Scott Mariani - The Mozart Conspiracy

‘We’d have to be talking about some pretty solid fucking proof.’

‘But if I did-’

Schiller gasped and flapped his arms in exasperation. ‘Yes, Markus. OK. If-and it’s one hell of a big if-you come up with something seriously convincing, then I might just consider reopening the case.’ His eyes were hard. ‘That’s as good as it gets.’

‘That’s good enough for me,’ Kinski said. Then the office door was flapping in his wake.

The detour to the office had made him even later for picking his daughter Clara up from school. The traffic was a nightmare and the roads through the city looked like a car park. Kinski sat for fifteen minutes in a nose-to-tail jam, drumming on the steering wheel and fighting his rising impatience.

In a nearby department-store window, the same channel played on rows of TV screens. Kinski gazed at them distractedly. It was one of those talking-heads shows, some interview with a politician. Kinski knew who he was. His face was plastered everywhere lately. Some rich man’s son who thought it was cool to be a Socialist. What was his name? Philippe something. Philippe Aragon. The great new fucking hope for Europe.

Kinski looked at the clock on the dash and sighed. If he didn’t get there soon, Clara would get on the bus and he’d have to double back and try to catch her at the bus stop. She’d be hanging around on the street corner in the dark wondering where Helga was. Shit.

What the hell, he thought. He slapped the blue flashing light to the roof and hit the siren. The traffic parted magically and he sped on through.

As he skidded around the corner and gunned the big Mercedes along the street he saw the school bus still pulled up outside the high wall of St Mary’s College. Crowds of little girls in their sombre grey uniforms and dark blue coats were gathered noisily around the bus, chatting, laughing. Expensively dressed mothers were arriving in their Jaguars and BMWs to collect their daughters.

Kinski screeched to a halt and killed the siren. A group of mothers turned to stare at him as he climbed out of the car and jogged over towards the bus. He looked, but couldn’t see Clara among the crowd of girls. He recognized some of her friends. ‘Anyone seen Clara?’ he asked them. ‘Clara Kinski?’

They all looked blank or shook their heads. Kinski stepped up inside the bus, but she wasn’t there either.

He stopped. A group of girls were coming out of the school gate and walking off down the road. They had their backs to him, swinging their schoolbags, laughing, skipping. He looked. He saw a violin case. Fair-coloured pigtails hanging out from under the regulation blue bonnet. He ran after them. Called her name. Some of the girls turned to look at the big, panting, red-faced man as he approached. The one with the violin case kept on walking, talking to her friend. She hadn’t noticed him. He scattered them and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘Clara, where the hell are you-’

She turned and blinked up at him, scared. She backed away.

‘I’m sorry,’ he panted. ‘I thought you were Clara Kinski. Have you seen her?’

They all shook their heads nervously, big eyes looking up at him. Then they turned and kept walking, throwing glances over their shoulders as he turned away. One of them tapped her head to say ‘he’s crazy’ and they all giggled.

He ran through the school gate and down the tree-lined driveway. It was beginning to snow again, heavy flakes in his eyelashes. He wiped them and saw a teacher he recognized coming the other way. ‘Frau Schmidt, have you seen Clara?’ he asked.

The teacher looked surprised. ‘Is she not on the bus, Herr Kinski? I saw her go through the gate with her friends.’

He shook his head. ‘I checked.’

‘Don’t worry, Herr Kinski. Perhaps she’s gone home with a friend?’

‘She’d never do that,’ he said, biting his lip.

A small girl came out of the ivied archway that was the main entrance to the school. She was carrying a little clarinet case. She had dark plaits and big brown eyes that widened in recognition when she saw Kinski.

‘Martina, have you seen Clara?’ asked Frau Schmidt.

‘She’s gone,’ said Martina in her small voice.

‘Gone?’ Kinski asked.

The girl melted shyly under his look.

‘Speak up, Martina,’ the teacher said kindly, kneeling down and stroking her hair. ‘Don’t be afraid. Where did Clara go?’

‘In a car. With a man.’

The teacher’s expression hardened. ‘What man?’

‘I don’t know. Just a man.’

‘When did you see this?’

Martina pointed up towards the gate, where the bus was pulling away. ‘I was with her. Then I remembered my clarinet. I came back for it. Just then, a car came. A man got out. He smiled at Clara. He said he was a friend of Herr Kinski.’ Martina’s timid eyes flickered up at him.

Kinski’s heart was thudding and his palms were prickling. ‘What did he look like?’ he asked the child.

‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly. ‘He was big. He was wearing a suit.’

‘What kind of car was it? What colour?’

‘Black,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what kind.’

‘Which way did they go?’

She pointed down the street. The bus was pulling away. He looked beyond it at the empty road, houses in the distance.

She could be anywhere. She was gone.

Oxfordshire

They switched taxis twice and rode around the countryside in buses until Ben satisfied himself that they weren’t being followed. Just as the sun was beginning to set, they boarded a red double-decker in the village of Eynsham heading back towards the city. The top deck was empty and they sat at the back so they could watch the road behind them.

‘What are we going to do now?’ she asked.

‘I think we both know that Oliver’s death wasn’t an accident, Leigh.’ Ben put his hand on hers and squeezed it lightly, looking into her eyes. ‘I’m sorry. I almost wish it had been.’

She nodded sadly. ‘What was he doing there? What could have happened? He was just researching a book.’

He rubbed his temples, thinking hard. ‘Did the coroner establish time of death, more or less?’

‘He died at ten thirty-four p.m. Why?’

‘That’s too precise,’ Ben said. ‘Nobody can pinpoint the moment that accurately.’

‘Dad’s old wind-up watch,’ she replied. ‘Oliver always wore it to remember him by. It stopped…’ It was tough to say it. ‘It stopped when he went in the water.’ She sniffed. A tear welled up in her eye and she wiped it away.

‘Are you OK talking about this?’ he asked.

‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’

‘Here’s how I see it,’ he said. ‘Oliver witnessed something. Why, and where, we don’t know. We only know what he witnessed, and it looks like some kind of ritual execution. But he must have been seen somehow. They came after him, but it took them a while to catch up with him. Just over an hour’s gap from when he witnessed the crime to when he died.’

Leigh nodded and said nothing. She dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

‘I think he filmed the clip on a mobile,’ Ben went on. ‘Say he still had it with him when they caught him. Say the clip was still on it. They’d have thought they’d retrieved all the evidence.’

‘But then they saw my TV interview,’ Leigh said grimly.

He nodded. ‘Months had gone by. They’d covered all their tracks. Case closed. Then suddenly there’s a whole new threat. You announced you had all the research notes Oliver had been sending you, including material posted the day he died that you hadn’t looked at yet. What if he’d sent you a copy of the evidence? That’s when they knew they had to come after you as well.’