Orchestrated Death (8 page)

‘You’re Joanna Marshall,’ he heard himself say.

‘Of course,’ she said, as if it were very much of course, and held out her hand with such an air of being ready to give him
all possible credit that he took it and held it as though this were a social meeting. Warmth came back to him along the line
of contact, and pleasure; their eyes met with that particular
meeting which is never arrived at by design, and which changes everything that comes afterwards.

As simple as that? he thought with a distant but profound sense of shock. The moment seemed scaffolded with the awareness
of possibility – or, well, to be honest, of probability, which was infinitely more disturbing. Like the blind stirring of
something under the earth at the first approach of the change of season, he felt all sorts of sensations in him turning towards
her, and he let go of her hand hastily. At once the staircase seemed more dank and dreary than ever.

She resumed the downward trot and he hurried after her. ‘How did you know who I was?’ he asked.

‘Sue Bernstein phoned me. She said you’d probably want to talk to me. I knew you weren’t a musician of course. Come to think
of it, I suppose you do look like a detective.’

‘What does a detective look like?’ he asked, amused.

She flicked a glance at him over her shoulder, smiling. ‘Oh, I hadn’t any preconceived ideas about it. It’s just that now
I see you, I know.’

She shouldered through another pair of steel doors, and then another, and suddenly they were back in civilization: lights,
sounds, and the smell of indoors.

She stopped and rounded on him again. ‘It’s so terrible about Anne-Marie. I suppose there’s no doubt that it is her? I simply
can’t believe she’s dead.’

‘There’s no doubt,’ he said, and showed her one of the mugshots. She took it flinchingly, fearing God-knew-what sketch of
carnage. Her first glance registered relief, her second a deeper distress. Few people in this modern, organised world ever
see a corpse, or even the picture of a corpse. After a moment she drew a sigh.

‘I see,’ she said. ‘Sue said it was murder. Is that true?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

She frowned. ‘Look, I want to help you, of course, but I’ve got to get changed and warm up, and I’ve only just got time. But
I’m only on in the first piece – can you wait? Or come back a bit later? I should be finished by a quarter past eight – then
I’ll be free and I can talk to you for as long as you like.’

As long as you like. She looked up at him again, straight into the eyes. This directness of hers, he thought, was very
disturbing. It was childlike, though there was nothing childish about her. It was something outside the range of his normal
experience, and made him feel both exposed and off-balance – as if she were of a different species, or from a parallel universe
where, despite appearance, the laws of physics were unnervingly different.

‘I’ll wait,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I could take you to supper afterwards,’ he heard himself add. What in God’s name was he doing?

‘Oh, that would be lovely,’ she said warmly. ‘Look, I must dash. Why don’t you go in and listen? The auditorium’s through
that door there.’

‘Won’t I need a ticket?’

‘No, it won’t be full, and no-one ever checks. Just slip through and sit somewhere near the side, and then at the end of the
first piece come back through here, and I’ll meet you here when I’ve changed again.’

She was a quick changer; and at half past eight they were sitting down in an Italian restaurant nearby. The tablecloths and
napkins were pale pink, and there were huge parlour palms everywhere, one of which shielded them nicely from the other diners
as they sat opposite each other at a corner table. She moved the little lamp to one side to leave the space clear between
them, put her elbows on the table, and waited for his questions.

Close to her, he wondered again about her age. Clearly she was quite a bit older than Anne-Marie: there were lines about her
eyes, and the moulding of experience in her face. Yet because she wore no make-up and no disguise, she seemed younger; or,
well, perhaps not really younger, but without age – ageless. It troubled him, and he took a moment to ask himself why, but
he could only think it was because if she asked him a question about himself, he would feel obliged to tell her the truth
– the real truth, as opposed to the social truth. And then, this immediacy of hers made him feel as though there were no barrier
between them and that touching her, which he was beginning to want very much to do, was not only possible, but inevitable.

He had better not follow that train of thought. He got a grip on himself.

‘I suppose we must make a start somewhere. Do you know of anyone who would have reason to want to kill your friend Anne-Marie?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that, of course, and I honestly don’t. Actually, I can’t imagine why anyone would ever want to kill
anyone. Death is so surprising, isn’t it? And murder doubly so.’

‘Would you have found suicide less surprising?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said at once. ‘Not because I had any reason to think she was contemplating it, but one can always find reasons
to hate oneself. And one’s own life is so much more accessible. Murder, though –’ she paused. ‘It’s such an affront, isn’t
it?’

‘I’d never really thought of it like that.’

‘It must be awful for you,’ she said suddenly, and he was surprised.

‘Worse for you, surely?’

‘I don’t think so. I have no responsibility about it, as you have. And then, because I only knew her alive, I’ll remember
her that way. You only ever saw her dead – no comfort there.’

Why in the world did she think he needed comforting? he thought; and then, more honestly, amended it to how did she know he
needed comforting?

‘Who were her friends?’ he asked.

‘Well, I suppose I was her closest friend, though really, I can’t say I knew her very intimately. We shared a desk, so we
used to hang about together while we were working. I went to her flat once or twice, and we went to the pictures a couple
of times. She hadn’t been with the Orchestra long, and she was a private sort of person. She didn’t make friends easily.’

‘What about friends outside the Orchestra?’

‘I don’t know. She never mentioned any.’

‘Boyfriends?’

She smiled. ‘I can tell you don’t know about orchestra life. Female players can’t have boyfriends. The hours of work prevent
us from mixing with ordinary mortals, and getting
together with someone in the Orchestra is fatal.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of the talk. You can’t get away from each other, and everyone bitches and gossips, and it’s horribly incestuous.
Men are much more spiteful than women, you know – and censorious. If a woman goes out with someone in the Orchestra, everyone
knows all about it at once, and then she gets called filthy names, and all the other men think she’s easy meat – just as if
women never discriminate at all.’

‘But Anne-Marie was very attractive. Surely some of the men must have made passes at her?’

‘Yes, of course. They do that with any new woman joining.’

‘And she rejected them?’

‘She had a thing going with Simon Thompson on tour last year, but tours are a different matter: the normal rules are suspended,
and what happens there doesn’t count as real life. And I think she may have gone out with Martin Cutts once or twice, but
that doesn’t count either. He’s just something everyone has to go through at some point, like chickenpox.’

Slider suppressed a smile and wrote the names down. ‘I see.’

‘Do you?’

He looked into her face, wondering how she had coped with the situation. She had said those things about being a female player
without bitterness, merely matter-of-fact, as though it were something like the weather than could not be altered. But did
she know those things from first-hand experience?

She smiled as though she had read his thoughts and said, ‘I have my own way of dealing with things. I’ll tell you one day.’

The waiter came with their first course, and they waited in silence until he had gone away. Then Slider said, ‘So you were
Anne-Marie’s only friend?’

‘Mmm.’ She made an equivocal sound through her mouthful, chewed, swallowed, and said, ‘She didn’t confide in me particularly,
but I suppose I was the person in the Orchestra who was closest to her.’

‘Did you like her?’

She hesitated. ‘I didn’t dislike her. She was a hard person
to get to know. She was quite good company, but of course we talked a lot about work, and that was mostly what we had in common.
I felt rather sorry for her, really. She didn’t strike me as a happy person.’

‘What were her interests?’

‘I don’t know that she had any really, outside of music. Except that she liked to cook. She was a good cook –’

‘Italian food?’

‘How did you know?’

‘I was at her flat today. There were packets of pasta, and two enormous tins of olive oil.’

‘Oh yes, the dear old green virgins. That was one of her fads – she said you had to have exactly the right kind of olive oil
for things to taste right, and she wouldn’t use any other sort. The stuff was lethally expensive, too. I don’t suppose anyone
else could’ve told the difference, but she was very knowledgeable about Italian cooking. I think she was part Italian herself,’
she added vaguely.

‘Was she? Did you ever meet her parents?’

‘Both dead,’ she said succinctly. ‘I think she said they died when she was a baby, and an aunt brought her up. I never met
the aunt. I don’t think they got on. Anne-Marie used to go and visit her once in a while, but I gathered it was a chore rather
than a pleasure.’

‘Brothers and sisters? Any other relatives?’

‘She never mentioned any. I gather she had rather a lonely childhood. She went to boarding school, I think because the aunt
didn’t want her around the house. I remember she told me once that she hated school holidays because her aunt would never
let her have friends home to play in case they made a mess. Wouldn’t let her have a pet, either. One of those intensely houseproud
women, I suppose – hell to live with, especially for a child. Have you spoken to her yet?’

‘I didn’t know until this moment that she existed. We asked your Mrs Bernstein, but she didn’t know who the next of kin was.’

‘No, I suppose she wouldn’t,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I suppose if it was me instead of Anne-Marie, it would be just the same.
So the aunt won’t know yet, even that Anne-Marie’s dead?’

Slider shook his head. ‘I suppose you don’t know her name and address?’

‘Oh dear! Did she ever tell me her aunt’s name? I know she lived in a village called Stourton-on-Fosse, somewhere in the Cotswolds.
The house was called something like The Grange or The Manor, I can’t remember exactly. But Anne-Marie said it was a large
house, and the village is tiny, so you ought to be able to find it easily enough. Wait a minute,’ she frowned, ‘I think I
saw the name on an envelope once. Now what was it? I was going to the post box and she asked me to post it along with mine.’
She thought for a moment, screwing up her eyes. ‘Ringwood. Yes, that was it – Mrs Ringwood.’

She looked at him delightedly, as though waiting for praise or applause, but their main course arrived and distracted her.

‘Mm,’ she said, sniffing delightedly. ‘Lovely garlic! You could give me matchboxes to eat as long as you fried them in garlic.
I hope you like it?’

‘I love it,’ he said.

Long, long ago in his youth, before Real Life had happened to him, he had cooked for Irene on a grease-encrusted, ancient
and popping gas stove in their little flat; and he had used garlic – and onions and herbs and wine and spices and ginger –
and food had been an immediate and sensuous pleasure. So it still was, he could see, for Joanna. She seemed very close to
him, and warm, and what he felt towards her was so basic it seemed earth-movingly profound. He wanted to take hold of her,
to have her, to make good, wholesome, tiring love to her, and then to sleep with her all night with their bodies slotted down
together like spoons. But did anything so simple and good happen in Real Life? To anyone?

Under the table he had a truly amazing erection, and it couldn’t be entirely because of the garlic. He saw with an agony of
disappointment what life could be like with the right person. He imagined waking up beside her, and having her again, warm
and sleepy in the early morning quiet; eating with her and sleeping with her and filling her up night after night with himself.
Just being together in that uncluttered way, like two animals, no questions to answer and none to ask. He wanted to walk with
her hand in hand along some
bloody beach in the sunset, with or without the soaring music.

The erection didn’t go down, but the pressure seemed to even itself out, so that he could adjust to it, like adjusting to
travelling at speed, all reactions sharpened. He watched her eating not only with desire, but also, surprisingly, with affection.
He could see how the rough, heavy locks of her hair were like those sculpted on the bronze head of a Greek hero, soft and
dense, pulling straight of their own weight. She ate with simple attention, and when she looked up at him she smiled, as if
that were something obvious and easy, and then all her attention was on him.

She put out her hand for her wine glass, and almost before he knew what he had done, he intercepted it across the table. To
his astonished relief, her warm fingers curled happily round his and returned his pressure, and the situation resolved itself
simply and gracefully, like crystals forming at crystallising point. Nothing to worry about. He released her and they both
went on eating, and Slider felt as though he were flying, and was utterly astonished at himself, that he could have done such
a thing.

In the interval between the main course and dessert he went to the telephone to ring the station, and spoke to Hunt, who was
Duty Officer.

‘I’ve got a next of kin in the Austen case,’ he said, and relayed the information about Mrs Ringwood. ‘Can you put a trace
on that, and get one of the local blokes to go round and inform her. She’ll have to formally ID the body. And then we can
have the inquest. Would you tell Atherton to get onto it first thing in the morning?’