Chapter 23
‘I feel like we might have to,’ says Amy, looking at Korbin’s body.
Rosie rolls her eyes, but Steve nods.
‘I mean, if we didn’t have to,’ says Vern, ‘that would make my life easier. Rosie?’
Rosie takes some time to think. She has to be honest with herself, this is everything she could have dreamt of when she suggested they form We Solve Murders.
One murder leads to another murder. Perhaps more to come, one can only hope.
But it does all come with more admin than she’d anticipated.
More responsibility. This is a case in point.
‘It feels like we might have to,’ says Rosie. ‘I don’t like it any more than you, Vern, but, instinctively, I’d say probably we should let the police know.’
They all stare into the deep freezer. Korbin’s body lies face up, the knife, frosty now, still sticking out of his chest.
Playing by the rules is a terrible bore, but so is ending up in an Italian prison for perverting the course of justice. What choice do they have?
‘I keep trying to pull his eyelids closed,’ says Vern. ‘But they pop back open.’
‘I’ve done everything I can,’ says Amy. ‘Got everything I need. Fingerprints, photos. Questioned everyone.’
‘You’ve done good,’ says Steve.
Amy has given them both a file, and Rosie has actually read it this time.
The only people at the villa at the time of Korbin’s death were Vern, locked in, Lee, watching a film, and Amy.
Lee had been on a patrol earlier in the evening and could have had the opportunity to kill him, Vern could have disabled the alarms on his villa, with some difficulty, and plunged a knife into his own bodyguard, or Amy herself might have lost her mind.
Rosie feels like one day Amy could absolutely lose her cool and go on some sort of rampage.
She doubts she would start murdering bodyguards, but who knows with that generation?
The only prints on the knife were Korbin’s, which told them the square root of precisely nothing, because any decent murderer would be wearing gloves.
What would Vern’s motive be? That’s something they can chat about on the plane home.
And Lee, the only surviving bodyguard? Two bodyguards dead, does that mean a promotion?
Amy has got to know Lee a little, and Rosie is sure she will have an opinion.
Possibly even a crush? One can hope. That husband of hers, Adam, is always away. Rosie doesn’t like that for Amy.
Or has someone come into the compound from the outside?
Has Jakob Eriksson struck again? Killing his own man?
Tying up a loose end? The cameras show a figure running across the lawn towards Korbin’s cottage at around 9.
30. Bleached blond hair, that’s about all that can be seen.
It’s all in Amy’s report. Rosie sees that Amy now has her arm around her father-in-law.
‘How was Tony?’ Amy asks.
‘Shaken up,’ says Steve.
‘Who’s Tony?’ Vern asks.
‘My best mate,’ says Steve. ‘Jakob Eriksson sent one of his lads over to give him a hiding, try to warn us off. Someone with bleached blond hair by the way.’
Same as the figure on the security footage? You’d have to assume so, even though an awful lot of people dye their hair. Rosie has been everything in her time. She is currently Chocolate Strawberry.
‘God, I’m sorry, Steve,’ says Vern. ‘I warned you not to go after Eriksson. The last thing I want is innocent people dragged into this thing.’
‘I think I was more upset than Tony,’ says Steve, waving Vern’s apologies away. ‘He can be very “easy come, easy go” when he wants to be.’
‘Perhaps we should just leave the whole thing well alone?’ says Vern. ‘I mean, I’m telling you, it’s not Jakob, but even if it’s someone pretending to be Jakob, it’s the same result. Too dangerous. I might move for a bit. It feels like this place could be … slightly compromised.’
‘I think that sixty-six per cent of your bodyguards ending up dead in the freezer counts as slightly compromised, yes,’ agrees Rosie. ‘What if we fly you to England? You can stay at mine.’
‘She’s got two moats,’ says Steve.
‘That’s a good amount of moats,’ nods Vern. ‘But for tax purposes I can’t go to England. The second I set foot in Heathrow it costs me a couple of million.’
‘And that’s just Duty Free,’ says Steve. He and Vern laugh a great deal at this. Rosie and Amy wait them out. Rosie double-checks that they’ve finished.
‘This is what I suggest,’ Rosie says. ‘Vern, we fly you to England, on the jet, put you up at mine for a week or so.’
‘There are other places I can go,’ says Vern. ‘Switzerland. Honestly, I feel like this is too much for you.’
‘Nonsense,’ says Rosie. ‘We’ll have a blast. You’ll be protected, and it’ll buy us a bit of time, and perhaps it might lure whoever’s killing all of your bodyguards.’
‘And into an environment we have more control over,’ says Amy. ‘More secure.’
‘It’s still a no,’ says Vern. ‘I have a yacht I could use. That would be even more secure.’
‘A yacht makes you a sitting target,’ says Amy. ‘I have blown up a lot of yachts in my time.’
‘There’s a nice shop in Rosie’s village,’ says Steve. ‘But if there’s a woman called Maureen behind the till, she overcharges, and she knows I know.’
‘You can bring the bodyguard you still have left,’ says Rosie.
‘It’s a lovely offer,’ says Vern. ‘But it’s still a no. And right now I’m more worried about the idea of the police coming here. The whole point of hiring you was I wouldn’t have to deal with them. I don’t know if you want me to stop paying you?’
‘No other option,’ says Steve. ‘Sorry, Vern. I’ll head down into Lucca, explain it all and bring them up here. Maybe have a couple of coffees before I go in.’
‘Can you give me six to seven hours to clear a few things away before they get here?’ Vern asks, with a sigh.
The second the police arrive, this job will be out of their hands. Rosie knows this, but, fortunately, she has a plan.
‘Or –’ says Rosie.
‘We’re going to the police,’ says Steve.
‘Yes, or –’ says Rosie.
‘None of us likes the police, Rosie –’ says Amy.
‘None taken,’ says Steve.
‘– but Steve’s right. We don’t report this and we could be in serious trouble.’
‘Two things,’ says Rosie. ‘Firstly, serious trouble is my favourite kind of trouble. But, secondly, and that aside, I absolutely agree we should report it. It’s just a question of who we report it to.’
‘The police,’ says Amy. ‘You know, blue lights, uniforms, increasingly tainted brand?’
‘It’s a question of which police though,’ says Rosie. ‘It feels to me that if a German bodyguard has been murdered in the Italian villa of an English criminal –’
‘Semi-criminal,’ clarifies Vern.
‘Possibly at the behest of a Swedish mastermind … then that might be too big a job for the local bobbies?’
‘What are you thinking?’ Amy asks.
Rosie holds up her palms to show she is about to make a perfectly reasonable suggestion.
‘I just wonder if it might be a job for Interpol?’
‘We could tell Ernesto, you mean?’ says Steve.
Bingo, Steve. Our friendly police officer, keeping us nicely in the loop.
‘Who’s Ernesto?’ asks Vern.
‘Interpol detective, poet, mighty Spanish stallion,’ says Rosie. ‘Would you like that, Stevie? Get Ernesto involved? See his lovely big grinning face?’
‘I mean, it makes sense,’ says Steve. ‘I don’t mind.’
‘What a lot of friends you’re making,’ says Rosie. There’s something very wholesome about Steve’s relationships with his male friends. Boring, for sure, but wholesome.
‘I don’t know about Interpol,’ says Vern. ‘I don’t know they’d approve of me.’
‘Ernesto will leave you alone,’ says Rosie. ‘He’d only be interested in the murders. I’ll let him know the score.’
‘You promise?’ says Vern. ‘He doesn’t poke his nose into my affairs?’
Rosie senses an opportunity. She doesn’t want Vern in Switzerland, or on a yacht, she wants him where she can keep an eye on him. And, more to the point, she wants to keep investigating.
‘When I say it out loud, I don’t like it,’ says Rosie. ‘Perhaps Steve is right. The murder was in Lucca. That’s where we should report it.’
‘I do think, though, that Interpol –’ starts Vern.
Rosie waves this away. ‘It wouldn’t be ethical, and I founded We Solve Murders on ethical grounds.’
‘Well, this is news,’ says Amy.
‘You know my watchwords, Amy,’ says Rosie. ‘Ethics. Sustainability. Murder-solving.’
‘The big three,’ says Amy. ‘Sure.’
‘The police in Lucca will want to interview us all, of course,’ says Rosie. ‘And they’ll want Korbin’s body to themselves, and full access to the crime scene, but sometimes you have to play by the rules.’
‘Interpol though,’ says Vern. ‘Think of their resources?’
Rosie mulls this for a moment. ‘Maybe.’
‘Definitely maybe,’ says Vern.
‘Terrible album,’ says Steve, and Vern takes time out of the conversation to fist-bump him.
‘Well, how about a compromise?’ Rosie suggests. ‘If you agree to come to England, I suppose I can agree to keep this little difficulty –’
She motions to the permafrosted ex-German.
‘– between us and a very friendly police officer.’
Vern thinks this through, then nods. ‘I suppose I can crack open one of my emergency passports. Just a few days though.’
‘Let’s call Ernesto, then,’ says Rosie. ‘A body in a freezer is exactly his sort of thing.’
Amy looks deep into the freezer, then turns to Vern. ‘You know there’s still food in the bottom of this freezer? Underneath the corpse.’
Vern looks embarrassed. ‘I know. I cleared all the food out when we put Esteban in here, and then I put it all back in when we buried him, and when we put Korbin in here, I wasn’t sure if I should clear it all out again. Can you refreeze things twice? I thought it might be bad for you?’
Lee enters the barn.
‘Goodness me,’ says Rosie. ‘A living bodyguard, I’ve seen it all now.’
Lee is carrying several large bags of ice. Nodding to the assembled crowd, he proceeds to tip the ice into the freezer.
‘Why are you tipping ice into a freezer?’ Steve asks.
It’s a good question. One of many good questions at this exact moment. Who killed Esteban? Who killed Korbin? Who sent a thug to the New Forest to duff up Tony Taylor? And, when all evidence points to one man, Jakob Eriksson, why is their client so sure he’s not responsible?
It is high time they found Eriksson and spoke to him.
If he is being set up, then let him tell them why.
Rosie doesn’t see a way that they can continue much further with the investigation without asking him those questions directly.
She has to take care of the day job tomorrow, sales figures for the new book are due out. But straight after that.
And as to the question of why pour ice into a freezer?
‘It’s because I can’t shut the lid,’ says Vern. ‘With the knife sticking out like that.’
Well, that’s one mystery solved at least.
‘I keep trying,’ says Vern, looking at the knife again ‘But it’s like having a baguette that’s too big for your bread bin.’