The Tooth Tattoo

29

‘What’s the boss up to now, letting them record their party piece?’ Ingeborg asked on the drive to Newton Park.

‘Don’t ask me,’ Halliwell said. ‘We had all four in that house this morning. We could have pulled them in and got to the truth.’

‘There’s a change in him today. He’s more like he used to be.’

‘Cocksure and pushy?’

‘I was going to say frisky, but I guess it’s much the same.’

‘As if he knows something we don’t.’

‘By the way he’s behaving, anything is possible. Only it could be down to something else,’ Ingeborg said. ‘His love life is looking up. He came in wearing aftershave this morning.’

‘Doesn’t he usually?’

‘Only when he’s seeing Paloma.’

They parked behind the Michael Tippett Centre and zigzagged around clusters of gossiping students on their lunch-break towards the two digital recording studios. Diamond was waiting outside, still unmistakably frisky. ‘Don’t look so hard done by,’ he said. ‘I’ve asked and this lasts only sixteen minutes.’

‘For one take,’ Halliwell said. ‘They’re never satisfied with one.’

Diamond hadn’t thought of that. ‘Today, they have to be.’

‘Have they all turned up?’ Ingeborg asked.

He nodded. ‘And so has Douglas Christmas.’

‘I’d almost forgotten him.’

‘He’s in there already. Shall we join him?’

Extra seats had been placed at the rear of the narrow control room. The technical team were already manning the digital audio workstation, headphones on, testing the controls. Through the glass the Staccati were seated in the usual formation, violinists to the left and Mel and Cat right. Deep in concentration, they were fine-tuning, obtaining the A from Ivan and making their own small adjustments. In addition Cat and Mel would compare C strings, a wise check for accuracy allowing that the pitch of the instruments was an octave apart. There was an air of anticipation, that mix of excitement and nerves that is the dynamic of any performance.

Diamond took the chair beside Douglas. ‘Glad you made it here.’

The manager nodded. ‘I support them whenever I can. After all, they’re my breadwinners.’

‘Enjoy your last meal, then.’

Douglas clearly missed the point but registered with a grin that it must be humorous. In fact, he followed with a quip of his own. ‘And what are you chaps doing here — making an arrest?’

Diamond said straight-faced, ‘All in good time.’

‘Are you familiar with the piece?’

‘That would be an overstatement.’

‘I’d better warn you, then. It can be difficult to the untrained ear, even brutal.’

‘Up my street, then.’

Everyone smiled.

‘Ghastly news about Harry,’ Douglas said. ‘A sad end to a fine musician. I’m going to suggest they dedicate this to his memory.’

‘Difficult and brutal?’

Douglas was lost for words. Clearly he wasn’t on Diamond’s wavelength.

The producer touched a switch on the console and spoke through his mic to the artists. ‘How are we doing, folks? Almost ready to go?’

In the studio Ivan turned to the others and got their agreement. He raised his bow towards the window.

‘In your own time, then. We’re running now.’

The players took their cue from Ivan and began.

The overture, as the composer termed it, of the Grosse Fuge, made no concessions. It demanded attention to what amounted to snatches of unrelated music separated by long pauses that would only have relevance as the piece developed. Eventually they would be identified as a kind of running order for what was to come, but perversely Beethoven had turned the whole thing on its head and started with the finale.

Fair warning.

The sound was relayed to the control room for the benefit of the little audience. The technicians in their headphones concentrated on getting the ideal mix, oblivious of any conversation from behind them. There was a voice speaking. At the back, Diamond had begun a performance of his own.

‘While this goes on I’m going to explore the evidence and see if we can agree what actually happened. We have three unexplained deaths, three murders as it turns out, with the Staccati featuring in some way in each one.’

‘The common factor,’ Halliwell said, rather like the second violin developing the theme.

‘Let’s start in reverse order,’ Diamond went on. ‘Why was Harry killed? On impulse, apparently. The opportunity presented itself and the killer snatched the gun and shot him. If you’re planning a murder you can’t expect your victim to supply the loaded weapon. So it was unplanned. A crude attempt was made afterwards to suggest it was suicide. Crude and poorly executed.’

‘There must have been a reason for the killing,’ Ingeborg said.

‘There was. Harry had to be silenced.’

‘Why?’

‘It goes back a long way. He had unfinished business with the quartet. He naively supposed he could return and get their support in proving he was innocent of Emi Kojima’s murder in Vienna in 2008. The Austrian police had been led to believe she drowned herself, but the yakuza knew better. They knew the netsuke she was carrying in her clothes — a suicide emblem — wasn’t a statement of intent, but a sample obtained on their instructions and for their inspection. She had been working for them, brought to Vienna to get the inside story of the trade in ivory objects, and they were angry. They decided, rightly, that she had been murdered. Harry was the obvious suspect and they removed two of his finger joints to try and extract a confession. But Emi’s death was a mystery to Harry. He couldn’t say who killed her, or why.’

‘What a nightmare,’ Ingeborg said. ‘It’s bad enough being tortured for information, but when you don’t have the information to give, that’s too horrible to imagine.’

Diamond was trying to keep imagination out of it. ‘Harry remained in terror of the yakuza. He’d escaped and gone into hiding, but he lived in constant fear of being caught again and put through more agony, or executed. When he learned that the Staccati were fully functioning again and were in Bath with a new violist he decided to visit his former colleagues and ask if they knew the truth of what happened in Vienna in 2008. He returned to Britain, rented a car, drove to Bath with the idea of observing them first, armed with a gun for his own protection. After so much had gone wrong in his life he was cautious.’

‘Can’t blame the guy, after all he’d gone through,’ Ingeborg said.

Diamond continued the story. ‘But first came the shock of Mari’s body being discovered in the canal, another Japanese woman murdered and disposed of in the same way. What was he to make of it? Could one of his old colleagues be the killer? He wasn’t sure which of them he could trust.’

‘Mel,’ Halliwell said. ‘Mel was the new man. And he thought Mel hadn’t been in Vienna.’

‘As we later discovered, he had, playing with the London Symphony Orchestra, but Harry didn’t know that. To Harry, Mel was clean, the new man, his replacement as viola player. So Harry tracked him down to where he was living and after watching the house for a time and nearly getting caught at it, he plucked up courage and visited there to find out from Mel how things currently stood. A calculated risk. Fortunately they got on well, particularly because there was no threat of Harry claiming back his place in the quartet. After the loss of his finger he would never play again. The meeting passed off peaceably and Harry planned his next move. He would make an approach to Anthony.’

‘Why Anthony?’ Ingeborg asked.

‘Because he could rely on him to tell the truth. There’s no sophistry with Anthony. He gives it to you straight if he gives you anything at all. That’s a symptom of his condition. So if Anthony knew what really happened in Vienna — even if he had killed the woman himself — Harry had a chance of extracting a truthful account. He drove to Westmoreland Street last night and waited for the right moment.’

The quartet were already into the second section and it was complex. The essence of any fugue is that a melody or theme known as the subject is introduced and then taken up by each of the other players until all four are weaving an elaborate mesh. Connective passages lead on to other variations of the theme. That can be demanding enough. Here, Beethoven had a double fugue in play from the start, a remorseless deluge of counterpoint, savage in its intensity. The term ‘brutal’ that Douglas had used was not unwarranted. Fingering too quick for the eye to follow, frenetic bowing and faces taut with concentration testified to the severity of the journey through this jungle. The players were at the limit of what was musically possible.

Diamond, too, was developing a difficult new subject. The music wasn’t entirely lost on him; he expected to evoke moods of disquiet and dissonance that matched. ‘For the moment let’s leave Harry sitting in his car outside Anthony’s place. I want to return to the night Emi Kojima was murdered in Vienna. Remember she was a talented musician herself. She’d been chosen by the yakuza as the honey trap for Harry, to get the lowdown on his ivory trading. She attended the recital at the Konzerthaus and made a point of approaching the artists afterwards and talking intelligently about the music. She was there to pull Harry, and she did. Later in the evening the other players were drinking in the hotel bar and saw Harry get into the lift with Emi, the last time she was seen alive.’ Diamond turned to Douglas. ‘You were there that night.’

Douglas jerked as if he’d been punched. Up to now he’d been staring through the glass, obviously trying to give the impression he wasn’t listening to Diamond. ‘Aren’t you interested in the music?’

‘It’s over my head,’ Diamond said. ‘You’ll be able to hear it on disc later. I’m asking about Vienna, what was said in the hotel bar.’

‘I hope you’re not suggesting I had something to do with these tragic events.’

Diamond smiled. ‘I don’t mind telling you I’ve had my suspicions. You seemed to be around at the critical times.’

‘It’s my job. I’m their manager.’

‘Yes, and just to be certain, I made a call before coming here to check if you were in London this morning, and you were. You couldn’t have shot Harry.’

‘I’m glad that’s clear, then. I don’t kill my own clients, even ex-clients. What did you just ask?’

‘What was the talk about Harry in the Vienna hotel bar?’

‘It was a long time ago,’ Douglas said. ‘I think we passed a few remarks. He was up to his old ways with the ladies, that sort of thing. He had a spicy reputation.’

‘Anything else?’

A shrug and a sigh. ‘We were all quite relaxed about it, as I recall. We recognised the young woman as the music buff who came up after the concert. Someone — it may have been me — laughingly suggested she might have been trying to lure Harry away to the Tokyo Quartet. Good violists, you see, are much in demand. And Vienna is the place where musical wheeling and dealing is done.’

‘It wasn’t a serious remark?’

‘Not from me, of all people. I didn’t want anyone to defect.’

‘Would the others have taken it lightly?’

Douglas tilted his head one way and the other like a parrot under scrutiny. ‘Cat will have laughed it off, or topped it with something more outrageous. You never know how Ivan or Anthony will react. They can get far too uptight and obsessive about the quartet, but I don’t think they rose to the bait. I honestly can’t remember how it was left. Soon after, we all went to bed ourselves.’

As if on cue, the quartet had started the third part, a more accessible sequence at a slower tempo, tender by contrast with what had just gone before. The players’ faces reflected the lyrical nature of the theme. The lines of anxiety had gone from Ivan’s brow. Beside him, Anthony’s lips had formed into something near a smile. Mel was leaning back as he played. And Cat had time to brush away a wayward strand of hair.

Diamond resumed. ‘Emi didn’t remain all night with Harry. She left after they’d had sex and she’d persuaded him to part with the netsuke. Earlier, she’d given the impression she was a guest at the hotel, but this wasn’t true. She was under instructions to report back to the yakuza with the netsuke. She took the route beside the river Wien that links to the canal and she must have been followed. Someone was deeply alarmed about her.’

‘Harry?’ Halliwell said. ‘He’d worked out what this was all about?’

‘Unlikely. He wouldn’t have dropped her into the canal without recovering the netsuke. After all, it linked her to him. But someone attacked her and almost certainly strangled her and dumped the body in the canal. The reason, the motive, is the key to this whole mystery.’

In the studio, a dramatic change in the music sent the players careering into the fourth part. The jarring fugal themes returned at full pitch, outrageous in complexity, skewed into ever-changing variations, playing havoc, twisting, reversing, rollercoasting into dissonance and darkness. Eyes wide, the musicians strove to stay with it, the strain as extreme as it gets.

‘We can’t consider the killing of Emi without leaping forward to Mari Hitomi,’ Diamond said. ‘The deaths are related. We know for certain that Mari was strangled and thrown into the Kennet and Avon canal. The same method of disposal. And why? Because up to this time the killer appeared to have got away with the first murder this way. A rotting corpse recovered after weeks in water doesn’t yield many clues. If she hadn’t been identified from the tooth tattoo we might never have made the connection. Once we had the facts, the parallels were striking. Two Japanese women with knowledge of classical music who attended Staccati concerts and approached the players afterwards as fans. Two women who ended up murdered in canals. What can we get from that?’

‘The killer had a thing about Japanese women?’ Halliwell said.

Ingeborg rounded on him. ‘What do you mean — a “thing”?’

‘I don’t know what psychologists would call it. A love-hate complex? All his sexual fantasies revolve around Japanese women.’

‘Ivan,’ Ingeborg said at once.

‘I’ve been thinking hard about Ivan,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s a regular visitor to the geisha houses. He told me himself that he visits Kyoto and plays the three-stringed instrument with the geishas. These aren’t knocking-shops. They’re highly respectable places controlled with long-established rules. It’s genuinely about traditional culture. But with my suspicious mind I wondered what really motivates Ivan. Is he secretly wishing he could have sex with these unattainable women? And when a Japanese woman says she’s a fan and wants to hang out with the quartet, does it start an adrenaline rush in Ivan? Is he transferring all those pent-up desires to these hapless women? It’s not difficult to see how it could get nasty if, for example, they reject the advance.’

‘How would it have happened?’ Ingeborg said.

‘He’d see Emi going up to the hotel room with Harry and he’d wait for her to come out. Something similar with Mari. He thinks because the geishas dance attendance he’s got a special way with all Japanese women. With these two it doesn’t work out and he turns violent.’

‘Is that it?’ Ingeborg said. ‘Ivan is the killer?’

Behind the glass they could see Ivan’s piston movement with the bow, ferociously rising to the demands of the score while the fingers of his left hand kept a continuous vibrato in play.

‘He seemed more shaken than anyone else when Harry reappeared this week,’ Diamond went on. ‘He recognized him in the car and kept the knowledge to himself. When I called on him at his lodgings he was fearful that I was Harry. I had to threaten to knock the door down.’

‘Did Harry know Ivan was the killer?’ Halliwell asked.

‘Harry knew nothing. Ivan was in a state of near-panic because he thought Harry wanted reinstating as the Staccati violist. He didn’t know about the missing finger. Ivan can’t take disruption. He wants the quartet to stay as it is. After four years in the wilderness they had only just got back to peak performance again. He had no strategy for dealing with Harry. As a chess player that alarmed him.’

‘So the panic wasn’t because Harry could turn him in?’

In the studio, the ferocious drive of the violins reached a pitch of intensity that caused Diamond to break off.

There was a difference of tone when he resumed. ‘When all is said and done, these crimes aren’t down to Ivan,’ he said with certainty. ‘Remember he’s the controlling one, the chess expert. There was too much left to chance, too many mistakes, too many unknowns. Do I have to go over them again? He wouldn’t dream of attempting a murder without a master plan. Ivan would make sure he committed the perfect crime.’

‘I can agree with that,’ Douglas said. ‘He covers every angle.’

‘Is it Anthony, then?’ Ingeborg said.

‘What’s the case for Anthony?’ Diamond said. ‘The ball’s in your court.’

‘Pretty straightforward,’ she said. ‘He’s obsessive, autistic, liable to tantrums. Yet he’s no child. He has a sex drive and visits prostitutes. He’s been around when each of the killings took place. Harry was murdered right outside the house where he lives.’

‘Why would he have killed these women?’

‘Because he has no ability to relate to us,’ she said, as if speaking for all women. ‘He can’t form relationships. We’re sex objects, and that’s it. The tragic irony is that he’s a young, attractive-looking guy who is going to appeal to women. But when they show interest he assumes it’s sex they want and if they don’t immediately respond he kills them.’

‘Simple as that?’ Diamond said.

‘Issues are simple for Anthony.’

‘So you’re saying he murdered Harry as well?’

‘Harry made the mistake of parking outside Anthony’s lodging and sitting there. Anthony went out to him and asked what he wanted. Harry started asking awkward questions about what happened in Vienna and Anthony grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger.’

‘Do you know this for sure? You interviewed him.’

Assertive as Ingeborg liked to appear, she was sometimes betrayed by a blush and it happened now, spreading with the speed of a flash fire. ‘I didn’t in fact get much from him. I’ve told you my theory.’

‘You think he shot Harry because questions were asked about the killing of Emi?’

‘Awkward questions.’

Diamond was shaking his head. ‘Awkward questions aren’t awkward for Anthony. What’s done is done. He gives it to you straight. He told us what happened this morning, how he went out and saw the bullet-hole in Harry’s head and how he told his landlady and she phoned Cat.’

‘Yes,’ she said, still pressing her theory, ‘but what he didn’t say is what matters. He didn’t say he’d gone out to the car and shot Harry last night, which I believe is what happened. You didn’t ask him, so he didn’t tell you.’

‘In fact I put the question to him when I first got to the scene before you came,’ Diamond said. ‘These were my actual words to Anthony: “Do you know how Harry was shot?” He shook his head and I insisted on a verbal answer and got one. He gave me a clear “No”. Are we all agreed that he speaks the truth?’

Douglas said, ‘Every time. Even when it’s uncomfortable for other people.’

Halliwell said to Ingeborg, ‘You took his statement. Did he say anything about speaking to Harry last night?’

Her gaze slipped away to the musicians pounding out a fortissimo passage in great sobs of sound, and then came back to Diamond. ‘All right, guv. I agree with you. Anthony is in the clear.’

There would have been a pause for thought if thought was possible in a maelstrom.

When the volume decreased a little, Halliwell said, ‘That leaves the least likely.’

‘Mel?’ Ingeborg said, mystified. ‘He’s only just joined them. Anyway, he’s not violent. He’s a normal, well-adjusted guy.’

‘We all know how you feel about Mel,’ Halliwell said.

‘That’s below the belt. If you remember, I commented after first meeting him that he thinks he’s God’s gift to women.’

‘So we’ve got that clear,’ Diamond said to get some order in the ranks. ‘Shall we examine the case for Mel being the killer? You say he only just joined them, Inge, and that’s true. However, we discovered he was in Vienna performing with the London Symphony Orchestra in 2008, in the month Emi was killed. Coincidence, or evidence of guilt?’

‘Pure chance. There’s nothing to connect him with Emi or the Staccati at that time,’ Ingeborg said.

‘But he does act like God’s gift,’ Halliwell couldn’t resist quoting her. ‘From all we hear, he shags anything that moves — his landlady’s daughter and probably his landlady as well. We know what Emi’s profession was and we know she was a musician herself. He could have coupled with her. We can’t rule it out.’

‘What — strangled her and dumped her in the canal? Mel?’ Ingeborg said with scorn.

Diamond said, ‘There’s a story about Mel that may have some bearing on this.’ He turned to Ingeborg. ‘About his viola being stolen outside the Festival Hall. You were there with me. You heard him tell it.’

‘I know. A really mean trick on somebody’s part,’ she said, ‘but I don’t see the relevance, guv.’

‘Can you recall the details? You and I heard it, but Keith hasn’t and it may be new to Douglas.’

In a slightly mystified voice Ingeborg started repeating the tale. ‘He was on his way home from a concert at the Festival Hall one night and this student stopped him and asked for his autograph.’

‘Stop there,’ Diamond said. ‘You’ve missed the point. She was from the Far East.’

‘Why does that matter?’ She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh. He’s got a thing about Asian women. He was tricked by this one and never forgot it.’

‘Finish the story.’

For the benefit of the others, she told it to the end. ‘It didn’t strike me as important at the time,’ she added. ‘I suppose it could have turned his mind.’

‘Let’s move on,’ Diamond said. ‘Mel joins the quartet. They recruit him. He doesn’t go looking for the job. But here in Bath he’s as likely as anyone else to have met Mari at the concert she attended.’

‘He claimed to have no memory of her,’ Halliwell said.

‘He would, wouldn’t he?’ Diamond said. ‘I don’t see that as significant. He could have fixed to meet her later, on some pretext like a walk along the towpath.’

‘And strangled her because she reminded him of the girl who set him up for the mugging?’ Ingeborg said. ‘It still seems far-fetched.’

‘Unless you can think of a better motive.’

Halliwell returned to the point he’d made already. ‘He’s a letch. These women came onto him and he responded.’

‘You mean a murdering letch,’ Diamond said. ‘In other words, a psychopath.’

‘We don’t know if either victim was killed as part of a sex act, but they could have been. The bodies were too far gone to show any signs.’

‘They were dressed,’ Ingeborg said, contemptuous of Halliwell’s theory.

‘Doesn’t mean nothing happened,’ Halliwell said.

Diamond wanted to move on. The sixteen-minute fugue was at least two-thirds through. ‘I’m willing to look at that. But what would have caused Mel to shoot Harry, a totally different kind of killing?’

‘We agree Harry knew too much for the murderer to allow him to live,’ Halliwell said.

‘Or was too curious and likely to find out the truth,’ Ingeborg chimed in. ‘Harry had visited Mel earlier the same night. Something he said caused Mel to panic. He knew where to find him. It was obvious Harry would try and see Anthony next.’

‘What’s all this? Are you warming up to the idea of Mel as the killer?’ Diamond said to her, faintly amused at the U-turn.

‘He knew Harry was carrying the gun. He may have thought he could fake a suicide.’

‘Hang on a minute,’ Diamond said. ‘Let’s inject some reality into this. The reason Harry called on Mel last night is that he felt safe with him. He’d get the updated story from him. If he’d thought for a moment that Mel was the killer he wouldn’t have gone near him. They had their conversation and he left in peace. And even supposing Mel is the murderer, how would Harry know? At the time Emi was murdered, Harry wasn’t around. He was in bed in his hotel room. We all agree Emi had sex with him and left the hotel alone after midnight. And as for Mari, if Mel had some kind of date with her in Green Park, we don’t even know if Harry was in the country by then. The first time he was spotted was less than a week ago. Mel had no reason to kill Harry. Mel is innocent.’

A crescendo from the Staccati appeared to salute this conclusion.

There was another short period when nothing was spoken and the control room was filled only with the dissonant wail of the strings.

‘We’ve eliminated them all,’ Ingeborg said.

‘Except one.’

The fifth and final part of the Grosse Fuge restores sanity. It picks up and develops the transparent, tuneful theme that was briefly employed in the second part. It is recognizable Beethoven, a coda in pianissimo that pacifies and pleases.

‘To quote a smarter sleuth than any of us,’ Diamond said, ‘ “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” ’