‘Play something to me, will you?’
‘Like, what?’
Simon rolled over onto his side, considering. ‘Something sad. Sad but not morbid,’ he added, qualifying his request with a grin that lit up his eyes.
Chris tucked the fiddle under his chin and paused for a moment, bow in the air, his eyes looking beyond the man on the bed and out towards the grey patch of sky framed in the window. Then he looked back fondly at the strings and began to play.
The strains of the music filled the room with their sense of unfulfilled longing as ‘The Dark Island’ reminded the two men of a people who had been bereft of their homeland so long ago. As the music trembled and died, Chris lowered his bow and smiled.
‘Will that do you?’
‘Ah, such sweet music! You’re a born romantic, so you are, Hunter!’ Simon teased. ‘All that Scottish sentimentality, it’s really got to you, hasn’t it?’
‘We learnt that at school,’ Chris told him. ‘Lots of the old pipe tunes were standard fare for violin lessons down in Bristol. That one’s always stuck with me for some reason, though.’ He smiled a secret smile to himself.
‘Thinking about when you were wee?’ Simon asked, watching the other man’s face.
Instead of replying to his question, Chris picked up the bow again and began a lively reel. He swayed from side to side in exaggerated sweeps, his foot tapping wildly on the bedroom carpet.
Simon leapt to his feet, clapping his hands and twirling around in time to the music, sending out the occasional ‘Heuch!’ The music became louder and faster as the violinist changed the tempo, jigs and strathspeys following in rapid succession until Simon fell, exhausted and laughing, back onto the rumpled bedclothes.
‘Oh, man,’ he said, weak with laughter and the effort of prancing around the room, ‘That was just what we needed!’ Simon sank back onto the pillow, one hand behind his head, his cheeks flushed and the red-gold hair clinging damply to his forehead. ‘The perfect antidote to a funeral,’ he murmured.
Chris Hunter turned away to put the violin back into its case.
‘Blast!’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I need a new bow. This one’s a wreck. Look at it!’
Simon yawned and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Forget it. Come to bed. Brendan’ll get you something tomorrow if you ask him.’ He looked over at the man sitting on the edge of the bed, noting the sudden slump to his shoulders. ‘Wish you’d taken up George’s offer, now?’ he asked, a malicious glint in his eye.
‘Hell, no! I couldn’t afford it then and I can’t now. A new fiddle? Any idea what a decent one would set me back?’
‘Aye, poor old Georgie boy. Who’d have thought he was dealing in suss instruments, eh?’
Something in the other man’s voice made Chris Hunter look up.
‘Did you know what he was up to?’
‘Me?’ Simon feigned innocence, his eyes laughing behind their wide stare. ‘A clean-living country boy like me? Come off it!’
‘Did you, though, seriously?’
Simon shook his head. ‘Never suspected a thing. Knew he did the odd line, well he hardly kept that a secret, did he?’
‘No,’ Chris replied. ‘Liked to flaunt that, didn’t he?’
‘Aye, it fair annoyed the old women, didn’t it? Remember how Karen used to go on about it?’
‘Come on, Si, she’s only just been buried, for goodness sake,’ Chris protested.
‘With full honours,’ Simon replied. ‘Wonder how much Drummond charged for the Chorus’s services today.’
‘Surely they’d be singing for free?’
‘You don’t know Maurice Drummond. I bet even now he’s invoicing Quentin-Jones.’
‘I don’t believe that,’ Chris replied shortly. ‘Nobody could be that cold-blooded.’
Simon ran a hand through his hair. ‘Someone is, though,’ he said darkly. ‘Someone’s cold-blooded enough to do in two of our orchestra.’
‘You think it might be Drummond? Why?’ Chris twisted around to look at Simon’s expression.
‘There was something between him and Karen.’
‘What sort of thing?’ Chris asked, a frown creasing his brow.
‘Och, I don’t know really. I’d seen them arguing together. There was no love lost between that pair, I can tell you.’
‘Have you told this to the police?’
Simon made a face. ‘Tell them what? That Drummond didn’t like our Assistant Principal Fiddle? There were quite a few who would come in to that category. Come on, let’s be honest, she wasn’t everyone’s favourite person, was she?’
Chris shook his head and sighed. ‘I suppose not, but it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead. Especially today.’
Simon laughed, ‘Nothing you or I can say will hurt her now, pal.’
‘I was just thinking of the family,’ Chris protested.
‘Aye, I know. You’re a soft-hearted lad, aren’t you,’ Simon told him, reaching out and grasping Chris’s wrist. ‘That’s one of the reasons I love you,’ he whispered, drawing Chris’s hand up to his mouth. He began sucking gently at his fingertips until Chris gave a groan and swung his body onto the bed beside him.
The light was beginning to fade when Chris finally fell asleep. Simon observed the faint shadow of his chest as it rose and fell in a steady rhythm. There was only that whisper of gentle breathing in the room now and the murmuring hum of the ioniser, mere shadows of sound. Even familiar shapes became blurred and indistinct; the fiddle in its open case was a dull gleam of polished wood. Simon stared at it for a long moment.
‘I wonder what’s happened to her violin,’ he asked himself dreamily, then a sudden shiver made him pull the covers over his naked feet.