Traitor's Blood
Page 27
Well, their departure saved me the bother of being angry. I’d had enough of anger. Besides, I felt so well I had no expectation of needing a doctor ever again, and as for Numero Siete, she’d been coming to the end of her service and in a few weeks I’d have been trading her in for Numero Ocho anyway. Not that I’d been in any hurry to choose a replacement. I wanted to be quite sure the next one wouldn’t be grinding glass into my chipi chipi soup!
In fact as it turned out, Numero Ocho chose me. She came out of the house now with a tray holding two steaming platefuls of sancocho. I smiled up at her and remembered her first appearance at the hacienda. I’d been lying here in this same position except that I was about ten times more bottled. There’d seemed to be little else to do in the months since my return and I suppose I’d taken fairly large steps towards alcoholism.
I’d heard a step on the verandah and through my drink haze assumed it was one of the guards. Then suddenly I felt my chinchorro being twisted round and as I crashed out of it to the wooden floor, a familiar voice said, ‘Don’t you know to stand up when a lady comes visiting, bucko?’
‘Reilly!’ I groaned. ‘How the hell did you get here?’
‘Just walked through your defence system, Lem, if that’s what you call it. I’d kick a few bums if I was paying anybody good money to defend me.’
I stood up and looked at her. She was changed but as extraordinary as ever. Her hair was now a dull ochre and had been cut very short and plastered against her skull. She wore no make up except some very dark eyeshadow. She was wearing Bermuda shorts and a sunhalter which only just succeeded in halting anything this side of decency.
Beside her on the verandah was an old battered suitcase.
‘Why’ve you come, Reilly?’ I asked.
‘Have you forgotten, bucko? I told you a long time ago soon after we met, if you beat me three times, you got to keep me. You did it. Here I am. Broke and out of work, I may add.’
We locked gazes. Gradually it dawned on me that, Angelica apart, there was no one else on earth I’d rather see.
I grinned widely and said, ‘Reilly, by a strange coincidence there’s an opening here that might just interest you.’
And that’s how I got Numero Ocho. Occasionally she asks me what the Spanish is for nine and I think for a while and then shake my head and say I don’t know. She seems very happy. I know I am. I correspond regularly with Angie, who has settled more or less permanently with her Carducci relatives in Rome. I’ve sent them the money and she and Teresa and Vasco are coming on a long visit next month and I wake up counting the days, like a little boy longing for Christmas. But each day I count is a happy day too, and the past is slowly becoming bearable again.
Reilly and I respect each other’s privacy. Neither of us probe. Gradually little by little I’m learning about her early life. As for her more recent past, when she came out of hospital she knew her shoulder, though mending, would never be as strong again. She also knew that in the Department she was an object of much resentment. There was little absolute proof against Percy, none at all against the Brigadier. And though it was generally agreed that she’d been right, it was generally preferred that she should have been wrong.
‘I can’t be looking over my shoulder all the time, especially when it’s busted,’ she’d explained. ‘I wanted somewhere safe, with someone I liked, someone who’s as good as me at the things that matter.’
Now we ate our meal together in companionable silence.
I broke it, saying casually, ‘Reilly, did I ever tell you what old Percy told me just before he died. Before I killed him?’
She shook her head. It was unnecessary. Both of us knew I’d never mentioned that day since her arrival on Margarita.
‘He told me that he and Mama were lovers before she met Pa. He told me that after she got married—it was one of those whirlwind affairs, only a couple of weeks’ courtship—he told me Mama discovered she was pregnant.’
‘By Percy?’
‘That’s what he told me,’ I said.
‘And so?’ she said.
‘I just wonder sometimes,’ I said. ‘I just wonder if after all they got me to do what they said—what you and the Brigadier said you wanted me to do in the first place. Kill my own father.’
‘Now that’d be really something, wouldn’t it?’ said Reilly softly. ‘But ask yourself this, Lem. What do you think your ma would have done in the circumstances? Being the kind of woman she seems to have been.’
I thought.
‘Told Pa, I guess.’
‘Right. And did your Pa ever treat you unlike his own son? Or rather do you think he’d have treated you different?’
I shook my head.
‘No. Pa treated me like his son, all right. That’s for certain.’
‘Well, then. Add to this that dear old Uncle Percy was probably the biggest liar either of us will have the privilege of meeting. Add all that up, and see what you get.’
I lay back in the chinchorro, rocking gently. Overhead the sky was a deep rich blue. Soon the stars would come pricking through.
Reilly said, ‘Hey, milord. Isn’t that what they call a Viscount? Though there’s still a strong school thinks you should lose the title, you know that?’
I said sleepily, ‘Who cares? Anyway, don’t forget that under Italian law I may be a Conte now.’
‘I never doubted it.’ She laughed. ‘What were you thinking of, conte?’
‘I’m trying to remember the Spanish for nine,’ I said.
She rose and came over to me and said throatily, ‘I’m going to stunt your education, bucko. Move over.’
I said, ‘For God’s sake, Reilly. Not in a chinchorro. You’ll bring the house down!’
‘That’s always my aim,’ she said. ‘Move over.’
She climbed in on top of me. Over her shoulder I saw a flight of scarlet ibis winging their way across the darkling sky, their wing-beats as strong as a swimmer’s arms driving his body through the flashing water, their movement as graceful as a sail-boat’s surge before a rising wind.
Then I saw no more.
About the Author
Reginald Charles Hill FRSL was an English crime writer and the winner of the 1995 Crime Writers’ Association Cartier Diamond Dagger for Lifetime Achievement.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1983 by the Estate of Reginald Hill
Cover design by Ian Koviak
ISBN: 978-1-5040-5976-3
This 2019 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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REGINALD HILL
FROM MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA
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