by Jill Downie
“An evasive hunk. Both of them were — evasive, that is. Why, I wonder.”
“Could be they just don’t want to be involved.”
“Could be.” Moretti drank some coffee and thought of the cigarette lighter in his pocket, and the packets of cigarettes on sale in the public bar. He ate a piece of fish instead. “I’d say from the exchange of glances between De Putron and the boss lady that he has been known to leave his post. I think we can rule him out as an alibi for the crew at the hotel, don’t you? When we’re done here, I want you to go to the harbour master’s office and check into Masterson’s arrival, how and when he cleared customs, whether they remember anything about him, or the rest of the crew. Then phone the station and give them details of the gun Martin Smith described.”
“Right.” Liz Falla pulled out her notebook. “Do you think he was killed with his own gun?”
“Possibly. What strikes me about that gun is that, if the little shit is correct, much of it is plastic, and it takes to pieces. Could be helpful getting it through customs. I’ll have to find that out.”
“But you’d think they’d pick that up on the X-ray machines, wouldn’t you.”
“Right. This weapon somehow skipped a customs inspection is my guess. And something else — did the CCTV cameras in the area pick up anything of interest last night? Let PC Brouard check the gun, Falla. You check the CCTV stuff.”
Liz Falla put her notebook away and picked up her coffee cup. Her spiky, short haircut gave her an urchin, almost boyish appearance, particularly when she gave him her wide, now familiar, grin, showing the tiny space between her two front teeth.
“Let me guess, Guv. I’m looking for whoever might have left her lipstick on a champagne glass in the wee small hours.”
“Right. And if she’s not there, we have two other possibilities. That she came by boat, or she was already on board. You can drop me off at Hospital Lane, and I can take my own car from there.”
“You’re going back to the yacht?”
“No. It’ll take the SOC people some time to get through there, so I’ll stay out of their way.”
Liz Falla smiled, thinking of her partner’s rocky relationship with SOCO’s head officer, Jimmy Le Poidevin.
“A bit of background on what Madame Letourneau called ‘a facilitator’ would be useful. Tomorrow morning I’m going to see someone who knows about guns, wheeler dealers, and million-dollar deals.”
Chapter Three
Day Two
The parish of St. Martin, where Moretti was heading, is in the southeast corner of Guernsey, and contains some of the most spectacular coves and bays on the island. The coastline here is rugged and precipitous, the cliff faces sheer expanses of lichen-covered granite exposed to the elements, dotted in places with trees and undergrowth clinging precariously to an inhospitable terrain.
In 1940 an abortive attempt at a landing had been made by a group of Commandos at Petit Port, one of the little bays. In fact, that was all they had managed, to land and then strand three men who were not strong enough swimmers to get back to the destroyer that had delivered them.
Why there, of all places? And who planned such a cock-up? It was the kind of thing Moretti enjoyed mulling over with the man he was going to see.
Shape-shifter.
Dr. Ludovic Ross, classical scholar, fellow of Balliol College, Oxford, guest lecturer at Harvard and Yale, had taken for himself the name given by Homer to Odysseus the wanderer, the cunning No Man who could change his appearance and outwit the enemy, whether it be Lord of the Earthquake, or a man-eating Cyclops. Much of Ross’s career remained classified, but from what Moretti could discover, the undercover work in which Ludo Ross had been involved had presented him with adversaries as dangerous and devious as any encountered by Homer’s wandering hero.
Ross was not a Guernseyman. He had no true roots, he once told Moretti, because he was a colonial, and still thought of the country of his birth as his own. That country had now ejected foreign rulers from its soil, and he was persona non grata in a place no longer called by the same name. When he retired from academic life he settled in Guernsey, where his income would be taxed at a more modest rate.
“I’ve given enough to my country and I’m damned if I’m going to give back what I earned with the sweat of my brow and the perspiration of utter terror.”
“You admit to fear?”
“Best way to deal with it.”
It was Gwen Ferbrache who first introduced Moretti to Ludo Ross. She had run into him on Lihou Island, a small islet joined to Guernsey by a causeway at low tide. The priory that had been on the island had been the scene of a murder in the sixteenth century, but its appeal for Gwen was that it was on the migration route for countless birds on the wing to Western Europe. The three of them had a drink together one evening at the Imperial Hotel, and then one night Ross turned up at the Grand Saracen Club. He and Moretti talked about Charlie Parker and Billie Holliday, Oscar Peterson and other shared passions, and from time to time Ludo Ross phoned Moretti and invited him over.
Normally he would not go uninvited and unexpected.
“Always delighted to see you, Ed, but let me know if you’re coming, won’t you? There’s a good chap.”
“You’re still cautious?”
“Habit of a lifetime, yes.”
“How about postmen, that sort of thing?”
“It’s the unexpected one looks out for. Though I don’t like it when they change postmen on me.”
What was it the petit salaud had said? Moretti turned his car into the narrow lane that ran above Ludo’s house and braked to allow a startled rabbit in the middle of the road to make a decision. Don’t let down your guard just because you are in the back of bleeding beyond — that’s when they get you.
The rabbit opted for going back the way he came, and Moretti carried on, turning the corner that led to the steep lane down to Ludo Ross’s house. But before that he caught a glimpse of the back of the house beyond an untrimmed hawthorn hedge entangled with blackberry bushes.
There were no windows on this side of the house, which was built against the slope of the cliff that led down steep, winding lanes to the coast. All the windows faced the sea, which could barely be glimpsed from them because of the wild profusion of trees and undergrowth that descended the cliff face. The house itself was curved, rather like a two-tiered cake of ivory plastered stucco. Beneath a steep-sided conical roof of pale grey tiles the upper storey was smaller than the lower, and a semi-circular balcony took up the extra space over the ground floor. No attempt had been made at taming the landscape, apart from a wide, paved courtyard outside the house, and there was no fence, wall, or gate. When Moretti asked why, he was told, “Because the kind of people I had dealings with don’t have any problems with barriers.”
Just before turning into the driveway, Moretti brought the Triumph to a halt, and called Liz Falla on his mobile.
“Anything on the CCTV cameras so far I should know about?”
He listened with pleasure to the low register of her disembodied voice. “Yes, Guv. There’s all kinds of stuff, like people leaving the Landsend Restaurant and so on, but what’s really interesting is the out-of-place person who shows up, if you see what I mean.”
“Who is it?”
“Lady Fellowes, Guv. No mistaking her, is there?”
“None.”
Of all the island residents who could have shown up on the CCTV cameras, none would have been more easily identifiable than Lady Coralie Fellowes. In the late 1930s there were few more recognizable faces, or bodies, than those of Coralie Chancho. She had first caught the eye when given a brief solo moment at the Folies Bergère, stepping out of the chorus line in a velvet cache-sexe and a headdress of ostrich plumes, to shoot at a straw-hatted Maurice Chevalier with a jewelled bow and arrow. The public demanded to see her again, and once they heard the unique voice with the sensual growl that came with the face and the body, Coralie Chancho became a star.
&nbs
p; When that star declined, as is the fate of every fair from fair, thanks to the passage of time and nature’s changing course, La Chancho made the career move every prudent woman in her position makes: she married money. How she came to Guernsey, Moretti did not know, but it was probably to do with holding on to that money.
“What was she doing?”
“Teetering along the deck, dressed up to the nines. The CCTV shows the time as one thirteen a.m. And she’s the only woman on her own, anywhere near the yacht between ten o’clock and six-thirty the next morning.”
“I’ve seen her at the Landsend, so perhaps she was there.”
“Want me to check, Guv? I’m just on my way to speak to the customs people.”
“Yes. I was planning to talk to Gord Collenette anyway.”
Moretti finished his call and looked up. Ludo Ross was at the window of the Triumph, and alongside him was one of his Rhodesian Ridgebacks, Benz, his lips drawn back in a snarl.
“Put the window down, Ed, so he can get your scent.”
As Moretti did so, the dog relaxed, and his master took his hand off the collar he was holding. “Park the car by the garage, Ed. Good to see you.”
Ludo Ross was an imposing man, somewhere in his late seventies Moretti thought, who had held on to a fine head of grey hair atop a neatly trimmed white beard. The contrast was startling enough that it looked to Moretti when he first met him as if the undercover agent was still in disguise, with a fake beard hooked over his ears. But in no way did this bearded scholar resemble a jolly Father Christmas, with his hawk-like nose and light, uncommunicative eyes — eyes that now brought to mind the hard-boiled stare of the dead man’s housekeeper to Moretti, as he drove into the paved courtyard.
“Good to see you, Ludo, and apologies for arriving unannounced.”
“I was thinking of phoning you, as a matter of fact, to see if you were playing at the club tonight.”
There were dark circles under Ludo Ross’s eyes, as there often were, the loose skin looking bruised and discoloured. An insomniac who accepted his affliction as incurable and therefore, as he facetiously put it, not worth losing sleep over, he had once or twice persuaded Moretti to share his white nights with him after a session at the club. His record collection was exceptional, as was his wine cellar, but it was not a habit Moretti could indulge too often.
“Not a chance. That’s why I’m here.”
“So this is work related?”
“You could say that.”
The dog ran ahead of them into the house, and was joined by his female companion, who made straight for Moretti.
“Hi, Mercedes. Remember me? I hope.”
The ridgeback sniffed Moretti’s extended hand and wagged her tail, then joined her mate. Together the four of them moved through the entrance hall on the right-hand side of the house, leaving a huge space to the left as a living area. This was covered by a pale blue Kirman carpet that extended the full width of the room. The décor and furniture were in spare, modern lines, the tones neutral, the paintings on the wall abstract. There were no photographs, no mementos of past lives or loves. The only indication of Ludo Ross’s former academic occupation was the built-in mahogany bookcase that lined the walls from floor to ceiling.
Moretti accepted his host’s offer of a beer, and waited until he came back, watched by the two dogs, who seemed relaxed, although they didn’t settle until their master returned.
“So,” said Ross, handing Moretti a glass of the Guernsey Brewery’s Special Creamy Bitter, “what’s up?”
“A body with a bullet in the head on a pricey Vento Teso in Victoria Marina, complete with a very pretty Porsche below decks, and a fortune in Euros in a safe in the bed-head.”
Ludo Ross raised one bushy grey eyebrow. He surveyed Moretti over the top of his glass, took a gulp of beer, put down the glass, and smoothed his beard. “Not your average Guernsey crime. What do you know about the body?”
“Bernard Masterson, a Canadian engaged in international deal making. Big-scale stuff, we’re not talking widgets or ball bearings. According to his housekeeper, he just brokered a deal between Canada and Germany involving armoured personnel carriers.”
There was a pause. Ross’s hand on his beard stopped moving and for a minute Moretti thought he was going to tell him something. Instead, he asked a question. “What was a chap like that doing in Guernsey? Even if he had dirty money tucked away here, he didn’t have to come near it.”
“All the more reason not to come here. We are making enquiries, of course, through Interpol and Scotland Yard, and we may yet have to bring someone in, but I’d just as soon we didn’t.”
“Arms dealing.”
Ludo Ross got up from the seat opposite Moretti and moved toward one of the long windows facing the courtyard. Ludo Ross always seemed to be on the lookout, whether he was standing talking outside the club, or on his own driveway, taking in what was going on around him — an unexpected noise, a passing car, a passerby brushing against him.
“You’re in with some dangerous bastards there — at least, he was — many dirty and all of them devious.”
“By devious I assume you mean dishonest.”
“Depends what you mean by dishonest. In the world of these guys there is no black or white, and little grey. Morals of any kind are not part of the equation.”
“No different from drug dealers.”
“They are the drug dealers. Or they often are. Gone are the days when international security forces pursued separate entities that specialized in drugs, or prostitution, or gun-running. Now the world is crisscrossed with a vast, intertwined chain connecting drugs, gun-running, you name it.”
“A perfect fit for Masterson. He was described to me as a financier, a facilitator, and a middleman. When I asked for something more precise, I was told about the Canada-Germany deal.”
“He could indeed fit the frame. I’ll give you an example of what I mean: Heroine from Turkey moves through the old Eastern bloc — Bulgaria, Rumania, across into the Czech Republic. From there it goes into Switzerland, Germany, France, England. The money the drug dealers make in the West buys Russian arms, which are then used by so-called freedom fighters wherever in the world there’s a so-called freedom fight going on. One crazy-paving, interconnecting patchwork quilt, that’s the kind of thing you’re dealing with nowadays.”
Moretti watched Ross walk back from the window, crouch down, and pat both dogs. He was wearing a navy Guernsey, putty-coloured slacks, and brown suede desert boots, his usual uniform, over a body a much younger man might envy.
“Thing is, Ludo, our dead man’s arms deals appear perfectly legit. His right-hand woman was quite open about it.”
“She’s not going to talk about any deal he might have made with a proscribed government, is she? Someone killed him, which suggests there’s something shady going on. We still come back to what he was doing here. It doesn’t make any sense, not on a money-laundering, arms-dealing level. There’s no doubt that Guernsey is part of a chain where dirty money is moved through London from Moscow, for example, but he could set up all kinds of shell companies to do that. Hell, he could be operating from a bank existing in cyberspace, run from a computer somewhere in the United States. Are you sure there’s no personal reason for his murder?”
“Personal? As in a woman?”
“Who is this right-hand woman you mentioned?”
“Adèle Letourneau, also from Montreal. She describes herself as his ex-lover, now his housekeeper. His bodyguard — yes, bodyguard — says she was in on all business meetings. And she told me Masterson ‘loved his babes.’ She even suggested he might have been done in by some dangerous island femme fatale.”
Ross gave a short bark of a laugh. “Damn few of those, but more likely to be a babe than an international arms dealer, or a babe set up by an international arms dealer. Won’t be the first time they got to someone through his loins. A spy has no friends, which should include lovers.”
There was an e
dge to Ludo Ross’s voice, which suggested the awakening of personal memories. Moretti knew nothing about Ludo’s private life, he had never mentioned a wife, or a family, or friends, and Moretti, who tended to be silent on the social context of his own life, was not about to ask.
“How does the housekeeper’s alibi stand up?”
“Depends on whether you believe the night clerk at the Esplanade Hotel was doing his job.”
Ross laughed, and this time it was the full, generous laugh that warmed his pale eyes. “Enough said. There is another possibility among many possibilities, and theft is still on the cards. Whoever your murderer is may not have been interested in traceable Euros, or put much faith in banks operating in cyberspace, but he may have preferred something else Masterson had in his safe, or on his person. Diamonds, for instance. They are portable, easily hidden, decidedly valuable, and a useful form of payment for less than squeaky clean deals. Have you found the gun? And what about the bullet?”
“A hollow-point, according to Nichol Watt.”
“Nichol? He has experience in America, hasn’t he? I think he told me he worked there for a number of years. I’ve always wondered why he left.”
“In Nichol’s case, probably to do with a babe. Like our victim, Nichol likes his babes.” Both men laughed. “The bullet’s gone to Chepstow for further tests, and I’ll send divers down tomorrow if no gun turns up on the yacht. But I think whoever did this took the gun with him — or her. Why leave it around?”
“You’re probably right. This kind of character often carries a gun himself. Did Masterson?”
“Yes, or his bodyguard did.”
“That’s right, you mentioned a bodyguard. So he expected trouble.”
“Anywhere but here, apparently, because he’d sent him on shore for the night. The gun was a Glock 17 and it’s disappeared. In your opinion, could a gun largely made of plastic that takes to pieces be smuggled through customs?”
