Daggers and Men's Smiles (26 page)

Moretti responded calmly, as though the outburst had escaped his attention. “Bear with me a little longer, sir, would you? Let's suppose for a moment the two murders do indeed have something to do with the plot of
Rastrellamento
. As a man who deals with storylines, fiction, creations of the imagination — who then would be the most likely suspects, in your opinion?”

“
Dio mio
, guys — you want me to do your job for you?” Monty Lord came back to the desk and sat down. The flare-up seemed to have left him exhausted. He ran his hand over his bald head and took a moment before replying.

“Okay, let's play whodunnit. If your theory is correct — and I still think you're barking up the wrong tree — then it has to be a member of either the Vannoni or Albarosa families, doesn't it? The killer is far more likely to be one of them than Mario. And, you know, you asked me if Donatella and I had talked about the changes, and we haven't. But I know she and Mario have talked about them. Not that I'm saying it's Donatella, mind you. But she may well have told another member of the family.”

“Such as who?”

Monty Lord got up from his desk and picked up a navy baseball cap from the quilted satin bedcover. It had Epicure Productions printed on the front, and Moretti had seen other crew members wearing them. “Well — knowing them all as I do, my money would be on two of them. Long shots in my opinion, but hey, you asked for my opinion, so here it is, for what it's worth. Paolo or Gianfranco. Or perhaps both in combination. Gianfranco would do just about anything to get back into his father's good books. ” He put the cap on his head. “And now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going downstairs for lunch.”

Moretti and Liz Falla followed him downstairs. When they reached the hallway, Moretti could see through the windows that other members of the film crew had started to gather on the terrace. Cosimo del Grano, the art director, was talking animatedly to the cinematographer, Mel Abrams, Betty Chesler and Eddie Christie, and Piero Bonini was sitting with Gianfranco Vannoni, who was drinking a glass of wine and gesticulating languidly with a long ivory cigarette holder. Mario Bianchi was sitting next to Adriana Ferrini.

As they followed Monty Lord out on to the terrace, the producer turned to Moretti and said, “I trust you are not going to say anything about the opinions you elicited from me?”

“No, sir.”

They walked on to the terrace just as the sun came out from behind a cloud and bathed them in light. There was a startled murmur at their appearance, and Moretti realized it looked as if they had Monty Lord under arrest. Obviously, the same thought occurred to the American producer, for he stepped forward from behind his escorts and announced, “Relax, ladies and gentlemen — appearances are deceiving. See — no handcuffs!” He held out his hands in front of him to a ripple of relieved laughter and a babble of comments.

At precisely that moment, Sydney Tremaine came around the far corner of the terrace beyond the cameras and cranes of the film set, walking slowly toward them. She was wearing a long sheath dress in ivory satin with a flared skirt that undulated around her as she moved. There were ruched bands of black chiffon tied around her slender arms and twisted in her hands was a black chiffon stole that trailed on the ground. Her red hair was piled up loosely on top of her head, tendrils falling around her pale face, against which her lipstick looked almost black.

There was a gasp from the assembled company, a group appreciative of dramatic entrances and theatrical gestures. Moretti heard Eddie Christie say, “Ooh, gorgeous. It's her Christian Lacroix.”

“Yes.” Betty Chesler moved forward. “Gil got it for her in Paris, as a peace offering after one of his sordid little adventures. Hardly the outfit for an al fresco luncheon, but that's the point I would think. Sydney —”

She started to move toward Sydney, who put out her hand and stopped her, like a traffic policeman. With a final swirl of her skirt, Sydney came to a halt before her startled audience and began to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen, here I am, the grieving widow, come to be the spectre at your feast.” Her voice was quite strong enough to carry across the space. “Isn't it strange to think that, among the group I see in front of me, is the person who killed my husband. I have a message for that person: I know now why Gil died. And I will find you.”

The last two sentences were delivered slowly, clearly, deliberately rather than dramatically.

Standing beside Moretti, Monty Lord started to clap his hands.

“Magnificent!
Brava
!”

At the table farthest from the self-proclaimed spectre at the feast, Mario Bianchi put his head down on his hands and started to sob uncontrollably.

Moretti went up to Sydney Tremaine and, as he took her by the arm, she looked defiantly at him. He could feel her trembling. Anger and exasperation filled him and he controlled his voice with difficulty.

“Ms. Tremaine, it's best you leave with us.” He felt her resist, start to pull her arm away from his grasp. “Come on, Sydney,” he said gently, “There is nothing more you can do here.”

Nothing was said in the police car. Liz Falla drove in silence, her eyes fixed on the road. Moretti, for his part, was making decisions. The rustle of Sydney Tremaine's dress and the faint perfume in the air distracted him from time to time. What perfume, he wondered. Certainly not Fracas. There was a haunting sweetness about it, a vulnerability and a sadness.

At the Héritage Hotel he said to his partner, “Stay here, Falla. I'll escort Ms. Tremaine to her suite.”

She said nothing as they crossed the foyer and went down the corridor, passing a couple of startled hotel guests who stared as the haute couture vision floated by. Sydney gave them her sad, submerged Ophelia smile, and Moretti thought of the armless beauty navel-deep in water lilies in the manor lake.

At the door of the suite he asked her, “Where have you got your key in that getup — or have you?”

“Of course. In my arm band.”

She extracted the door key from one of the ruffled chiffon ties, opened the door, and they went inside.

“Ed, I want to explain why —”

“Explain later. Don't move from here, don't open the door. If you are gone when I come back, I'll put out an all-points bulletin to have you picked up, and I'll put you in protective custody.”

“I can't just sit here! I went with Betty to the hospital to identify Gil and I lost it.”

“I'm with you on that. And you won't just be sitting here. Pack a suitcase with enough clothes for about a week. If you want something to eat, get room service, but don't tell them you're leaving.”

“Where am I going?”

“I'll tell you when I come back to get you.”

Sydney Tremaine flung herself down on a nearby sofa, her skirt rustling expensively around her, giving Moretti a glimpse of the highest and skinniest pair of heels he'd ever seen in his life.

It was a reassuring return from the unreal to the normal to see Liz Falla waiting for him by the police car in her conservative dark blue suit and her sensibly heeled shoes.

“What a scene, eh, Guv! Like something out of a film was what I thought.”

“Contrived, yes, but no less effective — and stupidly dangerous — for all that. Which is why I have to talk to you, Falla, and not at headquarters. I'm going to ask you to use your personal phone for this, so let's go to the Salerie Inn and get something to eat.”

“Okay, Guv.”

She looked at him questioningly, but said nothing, for which he was grateful.

The coastal area called La Salerie is part of St. Peter Port, but north of the main shopping section of the town, the marinas, and docks. The name describes its old function as a salt manufactory, and the curve of the coastline embraces a wide stretch of bay emptied twice a day by the thirty-foot tides of the island. Echoing the contours of the coast are a row of eighteenth-century houses, some with small front gardens, some built flush along Glategny Esplanade, their walls bending around Salerie Corner, and it was in one of these that Liz Falla had her flat.

They drove down Val des Terres into town, past the Guernsey Brewery and the bus terminus. To the right, beyond Castle Cornet, Moretti saw that the islands of Herm and Jethou were obscured by mist, and the windshield of the car was spotted with moisture. Past the bottom of St. Julian's Avenue, the hoardings around what had once been the Royal Hotel, one of the places to see and be seen, now a hole in the ground. On past more hoardings and boarded up buildings, all scheduled for renovation. No risk of them remaining as they were, crumbling and becoming ruins and rubble — too much money now on the island, and these would soon be cleaned and painted and prettied up once more, home to some of the businesses associated with the offshore island boom.

Liz Falla manouevred the Mercedes into a narrow parking space outside the Salerie Inn. Moretti glanced across the road at the old careening hard, the exposed area of beach near the jetty where his mother's ancestors had brought their boats up for cleaning, three or four hundred years ago. The tide was on the turn, and a lone cormorant was fishing out in the bay. Overhead a tern shrieked and dived into the water, then swooped off followed by an irate gull.

“I live quite close, Guv. Do you want to use my phone now?”

“Let's eat first.”

The inn was painted blue, not navy or marine blue, but the blue of the sea below the cliffs over Saints Bay on a summer day. There were hanging baskets and window boxes of petunias and geraniums the length of the building and through the broad glass windows Moretti caught a glimpse of the splendid brass fittings of the inn's old lamps. He had once asked how old they were and was told “old.”

The section on the right of the door was quiet, and they sat down at one of the round polished wood tables beneath the patterned Lincrusta ceiling. A collection of blue and white plates sat on a rack just below ceiling level near the dartboard, where they were safe from random darts. Nobody was using the dartboard, and there was only one other couple at a table across the room — not locals, because they were studying the ubiquitous tourists' friend, Perry's Pathfinder, the route map and town plan of the island, with the zeal of military leaders planning a campaign.

“Been thinking about it ever since we passed the brewery — I could use one of their Special Creamy Bitters. What can I get you, Falla?”

Liz Falla stuck to coffee — “they do good cappuccino here”— and they both decided on fish and chips. Moretti gave their order at the bar, which boasted more of the “old” brass fittings with fine horses' heads on them, and returned to the table. Liz Falla's usual expression of sunny insouciance was gone, he noticed.

“What I'm asking you to do is — irregular, Falla, so you are free to refuse. I'm going to ask you to cover for me.”

“And what will you be doing, Guv?” She was cool; he liked that.

“Leaving the island.”

At that moment their meal arrived, and Liz Falla waited until the server had gone.

“You'll be somewhere between Grosseto and Siena, right?”

“Right.” Moretti took a long draught of his beer.

“I'm supposing you have a plan for this, so why don't you tell me what it is first.”

Actually, he didn't really have a plan. Yet. And what he did have depended on the co-operation of DC Liz Falla. “I'm leaving Sydney Tremaine at my place and you are the only one who is to know that. That's the first thing. After we've done what we have to do here, I shall pick up some supplies, go back to the hotel, and pick up Ms. Tremaine. We will leave by the patio exit and meet you out on the road. Okay so far?”

“Okay so far.”

“I don't believe in coincidence, but I do believe that, just occasionally, you get lucky. And our biggest break is that Chief Officer Hanley is going on vacation. I know he won't cancel it.”

“How do you know that, Guv?” Any misgivings she might have were not affecting his partner's appetite, Moretti noticed.

“Because I shall shortly be making a phone call to reassure him with news of a major break in the investigation. It will not be a lie, because that's exactly what has happened.”

“Okay so far, Guv. But how am I going to cover for you? You're not going to be available for — how long?”

“Don't know. About a week, maybe less if I get lucky. It'll have to be something to do with the case, and I'm more concerned about any civilians finding out than I am about Hospital Lane finding out. But if you could avoid saying anything at all about Italy, I'd be happier.”

“I've got an idea.” Liz Falla drank some of her cappuccino. “You've got a roomful of officers back at headquarters thinking this may have something to do with the Occupation, right? Well, how about me saying you're on Alderney.”

“Alderney?”

On a clear day you could just see Alderney, lying beyond Herm and Jethou. It was the third largest of the Channel Islands, lying only about six miles off the coast of Normandy.

“What would I be doing on Alderney? Taking a break?”

“Looking for clues, Guv. Remember, there were some really bad things happened on Alderney during the war?”

Liz Falla was right. If the story of Guernsey's occupation was one of hardship, deprivation, and moments of sheer terror, Alderney's war years were unremittingly hideous. The whole population had been evacuated in 1940, leaving the island to be used as a self-contained concentration camp in the hands of sadists, and the true horror of those years was a story that had never been fully told.

“I could say something about certain leads pointing to Alderney and you having to go there.”

“It might work.” Moretti's respect for the resourceful-ness of his partner was growing by the minute. “You'd be best keeping it vague.”

“You're telling me! Being indefinite is usually best when you're pulling the wool over somebody's eyes — at least, in my experience.” Liz Falla laughed, dipped a last chip in ketchup, and ate it. There was a small gap between her two front teeth that made her look even younger than she actually was. “What do you think, Guv? Or do you have a better idea?”

“No, I don't, so we'll go with yours.”

“When will you be leaving? Is that why you wanted to use my phone?”

DC Liz Falla appeared to be taking his irregular proposal in her stride, and Moretti felt it had more to do with his partner's breezy insouciance about love and life in general than any starry-eyed admiration of his brilliant stratagem.

“No, but that might be a good idea also. I want you to use your phone — I'll go and buy some stuff and come back and pick you up — and this is what I want you to do.”

Draining the last of his bitter, Moretti outlined the rest of his plan.

“I'm not going back to the States. If you put me on a plane, I'd only come right back here.”

“I know. Anyway, you're a material witness. You're not going anywhere, and the only trick is to make sure you stay alive.”

“That's why I'm here.”

“That's why you're here. I presume your claim to know the reason for your husband's death was just window dressing?”

Moretti and Sydney Tremaine were in his sitting room, her suitcase on the floor between them. She was wearing jeans and a white turtleneck sweater, but she still looked far too exotic for her setting. Now that she was standing there, her spectacular red hair backlit by a coral-shaded standard lamp, surrounded by his parents' furniture, Moretti began to have severe doubts about his course of action.

“Yes. I've gone over and over anything and everything he ever said to me about Rastrellamento and I can come up with nothing. Does anyone know I'm here?”

“Only my partner, DC Falla. These are her phone numbers — her mobile and her home phone. She'll check up on you from time to time, but she won't come here unless it's absolutely necessary. Don't ever pick up the phone yourself if it rings. She'll leave a message, and you call her right back.”

“Why? Where will you be?”

“Not here.”

At which Sydney Tremaine sat down on the sofa and started to cry.

“I can't be left on my own, Ed. Please stay with me. I won't get pissed, and I won't be a pain in the ass, and I'll even stop calling you ‘Ed' and start calling you Detective Inspector. Please.”

Moretti sat down beside her. “I can't stay here, Sydney, even if you call me Detective Superintendent, but maybe you shouldn't get too pissed. Still, there are a couple of good reds in the kitchen, and I put some white wine in the fridge, and there's plenty of food and plenty of books and CDs. There are also some videos. When did you last eat?”

“I don't remember.” She put her arms around his neck, and he wondered why it was that some people looked like hell when they cried, and some people actually glittered with tears in their eyes. He removed her clasped hands and stood up, pulling her up with him.

“Come on. I'll show you where everything is, and I'll make you an omelette.” She followed him through into the kitchen.

“Look at that — a harvest table! Just gorgeous. I love antiques.”

“Is it? That table's been in this place as long as I can remember.” Moretti went over to the fridge and took out eggs, butter, cheese, and a bottle of white wine, which he opened first. “Here — have some of this. I've got some questions to ask you.”

“And the first is why in the hell did I set myself up.”

“It wasn't, but since you've brought it up —.”

“Guilt, I guess. Gil was a shit sometimes, but he didn't deserve to die, and I think I may have helped matters along by taking off with Giulia.”

“It's possible, but I don't think so. I think your husband brought it on himself. Tell me why you went to see Giulia Vannoni.”

What Sydney told him was precisely what she had told Betty Chesler. Nothing new there, he thought, putting the grated cheese into the omelette and flipping it over. “Cut us some bread, will you? I'm going to draw the curtains and put on another light. We are going to eat, and you are going to tell me about your dancing career. I saw you once.”