'What's wrong with my leg?'
'You broke it. Clean snap, so they say. Nothing to worry about. You'll have to give up jogging for a bit.'
'That's a pity.'
'No permanent damage, anyway. I thought I'd come and see how you're getting on. So I can tell your girlfriend.'
'Who?'
'That Italian woman? She been ringing up every few hours for the last couple of days, driving the entire department nuts. The whole homicide squad's on first name terms with her now. She's pretty gone on you, isn't she?'
'Is she?' Argyll said with grave interest. Morelli didn't bother to reply. Seemed pretty obvious to him.
'So, now I see you're OK, I'll leave you in peace.'
'Double screw,' Argyll said, a vague memory coming into his mind.
Morelli looked surprised.
'The brake cable couldn't have come undone on it's own. So I'm told.'
'Yeah, well, I was going to mention that . . .'
'Which means,' he went on, thinking hard, 'what does it mean?'
Morelli scratched his chin. Amazing. The man never seemed to shave. 'Well,' he said, 'it sort of struck us, down in the department, that maybe someone gave it a tug.'
'Seems a bit silly to me. I might have been hurt. I can't imagine who'd do something like that.'
'How about the person who killed Hector di Souza? And Moresby? And stole that bust?'
'What do you mean?'
'Di Souza's body was found this morning. He'd been shot.'
Argyll stared at him. 'You're not serious.'
Morelli nodded.
A long pause followed. 'You OK?' he asked eventually.
'Umm? Oh, yes,' Argyll began, then stopped and reconsidered.
'In fact, no. I'm not. It never occurred to me that something might have happened to the poor old sod. He's not the sort who gets killed. Why on earth would anybody want to kill Hector? I didn't like the man much, but he was part of the landscape, and pretty harmless. Unless you bought something from him, that is. Poor bugger.'
Morelli, of course, was scarcely upset at all. In his career he had seen the murdered remains of nice people, nasty people, old ones, young ones, rich and poor, saints and sinners. Di Souza was just one more, and he had never even met him.
Argyll stirred from his mournful reflection and asked for more information. Morelli kindly spared him most of the details. He'd been up early to go to the bit of woodland where the body had been found in a shallow grave, and could remember it all far too well to share with someone in Argyll's delicate state of health.
'It's a bit difficult to tell, but the experts reckon he must have died less than twenty-four hours after he vanished. One bullet, in the back of the head. Never felt a thing.'
'They always say that. I can't say I've ever found it too convincing. Personally, I suspect being shot hurts. Do you know where the gun came from?'
'No. A small pistol. We found it thrown into some scrub nearby. They don't know any more yet, except that it's almost certainly the gun that killed Moresby as well. We'll find out something about it eventually.'
'And I suppose it'll be up to me to get him back to Rome,' he said reflectively. 'Typical.'
'Do you think that's a good idea?' Morelli rubbed his gum with his finger again, in an exploratory fashion.
'Still hurting?'
He nodded. 'Hmm. It seems to be getting worse, damn the thing.'
'You should go to a dentist.'
Morelli snorted. 'When? I'm swamped with work because of this murder. Besides, do you know how far ahead you have to make an appointment with dentists? It's easier to get an audience with the Pope. Why do you feel responsible for di Souza?'
Argyll shrugged. 'I don't know. But there it is; I do. Hector would never forgive me if I left him here. He was a professional Roman and an aesthete. I don't think a graveyard in Los Angeles would please him at all.'
'We have very good cemeteries.'
'Oh, I'm sure. But he was very fussy. Besides, I don't know of any relations or anything.'
Takes all sorts. Morelli was very much less sentimental. Argyll, on the other hand, reckoned that the least he could do was give the old man a decent send-off in the style to which he was accustomed. Full requiem with all the trimmings in a church of suitable magnificence, weeping friends at the grave, all that.
'Very clever of you to find him,' Argyll said, not being able to think of anything else to keep the conversation going.
'Hardly. We got a tip-off.'
'Who from?'
'Someone hunting out of season, I reckon. It often happens. They want to report a body, but don't want the risk of being prosecuted.' Morelli said it as though illegal hunters tripped over corpses every day.
'Sort of lets Hector off your list of suspects, doesn't it?'
'Maybe. Maybe not. But we're certainly short of at least one murderer at the moment. You were one of the last people to talk to him at that party, weren't you?'
Argyll nodded.
'Can you remember what he said?'
'But I've told you, more or less.'
'Exactly. Word for word.'
'Why do you want to know?'
'Because if someone at some stage loosened the brake cable of your car, then it stands to reason they wanted to kill you. With all due respect, why would anyone want to kill you? Unless you know something that you haven't told us.'
Argyll thought hard, and could come up with nothing that might, somehow, solve the problem.
'He said that he could sort everything out with Moresby,' he said eventually.
'Did he say how?'
'Yes.'
'Tell me, then.'
'Well, you see, the trouble is, I didn't listen. I was thinking of something else. And Hector does tend to go on. I asked him to repeat it but he wouldn't.'
Morelli gave him a nasty look.
'Sorry.'
'And who may have overheard this?'
Argyll scratched his head as he thought. 'Lots of people, I suppose,' he said eventually. 'Let's see. Streeter, Thanet, Mrs. Moresby, that lawyer man were all there. Young Jack had gone, Old Moresby hadn't turned up . . .'
'But who was close enough to hear?'
Argyll shrugged. No idea.
'You're not a dream witness, do you know that?'
'Sorry.'
'Yeah, well, if you remember . . .'
'I’ll call. I don't know that it would do much good though.'
'Why not?'
'Because we were speaking in Italian. Langton speaks Italian, but he wasn't anywhere near. Hector was looking for him. I suspect that none of the others speak it.'
Morelli looked even more disappointed in him, so Argyll switched the subject.
'Have you found the bust yet?'
The detective shook his head. 'No. And I don't imagine we will. It's probably been thrown in the sea.'
'That's daft,' Argyll said with conviction. 'Why steal something and throw it away?'
