It is a voice bodeful of death or of life.

Bill moved nearer to the table, his eyes on the shashka.

Of one thing we can be sure: with a maestro conducting an evening-dressed cast featuring knights and dames of the musical establishment in a grand concert hall, this was not The Threepenny Opera as its creators Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill either envisaged or wanted it.

The attacks claimed the lives of five people.