Below the Thunder Read online

  ‘Well now,’ Bryn said. ‘There could be no more apt comparison. It is no coincidence that, as opera began to lose its mass appeal early in the last century – in Italy as in other countries – so cinema was rising. Because cinema was, and remains, the new opera. It was always, from the beginning – like opera – theatre set to music. Even in the silent days they had orchestras accompanying the action. As sound came in, composers – opera people like Korngold or Max Steiner – filled the soundtrack with their music. And the stories were always operatic. Melodramas, dying heroines, murders, heroes. Then there’s the way films were constructed. Think of those swooping arias – Bette Davis, Marlon Brando, Meryl Streep. The more operatic the role, the more likely the star to be acclaimed as a diva and win the Oscars. Wagner’s Leitmotifs? Films are full of them. Lara’s theme, Tara’s theme. And so on. And so on. Don’t tell me you can’t compare cinema with opera.’

  The memory of that particular coloratura aria still lingered mortifyingly next morning. That and a vaguer sense of all-round hubristic arrogance. A late-night exchange with Burton returned to haunt him even as he was having breakfast.

  ‘All art aspires to the condition of music,’ he had opined.

  ‘Is that original?’ asked one of the older ladies.

  ‘Sadly not,’ he said. ‘Walter Pater.’

  ‘And does that gentleman record what all music aspires to?’ asked Burton mildly. ‘Perhaps you have an aphorism for us of your own?’

  ‘I do,’ Bryn had said, with relish. ‘All music aspires to the condition of love. Sometimes gentle, sometimes furious. And very often, to the act of sexual love itself. The climax – that explosive moment of resolution and physical release – is after all fundamental to music.’

  ‘How fortunate in that case it is so rarely achieved,’ observed Burton, after a lengthy pause.

  It was around this juncture that the party broke up, leaving Bryn to make his way back alone to his motel room. Though – even now – he was inclined to think it quite an apt maxim…

  He’d had rather a disturbed night. Rackety air conditioning is endemic in cheap American hotels and this was no exception. Had he not been overwhelmed by alcohol and exhaustion, he might not have slept much at all. Before he left in the morning, he made a polite, ritual complaint about the noise. He did not expect anything to be done but felt at least a duty to guests yet to come to register some form of protest.

  Today was the first opera of the Great Cycle: The Rhinegold. In which a swarthy dwarf called Alberich steals the eponymous mineral and transforms it into a ring which gives its possessor universal power; loses it to his enemy; and embarks upon a quest to retrieve it which will end in terminal destruction. Bryn was familiar with the more elevated expositions, involving gods and goddesses, brave heroes and the rise of mankind. But that seemed to him the essence of it.

  His tickets for the four operas – The Rhinegold, The Valkyrie, Siegfried and The Twilight of the Gods – were in the rear balcony, the second cheapest available (though still a serious investment). His new friends from England were in the orchestra stalls at an eye-watering four-figure expenditure for the seats alone – and not counting the cost of their flights, hotels, dinners and lady guide. He could just see them from his eyrie.

  The audience divided into two parts, not entirely based on ticket price. One part – much the smaller – sought to emulate the standards of Bayreuth, with dinner jackets and gowns. Many of these sat in the stalls. But most were in the phenomenally expensive boxes ranged in eighteenth century fashion round the three sides of the auditorium, from which they emerged like rabbits from their gilded hutches, to take padded armchair seats at the circle rail; and to which they scuttled back for their interval champagne, soft shell crabs and socialising. A few similarly well-dressed souls filtered up as high as Bryn’s humble balcony. He admired their determination to make such an event of their visit.

  And then there were the others: the majority. Some were in suits but many wore jeans or chinos, even – in this hot weather – shorts, with the women correspondingly equipped. Nor was their habitat by any means confined to the cheaper seats. A number of very casually dressed patrons could be seen wandering around at stalls level. Casually dressed, that is to say, by Chanel and Jimmy Choo. Though some distance short, he felt, of the elegance of the festspielhaus. Or, for that matter, Glyndebourne.

  But you could hardly fail to be impressed by the auditorium. Gold had always been the default pigment of opera houses, albeit mediated generally by less strident colours. In San Francisco, however, it was gold and nothing but gold: gold walls, curtains, proscenium, statues and bas-reliefs, pillars, balconies and ceiling. As a statement of municipal self-confidence it could not have been clearer; and wholly befitting a city created by the ’49 Gold Rush. So appropriate also for this evening’s performance.

  The Rhinegoldwas the shortest of the four operas of The Ring. The production was an example of what Germans call Regietheater, in which the subtext of the work is mined by the director to produce an original piece of art not necessarily comprehensible to its audience. The inspiration on this occasion – or so Bryn concluded – was the history of America itself, with the thieving dwarf a Gold Rush forty-niner (Black Al Berwick) who stumbles upon the mother lode of his career and makes off with it to a life of limitless riches and power. The Gods – his competitors – refugees from the pages of F Scott Fitzgerald – were a troupe of effete, blazered, champagne-swilling party-goers led by a ruthless tycoon in riding boots and duster coat with a tame politician in tow – otherwise Wotan, and his scheming advisor, Loge.

  Two and a half hours later, after the triumphant Gods had finally climbed their rainbow to Valhalla, the audience began to leave the theatre. Van Ness Avenue was as full of waiting limousines as Los Angeles on Academy Awards night. Bryn hung around in case the English tour, with its attractive girl guide leader, had not already departed.

  He heard a familiar, gravelly voice behind him and an elderly male with steel grey hair and large, rimless glasses passed through the crowd and eased into a waiting black stretch limousine. The man looked up and caught his eye.

  ‘Mr Strange! What a coincidence!’ he began.

  The expression on the other’s face was as dead as stone. Even as Bryn advanced, he was closing the rear door and the car pulling away. A different model from last time but with the same number plate: US PATRIOT.

  The traffic was beginning to clear. Across the road a small sedan with tinted windows was parked half on the pavement, half on the roadway. A short man in a baseball cap was watching them from beyond it. Bryn tried to return his gaze but immediately he ducked into the car, did a noisy U-turn in the middle of the highway and shot off after Strange’s limousine.

  David Burton was standing beside him.

  ‘I think you could do with a drink,’ he said, with a smile.

  Bryn wondered if Burton had been a witness to his embarrassment. But he was glad at least to have a chance to redeem himself from the previous night’s excesses. They found a bar nearby – they had to step over some sleeping pavement derelicts to get into it – and this time Bryn made a conscientious effort to induce Burton to talk about himself.

  He was a bachelor, though if he was gay he gave little evidence of it – aside from a characteristic interest in grand opera, and a tendency to clutch Bryn’s lapel to make a point. He explained – and Bryn had to press him quite hard for this information – that he was the chief executive of a luxury goods mail order company, run from offices in South London. Overseas travel, with some theatre on the side if he could manage it, was part of his business. He produced a card: E. David Burton, Ziggurat Exports; and a phone number, which – as they parted – he urged Bryn to call next time he was in London. Bryn promised to do so.

  Back at the motel, the helpful receptionist dug out a charger which matched Bryn’s battery-dead iPhone and he left it plugged in through the night. He wanted to check the photographs he’d taken a few weeks before in
Bayreuth, and test a presentiment that they might offer some clue to help him understand the curious events that had happened to him since.

  He waited until after breakfast.

  It was a great disappointment. Every photograph, in fact all the iPhone’s data, had been wiped. Even his address book had gone. He rang through on the motel telephone and talked to a troubleshooting Apple adviser who tried in vain to restore the factory settings. In the end, the helpline recommended that Bryn cut his losses and acquire a new appliance.

  Instead he went on the laptop in the motel lobby. For an hour, under the tolerant eye of the receptionist, he Googled his way round the internet searching for an online fix. Twenty websites and any number of anoraks later, he had still not cracked it.

  And then it came to him with perfect simplicity. All he had to do was hack into Marion’s emails.

  It took him a further two seconds to square his conscience. After which he went directly to her service provider’s website and put in her password, knowing she would not have changed it since he’d originally set the system up for her. One effect of his irregular entry was the instant opening of her latest private message; he hoped she wouldn’t conclude from this – correctly – that he was the one who had hacked it into it. The message was a brief oneliner from one of Marion’s girlfriends: a man’s name, Harlan J Hackett. He moved on quickly. It meant nothing to him.

  He scoured back through her in-tray for emails he had sent to her. Nothing again. At which point he remembered that Marion never emptied her Delete file.

  And there it sat: her promise of ‘a much longer letter very soon’ with his brief reply. And three attached photographs.

  He opened them up. The first was of two beautifully dressed Arabs passing through the festspielhaus crowds. Followed by the view from Hitler’s balcony. The third was the last picture Bryn had taken – of the SS chauffeur confronting him from the balcony door.

  He posted it to a greetings card website so that he could manipulate the image until the background to the chauffeur filled the frame. He wound up the brightness and the contrast to their maximum.

  And there the man was. Blurred and a little pixillated. But unmistakable.

  In the shadows of the pink sitting room behind the balcony stood a short, stocky individual in an open neck shirt and sunglasses. Impossible to tell whether he was wearing high heeled Cuban boots or not. But that it was the same person was beyond doubt. Jack Wilson, or whatever he called himself. And enough evidence, surely, to take to the police. Detective Slocumb’s card was still in Bryn’s pocket. A quick search on mapquest.com revealed that his station was a short drive away.

  Slocumb came out to see him at the reception desk.

  ‘Professor Williams! Didn’t expect to see you so soon. Should have told you a phone call would do.’

  Bryn explained how anxious he was to catch up on further developments. Was he – for instance – off the suspects list yet?

  Slocumb laughed.

  ‘Sure thing. Come on through to the interview room. And have a cup of coffee. Happy to tell you ’bout it.’

  And he had some interesting news. The dead man on Lassen Peak was a scientist called Sidney Stratton. A nuclear scientist no less. They had done an autopsy on his body and discovered that he was desperately ill. He had some time recently suffered a critical – indeed terminal – irradiation and would probably have known that he had a couple of weeks to live. Investigations were under way at his government laboratory to find out whether he might have irradiated himself by accident or even intentionally. What was especially interesting was that he had never reported it.

  ‘Have his employers shed any light on what he was doing on the mountain?’ Bryn asked.

  ‘None at all,’ said Detective Slocumb. ‘But we’re talking about the federal government here. Whatever they know I don’t think they’re gonna share it. They clammed up as soon as they heard he was up there with mining equipment.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s what it was?’

  Slocumb made no reply. Bryn sensed some discontent with the way his investigation had developed. He might welcome an opportunity to talk it through.

  ‘And the murderer? I take it it’s still a homicide even if the murderer only shortened the poor man’s life by a week or so.’

  ‘We’re gathering information,’ said Slocumb. ‘It could be the other guy was known to Stratton. Or that, if he wasn’t, Stratton had good reason to fear him. He may even have taken precautions.’

  ‘The rifle in Stratton’s truck?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘So how exactly was he killed?’

  ‘Oh, very professionally, Professor. The killer intercepted him – most likely tracked him up the mountain – and came up behind and shot him at point-blank range. Stratton may never have seen him. Like dying in your sleep.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Well, sir. Because of the burn marks – not visible to the naked eye but they showed up in forensic. That means a silencer barrel was held right up against Stratton’s head.’

  ‘No lead residue?’

  Slocumb looked at him narrowly.

  ‘No, Professor, there was no lead residue.’

  ‘So it was a lead-free bullet.’

  ‘That is obvious.’

  Bryn could feel the adrenalin rising.

  ‘Does that mean forensics know the gun too?’ he asked, eagerly. ‘Let me guess. Was it a Smith and Wesson Bodyguard?’

  Slocumb stood up and gazed out of the window. When he turned back, his expression was noticeably harder and less friendly than before. It was evident that Bryn had overplayed his hand.

  ‘What exactly are you trying to tell me, sir?’

  ‘I think I know the man you want.’

  ‘Do you really? How ’bout that.’

  The hostility was now palpable.

  With some diffidence, Bryn explained about Jack Wilson, about his conversation with the bait shop owner and about the cowboy boots with their peculiar high heels.

  He waited for a reaction but Slocumb just stared at him.

  ‘Didn’t you say there was a footprint in the snow?’ Bryn reminded him.

  The other nodded.

  He explained about his acquaintance with Udell Strange and the connection with Wilson; and how Strange and Wilson might both be in San Francisco at this moment.

  ‘It should be easy to locate Mr Strange,’ he said. ‘He could lead you to Wilson or whatever the killer’s real name is. Probably an alias.’

  ‘Do you know what I think, Professor?’ said Slocumb at last. ‘I think you’ve done ’bout enough for us. I think from here on you might like to leave the rest of the policing to the SFPD.’

  ‘San Francisco’s finest.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he said.

  Bryn reflected on how very sensitive professional people could be when a layman encroached upon their area of expertise. It was a lesson well learned in his university career. Even so: he was disappointed to find such a precious streak in a policeman. He had expected something tougher.

  Slocumb had made it clear that he had no further interest in whatever Bryn might have to tell him. He watched while Bryn climbed into his car and drove away. The last he saw of him, Slocumb was standing outside the entrance to his station, taking a call on a mobile phone.

  He drove back to the motel, complained ineffectually again about the air-conditioning, and sat in his noisy room to review the draft letter he had finally managed to write out in longhand to Marion.

  It was no more likely to find favour with her than any of his previous attempts. But he had settled for a pragmatically defensive mode. He felt now that he needed to show that he was the reluctant party. That whatever she was doing was not of his choice or a consequence of his actions. He hoped also that it would not come to a legal fight. It seemed sensible to occupy whatever high ground was left.

  He was pleased with what he had achieved. Reasonably and modestly expressed, hurt
but not resentful, dignified and affectionate. And not too self-righteous. It might make a difference. The friendly receptionist was on duty again so he took it to the motel computer and sent it off as an email.

  ‘Might have a new room for you, señor,’ said the receptionist encouragingly. ‘A leettle bit better than the last.’

  ‘Couldn’t be worse,’ said Bryn.

  That evening was the second instalment of the Cycle: Die Walküre. The Valkyrie. The production had now moved forward in American history from The Great Gatsby to the 1950s. Valhalla was a General Motors’ boardroom overlooking a sky-scrapered metropolis, and the King of the Gods its lounge-suited chief executive. The Valkyrie war-maidens had become the US marines on exercise. Meantime the fleeing human lovers, Sieglinde and Siegmund, were taking refuge in a trash-strewn automobile graveyard beneath a freeway flyover. The production had already modulated into the familiar trope of The Ring as a story of capitalist greed – with global warming and urban desolation thrown in for good measure. Entertaining to watch but bewildering for anyone unfamiliar with the original. Bryn was again too late for his English friends but – near midnight and after more than five hours in the Opera House – he was dog-tired and ready for bed anyway.

  There was a night man on reception. When he gave Bryn his key, he realised that it was for a new room.

  ‘Say thanks to Juan-Carlos for me,’ he said.

  ‘OK?’ the night man replied, with a shrug of the shoulders.

  ‘But has my bag been moved?’

  ‘OK?’

  An interpreter might have been an advantage.

  He made his long way down two or three corridors to a door round the far back of the motel. What the room lacked in convenience, it made up for in tranquillity: the air-conditioning was a faint and sleep-inducing background hum. Bryn’s bag had been helpfully placed on the Queen-sized bed; and he dropped down alongside it without bothering to undress.

  He was deeply asleep when the bomb went off.

  In the peculiar way of dreams, he had imagined himself on the very lip of Lassen Peak, gazing down into its volcanic bowl. A single blue flame danced above his head and the air smelled sweet and pure and not at all of sulphur. At the bottom of the bowl lay a collection of small dead animals: marmots, birds, rat-like rabbits. As he watched, he heard a distant crack, deep down within the mountain, and a mighty rushing, rumbling commotion. Pieces of rock and ice flew past him. The centre of the bowl began to rise and crack like an egg hatching. There was a terrible, thunderous roar as the whole mountain lifted upwards.