Fifth Victim by Zoe Sharp Read Free Book Online

of the yacht club and stared out across the glittering lights of the harbour.
    When Dina had said the birthday celebration was taking place at a regatta, I’d envisaged sailing boats of some kind, slim and sinuous. What greeted me instead was a collection of floating gin palaces, halfway to cruise ship size, bobbing fatly, gleaming and self-satisfied in their allotted mooring spaces, like prize pigs at a trough.
    Below me was a wide outside terrace area overhanging the water, strung with fairy lights and bordered by waist-high glass panels, presumably to stop the more enthusiastic partygoers tumbling into the murky depths. There were currently about thirty or forty of them down there, doing their damnedest to put that to the test.
    Our host for the evening, Torquil Eisenberg, was at the centre of things and working a little too hard at being the life and soul of his own party. He was a thin geeky kid with a long neck and prominent Adam’s apple above the bow tie of his white tuxedo. I guessed, in different circumstances, he would have had buck teeth and sticking-out ears, too, but Daddy’s considerable riches had fixed what it could and showered him with money in the hope of taking your mind off the rest. If he was into the extreme sports Dina had mentioned, it hadn’t helped convert his stringy physique into anything immediately impressive.
    It took me about ten seconds after meeting him to decide I didn’t like the kid. Dina had handed over her beautifully wrapped gift with studied casualness, like his reaction didn’t matter to her. He tore his way through the brightly coloured paper and ribbons and looked suddenly nonplussed when he came to the manufacturers’ logo on the box.
    ‘Victorinox?’ he said blankly. ‘What’s this?’
    ‘Why don’t you open it and find out?’ I suggested.
    He managed to open the box itself and found, nestling inside, the most comprehensive and expensive Swiss Army knife in the shop, bristling with attachments for every occasion. After she’d chosen it, Dina had gone back to the jeweller’s and had six words neatly engraved along the side of the casing.
    FOR THE GUY WHO HAS EVERYTHING
    Torquil stared for a moment longer and I could have sworn I caught the slightest twitch at the corner of his mouth, then he looked up and it was gone, replaced by an indifferent contempt.
    ‘Is that it?’ he demanded, dumping the gift into the hands of a flunkey and elbowing his way towards the next hopeful bearer.
    Dina tried to affect a blasé pose in response, but I saw her quickly bitten lip and wanted to slap his legs for him. Sadly, such an action was not part of my remit, however much personal satisfaction I might have derived from it.
    The party had been going for about three hours by that point. Torquil had made a showy arrival by chauffeured Bell Jet Ranger, touching down on the yacht club’s private helipad, and been swept into a huge marquee on the lawns for a short but concussive set by a moody rock group. I initially had them pegged as a particularly good tribute band and only realised, when the lead singer nearly punched out the birthday boy for making a grab at his favourite guitar, that they were actually the real thing.
    The catered meal that followed defied belief, from the massive ice sculptures on the tables to the vintage champagne freely available. Then it was on to the yacht club itself and the partying had started in earnest. What it had all cost was anybody’s guess.
    Now I sipped my ginger ale on the rocks slowly, as if it were whisky, and looked for trouble.
    There was general perimeter security in place, a load of guys built like American football players, squeezed uncomfortably into dinner jackets and bow ties. Not bad as a gatecrashing deterrent, but with neither the agility nor the experience, in my opinion, to prevent an organised, well-orchestrated attack. They’d given my evening bag a cursory search on the way in, but had completely missed the SIG hidden