‘Don’t mistake his slow speech for woolly thinking. He’s got a quick brain. You need to be sharp to choreograph an entire show like
‘He’s sharp, all right.’
She was missing all the irony. ‘You can safely send him off the building on an operation. I gather he’s frustrated being confined to barracks.’
‘Has he been complaining to you, ma’am?’
She backtracked a little. ‘It may have been mentioned in passing. He’s too gifted to be on the end of a phone all day long. Let him off the leash and I predict he’ll not let you down.’
‘He’s off the leash right now, making another search of the theatre with Ingeborg Smith.’
‘Splendid. If anyone can get results for you, Horatio will.’
He’d heard as much of this as he could take. ‘Is there anything else?’
On his way downstairs he forced some perspective into his thinking. Nothing fundamental had changed. He was still stuck with Dawkins and he’d have to give the man a chance. Everyone works the system and there were infinite ways of doing it. Fred hadn’t joined the BLOGs to cosy up to Georgina. He was already installed there. He’d got lucky and cashed in. Who wouldn’t have?
14
Hedley Shearman was on duty again in the Theatre Royal, bruised, but no longer bleeding, demanding to know what the devil the police were up to, poking around in the wings.
‘Searching,’ Ingeborg told him. A short answer can be a good riposte to bluster.
‘That’s obvious.’
‘Yes.’
‘But what do you hope to find?’
‘Make-up.’
‘The stuff Denise was using Monday night? I don’t think you’ll find it here. She was very organised. She wouldn’t have left anything lying around.’
‘She may have been so organised that she kept some handy in the wings for use before the show. That’s why we’re checking.’
‘Well, it had better not take long. We have a performance tonight and I don’t want you getting in the way of the actors.’ He took a second look at Dawkins and frowned. ‘Aren’t you the man in uniform who was here Tuesday morning putting me through the third degree?’
Dawkins had been obeying orders, keeping that low profile Diamond had decreed. Faced with open hostility, he broke his vow of silence. ‘I wouldn’t characterise it as such.’
‘You look and sound awfully like him.’
‘It was not the third degree. It wasn’t even the second.’
‘Oh, you don’t like the term,’ Shearman said, getting some of his bounce back. ‘I was on the receiving end and I know what it felt like. Why aren’t you in uniform today?’
Ingeborg was quick to head off an elaborate explanation. ‘He’s joined CID.’ She looked at her watch. ‘If you want us out before the show, better let us get on with it.’
Another glare and then Shearman moved off towards the dressing rooms.
Basic stage scenery is constructed as flats, canvas over a wooden framework, and when it is in position some of the horizontal battens form ledges. Small objects are sometimes lodged there, lucky mascots, bits of chalk, pens and torches. But it was doubtful if anything as big as a powder box would fit. More likely they’d find what they were looking for tucked away in a corner at floor level. Plenty of areas backstage needed checking. They went about the search systematically, each working at a different side of the stage, dividing the space into sections, lifting props, discarded cloths and coils of cable.
‘I’m getting less confident,’ Ingeborg called across the stage after twenty minutes. ‘If it’s here, it ought to be obvious.’
Dawkins didn’t answer and it wasn’t clear whether he disagreed or was still observing the embargo.
‘Putting myself in Denise’s place,’ Ingeborg went on, ‘if I had some powder laced with caustic soda I wouldn’t leave it lying around. I’d get rid of it.’
Still there was no answer from the opposite side.
‘But then,’ she added after more thought, ‘if someone else doctored the stuff, Denise wouldn’t have known.’
This time Dawkins couldn’t resist. ‘Don’t you think the someone else would also have got rid of it?’
‘In that case we’re wasting our time.’ Deadpan, as if she didn’t remember, she asked, ‘Whose idea was this?’
Dawkins became silent again.
Diamond had an in-built resistance to computers and he didn’t make a habit of checking for on-screen messages. If his own staff had anything to report, he expected to be told. Most of them knew this. To be fair to Fred Dawkins, anyone new on the team might have acted as he had, thinking it wasn’t unreasonable to expect the top man to make regular checks.
Dawkins was out of the office now, so Diamond stopped complaining about the call from Georgina he’d almost
