Chapter 14 #2
‘So, you’re saying that the existence of these weapons was common knowledge to everybody here in the villa?’
‘Of course. After all, if there was to be an attack, we’d all need to know where to lay our hands on some hardware, wouldn’t we?’
Virgilio was dotting the I’s and crossing the T’s. ‘Absolutely everybody? What about the housekeeper and her husband or, for that matter, the two other women here – Green and Cortez?’
We saw Eddie pause for thought. After a few moments, he replied, ‘Rosina and her hubby know all about the weapons, but under normal circumstances, guests like the Spanish woman probably wouldn’t have been told, but on Monday, we were doing a bit of clay-pigeon shooting in the back garden, and the boss brought out a couple of little handguns for people to play with.
One was a brand-new Glock 49, generation five, only just released onto the open market.
Beautiful little thing. We all had a go with it, and it was as sweet as you like. ’
Before we could stop him, he reached down and picked up a sinister-looking black handgun.
Although I’ve done a couple of firearms courses in my time, I’ve never liked guns and I certainly would never have used the adjectives ‘beautiful’ or ‘sweet’ when describing these deadly automatic pistols.
Eddie weighed the gun lightly in his hand before holding it out towards me with another of his trademark grins.
‘Here you go, DCI Armstrong, bet you wished you’d had one of these in your pocket when you were on the beat. ’
I took it from him, and the first thing I did was to eject the magazine.
He was right. The gun was remarkably light compared to some of the older weapons I had handled in the past. I checked the magazine and saw that it was full and, when I laid the weapon back in its place on the shelf, I left the magazine alongside it.
For me, the best weapons are unloaded ones. I glanced at Eddie.
‘Unlike most of the other TXA people, you weren’t in the army. How come you’re so familiar with weapons?’
Just for a moment or two, a look of what could have been unease crossed his face, but it was immediately submerged beneath another grin. ‘Like I told you, I’ve worked for the company for years. It’s only natural that I get my hands on the merchandise from time to time.’
Virgilio took up the conversation again.
‘As far as I’m aware, we have no record of permits having been issued for these weapons – in fact, there are several of the automatic rifles that wouldn’t be eligible for permits anyway.
I’m going to impound all of them. Tell me, Mr Smith, why is there a handgun and a suppressor missing?
’ In case Eddie might have been in any doubt as to what he meant, he pointed to the empty spaces on the shelf, and I saw Eddie’s eyes open wide in surprise.
‘Blimey! The boss wouldn’t have been happy about that going missing.
It was his pride and joy. He was showing it to everybody on Monday.
It’s plastic, you see.’ In case we missed the significance of this, he expanded.
‘Plastic weapons don’t show up on metal detectors, so they’re perfect for…
’ His voice tailed off into silence, and I could almost hear the cogs in his brain working as the significance of what he was looking at struck him.
He looked up again, the grin long gone. ‘Is that what they used to kill the boss?’
Virgilio nodded. ‘Almost certainly. Forensics say that the bullet came from a non-standard weapon.’
I decided to query Eddie’s skills as a detective once more.
‘So, this means that it’s a lot more likely that Tristan Angel was killed by somebody here in the villa.
Last time you and I spoke, you suggested that Emilia Cortez might be the killer.
Do you still stick by that and, if so, have you unearthed any proof in the meantime? ’
He took his time before replying. ‘I’m not saying she didn’t do it, but, you’re right, there ain’t a shred of evidence to show that she did. I suppose, if I’m being brutally frank, it’s possible the murders might be down to one of us after all.’
‘By “one of us”, you mean somebody in the TXA group? Feel like naming names?’
Another pause. ‘Mr Archer’s the boss now, so I suppose he’s done well out of the deaths of the top two, but I don’t see him as a killer.’
‘Although he was an army officer, wasn’t he?’
He shot me a cynical look. ‘Army officers don’t kill people. They’re too busy drinking gin and tonic and playing polo. They get the lower ranks to do the killing.’
‘But are there any lower ranks here?’
He looked up and caught my eye for a second. ‘Well, there’s a sergeant.’ He transferred his attention to Sergeant Dini and winked. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I don’t mean you.’
‘You’re saying you think Liam O’Connell might be the killer?’
Eddie just shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible.’
A less ebullient Eddie was shown out of the room and officers were called in to photograph and remove the weapons for fingerprinting, but I hardly registered their activity.
As they set about impounding the weapons, another thought occurred to me and I felt a wave of relief.
Now it surely didn’t matter one bit whether Tricia’s Shaun had been in the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards or any other regiment.
There was no way he could have got his hands on the murder weapon because it had been here, and he couldn’t have got in on Monday night or Tuesday morning to pick it up.
Of course, I had to remind myself, it was just possible that somebody here had picked up the weapon and passed it on to Shaun at the duomo to kill Angel, but this seemed ridiculously far-fetched.
There was absolutely no evidence of Shaun being in any way connected with anybody here and, besides, if somebody had taken the weapon from here, why hadn’t they used it themselves, rather than handing it on to a third party?
And finally, and most tellingly, there was no way he could have got into the villa last night to kill Hicks.
It now looked as though my future son-in-law was in the clear.
The relief I was feeling was partly for his sake and Tricia’s, but it was mostly for my own.
Knowing me and my sometimes pig-headed nosiness, I would probably have brought up the subject at dinner tonight and risked an almighty family row.
I actually wiped what might have been perspiration off my brow. Disaster averted.
Virgilio watched the door close and then turned back towards us, a note of exasperation in his voice.
‘Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? Everybody here at the villa knew about the murder weapon, and most of them probably even fired it on Monday.
The cupboard wasn’t locked, so that means that anybody here could have picked it up and used it to kill Angel.
’ He took a deep breath. ‘I suppose we have to look on the bright side. As you said, Dan, at least we can now be 99 per cent certain that Tristan Angel was killed by one of the people here in the villa. Whether this was at the behest of a foreign power or some shadowy terrorist organisation, or for a different reason, remains to be seen.’
Marco had been reflecting on what Eddie had told us. ‘What do we think of Smith’s theory that O’Connell might be the killer? Might he and Archer have been working together?’
Virgilio nodded slowly. ‘It’s a thought, isn’t it? The sooner we speak to Archer, the better.’