The Partisan Heart

by Gordon Kerr

  On they drove, the edges of the road beginning to close in on what looked like ancient asphalt. The road plunged deeper into the hills and there were no longer the precipitous drops that had kept them on the edges of their seats for the last twenty minutes. Outside, the air was crisp and increasingly cool. They couldn’tsee the BMW ahead of them any more. The road ahead was obscured by tall pine trees and it began to bend and curve every twenty or thirty yards. Michael slowed down, worried that the BMW might have stopped up ahead of them and that they might come upon it suddenly.

  They passed a turn-off that was no more than a dirt track, but which was certainly wide enough to take a car, even a big one like Pedrini’s. Michael stopped the car, reversed, pulled up and got out, looking at the ground.

  ‘What is it, Tonto? Have you found a track?’ Helen sniggered, standing at the side of the car, speaking across the roof.

  ‘Very funny, Matthieson, but look – and I know you’ll think I’m crazy – but if you look at this wheel rut …’ He pointed at the ground, at a deep furrow in the road filled with water. ‘… you will notice that the ground is wet on either side of it. Hence, a car must have turned down this side road not five minutes ago. I, ahem, rest my case.’

  She walked around the car to the spot where the rut was.

  ‘My God! I am impressed.’

  ‘I should think so, too!’ He stopped, becoming serious. ‘Look, do you think they’re very far from here?’

  ‘Well, you certainly wouldn’t want to drive a posh car like that too far on a surface like this.’ She gazed into the trees where the track disappeared from view, noting the rough terrain that it presented – a rutted, muddy dirt track.

  ‘I agree. So, I think we should abandon the car and walk in. That way they won’t hear us.’

  ‘Unless they already have, of course.’ she said, looking around for any sign of life.

  ‘That’s a chance we have to take, I suppose,’ he replied. ‘Why don’t I drive the car into the trees up ahead to keep it out of sight. Then we’ll walk for a bit and see what we can find.’

  He parked the car about ten yards into the trees at the side of the road, far enough away from it for it to be invisible to anyone passing who was not specifically looking for it. Then they set out down the track.

  The afternoon was not warm and they shivered after the shared warmth of the car. The trees closed in on them, shielding the sky and a silence hovered over them. All that was audible were their footsteps tapping out their rhythm on the ground. Michael wondered what he was doing here. How had he got into this situation? What was he hoping to find? And who was this girl he was walking with? He had met her one night and, somehow, amazingly, she had saved his life.

  All at once, a sound in the distance disturbed his thoughts: it was the sound of a car coming towards them.

  ‘Quick! Off the road!’ Michael half-shouted and half-whispered.

  They leapt to the side of the track they were on, plunging down a bank into clumps of bushes that grew there. Kneeling down under the cover of the bushes, they waited. A few moments later, the engine noise reached them and a navy blue Porsche Boxster with blacked-out windows passed them, slowly picking its way along the ruts of the track, its engine whining in complaint at the slow pace that it was making.

  ‘Fancy car,’ said Helen, standing up after it had passed, brushing earth and twigs from her knees.

  ‘Yes, Michael replied, following the sound of the Porsche engine into the trees with his eyes. ‘Come on. Let’s see if we can find out where he came from.’

  They walked on for ten more minutes and had decided to walk for another ten or so when, through the trees, they began to discern something. The grey-green hues of a stone-built construction became visible.

  ‘Aha!’ said Michael, falling to his knees behind a large bush. ‘What have we here?’

  ‘This must be it,’ whispered Helen, already on her knees beside him. ‘Yes, look … there’s the car.’ She pointed to the left of the building where the silvery sheen of Pedrini’s BMW could just be seen.

  ‘Maybe it’s his holiday hideaway,’ Michael said.

  They settled down on the slightly damp grass, staring at the building thirty or so metres in front of them.

  It was fairly ancient, but had had a considerable amount of work done on it of late. This was obvious, not only from the varying colours of the stone that made up the walls and the brand new, grey slate roof that gleamed in the late afternoon light, but also from the construction materials that lay around – piles of stones and slates and a concrete mixer as well as a small bulldozer.

  Smoke climbed lazily in a straight line from the chimney that sat at the apex of the roof. The house itself was big enough to have two storeys. Two rows of windows, one above the other confirmed that. Their view was of the back, as far as they could make out. There was a sliding patio door, which was curtained with something white, and to either side, small windows. The patio door was open, even though it was becoming quite cool as the sun slid down towards the tops of the mountains that surrounded the house.

  ‘God, it’s chilly,’ Helen whispered, shivering and wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm.

  Michael put an arm around her shoulder, feeling her bones through the thin jacket she was wearing.

  ‘Look, Michael, someone’s there.’ Helen pointed at the house.

  The curtain was pushed to one side exposing a dark triangle that was filled with two figures, one a man in a dark suit who was immediately recognisable as Vito Pedrini, and the other a woman, slim and young, with long blonde hair and clad in a white t-shirt and dark tracksuit trousers. Pedrini walked very close to her and was talking very earnestly. She stopped and turned to face him and, although Michael and Helen were too far away to hear what was being said, it was obvious from the body language that an argument of some kind was taking place. She used her hands expressively, raising them to emphasise whatever points she was attempting to make. He, on the other hand, stood there, his shoulders hunched and his eyes directed at the ground. An instant later, however, and he became animated again and the debate seemed to have taken an entirely new direction.

  ‘Who’s she?’ Helen hissed at Michael.

  Michael looked at the long, blonde hair of the woman and recalled the photographs he had in his files as well as the pictures that had been everywhere in Teresa Ronconi’s bedroom.

  ‘You know, Helen, I think we’re looking at none other than Teresa Ronconi, the woman who was kidnapped.’

  As they looked on, the couple seemed to come to some kind of consensus on what they had been discussing. They laughed and turned, Pedrini putting his arm paternally around Teresa’s shoulders as they walked back to the house.

  ‘That doesn’t look to me like the normal relationship a kidnap victim would have with her kidnapper!’ whispered Helen.

  ‘I know. How weird. What the hell is going on here? There’s no doubt that Pedrini is a gangster. He must be behind the kidnapping.’ He watched them enter the house and the triangle of inner darkness disappeared as the sliding door was closed and the curtain once again hid the interior of the room.

  Michael glanced at the darkening sky.

  ‘Look, I’ve seen enough. We should get out of here. It’ll be dark soon and I don’t really fancy driving that mountain road in pitch blackness.’

  By the time they returned to the road, however, night had all but fallen. Michael executed a difficult turn on the narrow track above the turn-off, taking care not to reverse down the steep bank that lay just behind his rear wheels. They set off, gingerly at first, and then a little more speedily as the road became more substantial.

  ‘Michael! Lights!’

  They had been going for about twenty minutes and were now safely on the tortuous sequence of switchbacks that would take them down to the main Sondrio road. Helen was looking up the mountain and had spotted car lights swinging left and right on the roads above them.

  ‘He’s not that far be
hind us and he’s moving fast. He must have seen our lights. He knows this road better than us. He’s going to catch us in a minute!’

  ‘Christ!’ He started to brake, pulling to the side of the road where a space had been made to allow cars to pass each other. He quickly turned in his seat.

  ‘Kiss me, Helen!’

  ‘What! There’s a bloody gangster who’s probably armed to the teeth about to discover that we’re on to his little secret and you want …’

  ‘Sorry, no time to explain!’ He put his hand behind Helen’s head and pulled it towards him. Their lips met as the lights of Pedrini’s car rounded the turn behind them. The car immediately slowed as it approached them. Michael kissed Helen even more passionately, lifting her hand to the back of his head to lessen further the chance of his being recognised.

  They felt eyes peering into the darkness of their car as the other crawled towards them. They could each feel the other’s heart pounding against the walls of their chests.

  ‘Oh, God!’ Helen mumbled through lips crushed against Michael’s.

  Michael took his hand from behind Helen’s back, without turning round or removing his lips from hers, and middle finger extended, gestured at the passing voyeur.

  Immediately, the horn of the passing BMW was sounded in response and its engine fired up again and roared away into the darkness.

  ‘Just another courting couple. That’s what he thought, dirty bugger, stopping to have a look. These hills are full of couples humping in parked cars every night.’ said Michael as they both pulled away from each other and fell back onto their seats, a sense of huge relief flooding the car.

  ‘God, I was scared then,’ said Helen. ‘That was bloody close.’

  ‘We’re not used to this kind of stuff, are we?’

  ‘You’re not wrong there. Hiding from gangsters, watching kidnap victims connive with their kidnappers … snogging a man everyone thinks is a murderer in a car on the side of a mountain in the middle of bloody nowhere. I can’t speak for you, Michael, but I should say I’m not used to this kind of stuff! But, hey, I can’t believe you pulled the old kiss me to hide from the baddies stunt!’ She laughed. ‘You’re a pretty good kisser, though, for a double murderer!’ He joined in with her and they laughed until it hurt, more out of a sense of relief than anything else.

  ‘My brother-in-law’s house is up there. It’s not far and we can go that way to get back onto the main road. Let’s drive past it so you can have a look at it.’ He indicated to turn right and waited for a car to pass from the other direction before swinging across the opposite carriageway and bumping onto a badly surfaced side road.

  ‘Are you sure? Shouldn’t we be getting back to Beldoro to work out what the hell we’re going to do?’ answered Helen in a voice filled with concern.

  ‘Oh, come on. It’ll only take a few minutes to swing past it. He designed it himself – he’s an architect – and just about built it himself, too. It really stands out from all the others around here. When you come in on the train from Milan to Morbegno, you can see it on the hillside in the distance. I remember how proud Rosa was when it was finished. It must have taken him three years, working in the evenings, at weekends. The kids spent their early years scrabbling about amongst the bricks and sand.’

  Helen sat back and smiled, resigned to the detour as they followed the road past small houses, their shutters fastened tightly against the outside world.

  ‘God, it’s so dark and scary abroad when they have shutters, isn’t it? It makes you even appreciate net curtains, the bit of light they let out into the street. This is just eerie, as if nobody was living in all these houses.’

  Michael understood what she meant. The hillside was littered with houses and small villages were scattered across both sides of the valley, but there was hardly a light to be seen, apart from street lights. It was as if the world outside their car had ceased to exist.

  ‘There it is. You probably can’t see it very well. That white one there.’ He pointed to a large modern building a hundred metres to the right of where he had stopped the car. It was fairly visible because its steep drive was illuminated by lamps that were mounted at intervals along the wall. Two stone lions sat on the pillars that guarded the entrance to the steep driveway.

  ‘Strange they’ve got the lamps lit. They usually only switch them on when they have visitors.’

  ‘It’s a nice place, though,’ acknowledged Helen, winding down her window and staring into the blackness. Ah, they have got visitors.’

  The front door opened, exposing a rectangle of bright light, light with which Michael realised with a sharp pang he was very familiar. The figures of two men emerged. It looked like Renzo and another man. They stood talking for a moment and then shook hands and separated, Renzo walking back to the door and then turning to watch the departure of the other man, who took the stairs two at a time. They heard the sound of a car door slam and a powerful engine roared into life.

  Michael switched off the lights of the car.

  ‘Now look, Michael, if this is just another excuse for a kiss …’ laughed Helen.

  ‘Ssssh,’ he hissed. ‘Which way is he going? It might be someone I know, someone I met with Renzo or Rosa and I obviously don’t want anyone to know I’m here.’

  The door to the house closed and darkness clothed the facade of the building once again, as the lights on the drive were extinguished. The car engine became louder, coming in their direction.

  ‘Keep down!’ whispered Michael, wondering why on earth he was whispering.

  They slid down against their seatbacks as the lights approached.

  ‘I’m getting terrible déjà vu, you know,’ muttered Helen between closed lips.

  The car approached and then passed them, speeding up as the driver became accustomed to the darkness and the road. As the bright red of its tail-lights faded into the night, they sat up and turned to look at each other, puzzled.

  ‘Michael, did you see what that was?’

  ‘I did.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘It was the Boxster, wasn’t it? The Porsche Boxster that passed us up on the mountain tonight. Coming from the house.’

  ‘It was, wasn’t it?’

  ‘What the hell is he doing at the house? Is Renzo mixed up in this, somehow?’ He sat back and closed his eyes, completely confused.

  Helen reached across and cupped both his hands in hers and went on, ‘I think we should just get back to Beldoro, and try to work this out, and work out what we’re going to do. You can’t carry on like this and if you’re innocent you should get a fair hearing …’

  ‘What do you mean, if I’m innocent? Don’t you believe me now? And as for a fair hearing – how is that going to happen? I’m clearly the prime suspect for the murder of Ignazio Mazzini, and for all I know they may have found Claudio Scatti by now and I might have been fingered by the old guy who gave me directions. He might even have been part of all this, might have been told to follow me and give me directions so that I would be placed there at some time. God, my fingerprints are even going to be found all over that place.’ He threw his head back on the seat headrest and stared out into the darkness. ‘I’m dead meat, Helen, one way or the other. Either Pedrini and his henchmen find me and I disappear – case closed. I am a fugitive, people think, and, therefore, guilty; or else the police get me and I go down for both murders, fingerprints, witnesses, the lot. They’ve got me.’

  ‘We’ll get out of this, Michael. And of course I believe you. You don’t think I’m putting myself through all this just for the hell of it, do you?’ She smiled. ‘Let’s get back to Beldoro.’

  He smiled too and sat up, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands.

  ‘Okay. Sorry. Beldoro it is.’

  They waited for a few moments, looking down across the flickering lights of the valley beneath them, before he turned the key in the ignition, the engine fracturing the silence as it burst into noisy life. He eased the car back onto the road, down towards the last
series of bends and the passing cars on the main road. Soon they were driving alongside the lake, palaces huddled together like huge, dark animals along its edge, their palm trees motionless in the approaching midnight.

  18

  3 September 1999

  Morbegno

  North Italy

  The elderly man reached out his hand to stop the plastic cup sliding across the table, as the train tilted away from the lake and headed inland towards the yawning gateway to the Valtellina. He had just had a last gulp of the dark, bitter, lukewarm coffee it had contained and the cup, now almost empty, had insufficient weight to keep it still. He picked it up and looked around for a bin to put it in.

  ‘Please, let me.’ The young girl sitting across from him stretched out her hand to take it from him. There was a bin just to the side of her seat.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, smiling.

  She had the look of most kids nowadays, he thought. She was probably on her way back from college. Pretty, with long dark hair, and an attractive face, a Valtellina girl whose forebears would have been like his. But, how different her life would be to the generations of women who had gone before her. The fact that she was spending her days out of the valley; that would have been alien to those generations of women, and most of the men, too, who rarely left their villages, let alone travelled to the sides of the lake and beyond. People even commuted to Milan, he supposed, like those guys on the East Coast who trained in from Connecticut to New York every day. What a life! An hour and a half on a train there, and an hour and a half on a train back, with nothing to amuse you every day but the view – the same old same old, every single day.

  Still, she appeared to be thriving on it. Smiling, he watched her lean back and stretch her limbs. The book she had been reading fell to the table and the pages flicked closed. She will have to search for her place when next she opens the book, he thought, thinking how fastidious his wife had always been about retaining her place in anything she was reading, had always kept the bookmarks that stores insisted on giving her when she bought those books that she used to lose herself in. The girl now reached into her bag, rummaging for something. Seventeen or eighteen, she would be, he thought, remembering another girl and another time.