Another pause. ‘Mr Archer’s the boss now, so I suppose he’s done well out of the deaths of the top two, but I don’t see him as a killer.’
‘Although he was an army officer, wasn’t he?’
He shot me a cynical look. ‘Army officers don’t kill people.They’re too busy drinking gin and tonic and playing polo. They get the lower ranks to do the killing.’
‘But are there any lower ranks here?’
He looked up and caught my eye for a second. ‘Well, there’s a sergeant.’ He transferred his attention to Sergeant Dini and winked. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I don’t mean you.’
‘You’re saying you think Liam O’Connell might be the killer?’
Eddie just shrugged. ‘Anything’s possible.’
A less ebullient Eddie was shown out of the room and officers were called in to photograph and remove the weapons for fingerprinting, but I hardly registered their activity. As they set about impounding the weapons, another thought occurred to me and I felt a wave of relief. Now it surely didn’t matter one bit whether Tricia’s Shaun had been in the Grenadier Guards, the Coldstream Guards or any other regiment. There was no way he could have got his hands on the murder weapon because it had been here, and he couldn’t have got in on Monday night or Tuesday morning to pick it up.
Of course, I had to remind myself, it was just possible that somebody here had picked up the weapon and passed it on to Shaun at the duomo to kill Angel, but this seemed ridiculously far-fetched. There was absolutely no evidence of Shaun being in any way connected with anybody here and, besides, if somebody had taken the weapon from here, why hadn’t they used it themselves, rather than handing it on to a third party? And finally, and most tellingly, there was no way he could have got into the villa last night to kill Hicks.
It now looked as though my future son-in-law was in the clear. The relief I was feeling was partly for his sake and Tricia’s, but it was mostly for my own. Knowing me and my sometimes pig-headed nosiness, I would probably have brought up the subject at dinner tonight and risked an almighty family row. Iactually wiped what might have been perspiration off my brow. Disaster averted.
Virgilio watched the door close and then turned back towards us, a note of exasperation in his voice. ‘Well, that’s just great, isn’t it? Everybody here at the villa knew about the murder weapon, and most of them probably even fired it on Monday. The cupboard wasn’t locked, so that means that anybody here could have picked it up and used it to kill Angel.’ He took a deep breath. ‘I suppose we have to look on the bright side. As you said, Dan, at least we can now be 99 per cent certain that Tristan Angel was killed by one of the people here in the villa. Whether this was at the behest of a foreign power or some shadowy terrorist organisation, or for a different reason, remains to be seen.’
Marco had been reflecting on what Eddie had told us. ‘What do we think of Smith’s theory that O’Connell might be the killer? Might he and Archer have been working together?’
Virgilio nodded slowly. ‘It’s a thought, isn’t it? The sooner we speak to Archer, the better.’
15
WEDNESDAY LUNCHTIME
The original plan had been to sit down with Vincent Archer before lunch, but Billy Nelson’s interview with him only ended at a quarter to one and Rosina told us she was cooking soufflés for the TXA people and made it clear that she intended to serve them at one o’clock and not a minute later. In consequence, the interview with Archer was deferred until two o’clock. I offered to give Billy a lift back down to the station for his train to Rome, and on the way, we stopped off at a little restaurant I knew for a quick lunch. This was a traditional old Tuscan eatery some way outside thecentro storico, and it was mostly frequented by locals, rather than tourists. In particular, it had car parking and tables outside in a fine open courtyard where Oscar could join us.
I had got to know Bobo, the owner, pretty well after helping him eighteen months earlier when thieves had broken into his store one afternoon and stolen a load of food and wine. Fortunately for me, the thieves had been singularly incompetent and had not only left their fingerprints but been stupid enough to park directly across the street, right outside a house with a video doorbell. Half an hour of my time, a phone call to Marco at thequestura, and the thieves had been arrested and the restaurateur reunited with his produce in time for the evening rush. In consequence, when Billy and I walked in, I got a bear hug from Bobo, and when I asked if he could sort us out with something quick so Billy could catch his train and I could get back to the villa, he leapt into action.
We had hardly sat down when Carla, the waitress, arrived with a half-litre of Chianti, a carafe of water and two plates bearing slices of succulent orange melon and cured ham. Seconds later, she returned with a bowl of water for Oscar and half a dozen not so little chunks of grilled meat, left over by previous customers, so he didn’t feel hard done by. While he wagged his tail appreciatively, I thanked her and received a broad smile in return.
‘Bobo asks ifpappardelle alla leprewould be all right? The pasta will be ready in no more than ten minutes, so eat up.’
I assured her that some of my favourite pasta in a rich gamey sauce would be perfect.
While we ate our antipasti, Billy and I chatted about old friends, past experiences and what had happened in our lives over the last quarter of a century. He told me about his marriage, his three children and his time living in Brockley, near Lewisham. I told him about my new venture as a private investigator, but I didn’t ask him about his work, and he didn’t offer any information – further cementing my conviction that he was now in the security services. Once we had exhausted the subject of wives – and in my case, my fiancée – children, hobbies and interests, the conversation inevitably returned to the two recent murders. What he had to say about his interview of Vincent Archer was potentially very interesting.
‘According to Archer, TXA Supplies had four directors: Angel, Archer, Hicks and Angel’s ex-wife, Jane. He told me thatAngel has spent the last four years since his divorce trying to remove his ex-wife from the board of directors, but without success.’
I looked up from the last of my ham and melon. ‘That’s interesting. There’s no mention of her in Angel’s will, but I imagine she now stands to do very well after his death after all and, of course, Hicks’s death will probably enrich her even further as well.’
No sooner had I put my fork down than Carla swooped in and removed our plates. A minute later, Bobo himself appeared carrying two more plates, piled high with steaming pasta. He reached over and refilled our glasses for us, patted me paternally on the shoulder, and withdrew. Billy was most impressed.
‘Looks like you’ve really settled here, Dan. Tell me, how come you’re involved in a murder investigation with the local police? After all, you’re just a civilian nowadays, and a foreigner to boot. Back in our day, that sort of thing was frowned upon.’
‘It would be here as well, except that I’m really only called in as an interpreter.’ Reading scepticism in his eyes, I went on. ‘Virgilio and I have worked well together in the past. He sometimes sends me business that he can’t or doesn’t want to get involved with, and I’m only too happy to help out if there’s an English-speaking connection. Inevitably, I get involved with what’s going on, but it’s most definitely his investigation, not mine. Go on, eat up. Don’t let it get cold.’
He dropped his eyes to his plate and started eating, making appreciative sounds as he did so. I did the same but was soon interrupted as he started speaking again.
‘Something else that emerged in my conversation with Vincent Archer this morning might be of interest to you. Go ahead and pass the information on to the Italian police, by all means. Reading between the lines, it’s quite clear that there’sbeen a lot of conflict inside the company of late, mainly because of Angel and Hicks’s decision to sell arms to a number of entities that are under United Nations sanction for war crimes, and in one case genocide. I get the feeling that Archer, a former colonel in the British army, would strongly object to that. We’ve been doing a bit of checking up on him and his colleagues – that investigation has been under way for a while now, long before either of these murders happened – and it’s become increasingly clear that there’s been a rift at the top. Now, whether this rift has been serious enough for Archer or somebody like him to take the law into their own hands is something the Italian police will have to work out for themselves, but you might like to tell them that it’s a possibility.’
I thanked him for the information and promised to pass it on.
As I tore up a slice of the wonderful Tuscan unsalted bread and wiped the last of the sauce off my plate, I thought about what he had just said. Could it be that this was the reason why the two most senior men in the company had been killed? We had been flailing around looking for a motive, and this certainly appeared a viable possibility. At the same time, the knowledge that Tristan Angel’s ex-wife did in fact have a lot to gain by his death brought her bouncing back into consideration as far as the first murder was concerned and made it less likely that Hicks might have done it.
