But a dangerous thought skidded into Caterina’s head. What if the dog had not been there? What if they had been alone on the edge of the cliff ? Would this tall masculine woman have silently pushed them both over the precipice?
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Jake Parr was in a foul mood. He was propping up a bar. It was at the back of the grand ballroom of the Palazzo Vanucci, a Baroque over-ornamented mansion that had been turned into a noisy, vibrating nightclub, the Pompeii Club. Jake’s attention was only half on the band on stage, who wore stiff white jackets and the smiles of men doing what they loved best. He envied them that. In one hand he nursed the dog-end of a Lucky Strike and in the other a straight bourbon. It was his third. It would not be his last. Jake had had almost no sleep this week, working long nights as well as days. He was only here now because that bastard Colonel Quincy had ordered it.
‘Be there,’ his senior officer had bellowed down the telephone.
The line crackled, breaking up. The repairs to the Naples telephone exchange were far from complete. It was a never-ending task for the British Army Royal Engineers and the wires were constantly being cut, stolen from the telegraph poles to sell on the black market alongside the army blankets and army petrol.
‘I want a SITREP,’ Quincy had informed him. A situation report. ‘Are you hearing me on this blasted line?’ Jake winced as Quincy banged the receiver on something hard to try to clear the disturbance. ‘I’ll see you there tonight, Major.’
Jake had abandoned the receiver and continued to trawl through a long list of names supplied to him by the Office of Housing and Relocation. It had been set up to deal with the homeless. But it was depressing. The office was swamped. Hell, half of the inhabitants of this benighted city were homeless, bedding down alongside the rats in mounds of rubble or huddled in the dirt in doorways, but right now, that wasn’t Jake’s problem, thank God. He already had enough of his own.
He was searching for a name. Sal Sardo’s to be exact. Okay, the guy was dead, but that wasn’t the point here. Sal had claimed to be one of the homeless, but if Jake could pinpoint him to an address – even an old one – he could maybe discover more about his previous whereabouts and which guys he did business with. It was a long shot.
That’s why the bourbon was firmly in his grip now in the nightclub and his expectations were way down deep in his boots. But that wasn’t his only gripe. The Lombardi girl had walked out on him. Without a word. Just like that. She’d upped and left while he was grilling Sal Sardo in the interrogation room, as if she’d lost interest in the whole sordid business, and he couldn’t blame her. Except for one thing. Her father. Where exactly did Papà Lombardi fit into this darn mess?
He’d seen her face, the way it fell apart when she set eyes on the triptych in the basement. It was obvious that she had recognised her father’s work instantly. She knew what it meant, and it was like watching a snared rabbit have its guts torn out. Not a sound escaped her lips. But it did something bad to Jake’s insides to see what he’d done to her.
He was a fool. Hadn’t he learned his lesson? Once before, he’d felt sorry for an Italian woman getting the shit beaten out of her in the street and he’d ended up with a thumping great bullet-hole in his chest, courtesy of the woman herself.
Don’t get involved, Jake reminded himself. Stay objective. The first rule of any good cop. But it was too late, he was already involved, dammit, each time he pictured that new elfin fringe fluttering on her forehead or recalled the warmth and weight of those strong hands of hers tight on his hips. Constantly he heard in his head the echo of her voice, sad and empty, when she said to him, ‘I want their names. These people who accuse my father. You owe me that much.’
He downed the last of his drink and felt it hit where it was needed. He stubbed out the cigarette butt in a pool of beer inside an ashtray and heard it hiss. He let the Big Band music that whipped through the room melt some of the tension that was making his bones feel as though they were held together by red-hot metal screws. It was a Benny Goodman number – Sing, Sing, Sing – and it suited his mood. All discordant trumpets and pounding of jungle rhythms on the drums. They blurred the smoky air, took the edge off the sharp bursts of laughter at the tables, as the room seemed to sway and a clarinet set out on its lonely sultry solo.
Jake stared at the glass in his hand. Half full again. When did that get there? Faces came and went, but the one he wanted to see wasn’t here. Dimly he was aware of holding conversations with other men in uniform, the place was stuffed with them, a handful of female officers parading on their arms. But he was sick of khaki. In all its shades. With all it pips and stars and fancy medals. Sick to his stomach of war.
He concentrated instead on the glamorous couples on the dance floor, the ones in slinky shimmering gowns and glossy black evening-dress. The ones who looked clean. Untouched. As though they didn’t even know the meaning of the word war, as though they had never smelled the foul rancid stench of it or seen their diamonds dulled by blood in the air. To those, he raised his glass.
‘Major Parr! There you are.’
Colonel Quincy was advancing through the crowd. To hell with him. That wasn’t the face Jake wanted to see.
The brilliantine on Quincy’s ginger hair shone like firelight under the chandelier, and Jake could smell the woody scent of his cologne from three yards away. It made him wonder who his senior officer was meeting later and whether his wife back in the States knew about it.
They had moved away from the grand ballroom to what had clearly once been the palazzo’s music room. A choir of angels graced the ceiling and the vast black carapace of a grand piano gleamed in the centre of the oak floor. On the walls hung portraits of Italy’s great composers – Vivaldi, Rossini, Verdi and Puccini – a stern-faced audience to their conversation.
‘Get on with it, Parr. Let’s hear your report. I’m having dinner with some top brass tonight and they’ll want to know the latest from this unit. Make it good, man.’
‘Yessir.’
Quincy had chosen for himself the grandest chair in the room but it looked uncomfortable, his long limbs not settling. In one hand he cradled a brandy glass large enough to swan-dive into, and Jake noticed the way he swirled the amber liquid relentlessly round the curve of the glass, his own private tidal wave, the only sign of his impatience. Jake had parked himself on the piano stool. He had not been able to resist lifting the lid and allowing his fingers to caress the ivory soundlessly. It had been a long time, too long, since he had played. A war had come and inserted itself between his fingers and the silky feel of piano keys, thrusting a Colt .45 into his hand instead. He turned his back on them now and gave the British Army colonel his full attention.
Jake kept the debrief short. He’d save the details for the written report – whenever the hell he got around to it, but for now he just stuck to the main facts. He proceeded to inform Quincy of the storm that had broken out since Sal Sardo was murdered. People were scared. Informants were panicking, running for cover. Jake was having to increase the sweeteners on offer to entice them back into his office.
He had heard a rumour. There were always rumours whipping through the city, as elusive as smoke, sending him off on wild-goose chases that got nowhere, but this one came from a usually reliable source and Jake’s cop-nose could smell the meat in it. It ended up with Jake and one of the new recruits to his team staked out beside an old disused brick-making factory night after night. The painting they were on the hunt for was one of Mary Magdalene weeping at Christ’s tomb.
‘By some artist called Bronzino,’ he informed Quincy. ‘Or that’s what they say. Ever heard of the guy?’
Instantly the colonel leaned forward, green eyes glinting through narrowed lids, the brandy still spinning like a dervish in his glass.
‘Bronzino is one of the Florentine Mannerist painters, you ignoramus,’ Quincy said with the slow intonation of someone talking to a child. ‘Sixteenth century. Mixed styles of High Renaissance into the
early Baroque period. Not a favourite of mine. Portraits too icy. Too aloof. But he worked on a magnificent series of frescoes at the Certosa di Galuzzo monastery with his master, Pontormo, in 1522. The great Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo de Medici . . .’ he paused, his mouth a scornful line. ‘Even a philistine like you, Parr, will have heard of him, I presume.’ But he didn’t wait for a reply. ‘Cosimo de Medici became Bronzino’s patron. Died in 1572 at the Florence home of his pupil, Allori.’
Jake laughed out loud. ‘You never cease to amaze me, Colonel. That is impressive.’
Jake never got used to it. This intimate knowledge. However obscure or however famous the name of a painter, Quincy could reel off facts and dates the way other people recite nursery rhymes. But a flush was rising up over the sandy skin on Quincy’s throat and darkening the freckles on his cheeks. Warning signs.
‘Where the blazes is the painting now?’ he bellowed. The force of it made the piano hum.
‘It’s safe, sir. In our paintings depository. Securely under lock and key. I put it there myself this evening.’
The brandy ceased its dance. ‘And the men involved? At the factory. Did you arrest them?’
‘No, sir. Unfortunately the two men guarding the painting at night attacked us and I was forced to defend myself. They are both dead.’
There. It was said. The reason for his foul mood. The reason for the red mist in his mind. They say if you put a bullet directly into a man’s heart, there is not so much blood. But they say wrong.
‘What happened?’ Quincy growled.
‘They got wind of us. Attacked our position.’
That’s what came of working with a raw rookie, one who didn’t know the meaning of the order “Maintain silence”.’
A stillness took root in the music room, but it could not erase from Jake’s ears the wet sound of those two bullets finding their targets. He’d expected a dressing-down from Quincy, but instead the Englishman was grinning like a ginger Cheshire cat.
‘I’ll take a look at the Bronzino first thing in the morning,’ the Colonel announced and snatched a healthy swig of his drink, the liquid glistening like oil on his lips. ‘By the way, Major, I have a task for you.’
‘What’s that, sir?’
‘I had a drink earlier this evening with Signor Palmiro Togliatti. You know, the leader of the Italian Communist party. His politics may be dangerous claptrap, but he is becoming a powerful figure and it looks as though he could be head of the new government after the election. So we are obliged to work with the man.’
Jake studied him warily. Where was this going?
‘You know what his nickname is among his followers?’ Quincy demanded. ‘It’s Il Migliore. The Best.’ He grimaced. ‘Not a bad chap really, and he does seem to be dragging his fragmented party to the right. He is even disarming the Garibaldi Brigades, those bloody resistance fighters of his. I tell you, there is hope for Italy.’
He paused. Jake did not like the pause.
‘Anyway,’ the colonel rubbed a hand over his freshly shaven jaw, as though seeking a smooth path for his next words, ‘you must be aware that Togliatti’s Communist party consists largely of those partisan resistance factions who bore arms against Fascism. First against Mussolini and then against the Germans.’
Another pause. Wherever this was going, Jake knew it was nowhere he wanted to be.
‘They may be a bunch of misguided riffraff, brainwashed by Stalin,’ Quincy conceded, ‘but they are also fierce patriots. And more to the point, they have their ear very close to the ground.’ He waved his glass through the air, setting the brandy in motion again.
‘So, Togliatti and I have agreed a mutual exchange of information. His sources believe that a cache of artwork is hidden somewhere in the village of Sant’Agata up in the hills on the Sorrentine peninsula. They don’t know exactly where. So I want you to take your whole unit tomorrow and do a clean sweep of the location. House to house. Got that?’
‘Yessir.’
‘Good man.’ Quincy unravelled his spidery limbs and leapt to his feet. ‘You deserve a drink, Major.’
Jake wasn’t going to argue with that.
Jake spotted the arrival of the two young women in white gowns, elegant in their simplicity. Short stylish dark hair. No jewellery. Just their skins for ornamentation, as smooth and gleaming as satin. The one who walked in front was Caterina Lombardi.
What the hell was she doing here? And who was the girl with her?
Jake watched Caterina scan the room, eyes dark and suspicious, her chin held high in that way she had. Scenting the air.
What was she here for?
The moment her gaze found him, she carved a path through the drinkers and the dancers, through the smoke and the smiles, straight towards him. He was absurdly pleased to see her. He smiled a welcome and wrapped his hands around his glass to stop him wrapping them around her.
‘Major Parr,’ she said without preamble, ‘I am surprised to find you here. I thought you’d be out chasing artworks.’
Her hostility came at him like she’d stuck the muzzle of that prehistoric Bodeo pistol of hers right in his face.
‘Good evening to you, Caterina,’ he drawled amiably. ‘No, I’m just chasing a glass of good whisky tonight.’
‘So I see.’
‘And what is it that brings you to Naples this evening?’
She didn’t reply. Instead she glanced at her friend whom she did not introduce and they exchanged a look. Her friend flicked a beautifully arched eyebrow in the direction of a huddle of young Italian bucks in evening garb over by the bar and she shrugged one glossy naked shoulder. Impatient to join them. Jake was sorely tempted to ask her to move away, because he wanted Caterina to stay right here. There was something about her that was different, something he couldn’t quite pin down, but it raised goose-bumps on his skin and he examined her appearance, seeking it out.
Not the grainy new shadows under her eyes. Nor the lack of a bandage on her forearm. Nor the jut of her hip bones through the thin skin of silk of the beautiful gown that he was certain was not her own. Yet the difference in her struck him forcibly. It lay in the boldness of her manner. That had not been there before. There was a firmness to her chin that he did not recognise and a faint narrowing of her eyelids as she regarded the world around her, as though assessing the threat it posed.
He wondered what had happened to her. To change her. And he tried to work out what was making her so all-fired angry at him.
‘Caterina, I . . .’
‘Well, well, signorinas.’ It was the smooth tones of Colonel Quincy at his side, bending from his great height to greet them. ‘What a pleasure this is. Our army boys will be delighted to have you here.’
He shook hands with both, enveloping their small fingers in his mighty paw. Caterina nodded politely at him, taking in his oiled hair and the expensively tailored jacket and the brandy flush at the base of his throat. She switched on a smile.
‘I am not here for the delight of your “boys”, Colonel,’ she said in English. ‘Do you chase paintings also?’
‘No, my dear, I leave the chasing to Major Parr and his unit. My work is to collate, identify, and then find the rightful owners.’
She gave no sign as to whether she understood. ‘Do you know someone called Drago Vincelli?’ she asked.
‘No. No, I most certainly do not.’
‘I think you do,’ she said. That boldness again.
With no further word she vanished into the crowd, her friend following. To Jake’s astonishment, Quincy roared with laughter and thumped Jake’s back between the shoulder blades, spilling his drink over his fingers.
‘Damn fine fillies, what? These Italian signorinas really were worth starting this bloody war for, don’t you agree, Major?’
Jake didn’t agree. He marched over to the bar and ordered two Jack Daniels. One for himself. One for the person he used to be.
‘Will you dance, Caterina?’
She was standing ther
e quietly, not talking, not drinking, a point of stillness in a ballroom bursting at the seams with noise and movement. One of the young bucks was standing beside her, an arrogant face with blond corkscrew curls and his hand hooked in the crook of her elbow. He could not take his eyes off her.
There was a new intensity to her, like a spotlight shining inside her. When Jake stepped close, he could feel the heat of it.
‘Will you dance?’ he asked again.
She detached herself from Signor Curly Hair and walked on to the dance floor.
Jake watched Caterina stare at the bar of service ribbons on the left side of his chest. At the way his thumb rested against hers as they danced. At the band-player thrumming his double bass as if it held the strings of his soul. Anywhere but at Jake’s face. She danced well, thistledown in his arms, and he steered her small figure through the crush of dancers, letting her keep her silence until they reached a spot on the edge of the floor where the press of warm bodies grew less.
‘Why did you run away, Caterina? When you left my interrogation room, where did you go?’
He felt her back stiffen under his palm, a tightening of tendons.
‘I didn’t run away. I had something to do.’
‘It looked like running away to me.’
‘Then you should get yourself spectacles.’
He took that one on the chin. She was observing a string of smoke that hung like a grey snake above one of the tables where a man was smoking a cigar. Her face was closed and tight.
‘Why are you so angry at me?’ Jake made his voice soft, so she had to lean closer to hear.
For the first time since stepping on to the dance floor she looked directly at him, her eyes so unhappy that he wanted to pull her close and fold his arms tight around her. He wondered again what had happened to her since he last saw her to turn her nerves into taut wires, and to bring her here, dressed like that. Surely not the young man with the blond curls that reached down to his collar like a girl’s and the face full of sheep smiles. His expensive evening wear did not quite hide that he was carrying a little too much weight on his well-fed cheeks, so that to Jake he looked soft and shapeless. Like butter left out in the sun.
The Liberation Page 21
