E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 324 Seiten
Reihe: DCI Lorimer
Gray Shadows of Sounds
1. Auflage 2011
ISBN: 978-0-7490-0918-2
Verlag: Allison & Busby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
The compelling Glasgow crime series
E-Book, Englisch, Band 3, 324 Seiten
Reihe: DCI Lorimer
ISBN: 978-0-7490-0918-2
Verlag: Allison & Busby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
ALEX GRAY was born and educated in Glasgow. She has worked as a folk singer, a visiting officer for the Dept of Social Security and an English teacher. She has been awarded the Scottish Association of Writers Constable and Pitlochry trophies for her crime writing. Married with a son and daughter, she lives in Bishopton, near Glasgow, and writes full time.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Weitere Infos & Material
Detective Chief Inspector Lorimer pressed the mute control on the TV remote as his mobile rang out. His eyes watched the silent antics of figures on his screen as he listened to a voice that demanded his full attention.
‘OK. I’ll be there,’ Lorimer spoke into the phone. ‘About twenty minutes.’
He flicked the red button and turned his attention to the television once more. A man and woman were having a heated argument. He could see her lipstick-red mouth wide open. The man was slapping the table between them noiselessly. Lorimer switched them off. He knew how it would end. They’d come over all sweet and sorry later on just as they always did. That’s why this soap opera had such a huge following, he thought. With its happy endings it was so unlike real life. He couldn’t have explained why he’d started to watch it after Maggie had left. She’d have been appalled at how hooked he’d become.
Anyway, this wasn’t getting him nearer the start of a new case. And, from what he’d just heard, there certainly weren’t going to be any happy endings. There were squads of men being called out from every Division in Glasgow to cope with this one. There would be a whacking great overtime bill by the time all the punters had been screened. Not to mention the musicians. And they’d had a bloody great Chorus on stage too, just to compound the logistical nightmare. Lorimer shook his head. Sometimes it wasn’t so bad being a mere Detective Chief Inspector. At least he didn’t have to worry about budgeting all of the time.
Lorimer shrugged himself into the jacket that had been hanging on the handle of the lounge door. The remains of a Chinese takeaway lay on the coffee table beside a half empty bottle of Irn Bru. He’d tidy them away later, he assured his absent wife, along with the week’s supply of newspapers strewn across the floor. For a moment Lorimer stared into space, seeing the room as it had been only two months before. It had never really been tidy what with Maggie’s piles of jotters to mark and both of them leaving books in various corners but now it was simply neglected. Then, at least, the place had been vacuumed and dusted, he supposed, or whatever she’d done to make it comfortable. But the difference was really more than mere housework, if he was honest with himself, much, much more.
With a grimace at the sight of it, Lorimer switched off the light and headed for the front door.
‘Chief Inspector Lorimer.’
The Security man at the stage door looked keenly at Lorimer’s warrant card then into the face of the tall man who stood just inside the doorway.
‘Mr Phillips, the Orchestra Manager, is waiting for you upstairs, sir,’ he said. ‘Trish will show you the way.’ Neville, the Security man beckoned forward a comfortable looking middle-aged woman. Lorimer recognised her steward’s tartan uniform. ‘Aye, it’s up here, Chief Inspector,’ Trish started to smile at him, but pursed her lips almost immediately as if she realised that the circumstances demanded some gravity of demeanour. Lorimer followed the woman up a steep staircase and through two sets of heavy swing doors. As they walked along a brightly lit corridor Trish cleared her throat.
‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? The poor wee man.’ She risked a glance into Lorimer’s face but he didn’t offer any comment in reply. The woman gave a sigh, whether about the passing of George Millar or Lorimer’s reluctance to engage in conversation, he didn’t know. They reached the end of the corridor, pushed through another two sets of swing doors and entered an open area that had a low ceiling and no windows. Lorimer saw with some relief that it was already full of uniformed policemen. Some were behind hastily erected trestle tables and taking statements from the musicians who were still in evening dress. A couple of officers from his own Division looked up as he came in, acknowledging his presence with a nod.
‘They’ve set up their stuff in here,’ said Trish. ‘It’s where the Chorus and musicians usually assemble just before they go on stage. Mr Phillips should be around somewhere. Oh, there he is,’ she told him, just as a figure in dark tails approached them.
Lorimer’s first impression of Brendan Phillips was of a slight, rather dapper man whose smooth, boyish face belied his age. He was probably in his late thirties, Lorimer reckoned. Not much younger than himself.
‘Chief Inspector, thank goodness you’re here,’ Brendan Phillips seemed on the point of reaching out to take Lorimer by the hand, but after one look at the policeman’s face, the Orchestra Manager’s hand fell to his side. Trish, Lorimer noticed, had vanished discreetly.
‘The Doctor said you would want to go straight to the dressing room. Where the body is,’ Phillips added in deliberately hushed tones. Lorimer followed the man out of the claustrophobic room. Round a corner, they emerged onto the entrance to the stage.
The auditorium was brightly lit and there were full spots still directed onto the stage itself. Both, mercifully, were empty. Lorimer followed the Orchestra Manager across the front of the stage, skirting the music stands and the Conductor’s podium. Several instruments were lying in their cases on the pale, varnished floor. Lorimer had to squeeze past a large harp as Phillips took him towards the stair leading to the other stage exit. He noted a booth with a board full of controls and a close circuit television that showed the empty stage. His policeman’s eyes also took in the CCTV cameras angled at regular intervals from the ceiling.
‘Who found the body?’ Lorimer asked.
When Phillips turned back to answer, Lorimer noticed that he didn’t meet his eyes.
‘I did,’ he replied. ‘It’s my responsibility to ensure that all the performers are on stage in time. It’s customary to fetch the Leader and the Principals personally from their dressing rooms. It’s part of my job,’ he added with a sigh that seemed to come from his well-polished shoes.
The Orchestra Manager walked on as he spoke. Round a corner they came to another, smaller assembly area.
The regulation incident tape had been fastened across an opening to the left. Phillips stopped and gestured towards an open door leading to a corridor on their right. It was parallel, Lorimer noticed, to another corridor that disappeared into darkness, its ceiling lowered by massive metal tubing. Rows of open fiddle cases lined a shelf on one side.
‘These are the Artistes’ dressing rooms. The first one, Lomond, is for our conductor. Morar is where …’ he broke off uncertainly.
‘Where you found the body,’ Lorimer finished for him. ‘And then you called Security, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ the man looked thoroughly miserable now, no doubt recalling the event that would give him nightmares for weeks. Lorimer nodded briefly and headed for the second room along the corridor that had been reserved for the late Leader of Glasgow Concert Orchestra.
‘Well, hello there, stranger,’ a blonde head turned to look up at him as Lorimer stepped carefully into the room.
‘Ah, Rosie,’ Lorimer grinned back at the pixie face below him. Doctor Rosie Fergusson, Lorimer’s favourite pathologist, was on her knees beside the body, her diminutive frame wrapped inside a clean white boiler suit.
‘I’ll just wait out here, shall I?’ Phillips called out, hovering in the doorway.
Lorimer frowned but before he could speak, Rosie answered for him, ‘That’s fine. Just keep the masses away from here. We don’t want to contaminate this area any further. OK?’
‘Yes,’ Phillips seemed uncertain if he should stay around but clearly didn’t relish the prospect of being in such close proximity to whatever they were planning to do with George Millar’s corpse.
Lorimer turned back to the Orchestra Manager. This time he laid a consoling hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Look. You’ve had a pretty tough time tonight. Why don’t you stay down in Security meantime? I’ll catch up with you when we’re finished in here.’
Brendan Phillips gave a grateful nod. The man looked simply defeated, thought Lorimer. A dead body might be all in a day’s work for Rosie, and to a lesser extent for a DCI but, Lorimer reminded himself, it was surely outside the experience of the average Orchestra Manager.
‘Well. what have we here?’ Lorimer joined the pathologist at the entrance to the tiled bathroom. The preliminary examination had taken place, he supposed. George Millar’s body still lay face down, but Rosie would have taken the body temperature as a first measure.
‘Time of death?’ he queried.
‘How did I know you were going to ask me that? You’re so predictable, Lorimer,’ Rosie teased. ‘Not that long ago, actually. The body was still warm when I got here, but rigor was coming on so I’d narrow it down to say he died two to three hours ago.’ She looked at her watch. ‘That’s about half an hour, or less maybe, before the concert was due to start. This room’s pretty well heated but I don’t think that complicates the timing too much.’
‘Good. So any CCTV footage from about seven o’clock onwards should show us who was around this particular dressing room,’ Lorimer mused.
The fact that so many...
