Richard Jury Mysteries 10: The Old Silent (47 page)

Jury breathed again and looked over to Macalvie near the stairwell,
then to Plant, who was sweeping the balcony with his opera glasses.

The band had been at it now for nearly an hour . . . another forty,
fifty minutes to go. They didn't break.

Jiminez and the keyboardist, Rivers, traded a few impro-visational,
intuitive licks that gave the audience some breathing space and Charlie
time to towel off his head. The two spots separated now, one following
Jiminez and one Raine as they broke into a trade-off of technical
wizardry, Alvaro on a funky blues line that backed off into a classical
progression—Bach, it sounded like. Jury smiled in spite of the tension
that made his arms, his back ache. The old "back-porch blues man"; it
was an ear-bending mix of perfectly amplified acoustic and heavy slide
distortion on Jiminez's electric.

Jury felt the crush of people behind him, people before him, people
standing in the aisle, backs against the wall, cheering. He edged
forward to stand beneath the Exit sign, couldn't see because of the
reflection from the spot. Both of the lighting technicians were
following their targets with the light—

Prom his position by the stairwell, Macalvie frowned, squinted at
the stage. The spotlights were out of sync. The one light was following
the black guy, Jiminez, who was moving all over. The other was fixed;
it wasn't on Raine, wasn't following him, though his movements were
sparse. He stepped into it and stepped out. Hunched down, Ma-calvie
started moving along the aisle, toward Jury.

Plant whipped the opera glasses quickly from the stage back to the
spotlight. It was in a pool of darkness, and all he could see of the
operator was a chap in a leather jacket and a cap who seemed to be
adjusting something near the bottom of the huge spot. Beside it was a
gig bag.

The noise as Macalvie tried to muscle his way through the knots of
devotees turned the Odeon into a compression chamber. For chrissakes—

Jury saw both of them coming, had his hand on the revolver in his
shoulder holster, moved slowly along the wall.

He should have realized it: of course it wouldn't be Charlie's
solo, where the audience was as hushed as a sleeping baby; it would be
like this, a trade-off of technique between Charlie and Alvaro that
whipped the house up into a frenzy. They were playing together but they
stood absolutely apart.

Charlie was sending fiery arpeggio runs across the long stage;
Jiminez was addressing them with those heavily distorted power chords.
It was a complex, killer duet that kept the audience in a state of
controlled havoc with little spills of applause all along the way for
Charlie's shot, for Alvaro's return.

Plant couldn't move all the way up to the rear, cross it, and go
down again. There wasn't time. He jumped up on the empty seat and used
the whole row as a clattering path to the other side, followed by
outraged shouts to get the fuck down and the bloody hell out of the
way. Along the way he sent at least one illegal tape recorder, a couple
of beer cans, and a waving Sirocco T-shirt flying into the air with his
cosher and might (given the crack) have broken the wrist that tried to
pull him down.

It wasn't a gig bag.

The folding stock of the rifle clicked into place and she raised it
so that the barrel jutted through the bars of the circle. It was the
perfect hiding place, with herself in a pool of darkness, the light
huge and blinding. And who would pay much attention to whoever was
operating the Super Trooper? She was between it and the wall anyway.

Jury was crouched, holding the Wembley with both hands. "Rena." The
word cut through the noise just like the snick of a safety.

"Hold it right there," said Macalvie, who'd drawn out a .38.

Rena fired a half second before the commands, out into the theater,
toward the stage.

Wes Whelan did a total turn, and yet still came down on the one,
hitting all the punches, not missing a lick.

The others hesitated, looked at him, and hit their instruments
again, following his lead.

As she swung the rifle, catching Jury in the sight, Melrose tossed
his coat at the gun. Macalvie threw himself at her legs and raised the
butt of his pistol. The spotlight fell across Rena Citrine and hit the
floor with a hideous crash.

And now, thought Jury, comes the hard part.

Panic in a theater filled with over a thousand people.

In the second row, Carole-anne and Mrs. Wassermann were yelling,
jumping, applauding the drummer and Jimi-nez, who had picked up on this
improvisational mix. The people round them were distracted momentarily.
But those nearest were staring in frozen silence for what Jury knew
would last only seconds before the panic started. The audience in the
stalls hadn't picked it up yet, but bad news travels fast. He pressed
the radio button, spoke into it.

Melrose Plant, seeing Macalvie and Jury throw them-selves at Rena
Citrine, calmly lit a cigarette and turned to the several dozen people
nearest and said, "That's show biz, ladies and gentlemen."

A woman screamed. It was one of the shrillest noises Jury had ever
heard.

He got off his knees, looked down at the stage, and as soon as he
thought it—for God's sakes, Mary Lee!—here she came . . .

Nervous, hobbling on the stiltlike heels of her glass slippers. The
people in the stalls were looking from her up to the dress circle,
where there seemed to be something rather nasty going on.

Wes Whelan was hugging his arm; the rest of the band was momentarily
stunned at the appearance of this girl.

Come on, Mary Lee,
do it
!

She did it. Grabbed at a mike and shouted, "Ladies and gentlemen!
Staaaan
KEELERr

When Stan Keeler moved, he moved. He came out of the wings at such
speed he covered the last several feet on his knees, sliding to a stop,
and playing on his way up from the floor.

Near him, the ones in the worst state were now moving between fear
and astonished delight.

All Keeler had to play was that famous chord progression to "Main
Line Lady" and he had them cold.

People had stopped moving for the exits, stopped crushing against
each other, and when the woman screamed again, Jury saw a hand flash
out and slap her down in her chair.

In the meantime, the band was backing up Stan.

Stan Keeler in person, in
concert
, and with
Sirocco
?

What sort of competition was a crazy killer with that?

The police ambulance
sans
siren had just left the alley
with its cargo and left the faces of the limo driver and a few of the
roadies open-mouthed, staring after it. Security police were in their
element, although they weren't too sure what the element was: they
seemed disappointed that there wasn't a crowd to be cordoned off and
held back, that there wasn't a mob of funky punk rock fans all jostling
for a front-row view. Aside from the single stretcher borne by two
orderlies in plain clothes and a youngish man held up by two more, it
was the slickest exit made from a stage door they had seen, slicker
than the exit of the stars themselves.

. . . who were still performing. Jury, Plant, Macalvie, and Wiggins
were sitting in one of the equipment vans on amps and crates, being
brought mugs of tea and stale sandwiches by Mary Lee, who was also in
her element. When one of the roadies kept after her, grabbing her to
tell him what was going on, she strong-armed him and told him and the
limo driver,
Get out of my face
, as she sashayed back in the
stage door with the tin tray that had held the food.

She stopped, however, for a photo session with a young man who
claimed to be the photographer from
Kregarrand
and who was
actually Jury's Scene-of-Crimes man, enjoying his double role.

When Jury saw the police pathologist come out of the stage door, he
jumped down from the lorry.

Dr. Phyllis Nancy was, in Jury's mind, the creme de la creme of
doctors, the one he had searched out not only because she could work
with lightning speed, but because she had an imaginative grasp of a
situation that was lacking in her colleagues.

Phyllis Nancy was, on the other hand, a conflicted personality; she
pretended to disdain her femininity and looks by wearing harshly cut
suits and little string ties. On the other hand, she went all out when
she was off-duty.

As she walked—or strolled—toward Jury, it was clear that she was
definitely off-duty. Beneath a fur coat she wore a long gown, green and
slit up the front. The conflict also extended to her having been called
away.

"From a performance of
La Boheme
, Superintendent,
Pa-varotti singing. Box seat, bottle of superior Chablis—"

"I know. About the seat, I mean, not the wine." He smiled.

Phyllis Nancy looked first to the right, then the left, then at the
sky. Anywhere but at Jury, as she clutched the collar of her fur coat
round her neck. In the other hand was her black bag. "The victim is in
critical condition. One of what I would imagine to be at least four
broken ribs penetrated the lung and started hemorrhaging, with blood
coming out of both the ear and the mouth. The right wrist is broken,
compound fracture, you can see the bone protruding. One side of the
skull endured a blow with a blunt object, bits of the cheekbone
adhering to the blood . . ."

Jury listened patiently as Dr. Nancy went on. Ordinarily, her
reports were like her no-nonsense, crisp suits: brief, staccato,
atonal. Dismembered bodily parts were inspected and collected like
shells. But for some reason, she seemed to enjoy whatever Grand Guignol
touches she could bring into play when she gave Jury her reports. She
ended hers now by asking Jury just what the hell was going on; at the
same time, she extracted from her pocket a cigarette case, removed a
cigarette, and snapped the little lighter before Jury could produce a
match. She did not seem to notice she was standing in a drizzling rain
that was matting her fur coat and taking the wave out of what looked
like a pricey hairdo.

Before Jury could answer her, she exhaled a thin stream of smoke and
said, "That police photographer"—she motioned to the young fellow at
the stage door who was still taking photos of a couple of the road
crew, who were enjoying it immensely—"was in the balcony popping his
flashbulbs at the curious and telling them he was the photographer
from
Kregarrand
."

Jury smiled: "A distraction, Phyllis. How's the member of the
lighting crew? We found him in a storage room, tied up and out cold.
Why he wasn't dead is beyond me."

"I brought him round. He said about twenty or twenty-five minutes
before the show, a woman came up to him when he was adjusting the
spotlight, said she was from the supply equipment company and that the
spot was defective. He said it wasn't—"

"And showed her, I take it."

"His leather jacket gone, his cap gone, and she was gone. Well, we
know where she was. She looked like she'd been set upon by a gang of
punks. Those blows to the head weren't all caused by the spotlight
falling—"

"Beer bottle, maybe?" asked Macalvie, who'd descended from the lorry.

Phyllis Nancy looked at him, mouth open, and when she didn't reply,
he shrugged and offered, "Couple of beer bottles?"

She dropped her cigarette on the pavement, scrubbed at it with a
green satin shoe. "Who are
you
?"

"Macalvie, Brian. Devon-Cornwall constabulary." He flicked out his
ID. "I've been working on a case."

She looked at him, looked back at Jury, squinted into the shadows of
the lorry. "Who else is in there?"

"You know how crazy fans get at these concerts," said Macalvie.
"Anything can happen."

As if to augment that statement, Sergeant Wiggins came out of the
stage door in a rush as if he were being blown thither by the swell of
music and thunder of applause. "I got hold of Sanderson—"

Phyllis Nancy said, "Well, if it isn't Sergeant Wiggins, our karate
expert."

"Kung fu," he corrected her. "And I'm not," he said modestly, "an
expert."

"Just enough to break a wrist or arm, I expect. What are you all
sitting in that lorry for? Is that the getaway car?"

"Waiting for autographs," said Jury. "I'll tell you all about it
later."

"This should be one of the more interesting reports I've written
up." She checked her tiny watch. "Well, I might be able to catch the
final aria." She collected her black bag and started toward the police
car.

"You should have come to the concert, Phyllis," called Jury after
her. "Better than listening to 'O Sole Mio.' "

She stopped, called back: "I couldn't get tickets." Dr. Nancy
slammed the door and the car lurched toward the Hammersmith Road.

"What did Sanderson say?"

Wiggins was blowing on his hands. "That he was sending someone from
Wakefield headquarters. And that the coins from the call box matched
the prints on the brandy decanter—Irene Citrine's. He added it didn't
prove
when
the calls had been made."

"He's as hard to convince as Commander Macalvie," said Jury.

"Good for Sanderson. I take it this Citrine woman was one of Roger
Healey's ladies?"

"It might have been pure greed and not love and greed. Rena's the
poor Citrine. Everyone else in the family had money. Roger and Rena
must have made a divine pair, both after his wife's money. They meant
to kidnap Billy; Toby was there; they had two boys to deal with.
Somehow Billy Healey got away. But they couldn't let Toby live to
identify them later—"

"So Toby Holt goes into the grave," said Wiggins. "Dr. Dench was
right about the age, then." Wiggins sounded almost disappointed.

Macalvie cut a look round at all of them. "No, he isn't."