A Grave Waiting (9 page)

“Don't get me wrong,” Moretti stood up, thrusting his hands deep into his jacket pocket, encountering his lighter talisman as he did so, “I didn't say it has nothing to do with Masterson's murder. I said it was not the gun that killed him.”

“Holy shit,” said both divers in unison

“My feelings exactly,” said Moretti.

Sometimes he had a glass or two of wine at the Grand Saracen, but mostly he didn't, unless there was someone like Ludo Ross in the club. “Not a chance,” he'd said to Ludo, and now he regretted it. After he'd written his reports for Chief Officer Hanley he didn't feel like returning home, so he'd eaten in town, and then shown up at the club.

The Grand Saracen was named for a legendary Guernsey pirate and operated out of one of the great vaulted cellars of an eighteenth-century house that faced the harbour. Above it was the restaurant once owned by his father, and named after him: Emidio's. Moretti still retained a part interest in both businesses, but the restaurant was run by a distant relation of his mother's, and the club by a tough and efficient local woman, Deb Duchemin.

Tonight he saw no one he knew well, so the pleas-ure was in the playing. The audience was small, but they were in the pocket tonight — he and Lonnie Dwyer, Garth Machin, and Dwight Ellis on drums. Garth was his usual scatological self, peppering his remarks with oaths, insults, and cuss words, but his playing was bittersweet — the one not unconnected with the other, in Moretti's opinion.

In the immortal words of Charlie Parker, if you don't live it, it won't come out of the horn. Garth would never give up his Fort George mansion for a garret in town. But the angst produced by his poor-little-rich-boy lifestyle enhanced the sound of his alto-saxophone. Behind Moretti's own playing lay the echo of Falla and Coralie Fellowes's voices and, from time to time, he found himself “going out,” leaving the music's harmony and rhythm behind, returning to meet the others again. Playing Bud Powell's “Tempus Fugit,” the smooth sound of Miles Davis's trumpet in his head blending with Garth's sax, remembering Coralie Fellowes's final words, directed at Falla.

Jeune fille en fleur
. Young girl in bloom.

A scattering of applause as the set ended, and Moretti automatically reached up to find his unfinished cigarette waiting for him. But there was no welcoming curl of smoke against the dim light and he groaned out loud.

“Want one?”

Dwight Ellis took a pack out of his shirt pocket and shook it in Moretti's direction. Above his drums, Dwight's skin gleamed like lovingly burnished cherrywood, hand rubbed by a hundred willing handmaidens — which, given Dwight's success with women, probably had been. There was something about Dwight's cheery insouciance and tender smile that awoke a maternal response in females. That, and the raw energy of his playing, often led to the bedroom.

“Get thee behind me, Dwight.”

“Okay, man. Chill out.”

Dwight grinned, shrugged his shoulders, and shook loose a cigarette for himself.

Moretti turned away. Beyond the lights he could hear a familiar bray of a laugh, a savage bray, teetering on the edges of intoxication. Nichol Watt was in the audience.

He was sitting near the front, and he was not alone. Nichol was rarely alone. Slumped against him was a young woman of about twenty, who looked not unlike Liz Falla, so presumably this was the idiot cousin. She had his partner's dark hair, and a similarly shaped face, but there the resemblance ended. Her hair was worn in some exceedingly untidy style Moretti vaguely recognized as currently chic, and a ghoulishly dark lipstick on her full lips. As far as Moretti could see above the level of the table, she appeared to be wearing virtually nothing, but given club rules he presumed this was not the case.

“Ed! Over here!”

Reluctantly, Moretti left the tiny platform and went over to the table. The girl smiled up at him, dreamily, drunkenly.

“You know Toni?”

Nichol Watt was a middle-aged man whose success with women had more to do with his income and veneer of well-travelled worldliness than any other obvious qualities. He was rangily built and seemed loosely put together, as if his limbs might detach at any time. His puffy eyelids and reddened skin showed the ravages of too much booze and too many babes, and he was fast acquiring jowls beneath a fleshy chin. He was, however, intelligent and highly experienced in his field, and Moretti never made the mistake of underestimating him.

“No. Hello.”

“You're Liz's boss.”

“Partner.”

“Liz was right.”

The girl stood up, leaning against the table, and Moretti saw she was just about clothed in a white tube top and a minuscule black leather skirt.

Moretti did not particularly want to hear what Falla was right about, and fortunately neither did Nichol Watt, who required the undivided attention of any member of his harem.

“Come on, Toni. Let's get you out of here while you're still ambulatory.” Nicol stood up, steadying himself by grasping the girl under the armpits, his fingers sliding inside her top.

“Amatory, you mean.” The girl giggled. “I'm always amatory.” She looked up adoringly at Nichol.

The girl's profile reminded Moretti of Falla.

“You're not driving, are you, Nichol?”

“Once a policeman, always a policeman, eh, Ed?”

“Are you?”

Jeune fille en fleur
. How in the name of all that's precious and lovely and ephemeral could this particular young girl in bloom waste her sweetness on the likes of Nichol Watt?

“No, officer. We'll mosey along to my little watercraft.”

As they started to move away, the girl called out. “That's what Liz said — she said, ‘always a policeman,' she said. ‘Always a policeman.'”

Just as Nichol and the girl were about to go up the stairs leading to the ground level, Moretti saw Garth Machin go up to them and take Nichol by the arm. A few words were exchanged, and from the look on Nichol's face those few words were not mere pleasantries or idle chatter. The surgeon's face darkened, and his reply was short and sharp. He jerked his arm away from Garth's grasp and pulled the girl against him, half-carrying her up the stairs. Moretti could not see Garth's face immediately, but when he turned back and headed toward the stage, he appeared shaken. His normally pale skin was flushed, and his strong, full-lipped mouth was trembling. He ran one hand over his short-cropped fair hair so that what was left of it stood up on end.

“I didn't know you knew Nichol Watt,” Moretti remarked, as his horn player bent down to take the instrument out of its case.

“In my line of business you need to know anyone who is anyone, Ed, and Nichol Watt is someone. A piece of slime, granted, but nevertheless he's someone on this blessed bloody plot set in a shitty silver sea.”

Which really didn't answer his question, of course. Perhaps it was about the girl, but Garth had never shown the faintest signs of chivalry and, as far as Moretti knew, had a stable and conventional home life. He had met Melissa Machin only once or twice at the few obligatory formal occasions he could not duck out of, and she seemed pleasant, looked pretty, and made all the right noises for the wife of a successful money man.

The Esplanade was deserted when Moretti left the club. He could see the lights near the yacht, where they were keeping the incident van, a police car, and a watch on the
Just Desserts
.

Just deserts, as in revenge taken? Unlikely. More likely to be about silence, the removal of a witness, of someone who knew too much. Hopefully by tomorrow they would have the reports in from the Canadian RCMP, giving them some more background on Bernard Masterson and Adèle Letourneau.

He thought about what Nichol had said.
My little watercraft
. That's right, he'd forgotten that Nichol kept a boat in the marina. He thought about what Ludo had said.
He has experience in America, hasn't he … I've always wondered what made him leave
.

Should he throw Nichol into the mix? Had Watt examined the body of the man he had — Christ almighty, he was getting paranoid himself.

Still. Instead of going straight to his car, Moretti headed south a short distance on the Esplanade. He could see the three decks of lights of the
Just Desserts
floating like a great white shark, and he was painfully aware of how inadequate their precautions were. The yacht was approachable — easily approachable — from the water, and although the police launch was now making regular trips to ensure the security of the crime scene, it was probably a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted.

Not only getting paranoid, but now misapplying metaphors.

Nichol Watt's boat was not as impressive as a Vento Teso, but it was a very nice cabin cruiser, a 2052 Capri LS, with an enclosed forward cabin and all mod cons — well, a portable toilet. Which, given the amount drunk by the two occupants, they would be needing — one way or the other. Moretti knew roughly where it was moored, but he doubted he would see anything useful. Ironic that he'd mused about getting a boat for himself, things being quiet. He needed one now. If he used the police launch he'd be spotted a mile off.

Pointless. Peering into the darkness, he could just about make out the Capri, beyond a smart new Chaparral and Garth Machin's cherished 1959 Alan Pape wooden motor yacht.

Had the killer come by water? Quite possibly. Moretti remembered the damp wetsuit. So possibly not directly by boat. The murder weapon was presumably already on board, and perhaps Masterson's nemesis could swim like a merman.

Or mermaid.

Moretti went back to his Triumph and made for home, heading north on the Esplanade to the Grange, up past the eighteenth-century mansions of the privateers who had made their fortune on the high seas, coming back to build these splendid monuments to their wealth. Guernsey has always been run by money, from those professional pirates, their skills harnessed by the sovereign to fill the nation's coffers as well as their own, to the present-day financiers with their far-flung fortunes in cyber-coffers, their castles in Marbella, and Monaco, and Miami.

Ten minutes later he turned into the lane leading to the cottage he had inherited from his parents, driving between the stone gateposts that were all that remained of the great house that had once stood there. He had done little to alter the cottage's interior, and had now lived there long enough to feel it his own, and not to expect his father to walk in the door.

Not his mother. She had died when he was fifteen, and he and his father had lived with her ghost a very long time.

The thought of the unaltered interior of his place reminded him of Lady Fellowes's sitting room. He grinned as he brought the Triumph to a halt on the cobblestones outside his front door, mentally comparing Coralie Chancho's lush and louche chaise lounge with the clean, hard lines of Ludo Ross's Italian-designed chaise with its sweep of matte red fabric and steel.
And yet,
he thought,
I'd lay money on la Chancho being as tough as Ludo.

La vie en rose,
my eye. I think she sees life exactly as it is.

Improvised Counterpoint

Day Three

T
he
incident room was crowded for the early morning meeting. A handful of officers stood around looking at the information Liz Falla had started to put up on the incident board when she arrived that morning, and another group were listening to PC Le Marchant describe for the umpteenth time the discovery of the Browning Baby. Moretti and Chief Officer Hanley arrived outside the door at the same moment.

“DI Moretti, a quick word with you before we go in.”

The head of the Guernsey Police Force was not an islander. He had been brought in a few years earlier to help with the reorganization and expansion of the force due to the burgeoning offshore business and a tightening up of regulations. He was a man of lugubrious countenance and mournful disposition — Buster Keaton without the laughs — who always expected the worst and, in his line of work, was rarely disappointed. He had quickly learned about the various power bases on the island — local, international, and financial — and had been distressingly swift, in Moretti's opinion, in trimming his professional sails to the prevailing winds.

“Good morning, sir.” Moretti waited. He had an idea of what the quick word might be.

“Lady Fellowes. I gather you paid her a visit yesterday.”

Got it in one. “Yes, sir.”

“Was it necessary? I mean, as far as I can see, she was only one of many on the CCTV cameras, wasn't she?”

“Yes, sir, but she was the only one throwing a gun into the harbour.”

“Good God!”

“Precisely. After you, sir.”

The excited buzz in the room died down as the two men came in. Moretti stood back and allowed Chief Officer Hanley to take centre stage, from where he swept the room with a look that spoke of the loneliness of command.

“This is a serious matter, I need hardly say. Murder, an uncommon crime on Guernsey, using a gun, an uncommon weapon on the island. Have we got the gun yet, DI Moretti?”

“Not the murder weapon, sir. But we have a gun.”

Briefly, Moretti described the Browning Baby. Looking at his superior officer he added, “For the moment I want to leave the circumstances surrounding that particular gun and concentrate on the gun that was the likely murder weapon, and most probably the victim's gun. Give us what you've found, PC Brouard.”

PC Brouard stood up. A gullible giant in his twenties, he had once allowed himself to be misled by trusting one of Moretti's suspects, and had redeemed himself with his knowledge of computers and his ability to keep his mouth shut.

“The gun owned by the victim is a Glock 17. In one piece it looks like this —” he turned and pointed at one of the photographs on the board “— but you can do this to it.” He pointed to another image that showed the frame detached from the barrel, with two other pieces lying beside it. “It's made of plastic — at least, most of it is. Makes it lighter, cheaper, and easier to fire, because the plastic absorbs most of the recoil. The trigger and the magazine are also made of plastic, but the guide rails are steel. The barrel, the frame, the recoil spring, and the guide rail all come apart.”

“Is it American?” Hanley asked.

“No, Austrian, sir. Used by the Austrian army.”

“So you see the problem.” Moretti pointed at the pieces of the gun. “It could have been disposed of all over the island, or in the harbour, or out at sea.”

Next to him, Chief Officer Hanley shifted and sighed. Things were turning out just as badly as he expected.

“However,” Moretti continued, “if it was disassembled, whoever did it knew how. It's unlikely they'd stand around checking the manual. Let's move on.” He turned to Liz Falla. “DS Falla has the information that just came in from the Mounties. Go ahead, DS Falla.”

“The RCMP know the murder victim well.”

Moretti thought Falla sounded good, even reading out this stuff.

His partner glanced at her notes and continued. “He first came to their attention five years ago over problems with a business he'd inherited from his father, Bernard Le Maître — possible Guernsey connection here. The father was legit, in the fur business in Montreal, and passed on a going concern to his son, and the son used the money from the business to buy up other businesses on the fritz and turn them around. So far so good, on the surface. But the RCMP suspected Masterson was using his various businesses to launder money for criminal organizations, specifically the Italian and Russian mafias. They seem to have stumbled on to him by accident, when they were carrying out a major sting operation, trying to trace the movement of money between Montreal, the Caribbean, and Europe. They had him in for questioning and, since then, the trail has gone cold. They think he's moved in another direction.”

“Do they know which direction?” Hanley asked.

“Not exactly,” Liz Falla replied, confirming yet again her superior's belief in the worst of all possible worlds. “But they believe his above-board role as an intermediary in arms sales is a cover for a dirtier business as a mover of cash for underworld arms dealers who supply, for instance, Russian arms to countries like Iran.”

“So,” Hanley asked, searching for a bright spot in the midst of gloom, “this murder may have nothing at all to do with Guernsey?”

“I don't know, sir,” Liz Falla replied. “The Mounties are very interested in the fact that it happened here, but have no idea why. It
could
mean we have a new criminal element moving in on the island, according to them,” she added, thus spreading further gloom and instantly dissipating any chance of bright spots.

“Let's move on,” said Moretti, forestalling the prolonged and unfocussed discussions that made him impatient. He turned to Jimmy Le Poidevin, head of SOCO. Jimmy Le Poidevin, full of pomp and circumference, also made him impatient. “Jimmy, could you go over what you and your team found on the yacht, if anything.”

“If anything?” The head of SOCO gave a short, sharp laugh. “Even nothing can be something, Moretti, as you know.”

The expression on Chief Officer Hanley's face suggested he would not appreciate further philosophical observations and the usual verbal sparring, and Le Poidevin pressed on. “The yacht is a big bugger, and we still have a team on board. We have taken fingerprints from the crew, and will continue to match them with the ones we have already found. The two items of interest so far are a tipped-over magazine rack in the main bedroom, and a lipstick-stained glass in the main stateroom. Neither has produced anything of interest. The rack has only two sets of prints, those of the victim and the housekeeper, and the glass has none. But we are sending a sample from the lipstick to the mainland for DNA testing, and also to see if the lipstick can be identified.”

“Entry?” Hanley enquired. “How did the killer get on board?”

“There are no signs of a break-in, sir,” Le Poidevin replied.

“So he or she was known to the victim.”

Moretti interjected. “Perhaps. There is also the possibility that Masterson was set up, left the yacht unsecured because he was expecting one person, and found himself facing another.”

“Such as who? Do we have any evidence to support this?” Hanley asked.

Jimmy Le Poidevin's lip curled and he crossed his arms over the convenient shelf of his belly.

“None, but we have little evidence of anything at this stage,” Moretti replied. “However, according to his housekeeper, he — I quote — ‘liked his babes.'”

There was a burst of laughter in the room.

“Did the CCTV cameras show any babes getting on the yacht?” someone asked.

Liz Falla responded. “I have a list of names I'm going to hand out to be checked. They are all people identified from the cameras. Find out why they were there. Most of them probably came from the party at the Landsend, and we can cross-check them from the booking list, but not everyone is named on it. The restaurant just needed the numbers.”

Jimmy Le Poidevin continued. “As to the murder itself, Dr. Watt says it occurred between about eleven p.m. and midnight, probably closer to midnight, death was instant, and the bullet was a hollow-point.”

At this point in the proceedings, Moretti was grateful for Hanley's presence. Otherwise, Jimmy would be spewing theories like an out-of-control slot machine, and Moretti would have moved from impatience to outright and outspoken irritation. “That's all for now,” he said. “DS Falla will hand out the names to be checked. Any questions?”

“Did we check with customs and the Harbour Authority?” PC Le Marchant's tone of voice suggested otherwise.

Liz smiled. Being part of the investigation was making PC Le Marchant uppity, it appeared. Uppitiness was something she was used to, particularly since her promotion to sergeant.

“We checked. The harbour master checked. There was nothing out of the ordinary in their arrival, which was around five p.m. They filled in all the forms, answered all the questions. The only thing of interest was that they were keen to get moorings here and not at Beaucette Marina.”

“What about the crew, Moretti?” Hanley asked. “I understand they're under guard at the Esplanade Hotel, but how about suspects among them? Any joy there?”

Joy would reign unconfined, Moretti knew, if he could nail a non-islander for the murder.

“Some, sir. Not one of them has an alibi that would stand up to scrutiny. We're checking if any of them has a record, and I think it's possible we'll find Masterson's bodyguard has one.”

“Good God, the bodyguard!”

“Yes, sir. He says he handed over the gun to Masterson, but there's no proof he did so. I've interviewed the crew, and we're getting written statements from all of them.”

“Anything else?” Chief Officer Hanley threw the question to the room. Liz Falla took another look at the fax sheet she had in her hand.

“There is something else, something that came from the RCMP. Masterson had a nickname, and so did his father. Masterson senior was known in Montreal as ‘
Boule à mite
.'”

This got a mixed reaction, depending on who spoke French and who did not. Most didn't.

“Mothball. The French for mothball. Came from the fur business. Masterson senior always smelled of mothballs, and the victim was known as ‘
Bébé boule à mite
.'”

“Baby Mothball?” Laughter.

Hanley quelled the hilarity with a look and turned to leave. “You will, of course, keep me informed, DI Moretti.”

“Of course, sir.”

Moretti waited until the chief officer had left the room and beckoned to PC Brouard. “Got that other stuff for me? Okay, we'll go to my office. You too, Falla.”

Once in his office, the door closed, Moretti turned to his partner. “PC Brouard was checking some background for me on the La Veile tenants. Go ahead, Brouard, let's hear what you've got.”

PC Brouard lowered his husky frame into a chair, and pulled out a sizeable wedge of papers from his jacket pocket. “That panther jersey first, Guv. It's not football or basketball. It's an ice-hockey uniform. They sell all kinds of stuff with the logo, besides the sweater. The colours change depending on whether the team is home or away — well, it becomes more red or more white, but the logo stays the same. The team's called the Florida Panthers.” He handed one of the sheets of paper to Moretti. “Here's a picture of it. Is that the one?”

“Yes,” said Moretti. “What about the woodchucks?”

“Big sellers as far as I can see, got their own webpage. Titles like
Warren and Wilma See Their Shadow
,
Warren and Wilma's Babies
,
Warren and Wilma and their Porcupine Pal
. Really interesting, Guv, the woodchuck. Also called a groundhog. Great fighter, but not a great mover, mostly they get away by diving into burrows. There's one book called
Warren and Wilma Move Burrows
. Amazing, really, the burrow's set up so there's a separate toilet — well, not an actual toilet, but —” PC Brouard was warming to his topic.

“Thanks.” Moretti was reminded of the small child's book report: “This book told me more about penguins than I wanted to know.”

“What about the author and the illustrator? Anything about them?”

“Quite a bit about the author, Sandra Goldstein. Degree from Yale, that kind of thing. Lives in Florida. Explains the sweater, doesn't it. Her local team.”

“Right.” Moretti and Falla looked at each other. “What about the illustrator?”

“Not as much about her, something about her art training. And the name's different.”

“Not Julia King?”

“Julia's the same. But the last name is Meraldo. Julia Meraldo.”

“Meraldo.” Moretti thought of the child's colouring and Gwen's comment. “Great, Brouard, good work. And I've got another job for you.”

PC Brouard beamed and sat up straighter in his chair, like a friendly Labrador puppy, eager to cooperate.

“The computers from the yacht, are they still with us?”

“Yes, Guv. I was told not to touch them.”

“That's what I want you to do. Tell Jimmy I said so. The problem will be the password.”

“Yes, and if they've been erased. Not that it's that easy to delete anything from the hard drive.”

“Then we may have to send them away, but give it a try.”

PC Brouard beamed again. “Any suggestions for the password, Guv?”

“Nicknames are important to people. Personal. Start off with variations on
Boule à mite
.” Moretti picked up a scrap of paper and wrote out a few versions of the name. “I wouldn't worry about the accent, and I'd try combining the words into one. And you might add this to the combination.”

“Two letter
B
s?” PC Brouard peered doubtfully at what Moretti had written