He moved on to the fly floor. Faint beams of light leaking from the other side of the scenery allowed him to see his way at ground level but the vast space above his head could have been the inside of a coffin. For a moment he stopped and listened. There was no sound. It was wise to remember that if the killer was lurking here he, too, had just enough light to see. He edged forward with caution, primed for another hammer attack.
He’d just crossed to stage right when he was stopped in his tracks by a voice speaking his name immediately above his head.
Impossible. Nobody was there.
He heard the hiss of static. He squinted in the poor light and found himself looking at a loudspeaker.
The speaker boomed again. ‘You can stop charging around like a demented elephant. She’s been dead twenty minutes.’
‘You bloody maniac. Where is she?’ he shouted back, and got no reply except the click of a disconnection. ‘You gain nothing by killing her. You’re finished.’
The last word echoed back to him from the fly tower.
He turned and ran back towards the opposite side, thinking that the DSM’s console must be the source, but nobody was there. Obviously there were other points in the building linked to the loudspeaker system.
He shuddered, more in horror than fear. Urging himself to concentrate on what he had to do, he accepted that some, at least, of the killer’s words couldn’t be denied. This was, indeed, a pointless pursuit. The building was too large for two men to search. Soon there would be reinforcements he could call on. The arrest would follow. The real urgency had been to save Dawn’s life. How much reliance could he place on the words of a murderer on the run?
In this case, enough for huge concern. This man picked his words with care.
The tannoy crackled again. This time the voice was Pidgeon’s. ‘House lights are on, guv.’
‘Okay, I’m coming,’ he said. His words weren’t going to be heard. He spoke them to release some tension. He moved fast around the outside of the set, pushed open the scenic double doors and crossed the stage. The curtain held none of those childhood fears now.
He parted the heavy lengths of velvet and stepped forward, and the horseshoe auditorium was before him in all its magnificence, the best view of the house you would get, every light now glowing, including the central chandelier. The great actors of seven generations had stood on this spot and delivered curtain speeches. But the significance was lost on Diamond. He was watching for a movement, and there was nothing. No one was in sight.
The sound of a handclap began, a slow, ironic slapping of palms. One pair of unseen hands was mocking his appearance in front of the curtain. He couldn’t tell where it was from, except that it seemed close, not the back of the theatre or the upper tiers. Presently it died away.
If nothing else, he knew for certain that the killer was out front and could see him. Some kind of resolution was imminent.
He decided to remain where he was. This was as good a vantage point as any. Staring out at the rows of empty seats, he tried to picture the sequence of events. Dawn had been out of sight crouching down in the stalls. Presumably she’d been discovered, attacked and taken somewhere nearby. Moving her upstairs would have been impractical.
A voice surprisingly close called out, ‘Do you want a prop? A skull would do nicely.’
He knew who it was. As ever, the words were spoken with deliberation and wrapped in some allusion he didn’t understand. ‘What did you say?’
‘What are you up to, standing centre stage? Is this an audition? You’ll never make a Hamlet, but you might get by as one of the gravediggers.’
He glanced right and left. No one was in front of the curtain with him and the voice hadn’t come from behind. It wasn’t amplified.
‘That’s a clue for you, the
Now he could see the speaker – in the lower of the two boxes to his right: the Agatha Christie, a fitting place for a murderer’s last stand.
Fred Dawkins.
The traitor had been speaking just out of Diamond’s line of sight, masked by the near side of the box. Now he had stepped into view, close enough to shake hands if Diamond were to move along the front edge of the stage.
A handshake was not in the plans of either.
‘Keep your distance. I’m still holding the hammer,’ Dawkins warned. ‘I’ll pay you a compliment, superintendent. I was streets ahead of you before tonight. Now I’m a mere half dozen yards away and I don’t flatter myself that I’ll walk out of this theatre a free man. So let’s exchange some home truths. What changed your mind? You weren’t planning to come here when we last spoke.’
Centre stage was new territory for Peter Diamond. He wasn’t comfortable in this position, being invited to lay out his case, yet he couldn’t risk walking off when he had the man in sight. The sensible response was to engage with Dawkins for as long as possible in the hope that George Pidgeon would see what was going on and come to his aid. So he started to voice some of the things that properly should have been spoken under caution in an interview room with a tape running. ‘I got your number, quite literally,’ he told Dawkins. ‘Five-one-eight-nine, on a seven year rap in Manchester Prison, Strangeways as it was known then, 1983 to 1990, for fraud, embezzlement, false pretences, depriving old ladies of their life’s savings. I spoke to the deputy governor this evening. You’re a con man,
