‘I came to ask you some more questions,’ Lorimer told him gently, taking a seat beside Brendan Phillips’s desk.
‘There’s nothing else I can tell you,’ Brendan began, his eyes pleading with Lorimer to leave him alone. ‘I really don’t know what’s been going on any more than you do.’
‘OK. I’m sure that’s how it seems. But the normal day-to-day things that might not mean a lot to you could have huge significance when we put them into a different context. You follow?’
Brendan Phillips closed his eyes and drew his fingers back and forth across his brow as if something pained him. Lorimer waited. He recalled Karen Quentin-Jones’s derision when she had referred to the Orchestra Manager as ‘Brenda’. The man was certainly living up to her sneer. Lorimer had seen more backbone in a young child. Still, he was in a world where artistic temperaments abounded and sensitive souls were probably the norm.
‘Take me through the last rehearsal. Just tell me everything that took place.’
Brendan sighed. ‘It was just a routine rehearsal for the Christmas Classics concert, nothing that was too taxing. There was nothing really very new. It’s for the older audience. You know? “White Christmas”, “Sleigh Ride”, “Lara’s theme” from Doctor Zhivago; that sort of stuff.’
‘And you were using a harpist?’
‘Of course,’ Phillips’s eyebrows were raised in surprise. ‘Christmas. Angel harps. Trumpets. It’s all very traditional music.’
‘And you were using Chloe Redpath again, weren’t you?’
‘Yes, as a matter of fact. Our usual girl was sick. Having a bad time with her pregnancy, actually.’
‘So Chloe’s been your main harpist all the time since October 22nd?’
‘Not all the time. Just occasionally.’
‘When we questioned her that night,’ Lorimer began slowly, ‘she was adamant that she had never removed any of her music. Yet when she went on stage for the concert it had gone.’ Somebody had created a series of jobs for Brendan Phillips that night, Lorimer guessed. Unless, of course they had been deliberately manufactured by the Orchestra Manager himself?
‘Really?’ the Orchestra Manager’s eyebrows lifted. ‘She didn’t pass that information on to me,’ he added querulously.
‘Well, events did rather overtake everyone that night,’ Lorimer answered dryly.
‘But, to get back to that other night. The night of Karen’s death,’ he began, ignoring Brendan Phillips’s sudden flinch, ‘nothing out of the ordinary happened at the rehearsal?’
‘No. The musicians turned up. They rehearsed. They went home.’
Lorimer chewed his lip. That was what it was meant to look like, certainly, but not everybody had gone home. Someone had stayed behind with the Second Violin to make sure she would never go home again. ‘Who was on duty from the administrative side of the Orchestra that night?’
‘I was. They don’t need anybody else on a rehearsal night. The sound technicians and the lighting people are all employees of the Hall. There’s a security man downstairs, and some staff in front of house earlier on, in the gift shop and at the box office. By the time we’re ready to leave it’s pretty quiet.’
Lorimer was thoughtful. This was information he’d already had from the Concert Hall’s security boys. Surely Phillips realised that.
Or was he deliberately trying to take away from the fact that he had been solely responsible for the Orchestra’s management that night? Was he experiencing guilt for what had happened?
‘So. You were on your own. Did you watch the rehearsal from the wings or were you out front?’
Brendan frowned. ‘A bit of both. I have to take the register so I’m always in the Hall until everyone’s arrived. But I wasn’t on my own. Maurice Drummond was there too. It was a Chorus night, you see. Once they’d started the programme and I knew they all had music and everything, I stayed out front with Maurice and listened for a while. It helps to get an idea of the balance of sound,’ he added.
‘Then?’
‘Then I’m back in Ness. That’s the room I always use here. Everybody knows where to find me. There are people popping in and out all the time.’
‘I’ve got a list of everyone who took part in the rehearsal,’ Lorimer said. ‘It looks like everyone who was there also took part in the concert that was on the night George Millar died.’
‘And why should that be significant?’
‘Well, think about it. They’ve hardly got over that night. Surely some of them are still in shock. It wouldn’t have come as a surprise to find that certain people had pulled out and had to be replaced at short notice.’
‘Chief Inspector, don’t forget these are professional musicians we’re talking about. They are well able to cope under strain. But, remember this: performing isn’t simply a matter of choice for most of them. It’s their bread and butter.’
The Orchestra Manager had become more assertive, thought Lorimer, as he sought to defend his Orchestra. The mother-hen act came naturally to him, he realised wryly. Brendan Phillips was probably just the right sort of bloke to have around an organisation like this.
‘You mentioned once before a library box, I think you called it, where spare strings and reeds are kept. I take it you had this at the rehearsal?’
‘Oh, yes. It’s with the Orchestra every time they play.’
‘And would you have noticed if there had been anything missing?’ Lorimer looked keenly at him. Neither man needed to mention the harp string that had been wound around the neck of Karen Quentin-Jones.
‘Yes. But not right away. I make a note of all the items used about once a month. Partly to replace them if we’re short, but also to keep tabs on the costs as we reorder,’ he added.
‘And where is this record kept?’ Lorimer asked.
Brendan Phillips coloured up at once. Lorimer could see his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down in his throat as he swallowed. He broke eye contact with the detective and rustled in among the papers on his desk but it didn’t take too much attention on Lorimer’s part to see that the paper in question had been on top of the pile.
‘So,’ Lorimer gave him a lopsided smile. ‘You were there ahead of me, were you?’
Brendan Phillips raised his eyes to the heavens. ‘What do you expect? I’m not stupid. Of course I wanted to check if there was a missing string.’
‘And?’
‘Yes. There was. There should have been a number 34.’
‘Can you describe it to me?’
‘Yes. It’s a fifth octave string, wire, not plastic, and it, it … wasn’t there.’ He looked up tentatively and Lorimer knew what he wanted to ask so he nodded.
‘Perhaps you wouldn’t mind having a look at the one we have in Pathology?’
The man’s shudder was possibly exaggerated but his sense of horror was quite real. There was a pause before he whispered, ‘I suppose I have to, haven’t I?’
Chapter Thirteen
Solomon Brightman had been asked in as an observer to this second interview with Carl Bekaert. Lorimer had scanned Jo’s notes accompanying his first statement made shortly after George Millar’s death. Reading between the lines, DI Grant had seemed to feel sorry for the Danish viola player. He’d blustered about his friend George, but had stopped short of admitting any closer relationship with the victim. Jo hadn’t pressed the point. Why?
‘Sit somewhere out of the way,’ Lorimer had asked him, hoping that the psychologist might be discreet. It was pretty hard to hide such a man, however; his black beard and curling locks drew the eye even in the darkest corner of the room.
Nevertheless he was out of the Dane’s line of vision and Lorimer hoped to keep it that way throughout the interview.
Carl Bekaert had stooped as he’d entered the poorly lit room. His eyes flicked back and forth as the Chief Inspector motioned him to sit in the chair on the other side of the desk. Even as the musician folded his long limbs under the table that lay between them Lorimer saw that he kept his eyes fixed to the floor.