‘They’ve set up their stuff in here,’ said Trish. ‘It’s where the Chorus and musicians usually assemble just before they go on stage. Mr Phillips should be around somewhere. Oh, there he is,’ she told him, just as a figure in dark tails approached them.
Lorimer’s first impression of Brendan Phillips was of a slight, rather dapper man whose smooth, boyish face belied his age. He was probably in his late thirties, Lorimer reckoned. Not much younger than himself.
‘Chief Inspector, thank goodness you’re here,’ Brendan Phillips seemed on the point of reaching out to take Lorimer by the hand, but after one look at the policeman’s face, the Orchestra Manager’s hand fell to his side. Trish, Lorimer noticed, had vanished discreetly.
‘The Doctor said you would want to go straight to the dressing room. Where the body is,’ Phillips added in deliberately hushed tones. Lorimer followed the man out of the claustrophobic room. Round a corner, they emerged onto the entrance to the stage.
The auditorium was brightly lit and there were full spots still directed onto the stage itself. Both, mercifully, were empty. Lorimer followed the Orchestra Manager across the front of the stage, skirting the music stands and the Conductor’s podium. Several instruments were lying in their cases on the pale, varnished floor. Lorimer had to squeeze past a large harp as Phillips took him towards the stair leading to the other stage exit. He noted a booth with a board full of controls and a close circuit television that showed the empty stage. His policeman’s eyes also took in the CCTV cameras angled at regular intervals from the ceiling.
‘Who found the body?’ Lorimer asked.
When Phillips turned back to answer, Lorimer noticed that he didn’t meet his eyes.
‘I did,’ he replied. ‘It’s my responsibility to ensure that all the performers are on stage in time. It’s customary to fetch the Leader and the Principals personally from their dressing rooms. It’s part of my job,’ he added with a sigh that seemed to come from his well-polished shoes.
The Orchestra Manager walked on as he spoke. Round a corner they came to another, smaller assembly area.
The regulation incident tape had been fastened across an opening to the left. Phillips stopped and gestured towards an open door leading to a corridor on their right. It was parallel, Lorimer noticed, to another corridor that disappeared into darkness, its ceiling lowered by massive metal tubing. Rows of open fiddle cases lined a shelf on one side.
‘These are the Artistes’ dressing rooms. The first one, Lomond, is for our conductor. Morar is where …’ he broke off uncertainly.
‘Where you found the body,’ Lorimer finished for him. ‘And then you called Security, I take it?’
‘Yes,’ the man looked thoroughly miserable now, no doubt recalling the event that would give him nightmares for weeks. Lorimer nodded briefly and headed for the second room along the corridor that had been reserved for the late Leader of Glasgow Concert Orchestra.
‘Well, hello there, stranger,’ a blonde head turned to look up at him as Lorimer stepped carefully into the room.
‘Ah, Rosie,’ Lorimer grinned back at the pixie face below him. Doctor Rosie Fergusson, Lorimer’s favourite pathologist, was on her knees beside the body, her diminutive frame wrapped inside a clean white boiler suit.
‘I’ll just wait out here, shall I?’ Phillips called out, hovering in the doorway.
Lorimer frowned but before he could speak, Rosie answered for him, ‘That’s fine. Just keep the masses away from here. We don’t want to contaminate this area any further. OK?’
‘Yes,’ Phillips seemed uncertain if he should stay around but clearly didn’t relish the prospect of being in such close proximity to whatever they were planning to do with George Millar’s corpse.
Lorimer turned back to the Orchestra Manager. This time he laid a consoling hand on the man’s shoulder. ‘Look. You’ve had a pretty tough time tonight. Why don’t you stay down in Security meantime? I’ll catch up with you when we’re finished in here.’
Brendan Phillips gave a grateful nod. The man looked simply defeated, thought Lorimer. A dead body might be all in a day’s work for Rosie, and to a lesser extent for a DCI but, Lorimer reminded himself, it was surely outside the experience of the average Orchestra Manager.
‘Well. what have we here?’ Lorimer joined the pathologist at the entrance to the tiled bathroom. The preliminary examination had taken place, he supposed. George Millar’s body still lay face down, but Rosie would have taken the body temperature as a first measure.
‘Time of death?’ he queried.
‘How did I know you were going to ask me that? You’re so predictable, Lorimer,’ Rosie teased. ‘Not that long ago, actually. The body was still warm when I got here, but rigor was coming on so I’d narrow it down to say he died two to three hours ago.’ She looked at her watch. ‘That’s about half an hour, or less maybe, before the concert was due to start. This room’s pretty well heated but I don’t think that complicates the timing too much.’
‘Good. So any CCTV footage from about seven o’clock onwards should show us who was around this particular dressing room,’ Lorimer mused.
The fact that so many people had been in the Concert Hall made this case a potential shambles. But, really, these security devices should eliminate practically all of them.
Lorimer didn’t anticipate a lot of bother with this one. once they’d seen the footage, they’d be home and dry, surely?
Sitting in the tiny space that passed for the Security department, Lorimer scanned the tapes that had purported to show all movement in and around the whole of the Concert Hall since midday. His initial optimism about finding evidence on the tape footage was rapidly being extinguished.
‘That’s when we change the tapes,’ Neville explained to him, ‘There’s maybe a two minute delay between taking the last ones out and putting fresh ones in. That’s all.’
Lorimer frowned. The screen that should have shown the area around the Artistes’ dressing rooms had been blanked out from just after seven o’clock.
‘And didn’t you do something about it when you saw that?’ Lorimer demanded of the man.
Neville shrugged. ‘Our usual technician’s off sick tonight. There’s just me and I didn’t know there’d been a murder, did I? Anyway, the outside cameras are probably more of a concern at that time of night.’
‘Oh? Why?’
Neville looked uneasy. ‘Don’t get me wrong. It’s not me who makes decisions about that sort of thing,’ he paused. ‘It’s all the beggars we get around here; Big Issue sellers and druggies with their wee plastic cups. It’s company policy to keep an eye on them.’
‘So what did you think when you saw that one of your monitors was suddenly blank?’ Lorimer wanted to know.
‘I was puzzled. But then His Nibs phoned down and told me to dial 999. That was when I realised there must have been something fishy about that screen.’
Lorimer gritted his teeth, so much for an easy solution. Whoever had immobilised the CCTV camera upstairs had planned things pretty carefully. At least he knew now that this was no random killing. Premeditated murder would be on the charge sheet in the event of an arrest.
‘OK. Thanks. We’ll need the original tapes to take away tonight. I’ll have them copied and returned to you whenever it’s possible,’ Lorimer told him. Privately he doubted if they’d ever be returned. They’d be kept as evidence in the case until after a trial, if it ever came to that. He picked up a programme from Neville’s desk, flicking through it till he came to the list of performers. This might come in handy, he mused, taking note of some of the names.
Trudging back up the stairs, Lorimer felt suddenly weary. The thought of all those people who’d been backstage tonight filled him with despair. God alone knew who had passed back and forth along the corridor of the four Principals’ dressing rooms in the half hour before the concert began. The paying public had already been herded out into the suites of rooms opposite the auditorium. They would leave names, addresses and show proof of identity before being allowed to leave the Concert Hall. Even the Hall’s stewards had been hastily drafted in to help the police officers perform this massive job.