Blood Will Out (16 page)

D
etective
Inspector Ed Moretti was feeling restless. Crab cakes with his sergeant had had that effect on him — sitting outside in some pleasantly warm autumn sunshine with a beer for them both, since they could now consider themselves off-duty. And the crab cakes were just as good as he remembered, as was the company.

Not that they had discussed anything personal. They had gone over the interview with Rory and Tanya Gastineau, and the pros and cons of bringing them down to the station, to see if that might dislodge more information. Moretti was reluctant, feeling they needed more direct evidence of a link between the Gastineau family and Gus Dorey. Falla's next task was to check out the newspaper reports of the wedding and to find out Tanya's last name and any other family details she could; Moretti's first job was to set up a proper incident room the next morning and to arrange for the “MI Team” to meet at Hospital Lane. It was time to share some of the information beyond the “need-to-know” group approved of by the chief officer, and to go over what they had so far.

Not that they had very much. He was hoping Al out at the roundhouse had got lucky. Nothing had been heard from him yet, but it was unlikely anyone would turn up until later, and he didn't want to risk contacting him, in case he interrupted anything.

The more he thought about it, the more doubtful he was becoming about a link between the assisted suicide and the attack on Hugo Shawcross. There was unquestionably something going on in the Gastineau family, but it could be there was also a random psychopath on the island who had been triggered by talk of vampires.

Not bloody likely.

He sat down at his mother's piano and started to play — a tango for some reason. Not “Jealousy,” a tune he disliked, but something he'd heard in a film some time ago that was all about the tango. He had gone with Val, he remembered, when he was living and working on the mainland, when they were still in love and planning a life together. She had enjoyed every minute, so he had not shared his personal opinion about two hours of nothing but the tango. Still, one or two of the melodies had stayed with him, even if Val had not. In his experience, music was always easier to stick with, and to remember.

But then, he was the one who had done the leaving. He picked up his personal mobile, phoned Lonnie.

“Lonnie — how do you feel about doing a set tonight? I've got something new for us. Are you free?”

Lonnie's lazy, always cheerful, voice rumbled into Moretti's ear.

“I'm always free!”

Which was usually true. He, Moretti, was the only member of the Fénions with a steady job. At least that's how it was in the off-season, when Lonnie made a few shekels playing at the club with Dwight, and whichever local guitarist or harmonica player was available, when Moretti was not. On those occasions, the Fénions became Lonnie and the Layabouts. In the summer, Lonnie was a bus driver, one of the few Guernseymen still employed by the company.

“Great. I'll get hold of Dwight.”

Dwight, too, was always free, usually freer than Lonnie, but tonight he sounded reluctant.

“Come on, Dwight. Can't the dishes wait? Or whatever you're doing at the moment?”

There was a pause, and Moretti heard whispering.

Ah, a woman.

“Bring her,” Moretti said. Then he phoned Don Taylor, as promised.

“So what's new?”

Lonnie was already on the little stage, his bass between his knees, softly plucking the strings, the sound reverberating in the almost-empty space. It was earlier than their usual hour to play, and only a few people had wandered down when they saw Moretti arrive. Lonnie played a riff, spun the bass and rested it carefully against the piano. Lonnie was the only Fénion who had to bring his instrument, and his instrument case lay at the back of the stage behind Dwight's drums, with his familiar, battered panama hat on top of it.

“Dwight coming?”

“On his way.”

Moretti sat down, took off his jacket and tie, and looked sorrowfully at the empty ashtray on top of the piano. He kept it there for the same deeply buried and quixotic reason he kept his old lighter in his pocket.

God, how he missed smoking, particularly in the club. His father, he was sure, had dwindled and died of grief, but the process had also been hastened by cigarettes. Since it didn't look like he was going to die for love, Moretti decided to rule out nicotine, and had finally won the battle. Only it was a battle that was never over, something he always reminded himself of when dealing with some screaming, writhing piece of humanity, stuck fast in the arms of morphine. Or whatever was their particular poison.

“This is what's new.”

Slowly the opening notes of the tango drifted across the space, and Lonnie began to play along, picking up the rhythm and the mood with his usual intuitive swiftness, so markedly at odds with his lemur-like movements in everyday life. Moretti remembered the first time he had heard Lonnie play, how amazed he had been by the speed of those powerful sausage-fingers in contrast to the physical lethargy he otherwise displayed.

The sounds of the tango drifted up the stairs into Emidio's, and the space began to fill up. Moretti saw Don Taylor arrive, on his own, as he usually was. Don waved at him, and took a seat close to the stage. Then Dwight arrived.

Only this time, Dwight was not on his own, as he too usually was. Not that he often left on his own. Moretti watched him walk in with two women, kiss one of them, leave them at a table near the back of the room, and walk towards the stage, greeting Don Taylor as he passed. Then he saw Don gesture towards the two women, who then made their way to the front of the room to join him.

Liz Falla and her godmother, Elodie Ashton.

Moretti realized he had stopped playing, and he and Dwight waited for Lonnie's final grace note. A ripple of applause as Dwight joined them on the stage. He grinned at Moretti.

“I brought her,” he said.

Nothing to say really
, thought Moretti.
Always easier for him to let the music do the talking
. He watched Falla introduce Elodie Ashton to Don, waited for Dwight to settle himself, and started.

Sammy Cahn's “I Fall in Love Too Easily.”

Behind him he heard Dwight make a sound that could have been either amusement or indignation, as he and Lonnie followed his lead.

They were just through the first set when a group of three women came down the curving staircase into the Grand Saracen. The Fénions never had a reliable timetable for their audience to follow, but Deb had a sign made up that she put outside when the three of them turned up together. As she grudgingly said, the enhanced cash receipts at the bar made it worth her while, but an actual schedule would be appreciated — something, she knew, would never happen. Although he didn't know them, Moretti recognized two of the women as regulars, who were often in the club when the Fénions were playing. He also recognized the third woman with them. It was Irene Edwards, dressed in black, her dark hair falling free on her shoulders.

They finished the set with a club favourite, “I Get a Kick Out of You,” and the three Fénions left the stage. Lonnie did his usual amble to the bar for a beer, and to chat up whichever beautiful girl was working that night. Normally, Dwight would go outside for a cigarette, but tonight he went to the table by the stage, and Moretti followed him.

“Hello,” he said. Well, it was a start.

Falla gave him one of her wide smiles that made her look about — well, even younger than she was, although what she was wearing did not, and Moretti realized he rarely, if ever, saw her in something other than her sensible dark suit. Whatever she was wearing bared her shoulders, revealing eye-catching evidence of her gym workouts.

Don stood up. “I don't think you know —” He indicated Elodie Ashton.

“Yes, we've met.”

Don, blissfully unaware of any underlying currents, was about to carry on when there was an interruption, as Irene Edwards came up to the table, and Falla made the introductions, swiftly acknowledged by the doctor. After appreciative remarks about the music, Irene Edwards turned her heavy-lidded Mona Lisa eyes and her silvery voice on Don Taylor.

“You're the runner, aren't you? The chap I see out in all weathers on the cliff paths?”

With pleasure and satisfaction, Moretti watched as a gobsmacked Don was courted by one of the most striking women in the room, who was, apparently, desperate to find a running partner who knew the island well.

“… unless, of course, you prefer running on your own? So many do.”

“God, no! I get tired of my own company. May I buy you a drink?”

It looked like the loneliness of the long-distance Don was over.

Moretti took the chair vacated by Don, which happened to be next to Elodie Ashton. No glasses tonight, and her extraordinary mane of hair was on full display. She was wearing something in a vivid cobalt blue that did nothing to diminish the impact of her eyes.

“Liz brought me to keep her company while Dwight's on stage,” she said, “and to give me a ride in her new car.”

Talk about Figaros and Triumphs and Piaggios kept the conversation going in safe directions until it was time to play again. Whether it was the Scotch he always had in the first break, or whether it was the shared laughter about the unimportant, all-important, trivia of everyday life — something he didn't indulge in too often — Moretti heard himself saying, “Sing for us, Falla. I know you've sung with Dwight in the past. He told me.”

As she got up on the stage with Dwight, he recovered his sanity, and started to worry about their shared worlds of work, and now play.

What door have I opened?

Then he stopped thinking as she sang, with the soft-shoe shuffle of Dwight's ghost-notes on the snare-drums behind the voice a former lover of his described as a blend of Enya with echoes of Marianne Faithfull. A voice he now heard as entirely her own.

“
What's it all about, Alfie?
”

What indeed.

The Fénions, Liz, Elodie, Don and Irene were the last people to leave the Grand Saracen. Upstairs, Emidio's was closed, and it was Ronnie who saw them out. She wanted to talk to Liz about her singing.

“I'll be singing with my group next Saturday, at a pub in Castel. Unless I'm working, that is.”

Liz looked at Moretti, who was watching Irene Edwards and Don. She was thinking of something to say about his music that didn't come out sounding feeble. She had never thought she knew the policeman, but now she felt she knew him better through the piano player. And that she would never say.

Irene Edwards and Don were laughing, apparently over the fact that the glamorous doctor had lost her ride home, and Don had come, as usual, on his bicycle.

“Put your bike in the back, Don,” Moretti called out. “Thank God it's not mud-covered. I'll give you both a lift.”

“It's okay, all taken care of.”

Don waved and he and his new running partner left, heading for the taxi rank on the Esplanade, wheeling Don's bicycle between them.

It looked like the gorse was going to be in full bloom.

“Good night, Guv.” Moretti realized Liz was talking to him.

“See you at the office tomorrow.”

Something about Don's situation must have got to him, warming the cockles of his heart, whatever that meant. As Liz turned to leave with Dwight and her godmother, Moretti heard himself saying, “Can I give you a lift?”

All three turned around.

“I've got a car now, Guv,” said Liz helpfully.

“No. Your godmother.”

The two women laughed, and the godmother said, “That'd be nice.”

“Why are you doing this?”

Her directness made him smile. “I'm not entirely sure.”

“Perhaps you are a neatness freak — you know, two and two and two.”

“God, no.” Pity it wasn't a warm summer night, and he could have watched all that red hair blowing in the breeze. “Falla was really — to use her word — pissed with me. I think that's it.”

Oh, what a charmer I am
, Moretti thought. They had moved out of St. Peter Port and were heading south, out from Sausmarez Road to the Route des Blanches, in completely the wrong direction for his cottage.

“So nothing to do with me. That's a relief.”

She didn't sound sarcastic, or ironic. She sounded serious.

“I suppose what I'm trying to say in my own silver-tongued way is that, if I have to consider you a suspect again, I will. Just so there's no misunderstanding.”

“I'm not at the moment a suspect? Good for me.” She turned towards him, and he glanced in her direction. It was a relief to see she was smiling. “And, just so there's no misunderstanding, I'm going to ask you in when we arrive. To check for bogeymen, as Liz would have done. I'm still spooked.”

“Not surprising. If it's any comfort, this has nothing to do with you, I'm sure. You had the misfortune to be Shawcross's neighbour, and he had the good fortune to be yours.”

“What in God's name is going on?”

“I wish I knew.”

The memory of the horrific attack on Hugo Shawcross hovered between them in the enclosed space of the Triumph, and they were silent for a while.

Moretti did what she asked, and checked over the house, including the two bedrooms and the bathroom upstairs. Again, there had been considerable revamping on the second floor, with the bathroom made into an en suite with the main bedroom. He found her choice of decoration as much to his taste as he did downstairs. The only sign of disorder was a pair of jeans and a shirt thrown across the bed in the main bedroom. Obviously, Falla had given her aunt short notice. Then he took a brief walk around the garden behind the house, with the help of a large flashlight.

“No sign of anything out of the ordinary. Should I have met the cat?”