Neither Virgilio nor I pointed out that the death of Hicks here at the villa almost certainly had to have been committed by somebody here, and we let Murray carry on thinking aloud.
‘Yesterday, when I heard of Tristan’s death, I did wonder whether there might have been a woman involved. He was a great guy and a shrewd businessman, but when it came to women, he had the morals of a tomcat. It wouldn’t have surprised me if that was the reason he was killed – but it wouldn’t have been by anybody here. As for Don, I’m totally at aloss.’ He shook his head slowly. ‘One thing’s for sure, it can’t have been woman trouble with him. I imagine you know he was gay.’
Virgilio returned to his original question. ‘Unless both deaths had a personal or sexual motivation, that brings us back to the company again, doesn’t it? When I spoke to Mr Hicks yesterday, he refused point-blank to talk about your clients, but I think the time for diplomatic niceties is over, don’t you? Think very carefully. You’ve just told us that you couldn’t think of any customer or rival company who might be holding a grudge against the company so strong that they decided to take such brutal action, but I’d like you to try and think a bit harder. Maybe not a customer, but somebody or some organisation that might have felt the effects of the weaponry you sold to their enemy? It’s in your interests to give us as much information as possible.’
Murray sat in silence for at least half a minute before, slowly, he started to name a few names. We all scribbled furiously as he listed almost a dozen entities worldwide who might – and he stressed the word ‘might’ – have had reason to commit murder. By the time Murray completed the list, it had become abundantly clear to all of us that there was no way on earth that any police force could even begin to attempt to investigate entities that ranged from major countries to small, shadowy organisations, little more than gangs, living way out in the deserts or deep in the jungles. As far as Tristan Angel’s death was concerned, from what Murray was saying, it was a miracle he hadn’t been murdered years ago. Unfortunately, that didn’t help us with squaring the circle of how a foreign operator could have got into the villa last night, and out again, without being picked up by the CCTV cameras or by the AISE man outside patrolling the grounds – unless Hicks’s killer had been one of the occupants of the villa or one of the AISE operatives.
Murray begged us to be as discreet as possible with thenames he’d given us, but it was clear that Virgilio’s message to watch out had got through and, when Murray left the room, I felt sure that he now realised that anybody here in the villa could be the next victim. Hopefully, he would spread the word, and they would all take more care.
After he’d gone, Virgilio took a good look around at the three of us, or rather the four of us. Marco, Dini and I were sitting down, but Oscar had obviously got bored of lying on a no doubt very valuable Persian rug and had gone walkabout. I followed the direction of Virgilio’s eyes and was just in time to see my nosey Labrador’s tail disappear behind the tapestry at the end of the lounge. It billowed out from the wall as he investigated what was behind it. I hastily jumped to my feet, in case he brought the whole thing crashing down, and went over to hoick him out.
What I saw when I looked behind the tapestry stopped me in my tracks. There was a small opening in the wall with a pair of doors in it, and Oscar’s nose was glued to them. I called the others over and, between us, we managed to lift the tapestry up so as to expose what was clearly a little cupboard. We pulled on gloves and Marco opened the doors. They weren’t locked and when he opened them, we were presented with an Aladdin’s cave of modern weaponry and ammunition, each item lying snugly in a depression in what was some sort of soft, felt-like material. I counted no fewer than three automatic assault rifles, half a dozen pistols, a load of ammunition and, most interesting of all, two empty spaces on the far right-hand side, which clearly showed where another handgun and a silencer had been stored. We didn’t have the murder weapon, but it was now looking pretty clear where it had come from.
Virgilio gave a satisfied grunt and looked down at Oscar at our feet. ‘Officer Oscar strikes again. Oscar, there’s a steak with your name on it next time you and I sit down to eat.’
The end of Oscar’s tail wagged in anticipation – although he might just have been pleased to be included in the conversation.
Virgilio sent Sergeant Dini out to call Alex Murray back in. She returned a few moments later not with him but with Eddie the odd-job man.
‘Signor Murray has gone to his room, but I found Signor Smith.’
Virgilio beckoned to Eddie and led him across the room to the end wall where the tapestry had been hitched up to one side, exposing the gun cupboard. When he got there, he turned towards the man with the broken nose.
‘Do you know what’s been hidden in here, covered by the tapestry?’
‘Tapestry? I always thought it was a carpet.’ Eddie was grinning as usual. ‘That cupboard’s Mr Angel’s armoury. We all know what’s in there.’
‘You all know about the cache of weapons?’
‘Of course. There’s an armoury in all the company’s houses. Like I told you before, in this line of business, you need to be prepared. Just like the bleedin’ Boy Scouts, we are.’ His face fell. ‘Not that it did the boss any good, did it?’
‘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 weredoing 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 allof 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?’
