“I think he was only a minute or two from asking if we could get him an autograph,” Poole said, laughing. “How did you know he was into all that?”
“Constable Sanders told me,” Brock said as he heaved himself up. “Come on, let’s go and see if the coroner’s got anything, then we can get back down to the theatre.”
Poole nodded but didn’t stand. “Sir?”
Brock froze and looked back at him.
Guy Poole had a face that always appeared at least slightly worried. His forehead had the lines of a man twice his age. Now though, there was a different complexion to it.
“You’ve heard from your father?” Brock said, sitting down once more. His voice was flat, but his grey eyes were lit with an intense fire.
“I got a letter from him.” He pulled the letter for his jacket and slid it across the table.
Brock took it, unfolded it and read it in silence before sliding it back to him.
“You need to go,” he said.
Poole looked at him in surprise.
“Look,” Brock said, noticing his reaction. “I know I haven’t known you very long, but it’s clear what happened with your father is still in your head, and it always will be until you meet him face to face and hear what he has to say.”
Poole looked down at his hands as he picked at a stray piece of skin to the side of one nail.
“It sounds like he wants to convince me he’s innocent,” he said, leaving the words hanging there.
“Well, let him,” Brock answered. “If he convinces you, you’ve got your dad back. If he doesn’t, at least you can properly move on.”
Poole nodded but didn’t really agree. The inspector made it all seem so simple, just a binary matter to be decided, black or white.
It wasn’t like that in his mind. It was confused, angry, uncertain. He wasn’t even sure what he would feel if his dad did convince him he was innocent, though he could see no chance of that.
He thought of his friend Simon who had died that day. He thought of blood.
“Come on,” Brock said, standing again. “Let’s get on with the case, take your mind off it.”
Poole gave him a weak smile and followed.
Chapter Seven
“I have to say, this really is quite exciting,” Todd Peel said, his long fingers interlocking on the desk in front of him. “I mean, the facilities here are really quite excellent, and to be brought in on this case—well!” A wide smile spread across his thin lips.
“Well I’m very pleased for you,” Brock said. “But can we just hear what you’ve found?”
Todd frowned and shuffled some papers in front of him. “Well, yes, of course, but I’m afraid there isn’t much to say.”
“Well, it will be nice and brief then, won’t it?” Brock said, leaning forward.
Poole looked at him, starting to wonder whether it was Ronald Smith the inspector had a dislike for or just all coroners.
“Mr Alvarado was killed by blunt force trauma to the skull. I’m not able to say with any accuracy what the weapon might have been, but it was something hard, heavy, and it had a slightly rounded edge.”
“A pipe? Some sort of bat maybe?”
“Possibly.” Todd nodded. “But the wound was rather narrow, and there’s something else.”
“Yes?”
Todd Peel picked up a blue, decorative glass ball which sat on a small tray of pebbles and pointed to the side of it with a pencil.
“Well the wound was across the top of the head.” He drew an imaginary line across the top of the glass ball. “The blow came from a high angle. At first, I thought this meant that we were looking for a tall perpetrator, but then I realised.”
They waited, but Todd Peel simply smiled at them.
“Realised what?” Brock barked impatiently.
“That this injury could also have been delivered by something swinging.” He leaned back, looking pleased with himself.
Brock narrowed his eyes. “You mean like something swung over someone's head?”
“Well, yes,” Todd said, leaning forward again. He looked for all the world like a man who had had his thunder stolen.
“But you say the object would have had to be heavy?” Brock continued.
“Yes, definitely.”
“OK, well let us know if you find anything else,” the inspector said, standing.
“Um,” Todd said as they reached the door.
They turned back to him.
“I have had rather a lot of calls from the press I’m afraid.”
“Just ignore them, don’t tell them anything.”
Todd nodded.
“And I’m afraid Ronald Smith has been calling me asking me for details as well.”
Brock exhaled through his nose. “I’ll talk to him,” he said and stepped through the door.
Poole left Brock calling Ronald Smith in the carpark. Although the inspector had moaned about Smith not following his instructions by staying out of the case, Poole had noticed he had also seemed quite pleased at the idea of an excuse to read him the riot act.
Poole ran up the steps to the station, pleased to see that the press had moved on while they had been in the coroner’s office. Earlier, he had noticed again that as he and Brock had had left the station to cross the carpark to the council offices, he had been ignored. The few press members who had been left at that time threw questions at Brock, who gave them a stone-faced silence in return.
“Did you see they’ve gone?” Roland said from behind the reception desk as Poole entered the building.
“I did,” Poole said, noting that Roland had a strange, knowing smile on his face.
He swiped his security card and moved through the door and into the main office.
“Well, well,” a familiar, loud voice said almost as soon as he was through the threshold. “If it isn’t the copper to the stars.”
Anderson leaned against a desk and folded his arms. “What’s it like being a celebrity officer then, Poole?” he boomed, loud enough so that everyone in the office heard.
“Fine, apart from the stupid questions from idiots,” Poole shot back. Anderson stood upright and stared at him as he walked along the aisle between desks.
“Oh, very clever. I guess you think you’re a big shot now, eh?”
Poole stopped next to him. “No, I think I have a murder to solve—and if I’m not mistaken, so do you?”
“Oh, don’t worry about me, Poole. I know my job. The question is, can you do yours?”
Poole moved past him, shaking his head as the rest of the office turned back to their work.
He headed straight through to the canteen and the battered old coffee machine.
“You and Anderson are starting to become a regular double act,” Sanita said from behind him as pressed the button to pour the first cup.
“It’s not a show I want to be a part of, believe me.” He felt an involuntary smile spreading across his lips as he turned to look at her face. She had large, bright eyes and a cheeky, lopsided grin that made his knees weak.
“How are you, Constable?”
“I’m good, sir.” Her face hardened. “I’ve been helping Anderson and Sharp on their murder case.”
“Oh right. A young woman, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir, found smashed over the head.” She took a deep breath. “Terrible.”
“Do they have many leads?”
“Nothing,” she said blankly. “We know she was working as an escort.”
“An escort? In Bexford?” Poole said, surprised.
Sanita laughed. “Yes, even in Bexford. Anyway, according to her agency, she hadn’t been working that night and we can’t seem to find anyone who knew what she was up to. Her friends weren’t with her at any rate.”
“Well I hope they find whoever did it,” Poole said taking the second cup of coffee. “I better get these back to Brock. See you later, Constable.”
“Bye, sir.” She grinned at him and turned away.
Chapter Eight
When closed, the theatre had a different feel. It was like an animal that lay dormant, lifeless even. The seats lurked in the gloom like faceless spectators, and the cold of the large space sent a shiver down Poole’s back as he crossed to the middle of the stage. The inspector strode before him, his large head scanning the wood-boarded area.
“It’s quite a way from the wings to the centre of the stage,” he said as he halted at the spot where Jarvis Alvarado had died.
“It would be difficult to get all the way onto the stage, whack him over the head, and then get out in time in the pitch black Sir,” Poole said, looking at the distance.
“Not just that,” Brock said, folding his arms. “Uniform have searched the surrounding area and there’s no sign of a murder weapon.”
“So, you think it must be still in the theatre?” Poole asked.
Brock looked at him, the corner of his mouth rising slightly. “It seems like it. The problem is there’s probably a million places to stash something here.”
They both gazed around the space which was covered in more shadow than light.
“Bloody hell, it could be anywhere,” Poole said, half under his breath.
“Actually, I don’t think so,” Brock said. ‘I think we can rule out anyone from the audience climbing up and killing him. They would have to either have the murder weapon on them, which seems like it would have been something people would have noticed, or dumped it back near where they were sitting. Uniforms have already checked everyone in the audience as they left, and they’ve looked under and on every seat in the house. No sign of anything.”
“So that narrows it down to the people who were backstage then?” Poole said, feeling slightly more optimistic about the whole thing.
“It does,” Brock replied. “Uniform haven’t found anything there either though. There’s a big storage room underneath the stage, but nothing. It’s all a bit of a mystery, isn’t it?” he said, turning to Poole, smiling. “Come on, let’s have a look around the place.”
He turned and headed off toward the far side of the stage. The space beyond the well-worn wooden boards of the stage gave way to dusty concrete, lined with a brick wall. Tools and pieces of rope hung from black hooks, and a ladder ran up into the gloom. The whole place had the feel of a handyman’s garage rather than a place of performance.
They moved toward the back of the stage where the area curved round toward the far side. A corridor stretched away to the left and Brock headed down it with Poole following.
“So, this is where the stars hang out,” Poole said, looking at the doors on either side of the hall, each with the words ‘dressing room’ and a number on them.
“Does it make you wish you’d taken up a different vocation, Poole? Just think, you could have been a star on Foul Murder yourself.”
“I doubt it, sir. I can barely convince anybody I’m a detective, let alone something I’m not.”
The inspector paused and looked at him.
Poole felt his cheeks redden. “The media didn’t ask me any questions this morning when I came in. It bugged me a bit. Sorry—just being stupid.”
“Well never mind, Poole,” Brock said, slapping him on the shoulder. “They’ll be all over you from now on.”
“Oh? Why, sir?”
“Well, now they’ve seen you with me, haven’t they?” He smiled at Poole, who was trying to stop his eyes from rolling.
“Right,” Brock said, clapping his hands together. “Let’s get you running, shall we?”
“Running?”
“Well we have to start working out the timings on all this, don’t we? Apparently the lights were out for three minutes, so we need to see who could have got to the stage, whacked Jarvis over the head and then got back to where they were standing.”
“So you want me to run to see if I can make it there and back in that time from where everyone backstage was standing?”
“Well only one person really. Mike Hart.”
Poole’s eyebrows rose. “You think he’s our killer?”
“I think everyone’s our killer until I can prove otherwise,” Brock answered. “But this time I was actually thinking about saving your legs. Mike Hart was the farthest person away backstage, so if you run from where he was and make it, we know they could all have done it.”
Poole sighed and walked to the far end of the corridor which ended in another wall.
“Well, I might as well start at the farthest point that he could have been stood,” he said, turning around again. “He said he was on the phone in this corridor, right?”
“He did,” Brock said, pulling the sleeve of his jacket back and looking at his wristwatch. “OK… go.”
Poole burst into a run, moving down the corridor and out into the space beyond before diving left through the opening and onto the stage itself. He ran to the middle and, feeling foolish, swung an imaginary murder weapon over his shoulder onto an invisible victim, turned and ran back.
“How long was I, sir?” Poole said, panting, his hands on his knees.
“One and a half minutes. Not bad, Poole.”
“Just a couple of problems, sir,” Poole said, straightening up. “I wasn’t actually carrying a sack with a heavy object in it which might have slowed me down. Also, it doesn’t leave much time for the murderer to dispose of the weapon, does it?”
“No, it doesn’t,” Brock said.
A voice came from behind them. “Erm, hello?”
They turned to see Jane Marx stood holding a screwdriver, her skin pale, her expression as though she had had a nasty shock.
“Miss Marx? Everything OK?” Brock asked, moving toward her.
“I, um, I think I might have found something to do with the murder,” she said hesitantly.
Chapter Nine
Jane Marx led them back down the corridor into the space behind the stage and pointed at four small openings in the wall set an equal distance apart from each other.
“You see these holes? Well, they go into a chute which leads down into the props room below. It’s so you can quickly get stuff down there without having to all the way down.”
Without waiting for them to ask why this was relevant, she turned and moved to the back of the stage on the far side.
There was no corridor here; the space just curved around to the opposite wing that they had come out of when they had arrived. There was, though, an opening in the floor—a large trapdoor that was open now and secured against the wall with a brass hook.
“Haven’t uniform already looked down here, sir?” Poole said as Jane Marx began to descend a flight of wooden steps which ran down from the trapdoor.
“They did, but it wasn’t open when the event was happening so I’m guessing they only gave it the once-over,” Brock answered grimly, leaving Poole under no illusions that someone was going to get it in the neck for missing whatever Jane Marx had found.
They descended into a chaotic and overwhelming space. Large metal shelving units ran off into the distance and Poole estimated that the basement ran beyond the stage and at least halfway under the seating.
Jane Marx walked along the wall until she reached a metal chute which ended in a long-walled shelf.
“In here,” she said, jerking her thumb toward it.
They moved to it and leaned over the small wall of the shelf. At the bottom was a cloth bag with a deep red stain at its base where something bulked through the material from the inside.
“Our murder weapon, sir,” Poole said.
“Looks like it. Get Sheila on the phone; I want her team down here as soon as possible. Take prints off the top of the chute.”
He turned to Jane Marx, who was stood hands on hips behind them. “Does anyone have access to down here?”
“Most of the backstage people who work here do, but everyone was cleared out for this event, so it was just me. I opened it yesterday for your lot to come down and then closed it up again until this morning. It doesn’t really matter though, d
oes it? I mean, someone clearly threw it down the chute.”
Brock grunted his agreement and turned back to the sack.
“Do you recognise this sack? Is it something from the theatre?” he continued with his back turned.
Poole watched Jane smirk.
“There are a million things like that down here; just take a look around.” She gestured to the shelves which spread away in the distance.
“Is there any way up onto the stage from down here?” Brock asked, suddenly turning back to her.
“Yeah, there’s a trapdoor right in the middle. Works on hydraulics.”
“Can you take us to it?”
She nodded and turned around, heading down the aisle directly behind her.
Though she was sullen and not overly talkative, there was something Poole liked about her. She was relaxed and confident, as though nothing could faze her. She was also attractive. Lean and fit from her work around the theatre, she had an athleticism about her he couldn’t help but admire.
“Here it is,” she said as the shelving units vanished to reveal a large open space, dominated by a large mechanical arm which rose up to a square of the ceiling above them.
“Can you lower it for us?” Brock asked.
She nodded and moved across to a grey box on the wall. She flipped a large switch and a loud hum broke out, echoing around the confined space. She then pressed the lower of two buttons and the mechanical arm began to bend slowly, lowering the chunk of ceiling down with it. Other than the hum of the motor, the procedure was surprisingly quiet. They watched it in silence, feeling the cooler air from above rushing in as the platform descended. When it had reached the bottom, Brock stepped onto it and inspected the floor.
“Is that how slow it is generally to go up and down?”
“Yep,” Jane replied. “Only two speeds and that was the fastest. It’s for musical stuff really. You know, big entrances and exits rather than making someone disappear.”
Brock nodded and stepped back off the platform. “You can raise it up again now.”
Jane nodded and moved back to the switch.
A Staged Death (A Brock & Poole Mystery Book 2) Page 5