Orchestrated Death (5 page)

‘All normal,’ he said. As he worked, he had spoken his commentary aloud for the machine, and between comments he whistled.
Sometimes he forgot to touch the foot pedal, so the whistle got recorded too. This was particularly trying for the audio-typist
who transcribed his reports, for the machinery played the whistle back at a pitch which was quite painful through an earpiece.
She had spoken to him again and again about it, and he always apologised profusely, but it made no difference. He had always
whistled. He had begun it as a student thirty years ago, an assumption of insouciance which was designed to deceive himself
more than other people, and to stop him thinking of the cadavers as human beings; and the habit was so ingrained by now he
wasn’t even aware he was doing it.

‘Right, I think that will do,’ he said at last, switching off the machine and nodding to the assistant. ‘I’ll be off then.
I’ve got two more to do at Charing Cross before I’ve finished, and I promised Martha I wouldn’t be late tonight. She’s got
some ghastly people coming in for drinks.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Not much chance of making it before they leave, thank
God, but I’ll have missed the traffic, anyway.’

‘Goodnight, then, sir,’ said the assistant. When the doctor had gone, he had his own tasks to perform. The body would have
to be stuffed and sewn up, the skull packed and the scalp drawn back into place and stitched, and the viscera disposed of
in the incinerator. When this was done, he returned the body to the trolley and, because he was a bit of a perfectionist in
his own way, he fetched a damp cloth and cleaned it up. Dead bodies don’t bleed, but they leak a bit.

With a gentle hand he wiped the pink-tinged bone-dust from the face. Poor kid, he thought. It was tragic when they caught
it as young as that. And pretty too. From her label he could see she was unidentified, which struck him as odd, because she
didn’t look like the kind of girl no-one would miss. Still, sooner or later, someone would want her, so she ought to be made
a bit decent. Kindly he smoothed the hair back to hide the stitches, and then wheeled her back to her waiting numbered drawer
in the mortuary.

When you’re born, and when you die, a stranger washes you, he thought, as he had thought a hundred times before. It was a
funny old life.

It was silly weather for January, warm and sunny as April never was, and all down Kingsway there were window boxes crammed
with yellow daffodils. Pedestrians were either looking sheepish in spring clothes, or self-righteous and hot in boots and
overcoats, and the bus queues were suddenly chatty.

Only the paperseller outside Holborn Station looked unchanged and unchangeable in his multifoliate sweaters, greasy cap, and
overcoat tied in the middle with baling-string. His fingers were as black and shiny as anthracite from the newsprint, as was
the end of his nose where he had wiped it with his hand. He scowled in disproportionate rage when Slider asked him where the
Orchestra’s office was.

‘Why don’t you buy yourself an
A ter Z?
he enquired uncharitably. ‘I’m not Leslie Fuckin’ Welch, the fuckin’ Memory Man, am I? I’m here to sell papers. Right?
Noos-
papers,’ he added fiercely, as if Slider had queried the word. Slider meekly bought the noon edition of the
Standard,
asked again, and was given very precise directions.

‘Next time ask a bleedin’ policeman,’ the paper-seller suggested helpfully. Am I that obvious? Slider thought uneasily as
he walked away.

The office turned out to be on the third floor of a building that had known better days, one of those late-Victorian monsters
of red brick and white-stone coping, a cross between a ship and a gigantic birthday cake. Inside were marble-chip floors and
dark-panelled walls, and a creaking, protesting lift caged like a sullen beast in the centre of the entrance hall, with the
stairs winding round it.

There was a legend on the wall inside the door, and Slider looked up the Orchestra office’s location, considered the lift,
and took the stairs, flinching when the lift clanged and lurched into action a moment later, and loomed past him, summoned
from above. He didn’t like its being above him, and hurried upwards while coils of cable like entrails descended mysteriously
inside the shaft.

On the third floor he found the half-frosted door, tapped on it, and entered an office empty of humanity, but otherwise breathtakingly
untidy, crammed with desks, filing cabinets, hat stands, dying pot plants, and files and papers everywhere in tottering piles.
On the windowsill amongst the plants was a tin tray on which reposed a teapot, a caddy, a jar of Gold Blend, an opened carton
of milk, and a sticky teaspoon. The empty but unwashed mugs were disposed about the desks, evidence to the trained mind that
coffee-break was over. A navy-blue cardigan hung inside-out over the back of a chair which stood askew from a desk on which
the telephone rang monotonously and disregarded.

Soon there were brisk footsteps outside in the hallway, the door was flung open, and the cardigan’s owner hurried in, bringing
with her the evocative scent of Palmolive soap, and reached for the telephone just as it stopped ringing.

She laughed. ‘Isn’t it maddening how they always do that? I’ve been waiting for a call from New York all day, and just when
I dash out to the loo for a second … Now I suppose I’ll have to ring them. Can I do something for you?’

She was a small, slight, handsome woman in her forties; shiny black hair cut very short, large-nosed face carefully
made-up, a string of very good pearls around her neck. Slider would have known even without looking that she was wearing a
white blouse, a plain navy skirt with an inverse pleat at the front, navy stockings, and black patent-leather court shoes
with a small gold bar round the heel. He felt he knew her well: he had met her a hundred times in the service flats round
the back of Harrods or the Albert Hall; in Kensington High Street; in Chalfont and Datchet and Taplow. Her husband would be
a publisher or an agent, something on the administrative side of The Arts, and their son would be at Cambridge.

Slider smiled and introduced himself and proffered his ID, which she declined gracefully with a wave of the hand, like someone
refusing a cigarette.

‘How can I help you, Inspector?’

Slider was impressed. Few people nowadays, he found, could call a policeman ‘Inspector’ or ‘Officer’ without sounding either
self-conscious or rude. He produced the mugshot.

‘I’m hoping you may be able to identify this young woman. We have reason to believe she may be a violinist.’

The woman took the picture and looked at it, and said at once, ‘Yes, she’s one of ours. Oh dear, how awful! She’s dead, isn’t
she? How very dreadful. Poor child.’

That was quick of her, he thought. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Anne-Marie Austen. Second fiddle. She hasn’t long been with us. What was it, Inspector – a traffic accident?’

‘We don’t yet know how she died, Mrs –’

‘Bernstein. Like the composer,’ she said absently, looking at the photo again. ‘It’s so awful to think this was taken after
she – I’m sorry. Silly of me. I suppose you must get used to this sort of thing.’

She looked up at Slider, demanding an answer to what ought to have been a rhetorical question, and he said, ‘Yes and no,’
and she looked suitably abashed. He took the photo back from her. ‘As I said, Mrs Bernstein, we don’t yet know the cause of
death. Do you know if she had any chronic condition, heart or anything, that might have been a factor?’

‘None that I know of. She seemed healthy enough – not that I saw much of her. And she hadn’t been with us long –
she came from the Birmingham about six months ago.’

‘I was wondering,’ Slider said musingly, running his fingers along the edge of the desk, ‘why she hadn’t been missed? If one
of your members doesn’t turn up, don’t you make any enquiries?’

‘Well, yes, normally we would, but this is one of our quiet periods. We’re often slack just after Christmas, and in fact we
haven’t any dates for the Orchestra until the middle of next week.’

‘I see. And you wouldn’t contact your members in the mean time?’

‘Not unless some work came in. There’d be no need.’

‘When did the Orchestra last work together?’

‘On Monday, a recording session for the BBC, at the Television Centre, Wood Lane. Two sessions, actually – two-thirty to five-thirty,
and six-thirty to nine-thirty.’

‘Was Anne-Marie there?’

‘She was booked. As far as I know she was there. I don’t attend the sessions myself, you know, but at any rate, nobody has
told me she was absent.’

‘I see.’ Another little piece had slipped into place in Slider’s mind – well, quite a big piece really. It explained why the
girl was in that area in the first place. She finished work at nine-thirty at the TVC, and half an hour or so later she was
killed less than half a mile away. Probably she had met her murderer as soon as she came out of the Centre. Someone might
have seen her walk off with him, or get into his car. ‘Did she had any particular friends in the Orchestra?’

Mrs Bernstein shrugged charmingly. ‘Really, I’m not the person to answer that. I work mostly here in the office – I don’t
often get to see the Orchestra working. The personnel manager, John Brown, would be able to tell you more about her. He’s
with the players all the time. And she shared a desk with Joanna Marshall – she might be able to help you.’

‘Shared a desk?’

‘Oh – the string players sit in pairs, you know, with one music stand and one piece of music between them. We call each pair
a desk – don’t ask me why.’ Slider gave her an obedient smile in response to hers. ‘Desk partners, particularly at the back
of the section, are quite often close friends.’

‘I see. Well, perhaps you could put me in touch with Miss Marshall, and Mr Brown. And would you give me Miss Austen’s address,
too?’

‘Of course, I’ll write them down for you.’ She went to a filing cabinet and brought out a thick file containing a computer
print-out of names and addresses. Flicking through it she found the right place, and copied the information onto a piece of
headed paper in a quick, neat hand.

‘The phone number of the office is here at the top of the sheet, in case you want to ask me anything else. And I’ll put my
home number too. Don’t hesitate to contact me if you think I can help.’

‘Thank you. You’re very kind,’ Slider said, pocketing the paper. ‘By the way, do you know who was her next of kin?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t. The members are all self-employed people, you see, and it’s up to them to worry about that sort of thing.’
The quick dark eyes searched his face. ‘I suppose she was murdered?’

‘Why do you suppose that?’ Slider asked impassively.

‘Well, if it was all above board, if she’d tumbled downstairs or been run over or something, you’d have said, wouldn’t you?’

‘We don’t yet know how she met her death,’ he said again, and she gave him a quick-knit smile.

‘I suppose you have to be discreet. But really, I can’t imagine anyone wanting to kill a child of her age, unless –’ She looked
suddenly distressed. ‘She wasn’t – it wasn’t –?’

‘No,’ said Slider.

‘Thank God!’ She seemed genuinely relieved. ‘Well, I should think Joanna Marshall would be your best bet. She’s a nice, friendly
creature. If anyone knows anything about Anne-Marie’s private life, it’ll be her.’

Out in the street again, Slider tried the name out on his tongue. Anne-Marie Austen. Anne-Marie. Yes, it suited her. Now he
knew it, he felt as though he had always known it.

John Brown’s telephone number produced an answering machine inviting him tersely to leave a message. He declined. Joanna Marshall’s
number produced an answering machine giving the number of a diary service, which Slider wasn’t
quick enough to catch the first time round. He had to dial again, pencil at the ready, and took down a Hertfordshire number.
The Hertfordshire number rang a long time and then produced a breathless woman with a dog barking monotonously in the background.

‘I’m so sorry, I was down the garden and the girl seems to have disappeared. Shut up Kaiser! I’m sorry, who? Oh yes, Joanna
Marshall, yes, just a minute, yes. Today? And what time? Oh, I see, you want to know where she is? Shut
up
Kaiser! Well I’m afraid I can’t tell you, because she’s not working this afternoon. Have you tried her home number? Oh I
see. She’s not in trouble, is she? Well all I can tell you is that she’s on tonight at the Barbican. Yes, that’s right. Seven-thirty.
Kaiser get
down,
you foul dog! I’m sorry? Yes. No. Of course. Not at all. Goodbye.’

Slider left the telephone box and walked back into Kings-way. The sunshine and warmth had persuaded the proprietor of an Italian
café to put tables outside on the pavement, and two early lunchers were sitting there, remarkably unself-conscious, eating
pizza and drinking bottled lager, blinking in the sunshine like cats. A mad impulse came over Slider. Well, why not? His morning
cornflakes were a distant memory now, and a man must eat. He hadn’t been in an Italian restaurant in years. He lingered, looking
longingly at the tables on the pavement, and then went regretfully inside. He’d feel a fool. He hadn’t their sureness of youth
and beauty and each other.

He plunged into the dark interior, into the smell of hot oil and garlic, and felt suddenly ravenous and cheerful. He ordered
spaghetti with
pesto
and
escalope alla rustica,
and half a carafe of red, and it came and was excellent. The frank, pungent tastes worked strangely on his palate, accustomed
as it was to sandwich lunches and grilled chops and boiled vegetables at night: he began to feel almost drunk, and it was
nothing to do with the wine. Anne-Marie, he thought. Anne-Marie. His mind turned and fondled the name. Was she French? Did
she like Italian food? He imagined her sitting opposite him now: garlic bread and gutsy wine, talk and laughter, everything
new and easy. She would tell him about music, and he would regale her with the
stories of his trade which would all be new to her, and she would marvel and be amused and admire. Everything was interesting
and wonderful when you were twenty-five. Until someone murdered you, of course.