Scott Mariani - The Mozart Conspiracy

‘Do opera stars usually have friends with guns?’

Ben smiled. ‘I was in the army with Oliver.’

Kinski nodded. Ex-military. That made sense, from the way this guy had sneaked up on him so easily. ‘What’s your name?’ he asked tentatively.

‘You can call me Ben.’

‘Markus Kinski.’

‘Good to meet you, Markus. Now perhaps we could drive a while, and you could tell me what you know about Oliver’s death. And then, if I’m satisfied that I can trust you, I’ll take you to meet Leigh.’

Kinski parked the Mercedes in a sidestreet in central Vienna and they walked to the Sacher Hotel on Philharmonikerstrasse, opposite the imposing Vienna State Opera House. Ben wanted a busy place, as public as possible, for their talk with the detective, and the Sacher was about the most public place in the middle of the city. Even if someone spotted Leigh here, they’d be less likely to come running for autographs. Music stars were nothing new in Vienna.

The Sacher café was bustling with people taking a break from their Christmas shopping for a morning coffee and a piece of the café’s famous cake. Ben guided Kinski to a table in the corner.

‘Where is she?’ Kinski asked, sitting down, expecting Leigh to be there. Not another damned tearoom, he was thinking. He hated these places.

‘You sit here and keep yourself occupied for an hour,’ Ben said. ‘And I’ll be back with her.’

Kinski grunted. ‘Great.’

‘I’ve got people here watching you,’ Ben lied. ‘If you make any phone calls or try to make contact with anyone, I’ll know about it and you won’t see me again until I come to kill you. Is that very, very clear?’

‘Absolutely clear. Thank you.’

Ben smiled. ‘Nothing personal, Markus.’

Left alone, Kinski glowered at the menu. When the surly waiter arrived, he ordered enough black coffee and buttery Malakofftorte to keep him going for the next hour. Then he sat back and waited and thought hard about this guy he’d just met.

Ben walked across the busy Philharmonikerstrasse, heading in the direction of the Albertina Palace. He saw a sign marked Strassenbahn and boarded a tram. Leigh was waiting for him at the cheap bed and breakfast on the other side of the Danube Canal.

Kinski was into his fourth coffee when Ben and Leigh walked into the Sacher café just over an hour later. Kinski rose to his feet as Leigh approached the table and greeted her politely. He turned to Ben. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.’

‘Another coffee?’

‘Forget it,’ Kinski said.

Leigh took off her sunglasses and laid them on the table. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she was wearing a woollen hat. Ben sat down beside her.

She studied Kinski carefully. ‘I believe you have some information about my brother.’

‘Tell her what you told me,’ Ben said.

Kinski spent the next few minutes going back over it, explaining in detail what he knew. Leigh listened carefully as he talked. He described how he’d accidentally stumbled across Madeleine Laurent, who had then turned out to be Erika Mann, which was almost certainly another false name. The whole Laurent episode had been an elaborate cover. Then he took the little plastic bag of spent 9mm cases out of his pocket and laid them on the linen tablecloth in front of Leigh. ‘I found these by the lakeside,’ he said.

She studied them, recognizing what they were. ‘I don’t understand,’ she said. ‘My brother drowned. He wasn’t shot.’

‘They weren’t shooting at him,’ Ben said. ‘They were shooting at the ice.’

Leigh closed her eyes for a moment. He patted her hand, gave it a brief squeeze.

Kinski went on. He explained how he’d tried to re-investigate Oliver’s case. How someone had taken Clara from her school and used her to silence him, how his old Chief had been suddenly removed, and with him any chance of reopening the case.

Leigh looked concerned. ‘Where is Clara now?’

‘Somewhere safe. She’s OK.’

‘Tell her what you told me about the guy with the ear,’ Ben said, tapping his own earlobe.

Kinski related what Clara had told him about her abductor. Leigh turned and looked at Ben with wide eyes. ‘The ear,’ she said. ‘The man on Oliver’s video-clip. He had a mangled earlobe.’

‘What video-clip?’ Kinski asked.

‘We need somewhere private with a computer,’ Ben said.

‘Shouldn’t be a problem,’ Kinski replied. He got up and approached the counter. He asked for the manager, produced his police ID, and within five minutes they were being shown to a small conference room at the back of the hotel. They sat at a long table and Ben loaded the CD-ROM into the computer’s disk drive.

Kinski watched the clip in silence. His brow furrowed at the end, but he didn’t take his eyes off the screen when the victim’s tongue was hacked off and his guts were slashed open. Leigh had turned away and was standing at the window watching the traffic go by.

Kinski sat back in his chair when it was over. He exhaled deeply. ‘And you think this happened here in Vienna?’

‘Look at the times,’ Ben said. ‘The film was shot not long before Oliver’s death. It had to be somewhere nearby. It looks like a big house, an old house, and part of it is a cellar or a crypt of some kind.’

‘The victim looked familiar to me,’ Kinski muttered. ‘I’ve seen him somewhere, but I can’t place him.’

‘What about this other guy, the one in the foreground, with the ear?’

Kinski nodded. ‘From what Clara said, it could be the same guy who took her, yeah.’

‘One more question,’ Ben said. ‘Does Adler mean anything to you?’

‘Common enough name. What about it?’

‘I don’t really know,’ Ben said. ‘Never mind.’

‘Anything else on this disc?’ Kinski asked.

‘Just some photos.’

‘Show me.’

Ben clicked out of the video file and brought up the images. Kinski shook his head at each of them in turn. Then he said, ‘Wait a minute. Stop. Go back. I saw something.’

The shot of Oliver playing the piano duet at the party came back up on-screen, and the big detective’s eyes narrowed. He pointed with a stubby finger at the second pianist sitting beside Oliver. ‘I know him,’ he said. ‘That’s Fred Meyer.’

Kinski had only seen him once before, and he’d been a corpse dangling from a rope. But it was the same man, no question.

‘Tell me more,’ Ben said.

‘Meyer was a music student,’ Kinski said. ‘I didn’t know he was a friend of Oliver’s.’

‘Can we speak to him?’ asked Leigh.

‘Tricky,’ Kinski said. ‘There might be an issue with availability.’

‘Dead?’ Ben asked.

Kinski nodded. ‘But that’s what’s interesting. He died on the ninth of January.’

‘The same day as Oliver,’ Leigh said quietly. She sat heavily down on a chair. Kinski could see the hurt in her eyes but he went on. She needed to know this. ‘Supposed to have been suicide,’ he said. ‘But I’ve never been happy with that. Didn’t check out at all. Suspicious.’

‘Suspicious how?’ Ben asked.

‘I’ve seen a lot of suicides,’ Kinski said. ‘There’s always a reason why a person makes that decision. Fred Meyer had none that I could find. He had everything to live for. Plus, I don’t like those kinds of coincidences. Two musicians both die on the same night, around the same time, just a few kilometres apart. One dies in an accident that doesn’t add up. The other dies in a suicide that nobody can explain. Tell me that’s not strange.’

‘And now it turns out he knew Oliver,’ Ben said.

Kinski nodded. ‘So now it’s even more suspicious. There’s another link, too. Meyer had a pair of opera tickets.’ He pointed at Leigh. ‘For the first night of your performance in Macbeth last January, here in Vienna.’