Page 35 of Murder in Portofino

‘I can do better than that. He’s sitting right opposite me now. I’ll pass you over.’

It wasn’t a long conversation but I could tell from what I heard and from the expression on Guido’s face that it was the news he’d been hoping to hear. When the call ended, he handed the phone back to me with a broad smile on his face.

‘Heather Greensleeves sends you her love but, more important than that, she’s just remembered the name of the other boat she saw on Saturday night. She was watching a programme on ancient Greek mythology and it suddenly came to her: Poseidon.’

I produced a satisfied smile. ‘The god of the seas – with a bellyful of contraband arms. That’s excellent news. The next question is where it is now. It’s been, what, two and a half days since it came up alongside Mario Fortunato’s boat, so I suppose it might be anywhere by now.’

As I spoke, Guido was calling his office with the news. I was amazed to find that they were able to call back barely five minutes later having already traced the vessel. He listened intently before ordering his people to come and collect him. At the end of the call, he told me what he’d just heard.

‘At last, a stroke of luck. Under normal circumstances, we would’ve been struggling to locate a vessel that size. Apparently, it’s something called a Beneteau Swift, a fifteen-metre motor yacht, and only vessels over thirty metres in length need to have marine trackers on board by law. As it happens, a quick search has revealed that it’s currently at a boatyard in Lavagna, only half an hour along the coast from here, waiting for a replacement rudder after running onto rocks while sailing too close to the cliffs in the dark. Ironically, it was one of our own Coastguard vessels from Lavagna that towed it into port. I’m going over there now. What are your plans?’

‘I need to do a bit of thinking and then I suppose I’d better report back to the Head of Accounts, although I’m going to have to be very careful what I say. At the moment, Edgar Beaumont is just about my number-one suspect for the stolen millions.’

‘Could I ask a favour of you?’ I nodded and Guido continued. ‘Would you have time to sit down and speak to Martin Grey for me? From what you’ve been saying, it’s unlikely he could have got his hands on the access codes to allow him to be involved with embezzling the money, but you might be able to get him to shed more light on exactly what happened on Saturday night. Ask him about his state of mind, now that it looks as though he might have lost his job. That way, when I get back, it should speed things up for me a bit. Is that too much bother for you?’

In fact, I was delighted to be asked. I’d been trying to think of ways in which I could grill Martin Grey without stepping on the lieutenant’s toes. ‘No problem. I’ll enjoy doing it.’

20

TUESDAY MORNING

After Guido and his team had headed off, I sat in the cabin for a few minutes and considered my next steps. Part of me would have loved to be zooming across the bay with him – and I felt sure my four-legged friend would have loved it as well – but of course, my current remit was not arms smuggling but embezzlement. As far as the murder investigation was concerned, it was of course still possible that the perpetrator or perpetrators were to be found aboard the Poseidon or in the cells at the Carabinieri station, but, in the wake of the second death here on this yacht, it seemed ever more likely that both murders had been committed by one of the people around me now. In consequence, I couldn’t help still having a keen desire to help root out the killer. As far as the missing millions were concerned, the first problem I faced was that, having been engaged to try to identify the perpetrator, I now had to report back to one of the two prime suspects. And the other one was dead.

Before going upstairs to speak to Edgar Beaumont, I wanted to sit down with Martin Grey, but first I needed to decide exactly what questions to throw at him. It occurred to me that I could give Oscar a quick run while I worked things out in my head, and the only place he could do that was back on dry land. I left the cabin and made my way towards the stern of the boat until I reached the stairs leading down to the watersports platform. Here I found two deckhands sitting on the side of one of the rubber dinghies that had been pulled up onto the deck.

I hadn’t been involved in interviewing any of the crew, so I hastened to capitalise on this opportunity even though I knew this was unlikely to shed any light on the missing millions. I recognised Christopher immediately, but the woman beside him was unfamiliar to me. The badge on her chest identified her as Jeanne and I presumed that she must be the Frenchwoman mentioned by Guido as Heinrich Schiller’s companion in Portofino last night. As such, this probably made her the last person to see him alive – apart from the murderer, of course. Christopher started to get to his feet when he saw me, but I waved him back to his place and took a seat on the side of the other dinghy opposite them both while Oscar wandered over to say hello.

‘I just came out for some air. I’ve been interviewing some of your guests.’ I didn’t say in connection with what. The embezzlement was of course a closely guarded company secret so these two naturally assumed that I was involved with the murder investigation. Christopher was the first to ask about it.

‘Have you made any progress? Jeanne and I’ve just been saying how creepy it is to think that we’re on a boat with a murderer.’

‘And a murderer who’s maybe killed twice.’ Jeanne’s accent was noticeably French but she spoke English fluently. She was a fit-looking woman probably in her late twenties with a really short urchin cut that emphasised her no-nonsense look. I could well imagine her climbing to the top of a hundred-foot mast or diving over the stern to clear seaweed from a rudder. To be honest, I know very little about boats, so maybe nobody does those kinds of things these days, but she certainly looked an experienced sailor.

I shrugged. ‘I’m sure the lieutenant’s making progress but I don’t really know how the investigation’s going. I gather he’s gone off somewhere now, so maybe he and his team will come back with a bit more information. I’m just on the periphery of the investigation really.’

Christopher caught my eye for a moment. ‘Martin told me you were a private eye. Is that right?’

There was no point in denying it. ‘That’s right, I work out of Florence but I was only here on holiday, at least until the murder of Jerome Van der Groot got me involved.’ It was interesting that the deckhand was on first-name terms with Martin Grey. As such, this probably made him better informed about the dynamics of the group than I had expected so I took advantage. ‘I imagine Martin’s as concerned as everybody else.’

Christopher nodded but I noticed a sour expression pass across the Frenchwoman’s face. I was keen to see what might be behind it so I kept the conversation on Grey.

‘He’s very well known on British TV. Even I remember him and I’ve been living here in Italy for a couple of years now. I suppose you must meet lots of celebrities on your yacht.’

Christopher answered with another nod of the head but I noticed Jeanne roll her eyes. I waited until she looked across at me and then very gently queried her reaction to Grey’s name.

‘Would I be right in thinking that you aren’t a fan of Mr Grey, Jeanne?’

She grimaced. ‘You could say that. He’s one of the guests, and so we have to treat them all with courtesy but, in return, would it hurt them to treat us with a bit of courtesy?’

I had a feeling I already knew what would be coming next but I asked all the same. ‘Was he a bit of a pest?’

‘A bit of a pest? He actually smacked me on my bottom and propositioned me.’

‘What did you say to him when he did that?’

‘There was a lot I wanted to say to him but I love my job so I just said nothing and reported it to Simon… the purser. Simon’s a good guy but he knows the ethos here just as well as I do – the customer is always right. The words he used were, “Grin and bear it”. Well, I certainly haven’t been grinning and I’ve been making sure I stay clear of Martin Grey.’

‘That sounds like a very sensible idea, and I can imagine your anger. I used to be in the police back in the UK, and smacking somebody’s bottom would definitely be considered sexual assault. You could press charges against him if you wanted.’ I saw her give me an expression that quite clearly said, You must be joking, and all I could do was give her a sympathetic look in return before continuing. ‘I gather from your captain that relations between crew and guests are frowned on, and I can see why. Tell me, does any of it go on? I’m thinking in particular about this latest murder victim, Heinrich Schiller.’

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