Chapter 23

23

TUESDAY LUNCHTIME

The lieutenant and I left Beaumont to his whisky bottle and headed outside, looking for somewhere to talk in private. We found this on the very top deck. I had never been up to this sun deck before and saw that it was actually on the roof of the captain's bridge with far-reaching views in all directions. From here, we could look down into a fishing boat as it chugged past and see the collection of lobster pots and nets strewn about in it. More interestingly, Guido caught my arm and pointed to what I had just assumed to be the wake of the boat, but which in fact was soon revealed to contain a pod of half a dozen dolphins, following the fishermen towards the open sea. It was an idyllic scene and the contrast with the reprehensible behaviour here on the Regal Princess was all the more stark in comparison. Guido appeared to be thinking along the same lines.

‘Why people can't just enjoy life as they find it without stealing and killing, I'll never know.' He turned towards me. ‘What's your opinion of Mr Beaumont? It sounded to me like he was telling the truth.'

I nodded in agreement. ‘Assuming there really is a secret account into which he's been repaying the money – and Neil Vaughan should easily be able to check that for you – I think we have to accept his story about the embezzlement and the deal with Van der Groot to repay it. As for his involvement in murder, like you, I tend to believe him as far as that's concerned as well. Surely, if he was going to murder Van der Groot, he would have done it back in April when the embezzlement was first discovered. He has no alibi for Saturday night or, indeed, last night, but then not many of the guests here have. Of course, if he's not our murderer, then who is?'

Before Guido could answer, his phone started ringing and he had a short conversation before turning back to me with an expression of triumph on his face. ‘That was the lab. They've been able to find a match with the partial prints on the handle of the knife found sticking into Schiller's heart. Feel like making a guess?'

It was with a certain degree of confidence that I nodded and offered my choice of culprit. ‘Martin Grey. Am I right?'

To my considerable surprise, he shook his head. ‘No, it appears that the fingerprints match those of Susie Upton.'

‘Susie Upton, really?' In spite of my suspicions, this still came as a shock.

‘Yes indeed, Dan, we have our murderer! The way I see it, she's been trading sexual favours with her boss for some time until she finally cracked and couldn't take it any more. She murdered Van der Groot on Saturday and then when Schiller started blackmailing her, she killed him last night.'

He was beaming with success and I couldn't blame him. After all, he'd managed to solve the gunrunning case and the double murders in a remarkably short space of time. Or had he? The trouble was that I still found it hard to believe that Susie could be our murderer, but the fingerprint evidence was certainly compelling. I nodded a couple of times before adding a word of caution.

‘That's excellent news, but it still doesn't answer the question of how she managed to murder him, dump the body and the dinghy somewhere close to the coast and then get back to the Regal Princess without being seen or heard. How definite were the Coastguard about the whole currents thing? Isn't there a possibility that the murder might have been committed here on the yacht and maybe the wind helped push the body and the dinghy onto the coast just past Portofino?'

He shook his head, but the triumphant smile remained on his lips. ‘No, I've just been through that again with the port captain now that he's returned from South Africa, and he confirms what the others had already said. Yes, the murder might have taken place here on board but, considering that on Saturday night, the yacht was moored a lot further out, there's no doubt that the body and the dinghy could only have ended up where they did if they'd been abandoned much closer in. Susie Upton must have seized the opportunity to offer to go with him back to port, but then murdered him partway. As for how she then got back here, I reckon we've managed to find the answer to that question.'

‘Really?'

‘She swam back.'

Seeing the expression on my face, he went on to explain and it confirmed my impression of him as an excellent and thorough detective. ‘I got my people to check the social-media background of our main suspects and they discovered a series of photos on Susie Upton's Instagram feed showing her taking part in a number of open-water swimming races. One of these was a two-mile swim around some Welsh island with an unpronounceable name. In comparison, seven or eight hundred metres in our nice, warm Ligurian sea must have been easy for somebody like her.'

I gave myself a mental ticking-off. Of course I had read that swimming was one of her hobbies, and I hadn't thought to check whether it was of the swimming-pool variety or long distance. So, it looked as though we really had caught our murderer, although I still found it hard to believe.

We hurried back down the stairs again to where Maresciallo Veronese and the port captain were waiting and broke the news to them, resulting in smiles all round. After that, it all happened very fast. The three officers disappeared into the yacht to find and arrest our murderer while I stayed outside with Oscar, still – in spite of the evidence – not totally convinced of her guilt. A few minutes later, Susie was brought out in handcuffs – although I thought that a little excessive – and the group headed for the Coastguard vessel moored at the stern of the Regal Princess . As she passed, Oscar stood up and wagged his tail, and she caught my eye for a moment, her expression a mixture of disbelief and dismay.

‘Dan, you've got to help me. They've accused me of murder, of two murders. I didn't do it. You've got to believe me. I didn't do any of it.' Before she could say anything else, the little group disappeared from view down the steps and less than a minute later, I saw the orange Coastguard boat pull away and head for the shore.

My eyes were still on the boat as it entered the harbour when I had two surprise visitors. These were the two comedians, Doug Kingsley and Billy Webster. Kingsley had obviously had a shave and a shower since I had last seen him and he was wearing a fresh T-shirt, this one sporting a photo of King Charles with ridiculously large ears holding his fist in the air in triumph. Beneath it was the word FINALLY! His corpulent companion was still wearing last night's T-shirt, but he looked far more animated then earlier on. They were carrying three pint mugs of beer and I wondered idly, not for the first time, whether this was bottled or if the yacht provided beer on draught. I had a feeling that, on a luxury vessel like this, draught beer was all part of the service. Whether they had brought enough to satisfy the appetite of a bunch of British comedians was another matter.

Doug Kingsley set a pint mug down in front of me and pulled up a chair. Oscar stood up and wandered over to say hello to them but it was clear from the start that they'd come to see me. Billy Webster was the first to speak – after wiping beer froth off his upper lip.

‘It's a bloody stitch-up. Susie's innocent. There's no way she could ever have killed anybody – no way, mate, no way at all.'

Kingsley nodded in agreement. ‘There's only one person on this boat who could possibly have murdered Jerome and that's Martin.' He sounded convinced but I reminded myself that relations between him and Grey had been strained – to say the least – so his opinion was to be treated with caution. I picked up my beer glass and took a refreshing sip.

‘Thanks for the beer, guys. Very welcome. What makes you so sure Susie didn't do it? The lieutenant's convinced that she was having an affair – probably against her better judgement – with Jerome Van der Groot and when she couldn't take it any more, she just snapped and killed him.'

Billy Webster gave me a highly sceptical look. ‘Pull the other one, mate. She was no more having an affair with Jerome than I'm likely to give up beer any time soon.' To reinforce his point, he swallowed half of the contents of his glass in a couple of gulps.

I took another, considerably smaller, sip of my beer and queried what Doug Kingsley had just said. ‘So you don't think it was Susie, but why do you think it was Grey?'

‘Because on Saturday night, Jerome hit Martin where it really hurts – and I'm not just talking about his wallet. He told Martin he was fired, out on his ear, and that hit the pretentious little git's self-esteem. Martin thinks he's the best thing since sliced bread and everybody else is a plonker compared to him. You should have seen the two of them on Saturday night. Jerome was livid, angrier than I think I've ever seen him, but Martin was apoplectic.'

‘And you think he went off and killed Van der Groot as a result?'

‘I don't think it, I'm sure of it.'

‘Well, if he's the murderer, explain this to me: the Coastguard have established that Van der Groot's body must have been dumped in the water much closer into the shore than where you were moored on Saturday night. The same applies to the dinghy being set adrift. So, if Grey was in the dinghy with Van der Groot's body before he dumped it in the water, how did he get rid of the dinghy and the body and then get back here to the Regal Princess ?' As I asked the question, a bell began ringing in my head. If Susie had been capable of swimming eight hundred metres, then, if I remembered right, so had Martin Grey. I pulled out my phone and checked his Facebook posts for the last year again and came across the photos I'd seen of him competing in no fewer than four triathlons. Another quick check under ‘triathlon' told me that most races included a swim of at least a mile. I took another, much bigger, swig of beer and put this suggestion to the two comedians. Doug Kingsley was the first to respond.

‘You're right. He spends a lot of time in the pool, swimming against that current thing, and when we were over in Sardinia, he swam across the bay and back. That was a good long way.' He picked up his glass and banged it hard against Billy's, spilling some of it onto Oscar's nose, which was currently resting on the big man's knee. As a result, Oscar spent the next minute or two licking his lips appreciatively. Doug Kingsley sounded euphoric. ‘Cheers, Bill, we've nailed him.'

As the idea gradually grew and took hold in my head, I realised that Martin Grey could indeed have committed Saturday night's murder and swum back to the yacht just as well as Susie Upton. The problem we had was that her fingerprints, not his, were on the knife found sticking into the German deckhand's body. Unless…

Leaving my beer, I jumped to my feet and ran up three flights of stairs to the rooftop sun deck followed by an excited Oscar. Fortunately, as before, it was empty. I pulled out my phone and called Guido Bertoletti. He answered immediately and I didn't waste any time. ‘Guido, the partial prints on that steak knife, what does partial mean? Were they smudged or what?'

If he was surprised at the question, his voice didn't show it. ‘The people at the lab said that they were indeed smudged; discernible but smudged. Why, what are you thinking?'

‘On Saturday night, Martin Grey was quite clearly furious with Jerome Van der Groot, but he was equally furious with Susie Upton because she was taking over his job from him. What about this scenario? Let's assume he kills Van der Groot, piles the body into the dinghy and heads off into the night, trying to distance himself from the scene of the crime. When he's far enough away, he jettisons the corpse and the bloodstained dinghy and then swims back to the yacht just like Susie Upton might have done. I'm sure you'll find that your people who were checking the social-media entries for the suspects will have noticed that Grey was keen on doing triathlons. As such, he could easily have managed to swim seven or eight hundred metres.'

I heard Guido have a brief conversation with somebody his end before he came back on the line. ‘Yes, he definitely did triathlons, so it could have been him, but what about the second victim and the steak knife? Fingerprints are fingerprints.'

‘I'm still trying to work it out, but maybe it went something like this: Grey is seen murdering Van der Groot on Saturday night by Schiller, who subsequently approaches Grey for money in return for keeping quiet. Grey decides to kill the man rather than pay up, but he sees this as the perfect opportunity to get even with the woman who's usurped his position. What if he helps himself to the knife she's been using at dinner that evening, picking it up with a napkin or a handkerchief, which would account for the smudging of her prints? Let's face it, we've both been wondering how Schiller's murderer could have been so careless as to leave the murder weapon behind, instead of just throwing it over the side. Also, although it would have been patently obvious that the German was dead or dying after his throat had been cut, why stab him in the heart? Because, that way, Grey knew he would leave the murder weapon with Susie Upton's incriminating prints on it and, hopefully, by so doing would be able to rid himself of her just as he'd rid himself of Van der Groot. What do you think?'

‘It's certainly credible, but just about the only proof we have in this case are Susie Upton's fingerprints on the murder weapon. How do we pin it on Martin Grey?'

‘You're right; it isn't going to be easy. We either need to fool him or to frighten him into confessing. He's a pretty tough character, so frightening him isn't going to be easy, but I need to think about how we could fool him into admitting he did it.'

‘Well, one thing's for sure, I agree that I definitely need to talk to him again. Susie Upton's now safely locked up, although she hasn't stopped protesting her innocence. It won't do her any harm to sit in a cell for a bit before I question her properly. Give me ten minutes to finish the paperwork and I'll come back out to the Regal Princess where we can have a talk, just the two of us.'

‘Don't worry. I'll borrow a dinghy and come up to the barracks to talk to you. That way, we know nobody's listening in. Just make sure the captain doesn't decide to sail away now that Susie Upton's been arrested. The more I think about it, the more I believe she isn't our murderer.'