‘Of course you’re confused, anybody would be. Just give it time, and let it sink in.’
I wondered whether she had already worked out what this meant as far as her real father was concerned. By the sound of it, she wasn’t the only one who was going to get a shock. I found myself wondering how Dirk Foster would handle this bombshell. My thoughts shifted to Alice, and I wondered why she had decided to seek out the baby she’d given up all those years ago. The significance of her words to me about Dirk Foster – ‘He didn’t only break my heart; he scarred me for life, mentally and emotionally’ – was now revealed. Presumably, she had offered Mary a job as a means of getting her close, but I wondered why she’d taken six weeks to break the news to her and why she’d chosen today of all days for such an explosive revelation. Feelings and emotions have never been my strong points – ask my ex-wife or Anna – but I felt sure that in this case, there was one course of action that Mary really should be following. I leant towards her.
‘Miss Graceland… your mother is in there on her own, crying. You’re out here, crying. Don’t you think it might be better if you went back to her? You both have a lot to talk about, and the sooner you get started, the better.’
Mary nodded slowly, gently lifted Oscar’s paws off her lap and stood up. She then came around to my side of the table and kissed me on the cheek. ‘Thank you, Dan. You’re right.’ And she went back over to the house and disappeared inside.
Diego was still looking at me with an expression of considerable curiosity on his face, but I decided that it would be down to Alice and Mary to tell him what had just transpired. I gave him a little wave, picked up my mug of beer and went back to my room, where I opened my laptop and set about investigating the financial status of the various guests.
Without the resources of the police behind me, I was unable to access bank details of the guests, and most of my information had to come from reading press releases and articles in the various industry journals. What emerged was that I’d been right in my supposition that all of them – including Alice – were doing very well indeed, except for one. As his girlfriend had hinted, Freddie Baker needed money – not pocket money, but serious cash.
He had a magnificent-looking villa in Beverly Hills and clearly more than enough money to allow him to fly across the world and rent what was probably a very expensive speedboat here in Venice, but what he needed was hefty financial backing to allow him to carry on making his movies. Probably unwisely, he had set up his own production company earlier this year and rumours were swirling around that it was close to insolvency. It was pretty clear that his prickly personality, as described by Antoinette, and as witnessed by Giulia and me, had alienated any number of possible financiers and he was apparently floundering, desperately seeking the many millions needed to make his new movie. In particular, it appeared that he was being blockedby a shadowy, but very influential, organisation referred to in several of the more sensationalist trade papers as ‘the Bloc’. As far as I could tell, this was a cartel of media millionaires and billionaires, without whose backing it was almost impossible for an independent filmmaker to get the necessary money to go ahead.
The problem from my point of view was that, however strapped for cash Baker’s company might be, I couldn’t see how this could have produced a motive for murder. Maybe Diego’s other suggestion was the right one, and the origin of the murders was sex after all. The damage that Alice’s autobiography could do to the reputations of some very powerful people had brought one of them here intent of silencing her for good.
23
SUNDAY LUNCHTIME
The sound of the lunch gong summoned me before I could dig any deeper into the mysterious Bloc organisation, and a glance at my watch told me that it was almost one o’clock. In case I might have had any thoughts of carrying on working and turning up late for lunch, Oscar walked over to his spotlessly clean food bowl and stuck his nose right into it before glancing around at me and uttering a plaintive yelp. I might be prepared to be late for lunch, but he certainly wasn’t. I took the hint, abandoned my online research and got up. I filled his bowl and, by the time I had washed my hands, he had hoovered it all up and was slurping up a bellyful of water to wash it down. He really doesn’t take his time and savour his food.
We went outside and headed for the pergola, where lunch was being served. As we walked, it occurred to me that I might be able to find out more about the mysterious Bloc by talking to some of the guests over lunch – although I would have to pick my interviewees carefully.
Lunch today was roast beef in a thick, red-wine-based sauce. As an alternative, Diego was busy grilling fresh fillets of fish,sardines, skewers of prawns, squid rings and octopus. Along with these were grilled peppers, slices of cauliflower and even halves of red lettuce, sprinkled with olive oil and cooked on the barbecue. It all looked and smelt amazing.
I looked around and did a rough count-up. Most of the guests had assembled – unsurprisingly, none of them deciding to come and eat with me after my presence alongside the inspector earlier – but there were a few notable absences. I spotted Antoinette, but there was no sign of Freddie Baker. Alastair Groves was here, but not his wife, and the most significant absentees were Alice, Mary and Dirk Foster. I hoped this meant that Foster was sitting down with mother and daughter, digesting and discussing the momentous news.
Anna had prepared some excellent roast beef for my mum and dad last weekend so, seeing as we were not only at the seaside but immersed in it, I decided to go for a plate of assorted grilled fish. Along with this, Valentina gave me a slice of toasted bread rubbed with garlic and drizzled with olive oil and a couple of slices of grilled cauliflower and grilled red lettuce. Grilled lettuce and cauliflower were something new to me, but I accepted gratefully, keen to try something out of the ordinary.
I saw the inspector and the sergeant sitting at a table at the far end of the pergola, and when Giulia caught my eye, she waved to me to come over. I waved back but stopped off first for a quick word with Antoinette before her boyfriend put in an appearance.
‘Hi, Antoinette, can I ask you something? Have you ever heard of something called the Bloc?’
She gave a weary sigh. ‘That’s just about the only thing Freddie ever talks about. According to him, they’re out to get him. Worse than the Mafia, he calls them.’
‘And who is “them”? Do they have names, these people?’
‘It’s all very secret, as far as I can tell. I’ve no idea how many ofthem there are or who they are but, according to something Freddie said this morning, the leader was Jack Sloane.’
‘Sloane?’ I felt a surge of excitement. Surely this had to be more than a coincidence. ‘I didn’t think Sloane was a financier. Wasn’t he a casting director, a talent scout?’
She nodded. ‘A veryrichtalent scout. According to Freddie, he’s one of the richest men in Hollywood. His name almost never appears in the credits, but he’s been executive producer of all manner of movies, most of them making him an awful lot of money.’
I thanked her for the information and made my way across to the inspector and the sergeant. Sergeant Scarpa pushed out a chair for me and I sat down. Oscar wandered around to say hello to the two of them, while Giulia brought me up to date.
‘Between us, we’ve interviewed everybody who was at the party last night and we’ve managed to draw up a plan of exactly who was where when the first murder took place. The bad news is that everybody was supposed to swap tables just before dessert was served, so almost anybody could have gone past the table where Lucy O’Connell was killed in the fifteen minutes between the fruit salad being brought out and the victim’s death. Forensics have tested what was left of the fruit salad in the main serving bowl and there’s no trace of the poison, so somebody must have got close enough to the victim’s table to be able to drop the poison into her dish. Ironically, the only guest who didn’t go near the victim’s table was Jack Sloane. Nobody can recall him moving out of the seat he occupied from the very start of the evening, and people who sat with him at various times during the meal report that he had no interest in the mystery whatsoever and just sat there drinking and silently fuming.’
I had been listening, but my mind was still processing the possible significance of what Antoinette had just told me. Still,when Giulia stopped talking, I managed to summon up a bit of interest. ‘At least it removes one possible line of conjecture. On that basis, it seems quite clear that Sloane almost certainly can’t have murdered Lucy O’Connell, so the scenario of him committing murder and then taking his own life would appear to be a non-starter.’
The two officers nodded, and I took a few bites of my lunch. In particular, the grilled red lettuce turned out to be unexpectedly excellent, but my mind was on the case rather than the food. Through a mouthful of fish, I asked another question.
‘What about people slipping away from the party to lace Jack Sloane’s whisky with poison?’
The sergeant shook his head. ‘Anybody or nobody. With all the table changing, it would have been easy for anybody to have gone off for a few minutes without any of the others noticing. Mind you, there was one person who definitely left for about ten minutes. Mary Stevenson went into all the rooms, delivering copies of the book. She, more than anybody else, had every opportunity to add the poison to the whisky.’ He gave me a look that said quite clearly that he considered her to be a prime suspect.
I had been expecting something inconclusive so I was disappointed, but not surprised, that the only definite absentee had been Mary, but I didn’t share the sergeant’s opinion of her as a killer. I was just about to tell them about Freddie Baker and the mysterious Bloc organisation when Giulia gave me a searching look and I realised that I’d been right when I’d thought that she didn’t miss much.
‘What’s on your mind, Dan? I can almost hear your brain churning. Have you discovered something?’
