Jaime ran in to stop her but Danny was one step ahead and cut her off before she could get to the top table. Everyone there looked terrified as Lio started up another screeching protest.
“You just leave me there to rot, is that it? Were you hoping they’d blame me for the murders so that they don’t have to look at you again?”
Marco was the only one who reacted. He stood up slowly as his family froze in place like dummies in a shop window. All Lio’s perfectly presented composure had deserted her. I’d never seen so much as an eyelash out of place on her before but, after several hours with Bielza at the police station, she looked rough, raw and worn out.
“Come with me, Lio,” Marco said, taking her arm to softly to lead her away.
“You can’t shut me up. I told them I had nothing to do with the killings. I didn’t say a word to help you or your sordid little organisation.” She kept screaming even after they reached the foyer.
Gianna Romanelli ran out after her husband and their discussion continued though we could only hear Lio’s part of it.
“It’s your grave and you can lie in it.”
There was a brief silence as we tried to catch what Marco mumbled in reply but nothing came back to us.
“Unlike the two of you, I know what loyalty means. I didn’t tell them anything, but I can see your hands are all over this.”
This time, I caught notes from Gianna’s higher-pitched voice but nothing very clear.
“Let go of me,” Lio responded. “And consider this my resignation. How could you not have thought to check on me? You’re disgusting.”
Lio loudly mounted the stairs and, when the Romanellis returned to the dining room, we all pretended to be deep in conversation and not the slightest bit interested in anything that had occurred.
“Wonderful paella this evening,” I said unconvincingly and I thought Ramesh might break into another song to cover the awkward moment.
Marco stopped halfway into the room and cast his fierce eyes about us. “I know what you’re all thinking and it’s not true. That girl is disturbed. She has a long history of problems and the only reason we employed her was to give her a second chance in life.” His eyes rested on me for some reason as if I was the most judgemental person there.
Well, there’s no way that’s true. You’re top three at worst!
Shut up and enjoy the paella.
“I didn’t kill anybody. Whatever’s been going on here had nothing to do with me. I didn’t know the girl on the beach and I’d never have murdered the journalist just because he wrote bad lies about me. That’s not my style.” He waited to see if anyone would challenge him and, when we all stayed quiet, shouted, “I’m not a murderer,” and stalked back to his table where he didn’t say another word all night.
Chapter Twenty-Three
There was a peculiar atmosphere after that. Conversation never recovered, Kabir attempted to get through a few more hits but had lost his enthusiasm and sounded like Sinatra on anti-depressants, and even Bu-Bu’s sparkling repartee at the central table couldn’t bring the place back to life. I eventually went to the bathroom to have a break from the oddly stuffy air.
You can always tell the quality of a place by looking at their toilets and The Cova Negra’s were top notch. In place of hand basins, there was a waterfall-wall complete with uniquely hewn boulders and subtle fairy lights. The soap was dispensed by a small sprinkler system and, there were no hand towels but, instead, you had to walk through a high-powered wind tunnel which whipped the water from you in seconds. It was all very impressive.
“I need to talk to you,” a desperate voice said as I took a seat on my pre-heated toilet throne.
It wasn’t the perfect moment to start in on a conversation. “Urmmmm, give me a sec.”
Shame really as I was hoping you might try out the different music modes on this thing. There’s nothing I like more than Japanese Toilet Muzak.
I ignored my inner monologue’s love of tacky gadgets and hurried myself up. It was no great mystery who was waiting for me outside the cubicle. There was only one person at the hotel with the voice of an Italian teenager and, when I emerged, Valentina Romanelli was there waiting for me.
“You mustn’t trust my father.” She was hiding behind the rocky outcrop of the waterfall. “He’s a liar and a cheat and I think he killed those people.”
“Would you like to sit down and talk about this?” I asked but sadly we were in a bathroom and there was nowhere to-
No wait, there’s a sofa over there.
We walked across to the plush chaise longue as she continued. “I only have a couple of minutes. My parents don’t trust us to do anything on our own.”
There was something I couldn’t get my head around. “Why would you want to tell me anything bad about your father?”
Her expression hardened before she replied. “I hate him. Everything he does is poison.”
“But he’s your Dad!” I have three of them and, even my weird first stepfather Arthur still has a special place in my heart. The idea of such open hostility was difficult for me to process.
“He’s a fascist. My mother too really, but she’s not so open about it. He hates anyone just the slightest bit different to him. He doesn’t let me have any friends unless they’re from old Italian families. All this new-age peace and harmony he talks about is a lie. Inside, he’s a monster and I despise him.”
She was getting so worked up that I was worried the diners outside would hear us.
“Do you have any proof that he’s involved in the killings?”
She paused and looked around the bathroom. “Not exactly, but I saw him the night before the conference.”
She clearly needed me to prod her along. “And what was he doing?”
“He left our suite in the middle of the night so I followed him here.” She pointed back out to the dining room. “I hung back and came down after him. There was a woman waiting for him on the terrace. She had dark hair. I didn’t see her clearly but it has to be the girl who was killed, don’t you think?”
I didn’t know how to phrase my next question. “And what were they… doing?” It felt wrong to ask a fourteen-year-old girl something like this about her father.
“They were kissing at first and then my father pulled her round between the windows and I heard them having sex,” she said very frankly and I remembered that she wasn’t British, or ridiculously averse to naughty words like I am.
“Urrmmm. Good. That’s good.” My whole body had just blushed. “So this was the night before the conference? It doesn’t resolve the fact your father wasn’t in the hotel last night. There are photos of him on Twitter just before the girl was killed.”
She started chewing the end of one thumb and I could see that, despite a glossy exterior, all her nails were bitten down. “My father would have found a way. Perhaps this girl wanted more from him and threatened to tell my mother about the affair. He could have picked her up in town, killed her on the beach, then gone back to Santander so no one would suspect him.”
She’d clearly thought it through carefully. “What about your mother, do you think she knew he was having an affair?”
She slumped her shoulders and suddenly looked just what she was, a little girl trying to make sense of the horrible world around her. “Mum’s different. She doesn’t get worked up about things the way he does. She’s too busy I guess. She has to look after us and she’s always dealing with Next Phase. I don’t think she worries about what Dad gets up to.”
“And have you ever seen your father being violent? Has he hurt you or your mum for example?”
She didn’t hesitate this time. “Not physically, but he’s come close. There’s this anger in him which boils over sometimes. When he screams at me, I see it in his eyes. He’d like to slap me. I know he would. And he’s always telling us about what a bad kid
he was. He used to get in trouble with the police for fighting and, I think he wishes he could go back to the way things were.”
It was good to hear about the other side of Marco’s personality. Until then, I’d only seen his public face, but Valentina gave me a peek behind the curtain.
There was something else I could ask her that no one else would tell me. “Valentina, your father had a gun in his room. Did you ever see it?”
She went all shy again. “Yes.”
“Do you know where it came from and why he had it?”
Her pretty face perked up. Perhaps she’d been expecting a nastier question. “He’s only had it a few months. Some horrible fascist group gave it to him. I was there that day. All those disgusting teen boys in military uniforms were idolising him and staring at me. The gun didn’t have any bullets but he bought some in Prague when we were there.”
“Has he ever fired it?”
She made a sad sort of laugh. “He gets drunk sometimes after the conferences. When we were in Paris he woke me up in the middle of the night and made me go onto the roof of the hotel to shoot bottles. I told him it scared me but he didn’t care.”
She folded her hands in her lap and then sat up straight like she thought her parents might be watching. “I have to go back to them now, but thank you for believing me.”
I kind of wanted to adopt her right then. “Thank you, Valentina. It’s very brave of you to speak to me like this.”
She stood up to leave but held herself there for a moment. “You have to show people what he’s really like. He says he’s a pacifist but it’s a lie. He didn’t even think of that until we had an argument one day and I told him I didn’t believe in violence. He just laughed and said it was a stupid idea and no one has ever won anything in this world without fighting.” She swallowed hard and a look of ferocious anger shaped her face. “My dad is a killer.”
I thought she might say something more but, happy with her delivery, she nodded, and swished from the room.
There were two things she’d said that stood out. The first was obviously the affair. If Maribel had started a relationship with Marco, it blew the case wide open. But that wasn’t all. Valentina had witnessed he father’s dark side first hand and someone had finally backed up my suspicions.
I’d caught a glimpse of it that first night in the bar. In the way he spoke and held himself, the force of his personality and the strength of his body; Marco was a loaded gun. I could see now that all it needed was for someone to pull his trigger and he would be deadly.
Careful, Izzy. We know he wasn’t here when Maribel was killed. Why are you so fixated on him?
But I’ve considered all the other possibilities. Lio, Delilah and Ian were the only ones without an alibi for either murder and we’ve found nothing to suggest that one of them was involved. Marco has to be behind this somehow.
I went back to the dining room and a slight buzz had returned to the place. Ramesh was there to make sure the wine was still flowing and Kabir had invited Celestino up on the stage to sing a Flamenco style ballad as Sagrario performed a slow but complex routine in front of him.
Her hands clapped out a syncopated rhythm while her feet shuffled manically to express the passion running through her. She was a different woman up there, remembering the steps she and every Andalusian girl would have learnt for the annual parties of her town. As her husband’s impressive voice cried out, like a muezzin calling worshipers to prayer, she turned on the spot, gradually getting faster as the song concluded. I whistled and clapped with delight when they took their bow. I felt that they deserved just as much credit as my mother and was glad to see the other diners show their appreciation.
After dinner-
Wait! You didn’t talk about dessert. You have to talk about dessert!
After a triple chocolate gateau with fresh whipped cream that I’d seen Cook making that afternoon, most of the diners filed off to bed. There would be no celebration that night. Lio’s interruption had killed the party and brought the events of the previous twenty-four hours crashing sharply into focus.
Ian Dennison had his napkin signed by Bu-Bu and, fifteen minutes after Kabir’s last song, the only people left were Mum, Danny and Ramesh.
“So, Mum?” I asked, as we moved out to the terrace together. “What did you find out from Marco?”
“Well, I can tell you with some certainty…” She dropped her voice to a whisper. “…Marco Romanelli is a very charming man.” A girlish laugh broke free from her throat. “And what a hunk! I mean, have you seen his arms? If I was a few years younger and not married to Greg and he was a few years older and unencumbered by his family and we both happened to live in the same-”
“Mum!” I tried to get her back on topic. “Did you find out anything that would help me build a case against him?”
Her eyes were cast out to sea and she was clearly reliving her glamourous evening. “Not yet, darling. Not yet. But what I can tell you is that the Romanellis are one hundred per cent Bu-Bu-heads after this evening!”
“Wow, Mother. That’s brilliant.” With a sullen face, I showed her just how unimpressed I was.
She was immediately on the defensive. “Well, I was hardly going to ask him if he was a homicidal maniac right there in front of Carolina, Gabriella and Valentina.”
“So then that whole song and dance routine was a waste of time.”
“Not at all, Izzy. I was finessing him, darling, he needs to be finessed!” She spoke as if such information was absurdly obvious. “I’ll give it another go at breakfast! Now, Danny, my angel, you couldn’t fetch old Bu-Bu a G&T?”
“I’ll go, Miss La Mer,” Ramesh jumped up from the table and ran to the bar, all excited.
It was Danny’s turn to offer his angle on the case. Sitting on a chair with his bowtie loose, he appeared to finally be off duty. “I was watching this Marco fella all evening and I think you’re right, Izzy. He’s bad news.”
“Thanks, Danny. I appreciate you doing your bit.”
“There’s definitely something off about him. Even before that mad woman came in, he looked nervous and uncomfortable. He kept shifting his eyes round the room like he was waiting for something to happen.”
“He’s been like that since this morning,” I said. “He’s no longer the Zen master he claims to be.”
“I wouldn’t mind him mastering my Zen!” my mother replied, once again ignoring the issue and focussing on which male subject had the biggest pecs.
Now I see where we get it from!
As if fate was determined to prove me a hypocrite, at that very moment, Jaime came in.
“Good evening, everyone,” he said in his warm Spanish accent. “I’ve finished my shift and I thought I might have a word with you, Izzy. If that’s alright.”
Danny instantly stood up, back in bodyguard mode. He walked over to Jaime and looked him in the eyes. There was a weird moment of recognition between them and they both slunk back a little as if to say, Oh, it’s you; my intercontinental twin.
“Guys, will you give us a minute?” I asked and Mum relinquished her chair for the officer to sit down.
Ramesh reappeared at that moment with a jug of gin and tonic and glasses for everyone. I would have asked for some lemonade to put in it but didn’t want to look like a baby in front of Jaime so sipped at my disgustingly bitter drink as if it was no big deal whatsoever.
“There’s been rumours all afternoon,” Jaime told me, once the others were across the other side of the terrace laughing and dancing together. “I found out what Bielza has been hiding and, I guess it’s not so bad like we thought.” He wrapped his hands around the icy glass to cool them down.
“The reason she did the interview on her own, you mean?”
“That’s right.” He took his time over the answer. “Marco admitted that he’s having an affair.”
I thought for a moment, considering what this could mean to his innocence or otherwise. “Funny. His daughter just told me the same thing.”
“His daughter?” Jaime sounded faintly impressed by this. “What a guy.”
“Did he say who his mistress is?”
“Only Bielza knows and I can’t access the tape without her permission.”
I decided to try out a theory on him. “Marco could be using the affair as an alibi. The best lie is one with a hint of truth to it.”
“It’s possible. But that still wouldn’t explain how he could have been in a club in Santander with fifty witnesses at the time that Maribel was killed.”
“But are we so sure that he was there all night? I looked at the photos on Twitter and there’s a gap where he could have come back here. Have you spoken to anyone who saw him?”
He let out a weary sigh. It had been a long day for him and I didn’t blame him for switching to Spanish. Concentrating in a second language is exhausting. “We’re looking into it. To be honest, it’s not typical to deal with a double murder around here. The odd domestic situation but that’s normally an open and shut case. Our resources have been stretched pretty thin today.”
I felt sorry for the guy, I didn’t want to push him, but I couldn’t let up. “Marco’s daughter, Valentina, saw him kissing someone here at the hotel on the night before the conference. She thought it must be Maribel. But perhaps Marco was stringing more than one woman along. Perhaps that’s the key to this.” A shout of joy came up from Ramesh as he and Danny took turns twirling Mum around and I half wished we were over with them. “What if Marco killed Álvaro himself but he got his girlfriend to deal with Maribel?”
The pro-policeman was quick to break down this argument. “For what reason? Even if Maribel had met Marco this week and started a relationship. Why would Marco want to kill her?”
“Because she was helping Álvaro. That must be it. Unless…” Another brick wall, another dead end, so I tried a different route. “What about the photos you found in Álvaro’s room? Did you discover anything useful in them?”
A Corpse on the Beach Page 17