Dead End (3 page)

The entry wound was in the right lower side at the back, just above the belt of his slacks; quite a neat hole, surrounded by a blood stain. Slider examined the podium and slipped his fingers in underneath the body, but there was no blood and seemingly no hole on the other side.

‘No exit wound,’ he said.

‘Still inside?’ Atherton said.

‘Presumably. He must have been hit at extreme range.’

‘Or else it was deflected.’

Slider grunted agreement, and stood up, turning to Whittam. ‘All right – you saw what happened?’

‘Well, yes,’ Whittam said unwillingly, as though it might incriminate him. ‘I was standing at the side, over there, making sure everyone was in place, just waiting for Radek to start. Once they were off, I was going to join Georgina in the vestry. I’d got a lot to do, and it was a late kick-off already.’

‘Why was that?’ Atherton put in. ‘I’d heard Radek was a stickler for punctuality.’

‘He is. Woe betide the musician who’s late. He won’t step on the platform if anyone’s missing.’

‘But he’s not punctual himself?’ Slider asked.

‘Oh he is usually. But he was in a rotten mood today. He’d had me up and down to the dressing-room half a dozen times, complaining about everything, and Des couldn’t get away. He treats him like a personal servant, you know, despite—’ He gestured with his head towards Keaton, who was still kneeling beside his dead master like Greyfriar’s Bobby. ‘Then when he finally deigned to come upstairs he stood over there by the vestry telling me the arrangements he wanted for tonight, as if we hadn’t gone over them ten times already. Bloody temperamental celebrities! I tell you, dear old Norman Del Mar was never like that.’

‘All right. Go on,’ Slider urged. He wanted to get the general picture before the rest of the team arrived and the scene fragmented.

‘Well, he got up on the podium and lifted his stick, and everyone got ready, and he just sort of stood there a minute – working himself up to start, I suppose. And then there was this bang – like a big heavy door slamming. It made my heart sink: I thought it was the verger frigging around up the back, and there’s nothing a conductor hates more than someone making a noise at a moment like that. Breaks his artistic concentration, you see. I expected him to turn round and bawl me out for it, but he just crumpled up and fell. And then Martin Cutts’s bird screamed, and old Buster came running past me shrieking like a hen, and it was only then I sort of put two and two together and realised he’d been shot. I ran over, but it was obvious he was dead.’

‘Did you see who did it?’

‘No, that was the trouble, you see – everyone was looking at Radek. By the time I even thought to look round the bloke had gone, whoever he was, and it was the same for all of us. But the verger was up the back, as I said. I think he may have seen him.’

‘Doctor’s just arriving, guv,’ Atherton murmured, looking over his shoulder towards the door. ‘And it looks like the photographer behind him.’

Slider glanced back. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘We’ve got about a
hundred people downstairs to interview. We’re going to need the cavalry. Call home and get everyone here who can read and write.’

‘And McLaren as well, sir?’

‘Get on with it. And when you’ve done that, see if Niobe here’s fit to speak yet.’ He turned to Whittam. ‘Can you take him somewhere and find him a cup of tea or something? The doctor will want to get to the body.’

Whittam jumped eagerly at the chance to be useful. ‘Yes, of course. I’ll take him in the vestry. It’s nice and quiet there.’

‘How do I get downstairs?’ Slider asked.

‘Over there, that door,’ he pointed to the opposite side from the vestry. ‘You can’t go wrong, it doesn’t go anywhere else.’

The door led onto a dank corridor which ran the length of the church. It was lined with an assortment of stacking chairs, elderly cupboards, and cardboard boxes full of mildewed bunting, torn crêpe paper decorations, remnants of junior nativity play costumes, and other bits of typical church-hall junk. Looking right, he saw at the far end a door onto the street, and beside it another door leading back into the body of the church; turning his head to the left he saw stone steps leading down, and a whiff of cigarette smoke and a murmur of voices told him he was facing the right way. At the bottom was another corridor, and immediately to his left the doorway into a large room furnished with sundry chairs, trestle tables, mirrors, and a ballet barre across one end which was largely obscured by coats. A tea urn and trays of cups and saucers filled one table, and the orchestra was hanging around, making itself as comfortable as it could in the manner of people accustomed to being kept hanging around in various dismal locations all round the world. They were chatting, dozing, smoking, reading and, in the furthest corner where the trombone section lurked, playing cards on somebody’s upturned instrument case. Joanna called it the airport terminal syndrome, with the emphasis on the terminal.

Joanna was sitting on the massive old-fashioned radiator right next to the door, her legs dangling, her hands knotted loosely between her knees, her head resting against the wall, her eyes closed. She seemed very pale, and the lines around her eyes and mouth looked more pronounced than he remembered. He
wondered how close she had been to the podium, how shocked she had been. He was so glad to see her it took him a moment or two to find his voice.

‘You shouldn’t sit on radiators,’ he said quietly. ‘You’ll get chilblains.’

Her eyes flew open. She stared at him almost blankly, and then, to his relief, there was a softening of her expression which, whatever it betokened, was on the side of pleasure rather than dismay.

‘Well,’ she said, ‘if it isn’t the mild-mannered Bill Slider.’

‘You’re looking rather pale,’ Slider said.

‘I’ve just seen someone killed,’ she said. ‘You think with television news reports – Bosnia, Northern Ireland and everything – that you’ve seen it all. But it’s different in real life. One moment there’s a real human being standing there, just a couple of feet away from you, and the next—’ She shook her head. ‘How do you ever get used to it?’

‘We don’t,’ he answered, divining that she meant the question personally. ‘If we stopped minding, we’d stop being effective. The flippant remarks are meant to fool us, you know, not you.’

‘Poor Bill,’ she said.

He wished he could take that as encouragement; but he had work to do. ‘How close were you to the podium?’

‘I was sitting at number four. Close enough, thank you.’

‘You’ve been promoted,’ he discovered with delight. The front four in the first violin section were permanent positions, while the rest of the section moved up and down on a rota system so as to share the work evenly. ‘What does that make you?’

‘Deputy principal,’ she said shortly.

‘That’s wonderful. Why didn’t you—?’ But of course he knew why she hadn’t told him. He altered course hastily. ‘Well, I’m just thankful you weren’t hurt. There was only one shot, is that right?’

She raised an enquiring eyebrow. ‘Am I being a witness now?’

‘You are a witness, like it or not. But you can be especially helpful to us – to me – because you know what we need. You know—’

‘My methods, Watson,’ she finished for him. ‘All right, what do you want to know?’

‘Start with your version of the incident.’

‘Well, Radek came out from the vestry—’

‘I thought he had a dressing-room down here?’

‘He did, but there’s another set of stairs down from the vestry. The conductor, and soloists if any, go up and down that way to avoid having to rub shoulders with the great unwashed, namely us. I’ve done concerts here before, you see. I know all about it.’

He smiled because she had anticipated his question. ‘You see?’ he said elliptically.

‘I’ve already accepted the premise,’ she said, giving him a firm look. ‘You’re not bright enough to put a scam by me.’

‘Thanks. I understand Radek was late starting.’

‘A bit.’

‘Was that unusual?’

She shrugged. ‘He’s usually punctual, but they’re a law to themselves, you know, conductors. It’s our job to wait for them, not vice versa. It was only five minutes anyway. It was two thirty-five by my watch when he stepped onto the platform.’

‘Did he seem as usual when he came on?’

She made an equivocal face. ‘I didn’t notice anything specific, but I wasn’t particularly looking. He was always an ugly, bad-tempered old bastard, not the sort you gaze at rapturously. He seemed to be in a bad mood, but that was nothing unusual.’

‘All right, go on.’

‘Well, he crossed the platform, got up on the podium, opened the score, picked up his stick—’ He could see her watching it replay in her mind.

‘From where?’

‘He’d put it down on the lectern while he opened the score. Oh, and he took out his handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his face. He always sweated a lot. It could be pretty nasty sitting up front. He’d flick his head to get his hair out of his eyes, and drops of sweat would fly.’

‘Yuck.’

‘Exactly. Anyway, he wiped his face, put his hanky away, picked up his stick and said, “Mahler”.’

‘Telling you which piece you were going to rehearse?’

‘Of course. So he waited for everyone to find their place and get their instruments up. And then—’ She hesitated.

‘Go on. However it seemed to you.’

‘Well, he stopped with his stick up, just staring at nothing, frowning. He might have been communing with his muse, I suppose, assuming the nasty old thing had one, but it didn’t quite look like that. He looked more as if he’d remembered something bad, like he’d left the gas on or he ought to have paid his VAT yesterday or something. He put his hand up and pulled his roll-neck – like this – as if he was loosening it, like a nervous gesture.’ She looked at Slider. ‘I don’t want to make too much of it, because it all happened so quickly, but it was something I noticed.’

‘You think he was expecting something to happen?’

‘God, I don’t know. He looked as though he had something on his mind, that’s all I can say.’

‘All right. Go on.’

‘Well, then everything seemed to happen at once. There was a terrific bang. I think someone out in the church shouted “No!” and someone else screamed. Radek dropped his stick and crumpled up, fell forward. It all happened in an instant. He was on the floor while the echoes were still bumping about in the roof.’

‘Did you know it was a gunshot?’

‘Oh yes. I don’t know why, because I’ve never heard a gun fired in real life, but I knew it was a gun. Of course I looked that way, and I saw a man in a light brown coat and a hat with a big brim up at the back by the main door. It was too far away for me to see any detail, but he was just standing there, staring. Then he turned and ran for it. There’s a small door within the large one, and he went out through that and was gone. It was all over in a second.’

‘Did you see what he did with the gun?’

She frowned. ‘I didn’t see the gun. I think – I’m not sure – he had his hand in his pocket.’

‘Did you recognise him?’

She shook her head. ‘Too far away, and too dark. We were under the lights, you see. And he had a hat on.’

‘So you don’t even really know that it was a man?’

She thought about that. ‘I assumed it was. I suppose it might have been a woman, but if it was, it was a woman hoping to pass for a man. It wasn’t a female shape.’

‘Okay, what happened next?’

‘Old Buster came rushing over from the vestry side, screaming, almost before Radek hit the floor. Tony Whittam was behind him, and they crouched over the body, and I think Tony said “He’s dead”, or something like that. Des Riley came halfway, and then went back into the vestry, presumably to call the emergency services.’

‘How did everyone else react?’

‘Everyone was very quiet, apart from Martin Cutts’s bird, who was sobbing as if it had happened to her. It’s funny, in films everyone rushes about shrieking and fighting to get out, but here nobody moved or made a sound. I suppose we were all too shocked. Then Bill Fordham jumped up and went running out to his wife and kid to make sure they were all right.’ She made a wry face. ‘Of course Brian Tusser – the first trombone – asked in a loud voice if it meant the concert would be cancelled, and would we still get paid, but he’s just a despicable scrote. I mean, I suppose we all thought it, but he had to go and actually say it aloud.’

‘I suppose that means no-one in the orchestra would have reason to kill Radek? He was a benefactor to you, really.’

‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ she said hastily.

‘Wasn’t he generally liked?’

‘Not by musicians. He was rude, unpleasant, arrogant, conceited, and had delusions of godhead. If he’d been a good conductor we could have forgiven him, but as it was—’

‘Not a good conductor? But he was famous!’

‘Not synonymous terms, I’m afraid. The critics loved him, but what do they know? On the box he was erratic and his technique was non-existent, but he’d got too famous for any of us to criticise. We had to carry him and cover up for his cock-ups; and then if we managed in spite of him to give a good performance, he got all the praise
and
got paid about a hundred times what any of us got for the same concert. So what was to like?’