A uniformed figure emerged from the shadows, and Moretti rolled the window down and identified himself. The man called the dog to heel and waved them on. In the wing mirror, Moretti saw him watching them until they were out of sight.
Instead of heading out to the coast and taking Val des Terres back onto the Esplanade skirting the harbour, they came back into St. Peter Port by La Charotterie and Le Bordage, down the steep slope of Fountain Street, with the town church on their left. As they turned the corner onto the North Esplanade, Moretti said, idly, his thoughts elsewhere, “You brought us back in along La Valée de Misère, Falla. The Vale of Suffering.”
His wandering mind snapped briskly back into the present as, beside him, his partner shuddered violently.
“Don’t say that.” Her voice was ragged, and she sounded angry.
“I’m sorry.” Surprised, Moretti turned to look at her, but all he could see was her profile against the window of the car, the lights along the harbour wall flashing as they passed. “This was a nasty part of the town, but it was a long time ago, Falla. Four hundred years or more. Is that what’s bothering you?”
“Yes, Guv. Sorry I spoke to you like that. Blame my grandmother, Guv, and her stories.”
“Did she give you nightmares when you were a child?”
“Yes. More than that, she says we are descended from the Becquet family — you know the ones.”
“Becquet? Weren’t a few of them executed in the sixteenth century as witches?”
“More than a few. The family died out, but my grandmother insists that’s who we are. My dad says there’s no proof whatsoever, and she just likes to dramatize everything.”
“Like your uncle Vern.”
“Right.” At least he had made her laugh. “Why anyone would want to claim that lot as ancestors beats me.”
“Perhaps she needs them for some reason.”
“Perhaps. Here we are.”
Liz Falla brought the car to a halt alongside the sea wall on St. George’s Esplanade. Moretti opened the car door and was assailed by the pungent smell of salt and seaweed from the bay beyond. The moon was almost full and he could just see on the horizon the dark humps of the islands of Herm and Jethou. He got out, walked across the pavement, and leaned over the sea wall. The tide was on its way out, leaving behind rock pools edged with acorn barnacles, dog whelk, and coralweed, quivering with the hidden lives of lugworm and shore crabs, long strands of thongweed floating in them like hair. He heard Liz Falla shut the door of the car, then the click of her heels as she walked around to join him.
“I live just across the road,” she said. “I like it here. It’s not spectacular, or postcard-pretty, mind you, but that’s what I like. It looks, feels, and smells real.”
“It’s pleasant,” Moretti agreed. “Why did you want to be in the police, Falla?”
“Me?” She sounded surprised at the question. “I didn’t want to sit at a desk in Lloyds Bank or the Crédit Suisse. I needed excitement, but I wanted to find my excitement in the here and now, not in claptrap about four-hundred-year-old satanists.” She shivered, but this time it was with mock fear. “How about you, Guv?”
How to encapsulate in a few words, as she had done, the twisting path that had brought him to Hospital Lane? That would mean disclosure, exposure, confidences. His fault, he had asked the first question.
“Much the same reason as you. I’m not a desk person.”
She must have sensed his withdrawal, because she immediately turned away from him.
“Goodnight, Guv. The keys are in the car.”
Moretti watched her run lightly across the road and waited until she had unlocked the door of one of the terraced houses that curved along St. George’s Esplanade. In the night silence he could hear the clack of the door closing, shutting off the light in the passage beyond.
Chapter Nine
By the time Sydney woke up, it was late afternoon. Much of her hangover had dissipated, but she was incredibly thirsty. She pulled on her kimono and padded on bare feet to the adjoining bathroom to splash her face with cold water, then returned to the bedroom. There was no sign of Gil, and she wondered if he was on the patio.
Surely not, she thought. But she had seen little of him since the murder of Toni Albarosa, so maybe he had got over his fear and returned there. The very fact he had been advised not to do that would have been spur enough.
In the bedroom, she removed a jug of ice water from the fridge, poured herself a glass, and drank it. Refilling the glass, she took herself through to the sitting room. There was no sign of Gil there.
“Gil?”
No answer. Sydney shivered, the glass frigid against her fingers. Across the stretch of Turkoman carpet on which they had last made love she saw the closed doors to the patio, and just above the backrest of one of the chaise lounges she could see the top of Gil’s head, tipped to one side, motionless.
“Gil!” she called again.
There was no response. A chill of terror struck her, turning her stomach to ice. Dropping the glass on to the coffee table, Sydney ran to the door and threw it open.
“Gil!”
She flew across the patio and around the chair to face whatever was waiting there.
“Jesus Christ, woman! You scared the fucking daylights out of me.”
Puffy-faced with sleep, her husband looked up at her. The striations left by the marchesa’s nails were only just beginning to fade.
Sydney threw her arms around him. “I thought you were —”
“I’m not,” he interrupted her. “Sorry to disappoint you.”
“Don’t say that.” Overcome with relief, Sydney rested her face against his. “I was scared. What in the hell are you doing out here, anyway?”
“Trying to sleep before I was so rudely interrupted. It was stuffy inside, and I couldn’t work out how to unlatch the damn windows.” A lifetime of being picked up after and waited on had left Gil hopeless at many of the simpler technical manoeuvres that cropped up in everyday life.
“You should have come and woken me.”
“Be it far from me to disturb your post-coital slumbers. Besides, you’d locked the bedroom door.”
Sydney looked at her husband’s bloated, scratched face with concern. The Gil she was familiar with would have screamed and banged on the door, battering it down if necessary.
“What’s happened?” she asked. “Have you been out here all afternoon?”
“That I have not, and that’s why I’m shagged out. I got a limo and went out to the manor, to see Mario.”
“About the changes?”
“Right. I didn’t have the chance to tell you about Monty’s visit — just before you returned from your night of debauchery it was.”
“It wasn’t — I didn’t —”
“Belt up, baby. I’ve got bigger problems than whether you had it off with superwoman and supercop.”
The ice in Sydney’s stomach felt the same as the minute before, melting the tenderness of her relief at finding him alive, but this time it was the old familiar chill of a relationship on the rocks.
“Baby’ll belt up with pleasure on that subject. What problems?”
The chaise tipped perilously to one side as Gil swung his feet down. “Problems as to what the hell is