Traitor's Blood

by Reginald Hill

  He was getting to her, I could see that. The gun wavered slightly and she began to look uncertain. Whatever the Brigadier was telling her made some sense, but the only kind of sense it made to me was no sense at all.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about, Brig?’ I demanded.

  Reilly said, ‘Later, Lem. Leave it alone for now.’

  Perhaps the Brigadier read this implied promise that for me there was going to be a ‘later’ as a sign that he’d failed to persuade Reilly. In any case, he suddenly switched tactics.

  ‘No, he has a right to know,’ he said sneeringly. ‘Every fool has the right to study his own folly. And I think he’s guessed anyway, haven’t you, Mr Swift?’

  ‘Guessed what?’ I cried.

  ‘That we’re talking about Sir Percival Nostrand, your beloved godfather, Uncle Percy.’

  ‘Uncle Percy?’ I echoed. ‘But he’s … he’s …’

  ‘He’s what? A fat old civil servant, with a taste for mature brandy and immature boys? The loyal defender of the Bessacarr clan? Oh, Mr Swift, how you have let yourself be deceived!’

  Reilly said, ‘For God’s sake, let it alone, Brigadier!’ as I stood paralysed. But the Brigadier did not want me paralysed.

  He continued harshly. ‘He deceived you even in his alleged taste for young men, Mr Swift. His tastes were much more catholic than that. Hot, lush, and Latin Catholic, you might say. Oh, he was a good friend to at least one of the Bessacarrs, a very good friend, as close as you can get. Who introduced your mother to your father, Lem? And who was your mother with on that last night?’

  The provocation was deliberate and irresistible.

  Reilly grasped what was happening but that itself was part of the Brigadier’s tactics. With a scream of rage, I bent to grasp Pietro’s discarded baton. Reilly cried, ‘Lem!’ and put out her hand to restrain me. I grabbed at it and tried to fling her aside, but she was too well balanced for that. But she did stagger a couple of paces, the gun moved off line, and the Brigadier saw his chance.

  He came at a low run, incredibly fast for a man of his age. His right shoulder held low like an American footballer carrying out a block crashed into Reilly and set her cannoning against me. I fell backwards over Pietro’s body. Reilly came down hard on top of me. And the Makarov went skittering across the stone floor.

  The Brigadier was too bright to be interested in a catch-as-catch-can contest with two of us. He backed off towards the door, his right hand scrabbling for the butt of a pistol holstered in the small of his back. But old muscles decay, and he must have damaged his shoulder against Reilly’s solid hip and he was winning no prizes in a fast-draw competition.

  Reilly went diving in pursuit of the Makarov. I seized the late Pietro’s baton and started to rise, eager to conduct a little elegiac music on the Brigadier’s head. He’d got his pistol out at last but before he could raise it, the athletic Reilly had reached the Makarov and rolled round, firing.

  The Brigadier was hit. I saw a line of blood drawn across his left temple as though by a felt-tip pen. He raised his hand to the wound in a weary saluting gesture. It could only have broken the skin, but it seemed also to break his spirit. Or perhaps there was another of Reilly’s slugs elsewhere in his body.

  Whatever, he made no attempt to return the fire but turned and fled.

  ‘You OK, bucko? panted Reilly.

  ‘Yeah. That was lousy shooting,’ I said.

  ‘Ha ha. Come on.’

  We went running through the echoing church. There’s a thing called the multiplication of sins which gives you two or more for the price of one, as for instance if you rape a nun. I wondered how high Reilly had already sent the divine till clicking by blowing away those two Red Brigade yo-yo’s in the vestry. She was clearly bent on pushing her credit to the limit, but either the Makarov had jammed or the clip was empty, and ahead of us the Brigadier had reached the exit without further perforation. But we were closing fast.

  Reilly reached the open door just ahead of me and stopped so quick that I ran into her.

  ‘Hold it!’ she ordered, pulling the door to so that just a crack remained.

  I peered through and saw that she’d been wise.

  The promised riot had just exploded out there. What precisely had triggered it off, God knows. Eventually everyone would blame everybody else, but the one explanation no one would come up with was that the Red Brigade had orchestrated it so that the body of an English crook could be found among the other debris with his head beaten in.

  I shuddered and watched.

  The police were coming in from both sides of the small piazza in front of the church. The tactic was obvious. Drive those in the square and the terrace down on to the Spanish Steps, forcing the crowd there to descend into the waiting arms of the police below. The riot shields flashed in the sunlight and the flailing batons were already bloody. The air was filled with missiles and shrieks of terror and of rage.

  Right into this maelstrom of panicking bodies plunged the Brigadier. Normally the Italians have a great respect for the silver hairs of age, but not here, not today. No one was guaranteed safe conduct and a fast running man with a bloody head and a pistol in his hand didn’t even begin to qualify.

  A baton-blow which must have shattered his arm sent the pistol to the ground beneath the Obelisk. I saw him take another blow along the jaw, then he was swept up in the fleeing crowd and borne out of sight towards the Steps.

  The line of police advanced in inexorable pursuit, much as a Roman Legion must have advanced two thousand years before.

  ‘OK,’ said Reilly. ‘Let’s go.’

  ‘Out there?’

  It was the last place on earth for a sensible man to be, it seemed to me. But she too was as inexorable as any legionnaire and dragged me out.

  She’d at least put the pistol out of sight and once in the piazza she grasped my arm and together we tried to give the impression of a pair of terrified tourists inadvertently caught up in this dreadful riot. It wasn’t difficult in my case. I really was terrified. But I soon realized that, in fact, up here in the piazza, the main danger had passed. There were still police around but they were mainly attending to the needs of the numerous wounded who littered the square.

  We teetered through them to the balustrade over-looking the terrace. The scene below was like the famous Odessa massacre sequence in The Battleship Potemkin and I’d no doubt the left-wing press would work the parallel to death. A double line of riot police was descending the Steps in strict formation, driving the crowd before it. They didn’t need to use their batons. The barrier of their shields was like the shovel of a snow-plough and its irresistible pressure was avalanching the protesters into the square below. There they were being allowed to disperse with no more than a few valedictory swings from the police contingents stationed at each of the exits. The main physical danger to the demonstrators came from their fellows. Anyone slipping or being knocked over on the Steps was in real peril.

  ‘There!’ said Reilly. ‘There he is!’

  She pointed. Her eyes were better than mine. At first I found it quite impossible to make distinctions in that torrent of heads, seething and bubbling like a cobbled street in an earthquake, then I had him. But just for a moment.

  ‘He’s down,’ said Reilly.

  ‘How can you be sure?’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure,’ she said.

  The uniformed line continued its descent, passing over the bodies of the fallen with scarcely a hiccough. Some of these moved and sat up and began to explore their wounds. Others stirred or simply twitched. And a few lay quite still.

  ‘I see him,’ said Reilly.

  So did I. His body lay athwart the Steps, his head lower than his feet, but he was unmistakable.

  ‘He’s dead,’ I said.

  ‘Let’s take a look,’ she said. She was a real doubting Thomas, that Reilly.

  As we descended the Steps, a policeman tried to stop us. Reilly spat a couple of obscenities at him and waved a c
ard in his face and he sullenly retreated.

  ‘Still persona grata?’ I said.

  ‘For a little while,’ she said.

  We reached the body. There was no doubt it was a body. That immaculate blazer was covered with footprints and stained with a dull red and those piercing eyes were wide open and trying to intimidate the sun.

  ‘He died with his wounds on the front,’ I said asininely.

  ‘You want to look at his back?’ asked Reilly.

  I shook my head.

  She dropped own on one knee and began going through his pockets. I studied the scene in the square below. The police had swept the Steps clear and the remnants of the demonstration were running out of the piazza. There was still a lot of trouble in store, I guessed. I could hear the noise of distant shouting and the breaking of glass. I suddenly felt very tired.

  ‘Reilly,’ I said. ‘I came back to kill you. Both of you.’

  ‘And why not, bucko? But not here, not now, OK?’

  Why not? I wondered. Another death would hardly be noticed.

  Reilly said, ‘Oh shit!’

  She too was looking down into the Piazza di Spagna. The carabiniere she’d waved her card at was returning with an irritated-looking officer.

  ‘Let’s not complicate things by getting you arrested,’ she said. ‘I’d better stay here to clear up. You take off, bucko. Go on, scat!’

  ‘Where?’ I said helplessly. ‘Where shall I go?’

  She looked at me with an expression of almost Pa-like exasperation.

  ‘Back to the Cristallo,’ she said. ‘Go to 211, knock at the door, say who you are. Hurry!’

  I hurried, half trotting till I reached the Piazza Barberini where I picked up a cab. My return to the Hotel Cristallo was greeted with far less indifference than my first arrival. The receptionist’s face showed real emotion as he rushed from behind to greet me.

  The reason wasn’t far to see. Or rather to smell. Whatever it was I’d put into my case had now achieved a ripeness second only to very, very old gorgonzola, and its emanations must have been heavier than air for they had descended all the way from the fourth floor to the vestibule.

  I shook my head and pushed him aside, making for the staircase. He probably thought I was going to do something about it, but he was crazy if he imagined I was going to go into a room smelling like that! I reached the second floor and knocked at 211.

  There was no reply. I knocked again.

  Then I said in Italian, ‘Excuse me, this is …’

  This is who? What had Reilly meant when she told me to say who I was?

  I tried my borrowed Italian name.

  No response.

  Then I tried Alexander Evans.

  Still nothing.

  Finally, feeling by now extremely light-headed, I banged hard on the woodwork and almost shouted, ‘This is Antonio Lemuel Ernest Sebastian Stanhope-Swift, 6th Viscount Bessacarr. Open up!’

  Now there was movement inside. The sound of a key turning.

  And slowly the door opened, just a fraction.

  I looked incredulously at the face which peered through the crack.

  ‘You?’ I said. ‘You?’

  I thrust the door open, a wild hope welling up inside me. So wild it was that even when it was realized, I still hesitated, suspecting illusion or deception.

  Then I was pushing past my nephew, Vasco, and running towards my daughter who rose from the edge of the bed to greet me.

  26

  … grave lack of trust …

  Reilly and I sat together high above the sunlit Alps. The pilot was waxing enthusiastic about them but to me they were just pink and white rock.

  I’d left Angie in Rome, safely lodged with the family of one of Vasco’s brothers. I’d have liked to stay longer with her and to see Teresa who was doing well and would soon be out of hospital, but Reilly had advised that the quicker I made my exit, the better. So in twenty-four hours, Alexander Evans was on his travels again.

  I said, ‘She will be OK, won’t she?’

  Reilly nodded as if she hadn’t heard it ten times already.

  ‘In the first place, it’s too late to shut them up.’ She said. ‘And in the second place all those who ever thought it worth while shutting them up are shut up themselves.’

  I nodded. Certainly the men who’d been given the job of contriving the accident on the Amalfitana were shut up. Reilly had shut them up in their car before sending it over the edge.

  When I’d thanked her with an emotional fervour she clearly found embarrassing, she’d said dismissively, ‘The whole thing was beginning to smell like O’Leary’s pigs. So I came back alone to have a poke around and when I saw the kids being taken off like that, I thought I’d like a word with them myself. And I couldn’t talk with them if I let them be pushed over a cliff, could I?’

  I still found it hard to believe what I’d heard about Uncle Percy, even though Reilly gave me chapter and verse. It wasn’t till she gave me Kim’s confession that I was totally converted.

  ‘Why didn’t Pa mention him when we were together?’ I wondered.

  ‘In the bedroom while the kids were there, he knew that any reference to Percy would make it absolutely certain they had to be dumped. And afterwards, you were a bit busy from the sound of it. Though at the very end when he told you to swim to the Emerald Grotto and “still persevere”, it wasn’t just your lily-white body he was worrying about. After all, at that juncture he thought you were a dying man too. No, I suspect what he really said was something like kill Percy. That’s what I guess his plan was. All this business about trials and press conferences was a misreading. He just wanted to sort out the man who’d betrayed him before he died.’

  ‘Betrayed,’ I echoed. ‘All that stuff about Percy and Mama that the Brigadier implied, what about that, Reilly?’

  ‘Can’t help you there,’ she said firmly. ‘Yes, he did have lady friends as well as young men, I’ve picked up that on the departmental grapevine. But as for your ma, Lem, that’s up to you to decide.’

  ‘The bastard,’ I said. ‘No wonder Pa found the strength he did to try and get back at him. Some things need to be done personally.’

  Reilly looked at me warningly.

  ‘Leave it to the experts, Lem. There’s two or three I know I can trust. I’ll be talking to them when I get back. They’ll sort the old sod out.’

  I settled back in my seat, saying, ‘You’re the boss.’

  At Heathrow we got a taxi. Reilly told the driver to make for the West End, adding, ‘And let’s not be having any of your scenic tours.’

  The driver rolled his eyes in mute indignation.

  ‘Nice to see you saving public money, Reilly,’ I observed. ‘Where are we going, as a matter of fact?’

  ‘I’m going to put you somewhere safe. They’ll likely want to talk to you when I tell them what’s happened.’

  ‘Likely,’ I agreed. ‘And after they’ve talked, what then?’

  ‘Drop you in the sea half a mile off Margarita so you can swim ashore and tell the authorities you’ve been kept bound and blindfolded by the FALN till just now you made a miraculous and heroic escape,’ she said.

  She didn’t sound convincing or convinced. I felt she’d got it almost right, only it wasn’t half a mile off but half a mile above Margarita they’d be dropping me. I found myself thinking a lot about the island which I thought I’d said goodbye to forever. Dr Quintero must have thought he’d said goodbye to me forever also. Well, he was in for a shock, not to mention Numero Siete who, according to Reilly, had helped doctor my food to produce the early symptoms.

  ‘You can’t expect loyalty from a number,’ commented Reilly.

  ‘I’ve not done so well with names either,’ I said and went on, ‘Reilly, what was the plan for me if I’d actually played along and killed Pa?’

  ‘What? But you didn’t, bucko! I knew you never would. You’re not the pa-killing type. You have to be either crazy or fitted up by the gods to do a thi
ng like that.’

  ‘I acted as gun-dog,’ I said. ‘And there must have been some contingency plan. So, what would you have done with a patricide who thought he was dying of cancer? Would you have told me it was all an April Fool after all?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Not me. I’d have set about curing you, put you on a course of Interferon perhaps.’

  ‘How kind. On the National Health? It’s rather expensive stuff, I believe.’

  She shook her luminescent locks.

  ‘No way. I’d have sold you the stuff, bucko. Top rate.’

  I laughed, but I wasn’t sure she was joking.

  Our destination proved to be a stale-smelling bedsit in Earl’s Court. The stairway and landing weren’t exactly fresh, but I’d grown used to that by the time Reilly got the door open and by contrast the smell from the room was like opening an old coffin.

  Reilly went in and did what I took to be a series of checks. ‘It’s OK. No one’s been here,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t doubt it. We’d have found them unconscious on the stairs, else,’ I rejoined. ‘What is this place? What you call a safe house?’

  ‘My own personal safe house,’ she said. ‘Not the department’s. I’m sorry about the pong, bucko, but I seal it up really tight, that’s part of my security system, and I think when they stuffed the sofa with horse hair, they left some bits of horse attached. Well, make yourself at home.’

  It wouldn’t be easy, I thought, looking around. Besides the offending sofa there was a narrow truckle bed, a balding card table, a single cane chair and an old fashioned hat-stand, seven foot tall, which held what looked like an Arab’s head-dress and a brand new bowler.

  ‘Entertaining the bosses?’ I said, nodding towards this last.

  Reilly opened a cupboard.

  ‘You’ll have to starve for a while,’ she said. ‘But there’s some scotch here. I’ve only got half-pint tumblers, but I dare say you’ll not be complaining at that?’

  She tossed me a full bottle of Tomatin and a glass. I caught them, but only just.