by Jill Downie
Deborah Duchemin was the manager and hostess of the Grand Saracen, where Moretti played jazz piano, and in which he had a part interest. From time to time, the club ran into trouble with members of its clientele who thought it would be a fruitful drug-selling venue, and had to be dissuaded, arrested, or thrown out.
“Yup. She’s a tough biddy, that Debby. Now,” — Annette deposited the bruschetta on the table and departed — “what’s up?”
“My godmother just died in Italy. I didn’t know her that well, but she’s left me with a request in her will that’s a puzzle. I only remember meeting her on two occasions, although I think my father took me back to see his family quite soon after I was born. And yet she’s kept quiet all these years, not spoken to anyone who might have helped her, and waited until after she herself had shuffled off this mortal coil to ask for my help.”
“What does she want you to do?”
“Now that’s real bruschetta,” said Moretti, finishing a luscious mouthful. “Hold on —” he reached into his pocket and took out a piece of paper, “she wants me to find someone called Sophia Maria Catellani.”
“Sophia Maria Catellani.” Rick’s cherubic face was uncustomarily solemn.
“Does that mean anything to you?”
“Catellani means nothing to me but — I don’t know. What I mean is, Sophia Maria seems to ring some sort of bell, and yet — hold on. I’m going to make a phone call.” Rick looked across the table at Moretti. “I would have to share this with my mother. She’s in a nursing home on Mount Durand now, but her brain still functions fine. It’s her body that has let her down. That okay?”
“Fine by me.”
Moretti watched as Rick went through to his private office. He was aching for a cigarette. Instead he ordered another espresso, and exchanged a few words with Annette, who was dying of curiosity about the film people up at the manor. She was less curious about the murder than she was about whether Moretti had actually seen any of the stars, and disappointed that he had only spoken to Vittoria Salviati.
“What’s she like?”
“Beautiful.”
“I know, but what’s she like? Was she nice?”
“Yes, she was nice.”
Rick returned, and Annette scurried off to the kitchen with her scrap of insider information. Vittoria Salviati was nice.
“Did I say my mother’s brain was functioning fine? Understatement of the year. Firing on all cylinders, enough to continue to be a thorn in my side. I’ve got something.”
“She knows something?”
“Well, depends on whether you think it’s something. It may be coincidence.”
“Not sure I believe in coincidence, not in my business. Go on.”
“She says — after much hemming and hawing about what a negligent son I am, and how good a son-in-law Emidio was to his poor aged mother-in-law — that she seems to remember that if you had been a girl your name was going to be Sophia. Or Sophie. She’s not sure which, but of that much she is sure. Sophia or Sophie.”
“Well, well,” said Moretti.
As Liz Falla turned the police BMW into the courtyard of the Manoir Ste. Madeleine and found a parking space between an immaculate period Mercedes and a battered contemporary Honda, an agitated figure rushed out from among a gaggle of helmeted fascisti making their way across the courtyard. It was Gilbert Ensor. He was shouting as he approached.
“Thank Christ you’re back — where the hell have you been?”
“Having lunch, Mr. Ensor. How can we help you?”
“My wife has disappeared, and the security guards say it isn’t their business.” He was sweating profusely, his unseasonable linen jacket clinging to him.
“Disappeared? She has probably gone back to the hotel.”
“Don’t you think I’d have the sense to check that? She’s not there. We’ve had an attempt on my life and a murder — my God, you’re cool in the circumstances! If anything’s happened to her, I shall personally see you’re both hung out to dry.”
Since “keeping cool in the circumstances” appeared to be annoying the hell out of a sweating Gilbert Ensor, Moretti stifled the desire to retaliate in kind.
“Have you checked with the limousine drivers? She couldn’t have walked, and it’s unlikely she’d have taken the bus.”
“I got Bella to do that for me. She says no one has left in a limousine this morning — the only ones that returned to town were empty.”
Into Moretti’s mind drifted a vision of a donna mobile running lightly down the corridor in the manor, a humiliated young woman going out into the same corridor, the sound of someone passing, humming as she went by the door of the marchesa’s sitting room. He decided to jump to conclusions.
“I think,” he said, “she’s in good hands. Safer than here, I should think. I suggest you take a limo back to the hotel and wait for her.”
As a bewildered Gilbert Ensor turned to leave, Moretti allowed himself to add, “And stay off the patio, won’t you, sir?”
When he was out of earshot, Liz Falla looked at her senior officer. “Do you know where she is, Guv?”
“Not really. I’m going to look for Monty Lord. I want you to check whether anyone saw the Ducati leave — and whether it left with a passenger.”
“Brilliant!” said DC Falla. “Oh I hope so, Guv.”
Moretti was spared a hunt for the film producer by his appearance in the courtyard. He was coming from the direction of the stars’ trailers and he looked grim. As soon as he saw Moretti he said, “You questioned Vittoria, I hear.”
“Of course.” Moretti said no more.
“It’s all right, Detective Inspector. I knew about the little affair, but I made sure nothing was said to the marchesa. This was the last thing she needed — and not the first time such a thing had happened.”
“So Mr. Albarosa was a philanderer?”
“Yes, and a successful one. Donatella would never have told Anna, but I wanted to spare her the pain.”
“Maybe that’s why he was killed. From what I hear, Mr. Ensor is also a successful philanderer.”
“Detective Inspector Moretti — if someone is going around killing off philanderers on this film set, I’ll be lucky if I’m left with half my cast and crew.”
Moretti looked around the courtyard, which was now filling up with dozens of laughing, chattering extras dressed as peasants, contadini.
“Is there somewhere we could talk, sir? If we could get it over with today, then hopefully I won’t have to take too much of your time again.”
“My office,” said Monty Lord.
Monty Lord’s trailer office was close to the command bunker entrance by the ornamental lake. They left the path that followed the side of the manor, and walked around the grassy hillock that had grown over the concrete curve of the man-made construction beneath. A couple of mallards hastened their steps ahead of them and made for the shore of the lake, which was partly obscured at this point by a giant chestnut and some large elderberry bushes. As they walked past, Moretti could see a heavy iron grille set in a concrete wall which was almost concealed by two massive beech trees. The approach to the bunker was brick-lined, but the sides were now overgrown with ferns, brambles, ivy, and moss, giving the installation an almost bucolic appearance.
“I understand you’ll be using the command bunker during the filming of Rastrellamento, sir.” Moretti bent down and peered through the foliage.
“Yes, we intend to,” replied Monty Lord. “I’ve got the key on me, as it happens. Would you care to take a look?”
“Certainly I would. I’ve seen others, but this being on private property —”
“Sure.”
As Monty Lord led the way down the slope to the entrance, Moretti saw that the iron grille did not extend to the ground, but ran across the top of a heavy metal door. The producer pulled a keychain from his pocket, bent down, and turned the lock.
The door swung open easily, revealing a long tunnel with openings on each si
de, stretching away into the darkness. The chill of the place was immediate, the exposed skin of Moretti’s hands and face instantly damp with moisture.
“Do you have any lighting installed?” Moretti could hear his voice echoing ahead of him into the gloom.
“No. We’ll use our own lights for that, on cables, but we always keep something here by the door.”
Monty Lord bent down and picked up a powerful workman’s lamp and switched it on. The intense beam of light illuminated the curved ceiling above, which had a large badly rusted pipe running the length of it. Somewhere in the darkness a creature squeaked and scuttled.
“Mice?”
“Bats, I think. I’ve seen them in here before. There’s a humongous ventilation shaft farther into the chamber, and an escape shaft also. It goes deeper the farther we go away from the entrance here. We can go on in, but there’s not really much to see.” Monty Lord swung the light around, lighting up the entrances along the passage. Moretti felt a drop of moisture on his head. His heart thumped unpleasantly in his chest as he thought about his father.
“Even with a ventilation shaft, you’ll need to pump in air, won’t you, if you work at any distance from the door?”
“Yes. We have that set up. Fortunately, even on your small island, Detective Inspector, you now have air-conditioning experts, and we’ve been able to arrange that locally.”
Moretti looked around at the encircling walls, the brickwork falling away in places from the granite, the broken rusting brackets holding the overhead pipe.
“One thing I don’t understand, sir — this place is a mess. How are you going to film as if it were a fully operating command post?”
“Aha!”
Monty Lord patted Moretti’s arm and shone the flashlight on the entrance closest to them on the right of the passage.
“Look in there, Detective Inspector.”
The stones beneath his feet were slimy with some growth or other, and Moretti slipped as he walked forward.
“Careful — there now. Great, huh?”
“A surprise, yes.”
The chamber had been set up as some sort of observation post or lookout. Moretti saw whitewashed walls, a grey painted cement floor, tables, chairs, wall maps. Bulky wireless equipment and headsets took up most of the central table, and a couple of uniform jackets hung on pegs on the walls. Some black-and-white photographs and a pin-up on the walls above a bunk bed were already showing signs of moisture damage.
“The set designer’ll bring down most of the decorative vintage shit when we need it, but the damp down here is a killer. And of course we’ll use the passages as they are. We need them for one or two scenes, also the escape shaft. Seen enough?”
“Yes. Terrible place.”
The sun outside felt delicious to Moretti. He ran his hand over his face, and his skin felt clammy, as if he had sweated and cooled.
“You suffer from claustrophobia, Detective Inspector?” Monty Lord locked the gate and put his key chain back in his pocket.
“No. But my father helped build places like these, sir.”
“So that’s how an Italian ended up on Guernsey. The end of the war that would be, I guess. Was he a partisan?”
“Yes. He was betrayed by local police when the Germans arrived in his village.”
“Yet he came back here?”
“To marry my mother.”
“The power of love, Detective Inspector.”
Monty Lord looked at Moretti, who had the impression that the film producer’s thoughts at that moment were many miles away.
Monty Lord’s trailer was the workplace of a fastidious and meticulous man. There were three or four filing cabinets with detailed labelling, a metal safe, charts and plans of various kinds on the walls. The huge aluminum desktop was uncluttered, with neat piles of papers — and no ashtrays. Moretti presumed the microwave and fridge were standard fixtures but, apart from a stereo unit, there were no personal belongings, no pictures or paintings, no rugs or family photographs. The trailer was a place of business — a place for everything and everything in its place.
When they came into the trailer, a woman was standing by one of the filing cabinets, putting away some papers. She turned to face them, smiling at Monty Lord. She looked to be somewhere in her forties, and she was tiny, with the narrowest rib cage Moretti had ever seen. She was wearing a black business suit that emphasized her extreme slenderness, and a pair of heavy-framed glasses almost too large for her narrow face.
“This is Bella, my personal assistant, who is also acting as interpreter for the movie. Thanks, Bella, but I’ll have to ask you to leave us for a while.”
Bella Alfieri closed the drawer of the filing cabinet and smiled again at the producer. “Of course, Monty. I’ll be in the other trailer when you want me.”
She crossed to the door, and Moretti heard her heels clacking down the steps outside.
Monty Lord indicated a chair on the other side of the desk, and sat down himself.
“You speak Italian very well, sir,” said Moretti, taking his seat. “How did you learn the language?”
Monty Lord tipped back his chair and laughed. “Because I’ve made what seems like hundreds of movies in Italy — probably dozens, anyway. I’ve spent much of the past ten or fifteen years there, making my living. Spaghetti westerns, that’s what I made, by the reelful. I’ll never sneer at them, because they gave me the money and the connections to make movies like this one — and they made me a great deal of money. Most of them feature someone who has since become a major Hollywood star, and at one time I owned a piece of him. Now he and I make the movies we always wanted to make.”
The name Monty Lord dropped was major enough to raise Moretti’s eyebrows and make him whistle in surprise.
“That, presumably, is why Rastrellamento appealed to you. But, with your connections, why take the trouble to bring cast and crew over here — let alone all that heavy equipment you need?”
“Costs, Detective Inspector. We could have rented a fabulous Medici palazzo near Florence, but at a price that would make your blood run cold. So when my major investor suggested using the family’s Guernsey property at a rock-bottom price, I jumped at it. The other determining factor was the availability of authentic war sites, without having to build them. The room in the bunker is just one of our planned locations. We are going to use some of the coastal fortifications as well.”
“So you haven’t financed the whole enterprise yourself?”
“No. I have my major investor in Italy, and I have also set up another branch of my company — Epicure Films Italia. This is quite normal for movie work.”
“I see. Who is your major investor?”
“The marchesa’s husband and his company — Vannoni Vigneti e Boschetti.”
“I somehow thought the marchesa was a widow.” Moretti was taken by surprise.
Opposite him, Monty Lord rubbed a hand vigorously over his shining, shaved dome. “For all intents and purposes, she is.”
“The marchese is absorbed in the work of the company, you mean?”
“They live apart, Detective Inspector. He rarely if ever comes here. He has an apartment in Florence and runs the business from there.”
“Does anyone in the family have contact with him?”
“I think Anna sees the most of her father. As a matter of fact, I met Paolo Vannoni before I met Donatella, at some government shindig or other. It was he who suggested using the Guernsey property.”
“How did the marchesa feel about that, I wonder?”
“Like shit at first. Then we met and — got along.”
Apart from a slight pause it was said simply, without any discernible subtext. For Moretti, who always listened for subtexts and hidden messages, it was a curiously empty remark, devoid of emotion. Either Monty Lord was brilliant at concealing emotions, or there was indeed nothing to conceal.
“It’s a while since I read Rastrellamento, but I remember the action being quite scattered. Apa
rt from the war sites, this film seems to be centred on the manor. Am I right?”
“Yes. The scenes in the book are far more diverse. We wanted to create a much more enclosed and claustrophobic feeling in the movie, so we focused in on the aristocratic Cavalli family in the novel, and spun the rest of the action around them.”
“You say ‘we.’ I presume you mean yourself and Mario Bianchi? Is it usual for a producer like yourself to have that kind of input?”
“It varies. Some are just the money men, and some like to have creative control. Like me.”
“Doesn’t this make for problems — with your director, I mean?”
“Not in this case. Mario is brilliant, but he’s also very unsure of himself in some ways. Often I simply reinforce what he has already decided — take the blame, you might say, and tell Gilbert. To the producer falls a number of unpleasant tasks, and that for sure is one of them.” Monty Lord gave a grim laugh.
“Why the casting changes? Is this normal?”
“Perfectly, particularly if there are changes to the script. Obviously, we pay the original actor, if he or she has a signed contract. You may have noticed we haven’t changed any of our leads — it would cost us a fortune.”
“You say you were in Rome — we will, of course, be confirming that. Where were you when Mr. Albarosa was killed?”
“Still in Italy, I think, or up in the air. Depends exactly when he was killed, but I got back to Guernsey very early this morning, as soon as your airport opened up. I am a qualified pilot and was on my own, but you could check that with the airport.”
“How long were you off the island? Were you here when the incident occurred with Mr. Ensor?”
“Unfortunately, yes, given our working relationship. I was only in Italy for just over twenty-four hours — possibly thirty-six.”
“And where, precisely, were you?”
“Here.” Monty Lord jabbed his finger downwards toward his chair. “Bella could confirm that. She was here with me taking notes that evening. I worked on my own for a while, and then called her back in to complete a couple of letters.”
Moretti put his notepad away. He often wondered what useful purpose it served. “Thank you, sir. We’ll check that with Ms. —?”
