I took off my clothes and started searching among the debris in the cellar.
They came back an hour later.
When they opened the door, they had the sense to remain cautiously a couple of feet back from the threshold. Then came a gasp of horror at what they saw silhouetted against the dim glow of the bulb. A body, dangling from one of the hooks in the ceiling and slowly turning as if the last shallow breath of life were still ebbing out.
Caution was forgotten.
‘Holy Mary, mother of us all!’ rasped Heathcliff and they rushed forward to save this demented foreigner from self-destruction.
I pushed myself off from the wall beside the door and hit the nearest of them with a bottle which had once held a Gragnano that I hadn’t tasted for thirty years. It didn’t suit this peasant’s palate and he collapsed to his knees, groaning. It was Heathcliff, I was glad to see, not out of any particular animosity but because he struck me as the more dangerous of the two.
I was right. The other backed away from me in terror. It was time the KGB gave him a refresher course. Finally he came up against the dangling dummy. The poor sod can’t really have imagined I’d dug up a genuine corpse from somewhere but he shrieked as if it was cold flesh he’d touched rather than my pants and shirt stuffed with straw. I kicked him in the balls. By this time Heathcliff, who obviously had a better head for red wine than I’d thought, was back on his feet and casting around for his billhook. I spotted it first and scooped it up, but he in the meanwhile had got hold of a solid baton of wood from one of the dismembered wine-racks. I computed the odds. At the moment, slightly in my favour, but not enough by a long chalk.
I hurled the still unbroken bottle at him and, as he ducked, I turned and ran. He hit the door behind me just as I turned the key, and then began to beat it with his baton. I felt the weathered wood vibrate as I leaned against it, panting like an overworked satyr.
I couldn’t hang around here, not with that noise drumming all over the villa. It seemed to be beating inside my head too and I had a dreadful suspicion that if I tracked that sinister throbbing through the labyrinth of my body it would prove to emanate from my guts. I didn’t make the journey. There were too many things to do before I faced up to the monster in that cave.
I set off at an unsteady lope.
The cellar was set behind the kitchen at the end of a narrow corridor with store cupboards on either side. The way back to the upper storeys of the villa led through the kitchen. I pushed the door open.
After the gloom of the cellar, it was like stepping into the radiance of Heaven. The windows gave out a stupendous view over the sea and the pure blue light hit my eyes as though thrown from a bucket. When the dazzle settled down, I realized there was a woman working at the kitchen table. She was chopping tomatoes with a fierce-looking knife. Already she must have been disturbed by the noise from the cellar. Now she stood stock still and viewed this strange apparition with curious but unfrightened eyes. She stood between me and the door which led to the stairs. I smiled and wished her goodday, but she replied in neither mode, merely adjusting the broad blade in her strong brown fingers.
I decided to forget about the stairs.
Another door led out of the kitchen on to a small terrace where in the lee of a low white wall generations of cooks at the Villa Colonna had cultivated their herbs. I stepped out into the warm air. It tasted good. The herb garden had been allowed to go to ruin, not in the riotous luxuriance that is produced by neglect in the British climate, but in a dry, baked dying, despite the protection of the wall. Only a few sprigs of marjoram showed that someone was making an effort at restoration. Perhaps my friend with the knife.
I looked over the wall.
Below, the cliff fell almost sheer to the tiny rocky cove where Ariel had once been moored. Yet again I felt a desperate longing for the years to peel back and give me once more the untroubled and untroubling days of childhood when the loss of an afternoon’s sailing might seem like the end of the world, but every hour was capable of creating a dozen new worlds to take its place.
I pushed the feeling aside and turned my eyes upward. Above me hung the villa with its lemon groves on either side where the cliff eased back from the precipitous to the merely very steep. The main terrace was on the step above the kitchen. I could see the fluted balcony rails intertwined with hibiscus and bougainvillæa and I thought I could hear voices.
The woman with the knife had come to the kitchen door and was watching me. Soon she must surely go to see why there was so much noise coming from the cellar. I realized I was still holding the key. I tossed it out over the cliff and watched it disappear without any visible splash into the water far below.
Now I walked along the little kitchen terrace to the edge of the building. Here the path diverged. Ahead was the old lift down to the sea. Even if it were still working, I didn’t fancy getting caught in it. There was the alternative of a rudimentary stairway hacked in the rock face, almost as dangerous as the third route which Father and I had taken on one occasion, abseiling down the cliff at its sheerest alongside the lift chute. Great-grandmama had caught us at it and hurled abuse at my father in the patois of back-street Naples, but this only provoked the exhibitionist in him and he had finished his descent with a series of rapid pendulum runs which took him through an arc of near one hundred and eighty degrees.
With an effort, I thrust the insistent past out of my mind. There was no going back. Nor, I decided, was there any going down. Even if I could escape on the old tub moored below, where was I escaping too? Everything important left for me to do in my life was waiting for me up there in the villa. That’s where I needed to be.
To my right a flight of steps ran up alongside the kitchen to the main terrace.
I went up these as quietly as I could, slowing down to second-class mail pace as my head reached terrace level, and stopping when I could get a good view through the bright blossoms round the rails.
There were two figures on the terrace. One was Vasco Carducci. He was kneeling alongside Angelica. Her face was invisible as it rested on his shoulder, but I recognized the long black hair and the slender athletic body even though I had only seen them once, and that briefly. She was wearing a sundress over her bikini now. I regarded her with pride and residual lust and incipient jealousy, not the traditional paternal emotions, I know, but in the circumstances the best I could manage. Vasco’s hands were on her shoulder-blades, caressing. I didn’t know how far he was planning to go out here on the open terrace, but I wasn’t about to become an incestuous voyeur. I rose and vaulted lightly over the rail. At least that was my intention, but I wasn’t in top condition for light vaulting and my heel caught the rail and I went sprawling on to the tiled floor.
The couple jumped in alarm. Now I could see Angelica’s face and I realized I’d been wrong about Vasco’s intentions. What I’d taken for a licentious caress had been more of a comforting pat, for her features were taut with grief and stained with tears.
And I’d also been wrong about my appearance causing female panic. The woman in the kitchen had merely regarded me with puzzled suspicion. And what now twisted Angelica’s face out of its mask of grief was not terror but rage and hate.
She came running at me, screaming, ‘You filthy sodding bastard!’
The billhook had fallen from my hands and she snatched it up and would have brought it swinging down on my head if Vasco hadn’t grabbed her upraised arm. I was grateful, even though I could see it wasn’t concern for me that had caused his intervention.
I pushed myself to my knees.
‘Angelica!’ I said urgently. ‘Listen to me.’
‘You bastard!’ she sobbed. ‘You murdering bastard!’
Then I understood. She must have heard about Kate. I shook my head and said, ‘No, no, Angelica, please, believe me …’ but I could see that my words had no chance of penetrating that fury of sobbing.
Vasco had taken the billhook from the girl’s unresisting hand and as I moved f
orward, purposing comfort, he raised it threateningly, purposing decapitation, and spat out a stream of very unpleasant judgements, not all of which were true.
‘Vasco!’ I yelled, deciding that he at least was within voice-contact. ‘Have you been in touch with your mother?’
The mention of Teresa gave him pause. I pressed my advantage.
‘You telephone her,’ I urged. ‘You ask her what these people have done to her.’
‘Mama?’ he said incredulously. ‘What has happened to her? Which people?’
‘These people, you moron!’ I yelled, making a gesture which took in the whole of the villa. The only people actually in sight were a few working among the lemons. Their status to me was still rather ambiguous except that I didn’t reckon they were on my side. I could see heads turning at the sound of my upraised voice and I didn’t doubt it had penetrated the villa too. But all that mattered to me was that somehow I should use this, perhaps my last opportunity, to get through to my daughter.
‘They hurt her,’ I said. ‘She’ll be OK, but they tortured her to find out where you’d gone with Angelica.’
I had his full attention though he had not relaxed his aggressive stance with the billhook.
‘Who?’ he demanded. ‘Who has done this?’
‘I keep telling you!’ I screamed. ‘My father’s people, that’s who. Oh Jesus, what do I have to do to make you understand?’
‘But why?’ he said. Why should your father need to do this when it was to Amalfi that we were coming anyway?’
I had the feeling this was getting me nowhere. Angelica’s sobbing had slackened from a torrent to a fordable flood. I switched to English and said, ‘I didn’t kill Kate. I didn’t kill Kate. I didn’t kill your mother!’
She looked up at me with tear-reddened, disbelieving eyes. I looked down at her helplessly. It was hopeless. Not so much convincing her that I hadn’t murdered her mother, though that wasn’t going to be easy. No, what was hopeless in the time available was convincing myself that this lovely young woman was my sixteen-year-old daughter.
‘I didn’t. Honestly, I didn’t,’ I said almost petulantly. The sound of upraised voices came from the house and I guessed that finally the alarm had been raised. It occurred to me then that the important thing was not what Angelica thought of me but her immediate safety and I didn’t know if that was guaranteeable in the villa. Pa’s egotistical sentimentality might keep her under his protection so long as she didn’t get in the way of his plans, but Pa’s mates wouldn’t be much inclined to leave witnesses wandering around. Witnesses to what? Probably to my killing for a start!
Vasco had relaxed his attention for a moment as he too listened to the sounds in the villa. It was easy to poke him lightly in the stomach and remove the billhook from his hand. Terror filled both their faces and to the boy’s eternal credit he thrust himself in front of Angelica to ward off my expected attack.
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid!’ I said wearily. ‘If you want to protect her, take her down to the town, back to your uncle’s bakery. Contact your mother. Do it now. Don’t go back into the villa. Walk, run, catch a bus, but just take her away. Please, Vasco, I beg you. I am your uncle too, remember, and Angelica’s father. Would I want to see you harmed?’
It was the familial appeal that did it, as well as the fact that I was urging them to take off when I could very easily have been chopping them up if that was what I fancied.
He grabbed Angelica’s arm with one hand and scooped up their pile of clothes and possessions with the other. Angelica looked set to resist. There was a stubbornness on her face which reminded me of young pictures of myself. Suddenly in that second she became my daughter. Fortunately there was Bessacarr blood in the young Italian too and his mind was made up.
He dragged her after him. I could hear footsteps slapping on the tiles from within the house. A group of people were approaching rapidly.
‘Hurry!’ I urged.
There was enough Latin in Angelica for her to know when to resist and when to give in. Suddenly she moved ahead of Vasco and together the two of them raced off the terrace and up through the garden towards the road. I watched their brown young bodies with sun and shadow from the lemon leaves till they were out of sight. The untypical fancy struck me that so must Adam and Eve have looked as they roamed through Eden in pre-lapsarian innocence.
The serpent entered on cue.
He held a Beretta 70 single shot automatic in his hand with the easy assurance of one who could have represented his country in almost any shooting category, had he felt it a talent worth displaying. I have seen him break fifty clay pigeons in a row at maximum scatter, and place five shafts in the gold with a longbow at eighty yards, but the target pistol was always his favourite weapon.
There were three men with him, though I was sure he didn’t feel the need for their support. One of them was the same breed as Heathcliff, with a secretive peasant face and in his gnarled hands a double-barrelled shotgun of the kind Italians like to destroy birdlife with. I think it was a Bernadelli Roma 4.
But it was the other two men that my eyes were drawn to, or rather one of them. I recognized that thin, worried, academic face! It was my Trinity scholar, the Brigadier’s man who had rescued me twice on his scooter. He smiled shyly at me, then shrugged as if to say third time unlucky, and that shrug rearranged the group for me. This was not a united party, but my scholar and his companion, a stout middle-aged Italian sweating profusely in a crumpled dark business suit, were being propelled ahead at the business end of those two contrasting weapons.
Pa spoke.
‘Good day, Lemuel. How nice to see you out and enjoying the sun. It will do you good. You really do look a little peaky. I hope you can assure these gentlemen that the cellar was not too uncomfortable. They are going to be resting there for a while.’
I suppose the sensible thing to do was to assume that the Brigadier would have some notion where his operatives had got to, and to spin things out till reinforcements arrived. But that voice, that air of complete assurance, that expression of ironic amusement at the odd way in which God had arranged the world, all these things here in this place where once I had worshipped him before I saw behind the mask stabbed my heart like angina and I ran at him with a shriek more like pain than rage. All I could see was Mama’s body, crumpled at the foot of the stairs with a ribbon of blood coiling across the floorboards from her black gleaming hair.
What he could see I don’t know. Perhaps a small boy running to embrace him. Or perhaps age had simply dulled his reflexes. But I was on him before the pistol could swing into line with my body and the force of my assault sent us both crashing to the floor.
Heathcliff 2 swore violently in a rough peasant dialect, but he knew well enough that you can’t be selective with a shotgun when two bodies are locked as closely together as ours. We rolled over and over, scattering chairs and tables as we thrashed from one end of the terrace to the other. Pa’s strength surprised me. If this was what he was like old and sick, no wonder his stamina had seemed endless when he was in his prime. Our faces were pressed close as lovers’ and I heard him gasp, ‘Lem! for God’s sake …’ but the note of appeal triggered no compassionate response, only an awareness that he must be weakening. I had not relaxed my hold on the billhook all this time, which initially disadvantaged me as he had dropped his pistol and was able to use both hands to grapple with. But as I gained the ascendancy, some still calm, still cold part of my mind told me why I was hanging on to the weapon. Despite everything, killing him with my bare hands was not possible. Even now, even as I felt his skinny old man’s throat in my grasp, I could feel my fingers relaxing as those eyes bulged out at me and those lips funnelled wide in a desperate search for air.
But the billhook made what would have been a murder into an execution. I felt his body go limp beneath me. I let go of his throat and knelt over him, raising the billhook high in both hands. Thus had overweening, treacherous aristocrats always died throughout the ag
es. He lay quite still except for the rise and fall of his chest and looked up at me unblinkingly. Incredibly there was a faint, almost pitying smile on his thin, pallid, blue lips.
‘Lem,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I didn’t kill your mother.’
The words rang like a familiar but meaningless incantation in my ear. The mention of Mama only confirmed my purpose. I knew I could execute him now. My muscles were tensed for the down-driving blow.
Then a hand plucked the billhook from my grasp like taking a rattle from a baby.
‘Please, Mr Swift, it will make such a mess on the terrace. Your task is over now. Leave the rest to experts.’
I looked round, ready to conceal my relief beneath anger. My Trinity scholar stood there with Pa’s pistol in one hand, the billhook in the other. Behind him, his fat companion had the ancient shotgun trained on the ancient peasant.
I pushed myself upright.
‘I think when you see the Brigadier you’ll find you’ve exceeded your orders,’ I said.
‘The Brigadier?’ he said, a faintly puzzled look on his sad, intellectual face.
‘Yes. He wanted this anthology of lies closed for ever,’ I snapped, pointing at Pa who was sitting slowly upright, feeling his limbs in search of broken bones.
‘Ah, the Brigadier,’ said the scholar. ‘Of course.’
He seemed amused, as a don might seem amused at some nice piece of academic wit in a footnote.
Pa had pushed himself upright, irritatedly elbowing aside his old peasant retainer who was kneeling beside him checking for damage and clucking like an old hen. Two decades of comradeship hadn’t diluted his blue blood all that much.
He looked at me with his old you’ve got-things-wrong-but-it’s-best-if-you-can-work-it-out-for-your-self expression.
‘Lem,’ he said kindly, feeling his head, ‘I begin to suspect that, not for the first time, you are the victim of a misapprehension. In a way, I’m glad of it. It gives me hope that other aspects of your extraordinary behaviour can be explained as acts of folly rather than criminality.’
Traitor's Blood Page 15
