“Artistic then, I’ll take your word for it. Perhaps he doesn’t want to blur the line between business and pleasure. It can be a dangerous one to cross,” Elodie’s voice hardened, but she did not elaborate, instead adding, “and your piano-playing Guv is not that old, kid. Have you been to the Grand Saracen, the club where he plays?”
“No, only to the restaurant upstairs. Emidio’s. It used to be his father’s. His mum was a Guernsey girl.”
“A wartime romance with an Italian slave labourer, Vern told me. Tell you what, we’ll go together some time. Looks like an ascetic, your Guvnor, but having watched him play, I doubt he is. A lot of smouldering going on beneath that detached exterior. Are you on duty after your workout? Why don’t you come back here and share the lamb shanks with me? If you’re free, that is.”
“Love to. I’ll eat and take notes. Are they easy to make?”
“A doddle. You can use that slow cooker I gave you and give your microwave a break. And I may have some info for you by then. Gandalf usually takes the air around the witching hour, and I’ll stroll down in that direction and engage him in conversation.”
“Okay, but be careful.” Liz stood up and took her jacket off the back of the chair. “You may not believe in fairies or ghosts or vampires, El, but that doesn’t mean Shawcross is a pussycat.”
“He has one — a pussycat, I mean. I hear him calling it. Stoker.” The two women looked at each other, and Elodie said, “First name probably Bram, don’t you think?”
She laughed, but Liz didn’t. Elodie went over to the sink and fetched a damp cloth, came back and started to wipe the jars. She looked across the table at her niece, her voice now deadly serious. “I may not believe in vampires, Liz, but that doesn’t mean I don’t believe in wickedness, and depravity and vice. I think there is as much evil in this world as good. Possibly more.”
Liz looked at her aunt, startled at this sudden outpouring of hidden emotion, as if she had returned to some dark episode in her life, and Liz thought of her mother’s enigmatic comment on her sister’s past.
“But I don’t have to tell you that, in your job,” she added and changed the subject. “Is your boss still in London?”
“No, actually, he’s taken a couple of days off.” Liz pulled her car keys out of her pocket and added, “At this moment he’s probably messing about in his new boat.”
Ed Moretti was thinking of his father. Not being a Guernseyman, Emidio Moretti had felt no particular desire to own a boat, although he had talked about it from time to time. So Moretti had got his knowledge and his experience from his mother’s brother, who owned a boat and was only too happy to have a strong young boy as his crew. He looked across the deck of his new Westerly Centaur at his own crew, who was at that moment leaning rather perilously over the side of the boat.
Don Taylor was no young boy, but a man in his mid-forties with the string-bean build and the stamina of a long-distance runner. On an island measuring just over twenty-four square miles, he still managed to keep up his passion on the extensive network of cliff paths. He worked with the Financial Services Commission, one of the elements in the complex structure involved with the financial scene, now the island’s main source of income. Moretti had worked together with Don once before, and Don had provided a key piece of information on Moretti’s last case.
“Good decision to get a bilge-keeler with the tides around these parts.” Don’s voice drifted back on the wind to Moretti. “And you won’t lose much except to windward. You’ll not always be diesel-powered, I trust.”
“I wouldn’t dare, not with you on board, but I wanted to give the motor another good outing while I was still able to get my money back.”
Moretti looked up at the cliffs and felt happiness flooding him. Well, contentment anyway. The kind of escape and freedom he felt at the Grand Saracen, or playing the piano that had been his mother’s, in the house that had been his childhood home. Beyond the treacherous rocks around Icart Point, he could see the coast beginning to curve inwards to Moulin Huet Bay, and out again to the Pea Stacks, three great rock masses on the southeast tip of the coastline, Le Petit Aiguillon, le Gros Aiguillon, and l’Aiguillon d’Andrelot, painted by Renoir when he visited the island. Midnight assassins, Victor Hugo had called them.
L’Aiguillon d’Andrelot was also known as Le Petit Bonhomme Andriou, and was supposed to resemble a monk in his cowl and gown. Passing fishermen tipped their caps to him, or offered small sacrifices — a libation, a biscuit, even a garment. Or so Moretti was told by Les De Putron, who had laughed at the old superstition and then doffed his cap as they sailed past.
“Better safe than sorry,” he said. “Mind you do the same. Be on the safe side,” he repeated.
Looking at the massive rocks, Moretti wondered at the power of superstition. An old observation post used by the Germans at Fort Grey, once in ruins, was now a shipwreck museum, a monument to the hundreds of lives lost along that hazardous coast. But perhaps they had not made an offering to le petit bonhomme.
The wind had come up, and Moretti concentrated on keeping the Centaur beyond the reefs and shoals of the promontory. Thank God he had done the sensible thing and taken lessons from Les, who ran a small private company running charters, renting boats and giving lessons out of St. Sampson’s harbour.
He had thought at first of keeping the Centaur at Beaucette Marina, on the northeast coast of the island. At one time a granite quarry, blasted into being as a marina in the sixties by British army engineers, it had appealed because of its distance from where he worked, but in the end that told against it. He had a feeling that his boat would spend more time bobbing about with the seals who showed up at Beaucette from time to time, than with him at sea.
The obvious choice of mooring was the harbour in St. Peter Port, and marina rates were the same anywhere, but Moretti still liked the thought of getting outside the capital for a change. He finally settled on St. Sampson’s as being closer to the small garage that looked after his Triumph; he could leave it in the safe hands of Bert Brehaut, the garage owner, when he was sailing. Security for the boats anchored there was good, with a punch-in code for berth holders and boat crews, but he didn’t fancy leaving his roadster outside the solid chain-link fence.
Sometimes he stayed overnight on the boat, which came equipped below decks with a sleeping area that converted into a dinette, complete with small stove, storage, a sink and toilet. It had been a financial stretch, but would save him finding accommodation when he visited the other islands, or France.
“Tide’s up. Want to pull in to Saints Bay and walk over to that little Greek restaurant past Icart Point, near Le Gouffre? Les De Putron has a mooring and a dinghy he keeps there,” he called over to Don.
“Great idea.”
The winds calmed as they approached the small bay, and the choppy water settled into ripples, picture-postcard blue and beautiful. Moretti cut the engine, and they moved gently in to the mooring. A few minutes later, they had pulled the dinghy up on to the dock, and were climbing the steep path to the top of the cliffs, with the natural rock face on one side, and a man-made granite bulwark on the other. Somewhere, an invisible stream made its way to the coast, concealed by vegetation, its waters murmuring unseen.
It was tough going up the cliff path, steep and uneven, a track that had been there for centuries. Don leaped ahead, light and easy on his feet, and turned back to laugh at Moretti.
“Want a hand?”
“You’re a bloody mountain goat, Taylor.”
“That’s what used to use these paths — goats, I mean. Goats and fishermen and smugglers. Watch the wall, my darling, when the gentlemen go by, as the poet says.” Don gestured towards the wall’s granite face.
“Not what I’m supposed to do when they’re bringing