Requiem Mass (52 page)

Rowland prized off the lid, annoyed by the slight ‘pluck’ as the air-tight seal broke. One of the trumpeters turned and glared at him swiftly. His fingers rummaged in the moist tobacco, found the smooth metal shank and traced along to the hardened steel tip. There were two bolts in the tin. He removed the first and laid it gently on the discarded felt by his side, the other he left on top of the tin by his hand. It was unlikely that he would have need of or time to use the second but he was always careful.

Rowland looked around him. There were six other people within immediate sight in the gallery; three trumpeters and three policemen – one by the door on his far right, one behind the musicians that were seated between him and the door and the other to his left at the end of the gallery. No one noticed his covert gaze although the police were looking around constantly, trying to keep alert during the performance. Despite their firearms training Rowland could tell that not one of them had come under fire before. It was his biggest advantage. Their inexperience would make them hesitate before pulling a trigger no matter what their training. He would have a significant tactical advantage.

Below him the mezzo-soprano began another solo; Rowland checked his score, it was the ‘Liber scriptus’. It was all so macabrely appropriate: ‘
Open lies the book before them, where all records have been written
.’ It had been the diary that had finally confirmed his suspicion – aroused by that awful letter from the past, his uncle’s dying words laying on him a doom far worse than any he could have imagined. He had sought revenge
and in his first blind hatred, Deborah Fearnside had died. Hers had been the most difficult death, perhaps the least justified. Her guilty memories babbled out in a desperate attempt to save her life only hinted, didn’t prove, what had happened.

And then Katherine Johnstone had died. He had been lucky, finding her diaries. Lucky that she had revealed so much in her adolescent scribblings. Three pages had told him all that he needed to know. He had kept them folded tight in his wallet, taking them out occasionally in moments of compulsive curiosity and disgust. Unconsciously, his hand moved to press them against his chest.

The mezzo-soprano sang on: ‘
What was hidden is uncovered. Naught forgotten, naught unpunished
.’ They were nearly all punished now. Leslie Smith was as good as dead. He had mistimed his acceleration, skidding slightly in the rain, but it didn’t matter. She had been a bit player, guilty only by association. Now there was only Anderson left. He could feel his anger grow again, blossoming in his chest. It was so fierce he wondered that it did not show, angry, red, glowing from the gallery.

There were only moments left before he would strike. Below him the chorus whispered the awful ‘Dies Irae’ with growing menace and the orchestra echoed their theme. He had the timings from the rehearsals noted on every page. In seconds they would storm in again in a sudden crescendo, before all sound died and they left the four soloists standing alone at the front of the dais.

Fenwick pushed his way to the side-room that had become the police centre of operations. There was no one there that he knew and Campbell turned his shoulder to whisper more closely into a hand-held radio mike. Fenwick ignored him and whispered urgently to the plain-clothes man huddled over the screens.

‘The letter from the recording company, has it been validated yet?’

The man looked bemused, then indifferent. He shrugged.

‘For God’s sake man, this is urgent. Where is it?’ Something
of his near panic communicated itself.

‘All the checklists and paperwork’s on the desk over there.’ He pointed to an old deal table in the corner, covered with forms, two laptop computers and a stack of hymn books. Fenwick nearly despaired but then he realised there was simple order in the chaos. A list of names, heavily scored through, was attached to a clipboard – letters, faxes and returned phone calls in a wire tray beside it. Fenwick found the letter from the recording company in moments. There was no indication that the director who had sent it had returned their calls. He looked down the list. On the second page he found the sound man’s name – it had not been ticked off, but then neither had several others.

He stood irresolute in the small room. Beyond the walls a woman’s voice sounded pure and distant.

Fenwick couldn’t work out where they were in the piece, whether it was Octavia singing or not. He stepped outside. A small figure in blue was standing alone in front of the choir. Relief flooded through him but was then washed away in turn by a wave of fear. His instincts were screaming at him to do something but he was confused. Was it just his screwed up emotions towards the woman destroying his judgement? All around him people were calm, sitting listening to a glowing performance, oblivious to everything but the glory of the music and the magnificence of the surrounding architecture. He could see police officers standing quietly to the sides of and above the nave. They appeared calm, alert yes, but not disturbed.

And then the quiet rumble of the ‘Dies Irae’ hit him, like distant thunder warning of a storm of gigantic proportions. He had no view of the triforium from where he was standing, as the narrow passage ran directly above his head. He risked audience displeasure and stepped out into the walkway that had been created halfway across the nave to allow access to the tightly packed seats.

There was a muffled ‘pop’ from above him. A woman tutted as he craned his neck upwards until he could see the sound boom and a man’s foot and calf. The technician had changed
his position. He looked down at the letter of authority still clenched in his hand and tried to remember Octavia’s words. It had been something about her tour, the importance of the recording contract that would follow it.

As the ‘Dies Irae’ rose to crash around him, he suddenly remembered: ‘My agent and I have it all planned: massive high-quality public performances for the next three months and absolutely
no
recordings – it’s a condition of all my contracts.’

There was no way she would have agreed to a recording of this performance and Katherine Johnstone would have been experienced enough not to organise it without her permission. There could be no recording deal – even the chairman of the organising committee had been unsure as to how it had been arranged, and surprised when the letter turned up.

Fear became certainty as Fenwick started running towards the staircase that led to the triforium, the sound of his feet lost in the noise from the chorus. But the sudden movement caught the eyes of the hidden watchers and they immediately became alert, tracing his every move, guns trained.

He reached the stairs as the music died behind him. He could hear the rustle as the choir sat, the expectant murmur as the soloists stood. The steep spiral staircase slowed him down, breaking his rhythm. At the top, the policeman by the door turned and tried to stop him even as Fenwick thrust his warrant card into the man’s face. He stumbled, half caught by the man who still insisted on blocking his path.

Octavia was standing proud at the front of the platform. Even at this distance her presence could be felt. Rowland slipped the crossbow bolt into the runner and eased the weapon into position. For a few brief seconds, he would be exposed as he took careful aim. The commotion at the door worried him not at all, his only focus now the woman in red before him. He aligned the sights and took up the pressure on the trigger. In a casual, smooth movement he found his mark and fired.

A huge weight fell on his shoulders. At first he thought a piece of equipment had overbalanced on top of him, then he
realised it was a man. Below him he heard screams and cries and despite his extreme jeopardy he smiled. He had no handgun, the searches had made that impossible, but there were always his knives. The man pinned his arms to his sides from behind. From the corner of his eye he could see his uniform. With all his strength he thrust his elbow into the man’s midriff and felt the gust of air from his injured lungs on the back of his neck. He found the flick knife strapped to his chest. It was small but sufficient. With casual elegance he drove it upwards under the man’s ribcage, avoiding bone and twisting as he went. The bullet-proof vest offered no protection for a blade and the young officer, who less than a minute before had been standing bored and tired behind the trumpeters, died instantly.

Rowland tried to pull the knife from the dead man as he fell but it held fast. It was useless, he needed the other. Crouching in the shelter of railings, grateful for the useless panic of the musicians to his right, he spared a few seconds to think and plan. To his left an armed officer was almost on him, prevented from firing because of the danger to the civilians around him.

By the doorway, another armed policeman had drawn his weapon and was desperately trying to aim across the heads of the trumpeters. Beside him another man was fighting his way through the crush to reach him. Rowland recognised Fenwick immediately. He mouthed the man’s name across the space, meeting his eyes for the first time.

Rowland’s route to the stairs was blocked, he could run the gauntlet of the long gallery but already others were running to block it off. He had this throwing knife left but couldn’t waste that. He glanced down below into the terrified audience. If he could find time to skim down the rope he had ready, he could pick one of them for a hostage.

The armed policeman to his right was on him, gun held close for a body shot. So casually that it could almost have been in slow motion, Rowland ducked, reached out and broke the man’s arm with an audible crack. Standing he lifted the agonised man and threw him heavily into the path of the others that were fast closing on him. He lurched for the rope tied to a thick
wooden pillar and pushed the length of it over the edge. Still crouched he swung his body over the railing ready to grab hold of the rope with his spare hand.

Rowland never quite made it. As his fingers brushed the rough cord there was a sharp retort from behind him, followed immediately by two more. Pain flared across his back and into his arms. His fingers refused to close on the rope and he fell, in a clumsy half-open somersault on to the chairs below.

It was an unlucky fall. The iron-framed chairs, vacated moments before, were rigid and unyielding, putting yet more strain on his spine as he landed hard across them. His back snapped. The last feeling he had was a sickening pop as he felt his legs and pelvis drift away from him and his body became entangled in the metal legs and spars as he lay on the marble floor. Within seconds he was surrounded by armed police.

Rowland could see his hands twitching uncontrollably and his own blood washing across the floor in a delicate stream. The pain was fading as he lay there and that worried him. Pain was a friend to the living. It’s alternative, the intense icy cold and blackness that threatened to engulf him, were the harbingers of death. He tried to say something and heard the air rattle in his throat. The sound was familiar. He knew with certainty now that he was dying. Still he struggled to remain conscious and to speak.

‘Fenwick.’ The name came out as a hiss. The barrel at his head jabbed into his skull and he was told to ‘shut the fuck up’. He looked up into the faces above him and recognised them at once. These were not beat bobbies deluded by flack jackets and intensive training into the belief that they could handle guns. These were professionals. Someone, somewhere had wanted him dead, not arrested, and they were succeeding. Still, he had to speak to Fenwick, to know before he died whether he had succeeded and that Octavia was dead.

‘Fenwick!’ The word died in a gurgle as the sole of a boot found his throat, the pressure choked the air from his lungs. He didn’t take it personally; someone was just following orders. Black spots were breaking before his eyes and muffled static filled his ears so that he didn’t hear the argument or struggle as
the man fought through the armed ring to reach him.

‘Let me through. Get the paramedics in here. For God’s sake, he’s not going to attack you now, he needs medical attention.’ Fenwick knelt carefully beside the dying man, trying to avoid the spreading puddle of blood around him. Slowly, Rowland’s eyes focused for the last time, finding Fenwick’s face. When he spoke his voice was a ghastly bubbling whisper.

‘Is she dead …? I must know, is she dead?’

Fenwick’s eyes gave him his answer.

‘Listen.’ He struggled to continue. ‘It isn’t murder … It’s justice … You’ll see … In my pocket.’

Pink froth bubbled at the corner of his mouth. He struggled to find his final words. ‘It’s up to you now, to finish it.’

Rowland’s head lolled sideways and his eyes glazed as his body was gripped by a final seizure.

Gingerly, Fenwick lifted the bloodied jacket from the dead man’s chest, millimetre by millimetre, half expecting some booby trap to take his hand. In an inside pocket he found a slim leather wallet and four carefully folded pieces of paper. Both were soaked with thick blood from an exit wound below Rowland’s shoulder. He removed them carefully by their corners and placed them in an evidence bag. He saw Cooper in the crowd and called him over. There was no way he was going to trust this evidence to these sudden strangers in the cathedral.

‘Here, get these over to forensics. And Cooper,
I
want the report on them both.’

Fenwick rose slowly, noticing the bloodstains on the knee of his trousers and jacket cuffs. Rowland lay in a twisted back flip on the floor, his arms flung out to either side, legs at impossible angles. He was a big man grotesquely feeble in death. Fenwick turned his back on him without a second look.

He walked down the long aisle in the nave towards the dais where a small crowd had gathered. The ambulance had just arrived and Nightingale was being helped outside towards it. She was grey-faced with pain but calm. She tried to smile as Fenwick approached her but it didn’t quite come off. He wanted to reach out and touch her – in comfort, sympathy, respect.
Instead he smiled back, gently touching the back of her hand. Nightingale recognised the unfinished gesture.