Devil's Breath

by G. M. Malliet

  “So, what do we have now?” Cotton stood with his back to the harbor, the breeze blowing his hair into a halo framing his face. Passersby were taken with the sight of two striking men, one fair, one dark. They might have been mistaken for tourists but for Cotton’s immaculate suit. Perhaps they were actors connected with that director’s yacht in the harbor? Several people smoothed their hair and adjusted their clothing on the off-chance a film camera was in range. “The night of the murder we know there was a disturbance of some sort. Angel, running out of the icing sugar he needed for the pastry, had gone to the safe room; he knew Zaki kept the combination written on a card in his chef’s jacket, which was hanging on a nearby hook. Zaki had actually left for the night, knowing everything was in capable hands. He seems to have done very little of the actual cooking and baking. Anyway, Angel retrieved the ‘sugar’ from the safe room and used it to make icing for that night’s pudding. Angel didn’t taste or test it—why would he? But Zaki came in to do a last-minute check and saw the tin of ‘sugar’ sitting on the counter. He saw the misidentifying label, and realized what must have happened. He was angry not just because Angel had gone into the safe room—he’d been told not to do so—but, of course, because his mistake could have got them both in serious trouble. The passengers might have been taken deathly ill when they ingested the drug, but at a minimum, they were going to notice the weird taste of what should have been sugar. And that would affect Zaki’s reputation for creating nonstop masterpieces. He ordered Angel to throw the pudding away. The guests had tinned apricots that night instead.”

  “That might be the part that sent him off the edge right there. The master chef sending such a poor excuse for a pudding out of his galley.”

  “But where does it get us?” Cotton asked. “Did Margot get caught up in this scene somehow? She went storming out of the party, remember. Did she see something? Did she suspect drug use and drug smuggling were going on? Was Zaki dealing to the passengers? Did she use drugs herself? I suppose once you allow in drugs as a factor there are all manner of ways she could innocently have put herself in harm’s way.”

  “Yes. If she found out about the drugs, if she caught Zaki red-handed somehow, would she be allowed to live to tell the tale?”

  “I doubt that very much,” said Cotton.

  “So do I,” said Max.

  Cotton sighed. “What we need is a confession.”

  “That would be most helpful. But whoever did this is looking at charges of murder, perverting the course of justice, preventing the burial of a corpse—just for starters,” said Max. “The chances anyone will break down and confess given the gravity of the situation are small.”

  “Actually, it has to be premeditated murder, given the drugs. She didn’t dope herself with all that lot. There was nothing spur-of-the-moment about any of this.”

  * * *

  Much later that same day, Cotton and Max shared an after-dinner drink in the situation room.

  “The guesstimate was about right,” Cotton told Max, ringing off another conversation on his mobile phone. “So far my team has found more than fifty kilograms of cocaine—well over a hundred pounds. It’s not a huge bust, not what they’re used to in London.”

  “But it’s quite a nice haul for Monkslip-super-Mare,” said Max. “That’ll be many millions in street value if it’s high grade. You’re sure to be mentioned in dispatches.”

  Cotton looked pleased at the idea, and Max was amused to see a faint blush spread across his friend’s face. At the least there would be an official commendation added to his file. It would all help when his super’s job fell open. “The question is, did the captain know? Did Romero?”

  “I doubt the captain knew exactly what was going on,” Max replied. “Romero—maybe he knew, maybe not. But there’s no earthly reason for him to be involved, that we’re aware. He certainly didn’t need the cash; your team looking into his finances seems to feel the lavish lifestyle was well funded. He might overreach his limits one day but so far, so good. Still … some people get into this kind of thing solely because they think it’s a lark. They’re in it for the thrill of pulling one off against the authorities. For those addicted to excitement, the thrill is all.”

  “I’ve met the type before,” said Cotton. “Nothing they do makes sense, on the surface.” He paused, thinking, then said, “The captain at least had to have suspected something, don’t you agree? Still, lack of clear knowledge is no defense against guilt.”

  “There’s a legal concept I’ve always had trouble grasping—how do you condemn someone who had no clue? All right, he was in charge of the ship, but even so…”

  “The buck has to stop somewhere,” said Cotton.

  Max smiled at him. “These Americanisms. That was Truman, wasn’t it? Anyway, I wonder how long it’s been going on, the smuggling.”

  “It’s hard to say. The safe room was built into the ship a year ago, replacing the small gym that had been there before. So at least we know the time frame of when the safe room could have been used to conceal the drugs. The regular storage areas may have been in use before that time for the same purpose, of course, but it’s a dicey proposition. What if the sous-chef went to bread the chicken with flour and accidentally used cocaine? He could have wiped out everyone on board. With the safe room, it was a safer bet, so to speak. So long as only the chef and captain knew the combination. And the captain had no need to go in there as a matter of routine.”

  “And then one night the sous-chef ran out of the icing sugar he needed to decorate his pastries. And unknowingly, he used cocaine powder from the stores in the safe room.”

  “Right.”

  “No doubt, as Angel said, it helped the chef to have someone like Delphine Beechum flitting about, acting as go-between. We noted before her usefulness in bridging the crew and the guests. Her ability to penetrate those social barriers at will. And it helps explain that blue hotel pen found in her cabin, the one with the fish logo. There are other explanations for her having it, of course—it’s not conclusive. But if she is lying about having been at the hotel before, perhaps passing drugs to and from the ship, we have a good indicator she’s lying about other things. She’s a memorable person and someone on the staff here will remember seeing her—”

  “She was dealing,” said Cotton. “Had to be. I wonder how big a part she played. As a courier, or in procuring the stuff in the first place. She will need a good explanation for the large amounts of money we’re finding in her numerous savings accounts, which can’t be accounted for by her paychecks alone.”

  “I think we can rely on what Angel told us—he suspected from the first she was the conduit. She and the chef had too many hushed conversations for there not to have been something going on. What earthly use is a cruise director on such a small yacht? The chef will spill the beans soon enough—sorry, what an appalling play on words. But remember, his style is to cast the blame, and with Angel out of the picture I doubt he’ll hesitate to implicate his actual accomplice. If you’re asking for the most likely scenario, she found buyers, passed the stuff along, and took a cut for doing so. Her financials don’t add up otherwise; there isn’t that much money in teaching yoga.”

  “But there’s certainly better karma there than in drug smuggling.”

  A pause, as Max sat thinking back over what they had learned. He watched the play of light in the amber liquid of his drink. “Tina,” he said, musingly. “What was her given first name again?”

  Cotton rustled through some papers. “I think it’s short for—yes, here we go. It’s short for Christina.”

  “It’s also a street name for crystal meth, as I’m sure you’re aware.”

  “Are you thinking there’s a connection?” Cotton asked.

  “Not really. What’s in a name, after all?”

  “Quite a lot,” said Cotton. “There is quite a lot to a name.”

  Max looked at him. He had never before asked. It simply had not come up in all the time he’d known Co
tton. “Do you have a first name?”

  Cotton looked at the ceiling, at the floor, out the window—everywhere but at Max before saying, “It’s Prospero. Yes, you heard right. Prospero Cotton. I was presumably named after the character played by my father. Whoever that was.”

  “Oh, sorry, man. That’s tough. I mean it must have been hard. In school and everything. Prospero, eh?”

  Cotton shrugged. “Most people were pretty decent about it.”

  Max had to wonder. Life couldn’t have been easy for a boy named Prospero. It certainly helped explain why Cotton was so well read up on the plays of Shakespeare. But Max wasn’t going to pretend it wasn’t an unusual choice of name for a baby.

  “I think my mother was crazy, actually,” Cotton said. “Or she thought I’d have a career in the theater. Which was never going to happen, after my having seen the life they all led. Chaos was reserved for the good days. The rest of the time it was pure ruddy mayhem.”

  “If nothing else,” said Max mildly, “it’s helped give you the advantage in this case. I think you see the psychology of many of the suspects quite well.” It might assist him in other ways, too, Max thought. Perhaps the ability to tell when a suspect was lying was enhanced by a childhood of being surrounded by people playacting a part.

  Or did it hinder? Could Cotton always spot the truth, given that background?

  But Max was still grappling with “Prospero.” On reports, he’d only seen Cotton use his initials: P. C. Cotton. No wonder. He was afraid to ask him what C stood for. Probably Caliban.

  Max made a deliberate attempt to excise the knowledge from his mind, to tuck it away in a little cabinet marked “Unimportant Information.” Cotton would always be just plain Cotton to him.

  Chapter 23

  LYRE, LYRE

  The next morning, Max interrupted Addison Phelps as he was updating his Web site. He invited Max into his room cordially enough, but asked him to wait a moment while he made sure his files transferred safely.

  “The Internet connection in this hotel seems to come and go with the tides,” he informed Max. “Or perhaps it’s connected with the phases of the moon. Right now, it’s a very weak signal—just glacial. I hope you don’t mind—I haven’t done my updates for days. And now that I finally have the chance to do it, well…”

  Max nodded amiably and took a seat near the open balcony window, where a cooling breeze lifted the sheer curtains framing each side. He took the opportunity to study the young man as he sat at the hotel desk, focused on his task. Addison, nicknamed Addy, was wholesome looking rather than conventionally handsome, with fair, lightly freckled skin and good clean lines of nose and jaw; he was spidery of build, and of indeterminate years. Max would have placed him at twenty-five and prematurely balding if he hadn’t known better from reading Patrice’s files. She had made a notation next to his name, a single phrase: “V. bright but sometimes plays the scatterbrain, don’t underestimate.” He had grown a beard he kept trimmed short and wore his sandy blond hair in a fashionable samurai topknot. His hair frizzed about his hairline, as if pulling it tight each day were breaking it at the roots. He sported a T-shirt that announced he was a fan of some band Max had never heard of, and artfully torn jeans that made him look as if he’d been attacked by ravening dogs.

  The laptop he was working on emitted a small ping, indicating it was satisfied, and Addy closed the browser window. A photo of a colony of penguins appeared on the screen. Addy carried his desk chair over to sit near Max, giving him an artlessly sweet, good-natured smile. From what Max could see of the screen before Addy had logged out, he’d also been working on a document in screenplay format, with large white margins and headers indicating character names and strips of dialogue. With so much white space on the page, it looked to Max almost like cheating, like an author could write a full screenplay in no time compared with a manuscript, but Max suspected there might be more to it than that. God knew his sermons, however brief he tried to keep them, took forever to write. The trick, he had discovered, was always to open with a joke. One he had found recently on the Internet was, “What do Winnie the Pooh and John the Baptist have in common?” Answer: “The same middle name.” The congregation had loved that one.

  “How can I help you—Max Tudor, is it? That detective told me to expect a visit from some sort of consultant on the case.”

  Max nodded. Even under normal circumstances, he resisted being addressed as “Father Tudor.” He liked to think of himself as neither low nor high church, but falling somewhere on a broad continuum where compassion and common sense outweighed dogma. Titles created a distance between people that was difficult to bridge.

  “Why do I feel suddenly like the Ghost of Christmas Past?” he asked. “With people being warned of my visit? But yes, and call me Max, please.” He hesitated a moment before adding: “In actual fact, I am an Anglican priest from Nether Monkslip, a nearby village. But I am here to talk with you about Margot Browne. The police have asked me to assist in this inquiry, if you’ve no objections to answering a few of my questions. In any event, I’d appreciate your keeping my—well, my mission to yourself for now.” Max wasn’t sure why, but he had made a decision on the spot to trust Addy with his actual identity and affiliation, where he had not done so with the others. There was something in Addy’s gentle manner that made Max feel he might be more amenable to a chat if it were clear that Max did not represent the full authority of the law. At least, not of earthly law.

  “Of course,” said Addy. “I mean, I guess it’s okay. Her murder is all anyone is talking about here, for sure. I dare not leave my room for fear of being blinded by photographers’ camera flashes. What I can’t imagine is, why are you here—I mean, really? Are the police that short-staffed in England they have to recruit stand-ins from the local church? Who is minding the altar, in other words?”

  Max smiled. “I have an able assistant filling in for me: the Rev. Destiny Chatsworth. I suppose it must look as if the police were desperately underfunded and understaffed. They are, in point of fact. But that doesn’t apply, not in this case. It’s more that DCI Cotton and I go back a long way.” He decided to leave it at that. If it implied Cotton was calling in some sort of favor, or implied nothing at all, that was fine with him. He was abashed to realize his truth telling during an investigation also fell along a continuum. But he certainly couldn’t explain to Addison or anyone that he was actually doing the rounds of the investigation at the behest of MI5.

  “I see,” said Addison. “Or rather, I don’t see but I don’t imagine you’re going to tell me any more than that, are you?” He had a focused, concentrated way of listening for answers, almost as if he were hard of hearing and had deliberately to filter out any background noise.

  Spot on, thought Max, who realized he was indeed talking with one of the brighter sparks in the group. After time spent with Tina, who struck him as more cunning than bright, it would come as a relief. “How do you like to be called?” Max asked him. “Is Addy all right?”

  “Sure. Everyone calls me Addy. Addison is too pretentious to live up to, don’t you think? I’d have to buy a cravat and riding boots and spend all day swapping bon mots with the baron and baroness.”

  “Perhaps your parents had high aspirations. Or is it a family name?”

  “Both. It’s a family name. My mother’s family. She was an Addison”—and here he lifted his voice into a nasal falsetto—“‘you know, the famous makers of Addison’s Idaho potato chips and other wholesome snacks.’ ‘Famous’ being a euphemism for richer than God, which they were—are—and never let anyone forget it. I have four siblings, all with names starting with A, but with normal names like Abigail.”

  “I believe I’ve actually heard of the brand—or of the family, rather.”

  “It was her grandfather, my great-grandfather, who started the line of products. He was a wily old coot, by all telling, who was buried clutching his Bible, which had his first dollar tucked between the pages—probably somewhere ar
ound St. Paul’s letter to the Philistines. He renovated an old factory during the depression and started helping to feed the nation’s appetite for relatively cheap, deep-fried foods. You can lay North America’s current obesity epidemic squarely at his door. I never eat the things, myself.”

  “I see. So, you’re from Idaho, then?”

  Addy nodded. “That’s right. Beautiful place. Great skiing. You ever been?”

  “Not yet,” Max replied. “One day I hope to visit. I do know you’re a long way from home. What brings you here?”

  Addy crossed one leg tightly over the other, lacing his hands together rather primly on top of his left knee. “On the accursed cruise, you mean? The short answer is Romero invited me. He became friendly with my agent when he was trying to acquire the screenplay rights to another of her author’s books. She recommended me as someone who could turn the story into a screenplay.”

  “I thought the book’s author did that.”

  “Turn his own book into a screenplay, you mean? Oh, God no. Not if they value their lives. Much better to cash the check and leave someone else with all the headaches.”

  “I see. And the long answer about what brought you here?”

  “The long answer is that Romero knew from my agent I was researching a bio of Margot Browne, and he thought I might take her off his hands. Keep her busy with interviews and flattery, you know, while keeping her away from him and Trixie—what’s her name.”

  “Tina,” Max supplied.

  “That’s it. What an enormous idiot. I hope Romero knows what he’s doing. Anyway, when someone offers you an all-expense-paid vacation on his luxury yacht, you accept, even though I was in the middle of everything and the weather conditions were far from ideal for a pleasure cruise. We spent a lot of time below deck while we were at sea, praying for sunlight and sight of land, like a load of well-fed pilgrims. If you’ve spent any time with theater or movie people you might know that it’s not as much fun as it may sound.”