Read Online Orchestrated Death by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles - Free Book Online Page A

Anne-Marie in the centre in a red bikini, one hand resting on the anonymous shoulder. She was laughing,
     her eyes screwed up with amusement and sea-dazzle, her head tilted back so that her dark bob of hair fell back from her throat.
     Her other hand was flung out – to balance her, perhaps – and was silhouetted sharply against the dark-blue sea in the background
     like a small, white starfish. She looked as though she hadn’t a care in the world; her youthful innocence seemed the epitome
     of what being young ought to be like, and so seldom was.
    Slider stared at it hungrily, trying to blot out the memory of her small abandoned body lying dead in that grim and dingy,
     empty flat.
Murdered
But why? The white starfish hand, pinned for ever against time in that casual snapshot, had rested finally against the old
     and splintered wood of those dusty floorboards. She was so young and pretty. What could she possibly have known or done to
     warrant her death? Not fair, not fair. She laughed at him out of the photograph, and he had only ever known her dead.
    One thing he was sure about – there was an organisation behind her death. That was bad news for him: if they were good, they’d
     have second-guessed him all the way along the line. But however good they were, they would have made one mistake. A benign
     God saw to that – one mistake, to give the good guys a chance, that was the rule. There was a good sensible reason for it,
     of course – that the criminals were working to a finite time-scale, and the investigators had for ever more to investigate
     – but Slider believed in a benign God anyway. He had to, to make sense of his world at all.
    Atherton had evinced no interest in the photograph, but was staring intently at the violin. He took it from the case and turned
     it over carefully, and then said hesitantly, ‘Guv?’Slider looked up. ‘I think this violin might be something rather special.’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I’m no expert, but it’s got A. Stradivarius written on it.’
    Slider stared. ‘You mean it’s a Stradivarius?’
    Atherton shrugged. ‘I said I’m no expert.’
    ‘It might be a fake.’
    ‘It might. But if it were genuine –’
    Slider noticed, as he had noticed before, how even under stress Atherton’s grammar did not desert him. ‘Yes, if it were,’
     he agreed.
    One mistake. Could this be it?
    ‘Take it. Find out,’ he said. ‘Find out what it’s worth. But for God’s sake be careful with it.’
    ‘Tell your grandmother,’ Atherton said, replacing it with awed hands. ‘What now?’
    ‘I’m going to see her best friend. You realise we still don’t have a next of kin, thanks to Inspector Petrie? So it’s the
     Barbican for me.’
    ‘Wouldn’t you like me to go for you? Concert halls are more my province than yours.’
    ‘It’ll be good for me to widen my experience,’ Slider said. ‘Rôle reversal.’
    ‘That’s dangerous,’ said Atherton. ‘The filling might fall out.’

CHAPTER 5
Utterly Barbicanned
    Slider left his car in the Barbican car park and immediately got lost. He had heard tales of how impossible it was to find
     your way around in there, and had assumed they were exaggerated: He found a security guard and asked directions, was sent
     through some swing doors and got lost again. He entered a lift which had been designed, disconcertingly, only to stop at alternate
     floors, and eventually, with a sense of profound relief, emerged into the car park where he had begun. At least now I know
     where I am, he thought, even if I don’t know where I’ve just been.
    He was contemplating his next move when the sound of footsteps made him turn, and he saw a woman coming towards him carrying
     a violin case. His heart lifted, and he went towards her like an American tourist in London who has just spotted the Savoy
     Hotel.
    ‘Are you a member of the Orchestra? Can you tell me how to get to the backstage area from here?’
    She stopped and looked at