Dead End

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  ‘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?’

  ‘Was he really that bad?’

  ‘Are you kidding me! You’ve heard me complain about conductors before.’

  ‘Yes, but everyone complains about bosses. It’s a way of getting through life. Was Radek really worse than anyone else?’

  ‘Well, just to give you an example, we rehearsed the Mahler yesterday at Morley College, and he brought the entire second fiddle section in in the wrong place twice. Then he was so rude to the principal second – you know, Sue Caversham? – that he reduced her to tears, and that’s not easy to do, because Sue’s a tough cookie – you have to be, to be a woman and get to the front desk. And then the bastard threatened that if it went wrong again today she’d lose her job. I mean, what was she supposed to do? If she hadn’t followed him in, if she’d hung back and come in at the right place, he’d have bawled her out just the same.’

  ‘Can he do that? Get one of you sacked?’

  She made a face. ‘Not officially. We’re all self-employed, as you know. Officially we are the orchestra and the orchestra is a self-governing body, so it’s us who hire him. But in reality a man as powerful as him can do what he likes, and the management won’t cross him for fear of losing his favour.’

  ‘But if he’s so terrible, why do you have him at all?’

  ‘He’s got recording contracts,’ she said simply. ‘It’s work, you see, what we exist for. The contracts go where he goes, and if he doesn’t like us, he’ll take them to another orchestra. So we have to kiss his boots. Had to, I should say,’ she remembered. ‘All contracts are now cancelled, by order of the Great Agent in the Sky.’

  Slider was silent a moment, absorbing all this. ‘So there may have been people with reason to want to kill him?’

  ‘Almost everyone he’s ever met, I should say. Old Buster must have been the only creature on the planet that loved him.’

  ‘Well, thank you. You’ve been most helpful,’ he said, but it came out sounding coolly official, and it broke the mood between them. He looked at her, felt awkward, and saw her feeling awkward back.

  ‘That’s all right. Just doing my duty as a citizen,’ she said flippantly.

  He plunged, suicidally. ‘Oh Jo, can’t we—?’

  ‘Now don’t start that again, please. You know my feelings. Can’t we leave it at that?’

  ‘No, we can’t,’ he said, a little angrily, and she looked surprised. ‘It’s crazy to ruin both our lives like this, when—’

  ‘My life isn’t ruined, thank you very much,’ she interrupted stiffly.

  ‘Well mine is!’

  ‘That’s not my fault.’

  ‘I never said it was. Did I ever blame anyone but me? I do understand your position, but—’

  ‘No, I don’t think you do,’ she said with feeling. ‘You think I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face—’

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘—but you altered the basis of our whole relationship. Look at it from my point of view: for two years you keep me dangling in limbo, and then when you find yourself all alone with no-one to come home to at the end of the day, you can’t get to me quick enough.’ She looked away unhappily. ‘Maybe you just want a housekeeper, and any woman would do. Someone to wash your socks.’

  ‘I don’t want you for that. How can you think it?’

  ‘Well of course you don’t think you do,’ she said, quite kindly. ‘But I don’t know that our being together would make us happy. And I’m not sure I want to take a chance on which of us is right.’

  She said ‘I’m not sure’ rather than ‘I don’t want to’, he noticed. It was little enough to pin his hopes on, but it was all he had; and besides, with a serious case to run, now was the time for consolidation rather than trail-blazing.

  ‘All right,’ he said meekly, ‘but you will help me with this case, won’t you? You know how helpful you can be to me, someone who knows the music scene, and knows my world; one foot in each camp so to speak—’

  ‘If you want a native interpreter, Jim Atherton knows the music scene,’ she said shortly.

  ‘But I don’t fancy him.’

  It was probably a stupid time to risk a joke. Cancel probably: she was looking at him with narrow suspicion.

  ‘I told you, you can’t put a scam past me. I’m a witness, and I’ll do my duty as a citizen, but that’s all. This isn’t a foot in the door, Bill. It’s over between you and me.’

  ‘Between you and me, maybe, but not between me and you,’ he said painfully.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she looked as if she meant just th
at. ‘For it to work, I would have to have come first with you, and I didn’t. You can’t change that.’

  The troops had arrived and were disposed about the band-room taking statements, which would later all have to be read and evaluated. Talk about making work for yourself, Atherton thought, coming back up to the vestry; but at least most of them would be short. ‘I didn’t see anything, can I go now?’ The police doctor who had come to pronounce Radek’s life extinct also pronounced Keaton unfit for further questioning, gave him a tranquilliser, and recommended he be sent home. Atherton could see for himself that the old boy was past anything at the moment: he sat pale and trembling like a vanilla blancmange, and any time he tried to speak it spilled over into helpless tears again.

  ‘We’ll get you a taxi to take you home,’ Atherton said. ‘Is there someone we can contact for you, who can come and be with you?’

  That brought more tears. Keaton, it seemed, had lived alone with Radek, doing everything for him, and going home to the empty house was going to be painful.

  ‘Is there somewhere else you’d prefer to go?’

  But no, when he managed to get the words out, Keaton made it plain he wanted to go home. ‘I just want to be alone. You’re very kind, but I need to be alone.’

  Atherton let it go, and Whittam went to look for a taxi. ‘We’ll have to come and see you, and ask you some questions,’ Atherton said. Keaton raised sodden eyes. ‘You must be the person who knew Sir Stefan best. You can help us understand the situation.’

  ‘Very well,’ Keaton said wearily.

  ‘Can you tell us who his next of kin is?’

  ‘His daughter,’ Keaton said. ‘Fay Coleraine. She’s his only relative. Do you want her telephone number?’

  Atherton took it down. ‘We’ll break the news to her,’ he said. ‘I’m sure you won’t feel like doing it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Keaton whispered. ‘You’re very kind.’

  ‘I must just ask you now, before you go – did you see the man who did it?’

  ‘I – I caught a glimpse. I was more – more concerned – with Sir Stefan.’

  ‘I understand. But did you recognise the man?’ A shake of the head. ‘Have you ever seen him before?’

  ‘No. I told you, I only caught a glimpse of him.’

  ‘Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to harm Sir Stefan? Had he any enemies?’

  Another shake of the head. ‘No. How could he have? He was a wonderful man. A great artist. The nation loved him.’

  The nation was not in the frame, Atherton thought; but there was evidently no point in pursuing it now. Whittam came back in. ‘We’ve got a cab at the door. Do you want me to come with you, Buster?’

  Keaton shook his head numbly. Whittam glanced at Atherton, who shrugged minutely. It was only five minutes away, and the man had said he wanted to be alone. One had to assume that adults could decide such things for themselves.

  ‘I’ll see you into the cab, anyway,’ Whittam said kindly, and put his hand under Keaton’s elbow to help him to his feet. The old boy did look very doddery, but that might have been the trank taking effect.

  ‘We’ll call on you tomorrow morning, Mr Keaton, if that’s all right,’ Atherton said. ‘Just to ask you a few questions.’

  Keaton turned and fixed Atherton with a red and angry eye. ‘Find him,’ he said in an unexpectedly strong voice. ‘Find the man who did this terrible thing.’

  ‘We will,’ Atherton said, and Keaton gave him a nod and shuffled away on Whittam’s motherly arm.

  Atherton went downstairs to Radek’s dressing-room. Some effort had been made here to soften the ecclesiastical grimness of the basement: the bare brick walls had been painted with cream gloss, and there was crimson carpet on the floor, whose sumptuousness was only marred by the number of component pieces it was in. It must have been an extremely narrow left-over – presumably a spare bit from an aisle somewhere. There was a table against one wall, with an upright chair before it and a large mirror on the wall over it, with a strip light above. A four-hook coat rail was fixed to the wall in the corner behind the door, and a dark overcoat was hanging on it – presumably Radek’s. Against the wall opposite the mirror was an ancient armchair, and a smaller table on which stood a water carafe and a tumbler. Both were empty and dry, presumably put there in readiness for the evening. On the other side of the table was a minimalist two-seater sofa, upholstered in a rather loud purple and orange velours which went with the crimson carpet like sardines and blancmange. Its apparent lack of conviction as a sofa suggested it might turn into an equally unsatisfactory bed, as though performing two functions badly were the same as performing one well. On the sofa was a large, double-depth briefcase, open, and a narrow black fibreglass briefcase, closed.

  A second door opposite the first led to a small, damp-smelling bathroom which contained an open-fronted shower cubicle with a fixed head and no curtain (fat lot of use, Atherton commented inwardly), a lavatory pedestal, a hand-basin fixed to the wall with a mirror above it, a thin roller-towel hanging on wooden rollers to the side of it, and a metal waste-paper basket on the floor. Still, he thought, it was luxury compared with what the orchestra had, which was two identical rooms between eighty of them, and an extra unisex loo in the passage with a wet floor and a cistern which took eighteen minutes to refill after flushing.

  The light was on in Radek’s bathroom; the soap and towel had been used, and in the bin there were several used tissues, a crumpled paper bag from Boots containing the outer cardboard container from a new tube of Germoloids, a smeary wad of cotton-wool, and a used baby bud. Atherton turned hastily away and went back into the dressing-room. He examined the overcoat first: navy cashmere and wool, silk lining, Austin Reed label inside. Smart but not ostentatious. In the pockets were a plastic comb, not very clean, a pair of washleather gloves, old and worn comfortable, a South Bank car park ticket dated a week ago, a handkerchief, unused, and three anonymous boiled sweets in plain wrappers, the sort that hang about in cute wicker baskets round the tills of certain restaurants.

  He abandoned the coat and went to look at the two cases. The small one contained two conductor’s batons in a contoured velvet interior designed to hold three. Atherton lifted out one side of the contouring, and underneath found a snapshot of a young woman on a beach holding up a very fat baby to the camera. It was obviously an old photograph: judging by the unconvincing colours and the white border round the picture he’d place it in the early seventies. There was also, curiously, a paper drinks coaster bearing in curly script the name The Ootsy-Tootsy Club (shouldn’t that be Hotsy-Totsy? he frowned) and underneath in small letters Ningpo Street, Kowloon. He turned it over. On the back in melting Biro was written Beda and 3–671111, presumably a telephone number. He slipped it gently into his pocket.

  The briefcase contained three scores, a notebook with a lot of musical scribble – notes in both senses on interpretations – and that day’s Grauniad; an engagements diary pretty well filled in for the year; some correspondence from the agent concerning today’s concert; a quantity of laudatory cuttings (did he read them before going on, to stiffen his resolve?); a clean pair of socks; a battered metal glasses case containing a pair of spectacles with gold frames; a sponge bag containing toothbrush, toothpaste, nail brush, face-cloth, dental floss and baby buds; a packet of laxative chewing-gum, opened, one stick missing; a packet of twelve Phensic, opened, two missing; a packet of twenty-four Actal, opened, six missing; and a bottle of milk of magnesia, in its box, but half empty and very crusty about the neck, as though it were regularly swigged from rather than poured into a spoon.

  ‘A regular little pharmacopoeia,’ Atherton said aloud.

  ‘That’s one word for him,’ said Des, appearing at the open door at that moment. ‘Des for Desirable’ he sometimes introduced himself, and he wasn’t quite joking; and somehow – irritatingly – his conviction that women couldn’t resist him tended to be borne out by women themselves. He was tall and well-built, wit
h glossy, insistent black eyes, and if he wasn’t handsome he at least had thick dark hair and all his own teeth, which gleamed between full lips and in contrast with his year-round, gypsy-swarthy tan. He was wearing today an almost transparent cheesecloth shirt, artfully tight across his pectorals and open far enough down to reveal a glimpse of black shiny hair with a cute little solid gold ingot on a chain nestling amongst it. His trousers were also tight enough to have made further contraception unnecessary, outlining his fierce gluteal muscles behind and leaving everything to be desired at the front.

  Atherton knew him by reputation from Joanna and one or two other musicians, and had met him a few times when hanging around waiting for Joanna, with or without Slider. He was friendly enough, so secure in his own irresistibility that he didn’t regard other men as rivals but as also-rans.

  ‘Hullo,’ Atherton said. ‘Did you want me?’

  ‘Come for the old bugger’s goods and chattels,’ Des said, gesturing towards the briefcases. ‘Old Buster’s howling for ’em.’

  ‘I thought he’d gone.’

  ‘Got as far as the cab and realised he’d left ’em behind. Didn’t want anyone pawing through the Holy Grail, so Tony asked me to come and get ’em.’

  ‘I’ll have to make a note of the contents first,’ Atherton said. ‘It looks as though he was a bit of a hypochondriac,’ he added, glancing at the pills he still held in his hands. Des after all was the person in the orchestra who probably had most to do with Radek.

  ‘Tell me about it! The ailments were as unattractive as the man: constipation, piles, bad breath!’

  ‘By his works shall ye know him,’ Atherton suggested.

  ‘Yeah,’ Des said with enthusiasm. ‘That’s what made him late this afternoon, you know – one of the things.’

  ‘What, bad breath?’

  Des grinned. ‘He was stuck on the loo, moaning. I came in looking for him just as he was coming out with his tube of Germoloids in his hand. Old Buster was furious. He’s a real vicar’s daughter, Buster – doesn’t like the mention of anything rude like toilets or botties, especially in connection with His Majesty. Screamed at me like a parrot when I came in – “Can’t you knock?” As if I didn’t know enough about his precious lord and master! I felt like telling him a few truths!’