Chapter 7
Well, this is very much more like it. An Italian villa, a corpse and a threatening note. This, Rosie reflects, is why it’s such a good idea to go on chat shows.
She, Amy and Steve have been met at the door to Vern Blackwood’s villa by a muscular German bodyguard.
‘Thank you,’ she says to the German man. ‘I didn’t catch your name?’
‘Korbin,’ says Korbin.
‘Korbin with a K?’ asks Rosie.
‘Yes, but only at the beginning,’ says Korbin, leading them into the house.
‘Best place for it. I’m Rosie,’ says Rosie, holding out her hand to be kissed. Korbin shakes it instead.
‘I know,’ says Korbin. ‘I have noted all of your names.’
As he ushers them into a room and walks away, Rosie turns to Amy. ‘Remind me to add Korbin to my “to do” list.’
‘Never sleep with a German bodyguard,’ says Amy. ‘It’s like having sex with a BMW.’
‘In a good way?’ Rosie asks.
‘Very safe,’ says Amy. ‘Also very fast.’
Steve is thumbing through a rack of vinyl. ‘He’s got some good stuff here. Sabbath, Purple, Priest. I think Mr Blackwood and I are going to get along.’
Rosie had returned Vern Blackwood’s call personally.
You could tell he was impressed. Of course I’d be interested in your corpse, Mr Blackwood, do tell me more?
Vern it is, then, and you must call me Rosie.
A bullet hole through the head? Yes, that certainly qualifies as a murder, doesn’t it?
Your bodyguard? Goodness me, what use are bodyguards if they go around getting shot?
Would you have any suspects, Vern? Any motives?
Or happy to leave that sort of thing to my team?
They were on the private jet two hours later, Steve complaining because he was supposed to be going to a steam fair that afternoon.
Rosie notes that Steve has very quickly got used to private jet travel and now brings along his own food.
And so it was that, as she and Amy tucked into vegan sushi, Steve asked the steward to warm up a sausage roll he’d bought from the service station.
The room they are in is very beautiful. An elegant sitting room with windows on three sides, Tuscany wrapping around them.
The walls are covered in Rosie’s absolute favourite sort of art – expensive paintings, bought by someone with very poor taste.
There are no personal items at all, and no photos except for one of Vern Blackwood giving a thumbs-up into the camera with his arm around a snooker player.
The snooker player is not looking at the camera, but looking, instead, for an escape route.
Double doors open and in steps Vern Blackwood.
Rosie takes him in. Early fifties? You could never really tell with men these days, now they’ve all had their hair and teeth done in Turkey.
He is wearing a short-sleeved shirt, which is normally an absolute red line for Rosie, but in Italy the rules seem to be different, so she will give him the benefit of the doubt for now.
‘Here they are, then,’ says Vern Blackwood. ‘We Catch Murderers.’
‘We Solve Murders,’ says Rosie.
‘Although we do catch murderers too,’ says Steve, extending his hand. ‘Some nice vinyl there, buddy.’
‘If anyone made a good record after 1989, I haven’t heard it,’ says Vern. ‘Am I right?’
‘Amen to that,’ says Steve. ‘Although I’ve got Metallica on the phone. They say they’d like a word!’
They both laugh. Rosie and Amy look at each other. It is so often a peek into an entirely alien world when Steve meets a man of his own age. Rosie offers a cheek to Vern Blackwood and he kisses it. She then offers her other cheek, but he steps back.
‘One cheek only,’ says Vern. ‘Just because we’re in Italy doesn’t mean we’re Italians.’
Amy gives Blackwood a firm handshake. ‘Mr Blackwood.’
‘Vern, you can all just call me Vern. Let’s sit soft.’
Vern takes a seat on his sofa, and the others sit too.
‘Tell us everything,’ says Steve. ‘Starting with you.’
‘I am …’ Vern begins, ‘let’s say … a criminal. A sort of criminal, but not really.’
A sort of criminal? thinks Rosie. Amy is writing things down. Amy always takes notes. Then she types them up and sends them to Steve and Rosie. Whether Steve reads them, Rosie couldn’t say. She hopes he does though. It would be nice if someone was reading them. For Amy’s sake.
‘I work in an industry populated by criminals,’ says Vern. ‘I find myself in their company often.’
‘But you yourself?’ Rosie asks.
Vern considers the question. ‘Well, I run a business that I would call shadowy rather than downright illegal.’
Rosie sees Amy underline the word ‘shadowy’. Amy likes things numbered and underlined. She doesn’t like chaos. Imagine not liking chaos?
‘What might your business be?’ Rosie asks.
They had been doing their due diligence on the plane over and came up with very little.
One small article about a legal dispute with his ex-wife over a trademarked name, but, other than that, nothing.
Rosie has put a call in with an old contact who now works at Interpol.
If there is further information, then he will have it.
‘Vitamins,’ says Vern. ‘Vitamins, health supplements, brain boosters, anything like that. I advertise and sell online. I ship from China, I pay tax in Italy and I holiday in the Caribbean. That’s the business.’
‘That doesn’t …’ Amy is now holding her pen in the air. ‘That doesn’t sound illegal at all. If you don’t mind me saying?’
‘Well, quite,’ says Vern. ‘The wrinkle of it is that they’re not real vitamins. The brain boosters won’t boost your brain, the anti-ageing capsules won’t make you younger. They’re just water and powder and nice packaging.’
‘Okay,’ says Amy. ‘Well, yes, that does sound illegal now.’
Vern holds up his hand. ‘Not quite. Not quite. You see, I only sell things that have no scientific proof they work anyway. Whatever active ingredients the legitimate supplement companies put into their pills, there’s no evidence at all that my fake pills are any worse than their real ones.
Both pills will have zero effect, but mine are cheaper. ’
‘It still feels a bit illegal, Vern,’ says Steve. ‘I don’t want to argue with a Sabbath fan, but –’
‘Oh, it’s a bit illegal,’ agrees Vern. ‘No arguments there. It’s a bit illegal for sure. Can we get to the murder, please? I’m quite busy.’
‘Do you solve murders, Vern?’ Rosie asks.
‘No,’ says Vern.
‘Well, we do,’ says Rosie. ‘So let us do our job.’
‘What were you in before?’ Amy asks.
‘Fake perfume and steroids,’ says Vern. ‘Whole different ball game.’
‘And there’s money to be made?’ says Steve. ‘Even though the products don’t work?’
‘A lot of the time they do work,’ says Vern. ‘A bit of positive thinking does wonders for the health. So I provide a service really. I sleep well at night. Just without help from my “Goodnight Sweetdreams” pills, which are a bestseller.’
‘And yet,’ says Rosie, because Vern is right, they do need to get to the crux of this thing, ‘someone has just murdered one of your bodyguards and dumped him on your doorstep.’
Vern raises his palms as if to say, I know, right? ‘By the way, I wasn’t sure if you wanted me to dig up the corpse or not? Absolutely no bother if you do. I don’t know how you work, but Korbin can have it done in a jiffy.’
Rosie gives a shake of the head and a wrinkle of the nose, telling Vern this won’t be necessary for the moment.
‘I’ll want a look at some point,’ says Amy. ‘Entry-wound angle and so on.’
Rosie must remember that Amy is not one-dimensional. She likes numbering and underlining things, sure, but she also likes looking at corpses.
‘I think the question we’re asking,’ says Steve, ‘is do you know who might have done it? Is there someone else, a rival perhaps, who might have reason to frighten you?’
Vern reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of paper. ‘And there we get to it, Steve, there we get to it. A note from a fellow businessman named Jakob Eriksson, claiming responsibility.’
Vern hands the note to Rosie, who reads.
‘This is a waning –’
‘English not his first language, then,’ says Steve.
‘I will be back and you will be next,’ finishes Rosie.
‘So you want us to find this Jakob Eriksson?’ Amy asks. ‘Your business rival?’
‘No,’ says Vern. ‘This note is nonsense.’
‘Nonsense how?’ asks Steve. ‘Apart from the spelling?’
‘I’ll tell you now, for a fact,’ says Vern. ‘Jakob Eriksson didn’t do this.’
Amy takes a look at the note. ‘He seems to suggest that he did.’
‘We’re friends,’ says Vern. ‘We’re not rivals. And we have an agreement.’
‘What sort of agreement?’ asks Rosie.
‘Jakob Eriksson is very much on the more illegal side of the business,’ says Vern. ‘We have always coexisted happily. He kills people. A lot of people. But he would neither threaten to kill me, nor try to kill me.’
‘He kills people?’ asks Amy.
‘Correct,’ says Vern.
‘But he wouldn’t kill you?’ says Steve.
‘He would not,’ agrees Vern. ‘Someone is using his name and trying to frighten me. I need you to find out who.’
‘Can I ask –’ says Steve. ‘Sorry, just to start getting a picture. What is the more illegal side of the fake vitamin business?’
‘The fake medication business,’ says Vern. ‘That’s what Jakob Eriksson does. Heart pills, Viagra, statins. Anything that people need but can’t afford the regular way.’
Jakob Eriksson will surely be on the radar of Interpol, then. Rosie wants to know more.
‘And that would make him more enemies than the fake vitamins market?’
‘Of course,’ says Vern. ‘No one owns the idea of a multivitamin tablet or cod-liver oil or fish collagen.’
‘I use fish collagen,’ says Rosie. ‘I swear by it.’
‘Do you get it from a Belarusian website?’ Vern asks.
‘No,’ says Rosie.
‘Shame,’ says Vern. ‘Anyhow, no one comes after me. But you start selling Viagra or Ozempic or anything medical, then there’s a billion-dollar industry with the sole job of protecting their brand. And any time there’s a billion-dollar industry, there are bullets.’
‘So perhaps Jakob Eriksson wants an easier life?’ Steve suggests. ‘Wants to do what you do instead? Prepared to kill your bodyguard to scare you out of his way?’
‘We all met up,’ says Vern. ‘In Vegas, five or so years ago. Eriksson, my good self and four others. Divided the world up between us. Agreed to leave each other in peace. I was a mediator of sorts, because of the vanilla nature of my operation here.’
‘Lot of money in vanilla,’ says Steve.
‘We’ll need their names,’ says Amy.
‘Of course,’ says Vern. ‘There’s me, of course, and Jakob Eriksson.’
‘Your good pal,’ says Rosie.
Amy is scribbling the list.
Vern continues, ‘Then there’s the late Gennady Volkin.’
‘Late?’ says Steve.
‘Shot dead a year later,’ says Vern. ‘Then there’s Mika Voronen.’
Amy looks up. ‘Could you spell that?’
‘Of course,’ says Vern. ‘V-O-R-O-N-E-N.’ And then, ‘R-I-P.’
‘Dead too?’ says Rosie. ‘Goodness.’
‘Shot dead,’ says Vern. ‘Then Vaclav Svoboda.’
‘Is he …’ starts Steve. ‘Still with us?’
‘Very much not, I’m afraid,’ says Vern.
‘Shot dead?’ guesses Amy.
‘A number of times, yes,’ says Vern. ‘Riddled, they say.’
‘That’s five,’ says Steve. ‘Who’s the sixth?’
‘Tommy Griffin,’ says Vern. ‘An American.’
‘A dead American?’ asks Steve.
‘Well, no,’ says Vern. ‘An alive American.’
‘So, of the six,’ says Rosie, ‘three are dead. And the other three are you, Tommy Griffin and Jakob Eriksson?’
Vern nods. ‘Eriksson killed the first three.’
‘You know that for sure?’ says Amy.
‘Don’t take my word for it,’ says Vern. ‘Ask around. You’ll hear that’s true.’
Another one for Interpol, thinks Rosie.
‘Any other rivals in mind?’ Steve asks, back to work. ‘If you don’t believe this was Jakob Eriksson.’
‘Yes, two people to look at,’ says Vern. ‘Firstly, Tommy Griffin.’
‘The alive American,’ says Amy.
‘He’s been expanding into Europe, which he’s not allowed to do,’ says Vern. ‘Just been in Ireland, for example. Strictly forbidden. He’s making a move into my territory.’
‘And Eriksson’s?’ says Amy.
‘Where is he now?’ Steve asks. ‘Still in Ireland? I like Ireland.’
‘Palm Springs,’ says Vern.
Steve nods. ‘Is it hot there?’
‘Very,’ says Vern.
Steve sighs.
‘And the other name?’ Amy asks.
‘The other person I’d like you to speak to,’ says Vern, ‘is Georgie Glazier.’
‘And who is Georgie Glazier?’ Steve asks.
‘My ex-wife,’ says Vern.
‘So you’re single,’ says Rosie. It’s not a question, merely an observation.
Rosie can’t help herself, by this point it’s a tic with her, she barely even notices she’s doing it.
But there is something about Vern Blackwood she rather likes.
Which, when she really thinks about it, is usually a red flag.
‘Very,’ says Vern.
Rosie looks over at Amy. ‘Make sure you write that down.’
‘I have a different file for your love life,’ says Amy. ‘A bigger file.’
‘We were a partnership,’ says Vern. ‘Amicably concluded, I thought. But she’s been in touch recently, asking for money, saying I owe her.’
‘And do you?’ Rosie asks.
‘Morally, yes,’ says Vern. ‘Financially, no. I told her she won’t be getting a penny from me. Perhaps she’s taken that badly. You know ex-wives, Steve!’
Vern gives Steve a laddish punch on the shoulder, and the only smile that Steve can muster is a sad one.
Three names for Interpol to look at: Tommy Griffin, Georgie Glazier, Jakob Eriksson. Rosie claps her hands. Plenty to be getting on with there.
‘I’m sure we can help you, Vern,’ says Rosie. ‘We’ll take a look at Georgie for you, and Tommy Griffin, and we really will need to find Jakob Eriksson. If only to rule him out. A murderer has threatened to murder you, so we wouldn’t be doing our due diligence if we didn’t.’
Vern shakes his head. ‘You won’t find him, and you don’t need to find him. It’s a smokescreen. I just need to know what the game is here. I need to know if Georgie or Tommy Griffin are trying to scare me. That’s your job. Who killed Esteban, and why. No one deserves what happened to that poor boy.’
Amy’s pen hovers over her notepad. ‘What was Esteban’s surname?’
Vern looks at her, quizzically. ‘No idea. He was only a bodyguard. I usually called him “number three”.’
Amy nods. ‘I’ll put “Sánchez”.’