The Tooth Tattoo

19

‘Is that it?’ Diamond asked. The clapping had finished and everyone was moving.

‘Only the interval,’ Ingeborg said.

‘God help us.’

‘Be thankful for small mercies.’

He stood up to get the feeling back into his legs. The seats weren’t the most comfortable. At the same time he looked across to where Paloma had been.

She’d gone.

He’d spent much of the concert debating with himself whether to go over and speak to her. She had definitely spotted him. It seemed churlish to go through the evening without saying anything. Yet weeks had passed with no contact and the last words she’d spoken had been about as final as you can get between people in a relationship. He wasn’t good at peacemaking.

And yet...

If she’d come here alone, he told himself, he would have seized his chance. She might well have given him the frost, but at least the pain would be private to the two of them. The new companion — or whatever he was to her — made any approach a minefield. Diamond knew for sure that if the dog’s dinner pitched in with backchat or sarcasm he’d give him more than a mouthful, and what use was that? Paloma would side with her new man and a bad situation would get massively worse.

‘I’ll be back presently,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Oh, sure.’

Needing to get his head straight as well as pumping some blood into his legs, he stepped over to the nearest wall and stood in front of the pictures. They held as much interest for him as outdated copies of Country Life in a dentist’s waiting room. Reynolds, Romney and Rubens weren’t his choice of painters. The Diamond theory of art required scenes and figures that looked real, as these did, but not so laboured over that they lost all vitality. He preferred the style of Hockney, fresh, bold and cheerful.

‘Didn’t expect to find you here.’

He swung round and there she was. Give Paloma her due: she wasn’t letting their recent history stop her from speaking to him.

No problem now with circulation. Heart thumping, he managed to say, ‘Likewise. How’s it going?’

‘Fine. And you?’

‘Soldiering on.’

Something was different about her, apart from the hair colour. He realised her eyes were level with his. Those crazy heels made her taller.

But the eyes weren’t angry, as he’d seen them last. Her mouth curved upwards. ‘In all the time I’ve known you, string quartets were never mentioned.’

‘That’s for sure. I’m no expert.’

‘But it’s nice you’re giving it a try. The Staccati are about as good as it gets. Did Ingeborg persuade you to come?’

She’d spotted Ingeborg, then. What did she think — that he was dating one of his team? ‘No. I invited her in case I made a fool of myself clapping in the wrong places.’

‘Is she into classical music?’

‘Not really. As an ex-journo, she’s done most things.’ He’d skirted around the real reason for his presence here. Paloma seemed so encouraged that he was doing the cultural bit that he didn’t want to disillusion her and admit he was on police business.

‘Invitations to these soirées are hard to come by,’ she said.

‘I got ours through Georgina. She’s well connected.’

‘Through her choral singing? Of course. So did you enjoy the Beethoven?’

‘I’d have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t got pins and needles in my legs. The seats aren’t the most comfortable.’

‘I know what you mean. I wanted to stand up halfway through. I expect they hired them specially for the concert.’

‘Those look better.’ He was eyeing the long row of padded chairs ranged along the wall below the pictures.

‘They’re Chippendale,’ Paloma said, ‘and not for sitting on. Not these days, anyway. I’ll tell you something that will amuse you. See the fabric they’re covered with? What do you notice about it?’

‘Matches the walls?’

‘Right. It’s exactly the same stuff, crimson silk damask. At some point the original chair coverings got worn to shreds and needed replacing. Unfortunately the same fabric couldn’t be got for love nor money, so some bright spark came up with the idea of cutting out patches of the wall-covering from behind the pictures and using them on the chairs. If you took the pictures down, you’d see a lot of large square holes. It means they can’t change the arrangement, so they’re stuck with this crowded display that was okay two hundred years ago, but looks all wrong now.’

‘How did you find out?’

‘I know the house well. It’s sometimes used for period dramas. Northanger Abbey. The Remains of the Day. They usually get my help.’

‘Should have realised. Seeing you here, I didn’t think of that. Is the business thriving?’

‘Doing okay. And yours? Still keeping the crime rate down?’

He smiled. ‘Mostly.’

‘How’s Raffles?’

‘The same, running the house the way he likes.’

The small talk would run out soon. Diamond hadn’t found out for certain if she was in a new relationship.

‘People seem to be returning to their seats,’ Paloma said.

‘Where exactly are you?’ he asked as if he hadn’t been watching her all evening.

‘Over there. Third row back. You haven’t met Mike, have you? The tall guy in the light grey suit. He’ll be wondering where I am. Better get back to him. Enjoy the rest of the music.’

She was away. A civilized exchange had been ruined for him by the way she spoke about the dog’s dinner: Mike — not Michael, but the shorter, more familiar name, suggesting a closeness that hit Diamond like a low punch. The very fact that she’d left the guy alone for the whole of the interval indicated that they’d passed the stage of dating. He’ll be wondering where I am. She could have been talking about her husband.

Diamond slunk back to his seat.

Ingeborg was already looking at the programme. ‘The cellist is doing a solo next.’

‘Ah.’

‘ “Salut d’Amour”.’

Cat Kinsella’s arrival was warmly applauded. The confident way this woman with the girth of a sumo wrestler carried in her cello and positioned it between her knees spoke volumes for her temperament. She began playing with a clear, strong note.

Elgar’s bittersweet music was never going to lift Diamond out of his low mood, but he was here for a reason and by degrees he forced himself to give all his attention to Cat. What was it that made her prefer playing in the quartet to giving solo performances like this? By all accounts she was in the first rank as a cellist, capable of any of the great concertos in the repertoire. She could be a virtuoso, a top name in her own right.

There are people who think of themselves as team players. Mostly they relish the support of those around them. He wasn’t sure if this was true of the Staccati. They were more like talented individuals who tolerated each other. Of the four he’d met, Cat had the most regard for the others. She spoke well of them all, even the nitpicking Ivan. With her sharp wit, she was good at defusing tensions between the men. As the solitary female, did she see her role as a peacekeeper or something more? Were they a foster family for a woman without children of her own? Or was she living the dream that she had three lovers? Who could say what her sexual fantasies might be — or what actually happened.

Out here alone, the focal point of the entire room, interpreting Elgar with skill and sensitivity that even Diamond could appreciate, she still left him puzzling how it could be that she was happier when performing with the men around her.

The piece came to a plaintive end. She stood and dipped her head as the audience responded. Seated again, and as if to demonstrate that there was another side to Cat Kinsella, she launched into the ‘Ritual Fire Dance’. The audience had its passions well stirred and quite forgot that it was middle class in middle England in midwinter.

‘How about that?’ Ingeborg said over the cheering at the end.

‘Best I’ve heard tonight.’

‘Me too.’

Difficult to follow a turn as gripping as that. Next on was Mel Farran, the new member. He looked even more ill at ease than when he’d made his original entrance with the others. He knocked one of the music stands with his foot and almost tipped it over. Some of the bandage on his hand had come unstuck and he had to press it back into place. Mel clearly wasn’t comfortable in this situation. Before he played the first note he seemed to be scanning the rows as if he expected a gunman out there. Diamond watched, intrigued. All right, chum. The worst you’ll see is a couple of detectives you’ve already met, and they ought to give you confidence. If you’ve done nothing wrong, that is.

Mel played two pieces by Fritz Kreisler. Once under way, he became calmer and so did the audience. Difficult for Diamond to tell whether he was playing well. More out of relief than anything else the audience gave him a generous reception, after which he was joined by Ivan Bogdanov for an arrangement for viola and violin of Handel’s Harpsichord Suite No. 7 in G minor. The two blended well.

While the piece was being played, Diamond’s concentration wasn’t total, or even partial. He’d heard almost as much of this stuff as a man could take in one evening — a man whose musical education hadn’t up to now stretched beyond Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé singing ‘Barcelona’. His attention wandered to the huge painting over the mantelpiece, a particularly gruesome hunting scene. People mostly on horseback were slaughtering wolves and foxes with clubs and spears. Dead and dying animals testified to the success of the day’s sport. A strange backdrop for a musical soirée. How ironic if one of the quartet turned out to be a killer.

All four returned to play the last piece on the programme, Andante Festivo, by Sibelius. At this stage of the evening the term ‘strung out’ summed up Diamond’s condition in more senses than one. But the piece was mercifully over in about five minutes. Then to his despair the audience demanded an encore. They wouldn’t stop clapping.

Ivan led the musicians off.

‘Thank God,’ Diamond said to Ingeborg.

She said, ‘Hang about, guv. They’re coming back.’

Diamond’s buttocks flexed. Amazing any life was left in them.

Ivan stepped forward to speak. ‘We would like to offer you a piece neglected by many ensembles: the Sibelius String Quartet in D minor, Opus 56.’

Huge applause.

The buttocks went into spasm. Another entire quartet.

As if he was a mind-reader, Ivan continued, ‘But it’s late and unfortunately we don’t have time for the entire composition, so with apologies to Sibelius we’ll pick it up at the start of the fifth and final movement. Thank you for being such a splendid audience.’

The quartet knew what they were doing. Whatever it was that made the Sibelius a neglected quartet, its climax was a sure-fire audience-pleaser, the Allegro, dynamic, demanding and impassioned. When the bows were lifted from the instruments a standing ovation followed. Diamond was among the first to rise. He needed no prompting.

‘I’ve become a fan,’ Ingeborg told him. ‘Wasn’t that awesome?’

‘Yes, but don’t overdo the clapping.’

‘Such talent. It’s almost impossible to believe one of them could be...’

‘I can believe it, no problem,’ he said.