Chapter 6

6

SUNDAY LUNCHTIME

The police station in Rapallo was a twenty-minute walk from the cable-car station and although we hugged the shady side of the streets, we were hot by the time we got there. I left Anna and Oscar at a nearby café and went in to tell my tale. I was greeted at the door by a young constable who asked me my business, and when I told him I thought I might have information about the Portofino murder victim, he led me to a nearby interview room where I was asked to sit and wait. It took ten minutes before a grumpy-looking uniformed officer with sergeant's stripes on his epaulettes arrived.

‘I understand you have information about a body.' He was probably in his late fifties – about my age – and he definitely looked disgruntled. I glanced at my watch and saw that it was almost one o'clock. The penny dropped. I had interrupted his Sunday lunch. I tried to be as cordial as possible.

‘I'm sorry to take up your time. I've been told that a body's been found at Portofino. That's right, isn't it?'

He nodded. ‘I believe so. Now, I need to have your name and address, please.'

He produced a notebook and laboriously made a record of my details before dropping the pen and prompting me. ‘What information do you have about the body?'

‘I understand that the body is that of a man with only one eye. Is that correct?'

He hesitated for a few moments before replying uncertainly, ‘I believe that may be correct, yes.'

Considering the case was already all over the Internet and local media, I was surprised to find him sounding so vague. Nevertheless, I pressed on. ‘I think I might know who he is.'

He picked up his pen again and gave me an expectant look. ‘Right, let's have the name.'

I shook my head. ‘I'm afraid I don't know the man's name, but I think I know how you can locate him.'

He dropped his pen onto his notebook again and gave a little snort. ‘You don't know his name…' There was a pause while he collected himself before continuing. ‘If you don't know his name, what makes you think this is the same person?'

Seeing him looking sceptical, I tried again. ‘He's part of a group of British tourists. I saw them in Lucca on Friday night and I've seen some of the group on a yacht moored off Portofino this morning – and I do know the name of the yacht. Like I say, I don't know the man's name, but I'm sure I could recognise him again. Alternatively, it should be a simple matter for you to send somebody out to the yacht to check whether they're missing a one-eyed man or not.'

He gave a heartfelt sigh – not dissimilar to the sort of noise Oscar makes when he knows he's got to wait until I've finished eating before he gets his food. ‘All right, thank you. Please let me have the name of the vessel and I'll get somebody to look into it.'

I gave him the name, Regal Princess , and saw him duly write it down. To my surprise, he then closed his notebook with a snap and stood up. ‘Thank you, Signor Armestronga , I'll get somebody to look into it.'

I was genuinely amazed. ‘You don't want to take a statement from me?'

‘No, we have your contact details. If we need to speak to you again, we know how to reach you. Besides, this is a matter for the Coastguard or Carabinieri . I'll pass the information on to them.'

Two minutes later, I was standing outside on the pavement under the blue and white Polizia sign feeling bewildered and vaguely annoyed. I thought back on the sergeant's final words to me and slowly began to realise what the problem might be. Presumably, his branch of the Italian law-enforcement service didn't have primary jurisdiction in this case. I remembered what my friend Virgilio had told me. As the body had been found at sea, the investigation would have been initiated by the Coastguard and, from what the sergeant had said, it sounded as though they were working in collaboration with the Carabinieri , rather than the Polizia . The Carabinieri carry out a very similar investigative and enforcement role to the police although they are in fact originally a part of the Italian military. Talk about complicated…

As I crossed the road and walked back to where Anna and Oscar were waiting, I found myself seriously doubting whether this information would even be passed on. The sergeant certainly hadn't looked particularly interested and if, as I had always suspected, there was a certain amount of competition between the different forces, it was quite possible that he just wouldn't bother. When I got back to the table where Anna was sitting, she must have worked out from my expression that all wasn't well.

‘Trouble?'

I recounted the less than warm reception I had received from the sergeant and Anna gave me a little smile. ‘What did you expect at lunchtime on a Sunday? I'm surprised the police station was even open.' She pointed to a glass of beer on the table in front of her. ‘Sit down and have a drink. I got you that. It's alcohol-free beer in case you're thinking of driving anywhere this afternoon.'

I took a very welcome mouthful and reflected on my next move. In fact, it didn't take long. I wiped the froth off my lip and looked across at her. ‘I think I need to go back over to Portofino to speak to the Coastguard.' Seeing a look of thinly veiled exasperation on her face, I did my best to explain. ‘It won't take long, but I need to pass on this information to the people directly involved with the investigation. You get that, don't you?'

She gave me a resigned smile. ‘I get it, Dan. The detective inside you won't let you rest until somebody takes you seriously. So does this mean you're going straight down to the ferry now?'

I noticed her use of the singular pronoun ‘you', rather than ‘we', and I took the hint. ‘I won't be away long. Why don't you have a walk around town with Oscar or go on the beach or maybe just go back to the hotel and have a lie-down?'

She glanced down at Oscar, who was sprawled under the table with his tongue hanging out. ‘I think I'll have a sandwich here and then he and I can go back to the hotel. I'll give him his lunch and then we'll both have a lie-down. The room should be nice and cool and, if not, I can always put on the air con. You go off and do what you feel you have to do.'

I drained my glass and stood up. Oscar didn't even bother moving, obviously far too weary – or maybe he'd heard Anna say ‘lunch'. I gave Anna a quick peck on the cheek. ‘I won't be long, I promise, but you know how it is. I feel I've just got to speak to somebody about this.'

A long-suffering expression appeared on her face. ‘I know how it is, Dan, believe me, I know.'

I only just managed to find a seat on the ferry, which was packed, and I had no doubt that Portofino would be heaving with people. When we got there, I was relieved to see the Regal Princess still moored at the mouth of the bay, but the crowds on the quayside were every bit as bad as I had feared. The good news, however, was that I recognised a figure in a blue and white uniform at the far end of the quay by the fishing boats, so I filed off the boat and struggled through the mass of humanity along the dockside towards the young Guardia Costiera officer I had seen before. He was looking stressed and I didn't blame him.

‘Good afternoon, Officer, could you spare me a minute or two?'

‘Just a few seconds, I'm afraid, as we're in the middle of a murder investigation.' Unlike the police sergeant in Rapallo, he was at least doing his best to be polite.

‘It's about that. Have you been able to identify the body yet? If not, I think I might know who he was.'

It was clear that I had immediately got his attention. ‘That would be very helpful indeed, Signor…?'

I gave him one of my cards and I saw him study it before looking up at me. ‘You're a private investigator? Can I ask what your interest in this affair is?'

I shook my head. ‘None whatsoever. I'm here on holiday with my girlfriend, but I just happened to overhear a conversation when we were in Lucca on Friday night that might have a bearing on this case.' Seeing his obvious interest, I gave him a quick summary of what I'd heard on Friday night and my fear that the body in the water might turn out to be the big man I had seen in the restaurant with Susie Upton. He listened intently without interrupting until I reached the end of my tale and at that point, he nodded a couple of times.

‘That's very interesting indeed, Signor Armstrong, but you have no idea of the identity of the two men you overheard?'

‘Unfortunately, no, but I'm reasonably sure that they came from the noisy group in the private dining room.'

‘Do you think you would recognise their voices again?'

I'd been wondering that myself. ‘I'm not sure. Neither of the voices were very distinctive but, you never know, it might be possible. Of course, I might be completely wrong and the one-eyed man I saw might be having his breakfast on the yacht out there at this very moment, but I thought it was worth letting you know. What are you thinking of doing? Presumably you have to speak to your boss now.'

‘Ideally, yes, but he went off to Milan yesterday evening and he's on the early morning plane to South Africa for a conference as we speak. We still haven't been able to contact him. Even if he decides to come straight back, the earliest we can expect him is late tomorrow or even the next day.'

‘Is there a risk that the yacht will leave before then?'

‘That's not a problem. I can get a message to the captain not to weigh anchor until he gets authorisation from us.'

I decided to plead ignorance. ‘Are you working with the police on this?'

He shook his head. ‘There isn't a police station here in Portofino, but we have a good working relationship with the local Carabinieri .' I saw him make a decision. ‘In fact, if you could spare me another few minutes of your time, I wonder if you'd be kind enough to come with me to the Carabinieri barracks to speak to the lieutenant.'

‘The lieutenant?'

‘Lieutenant Bertoletti. He's the main investigating officer here.' He held out his hand towards me. ‘Thank you for bringing this to our attention, Signor Armstrong. My name's Solaro, by the way, Paolo Solaro.'

It took us an age to walk the three or four hundred metres to the Carabinieri HQ. The crowds of sauntering tourists were, if anything, even worse than I'd feared and I was thankful that Anna and I had decided to take the early boat for our visit this morning. The Carabinieri post occupied the ground floor of an apartment block in a narrow road and there was an older officer in uniform standing outside. I'm not too clued up on ranks in the Carabinieri but from the look of the stripes on his epaulettes, I had a vague feeling he was a maresciallo or marshal, roughly equivalent to a sergeant. He was smoking a cigarette, no doubt at the end of his Sunday lunch, and thinking of food made me realise with a start that I was hungry. Oscar would never have forgotten something as important as that but, for now, I had business to attend to. The maresciallo gave Paolo Solaro a nod as we walked up to him and the young man offered a few words of explanation.

‘ Ciao , Romeo, this gentleman has some interesting information about the identity of our dead body.'

The maresciallo immediately dropped his cigarette on the floor and stubbed it out with his foot. ‘We'd better go and see the lieutenant.'

He led us inside, past a reception desk, to a door marked Privato . He punched in a code and we followed him into a corridor, at the end of which was a frosted-glass door. The maresciallo knocked and waited. Seconds later, a voice replied.

‘Avanti.'

Inside the office, I found a Carabinieri officer in shirtsleeves sitting behind a desk cluttered with paperwork. It was stuffy in here and the only ventilation appeared to be a freestanding fan on top of a filing cabinet. Officer Solaro handed him my card and gave him a brief outline of what I'd told him. The lieutenant stood up and held out his hand in greeting to me.

‘Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Please take a seat.' I saw him study my card for a few seconds but he made no comment about my occupation. ‘Signor Armstrong, would you mind just running me through it in your own words, please?' He was an intelligent-looking man, probably in his mid-forties, with short, dark hair. He was clean-shaven and he looked fit.

I sat down opposite him while the other two officers stood behind me and listened in as I went through my story again. As I had suspected, the police sergeant over in Rapallo hadn't bothered to pass on my message yet. The lieutenant listened intently, throwing out a question every now and then until I reached the end of my account. He had been taking notes as I went along and now he looked up from his desk over my shoulder towards the maresciallo and issued orders.

‘Veronese, contact the Regal Princess . See if you can find out if there's a man on board with an eyepatch. If there's never been one or there still is one on there, then I think we can probably eliminate them from our inquiries. If there was such a person on board and he's no longer there for whatever reason, tell them everybody has to stay on the yacht and it doesn't move until I come out to question them.'

The maresciallo gave a brief, ‘Yes, sir,' and went back out again, after which the lieutenant looked across at me.

‘As you said yourself, Signor Armstrong, this may be a completely different one-eyed man. Would you be able to wait for five minutes until Veronese has been able to speak to the vessel? Could I offer you a coffee? What about you, Paolo? A little espresso maybe?' Clearly his relationship with the Coastguard officer was a lot less formal.

The lieutenant spoke into his phone as Paolo Solaro pulled up a chair, and barely three minutes later, another officer appeared carrying a tray with three espresso coffees on it. While we sipped these, the lieutenant asked me about my work and I gave him a quick summary of my life to date.

‘I worked in the murder squad at Scotland Yard in London for thirty years and a couple of years ago I retired and moved here to Tuscany. A good friend of mine in the Florence murder squad suggested I set up my own investigation agency and I've been doing that for the last year.'

‘Thirty years in the murder squad? Were you a senior officer?'

‘Not terribly senior, I was a detective chief inspector, a DCI.'

He was obviously familiar with the rank and he smiled. ‘That's roughly equivalent to major in the Carabinieri or commissario in the Italian police, isn't it? You must have seen some things in your time.'

‘Yes, but never a one-eyed man floating in the sea. Can I ask if you're sure it was murder and not suicide or maybe just an unfortunate accident?'

‘Definitely murder.' I saw him hesitate before making a decision. ‘This is restricted information, so please keep it to yourself, but the man suffered six stab wounds to the back, sides and neck. And as for suicide, you try stabbing yourself in the back.' His tone was dry.

‘He was stabbed six times?' Without knowing it, the cable-car conductor had been pretty close to the mark. ‘That certainly doesn't sound like the work of a professional hitman.'

‘No, the pathologist said it looked like a frenzied attack with a fairly slim-bladed knife only about ten centimetres long.'

‘Tell me, do you have photos of the victim? I should be able to recognise him if he is the one I saw.'

‘I'm just waiting to get the photos back from the lab.' He gave me a rueful shrug of the shoulders. ‘We're only a very small contingent here and some of the technology takes a bit of time.'

Beside me, the Coastguard officer coughed apologetically. ‘It was my first experience of a murder victim, I'm afraid, and I didn't think to take my own photos. I just left it to the force photographer.'

There was a peremptory knock on the door and the maresciallo returned. ‘Sounds like this might be our man, sir. I've spoken to the captain, a woman called Monica Devesi, and she confirms there was a man with an eyepatch on board the Regal Princess until just before eleven last night, name of Jerome Van der Groot, British national. She says that she'd heard that for some reason after dinner, he left the saloon in a huff. Ten minutes later, they heard the outboard motor on one of their little rubber dinghies being started up and a crewmember saw it heading for the shore. It never came back and neither did he, so when this was reported to the captain first thing this morning, she sent out a search party in another boat. They found the dinghy wedged against the rocks just along the coast from here, but they've seen no sign of him and nobody's heard from him since last night. We found the body washed up only a hundred metres further on.'

‘When you say "wedged", was the dinghy moored up?'

The maresciallo shook his head. ‘I asked them that and they said no, no attempt had been made to secure it. It's a miracle it got stuck in the rocks, or it and the body would have been washed way out to sea by the currents and goodness only knows when it would have been found again.' He glanced across at me for a moment. ‘You maybe know the story of the unfortunate Countess Vacca Agusta twenty years ago. Her body wasn't found for over three weeks until it washed up on the shore in France.'

‘Yes, I just heard about it this morning. So on that basis, there's no proof that Van der Groot was actually still in the boat when it reached the shore.'

‘That's quite correct.'

The lieutenant nodded approvingly and caught my eye. ‘Looks like you were right, Signor Armstrong.' He returned his attention to the maresciallo . ‘What time did you say the man, Van der Groot, left the Regal Princess ?'

‘The captain said it was around eleven.'

‘Where was the boat moored?'

‘About a kilometre off the coast, between here and Santa Margherita. She says they arrived there from Rapallo at eight yesterday evening and spent the night there before moving to their current position closer to Portofino at seven-thirty this morning. They haven't moved since.'

‘Has anybody come ashore or are they all still on the boat?'

‘The two crewmembers who came looking for the dinghy at six-thirty this morning didn't set foot on dry land and returned with it as soon as they found it. As far as the guests on board are concerned, the captain says none of them have left the yacht so far today.' He gave a little smile. ‘By the sound of it, they've been hitting the booze pretty hard and, as a result, they're not too active in the mornings.'

I saw the lieutenant digest the information for a few seconds before turning to me. ‘Signor Armstrong, I know you said you're on holiday, but I wonder if you might be able to give us one more hour of your time. You said you think you might be able to recognise the voices you heard in Lucca, so would it be possible for you to come with me to the yacht now? I won't do formal interviews at this stage because I'm sure your time is precious, but I would just like to have a quick chat to everybody on board with you listening in, in the hope of pinpointing the men you heard.' I was impressed to hear him then switch to pretty good English with a distinct but comprehensible Italian accent. ‘As you can imagine, I have to use English quite a lot so I'm reasonably fluent and I don't really need the services of an interpreter, but the people on the yacht don't need to know that. I won't introduce you and if anybody asks, we'll just say you're helping with the language.' He switched back to Italian again. ‘Would you be able to do that for us? I'd be very grateful.'

I checked the time. It was almost two o'clock now and if Anna had gone for a snooze after her lunchtime sandwich she probably wouldn't be surfacing before three so I reckoned I was safe enough. ‘Yes, of course. I wish I could give you more of my time, but I'm here with my girlfriend and she's expecting me to spend our holiday weekend with her.' I caught his eye for a moment. ‘I'm afraid my job's been causing a bit of friction between us.'

The lieutenant gave me a rueful smile in return. ‘That sounds all too familiar. Thank you very much for your help.' He turned to the young Coastguard officer. ‘Paolo, I wonder if in return for Signor Armstrong's assistance, you or one of your colleagues would be kind enough to run him back to Rapallo after we've finished talking to the people on the yacht?'

‘Of course.' Officer Solaro gave me a little grin. ‘I promise I'll get you back a lot faster than the ferry.'