Page 36 of Murder in Portofino

I couldn’t miss the way they both exchanged glances before the Frenchwoman answered. ‘I liked Rick – that’s what he preferred to be called, rather than his German name – but only in small doses. When he first joined the crew, he almost immediately tried it on with me and the other girls, and we all told him quite clearly to keep his hands to himself. In fairness, he did. I’ve never had any trouble with him since and I’m pretty sure it’s the same for the others.’

I looked across at her companion. ‘What about you, Christopher? How did you get on with him?’

I had to wait before he managed to compose his answer, and there was an apologetic look on his face as he spoke. ‘Look, I’m sorry he’s dead, and it’s awful that he died in such a gruesome way.’ He caught my eye for a moment and I could see the anguish on his face. ‘I was on anchor watch last night and when I did my rounds just before midnight, I found him lying just over there in a pool of blood.’ His voice was choked and I could see that he was still in shock. And no wonder. ‘He was curled up in a ball, stone dead, and even from a distance, I could see that his throat had been cut – well, slashed really. I’ve never seen a dead body before and it looked like a scene from a horror movie but, if I’m honest, I suppose it didn’t really surprise me that much.’

‘What, the fact that he was murdered?’

‘Well, murder no, that’s totally over the top, but he did have a habit of making himself unpopular. He was always finding reasons for coming on watch late or getting out of doing jobs, and a number of us have noticed things going missing. I’ve been convinced for some time that he’s been stealing but, without catching him red-handed, there was nothing I could do. And if you speak to the captain, I’m sure she’ll tell you about the trouble there’s been over the past few months involving him and some of our female guests.’

I nodded. ‘I had heard something about that but I’ll go and speak to the captain again. Tell me, do either of you think he was carrying on with any of this group?’ Again, I couldn’t miss the exchange of looks between them. It was Christopher who answered first.

‘I’ve not been aware of anything particular, apart from a running commentary from him about some of the women in their bikinis. He was only too willing to volunteer for lifeguard duty, but I’m quite sure that was just so he could be around the pool ogling the women.’

‘But you don’t think he was actually physically involved with anybody before his death?’

Christopher shook his head but Jeanne didn’t look so sure. ‘Like Chris, I haven’t seen anything myself, but Maggie said something about seeing him sneaking around the guest cabins.’

‘Maggie?’

‘Maggie in Hospitality. She and Jess are responsible for general cleaning, laundry, that sort of thing.’ She glanced at the watch on her wrist. ‘If you want to speak to her, she’ll probably be either in the laundry or in the saloon helping to get things ready for lunch.’

I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost eleven o’clock. Oscar still needed a walk, so I decided to beg a lift back to Portofino in the launch and then come back a little later. Pre-lunch drinks yesterday had been at twelve forty-five or so and we had sat down to eat at one, so as long as I was back by noon, I reckoned I would be able to speak to the captain, Martin Grey and Edgar Beaumont without interfering with their meal schedule. As for me, after all the food I’d been eating in the last few days, I resolved to go back to Portofino after that for one of the excellent focaccia snacks Anna and I had had on the first day, rather than face another cordon bleu feast. I was sure Oscar would have disagreed with me on this, but I could already feel my belt a little tight around my waist and I knew Anna would notice when I saw her next.

When I asked for a lift, saying I just wanted to pop back to dry land for half an hour or so, Christopher made a helpful suggestion. ‘Why don’t you take one of these dinghies? It’ll be lunchtime soon so we won’t need it for an hour or two. Just make sure you don’t leave it where it would be in the way of the ferry. They get very annoyed if you do that.’

He slid one of the dinghies back into the water and showed me how to start the engine. Although this was all new to me, it wasn’t exactly rocket science and I quickly got the hang of it. What was really interesting was to see how Oscar took to being in something a lot smaller than the launch and a lot nearer the water. I set off gently with him standing excitedly at the front, tail wagging, and I was just wondering whether I should clip him onto his lead in case he decided to go for a swim when the inevitable happened. He turned, glanced momentarily at me with a beaming canine smile on his hairy face and, before I could wag my finger at him and tell him no, he had leapt into the water.

I throttled back and managed to manoeuvre the dinghy alongside him. Trying to get him back into the boat without soaking myself in the process turned out to be an impossibility so in the end, I just chugged very gently into the port while he doggy-paddled happily alongside me, snorting every now and then and looking for all the world like a seal. It took almost ten minutes and I felt sure he would sleep well tonight as a result. It occurred to me that this had been from the Regal Princess’s current mooring close to the shore. It was just as well he hadn’t pulled this trick where the yacht had been anchored on Saturday night. Even a healthy young dog like Oscar would have taken a long, long time and probably exhausted himself trying to swim almost a kilometre.

I guided him over to the far end of the promenade where a handful of fishing boats were moored up and he was able to exit the water without too much difficulty by walking up the old stone slipway. It was a bit slippery, with green weed below the waterline, but he manged fine. I was just hunting around for somewhere to moor the boat when I heard a voice from the quay a metre above me.

‘Buongiorno, Commissario.’ It was Officer Solaro of the Coastguard. Oscar recognised him immediately and headed over to him, tail wagging. I just had time to shout a warning so that Solaro could jump backwards to avoid being soaked as Oscar set about shaking himself violently, sending ‘Eau de Labrador’ all over the place, mercifully avoiding any passing tourists. The last thing I needed was a bill for a designer dress ruined by my dog trying to dry himself. I shouted an apology, but the young officer just gave me a smile.

‘I’m fine, I know what dogs are like. If you’re looking for somewhere to moor up, there’s a ring just over there.’ He pointed towards a massive iron ring set into the stone of the jetty and I chugged across to it and tied up. Getting out proved slightly tricky but Solaro very kindly bent down and gave me a helping hand.

‘I didn’t know you were a sailor, Signor Armstrong.’

‘Call me Dan. Everybody does.’ I gave him a rueful smile. ‘I’m sure you can see that I’m not much of a sailor, but the guys on the Regal Princess told me driving a dinghy was dead easy. Unfortunately, they forgot to tell Oscar he was meant to stay in the boat.’ We shook hands and I asked him if there was anything new on the investigation but, as it turned out, I probably knew more than he did. I gave him a brief summary of what had happened so far and queried why he hadn’t gone off across the bay to check out the Poseidon as well. Now it was his turn to give me a rueful smile.

‘The port captain came back from his trip to South Africa overnight and he’s gone with Sara, my colleague, and the Carabinieri officers. The boss likes to be involved when something exciting’s happening.’ He glanced at Oscar. ‘Your dog swims well. Maybe you should enter him for the Miglio Blu, the Blue Mile race. Hundreds of people take part every autumn in a swim along the coast between here and Santa Margherita.’

‘A mile? That’s way too far. No, I think a couple of hundred metres like today is more than enough. I wouldn’t want to lose him.’

His expression became more serious. ‘The lieutenant seems to think that the murderer is one of the people on the Regal Princess. Are you any nearer to finding out who it was?’

The two of us wandered over to an old stone bench against the wall beneath the cliffs of Castello Brown. There was nobody within earshot so I told him what I had so far.

‘I have no concrete proof against anybody, but the way I see it, there are four possible motives at play here: either Van der Groot was killed by the person who’s been stealing millions from the TV company – maybe the killer had even been in cahoots with Van der Groot himself – or he was killed by a furious TV personality who had just been sacked, or he was killed by a female actor who’d been forced to have sex with him and couldn’t take it any longer. The fourth possibility is less likely and that’s that it was done by somebody in the accounts department who discovered Van der Groot had stolen the money and killed him so as to avoid a scandal. However, I don’t really think that one’s credible.’

Paolo Solaro nodded. ‘And what about the second murder? Was the deckhand killed because he knew too much?’

I nodded approvingly. ‘That’s pretty much the conclusion we’ve come to. The lieutenant said the man had a history of blackmail and extortion so we’re increasingly confident that he must have seen something on Saturday night and he approached the murderer for money. Unfortunately for him, he ended up dead as a result.’

‘What about this female actor you mentioned? Which one is she? The gorgeous redhead or the sexy blonde?’

I wasn’t totally sure that his descriptions of Tamsin and Susie would have made it onto a formal case report but they were undoubtedly accurate. I smiled back at him. ‘Susie Upton, the blonde. I’m not sure how convinced I am that she might have been a killer or, indeed, that she might have been trading sexual favours for promotion. As far as I can tell, that was maybe just a story put about by one of the other main suspects, Martin Grey. I don’t know if you remember him.’

Solaro nodded. ‘The mouthy one with the cheesy smile. Yes, I remember thinking he was a pain when we interviewed him. I’m not sure if I can see him as a killer, but I have to confess, I didn’t really like him.’ He caught my eye and said it before I could. ‘And, yes, I know that doesn’t make him a murderer, but there was just something very fake about him.’

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