Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries)

world ends
    But all I need
    Is those four minutes
    With you . . .’
     
    Gloria hummed the next verse and then introduced her band as they took it in turns to play a series of riffs: Jay Jay Lion on piano, Tony Sanders on drums and Milo Masters on bass. Even though he was, he knew, in London, Sidney tried to imagine he was in uptown Harlem, hanging around at the bar with a load of musicians until the last song was sung and the last toot was tooted.
    ‘Hit it, Tiger Tony,’ cried Gloria and there then came the moment that always let the side down: the drum solo. Why were jazz fans so partial to this? Sidney wondered. It was like a sneeze, he decided. You could always tell it was coming but you couldn’t do anything to stop it.
    Tony Sanders did his best but it was still a drum solo. The only bonus was that Gloria Dee wandered out into the audience, singing scat, standing next to Sidney’s table, nodding her approval at her drummer’s industrial enthusiasm.
    Sidney was so excited when he realised that Gloria was close that he dared not look. He only needed to know that she was near. The mingled scent of sweat, gardenia and the heady tuberose of her perfume filled his nostrils. Sidney now knew what the word ‘intoxicated’ meant. He wanted this moment, with whom he now thought to be one of the greatest jazz singers in the world by his side, to last for ever. This was what it meant to be alive, Sidney decided, in this place, at this time and listening to this music.
    Then everything changed.
    A girl screamed, her voice piercing the treble line of the music. A man shouted for help. There was a crush for the doors. The house lights came on. The drum solo stopped.
    Phil Johnson barged through the crowds to the back of the club. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
    His daughter, Claudette, was lying motionless on the floor outside the Ladies.
    ‘What happened? Somebody tell me what’s going on?’
    A frightened girl backed against the wall. ‘I just found her.’
    ‘Did you see her fall?’
    ‘I don’t know what happened.’
    Phil knelt down beside his daughter. ‘Fetch Amy,’ he shouted. ‘Bring some water. She’s out cold.’ He put his arm under his daughter’s head and tried to lift her up. Then he noticed the marks on her neck. ‘Bloody hell, what’s this? Claudie, wake up; wake up, I say.’
    There was no waking her.
    She appeared to have been strangled.
    Phil Johnson was talking to his daughter. ‘Who’s done this? What’s happened? My little girl, my poor little girl, what have they done to you, Claudie? Get up . . . come on darling . . . get up. Is there a doctor here?’ Then he shouted out. ‘Is anyone a doctor?’
    Keating was already on the case. ‘Get me the telephone,’ he said. ‘Call an ambulance. Then Scotland Yard. No one must leave.’
    Most of the customers stood up from the tables and crowded around to see what had happened. The barman and doormen tried to persuade them back to their places while keeping an eye on the exit.
    There was nothing for them to go back for: no music, no drink, no conversation. The house lights were on: the late-night atmosphere had evaporated.
    ‘Oh no,’ said Sidney, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no.’ He looked down at the girl’s neck and could already see the bruising. There were fingernail marks under the left angle of the jaw, crescent-shaped abrasions on the skin. He wondered who on earth could have done such a thing. ‘Money in dark corners,’ Claudie had said to him. What had she meant by that?
    A queue formed for the telephone. People could already tell that they were in for a long night. Gloria Dee was poured another drink. ‘The poor baby. What’d she got mixed up in? It don’t make no sense.’
    Sidney wondered whether he would have been more alert if she had not been singing so close to them. Both he and Keating might have seen something, intercepted somebody or been able to avert disaster. But Gloria had been standing next to them. And now Claudette was dead. The murder had probably taken less time than it did to smoke one of her cigarettes.
    Half an hour later Inspector Williams arrived with men from Scotland Yard. He was a big, burly man who looked like a rugby player. He made straight for the manager.
    ‘I hear there’s been trouble, Johnson.’
    ‘It’s my daughter. Some bastard’s got to her.’
    ‘Keep everyone inside. Cover the exits.’
    Keating was by the body.
    ‘Who are you?’ Williams asked.
    ‘Inspector George