Detective Sergeant Liz Falla walking towards him in her neat, conservative, dark blue suit, a white shirt open at the neck, her short dark hair feathered around a face once described to him as “Audrey Hepburnish,” and smiled. He was remembering the first time he saw her, when he had wondered what on earth Chief Officer Hanley was playing at, partnering him with this inexperienced young woman with her easy, outgoing manner, so unlike his own approach to his profession. And to life in general, come to that.
“As well as could be expected — but I’m not allowed to tell you anything, of course.”
“Of course.”
Her grin showed the tiny gap between her two front teeth that made her look to his eyes even younger than she was. But, as she had shown on their two earlier cases, her intelligence and her perception outstripped her years and, whatever Hanley had been playing at, the partnership had worked out. He could only hope being saddled with Aloisio Brown was as smart a move by Hanley, because there were others who could have taken on the role quite as well.
As if she had read his mind, Falla said, “I hear you’re babysitting some APSG brainiac. Right, Guv?” He could hear the laughter in her voice above the sound of her heels click-clacking on the stones.
“Watch it, Falla. I was one of those, once. You haven’t met him yet?”
“He’s arriving this morning. I hope that gives me time to fill you in on a couple of things.”
“The death of the hermit? I saw the report in the paper this morning. Suicide, wasn’t it?”
“That’s what it looks like. Dr. Edwards says she’ll get a report to us today.”
“She?”
Moretti stood back and let Falla go through the doors first, and she grinned at him, as she always did at his gesture. “Would you rather I didn’t?” he had once asked her, defensively, and her reply, “No. I quite like it, but don’t tell anyone,” had amused him, defusing the moment and turning it into a shared joke.
“Yes. Irene Edwards, just joined the staff at Princess Elizabeth Hospital. She was on duty when the call came in. Seemed to know what she was doing. I liked her.”
“Good. A couple of things, you said? A rash of burglaries? An outbreak of graffiti? Someone important with ruffled feathers?”
Liz waited until they had signed in at the desk, and Moretti had exchanged a few words with the desk sergeant about his new Centaur. As they moved away she said, “Got it in three, Guv. Ruffled feathers.”
Moretti groaned. “What now? Some constable not tugging his forelock when asking one of the messux or the moneymen to move an illegally parked car? What?”
They were now in Moretti’s office. Liz Falla waited until he sat down and started to check his messages, the familiar pattern when they were not in the middle of an investigation and had anything immediate to discuss. She would have no problem guessing when he got to Chief Officer Hanley’s message, so she pulled out a chair on the other side of the desk and watched his face.
Her Guvnor was looking rested, with a light tan, his usually sombre features more relaxed. The dark hair inherited from his Italian father was touched with grey, and there were lines around his eyes that showed even when he was not laughing. No longer laugh-lines, she thought, but he wasn’t much given to idle banter, which was probably why she hadn’t noticed them before. Gorgeous, Elodie had called him. Not her type, which was just as well. Too much going on beneath the surface. At one point he looked across the table at her and nodded.
“Dr. Edwards. Competent, like you said.”
Then his expression changed. A series of emotions flitted across his face in rapid succession, moving from disbelief to laughter. Moretti switched off the machine and looked across the desk at Liz.
“Has Hanley developed a misplaced sense of humour, or has he lost his marbles?”
Liz replied, taking her voice down an octave. “This is serious stuff, Guv. We have been asked to investigate a report of a threat from a vampire, from the mouth of the undead himself.”
“Who is this vampire? Does he exist? Or can you even say that about vampires?”
“Oh, he exists. I met him last night, as a matter of fact. I’ll get us both a coffee and fill you in, shall I?”
“Let’s start with the vampire and get him out of the way. You met him last night, Falla?”
“Hugo Shawcross. Bit of a coincidence here — I know you’re not fond of coincidences — but he’s rented a place near my godmother, and I dropped over to see if she’d met him, knew anything about him.”
Swiftly, succinctly, Liz filled Moretti in on the details she considered relevant to Marie Gastineau’s complaint: the play, the Island Players, the threat. Moretti listened without interrupting her, but his expression made his feelings quite clear.
“… and I feel myself, Guv, it’s all a storm in a theatrical teacup. Volatile lot, these theatre people.”
“Worse than musicians? Okay, don’t answer that. I’ll tell Hanley that we’ve looked into it, and — well, what you just said.” Moretti finished his coffee with his usual grimace. “Terrible as ever, and yet I go on drinking it. Anything else before we move on to the hermit?”
“Only this.” Falla told him about her conversation with Marla Gastineau in the Beau Sejour change room.
“So the girl is getting poison-pen letters — or the twenty-first century equivalent? You tell me she’s a looker? Par for the course, surely. Lot of that going on in the social media, right?”
“Right.”
“Tell me about the hermit.”
“What did Dr. Edwards say?”
“You first. Not the gist, like your account about Hugo the undead. Everything, Falla. Everything.”
“Poor old bugger! Just as I was bringing him one of his magazines, one of his favourites. Archaeology Today. I was expecting our usual little joke about the title. ‘Boring,’ I’d say and he’d say, ‘Not a seller. I’m their only subscriber.’ Which, of course, he wasn’t. Then we’d laugh. Poor old bugger!”
“You’re Gordon Martel, aren’t you?”
“Gord, yes. I know your dad.”
Liz Falla and the shaken postman stood outside the hermit’s house, watching the SOC people going about their business, shrouded in their white overalls. Jimmy Le Poidevin, head of SOCO, shouted out from inside the police tapes in her direction.
“Take a suit from the van if you’re coming in, Falla!”
As if she didn’t know by now, but with Jimmy it wasn’t sex discrimination. He’d have said the same thing to Moretti. Falla put a hand on the shoulder of the trembling letter carrier. He was wearing the lime-yellow shirt with reflecting bands that all postmen wore on delivery, and the shorts they all favoured, whatever the weather, so some of the shaking could have been from the chill air.
“Come on. We’ll sit in the police car.”
She
