by Jill Downie
“So, two people. A Magician who is also the Devil, and a woman who is a Fool. Al, I think you met the Devil. Or almost.” Moretti got up and refilled his mug. Outside the cottage window it looked as if there was a storm brewing. The wind was rising, the sky darkening. He put on the overhead light. “The Devil is good at getting people to do his bidding if there’s something in it for them, and I have always thought there were two motivations here. Any ideas about who the Fool might be?”
Liz spoke first. “My money’s on Ginny Gastineau,” she said.
Moretti nodded. “Mine too.” He turned to Liz. “At the party, your godmother said Priestley was looking at someone and he was scared, and she didn’t think it was Gaskell. It was probably Ginnie Gastineau, but how she put him up to it we have yet to find out.”
“That makes three votes for Ginnie.” Al Brown scrolled through his iPad. “And for the Devil I nominate Aaron Gaskell. Before I went to his office today, I talked to Bernie, who’s been doing some digging. He’s had trouble checking Gaskell’s background. He’s worked for the same private bank for years, but as for finding any kind of address for him, personal details — nothing. Or virtually nothing. Looks like he’s lived in hotels, that kind of accommodation, and he has enough money to do that. He’s still working on it, but he hasn’t yet found a birth certificate that matches up. Bernie’s done this kind of checking a hundred times, and he says it looks like a deliberate attempt to hide. He found no involvement with any acting group of any kind, and all he has found is a membership in a book club — not one where you all sit around and read books the members choose, but one where you buy certain books, many of them very pricey, according to Bernie.”
“Ah,” said Moretti. “Which leads us to the Waldensians and my own cock-up, Al. Someone was looking for just one particular book, and they found it.”
When Moretti had finished going through the interview with Hugo Shawcross, Al leaned back in his chair and gave a low whistle.
“The hermit was killed for one book?”
“Looks like it, but that doesn’t explain the nonsense with Marla Maxwell, and the threats against Tanya Gastineau. Gandalf was being scared off, but why scare him off after the book was stolen?”
“Because he was just what you thought he was, Guv. A red herring.”
“Maybe.” Moretti turned to Al Brown who was, he noticed, wearing a diamond stud in his ear. Well, it was Saturday, wasn’t it. “What do the cleaning staff have to say?”
Al grinned. “I saw you taking in my ear decoration, Guv, and the ladies loved it. They became quite chatty. They say he asks a lot of questions about island people, particularly the old families. His secretary, who’s related to one of the cleaning staff, told her it’s like — and I quote — working for a zombie. When I asked her what they thought she meant, they said it’s like he’s not all there, a piece missing, and they don’t mean thick as two short planks. To quote again.”
“Interesting.” Moretti got up and walked over to the window. The first rain drops had started to bead against the glass. “They rehearse tonight, don’t they? I think we should make an appearance at some point in the evening.”
Liz closed her notepad and looked across the kitchen at Moretti. He was stroking a small sculpture of a black cat on the windowsill, and both the gesture and the carving seemed out of character and out of place. It was more the kind of decoration favoured by her great-aunt.
“A bit dramatic, Guv, don’t you think? Mightn’t it start something?”
“It might.” Her Guvnor seemed angry. “What other option is there? We take Ginnie in for questioning, because a madwoman has identified a Fool involved, from the Tarot, and we think it’s her? And we pick up Aaron Gaskell and tell him he is the Magician? God, Falla, I’d look and sound like something out of a bloody board game.”
Al Brown still sat in his chair, watching the two of them with interest. Liz did not appear in the least put out. She was smiling as she picked up her bag and slung it across her shoulders.
“And they’d be Miss Scarlett and Professor Plum, right? Want me to phone Elodie, Guv, and ask her about last night’s visit from the chief suspect?”
Moretti was picking up his notepad from the table in which he had taken notes while Liz and Al talked, and Al couldn’t see his face.
“If Elodie Ashton wants to live dangerously, she has made it very clear there’s nothing we can do. Leave it, Falla.”
Liz was still smiling. “When and where shall we three meet again, Guv?”
“Hospital Lane, at seven.”
Al Brown was silent in the car, and it was Liz who spoke first.
“Penny for your thoughts.”
She heard him laugh in the darkness.
“About what they’re worth. Can I buy you a drink?”
“No, but I’ve got a nice red at my place.”
Liz parked the car in the small garage she rented on the road behind the Esplanade, and they walked in the now steady rain to her second-floor flat facing the islands of Herm and Jethou, across the waters of the bay.
“Nice.”
Al looked around appreciatively at the little sitting room’s cosy, eclectic mix of furnishings, the attractive rug on the floor. Interesting choice — it looked like a Turkoman.
“I like it.” Liz poured them both a glass of wine, handed one to Al, who was looking at her collection of CDs. They sat down, facing each other, and there was a moment of awkward silence. Again, it was Liz who bridged the gap.
“So, has coming here solved any problems, Al?”
Al gave the laugh Liz had heard in the car. It was not a happy laugh.
“You guessed, huh? Not one.” He took a sip of wine, then said, “No, that’s not accurate. I now know I don’t want to be a policeman.”
“Ouch!” Liz was genuinely taken aback. “Is that the effect we’ve had on you?”
“Yes.” Al drank some wine, and added, “If I don’t like working with you and Moretti, I will never like it. I am thinking of going back to school, going into psychology, something like that. It is the only part of this that interests me.”
Liz put down her glass of wine. “So, let’s psychoanalyze a bit. We all agreed about the Fool. But how about the Magician? See, there’s something about Aaron Gaskell that doesn’t quite fit to me, and yet there’s something nagging me about him, and I don’t know what it is.” She laughed. “Maybe what I need is hypnosis, not psychoanalysis.”
Al got up, and started to walk around the room, stopping to look at a picture on the wall of a woman in a long white dress, walking alone in a forest.
“Douanier Rousseau. Not one I know — is that how you see yourself, Liz? No, don’t answer that. About Gaskell. When I met him, I thought of something I read about in one of my courses. The French call it ‘la belle indifférence.’ It describes a beautiful, exterior calm that hides an ugly interior of hysteria, hatred, rage. Gaskell fits the bill perfectly.”
“Yes, Al, but why?” Liz was now up and pacing. She put her wine glass back on the kitchen counter under the window overlooking the bay, where she had watched a white heron, and worried about Elodie. “Means, yes — anyone can make a garrotte — opportunity, yes. But why? What’s his motive?”
“Maybe he’s mad — no reason. And maybe it’s all about the book, after all.”
Liz looked sceptical. “Maybe. But I don’t think the Guvnor is entirely sold on Gaskell as the Devil, or I think he’d be more concerned about Elodie.”
“You think so?” Al smiled at Liz and finished the last of the wine in his glass. “Moretti’s a difficult man to read, but I don’t think he wants to go in that direction.” He got up from the chair and took his empty glass over to the kitchen counter. “I think he’d rather your luscious aunt took up with a good-looking zombie with mucho cash, and a perfect profile.”
“Perfect profile. Perfect profile. Oh my God, oh my God.”
Liz ran across the room and grabbed Al by the shoulders, so hard he staggered. �
�You’ve shaken it loose. Remember the mortuary, seeing the hermit’s body?”
“And you said he reminded you of someone, but you couldn’t place it. Peculiar, you said. I remember.”
“I’d just had to deal with a parking problem, and it was fresh in my mind, but not fresh enough.”
“Aaron Gaskell.”
They spoke in unison.
Just as Liz picked up her mobile to call Moretti, it rang.
“Guv, I was just going to call you.”
Moretti interrupted her.
“Al with you? Get out to the Gastineau place in Forest. I’m on my way there now. Dr. Edwards is already there.”
“Another attack?”
Al was picking up her coat and car keys for her as she walked towards the door.
“Two. One dead, one alive.”
Chapter Thirty-One
Moretti knelt down on the sodden grass beside Irene Edwards.
Lying there, her blonde hair drenched and darkened, her mouth slightly open, eyelids fluttering, surrounded by wet, drooping Ladies’ Tresses, Tanya brought to mind a pre-Raphaelite painting of Ophelia on the riverbank. Millais, if he remembered rightly. They had wrapped her in blankets, and someone had fetched a tarp of some kind from the house and propped it up on what looked like tent poles. It flapped loudly in the wind with a sound like gunshots, and they had to shout above the racket.
“Where is her husband?”
“Sedated. He was hysterical, getting in the way. I gave him a needle, and someone took him back inside. Your copper, I believe. He was the one who called first, and he has everyone corralled somewhere. Couldn’t move her until we’d stabilized her.” Irene Edwards looked up at Moretti through a mass of soaked, dark hair. “Same as last time. Attempted garrotting.”
“Bite marks?”
“Yes. Vicious, far worse than on Shawcross. Probably saved her life, because that took time. Let’s get her out of here now.” Irene Edwards stood up and gestured at the ambulance attendants, who ran over, the stretcher between them. “God, Ed, what in the hell was she doing out here in this weather? An assignation?”
Moretti bent down and extracted a sodden fragment from the grass near the path.
“An assignation, yes, with a bloody cigarette. Cigarettes kill, and this one nearly cost her her life.”
As they ran to the ambulance, Irene called out, “I’ll stay with her, Ed.”
“Glad you were around.”
“Me too. Think I’m going to be around for quite a while.”
The ambulance doors shut, and they were gone, the tires screaming on the gravel path, as Liz Falla’s Figaro hurtled towards Moretti. As Liz and Al got out, Moretti pulled out his mobile.
“Bob? Have you got backup yet? Mauger and Le Marchant, good. Hold them there and don’t let anyone go anywhere — yes, that includes using the facilities — no, Falla is coming with me, and La Gastineau will just have to put up with it. Check first there’s no way to get out, okay?”
Moretti turned off his mobile and grabbed Falla by the arm, both the gesture and the force behind it coming with the shock of the unfamiliar.
“Jimmy’s already with the other victim. He says to be prepared. It’s — nasty.”
“Sir.” Al also put his hand on Liz Falla’s arm, his touch protective. “Falla could stay here, couldn’t she? With Bob McMullin?”
“No.” Moretti spoke quite calmly. He started to walk towards the Figaro. “Falla comes. The case is wrapping up, and Falla is always in at the kill. Aren’t you, Falla?”
Liz didn’t bother to reply. She took her car keys out of her pocket and got into the driver’s seat.
The light from the interior of the little cottage streamed out the open door into the night sky, augmented by SOCO’s arc lamps, splintering in the rain. The three stood in the doorway and stayed there, staring.
Blood everywhere. Floor, carpets, walls, ceiling, evidence of the violent struggle that had taken place as Roddy the Body fought for his life. He was a fit young man, and had put up a fight that had knocked lamps from tables, turned over chairs. There was broken glass on the floor. He had even used the two suitcases that McMullin and Le Marchant had talked about to defend himself. Blood-covered, they lay in the centre of the room, one split open. Jimmy Le Poidevin came towards them, his white protective clothing spattered, his face grim.
“Not a pretty sight,” he said. “Perkins has already lost his dinner. Steel yourselves.” He held out three pairs of latex gloves and covers for their shoes.
Roddy Bull lay face upwards on the floor, with what looked like a second mouth above the neck of his sweater. Moretti knelt down beside him. His eyes were open, staring up at them, and to Moretti they didn’t yet seem vacant of life, as if the image of his killer still lived on the retina. Blood had begun to dry around the garrotte that remained in the wound, embedded in the tortured flesh.
“Any bites?”
“None this time. Same double loop, you see.”
“Yes. How long ago, would you say?”
“Not long. An hour or two? The photographer’s on his way, then we’ll move him. Why the hell did this happen?” Jimmy Le Poidevin spoke without his usual bombast, his voice subdued.
“Because his ex-girlfriend confided in him.”
Al and Liz were now looking around the wrecked, bloodied mess of a living room, and Moretti bent down to take a closer look at the items pulled from the damaged suitcase.
“Hold on. What have we here?”
Half-hidden by a solitary shoe was a book. As Moretti extricated it, Liz and Al came over to take a look.
“Reading matter for the journey? I don’t think so.”
“That Waldensian thing?” Al asked.
“No, but just as unlikely a book for Roddy Bull to own. Victorian porn, with some smuttily graphic illustrations.” Moretti held it out, and Al took it from him.
“This doesn’t fit in with the pattern of the hermit’s collection,” he said.
Moretti and Falla were looking at each other.
“Remember our Tin Pan Alley conversation, Falla? What was it you said to me?
“It was something Elodie said. ‘His only passion is books.’”
“Words, words, words,” said Moretti.
As they made for the door, Jimmy Le Poidevin shouted after them, “Wherever he is, the bastard that did this, he’ll be easy to spot. He’ll be soaked with the dead man’s blood.”
In the Gastineaus’ grand sitting room, they were greeted by Bob McMullin. Behind him, with PC Le Marchant hovering in the background, on various sofas and chairs sat the Island Players — or some of them. They looked like a group assembled for a photograph, or the final unveiling of the murderer in a Golden Age mystery. Some were in shell-shocked silence, some whimpering or openly crying, some chattering nervously to one another, but none were blood-covered.
“Where’s Jim Landers?”
It was Raymond Morris who answered Moretti. “How one was expected to have a rehearsal without the leading man, is beyond credulity, but there you are.” His outrage did not seem related in any way to the violence outside.
“Raymond, I left him a message.”
Marie Maxwell also sounded outraged, sitting with her arms around her daughter, who was sobbing.
“Where’s Ginnie Purvis?”
“With PC Mauger, Guv. Under restraint. She tried to resist, and she’s quite strong. And she was really wet. I cautioned her.”
“Good man.”
Bob McMullin looked relieved.
“Who found Mrs. Gastineau?”
“Rory.” It was Lana Lorrimer who answered. “He went berserk.”
Before Moretti could ask his next question, Liz Falla asked it for him.
“Where’s Elodie?”
This time it was Marie Maxwell who answered, huffily.
“Another one who didn’t bother to show.”
As Liz turned to run, Moretti stopped her.
“No.”
“I�
�m always in at the kill. Guv.” Her voice was rough, as she controlled her emotions. “You said it.”
“This won’t be a kill, Falla. He needs to spill his guts, and I want you here, to get Ginnie Purvis to spill hers. She’ll talk to you, I’m sure — remember the bookmarks? And that’s an order.”
He sat opposite her on the wing chair she had bought in a moment of nostalgia in a local second-hand store, cradling the glass of whiskey he had requested. Jim Landers seemed quite at home.
“Forgive my appearance,” he said.
If she had had a spyhole in the front door as her father had suggested, he would never have crossed the threshold. Apart from the overcoat he had put on after whatever it was he had done, he was blood-soaked from head to toe. Even his hair was smeared with it. He had pushed past her into the hallway, and then pushed her ahead of him into her sitting room, pressing the knife he held into her back.
“Sorry about this,” he said, in his usual calm, disconnected way, “but it’s for your own good. I remember how ably you rejected my advances and, to speak in clichés, resistance is futile.”
Elodie tried to copy the cool tone of Jim Landers’s voice.
“Is that what this is about?”
“God no!” He laughed, genuinely amused. “This is far bigger than you, although I was disappointed. This is about the story of my life. I want to tell it to you, I always did. Hence the knife, and not my preferred method.”
Speak in clichés, think in clichés. Keep him talking.
“Whose blood, Jim?”
“This?” He looked down, as if mildly surprised. “No one you know, don’t worry. Some of it is mine. He put up a good fight.”
“Why?”
“Ah, that’s a good question, but to understand the answer, first I have to tell you the story of my life. Someone to talk to, you know.”
And out it came, like a dam burst, a waterfall of childhood memories — of an absent mother, immersed in her own world; a father full of tales of past glories. As long as Jim Landers the child wanted to hear them, he had his father’s full attention. Most of them were brutal, and Jim Landers cheerily told them, his amusement as grotesque as the mocking laughter and macabre clown figures on the ghost trains of Elodie’s childhood that gave her nightmares.