Blood Will Out

by Jill Downie

  The shriek of laughter that burst out of Elodie shook the stool on which she was sitting, and she grasped the edge of the table to steady herself.

  “Liz, Liz — which demented islander told you that? I cannot believe you are taking this seriously.”

  “I’m not, and it certainly added a little light relief to my morning. But Elton Maxwell’s wife does.”

  “Ah. So the chief officer does.” Elodie pulled out another branch of berries, and winked across the table at Liz.

  “Got it in one. Mrs. Maxwell’s a member of the Island Players. Do you know her?”

  “Only as a fellow player. I don’t socialize much with the Maxwells.” Elodie leaned across the table. “Tell me more. Should I be avoiding the garden after dusk? Carrying garlic? Is she out of her tiny mind? If she has one at all?”

  Liz shrugged her shoulders and went on picking berries from the stem in her hand. “She’s not quite as wacky as that makes her sound, actually. She says he is writing a play for the group — do you know anything about that?’

  “No. But then, I’m only just coming up for air after finishing a really tough project for a researcher at Great Ormond Street Hospital. What does playwriting have to do with vampires?”

  “Everything. That’s what the play is about, and what has upset Mrs. Maxwell is that Hugo Shawcross says it is an area of interest to him, because he is a vampire himself, descended from a long line of the undead. She says he is trying to create a splinter group within the Island Players, and has joked about secret oaths and blood sacrifices.”

  “Seriously?” Elodie had stopped working on her branch of elderberries, and now looked concerned. “I know they were hoping to get some new blood into the group — sorry, terrible choice of expression — and wanted to attract a younger crowd. But this doesn’t sound like a good idea.”

  “No, and that was one of her complaints. That he is a bad influence on the island young. She also said he became threatening when challenged. Mind you, it could be that Mrs. Maxwell doesn’t have much of a sense of humour. He told her to leave him alone or one dark night she’d wake up to find him chomping down on her. Or words to that effect.”

  “Yuk. Not nice.” She caught Liz’s eye, and giggled. “Sorry again, Liz, but this is just ridiculous. Does chomping down on someone’s neck constitute a death threat?”

  Liz grinned. “Don’t feel the need to apologize. You should hear the jokes back at the office — well, you shouldn’t. Some are just filthy. Even Chief Officer Hanley had difficulty keeping a straight face when he told me, and he’s not a laugh-a-minute kind of feller.”

  “Were you planning on going round to talk to him? Do you need backup? We could take some of that.” Elodie pointed to the string of garlic hanging near a thick rope of onions. “I don’t have any crucifixes handy, I’m afraid.”

  “I sort of need backup — at least, that is what I was going to ask you.” Liz was no longer looking amused. “But I am now rethinking that, in case this guy is —”

  “Dangerous? Have you seen him? He’s not much taller than me, looks more like Gandalf than a vampire, and I’m pretty sure I could take him if I had to.” Elodie got up and went over to the sink to wash her hands. “See, Liz, I don’t believe in fairies, or ghosts, or vampires. But I do think he could be trouble. The Island Players have always played second fiddle to GADOC, and I’m sure that’s what this is about.”

  GADOC, the Guernsey Amateur Dramatic and Operatic Society, were the principal group on the island, with a history that went back close to a century. They performed at the well-equipped theatre in the Beau Sejour centre; the Island Players had come into being with a mandate to perform more challenging material. Their audiences, not surprisingly, were considerably smaller, and they were constantly in need of funds.

  Elodie went on. “The Players may be hoping that something shocking will help membership. I can always just ask about the play — say I’ve heard about it. I often see him out in his garden, through the trees.”

  Elodie turned around and grabbed at a towel near the sink. “Let’s get these beauties into the vodka with the lemon peel.”

  Liz went over to the sink, taking the towel from Elodie. Something fragrant was cooking in the oven, and the aroma drifted towards her as she washed her hands.

  “There’s a fantastic smell over here. What is it?”

  “Lamb shanks, cooking very slowly, with red wine and herbs from the garden. And garlic, of course! Some time you must let me teach you how to cook, young woman. Living on omelettes, fish and chips, and Dwight’s curries — delicious though they are, and I have some in the freezer — is not good. It’ll catch up with you, sooner or later.”

  “Knock it off, El. You sound like my mother. Anyway, are lamb shanks a health food?”

  “Kind of. They are good for the soul.”

  Together they filled the Mason jars, fastening down the lids, and Elodie put on the coffee. “How is Dwight?” she asked. “Still playing in that jazz group with your boss?”

  “Yes. He’s fine. We are not an item anymore, you know.”

  “I know.” Elodie had her back to Liz, but could hear the subtle change in her voice. She took down two coffee mugs from the shelf near the fireplace and put them on the table. “Is that something you care about, or am I misinterpreting that change of key I hear?”

  Liz grinned, and said, “Major to minor you mean? Actually, that’s more about my Guvnor than about Dwight. Thanks.” She took the filled coffee mug, sat down and took a sip. “He was going to come and hear me sing with my group, Jenemie. Then he had to go to London for a debriefing for this last caper — case — of ours and missed it. I was disappointed, don’t know why.”

  Elodie looked at her niece, and felt a wave of tenderness. She was younger than her age in some ways, flitting from relationship to relationship, some of them from which she disentangled herself — or was disentangled. Her apparent insouciance about such things was not always genuine, her flippancy a useful cover for hurt.

  “Have you heard him play? I have, once. He’s good. Went with your Uncle Vern.” She smiled. “Do you think your disappointment is artistic, or personal? Do you fancy him? He has a certain je ne sais quoi. Well, I do sais quoi. He’s rather gorgeous.”

  Liz looked as shocked as if her aunt had made a deeply improper suggestion. “El, please, he’s old enough to be my father. Besides, he’s my boss.” She took a deep draught of her coffee, pushing away the thought of an earlier attraction, a man old enough to be her grandfather.

  “Artistic then, I’ll take your word for it. Perhaps he doesn’t want to blur the line between business and pleasure. It can be a dangerous one to cross,” Elodie’s voice hardened, but she did not elaborate, instead adding, “and your piano-playing Guv is not that old, kid. Have you been to the Grand Saracen, the club where he plays?”

  “No, only to the restaurant upstairs. Emidio’s. It used to be his father’s. His mum was a Guernsey girl.”

  “A wartime romance with an Italian slave labourer, Vern told me. Tell you what, we’ll go together some time. Looks like an ascetic, your Guvnor, but having watched him play, I doubt he is. A lot of smouldering going on beneath that detached exterior. Are you on duty after your workout? Why don’t you come back here and share the lamb shanks with me? If you’re free, that is.”

  “Love to. I’ll eat and take notes. Are they easy to make?”

  “A doddle. You can use that slow cooker I gave you and give your microwave a break. And I may have some info for you by then. Gandalf usually takes the air around the witching hour, and I’ll stroll down in that direction and engage him in conversation.”

  “Okay, but be careful.” Liz stood up and took her jacket off the back of the chair. “You may not believe in fairies or ghosts or vampires, El, but that doesn’t mean Shawcross is a pussycat.”

  “He has one — a pussycat, I mean. I hear him calling it. Stoker.” The two women looked at each other, and Elodie said, “First name probably Bram
, don’t you think?”

  She laughed, but Liz didn’t. Elodie went over to the sink and fetched a damp cloth, came back and started to wipe the jars. She looked across the table at her niece, her voice now deadly serious. “I may not believe in vampires, Liz, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in wickedness, and depravity and vice. I think there is as much evil in this world as good. Possibly more.”

  Liz looked at her aunt, startled at this sudden outpouring of hidden emotion, as if she had returned to some dark episode in her life, and Liz thought of her mother’s enigmatic comment on her sister’s past.

  “But I don’t have to tell you that, in your job,” she added and changed the subject. “Is your boss still in London?”

  “No, actually, he’s taken a couple of days off.” Liz pulled her car keys out of her pocket and added, “At this moment he’s probably messing about in his new boat.”

  Ed Moretti was thinking of his father. Not being a Guernseyman, Emidio Moretti had felt no particular desire to own a boat, although he had talked about it from time to time. So Moretti had got his knowledge and his experience from his mother’s brother, who owned a boat and was only too happy to have a strong young boy as his crew. He looked across the deck of his new Westerly Centaur at his own crew, who was at that moment leaning rather perilously over the side of the boat.

  Don Taylor was no young boy, but a man in his mid-forties with the string-bean build and the stamina of a long-distance runner. On an island measuring just over twenty-four square miles, he still managed to keep up his passion on the extensive network of cliff paths. He worked with the Financial Services Commission, one of the elements in the complex structure involved with the financial scene, now the island’s main source of income. Moretti had worked together with Don once before, and Don had provided a key piece of information on Moretti’s last case.

  “Good decision to get a bilge-keeler with the tides around these parts.” Don’s voice drifted back on the wind to Moretti. “And you won’t lose much except to windward. You’ll not always be diesel-powered, I trust.”

  “I wouldn’t dare, not with you on board, but I wanted to give the motor another good outing while I was still able to get my money back.”

  Moretti looked up at the cliffs and felt happiness flooding him. Well, contentment anyway. The kind of escape and freedom he felt at the Grand Saracen, or playing the piano that had been his mother’s, in the house that had been his childhood home. Beyond the treacherous rocks around Icart Point, he could see the coast beginning to curve inwards to Moulin Huet Bay, and out again to the Pea Stacks, three great rock masses on the southeast tip of the coastline, Le Petit Aiguillon, le Gros Aiguillon, and l’Aiguillon d’Andrelot, painted by Renoir when he visited the island. Midnight assassins, Victor Hugo had called them.

  L’Aiguillon d’Andrelot was also known as Le Petit Bonhomme Andriou, and was supposed to resemble a monk in his cowl and gown. Passing fishermen tipped their caps to him, or offered small sacrifices — a libation, a biscuit, even a garment. Or so Moretti was told by Les De Putron, who had laughed at the old superstition and then doffed his cap as they sailed past.

  “Better safe than sorry,” he said. “Mind you do the same. Be on the safe side,” he repeated.

  Looking at the massive rocks, Moretti wondered at the power of superstition. An old observation post used by the Germans at Fort Grey, once in ruins, was now a shipwreck museum, a monument to the hundreds of lives lost along that hazardous coast. But perhaps they had not made an offering to le petit bonhomme.

  The wind had come up, and Moretti concentrated on keeping the Centaur beyond the reefs and shoals of the promontory. Thank God he had done the sensible thing and taken lessons from Les, who ran a small private company running charters, renting boats and giving lessons out of St. Sampson’s harbour.

  He had thought at first of keeping the Centaur at Beaucette Marina, on the northeast coast of the island. At one time a granite quarry, blasted into being as a marina in the sixties by British army engineers, it had appealed because of its distance from where he worked, but in the end that told against it. He had a feeling that his boat would spend more time bobbing about with the seals who showed up at Beaucette from time to time, than with him at sea.

  The obvious choice of mooring was the harbour in St. Peter Port, and marina rates were the same anywhere, but Moretti still liked the thought of getting outside the capital for a change. He finally settled on St. Sampson’s as being closer to the small garage that looked after his Triumph; he could leave it in the safe hands of Bert Brehaut, the garage owner, when he was sailing. Security for the boats anchored there was good, with a punch-in code for berth holders and boat crews, but he didn’t fancy leaving his roadster outside the solid chain-link fence.

  Sometimes he stayed overnight on the boat, which came equipped below decks with a sleeping area that converted into a dinette, complete with small stove, storage, a sink and toilet. It had been a financial stretch, but would save him finding accommodation when he visited the other islands, or France.

  “Tide’s up. Want to pull in to Saints Bay and walk over to that little Greek restaurant past Icart Point, near Le Gouffre? Les De Putron has a mooring and a dinghy he keeps there,” he called over to Don.

  “Great idea.”

  The winds calmed as they approached the small bay, and the choppy water settled into ripples, picture-postcard blue and beautiful. Moretti cut the engine, and they moved gently in to the mooring. A few minutes later, they had pulled the dinghy up on to the dock, and were climbing the steep path to the top of the cliffs, with the natural rock face on one side, and a man-made granite bulwark on the other. Somewhere, an invisible stream made its way to the coast, concealed by vegetation, its waters murmuring unseen.

  It was tough going up the cliff path, steep and uneven, a track that had been there for centuries. Don leaped ahead, light and easy on his feet, and turned back to laugh at Moretti.

  “Want a hand?”

  “You’re a bloody mountain goat, Taylor.”

  “That’s what used to use these paths — goats, I mean. Goats and fishermen and smugglers. Watch the wall, my darling, when the gentlemen go by, as the poet says.” Don gestured towards the wall’s granite face.

  “Not what I’m supposed to do when they’re bringing in brandy for the parson, or marijuana for — whoever. Not in my job.”

  “True. Look at those, running down the side of the cliff. Even I wouldn’t use those.”

  Don had reached the top, and was pointing at barely visible tracks down the sheer cliff face to their left.

  “Goat tracks. Used to be all kinds. Goats, I mean. Falla, my partner, has an aunt who still keeps goats somewhere around here.”

  They turned left and headed towards Icart Point, with the sea and the cliff face close to the footpath. On the other side was St. Martin’s Common, where sheep had roamed free for generations, but they were long gone, like most of the goats that had used the old tracks. Gone also were the côtils, the terraces where smallholders grew potatoes, or planted bulbs for the once-flourishing flower-growing industry.

  There was little colour on the cliffs at this time of year, with the heather and gorse past their prime, but the sky was full of gulls wheeling and shrieking overhead in perpetual motion, and the wind carried the sound of the waves, crashing against the rocks, the familiar soundtrack of the coastline. Even up here, the air was flavoured with salt.

  “You know what they say about gorse?” The wind was strong enough for Don to have to shout at Moretti. “When the gorse is not in flower, then kissing is out of fashion.”

  “And gorse is always in flower. More or less.”

  “So the kissing never has to stop. All one requires is the woman to kiss.”

  Moretti looked at Don’s face, but he was not laughing. Was this just idle banter, or something more?

  The little Greek restaurant was in a tree-filled valley above Le Gouffre, a small anchorage between towering cliffs.
The waitress who served them sounded Australian, but the food was Greek. They ordered a range of appetizers and coffee and sat outside, watching a large marmalade cat luxuriate in the late summer sun in this protected valley.

  “Sybarites, cats. They certainly know how to seize the day,” said Don, popping an olive into his mouth and chewing with gusto. He had the voracious appetite of the long-distance runner, without a trace of body fat. “Speaking of which, is this your last day of freedom?”

  The coffee was good. Hot, strong and black as — as the colour of his ex-lover’s hair. Although Moretti was not sure you could call someone an ex-lover who had, in effect, been a one-night stand. Not that he’d planned it that way.

  “It is, then it’s back to the desk, I imagine. Break-ins and burglaries and little else. But maybe I’ll have more time for the boat.”

  “And playing at the club with the Fénions? Means layabouts, doesn’t it? Great name for a bunch of jazz musicians — or an outsider’s perception of jazz musicians. Have you got a replacement for your horn player?”

  “Nope. And no hopes of one on the horizon. So it’ll be Dwight on drums, Lonnie on bass and me playing piano. Won’t be quite the same.”

  “Still, let me know next time you are playing.”

  Moretti felt a damp little cloud of depression settle over him, and fingered the lighter he always carried in his pocket. Why a lighter should be the talisman that helped him keep off the noxious weed, he couldn’t imagine. But it was at moments like this he still longed for a smoke.

  Don dipped a dolma in tzatziki and swallowed it whole. “God, I love garlic. Just as well I don’t have a woman in my life at the moment. I’ll stink for twenty-four hours after this lot. How about you, Ed? Any new lady in your life?”

  Women again. Moretti looked across the table at the man who knew about as much about his private life as anyone, which was virtually nothing. Idle chatter about women interested him about as much as discussing island politics, or what were now called “relationships.” All three topics were minefields, as dangerous as these cliffs had been after the Germans left the island.