"Guv!" Alex said, barging into his office.
Gene looked up, his face set to: "This had better be good."
"Opera," Alex announced.
It was clearly not what he had been hoping for. Alex was not surprised.
"Opera!" she repeated insistently but perhaps not very cogently. "Driscoll's alibi."
"If you're about to tell me he has some fat bird scream in their faces until their eardrums go pop…" Gene began.
"No!" Alex said, gesturing at him to be quiet and listen. "His alibi. On at least five occasions when someone connected with Driscoll died an apparently natural death, he said he was at the opera when it happened."
"Did it check out?"
"Yes. But then, the deaths didn't look suspicious, so no one pushed it further than that. But there's more. On at least four of these occasions, neighbours reported hearing music which could well have been opera coming from the house of the deceased. What if that was Driscoll's little joke? The climactic moment accompanied by an appropriately sweeping soundtrack. When he said he was at the opera… perhaps he was referring to his front row seat at the ultimate in human tragedy." She stopped suddenly.
"Oh my God…"
"What?"
"Opera…"
"If you say that one more bloody time…"
"It's Latin."
"Of course it is. I was under the impression it was a dead language, but fat chance of that with you giving it all this frantic CPR…"
"It was Greek last time… anyway, it means 'work'," she continued impatiently. "As in 'work of art'... as in 'magnum opus...' It's his great achievement; his life's effort… his masterpiece."
"Wonderful. Well, everyone needs a hobby. I collect scumbags myself. Driscoll's now got imaginary gardening and crap music to keep him busy, and I'd bet my left bollock he's never had anything to do with either because he's been fully occupied committing acts of evil. Unfortunately, as we can't yet prove that, the long overdue lefty lawyer has marched in with his briefcase and poncey bits of paper and insisted that we let the sweet little murdering bastard out to play."
"What?"
"He's out, Drake," Gene said, bitterly. "Driscoll's out."
Alex was appalled. "When?" she demanded.
"While you were busy finding new ways to get on my nerves by forcing culture into crimes where it doesn't belong," he snapped.
"It's a link…" she insisted. "I know it is. And we'll prove it; we just need to get out there now and look harder."
"The alibis must have been checked at the time," said Gene. "Someone must have seen him at the opera."
"Or someone said they did…" Alex pointed out. "What if he does like opera? What if he has someone at the opera house who'd be prepared to swear they saw him whenever he needed them to? In an audience that size, no one would expect all the staff to remember every patron. If he could prove he had a ticket, it would only take one other person to corroborate his story and anyone investigating would have had to let it drop unless they had a real reason for suspicion - and he's been very careful to make sure they never had."
A thought struck her. "It's a bit of a stretch to think he could get tickets at the last minute if he needed them… or that he'd be able to time all the deaths to happen on days when he already had them. He's a control freak, but that would take a ridiculous amount of planning."
She could almost feel the pieces about to click into place.
"He must have a contact in the box office who could print him a ticket. Or someone who had tickets to all the shows already who'd be prepared to hand it over to him if he asked."
She looked at Gene.
"Drake…" he said, heavily. "Why do I get the horrible feeling this case is about to take a turn in a direction I'm really not going to like?"
She nodded, smiling. "I think we're going to have to go to the opera," she confirmed.