Outside the Theatre Royal was a Morris column, one of those cylindrical billboards common in Paris and beloved of Proust. It was plastered with posters of I Am a Camera showing Clarion smoking a cigarette in a holder. Leaning nonchalantly against it, waiting for Ingeborg, was Keith Halliwell. He had borrowed a camera from one of the police photographers and was carrying a professional-looking shoulder bag that was supposed to be filled with camera equipment. In reality it contained his raincoat and the camera. He wouldn’t know how to change a lens or what to do with a light meter.
‘Yoo-hoo.’ Ingeborg stood only a pace away from him, making a circling movement with her hand.
He hadn’t spotted her in the crowd in front of the theatre. She had her hair pinned up and was wearing a black velvet skirt, the first time he’d seen her in anything but jeans.
‘Did you get the tickets?’ She sometimes forgot she was the DC and he the DCI, but it was obvious that on the present mission she would have to take the lead.
‘Royal circle, back row.’
‘Shall we do the biz first? I’ve brought my old press-card.’
‘Will I need one?’
‘Not if you tag behind me with the camera in your hand. Where is it?’
‘In the bag.’
‘No use there. The whole point is to have it on view. Let’s check the notices in the foyer.’
Halliwell wasn’t sure why. He thought they were supposed to try and get backstage before the show. But Ingeborg found what she was looking for, a board with an announcement that for this performance the part of Sally Bowles would be played by Gisella Watling.
They left the foyer. Outside again, they turned right, past the drinkers outside the Garrick’s Head. The stage door stood open, but didn’t look like an invitation to go in. They went up some stairs to the point where you had to declare yourself or turn back. Ingeborg tapped on the window and a heavy-jowled, unfriendly face appeared. ‘Press,’ she said in a matter-of-fact tone, allowing a glimpse of her card. ‘May we go in?’
‘Who are you?’ the doorkeeper asked.
‘Ingeborg, independent.’ She made it sound as if Borg was her surname and the Independent was her employer. A national paper had to be treated with respect by any provincial theatre.
‘The press night was yesterday.’ Not a lot of respect there.
‘I know, but yesterday the story was all about Clarion,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Tonight it’s Gisella.’
‘Who?’
‘The understudy playing Sally Bowles.’
‘The curtain goes up shortly. She won’t want to do an interview now.’
‘Not an interview. We’re taking some pictures backstage for an exclusive. It’s all been cleared. We won’t get in the way.’
‘No one cleared it with me.’ The voice was deeply discouraging, and it added, ‘I’m not the regular man, you know. I work for the security team. Everything has to authorised with us.’
‘Didn’t she let you know? So much on her mind, poor lamb. It’s been that sort of day for us, too. We were only given the job this afternoon.’
Halliwell had to admire Inge’s sales pitch, and some of it was the truth. She must have learned how to blag in her days as a hack.
She then excelled herself by asking this plonker if they could get a picture of him in uniform to go with the feature she was writing.
‘You don’t want me in your paper,’ he said in a tone disclosing he wouldn’t mind at all.
‘Keith, why don’t you get the picture of – what’s your name, sir?’
‘Charlie Binns.’
‘Of Charlie Binns, while I go ahead and let Gisella know we’re here. We don’t want her panicking tonight, of all nights.’
The man had bought it. He was fastening his silver buttons. ‘I’d better put my cap on.’
And now it was up to Halliwell to work the camera. He wasn’t even sure which button to press. He was struggling to get the thing out of its case.
‘I’ll leave you guys to it,’ Ingeborg said, ‘if you wouldn’t mind letting me through, Charlie.’
The man adjusted his peaked cap, the door was unfastened and Ingeborg went backstage.
Halliwell touched each button he could see and one of them produced a flash. ‘All in order,’ he managed to say and pointed the lens at Charlie Binns and pressed the same button again. ‘Nice one.’
‘So when will it appear?’ Binns asked.
‘Could be in the magazine this weekend. The editor decides.’ Halliwell was improvising quite well himself. ‘May I go through now?’
He was admitted to a passageway with several noticeboards. At the far end Ingeborg was talking to a large-bosomed woman who didn’t look as if she was about to go on stage. She had a modern hairstyle with blonde highlights and was in a low-cut top and jeans. She was holding a dress on a hanger.
‘This is my photographer,’ Inge said as he approached. ‘Keith, this is Kate, who runs the wardrobe department. I was asking which dressing room Gisella uses now, and she’s still in number eight upstairs. I thought we might get a picture of the number one room first.’
‘That’s stage left, on the prompt side,’ Kate from wardrobe told them, pointing. ‘Are you sure you have permission to be here?’
‘Yes, we have clearance from Mr Binns on the stage door.’
‘Keep your voices down, then, and don’t go anywhere near the stage.’ She headed off in the other direction.
‘Do we really want a picture?’ Halliwell asked Ingeborg as they made their way up the corridor. ‘I’m not even sure if there’s film in the camera.’
People mostly dressed in black were moving about with a sense of urgency as curtain up approached.
‘We only need to get in there. Instructions from the guv’nor.
He called me on the way here. You wear specs sometimes,
don’t you?’
He didn’t follow her thread. ‘For distance, yes.’
‘Did you bring them?’
He patted his pocket. ‘I manage pretty well without them, but I thought I might need them for the play.’
‘Are they in a case?’
He nodded, still mystified.
‘Not one of those soft ones?’
‘Metal.’
‘Ideal. Well done.’
He didn’t ask why.
Quicker than expected, they were approaching the back of the stage itself. There was no other way forward, so they crossed behind the scenery, trying to look as if they had a function in the production. Above them was the cavernous fly tower with its complicated system of grids and catwalks. They turned right towards the wings where someone was perched on a higher level looking at a screen and working a console. Stagehands hurried past.
Praise be: a sign pointed to dressing rooms 1-7. Ingeborg gave a thumb up.
She was off again like the White Rabbit. When he caught up with her she had opened the door of number one and gone in. No one was inside. Some clothes were on a hanger beside the dressing table. ‘We’re looking for a dead butterfly.’
‘You’re kidding.’
‘Them’s the orders.’
Halliwell said no more. If the boss had asked them to find a dead butterfly, so be it. He had faith in Diamond’s decisions.
‘It should be on the sill, or the floor, if it’s blown off, so look where you’re treading,’ Ingeborg said. ‘Voilà.’ She pointed to the window. A small, speckled butterfly was lying on the sill. ‘Definitely dead, I’d say. This is where your specs case comes in useful.’
‘Yes?’ He took it from his pocket and removed the glasses.
‘A perfect little coffin,’ Ingeborg said as she gently slid the tortoiseshell off the sill and into the case and snapped it shut. ‘Keep it level at the bottom of your bag and it shouldn’t get too shaken up.’
Then a voice shocked them both by saying, ‘Beginners, please.’ It came from a loudspeaker attached to the wall.
‘Should we get to our seats?’
‘Still got a couple of things to check,’ Inge said.
‘What things?’