Hymn

by Graham Masterton

  Nor did he know if his nocturnal visitor had managed to find what he was looking for. It was quite possible that he had already taken it—in which case, Lloyd would never find out what it was.

  And there was still the question of who had hidden it, and why, and how come a burglar had known what to look for, and where it was?

  As he peered around inside the piano, he came up with all kinds of random, half-developed, kaleidoscopic theories. Maybe some drugs dealer had been using the piano store as a front for selling crack, and had stashed some of it inside the piano he least expected to sell. Maybe the piano-frame had been cast out of solid gold by the Brinks Mat gang, as a way of smuggling it out of Europe. Maybe some spy had been using the piano as a drop for information stolen from the US Navy base.

  Maybe . . .

  He inclined his head sideways and caught sight of a pale brown envelope sellotaped to the inside of the piano. He carefully picked off the tape, and lifted the envelope out, making sure he held it right by the very corner. After all, it might have some Russian agent’s fingerprints all over it, and what would the FBI say if he smudged them? He had seen enough episodes of Mission Impossible to know the correct procedure. This message will self-destruct in ten seconds.

  He laid the envelope on his writing-desk, and opened it. Inside, there was a sheaf of yellowed papers. He slid them out on to his blotter, and carefully fanned them out. He wouldn’t have known what they were before he had met Celia, but he recognized them immediately as an operatic libretto. It must have been a pretty major opera, too, since the pages were numbered from 125 to 137.

  There were also some pages of music manuscript, written with a spidery, splotchy pen, and heavily crossed-out and corrected. On the very last page there was a pencil note: Wagner ‘Junius’ January 1883.

  Lloyd sat back in his chair and stared at all these discoloured sheets of paper in perplexity. They looked as if they could be Wagner’s original score—although Lloyd had no idea what Wagner’s writing had been like. If they were, they were probably quite valuable. But why had Celia hidden them inside her piano? Why hadn’t she locked them up at the bank? And who had known, apart from Celia, that they were hidden there?

  He leafed through the libretto again and again. He couldn’t understand it, because it was all in German, and written in a handwriting that he could scarcely decipher anyway.

  Maybe he should show it to the police. Celia had never mentioned it to him. Maybe her big secret was that she had stolen it. He knew what a nut she had always been for Wagner memorabilia. Maybe its rightful owner had killed her out of revenge. Despite what several eyewitnesses had said on the local televison news, Lloyd still found it difficult to believe that Celia had actually poured petrol all over herself and set herself alight. Maybe somebody had forced her to do it—at gunpoint, perhaps. Somebody who had been standing sufficiently far away not to be noticed when the petrol went up.

  Wagner ‘Junius’, January 1883. He left his desk, and went across to the bookshelf, taking out Richard Wagner by Hans von Kiel. Licking his finger, he leafed through it until he reached the index of Wagner’s operas: Die Feen, The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, The Twilight of the Gods, Lohengrin and, lastly, Parsifal, which had been written in 1882, the year before Wagner died of a heart attack. No mention of an opera called Junius.

  Lloyd looked through the list of overtures and pieces for chorus and orchestra. The Siegfried Idyll, the Faust Overture, but no Junius. He closed the book and sat with his mouth covering his hand, deep in thought.

  Was it possible that Celia had faked this opera—either as a wicked joke or as a way of making herself some extra money, and that somebody who resented that kind of fraud had found her out? She had been brilliant at improvising Wagneresque music. At parties, she had been able to sing great bursts of pretence verses from The Ring. She had even invented a Wagnerian operatic character of her own, Bulkhilde, and she had once discussed Bulkhilde with the San Diego Opera’s artistic director, Tito Caporosso, for over twenty minutes before he realized he was being leg-pulled.

  He had heard of homicides in the art world, after forgers had tried to con dealers and auctioneers out of millions of dollars. But was there a music mafia, too? People who would burn you alive because you sold them a fake opera? It didn’t seem particularly likely. In fact it seemed almost laughable.

  Lloyd found a spare plastic record sleeve, and slipped the pages of music manuscript into it. His first step would be to take them to Sylvia’s tonight. Sylvia was an expert when it came to long-lost music manuscripts, and her knowledge of Wagner was almost as encyclopaedic as Celia’s had been. In 1972, Sylvia had found nine previously undiscovered piano suites written by Debussy after his visit to the Bayreuth Festival in 1889—compositions that were strongly influenced by Wagner.

  If anybody would know about Junius, it would be Sylvia.

  Lloyd was beginning to feel hungry. He hadn’t been able to eat properly since he had first heard about Celia, and despite the horror of having to identify her body, or even because of it, his stomach had started to growl. He decided to go down to Michelangelo’s Italian restaurant on Rosecrans and treat himself to a plate of their spaghettini alla vongole.

  There was another reason why he wanted to go to Rosecrans: he wanted to see for himself the place where Celia had died.

  He called Waldo to check how the Original Fish Depot was faring. ‘You don’t worry about nothing, Mr Denman. All booked up this lunchtime, all booked up tonight. No problems.’

  Lloyd was still talking to Waldo when he thought he glimpsed a shadow moving silently across the kitchen floor. He paused in his conversation for a second, keeping his eyes on the open kitchen doorway. Then he said, ‘Okay, Waldo, thanks a lot. I’ll check in later, okay?’

  ‘You got it, Mr Denman.’

  Lloyd gently replaced the telephone receiver, and waited. He thought he heard the back doorhandle eased on its spring. Somebody trying to turn it. Somebody with infinite patience, trying to open the back door without him hearing. This time, however, they wouldn’t have any luck. He had not only locked the door, he had shot the bolts, too, top and bottom. Nobody would be able to break into the kitchen without kicking the door out of its frame.

  He softly crossed the living-room until he reached the kitchen door. He hesitated for a moment, his chest tight with anticipation.

  Suppose somebody’s standing outside the back door, trying to force their way in? Even worse, supposing it’s . . .

  He let out a long, controlled breath. Don’t be so goddamned ridiculous. Celia’s dead. You saw her body, you saw it for yourself. They gave you back her charm bracelet, and they gave you back her purse.

  He stepped into the kitchen, and turned immediately toward the back door. For a fraction of a second, he thought he glimpsed a pale fawn figure, ducking down. He heard footsteps brush quickly on the brickwork outside.

  ‘Come here!’ he shouted. ‘If you run, I’m going to call the cops!’

  Furiously, he twisted the key in the back door, and cursed as he forced back the bolts. He hardly ever used them, and they were so stiff that he chipped the heel of his hand on the edge of the metal. He hurled open the door, knowing how foolish it was, knowing that it was madness, but he was convinced that he had glimpsed a fleeting triangle of bright yellow, and a pale blur that could easily have been a raincoat.

  He rushed out into his back yard, alarming a brace of California quail. There was nobody there. No yellow scarf, no raincoat. What was more, the sprinkler was glittering in the middle of the lawn, and if anybody had run away through the garden they would have had to pass directly through the spray.

  There were no tracks across the silvery moisture-beaded grass, no sign that anybody had run that way. But sidling toward the fence was a cloud of slowly fragmenting smoke, like a ghost that was coming apart at the seams. Eventually, it rose in the breeze and was abruptly whirled
away. No—not smoke, but steam, as if somebody had run through the sprinkler whirling a red-hot poker around their head.

  Eight

  His appetite wasn’t as hearty as he had imagined it would be, and he left most of the pasta pushed to the side of his plate. Gino was hurt, and came out of the kitchen and stared at him with cow-like eyes.

  ‘There’s something wrong? Maybe I should cook you some of my rognoncini di agnello saltati con cipolla.’

  ‘You’ve got to be joking,’ Lloyd responded. ‘Gino, that was brilliant. Spaghettini like they make in heaven. But I guess my eyes were bigger than my stomach.’

  ‘Aren’t you the man who said to me, “to waste food is to waste life itself . . .”?’ Gino demanded.

  ‘Sure, but I’m also the man who said, “never eat anything you can’t lift”.’

  Gino sat down at the table with him and snapped his fingers for the waiter to bring them two glasses of verdicchio. ‘You tease me, Lloyd, you make fun,’ he said, laying a hand on Lloyd’s arm. ‘But you must miss her so much. Such a lady. Such elegance.’

  ‘Yes, well,’ said Lloyd, and lowered his eyes. He was trying very hard not to think about the Celia that he could remember, but to concentrate on the Celia that he had obviously never known. The secret Celia, the Celia who had pretended that she had no parents. The Celia who had believed so obsessively in living for ever. The Celia who had gone to Otto’s religious study group, and who had burned herself alive not five blocks from where he was sitting now.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ Gino asked him. ‘Maybe you should take some time off?’

  Lloyd nodded. ‘Two or three days, maybe. But I can’t keep away from the job too long. You know what it’s like. You take too much time off, you lose your edge.’

  ‘Hey . . . if you get bored, come back down here, and I will show you how to make insalatina tenera con la pancetta.’

  ‘What the hell is that? It sounds like a street direction to the Vatican.’

  Gino swallowed wine and shook his head. ‘Lettuce, fried. It’s wonderful. But I can’t explain how to do it, I have to show you.’

  Just then, Gino was called back to the kitchen to whip up some coste di biete saltate, and Lloyd was left to finish his wine on his own. He was glad of the chance to be silent. He was summoning up all of the courage he possibly could, so that he would have the strength to visit the place where Celia had died. He had to go. It was not just an investigation, it was a pilgrimage. He had to know exactly where it was before he could begin to visualize it, and then to understand. He couldn’t imagine what pain had been suffered by wives in wartime, to learn that their husbands had been killed, but never to know exactly where. It seemed to him then that the place where somebody dies is even more important than where they were born.

  He stood in the car-park opposite McDonald’s with his hands by his sides, staring at the smoke-stained kerb. Some of the bushes had been scorched, too, so Lloyd could judge how fierce the fire must have been. He wished he had brought some flowers. Lilies had always been Celia’s favourite.

  What a place to die. Barren and public, noisy with traffic. He couldn’t imagine why she had chosen such a dreary location.

  He tried to say a prayer. He hoped that her soul was at rest. He hoped that she hadn’t suffered. He hoped that she would forgive him, for not understanding that she was suffering so much that she wanted to die.

  ‘And one day we’ll meet again, for sure. Amen.’

  He was walking back to his car when one of the chefs came out of the side entrance of the McDonald’s restaurant and began to walk hurriedly toward him. A bulky man, with a startling wide-apart cast in his eyes.

  ‘Pardon me!’ he called. ‘Sir!’

  Lloyd waited for him to reach him. He was in his fifties, grey-haired and sweating. He smelled strongly of hamburgers.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir,’ he said, wiping the palms of his hands on his apron. ‘But I couldn’t help noticing you standing over there.’

  Lloyd said, ‘I’m not one of your sensation-seekers, if that’s what you think. The girl who was burned . . . well, she was my fiancée.’

  ‘I figured something like that. Well, I saw the BMW. Your average ghoul doesn’t usually turn up to gawp in a BMW.’

  He held out his hand. ‘Bob Tuggey. Most people call me Unca Tug.’

  ‘Lloyd Denman.’

  Bob said, ‘I was here when it happened. I tried to stop her. It was terrible.’

  ‘You were the one with the fire-extinguisher?’

  Bob lowered his eyes, and nodded. ‘I tried, believe me, but I just wasn’t fast enough. Fifteen seconds sooner, and I could have saved her.’

  Lloyd looked back toward the burned bushes. ‘I appreciate what you did.’

  ‘I saw her walking across the car-park, swinging this yellow can. I should have guessed right away what she was planning on doing.’

  Lloyd shook his head. ‘I don’t think anybody could have guessed what she was planning on doing.’

  ‘I was in Saigon,’ Bob told him. ‘I saw one of those monks setting himself alight. Your young lady sat right down, crosslegged, exactly the same way that monk did, and then I knew for sure what she was going to do. I just wasn’t fast enough.’

  ‘Well, thanks anyway,’ Lloyd told him.

  ‘Hey, listen . . .’ said Bob, reaching into the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘I found something afterwards, in the bushes. I was going to take it to the police yesterday but I didn’t have the time. It must’ve been hers, so I guess the best person to give it to is you.’

  Between finger and thumb, he held up a small gold charm, discoloured by heat. Its link was broken, as if it had been tugged from a chain or a bracelet. But Lloyd had never noticed it on Celia’s bracelet. Certainly he hadn’t given it to her, and she had never mentioned buying it.

  ‘I don’t recognize it,’ he frowned, holding it flat on the palm of his hand. ‘It must be somebody else’s.’

  The charm was a circle, and inside the circle was a lizard, with its head bent sideways and its legs and its tail bent sideways, too.

  ‘You’re sure?’ asked Bob. ‘I found it right where it happened, the same afternoon. I kept meaning to take it in.’

  ‘I could show it to her mother, see if she recognizes it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Bob agreed.

  ‘Do you want a receipt for it?’ asked Lloyd.

  Bob gave him a smile. ‘Don’t worry about it. You’re not going to get very far in a white BMW with a registration plate that says FISHEE.’

  ‘I guess not. Listen, Mr Tuggey—I run Denman’s Original Fish Depot, at La Jolla Cove. Here—here’s my card. Why don’t you call by sometime, and have a drink on the house?’

  ‘Thanks. I might just take you up on that.’

  They shook hands. Bob returned to McDonald’s, and Lloyd walked back to his car, holding the charm tightly in his fist, as if he were afraid it might jump out of his hand. He unlocked his car, but as he was about to climb into it, he noticed a red neon sign on the opposite side of Rosecrans announcing Copie Shoppe: Xerox, Printing, & Fax. He picked up the sheets of libretto from the passenger-seat, relocked his car, and crossed the road.

  As Bob reappeared in the kitchen, Sally the manageress called out to him, ‘Unca Tug? You just missed a phone call.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, who was it? Not the President again, asking for advice on the Middle East? I wish he’d formulate his own policies, for God’s sake, and leave me alone.’

  ‘It was a girl. She sounded sexy, too.’

  Bob looked up from the grill. ‘A girl?’

  ‘Sure. Real hoarse and provocative, know what I mean?’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Well, not specifically for you. She wanted to know if anybody had handed in a gold charm. Apparently she lost it in the parking-lot.’

&n
bsp; Bob put down his spatula in exasperation. ‘Would you believe it? I just gave that charm to that guy out there. Well, he was out there. He’s gone now.’

  ‘What did you do that for?’

  ‘He said that girl who burned herself was his fiancée. I was sure the charm must have been hers.’

  ‘This girl sure didn’t sound dead.’

  ‘Well, the guy didn’t recognize the charm, either, so I guess it couldn’t have belonged to his fiancée, after all. Damn it.’

  ‘Do you know who he is?’ asked Sally.

  ‘Oh, sure. He owns a fish restaurant at La Jolla. Guess I’ll just have to call him and get it back.’

  ‘I told the girl on the phone you had it,’ said Sally. ‘She said she’d call by later to collect it.’

  ‘She described it?’

  ‘Sure, kind of a lizard, in a ring, that’s what she said.’

  Bob nodded. He left the kitchen and went through to the corridor, and picked up the payphone. He punched out the number of Denman’s Original Fish Depot, and waited while it rang.

  Waldo answered. Bob explained what had happened, but Waldo told him that ‘Monsieur Denman weel not veezeet ze restaurant aujourd’hui. Pairhaps tomorrow.’

  ‘Just tell him the gold charm didn’t belong to his fiancée, please, and maybe he could call me.’

  ‘Avec plaisir, monsieur.’

  Bot put down the phone, and went back to the Big Macs and the Fillet-o-Fishes and the Egg McMuffins. The afternoon passed quickly: his shift was due to end at seven-thirty. Tonight he was planning on bowling with his friend Stan Kostolowicz, another marooned penpusher from the Far Eastern embassies of the 1960s.

  As it gradually grew dark, however, he failed to notice the large silver-grey Mercedes saloon with darkly-tinted windows which drew up outside the restaurant, and which remained parked there, even though none of its doors opened. Whoever was inside it had obviously decided to remain inside it, waiting.