‘Even Anthony is satisfied,’ Cat said. ‘Somebody please collect me from cloud nine.’
In the control room, Diamond said, ‘We’ll give them ten minutes.’
It was fully two hours later when a solicitor had been found and Cat was seated beside her in Interview Room One at Manvers Street.
‘What’s all this about, then?’ she said, arms folded defiantly, after the formalities had been gone through and the tape was running. This wasn’t going to be one of those ‘no comment’ sessions.
Diamond had asked Halliwell to sit in with him. Most of the others would be on the other side of the one-way observation window. ‘It’s about what you’ve been up to, and why,’ Diamond said.
‘Recording the Grosse Fuge,’ she said with gusto, ‘and you were there to be blown away by it, lucky man.’
‘It would have blown anyone away. But I want to ask you about Vienna in 2008. Your quartet was equally brilliant then, but with a slightly different combination.’
‘Harry on viola.’
‘Before he went missing.’
‘Before he was kidnapped, poor lamb.’
‘You know about the kidnapping, then? That’s a good start.’
‘Mel filled us in this morning. Harry called at his house yesterday evening. What a horror story it was, too.’
‘You were the originals, you, Harry and Ivan.’
Cat remarked to her solicitor, ‘He wants us to know he’s done his homework.’
‘You’ve always been the mainstay of the Staccati,’ Diamond said. ‘Be they alcoholic, autistic or exiles, you mother them all.’
‘Is that what they told you?’
‘It’s what you repeatedly tell everyone. The first time we spoke at any length, you told me you keep your boys in order.’
She said to the solicitor, ‘He doesn’t miss a trick.’
‘I’m sure they appreciate it,’ Diamond said. ‘In their different ways, they all need mothering, don’t they? They’re your family. You told me how, after Harry went missing, you wandered the streets of Budapest searching for him.’
‘Where are you going with this?’ Cat’s long fingers beat an impatient rhythm on the table.
‘I’m thinking a single woman like yourself found an ideal outlet for her strong maternal instincts.’
‘I thought you were a policeman, not a shrink.’ Her tone was less playful now.
‘We have to understand people’s motives,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk about the music, then. You’re one of the best cellists in the world, I’m told. You could have a solo career, but you prefer playing in the quartet.’
‘There’s nothing criminal in that. I’m a team player, an ensemble person through and through.’
‘You’ve said it for me,’ Diamond said. ‘You keep the Staccati going. It’s your personal mission, creative and fulfilling.’
‘I won’t argue with that.’
‘But if anyone threatens its existence, you see red. I was told you’re like a tigress then.’
‘Who said that?’
‘If it’s true, does it matter? There was that evening in Vienna when you were having a drink after the concert in your hotel bar with the others.’
‘Most concerts end like that.’
‘This one was different because Harry wasn’t drinking with you. He was in another part of the bar with a Japanese woman you’d all met.’
‘Harry was like that. Never known to refuse an offer.’
‘You were all discussing the two of them and Douglas remarked that this woman — who knew a lot about music — could be out to persuade Harry to join another quartet.’
‘Douglas said that?’
‘He tells me he did.’
She arched her eyebrows in a show of surprise. ‘I have no recollection at all.’
‘Harry took the woman, whose name was Emi Kojima, to his hotel room.’
‘Tell us something new, sunshine. Stuff like this has been going on since Adam and Eve.’
‘But you were deeply suspicious of her motives. You considered Emi a serious threat to your beloved quartet and, let’s face it, your personal and professional life. You waited on the same hotel floor for her to leave. She was alone and you followed her along the river bank towards the Danube canal. I’m guessing now, but I reckon at some point you caught up with her and challenged her to say what her intentions were. She was terrified of you. She tried to get away, but she was small, no match for you. You may have simply pushed her, or you may have put your hands around her throat. Either way, she ended up dead in the canal. She wouldn’t be found for some weeks. You returned to the hotel shaken by what you’d done, but thinking you’d stopped her from poaching Harry. The tour continued, but unfortunately in the very next city, Budapest, Harry went missing.’
‘The last part is correct,’ Cat said to her solicitor.
The solicitor said, ‘I’m advising you not to comment.’
‘I’m only agreeing that we lost Harry. Of course we did. The rest, about me attacking the woman, is up there with UFOs and little green men.’
Diamond wasn’t put off. Cat had clearly decided to bluff her way through this and he hadn’t expected her to tell all after the first salvo. ‘So in spite of all the risk you took,’ he continued in the same steady manner, ‘the quartet was in trouble. All credit to you and Ivan for trying to keep it going.’
‘Desperate times.’ She took up the narrative as smoothly as if nothing had passed between them. ‘I had Anthony throwing tantrums because he wanted work. You’ve no idea how childish he can be. And Ivan had to be stopped from jumping ship. I kept reminding them both that we had a brand name and a fan base and a backlist of recordings.’
The solicitor touched her arm to silence her, but Cat wasn’t of a mind to underplay her achievement. ‘You’ve no idea how much competition there is among quartets. All these pushy kids coming out of Eastern Europe and the Far East were only too keen to fill the vacuum.’
‘And you didn’t know at the time that Harry had been kidnapped by the Japanese mafia?’
‘We thought he was dead. What else could we think after so long? That’s why we hired Mel to replace him — eventually. Years had gone by. We weren’t even history. We were forgotten. We needed to build our reputation all over again.’
‘So you got the residency here.’
‘Thanks to Doug. He kept the faith. Top man.’
‘And everything was coming up roses until you gave your first concert and a small Japanese woman said she was a fan and started cosying up to the men. To you it must have seemed like a rerun of Vienna in 2008, except that this time Anthony was getting the attention. She talked intelligently to him about the music. She’d played the violin to a high level herself. Do you remember the shock this gave you, Cat?’
White-faced, she was about to say she didn’t, but Diamond added, ‘Anthony does, and he’s selective in his memories. He particularly noted her tooth tattoo.’
Again, the solicitor put a restraining hand over Cat’s forearm.
She wouldn’t be silenced. ‘Anthony wouldn’t stitch me up. He needs me. He can’t function without me.’
‘His mind doesn’t work like that,’ Diamond said. ‘He takes each day as it comes. He didn’t stitch you up, as you put it. You stitched yourself up. You were incensed. You weren’t going to allow Mari Hitomi to threaten the Staccati after the tough times you’d been through. I don’t know what went through your mind, whether you believed she was trying to recruit Anthony for another quartet, or if it was pure jealousy that she was young and pretty and might sleep with him. You weren’t having it. You spoke to her yourself and offered some kind of lure — perhaps a private meeting with the quartet. She was to meet you after dark at Green Park, that remote patch of ground just across the river from where you live.’