Chapter 16
SATURDAY NIGHT
The police arrived barely twenty minutes later. I half-expected to see Virgilio’s friend, Inspector Giulia Trevisan, but the first to arrive were a sergeant and two constables, closely followed by an ambulance boat with two paramedics and a doctor.
Diego showed the doctor to the victim, and it took little more than a few seconds for her to pronounce Lucy O’Connell dead.
No sooner had she stepped away from the body than the sergeant and his men began to move in.
I was appalled to see that none of them were wearing gloves and I couldn’t stop myself from remonstrating with them.
‘Sergeant, you do realise that this could be murder, don’t you? Shouldn’t you be wearing gloves and preferably overalls?’
He turned and looked me up and down with an exasperated expression.
He was probably around my age, and one look at his face told me that I was wasting my time if I hoped he would listen to me.
In case I was in any doubt, he went on to tell me as much.
‘Thank you, sir, but I don’t need advice from members of the public.
I’ve seen this kind of thing often enough in my career.
For your information, it’s clear to me that this wasn’t murder.
The victim was a drug addict. Anybody can see that.
’ He pointed at Lucy’s pathetically thin arms. ‘See that bruising? That’s typical of addicts.
This person has died of an overdose, and I’d be grateful if you would step back and let me get on with my job. ’
I’ve always had an obstinate streak – ask my ex-wife – and I wasn’t going to stand by and see a crime scene contaminated by a trio of heavy-handed coppers, so I tried again, this time addressing myself to the doctor.
‘Doctor, is the officer right? Because if he isn’t, his boss is going to be very unhappy at him for contaminating a crime scene.’ I deliberately made my voice loud enough for the three police officers to hear. ‘Is it possible that the victim was murdered?’
I was relieved to see her step back towards the body again, studying it more closely.
‘The sergeant could well be right about the victim being a drug addict, but there’s no way of knowing whether that’s what killed her until we do an autopsy.
Certainly, if you’re putting me on the spot and asking me to tell you whether it was misadventure or murder, I can’t do that. ’
We both looked across at the sergeant expectantly. I could tell that he was peeved – and on one level, I didn’t blame him. After all, who was this nobody, trying to teach him his job? Seeing him looking uncertain, I decided to play my joker.
‘Why not give Inspector Trevisan a call and see what she says? It can’t hurt.’
His expression became more wary. ‘How do you know Inspector Trevisan?’
‘She’s a friend, and I had coffee with her yesterday.
I used to be a commissario in the police myself.
’ I didn’t mention in which force. Sensing that I was getting through to him, I did my best to offer him a face-saving way out.
‘The fact is that things here have been very fraught, and I have good reason to believe that foul play may have been involved.’ I gave him a little smile.
‘I’m sorry, I probably should have told you that earlier. ’
He nodded a couple of times before turning to the other two officers. ‘Pavan, Piave, stay here and make sure nobody touches a thing, while I call the station.’ He walked off, reaching for his phone.
I went over to where Alice was still sitting motionless and I leant against the table in front of her.
I’d been speaking in Italian with the police and so she probably hadn’t understood what had been said.
Indeed, most probably few, if any, of the guests would have understood either, so I raised my voice a bit when I spoke to her, ensuring that the others would hear.
‘The sergeant is going to phone the police station so that a more senior officer can be sent out to take charge. I imagine that a forensic team will come at the same time, and we should find out before too long the exact cause of Lucy’s death.
We probably all know that she had a drug problem so it might be an accidental, or even a deliberate, overdose, but we have to face the fact that it’s possible that she’s been murdered.
I’m afraid this is probably going to mean that everybody here on the island, including you and me, Alice, will have to be interviewed, and the police will probably want to take our fingerprints and maybe even DNA samples for exclusion purposes.
I have a feeling it might turn out to be a long night. ’
Alice slowly looked up from Oscar at her feet, and I could see the anguish in her face. ‘What you’re saying, Dan, is that if she was murdered, it must have been one of us who did it.’
I tried to play this down for now, although the exact same thoughts were running through my head. ‘Not necessarily, but don’t let’s get ahead of ourselves. We should let the police and the forensic people do their work first, and then we’ll know better.’
‘And if she was murdered, it was because of my stupid game, and poor Lucy was killed by mistake, and it’s my fault. There’s no doubt in my mind that I was the target. Whoever did this to Lucy was trying to kill me, and what worries me most of all is whether they’ll try again.’
There was a muted chorus of dissenting voices as a few people did their best to reassure her that she had nothing to worry about but, deep down, I felt sure that she was right.
Valentina and Gabriella emerged from the kitchen with trays of strong coffee, and I helped myself to one while unobtrusively studying the faces around me.
Apart from the serving staff, I counted Alice and ten guests – Dirk Foster hadn’t returned after storming off – plus Mary and the six actors engaged for the game.
For now, I mentally discounted the actors because I was at a loss to think of what possible motive any of them might have had to murder Lucy O’Connell.
I also sidelined Mary, Valentina, Diego and their children for the same reason.
This left me with Alice herself – although at this stage, I had no idea why she might have wanted to kill Lucy – and her guests, few, if any, of whom could have realised that the woman in Alice’s costume had in fact been Lucy.
From what I’d seen over the last twelve hours, Alice certainly wasn’t flavour of the month with a number of these, but the question was whether one of them might have decided to take the radical step of trying to kill her.
As far as I could tell at the moment, the only guests not out for Alice’s blood were probably Rocco Gentile, Sandra Groves – although she hadn’t exactly sounded enchanted to be here – Antoinette Latour and Greg Gupta.
This left me with six possible suspects here, plus Dirk Foster, who had gone off in a huff.
These were Desmond Norman, the all-powerful producer, Jack Sloane, the casting director, Maggie McBride, the widowed billionaire producer, Carlos Rodriguez, the famous director, Alastair Groves, the theatrical agent, and Freddie Baker, the new-kid-on-the-block director.
I had seen all of them react angrily – or at least suspiciously – at what Alice had written on their cards, except for Freddie Baker.
I hadn’t observed his reaction but I had sensed a certain degree of antipathy between him and Alice when he’d first appeared in the dining room at lunchtime.
According to Diego, Dirk Foster and Desmond Norman had crossed swords with Alice after lunch, and her deliberate choice to make Foster the murderer and to spell out in her summing-up the way his Renaissance character had betrayed hers had led to him going off.
As a result, I tended to position him high up on my list of suspects, with Norman not far behind.
My thoughts were interrupted as Dirk Foster reappeared on the terrace, changed back into his everyday clothes, with his suitcase in one hand.
He ignored Alice completely, spotted Diego and waved to summon him.
‘I need to get off this island. I want you to take me across to the old town or the mainland. Right now!’ He was still looking and sounding furious.
I saw the two police officers eyeing each other.
I wondered how much English they understood, and if they had already recognised him as the world-famous star he was, but it was clear they were unsure what his intentions were.
I hurried across to put Foster in the picture.
‘I’m afraid you aren’t going anywhere, Mr Foster. None of us are.’ I pointed across to the two police officers. ‘Lucy O’Connell’s dead.’
This stopped him in his tracks, and he dropped his suitcase onto the ground with a thud. ‘Lucy dead? But how…?’
I told him briefly that a police investigation would establish the cause of death and that it was uncertain at this stage whether we were looking at an accident, suicide or murder.
‘I’m afraid we’ll all have to stay here at least for tonight.
A senior police officer is coming out to the island now, and I imagine he or she will want to take statements from everybody. ’
He stared at me blankly for a couple of seconds.
‘Did you say murder? Do the police think she was murdered? And if so, who by?’ He looked and sounded convincing, but I couldn’t help reminding myself that he also was a very good actor.
Besides, was his bewilderment because he had just discovered that he had killed the wrong woman?
I told him how Alice had swapped costumes with the victim and so maybe Alice had been the intended victim, and his tanned face paled visibly.
He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, waving vaguely towards Valentina and muttering, ‘Coffee.’