Never Die in January (A Macrae and Silver Mystery Book 2) by Alan Scholefield

Author:Alan Scholefield [Scholefield, Alan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2017-04-02T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER XIII

“Leo, you’ve got to do something!”

“What can I do?”

“Don’t ask me. It’s your family.”

“I know,” he said, gloomily.

They were in the Old Vienna, off the Strand, a wine bar that Zoe liked because the food often tasted slightly burnt, which gave her confidence that it didn’t come from an imagined central cooking complex in Swindon pre-packaged for microwaving.

“It’s only a tooth, you said.”

“I know.”

“Forty-eight hours, you said.”

“I know.”

“I’ll be with you every evening, you said.”

“I know.”

“So where were you last night?”

“Yesterday was a bastard. I had to go to Suffolk. When I got back there was a siege in a council flat in Westminster, a man holding a young girl. That didn’t end till three in the morning and it was too late to phone you. I was so bloody tired I went home to bed.”

“Home?” she said. “What’s that? Oh, yes, I remember. It’s our flat in Pimlico.”

“Did you have a dull evening?”

Dull, she thought, was not a word she would have chosen. Advertising copywriters had to be precise in their use of words. Boring, tedious, wearing, frustrating…those were some. Then there were others such as rage, fury, violence, frenzy, hysteria, that also sprang to mind.

She had had her dinner with Manfred.

“Do you know what is backhendl?” he asked when she came in.

She had decided not to be bullied by Manfred. “Is that Willibald Backhendl who wrote the famous concerto for glass harmonica and kettle drum?”

He stared at her unhappily. This is what you got from a mother who lived in a commune and ate nuts. What had he done that God should have visited this woman on his only son?

“ Backhendl is fried chicken in the style of Vienna.”

“We’re having steak and chips,” she said. “How do you like yours?”

After supper she asked him if he was going to his chess club. He shook his head. She picked up the paper and decided to endure Manfred until Leo got back.

“Leo tells me you like music.”

“That’s right.”

“What?”

For a long moment her mind went completely blank. She could not think of a single composer or a single piece of music.

Manfred said, “Johann Bach’s Greatest Hits?”

Stung, she said, “Not at all. I like a lot of things. I studied the piano at school.”

This did not impress Manfred, the music teacher. “You want to listen to something?”

She thought he meant a tape, instead he led her to the music-room and sat down at the Bosendorfer. There was only the straight-backed chair he used for his lessons and she sat down on that.

“You know Sorabji?” He played a few bars that sounded vaguely like a sitar transcribed for keyboard. “Opus Clavicembalisticum. Four and a half hours. No repeats. The longest keyboard piece in the world (vurld).”

“Why would — ?”

Manfred played a few bars of another piece. “Satie. Vexations. You can play it for ever, but it is all repeats.”

“Would you like some coffee?”

He ignored her. “They want long pieces? I can give them long pieces.” He began to play.

It sounded to Zoe as though he was playing a series of studies by Czerny.

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