A Grave Waiting (23 page)

His partner's emotional reaction took Moretti by surprise, then he remembered Falla singing with the former Folies star. “La Vie en Rose.” Almost certain to be on the tape someone had compiled for her.

“Falla, I'm sure there's a photo missing from this table. Of her, of course, but can you remember anything more?”

His DS looked at him, surprised. It was not often he had to rely on her memory. Probably the head injury. He looked terrible.

“Yes. Nude. No fan in this case, and it was signed, with some sort of message. I remember that, but I didn't get close enough to see what it said. It had faded, after such a long time.”

“Can I get on now?” Jimmy's familiar plaintive cry filled the room.

They left him and his cohorts and returned to the kitchen, where Mrs. Evans still sat, nursing her third cup of tea.

“Oh, I know you,” she said to Liz Falla. She dabbed her eyes and mouth with a tissue, then added, “Well, I know your mum. She says you've got the power, but you don't want to know about it. Be useful in her job, I said, save a lot of time, second sight would, I said —”

Liz Falla broke into the housekeeper's flight of fancy, her earlier emotions on seeing Coralie Fellowes nearly getting the better of her. “Solid police work and investigative techniques are what I was trained to use, Mrs. Evans, not ignorant superstition.”

“Well, I never.” Mrs. Evans returned her empty cup noisily to its saucer.

Smothering a wild desire to laugh, which he could only put down to lack of sleep, Moretti pulled out the chair opposite Coralie's housekeeper and sat down.

“Mrs. Evans, can you answer a few more questions for me?”

“For you, yes.” A pointed glance at Moretti's DS.

“Was the cushion on the floor when you found Mrs. Fellowes, or did you remove it from — anywhere else?”

Mrs. Evans shuddered. “It was on the floor beside her. I thought she was asleep at first, and I went over all cheery to wake her up. Then I saw her staring up at me, and I dropped the tray.”

“To your knowledge, did Mrs. Fellowes have a will?”

“Oh, yes.” Mrs. Evans perked up and beamed at Moretti. “I was one of the witnesses. Me and the gardener, Ted Priaulx. He's always done the gardening and odd jobs for her and Colonel Fellowes. She hadn't made a will since her husband died, she said, and she suddenly decided to make one. She's left both me and him — Ted, that is — a nice little something for our trouble.” Mrs. Evans suddenly became flustered. “But that doesn't mean I'd harm a hair on her head, Inspector. I'll never be able to get another job like this one.”

Moretti leaned across the table and touched the housekeeper's hand, still clutched around the tissue. The gesture brought on a fresh bout of sobbing. “Of course, and I believe you, Mrs. Evans. So there were a number of bequests. Was there also a principal beneficiary?”

“Yes, there was.” Mrs. Evans expression softened, and she started to smile. “He was so good to her, he was, really her only visitor. Made her laugh, talking about the old days. A real gentleman, not like some.”

“And his name?”

Mrs. Evans's smile was warm and tender. “A real gentleman,” she repeated fondly. “Bit of a ladies' man, I suppose you might say. Professor Ross — do you know him? Ludo, she called him. Darling Ludo, she used to say to me, my oldest, bestest friend.”

Any wild desire to laugh instantly abandoned Moretti. He turned to see Liz Falla had moved, and was now standing next to him.

“I need to speak to you, Guv. Urgently,” she said.

Moretti stood up, feeling his calf muscles shake at the effort. No point in thinking about sleep. Sleep would not be knitting up his ravelled sleeve for quite a while, the way things were going.

“When did this happen? After the Masterson murder?”

They were on their way to Ross's, having arranged for Mrs. Evans to be taken to the station to make a written statement, after which she had been assured she would be given a lift back to her home and to Rambo duty. Moretti had also set up a search of the property, looking for signs of a break-in, but both he and Liz knew how easily she let complete strangers into her home. Perhaps loneliness had made her open the door to her own death.

“Yes.” Beside him in the Triumph, Liz Falla groaned. “It was when I went to see him, to ask him why he hadn't said anything to you about that business with Mr. Machin. I got nowhere — of course. That man knows how to keep a secret, said it had nothing to do with anything, was a personal matter. But, see, I just don't buy Ludo as some lonely hearts confidant. I was just gobsmacked when he went for me like he did. Losing control is not Ludo's thing, is it?”

“No.” It was a characteristic he and Ludo had in common, but it was amazing what women and sex could do with that one. “I have to ask you this, Falla. Might it not be because you —?”

“Gave him the push? Could have been, but what he did really put any chance of
that
out of the window, didn't it, and he's one smart cookie, is Ludo.”

“True. So he got very angry when you made certain comments about Coralie Fellowes.”

“Yes. Got personal. Trashed me and, what's worse, trashed my music.”

“Your music?” Moretti turned to look at Liz Falla. She was looking out of the car window and he couldn't see her face. “That's serious stuff, and I know it's not true. You bowled him over, Falla, so we've caught him out in one lie, at least.”

“Thanks.” His DS turned back and smiled at him. Moretti returned the smile, feeling suddenly a lot better about everything, although why he was not sure.

“Here we are. And he's not expecting us, so watch out for those hell-hounds of his.”

As if on cue, the two ridgebacks appeared, followed by their master. He was smiling as Moretti wound down the window.

“I recognized the Triumph,” he said. “To what do I owe this unexpected — double — pleasure?”

L
udo
Ross sat hunched over on his elegant red chaise, weeping.

Not what he had expected, this collapse. Women and sex, yes. Oh, yes. But Coralie Fellowes? She had to be at least a decade older than Ludo.

Liz Falla made a move toward the chaise as if to comfort him, but Moretti restrained her. He did not want to give Ludo any chance to recover his equilibrium.

“You knew her well?”

“In the old days. The very old days, when the world was young. I was still a virgin, and had the unbelievable luck to have La Chancho as my first lover.” Ludo Ross looked up and it was at Liz Falla he was looking. “Not like your generation, where sex is available à la carte from early puberty to all and sundry. I left my boarding school to do my degree, and was recruited straight into the secret service. I'd been heavily petted and that was it, until Paris and Coralie. And no guilt! Just sex. God, what a baptism. What an initiation.”

Moretti interjected. “This was during the war?”

“Almost.” Ross was pulling himself together. Perhaps it was a grimace, but he seemed to be smiling now. “My service really started when mushroom clouds were going up and iron curtains were coming down. But France after the war was in chaos, and it was difficult to tell at the time who were the bad guys — apart from the Germans, of course — because many had collaborated. Inevitable, when your country is taken over for five years. It happened here in Guernsey. People just want to survive. And they fall in love.”

“What was Coralie Fellowes's role in that chaos?” Moretti went over and sat down beside Ludo Ross. There was no advantage to be had now in distancing himself. “It could be important. People have long memories, and some are passed on to the next generation.”

“Which is why I was detailed to get her out of France. Coralie was one of our agents, but to most of her countrymen she was a traitor who slept with the enemy. Which she did. Coralie's pillow talk with top German officers gave us invaluable information throughout the war, but once it was over she was in danger from her own.”

“You mean to say —?” Liz Falla got up from the chair opposite the two men and walked toward the window that overlooked the courtyard. Below her, crouched on the flagstones, Benz and Mercedes looked back up at her. She could see they were growling, lips drawn back, angry they had been separated from Ludo when he had visitors.
Just as well,
she thought,
with him crying like that they'd tear us limb from limb
. “You mean to say that top brass went to all that trouble sparing an agent to smuggle a Folies Bergère
showgirl
out of Paris? She was no use to them anymore, was she? So why would they do that?”

Ludo Ross sprang up from the chaise with such force he knocked Moretti sideways. He strode over to the window and swung Liz Falla around to face him. In his face she saw the fury that had been there before, when she spoke disparagingly about Coralie Fellowes.

Here we go,
she thought. What she wanted, to see this “ladies' man,” to use Mrs. Evans's phrase, losing it. Losing control.

“Why? Because her British contact had been Ronnie Fellowes, and he would have given his life to get her out. But, as
you
said, once her usefulness was over no one would lift a finger. Coralie was in jail in Paris, and the charges against her were serious. Ronnie was terrified she would be shot.”

Moretti interjected. “Why didn't Ronald Fellowes handle this himself? He would have had more clout, surely, than you.”

Ludo looked at Moretti and smiled. “It didn't take clout, Ed. It took arm-twisting, bribery, and, above all, it took the kind of ruthlessness you have when you are still a teenager and think you can do the impossible. I was twenty years younger than Ronnie, and I broke every rule in the book. Ronnie knew I had done very well in my — training.”

“You killed to get her out.”

“I killed to get her out.”

“And then you got lucky.”

Liz Falla's jibe got the response she had expected. Ludo Ross put up his hand as if to hit her face, and Moretti pulled Falla back. The antagonism between them was as palpable as the lightning strike from a Taser.
If looks could kill they'd both be lying on the Kirman,
thought Moretti. As Falla turned away from Ross to look at him, she raised her eyebrows, almost quizzically, and he saw she meant this to happen.

Moretti raised his voice. “DS Falla, keep this professional, or I'll drop you from the case. The pair of you are behaving like squabbling six-year-olds.” Moretti released Falla, pushed her in the direction of the chair behind him, and turned his attention back to Ludo Ross. “Sit down, Ludo, answer my questions, or I'll take you down to the station and we'll do it there. So you got Coralie Fellowes out. You kept in touch?”

“No.” Ross had regained his usual self-possession, tears and anger gone as if they had never happened. He picked up his pipe and pouch from the table beside the chaise, and the room filled with the delicious aroma of honey and Turkish latakia. Ambrosia. Liz saw Moretti's hand go into his pocket and touch the lighter he always carried. She smiled. So far his talisman was working well for him.

Ross lit his pipe and continued, his tone measured. “I got out of the service, got on with my other career, and then, years later, saw Ronnie's obituary in the
Times
. There was a bit about Coralie in it and, God, the past came flooding back. It also mentioned they lived in Guernsey, and it came at a time when I was thinking of retirement. So, here I am and, because I imagine you are going to ask, it was never again a physical relationship. We could talk about things we could never share with anyone else. Coralie married Ronnie for his money, and then found she loved him.”

Old mortality, the ruins of forgotten times
. Moretti watched the smoke from Ross's pipe float by him on the air, like smoke from a funeral pyre.

“We now know that Masterson cheated Ronald Fellowes, and Lady Fellowes is the only person of interest picked up on the CCTV cameras the night of Masterson's murder. But the gun retrieved from the harbour, the gun she threw into the water, did not kill him. She was there, Ludo, we know that. And now she is dead, you no longer have to protect her. Was that one of the things you could share, what happened that night?”

Ludo sat with his head tilted back. Moretti could not see his expression, but he doubted there was much to see, not now.

“No,” he replied. “It was not.” He leaned forward, his tone confidential. “But I'll tell you this, if she'd got there first, he would be dead, so my feeling is he was dead already, and she got out of there.”

Liz Falla looked up from her notebook. “Then why throw the gun away? There was no need to do that, was there?”

“Disposing of anything incriminating had been drummed into her during those war years. Habit, I imagine.”

“But she slipped up,” said Moretti. “She left lipstick on a champagne glass.”

“Might not have been Coralie. Masterson liked his babes.” Ludo Ross looked over at Liz and smiled, no antagonism now in his expression. “Don't we all.”

Falla smiled back at him, sweetly, then turned to Moretti. “I forgot to tell you, Guv, but the analysis came back. The lipstick is a discontinued brand. Helena Rubenstein. With that blast from the past we really don't need a DNA match, do we?”

Ludo Ross sighed deeply, and put down his pipe. “Oh, my dear Coralie,” he said. “Almost certainly shocking pink. Her favourite colour. She loved to shock. Nothing more to be said, is there? She must have been there, and that's why she died.”

“That's why she was murdered, yes. And you, Ludo, are the main beneficiary in her will.”

Moretti expected anger, but Ross started to laugh. “Look around you, Ed,” he said. “You've spent enough time with me to know I don't need to murder a frail old lady, who was my friend, for her money. And now —” he picked up the tobacco pouch again, fiddling with the clasp, his eyes hidden “— I think we should talk about Garth Machin, don't you? Before someone else is killed.”

The three photographs lay on the table between them. Moretti watched Garth's face.

“Leo Van der Velde, Patrice Adaheli, Norman Beaufort-Jones. Double V, Sol, and Game-Boy. The trio who were going to make your fortune, and theirs. More importantly, theirs. I doubt you would have survived to play your trumpet for very long.”

Garth Machin swore, tried to bite another chunk off his non-existent thumbnail. “Fucking Ludo,” he said. His office was cool, but he was perspiring, and the smell of his sweat reached across the desk to Liz Falla.

He stank of fear. He was in over his head and he knew it
.
Liz thought back to the interview with Ludo, and his apparent breakdown.

She didn't buy it. It was all calculated, a performance. The only genuine emotion came when she'd ridiculed La Chancho and he lost it. On their way to interview Machin she and Moretti had discussed Nichol Watt's collapse, which seemed to put him back in the frame for the murders. Which she was all for, and she was only too happy to send Brouard to remove the doctor's passport. But there was more, much more, to be said about Ludo.

“Fucking Ludo, indeed,” replied Moretti. “If he hadn't behaved like a priest in the confessional, we might have these three under lock and key by now. Or, certainly, their accomplices. The silence that was supposed to keep you and your wife safe has put you both in danger.”

Anguished, Garth Machin looked at Moretti. “Where is Melissa? I can't reach her.”

“No, you can't. She is safe.”

Liz looked up from her notebook. “Doctor Watt's ex-wife told me about the MRI machines. You told DI Moretti that your disagreement in the club was about his behaviour toward Mrs. Machin and, given Dr. Watt's reputation, that made sense. But was it about Masterson?”

“Yes. Nichol can knock it back, drinks like a fish. In a drunken moment he told me about Masterson and how he was duped. Swore he'd get him. Maybe he did. That's what I wanted to talk to him about.”

“So the idea for how to make big money —”

“— really big money, fuck-off money, get out of this jail money —”

“— came to you after you heard about Masterson?”

Garth Machin looked surprised. “No. They approached me, those three in your holiday snaps. Perfectly legit, it seemed, through our website. They wanted to discuss financing the development of oil in a small African country. They needed a lot of cash, and they offered me a humungous payback. That's when they had me, of course, because much of the money would line my pockets and not those of Northland. I met them first in London, not here.”

“Besides being paid through the back door, when did you first realize everything in the oil patch was not hunky-dory?”

“After the first payment, when they had proof of my involvement. When I discovered the oil development would involve the overthrow of the legitimate government of Maoundi. Assassination. They were going to run a puppet president, a buddy of Adaheli, now living in exile in Paris, pocket the profits. And, you know, at first, they had me persuaded it was no big deal, that one African president is much like another. Greed made me as unprincipled, as racist, as those bastards.” Garth jabbed a finger on the face of Double V.

“When did greed change into cold feet?”

“When they came close to home, and arrived in St. Peter Port. When they told me they wanted me to carry a lot of cash for them that was arriving with Masterson. When they told me Masterson had fucked up, and was going to be eliminated. Their word. Eliminated.”

“Why Guernsey? Because you were here?” Liz looked up from her pad and flexed her right wrist.

“Only in part. It was Masterson's idea. He has island roots and had, apparently, run a successful operation of some sort from here before. ‘At the back of beyond,' he said to them. ‘No one will recognize you there.'”

“What were you to do with the cash?” Moretti asked.

“Deposit it in our bank, all above board, because I would be doing it, and I am above suspicion.” Garth gave a hollow laugh. “God, I could do with a drink,” he said, taking out a handkerchief and mopping his brow and upper lip.

“Then the money would buy arms? Helicopters? Mercenaries?”

Garth shook his head. “Not directly. Even Beaufort-Jones was nervous about that, and he has major protection. MI6 and the FBI have got good at following the money trail.”

Moretti and Falla looked at each other. Liz was thinking about Masterson's research into
hawala
; Moretti was remembering Jan Melville's observations about post office boxes.

“Diamonds,” he said. “Because you are above suspicion, you were to buy diamonds for them.”

Both Falla and Machin looked at him, surprised.

Garth gave another of his vacant laughs. “Got it in one, piano player. Me, a stupid, jazz-playing banker in that world of sharks. I'd have lasted five minutes, and I knew it. More to the point, so did they. I wasn't made for international skulduggery, Ed. They would have got what they wanted out of me, and then I would have been — eliminated. Just like Masterson.”

Moretti stood up, suppressing a groan. He really must take up Don Taylor's invitation to join him on his runs across the island before he fell apart physically. But that would have to be put off, again.

“Set up a meeting,” he said. “Say whatever it takes to get them over here. Can you do that? Tell them it's urgent. Tell them agents of theirs are about to be picked up by the police, and are to be flown out for questioning by MI6.”

Garth Machin leaned back in his chair. There was a damp patch on the leather seat back. “Easy. Van der Velde and Beaufort-Jones contacted me last night on my private email here. Adaheli is in Harare. Since you lot found the stash on the yacht, they are on their way with more. All they need is a safe place, because they know my house is under surveillance since that bodyguard had to be — yes, that word again — eliminated. They'll be coming in by private plane.”