No and yes.
...was all it said and so I replied with my final question for Maribel’s mum and then grabbed the toy gun from Danny’s shoulder holster.
“Izzy, what are you doing?” he asked and I put a finger to my lips to keep him quiet. “Don’t worry about me, but, when Jaime gets here, tell him this is only a toy gun and I’ll need his help outside.”
Mum was looking worried about me, which was nothing new, so I put the gun in my pocket to calm them both down. “Everything’s fine,” I told them. “Mum read your paper, Danny have some coffee.”
With their fears subdued, and Ramesh fast asleep, I was free to roll the dice for the final time. I casually strolled across the room to where Delilah Shaw was pigging out.
“Urmmm, Delilah,” I said, showing her a flash of the gun. “You’re going to have to come with me.”
She let out that squawking parrot laugh of hers and, when she realised I wasn’t joking, the amusement on her face faded away. “What on earth are you thinking?”
I put my hand on the grip of the pistol and motioned for her to head outside.
“I’m not messing around. Move.”
I know this is somewhat out of character for me. I’m not really a taking-hostages-by-gunpoint kind of person. If I ever have to use a real gun, I’ll probably end up shooting myself. But bear with me, because I had a good reason for it and this was the only way that crossed my mind to get things done.
Hey, don’t blame me for this.
With her hands displayed above her waist to appease me, Delilah flicked her legs out from under the table and stood up. I couldn’t risk attracting the attention of the police as they would probably shoot me so, as casually as possible, I walked Delilah across the terrace. She kept checking on me over her shoulder as we cut through the garden to the path which led to the cliffs. In the distance, Marco and Gianna Romanelli had their arms around one another and were gazing out to sea.
“Marco,” Delilah shouted before we got there and I figured we were far enough from the hotel to pull the gun out and hold it against her.
“Quiet,” I said but the Romanellis had already spotted us and were trying to work out why Delilah was walking along awkwardly with her hands in the air.
“Izzy, what’s this about?” Marco said and even then I couldn’t help remarking how charming his accent was. “Your obsession has to stop. The police has founded the killer. It’s time to forget.”
Gianna searched about for help in vain. There was no one down on the rocks beneath us. No one within earshot. I’d never seen her look so scared.
“You know what this is about, Marco.” I wasn’t happy with how that came out. I sounded like the villain instead of the detective and I considered trying the line over again. “It’s about the truth. It’s about the real reason Maribel came here to the hotel and Álvaro was murdered for the secrets he’d discovered. It’s about the affair you’ve been having with the woman whose head I’m holding a gun to.”
Marco took a step forward to reason with me and so I pulled the hammer thingy back. (Sorry, I’m not great with guns. I’m not entirely sure that’s what you’re supposed to do with them but it looked pretty cool.)
“Don’t come any closer, or I will shoot her.” I’m afraid my acting just wasn’t up to scratch. I was trying to sound all serious and intense but it came out sounding like Keanu Reeves when he’s trying to sound all serious and intense and it makes you go, Ahhh, poor Keanu. So pretty, but such a bad actor.
“It’s all in your mind, Izzy,” Delilah tried. “I’d never met Marco before this week.”
“Not true. You were on a panel together in London three years ago.” What pleasure it gave me to deliver that nugget of truth! Though I couldn’t see her face, I could feel Shaw reel back against me as the words sunk in. “I imagine that the two of you have been meeting up in secret ever since. The only reason Marco booked a conference in Santander was because this is where you take your holiday every year. You thought you could get away with it, even with his wife here.”
I watched for Gianna’s reaction. Though I’d strung together most of the story, there were plenty of holes that I still needed to fill in and this was the first. I hadn’t been sure whether Gianna had known about Marco’s relationship with Delilah. From the way she’d spoken to me on the beach, I knew she had her suspicions, but, as her eyes jumped over to look at him right then, it was clear she hadn’t suspected the nasty British woman I’d just brought to the party.
“Marco?” Her voice was scratchy, her throat dry, and she smiled incredulously. “This isn’t possible.”
I began to lay out the evidence. “I’m not lying, Gianna. You have to believe me. Think about it; who chose this place? I’m going to guess it was Marco and that you were in charge of planning the other venues.”
I could see from her reaction that I was on the right track. “What did he tell you? That it would be a nice break for you and the girls? You said yourself that you’re the one who does all the work for Next Phase so why was he so keen to come here?”
Gianna was like a spectator at a tennis match, looking back and forth between her husband and his lover. Keeping my gun trained on Delilah, I moved to the side to see her reaction. To my surprise, she had the same impervious look as always and I could see that even the dramatic finale I’d planned would struggle to move her.
“Of course it’s not true,” Marco attempted to save himself. “I barely know this woman… I mean, we met that one time, but you’ve seen, I had nothing to do with her this week.”
Gianna’s previous calm was extinguished and she let out a torrent of abuse in Italian, which was punctuated by her two tiny fists as they slammed against her husband’s broad chest.
“Oh, give it up, Marco,” Delilah said, rolling her eyes as if this was all such a bore. “It’s not going to do any good now, is it?”
I felt my phone buzz in my pocket again and pulled it out whilst they were bickering.
The answer is yes. Her mother broke down and confessed what happened. I’m on my way back to the hotel, I’ll tell Bielza everything.
As I read Jaime’s message, Marco saw his chance and stepped forward to grab the pistol. I pulled up just in time and pointed the weapon at my favourite extreme-right lifestyle guru.
“I’m not finished yet.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
I shifted the gun to two hands and took a couple of steps backwards to avoid any further challenges. “Actually, all three of you, move away from the edge of the cliff.”
“That isn’t a real gun, is it Izzy?” Marco was so smooth and self-assured. It was almost upsetting that anyone could have a gun pointed at them and still sound like that. I’m less confident ordering in KFC or deciding which socks to wear.
I turned it on its side to look at the barrel and read the name stamped there. “Glock 17. That’s standard Spanish police issue, or don’t you know anything about guns?” Luckily for me, he clearly didn’t. “I managed to borrow it this morning, but you had a weapon of your own, didn’t you, Marco?”
Taking his wife by the shoulder, he slowly moved away from the precipice. “Do we have to go through this again? I know you’re upset at what happened, Izzy, but it’s not my fault. The gun was stolen. I never even fired it.”
“Another lie, your daughter told me you shot bottles on a Paris rooftop. In fact you bought bullets especially, isn’t that right?”
“Listen, Izzy, calm down. We can talk about this. There’s no need for anyone to get hurt here.”
“Nice try, but it won’t work.” I was loosening up by now, getting my mind into the role.
That’s right, Izzy. You’re wild! You’re a loose cannon and no one knows when you’ll go off. Run with that.
I turned my attention to the wronged party. “You know, Gianna, I feel sorry for you. To live with a man like Marc
o who doesn’t know how to tell the truth. I bet whenever you confronted him about your suspicions he’d use that voice of his.”
“Izzy, this is ridiculous,” he began, but I cut him straight off.
“That’s exactly it, Marco. Thanks for the demonstration. It’s a voice I’ve heard before. The voice of a man who thinks he knows better than a woman, who wants to convince her that she’s crazy to think so poorly of him.” I turned back to her husband, pointing the gun straight at his head now. “It won’t work anymore, Marco. Those days are over.”
He raised his hands for the first time, more in appeasement than surrender. “Okay, Izzy. Okay. Just take it easy and tell me what you want.”
I’d got a bit distracted with all the emotion and drama and the fact I was having to improvise as I went along. I kind of wished Ramesh had been there to help me, though I’m pretty sure he’d have turned the scene into a musical number.
“Urmmm… I want to go back to my previous topic. You said you’d never shot the gun before and that it was stolen from your bedroom, but that wasn’t true. I could tell that whoever had robbed the rooms were professionals. They used hacked key cards to get inside and there were only a few people who had the opportunity while you were at the conference or later that evening during dinner. The Austrians and Brits couldn’t have done it which only left the old Spanish couple. They’ve been poking about ever since I got here and, in the end, their innocent act didn’t wash with me.”
My voice had gone a bit too gangster so I reined it back in. “I just discovered that they weren’t so foolish as to steal the gun. It was too conspicuous. They were after valuables and a gun would only bring them trouble. You have no alibi for where you were when Álvaro was killed…”
“Izzy,” Delilah began before I could shut her down. “I was with Marco when-”
“Quiet!” At some point, my nervous act had become real and the pistol was shaking in my hand.
Eat your heart out, Ramesh. Now this is method acting.
“When your room was robbed, it gave you the perfect opportunity to sort out your problem with the press. You told the police that the gun had been stolen so that they couldn’t pin Álvaro’s murder on you. What had he found out that frightened you so much? That the old woman who claimed to be your long-lost great aunt was really the lover whose will you’d wormed your way into?”
I gave him a moment to reply, but he was suddenly speechless. “Your supporters wouldn’t be happy if they discovered you’d been a full-on conman. A rough and ready street kid come good? Sure, that’s a narrative they could get behind. But if Álvaro had revealed the truth, that would have spelt the end for Marco Romanelli and Next Phase.”
The tension was really getting to me. My palms were sweating, the muscles in my arms were dancing and my legs were weak from standing still for so long. “No. Álvaro Linares had to be dealt with.”
“You’ve jumped ahead of yourself.” Any nerves that had been peeking out of Marco were buried away again and he was back to his confident best. “Sure, I had no alibi when Álvaro was killed and maybe I had every reason to want him out of the way, but Maribel was different. I had no connection to her. At the time the police say she was murdered, I was in Santander. How can you explain that?”
“It’s a good point, Marco. And it had me stumped for a long time. I could only come up with one way you could have killed her in fact and it would have required incredible timing, precision and stamina. But then, you’re Marco Romanelli, the high priest of order and exactness, it surely wouldn’t be a problem for you.”
I spread my feet out wider to steady myself. “I saw the tweets that were sent that night and it’s true that people spotted you at a tapas bar in the marina just after one o’clock and then, a few hours later at a club. That gap in the middle would have given you just enough time to drive to the next bay on from here and swim round the headland to meet Maribel as you’d planned. You realised that she was working with Álvaro and couldn’t risk any more scandal so you knocked her out. But killing someone isn’t as easy it seems and, rather than finish the job yourself, you buried her in the sand by the water’s edge then waited for the tide to come in.”
“This is ridiculous.” His voice rose up to a high note of astonishment. The way his wife was looking at him right then told me it was not entirely impossible.
“No, it’s not ridiculous, Marco. Unlikely perhaps, but not ridiculous. You’re an incredibly strong swimmer. I saw it on my first day here. You have … let’s say… an athletic physique. Most people would struggle to swim a few kilometres late at night after already consuming a few drinks, but not you. You could have killed Maribel, swum back to your car and driven into Santander once more. I’ve considered the time frame and it’s certainly possible. But perhaps there was an easier way to go about it.”
I paused for a few seconds before delivering my second explanation. “Your lover Delilah.”
She let out a laugh before speaking. “I finally get a look in, do I?” She sounded pleased about it. “As I tried to tell you before, I was with Marco in Santander when Maribel was killed and we were in my room together when we heard the shots from Álvaro’s bedroom. No hard feelings, eh Gianna?”
Gianna was as still as a statue. She hadn’t made a sound since her outburst and it felt good to get some revenge on her behalf.
I held Delilah’s gaze and pointed the gun at her chest. “Yes, I imagine that’s what you told the police. Inspector Bielza never took either of you seriously as suspects so I had to assume you’d come up with a pretty tight alibi. What I failed to consider was that you could have both been involved in the killings.”
“Oh, come on, now. This is all getting silly,” Delilah responded with that wonderful British habit of making dramatic situations sound like no big deal.
“Is it? Or did you take charge of murdering Maribel so that your boyfriend would have an alibi? I suppose he did his share of the work when he killed Álvaro. And perhaps you got rid of Ian together, after all, it’s nice to do things as a couple once in a while. By dumping the gun on his body, you thought you’d deflected any lingering suspicion. Well, think again!”
The sun had burnt a hole through the clouds and beams of light shot down to us as Marco once more tried to reason with the crazy girl with the gun.
“Izzy, I understand you’re upset and I understand why you might think these things. But you still haven’t explained why I would have wanted Maribel dead. Why would I kill a girl I’d never met?”
I answered his question with one of my own. “This isn’t your first trip to Spain, is it, Marco?”
He looked confused and peered between the two women in his life before answering. “No, I’ve been here many times. Why do you ask?”
“But when was the first time? I mean the very first time you were here?”
His words came even slower this time. “I was young. In my twenties. I came with a youth group at my local church. They took us to another church over here to give kids from poor backgrounds a chance to travel.”
“And when you say, ‘over here’ it was very close, wasn’t it? Just a few miles from where we’re standing in fact, in a village called Santa Maria del Mar. It wasn’t all mass and bible studies, was it, Marco? You were there in the summer. You went to the beach and the village parties. You had a good time and got to know the local girls. Tell me, Marco, what year was that?”
“1992,” he replied, more decisively than I might have expected.
“That’s right, twenty-eight years ago. The summer before Maribel Ruiz was born.” I didn’t feel like joining the dots for him. I relaxed my shoulders and took a deep breath because the worst of the revelations were over with.
“Bloody hell, Marco.” Delilah was quicker than I’d given her credit for. “The dead girl was your daughter.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Wait, this isn’
t possible.” Unlike Keanu and me, Marco was a pretty good actor when it was required. “I mean… I never knew.”
Just then a white and grey gull popped up at the top of the cliffs, eyed the four of us and veered off with a screech. The others didn’t notice it because they were all staring at me, waiting for the next part of the story.
“You met a girl called Susana, she was younger than you and had a boyfriend, but that was no barrier for Marco Romanelli. When you left and Susana discovered she was pregnant, she married her boyfriend and they raised Maribel as their own. Susana didn’t tell anyone about you and, even when she discovered that her daughter had died at the hotel you were staying at, she kept her secret safe.”
This was another grey area in my thinking and I could only hope that Álvaro’s laptop would be recovered to fill in the gaps. “I don’t know how Álvaro discovered the truth. Perhaps it was Maribel herself who told him. She was a brave girl and did not believe in your jaded world view, so I can only think that she came to the journalist offering to help. She gave him photos from the Santa Maria parties in 1992 – yet another reason why Álvaro had to die. After all, Next Phase believe in order and your life was starting to get messy.”
Even over the sounds of the sea and the swirling wind, I could hear Gianna breathe out loudly as she processed what I was saying. This was harder for her to listen to than anyone and I wasn’t done yet.
“You made a mistake, Marco. You removed every last photo of Susana and, with time, I realised what that meant; you were in those photos with her. It struck me as strange that she wouldn’t have appeared in a single shot given that Spanish people never miss their summer fiestas. It’s practically a law here. There were photos of the man who raised Maribel – a man who looked nothing like her – but not one of her mother.”
That high, fluted tone of Marco’s peaked once more. “You can say I killed the journalist, and if I was capable of that it would only make sense for me to pin the blame on Dennison. So fine, you can believe I am a murderer if that’s what you want. But I’m not a monster. I would never have killed my own child.”
A Corpse on the Beach Page 20