As if on cue, the quartet had started the third part, a more accessible sequence at a slower tempo, tender by contrast with what had just gone before. The players’ faces reflected the lyrical nature of the theme. The lines of anxiety had gone from Ivan’s brow. Beside him, Anthony’s lips had formed into something near a smile. Mel was leaning back as he played. And Cat had time to brush away a wayward strand of hair.
Diamond resumed. ‘Emi didn’t remain all night with Harry. She left after they’d had sex and she’d persuaded him to part with the netsuke. Earlier, she’d given the impression she was a guest at the hotel, but this wasn’t true. She was under instructions to report back to the yakuza with the netsuke. She took the route beside the river Wien that links to the canal and she must have been followed. Someone was deeply alarmed about her.’
‘Harry?’ Halliwell said. ‘He’d worked out what this was all about?’
‘Unlikely. He wouldn’t have dropped her into the canal without recovering the netsuke. After all, it linked her to him. But someone attacked her and almost certainly strangled her and dumped the body in the canal. The reason, the motive, is the key to this whole mystery.’
In the studio, a dramatic change in the music sent the players careering into the fourth part. The jarring fugal themes returned at full pitch, outrageous in complexity, skewed into ever-changing variations, playing havoc, twisting, reversing, rollercoasting into dissonance and darkness. Eyes wide, the musicians strove to stay with it, the strain as extreme as it gets.
‘We can’t consider the killing of Emi without leaping forward to Mari Hitomi,’ Diamond said. ‘The deaths are related. We know for certain that Mari was strangled and thrown into the Kennet and Avon canal. The same method of disposal. And why? Because up to this time the killer appeared to have got away with the first murder this way. A rotting corpse recovered after weeks in water doesn’t yield many clues. If she hadn’t been identified from the tooth tattoo we might never have made the connection. Once we had the facts, the parallels were striking. Two Japanese women with knowledge of classical music who attended Staccati concerts and approached the players afterwards as fans. Two women who ended up murdered in canals. What can we get from that?’
‘The killer had a thing about Japanese women?’ Halliwell said.
Ingeborg rounded on him. ‘What do you mean — a “thing”?’
‘I don’t know what psychologists would call it. A love-hate complex? All his sexual fantasies revolve around Japanese women.’
‘Ivan,’ Ingeborg said at once.
‘I’ve been thinking hard about Ivan,’ Diamond said. ‘He’s a regular visitor to the geisha houses. He told me himself that he visits Kyoto and plays the three-stringed instrument with the geishas. These aren’t knocking-shops. They’re highly respectable places controlled with long-established rules. It’s genuinely about traditional culture. But with my suspicious mind I wondered what really motivates Ivan. Is he secretly wishing he could have sex with these unattainable women? And when a Japanese woman says she’s a fan and wants to hang out with the quartet, does it start an adrenaline rush in Ivan? Is he transferring all those pent-up desires to these hapless women? It’s not difficult to see how it could get nasty if, for example, they reject the advance.’
‘How would it have happened?’ Ingeborg said.
‘He’d see Emi going up to the hotel room with Harry and he’d wait for her to come out. Something similar with Mari. He thinks because the geishas dance attendance he’s got a special way with all Japanese women. With these two it doesn’t work out and he turns violent.’
‘Is that it?’ Ingeborg said. ‘Ivan is the killer?’
Behind the glass they could see Ivan’s piston movement with the bow, ferociously rising to the demands of the score while the fingers of his left hand kept a continuous vibrato in play.
‘He seemed more shaken than anyone else when Harry reappeared this week,’ Diamond went on. ‘He recognized him in the car and kept the knowledge to himself. When I called on him at his lodgings he was fearful that I was Harry. I had to threaten to knock the door down.’
‘Did Harry know Ivan was the killer?’ Halliwell asked.
‘Harry knew nothing. Ivan was in a state of near-panic because he thought Harry wanted reinstating as the Staccati violist. He didn’t know about the missing finger. Ivan can’t take disruption. He wants the quartet to stay as it is. After four years in the wilderness they had only just got back to peak performance again. He had no strategy for dealing with Harry. As a chess player that alarmed him.’
‘So the panic wasn’t because Harry could turn him in?’
In the studio, the ferocious drive of the violins reached a pitch of intensity that caused Diamond to break off.
There was a difference of tone when he resumed. ‘When all is said and done, these crimes aren’t down to Ivan,’ he said with certainty. ‘Remember he’s the controlling one, the chess expert. There was too much left to chance, too many mistakes, too many unknowns. Do I have to go over them again? He wouldn’t dream of attempting a murder without a master plan. Ivan would make sure he committed the perfect crime.’
‘I can agree with that,’ Douglas said. ‘He covers every angle.’
‘Is it Anthony, then?’ Ingeborg said.
‘What’s the case for Anthony?’ Diamond said. ‘The ball’s in your court.’
‘Pretty straightforward,’ she said. ‘He’s obsessive, autistic, liable to tantrums. Yet he’s no child. He has a sex drive and visits prostitutes. He’s been around when each of the killings took place. Harry was murdered right outside the house where he lives.’
‘Why would he have killed these women?’
‘Because he has no ability to relate to us,’ she said, as if speaking for all women. ‘He can’t form relationships. We’re sex objects, and that’s it. The tragic irony is that he’s a young, attractive-looking guy who is going to appeal to women. But when they show interest he assumes it’s sex they want and if they don’t immediately respond he kills them.’
‘Simple as that?’ Diamond said.
‘Issues are simple for Anthony.’
‘So you’re saying he murdered Harry as well?’
‘Harry made the mistake of parking outside Anthony’s lodging and sitting there. Anthony went out to him and asked what he wanted. Harry started asking awkward questions about what happened in Vienna and Anthony grabbed the gun and pulled the trigger.’
‘Do you know this for sure? You interviewed him.’
Assertive as Ingeborg liked to appear, she was sometimes betrayed by a blush and it happened now, spreading with the speed of a flash fire. ‘I didn’t in fact get much from him. I’ve told you my theory.’
‘You think he shot Harry because questions were asked about the killing of Emi?’
‘Awkward questions.’
Diamond was shaking his head. ‘Awkward questions aren’t awkward for Anthony. What’s done is done. He gives it to you straight. He told us what happened this morning, how he went out and saw the bullet-hole in Harry’s head and how he told his landlady and she phoned Cat.’
‘Yes,’ she said, still pressing her theory, ‘but what he didn’t say is what matters. He didn’t say he’d gone out to the car and shot Harry last night, which I believe is what happened. You didn’t ask him, so he didn’t tell you.’
‘In fact I put the question to him when I first got to the scene before you came,’ Diamond said. ‘These were my actual words to Anthony: “Do you know how Harry was shot?” He shook his head and I insisted on a verbal answer and got one. He gave me a clear “No”. Are we all agreed that he speaks the truth?’