Blood Will Out (27 page)

M
oretti
knelt down on the sodden grass beside Irene Edwards.

Lying there, her blonde hair drenched and darkened, her mouth slightly open, eyelids fluttering, surrounded by wet, drooping Ladies' Tresses, Tanya brought to mind a pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia on the riverbank.
Millais
, if he remembered rightly. They had wrapped her in blankets, and someone had fetched a tarp of some kind from the house and propped it up on what looked like tent poles. It flapped loudly in the wind with a sound like gunshots, and they had to shout above the racket.

“Where is her husband?”

“Sedated. He was hysterical, getting in the way. I gave him a needle, and someone took him back inside. Your copper, I believe. He was the one who called first, and he has everyone corralled somewhere. Couldn't move her until we'd stabilized her.” Irene Edwards looked up at Moretti through a mass of soaked, dark hair. “Same as last time. Attempted garrotting.”

“Bite marks?”

“Yes. Vicious, far worse than on Shawcross. Probably saved her life, because that took time. Let's get her out of here now.” Irene Edwards stood up and gestured at the ambulance attendants, who ran over, the stretcher between them. “God, Ed, what in the hell was she doing out here in this weather? An assignation?”

Moretti bent down and extracted a sodden fragment from the grass near the path.

“An assignation, yes, with a bloody cigarette. Cigarettes kill, and this one nearly cost her her life.”

As they ran to the ambulance, Irene called out, “I'll stay with her, Ed.”

“Glad you were around.”

“Me too. Think I'm going to be around for quite a while.”

The ambulance doors shut, and they were gone, the tires screaming on the gravel path, as Liz Falla's Figaro hurtled towards Moretti. As Liz and Al got out, Moretti pulled out his mobile.

“Bob? Have you got backup yet? Mauger and Le Marchant, good. Hold them there and don't let anyone go anywhere — yes, that includes using the facilities — no, Falla is coming with me, and La Gastineau will just have to put up with it. Check first there's no way to get out, okay?”

Moretti turned off his mobile and grabbed Falla by the arm, both the gesture and the force behind it coming with the shock of the unfamiliar.

“Jimmy's already with the other victim. He says to be prepared. It's — nasty.”

“Sir.” Al also put his hand on Liz Falla's arm, his touch protective. “Falla could stay here, couldn't she? With Bob McMullin?”

“No.” Moretti spoke quite calmly. He started to walk towards the Figaro. “Falla comes. The case is wrapping up, and Falla is always in at the kill. Aren't you, Falla?”

Liz didn't bother to reply. She took her car keys out of her pocket and got into the driver's seat.

The light from the interior of the little cottage streamed out the open door into the night sky, augmented by SOCO's arc lamps, splintering in the rain. The three stood in the doorway and stayed there, staring.

Blood everywhere. Floor, carpets, walls, ceiling, evidence of the violent struggle that had taken place as Roddy the Body fought for his life. He was a fit young man, and had put up a fight that had knocked lamps from tables, turned over chairs. There was broken glass on the floor. He had even used the two suitcases that McMullin and Le Marchant had talked about to defend himself. Blood-covered, they lay in the centre of the room, one split open. Jimmy Le Poidevin came towards them, his white protective clothing spattered, his face grim.

“Not a pretty sight,” he said. “Perkins has already lost his dinner. Steel yourselves.” He held out three pairs of latex gloves and covers for their shoes.

Roddy Bull lay face upwards on the floor, with what looked like a second mouth above the neck of his sweater. Moretti knelt down beside him. His eyes were open, staring up at them, and to Moretti they didn't yet seem vacant of life, as if the image of his killer still lived on the retina. Blood had begun to dry around the garrotte that remained in the wound, embedded in the tortured flesh.

“Any bites?”

“None this time. Same double loop, you see.”

“Yes. How long ago, would you say?”

“Not long. An hour or two? The photographer's on his way, then we'll move him. Why the hell did this happen?” Jimmy Le Poidevin spoke without his usual bombast, his voice subdued.

“Because his ex-girlfriend confided in him.”

Al and Liz were now looking around the wrecked, bloodied mess of a living room, and Moretti bent down to take a closer look at the items pulled from the damaged suitcase.

“Hold on. What have we here?”

Half-hidden by a solitary shoe was a book. As Moretti extricated it, Liz and Al came over to take a look.

“Reading matter for the journey? I don't think so.”

“That Waldensian thing?” Al asked.

“No, but just as unlikely a book for Roddy Bull to own. Victorian porn, with some smuttily graphic illustrations.” Moretti held it out, and Al took it from him.

“This doesn't fit in with the pattern of the hermit's collection,” he said.

Moretti and Falla were looking at each other.

“Remember our Tin Pan Alley conversation, Falla? What was it you said to me?

“It was something Elodie said. ‘His only passion is books.'”

“Words, words, words,” said Moretti.

As they made for the door, Jimmy Le Poidevin shouted after them, “Wherever he is, the bastard that did this, he'll be easy to spot. He'll be soaked with the dead man's blood.”

In the Gastineaus' grand sitting room, they were greeted by Bob McMullin. Behind him, with PC Le Marchant hovering in the background, on various sofas and chairs sat the Island Players — or some of them. They looked like a group assembled for a photograph, or the final unveiling of the murderer in a Golden Age mystery. Some were in shell-shocked silence, some whimpering or openly crying, some chattering nervously to one another, but none were blood-covered.

“Where's Jim Landers?”

It was Raymond Morris who answered Moretti. “How one was expected to have a rehearsal without the leading man, is beyond credulity, but there you are.” His outrage did not seem related in any way to the violence outside.

“Raymond, I left him a message.”

Marie Maxwell also sounded outraged, sitting with her arms around her daughter, who was sobbing.

“Where's Ginnie Purvis?”

“With PC Mauger, Guv. Under restraint. She tried to resist, and she's quite strong. And she was really wet. I cautioned her.”

“Good man.”

Bob McMullin looked relieved.

“Who found Mrs. Gastineau?”

“Rory.” It was Lana Lorrimer who answered. “He went berserk.”

Before Moretti could ask his next question, Liz Falla asked it for him.

“Where's Elodie?”

This time it was Marie Maxwell who answered, huffily.

“Another one who didn't bother to show.”

As Liz turned to run, Moretti stopped her.

“No.”

“I'm always in at the kill. Guv.” Her voice was rough, as she controlled her emotions. “You said it.”

“This won't be a kill, Falla. He needs to spill his guts, and I want you here, to get Ginnie Purvis to spill hers. She'll talk to you, I'm sure — remember the bookmarks? And that's an order.”

He sat opposite her on the wing chair she had bought in a moment of nostalgia in a local second-hand store, cradling the glass of whiskey he had requested. Jim Landers seemed quite at home.

“Forgive my appearance,” he said.

If she had had a spyhole in the front door as her father had suggested, he would never have crossed the threshold. Apart from the overcoat he had put on after whatever it was he had done, he was blood-soaked from head to toe. Even his hair was smeared with it. He had pushed past her into the hallway, and then pushed her ahead of him into her sitting room, pressing the knife he held into her back.

“Sorry about this,” he said, in his usual calm, disconnected way, “but it's for your own good. I remember how ably you rejected my advances and, to speak in clichés, resistance is futile.”

Elodie tried to copy the cool tone of Jim Landers's voice.

“Is that what this is about?”

“God no!” He laughed, genuinely amused. “This is far bigger than you, although I was disappointed. This is about the story of my life. I want to tell it to you, I always did. Hence the knife, and not my preferred method.”

Speak in clichés, think in clichés. Keep him talking.

“Whose blood, Jim?”

“This?” He looked down, as if mildly surprised. “No one you know, don't worry. Some of it is mine. He put up a good fight.”

“Why?”

“Ah, that's a good question, but to understand the answer, first I have to tell you the story of my life. Someone to talk to, you know.”

And out it came, like a dam burst, a waterfall of childhood memories — of an absent mother, immersed in her own world; a father full of tales of past glories. As long as Jim Landers the child wanted to hear them, he had his father's full attention. Most of them were brutal, and Jim Landers cheerily told them, his amusement as grotesque as the mocking laughter and macabre clown figures on the ghost trains of Elodie's childhood that gave her nightmares.

The wounded self
, she thought.
Freud's phrase for the hidden persona of the neglected, abused child.

At some point in the narrative, he pulled a piece of cord out of his pocket to illustrate his story, putting down his glass to do so, still holding on to the knife.

“The preferred method of garrotting by the Foreign Legion, my father said.
La loupe
, a double loop. The victim pulls on one, only to tighten the other. Once thought of running away from home to join them in the desert.
Marche ou crève
, that's what they had tattooed on their feet. Couldn't have been any worse than boarding school.”

Slowly, carefully
, she thought.
But at some point, one of us must make a move
. “I asked you ‘why,' and you said it was a good question. Why, Jim? What is the answer?”

Jim Landers face glowed. “Because this one acquisition is my chance at deliverance from penury, and I had to make sure no one stood in the way. This chap, for instance.” Deadpan, he tugged at his sodden sleeve. “Came into the shop one day, rattling on about some secret Rory's bimbo has told him. No idea what it was, but couldn't risk it, not so close to the financial freedom I'd always wanted.”

“Why Hugo, Jim?”

“Apart from being a pompous clot, you mean? Ginnie suggested it.”

“
Ginnie
?”

“Yes, she was there when the aforementioned clot held forth about vampires, and evil existing at the first meeting about the new play. He said something about curses and witches and books, and I knew he was on the same track. A man like that would be. Ginnie saw I was upset.”

“Upset?”

The understatement was chilling.

“Yes. Ginnie adores me, you see, so I told her about my quest. ‘Why don't we hoist him on his own petard!' she said.”

“So, the whole vampire thing, the biting and so on, was a red herring?”

Jim Landers giggled, a grotesque little sound. “Very funny, Elodie, very funny.” He was instantly serious again. “Bit of a challenge for me, when I tried it. Not as easy as you might think. But Ginnie was a chum, the only person I trusted with my story, and she had her own reasons for being interested in the Pleinmont hermit.” Jim Landers's blood-smeared face now radiated delight. “Luck, for once, was on my side. You see, I had already been setting free some of the books. No way they should be owned by a down-and-out in a hovel. Then I read about this rare book in Alberta, that there was possibly another copy somewhere, and Hugo started dropping hints. I had an advantage over him, because I knew where it was likely to be!”

“One book, Jim? One book could change your life? What one book could do that?”

Jim Landers looked impatient. “A book worth millions, of course. Ginnie was thrilled when I found it. Thought we'd be walking off into the sunset together. One day the troglodyte saw me, and so did the old bag who hung around his place. I told Ginnie, and Ginnie helped, so I was happy to go along with her vampire idea, and Hugo had to go, just in case. What the hell she was looking for in that dump, I don't know. Not my business.” Landers leaned towards Elodie, lowering his voice theatrically. “Only I'll have to hold on to it for a while till the heat dies down.”

“How can you bear to sell something about which you feel such passion?”

Jim Landers looked disapproving. “It is a disgusting book, and I don't want it near my Jane Austens. Like the piece of filth I offered this chap.” Another tug at his slee
ve.

Inconsequential thoughts began to flit through Elodie's mind.

That lovely fresh sea bass in the fridge. Should I offer him dinner, and is he mad enough to accept? Difficult, while eating, to hold on to any weapon other than cutlery. I'll have to get rid of that chair, but I wasn't that sure about it in the first place. Ginnie, dear God, Ginnie.

Suddenly, Elodie began to feel very angry. She was getting tired of waiting to die, and she'd decided that she had to try to break through that prissy, prudish façade.

“Ginnie had other motives, Jim, you're right. You weren't supposed to be a
chum
, you're supposed to be her stud, mate with her and give her a son as heir to the Gastineau throne. She didn't adore you, she adored your
prick
.”

“You dirty-minded bitch!” His voice rose.

“And you didn't kill Hugo, did you? You failed even at that, didn't you? What
would
Daddy have to say about that?”