Blood Will Out

by Jill Downie

  “Tanya, Tanya.”

  Rory Gastineau crouched by his wife’s side, taking her in his arms. Marla was holding on to Charles Priestley as if he might float away at any time, and her mother was holding on to her daughter as if she might float away with him. Elodie took advantage of the chaos to pull out her phone. Ed Moretti answered immediately.

  “Early,” he said. “You had enough?”

  “Yes. Can you come?”

  “I’ll be there. Change of plans for me, but I’ll explain when I see you.”

  As she put her mobile away, Elodie saw Aaron Gaskell watching her and then coming towards her. They had been momentarily separated by the onrush of Island Players to get a better look at the action. But he was stopped by Rory getting to his feet, his wife in his arms. He stood there, like Lear with Cordelia, anger and anxiety on his face.

  “I’m taking her home,” he said. Then he added, “She’s pregnant. Tanya’s pregnant.”

  Moretti looked at Elodie as she got into the Triumph.

  “Something happened,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “And for me. I’ve got to go somewhere, and I’ll have to drop you at home and leave you. Okay?”

  “Not okay. I’ll go with you and sit quietly in the car, but I’m not going home, Ed. Not on my own.”

  What the hell, he thought. I’ve found my little lamb lost in the wood, so I might as well be hung. For a sheep as a lamb.

  “Okay,” he said.

  Part Three

  The Closing

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  “Where are we going?”

  “You first. What happened?”

  Moretti listened. There was tension in Elodie’s voice, but there was precision in her description of the events of the evening, a lack of emotional embroidery and personal comment, much as if she were writing an official report, a reflection perhaps of skills she used in her professional capacity.

  “That,” she concluded, “is how I saw things.” She turned and looked out of the car window into the darkness and up at the night sky. Against the light of a three-quarters moon the clouds were scudding overhead, and they seemed to be the only car on the road. “Where are we going?”

  “To Pleinmont. Someone I’ve been looking for has turned up, and she could take off again.”

  “She?”

  “Yes.” He didn’t elaborate, but asked, “How did you feel about what happened?”

  “Put an interpretation on it, you mean? Well, it was fascinating to see how people reacted to the news of the pregnancy. All the young women — and there were a lot of them — oohed and aahed and clapped, followed by a few others, like Lana Lorrimer, then some of the men. There was the odd, predictable shout of ‘Good for you, Rory,’ that kind of male chest-thumping. Jim Landers rustled up a chair for Rory and he sat down, still holding Tanya. Marla and Marie and Charles Priestley were all clinging to each other, and —”

  “Hold on —” Moretti interrupted her. “How did Priestley look? Angry? Defiant? Shocked?”

  “Scared,” said Elodie. “That’s what struck me. He looked frightened, and I thought he seemed to be looking at someone in the crowd. I know it wasn’t me, or Aaron Gaskell, who was near me. I can’t be more precise than that, I’m afraid. Then you phoned to say you’d arrived, and I left.”

  “Last impressions?”

  “Of how quickly people get over things. Rory and Tanya went into the house, and the party went on.”

  “Did anyone leave, apart from you?

  “Yes. Aaron Gaskell. But I think his motivation had more to do with me. I think he was about to offer me a lift home and saw you.”

  “Sorry,” said Moretti.

  “Don’t be.”

  They had arrived.

  Meg the Gypsy lay curled up on her sofa, holding on to Darcy. She was swathed in a voluminous shawl, with only her mass of wiry grey hair visible above a face gaunt with fatigue. She looked up at Moretti and said, “Vera’s son.” Beside her, Darcy growled, deep in his throat, but this time he didn’t bare his teeth. Maud Cole sat on a rug beside the sofa, her hand on Darcy’s collar.

  “She came home about an hour ago. Darcy heard her. She’s had something to eat and drink, but she’s very tired.”

  “She must be.” Moretti came slowly over towards the two women and the dog. “My constable says even Billie didn’t know where she was, and she must be ‘living rough,’ as he put it.”

  Moretti crouched down beside Maud Cole. “Hello, Meg. Yes, I’m Vera’s son, Eduardo. You remember her.”

  “I remember her. She was kind to me.”

  “She liked you.” Gently now, he thought. The most important thing is she’s safe, and Maud Cole may be able to get more out of her than I can. “Where have you been, Meg? Everyone’s been worried about you.”

  “Around and about. This is Darcy.” She stroked Darcy’s ear and he closed his eyes.

  “Yes. Darcy and I have met. Do you remember the man with the sore hand? He says to thank you, because his hand is now all better.”

  “Of course it is.” She seemed unfazed by Moretti’s question, so he decided to press on a little further.

  “Someone else hurt him, hurt his hand. You called him ‘the other one.’ Do you remember who the other one was, Meg?”

  She didn’t reply immediately, then she said, “I know. But he doesn’t know I know. Gus used to tell me, ‘Can you keep a secret?’ and I used to say, ‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’”

  She sat up on the sofa, dislodging Darcy’s head from her legs, and crossed her heart.

  Hope to die.

  Maud Cole and Moretti looked at each other, and Moretti knew there was no point in going on. Not even the son of Vera Domaille would be able to get her break her oath of silence to Gus Dorey.

  “Darcy and I will keep an eye on her, don’t worry — there’s someone in your car, looking through the window.”

  “Yes. She is at risk, just like Meg, until I can find out who ‘the other one’ is. Meg may tell you, Miss Cole.”

  In the darkness of the courtyard, Moretti heard Maud Cole sigh.

  “I think she would rather go to her grave than betray Gus Dorey.”

  “Except —” Moretti unlocked the Triumph, and turned back to Maud Cole, who was now waving at Elodie. She smiled at Moretti, but said nothing more. “Gus the hermit went to his grave because of ‘the other one.’ You might persuade her of that, Miss Cole.”

  “I’ll try. Goodnight, and say hello to Elodie for me.”

  “You know Miss Cole? I think she now thinks we’re an item.”

  “Heavens. I only know her because of her beautiful work. I bought a shawl from her at a show in the old market — when it was still the old market. Les Halles. Such a shame — the disappearance of the market, I mean. We had a long talk about — oh, various things. The woman you are worried about is the one who lives on the property, isn’t she. Meg.”

  “Yes. Do you know her?”

  “No. I just know of her. One of the things we talked about, Maud Cole and I, was the pleasure of living alone. She mentioned her neighbour. Three solitudes, she called us.”

  Elodie turned and looked at him as he started the engine, and Moretti wondered if she was thinking what he was thinking. Not three solitudes. Four. But what she said was, “Could we stop and look at the sea for a moment? I don’t usually have a male escort, and it’s not something I often do on my own, and certainly not now.”

  As Moretti smiled back at her, he felt a very slight tremor shiver through him that did not come from the engine of the Triumph. Later he would remember it, and marvel at the power of matter over mind, desire over reason, the moment at which he should have said, “No.” Perhaps he had felt protected by Elodie Ashton’s own cloistered nature.

  So he said, “Yes. Why not.”

  It only took about a minute or two to drive to the sea wall at Portelet Harbour, and park the Triumph in the deserted space where the buses turned. Behind them, the
Imperial Hotel stood elevated on its rise of land, still glowing with light like a beacon over the water, as it had done for over a century. As they got out of the car, the spray from the sea splashed their faces, and Elodie gasped and shivered, zipping her denim jacket over her shirt.

  “Tide’s up and you’re not dressed for this,” Moretti called out, buttoning up his own, heavier jacket.

  “Just for a moment.”

  She moved away from him and went to lean over the low wall, looking in the direction of Rocquaine Bay, stretching to the north.

  “Look at the moon on the water.” The reflection disappeared almost immediately as a cloud covered its face. Moretti joined her, leaning against the parapet, the spray soaking them both. Suddenly, the clouds cleared and the luminosity returned to the water.

  “Up there,” she said, pointing towards the north and raising her voice above wind and wave, “the witches lived, up at L’Erée. A colony of them, flying out on their brooms to scare the country folk, so they say.”

  “So they say — any of your relatives among them?”

  “I like to think so.”

  She turned and laughed at him, as a gust of wind blew her now soaking-wet hair across her face and into his eyes, temporarily blinding him. She staggered with the force of the gust and he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her, her body jolting against his as he did so, dislodging a small, battered rose from the buttonhole of her jacket.

  For a moment he felt her resist, and then she didn’t.

  As he lay sleepless overnight, Moretti settled on a name for the investigation, for the chief officer’s benefit. Operation Vampire-Slayer. Op VS for short. It sounded like a video game. In an effort to refocus his attention, Moretti was writing it up on the board in the incident room as Falla walked in the door with Al Brown, the two of them laughing together about something that had happened the night before, something to do with Lonnie and the Latvian girl.

  Moretti interrupted their merry mood with a curt remark about private conversations, at which Al looked startled, and Falla mutinous. Bernie Mauger was already there and, as Moretti waited for the rest of his hastily assembled team, he had time to think about why he had jumped all over them. He came to no useful conclusion before the arrival of Rick Le Marchant and Bob McMullin, and turned his attention to the business at hand.

  “Falla, Al, Bob, Bernie, Rick, you are what Al and the Met calls an MI Team and I am your Action Manager. It’ll keep the chief officer happy.” Al smiled, guardedly. “We may need to add Perkins, but I’m hoping to keep it to the six of us. And to the one Guernsey Press reporter I spoke to yesterday, who was asking questions about hospital gossip. I am supposedly keeping him in the loop as the price for his silence — for now. I’ll just go over last night’s events.”

  As Moretti described in detail Elodie’s account of Tanya’s hysterical outburst and updated the team on the reappearance of Meg the Gypsy, leaving his companion out of the account, he watched Falla’s expressive eyebrows do their familiar disappearing trick beneath the jagged line of her bangs. Then he turned to Bob McMullin.

  “Okay, Bob. Have you anything to add to Ms. Ashton’s account?”

  Bob shrugged his shoulders, and took a notebook out of his pocket. “Not really, but I wrote everything down as soon as I got home.”

  Bob’s account differed little from Elodie’s, apart from the conversation he was having with Charles Priestley before Tanya’s outburst, which was apparently all about music.

  “Music?”

  “Yes. Groups we like, that kind of thing. Nothing else. They’d started playing some sort of antediluvian music, which we both hate.”

  “Antediluvian as in — ?”

  “Rolling Stones, that era. Seriously retro stuff.”

  Feeling seriously retro himself, Moretti turned to Bernie Mauger.

  “Bernie, tell the team what you told me before everyone got here. Tell us about Hugo Shawcross.”

  Bernie surveyed the room with the air of someone who has struck the motherlode.

  “Hugo Shawcross doesn’t have a police record, which was why we didn’t find him on the NPC, but he does have a record on the privately kept files of one of the top security companies in the U.K. They handled a complaint about his involvement with the underage daughter of Sir Henry Arnold.”

  “The politician?” asked Moretti.

  “Yes. Member of the Cabinet. They put a tail on Shawcross, and from what I can read between the lines, he was caught in the act, as you might say, and force was used to — dissuade him. That was the word used in the report.”

  “Why didn’t the police handle this? Why a private security firm?”

  Bernie Mauger nodded in agreement at Falla’s question.

  “That’s what I wondered. Looks like Sir Henry was more bothered about his own reputation being dragged through the mud by the goings-on than about his daughter. Seems there were some kinky stuff involved that the tabloids would have jumped on, according to the report.”

  “Kinky things?”

  “Yes. Black masses and such.”

  “Wow.” Rick Le Marchant’s eyes shone. “How did you get access to this info, Bernie?”

  Bernie Mauger looked uneasy, and Moretti moved swiftly on.

  “We have now interviewed the principle players in this melodrama, with the exception of Charles Priestley. Al, you and I are going to do that and, while we’re doing that, I want you, Falla, to see if you can get anything out of Tanya Gastineau. Clearly, she thinks Charles Priestley is her phone tormentor, and maybe she’s now scared enough to talk to you.”

  “Right, Guv.”

  Moretti looked at Falla for signs of either hostility or goodwill, but saw neither. He turned to Bob McMullin and Rick Le Marchant.

  “The two of you are to pay a visit to Roddy, Tanya Gastineau’s groomsman. Horseperson,” he added, when he saw mystification on the two faces opposite him. “You’ll find all we know about him in Falla’s notes, which is very little. Say that we are just doing a background check on the people connected with the Gastineau family. No need to be any more specific than that. And Bob, no mention of last night’s episode and nothing about your connection with the Island Players. It’s unlikely he knows, yet.”

  Bob McMullin nodded in agreement.

  “Do you think, Guv, that Hugo’s past has come back to haunt him?” Al spoke tentatively, testing the waters.

  “Looks like it, doesn’t it?” Moretti replied, smiling, and the tension in the room eased.

  “But that,” he added, “is exactly what we are supposed to think. And I don’t.”

  The six people in the incident room looked at him for further enlightenment, but, instead, Moretti moved away from the blackboard, with its graphic images, the backstory to a life and a death, now confirmed a murder, and the Op VS Team started to disperse. All except Al, who was waiting for Moretti, and Falla.

  “Guv, can I have a word?”

  Al Brown picked up his jacket and followed the rest of the team out of the room.

  Moretti waited. He didn’t know what he was expecting to hear, but Falla’s question took him by surprise.

  “Guv, are you dissatisfied with my work on this case?”

  “Why would you think that?” was all he could find to say, and “No” seemed an adequate enough reply.

  “That’s good to know.” She was giving him one of those looks from her dark, expressive eyes that he found totally unfathomable. Then she added, “And that’s all I need to know. My personal life and your personal life are off-limits, right?”

  It was said as a statement, not a question.

  “Right.”

  She slung her bag over her shoulder, and added, “Only, sometimes it’s easier said than done.”

  Moretti felt no need to answer, because he couldn’t have agreed more — and that he had just proved by his own childish response to their laughter.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Liz Falla was glad Moretti was not with her
in the police car, or she would have found herself doing either good cop or bad cop. The good cop would have asked leading questions like, “So Elodie called you when the fight broke out? You took her with you to question Meg? Then you took her back home so she wasn’t on her own?” The bad cop would have lost control, blown a gasket with such remarks as, “Elodie isn’t one of your one-night stands. Elodie has been hurt in the past.” Or even, “If you hurt Elodie, you’ll have me to deal with.” As if she was her godmother’s mum.

  Both cops would have been disastrous.

  She was greeted at the Gastineau front door by a member of the household she had not seen before, but if she had thought about it, must have known existed. A servant. No way Tanya and Rory did the dusting. She was a solidly built middle-aged woman, wearing an overall and carrying a small dog in her arms that looked like a terrier of some sort. Certainly, it didn’t seem to have been chosen as a guard dog, because it was delighted to see Liz, its whole body almost wriggling free of its minder.

  “Yes?”

  The tone was unfriendly, as the household help struggled to hold on.

  Liz held out her police badge, decided to give no explanations, but to sound as if she was expected.

  “DS Falla, here to interview Mrs. Gastineau.”

  “I wasn’t told about this.”

  From the resigned expression on the woman’s bleak face that gave the impression of being carved out of island granite, this was not the first time.

  “Oh.” Liz looked at her watch, tutted, then waited.

  “You’d better come in. I can’t hold this animal much longer.”

  Liz crossed the threshold and helpfully closed the door behind her.

  “That’s quite an armful you’ve got there. I don’t remember seeing him before, or you, Mrs. —?”

  “Livingstone. I’m the housekeeper. It’s a she, and they just got it. Must have been my day off when you came before. I’ll just shut her in the cloakroom and see you through to Mrs. Gastineau. She piddles — the dog, I mean — and she might as well make it the cloakroom as anywhere else. Just a minute.”