Devil's Breath Page 6

  The need to lie was the downside to working in Five. The struggle to cling to honor in the face of an existence grounded in subterfuge. Many had failed to adapt to such dual existences, and many a marriage had come unstuck because of it.

  “So, yes,” Max continued. “Once we were close. But there’s a lot of water under that bridge.”

  George nodded sagely. “I thought so, but I wanted to be sure. She asked for you specifically to be brought in.”

  Max had in fact been the subject of intense discussion between the two of them. Patrice was especially caught up by the fact that Max had joined the priesthood, in a reaction to the death of his friend and colleague Paul. He had decided on the priesthood long years after he and Patrice had split up, so she knew it was nothing to do with her. But she, who knew Max so well, or thought she had, found the whole thing rather unbelievable.

  “Why didn’t he just join the circus?” had been her scoffing comment. “Or the foreign legion?” Making George think how little she had understood the many layers that went into the makeup of Max Tudor.

  “How very flattering,” Max murmured now, astonished by the news of Patrice’s request. “I don’t see how I can help, but of course I’m willing to try. She was a top-notch agent, and if the case puzzles her—well, I must admit I’m intrigued. I mean, if she’s not bothered by the old association.”

  “I think you’ll find that won’t be a problem,” said George.

  Chapter 12

  TEAM PLAYERS

  The Monkslip-super-Mare police department had requisitioned one of the smaller rooms of the Grand Imperial Hotel for its investigation into the death of the actress Margot Browne. For no particular reason, DCI Cotton had nicknamed it Camp X, after the secret World War II commando training station. Like the hotel’s plush pink lobby and all its public spaces, the room was done up in a style that might best be described as “Early Kensington Palace,” all embroidered pillows and tufted silk, fraying a bit at the edges. While it retained its elegant proportions, rather like an aging Victorian lady stuffed into a whalebone corset, it was the sort of place that had radiators clinging like barnacles to the walls, radiators that would intermittently clang and vibrate throughout the night, radiators with ominous-sounding signs attached asking that guests call for assistance before attempting to adjust the climate of their rooms.

  Cotton rose from where he had been seated at a rosewood desk to greet Max as he entered, first taking a moment to hand marching orders to two uniforms in the room. Once Cotton had made sure they were quite alone, the two men, detective and priest, settled themselves before a gas fireplace that took up most of the length of a windowless wall. Even in May, and even with the radiators clanking away, a small fire was needed to take the chill off the high-ceilinged room.

  Max sat back to observe his partner in solving so many crimes. Cotton was physically unchanged from their last successful investigation, apart from an incremental upward creep of the hairline of his thick blond hair, which accentuated the heart shape of his face. The pale, gray-blue eyes remained clear and ever sharp, the figure trim, the sartorial style flawless. Today Cotton wore a slim two-piece blue suit with a red silk tie and matching pocket handkerchief. He looked like he had just stepped off a runway to assume the role of lead investigator into the death of Margot Browne, not stopping to change into anything less formal. Max doubted Cotton owned anything less formal.

  He never seemed to mind Max’s butting in on any of his investigations. Quite the contrary. He clearly believed that having Max on board would make the solve a slam dunk, and there was never the slightest trace of resentment of that fact.

  “So,” said Max. “What have you got?” He rearranged the pile of fringed pillows at his back, preparing to listen. “What are we dealing with here?”

  “Well, brace yourself. There is even more drama than you might expect, given the players in this one.”

  “All right,” said Max. “I did gather from the news that you are probably being treated to more media scrutiny than if, say, a casual tourist had been found floating in the water. So what’s the story?”

  “The initial and still-official story is that Margot Browne, once-legendary actress, somehow fell off the yacht on which she had been sailing with friends and acquaintances. Those friends and acquaintances included what is assumed to be her current lover and an ex-lover. It’s already your basic nightmare when it comes to motive, you’ll notice.”

  And if Cotton was talking motive, he was already also talking murder. Max zoomed in on the practicalities. “It’s a large yacht, then.”

  “Yes, it’s one of those big-job yachts you could live on for decades and never have to set foot on shore if you didn’t feel like it. Well, you might have to pull into port somewhere for suntan lotion and food once in a while. Even then—you should see the supplies on this thing. Anyway, we’ll have to come clean with the press soon about the falling-off part of our story. The rumors are already flying that she was pushed off the side, or off the back.”

  “I think you’ll find that’s called the stern,” put in Max. “The back of a ship is the stern.”

  “The stern. Okay. I’m learning so much already. Now if I could just learn who killed Margot and why. And that’s where you come in, Max.”

  “So it was murder, no question?”

  “Signs of strangulation as well as drugs in her system. Someone really wanted her dead. We could perhaps explain away the drugs as a factor in her going overboard, but not the marks on her throat. Too bad they couldn’t raise prints from her neck in this case, or we’d be further ahead.”

  “Not a suicide.” At Cotton’s certain nod, Max continued: “All right, I’ll do what I can, you know that, but really—this Hollywood and West End crowd is entirely outside my usual remit.”

  Cotton knew that was true. Max’s time these days was largely taken up with supervising skirmishes over the Bring-and-Buy at St. Edwold’s Church and acting as peacemaker on the parish council. He also had the more serious duties of pastoral caretaker to a large and growing congregation which was more and more in touch with the influences, for good and ill, of the broader outside world. And of course, there was Max’s most recent incarnation as Awena’s doting husband and Owen’s besotted father, a full-time job in and of itself.

  But in traces of Max’s early life as an undercover operative for MI5—that was where Max’s gifts shone through as far as Cotton was concerned, even in a backwater like Nether Monkslip. Cotton had not met Max until he’d arrived in the village as the new padre, and all he knew of Max’s former life in MI5 had been what the Nether Monkslippers knew, which was a hodgepodge of speculation, exaggeration, and wild rumor. Still, from knowing the man now, Cotton would not be surprised to learn most of the stories that swirled around Max were true. He was an extraordinary man of seemingly endless patience, knowledge, integrity, and bravery. Everything you could hope for in a fellow investigator, in short, and more. Cotton’s view of Max bordered on hero worship, and he had never yet been disappointed.

  Today Max was not wearing his clerical collar, a choice Cotton had anticipated. Max would consider it to be a misuse of his authority, somehow dishonest, to wear the collar in these circumstances. Wearing it also might boomerang, depending on the suspect. A lot of people wanted nothing to do with a clergyman, especially one asking questions about a suspicious death.

  “And mine—it’s outside my experience, as well,” said Cotton now. “Unless you count my mother—who never quite made it to the big time in the West End, but not for lack of trying.” Cotton’s mother had been an actress. Or a “performance artist” of some sort, when times were lean and legitimate acting parts thin on the ground. The exact definition of her job title had been left vague during rare family get-togethers—or deliberately avoided as a topic, it seemed to Cotton now. She had, he gathered, been designated the black sheep of her baffled family. Cotton himself had only trace memories of her, having seen her infrequently as he was growing up in the
care of whichever relative was willing to take on a small and unobtrusive boy that year, while his mother pursued her “career.” His education had been sporadic and varied but miraculously well-rounded, and he could still quote the lines and lyrics of many plays by heart. His memories of his mother consisted largely of being clutched briefly in her powdery embrace as she gave him a distracted hug good-bye, smothering him in feather boas and the scent of perfume and Aqua Net Extra Hold, a fragrance that to this day filled him with an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss.

  Max nodded, knowing the subject of Cotton’s mother was fraught, and not surprised when he quickly moved the subject back to the investigation.

  “Does Five have any particular theories?” Cotton asked. By prior agreement with George, Max was to downplay Five’s role in the investigation, not mentioning it to the suspects. Certainly, the fact that the case had reached the highest echelons of the security services could not be penned into the official record—not now, perhaps not ever.

  “Not that I’m aware,” Max replied. “But I’m guessing the murderer was hoping the body would be washed out to sea, or would be so compromised that forensics couldn’t discover much about how she’d met her end.”

  Cotton nodded his agreement. “That’s a good guess. If someone had done the slightest amount of research, they’d have learned they were offloading her body at the worst possible time as far as the tides were concerned. The body was discovered the next morning, quite intact and little the worse for wear, floating in the harbor not far from this hotel. She was discovered by early birds taking their morning constitutional on the boardwalk. The Emersons. Lovely elderly couple who did the right thing and left her undisturbed until my men and women could get there. Quite composed, they were, as if this were an everyday happening, but Mr. Emerson had lived around the sea most of his life and for him perhaps it was nothing new. Anyway, we think what happened was someone ignorant of tides and sterns and things had a hand in it.”

  “That rather rules out the captain and crew, who would certainly be aware of the tides. Unless of course the killer—or killers—simply felt they had no choice as to timing. You can’t leave a body lying about on deck and the most obvious way to dispose of a body on a ship is to tip it overboard. How difficult would that have been, by the way? From photos, she was voluptuous, but I wouldn’t say she was a large woman.”

  “Dead weight is always tricky, but she was a small-boned five-foot-seven and slightly underweight for her height. Rumor has it she got most of her nourishment from alcohol, and the coroner found early signs of liver disease. And as I say, she was drugged.”

  “Yes—with what, exactly, was she drugged?”

  “The tox scan showed GHB, lots of it. GHB wears off quickly, which is why testing for it is tricky on a live subject—ruddy hard to prove in court. But in Margot’s case, she died so quickly after ingesting the drug, the evidence of it was still there, plain for the experts to see.”

  Gamma-hydroxybutyric acid. The date rape drug. “How bizarre,” said Max.

  “In this context, it certainly is. Forgive me for putting it this way, but in Margot’s case the use of a drug for that sort of nefarious purpose would be in most cases unnecessary. You will probably gain a clearer understanding of what I mean by that if you talk with her stylist Maurice. But I would say it was administered so as to incapacitate her—for other purposes.”

  “So she could more easily be subdued and murdered. How awful. The poor woman didn’t stand a chance.” Max didn’t like this at all. Murder was horrible by definition. The murder of a victim rendered helpless and unable to fight back offended his very British sense of fair play. “It’s unlikely in the extreme she would willingly dose herself with such a drug,” he added.

  “Right you are. Also, there were no defensive wounds that the coroner could attribute as such. No wounds at all that couldn’t be explained away by her body’s being knocked about the ocean for a while.”

  “This is your new coroner, is it?”

  “Dr. Winterbottom. Yes. Sound man.”

  “He has a good reputation; I would tend to rely on his judgment. I understand GHB requires high levels to detect postmortem; I’d be interested to know exactly what levels were found. But let’s assume, as we are doing, that the drug was administered by someone with no interest in its uses in a date-rape situation. What does that suggest to you?”

  “It suggests for one thing that a woman might be the killer,” replied Cotton promptly. “Believe me, we are considering that—that it was someone who needed the drug to subdue Margot, because they couldn’t be sure who would come out the winner in a fair fight.” Cotton paused. “The female guests on board are in every case petite, short, or tall and quite thin—there would be no guarantee they would prevail in hand-to-hand combat without outside help.”

  “There was no attempt to weigh down the body?”

  “None that we could see. If someone had tied an anchor or something to her and it came off, there probably would have been traces: rope burns or some such. No, someone just relied on the sea and the creatures of the sea to do all the dirty work of concealment for him. Or her.”

  “She was dead before she went in?”

  “Yes,” said Cotton. “Small mercies, I guess, to be thankful for. No water in the lungs.”

  “I think,” said Max, slowly, considering, “that we have to consider that the death might have been accidental. Meaning, someone didn’t actually intend killing her, but then found himself with a dead body to dispose of. An accidental overdose of GHB is not unheard of. Again, sending her overboard is the obvious way to dispose of an inconvenient body at sea.”

  “It’s just possible,” Cotton agreed. “The thing is, mixing GHB with alcohol is almost certain to lead to disaster. And finding Margot sober even on a good day would have been the tricky part, according to all and sundry. So maybe the person who administered the drug simply didn’t realize how deadly it might prove to be, particularly in her case.”

  “The worrisome thing is that it’s a drug so readily available, isn’t it?”

  “These days, absolutely. And a lot of people without a clue have started taking it to enhance their fitness, if that doesn’t sound too crazy, which it is. It helps build lean muscle—using the parlance, they are trying to ‘lean out’ their body mass. Which really doesn’t help your appearance much when you’re dead. We’ve seen a rise in the use of the stuff, especially among young people, but pretty much across the board age-wise. It enhances sexual prowess, makes the user feel superhuman. Playing with fire, it is.”

  Max had a few parishioners who were struggling with all the usual addictions, even in the remote outposts in which he served. He hoped GHB wouldn’t soon be added to the list. “It comes in liquid form most often, am I right?”

  “Right. Nothing easier than to pour it into someone’s drink. Since Margot was seldom seen without a glass in hand, as I say—nothing could have been simpler than to tip in a few drops. Again, the goal may have been to incapacitate her, not to kill her, but it’s anyone’s guess why they felt they needed to knock her out in the first place. It’s not as if they were planning to steal her purse or pick her pocket, although that is another of the street uses for GHB.”

  They both turned at the sound of a knock on the door. It was a sound Max had unconsciously been bracing himself for. Patrice Logan was scheduled to join them for this conference. Uncharacteristically, she was a few moments late.

  Cotton went to open the door.

  “Ms. Logan, welcome. We’ve been waiting.”

  “I didn’t keep you waiting too long, I hope. I’m afraid I had to make an emergency stop to powder my nose.”

  “Not at all, not at all. I think you know Max Tudor?”

  Patrice emerged from behind the open door and stood just inside the room. She looked much the same as before, strikingly beautiful, with shiny brunette hair curling to accent her high cheekbones before falling about her shoulders. The same as before, except
: Max could see that his former lover was heavily pregnant, and by the look of things, perhaps a month away from her delivery date. Max’s mind immediately flew to the childbirth classes he’d endured when Awena had been carrying Owen, those instructional hospital films of bloodshed and carnage resembling footage of one of the world wars. Even though it had been a home birth, Max had wanted to be prepared for any eventuality. To this day, he did not quite understand how either Awena or Owen had survived it.

  He shot a look at Cotton—Why didn’t you tell me?

  Cotton shrugged. But then Cotton wouldn’t necessarily have known Max’s history with Patrice, unless she’d mentioned it—highly unlikely. George Greenhouse certainly knew her condition, and Max thought he might ask him about his silence when next they met. Discretion could be carried too far.

  Max collected himself and walked toward Patrice, hands out to clasp hers. Anything more than a sideways hug was out of the question.

  “Patrice!” he exclaimed. “You’re looking … so well!”

  “For an inflatable dinghy, you mean? Which is how I feel. Good to see you, Max.” Her smile was warm, unconcerned, unfazed; she looked genuinely delighted to see him—nothing more. They might have been people who’d met on a cruise ship years before and happily parted ways, with no hope of meeting again. But his last hours with Patrice could at best be described as icily cordial.