Chapter 15

15

TUESDAY EARLY MORNING

I couldn't get off to sleep that night. If I'm totally honest, it was probably in good part my own fault for having eaten far too much in the course of the day but, more specifically, it was because my brain had been churning. The two subjects preventing me from dropping off had been the murders at Portofino and my relationship with Anna. Of the two, I knew that Anna was the more important to me, but thirty years in the murder squad leave their mark. Yes, I loved Anna dearly, but at the same time, it was now crystal clear that there was a psychopath at large on the luxury yacht. I spent ages telling myself over and over again that Guido Bertoletti was a committed, competent detective and it was his job, not mine, to bring the killer to justice. A fat lot of good that did me. I still found myself lying there staring blankly at the ceiling until somewhere around two o'clock in the morning.

At that point, I was roused by a movement from the floor beside the bed and a couple of seconds later, a cold nose gave my shoulder a nudge. I rolled over to see a pair of big, brown eyes, now glowing green in the moonlight filtering through the shutters, staring at me intently. At first, I wondered if Oscar was telling me he wanted a comfort break, but he only gave me that one nudge, whereas I knew from experience that if he had wanted to go out, he would have kept on headbutting me. Evidently, his canine radar had picked up the fact that I was troubled and he was trying to offer support. I pulled one arm out from under the sheet and scratched his ears while I outlined my problem to him in a whisper. He gave no reaction until I reached the end of my exposé.

At that point, after a momentary pause for reflection, he farted.

As a cloud of near toxic gas wafted over me, I recoiled and bumped into Anna. She's normally a heavy sleeper but presumably tonight she had also been struggling to get to sleep as she sounded wide awake when she pulled the sheet over her head and addressed me from within it.

‘I'm hoping that was the dog, Dan.'

I joined her under the sheet. ‘Not guilty, your honour. It was definitely Oscar. That's the trouble when he gets hold of a bone. Sorry I woke you.'

‘I wasn't really sleeping.' She rolled towards me and caught hold of my upper arm. ‘I've eaten too much.'

‘Me, too, but it was good, wasn't it?'

‘Both meals were excellent, but food isn't the only reason you've been lying there talking to your dog, is it?'

‘You heard that?'

‘Only odd words, but enough to know that you're struggling to know what to do.'

‘I know what I have to do, it's just that I'm finding it hard to turn my back on years of conditioning.' I reached across with my hand and let it rest against her cheek. ‘My number-one priority is you. I know that, I hope you know that, and Oscar now knows that. I brought you away for a few days for a nice, relaxing holiday and what have you had? Me charging off all over the place, pretending I'm in the murder squad again while you've had to sit around and twiddle your thumbs. I'm really sorry and, however much my instincts are telling me to get involved with the people on that yacht, I know where my responsibilities lie. And that's with you.' To reinforce the point, I kissed her.

She kissed me in return and then gave my arm a squeeze. ‘I know that, carissimo , but I also know what drives you. It's that Hercule Poirot brain of yours that just can't switch off.' She leant over and gave me another kiss. ‘And I love you for your brain, so I have a suggestion. Tomorrow morning, sorry, this morning, I think you need to go back over to Portofino and go out to the yacht with Guido. Between the two of you, I know you'll be able to sort things out.' Before I could reply, she placed a finger on my lips. ‘I can easily walk down to the station tomorrow and catch a train that'll get me to Florence by lunchtime. My meeting isn't till five and there are loads of things I have to do for work, so I'll just go back to my place and get on with that while you do your best to solve the mystery here. All right?'

Just in case I might be thinking of omitting to give credit to my four-legged friend for initiating this conversation, two heavy paws then landed on my bottom and the next thing I knew, I had fifty or sixty pounds of canine bone and muscle climbing all over me. By the time I had managed to persuade him to return to his place on the floor and had thanked him formally for his intervention, Anna had finally stopped laughing. I rolled back towards her and saw her face, no longer covered by the sheet, smiling at me.

‘You're sure you don't mind?' I gave her a kiss for good measure.

‘Of course I don't mind. I'll go back to the never-ending arguments between Pope Julius II and Michelangelo while you go and solve your murders. We all have our areas of expertise. Go and use yours.'

I woke up at six-thirty on Tuesday morning and took Oscar for a walk. The beauty of getting out so early was that the temperature was delightful, the air almost fresh, and the traffic on the streets around the hotel far lighter than I knew it would be later on in the day. We walked to a nearby park that I had found the previous day where Oscar had the chance to run around retrieving pine cones for me to throw for him. While the game continued, I pulled out my phone and texted Neil Vaughan, telling him I would be happy to investigate the missing money, and then I called the lieutenant. His phone was answered by Maresciallo Veronese.

‘Lieutenant Bertoletti's phone.'

‘Good morning, Maresciallo , it's Dan Armstrong. How did it go on the Regal Princess last night?'

‘Good morning, Commissario , it certainly looks like the same perpetrator. The man was lying on the rear deck of the yacht with his throat cut and a steak knife still sticking into his heart. The pathologist said he must have died almost instantly, so whoever did it knew what they were doing.'

‘And they cut his throat as well as stabbing him through the heart! They certainly wanted to make sure he was dead. Did the pathologist say which blow came first?'

‘The throat, apparently – that accounts for all the blood.'

I digested what he'd said. The choice of murder weapon certainly seemed to indicate that this latest murder had been committed by the same person who had killed Van der Groot.

‘Any chance of prints on the knife?'

‘Forensics were there until two and they say there are at least some partials. We'll fingerprint everybody this morning and it would be great if we found some that matched, but we're not getting our hopes up yet. The pathologist's doing a post-mortem as we speak but he doesn't expect to find anything much apart from the stab wounds.'

‘Any suspects?'

‘Nothing for now. At that time of night, half of the people on the yacht were already in bed and most of the remainder looked as if they were too drunk to have been able to get down the stairs to the rear deck, let alone stab a fit thirty-year-old. The lieutenant stationed two officers on the boat overnight and he's confined everybody to the area. We're going back over again this morning to do formal interviews. Ah, here he is now. I'll pass you over to him.'

A couple of seconds later, I heard Guido's voice. ‘Good morning, Dan. I hope you slept well.'

‘Ultimately, yes, but Anna and I were doing a bit of talking first. The decision we've come to is that she's going back to Florence by train and I'm going to accept Mr Vaughan's proposition, so I'm up for a visit to the yacht as soon as you like.'

‘Excellent. Do you want me to send a boat over to Rapallo to pick you up?'

‘Thanks, but I have to leave the hotel today, and that includes moving the van. The place is completely booked tonight and for the rest of the week, so I thought I'd drive over because, if all else fails, that means I can sleep in the van. Somehow, I don't think I can afford Portofino prices.'

He laughed. ‘I can help with that. I'll find you a bed here at the barracks if you need it and I can even offer you a free parking space. Just park in any of the yellow parking spaces at the top of Piazza della Libertà and I'll get you a permit. What time can you be here?'

‘It's almost seven now. Probably around eight-thirty if that's okay with you.'

‘Perfect, see you then. I'll fill you in on what happened last night when you're here.'

After a quick breakfast, I kissed Anna goodbye and loaded Oscar into the van. Fortunately, at this time of the morning, the road to Portofino wasn't too busy and I managed to get to Piazza della Libertà at just before eight-thirty. As instructed, I parked in one of the restricted spaces right in front of a sign indicating graphically that transgressors would find their vehicles towed away. I hurried up to the Carabinieri station where I found Maresciallo Veronese in his usual spot outside. We shook hands and he ruffled Oscar's ears before leading me in to see the lieutenant, who greeted me with a smile.

‘Come in, Dan, sit down. Veronese, will you see that a parking permit gets put on Dan's car? What's the make and registration number?'

After the maresciallo had gone off to make sure that my van didn't end up being towed away, Guido ran through the events of the previous night.

‘I got out to the yacht at just before eleven. There were a lot of pretty drunk people sitting around looking stunned, but about half of the guests had already disappeared to their cabins. We took statements from the captain and from the crewmember who discovered the body, but otherwise I put everything on hold until this morning. The anchor-watch guy found the body curled up in a foetal position in a pool of blood and although he saw the horrific cut across the throat and knew the man was dead, it was only when we turned the body over that we found the knife in his heart.' He caught my eye. ‘Another one of the steak knives, but I'm not broadcasting the fact.'

‘An opportunistic weapon and the same killer by the sound of it, unless it was a copycat murder – although nobody's supposed to know that Van der Groot's murder was committed with one of the yacht's own knives. Strange that they left the knife there to be found. I'd have dumped it in the sea.' I caught his eye. ‘Of course, this makes it almost certain that the killer is to be found on board the Regal Princess , and that means that our idea of the first victim being stabbed by Mario Fortunato and his mysterious henchmen is much less likely.' I was secretly pleased that this indicated that Heather Greensleeves hadn't hooked up with a killer after all. I had rather liked her.

‘I agree. We need to focus on the people on board the Regal Princess . As for the murder weapon being left with the body, I know what you mean, but maybe in the heat of the moment, the killer panicked. What are your plans now? You're very welcome to sit in with me, or do you want to do your own thing?'

I'd been thinking about this on the way over. ‘I think it might be better if I distance myself from your investigation – at least initially. Maybe that might encourage a few of the guests that I interview to open up to me about things that they wouldn't have wanted to discuss with the police. In fact, Neil Vaughan has just texted me to offer to send their launch to pick me up, so I think I might take him up on that. That way, you and I will arrive separately and that should further distance us in the eyes of those on board. I'll text you when I've finished and if you do the same for me then we can meet up back here and discuss our findings. How does that sound?'

Guido agreed and I sent off a text immediately to the yacht asking for a ride. While waiting for a reply, I floated an idea that had been running through my brain since hearing of the murder of the deckhand.

‘One of the main problems we've had as far as the first murder's concerned is that the information we were originally given was that a lone figure had been seen leaving the yacht in a dinghy and that neither that person – assuming it was Van der Groot – nor the dinghy came back. This, of course, made it likely that Van der Groot had been murdered on his way to the shore after witnessing Fortunato and his cronies up to no good or maybe he got himself killed after arriving in Portofino. The finger of suspicion now definitely points at both murders having been committed by somebody on the Regal Princess , but the man who provided that information is now our second murder victim, so what does that mean as far as the first death's concerned? Did Van der Groot's murderer think that the deckhand might have been able to identify him? If so, was Schiller killed by Van der Groot's murderer to shut him up? Alternatively, was Schiller lying about what he saw? Was he maybe a willing accomplice or even the sole murderer? Did Schiller stab Van der Groot in the dinghy when it was still with the yacht and then tip the body into the water, untie the dinghy and then dream up the story of having seen it going off with Van der Groot in it?'

Guido had clearly been thinking along the same lines. ‘I've spoken to the Coastguard and they say definitively that if the dinghy and the body had been dumped over the side of the yacht out there where they were moored on Saturday night, almost a kilometre from the coast, both would have drifted way out to sea, rather than ending up on the coast where they did. So the body and the dinghy must have been dumped much closer to the coast, but that doesn't make sense unless the killer was then returned to the Regal Princess by another boat and nobody noticed the sound of the engine, but if so, who on earth was driving that? There must have been an accomplice.' He glanced at me. ‘Maybe the same two men you heard in Lucca.'

This had been worrying me, too. ‘Point taken. Besides, even if Schiller did kill Jerome Van der Groot – and God knows why he would have done – then who killed him?'

Guido nodded slowly. ‘Like you say, if Schiller murdered Van der Groot, who murdered him and why? Revenge – somebody knew Schiller had done it and wanted him to get a taste of his own medicine? I seriously doubt it. From what I've been told, I don't think there's a single person on board the yacht who liked Van der Groot enough to buy him a drink, let alone avenge his murder.'

I felt sure he was right about that. ‘I agree, and that makes it even less likely that Schiller killed Van der Groot in the first place. But if Schiller was murdered because the killer was afraid of having been spotted, the problem is how did the killer know that he or she had been seen? Surely if the murderer had realised on Saturday night that they'd been recognised, they would have disposed of the witness immediately, not waited two days to do it. And as for Schiller, surely he would have told you as soon as he saw you on Sunday.'

‘Not necessarily.' Guido leafed through some papers on his desk and produced a sheet. ‘The German police have been very efficient and they sent us through their report on Schiller yesterday evening while you and I were having dinner. Veronese and I both thought he was a suspicious character and it turns out he did indeed have a criminal record in Germany: not for violent crime, but for extortion. He was jailed for eighteen months a few years back. It seems he specialised in getting compromising information about people and then blackmailing them in return for keeping quiet. Getting a job on a yacht like this full of wealthy and, in some cases, famous people must have provided him with all sorts of opportunities.'

This was really interesting – although it didn't reflect well on the thoroughness of the staff vetting procedures used by the owners of the Regal Princess . I looked across the desk and caught Guido's eye. ‘Of course, that would explain why there was the delay before killing him. Schiller must have seen something the other night so he approached the murderer on Sunday or Monday, presumably asking for money, threatening to expose them if they didn't pay up. How's this for a scenario? Van der Groot's murderer arranged to meet Schiller last night on the rear deck of the yacht to hand over the cash, and while the German was distracted, maybe counting the money, our murderer cut his throat and stabbed him.'

‘Exactly what I've been thinking – although there's still the conundrum of how Van der Groot's body ended up where it did. What this means is that we're now almost certainly looking for a double murderer, and it's 99 per cent certain that he or she is on the Regal Princess .'

I nodded in agreement. ‘Or there were two murderers. Otherwise, how did Van der Groot's killer get back to the ship? It's looking highly unlikely that Mario Fortunato and the other arms smugglers killed Van der Groot so does this mean you'll have to release them now?'

‘I'm still holding onto him and the Libyans until this afternoon, by which time I've been promised the results of fingerprint and DNA analysis from the boxes of arms found on Fortunato's boat as well as the knife sticking in Schiller's heart. But if they come back clean, then I don't really have much option but to release the Libyans and all I can charge Fortunato with is possession of contraband weapons. Yes, the public prosecutor says that will definitely see him go to trial, but with good lawyers – and his kind always have good lawyers – he's unlikely to get a lengthy sentence.' He gave an exasperated sigh. ‘It's infuriating. We wanted to roll up the whole chain all the way back to Bratislava or wherever. Still, at least we can put him away for a bit and it might slow the provision of illegal arms for a while, but it's not the conclusive result we were hoping for.'

At that moment, my phone bleeped and I saw a text telling me that the launch was on its way to the jetty to pick me up. I stood up, gave Guido a wave, and Oscar and I headed down to the waterfront for our trip out to the Regal Princess . As I walked down the narrow street, I couldn't help reflecting that I was soon going to come face to face with one or even two murderers. I glanced down at Oscar beside me.

‘Just like old times, eh, buddy?'

He glanced up at me, but I noticed that he didn't wag his tail.