A Grave Waiting. Jill Downie
Читать онлайн книгу.
if you’re just interested in selling a yacht. Looks like the middleman facilitator had something else on the boil, something that your murderer didn’t want anyone to know about.”
“We’ll check. Shouldn’t be too difficult if that’s the name of the outfit.”
“What about all those CCTV cameras? Did they pick anything up?”
Moretti thought about the ex-star of the Folies Bergère teetering, to use Falla’s word, across the screen in the small hours. Better not, he decided. Lady Fellowes might have a perfectly good explanation, and she had friends in high places. As did Ludo Ross.
“I don’t know yet,” he prevaricated. “That’s one of the jobs Liz Falla’s doing.” Moretti stood up, and the two ridgebacks were instantly alert. “I must go. Perhaps I could talk to you again, when we get more information.”
“Of course. Let me know, anyway, when you’re going to be at the club.”
The wind was blowing hard enough to shake the lilac blossoms off the trees near the end of the drive, and somewhere a cuckoo was calling. Benz loped along by the Triumph until he reached the end of the property, then turned back to his master. In his rear-view mirror, Moretti watched Ross bend down to pat him, wave, and turn back into his house, closing the door behind him.
From the window beside the door, the one through which he could see out and those outside could not see in, Ludo Ross watched Moretti’s car turn the corner, and listened until the sound of the engine was swept away by the wind. He walked back into the living area, crossing the blue stretch of Kirman, making for the wall unit that extended the length of the room opposite the windows. From an unlocked drawer he removed a folder, and placed it on the polished surface of the desk incorporated into the unit. Opening it, he shuffled through some papers, giving a grunt of satisfaction when he found what he wanted. It was a photograph, somewhat faded now, dog-eared, as if it had long been carried in a pocket, and often taken out by the wearer. Ludovic Ross smiled at the black-and-white image.
“He could use your talents,” he told the face in the picture. “God knows I did.” The smile turned to a grimace. “But then, could he trust you? Should he have trusted me?”
Holding the photograph by one corner, Ross started to tear it, then stopped. He placed it back in the folder, but this time it was not returned to the unlocked drawer. It was carried upstairs to the wall safe hidden behind the false bathroom cabinet, installed by a locksmith from East Sussex who had been flown in to do the job.
From the bathroom doorway, Benz watched his master stroke the cabinet mirror before turning away.
The rain was still holding off. Moretti thought about Liz Falla and the group she sang with, Jenemie. Why hadn’t he made the effort to hear her? Not his type of music either, like Ludo, but that wasn’t the reason. They had been together professionally for just over a year now, and he found her quick thinking, competent, and, from time to time, amusing. He wanted things to stay that way, compatibility with no confusion between the professional and the personal. He’d been down that road before, and it was a road that had brought him back from the mainland to the island.
Moretti headed back from the coast, picking up the main route through the parish of Forest toward the parish of St. Peter’s, and the rented cottage owned by Gwen Ferbrache. She had pointed it out to him once when they made an excursion to some protected meadowlands nearby in La Rue des Vicheries to look at some wild orchids. Normally he would have asked Liz Falla to pay an informal call on the two women, on the pretext of checking on their personal safety. But since there was a gun and a family friend involved, making himself the target seemed the decent thing to do.
About ten minutes later he turned off the main road, drove past Torteval Church, with its conical nineteenth-century witches’ hat of a tower, described in an old guidebook as “a supreme example of ugliness,” and crossed over into the western section of St. Peter’s. Slowing the Triumph to a crawl, he kept his eyes open for the menhir he remembered that marked the entrance to Verte Rue. The island was dotted with ancient stones and pre-Christian monuments, of which the most impressive was La Gran’mère du Chimquière in the gateway of St. Martin’s churchyard.
Moretti had almost passed the stone when he caught sight of it, overgrown with brambles and wildflowers. Campions, violets, and primroses ran riot in the hedgerows at this time of the year, before the obligatory hedge cutting in June, and only the weather-worn head of the stone peered through a coronet of white cow parsnip and nettles. Moretti stopped the car and backed up, turning cautiously into the narrow lane until he could see what condition it was in. To his relief the ground seemed firm, and ahead of him he could see a series of ruts leading to the cottage about a quarter of a mile down the lane. At least if he was in the car he had a better chance of escaping injury if they took a potshot at him.
It was a short, sharp switchback of a journey, the car wheels jolting alarmingly in and out of the ruts and over the occasional cross-channel made by escaping winter rains. By the time he got to La Veile, Moretti was more concerned with the car’s suspension than with gunfire, and it was a relief to pull up outside the cottage and get out.
La Veile was a solidly built two-storey granite cottage, with a window on each side of the central door, set in a small porch. The two windows on the upper floor were framed by the tiled roof, which came down in an inverted triangle and squared off low over the front door. The place appeared deserted. Two bicycles, one with a child’s seat on the back, rested against the porch overhang, and there was a multi-coloured beach ball perched in an empty flower box under one window.
Mindful of Gwen’s experience, Moretti slammed the car door loudly, so that no one could be taken by surprise. As he did so, he saw a movement in one of the downstairs windows. Someone had pulled open the slats of the blinds installed in both of the ground floor windows. A moment later, the front door opened.
“Hello!” he called out. “My name’s Ed Moretti, a family friend of Gwen Ferbrache. I thought I’d just drop by and introduce myself.”
A woman stepped out from the darkness of the porch into the relative light of late afternoon, her long, dark hair swinging against her shoulders as she turned and shut the door behind her. Sandra Goldstein presumably.
“You must be the policeman,” she said. “Hi, how are you? I’m Sandra.”
She smiled at Moretti, but she did not extend her hand. As Gwen had said, she was above average height, but what Gwen had called an olive complexion looked more to Moretti like a fading tan. She was barefoot, wearing the jeans Gwen had called predictable, and a grey sweater with what looked like the logo of an American sports team on it, involving the head of a snarling jungle cat beneath the word Panthers. With her dark hair and intense, wary gaze, it seemed like a fitting logo for Sandra Goldstein.
“I’m a policeman,” Moretti replied. “But this is just a courtesy visit to welcome you to the island and to make sure all is well.”
“Of course it is. Why wouldn’t it be in this perfect place?”
Sandra Goldstein laughed, and the sound was warm and happy. “Nice car,” she said, nodding toward the Triumph.
“So you’ll know who it is if you see it bumping and rolling up the lane.”
I must at least see the child, thought Moretti, even if I have to invite myself in.
“Are you managing all right, so far from the bus stop, with your friend and the little girl?”
Sandra Goldstein laughed again, sounding genuinely amused. “After the States, Mr. Moretti, nothing seems so far on this island — heck, the longest bus ride is twenty minutes!”
Just as he was thinking he would have to make some excuse about checking the furnace or the door locks, the front door opened and a voice called out, “Sandy?”
Sandra Goldstein turned back to the house. “It’s okay, Julia,” she called. “It’s Miss Ferbrache’s policeman friend — you know, the one she told us about.” Turning back to Moretti she said, “Won’t you come in and meet the other