Solo - Jack Higgins [63]
He turned and walked away quickly.
It was a nonsense and yet, when he got back to the flat, he started to go through those newspapers again. The facts of the Cohen shooting and Megan's death were both mentioned on different pages of the Daily Telegraph for Saturday the twenty second.
He found the music page and there it was. A lengthy piece by the paper's critic reviewing the concert of the previous evening and a picture of the pianist alongside.
Morgan studied it for quite some time. The handsome, serious face, the dark hair, the eyes. It was stupid, of course, but he went and got Who's Who from the bookshelf anyway and looked Mikali up. And then a couple of sentences seemed to leap right out at him - the reference to Mikali's service in the French Foreign Legion paratroopers in Algiers - and he didn't feel stupid any more.
*
It was just after nine when Bruno Fischer's secretary unlocked the door of his office in Golden Square and walked in. She'd hardly had time to get her coat off when the phone rang.
'Good morning,' she said. 'Fischer Agency.'
'Is Mr Fischer in yet?' It was a man's voice, rather deep with a touch of Welsh about it.
She sat on the edge of the desk. 'We never see Mr Fischer much before eleven.'
'I am right, he does represent John Mikali?'
'Yes.'
'My name's Lewis,' Asa Morgan told her. 'I'm a postgraduate student at the Royal College of Music doing a thesis on contemporary concert pianists. I was wondering whether Mr Mikali might be available for an interview?'
'I'm afraid not,' she said. 'He's just had a concert in Helsinki, then flown straight to Greece on holiday. He has a villa there on Hydra.'
'And when might you be expecting him back?'
'He has a concert in Vienna in ten days' time, but he'd probably fly there direct from Athens. I really couldn't say when he'll be back in London and there wouldn't be any kind of guarantee that he could see you.'
'That's a pity,' Morgan said. 'I'd hoped to be able to question him about particular cities he likes to play in. Any personal favourites and why.'
'Paris,' she said. 'I should say he plays Paris and London more than anywhere else.'
'And Frankfurt?' Morgan inquired. 'Has he ever played there?'
'I should say so.'
'Why do you say that?'
'He was giving a concert at the university there last year when that East German minister was assassinated.'
'Thank you,' Morgan said. 'You've been more than helpful.'
He sat by the phone, thinking about it. There had to be something wrong. It was too simple. And then the phone rang.
Kate Riley said, 'Asa, I'm sorry. I was so shattered by what happened...'
'Where are you?'
'Back in Cambridge at New Hall.'
'Hell of a thing happened to me this morning,' he said. 'I visited the street where the Cretan dumped the car that night, moved on foot from there, as he might have done.'
'All supposition, of course.'
'But it took me across Kensington Gardens to the Albert Hall. Where I noticed a poster. One of many, but more interesting than the others, advertising a concert at eight o'clock on the night Megan died.'
'A concert?' She was aware of a coldness in her, a quickening of breath.
'John Mikali playing Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto and that name struck a chord. An Italian film director called Forlani was shot dead at the Cannes Film Festival in nineteen seventy-one in his hotel by the Cretan who vanished completely in spite of the French security guards. Mikali was one of a number of famous celebrities staying in the hotel at the same time.'
'Well?'
'Last year, when that East German minister was killed at Frankfurt, guess who was giving a concert at the university?'
She took a deep breath. 'Asa, this is nonsense. John Mikali is one of the greatest pianists in the world. An international celebrity.'
'Who spent two years in the Foreign Legion as a kid,' Morgan said. 'All right, so it doesn't sound very probable, but at least it's worth following up.'
'Have