It came as no surprise to find that ever-efficient Sergeant Dini had already done this. ‘They’ve confirmed that the two of them only met on three previous occasions, and all of the meetings took place in the offices of the law firm. Angel didn’t even go out for lunch or dinner with her. Something else that occurs to me is that most of the men here spent time in the British Army – and Angel and Hicks were both in the same regiment. I wonder if there might be a link to something that happened in the past, and this was payback.’
I saw Virgilio consider her suggestion. ‘It’s an interesting thought. Mr Nelson from the British embassy in Rome haspromised Dan that he’ll dig down a bit deeper into the backgrounds of the suspects. Let’s see what he comes up with. Maybe the roots of Angel’s murder and even Hicks’s murder go back a long way.’
Suddenly, an unexpected and most unwelcome thought occurred to me. What if Dini had hit the nail on the head, and the murders of Tristan Angel and Donald Hicks were linked to events in the British army years ago? Yesterday morning, Tristan Angel had been in the duomo at roughly the same time as Donald Hicks, a former member of the Grenadier Guards. Jane Taylor-Mead’s boyfriend, Simon Frost, had also been in Florence at the time, even if he had denied going into the cathedral. But, I suddenly remembered, there had also been another former British army officer in the duomo at that time. It came like a punch to the solar plexus when I realised that my future son-in-law – unaccompanied by Tricia – had been there as well.
I knew from what Tricia had told me that Shaun had been an officer in one of the Guards regiments, but I didn’t know which one. Angel, Hicks and Frost had been in the Grenadier Guards. What if Shaun had also been in the Grenadier Guards and had come here to avenge something bad that had happened in the past? Shaun had told me he joined the army fifteen years ago, two years before Angel and Hicks had left the regiment. Might their paths – and swords – have crossed? Was it even possible that Shaun had known Simon Frost all those years ago, and the two of them had got together to plan Tristan Angel’s murder here in Florence?
No sooner had I thought it, than I did my best to chase the idea from my head. It was ridiculous, surely. Shaun’s army career could only have overlapped with Angel and Hicks by a couple of years, during which Shaun would have been a very junior officer and Angel and Hicks far more experienced senior officers, whoprobably wouldn’t even have registered the existence of either Shaun or Frost. Besides, I told myself, Shaun couldn’t be a murderer. He was a very nice man who was going to make my daughter an excellent husband. I could almost hear a heartbroken Tricia asking me how I could possibly even begin to think that her fiancé could be a murderer. Was I seriously considering ruining my daughter’s happiness? The repercussions of an accusation such as this were too awful to consider.
But I knew that I had to entertain this as a possibility, however remote. The trouble with being a detective is that, inevitably, everybody becomes a suspect. Although in a court of law, every defendant should be considered innocent until proved guilty, in my line of business, everybody is potentially guilty until I can rule them out. Mind you, it should be simple to check whether Shaun really had been in the Grenadier Guards. If not, then he was in the clear and I could forget about it. If, on the other hand, it turned out that he had been in that regiment then…
‘Are you all right, Dan?’
Virgilio sounded concerned. Oscar must have sensed something in my mood because he abandoned his position alongside Sergeant Dini and trotted over to lean against my leg and give me a questioning look. I reached down to scratch his ears and tried hard to shake the uncomfortable thought from my head.
‘I’m fine, thanks. Just trying to get my head around the case.’ I took a deep breath and did my best to sweep away any thought of Shaun as a killer. ‘If we ignore Rosina and her husband, we’re left with eight suspects here at the villa for Hicks’s murder. As it seems pretty well definite that nobody can have got in from outside last night to kill him, his murder must have been committed by one of the eight here. Any one of those also had the opportunity to murder Angel in the duomo yesterday,although Alexander Murray and Peter Schneider say they didn’t visit the duomo yesterday morning, but there’s no proof of that either way. So unless it turns out that Angel was murdered by a foreign government or whatever, I tend to think that we’re looking for one killer for both murders. Or do any of you think that I’m wrong? The more I think about it, the more convinced I am that somebody here at the villa killed both of them.’
Virgilio answered first. ‘That seems a logical deduction, Dan, but I suppose we still have to consider the possibility that person or persons unknown might have killed Angel in the duomo yesterday, and somebody completely different here piggybacked on that killing to settle accounts with Hicks – and that puts Vincent Archer into prime position if Dini’s theory of him having been on the fiddle turns out to be true.’
We talked it over and all four of us finally agreed that we were more probably looking for a single perpetrator here at the villa responsible for both murders, but that we should keep an open mind. Virgilio could well be right about Archer being a prime suspect, but this all depended on Dini’s fraud scenario being true and uncovering that in a company based in Panama wasn’t going to be easy.
Virgilio glanced at his watch. ‘I imagine Mr Nelson is still interviewing Archer, so I’ve been thinking of starting our second round of interviews with Alexander Murray, the sales director, who might be another who stands to do well out of the recent deaths. Alternatively, there’s Liam O’Connell, who allegedly had a furious argument with Archer about something. I agree with Marco that O’Connell looks like the toughest of the men, so let’s start with him. Marco, when you and Dini questioned him this morning, what did he say when you asked him about the argument he supposedly had with Archer?’
Sergeant Dini looked a bit sheepish. ‘I’m afraid he has areally strong accent and I couldn’t understand much of what he said. I think what he was trying to say was that it wasn’t a big deal.’
Virgilio glanced across at me. ‘I think this is where your interpreting talents will have to come in again, Dan. Let’s get O’Connell in first and see what he has to say for himself.’
Sergeant Dini went out and returned a minute later with Liam O’Connell. I remembered seeing him yesterday at the lunch table. He was probably in his early forties with short-cropped, brown hair and he looked fit – and as if he could handle himself in a fight. He came in looking relaxed and confident and sat down in front of us. Virgilio started the questioning.
‘Mr O’Connell, am I right in thinking that you used to be in the British Army?’
‘That’s correct. I was a sergeant in REME, that’s the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. I spent fifteen years in the army before joining TXA Supplies.’ This was the first time I’d heard him speak, and I could see how his strong Northern Irish accent would have been almost impenetrable for a non-native speaker like Diana Dini. I realised that Virgilio was in the same boat, so I provided a translation. He gave me a grateful nod and produced more questions.
‘How long ago did you join the company?’
‘Almost exactly ten years ago.’
‘How old are you, please?’
‘Forty-three.’
‘During your time in the army, did you come across Tristan Angel?’ O’Connell shook his head, but Virgilio wanted to be sure.
‘So, when did you first meet Mr Angel?’
‘When I was called for interview by him ten years ago.’
Virgilio nodded a couple of times and changed tack. ‘Iunderstand that a few days ago, you were involved in an argument with Mr Vincent Archer that turned into a physical confrontation, and the two of you had to be separated by Peter Schneider. Can you tell me what that argument was about?’
‘I already told your colleagues this morning that there was nothing to it. Just a disagreement about a business deal.’
I had a feeling that there had to be more to it than that. Had Archer confronted him about some financial misdeed – or had it even been the other way round?
Virgilio looked unconvinced. ‘Is it normal for your disagreements to end up in a fight?’
He scoffed. ‘It wasn’t a fight. Nobody hit anybody.’
‘Can you tell me more about the business deal in question?’
