A Grave Waiting. Jill Downie
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you be following your dream, not your father’s?”
Moretti had shaken his head and said, “You don’t understand, Peter.”
He hadn’t offered to explain, and Walker had not asked him to do so.
The catamaran eased away from Rosière Steps, and Moretti gave a last wave as Peter Walker’s sturdy figure receded into the distance. It was a glitteringly clear day, and a sapphire sea creamed into a white froth around the islets of Crevichon and Grand Fauconnière, and the countless rocks that made sailing treacherous in these parts, unless you knew what you were doing. On Guernsey also, besides St. Peter Port Harbour, St. Sampson’s, and Beaucette Marina, there were many anchorages around the island, but they all required knowledge of such things as low-lying rocks and neap tides, when the water was at its lowest point.
To the left of the catamaran, five hundred yards away, loomed the two-hundred- sixty-foot hump of the island of Jethou. For some reason it always appeared ominous to Moretti, forbidding in any light or any season. And yet Fairy Wood on the north side would be carpeted with bluebells and daffodils at this time of the year, and the island’s past history was not as shady as that of others in this islet-dotted sea. On another, even smaller, island, a multimillionaire had for years run his business empire, thumbing his nose at the taxman. And on the island of Sark, a mini paradise, ruled until very recently by a feudal seigneur, many of its supposed residents were merely telephones with redirect facilities to wherever in the world the various businesses they served were to be found. A mini paradise indeed, for arms dealers, money launderers, and distributors of pornography, none of whom had ever set foot in the cathedral-like caves of the Creux Terrible, or gazed into the pellucid depths of the Pool of Adonis.
They were now out into the open, narrow channel that lay between the islands of Herm and Guernsey, passing Mouette and Percée and Gate Rock, heading for the harbour of St. Peter Port, the capital of Moretti’s home island. Here, the wind strengthened and blew salt against Moretti’s mouth. A small boat heading for Herm came alongside briefly, the man and woman on board waving at the children on the catamaran. They looked happy, carefree. Windblown. “I must get another boat,” Moretti resolved.
He’d have time. It had been a quiet winter, with only the usual annoyances of civilized society: break-ins, burglary, car accidents. Domestic disputes.
Behind him Herm receded into the distance, and the curve of Guernsey’s eastern coastline grew nearer. In the centre the houses climbed the terraced cliffs of St. Peter Port, behind one of the most beautiful harbours in the world, guarded by Castle Cornet, as it had been since the thirteenth century.
Old mortality, the ruins of forgotten times.
The fragment dislodged and drifted up from a buried repository of poems learned and texts committed to memory during his years at Elizabeth College, the private boarding school on the island. From mediaeval fortress to Hafenschloss for the occupying forces during the Second World War, Castle Cornet had survived the distinction of being the only castle on British soil bombed by the RAF, to become the keeper of the ruins of forgotten times. In the summer there would be open-air theatre and living history re-enactments. Seventeenth-century pikemen and eighteenth-century militiamen walked along Prisoners’ Walk and past Gunners’ Tower for the amusement of school children and tourists. And every day a soldier in Victorian uniform fired the noonday gun, the sound echoing across the harbour and the town.
The catamaran pulled into the moorings used at low tide at White Rock Pier, and its passengers marshalled themselves and their belongings. Moretti waited until everyone had disembarked and started to move toward the exit to the gangway. He’d drop into police headquarters on Hospital Lane before heading off home, see if his partner, Detective Sergeant Liz Falla, had got back from her gig on Jersey.
Not jazz for Liz Falla. Folk music. Acoustic guitar and a voice once described by a past lover of his as a cross between Enya and Marianne Faithfull. Was such a hybrid possible? Or even desirable? He had yet to hear her sing.
Something seemed to be going on over toward Albert Pier. Moretti could hear sirens, see the flashing of lights.
“What’s up? Do you know?” he asked the catamaran skipper, a swarthy, bearded individual whom Moretti recognized as a not-infrequent patron of police hospitality after too many beers in local watering holes.
“Nope. But they were there when I left an hour ago.”
Moretti took his mobile phone from the depths of his bag and turned it on. It rang almost immediately.
“Falla?”
“Guv?” His partner’s voice was deep for a woman, with a singer’s resonance.
“What’s the problem down at the harbour?”
“I’ve been trying to reach you. Did you just come in on that catamaran?”
“You saw that? I only just turned my mobile on. Where are you?”
“Victoria Marina. There’s been a shooting on a yacht.”
“Where are the rest of the crew?”
“On land, apparently. The cook was scheduled to be first back this morning.”
Liz Falla watched Moretti walk around the circular bed, examine the exact turn-back of the bed cover beneath the dead man, the position of his hands, the angle of his head on the satin-covered pillows. Ask him a question hours later about some tiny detail in the cabin and, snap, his photographic memory would provide the answer.
About a year ago she had not dared ask Chief Officer Hanley, but she had asked the fates, various colleagues, and sundry family members why she had been assigned to this laconic, introverted individual who had no small talk, and even less awareness of her as a member of the opposite sex of above-average attractiveness. Or so she had been given to believe by more forthcoming males with less in the way of looks and intelligence than Moretti. But she had got used to walking into his office, or picking him up in the police car, and having no comment made about a new hairstyle, or a new suit. The only acknowledgement he ever made of her femaleness was when asking for fresh insights or opinions her sex might give her. What she had first seen as a slight she now valued as commendation.
“This is when I wish we had a coroner on Guernsey. I assume the scene-of-the-crime people are on their way.”
“Plus the pathologist on duty at Princess Elizabeth Hospital, Guv. We got here first. PC Mauger is sitting with the cook in the galley. He found the deceased. I’ve only had a quick word.”
“Give us a chance to look at the victim before everyone gets here. You okay with this, Falla?”
His partner gave Moretti a long look from beneath a pair of straight, dark eyebrows. Old-fashioned, his mother would have called it. It was a look he was getting used to. And, after the first murder case they had worked on together, his question was ridiculous. Falla was no fragile flower.
“After some I’ve seen that have been in the sea a few weeks?” She grinned. “I’ll manage, Guv.”
Together the two officers bent over the body.
The dead man appeared to be in his late forties, Moretti reckoned. He was a big man, with an incipient corpulence that might well have gone on increasing if cruel fate had not cut him off before any further advance of middle age. But even in death one could see he had been handsome. His skin was tanned, his thick brown hair expertly cut, his features strong but perfectly proportioned. He was formally dressed in a suit of grey flannel, but casually accessorized: a silky, open-necked shirt, some light loafers in soft black calf on his stiffly extended feet. There was a damp patch between his legs.
“Shot from a distance,” said Moretti, “probably from the doorway. Can’t see any powder grains.” Gingerly he got hold of the tip of a loafer and jiggled one of the flannel-clad legs. “Rigor still in the legs, but from the look of his jaw, it’s worn off up top.”
“Starts at the top and works its way down, doesn’t it?” observed Liz Falla.
“Right.