by Jill Downie
Liz Falla eased the police Vauxhall along Verte Rue, the mobile bouncing about on the seat beside her, the car sliding on the mud-filled ruts at one moment, stalling in the troughs between them the next. She wouldn’t want to take any car of hers down here, not that she had a car of her own.
She was quite happy to run this errand for Moretti, because she was curious to see the two American women for herself. She was somewhat surprised at the ease with which her boss had accepted the story he was told, and was keen to see if her theory as to why was correct. Of course, the murder enquiry took top priority, but Liz Falla was of the opinion that was only part of the reason.
As she approached the house, she saw one of the blinds in a downstairs window flick open, then close again. She rolled down the window of the car, and waved at whoever was watching her arrival. Hopefully they would see it was a woman’s hand, and give her a chance to explain. After all, they only had the word of one woman that the gun was a replica, and it had never been produced as evidence. She turned the car so that it drew up alongside the house, with her face in full view.
“Hello!” Picking up the mobile from the car seat she waved it out of the window. A moment later, a tall dark-haired woman with a slender, long-legged build came out of the house, closing the door behind her.
So, her theory was correct. Ed Moretti’s motives had as much to do with hormones as the milk of human kindness. This one was a looker all right.
“Hi. Are you Ed’s sergeant?”
So he was Ed now, was he? As the woman came to the side of the car, Liz saw that the slenderness was misleading. The sleeves of her sweater were pushed up, and her forearms were muscled, her hands strong.
“That’s me, Liz Falla. You are —?”
“Sandra Goldstein.”
Sandra Goldstein’s eyes were watchful, something almost animal about them. Liz smiled in what she hoped was a warm and reassuring manner. “DI Moretti asked me to give you this, and to check everything is in order.”
Not that he had asked her to do that, strangely enough, in the circumstances. She handed over the mobile.
“We’re fine. Ed couldn’t make it himself?”
“No. He’s off the island at the moment, on police business.”
“Oh.”
That was all she said, but Liz Falla felt a wave of something very much like hostility from Sandra Goldstein. Not fear, and that she might have expected, given the story they had been told, but a feeling it was she, and not some distant ex-husband, who was the enemy.
“The phone’s got all the bells and whistles. DI Moretti thought you’d need them — overseas calls and suchlike. I will be billed for the phone, and DI Moretti will submit it to Miss Ferbrache, who will add it to your rent. Okay?”
“Okay. Thanks.”
If she had hoped to be asked in for a cuppa or whatever, it clearly wasn’t going to happen. Liz peered beyond Sandra Goldstein’s shoulder at the house, but there was no sign of the other two occupants, no sound of a child. There was something sinister about the little house, standing there in the midst of nowhere, rain dripping noiselessly from a downspout at the side of the building. It seemed less like a haven than a hideaway. Which was what it was also supposed to be, Liz reminded herself. Hideaways are not only for outlaws and escapees.
“You’d better go in,” she said. “You’re getting wet, standing there in the rain. So, if everything’s in order, I’ll be off then.”
The rain glistened on Sandra Goldstein’s long dark hair and dampened the sleeves of her sweater, on the front of which the Florida panther snarled menacingly into Liz Falla’s face.
“Everything’s in order.”
“Goodbye then.”
The car swerved as Liz turned around on the soggy rough grass in front of the house, sloshing Sandra Goldstein’s jeans with muddy rainwater. She swore under her breath and jumped back, glaring at Liz as though she had done it deliberately. Maybe she hadn’t been as careful as she might have been, had the lady shown any gratitude.
In her rear-view mirror she saw Sandra Goldstein still standing and watching until the police car had disappeared out of sight.
It was only later it occurred to Liz that the animosity she had sensed was connected with her answer to the question about Ed Moretti: that he was away on police business. While she was checking out Nichol Watt she’d take another look at Sandra Goldstein.
It wasn’t far to her next port of call, and she was in the right frame of mind for it. It was a relief to be out of the muddy morass of Verte Rue and on paved road again. Liz gunned the engine and cut the corner, narrowly avoiding a small van whose driver honked protestingly at this enforcer of law and order breaking the rules. It took only about ten minutes to reach the strange circular construction of Ludo Ross’s house and to turn down the short, steep lane to the open entrance to the courtyard. Within seconds she heard the barking of the two ridgebacks, who ran out to meet the car, teeth bared. She turned off the engine and waited for Ludo to appear before she got out of the car. A moment later, there he was.
“Liz Falla — what a sight for sore eyes! Benz, Mercedes, here.”
He said something else to the two dogs that she could not catch, and she remembered him doing the same thing on her first visit to the house.
Pissed off though she was with him, after her last reception it was nice to be appreciated.
“Are you here in your official capacity? Please say no.”
“No.”
“So why then are you looking at me as though this is a bad thing, instead of a good thing?”
“Look, I just had a less than wonderful conversation through the window of this car, and I am in no mood for a second one. Can you call off your hounds so I can get out?”
“I already have.”
He was laughing at her and at her tetchy response, but with such apparent delight at her arrival that she found herself laughing back at him. As she got out of the car he took her by the elbow, and she felt the current of electricity she had felt before when he touched her. Both dogs were now wagging their tails, and seeming as pleased to see her as their master. The female pushed her muzzle into Liz’s hand.
“Are they as dangerous as they look?”
“Yes. Come in and tell me why you’re here — my God, where have you been with this vehicle?”
“To the back of beyond, about five minutes from here. Did DI Moretti tell you about his sort-of aunt’s lodgers?”
“No, he didn’t. Sounds intriguing. That’d be Gwen Ferbrache, would it?”
They were in the house now and, as Ludo closed the door behind him, the dogs moved ahead of them into the living room.
“Yes. You know her?”
“Knew her before I met Ed. She introduced us, and then I went and heard him play.”
“I still haven’t done that.”
“How strange. So, if you’re not on duty, can I offer you a glass of wine?”
“I’d love a beer. Annoyance makes me thirsty.”
Ludo Ross said nothing in response. He disappeared in the direction of the kitchen, leaving Liz with the two dogs, who appeared relaxed, but who reacted slightly to her every move. They watched as she walked around the room, looking at books on the shelves, examining a small bronze sculpture of a horse, hooves pawing the air, mane flying, petrified in space.
When he came back with the beer, Liz was holding one of the books in her hands.
“Most of your library is in French.”
“I don’t know about most, but a lot, sure. It’s a language I love.”
“And the language of love.” She took her beer from him, and her fingers buzzed at the contact. Hold on, she told herself, you are angry, remember.
“I thought that was Italian.” He was laughing at her again, the lines around his eyes crinkling into deeper folds.
“DI Moretti would know more about that than I would. At least, I imagine he would, but he’s a difficult man to read, my boss. But he’d be an open book, I think,
if he knew how much you hadn’t told him — especially as he came to see you about Masterson. Didn’t he?”
“He did.”
No laugh lines now. Ludo Ross’s face was expressionless, still. He turned away from her for a moment, and she wondered if he was removing himself from the force field between them, or whether she alone felt it and he was merely composing both his features and his story. She sat down on his elegant red sofa with its glacial lines, and waited for his reply.
When he turned back again he said, in a voice as lacking in inflection and emotion, as if he were giving directions to a stranger on the road, “I suppose you know I want to go to bed with you.”
Disconcerted, thrown off course as she was intended to be, she spluttered peevishly, “That’s not fair, that’s not what I want to talk about, that’s not why I’m here.”
Ludo Ross sat down on the far end of the chaise, not touching her, letting his eyes do the touching for him. “Look. You tell me you’re not here on official business, you talk about the language of love, and then you’re knocked sideways when I say what is on my mind — well, my mind is not exactly where it’s on, but let’s not play word games. Why are you here in a tizzy because Ed Moretti came to see me about your case?”
Had she expected to be wooed? Yes, she had. His declaration was a strategy to throw her off, and it had succeeded. He was counterpunching, she recognized, as one who could play that game herself.
“Yes, I know you fancy me. And this is not an official visit because my boss doesn’t know I’m here. He was quite surprised, in fact, to find out we had met. I got the impression he thought you had just heard me sing, that’s all.”
“So you want me to brag about my conquest? Well, my semi-conquest, I suppose you’d call it. One kiss, a lot of heat, and a few sleepless nights.”
“So what? Big deal, you’re an insomniac, so you tell me. Am I supposed to feel sorry for you?”
“God no. I don’t want your pity, Liz. I want
your —”
“Knock it off, Ludo. The element of surprise has gone now.” Liz put down her glass on the blue stretch of carpet, pushing his hand away when he tried to pick it up. “Leave it. I don’t want another, and I like it there, mussing things up a bit. Why didn’t you tell him about Garth Machin and you?”
“You make that sound like a relationship. Dear girl, what the hell do you mean?”
The Ludo Ross who challenged her now was not the elegant, charming, patrician gentleman of their earlier meetings. A remote and chilly stranger looked down at her, standing very close, dominating her with his height and physical presence. The only electricity she felt now was a tremor of actual fear. But she had come this far and there was no point in stopping. She pressed on.
“That you and Garth Machin have some sort of something going — and before you make that infantile joke again, no, I don’t think it’s sexual. I think it’s —” she searched for the right word “— conspiratorial.”
Suddenly Ludo Ross was sitting beside her, and she had to stop herself pulling away against the curved back of the chaise. But his voice now was tender, caressing. “You came here one day and Machin was here, that’s true. He was in such an emotional state he couldn’t conceal it. He’s got problems that, sadly, I cannot help him with as he hoped I could. Why in the hell should you extrapolate from that some sort of conspiracy that Ed should know about, and that I have deliberately kept quiet about? Just because Machin is in the Fénions does not mean I have to inform Ed, does it?”
“Ludo, why is it that you have never mentioned your friendship with Garth Machin to my boss? He’s in the group, you go to hear them play, and yet DI Moretti doesn’t have any idea you are on close terms. It’s the silence, Ludo. It’s suspect, especially now, and while the DI’s away, I want to get it straight.”
“Especially now?” Ludo Ross bent toward her. “Why especially now?”
Without going into details, Liz told him about the body on the Amsterdams’ lawn, close to the Machins’ house. It would all be in the paper soon anyway, and some of the mainland press were already sniffing around. Ludo listened in silence, and when she had finished he bent down, picked up the empty glass, and put it on a nearby table. She thought it was as if controlling his physical environment gave him control over situations. And emotions. On her previous visit she had watched him straighten pens on a table, lining them up side by side, flick down a wayward strand of the fringe of the Kirman, slightly alter the angle of a chair.
“Would it be of any use to tell you that my — I prefer to call it acquaintanceship — with Machin has absolutely nothing to do with these killings? Garth’s personal problems have nothing to do with your enquiry.”
He stood up abruptly, startling the two ridgebacks who rose to their feet and came over to him. Three pairs of hostile eyes surveyed her, reminding Liz of Sandra Goldstein and her snarling panther. They were all concealing something, even those two damn dogs, but challenging him would be pointless, so she’d change course, like he did. She’d thrown a mobile at one, so why not throw this one a bone and see what she got in return.
“Hope you’re right, because it’s a minefield already, without adding Garth Machin. You probably saw from the Guernsey Press that we have another island celebrity involved?”
“I don’t get the local paper.” He looked her straight in the eyes with what she thought was too much apparent candour for such an insignificant comment. He was lying.
“Lady Fellowes.” Liz laughed and drew her feet up under her on the sofa. “God, Ludo, you should have seen her on the CCTV cameras, and when we interviewed her. What a dog’s dinner! All tarted up like she was about to do her act — whatever that was, back in the Dark Ages.”
“Jesus Christ, what a little bitch you are.” Ludo Ross walked away from her, turning his back. No eye contact now.
The vehemence of his outburst jolted her. She had imagined he’d become curious, ask questions, perhaps even begin to say something about what had passed between him and Machin. He took a moment to pick up his pipe from the desk by the window, and as he pulled the tobacco pouch from the pocket of his jacket he continued, the words cutting and stinging, but his tone as detached and casual as if he were discussing the weather. “Just how special do you think you are, Detective Sergeant Falla? She was a star, that woman, with lovers and worshippers enough to fill the Guernsey telephone book. You, on the other hand, are a little girl of little talent, playing in a little group on a little island. And in between you are second banana to Ed Moretti. You are not in the same league, and will never be.”
Liz Falla got to her feet, her legs shaking beneath her. What had released this verbal torrent of invective, spewed in her direction like molten lava? Her ego was sorely shaken and bruised, but this was not about rejection — besides, she hadn’t actually done that. This was something beyond her, beyond whatever it was that had happened, or not happened, between them.
“I don’t know you at all, do I?”
Stay cool, she told herself, cool as he is. Although, of course, he isn’t.
“No.” Beyond the pipe-curls of smoke, his face showed little, but there was contempt in his voice. “I still want to sleep with you. Notwithstanding.”
“Tell you what, Ludo, if you’re going to scrape the bottom of the barrel, it won’t be with this little girl. Notwithstanding. Call off your hounds, would you?”
“They won’t touch you.”
“Good. That makes three of you.”
She got up and left, seeing herself out, three sets of angry eyes burning a hole in her back.
What happened there? Her hands on the steering wheel were shaking. What in the hell happened there? Shape-shifter, she thought, that’s what happened there. He’s one thing, then the other, and then another. After years of changing face, why be surprised if he no longer knows who he is.
She knew she was being naïve. She didn’t know who he was, but Ludo Ross knew exactly who he was.
In the midst of
uncertainties, one thing was certain. She should find out more about Coralie Chancho. She must talk to Le Marchant, see if his gauche young charms had shaken anything loose. Getting Lady Fellowes to reveal the identity of Champagne Charlie had now taken on an added dimension for Detective Sergeant Liz Falla.
Chapter Nine
But first there was Melissa Machin.
During office hours, Moretti had said, and it was still early afternoon. Both her previous interviews had lasted no more than half an hour, since both her interviewees had sent her packing. She appeared to be on a roll, so she might as well add Melissa Machin to her list and be done with rejection and contempt on the same day. Liz stopped for something to eat at a small café near Saint’s Bay, then continued on to Fort George.
As she drove down the steep upper slope of Val de Terres, a gleam of sun broke through the heavy cloud over the distant bay, like a hand parting a curtain. I’ll take it as a sign, she thought, except things usually happen in threes, according to her mother. In which case, she was in the right frame of mind to take on one of Fort George’s look-down-your-nose denizens. Angrier than a wet hen. A spurned second banana of a wet hen of little talent.
The woman who opened the door of the Machins’ house to Liz Falla had very little of the haughty householder about her, and far more of the damsel in distress. She had obviously been crying, and she made little effort to conceal the fact from her visitor.
“Mrs. Machin, I’m Detective Sergeant Falla of the —”
From somewhere in the house came the sound of music, a violin playing something disjointed. At least, to her ears.
“Yes, I know. Well, not you specifically, but I recognized the police car. We’re getting used to them around here, aren’t we?” Melissa Machin gave a ragged laugh and added, “I wondered when you’d be around again.”
“I’m sorry to disturb you, but there are a few more details I’d like to ask you. Perhaps it would be better if I came in?” Liz gestured in the direction of the sequestered, shuttered mansions in their secretive gardens.
