chatter. Ben sprawled in his seat and drank it all in. It was a heady feeling. He could begin to understand the appeal for the performers who devoted their lives to this moment.
Then the conversation began to die down and the audience started applauding loudly. The conductor was coming up through the orchestra pit. He was a tall man in a black tuxedo, white tie, a thick mane of black hair swept up from his high forehead. His expression was severe, focused. He bowed to the stage, turned and bowed to the audience and the musicians, then took to the podium. Dead silence fell over the theatre for a moment before the overture began.
A huge orchestral chord sounded, the instruments all coming in together. Then a pause for four beats, and another two big chords. Another pause, followed by two more stabs. It was the composer’s way of grabbing the audience’s attention by force, and it worked perfectly. The theatre was suddenly filled with sound as the whole orchestra chimed into the main theme.
The overture over, the audience applauded again and the house lights dimmed. This was it. The heavy curtains glided apart across the stage, and Ben settled back.
The set was breathtaking. It was a wilderness strewn with ruined buildings, broken-down temples, bushes and huge rocks. It looked completely real and the lighting effects were as good as any movie he’d ever seen. He could see the Masonic influence in the Egyptian look of the ruins, a pyramid in the background. He stifled the memories they brought up. That was all over now.
A man emerged from stage left and ran across the set, chased by a giant snake, then stumbled and lay still at the foot of the giant pyramid. While he was unconscious, three women in strange costumes came out and killed the snake with silver spears. Ben watched. It all seemed very odd to him. He was taken aback by the volume of the singing. No microphones. He checked the libretto on his knee and tried to follow the storyline, but quickly lost the thread. He wasn’t that interested. He only wanted to see Leigh, and she wouldn’t appear until some way into the first act.
Until then, he drifted and let the spectacle wash over him. It was huge and impressive and fantastically staged, but it didn’t captivate him.
However, the Queen of the Night’s entrance did, completely.
She was wearing a long silvery-black robe and a wild crown, both covered in glittering stars. He could feel the impact she had on the audience the moment she stepped out onto the set. The lights followed her centre-stage. She looked totally at ease, in command of the whole theatre. Someone threw a red rose from a box across the opposite side. It sailed over the orchestra pit and landed on the stage.
Then she started to sing. The power and depth of her voice blew him away. He watched her. It was hard to believe it was the Leigh he knew. It was as if the music wasn’t coming from her, it was coming through her from some other source. She filled the room with an awesome kind of beauty he’d never experienced before.
So this was what it was about. Now he suddenly knew who Leigh really was, what she lived for. It was something you had to understand. Nobody could explain it to you, and if you couldn’t feel it you were soulless, dead inside. It gave him goose pimples.
Her aria was over far too quickly. He was left stunned by it. There were cries of ‘Bravo!’ as she exited. More flowers landed on the stage. Another scene started.
Ben knew from the libretto that she wouldn’t be on again for a while. He had plenty of time to get down to the bar and grab himself a drink before her next appearance. He quietly left his box and started down the red- carpeted passageway.
That was about the same moment that the latecomer wandered into the lobby. He looked around him. He avoided the ticket office. That wasn’t what he was here for. He kept his head low and walked fast. He aimed for a side door. The sign read PRIVATE. He pushed through it and walked on.
The latecomer had never been in this place before, but he’d been reading about it very recently. He kept his coat collar turned up and drew the peak of the baseball cap lower down over his face. He walked quickly, a little stiffly, turning right, left, right again. Here, away from the public areas, the walls were plain and some parts still looked unfinished since the last restoration. He passed some stage assistants carrying a wooden prop that looked like part of a stone battlement, performers in costume, looking nervous and checking sheets of music notation. There was activity and bustle around him-everyone too distracted and psyched up about the show to notice him. He avoided eye contact and pushed on. He could hear the sound of the orchestra, muted and damped in the background.
Suddenly he was backstage and the music was much louder. It was hectic here in the crowded wings, people everywhere, a million things going on at once to keep the huge show rolling. A stage director was hissing orders in Italian at some flustered-looking crew members. Everyone was tense, and high on adrenaline.
Too many people. This wasn’t a good place to be. He walked on quickly and pushed through another door and followed the red carpet. This looked more like what he was looking for. Decorative plants in tall porcelain vases lined the walls on both sides with doors between them. At the end of the corridor, a good-looking woman in a long yellow dress was talking to two men. He slipped into a room with a sink in one corner and some mops and buckets in another. He pulled the door to, and through the crack he watched the people leave.
He stepped out of the cleaner’s room.
‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice.
The man turned round slowly. The usher was a good few inches shorter than him. The man looked down at him and said nothing. He kept his face low, so that the visor of the cap covered a lot of it.
‘This area is for stage personnel and performers only,’ the usher said. ‘You’ll have to leave.’
The man didn’t understand the quick-fire Italian, but he got the message. He raised his head a little. The usher’s eyes opened wider. He couldn’t help himself. Most people had that same look of revulsion when they saw his face. That was why he wore the cap.
The usher was standing there gaping at him. The man laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let me explain something to you,’ he said in English. He moved him out of the middle of the corridor to where it was a little shadier, near to the door of the cleaner’s room.
He killed him quickly and quietly. It was easily done and there was no blood. He propped the body against the inside wall of the cleaner’s room and snicked the door shut. He turned the key, slid it out of the keyhole and dropped it into a plant pot.
He walked on until he found the door he was looking for. It had her name on it. He slipped to one side. He took a phone from his pocket, pressed a preset number and spoke quietly to the person on the other end. Then he waited.
Ben glanced at his watch and downed the last dregs of his whisky. He was alone in the bar. He suddenly felt a little guilty about sneaking away from the opera. He’d stayed away too long, and Leigh should be back onstage any minute now. That was something he didn’t want to miss.
He made his way back along the red-carpeted passage, up the flight of steps he’d come down and along the curved corridor that led to the doors of the private boxes. They all looked the same, red velvet inset into the red velvet wall. He found his number. Settling back in his seat, he looked down at the stage and saw that he’d been just in time.
The opera was into its second act. An aria was just finishing as the Queen of the Night reappeared. She hit centre-stage and began to sing about love, death and revenge. It was powerful.
But something was wrong.
The voice was wrong. It was a strong, vibrant soprano. It was good enough for world-class opera but it didn’t have anything approaching Leigh’s passion or depth, the things that had made his skin tingle.
He frowned. On the seat beside him were the tiny opera glasses Leigh had given him. Their magnification was scarcely military-grade but they were enough to see the faces of the performers up close. He put the little eyepieces to his eyes and focused in on the Queen.
