Page 42 of Murder in Portofino

‘Nothing springs to mind but I think you’re right: Martin Grey’s fatal flaw is his ego. If we can seriously damage that, then he might start talking.’

Officer Solaro took Guido, Veronese and me back out to the Regal Princess, and on the way, we did our best to refine our admittedly shaky plan. First things first, we had to speak to Edgar Beaumont. When we got there, we found him still in his cabin and I couldn’t help noticing that the level of whisky in the bottle behind him had dropped considerably in the course of the morning. He must have been well used to it because he was still sounding reasonably lucid in spite of his alcohol intake. As agreed, I was the first to speak this time.

‘Mr Beaumont, I now know that the conversation I overheard in that restaurant in Lucca on Friday night was between you and Jerome Van der Groot. Why did you deny having such a conversation when the lieutenant queried it with you?’

He looked up, bleary-eyed, but his brain still functioning. ‘I panicked. The lieutenant asked me if I’d been threatening to harm somebody at the restaurant and I was afraid that if I said yes, he might have considered me a suspect for the murder.’ He gave us both a pleading look. ‘I haven’t murdered anybody, please believe me.’

‘We do believe you, but we’re trying to establish who the real murderer was. There can be no question now that it was definitely somebody here on this boat. If you didn’t do it, who do you think might have done it?’

He looked puzzled. ‘But I thought you’d arrested Susie? Not that I believe for a moment that she could possibly be a murderer.’

The lieutenant took over. ‘I have indeed arrested Susie Upton, but we’re still investigating all possible leads. If, as you say, she isn’t the murderer, then who do you think that might have been?’

There was a long pause before Beaumont answered, and I almost thought he was about to fall asleep before he suddenly rallied and looked up. ‘I can still hardly believe it – even of him – but there’s only one person here on the yacht who might have had reason to wish Jerome dead and that’s Martin, Martin Grey. Whether he really did murder Jerome or not, I have no idea, and I still find it hard to believe that any of my colleagues could kill anybody, but you asked me, and that’s my answer.’

I exchanged glances with the lieutenant and then asked a question of my own. ‘Can you remember what you were both saying about Mr Grey back there in Lucca? Presumably you’d just found out that he’d been talking to your competitors.’

‘We were both appalled and Jerome was furious. He said a lot of very uncomplimentary things about Martin and threatened to sack him, if not strangle him, for what he done.’ He glanced up. ‘Not that he would have strangled anybody. It was just a figure of speech, but he was hopping mad.’

‘If you can remember some of the uncomplimentary things that Jerome Van der Groot said about Mr Grey, would you be prepared to repeat them to Grey’s face? We’d very much like to see how he reacts when he discovers just how low his boss’s opinion of him was.’

Beaumont snorted. ‘Not just his boss. I also thought his behaviour was despicable and it was just the tip of the iceberg as far as he’s concerned. I’ve been saying for some time that the company would be much better off without him.’

The lieutenant nodded. ‘So if we call him in here, would you be prepared to repeat some of the accusations so we can watch his reaction?’

Beaumont sat bolt upright and nodded in return. ‘I’d be only too happy.’

Maresciallo Veronese disappeared out of the door and returned a couple of minutes later with Martin Grey. Guido invited him to sit down and told him he would be recording this conversation. There was an insolent smirk on Grey’s face – the sort that made me feel like wanting to give him a slap – as he helped himself to a shot of Beaumont’s Scotch before sitting down opposite the lieutenant. He was wearing yet another designer polo shirt and a pair of cargo shorts – the ones with pockets on the sides of the thighs – and, as usual, not a single hair on his head was out of place. He smiled unctuously at Guido.

‘May I be one of the first to offer you my congratulations, Lieutenant. Excellent work in catching a very dangerous criminal. The fact that we can all sleep soundly in our beds tonight is down to you.’ He held up the glass of Scotch towards the lieutenant and then took a big mouthful. Guido remained unimpressed as he switched on the voice recorder.

‘Mr Grey, we have some supplementary questions we would like to put to you. My companion here, Mr Armstrong, happened to overhear a conversation that took place on Friday night in Lucca between Mr Beaumont and the late Mr Jerome Van der Groot. The two of them were clearly furious and the object of their anger was you. Are you aware of that?’

The insolent smile stayed on Grey’s face. ‘I always love it when people talk about me. No such thing as bad publicity, after all.’

The lieutenant shook his head. ‘You may change your mind about that when you hear what they were saying. Mr Beaumont, could you tell us what Mr Van der Groot said about Mr Grey, please?’

I was pleasantly surprised to see Beaumont looking positively bullish. His tolerance of alcohol was impressive. If I’d drunk half a bottle of Scotch in the space of a few hours, I’d probably have been hanging over the side of the yacht being violently sick. ‘I can’t remember everything Jerome said and most of it was unprintable, but I’ll certainly give you some of the highlights.’ He subjected Grey to a scornful stare. ‘He said you were a slimeball, a self-obsessed narcissist, and that he wouldn’t trust you as far as he could throw you. He said if he had the opportunity to throw you off a cliff, he would do so with delight. I would add to that that I would have been equally delighted to give him a hand in doing so. The sooner you’re out of GreyratTV, the better.’ Realising what he’d said, he glanced at the lieutenant for a moment. ‘We wouldn’t really have pushed him off a cliff, but we were both feeling very bitter.’

As the insults came pouring out, I kept a close eye on Grey. At first, he kept the smile on his face, but with each new insult I could see it was getting harder and harder for him to maintain the charade of serenity. He was sitting across the coffee table from us, his hands drumming nervously on his thighs. For now, he was unable to make any retort because Beaumont was still in full flight and I could see that the head of Accounts was enjoying himself now, no doubt getting a lot of bottled-up resentment out of his system.

‘He said you were a liability and he said you were incompetent. You might be interested to know that even before word of your treachery had reached us, Jerome and I had been engaged in serious discussions about replacing you. We only want good, committed, competent people working for the company, and you qualify on none of these counts. Compared to all our other presenters and performers, you excel in only one area: the number of complaints we receive about you, not just about your warped sense of humour and your foul language, but your ignorance.’ At the sound of this word, Grey clearly gave up any attempt to feign a lack of interest, and I could see that Beaumont was on a roll. ‘Remind me to show you the ratings one of these days. You come out bottom of all our presenters – after all, a quiz-show host who’s unaware that the capital of Spain is Madrid doesn’t deserve to be running a quiz.’ Finally, Beaumont delivered the coup de grâce. ‘In comparison to you, Susie is a goddess. I remember Jerome saying quite clearly that you aren’t even qualified to clean her shoes for her.’

Grey jumped to his feet but Veronese laid a large hand on his shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. Grey shot him a dirty look and then returned his attention to Beaumont. He was positively spitting with rage and I knew that this was our best chance of getting him to incriminate himself. The lieutenant was obviously thinking along the exact same lines because he suddenly looked across at Grey and raised his voice.

‘How does this make you feel, Mr Grey? Angry? Angry enough to commit murder?’

Grey looked back at him and there was a sneering tone to his voice as he replied. ‘Yes, of course it makes me angry because it’s untrue, just a pack of lies!’ He was almost shouting now.

‘And what about when Rick Schiller, the deckhand, tried to blackmail you? Did that make you angry as well? Angry enough to murder him as well?’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t murdered anybody. The idea of picking up a steak knife and stabbing somebody is unthinkable.’

A sudden hush fell over the cabin as the lieutenant and I exchanged glances. After a few seconds, the lieutenant looked back across the table at Martin Grey. When he spoke, it was with a lower, less urgent voice, but his words cut through the silence with solemn power.

‘How do you know that the victims were killed with a steak knife? The only people who know that are my colleagues in the Carabinieri, my friend Mr Armstrong, our forensic laboratory and the purser, who was sworn to secrecy.’

Too late, Grey realised the mistake he’d made. He started to backtrack, blustering that it was common knowledge when we all knew for a fact that it wasn’t. There was now sweat beading on his brow and the sound of his hands drumming on his thighs was loud enough to rouse Oscar. Unexpectedly, I saw my dog get to his feet and walk slowly across to Grey’s side. He’s normally a pretty good judge of character and I was vaguely surprised that he was showing interest in this unsavoury character, but then he did something very strange. Instead of poking the man with his nose or rubbing up against his bare leg, he sat down, raised a paw, and started scratching at the man’s shorts. Grey swatted him away irritably and it was only as I saw his hand disappear into the side pocket of his shorts that the penny dropped. There was something in there and I felt sure I knew what it was.

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