The Mozart Conspiracy

Chapter Sixty-Five

The latecomer had never been in this place before, but he’d been reading about it very recently. He kept his coat collar turned up and drew the peak of the baseball cap lower down over his face. He walked quickly, a little stiffly, turning right, left, right again. Here, away from the public areas, the walls were plain and some parts still looked unfinished since the last restoration. He passed some stage assistants carrying a wooden prop that looked like part of a stone battlement, performers in costume, looking nervous and checking sheets of music notation. There was activity and bustle around him-everyone too distracted and psyched up about the show to notice him. He avoided eye contact and pushed on. He could hear the sound of the orchestra, muted and damped in the background.

Suddenly he was backstage and the music was much louder. It was hectic here in the crowded wings, people everywhere, a million things going on at once to keep the huge show rolling. A stage director was hissing orders in Italian at some flustered-looking crew members. Everyone was tense, and high on adrenaline.

Too many people. This wasn’t a good place to be. He walked on quickly and pushed through another door and followed the red carpet. This looked more like what he was looking for. Decorative plants in tall porcelain vases lined the walls on both sides with doors between them. At the end of the corridor, a good-looking woman in a long yellow dress was talking to two men. He slipped into a room with a sink in one corner and some mops and buckets in another. He pulled the door to, and through the crack he watched the people leave.

He stepped out of the cleaner’s room.

‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice.

The man turned round slowly. The usher was a good few inches shorter than him. The man looked down at him and said nothing. He kept his face low, so that the visor of the cap covered a lot of it.

‘This area is for stage personnel and performers only,’ the usher said. ‘You’ll have to leave.’

The man didn’t understand the quick-fire Italian, but he got the message. He raised his head a little. The usher’s eyes opened wider. He couldn’t help himself. Most people had that same look of revulsion when they saw his face. That was why he wore the cap.

The usher was standing there gaping at him. The man laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let me explain something to you,’ he said in English. He moved him out of the middle of the corridor to where it was a little shadier, near to the door of the cleaner’s room.

He killed him quickly and quietly. It was easily done and there was no blood. He propped the body against the inside wall of the cleaner’s room and snicked the door shut. He turned the key, slid it out of the keyhole and dropped it into a plant pot.

He walked on until he found the door he was looking for. It had her name on it. He slipped to one side. He took a phone from his pocket, pressed a preset number and spoke quietly to the person on the other end. Then he waited.