by Jill Downie
“Ah yes, the fair lady of sorrows. But the most likely killer, or killers, are the ones the little shit warned him about. The ones who get you when your back is turned, your own.”
“The so-called housekeeper and the so-called Germans. Given he was shot with a Glock, the most likely, and now the two principal suspects are on the lam. But this is a small island, Guv, and we’ve got all available personnel out looking for them.”
Moretti drank the orange juice, finished his sandwich, and put the plate down on the oak chest he used as a coffee table. “Falla, you did the right thing, but it’s too late now. Ulbricht and Baumgarten are probably long gone, and not via the airport or by the regular ferry service.”
Liz Falla looked at him, but did not reply. She picked up the remains of his meal and took them back into the kitchen. Moretti reached into his shirt and pulled out the body pack, extracted the photographs Jan Melville had given him, and put them down on the oak chest. He watched in silence as she came back into the room, sat down, and picked them up.
“That looks like —”
“Poppa Ulbricht, don’t you think? These, I am sure, are the three people Melissa Machin overheard that day, and it is fortunate she had the good sense to stay hidden. I am going to tell you what I was told about these three, and the only other person who gets that information is Hanley.”
Liz Falla listened in silence as Moretti filled her in, then asked, “Do you think the little shit ignored his own advice, tried his hand at blackmail, then was shot by one of them?”
“Yes. Probably Ulbricht. My feeling is that Baumgarten is the point man, and watches his back, but Ulbricht is the hit man. A loose cannon, Martin Smith, and he became a liability.”
Moretti was startled by his partner’s sudden yelp, as if she were in pain. “Now I remember what was bothering me, Guv, about Melissa Machin’s account. I couldn’t put my finger on it at the time, but she said, ‘Bruiser? That’s what his shirt said, wasn’t it?’ There is no way she could have seen that from inside the house and, besides, it was getting dark. I think she went outside and she saw something. She’d been cooperative right up to the end, and then she became almost hostile. She’d been so frank it never occurred to me she might have withheld anything.”
Moretti got to his feet. The icepack slipped off unheeded into the armchair as he took out his mobile. Liz could hear the sound of a phone ringing, somewhere.
“Answer it, answer it, pick the damn thing up — Mrs. Machin? This is Ed Moretti. I’m coming right over. Do you have a spy hole in your door — yes? Keep back from the windows, but watch out for me and the detective sergeant you met a day or two ago. Open the door to no one else, not even Garth — I’ll explain when I get there.”
Moretti put his mobile away, picked up the photographs from the table, and repacked them in his moneybelt.
“To state the obvious,” he said, “Melissa Machin is in a whole lot of trouble, because we don’t know if the Germans are off the island. We’ll take her first to Hospital Lane and then, Falla, to your place. After dark.”
Liz Falla was already at the door, car keys in hand. She was smiling as she turned back to Moretti, and he remembered that her brains were matched by her coolness under fire, a metaphor he hoped would remain only a turn of phrase.
“I’m babysitting again. Right, Guv?”
“Right. And you can put those car keys away. We’ll take my Triumph and leave the police car here. Someone can collect it later.”
His partner’s smile broadened as she replied. “Brilliant. With that head injury, I’d better drive, hadn’t I?”
Melissa Machin packed a small bag as they waited, then walked between them to the Triumph. Moretti had let Falla do the talking, and she had said the right thing.
“Mrs. Machin, please come with us. For your children’s sake, please don’t delay, just come with us.”
“But, Garth —”
“Leave him a note saying you are on the mainland,” Moretti said, adding, “but don’t say where. I’ll talk to him.”
Moretti watched the window as Liz Falla went up the stairs with Melissa Machin. On that pristine, featureless landscape, whatever Garth’s wife had seen would have stood out like — a dead prizefighter. And he thought he knew what she might have seen.
“At first, I didn’t really think it was odd. They were not out of place, because they were well-dressed, and their car was in keeping with most of the cars around here.”
“What kind of car?” Moretti asked.
Melissa Machin gave a faint smile. “I couldn’t tell you what make, I’m afraid. It was black, shiny. I’m not good on cars.”
“So there were two of them?”
“Yes. They had such cheerful expressions, looked as if they were dropping in on the people next door. And they made no attempt to hide, so it never occurred to me they were dangerous. Not at first, not until I heard this popping noise. Like a cap gun, sort of, after I’d walked away from the window. Then I heard the sound of the car leaving, fast — the brakes squealed, something like that. I looked out the window and saw what looked like next door’s gardener lying on the lawn, only it wasn’t his day, and that was odd. I thought maybe he’d had a heart attack or something, so I ran out of the house to help him. Then I saw the wound and knew. Just knew.”
“That it might be something to do with what you overheard?” Liz Falla interjected. “You’d told me so much, why didn’t you tell me everything, Mrs. Machin?”
Melissa Machin shook her head. “Panic, I think. I don’t know, I really don’t. Fear of implicating Garth any further in — whatever this is all about.”
“Did you see the two men or the car?” Liz Falla asked.
“No. Just the body on the lawn.”
Maybe it was his sore head, but Ed Moretti felt irritation rising inside him. He was tired of being nice. “Is this the full story now?”
“Yes. I promise you, I saw nothing.”
Melissa Machin was shaking visibly, but Moretti felt only exasperation.
“See, the trouble is, Mrs. Machin, you have put yourself and Garth in greater danger, which could have been avoided if you had told DS Falla the truth.”
“I didn’t lie!”
“You withheld information, the two men you saw are killers, and we don’t know where they are.”
As the tears started to run down Melissa Machin’s cheeks, Liz Falla stood up and put a hand on her shoulder. “Which is why, Mrs. Machin, you are going to spend the night at my place.”
Wiping away her tears, Melissa Machin turned round in her chair, and looked up at Liz Falla. “What about Garth?” she asked. “Mightn’t they come looking for him?”
Before Liz could answer, Moretti replied. “They might, and if your husband chooses to tell me what is going on, we may be able to save him.” He stood up, pushing his chair back with unnecessary vigour. “A word with you, DS Falla.”
Outside in the corridor, Moretti took Liz by the shoulders, which surprised them both. As she looked up into his eyes, Liz remembered Moretti being compared once to someone called Dirk Bogarde. Some time she must ask him who Dirk Bogarde was. She felt his hands tighten on her shoulders, then release, as if he suddenly became aware he was touching her.
“First, before I leave here I’m going to arrange for Adèle Letourneau to be held in police custody overnight, preferably longer. That will free up an officer to be posted full-time at the Machins’. I don’t think Letourneau is of great importance in the grand scheme of things but, if she is the brains, then they made a mistake cutting her out. She may yet talk. But I could be wrong, and I’m worried she may be able to swim her way out of police custody. One of those wetsuits was — wet, remember? Second, I’ve arranged a meeting with Chief Officer Hanley. He needs to know about my Cadogan Hall meeting, and the international ramifications of this case. He is less likely to get upset if I break the rules, and less likely to blow a gasket if islanders are not involved. We’ll take the Triumph to your place, and t
hen I’ll drive it back home.”
“What about Garth Machin?”
“I’d love to set him up as bait, but for tonight I’ve told him to stay at the office, and that his wife is safe with us. One more thing —” even in the deserted corridor, Moretti lowered his voice “— I believe the Cadogan Hall mob have thrown us to the wolves. They didn’t help me in return for a few post office box numbers, but because we may bumble around and flush out these characters, and if we are killed in the process, too bad.” He held out his hand, and grinned at Liz. “You really think I’m going to leave my Triumph sitting on the Esplanade for joyriders? Come on, Falla, hand over that key.”
Reluctantly, Liz Falla took the key out of her pocket and mentally added a sports car to her wish list. As Moretti took them from her, she remembered her plan to check out Sandra Goldstein. It would have to be put off, again.
It should have been awkward, but it wasn’t. Melissa Machin was as easy and compatible as any of her woman friends, and it was that thought that led Liz Falla to another.
What woman friends? She had no close friends in the force, and many of her former school friends were no longer on the island. Two had gone into the financial sector, and they had drifted apart, largely because neither could understand how bright Liz Falla could have chosen being a bobby over being a businesswoman. And she was not big on coffee klatches, hen parties, and their modern counterparts, tweeting and texting. At least, not as a solely female undertaking. There were women on the force she liked, but her rapid rise to detective sergeant had put a space between them and her.
With whom did she share the things that were important to her? Some members of her family, maybe. Then, of course, there was her band, Jenemie, but she really only shared a love of music, and playing music, with them.
As they ate their frozen dinners, she and Melissa Machin talked about art and books, and Melissa Machin returned more than once to the impossibly difficult separation from her children, which was, apparently, something set in stone by the class into which she had married.
As they talked, Liz came to the conclusion that she only spoke at any length to whoever was in her bed, and that included Brutus. And Moretti. But that was mostly about work, and for sure not in bed. Her boyfriends were rarely that interested in talking when they shared her bed, so perhaps that was why she had been attracted to Ludo, for all his advanced years. And Moretti had put up barriers between them, barriers that had as much to do with his personality as with their professional relationship.
“The class into which you married? I’d have thought you and your husband came from the same background, Mrs. Machin.”
“Melissa, please!” Melissa Machin finished the last of her meal and put the bowl down on the table. “That was really good curry. Did you make it?”
Liz laughed. “No. And I’m Liz. The drummer in the Fénions makes them. His vindaloo is amazing, could blow up a battleship, but I thought the butter chicken best for tonight.”
“Dwight.” Melissa looked at Liz questioningly. “Are you and he —?”
“Once. Not anymore. Dwight likes to move on, and I was okay with that.”
Liz got up and took the bowls over to the sink. “So, this whole class thing. On this island you’ve got to get it right, or you tread on the wrong toes.”
“Everywhere, I think. I met Garth when he was playing sax in a Paris club. I was there studying art on a scholarship. My family are all in the arts one way or another, so money is tight. We were crazy about each other, Garth and me, but I think part of the attraction for him was my family’s bohemian attitude to life. I didn’t meet Garth the financier until after I realized I wanted to spend my life with him, have children with him. The sax player never completely went away, but the money man came out ahead of him. Money is so seductive, Liz.”
Liz thought of her wish list, and her own reluctance to sit behind a desk. “I know. I’m in the police force to put curry on the table, but I would love to play my guitar and sing for a living.”
Melissa Machin looked delighted. “You play that lovely thing? I wondered if it might be purely decorative.”
“Perish the thought!” Liz took a bottle of wine from her small wine rack near the sofa bed that would be her guest’s that night. “I don’t like drinking wine with curry, but I love it afterward. Let me guess — bohemian family — red?”
“You guessed right.” Melissa was laughing as she got down from her chair and on to the floor, to sit cross-legged on the pretty little tribal rug that Ludo had helped Liz choose in happier days. Just as he had guided her with her wine selection. “Then you’ll play and sing for me, Liz?”
“Try and stop me.”
She began with “Plaisir D’Amour,” and watched the tears drift unchecked down Melissa Machin’s face.
Plaisir d’amour ne dure qu’un instant
Chagrin d’amour dure toute la vie.
Moretti let himself out of Chief Officer Hanley’s office with a sigh of relief. The briefing had gone surprisingly well, and he was reminded of his superior officer’s best qualities, which came more readily to the fore when Hanley did not have to concern himself with island politics or island personalities. Hanley had listened, allowed him to talk, asked the occasional question, then picked up the phone. By the time he put it down again, Adèle Letourneau was in custody and on her way to Hospital Lane with PC Brouard, who was only too happy to oblige. His feet were hurting, and he was fed up with being sworn at in a language he didn’t understand, although the gist was quite clear. What’s more, the Letourneau woman came quietly, which was unexpected, an added bonus, and almost as if being in custody overnight was not that unwelcome.
Moretti unlocked the Triumph and drove out of the police car park into Hospital Lane. The throbbing of the bump on his head had now turned into a more general headache radiating in a tight band just above his ears. On an impulse he turned away from his normal route home and drove toward the harbour, to Le Grand Saracen. Maybe he would feel better if he had something to eat, and Deb Duchemin’s lasagna travelled well. It was almost as good as his mother’s. Emidio’s was busy, and he was able to get in, pick up what he wanted, and get out again without having to talk too much. His head was too sore for an exchange of pleasantries, witticisms, or customers enquiring when he was playing again downstairs.
If only, he thought. If only.
The image of a witch in black and silver floated through his mind with the music that was always there, as he headed for home. So it was not surprising he thought her a figment of his imagination when he saw her outside his house, sitting on the step, her coat folded up beneath her.
Chapter Fourteen
“What are you doing here? Is something wrong?” Moretti called out the car window, as Sandy Goldstein stood up and came toward him. She was holding a small package in her hand and she was smiling. Under the porch light her teeth shone, incredibly white.
“Waiting for you is what I am doing here, and the only thing wrong is that I am freezing.” She gave a mock shiver. She was wearing a black turtleneck sweater and black pants, but the coat on his doorstep was scarlet. “And in case you’re wondering how I found you, Gwen told me where you lived. I have a gift for you, a thank you for the phone.”
Gwen indeed. Very few called Gwen Ferbrache by her first name.
“That wasn’t necessary.”
Charming, he thought. What an impression I must be making, and why did this delectable woman appear on my doorstep when all I want to do is to crash with the help of an aspirin or two. Or three.
“Very gallant, Detective Inspector.” Sandy Goldstein was laughing.
Moretti climbed out of the Triumph, retrieved the lasagna, picked up the red coat from the step, and unlocked the door.
“Come in.”
As she walked by him into the house, the fragrance she had worn at the club drifted in after her, and he followed in its wake.
“This is a pretty place. Your parents’ originally, Gwen tells me.”
She is so at ease in her skin, he thought, watching her put down her package, walk over to look at the prints and photos on the wall.
“Yes. You have left Julia on her own? In the circumstances, I feel I must ask.”
“Yes. She is so happy and secure here, and this is from her as well. More than from me, as a matter of fact, because it is one of her watercolours. We had it framed in town.”
She sat down and gestured to Moretti to do the same, as if she were in her own place. Inside the package was a rectangular painting in a simple frame.
“Wildflowers. Julia chose the muted tones. We had no idea what your place was like, or your tastes, but Julia felt this was — well, you.”
“She was absolutely right. Thank you.”
Sandy Goldstein came over and stood beside him. “See, she identified them all on the back. Fennel, hogweed, coltsfoot — we are becoming quite experts, Ed — some reeds and a touch of yellow. Ragwort, Julia loves yellow — aah!”
With his frayed nerves, her muted shriek sounded like the harbour siren in his ear, and Moretti jumped violently.
“You’ve got a helluva bump on your head. What happened, Ed?”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time, so let’s just leave it at that.”
“Oh my God, and you come home and find me on your doorstep. Unasked for and unwanted. What timing. I’m so sorry.”
“How were you to know?” He was thinking much the same thing, only unwanted wasn’t on his list. He felt her body against his side, then her lips against his head.
“Oh, Ed, you poor baby,” she said.
How things unfolded from there he could never quite remember afterward, and he put it down to the bump on his head. Loss of memory, loss of judgement, above all, loss of control. He hated losing control, most of the time.
She had a silver stud in her navel with a diamond in it, and around the diamond was a tattooed flower that bore no resemblance to any Guernsey wildflower whatsoever, of coastline or marshland, of wasteland or watermeadow.
