Blood Will Out. Jill Downie
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straightforward, doesn’t it?”
“Lonely old hermit does away with himself, yes. But listen to this.” Moretti handed the phone over to Liz. “Not the chief officer and the voodoo, Falla, but Dr. Edwards.”
Dr. Edwards’s voice came as a surprise to Liz. In person, she was an imposing woman, tall and big-boned, with striking features. Although she had long, dark hair she always wore it coiled up into a chignon, which probably made it easier to fit under the hoody-like protective headgear. On the phone, though, detached from her appearance, her voice was light, almost girlish.
“Hello, DS Falla. This is Dr. Edwards. Here is my first impression, as promised. Mr. Dorey probably died the morning he was found — I’ll be more precise, I hope, after the post mortem. He was an old, frail man, and the drop caused a cervical fracture from the look of it — in other words, he broke his neck. Doesn’t always happen, and the PM will tell me if he was asphyxiated, or died from occlusion of the blood vessels, or the fracture did him in. But there is something else that’s a bit of a bother.” A moment of silence and then the girlish voice added, “He still had quite strong leg muscles, perhaps from doing a lot of walking, but his upper body on the other hand — it was skinny and weak to the point of emaciation, which is why his neck snapped like a twig.” Another pause. “So, what I’m saying is — how did he manage that humungous knot on that massive rope? Thought I’d throw that at you.” A silvery laugh and then a click.
Moretti and Falla looked at each other. Liz spoke first.
“Is she saying what I think she’s saying?”
Moretti looked across the table at his partner. “If you think she’s saying the hermit had a helper. then, yes. I think that’s exactly what the observant Dr. Edwards is saying.”
Chapter Four
The drive out to Pleinmont, on the southwestern tip of the island, was one of the longer journeys on Guernsey, and gave Liz Falla time to regale Moretti with an account of her evening with the vampire. Once or twice he threw his head back and laughed with a lack of restraint that took Liz by surprise. In the short time they had been together as partners, she rarely remembered him behaving in such an extroverted way.
What had changed in his life, she wondered. She knew he had originally come back to the island after the breakup of a long-term relationship, and since his return had been involved with a couple of women, neither of them islanders. As far as she knew, those were love affairs, not life affairs — a big difference, in her book. He was an ascetic, according to Elodie, with hidden fires. Maybe the hidden fires part only showed when he was playing jazz piano.
She had looked up “ascetic.” It was one of those words she thought she knew, but really didn’t. Someone who had been briefly in her life, flaring up and self-destructing, brilliant as a shooting star, had encouraged her to do this. “Severely self-disciplined,” her dictionary said; the word “abstinent” was also used. Well, that bit wasn’t accurate.
“I was sailing around this part of the coastline yesterday, with Don Taylor — remember him? It was a great day. Reminded me of when I was a kid, risking my life climbing the cliffs at Le Gouffre with Andy Duquemin.” Moretti was laughing again. “There really is a god who looks after small boys, Falla.”
So it was a boat, not a babe. “Not small girls, Guv? It’s okay, you don’t have to answer that. That’s just some of my feminist claptrap. I know what you mean.”
“Don’t you have an aunt who lives around here? The one you’d rather not talk about?”
Liz Falla made an unnecessarily brisk twist of the wheel to the left as they turned on to the coast road.
“She’s actually my great-aunt and yes, she does. With her simples, and her goats and her ouija board — sorry, planchette. She considers the ouija board new-fangled. Here we are, Guv.”
Ahead of him Moretti saw the hermit’s roundhouse, surrounded by police tape. The strange building had been there for well over a decade, as far as he knew, but certainly had not been there when he and Andy Duquemin had roamed the cliffs and the Common. He remembered asking his father about it, when he came home on his first vacation from London University. It was his mother, the island girl, who had answered him.
“Gus Dorey. Came back with his mother after the war to find his family home in ruins. Reprisals, I imagine. He built that himself, when he came back again, years later. His parents were long gone by then.”
“Gus Dorey,” said Moretti. That visit was the last time he saw her, and he heard again the echo of his mother’s voice, saying the name. When he got out of the car the brisk wind of autumn made his eyes water. “Is there anyone watching the place, Falla?”
As he asked the question, a uniformed constable came out of the house.
“Yes, Guv. Looks like it’s PC Mauger. I think he came on duty this morning.”
PC Mauger walked briskly towards them across the rough scrub that surrounded the house, his arms folded across his body against the wind.
“’morning, DI Moretti, DS Falla. You didn’t bring any hot coffee with you, by any chance?”
“Sorry, no,” Falla replied. “Anything to report?”
“Nothing, but PC Bichard, who was here last night, thought there was someone hanging about outside. When he went out to check, he could see nothing, wondered if it was his imagination playing tricks.”
“He’s a policeman, he’s not supposed to have an imagination playing tricks.” Moretti’s voice sounded sharp, and both officers looked at him with surprise. “I’ll speak to him when we get back to the station. Let’s take a look at Gus Dorey’s hideaway. I’m assuming SOCO are done here?”
“Yes, sir. I was told not to move anything, but no need to wear gloves. There’s not much to see, sir. Is there, DC Falla?”
“Not much.”
Falla watched Moretti go ahead of them into the roundhouse, and turned to PC Mauger. “Did Pete Bichard say what he meant by ‘hanging about’?”
“Blimey, he’s in a mood, isn’t he? What’s got up his nose?” One look at Falla’s expression quelled any further comments about Moretti’s mood, and he went on, “He thought he heard a vehicle on the road, then he thought he heard it stop. Then he thought he heard someone moving around. That’s all.”
“Did he go outside and take a look?”
“Yes. It was pitch-black and he saw nothing. Then he heard a vehicle again on the road, but he saw no headlights, which was weird. Should have seen them from here.”
Falla looked back towards the road. There were few trees, and Pete Bichard was right. He should have seen headlights.
“Go and sit in the car for a bit, Bernie, get warmed up.”
Bernie Mauger trundled happily off towards the road, and Liz went into the roundhouse. Moretti was kneeling on the wooden floor surrounded by books. Behind him lay the chair, still on its side. He looked up as she came in.
“Interesting,” he said.
It was Moretti’s default word, and could mean mildly interesting, or extremely interesting, depending on the circumstance. She waited for him to elaborate, which was usually best and, given his sudden hissy fit with PC Mauger, probably advisable right now. If she wasn’t a copper, the laughing Guv of a few minutes before would seem like her imagination playing tricks.
“Some of these are quite valuable.” Moretti held up a nondescript-looking book bound in a faded green, brushing the silvery-white dust left by SOCO off the cloth cover. “First edition of Nicholas Nickleby, 1839, with the original etchings and frontispiece. Probably worth a bob or two.”
“A bob or two?” Liz crouched down beside him.
“A thousand pounds or two,” Moretti replied. “Until the