by Jill Downie
“Did you see anyone? A car? Anything at all?”
“Well, no, I didn’t exactly stay to look around. I picked up my secateurs — I’d dropped them, you see, the shock — and then ran, literally ran, back into the house, locked myself in, and phoned for you people.” She closed her eyes briefly, then continued. “My husband always says don’t rock the boat and not to overreact, it attracts attention, but what else could I do?”
“Should we phone your husband for you?” Liz Falla asked. “Is he at the office?”
“No, as a matter of fact, he’s not. He’s in the hospital, having his gall bladder removed. I didn’t like to bother him with this.”
Don’t bother the man with the death of a little nobody, thought Moretti. “Is the dead man known to you?” he asked.
“Good God, Inspector, no! I have never seen him before, and he is the most unlikely person to end up here, in one’s flowerbed, don’t you think? I was going to ask you the same question — is he known to the police?”
“We know who he is.” Moretti chose his words carefully. “He is a recent visitor, arrived on a yacht.”
“A yacht! Not his, I presume.”
“No. He was the owner’s bodyguard.”
“Bodyguard! Dressed like that! Oh, Gareth will be so upset!”
“Your husband?”
At the corpse’s lack of dress sense? At the body’s choice of profession? Liz Falla wondered.
“Yes, my husband. I assumed the man was a drifter, who’d got into bad company, that sort of thing.”
Moretti stood up. “I think we can fairly say he got into bad company, Mrs. Amsterdam, but no, he was not a drifter. We shall have to bring in more police, go over your garden. It extends as far as the cliff path, I believe?”
“Yes, but there’s a high wall, with broken glass along the top. I really don’t think anyone could have got in that way. Gareth has been talking about enclosing the front garden and installing a gate with electronic security, but he put it off because of his gall bladder.”
“Why was he planning to increase your security? Have you had any problems?”
“Oh no, but you can never be too careful, Inspector. Gareth is with Crédit Genève and safety is their middle name, so of course we made it ours. Surely this is just a random shooting, Inspector, and this man ended up by chance on our property.”
“We cannot answer that yet, Mrs. Amsterdam. By the way, who lives next door, to the left of your house, near the flower bed?”
Mrs. Amsterdam looked surprised. “I have no idea. Someone like us, I imagine.”
As they left the room, Mrs. Amsterdam finished the last of her brandy and rose to replenish her glass.
“So, Falla, what are your gut feelings about Mrs. Amsterdam?”
Liz Falla glanced briefly at Moretti, and then redirected her attention to Val des Terre’s hairpin bends.
“Lives in a bubble, doesn’t even know the someone-like-us next door. Why was she having a dinner party when her husband was in hospital, Guv? Was it a hen party? Didn’t sound like it to me, but perhaps a girls’ night out — or in — for this crowd does require the best china. She’ll have to change her colour scheme, won’t she, because Martin Smith has pretty well flattened her pelargoniums. We’ll have to talk to the staff, since they probably know who was coming.”
“Especially the minimalistic cook who’s no good with flowers. Something else, Falla. About the corpse. About his face.”
“It was a neat, expert job, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, like the death of his employer. Now, think about Ms. Letourneau’s story. She had to fight him off, she said, tooth and nail. Did you see the length of her nails?”
“Her nails!” The BMW took a twist in the road with extra velocity. “There wasn’t a mark or a scratch on him, except for the hole in the middle of his forehead.”
“Exactly. Now, maybe the little shit was a quick healer —”
“— or maybe Ms. Letourneau was lying through those teeth she supposedly fought him off with.”
“And if so, why? That’s the interesting question, Falla. Why would she lie about fighting him off?”
“Because there wasn’t a real fight in the first place, and maybe it was staged for Betty Kerr’s benefit — and ours — and maybe he wasn’t supposed to have said what he said to Shane. ‘I’m going to see a man about a yacht.’ That’s what he said to him, right?”
“Right. And what better place to go than Fort George if you are looking for a well-heeled somebody who might be involved with floating palaces. I doubt he arrived on foot, so we’ll have to do a door to door enquiry about vehicles, etc.”
“That’ll go down like a lead balloon, I imagine. The sound of the gun, Guv. Surely someone in that particular neighbourhood would react to a gunshot.”
“They must have used a silencer — I assume one can be used on a Glock. I think we can call off the divers, because clearly this gun is not on the harbour bottom, and I don’t think we have a third weapon.”
“Time of death?”
“Nichol will be able to tell us. Whether it was a crime of opportunity, or carefully planned, it took nerve on the Amsterdams’ front lawn in broad daylight.”
Moretti’s mobile rang. It was Brouard, sounding animated. “I found out who lives next door, Guv. Friend of yours.”
“A friend of mine in Fort George? I think not, Brouard.”
“He’s in your band, Guv. Garth Machin. I just spoke to his wife.”
The music always played in Moretti’s head. Snippets of Cole Porter while looking at the dead body of Martin Smith, snatches of Dizzy Gillespie when talking to Mrs. Amsterdam, segments of “An American in Paris,” played on the piano by Gershwin, whenever Sandy Goldstein crossed his mind, which was happening from time to time.
Pieces coming together, like fragments of music, into some sort of coherence, or semi-coherence. Garth, Gareth, Gareth, Garth. Coincidence? Or confusion because the names were so alike. Had Martin Smith meant to end up at the Machins’? Masterson’s insistence on being in Victoria Marina, where his Vento Teso was close to Garth’s boat. Not to forget Nicol’s Capri, and the scene in the club between the two men.
The music still played, but the soundtrack had changed. Still Gershwin, but now it was “Rhapsody in Blue,” and the wail of Garth’s horn that rang through Moretti’s head.
Garth Machin worked for a company called Northland Private Banking, whose offices were in a small enclave of similar businesses quite close to the police station and Government House Hotel, one of the premier hotels on the island. All the buildings in the area were new, but designed to blend in with St. Peter Port’s traditional architecture. Behind a false front of becomingly aged stone in pale ochres, greys, and creams, the bank discreetly announced its presence on a small brass plate to the right of the main entrance, alongside two other similar plaques for banks in the same building. From the corners of the structure CCTV cameras looked down on all who left or arrived, like angular, featureless gargoyles.
As far as Moretti could recall, Northland was an offshoot of one of the major British banks, specifically set up to handle financial planning for clients with an international asset base. It was one of many such offshore banks, which unabashedly proclaimed themselves as operating solely for “high-net” clients with assets in the millions, and whose own assets were in the billions. High on the list of attributes touted in their brochures or on Internet sites, right up there with the depth of their assets or the breadth of their services, was the quality of discretion. Facts would not be difficult to come by, if all Moretti wanted to know was the name of any of the funds administered, or types of accounts available, but if he wanted to know the names of any of the people whose funds or accounts those were, he would be stonewalled, shown the door, or simply laughed at.
He was surprised at the instant response when he identified himself to the disembodied female voice on the intercom. “Yes,” said the voice, and there was the sound of the lock rel
easing on the glass and metal door.
Melissa Machin must have phoned, he realized. He was glad he had sent Falla on to the station to call off the divers and see how Le Marchant was doing. There was the possibility that Garth might be more open with him if he were on his own. That is, if there was something to be open about.
As she dropped him off, Falla asked, “Why did you send Le Marchant out there in the first place? Why not send a policewoman to look after her and keep an eye out for trouble?”
“Because if she is gaga — and I am not at all sure that she is — she is much more likely to spill the beans in an unguarded moment to a man than to a woman. Le Marchant is young, wet behind the ears, and not as cool as he likes to think he is, and I have a feeling La Chancho likes dominating the male of the species.”
Falla’s laugh echoed around the square as she pulled away from the curb. Moretti could still hear it as the BMW turned into Hospital Lane.
Garth’s office was on the second floor, according to the list by the stairs, and according to the young woman in the lobby.
“He’s expecting you.”
So Melissa had phoned. Damn.
As Moretti came around the corner at the top of the stairs, Garth was coming toward him. In his navy blue suit and crisply knotted tie he was quite unlike the sax player whose usual dress was casual to the point of dereliction, but the tie made a statement of some sort. Against a black background a well-endowed and cheerful woman rode what looked like a unicorn across its shiny silken surface.
“What the hell’s going on, Ed?” Garth’s voice was in a higher register than usual, betraying an anxiety he was unable to hide.
“I’m here to ask you the same question, Garth,” Moretti replied. “Let’s talk in your office.”
Garth’s office was a room of modest proportions whose outstanding feature was a complete lack of any individual touches. There was a large desk, a host of filing cabinets, a computer, printer, fax, all the usual office equipment. The two windows were screened by white vertical blinds, and an oatmeal-coloured carpet covered the floor. Moretti could not see a single family photograph, one piece of anything that reflected the married man or the musical man, no evidence that here was a human being with a life that gave him any pleas-ure. There were two photographs on the wall opposite the door, one of the bank’s London headquarters, the other of St. Peter Port Harbour. Neither was an interesting piece of photography — not that it mattered much, since both were tucked away beyond a cabinet and therefore unviewable from the desk.
“For God’s sake, Ed, the next-door neighbour has a fucking corpse in her fuchsias and one of your lot gives Melissa the third degree. She was in a state when she phoned me, and she’s not the hysterical sort, Melissa.”
Garth took himself round to the far side of the desk, but he remained standing. Moretti had the impression of someone gathering control by putting distance between himself and an adversary.
Moretti pulled out the chair nearest the desk and sat down. He watched as Garth sat down pulling out a pack of cigarettes from a desk drawer, and cursed himself for quitting. It might have given them a blokes-together moment if he hadn’t.
“Why not you, damnit, instead of one of your heavy-footed minions?”
“Brouard’s a big lad, it’s true, but he’s a kindly soul. Not me, because I’m here.” As Garth lit up, Moretti leaned across the desk into the enticing fragrance of Benson & Hedges. “As you said to me, Garth — what the hell’s going on? Or — is anything going on? The dead man was the personal bodyguard of the murder victim on the yacht in Victoria Marina, and I am wondering if he was trying to see you. He was certainly trying to see someone in that neck of the woods.”
“The next-door neighbour from the look of it, whom I wouldn’t know from a hole in the ground. Would anyone in his right mind try to get hold of me at home on a working day? I’m always here, God help me, even at this God-forsaken hour.” Garth swept an arm around the sterile confines of his workplace.
“This particular victim was not that well-informed about how your sort live. Also, there’s a possibility he was trying to see your wife, Garth.”
“Melissa? Why in the hell would he want to see Melissa?”
“Blackmail.” Moretti paused a moment to let the word sink in. “I think he may have hoped to blackmail either one of you. Preferably you, perhaps, but your wife could be more easily intimidated. Intimidation was very much this fellow’s forte.”
Moretti watched as the muscles in Garth’s face tightened. The underdressed lady on the unicorn galloped merrily along on the undulations of his accelerated breathing, and the cigarette in his hand shook as he put it to his mouth, scattering ash on the dark surface of his suit. Before he could respond, Moretti said, “I don’t think you are going to tell me anything, are you? So let me guess this is somehow linked to whatever passed between you and Nichol at the club the other night.”
It was a wild shot in the dark, but it found its target. Garth dropped the half-smoked cigarette in the ashtray on the desk and rubbed his hands over his face. When he looked up at Moretti he seemed almost on the verge of tears.
“Leave it, Ed. You’re way off base. That was something else altogether. Nichol Watt is an arsehole, as well you know, and he made a pass at Melissa. He’s a bastard, that’s all. A bastard,” he repeated.
“No argument here.” Moretti stood up. “No point, is there, in continuing this, so I’ll be off. Just remember, Garth — I’ll do whatever I can to help you and to protect your wife, if that’s necessary. I can’t speak to your financial or fiduciary skills, but you’re far too good a musician to lose.”
“As I’ve already told you, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“So you have. Will you be at the club tonight?”
“If I’m not hauled away to the calaboose.” Garth gave a feeble attempt at a laugh that caught in his throat and died.
“I’ll see myself out.”
“Do that.” He was pulling out his cigarettes again before Moretti got to the door.
It was a short walk to the station, and Moretti had just reached the courtyard when his mobile rang. It was Don Taylor, sounding triumphant.
“Ed, I’ve got it. Why his nickname rang a bell. Something that happened about fifteen years ago, to do with deregistering a deposit taker.”
“Great news, Don. I’m tied up at the moment — but I’ll be at the club tonight, so why don’t you come over to my place afterward.”
He and Don had done this before, going back and continuing the evening with jazz, and more jazz, until dawn. Less tiring than with Ludo, because he didn’t drink as much in Don’s company.
A break maybe. God knew they could do with one. Because if this case involved the kind of people and the kind of money he suspected it did, he would have to have it all laid out in black and white, cut and dried, everything dotted and crossed and beyond the slightest suggestion of a shadow of a doubt. Whoever had seen to it that Masterson died with a bullet in the brain was a very big gun indeed.
He was playing “Angel Eyes” when Sandy Goldstein walked into the club that night. He must have hesitated or changed the beat in some way, because Dwight Ellis followed the direction of his glance, raised one eyebrow, grinned, and gave a soundless whistle.
She was on her own. She looked around a moment, then sat down at a table near the back. Moretti turned his attention back to the piano, and watched Garth Machin stand up and start to play. The navy-suited banker with the shaking hands earlier in the evening was nowhere in sight. This Garth Machin was a cool and collected cat, full of confidence and cuss words, very much his usual silver-tongued Fénion self. It was quite a performance, any sign of weakness gone.
Ah well. Here’s hoping Don has something useful, thought Moretti, as the sublime tone of Garth’s horn floated across the smoky room toward the table where Sandy Goldstein sat. She looked up to thank the girl who brought her a glass of wine, then back to the stage, raising the wine
glass and smiling at him. Then she mouthed something at him, but Moretti could not read her lips.
He sometimes felt bliss when Garth was in full flight. Add to that a beautiful woman smiling at him, and he felt no pain. He saw Dwight grin at him again and he grinned back. One more number, then the set would be over, and he could find out how she managed to spring herself loose from La Veile and Julia King.
A piano solo for him, with some soft bass accompaniment from Lonnie. Johnny Mercer’s “Laura.” Applause, acknowledged with a wave of the hand. He still had to stop himself from reaching up for a cigarette from the ashtray on top of the piano.
He had just stood up when he saw Don Taylor arrive and stop to talk to Deb Duchemin, who had taken a break from restaurant duties upstairs and, with a feeling that was far from blissful, he remembered their arrangement.
In theatre and in politics, timing is everything, so they say. He crossed the room to Sandy Goldstein’s table.
“Hi. I’m glad you made it, but how did you make it?”
Sandy Goldstein laughed. She was wearing neutral colours again, black this time, with a pair of striking turquoise and silver earrings, and her hair was caught up in a loose chignon held by a large silver clip.
“Julia is working on a series of pictures for the new book, so I left her in peace. I took a cab — Gwen recommended someone reliable, and the path’s not that wet at the moment. I’m glad I made it. You’re good.”
“You sound surprised.”
“Yankee superiority. We invented the stuff, after all.”
“Not Yankees, if I remember my history.”
“True.”
Moretti pulled out a chair and sat down. He didn’t know what perfume she was wearing, but it definitely wasn’t damp fleece. He called the server over and ordered a Scotch and another glass of wine for Sandy Goldstein.
“I have a phone for you, a mobile. Or, rather, my partner has. It’s in her name, so there shouldn’t be any problem. I was going to bring it to you yesterday, but we had new developments in the case I’m working on. It’s at the office.”