Daggers and Men's Smiles (19 page)

“Or her victim,” said Moretti. “It could have been a woman — a woman he knew from the sound of it.”

“It doesn't rule out too many people, because Albarosa was tall. What now, Guv?”

“Home, Falla. No need to go back to the station. We'll drop off at your place first and I'll take the car on home. Do you live with your parents?”

“That would cramp my style, Guv,” said Liz Falla cheerily, putting on the headlights and heading out of the courtyard. “I've got a flat out at La Salerie, on St. George's Esplanade by the old harbour. Used to share it with a feller, but I ditched him and kept the flat.”

His partner's unself-conscious insouciance about her love life was light years away from the
sturm und drang
Moretti had gone through with Valerie. Maybe it was a generational thing — she certainly made him feel like Methuselah.

“Nice pub out there — watch out.”

A dog appeared in the headlights, his eyes glowing red.

“Ooh, very
Hound of the Baskervilles
,” said Liz Falla, hitting the brakes. “And there's his handler.”

A uniformed figure emerged from the shadows, and Moretti rolled the window down and identified himself. The man called the dog to heel and waved them on. In the wing mirror, Moretti saw him watching them until they were out of sight.

Instead of heading out to the coast and taking Val des Terres back onto the Esplanade skirting the harbour, they came back into St. Peter Port by La Charotterie and Le Bordage, down the steep slope of Fountain Street, with the town church on their left. As they turned the corner onto the North Esplanade, Moretti said, idly, his thoughts elsewhere, “You brought us back in along La Valée de Misère, Falla. The Vale of Suffering.”

His wandering mind snapped briskly back into the present as, beside him, his partner shuddered violently.

“Don't say that.” Her voice was ragged, and she sounded angry.

“I'm sorry.” Surprised, Moretti turned to look at her, but all he could see was her profile against the window of the car, the lights along the harbour wall flashing as they passed. “This was a nasty part of the town, but it was a long time ago, Falla. Four hundred years or more. Is that what's bothering you?”

“Yes, Guv. Sorry I spoke to you like that. Blame my grandmother, Guv, and her stories.”

“Did she give you nightmares when you were a child?”

“Yes. More than that, she says we are descended from the Becquet family — you know the ones.”

“Becquet? Weren't a few of them executed in the sixteenth century as witches?”

“More than a few. The family died out, but my grandmother insists that's who we are. My dad says there's no proof whatsoever, and she just likes to dramatize everything.”

“Like your uncle Vern.”

“Right.” At least he had made her laugh. “Why anyone would want to claim that lot as ancestors beats me.”

“Perhaps she needs them for some reason.”

“Perhaps. Here we are.”

Liz Falla brought the car to a halt alongside the sea wall on St. George's Esplanade. Moretti opened the car door and was assailed by the pungent smell of salt and seaweed from the bay beyond. The moon was almost full and he could just see on the horizon the dark humps of the islands of Herm and Jethou. He got out, walked across the pavement, and leaned over the sea wall. The tide was on its way out, leaving behind rock pools edged with acorn barnacles, dog whelk, and coralweed, quivering with the hidden lives of lugworm and shore crabs, long strands of thongweed floating in them like hair. He heard Liz Falla shut the door of the car, then the click of her heels as she walked around to join him.

“I live just across the road,” she said. “I like it here. It's not spectacular, or postcard-pretty, mind you, but that's what I like. It looks, feels, and smells real.”

“It's pleasant,” Moretti agreed. “Why did you want to be in the police, Falla?”

“Me?” She sounded surprised at the question. “I didn't want to sit at a desk in Lloyds Bank or the Crédit Suisse. I needed excitement, but I wanted to find my excitement in the here and now, not in claptrap about four-hundred-year-old satanists.” She shivered, but this time it was with mock fear. “How about you, Guv?”

How to encapsulate in a few words, as she had done, the twisting path that had brought him to Hospital Lane? That would mean disclosure, exposure, confidences. His fault, he had asked the first question.

“Much the same reason as you. I'm not a desk person.”

She must have sensed his withdrawal, because she immediately turned away from him.

“Goodnight, Guv. The keys are in the car.”

Moretti watched her run lightly across the road and waited until she had unlocked the door of one of the terraced houses that curved along St. George's Esplanade. In the night silence he could hear the clack of the door closing, shutting off the light in the passage beyond.

By the time Sydney woke up, it was late afternoon. Much of her hangover had dissipated, but she was incredibly thirsty. She pulled on her kimono and padded on bare feet to the adjoining bathroom to splash her face with cold water, then returned to the bedroom. There was no sign of Gil, and she wondered if he was on the patio.

Surely not
, she thought. But she had seen little of him since the murder of Toni Albarosa, so maybe he had got over his fear and returned there. The very fact he had been advised not to do that would have been spur enough.

In the bedroom, she removed a jug of ice water from the fridge, poured herself a glass, and drank it. Refilling the glass, she took herself through to the sitting room. There was no sign of Gil there.

“Gil?”

No answer. Sydney shivered, the glass frigid against her fingers. Across the stretch of Turkoman carpet on which they had last made love she saw the closed doors to the patio, and just above the backrest of one of the chaise lounges she could see the top of Gil's head, tipped to one side, motionless.

“Gil!” she called again.

There was no response. A chill of terror struck her, turning her stomach to ice. Dropping the glass on to the coffee table, Sydney ran to the door and threw it open.

“Gil!”

She flew across the patio and around the chair to face whatever was waiting there.

“Jesus Christ, woman! You scared the fucking daylights out of me.”

Puffy-faced with sleep, her husband looked up at her. The striations left by the marchesa's nails were only just beginning to fade.

Sydney threw her arms around him. “I thought you were —”

“I'm not,” he interrupted her. “Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Don't say that.” Overcome with relief, Sydney rested her face against his. “I was scared. What in the hell are you doing out here, anyway?”

“Trying to sleep before I was so rudely interrupted. It was stuffy inside, and I couldn't work out how to unlatch the damn windows.” A lifetime of being picked up after and waited on had left Gil hopeless at many of the simpler technical manoeuvres that cropped up in everyday life.

“You should have come and woken me.”

“Be it far from me to disturb your post-coital slumbers. Besides, you'd locked the bedroom door.”

Sydney looked at her husband's bloated, scratched face with concern. The Gil she was familiar with would have screamed and banged on the door, battering it down if necessary.

“What's happened?” she asked. “Have you been out here all afternoon?”

“That I have not, and that's why I'm shagged out. I got a limo and went out to the manor, to see Mario.”

“About the changes?”

“Right. I didn't have the chance to tell you about Monty's visit — just before you returned from your night of debauchery it was.”

“It wasn't — I didn't —”

“Belt up, baby. I've got bigger problems than whether you had it off with superwoman and supercop.”

The ice in Sydney's stomach felt the same as the minute before, melting the tenderness of her relief at finding him alive, but this time it was the old familiar chill of a relationship on the rocks.

“Baby'll belt up with pleasure on that subject. What problems?”

The chaise tipped perilously to one side as Gil swung his feet down. “Problems as to what the hell is going on.”

“Going on with what? Surely it's just a question of a superstar director with a big head and big ideas? Maybe we should go home and let them get on with it — you know what it's like for writers on a film set.”

“No.”

There was something about her husband's unaccustomed gravity that made Sydney realize Gil was not off on one of his ego trips. “Mario seems — well, scared. Maybe he's back on the hard stuff again, I don't know. I had a hell of a time getting him on his own, then I cornered him in his trailer. He went all spiritual on me, told me he was being
guided
into the decisions he was making — went on about higher forces and trusting to other voices. It was like talking to a bloody yogi. When I tried my usual yelling and browbeating approach, he broke down, and next thing I know Monty's sidekick, Piero Bonini, comes rushing in and orders me off the set. But I'm not leaving it there, and I think I've finally made that clear.
Something
is going on.”

“You're paranoid, honey. What could be going on? What happened — out here — is making you imagine things.”

A cool wind was blowing in off the cliffs, and Sydney trembled in her flimsy wrap.

“Come inside, Gil. You shouldn't be sitting out here.”

“Don't patronize me, Syd. I'm right, I know I am. Besides, I gotta reason to hang about a bit longer, and I ain't talkin' script changes now.”

He was leering at her, but she knew the lechery in his eyes was not for her.

“Christ, I'm dying for a cigarette and a drink. Be a good little wifey, will you, and pour me a Scotch?”

He followed her inside, fumbling in his pocket for his cigarettes, humming to himself.
All, or nothing at all.
A spectacularly inappropriate choice
, she thought, pouring a large Scotch into a large glass.

“I'm going back to bed,” she said.

“I'll be going out again.”

“I'd figured that out,” Sydney said. “Research.”

“Clever kitten. Don't you want to know who's my research assistant?”

“No.”

“Pity. We could make it a threesome. Her idea — what a vixen! Vroom vroom! She likes you, sweetie-pie.”

Sydney poured herself another glass of water, threw it in his face, and went back to the bedroom.

It was dawn when she woke and he still was not back. Sydney went across to the bedroom door and locked it. Then she went back to bed and cried herself back to sleep, swearing as she did so that she would never, ever humiliate herself that way again. She woke up again at eight o'clock, phoned room service, and ordered breakfast.

“Coffee, grapefruit, whole wheat toast. For one.”

At nine o'clock, she began to worry.

Gil had stayed out on the tiles longer than this, many times, but ever since she had once — out of spite — reported him missing in Los Angeles and the press had got hold of it, he had taken to calling her and telling her his whereabouts. Gil had never been averse to a little gloating, anyway, and besides, he was not one for hanging around the morning after. Maybe, under the circumstances, she should be letting someone know.

Sydney got showered and dressed, then took a man's blue shirt out of the bedroom dresser. From the top pocket she pulled out a scrap of paper and dialed the number on it.

“Moretti.”

The live voice startled her. “I thought I'd get an answering machine.”

“Is that Ms. Tremaine?” It was said with incredulity.

“Yes. I took your number off your phone when I was —”

“I'm writing up my report before going to the station. That's how you got me. What is it?”

“It's Gil. He's been out all night. I didn't want it spread around the police station and the island, so I thought I'd —”

“Is this unusual, Ms. Tremaine?” She heard the tentative note in his voice.

“Ever since I reported him missing once and we had every tabloid in the States on our doorstep, he's let me know he's okay. It's unusual.”

“I'll be right over. Don't open your door to anyone until I get there — it'll take me about fifteen minutes.”

She heard him hang up the phone. Twenty minutes later he was with her, and Sydney was astonished at the wave of relief and pleasure she felt on seeing him.

“Sorry. It took me a little longer than I thought. My partner has gone out to the manor to see if anyone there knows anything, or has seen your husband.”

Moretti came into the suite and closed the door. “Let's sit down, Ms. Tremaine, and go over what happened before your husband left you last night.”

Carefully he took Sydney through the events of the evening. When she got to Gil's final remarks to her, she faltered, close to tears. Moretti leaned forward and took her by the hands. It was a gesture that surprised him quite as much as her.

“Now, Ms. Tremaine, I've got to get this straight. First, your husband reports
you
missing, and I find you at the Grand Saracen with Giulia Vannoni. Then you report
him
missing, and if it weren't for the fact this is a murder inquiry, I might wonder if this isn't a game you both play. Is it? You played games, didn't you?”

“Yes. Gil liked games. He needed them, he said, for his books. Research, he called them. When I said he needed them to cure his whisky droop, it was the only time he hit me.”

She removed a hand from Moretti's and put it up to her face, remembering.

“Was it generally known that he — liked games?” Moretti asked.

“Oh, yes. That was part of it for Gil. Being the centre of attention, the rest of the world as voyeur.”

“Who do you think he's with? Have you any idea?”

“That's just it — I think he may have taken his revenge by — oh God, I can't believe she'd do it, but then, what do I know about her?”

“Are you saying,” said Moretti, “that your husband told you he was going to see Giulia Vannoni?”

“Not in so many words.” With difficulty, Sydney repeated her last conversation with Gilbert Ensor. Then she wept against his shoulder, and Moretti put his arms around her, and tried not to think about Chief Officer Hanley.

* * *

It was cool out, and Sydney was glad she had brought a jacket. Beside her in the Triumph, Moretti was silent, his eyes on the road.

“You're a great pianist,” said Sydney, “with a style of your own. Have you ever thought of turning professional?”

“Often. But I've always woken up in time. How about yourself? Have you ever thought of going back to the stage — to dance, or to act?”

“Sometimes. I too have always woken up in time. Reality bites.”

Moretti nodded, but kept silent.

“This is nice,” Sydney said after a while. “Yours, I guess, not an official car.”

“Yes. My partner picked up the police car.”

“She's pretty. Kind of Audrey Hepburnish.”

“Is she?” He sounded surprised.

“You hadn't noticed? I guess I can't call you Ed, can I?”

“You already have. Well — Eduardo. You also told me you'd have to be a nun if you wanted to learn to read.”

“Jeez, did I? Just at the moment, that doesn't seem such a bad idea.”

“Learning to read?”

Her laughter dissolved as the Martello tower came into view.

“Oh God, Ed —”

“We don't know they're here. We only know that the marchesa said her niece was at her place at Icart. I just want us to sort this out quietly, so we can get on with the investigation. I'd like you to stay in the car — please, Ms. Tremaine,” Moretti added, as she started to open the door. “Lock yourself in and wait for me here. I'm going to climb over the gate.”

Sydney watched as Moretti straddled the gate and jumped over. Through the bars she saw the door of the Martello tower open. She saw Moretti walking up the path, and then she saw Giulia Vannoni coming down to meet him. A moment later, Giulia was running toward the car, with Moretti behind her.

“Sydney!
Idiota
!
Che stupidità
!”

There were various other epithets, but those she understood. She got out of the car and waited for Giulia to open the gate. She expected to be hugged, but instead Giulia took her by the shoulders and shook her.

“You — you —! Do you really think I'd do that to you?
Dio mio
!”

“Well, then.” Moretti's quiet voice broke into Giulia's angry outcry. “Ms. Vannoni is on her own and has been all night. It would seem your husband was trying to get back at you. Both of you.”

At that moment, Moretti's mobile rang.

“Okay, Falla. We'll be right over.”

He put the phone back in his pocket and took Sydney by the arm.

“It may be nothing, but the dogs have picked something up.”

“Dogs?” Sydney asked, bewildered.

“The dogs with the security firm — they know your husband's scent, of course.” Moretti decided not to tell her that Liz Falla had picked up a piece of clothing from the hotel suite and taken it to the manor. “They are waiting for me. I suggest you stay here with Ms. Vannoni until I contact you.”

“No. I'll come with you.”