Moretti and Falla Mysteries 3-Book Bundle. Jill Downie
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sitting room. He decided to jump to conclusions.
“I think,” he said, “she’s in good hands. Safer than here, I should think. I suggest you take a limo back to the hotel and wait for her.”
As a bewildered Gilbert Ensor turned to leave, Moretti allowed himself to add, “And stay off the patio, won’t you, sir?”
When he was out of earshot, Liz Falla looked at her senior officer. “Do you know where she is, Guv?”
“Not really. I’m going to look for Monty Lord. I want you to check whether anyone saw the Ducati leave — and whether it left with a passenger.”
“Brilliant!” said DC Falla. “Oh I hope so, Guv.”
Moretti was spared a hunt for the film producer by his appearance in the courtyard. He was coming from the direction of the stars’ trailers and he looked grim. As soon as he saw Moretti he said, “You questioned Vittoria, I hear.”
“Of course.” Moretti said no more.
“It’s all right, Detective Inspector. I knew about the little affair, but I made sure nothing was said to the marchesa. This was the last thing she needed — and not the first time such a thing had happened.”
“So Mr. Albarosa was a philanderer?”
“Yes, and a successful one. Donatella would never have told Anna, but I wanted to spare her the pain.”
“Maybe that’s why he was killed. From what I hear, Mr. Ensor is also a successful philanderer.”
“Detective Inspector Moretti — if someone is going around killing off philanderers on this film set, I’ll be lucky if I’m left with half my cast and crew.”
Moretti looked around the courtyard, which was now filling up with dozens of laughing, chattering extras dressed as peasants, contadini.
“Is there somewhere we could talk, sir? If we could get it over with today, then hopefully I won’t have to take too much of your time again.”
“My office,” said Monty Lord.
Monty Lord’s trailer office was close to the command bunker entrance by the ornamental lake. They left the path that followed the side of the manor, and walked around the grassy hillock that had grown over the concrete curve of the man-made construction beneath. A couple of mallards hastened their steps ahead of them and made for the shore of the lake, which was partly obscured at this point by a giant chestnut and some large elderberry bushes. As they walked past, Moretti could see a heavy iron grille set in a concrete wall which was almost concealed by two massive beech trees. The approach to the bunker was brick-lined, but the sides were now overgrown with ferns, brambles, ivy, and moss, giving the installation an almost bucolic appearance.
“I understand you’ll be using the command bunker during the filming of Rastrellamento, sir.” Moretti bent down and peered through the foliage.
“Yes, we intend to,” replied Monty Lord. “I’ve got the key on me, as it happens. Would you care to take a look?”
“Certainly I would. I’ve seen others, but this being on private property —”
“Sure.”
As Monty Lord led the way down the slope to the entrance, Moretti saw that the iron grille did not extend to the ground, but ran across the top of a heavy metal door. The producer pulled a keychain from his pocket, bent down, and turned the lock.
The door swung open easily, revealing a long tunnel with openings on each side, stretching away into the darkness. The chill of the place was immediate, the exposed skin of Moretti’s hands and face instantly damp with moisture.
“Do you have any lighting installed?” Moretti could hear his voice echoing ahead of him into the gloom.
“No. We’ll use our own lights for that, on cables, but we always keep something here by the door.”
Monty Lord bent down and picked up a powerful workman’s lamp and switched it on. The intense beam of light illuminated the curved ceiling above, which had a large badly rusted pipe running the length of it. Somewhere in the darkness a creature squeaked and scuttled.
“Mice?”
“Bats, I think. I’ve seen them in here before. There’s a humongous ventilation shaft farther into the chamber, and an escape shaft also. It goes deeper the farther we go away from the entrance here. We can go on in, but there’s not really much to see.” Monty Lord swung the light around, lighting up the entrances along the passage. Moretti felt a drop of moisture on his head. His heart thumped unpleasantly in his chest as he thought about his father.
“Even with a ventilation shaft, you’ll need to pump in air, won’t you, if you work at any distance from the door?”
“Yes. We have that set up. Fortunately, even on your small island, Detective Inspector, you now have air-conditioning experts, and we’ve been able to arrange that locally.”
Moretti looked around at the encircling walls, the brickwork falling away in places from the granite, the broken rusting brackets holding the overhead pipe.
“One thing I don’t understand, sir — this place is a mess. How are you going to film as if it were a fully operating command post?”
“Aha!”
Monty Lord patted Moretti’s arm and shone the flashlight on the entrance closest to them on the right of the passage.
“Look in there, Detective Inspector.”
The stones beneath his feet were slimy with some growth or other, and Moretti slipped as he walked forward.
“Careful — there now. Great, huh?”
“A surprise, yes.”
The chamber had been set up as some sort of observation post or lookout. Moretti saw whitewashed walls, a grey painted cement floor, tables, chairs, wall maps. Bulky wireless equipment and headsets took up most of the central table, and a couple of uniform jackets hung on pegs on the walls. Some black-and-white photographs and a pin-up on the walls above a bunk bed were already showing signs of moisture damage.
“The set designer’ll bring down most of the decorative vintage shit when we need it, but the damp down here is a killer. And of course we’ll use the passages as they are. We need them for one or two scenes, also the escape shaft. Seen enough?”
“Yes. Terrible place.”
The sun outside felt delicious to Moretti. He ran his hand over his face, and his skin felt clammy, as if he had sweated and cooled.
“You suffer from claustrophobia, Detective Inspector?” Monty Lord locked the gate and put his key chain back in his pocket.
“No. But my father helped build places like these, sir.”
“So that’s how an Italian ended up on Guernsey. The end of the war that would be, I guess. Was he a partisan?”
“Yes. He was betrayed by local police when the Germans arrived in his village.”
“Yet he came back here?”
“To marry my mother.”
“The power of love, Detective Inspector.”
Monty Lord looked at Moretti, who had the impression that the film producer’s thoughts at that moment were many miles away.
Monty Lord’s trailer was the workplace of a fastidious and meticulous man. There were three or four filing cabinets with detailed labelling, a metal safe, charts and plans of various kinds on the walls. The huge aluminum desktop was uncluttered, with neat piles of papers — and no ashtrays. Moretti presumed the microwave and fridge were standard fixtures but, apart from a stereo unit, there were no personal belongings, no pictures or paintings, no rugs or family photographs. The trailer was a place of business — a place for everything and everything in its place.
When