The Liberation

by Kate Furnivall

  ‘As I recall, my friend, you were the one in Cairo who had the joys of a dancer shaking her belly-button in your face in that bar where we . . .’

  His words dried. He forgot the smoky bar in Egypt. Out of the shadows of the doorway walked a young woman and every eye on the terrace turned to stare. It was Caterina Lombardi. But it was Caterina Lombardi looking very different from yesterday. She was still small and slight, but her dense dark hair was chopped short in an elfin style with a feathery fringe, and instead of the cinnamon work clothes of yesterday, she was wearing a sleeveless silk dress of ice-cream white with a cinched-in waist and a skirt of razor-sharp pleats that swayed around her slender hips with every step. But as she wove her way towards him, he couldn’t miss the stiffness in her walk, as though she were hurting, and the hard edge to her eyes beneath the thick lashes, accusing him of something, though he had no idea what.

  ‘Signorina Lombardi,’ he said, rising to his feet and holding out his hand, ‘this is an unexpected pleasure.’

  ‘Is it?’ She didn’t take his hand.

  ‘Let me introduce Captain Chester Fowles.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, ma’am.’

  She didn’t even look at him. In the unforgiving blaze of the sun Jake saw the greyish purple shadows circling her eyes, the raw graze in her hairline, the tension in the tendons of her long neck. Her mouth was set hard and a veil of something untouchable cut her off from the world. Her arm was bandaged above the wrist of her left hand.

  ‘What is it?’ he asked quickly.

  ‘I wish to speak to you.’ For the first time she switched her gaze to Chester. ‘In private.’

  They could have been lovers: heads close together, voices secretive, lingering in the shade under the abundant orange trees while a pair of wood warblers serenaded them from a jacaranda tree. Jake led Caterina through the lush sub-tropical gardens of the Hotel Vittoria. The scent of citrus was warm and sweet in the air and the thick rubbery leaves of the spiky heliconias twisted in the sea breeze. There was a softness here, a gentle beauty that he thought would help soothe her. But he was mistaken. As she walked at his side he could feel a new hardness in her, a sharp bright edge. The elegance of her ice-cream dress and the delicacy of her different hairstyle hid none of her anger.

  ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘what happened.’

  ‘There’s something I need you to do, Major. It will help us both.’

  ‘What is that?’

  ‘There is a family in Sorrento who may have information about my father that would be useful. I can’t go to them myself because they will not talk to me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because there is bad blood between our families.’ A flush rose up her pale throat.

  ‘The Cavaleris?’

  She turned to face him. ‘How do you know about the Cavaleris?’

  ‘It is my job to know.’

  She stared at him far too long and then moved deeper into the cool shade, as though to escape from him.

  ‘Tell me what happened to your arm?’ he said.

  ‘A dog bit me.’

  ‘I’m sorry. But I have a feeling there was more to it than that.’

  ‘What makes you say so? And don’t tell me it’s your job to know.’

  ‘You are walking stiffly. You can hardly turn your head. Your shoulder looks swollen and there is a scrape on your forehead. Have you been in an accident?’

  For the first time today the corners of her mouth softened a fraction. ‘You are good, Major Parr. Sharp eyes. It is no wonder you are an Intelligence investigator.’

  ‘I used to be a police officer in Milwaukee back before the war.’

  She studied him, nodded and turned away. Sunlight edged between the leaves of the orange trees and dappled her cheek, highlighting the tension in the muscles under her skin. Why the hell did he tell her about being a police officer? Usually he kept that private. But he wanted her to trust him.

  ‘How did the accident happen?’

  ‘I was forced off the road in Capri. A man in a black Buick slammed into the car I was riding in and sent us skidding down the cliff.’

  ‘And you blame me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because one day you questioned me in the street and the next I am attacked. They made it clear that they are going to kill me.’

  She again moved away from him, this time to a circular bed of sugar-pink roses that were lazing in the sun. He let her stand there alone for a moment, the fingers of her right hand cradling one of the velvety blooms before he went to stand at her side.

  ‘I intend to find these people,’ he promised her. ‘But I will need your help.’

  She nodded, but did not look away from the flower in her hand. He laid a hand gently on her bandaged arm.

  ‘Tell me what happened, all of it. We will need to work together.’

  So she told him. About the commission in her father’s order book for the jewelled table, about her trip out to Capri and the Villa dei Cesari, about the sterile whiteness of it, the disturbing strangeness of Count di Marco and the fragility of the girl with the dog. She spoke quietly and calmly and if he didn’t already know her better he might have thought she was talking about someone else. Someone she scarcely knew.

  ‘We left the villa in Leonora di Marco’s car and as we were driving down the mountain a black car pulled alongside us and deliberately rammed us. We crashed over the edge and ended up jammed against a tree. It gave us a brief moment to escape before the car blew up.’ She shivered.

  ‘The dog bite?’ he prompted.

  ‘The animal turned on me when I was hauling Leonora out of the car. It was trying to protect her. I can’t be angry with it. It is a loyal creature.’

  Loyalty was something she prized, he could hear it in her voice. She made little fuss of the crash but Jake had seen in her eyes today what it had done to her.

  ‘Did you contact the polizia?’

  ‘Yes. A policeman came to the villa and took a statement from us.’

  ‘The di Marco girl?’

  ‘She survived.’

  ‘The black car?’

  ‘Disappeared, apparently.’

  ‘It’s a small island.’

  She uttered a small angry sound. ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘But no luck finding it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What about the person in the other car? Did you get a look at the driver?’

  She ripped the head off the rose and threw it on the earth. ‘He was big and muscular. He filled the side window, a huge shoulder in a black suit, menacing and . . .’ She grew silent as she stared down at the ruined rose.

  ‘And frightening?’ he finished for her.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you describe his face?’

  She shook her head, her forehead creased with effort. ‘Not really, it happened too fast. I had the impression of a thick moustache and heavy features. There was a ring on his finger on the steering wheel, a large chunk of gold on his right hand.’

  He could sense her frustration. It matched his own, but he changed the subject, knowing from experience of questioning witnesses that more details would come if she stopped pulling and prodding at it. He drew out his cigarettes and she accepted one with a nod, watching him as he lit them both with a match struck by his thumbnail.

  He inhaled a lungful of smoke. ‘What made you think I’d be here at the Hotel Vittoria?’

  She ruffled a hand through the unfamiliar strands of her cropped hair. ‘I called on the off-chance.’ She observed him from head to toe, taking in his crisp army shirt and mohair tie tucked between the second and third buttons according to regulations, his shoes buffed to a glassy sheen, but above all the bar of military awards above the left pocket of his jacket. She spread her arm to encompass the sumptuous hotel.

  ‘It’s the kind of place you Americans would go,’ she said and laughed. It was a small private laugh that stung Jake more than it should h
ave.

  ‘So,’ he adopted a police officer’s official tone, ‘you came to ask me about the Cavaleri family.’

  ‘Yes. They are the ones who have reason to blacken my father’s name.’

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because . . .’ her brown eyes became blank, blocking him out, ‘because eleven years ago my mother ran off to Rome with Roberto Cavaleri, the head of their family. It nearly destroyed their business and brought shame on us all.’

  She didn’t look away. Jake knew she wanted to but she kept her eyes fixed on his, despite the colour that flooded her cheeks. He was acutely aware of what shame meant to an Italian.

  ‘That must have been tough,’ he said.

  He saw her stiffen. She didn’t want his pity.

  He continued briskly, ‘So it’s just as well that I have an appointment to see Signor Stefano Cavaleri this morning, isn’t it?’

  Her eyes widened with surprise and the cigarette burned unheeded in her hand, but at last she gave him a real smile.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The house sat back off the road at the edge of town, keeping itself to itself. It was a fine single-storey stuccoed building, long and elegant, the kind of place Jake wouldn’t mind living in himself. Its terracotta tiles gleamed golden in the sunlight and the courtyard at the front was a blaze of colour with bougainvillea scaling the honey-coloured walls and scarlet geraniums climbing out of stone troughs. But as Jake approached, he became aware of the air of neglect that hung around it. The walls and shutters were cracked and peeling, crying out for a coat of paint, but that was nothing unusual in a country where paint had become a luxury item that could only be bought on the illegal black market. And then only for a king’s ransom.

  But the neglect ran deeper. Weeds had colonised the courtyard cobbles and in one corner an ancient fig tree was collapsing drunkenly to the ground. Dusky lizards flitted among its branches and the sweet scent of figs lingered in the air. A skinny goat huddled in a patch of shade near a water barrel, its droppings baked iron-hard by the sun. Jake arrived bearing cassata-filled pastries in one hand and his identity card in the other, but not for one moment did he anticipate a warm welcome.

  As he entered the courtyard a mongrel that was draped across the threshold, announced his arrival to the household, startling the goat. A man was quick to appear in the doorway. Mid-forties, thin-bellied and with thickly bristled jowls, he looked the kind of man who kept a shotgun behind the door. He was wearing a wine-stained vest and a workman’s dusty blue trousers, patched at the knee.

  ‘Major Parr?’

  ‘That’s me.’

  Jake held out his identity card and the man snatched it from him. ‘I am Stefano Cavaleri.’

  So this was the brother of the man who ran away with Caterina’s mother.

  ‘Good morning, Signor Cavaleri. I would like a few words if I may.’

  He presented the pastries plus two packs of the American cigarettes that servicemen received free and the man’s heavy features broke into a greedy smile.

  ‘Benvenuto, Major. Come inside.’

  ‘Grazie.’

  They walked into a spacious hallway that was cool and dim after the glare outside, with a high vaulted ceiling, but bare of furniture. Signor Cavaleri continued to inspect Jake’s card.

  ‘Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives Officer attached to the Allied Military Government,’ he read aloud. ‘What in God’s name does all that mean?’

  ‘It means I’m here to ask you some questions.’

  They entered a pleasant room with tall windows overlooking the emerald slopes of the hills and a mosaic floor of turquoise tesserae. The upper layer of the walls was nicotine-stained and the leather of the chairs was as wrinkled as an old man’s skin. Another dog sprawled on one of them. Jake was not invited to sit down.

  His host stood in the centre of the room and scratched his armpit thoughtfully. ‘What kind of questions?’

  ‘Questions about Antonio Lombardi.’

  Cavaleri reacted as if Jake had given him a shot of bourbon. The sag of his shoulders vanished. He became as alert as a gundog.

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I’m here to find out about his wood-inlaying business.’

  The man sneered. ‘The bastard is dead.’

  ‘I am aware of that.’

  ‘So what is Lombardi to the United States Army? Why the interest in him?’

  ‘It’s like this, Signor Cavaleri. Certain valuable items of antique furniture have gone missing.’ He paused. Let that sink in. ‘I am making enquiries among cabinet-makers, woodworkers and restorers in this area because Sorrento is a famous centre for wood skills. I wish to learn if any of them have been approached by people looking to use those skills to make repairs to bomb-damaged valuable pieces.’

  He watched Cavaleri closely. Jake was quick at spotting lies; at picking out the tightening of the eyes, fine threads of deceit at their corners, the downward twitch at the sides of the mouth, the slight stiffening of the fingers. That was one reason he was good at his job.

  ‘Do you know of anyone,’ he asked, ‘who is going round these parts with requests for restoration work on antiques?’

  ‘No.’

  Liar.

  ‘Has anyone approached you to do this kind of work?’

  ‘No.’

  Liar.

  ‘Do you know whether Lombardi was involved in such activities before he died?’

  ‘I heard rumours.’

  ‘What kind of rumours?’

  Cavaleri shrugged. He opened up one of the white packs of Lucky Strike and flicked out a cigarette. He didn’t waste one on Jake, who waited with a show of patience, hands in his trouser pockets, watching his man buy time for his next lie. Cavaleri struck a match on the rough wall and touched the flame to the tip.

  ‘The rumour is that he was into dirty business. Maybe even working with the Camorra,’ he said.

  Jake breathed out heavily. The Camorra was bad news. It was the name of Naples’ own personal mafia, in control of drugs, whores, gambling, protection money, kidnap, stealing of medicines from the Allied hospital and every other dirty violent racket that he could think of. It was the rotten underbelly of the city. The jeweller with the crushed windpipe, whose white and bloated corpse had been hauled out of Naples’ filthy harbour three days earlier, bore the marks of a Camorra killing, with cement blocks fixed to his ankles. But Jake had learned the hard way that you could never be sure. People imitated their methods. To divert attention. To hide tracks.

  ‘Tell me about the Lombardi family,’ he said quietly.

  ‘Lombardi?’ Cavaleri said the name as if it tasted sour on his tongue.

  ‘I’m told there is bad blood between your family and the Lombardis.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘Everybody.’

  ‘People should stay out of my business.’

  ‘Somebody has been spreading those bad rumours about Antonio Lombardi. Accusing him of being involved in crime.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Was it you?’

  Cavaleri grinned, revealing good teeth. ‘No.’

  A lie? The grin made it hard to spot.

  ‘Okay, tell me about Lucia Lombardi instead.’

  It was like dropping water into a pan of hot oil. It spat everywhere.

  The thin Italian seized a dog’s enamel water bowl that lay on the floor and hurled it at Jake’s head. He sidestepped it with ease but water sprayed his neck and the dog leaped off the seat, growling.

  ‘Get out!’ Cavaleri bellowed, his cheeks the colour of the wine stains on his vest. ‘Get out of my house or I’ll . . .’

  From the back of his waistband he whipped out a knife. It had the look of a butcher’s knife, long-bladed and honed to a razor edge. Jake felt a torrent of adrenaline hit his system at the sight of death coming at him.

  ‘Calm down,’ he said evenly, stretching one hand out flat towards the oncoming Italian, his other hand leaping to the
gun-holster at his hip. He had shot men before. But never this close, never when he could smell their breath and hear their fingers chafing on the bone handle of the blade.

  ‘Put it down,’ he ordered, ‘before I . . .’

  ‘Stefano! Bastardo. Stop that at once.’

  Stefano Cavaleri froze. Eyes full of rage. Yet the blade paused in mid-air, suspended inches from Jake’s clean buff shirt, and the owner of the voice stepped into the room.

  ‘Don’t be a gutter-brained fool, my son.’

  Jake allowed his head to turn a fraction. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a woman clothed in black to her ankles, grey hair hidden in a black beaded net, taller than her son and her back as straight and stiff as a rifle barrel. But what struck Jake was her face. It was the face of a warrior.

  ‘A glass of Marsala, Major Parr?’

  ‘Grazie.’ Jake hated the sweet liquor. He smiled.

  The bottle that Signora Cavaleri produced was dusty, as if it usually sat at the back of a cupboard, only seeing the light of day on rare occasions. Times were hard.

  ‘You must excuse my son,’ she said. ‘He has the manners of an ox. But he is right. We do not speak the name of that woman in this house.’

  ‘My apologies, signora. I did not mean to offend.’

  They were seated in the wrinkled armchairs and Stefano regarded him with ill-temper through a haze of cigarette smoke while his elderly mother poured their guest a drink. She had the hands and the skin of a woman in her late seventies who had lived and worked in a hot country all her life, but she possessed the vigour and demeanour of a much younger woman. Her features were mannish, large and strong with a heavy brow, though her voice was deliberately soft. But Jake wasn’t fooled by her courteous tones. Her face revealed who she was. There were deep lines of determination scored down her cheeks and a broad silvery scar ran right across her forehead, for all the world like the mark of a sabre.

  ‘So you want to know about the Lombardi family, Major.’

  Her son opened his mouth to say something but she gave him a hard look that silenced him at once.

  ‘Major?’ She waited for Jake’s response.

  ‘Yes. I am enquiring whether anyone has been approaching local wood craftsmen to work on damaged antique furniture. Your business is respected in Sorrento.’