‘You and Fred didn’t live together, did you?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I work here full-time. I’m the manager here. Fred had cheap digs in Vienna. We were saving to get married after his graduation from music school.’

‘I’m sorry to be digging this up for you.’

She sniffed and wiped a tear away. ‘No, it’s OK. If something bad happened, people need to know. I need to know.’

‘Can you tell me about the opera tickets?’ Ben asked. ‘Fred had two tickets for Macbeth. They were for him and you, weren’t they?’

‘Yes, they were. He was so excited about it. He couldn’t have afforded the tickets himself. He couldn’t wait. He loved Verdi.’ Christa gazed into the middle distance. Her face darkened. ‘Like he would have killed himself. It’s crap. I always said it was a pile of crap. But nobody would listen to me. People thought I was just this hysterical girl with issues, who couldn’t face up to the idea that her man had killed himself. Like I was in denial or something. They told me to see a shrink. And Fred’s parents just accepted it. I mean, how could they?’

‘People tend to take the path of least resistance,’ Ben said. ‘It’s easier to believe someone committed suicide than to start looking for a killer.’

‘Are you looking for the killer?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘What’ll you do if you find them?’

He didn’t answer that. ‘Did Oliver give Fred the tickets?’

Christa nodded.

‘Tell me about it,’ Ben said.

‘I don’t know all the details,’ she replied. ‘Fred used to play piano gigs here and there to make a bit of extra cash. Mostly it was bars, restaurants, anywhere with a piano. He gave classical recitals too-he had a little circuit going. He was such a great player, and he had a good reputation. One day he landed this really important gig at a private party, some big house outside the city. It was a real prestigious thing, tuxedo job. Anyway, the night he met Oliver was the week before the gig. He told him about it but Oliver didn’t say much at the time. Well done, congratulations, good luck, all the things one player would say to another if they weren’t jealous.’ She paused. ‘But later that night, hours after the party was over, Fred got a phone call. It was Oliver. He said he’d been thinking about what Fred had said. He’d found out something. Suddenly he was all excited about the gig at the big house.’

Ben listened hard.

Christa went on. ‘He wanted to know everything about it, and he wanted to go with him. He was desperate to get into the place.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know. But Fred told him there was no way he could get him an invite. It was very exclusive. Politicians, people like that. Major big-wigs. A lot of security.’

‘I don’t understand why Oliver would have been so keen to meet those kinds of people,’ Ben said. ‘They weren’t his favourite kind.’

‘From what Fred said, it wasn’t the party he was interested in. It was the house itself. He was asking lots of questions about it.’

‘Why was he so interested in the house?’

‘I don’t know,’ she replied. ‘He kept talking about his research.’

‘He didn’t say more?’

‘If he did, Fred never told me.’

‘Never mind,’ Ben said. ‘Go on.’

‘When Oliver called up late that night, he made Fred a weird offer. He said he could get him a private box for two at his sister’s performance of Macbeth at the Vienna State Opera. The last box, the last tickets. Worth a fortune. But there was a condition.’

Ben got it. ‘If Fred agreed to change places with him? Oliver wanted to get in there as the pianist for the night?’

She nodded.

‘And Fred agreed to the deal?’

‘He didn’t really want to give up the date, and the whole idea seemed nuts. But Oliver was totally serious, and the opera tickets were too tempting. Oliver said he’d let him have the gig fee, too. Fred knew Oliver was a good player, that he’d do a good job and wouldn’t spoil his reputation. So he went for it.’

‘And Oliver gave the recital?’

‘You tell me,’ she said. ‘According to the papers, he was somewhere else. Didn’t they say he was at a party and got drunk with some woman, then drowned in a lake?’

‘So the night of the recital was the night Oliver and Fred both died,’ Ben said.

Christa let out a long sigh. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘Where was the recital?’

‘I don’t know where the house is,’ she said. ‘Just that it’s not that far from Vienna. It’s some seriously expensive, fancy place. A real palace. An aristocrat owns it. Old Viennese money, going back centuries.’

‘Do you know who the aristocrat is?’

She nodded. ‘Von Adler. He’s the Count von Adler.’

Chapter Forty

Slovenia

The same day

Clara carefully wrote down the right answer to question ten and folded the exercise jotter inside her maths textbook. Mother Hildegard didn’t have a calculator, but that didn’t matter. Clara’s arithmetic was pretty good.

The child left the schoolbook lying on the desk, slipped down from the hard chair and went off to potter about the nun’s office, looking for something else to do. She looked along the bookshelves at the rows of leather spines. Most of Mother Hildegard’s books were religious and Clara wasn’t too tempted by them. There were a couple of tatty old jigsaw puzzles in the cupboard but Clara had already done them both. Puzzles were for kids, and Clara didn’t think of herself that way. The Pope’s left eye was missing, anyway.

She looked out of the window for a while, watching the mountains in the distance. It was lovely here, and it was a nice holiday, although she couldn’t understand why her daddy couldn’t be with her more of the time. The nuns were kind to her and Leigh was a lot of fun too. But she missed her friends, her school, and most of all she missed her sitter Helga. Helga was like a big sister to her. She wondered whether Daddy would ever marry her, and they could have a real family again.

On the Mother Superior’s desk was an old phone, the only phone in the convent. It was like no other phone she’d ever seen, and it fascinated her. It was heavy and black, with a funny-shaped receiver that sat sideways on top and was connected to the heavy part by a braided cord. But the strangest thing about it was the round dial in the middle, with little holes in it. She knew from watching old movies with her daddy that you were meant to put your finger in the holes and turn the dial. Her fingers went in the holes easily. She wondered whether her daddy’s big stubby fingers would fit.

It was weird to imagine that people used to use this kind of thing all the time. She amused herself dialling 1-2-3-4-5 and watching the dial whirr back a little further each time until it reached the stop.

Then she had a thought. She suddenly wanted to talk to Helga, to tell her about her new friend Leigh, the famous singer who was on CDs and television. She looked around. She could hear singing coming from the chapel. Just a little call, nobody would mind.

She picked up the heavy receiver, remembered the code for Austria and dialled the number. Her face lit up at the sound of her friend’s voice. ‘Helga, it’s me,’ she said.

Leigh sipped a coffee and watched the crackling fire. It was so quiet here. Ben had been gone less than eighteen hours. They’d hardly spoken when he left, and the memory kept playing back in her head. There was a lot she wanted to say to him. She knew she was lying to herself when she tried to tell herself she didn’t still love him. Over the last few days she’d begun to wonder whether she’d ever really stopped. But she’d been selfish with him, and that was the biggest regret she had. She’d initiated the kiss, and then she’d pushed him away. It wasn’t fair to play with his emotions.

She heard the cottage door open, and Clara appeared in the doorway. ‘Hi, can I come in?’ She came and sat on a chair, kicking her feet.