A Grave Waiting. Jill Downie
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devious I assume you mean dishonest.”
“Depends what you mean by dishonest. In the world of these guys there is no black or white, and little grey. Morals of any kind are not part of the equation.”
“No different from drug dealers.”
“They are the drug dealers. Or they often are. Gone are the days when international security forces pursued separate entities that specialized in drugs, or prostitution, or gun-running. Now the world is crisscrossed with a vast, intertwined chain connecting drugs, gun-running, you name it.”
“A perfect fit for Masterson. He was described to me as a financier, a facilitator, and a middleman. When I asked for something more precise, I was told about the Canada-Germany deal.”
“He could indeed fit the frame. I’ll give you an example of what I mean: Heroine from Turkey moves through the old Eastern bloc — Bulgaria, Rumania, across into the Czech Republic. From there it goes into Switzerland, Germany, France, England. The money the drug dealers make in the West buys Russian arms, which are then used by so-called freedom fighters wherever in the world there’s a so-called freedom fight going on. One crazy-paving, interconnecting patchwork quilt, that’s the kind of thing you’re dealing with nowadays.”
Moretti watched Ross walk back from the window, crouch down, and pat both dogs. He was wearing a navy Guernsey, putty-coloured slacks, and brown suede desert boots, his usual uniform, over a body a much younger man might envy.
“Thing is, Ludo, our dead man’s arms deals appear perfectly legit. His right-hand woman was quite open about it.”
“She’s not going to talk about any deal he might have made with a proscribed government, is she? Someone killed him, which suggests there’s something shady going on. We still come back to what he was doing here. It doesn’t make any sense, not on a money-laundering, arms-dealing level. There’s no doubt that Guernsey is part of a chain where dirty money is moved through London from Moscow, for example, but he could set up all kinds of shell companies to do that. Hell, he could be operating from a bank existing in cyberspace, run from a computer somewhere in the United States. Are you sure there’s no personal reason for his murder?”
“Personal? As in a woman?”
“Who is this right-hand woman you mentioned?”
“Adèle Letourneau, also from Montreal. She describes herself as his ex-lover, now his housekeeper. His bodyguard — yes, bodyguard — says she was in on all business meetings. And she told me Masterson ‘loved his babes.’ She even suggested he might have been done in by some dangerous island femme fatale.”
Ross gave a short bark of a laugh. “Damn few of those, but more likely to be a babe than an international arms dealer, or a babe set up by an international arms dealer. Won’t be the first time they got to someone through his loins. A spy has no friends, which should include lovers.”
There was an edge to Ludo Ross’s voice, which suggested the awakening of personal memories. Moretti knew nothing about Ludo’s private life, he had never mentioned a wife, or a family, or friends, and Moretti, who tended to be silent on the social context of his own life, was not about to ask.
“How does the housekeeper’s alibi stand up?”
“Depends on whether you believe the night clerk at the Esplanade Hotel was doing his job.”
Ross laughed, and this time it was the full, generous laugh that warmed his pale eyes. “Enough said. There is another possibility among many possibilities, and theft is still on the cards. Whoever your murderer is may not have been interested in traceable Euros, or put much faith in banks operating in cyberspace, but he may have preferred something else Masterson had in his safe, or on his person. Diamonds, for instance. They are portable, easily hidden, decidedly valuable, and a useful form of payment for less than squeaky clean deals. Have you found the gun? And what about the bullet?”
“A hollow-point, according to Nichol Watt.”
“Nichol? He has experience in America, hasn’t he? I think he told me he worked there for a number of years. I’ve always wondered why he left.”
“In Nichol’s case, probably to do with a babe. Like our victim, Nichol likes his babes.” Both men laughed. “The bullet’s gone to Chepstow for further tests, and I’ll send divers down tomorrow if no gun turns up on the yacht. But I think whoever did this took the gun with him — or her. Why leave it around?”
“You’re probably right. This kind of character often carries a gun himself. Did Masterson?”
“Yes, or his bodyguard did.”
“That’s right, you mentioned a bodyguard. So he expected trouble.”
“Anywhere but here, apparently, because he’d sent him on shore for the night. The gun was a Glock 17 and it’s disappeared. In your opinion, could a gun largely made of plastic that takes to pieces be smuggled through customs?”
“Highly unlikely in this day and age, and the bullets present another problem. It’s more likely he got the weaponry he needed from sources close at hand, then discarded it. He’d have contacts, this chap.”
Ludo Ross went back to the seat opposite Moretti and picked out a pipe from a rack on a nearby table. Pulling out a pouch from his pocket he started to fill the pipe and, as he lit up, the fragrant heady aroma of tobacco drifted across the room. Apricot essence and honey, some Oriental tobaccos, a touch of Turkish latakia. October 89, bought in bulk from the Dunhill store in London. Moretti put his hand in his pocket and touched the lighter he still carried.
“Sorry,” said Ross, seeing the gesture. “Still on the wagon?”
“Clinging to the buckboard by my nails. Don’t stop for my sake.”
Ross smiled and put the pipe down. “I can wait. Where’s that pretty partner of yours?”
“Is she? I suppose she is. Doing desk work, filling in forms, you know, all that shit.”
“I heard her sing the other night.”
“You did?” Moretti finished his beer. “What’s she like?”
A sudden gust of wind outside the long windows of the living room shook the trees around the courtyard, blowing some loose twigs against the glass. Immediately the two dogs were up and over by the window. Moretti heard the male, Benz, growl softly in his throat. Ludo Ross looked toward the window and then back at Moretti.
“You haven’t heard her? Shame on you, Ed. Not my kind of music, I thought, and then she sang Byron’s ‘So We’ll Go No More A’roving.’ Fair took my breath away, she did, and that’s not easily done anymore.”
“A friend told me she sounds like Enya with a touch of Marianne Faithfull.”
Ross gave a short bark of a laugh. “Yes. The Enya is deliberate, but the Faithfull comes unbidden from God knows where in such a young woman.”
His cool, pale eyes looked beyond Moretti, beyond the windowless wall, back to some past from which he had not yet detached himself.
Old mortality, the ruins of forgotten times.
“I nearly forgot —” Moretti pulled himself back to present priorities and took out from his pocket the scrap of paper taken from the magazine rack. “What do you make of this?”
Ross took the paper and walked over to the window. He looked at it a moment, then turned back to Moretti. “I assume there was something out of the ordinary about where you found this?”
“Someone had taken the trouble to remove whatever it was from a rack otherwise full of semi-pornographic magazines, knocking it over in the process.”
“On the surface it looks like part of a brochure for high-priced yachts, but there is something unusual about it. See this?” Ross pointed at something in small print below the words Offshore Haven. The lower part of the letters had disappeared with the rest of