The Mozart Conspiracy

‘Kidnapping is just a business like any other, Leigh. It’s not personal. It’s all about money, and if there’s no family or spouse to pay for your safe return, there’s no motive. It’s the ultimate emotional blackmail. It only works if there’s a third party who’s scared enough of losing someone they love.’ He took a swig of Scotch, draining the glass almost to the bottom. ‘There’s only one exception to that rule, and that’s if the victim has K&R insurance.’

‘K&R?’

‘Kidnap and ransom.’

‘I didn’t even know you could take out insurance against that.’

‘So I take it you haven’t got any?’

She shook her head.

‘That means we can largely rule out a financial motive,’ he said. ‘Unless it was an amateur job. Snatch the person first and worry about the details later. But these guys sound more professional than that. And I don’t think it was a case of mistaken identity either. They knew where you were living. Someone had done their homework.’ He paused to take another long drink of whisky. He laid the empty glass down with a clunk on the table. ‘What are you planning to do now?’ he asked.

‘I want to get out of London, for a start. I can’t stand it here any more, trapped like an animal in this hotel. I’ve got to be in Venice in mid-January for The Magic Flute. But first I’m heading for west Oxfordshire, in the country. Dave and his team are escorting me there.’

‘Why there?’

‘It’s a place I bought a while ago. I’ve been thinking of setting up an opera school.’

‘Who knows about it?’

‘Nobody yet, apart from myself, my PA and my business manager,’ she said. ‘At the moment it’s still just a big old empty house with nothing but a few boxes of stuff sent over from Monte Carlo. I haven’t got around to furnishing it. But it’s liveable in. I’ll stay there for a few days until I decide what to do next.’

‘I’ll tell you what you need to do,’ Ben said. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the direction of the door. ‘First thing, you need to ditch those idiots outside. They’re a liability. I could have been anybody walking in here. They didn’t even slow me down.’

She nodded. ‘You’ve put things into perspective a little. So, say I agree to ditch them right away. What next?’

‘You want me to step in?’

‘That’s what I was hoping,’ she said.

‘I’m not a bodyguard, Leigh. It isn’t what I do. But I know people. We’ll get you some proper protection.’

She looked unhappy. ‘Why should I exchange one bunch of heavies for another?’

He smiled and shook his head. ‘The people I have in mind are professionals. The real thing. You would barely even know they were there, but you’d be safe. I know, I trained them.’

‘I’d feel safer with you,’ she said.

‘Even after what I did to you?’

‘You won’t let me down again?’ she asked. ‘Not this time?’

He sighed. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I won’t let you down again.’

Chapter Six

Berne, Switzerland

Heini Müller huddled closer to the fire and warmed his hands. Snowflakes were spiralling down from the night sky, sizzling against the metal sides of the brazier.

It had been a long day, and some of the protesters were getting restless waiting for something to happen. He ran his eye over the crowd. They weren’t as vociferous as they’d been that afternoon. People were standing around smoking herbal cigarettes, sipping blackcurrant tea and decaf from their flasks, talking in groups, kicking their feet, looking tired and cold. Some people had given up and gone home, but there were still about four hundred of them.

They’d tried earlier to get inside the hotel grounds, but when these bastards had their conferences the security was tight. The place was locked up solid and they’d had to content themselves with waving banners outside the tall gates. The police were keeping their distance, vans and motorcycles parked some way up the road, and more inside the grounds. The cops were nervous. They knew they were seriously outnumbered.

The big hotel stood a few hundred yards away, across snowy lawns. There were thirteen limos parked outside the conference building, black, identical. A few minutes ago, Heini’s girlfriend Franka had spotted a bunch of drivers emerge from a side entrance to wipe snow off the cars. It looked like something was beginning to happen at last.

‘Here they come,’ someone yelled. The protesters picked up their banners like weapons. STOP CLIMATE CHAOS. ARAGON FOR EUROPE.

Heini watched through Franka’s binoculars as the conference building opened and the attendees filed out under the snow. The youngest of the men were middle-aged. They were all smartly dressed and some of the older ones wore hats. The hotel forecourt had been salted and swept for the Important Men, and the drivers and hotel staff were in attendance with umbrellas. Motorcycle police mounted their white Honda Pan Europeans, and plain-clothed security men stood around talking on radios.

Thirteen drivers simultaneously opened thirteen limo rear doors, and the passengers got in. The doors slammed and the hotel staff gathered respectfully under the snow as the cars pulled away. The procession purred softly down the private road towards the tall gates where the protesters were waiting. Flanking motorcycles led the way, and four security cars brought up the rear.

In the back of the lead limousine a slightly built, smartly dressed man in his late sixties reclined into the leather seat. His name was Werner Kroll and he was the committee president. He folded his hands delicately on his lap and waited patiently as the limo approached the thronging, raging crowd.

Kroll’s assistant sat opposite him. He was a younger man, in his early forties. He was muscular and still wore his hair the way he had in his military days. He turned to watch the waving banners with a scowl of derision. ‘Idiots,’ he said, pointing a gloved finger. ‘Look at them. What do they think they’re achieving?’

‘Democracy gives them the illusion of freedom,’ Kroll replied softly, gazing at them.

The gates swung open automatically to let the limousines through. The protesters immediately swarmed around the cars, yelling slogans and shaking their banners angrily. There were a lot more of them than usual, Kroll observed. Two years ago the demonstrators outside these meetings would be little more than a disordered band of hippies, sixty or seventy at the most and easily within the police’s power to subdue. Things were different now.

The crowd surrounded the car. The police were mingling with the demonstrators now, grabbing people and dragging them away to the waiting vans. The pitch was rising fast. Three officers grabbed hold of a young man carrying an ARAGON FOR EUROPE banner who was blocking the car’s path. The banner clattered against the windscreen, the rough painted words large against the glass.

Kroll knew the name Aragon very well. Aragon was the man who was giving these people their power. In a few short years the charismatic young Europolitician had risen from obscurity to being able to command massive popular support for his Green and anti-nuclear policies. It wasn’t just a group of hippies, radicals and committed lefties protesting any longer. Aragon was appealing to the middle classes. And that was dangerous.

Heini Müller reached into his bag and took out a box of eggs. He was a vegan and didn’t normally buy them, but for this he’d made an exception. The eggs were months old. Heini stood grinning as the lead limo approached, its headlights blazing. He grabbed an egg out of the box and raised his arm to hurl it against the window of the limo. Someone else was shaking up a spray-can of red paint.

As Heini was about to smash the egg against the first car, it stopped. The opaque window whirred down.

Heini froze. Suddenly the roar of the crowd was silent in his ears. The old man in the back of the limo was staring at him. His gaze was like ice. It seemed to drain the blood out of Heini, who stood transfixed with the egg in his hand. His arm fell limp, and something cracked. The window whirred up again and the gleaming black limo moved silently on.

Heini Müller looked down at his hand. The rotten yolk dripped from his fingers. The cars went by him and he just stood there. Then the yelling filled his ears again. A policeman grabbed his hair and he was on the ground, kicking and squirming.

* * *

Kroll eased back in his seat as the car swept away between the flanking police outriders. His phone rang, and he picked it up slowly.

‘Llewellyn left before we could get to her,’ said the voice on the line. He sounded apologetic and frightened. ‘We were half an hour late.’

Kroll listened impassively, looking at the snowy hills rolling past.

The voice went on, sounding more hopeful. ‘But we have found her again. I have an address for you.’

Kroll reached for a notepad and wrote as he listened. He ended the call without a word, then pressed a button on his console. A small flat-screen TV flashed into life and he pressed play on the DVD control. Kroll looked intently at the screen. He’d seen this before. He enjoyed watching her.

She was reclining in a large armchair in a television studio in London. Her face was animated as she spoke to her interviewer. She wore a creamy cashmere dress and a string of glittering pearls that contrasted strikingly with her jet-black hair.

‘She’s something, isn’t she?’ said Kroll’s assistant.

Kroll didn’t look away from the screen. ‘She certainly is,’ he replied softly. He stopped the video playback. The screen went dark. He fixed the other man with cold eyes for a second before glancing down to the notebook on the seat next to him. He tore off the top sheet and handed it to the younger man. ‘Make the necessary arrangements, Jack,’ he said.

Chapter Seven

The village of Aston

West Oxfordshire

It was dark by the time they reached the sleepy village. Ben had the taxi drop them in the square. They bought a few provisions from the village shop and called a local taxi service to take them the two miles to Langton Hall.

The country house lay secluded in its own land, among wintry oaks and willows at the end of a long, twisty driveway. Its gables and chimney-stacks stood silhouetted against the dark blue sky, and moonlit frost glittered on the roof. The windows were in darkness. An owl hooted from a nearby tree.

Leigh unlocked the heavy oak front door and quickly punched a number into a wall panel to disable the alarm system. She turned on the lights.

‘Nice place.’ Ben’s voice echoed in the empty entrance hall. He looked around him, admiring the ornate wood panelling and the sweep of the wide staircase.

‘It will be when it’s all done up,’ she said. She shivered. ‘Cold, though. The boiler’s almost as old as the rest of the place and the heating doesn’t work.’

‘No problem,’ he said. ‘I’ll get the fires going. We’ll soon warm the place up.’

‘Thanks, Ben. There’s a pile of logs in the woodshed.’

He followed her into a large stone-floored country kitchen and laid the plastic bags of shopping on a long pine table. He checked that the old-fashioned lock on the kitchen door worked, then quietly slid open a drawer and found what he was looking for. He discreetly slipped the carving knife inside his jacket.

‘Leigh, I’m going to fetch some logs and take a look around the place. Lock the door after me.’

‘What…’

‘Don’t worry, just being cautious.’

Leigh did what he said. The big iron key turned smoothly in the lock and she heard his footsteps moving away up the corridor.

She opened a bottle of village-shop wine. There were some beakers and basic cooking equipment stored in the walk-in pantry. She took a heavy cast-iron skillet down from a hook and laid it on the gas range.

She smiled to herself as she took a box of eggs out of one of the shopping bags. It was strange, having Ben Hope around her again after all these years. She’d loved him once, loved him madly enough to have thought about giving up her career for him even before it had begun.

‘You’ll like him,’ Oliver had said that day. And he’d been right. Her brother’s new army friend wasn’t like the others she’d met. She’d just turned nineteen, and Benedict-as he’d been introduced-was four years older. He had an easy smile and a quick mind. He’d talked to her like no other boy had ever done before. Until then she’d thought love at first sight was a fairy-tale, but it had happened to her with him. It hadn’t happened to her since, and she could still remember every day of those five months they’d been together.

Had he changed a lot since those days? Physically he didn’t seem that different. His face was a little leaner, perhaps. A little more careworn, with more frown-lines than laugh-lines. He was still toned and in perfect physical shape. But he had changed. The Ben she’d known back then had been softer and gentler. He could even seem vulnerable at times.

Not any more. Through Oliver she’d heard enough about Ben’s life during the intervening fifteen years to know that he’d seen, and perhaps done, some terrible things. Experiences like that had to leave a mark on a person. There were moments when she could see a cold kind of light in his blue eyes, a glacial hardness that hadn’t been there before.

They ate sitting on the hearth-rug in the unfurnished study. It was the smallest room in the cavernous house, and Ben’s crackling log blaze had quickly chased the chill from the air. Firelight danced on the oak panels. In the shadowy corners of the room, packing cases and tape-sealed cardboard boxes were still piled up unopened from the move.

‘Fried egg butties and cheap wine,’ he said. ‘You should have been a soldier.’

‘When you work the hours I do, you learn to appreciate the quick and simple things in life,’ she said with a smile. The bottle between them was half-empty now and she was feeling more relaxed than she had for days. They sat in silence for a while, and she let her gaze be drawn by the hypnotic rhythm of the flames.

Ben watched her face in the firelight. He had a clear image in his mind of the last time they’d sat alone together like this, a decade and a half earlier. He and Oliver had been on leave from the army and had travelled up to mid-Wales together to the Llewellyn family home in Builth Wells. The old merchant townhouse, once grand, had by then grown tatty and neglected with the decline of Richard Llewellyn’s antique piano restoration business. Ben had only briefly met Leigh and Oliver’s father, a kindly, heavy man in his mid-sixties, with a greying beard, a face reddened by a little too much port and the sad eyes of a man widowed for six years.

It had been evening, the rain lashing down outside, wind howling through the chimney. Oliver was taking advantage of his week’s freedom to go in search of pulchritude, as he had put it. Richard Llewellyn was up in his private study, as he always seemed to be, poring over old books and papers.

Alone downstairs, Ben had built a roaring log fire and Leigh had sat by him. They’d talked quietly for hours. That had been the night of their first kiss. There hadn’t been many.

He smiled to himself, returning to the present-watching her now, the flickering glow on her cheek. Neither time nor fame had changed her.

‘What are you thinking about?’ he said.

She turned away from the fire to look at him. ‘Thinking about you,’ she said.

‘What about me?’

‘Did you ever marry, find someone?’

He was silent for a moment. ‘It’s hard for me, with the life I lead. I don’t think I’m the settling kind.’

‘You haven’t changed, then.’

He felt the sting of her words, but said nothing.

‘I hated you for a long time,’ she said quietly, looking into the flames. ‘After what you did to me.’

He said nothing.

‘Why didn’t you turn up that night?’ she asked, looking round at him.

He sighed and paused a long time before replying. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He’d thought about it so often.

‘I loved you,’ she said.

‘I loved you,’ he answered.

‘Did you, really?’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘But you loved the regiment more.’

‘I was young, Leigh. I thought I knew what I wanted.’

She looked back into the fire. ‘I waited for you that night after the show. I was so excited. It was my debut. I thought you were in the audience. I sang my heart out for you. You said you’d meet me backstage and we’d go to the party together. But you never came. You just disappeared.’

He didn’t know what to say to her.

‘You really broke my heart,’ she said. ‘Maybe you don’t realize that.’

He reached out and touched her shoulder. ‘I’ve always felt bad about what I did. I’ve never forgotten it, and I’ve often thought about you.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t drag out the past. It was a long time ago.’

They sat in silence for a while. He tossed another log on the fire, gazing at the orange sparks flying up the chimney. He didn’t know what more to say to her.

‘I miss Oliver,’ she said suddenly.

‘I miss him too,’ he said. ‘I wish I’d seen more of him in the last few years.’

‘He talked about you a lot.’

Ben shook his head. ‘What the hell was he doing on that lake?’

‘Nobody really knows,’ she said. ‘The only witness to the accident was his lady companion for the evening.’

‘Who was she?’

‘Madeleine Laurent. Wife of some diplomat. It caused a bit of a scandal. There were people behind the scenes trying to keep the investigation under wraps. Some of the details were pretty hazy.’

‘Tell me what happened,’ he said.

‘All I know is that apparently they’d been at a party, some black-tie affair with a bunch of important people. I don’t know where it was or who else was there. If there were witnesses, maybe they didn’t want to get involved.’

‘Black ties and VIPs,’ Ben said. ‘It doesn’t sound like Oliver’s kind of party.’

‘He went along with her. She said he’d been chasing her around. The husband was away somewhere. And there was champagne. He drank a lot of it.’

‘That does sound like him,’ Ben admitted.

‘They were dancing and drinking. She’d had quite a bit too, but not as much as him. One thing started leading to another. He wanted to get her away somewhere private. She said he kept insisting he wanted to drive her to a hotel, get a room together.’

‘They couldn’t have sneaked into a bedroom?’

‘Apparently not.’

‘That doesn’t sound like him. Drinking and driving wasn’t his style.’

‘I didn’t think so either,’ Leigh said. ‘But he pranged the car on the way to the hotel. That’s true. I saw the damage.’

‘That old MG of his?’

‘He smashed it up pretty badly. The front was all dented in. Looked like he’d hit a wall or something.’

‘If he turned up drunk at the hotel with a damaged car, there must have been other witnesses,’ Ben said.

She shook her head. ‘They never made it to the hotel. Apparently they couldn’t wait. They stopped off somewhere quiet on the way.’

‘At the lakeside?’

She nodded. Her face tightened. ‘That’s when it happened. According to the woman, he thought it’d be a laugh to have a skate on the ice.’

‘That really doesn’t sound like him.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘But it looks like that’s what happened. He got this crazy idea in his head and he went out on the ice. She thought it was funny at first. Then she got bored and went back to the car. She fell asleep on the seat.’

‘Drunk enough to pass out,’ he said. ‘But she remembered a lot of detail afterwards.’

‘I’m only telling you what she claimed happened. There’s no evidence that it didn’t happen the way she said it did.’

‘He went out on the ice before or after the sex?’

‘She said it never went that far.’

‘So he was too horny to wait to get to the hotel, but then he decides to go skating first?’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I thought about that too. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But I guess if he’d been drinking—’

He sighed. ‘OK. Tell me the rest.’

‘She woke up shivering with the cold. She reckoned she’d been out of it for about half an hour.’ Leigh paused, sighed, closed her eyes, sipped a little more wine. ‘And that was it. She was alone. He hadn’t come back from the ice. There was no sign of him. Just a hole where he’d gone through.’

Ben flipped the burning log in the fire. He said nothing, turning it over in his mind. Dammit, Oliver, you were trained not to do things like that. Bloody fool, dying so stupidly. ‘What was he doing in Austria?’ he asked.

‘He was there researching his book.’

Ben laid down the poker and turned to look at her. ‘A book? What was it, a novel?’

‘No, it was about Mozart.’

‘A biography or something?’

‘It wasn’t the story of Mozart’s life,’ she said. ‘That’s been written about a million times. This was the story of Mozart’s death.’

‘Strange subject. Not that I’d know anything much about it.’

‘Olly was devoted to it. He was always sending me his notes, keeping me up-to-date on his research. I was funding him, so I think he felt obliged. I never had much time to read the stuff, and then when…when he had the accident, I couldn’t bring myself to look at it any more. He even posted me something on the day he died. I’ve never opened it.’ She hung her head, sipped her wine, and went on. ‘But in the last couple of months I’ve started getting the idea of carrying on where he left off.’

‘You mean finish his book for him?’

‘Yeah. I think I’d like to do that in his memory.’ She pointed over her shoulder with her thumb. ‘I had all his notes sent over from Monte Carlo. They’re still packed up in one of those boxes over there.’ She smiled. ‘You think it’s a crazy idea?’

‘Finishing his book? No, I think it’s a great idea. You reckon you can do it?’

‘I’m a singer, not a writer,’ she replied. ‘But it’s an interesting subject, and yes, I reckon I can do it. Maybe it’ll be good for me, too. You know, help me come to terms with death, and loss.’

Ben nodded thoughtfully. He filled their glasses. The bottle was empty now, and he thought about fetching another. ‘Mozart’s death,’ he said. ‘I thought people already knew what happened to Mozart.’

‘That a jealous rival composer poisoned him?’ She chuckled. ‘That old theory. It’s just one of those myths that got blown up.’

Ben held up his beaker so that he could watch the dancing flames filtered redly through the wine. ‘What was Oliver’s angle?’ he asked.

‘He said his research uncovered a whole new take on the Mozart murder theory. That’s what made his book so important.’

‘So who did it?’

‘I think he believed it might have been the Freemasons,’ she said.

‘A bunch of guys in sashes with one trouser-leg rolled up.’

She looked at him hard. ‘Oliver took it seriously enough.’

‘Why would the Masons have gone and done something like that?’

‘Because of The Magic Flute.’

‘The opera you mentioned. Is there more to that, or am I supposed to guess?’

‘The Magic Flute is full of Masonic symbolism,’ she explained patiently. ‘Secrets that Masons are sworn to protect.’

‘So how did Mozart know all these secrets?’

‘Because he was a Freemason himself.’

‘I didn’t know that. So, what? He blabbed, and they knocked him on the head?’

‘That’s the idea. I don’t know much, though.’

‘Should make for an interesting read.’ Ben smiled. ‘And where was Oliver getting all this stuff from?’

‘From Dad’s discovery,’ she said. ‘Remember?’

He did. ‘The letter.’

Leigh nodded. ‘It was the centre of his research. The book’s named after it. The Mozart Letter’