Free Shadows of Sounds by Alex Gray Page A

omission. He searched back through the list of members of the audience. It wasn’t there either. The final check had to show his name amongst all the back room boys, surely? People like Brendan Phillips and other administrators, the drivers and shifters and the permanent Concert Hall staff were all listed in a separate file. But the name was still missing. Lorimer chewed his lip. He didn’t even know who he was looking for, simply a name against the designation: Chorus Master, City of Glasgow Chorus. When he’d checked the lists again he lifted the phone and dialled Brendan Phillips’s number at the orchestra Manager’s headquarters.
    ‘Good morning, Chief Inspector. Any news yet?’ Brendan Phillips’s voice sounded breathless as if he’d been running to pick up the phone.
    ‘Nothing to pass on to you as yet, sir. But I do have a question to ask you. Do you have the full name and address of the Chorus Master?’ Lorimer’s question was intended to make it seem as if he was querying information he already had rather than fill in an embarrassing blank.
    ‘Could you hold just for a minute?’ Lorimer heard the clunk of the handset being placed on Brendan’s desk as he waited for the Orchestra Manager to return.
    ‘Here we are. C. Maurice Drummond, 24 Belmont Street. Afraid I don’t know what the C stands for, Chief Inspector. we all know him as Maurice.’
    Lorimer grinned to himself. This was a piece of pure luck. Phillips would think he needed the man’s Christian names. Whatever C stood for it wouldn’t make Chief Inspector Lorimer look a right Charlie. He’d follow it up, nonetheless, he thought as he scribbled down the man’s telephone number. Someone would have to go and check this one out. He’d enough to do without running around the West End every minute of the day. Lorimer dialled another number and gave instructions for a visit to be made to Mr C. Maurice Drummond.
    Funny, though, he mused after he’d spoken to WPC Irvine, how he had slipped through the net like that.
    By Rosie’s reckoning the murder had taken place before the musicians had gone on stage. The events behind the scenes during that half hour before the scheduled performance were pretty much visible on the CCTV footage. He’d spent hours watching the screen show men in dress shirts milling around their dressing rooms, folk smoking outside at the back door, musicians and members of the Chorus alike wandering through the warren of corridors backstage. And in the minutes before that particular camera had gone blank there was only an empty corridor. The last people seen moving along there had been Brendan Phillips and one of the female stewards. If Lorimer’s hunch was right, the camera had been tampered with by someone coming in from the area behind stage left, not someone who had calmly walked down the corridor towards it.
    Rosie’s latest report had shown the substance on George Millar’s fingers to be nothing more sinister than resin from his bow. Lorimer supposed things like that were kept in the man’s violin case. The black duster, on the other hand,showed traces of a stronger adhesive than mere double-sided sticky tape. It was an industrial strength adhesive not usually found in the normal outlets like newsagents or supermarkets. Bostik 6092 had only one supplier in Glasgow. It was a place up in the Balmore Industrial estate, according to Rosie. Lorimer grinned to himself. It was tiny details like these that could be followed up and become promising leads in a murder investigation. The murder weapon itself had been wiped clean. Lorimer imagined a figure bending over George Millar’s body then placing the percussion instrument where it might easily be seen.
    The detective’s grin straightened into its customary frown, the twin creases deepening between his eyebrows. Had that been a deliberate ploy on the part of the killer? Had he been trying to draw attention to one of the percussionists? Poliakovski had mentioned working