Our Last Echo

5

Singleforth City

The umbrella Detective Cavendish carried was poor protection against the driving rain. She had to fight the wind with every step she took as she climbed the steps in front of the Singleforth Opera House.

Sutton watched her from the shadows between the gothic pillars. When the wind blew her umbrella inside-out and she turned around to catch it and wrestle it back into shape, Sutton stepped forward. It was a very simple trick of timing so that when she looked back he would apparently have appeared from nowhere.

She cursed when she saw him and lowered the umbrella, shaking the rain off it in a futile gesture. She hurried up to where he waited. "It's inside," she said.

"Thank you for calling me." Sutton led the way into the opera house.

Singleforth Opera House was closed for some major refurbishment so there wasn't even a show in rehearsal. The only people with access to the building were builders and security. The lobby was very far from its usual ornate splendour: the carpet had been torn up, tools and timber lay everywhere.

"It's not very public," Sutton remarked. The murder scene in Mason Square was meant to be seen, a very public message. The next scene should have been in a similarly public location. A closed theatre didn't have the same cachet.

"Not like the square, you mean?" Cavendish indicated the sweeping staircase that led to the circle and private boxes. "No, I think this time the message is more private."

He had walked up these steps many times as James Sutton. He came here as a boy with his parents and now came often to the opera as a patron of the arts. He had never before climbed these steps as Sutton.

"You'll get the best view from the circle," Cavendish said as they reached one of the entrances.

Sutton entered ahead of her. He strode past the rows of seats to the front of the circle. As soon as he saw the stage he understood Cavendish's abrasive attitude. He wondered if he was here as detective, or as a suspect.

There were two bodies this time, male and female, posed side by side on their backs with his feet beside her head and vice versa. As before, both were clothed only in blood. Both bodies had been sliced open: the woman through the rib cage, with the bones pulled apart to expose her internal organs; the man's stomach open from ribs to genitals. The stage lighting had been set up around them, bathing the scene in red. But it was the prop suspended above them that drew the eye and explained why Cavendish called him so promptly. He recognised it, actually, because it had appeared in the previous season's performance of Faust. It was a flying demon, but from where he stood, with a single spotlight illuminating the wings from below.

The first message was public. This was meant for him.

"Tell me you know who did this," Cavendish said from beside him.

"I don't," Sutton growled, "but I'm going to find out." The first three victims were unknown to him, but the woman lying on the stage seemed familiar. He needed a closer look to be sure. "How long since they were found?" he asked.

Cavendish checked her watch. "Eighty seven minutes."

"And how long until we have company?"

"Haven't you seen enough?"

"I'm not here for tourist thrills, detective. I need to go down there."

"You know I can't let you contaminate the scene."

"It's not my first day. If you stay here, you'll be able to see everything I do. I will touch as little as possible but I need to understand the message here." He didn't wait for further discussion, but jumped over the safety rail to the stalls below.