Traitor's Blood

by Reginald Hill

  If I’d thought that the events of this night hitherto had been nightmarish, I now realized that by contrast with what followed they were gentle as a waking dream.

  I don’t know who did it. Perhaps Pa, exhausted or wounded, collapsed across the helm and inadvertently brought us round. Or perhaps the cruiser’s skipper, cowed by Krylov’s KGB authority or simply desperate to get things done with and be away, deliberately ran us down.

  Or perhaps it was simply old Triton deciding that these insects had disturbed his rest for long enough and flinging them together to bring an end to it.

  Whatever the cause, the motor-cruiser passed through us like a blunt hatchet through a rotten log and Ariel’s brief taste of her former glory was gone. Well, she died as she deserved to die, under sail on the open sea, with the emblems of her recent degradation stripped from her elegant frame.

  God send us all such a death! Not that it seemed to be what he had in mind for me. Ariel folded up like a book and I was flung with great violence against the mast, cracking my nose and loosening a couple of teeth, mere trifles to a man about to drown. For a second I clung like some silent-comedy figure to the mast and had a brief glimpse of Pa going over the stern, his old fingers grasping at the wire hawser as if in hope of keeping contact with the dinghy. But there was nothing left to keep contact with except matchwood. I lost my grip and went deep, deep down, and found I didn’t much care if I never came up. But even the sea is choosey and up I rose, almost as fast as I’d sunk, and as I re-emerged into the air, I cracked my head against something solid.

  It was the mast, determined to get me coming or going. I clung to it once more and looked around for Pa. There was no sign of him, but I could see the launch quite clearly and something very interesting was happening to it. I doubted if the impact could have seriously damaged its hull, but it was quite clear that something was fouling the screw. The engine was spluttering and sparking as the propeller tried to free itself from the obstruction. But it must have been something very strong, the wire hawser perhaps, and finally the engine fell silent and the launch drifted away on the long swell. I could imagine what was going through its skipper’s mind. Being powerless on a lee-shore is the sailor’s nightmare, especially when the shore’s as unwelcoming as this one.

  But I had neither time nor inclination for sympathy as I desperately scanned the surface for a glimpse of Pa.

  It seemed a hopeless task. In these seas we could already be fifty yards apart, assuming he was still afloat. And at water level, fifty yards meant out of sight.

  Then I saw him. The moon came momentarily into a break of open sky and its beams glanced off the distinguished grey of his patrician head. I took a few strokes in his direction but the effort pained my wounded side so much that I had to grab my piece of flotsam once more and try to proceed by dint of a one-handed dog-paddle.

  Progress was slow. The launch was still drifting out of control and I felt able to risk a shout. At my second yell, the head turned and he saw me.

  I got quite close. He looked to be in a bad way, but I could see his mouth working though I couldn’t make out any words. He must have become aware of this for I saw for the last time that old look of contained exasperation at my slowness, then he spoke again with a visible effort at clarity of articulation. All I caught was a few broken syllables and I wasn’t sure even of those. One combination sounded like emerald but that made no sense. Another, more typically, could have been still persevere! Anyway, I smiled and nodded as if I’d got the message.

  We were within five feet of each other. I reached out my hand.

  The exasperation had vanished from his face. He regarded me with unqualified affection and, I like to believe, something of pride. Then he raised his arms from the water, to grasp my reaching hand I at first believed.

  Then with the numb horror of one who has gone into nightmare far past the shrieking point, I saw that both his arms ended in bloody stumps and became aware of the colour of the water all around him.

  He slipped down out of sight as I helplessly watched, deep deep down, as he must have dived clutching the wire hawser. Did he deliberately set out to foul the launch’s propeller, or was he sucked into it despite his effort? God knows. I wouldn’t put it past him. All I knew was that this time he did not reappear.

  I dived once and I think I saw his body turning slowly in the deep currents a little way away. I made no effort to go after it. He was as likely to lie at peace here with his beloved Ariel beneath these familiar seas as anywhere else in the world.

  I looked around for the cruiser. It had been carried in against the cliff-face with incredible speed and the huge swell was thrusting it at the rock again and again. I began to swim slowly towards it. The pain in my side seemed to have been numbed by immersion in the water and my stroke was long and strong.

  The motor-cruiser was breaking up. I saw two or three figures go over the side. God would be good, I was certain of that. He had taken everything I ever cared for … Mama … Angie … Pa too. He could afford to toss me a crumb surely …

  He tossed. The crumb came floating by. Krylov, his narrow intellectual face contorted with the effort to breathe, to keep alive. He didn’t look a very expert swimmer. I moved steadily towards him. He saw my form approaching and shouted in Russian. Perhaps he thought I was going to save him.

  Then he recognized me.

  I had got within a couple of yards, when he raised his arms in the air and sank without a struggle. I screamed in rage at being deprived of my active vengeance and dived and dived again, eager to drag him back to the air so that I could drown him! But he was gone deep, far beyond my reach.

  And with these violent efforts my strength was gone too.

  The currents were in charge now. It was all I could do to keep afloat. They whirled me away from the wreck of the cruiser, dragging me down the coast, toying with me by bringing me close to the cliff-face, then hurling me back just before impact. There was no break in the cliff, no hope of a safe landing. I didn’t care. I listened to the thunder of the water breaking on the rock and surrendered myself completely to the ocean’s driving force.

  This time there was going to be no last-second pulling back. The sea hurled me forwards. There was no sense of impact, just a plunge into great darkness. A brief intuitive struggle. Then blackness, total blackness, within and without.

  Later, if time still meant anything, the blackness broke up into a strange shifting green light. Emerald. I remembered Pa’s voice. Emerald.

  Voices, not Pa’s. Pain. Blackness again.

  And much, much later, white, white, white.

  23

  … nothing but my continental breakfast …

  I really thought I was dead.

  And in hell, of course. Where else? If God exists, and he’s not as stupid as some of His creation suggests, there has to be a special circle of the Inferno for English peers who went bad. A dress circle, of course.

  That was what alerted me; the dress. I was in a sort of nightshirt which might have passed for Other Wordly wear in a medieval mural, but felt neither paradisal nor penitential enough to me.

  I pulled back the white sheet which I’d contrived to drag up over my face and looked at the white ceiling and my nose told me before my eyes that I was in hospital.

  The door opened and for a moment I almost revised my conclusion as a woman entered wearing unequivocably religious garb, and medieval at that.

  Then she was followed by Reilly and the Brigadier and, knowing angels by the company they keep, I realized she must merely be a member of the religious nursing order which ran this hospital.

  ‘Good day, Mr Swift,’ said the Brigadier. ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Like death warmed up, I think is the phrase,’ I replied. ‘To coin a cliché, where are we?’

  ‘A hospital,’ he said. ‘Quite close to Sorrento. We had you brought here.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ I said. ‘From where?’

  ‘From Amalfi. After you’
d been found in the Grotta dello Smeraldo by the first party of tourists that morning. It was quite dramatic, I believe. The lighting was switched on to demonstrate the interesting green light, and there you were, draped over a stalagmite.’

  ‘The Emerald Grotto,’ I said. ‘So that’s what Pa meant!’

  ‘Your father?’ said the Brigadier alertly. ‘What precisely did he say?’

  ‘Before he died, you mean?’

  Reilly and her master exchanged glances.

  ‘Oh yes,’ I said softly. ‘You can rest content, you and all the bastards like you. He’s dead all right.’

  ‘I’m sorry. For your sake, I mean,’ said the Brigadier. ‘You seem to have had some kind of reconciliation. We’ll need to know everything he said to you after you left the villa.’

  ‘Meaning you’ve got a record of everything we said to each other in the villa, I suppose?’ I said bitterly. ‘Then you heard it all, Brig. Afterwards, we were too busy working on ways to keep me alive. His last instructions to me were emerald, meaning head for the Emerald Grotto, and still persevere. He just wanted me to keep going.’

  I felt tears stinging my eyes.

  ‘What about the launch?’ I said to occupy my mind.

  ‘No survivors. You did a good job there, bucko,’ said Reilly.

  I shot her a glance of pure hatred.

  ‘They have recovered Major Krylov’s body,’ added the Brigadier. ‘A sad loss. We must send flowers.’

  ‘And my daughter and nephew, will you be sending flowers to their funeral too?’ I exploded rising in the bed.

  The Brigadier looked uncomfortable, which I suppose was to his credit. Reilly, who had no credit to increase or diminish, said jocularly. ‘It’ll need to be a floating wreath, me boy.’

  ‘You mean they haven’t found them yet?’ I asked, suddenly touched with a crazy hope.

  The Brigadier said with that combination of military crispness and commanding officer’s sympathy which was his hallmark, ‘The car seems to have exploded and broken up. It’s in a couple of fathoms. They’ve sent a diver down, but so far, nothing. I’m very sorry about this, Swift. A terrible accident.’

  ‘Accident, shit!’ I said. ‘It was Krylov’s way of getting rid of a couple of witnesses. And don’t let’s have any babes-in-the-wood act from you two. You know exactly what happened. All I’ve got to decide is whether you knew about it in advance!’

  They exchanged glances.

  Reilly shrugged indifferently and turned away.

  The Brigadier said, ‘You’re quite right, Mr Swift. We did guess that it was probably no accident. But I assure you that we had no idea in advance what Krylov’s intentions were with regard to the young people. It was our understanding that they would be released safely after your father had been returned to Russia.’

  I didn’t know whether to believe him or not. On the whole I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt, but perhaps that was just my bullshit reason for not wanting to kill him. My asshole reason was that with a bit of luck the Russians would blame the fiasco at Amalfi on a British double-cross and take out the Brigadier and Reilly at their earliest convenience.

  But for once the real reason was neither obscure nor far to seek.

  Revenge was meaningless. I had destroyed my own life and the lives of others in its pursuit. A whole acre of bodies couldn’t begin to balance my losses. Deaths were meaningless now. Except one. My own.

  And I didn’t intend sitting around waiting for it to come either from the sleeping dragon in my gut or from some brainless yo-yo paid by one side or the other to remove my embarrassing presence.

  The Brigadier was on his feet and making for the door.

  ‘They tell us your wound is not too serious,’ he said. ‘You should be fit to travel in a couple of days. You shouldn’t be troubled by an official interest. I’ve pulled a few strings and now we’ll head back to Rome and make a few more soothing noises. I’ll arrange to have you join us there. Goodbye, Mr Swift.’

  He went out.

  Reilly came to the bedside and leaned over me.

  ‘You look terrible,’ she said.

  ‘What’s this, Reilly?’ I asked. ‘The usual technique? The Brig goes and you hop into bed for a quick screw and a friendly chat? You’re out of luck, girl. Both ways.’

  ‘Like to bet,’ she said lightly.

  Suddenly to my surprise she leaned down and kissed me, a pleasant sisterly kiss, not the open-mouthed, tongue-prodding erotic version I’d have expected.

  ‘Listen. You take care,’ she said.

  ‘I intend to,’ I answered. My new resolve made me feel easy with the world, even with Reilly. And her kiss, though doubtless carefully measured, helped also.

  She had left the bedside but seemed reluctant to leave the room. The door opened again and a nurse came in announcing that she had to change my dressing.

  ‘Stay and watch if you like, Reilly,’ I invited.

  A faint smile touched her lips and she shook her head.

  ‘Take care, bucko,’ she repeated. ‘And I’ll see you soon.’

  ‘Bets?’ I said under my breath as she went through the door.

  But I waved my hand languorously. A dying man needs someone to say goodbye to and Reilly was all I’d got.

  I looked at my gunshot wound with interest as the nurse removed the dressing. The bullet had pierced my right side. A little lower and it would have shattered my hip. A little more central and it would have bust my gut. A little higher and it would have punctured my lung. As it was it hadn’t done me a great deal of harm and the major damage had been the vast amount of blood I had lost before being discovered.

  The nurse chattered away as she went about her work. I don’t know what explanation had been given for the presence here in a private room of a gunshot Englishman, but it’s been my experience that nuns and priests take most things in their stride. I wondered idly what her reaction would be if I told her that a few inches away from this wound she was helping to heal was a cancerous growth programmed to shake me off the tree while my new scar was still in full blossom.

  Probably nothing except regret and prayer. Though if she’d guessed I was planning to put myself in a state of mortal sin by suicide, she might have become a little agitated.

  I was supposed to lie in bed but I persuaded her to let me sit in a wheelchair by the window. From here I had a fabulous view right across the Bay of Naples. It was a day of sparkling clarity. To my right, the chopped-off cone of Vesuvius looked to be within grasping distance and, straining my eyes straight ahead, I thought I could make out in the heat haze above the water the shape of Castel dell ‘Ovo over the harbour of Santa Lucia, but it probably owed more to imagination and memory than farsightedness.

  I turned my gaze closer and looked downwards. I was on the second floor and though there was a concrete terrace below, it wasn’t far enough below to make death certain. To die of cancer with all your limbs in plaster would really be gilding the lily, I thought. No, jumping was out.

  Still, if you’re going to kill yourself, surely a hospital must be one of the easiest places to do it?

  I tried a few tentative steps. My legs were weak as a satyr’s after a hard day chasing woodnymphs. I got back into my chair and went for a little ride, partly to get the lie of the land, partly to flush out any watchers. My nurse came out of a room only two doors away from mine as I passed and with a great show of anger wheeled me back and commanded me to bed. But I’d noted that the room she came out of was lined with medical cabinets.

  I asked for a sleeping tablet that night. She went out leaving my door open. I counted her steps. Just enough for the room I’d seen. She returned with a brown capsule. I studied the name on it before taking it.

  The following day I felt much stronger but my mental state was just the same and all that the returning strength meant to me was that death was much more easily accessible.

  I timed my move for after the doctor had examined me that morning. He pronounced
himself very satisfied with my progress and then went out with his little crowd of acolytes, my nurse among them. The moment the door closed, I got out of bed and went and opened it a fraction. The procession was disappearing round the furthermost corner of the corridor. I moved as swiftly as I could to the medical store-room. It was empty. Locating the cabinet which contained the sleeping capsules took only a moment. It was locked but I’d brought with me a spoke removed from the wheels of my wheelchair earlier that morning and bent into a useful picklock shape. Two minutes later I was back in my room with a couple of hundred capsules, congratulating myself on a perfect crime.

  I was mad, of course. Not for planning to kill myself—that’s an area of ethical vagueness which I’ll leave to the philosophers—but for planning to do it in a hospital. There I was, telling myself it’s the best place on earth to use as a launching-pad for the next world, and ignoring the fact that it’s full of instruments and expertise for keeping you in this. Even if I’d got hold of some fast-acting poison, it would have made poor enough sense. But sleeping tablets! Jesus!

  Well, perhaps it’s like the shrinks say, just a cry for help. If so, it was heard with commendable speed. Perhaps I’d been spotted going into the store-room. I don’t know. But I hadn’t even started taking the damn things when my nurse and a couple of muscular orderlies came rushing in. They wouldn’t listen to my protestations of emptiness which in any case are hard to maintain at a high level of coherence when someone is shoving a tube down your throat. I hoped they felt sorry when they pumped up nothing but my continental breakfast, but I doubted it.

  The doctor returned, very Italian, very angry. He decided which of his patients lived or died, nobody else. He alone was responsible.

  He was also curious. Why had I done it? My wound was minor. There was a mystery surrounding my presence here, it was true, but I had official standing and as there were no armed guards sitting at the foot of my bed, I could hardly be a dangerous criminal intended for trial as soon as I’d recovered.

  I couldn’t resist the chance of sneering at his professional competence.