Perched up in the private box, he had a great view of the Gran Teatro Fenice. The Phoenix, the legendary opera house. Aptly named. He’d read in the programme that someone kept burning the place down. The last time had been in ’96. In 2003, the programme said, it had been restored to its former grandeur.
Grandeur was the right word. He looked around him. He’d seen some sumptuous décor in his life, but this was going a stage and a half further. The ornamentation of the place was beyond belief. It was like a cathedral built in the name of music.
He sighed. So here he was. Venice. His first opera. Leigh was an old hand here-half the audience were here especially to see her. The Queen of the Night was the big diva role. The media were all over her, and all over her new husband by extension.
He’d got used to being a very private man, and his first encounters with the hordes of journalists and paparazzi had been a bit disquieting. He might have been a little surly with them. Especially the overinsistent camera hound he’d threatened to ditch in the Grand Canal.
This was all something he’d have to adjust to. He wondered if he’d ever get to like opera. Maybe one day. For now, all he wanted was to see her on the stage. He’d never heard her sing live. He couldn’t wait to see her in her element.
Down below, the orchestra was tuning up and the audience was animated, the theatre filled with the hum of chatter. Ben sprawled in his seat and drank it all in. It was a heady feeling. He could begin to understand the appeal for the performers who devoted their lives to this moment.
Then the conversation began to die down and the audience started applauding loudly. The conductor was coming up through the orchestra pit. He was a tall man in a black tuxedo, white tie, a thick mane of black hair swept up from his high forehead. His expression was severe, focused. He bowed to the stage, turned and bowed to the audience and the musicians, then took to the podium. Dead silence fell over the theatre for a moment before the overture began.
A huge orchestral chord sounded, the instruments all coming in together. Then a pause for four beats, and another two big chords. Another pause, followed by two more stabs. It was the composer’s way of grabbing the audience’s attention by force, and it worked perfectly. The theatre was suddenly filled with sound as the whole orchestra chimed into the main theme.
The overture over, the audience applauded again and the house lights dimmed. This was it. The heavy curtains glided apart across the stage, and Ben settled back.
The set was breathtaking. It was a wilderness strewn with ruined buildings, broken-down temples, bushes and huge rocks. It looked completely real and the lighting effects were as good as any movie he’d ever seen. He could see the Masonic influence in the Egyptian look of the ruins, a pyramid in the background. He stifled the memories they brought up. That was all over now.
A man emerged from stage left and ran across the set, chased by a giant snake, then stumbled and lay still at the foot of the giant pyramid. While he was unconscious, three women in strange costumes came out and killed the snake with silver spears. Ben watched. It all seemed very odd to him. He was taken aback by the volume of the singing. No microphones. He checked the libretto on his knee and tried to follow the storyline, but quickly lost the thread. He wasn’t that interested. He only wanted to see Leigh, and she wouldn’t appear until some way into the first act.
Until then, he drifted and let the spectacle wash over him. It was huge and impressive and fantastically staged, but it didn’t captivate him.
However, the Queen of the Night’s entrance did, completely.
She was wearing a long silvery-black robe and a wild crown, both covered in glittering stars. He could feel the impact she had on the audience the moment she stepped out onto the set. The lights followed her centre-stage. She looked totally at ease, in command of the whole theatre. Someone threw a red rose from a box across the opposite side. It sailed over the orchestra pit and landed on the stage.
Then she started to sing. The power and depth of her voice blew him away. He watched her. It was hard to believe it was the Leigh he knew. It was as if the music wasn’t coming from her, it was coming through her from some other source. She filled the room with an awesome kind of beauty he’d never experienced before.
So this was what it was about. Now he suddenly knew who Leigh really was, what she lived for. It was something you had to understand. Nobody could explain it to you, and if you couldn’t feel it you were soulless, dead inside. It gave him goose pimples.
Her aria was over far too quickly. He was left stunned by it. There were cries of ‘Bravo!’ as she exited. More flowers landed on the stage. Another scene started.
Ben knew from the libretto that she wouldn’t be on again for a while. He had plenty of time to get down to the bar and grab himself a drink before her next appearance. He quietly left his box and started down the red-carpeted passageway.
That was about the same moment that the latecomer wandered into the lobby. He looked around him. He avoided the ticket office. That wasn’t what he was here for. He kept his head low and walked fast. He aimed for a side door. The sign read PRIVATE. He pushed through it and walked on.
Chapter Sixty-Five
The latecomer had never been in this place before, but he’d been reading about it very recently. He kept his coat collar turned up and drew the peak of the baseball cap lower down over his face. He walked quickly, a little stiffly, turning right, left, right again. Here, away from the public areas, the walls were plain and some parts still looked unfinished since the last restoration. He passed some stage assistants carrying a wooden prop that looked like part of a stone battlement, performers in costume, looking nervous and checking sheets of music notation. There was activity and bustle around him-everyone too distracted and psyched up about the show to notice him. He avoided eye contact and pushed on. He could hear the sound of the orchestra, muted and damped in the background.
Suddenly he was backstage and the music was much louder. It was hectic here in the crowded wings, people everywhere, a million things going on at once to keep the huge show rolling. A stage director was hissing orders in Italian at some flustered-looking crew members. Everyone was tense, and high on adrenaline.
Too many people. This wasn’t a good place to be. He walked on quickly and pushed through another door and followed the red carpet. This looked more like what he was looking for. Decorative plants in tall porcelain vases lined the walls on both sides with doors between them. At the end of the corridor, a good-looking woman in a long yellow dress was talking to two men. He slipped into a room with a sink in one corner and some mops and buckets in another. He pulled the door to, and through the crack he watched the people leave.
He stepped out of the cleaner’s room.
‘What are you doing here?’ said a voice.
The man turned round slowly. The usher was a good few inches shorter than him. The man looked down at him and said nothing. He kept his face low, so that the visor of the cap covered a lot of it.
‘This area is for stage personnel and performers only,’ the usher said. ‘You’ll have to leave.’
The man didn’t understand the quick-fire Italian, but he got the message. He raised his head a little. The usher’s eyes opened wider. He couldn’t help himself. Most people had that same look of revulsion when they saw his face. That was why he wore the cap.
The usher was standing there gaping at him. The man laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘Let me explain something to you,’ he said in English. He moved him out of the middle of the corridor to where it was a little shadier, near to the door of the cleaner’s room.
He killed him quickly and quietly. It was easily done and there was no blood. He propped the body against the inside wall of the cleaner’s room and snicked the door shut. He turned the key, slid it out of the keyhole and dropped it into a plant pot.
He walked on until he found the door he was looking for. It had her name on it. He slipped to one side. He took a phone from his pocket, pressed a preset
number and spoke quietly to the person on the other end. Then he waited.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Ben glanced at his watch and downed the last dregs of his whisky. He was alone in the bar. He suddenly felt a little guilty about sneaking away from the opera. He’d stayed away too long, and Leigh should be back onstage any minute now. That was something he didn’t want to miss.
He made his way back along the red-carpeted passage, up the flight of steps he’d come down and along the curved corridor that led to the doors of the private boxes. They all looked the same, red velvet inset into the red velvet wall. He found his number. Settling back in his seat, he looked down at the stage and saw that he’d been just in time.
The opera was into its second act. An aria was just finishing as the Queen of the Night reappeared. She hit centre-stage and began to sing about love, death and revenge. It was powerful.
But something was wrong.
The voice was wrong. It was a strong, vibrant soprano. It was good enough for world-class opera but it didn’t have anything approaching Leigh’s passion or depth, the things that had made his skin tingle.
He frowned. On the seat beside him were the tiny opera glasses Leigh had given him. Their magnification was scarcely military-grade but they were enough to see the faces of the performers up close. He put the little eyepieces to his eyes and focused in on the Queen.
She was wearing the same costume and she was made up to look just the same. But she wasn’t Leigh. She was another woman.
Everyone was elated. Leigh had had to see a million people backstage after her first aria. She had costume check, hair check, makeup retouches. Some TV guy had sneaked in on a pretext and wanted to talk to her about chat-show bookings but she turned him away. Then one of the opera producers wanted to lavish praise on her. People wanted to give her flowers. And the show wasn’t even over yet.
A breathless runner found her as she stood talking in the wings with the overflowing producer. There was a message for her. Her husband had called the front desk and needed to speak to her. It was something important. He hadn’t said what. But he wanted to meet in her dressing room. He couldn’t see her backstage. It was a private thing. And it couldn’t wait. The runner was apologetic. That was what Mr Hope had said.
She made her excuses and broke away from the producer. It was strange. What did Ben want to see her about? She was in a rush. She didn’t have time to run back to her dressing room. It was miles away through the maze of corridors. But if he’d said it was urgent…
‘You’ve got exactly four minutes,’ the stage manager warned her.
‘I’ll be here, Claudio.’
‘Three minutes fifty-nine seconds.’
‘I’ll be here.’
She’d run. The long, flowing costume wasn’t easy to run in. The corridors were empty. She was a little out of breath by the time she reached her dressing room.
She’d expected to find him standing outside the door. Aside from that, she didn’t know what to expect. Had he been taken ill? Received bad news? The car was stolen? The house was on fire? It wasn’t like him to panic.
But he wasn’t outside the door. There was nobody there. The passage outside her door was deserted. It was in shadow. A whole row of the wall-mounted lamps had gone dark. She stepped over to one of the lamps to check it. There was nothing wrong with the switch. Someone had taken out the bulb. She checked the next one. Someone had taken the bulb out of that one as well.
She walked back across the darkened red carpet and tried the handle of her dressing-room door. The door was locked. She’d locked it before the start of the performance. He didn’t have a key anyway. So where was he?
She only had a couple of minutes to get backstage. No time to wait. He’d have to catch her later. She turned to start running back.
That was when the cold leather of the gloved hand had clapped over her mouth and strong fingers had gripped her arm.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Ben pressed through the crowd backstage. The Queen of the Night’s aria was over and he caught sight of her coming through the wings. He moved quickly towards her. ‘Who are you?’ he asked her. She looked surprised.
A hand on his shoulder. He turned and saw a heavy-set man with long greying curly hair tied in a ponytail, looking at him nervously. ‘Claudio,’ he said, recognizing the stage manager.
Claudio was biting his lip. ‘Where is she?’ he asked. His English was perfect.
‘I came to ask you that,’ Ben said.
Claudio looked confused. ‘Your message—’
‘What message?’
‘You called the desk and asked for Leigh to meet you at her dressing room.’
‘When was this?’
‘Just five minutes ago. She went to meet you. She hasn’t come back. We’ve been going crazy looking for her. We had to fill in for her.’ He motioned towards the young soprano in the Queen of the Night costume. She was still standing there uncertainly. ‘This is Antonella Cataldi, her understudy.’
‘I have to go,’ Antonella said. Claudio nodded to her and she filtered away through the crowd with a last glance at Ben.
The stage manager looked irritated. ‘Where did she go? She’s never done anything like this before.’
‘I never left that message,’ Ben said.
Claudio’s mouth fell open. ‘Then who did?’
Ben said nothing. He was already pushing back through the crowded wings towards the performers’ dressing rooms.
The corridor was half dark. He tried her door. It was locked. There was nobody around. Claudio caught up with him, out of breath, sweat shining on his cheeks. ‘This is crazy,’ he said. ‘Where did she go?’
Ben stood back from the door. He took two quick steps forwards, bounced on his left heel. The flat of his right shoe crashed into the door, five feet from the carpet. It burst open, tearing a long splinter out of the frame. It juddered against the inside wall.
The dressing-room walls were lined with rich blue satin. There was a cluttered dressing table surrounded with lights. A chaise longue with Leigh’s clothes neatly folded on it. Her coat was hanging from a hook on the back of the door. Her handbag was slung from its strap over the back of the dressing-table chair. Her shoes were neatly lined up on the rug. The book she’d been reading was propped open on a side table. But the dressing room was empty.
‘So where the hell did she go?’ Claudio asked. He was looking more worried every second.
Ben walked fast out of the room. He ran up the corridor. Something was lying on the red carpet up there. He knelt down beside it. It was black, silvery, soft. He picked it up. It was the starry crown from her opera costume. He examined it. Nothing unusual. Except that it was here and she wasn’t.
‘There must be an explanation,’ Claudio was saying. He was sweating heavily.
‘The message is the explanation,’ Ben said.
‘Who could have left it, if not you?’
‘I didn’t leave it.’ Ben pointed up the corridor, past where he’d found the crown. ‘What’s up there?’
‘More dressing rooms. Some storage areas. Offices. A fire exit. The way down to the basement.’
‘Who was the last person to see her?’
‘I was,’ Claudio said. ‘I told her to be quick. She said she’d be right back. I don’t unders—’
His phone rang in his pocket. It was a classical music ringtone. He flipped the phone open. ‘Barberini,’ he said. He listened for a moment. His eyebrows rose. His eyes flickered over to Ben. Then he handed Ben the phone.
‘It’s for you,’ he said.
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Ben hadn’t thought he’d ever hear that voice again. But it was right there in his ear. It sounded a little different, indistinct, garbled, like there was something wrong with the man’s mouth. But it was definitely Jack Glass on the other end of the phone.
‘You know who this is,’ Glass said.
Ben didn’t reply.
‘You know what
I’m calling about,’ Glass continued.
Ben stayed silent.
‘I have something of yours. Meet me outside.’
‘When?’
‘Now. Right now, Hope.’
Ben shut the phone. ‘I might need this,’ he said. He dropped it in his pocket. Claudio didn’t argue.
Ben ran up the corridor. He passed the crown lying on the carpet and ran on.
A side door was flapping open and he stepped out into the night, into the icy fog hanging over Venice. There were no stars. His footsteps echoed up the pitted walls of the narrow street. He could hear the swish and gurgle of the canals, the water lapping at the old stone banks and the sides of the buildings.
He ran out onto the piazza, the white stone steps and columns of the Teatro Fenice behind him. Ahead of him was a stone quay.
Jack Glass was standing near the edge. There was a street light above him, mist drifting in its glow.
He had his arm around Leigh’s neck. A black hand clapped across her mouth. Her eyes were dilated with fear, her hair plastered over her face.
Glass’s other hand clutched a knife. It was a Ka-Bar US military killing knife. It had a seven-inch blackened carbon steel blade with a double-edged tip. Its sharp point was pressing hard against Leigh’s stomach.
Ben took a step closer. He looked at Glass’s face under the peak of the baseball cap he was wearing.
He was disfigured. He had no nose. He had one eye. His skin was bubbled and yellow and black, still raw and seeping in places. One side of his mouth was stretched downward, the skin puckered and loose. His lips were mostly gone.
In a cold rush of horror Ben remembered the helicopter explosion. He and Clara had got out and run across the snow to safety. Two seconds later the chopper had gone up. Two seconds. Maybe just enough time to scramble out of the cockpit. Not enough time to escape entirely from the blast.
The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET Page 64