Caterina couldn’t tell whether it was regret or relief that lay behind the words, but it was clear Leonora didn’t wish to discuss it further. She stamped on the brake as they hit another bend.
‘I was told,’ Caterina said, ‘that your grandfather only employs male staff, but I only saw Octavia.’
Again the easy laugh.
‘Octavia isn’t staff. She’s his niece. My aunt.’
‘His niece? He doesn’t treat her like a niece.’
‘She lives there as his housekeeper.’
The loud blare of a car horn behind them shattered her sentence. The dog yanked its head in with a sharp bark.
‘Damn fool,’ Leonora snapped. ‘He can’t overtake here.’ She put her foot down and they leapt forward at increased speed, but the horn blared again.
‘Slow down, Leonora. Pull over. Let him go by.’
‘Stupido!’ Leonora blasted out her own horn.
Caterina twisted in her seat. Looming behind them was a large black Buick, right on their bumper, the big man in the driving seat stern-faced. He hooted again.
‘What the hell . . .?’
Trying to pass here was suicidal.
Leonora accelerated and for a split second the black car was left behind, but it quickly caught up and hitched itself to their bumper again. Caterina rolled her window down and leaned out.
‘You maniac,’ she shouted. ‘Pull back!’
‘Get off my tail,’ Leonora screamed.
The car slammed into their rear. The crunch from behind snapped their heads back and catapulted their vehicle forward. Leonora’s hands were slick with sweat on the wheel and for a second she lost her grip. She stamped on the brake, but the car behind was too heavy, its momentum too great, the slope of the road too steep. They slowed a fraction, skidding forward, wheels locked.
We’re going to die, thought Caterina.
Time seemed to unravel and thoughts scrambled in her head. Luca, she had promised to pick up Luca from school. She could smell the bruised orange in the American army major’s hand. Or was it the scent of the terraced lemon groves directly below her. Twenty, thirty, forty metres below her. She was going to die on the next bend.
She reached across and seized one side of the steering wheel, preparing to swing the car on to the wrong side of the road. Only then did her ears register Leonora’s low keening sound.
‘I don’t want my bella Bianchezza to die.’
‘We have to stop the car.’ Caterina’s words came jerkily. ‘Crash it against the rocks.’
‘No!’ Leonora started to scream. ‘No!’
‘Not over the cliff.’ Caterina tried to turn the steering wheel but Leonora fought her.
As if the black car could read her mind, it veered onto the opposite side of the road between them and the wall of rock. If any car came round the bend, they would all be dead.
‘Brake! Now! Now!’
But the other car was abreast of them and when Caterina looked across to Leonora she was staring straight into the driver’s face. Fierce eyes. A wide, mocking grin. A mountain of a man in a dark suit and with a heavy moustache. Thick muscular arms.
Her heart clawed at her lungs. She knew what was coming. She knew this was the end. The black Buick swerved and body-slammed their sedan with ferocious force. Grinding metal shrieked. Leonora’s door buckled. The steering wheel jerked free from her grip, and the car crashed through the flimsy barrier of undergrowth at the edge of the road.
No ground beneath them. No sound. As if the world had died.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The world came back. Not with a whisper. Not with the soft sigh of death. It came back to Caterina with Leonora being tossed across the car as it spun in a wild arc through the air. It came with a tortured shriek of steel and an explosion of glass. A mangled ripping of metal and an unexpected howling that she couldn’t place.
The car smacked to earth with an impact that jolted her spine, but her hands were fused to her seat with a grim grip. That’s what saved her when the car smashed its way down the steep terraces in an uncontrolled race to the sea.
It stopped. Quite suddenly. A sickening crunch. Then nothing. The car lay still. Nothing moved. Every bone in her body ached and something was wrong with her eyes because a spectacular light-show danced at the edge of her vision. A tree seemed to have sprouted out of the bonnet of their car and it took her a moment to make sense of it. The car was jammed against the trunk of a stunted umbrella pine that had put an abrupt halt to their descent.
‘Leonora?’
No reply. Caterina twisted round. Hands shaking. Her companion’s slender body lay face down, slumped between the seats, half in the front and half in the rear. It had a crumpled look to it and wasn’t moving. Caterina touched her back, her neck, her shoulder, calling her name, but no answer came. Glass sparkled like diamonds in her hair and a thin line of scarlet threaded through the white silk of her tunic.
Caterina knew she had to get them both out. Fast. She could smell petrol. She tried the door handle. It worked but the door didn’t budge. She hurled her shoulder against it but it was jammed, so she lay back on the seat and jack-knifed her feet against the buckled metal. With a sound like a gunshot it burst open and she tumbled out on to the stony ground, relief shuddering through her despite the precipitous slope of the mountainside on which she was sprawled. She scrambled to her feet, skidding in the dirt, and leaned inside the car.
The stench of petrol was growing stronger.
She wanted to run. To charge up the slope on all fours, to escape back to reality.
How could this be real?
The cream bodywork of the car had buckled, the front wing caved in, and it was now balanced precariously against the tree that had proved to be their saviour. Quickly Caterina reached in, grasped the inert body of Leonora and started to haul her from the car. One foot was caught between the seats. Caterina clambered inside to dislodge it, but as she did so she felt the vehicle shift and there was a groan from Leonora.
‘Leonora! Help me. Quickly.’
The young woman’s eyes rolled open but she could do nothing to help. Another jolt and the scraping sound of metal moving against metal sent the strength of fear surging through Caterina and she put both hands under Leonora’s armpits and yanked hard. They both spilled on to the ground. A trail of blood snaked from Leonora’s forehead on to the front of her tunic but Caterina knew she couldn’t stop to deal with it now. She knelt down and draped one of Leonora’s arms over her shoulder to lift her up and that was when she heard the snarl. She froze.
From under the car slunk a shadow, eyes intent on Caterina’s face, fangs bared to tear flesh from bone.
‘No,’ Caterina said, fighting to keep her voice calm, ‘no, no Bianchezza. I’m helping her, not hurting her.’
The dog’s belly skimmed the ground as it crept closer, each broad paw placed in front of the other with intent, its fierce gaze never leaving Caterina. A slash of blood swept down over its white coat from the point where a shard of glass was embedded in its neck, and all the time the blood-chilling snarl rose from its throat.
‘No! Get back.’
She could sense panic in herself, smell the petrol fumes, feel the limp weight of the wounded woman she was struggling to drag uphill.
Leonora moaned.
It was all the animal needed. It launched itself at Caterina.
The dog went for her throat.
Thirty-five kilos of solid muscle. Caterina could see strings of saliva as it flew at her, its black lips drawn back, its pale eyes consumed with fury.
She released Leonora. Instinctively her arms shot out to ward off the attack but she had not bargained on the weight of the animal. The impact sent her sprawling backwards on the ground and its jaws closed on the forearm she had raised to protect her throat. Pain ripped through her flesh and tore a scream from her throat. In desperation she slammed her other fist into the side of the animal’s head but it didn’t even blink. Its jaws closed tig
hter.
‘Down, Bianchezza!’
Leonora’s voice was weak but in an instant the attack ceased. The jaws released their hold. The dog backed off, its long tongue removing blood from its lips with fast efficient flicks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Leonora whispered in horror. ‘She was protecting me.’
Caterina’s arm felt on fire, but she forced herself to her feet. ‘Quickly, we have to get out of here.’
Using her good arm and with one eye still on the dog, she lifted the young woman to her feet, supporting her, and started up the slope towards the road.
‘Bianchezza is hurt,’ Leonora wailed when she saw blood oozing in thick rivulets from the dagger of glass embedded in the animal’s neck.
Right then Caterina wished the dog dead and buried, but she propped Leonora on her feet and bent to extract the piece of glass.
That was the moment the car exploded.
‘Caterina.’
The voice came from so far away that Caterina had to squint to find the person speaking somewhere on the horizon, but all she saw was sky. Thin and brittle. So bright it hurt. She had an odd feeling it was about to crack and fall down on her.
‘Caterina Lombardi.’
That voice. Again. She’d heard it before. But where?
‘Can you hear me?’
Yes, I can hear you.
‘It’s all right, you’re safe. We’re going to move you up to the house.’
The house? Which house?
A hand touched her face. Wiped her cheek. ‘Don’t cry.’
She wasn’t crying. Of course she wasn’t crying. Why would she cry? She was in her workshop, wasn’t she? She had a jewellery box to finish with . . .
With what?
She couldn’t remember. She could feel her teeth chattering and clamped them shut.
‘A doctor is coming.’
The voice. Again. But this time a face came with it. A voice and a face she knew, but she had no idea to whom they belonged. The face loomed closer. A woman with smooth black hair tied back, long silver earrings and a smear of blood on her chin, lips that were moving and saying words that slid away from Caterina’s grasp and tumbled down the mountainside.
Mountainside? Why was she lying on a mountainside? She tried to sit up.
‘Don’t move, Caterina.’
The sky cracked. Fragments of its bright blue shell fell down on her.
Caterina opened her eyes. Blinked. Opened them again. Where was she?
On a sofa.
She sat up and every muscle in her body groaned, stiff and sore, her arm throbbing as if one of the American Sherman tanks had driven over it. She looked down and found it neatly bandaged. What the hell had happened to it?
She glanced around her, swaying slightly, and noticed everything in the room was white. Realisation trickled back into her mind.
The car.
The dog.
Leonora.
How did she end up here, back in the ice palace?
‘You’re awake.’
The woman was there, a black shadow in one corner. She approached on silent feet, brisk and efficient.
‘How are you feeling?’
‘Sore. How is Leonora?’
‘She’s in bed. She has a gash on her head but the doctor has seen her. Nothing broken. You are both lucky it wasn’t much worse.’ Her cool gaze skimmed Caterina from head to toe. ‘Young bones,’ she murmured and there was a skin of envy to her words.
‘Someone forced us off the road,’ Caterina said, angered by the calmness of this woman. ‘Tried to kill us. How the hell could it be worse?’
Octavia di Marco narrowed her eyes and something close to a dart of amusement softened her mouth. ‘He could have succeeded.’
Caterina was questioned by a policeman who drove up to the Villa dei Cesari, a sallow man with bad skin, who tried unsuccessfully to hide the fact that he was overawed by his surroundings. The doctor had given her something for the pain in her arm, but it was her head that pounded relentlessly while she described again and again the man in the black car – big and swarthy, a felt hat and a moustache like a walrus. Only on the fourth time of telling did she dredge up the image of his beefy hand on the steering wheel with a hefty chunk of gold on his finger.
‘Grazie, signorina,’ the police officer said and finally snapped his notebook closed with a small sigh of relief. ‘I do not recognise the man from your description of your attacker in the car but I will look through our file of photographs. I will contact you if I find any that match it.’ He rose and said with genuine concern. ‘I wish you a speedy recovery.’
‘Surely you must be able to find that black car. It has to be badly damaged and this is a tiny island.’ She wanted to shake the small nervous smile off his face.
He tucked his cap under his arm and spread his hands helplessly. ‘It has vanished.’
‘Octavia, fetch the box.’
The tall woman regarded Count di Marco with unease.
‘Are you sure?’ she asked grudgingly.
‘Yes, I am.’
‘It won’t work.’
A thin smile spread across his lips. ‘It always works.’
Caterina watched her turn and walk stiffly into the villa, leaving behind her a pool of silence that Caterina felt no urge to disturb. They were back on the terrace, the Count still reclining on his bed of cushions, Caterina isolated once more on her small island of shade, as though he feared contamination. She wanted to say, ‘Go and sit by your granddaughter’s bedside, hold her hand, tell her you are glad she didn’t die.’
What was this box that the Count required? Her thoughts were fragmented, disconnecting from each other. She shook her head to clear it and felt a bolt of pain hit the back of her eyes.
‘Signorina?’
Caterina’s head twitched round. The two di Marco pairs of eyes were scrutinising her. She realised they had been speaking to her.
‘Be quick,’ the woman in black said to the Count. ‘She is not looking good.’
‘What is it you wish to say, Count?’ Caterina asked.
‘First, I want to thank you, Signorina Lombardi. You saved my granddaughter’s life. I am grateful, of course. She is the one destined to carry the di Marco name to the next generation.’ He frowned at her from under his canopy. ‘I am sorry you are upset.’
‘Upset?’ she hissed at him. ‘I have been questioned by American and British Intelligence Officers, my father’s name is being blackened, I have been attacked in a Sorrento street, my family has been threatened and now I have been forced off the road down a cliff in your granddaughter’s car and savaged by a dog. So yes, Count di Marco, you could say I am upset.’
He showed his teeth and she could not tell if it was a smile or a grimace.
‘Octavia, the box.’
The woman placed a box on the table beside his day-bed and as she did so Caterina recognised the similarity between them, the same high forehead, the same arrogant manner, the same ice in their veins. But it was the box that seized her attention. She wanted to snatch it from them.
‘Recognise it?’ he asked.
She nodded.
It was made of the palest sun-streaked sycamore. On its lid was a design of Romulus and Remus with the she-wolf, inset with tortoiseshell.
He reached out and unlocked it with a brass key, but it was facing him, turned away from her, so she could not view its contents. Octavia stood just outside the reach of his canopy, her face blank, but her fingers betrayed her as they gripped a button on her waistcoat and twisted the life out of it.
‘Your father made it,’ the Count reminded her.
‘I remember.’
It had been the year her mother left. Eleven years ago.
‘This is for you, Signorina Lombardi.’
The Count removed an envelope from the box, buff and bulky, and held it out to his disapproving niece who placed it on the chess table next to Caterina. She snatched it up, hoping it would contain a message from her father.
She flicked open the envelope.
Stupido!
Inside lay money. A thick wedge of banknotes that Caterina didn’t even touch. She replaced the envelope on the table.
‘I am not for sale.’
‘It is a thank-you.’
‘The only thank-you I want is the truth about what my father was doing.’
‘I have told you everything I know, signorina. The table was a commission for my daughter’s wedding.’
‘Why would someone want to push your granddaughter off a cliff?’
‘As I told the policeman, I have no idea and neither does she.’ He was observing her carefully, his face watchful. The breeze that rose up the cliff-face crept across the white marble to lift the hem of his robe. ‘Regard it as a fee.’
‘A fee for what?’
‘To find the table – if it still exists.’
She stood up. Too fast. The floor tilted under her feet. She picked up the buff envelope and tossed it on to the Count’s cushions.
‘Hire yourself a proper detective,’ she told him.
‘A detective will get nowhere, we both know that. This is southern Italy, not Rome. An outsider – like your Intelligence Officers – will get nowhere. We are close-lipped down here with strangers and we protect our own. If I am ever to see my jewelled table again, I need you to . . .’
‘No, Count Di Marco, I am going to clear my father’s name. If I find your table in the process, you will be the first to know.’
‘Don’t expect me to wait, young woman. Your father owed me those jewels when he died. The debt is a debt of honour. Don’t you forget that.’
The dog was lying on the white bed cover beside its mistress and lifted its heads with a flash of teeth and a low-throated growl of warning. The room was another ice chamber, without colour or soul.
‘I’ve come to say goodbye and to see how you are,’ Caterina said softly.
The face on the pillow was pale and delicate, fragile as lace. There was a bandage on Leonora’s head but she smiled and held out an unsteady hand.
‘Thank you, Caterina Lombardi. Thank you for . . .’
‘How are you feeling?’ Caterina interrupted. She hadn’t come here for thanks.
The Liberation Page 11
