Free The Kingdom of Bones by Stephen Gallagher Page B

Sayers had sensed the boss’s irritation that his reception was matched by the one given to the Low Comedian at the play’s beginning, the reason being that they recognized him from his first-half turn as baggy-trousered comedian Billy Danson. But the boss could see that it was to the benefit of the play’s overall effect, so he’d made no changes.
    As Louise stood in the wings and waited for her cue, James Caspar seemed to float out of the darkness to appear behind her. She did not see his approach; rather, she suddenly sensed his presence. It startled her. Caspar’s first cue was a good ten minutes away, and he was to enter from the opposite side of the stage.
    He leaned close, so that he might speak and not be heard from beyond the wings.
    “I’m sorry if I surprised you,” he said. His breath brushed her ear. Louise felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise.
    “Mister Caspar,” she whispered back. “There is nothing to apologize for.”
    “I wanted to ask you something.”
    “Oh?”
    “Your song tonight. Would you sing it for me?”
    She did not know how to respond. He seemed to sense her confusion, and did not press for a reply.
    By the time that she had gathered herself, Caspar had turned away and faded back into the shadows.
             
    In the bar at the back of the auditorium, Police Superintendent Clive Turner-Smith stood among a group of strangers and watched the curtain rise on
The Purple Diamond.
He’d arrived at the theater too late to see the Low Comedian’s first-half spot, so he was mystified by the cheers that greeted the sight of a butler in an apron, busy polishing the silverware in a country-house kitchen. Having little interest in the play itself, he scanned the audience. Common folk all, out for nothing more than a good evening’s entertainment. One or two types he’d be inclined to keep an eye on, had this been his own patch.
    As the butler launched off into one of those
Oh mercy me,
talking-to-myself but really talking to the audience monologues, Turner-Smith became aware of a touch at his sleeve. He looked and saw that a shaven-headed, skull-faced man had appeared by his side and was holding out the same note that he’d sent backstage some ten minutes earlier. It had been opened, and a return message had been scribbled on it.
    Turner-Smith took it, read the scribble, and then folded the note and tucked it into an inside pocket.
    He said, “I’ll be waiting in the saloon bar next door. Tell no one else about this. Do you understand?”
    The man remained silent, but inclined his head in assent.
    Turner-Smith left the auditorium and crossed the foyer, emerging onto the street by the theater box office. He’d arrived in Manchester little more than an hour earlier. He’d told no one of his arrival, but immediately took a cab across the river and into Salford. He’d made the same journey twenty years before when, as a provost marshal, he’d been in pursuit of a deserter who’d killed a sergeant in barracks and run for home. He could remember a four-roomed terraced house full of children and having to face down the deserter’s mother, a woman more formidable than many a man in his regiment. She’d denied seeing her son when, in truth, he was hiding in the privy in a neighbor’s backyard. The boy had fled as Turner-Smith’s men began to search, and drowned himself later that afternoon. The river Irwell divided the borough from the city; a drowning would bring out the two sets of police with boat hooks, one squad of men on each bank, ready to shove the body toward the opposite shore for their neighbor force to deal with.
    Liverpool Street was a wide thoroughfare, with broad stone pavements and tram rails set into the cobbles. Ahead of him, a girl of around eleven was pushing along an old pram loaded with firewood. More children could be seen outside the commercial hotel next door. They sat on the steps, they sat on the kerbstones with their feet in the road. Younger ones