’

‘That’s true. Did you see Delamitri at the ceremony? He made a beautiful speech. You could see he really meant it. You know, like he’d really given it some thought. My wife nearly cried.’

Chapter TwentyFive

Bruce had scarcely had time to assimilate the catastrophic collapse of Brooke’s brave attempt at dividing the enemy when he was faced with a further and even greater nightmare.

Standing at the door were not only his nearly exwife, Farrah, but also his beautiful and beloved daughter, Velvet. Velvet was the apple of Bruce’s eye. This had not always been clear to Velvet, possibly because Bruce habitually wore shades. None the less, it was the case. Bruce loved Velvet very much. Also, deep down and in a strange way, he still loved her mother.

What a couple they had been.

Fifteen years earlier Bruce had scored his first directorial assignment and his first (and so far only) wife on the same day. The job was a usedcar commercial, one of those sad, nobudget nasties, made purely for local TV, in which the owner of the business is himself the star of the ad.

‘You want bargains? I’ve got bargains. Crazy bargains!’

At which point the script called for a jump cut so that the client/star could put on plastic novelty glasses, a comedy moustache and a dayglo green bowler hat with a spinning helicopter blade sticking out of the top.

‘That’s right, you’d be crazy to miss ‘em. And I’m crazy to give ‘em, ha ha!’

The picture froze on the client/star’s amusing grin (his laughter soundtrack continued, but speeded up: hahahaheeheehee) and the address of the usedcar lot appeared across the screen.

The one bonus for Bruce as he faced that gruesome morning’s work was that throughout his pitch the star was to be surrounded by a bevy of gorgeous babes in bikinis. The original script had stated that after the jump cut these babes would also suddenly be wearing crazy masks and hats. However, the constraints of the budget meant this idea had to be vetoed.

Farrah had been one of the babes, and Bruce would never forget the first time he saw her. She had arrived for the shoot on her own Harley, which roared throatily as she gunned the throttle preparatory to dismounting. All heads turned, of course, and she got off the bike as if she had just fucked it. If Bruce had been a cartoon character, his eyes would have been on footlong stalks by this time, because Farrah had arrived already in costume and ready to work. Under her studded leather jacket she wore only a bikini and bike boots.

He was utterly smitten, and that very night Velvet was conceived.

Bruce and Farrah had had a good marriage, and a long one by Hollywood standards, supporting each other as they climbed their respective career ladders. Eventually, however, their pretensions and aspirations diverged. As Farrah got older and could no longer do bimbo parts, she started to put on intellectual airs, attending drama classes and pitching for ‘proper’ roles, something which Bruce found excruciatingly embarrassing. Likewise, as Bruce became more and more the doyen of hip culture his pose got tougher and sneerier (to the point where he had even considered a tattoo), which frankly turned Farrah’s stomach, knowing him as she did for the nerd he secretly was. Basically, the marriage eventually failed because she was genuine street pretending to be boulevard, and he was genuine boulevard pretending to be street. They ended up loathing the sight of each other.

But no matter how many times in recent years Bruce had wanted not to see his wife, they were all as nothing to how much he did not want to see her now. On this terrible morning when the psychopath ushered the rest of his sad, dysfunctional little family into their own private hell.

For a moment longer, though, Farrah and Velvet were to remain in ignorance of their danger. Wayne had concealed his gun and Scout had quickly enveloped hers in the folds of her dress before putting the everpresent cushion back on her lap. Was it possible that Wayne might be prepared to let these two new arrivals pass unmolested through the drama he had created? Bruce could scarcely bear to hope.

Even without the weaponry, the scene that greeted Farrah and Velvet as they paused momentarily in lounge doorway was disconcerting.

A gorgeous woman lay on the floor in a grubby, bloodied evening gown, her lip bleeding badly. A strange wildlooking creature was just rising from where she had clearly been sitting astride the prostrate woman. And the young man hovering behind them was the worst of the lot: cocky and sneering, he had nasty, violentlooking tattoos on his heavily muscled arms and what looked alarmingly like bloodstains on his vest and jeans.

‘Bruce, your old lady’s here,’ the man said.

Farrah raised a questioning eyebrow and stuck a piece of gum in her mouth. She didn’t much care for such dismissive familiarity, particularly from so obvious a piece of rough trade, but it took more than a couple of tats and a bit of attitude to throw her.

‘What the hell’s going on here?’ she said, striding into the room. ‘Some kind of disgusting orgy?’