“It’s worth a thought, Sean,” said Gardener, “but it doesn’t really fit. She’s in her twenties, chances are that the man we’re after is probably more than double her age.”
Reilly shrugged, “just a thought, boss.”
“And not a bad one,” said Gardener, nodding to his superior, DCI Briggs. “Maybe someone on her as well?”
“Christ, Stewart, we’re not made of money.”
Gardener smiled and addressed the team again. “The end of the riddle. ‘It’s time to detect, and study the clues.’ Despite being cocky, he’s right. And so is DCI Briggs. He’s taking us for mugs, especially if he gets away with another murder. We have to try to prevent it. Sean and I are going to pay a visit to Leonard White’s former home. Apparently, it was a colleague of White’s who bought it. Although he’s dead, it’s possible his wife is still there.”
“Okay, let’s be more focused,” shouted Briggs. “It doesn’t sound like we have much time, but you’re going to have to do your best. Otherwise, the press will do their worst. The way I see it, there are three suspects.” Briggs held up one hand and counted with his fingers on the other.
“Val White. She had the motive and the ability, but she has an alibi. Dig deep, someone. Harry Fletcher. We don’t know enough about him either way. We can’t put him in the frame and we can’t rule him out, so we need to find him. Cuthbertson, who runs the stage make-up shop. He’s a possible suspect, but he may also be the next victim. Someone tail him for a couple of days. We have to be seen to be doing something, despite the fact that we’re getting nowhere.”
Gardener glanced at the chart again, ticking off the subjects he’d covered, stopping when he reached the word ESLA.
He addressed Steve Fenton. “Anything?”
“Yes. We’ve got the results in. We need everyone back at the theatre with their shoes so we can check them off.”
“Good. Go and ring Paul Price now and tell him I’d like everyone there tomorrow, with the shoes they were wearing on Saturday night. I’d also like to see the results at the next incident room meeting.”
He glanced at them all as a group. “That just leaves the sound problem. The word that Paul Price heard spoken before Leonard White was hung.”
“I know about that one, sir,” said Paul Benson, another young member of the team, who produced a notebook. “It was on a cassette tape. Once we’d identified which one, I popped over to the theatre to speak to the sound technician.”
Gardener glanced over the evidence bags, spotting a tape. “What did he have to say?”
“The sound tech identified it as the tape he’d been given by Leonard White about ten minutes before he went on, with the instructions that h
e should play it after the safety curtain had been raised.”
“Where did White go then?” asked Gardener.
“To the other side of the stage to wait in the wings, only our sound technician couldn’t see him. Once the curtain was up, he played the tape. At first, he thought it was blank, the wrong one maybe. Then he heard something scream out, which was a bloody sight louder than he’d anticipated. When he searched the desk for the volume level, it was too late. There was nothing else on the tape, and the body was in front of the audience.”
“Did he see White at all after that?”
“No, but to be honest, I think he was in shock. He said he just stood staring at the body until Price came barging through the stage door.”
“Did he recognise the word on the tape?”
“No.”
“Do you?”
“The sound lads have been playing with this for ages. The recording is pretty loud, which means it’s distorted,” said Benson. “But they have managed to clean it up and they think it’s two words, even though it’s said quite fast. Someone shouts ‘look out’, and that’s it.”
Gardener glanced at the ceiling, defeated. It would be nigh on impossible to identify that, but he had to try.
“Any ideas?”
Benson spoke up again. “The sound lads think it comes from an old film. There’s lots of crackling and a definite hiss, so it hasn’t been recorded live. Whoever did it might have used the latest technology, but the soundtrack is very old.”
“Okay,” said Gardener. “Everyone take a copy of that tape. I’ll have one for my dad. Any of you talking to the film historians, play it to them, see if they recognise it. I’m not expecting miracles, but you never know.”
Gardener updated the board and added the word ‘DVD’, intending to follow up on the Inspector Burke clip.
Briggs stood up. “Before you all go, the Chief Super’s been talking to a retired profiler who’s offering his services for free.”