There was something undeniably gruesome about the ripped costumes, spread out in a row, the gashes in the fabric like open wounds. Like headless corpses, thought Liz Falla. But still — this woman had been as hysterical on the phone as if actual murder had been committed, and in her new role as Chief Officer Hanley’s blue-eyed girl, she had been sent to investigate.
Eagle-eyed, to be accurate. That’s what the Guernsey Press called her, for spotting the old spare tire with a stain near the rim in the boot of a brand new car that had rolled off the Condor ferry from Poole. Inside lay four one-kilogram packages of cannabis, wrapped in yellow foam, street value around thirty-six thousand pounds. A drop in the ocean, but it meant another mule — it was her third trip — put out of business. High-fives all round, and a foolish young girl sentenced in the Royal Court to a four-year jail term.
But this? It looked more like a destructive prank than the dangerous act of a crazy madman, which was how the costume lady, Betty Chesler, had described it on the phone, and why someone from plainclothes had been sent out. Liz Falla wished that her new boss, Detective Inspector Moretti, were with her.
Which was not how she was feeling when she got up that morning. Be careful what you wish for, the Chinese said — didn’t they? — and she’d got it. Out of uniform, assigned to one of the premier investigating officers on the island, but not the one she’d have chosen. He had a reputation for being a maverick, since he played with that jazz group, but also a loner, and certainly not a laugh a minute. No merry chatter in the squad car to while away the hours, not with this one. Unmarried, not too long in the tooth, reasonably good-looking, if you liked your men darkish, thinnish, and sort of brooding. Which she didn’t — she personally preferred the lively ones. Anyway, she wasn’t in the least interested in finding a life mate. She was relieved when he told her he had to take a few days compassionate leave and now here she was, on her own.
“You look very young for this.”
“Sorry?”
“Didn’t they think this important enough for a senior officer, then?”
The costume lady’s voice rose sharply and cracked in indignation at the end of her query.
Film people, stage people, thought DC Falla. All the same, just like her uncle Vern who hung out with the Island Players and tended to weep at the drop of a hat at family celebrations. The artistic temperament, he called it. Histrionics, her father called it.
“Do you know how the damage was caused?”
“Yes I do, because the bastard left it behind.”
Betty Chesler pointed to something that gleamed on the table between a small black beret and a broad-brimmed straw hat.
“Like something out of an Errol Flynn movie. He came through the window, that — butcher — holding a dagger. And did this. With a dagger, for God’s sake, which he had the bloody cheek to leave behind.”
With dramatic theatricality the sun suddenly disappeared beyond the thick glass panes of the windows of the lodge and, just as swiftly, the room darkened. Liz Falla felt the skin on her arms prickle. No lack of oxygen now, but a heightened awareness of something hanging in the air. It’s chilly in here, she told herself, nothing to do with those ancestors of yours, those poor benighted women who took the long, winding walk down from the prison of Beauregard Tower to the gibbet built above the brushwood, at the foot of Fountain Street.
By the pricking of my thumbs, something evil this way comes. The “gift,” her grandmother called it.
“Now, young lady,” said Betty Chesler, her hands planted aggressively on her voluminous hips, “what are you going to do?”
“You’re a bastard, Gil.”
“I know. It’s one of my strong points. It’s why you fell in love with me.”
“Too true,” said Sydney Tremaine wearily. She got up from the rumpled sheets on the floor, pulling her peignoir around her. Her husband lay spreadeagled on the carpet, naked and unashamed, the bird’s head motifs of the Turkoman rug around him pecking at his privates. Or so, vindictively, she fantasized. A man in his condition should be ashamed, she thought. He should be the one covering himself, pulling the bedclothes over his ever-increasing belly. But he knew only too well the power he had over her.
Not love, not even sex anymore. Money. Moolah. The comfortable cushion of life in couture clothes and five-star hotel suites, even if it was a luxury hotel on some Godforsaken minuscule island that she had never heard of before the film shoot. That was why, instead of turning away from him with a yawn, she joined him on the floor, straddling him with her strong dancer’s legs. His renewed desire for her was a sign that the only hold she had over Gilbert Ensor was restored to her.
“Christ, I don’t believe it. The sun’s out. Get me a Scotch, baby, will you?” He grinned as she cringed at his pathetic attempt at her American accent. “I’m going out on the patio.”
“I don’t know why you keep trying to sit out there. It’ll still be soaking from that shower. This isn’t the Riviera, you know.”
“Don’t I friggin’ know. But I’ve got to keep close to these shysters, or they’ll have my masterpiece in fucking tatters.”
“Why do you bother?” Sydney called after his departing figure, legs wobbling slightly from his recent exploits. “They’re paying you a fortune. And shouldn’t you put something on?”
“Oh, right.”
Gilbert Ensor picked up a pair of corduroy trousers from a chair and, hopping from foot to foot, hauled them over his legs, zipping them up around his protruding stomach where they hung comfortably and baggily. He opened the door onto the small private patio that adjoined the suite and stepped outside.
Beyond the high stone wall was a stretch of grass, and beyond that was the steep cliff that lay between St Martin’s Point, the southernmost tip of the island, and St. Peter Port, the capital of Guernsey. A wrought-iron gate set in the wall led to one of the cliff paths that encircled the island — not that Gilbert had ever pulled back the bolt. Exercise was anathema to him.
“All that walking and running and huffing and puffing uses up creative energy. Any I have left over I save for sex.”
Sydney knew that was true. She also knew that his precious spare energy was not always saved for her. She sighed and poured him out a triple Scotch. With any luck he’d then fall asleep and stay out of trouble. Not sexual trouble. She was used to that. The trouble she dreaded was the constant fighting with any member of the film company who came close enough. She poured herself a Perrier and picked up both glasses.
“Sydney!”
His scream was high-pitched, shrill. Oh dear God, she thought. Not his bee allergy again, not a mad dash to the hospital — in which of all those expensive matching suitcases was the Epipen? She put down the glasses and ran on to the patio, the stones unpleasantly moist beneath her bare feet.
“Have you been stung?”
“That’s one way of putting it.”
Gilbert Ensor’s quivering forefinger was pointing at something that lay on the ground, gleaming in the slanting rays of the afternoon sun.
“It’s a dagger.” Sydney picked it up, turning
