A Grave Waiting (2 page)

Together the two officers bent over the body.

The dead man appeared to be in his late forties, Moretti reckoned. He was a big man, with an incipient corpulence that might well have gone on increasing if cruel fate had not cut him off before any further advance of middle age. But even in death one could see he had been handsome. His skin was tanned, his thick brown hair expertly cut, his features strong but perfectly proportioned. He was formally dressed in a suit of grey flannel, but casually accessorized: a silky, open-necked shirt, some light loafers in soft black calf on his stiffly extended feet. There was a damp patch between his legs.

“Shot from a distance,” said Moretti, “probably from the doorway. Can't see any powder grains.” Gingerly he got hold of the tip of a loafer and jiggled one of the flannel-clad legs. “Rigor still in the legs, but from the look of his jaw, it's worn off up top.”

“Starts at the top and works its way down, doesn't it?” observed Liz Falla.

“Right. Then it starts to wear off after about ten hours or so. Longer fibres in the leg, so it hangs on. Do we know who he is?”

“Bernard Masterson, owner of the boat, says the cook. He's Swiss French — the cook, I mean. Name's a bit of a mouthful, but I've got it in my book. Jean-Louis Rossignol.”

“Do we know where they were coming from?”

“Cherbourg, again according to the cook. It'd been an easy crossing, but they'd done a lot of entertaining in France, so he gave them all the night off. Even paid for them apparently.”

“Interesting. Did you find out who ‘them all' are?”

“Yes.” Again, Liz Falla consulted her notes, reminding Moretti what a relief it had been to discover that this new, unasked for, female partner of his was as well-organized as he was. Better organized than he was. “Besides the cook there's a personal valet, a housekeeper, and two crew members.”

“Where were they staying in St. Peter Port?”

“The Esplanade Hotel — that's a four crown. Didn't stint on them, did he?”

“Apparently not.”

Stinting did not seem to be part of the victim's way of life,
thought Moretti, picking up a set of ivory-handled brushes monogrammed in gold from the built-in dressing table between the entertainment console and the desk. Although Guernsey, second largest of the Channel Islands off the coast of France, had become a tax haven like the Cayman Islands or the Turks and Caicos, attracting billions of pounds, every bank under the sun, financial businesses galore, this particular high roller seemed an unlikely visitor.

Then there was the murder weapon. Guns were also unlikely visitors, and this looked like a professional hit.

“Hello — what happened here?”

Liz Falla's glance followed that of her superior. Moretti was looking at a heavy wooden magazine rack that had tipped over near the bathroom door. Some of the contents had spilled out on the floor.

“Could it have got knocked over in a struggle?” she asked.

“What struggle? That's what's odd about it being like that. Looks like someone took something out of it in a hurry and knocked it over. Let's have a look.”

Carefully reaching into the rack, Moretti pulled out one or two magazines by the corner. They were all of the
Penthouse
,
Hustler
variety, some more hardcore than others. Liz Falla whistled under her breath.

“Dirty old sod, eh? Could this be about porn?”

“Too early to tell, but none of this stuff appears to be illegal. What's this?”

Caught in one of the brass studs decorating the rack was a fragment of glossy paper. Moretti extracted it from the stud and held it up. Enough of the fragment remained to show a fraction of a photograph and a piece of printing.

“Looks like the prow of a boat, doesn't it. This boat?”

“Don't think so. Different shape. Not a Vento Teso.”

“Is that what this is? Can you read any of it?”

“‘Dream big — you only live....' Ironic in the circumstances.”

“I'll say.”

“And there's something else: ‘Offshore Haven Cred.'”

There was the sound of sirens outside the large oval windows of the master stateroom, a bustle of activity on the dockside.

“Here we go,” announced Falla from the window. “The technical boys and the doctor have arrived. Oh, isn't that nice. It's the lovely Dr. Watt.”

“Not a favourite of yours, Falla?”

“That's right, Guv.”

She said no more, but more was not necessary. On an island that measured about twenty-five square miles, a high-profile professional man like Nichol Watt with an ex-wife on the island, another on the mainland, and at least two girlfriends got himself talked about. Moretti found his partner's love life to be something rich and strange, since her approach managed somehow to be both casual and committed, but as far as he knew it was always off with the old before on with the new. Such niceties didn't bother Nichol Watt.

Moretti stood up, pocketing the piece of paper. “Let's take a look around, Falla, then go and hear what Mr. Rossignol has to say.”

The master suite in which Bernard Masterson had met his end stretched full beam across the prow of the yacht, and led into the dining room through sliding glass doors. On one side was the aft deck, set up as an outside dining area, and on the other was the kitchen. Beyond the dining room, through more sliding doors, was the main salon that housed a huge, curved bar. There were dirty glasses still on the black-and-white marble countertop, a couple of bottles alongside them, one of Scotch, the other of champagne. The bottle of champagne was empty. Moretti picked up one of the glasses in his gloved hands.

“Lipstick. Falla, get Jimmy Le Poidevin on your mobile, tell him to come here when he's finished in the bedroom.”

As Liz Falla made her call to the forensics chief, Moretti crossed over to the windows that faced Albert Pier. It was May, and the holiday season had not yet started in earnest, but the place was busier than usual. There was much rebuilding in progress. The three great travelling cranes and the one fixed crane on the very end of the pier that faced the Little Russel, the shipping channel that led into the harbour of St. Peter Port, were getting a major overhaul, and a new crane was being erected.

Not that the area was ever that quiet or deserted, since it housed the passport office, the ships' registry, the freight office, a bureau de change, a left-luggage office, a bicycle shop, and the offices of the various ferry lines: the Emeraude Lines, the Condor Ferries, and the high-speed catamaran service to France. There were always people about on the pier, so there was a fair chance of finding someone who might have seen or heard something. Hopefully.

And there was always the chance that someone on a boat might come up with something useful. The ambulance boat, the Harbour Authority boat, and the fisheries vessel were all moored close by, although there were fewer visiting craft than there would be in high summer. That, presumably, was how a yacht this size had found moorings in Victoria Marina itself, and not on a buoy in the outer harbour or up north at the privately owned Beaucette Marina near St. Sampson.

There was also the Landsend Restaurant not far from the Vento Teso's moorings. He'd have a word at some point with Gord Collenette, the owner.

“All set, Guv. Where now?”

“Upstairs.”

A set of stairs in the main salon led up to the top deck, on which there was another lounge and a sky deck complete with bar, refrigerator, and another entertainment console with hi-fi, television, and a couple of pinball machines.

“Talk about over the top,” observed Liz Falla. “How many bars has this thing got?”

“Three so far. This leads to the pilothouse, I think.”

Set in a highly polished wood panel, the controls in the pilothouse looked like the dashboard of a very expensive car, with a cushy leather-upholstered swivel chair in front of the wheel. The bow deck was equipped with a Jacuzzi and yet another entertainment console.

“Everything seems to be in order.” Liz Falla peered down into the empty Jacuzzi.

“It does. Apart from those glasses and the empty champagne bottle, you'd never know any of this had ever been used. Let's take a look below decks, where the steerage passengers, the staff that is, live.”

On the lower level there were four crew cabins in the bow, and two guest suites. The guest suites were open and appeared unused, but the doors of the crew cabins were locked.

“That's about it, isn't it?” Liz Falla peered into a pristine guest suite.

“Almost. On a yacht like this there should be a garage.”

“Garage?”

They found it. It contained water scooters, motorcycles, and a stunning silver Porsche. Diving equipment hung on the walls alongside two or three wetsuits. One suit appeared to be slightly damp.

“How the other half live, eh, Guv?”

“Other sixteenth
maybe
. Let's go and hear what Monsieur Rossignol has to say.”

“Dear oh dear.”

Gwen Ferbrache unlocked the front door of her house again, retrieved her shopping bag from the chair in the hall, went back outside, and relocked the door. No point in going into town and not picking up a few things while she was there, however pressing the main reason for her trip might be. Her preoccupation was such that it was fortunate she hadn't locked herself out, and the sooner she cleared her mind the better off she would be.
A problem shared
, she told herself as she hurried down the gravel driveway, particularly if you plan to share it with the son of your dear childhood friend, Vera Domaille, who happened to be a detective inspector with the Guernsey Police Force. Eduardo, whom she always called Edward.

She and Vera had grown up together on the same street, played together, shared secrets, including Vera's secret love for the Italian prisoner of war she had seen force-marched through the streets, to labour in one of the many underground structures built during the Nazi occupation of the island. Later, after Emidio Moretti had come back and married Vera, she had danced at their wedding, and mourned at their funerals.

They had not danced at her wedding. Her sweetheart, Ronnie Robilliard, had not been as lucky as Emidio. Enough of that. She had moved on, devoted her life to her teaching career and interests other than home, husband, children of her own. But Edward, with his father's dark hair and his mother's fine bone structure, held a special place in her heart. Pity he hadn't married that girl in England, but she was glad to have him back on the island.

Outside the twin whitewashed gateposts of her limestone cottage with its name,
Clos de Laurier
, painted in black on the right-hand post, she turned left past her hollybush hedge and descended the hill that led from Pleinmont Village to the coastal road near Rocquaine Bay on the western shore of the island. A quick glance at her watch assured her she was still in good time to catch the number 7A bus that would take her around the coastal road, inland past the airport, through St. Martin's, past Fermain Bay, and into the island capital. There were fewer buses at this time of year, outside the holiday season.

Gwen was well into her seventies, but she could still keep up a brisk pace, thanks to years of walking the twenty miles of cliff paths on the spectacular south coast of the island, and the trainers she always wore on her feet these days. Not normally a lover of contemporary mores and modern inventions, she had quickly taken to the ubiquitous and practical footwear Americans called running shoes.

The day was clear and warm, and on any other occasion she would have enjoyed the feel of the spring wind blowing off the beach at Rocquaine Bay, sprinkling the surface of her spectacles with flecks of sand. She was briefly diverted by a flock of swallows and martins drifting high in the sky overhead, feeding off a swarm of midges over the tussocks of grass on the roadside. They did not necessarily presage a fine summer, but she was glad to see them. Briefly cheered at the thought of an excursion to see some of the birds who used Lihou Island as a stopover on their way north — flycatchers, wheatears, sedge warblers — she turned the corner past the clipped yew hedges of the Imperial Hotel, and crossed the road to the bus stop.

The sight of the classical frontage of the one-
hundred-year-old hotel brought the purpose of her trip bubbling up again in her mind.
Bubble, bubble, toil, and trouble,
she thought.
They
had stayed there. All so harmless, perfect, so it had seemed at the time. They had met at the Water's Edge Restaurant in the hotel and she had felt no misgivings. Perhaps she was imagining things.

Along the curve of the coastal road, Gwen Ferbrache could see the bus passing Fort Grey, once known as Rocquaine Castle, used as a Nazi observation post during the occupation of the island, now a shipwreck museum, monument to the hundreds of lives lost in these inhospitable, rock-strewn waters. The Cup and Saucer, the locals called it, because of its shape, an inverted white mound above a wider grey concrete foundation. As the bus came nearer, she saw the driver waving and grinning. Lonnie Duggan — spring had arrived.

The reappearance of Lonnie Duggan in the driver's seat was as sure a harbinger of spring as the arrival of the first cuckoo. How he supported himself during the winter she did not know, but he was also a bass player with the Fénions, Edward's jazz group. The name meant do-nothings, layabouts and, although that didn't apply to Edward, it was an apt one for Lonnie, with his habit of semi-hibernation and air of cheerful lethargy. It was difficult to imagine him as a musician, even of an art form she found impenetrable, but Edward told her he was good. “Nimble fingered” was the unlikely adjective used.

“Hey there, Miss Ferbrache! Hop aboard!”

“Good day, Mr. Duggan.”

Stifling mild irritation at being told to hop anywhere, Gwen Ferbrache climbed on board. About twenty minutes later, she and two other passengers were at the southern end of the Esplanade, trundling past the old dray outside the Guernsey Brewery, painted in the brewery colours of red and gold.