Requiem Mass (51 page)

Anderson shuddered and wrapped the warm gown more closely around her bare, white shoulders. It was time to dress – to prepare for the evening. Her maid had set her hair exquisitely and it was cushioned as her head rested above the pillows. The mass of blue-black waves had been disciplined into glistening coils that perched securely on top of her head, elongating her white neck and accentuating the porcelain fineness of her neck and jaw.

She always did her own make-up, knowing precisely how to enhance her startling eyes – widening them, creating infinitive opportunities for dramatic expression. Normally she needed no cosmetics on her skin for a simple recital, but tonight she had to resort to light rose blusher along her cheekbones and a faint brush of powder to eliminate the awful pallor she saw in the mirror.

She was ready to dress. A long mirror had been placed in the bedroom to help her. Standing, she let Nightingale’s turquoise robe fall to her feet and stood naked before her own reflection. Delicately, curiously, she ran her fingers over her shoulders, gently over her breasts, stopping to cup them and brush the nipples before tracing the tips of her fingernails down her flat stomach to her thighs.

She opened her legs slightly, fascinated to see her own red-tipped fingers stroke and tease. One hand slipped between her thighs, but then she stopped herself. She wanted to trap the sexual energy and tension inside to release later in her performance. From experience, she knew the tension would add a passion that communicated beyond her voice.

Octavia started to lay out the clothes she would wear. Each item was pressed to perfection. It occurred to her briefly as she pulled gull’s-egg-grey silk camiknickers up to her waist that the next hands to remove them could be a pathologist’s. Memories of a primary school teacher’s voice came back to her – ‘remember to wear clean knickers, you never know what might
happen to you.’ The memory of her early childhood made her smile, not shiver. Her life had been one long performance, why should it not continue beyond her death?

Her slip matched the knickers. She wore no stockings, preferring to feel the raw silk against her waxed legs. There was a tap at the door. ‘Ten minutes, madam.’

‘Right. I’m nearly ready.’

She stepped into her dress. It was a shocking, flaming red hourglass; wide, structured wings fanned out from her waist curving above long, skin-tight sleeves at her shoulders. The front was cut low and straight across the rise of her breasts; the skirts flared from a waist that was sculpted to look tiny but allowed a deceptively large room for breath. A wide train fell from her shoulders, beneath the stiffened raised collar formed by the wings as they joined at the back.

The effect was stunning. Her white neck rose in a slender marble column from the stiff red petals, her head poised centrally above the architecture of her costume like the curving stamen of a hibiscus. She elected to wear no necklace but spiked ruby and diamond drops into her ears before finally placing a matching ring on the third finger of her left hand. Without a further glance, she extinguished the blaze of material beneath a heavy black opera cloak and left the room.

Jason MacDonald had been an unwelcome and unnecessary diversion for Blite’s team and the subsequent inch-by-inch search of the cathedral stretched nerves to breaking point. Up in the gallery, the trumpeters and sound man, who had been engaged in a silent territorial battle from the beginning, vented their combined spleen on the backs of the unfortunate officers endeavouring to crawl all over them. When they attempted to dismantle the music stands for the third time that day Cooper had to step in to quell a small riot.

Rowland, watching the débâcle in relative comfort, found it all amusing. True, he had yet to assemble his weapon; true, it was a far less fine instrument than his original; true, he would be under the curious gaze of several players for most of the
time which would make manoeuvring difficult. But he remained confident. He was an excellent shot; his escape route was planned and, above all, he had thus far escaped detection for five hours. With the time left to the performance counted in minutes, there was little risk the police would now discover him.

His final problem was to decide when to strike. He thumbed through the score in his hands casually, looking for the soprano line all the time. He was amazed at the appropriateness of her words which spelt out her guilt for all to hear. There was a strong temptation to leave it all to the end – so pathetic were her closing moments – but then, that was too high a risk. He flicked back, looking for the moment – then his eyes found the words, saw she would be standing proud in front of the choir, and it was decided.

Fenwick was running through his own final checklist with Cooper; there were minutes to go before Octavia and the other soloists arrived. Already, early birds in the audience were taking their places. They would have a longer wait than they anticipated as the start time would be pushed back to allow for the impact of greater security.

His men were scrutinising faces as they passed, keeping the admissions in orderly rows. It didn’t comfort Fenwick. He was certain that Rowland had already arrived.

‘Have we cross-checked the names and addresses of all the choir and orchestra yet?’

‘We’re still twenty short. You wouldn’t believe how many are ex-directory or have no driving licences.’

‘Well get on with it.’ Fenwick caught his sergeant’s fleeting look. ‘I know it’s probably redundant but it gives the ACC’s extra men something to do. Right, what else? The recording company; what about them? Have you checked the sound man’s credentials?’

‘The letterhead’s OK and Dalton, the bloke that signed it, works for them, but we can’t trace him. He’s been uncontactable all day. But we’ve found his secretary and she says it looks like his signature.’

‘Well keep on it – tell whoever you’re got in the gallery to keep their eyes on him and the trumpeters, they’re ideally placed.’

‘Yes, sir. But we’ve been over their equipment time and again. There’s nothing remotely resembling a gun up there or bullets – believe me.’

‘How about a blow pipe?’ With a sinking heart Cooper realised Fenwick was only half joking and set off once more to order a final check in the triforium. It would not be pleasant.

Fortunately, the rain had eased and few of the audience had brought umbrellas. However, there were still enough to challenge the rudimentary raffle ticket system that had been set up to manage their collection and it looked as if it would be a lottery when the time came to return the right accessories to their owners at the end of the performance.

The chairman of the organising committee bustled up to Fenwick. ‘Chief Inspector, I’ve reserved you a seat right at the front. Here’s your special edition programme.’

‘Thank you, sir, but I won’t be sitting there. Some of the ACC’s officers are in the front row already. I’ll be keeping an eye on things from back here.’

‘You really won’t enjoy the performance as much from there, you know.’

‘Unfortunately, I’m not here to enjoy the performance, sir.’

Rowland settled comfortably to wait. The performance was delayed but he had expected that, given the security. All his equipment was to hand; he could assemble his weapon in less than ninety seconds and only in the final fifteen would even the most diligent observer recognise it for what it was. It would take him no more than a further fifteen seconds to aim and fire; a danger time of half a minute maximum.

If necessary, he would disable or kill anyone who got in his way quickly and quietly, just using his hands.

His escape route was simple but it would expose him to any hostile fire there might be for about fifteen seconds. There was no other option, though. The triforium provided an
excellent vantage point but the stairs leading to it were narrow and easy to block off. He had no choice but to use a rope over the rail down into the nave. In the field it would have been suicidal but here, with surprise to his advantage and the reluctance of the police to open fire, he stood a chance. They were not used to bold, experienced and above all fast protagonists; he had found that out in London. And if they did succeed in blocking the exit, he would simply take a hostage. On balance, he felt the odds of a clean escape were fair given the confusion he would be leaving behind and police hesitation to pull a trigger.

In the cathedral, the audience was unsure whether to applaud the arrival of the conductor and then the soloists. No one started to clap and instead, the vast nave settled into silence. The choir stood, children in the front rows. Fenwick sat down.

The opening bars were so quiet that the sound crept up on him before he had noticed. ‘
Requiem, requiem aeternam
.’

It had started – so normally and peacefully he was, for a moment, taken by surprise. He saw Octavia, dressed as a target again, sitting on the raised dais at the front of the choir. What he took for Nightingale’s head, rested beside her at knee height. Around the cathedral he could see officers, watching the watchers. By craning his neck upwards he made out the truncated shapes of uniformed and armed police side by side around the triforium. Immediately above him, their faces obscured by the wooden railings of the gallery, he could see the trumpeters resting their instruments on their knees.

The body of the sound recordist was hidden but he could see his feet and the woolly microphone peeking out of the woodwork to capture the music. It all appeared quite normal. In the cathedral, the first solo concluded without incident. He looked down and found he had twisted his programme into a tight, sweaty paper baton. He forced himself to smooth it out and flicked through the pages with a nervous twitch. He noticed Octavia’s picture appearing two or three times.

There was an interview with Octavia at the front of the programme – looking backwards to her schooldays, looking
forwards to her next tour and recording contract. Above him, the trumpeters responded to their cue from the bass and, in the words of the libretto, called the dead from slumber. Nothing else happened. She still sat there, calm, stunning the audience with her presence and the power of her voice every time she sang.

As the performance continued smoothly, with no interruptions or suspicious developments, Fenwick tasted relief and defeat and started to anticipate the sharp barbs of ridicule that would be his when the performance concluded and over one hundred officers made their way home. He made a quick calculation and estimated the probable cost of the police effort over the weekend; it was enough to blow their budget for the quarter and he would undoubtedly be held responsible. And yet he had been so sure that Rowland would strike today and he was tormented by the idea that he was still missing some vital clue to the man’s whereabouts.

Pushing the growing prospect of failure to one side, Fenwick went back over the events of the past few days – his conversations with Octavia, the checks they had done on all the musicians, the endless searches of the cathedral. Instinct told him that Rowland should be in the building. To have avoided the performance completely suggested a caution and infinite patience he doubted the killer still possessed. Despite his army training Rowland was a hunter working solo for nearly nine months. He had positioned himself close enough to smell his prey; it was unlikely that he would turn away now. Above all, Fenwick’s sixth sense for danger told him that Rowland was there, that something would happen.

Octavia was standing in front of him again now, a perfect target, but nothing happened. Around him thirty trained pairs of eyes scanned performers and audience constantly for signs of threat but obviously could see nothing unusual. The conviction that he had missed something vital grew as the seconds stretched to minutes. He went over in his mind every report that he could remember, silently replaying Octavia’s statements. Something was out of balance, a small fact was sitting out of
true and it pricked his brain each time he passed over it, but he could not see it.

A slight grating noise from above irritated Fenwick as he tried to concentrate. Octavia’s voice was echoing back from the high vaulted roof. He turned over the pages in his programme to find her photograph. His sweat had stained the paper and there was black ink on his palms. One page had to be peeled away from his right hand where he’d gripped it so tightly it had stuck fast. As he focused on the programme notes, Octavia’s photograph looked up at him, her smudged words strung out beside it: ‘I’m particularly looking forward to my next tour. It will be the most demanding I’ve done. And of course, when I return, I shall be starting on a major recording contract. As it will be the very first personal compilation, I’m obviously being careful about choosing the right company …’

A memory of a forgotten conversation with Octavia unfolded in Fenwick’s mind. They had been talking about her career and she had mentioned the recording contract. She had emphasised how important it was, the money it could mean. Would she have sanctioned a one-off recording of this concert right now? What was it she had said? Something about exclusivity. Fenwick looked around desperately for the chairman but he was in the front row. Could he risk complete disruption and potential disgrace on a hunch?

Above in the triforium, Rowland removed the five simple parts of the weapon smoothly from their casings and felt wrappings, his movements screened by a stack of equipment studded with meaningless flashing lights. People expected there to be odd bits of metal and lengths of wire around a sound technician; each individual element was innocent enough. The long sound boom that peeked from the wooden railing provided a basis for medium-range sights, perfectly aligned on the soprano’s chest based on measurements he had gathered during the rehearsal and week before. It had been very helpful to be able to insist on knowing precisely where each soloist would stand as part of his preparations. The far sight extended by millimetres from the
fluffy wool muffler; the other appeared to be a random lump of solder on the boom itself.

His hands worked smoothly by touch, his eyes continuing their playful charade of checking dial readings and sound levels. Only when the last piece clicked into place did he dare check that all was ready. He looked down and pulled back the wire, setting it in place to be released by a hair trigger. The bolt lay at the bottom of a tobacco tin cushioned by Old Virginia and Green Rizlas. The tin had never been searched.