Head Shot

He could see, out of the corner of his eye, his mother and his aunt tense as she asked the question.

'No,' he answered, as firmly as he could. 'Not a bit. It was instantaneous; I doubt very much if he even heard the gunshot.'

'Paula heard a policeman say there was a silencer.'

He glanced at his cousin as she came into the room. 'They just muffle the noise, Nana,' he said. 'And this was a big gun.'

'So what have you been doing all day?'

'I've been helping my col eague Detective Superintendent Jay. You have to realise, Nana, that I'm a witness in this investigation, not a participant. I've spent most of the day so far in Uncle Beppe's office with two specialist detectives, going through al of the books of the business in the hope that we might find something that pointed to a reason for the murder.'

'You mean you were trying to find out if Beppe had been up to no good?'

'No, Nana, I didn't mean that.'

She patted him on the arm and settled stiffly into her high-backed armchair, throwing him a faint smile. 'Of course you did, son; but you don't need to soft-soap me. I could have told you you'd be wasting your time there. Your poor uncle might not have been about to win the Businessman of the Year award, but he wasn't a crook.

'And remember, even if he had been that stupid, your mother was there as the second trustee. She'd have stopped him in his tracks.'

'I know, I know,' he agreed. 'But this is a police investigation, and things can't be taken on faith. They have to be looked at. We've done that now, and of course there was nothing there. In a way I wish there had been, it would have given us a bloody lead.'

'Aye,' the old lady said sharply, 'and dragged our name through the mud at the same time. I would rather that you didn't catch the man who shot Beppe, than for that to happen.'

'Oh, we'l catch him, Nana, don't you worry about that. The man's not walking away from this. As for the family name, I'l keep it as safe as I can. I may carry my father's surname, but I'm as much a Viareggio as anyone in this room.'

'Mario.' His mother cal ed to him, from across the room. He turned to face her; she was as red-eyed as her sister-in-law, and at the sight other the memory of his father's death flooded into his consciousness. 'I've 144 been thinking all day about this, ever since you told me about Beppe. I think I'd better stay for a while; stay in the trust, I mean.'

He shook his head; there was a slow finality about the gesture. 'No,' he said. 'That's not going to happen. I've been thinking about it too, don't worry. This day was always going to come, one way or another; Beppe's gone and you're gone. Paula and I are in control of the businesses now, and that's how it's going to stay. It's Papa's wil , and you can't fight that.'

'But won't it conflict with your duties as policeman?'

'It's unlikely, but if it did, there's a way around it. I have a lawyer, someone I know and trust. On Thursday, I had her look at the trust provisions; they allow for me to appoint her, or someone else suitable, as my proxy, to exercise al my powers on my behalf. If I'm advised that it's necessary, I may well do that, but first… we're going to find the bugger who made my Aunt Sophia a widow.'

36

'Of al the fatally stupid things I have seen, sir,' said the sheriff's marine patrol lieutenant, 'they don't come any more stupid than that… or any more fatal. Lighting a charcoal barbecue in the middle of a crowded marina, with al that fuel around…'

Dwayne Traylor shook his head and looked at Skinner. 'So far, in addition to Mr Wylie's cruiser, we've lost four other boats, and had serious damage to three others. There are no dead… other than the guy himself, and he's as dead as you can get… but one lady has gone to the emergency room with burns to her arms and face, and with most of her hair frazzled.'

The young man glanced into the treatment bay, behind the yacht club's reception area. Joe Doherty lay on a long leather-topped table; a doctor was leaning over him, putting stitches into a long gash on his cheekbone. 'How's your buddy?' he asked.

'Okay, I hope,' the Scot answered. 'He was out for three or four minutes after the explosion. I told him he should go to hospital; he told me I should go to hell.' He glanced at the officer. 'Did you call Sheriff Dekker?'

'As instructed, sir. He was on the tennis court, but when I gave him your names and told him what had happened, he said to give him ten minutes to shower and he'd be on his way.' Traylor frowned. 'He called you Deputy Chief Skinner, sir. From where, exactly, may I ask?'

'Edinburgh.'

'As in Edinborough, Scotland?'

'More or less.'

'Deputy Chief of what?'

'Well, I'm not a fucking visiting fireman, however you put it here,'

Skinner snapped, irritably. He stopped, then apologised. 'I'm sorry, son.

No need to bite your head off. I'm a policeman; deputy chief constable.'

'And your buddy, Mr Doherty there; is he Scottish too?'

'Son of a bitch!' came a shout, from the treatment table.

'Does that answer your question?'

Lieutenant Traylor grinned. 'I guess so.'

'Tell me,' the Scot asked, 'do you have many incidents involving moored boats?'

'Not like this one, sir, I'm happy to say. Last Thanksgiving I arrested a guy who was drunk and launching fireworks from his boat in a marina complex a little further down the lakeside. He told me they were distress flares. They may have been, but I stil charged him with public disorder and breach of half-a-dozen county ordinances, and took him into custody, for his own safety, and everyone else's.

'That was an exception, though; most boat-owners are responsible people. They have to be. They're indulging in a very expensive hobby.

Apart from the capital cost of these cruisers, the berths in places like this are expensive, and marine insurance doesn't come cheap.'

'So what Jackson Wylie did was exceptional too?'

Traylor hesitated. 'Cooking on deck on an open fire, rather than in an enclosed galley, is stupid, sir, like I said, but truth be told, it's common enough behaviour.'

'Have you seen many accidents like this one?'

'A couple of smal fires, maybe, but nothing on this scale. Do you know if there's a Mrs Wylie?'

'I don't believe so. I heard she died a few years back.'

'Children?'

'None that I know of.'

'In that case, the executors, whoever they are, had better pray that the insurance company takes a sympathetic view, otherwise the other boat owners, and especially that lady with the frazzled hair, will sue the ass off the estate. If that happens, Mr Wylie better leave a hell of a lot of money to pay off al the claims.'

The lieutenant was looking over Skinner's shoulder as he spoke, towards the door to the marina reception. Suddenly he stood, and came to attention. 'Good afternoon, Sheriff,' he exclaimed.

'Afternoon, Dwayne,' said Bradford Dekker, barely glancing at him.

Instead he looked anxiously at the big Scot. 'Bob, how are you? How's Mr Doherty?'

For a second Skinner's inbuilt cynicism came to the surface, and he wondered whether the sheriff's concern was for his friend or for the potential fall-out from the FBI if its deputy director had been injured seriously in a sloppily managed facility in his territory.

'I'm fine,' he answered. 'Joe's got a hole in his head, but they're stitching it up right now.'

'What happened? Traylor gave me the outline, but…'

'There wasn't much more than an outline, Brad. We were walking towards Wylie's boat when it went up like a fucking candle.'

'There wasn't any warning?'

The DCC shook his head. 'Not that I can remember. Al I saw was the fireball.' He frowned as the recollection of his dizzy spell came back to him. For a second he thought he was about to have a recurrence, but the feeling passed. 'I can't really swear to anything.'