Authors: Alex Gray
Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer pressed the mute control on the TV remote as his mobile rang out. His eyes watched the silent antics of figures on his screen as he listened to a voice that demanded his full attention.
‘OK. I’ll be there,’ Lorimer spoke into the phone. ‘About twenty minutes.’
He flicked the red button and turned his attention to the television once more. A man and woman were having a heated argument. He could see her lipstick-red mouth wide open. The man was slapping the table between them noiselessly. Lorimer switched them off. He knew how it would end. They’d come over all sweet and sorry later on just as they always did. That’s why this soap opera had such a huge following, he thought. with its happy endings it was so unlike real life. He couldn’t have explained why he’d started to watch it after Maggie had left. She’d have been appalled at how hooked he’d become.
Anyway, this wasn’t getting him nearer the start of a new case. And, from what he’d just heard, there certainly
weren’t going to be any happy endings. There were squads of men being called out from every Division in Glasgow to cope with this one. There would be a whacking great overtime bill by the time all the punters had been screened. Not to mention the musicians. And they’d had a bloody great Chorus on stage too, just to compound the logistical nightmare. Lorimer shook his head. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad being a mere Detective Chief Inspector. At least he didn’t have to worry about budgeting all of the time.
Lorimer shrugged himself into the jacket that had been hanging on the handle of the lounge door. The remains of a Chinese takeaway lay on the coffee table beside a half empty bottle of Irn Bru. He’d tidy them away later, he assured his absent wife, along with the week’s supply of newspapers strewn across the floor. For a moment Lorimer stared into space, seeing the room as it had been only two months before. It had never really been tidy what with Maggie’s piles of jotters to mark and both of them leaving books in various corners but now it was simply neglected. Then, at least, the place had been vacuumed and dusted, he supposed, or whatever she’d done to make it comfortable. But the difference was really more than mere housework, if he was honest with himself, much, much more.
With a grimace at the sight of it, Lorimer switched off the light and headed for the front door.
‘Chief Inspector Lorimer.’
The Security man at the stage door looked keenly at Lorimer’s warrant card then into the face of the tall man who stood just inside the doorway.
‘Mr Phillips, the Orchestra Manager, is waiting for you upstairs, sir,’ he said. ‘Trish will show you the way.’ Neville,
the Security man beckoned forward a comfortable looking middle-aged woman. Lorimer recognised her steward’s tartan uniform. ‘Aye, it’s up here, Chief Inspector,’ Trish started to smile at him, but pursed her lips almost immediately as if she realised that the circumstances demanded some gravity of demeanour. Lorimer followed the woman up a steep staircase and through two sets of heavy swing doors. As they walked along a brightly lit corridor Trish cleared her throat.
‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? The poor wee man.’ She risked a glance into Lorimer’s face but he didn’t offer any comment in reply. The woman gave a sigh, whether about the passing of George Millar or Lorimer’s reluctance to engage in conversation, he didn’t know. They reached the end of the corridor, pushed through another two sets of swing doors and entered an open area that had a low ceiling and no windows. Lorimer saw with some relief that it was already full of uniformed policemen. Some were behind hastily erected trestle tables and taking statements from the musicians who were still in evening dress. A couple of officers from his own Division looked up as he came in, acknowledging his presence with a nod.
‘They’ve set up their stuff in here,’ said Trish. ‘It’s where the Chorus and musicians usually assemble just before they go on stage. Mr Phillips should be around somewhere. Oh, there he is,’ she told him, just as a figure in dark tails approached them.
Lorimer’s first impression of Brendan Phillips was of a slight, rather dapper man whose smooth, boyish face belied his age. He was probably in his late thirties, Lorimer reckoned. Not much younger than himself.
‘Chief Inspector, thank goodness you’re here,’ Brendan
Phillips seemed on the point of reaching out to take Lorimer by the hand, but after one look at the policeman’s face, the Orchestra Manager’s hand fell to his side. Trish, Lorimer noticed, had vanished discreetly.
‘The Doctor said you would want to go straight to the dressing room. Where the body is,’ Phillips added in deliberately hushed tones. Lorimer followed the man out of the claustrophobic room. Round a corner, they emerged onto the entrance to the stage.
The auditorium was brightly lit and there were full spots still directed onto the stage itself. Both, mercifully, were empty. Lorimer followed the Orchestra Manager across the front of the stage, skirting the music stands and the Conductor’s podium. Several instruments were lying in their cases on the pale, varnished floor. Lorimer had to squeeze past a large harp as Phillips took him towards the stair leading to the other stage exit. He noted a booth with a board full of controls and a close circuit television that showed the empty stage. His policeman’s eyes also took in the CCTV cameras angled at regular intervals from the ceiling.
‘Who found the body?’ Lorimer asked.
When Phillips turned back to answer, Lorimer noticed that he didn’t meet his eyes.
‘I did,’ he replied. ‘It’s my responsibility to ensure that all the performers are on stage in time. It’s customary to fetch the Leader and the Principals personally from their dressing rooms. It’s part of my job,’ he added with a sigh that seemed to come from his well-polished shoes.
The Orchestra Manager walked on as he spoke. Round a corner they came to another, smaller assembly area.
The regulation incident tape had been fastened across
an opening to the left. Phillips stopped and gestured towards an open door leading to a corridor on their right. It was parallel, Lorimer noticed, to another corridor that disappeared into darkness, its ceiling lowered by massive metal tubing. Rows of open fiddle cases lined a shelf on one side.
‘These are the Artistes’ dressing rooms. The first one, Lomond, is for our conductor. Morar is where …’ he broke off uncertainly.
‘Where you found the body,’ Lorimer finished for him. ‘And then you called Security, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ the man looked thoroughly miserable now, no doubt recalling the event that would give him nightmares for weeks. Lorimer nodded briefly and headed for the second room along the corridor that had been reserved for the late Leader of Glasgow Concert Orchestra.
‘Well, hello there, stranger,’ a blonde head turned to look up at him as Lorimer stepped carefully into the room.
‘Ah, Rosie,’ Lorimer grinned back at the pixie face below him. Doctor Rosie Fergusson, Lorimer’s favourite pathologist, was on her knees beside the body, her diminutive frame wrapped inside a clean white boiler suit.
‘I’ll just wait out here, shall I?’ Phillips called out, hovering in the doorway.
Lorimer frowned but before he could speak, Rosie answered for him, ‘That’s fine. Just keep the masses away from here. We don’t want to contaminate this area any further. OK?’
‘Yes,’ Phillips seemed uncertain if he should stay around but clearly didn’t relish the prospect of being in
such close proximity to whatever they were planning to do with George Millar’s corpse.
Lorimer turned back to the Orchestra Manager. This time he laid a consoling hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Look. You’ve had a pretty tough time tonight. Why don’t you stay down in Security meantime? I’ll catch up with you when we’re finished in here.’
Brendan Phillips gave a grateful nod. The man looked simply defeated, thought Lorimer. A dead body might be all in a day’s work for Rosie, and to a lesser extent for a DCI but, Lorimer reminded himself, it was surely outside the experience of the average Orchestra Manager.
‘Well. what have we here?’ Lorimer joined the pathologist at the entrance to the tiled bathroom. The preliminary examination had taken place, he supposed. George Millar’s body still lay face down, but Rosie would have taken the body temperature as a first measure.
‘Time of death?’ he queried.
‘How did I know you were going to ask me that? You’re so predictable, Lorimer,’ Rosie teased. ‘Not that long ago, actually. The body was still warm when I got here, but rigor was coming on so I’d narrow it down to say he died two to three hours ago.’ She looked at her watch. ‘That’s about half an hour, or less maybe, before the concert was due to start. This room’s pretty well heated but I don’t think that complicates the timing too much.’
‘Good. So any CCTV footage from about seven o’clock onwards should show us who was around this particular dressing room,’ Lorimer mused.
The fact that so many people had been in the Concert Hall made this case a potential shambles. But, really, these security devices should eliminate practically all of them.
Lorimer didn’t anticipate a lot of bother with this one. once they’d seen the footage, they’d be home and dry, surely?
Sitting in the tiny space that passed for the Security department, Lorimer scanned the tapes that had purported to show all movement in and around the whole of the Concert Hall since midday. His initial optimism about finding evidence on the tape footage was rapidly being extinguished.
‘That’s when we change the tapes,’ Neville explained to him, ‘There’s maybe a two minute delay between taking the last ones out and putting fresh ones in. That’s all.’
Lorimer frowned. The screen that should have shown the area around the Artistes’ dressing rooms had been blanked out from just after seven o’clock.
‘And didn’t you do something about it when you saw that?’ Lorimer demanded of the man.
Neville shrugged. ‘Our usual technician’s off sick tonight. There’s just me and I didn’t know there’d been a murder, did I? Anyway, the outside cameras are probably more of a concern at that time of night.’
‘Oh? Why?’
Neville looked uneasy. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s not me who makes decisions about that sort of thing,’ he paused. ‘It’s all the beggars we get around here;
Big Issue
sellers and druggies with their wee plastic cups. It’s company policy to keep an eye on them.’
‘So what did you think when you saw that one of your monitors was suddenly blank?’ Lorimer wanted to know.
‘I was puzzled. But then His Nibs phoned down and told me to dial 999. That was when I realised there must
have been something fishy about that screen.’
Lorimer gritted his teeth, so much for an easy solution. Whoever had immobilised the CCTV camera upstairs had planned things pretty carefully. At least he knew now that this was no random killing. Premeditated murder would be on the charge sheet in the event of an arrest.
‘OK. Thanks. We’ll need the original tapes to take away tonight. I’ll have them copied and returned to you whenever it’s possible,’ Lorimer told him. Privately he doubted if they’d ever be returned. They’d be kept as evidence in the case until after a trial, if it ever came to that. He picked up a programme from Neville’s desk, flicking through it till he came to the list of performers. This might come in handy, he mused, taking note of some of the names.
Trudging back up the stairs, Lorimer felt suddenly weary. The thought of all those people who’d been backstage tonight filled him with despair. God alone knew who had passed back and forth along the corridor of the four Principals’ dressing rooms in the half hour before the concert began. The paying public had already been herded out into the suites of rooms opposite the auditorium. They would leave names, addresses and show proof of identity before being allowed to leave the Concert Hall. Even the Hall’s stewards had been hastily drafted in to help the police officers perform this massive job.
It was time to join the troops who were busy taking details from each and every one of the members of the Orchestra, Chorus and various backstage crew.
The claustrophobia hit him almost as soon as he entered the windowless area with its low ceiling. There seemed to be no space to move amongst the masses of
bodies crammed into the room. Even the tables set up by the uniformed officers had disappeared against a wall of musicians in evening dress. A quick glance showed him the various styles adopted by the female members of the Orchestra ranging from plain trousers and blouses to full-skirted gowns. All the men wore black tails.
A buzz of noise filled the room. Evidently a murder in their midst hadn’t quelled the odd artistic temperament, judging by some of the louder voices raised in protest at their incarceration in this confined space.
As Lorimer approached the nearest table to speak to WPC Irvine, one of his own officers, the woman opposite looked up at him. She was probably middle-aged, judging by the steel grey hair. Her face, still smooth and youthful looking, had a strong bone structure dominated by the long, determined line of her jaw.
‘And who may you be?’ she asked in tones that instantly reminded Lorimer of a loud-voiced neighbour in his street who was forever complaining about dog fouling and children playing football near her garden. Mrs Ellis was the self-appointed neighbourhood watch who kept tabs on everybody’s coming and going. She had even resorted to ringing his front door bell, demanding Police Action until Maggie had sent her packing with a flea in her ear. Lorimer swallowed his instant dislike of the woman in front of him dressed all in black lace, reminding himself that the Mrs Ellises of this world had their uses.
‘Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer, ma’am,’ WPC Irvine replied for him. ‘And this is Karen Quentin-Jones.’ The look on his officer’s face showed that she clearly expected the mention of Lorimer’s rank to change the woman’s tune. Lorimer glanced back at the programme in
his hand. Karen Quentin-Jones was the Second Violin.
She must be the one who had taken over when Phillips had decided that the show must go on, Lorimer thought.