Above, and to the left, Cooper could see people in the boxes overlooking the stage. The upper box looked a bit high for comfort — though it would be ideal if you felt like throwing fruit or rotten eggs on to the stage after a performance.
He frowned, then looked again at the upper box. There were three people in it, one male and two females. He could only see them from the shoulders upwards. But as one woman leaned forward on the rail to look down at the stalls, Cooper felt a stab of recognition.
During the second act he was leaning forward to look over the low parapet when Young pulled him back.
‘Careful,’ said Young. ‘You’re not thinking of jumping, are you?’
‘Just thought I saw someone I recognised,’ said Cooper. ‘I need to see if it’s really them.’
She put a hand on his arm.
‘Ben, wait for the intermission at least.’
Reluctantly, he eased back into his seat for the rest of the opera, occasionally casting a glance at the box to make sure the group of people were still there.
Cooper was struck by the scene in which Tosca quietly took a knife from the supper table and concealed it. As Scarpia triumphantly embraced her, she stabbed him, crying ‘Questo è il bacio di Tosca!’ — ‘This is Tosca’s kiss!’. The supertitles scrolled out her words in English:
Is your blood choking you?
And killed by a woman!
Did you torment me enough?
Can you still hear me? Speak!
Look at me! I am Tosca! Oh, Scarpia!
When he was dead, she forgave him, lighting candles and placing a crucifix on his body.
By the time Tosca made her fatal leap from the wall of the castle crying O Scarpia, Avanti a Dio! — ‘O Scarpia, we meet before God!’, Ben Cooper was watching Box F carefully.
Even before the thunderous applause had died down, he jumped up from his seat.
‘I’ll catch you in the bar,’ he said.
‘Ben, wait—’
But he couldn’t wait. He needed to know for certain. Everything hinged on this moment, in the same way that Reece Bower’s life had been changed by that positive sighting of Evan Slaney’s.
He found himself on a narrow stairway between Box D and Box F. A door led into the Upper Circle, where a man was sitting at the end of a row, close to a speaker and a set of spotlights.
He heard the door of Box F slam. Cooper ran up the stairs. But when he opened the door, there was no one there. Too many doors, too many stairs.
Quietly, he cursed to himself. He’d spent so much time looking at the photographs of Annette Bower that he’d impressed a very clear image of the missing woman in his mind. And he was sure he’d just seen her.
Diane Fry watched an old couple make their way down the street in Shirebrook. Jamie Callaghan was handing out more flyers with the appeal for information. Some passers-by swerved sharply away from him as if he was selling insurance. Others took a flyer, glanced at it, then dropped it in a bin a few yards up the road.
Fry shook her head. The idea that some of these people were still fighting the Miners’ Strike from 1984 didn’t make any sense to her. She had a suspicion Ben Cooper was right, though. He knew this place and she didn’t. She would probably never know it, no matter how much time she spent here. She would always been an observer, an outsider, just like she’d been in Edendale. Someone who didn’t belong.
She recalled her last meeting with Ben Cooper in Edendale. That case of the suicide tourists. And for a while she thought it had been the last meeting between them too. It had been the way Cooper said ‘Goodbye, Diane’ in that casual yet final way. She left Edendale feeling a period of her life had come to an end, and surprised by a sudden turmoil of mixed emotions she couldn’t explain.
How could two words do that to her? They were simple enough. Just an ordinary ‘goodbye’. He was distracted by something else as she was leaving and he hadn’t looked at her as he spoke. That was all it was. That was all.
It was ridiculous that she should start trying to read deeper meaning into everything people said or did. Not now. She’d avoided it all her life, had watched people doing it and had shaken her head in pity. Such futility in attempting to second-guess what someone else was thinking, so much pain you could cause yourself by dwelling on the possible meaning of a word, an expression, a casual gesture. It was a tragic waste of time and emotional energy, not something Diane Fry would do. She was immune to all that. She left it to the Ben Coopers of the world.
She turned and unlocked the car.
‘Come on, then, Jamie,’ she said.
‘Where are we going?’ asked Callaghan in surprise.
‘The pub?’
He smiled. ‘If you say so, Sergeant.’
Ben Cooper was still distracted as he came out of Buxton Opera House with Chloe Young. Walking through the tiled lobby and down a flight of steps, he looked everywhere, staring at the crowds of opera goers.
‘That execution...’ Young was saying. ‘Well, I suppose he was just a painter.’
Cooper stopped suddenly. ‘There she is.’
‘What?’
‘It’s her, I’m sure of it.’
‘Ben—’
He let go of Young’s arm and ran down the steps, dodging between the crowds. He caught up with a group of three people, two women and a man, who were heading towards the taxi rank.
Breathless, Cooper came up behind them and touched one of the women on the shoulder. She spun round with a small cry of surprise.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
The man pushed himself in between her and Cooper.
‘What’s going on here, friend?’
Automatically, Cooper pulled out his warrant card and held it in front of the man. But he was looking only at the woman. Now that he stood right in front of her, he realised that she looked nothing like Annette Bower. Well, a bit perhaps. She was the same height, same build, and had the same colour of hair. The style of it was different, but that was to be expected. What he noticed most that she was too young. He’d been looking at photographs of Annette Bower from at least ten years ago.
‘So you’re police? What have we done?’
‘Nothing, sir,’ said Cooper.
He spoke to the woman. ‘I’m sorry to startle you. Can I ask your name?’
‘Hannah,’ she said. She was starting to relax now and smiled at him quizzically. ‘Hannah Moulton. These are my parents.’
‘I think I made a mistake,’ said Cooper. ‘I’ve confused you with someone else.’
‘That’s all right.’
‘Are we free to go, then?’ asked her father.
‘Of course. I’m sorry,’ he said again. ‘There’s no reason to panic.’
Cooper jumped as an alarm began to sound. He looked around for a car flashing its lights, but it wasn’t coming from the street. The woman he’d approached looked flustered and began to dig in her bag. It took her a minute or two to pull out a rape alarm and turn it off. She sensed him watching and met his eye with a small shrug and a rueful smile. Sometimes there was no reason to panic. It could just be a false alarm.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
‘No problem.’
Cooper stood and watched the group get into a taxi. People passed him on either side, with the occasional wary or amused glance.
He turned and found Chloe Young standing behind him, shaking her head in bemusement. She looked as though she didn’t know whether to laugh or not.
Across the road from the Opera House, geraniums gleamed in hanging baskets lining an arcade. A young man was half-heartedly asking passers-by for change. He was wearing a slouch beanie hat that made him look like an overgrown garden gnome.