Disappeared

by Colin Falconer

  “What did you tell her?”

  “I haven't told her anything. Not yet.”

  “Good. Don’t.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t care what Luke thinks. I don’t want you to tell her about this. I don’t want Luke to tell her either. You’ll have to talk to him.”

  “She has a right to know.”

  “What good will it do?”

  “I don't know. It’s just the truth, isn’t it? Sometimes it doesn’t do any good. It just is.”

  “This never happened.”

  “But it did happen.”

  “No! It did not!' She slammed her fist on the filing cabinet.

  He had not seen her as animated since ... since Buenos Aires. He stood up, put out a hand to try and calm her. “Darling, hush, Diana will hear us ....”

  She twisted away. “You will not tell her anything. We will go on as if this never happened. Do you understand me, Stephen?”

  “I don't know if that's the right thing to do.”

  “If you love me ... you will do this for me.”

  She turned and walked out of the study. He watched her retreat down the landing to the bedroom. He stood there, his hands hanging useless at his sides.

  ***

  Mercedes lay on the bed, the curtains drawn and her eyes closed. She saw a man in a green polo shirt and tan slacks, with his arm around his daughter and his wife; a family man, a good man. He had a strong jaw and a perfect smile; the face of a doctor perhaps, or a dentist. Not the face of a torturer, not the man who had raped her on five different occasions in the barracks at Ezeiza, while she lay helpless, strapped to a table.

  She would not invite that monster back into her life. They had a good life now. The nightmare had been buried in the past. And there it would stay.

  Chapter 70

  Rome

  FRANCESCA ANGELI WOKE in the middle of the night, rolled over in the bed and reached out for her husband. He wasn’t there. She looked at the digital clock beside the bed. It was three in the morning.

  She put on a dressing gown and went around the apartment, looking for him. She found him in the salon, sitting alone in the dark. She switched on the light.

  “Turn that damned thing off,” he growled.

  She did as she was told, wondered if she should leave him and go back to bed. This was happening more and more often these days. “What’s wrong, darling?”

  “Nothing’s wrong. I can’t sleep.”

  “Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

  “Because I’m too tired to read and I don’t want to watch television.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Of course I’m all right.”

  “I have been worried about you.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  “You haven’t been sleeping well. Is there something on your mind?”

  “Just go back to bed, caro.”

  “But ... you will tell me if something’s wrong.”

  A sigh. “Why do you think there’s something wrong?”

  “You’re not yourself. Tonight you shouted at the television.”

  “The communists are taking over South America. Why wouldn’t I get angry?”

  “You go to Mass three times a week. Are you sick?”

  “Why is it wrong for a good Catholic to go to Mass?”

  Francesca was about to give up and go to bed, just as her husband wanted. But instead she fumbled across the room in the dark, found the Chesterfield, and sat down.

  “It’s Simone, isn’t it?”

  “Why do you think that?”

  “You miss her. No one to play chess with. Well, I can play, but she’s the only one that can beat you.”

  She heard the rattle of ice cubes in a glass. She realized he was drinking, something else that was out of character. “We should not have allowed her to move out.”

  “You bought her that apartment.”

  “If I hadn’t, she was going to move out anyway. At least this way I have some control over her.”

  “You shouldn’t worry about her. She’s a good girl. She studies hard. She doesn’t take drugs.”

  “How do you know what she does? Did you behave like this when you were her age? Did you have your own apartment, boyfriends, wear jeans with holes in the knees. She pays for the holes, you know. They cost extra. She wears bathing costumes that show everything. Everything. ’

  “It’s different these days.”

  “You think she’s still a virgin?”

  “Of course.”

  Another sigh.

  “Will you come back to bed now?”

  “In a moment. Go back to sleep. I’ll be all right.”

  Francesca left him sitting there, in the dark, with his twenty year old Scotch whisky and whatever demons had come to haunt him. It wasn’t just Simone that worried him these days. But whatever else it was she didn’t want to know.

  ***

  The next day Simone stopped at a local bar on the way home from university. It was empty except for a teenager listlessly playing the pinball machine in the corner. The waiter's name was Riccardo, she knew him well, a student like herself. He was alone behind the bar, wiping glasses and lining them up on the zinc counter top.

  “Ciao.”

  “Ciao, Simone.”

  “Espresso.”

  He made the coffee, put it on the bar. “Che cosa c’e?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Haven't see around much. You heard from that Englishman?”

  She shook her head. She opened a sachet of sugar, split the contents on the counter top.

  “Stronzo. He's got to be crazy, dumping a girl like you.”

  Two Americans came into the bar, wanting cappuccinos. He looked at Simone and rolled his eyes. Like ordering breakfast at four in the afternoon. They sat at one of the tables outside.

  After he had taken them their coffee he came and stood beside her at the bar.

  “Is that why you're so down?”

  She shrugged.

  “Perhaps you should go out with me instead.”

  “Why didn't you ever ask me before?”

  “I'm asking you now.”

  “You're going out with Claudia Tombetti.”

  “I'm not a monk.”

  “Far from it, unless you’re the type of monk who screws everything in a skirt.”

  “Claudia is just a friend,” he said, sulky. “Your father wouldn't let you go out with me anyway.”

  “My father doesn't run my life.”

  “Sure he does. Look, you tell him I won't always be a waiter. When I finish my studies ...”

  She touched his cheek. “You're sweet. But ... I've had enough of boys for a while. Okay?”

  “What are you doing,” a voice growled, “I don’t pay you to flirt with my customers all night.”

  The owner rolled in, his florid face lathered in sweat. His name was Gino, a big Napolitano with sideburns almost as big as he was.

  “It's the first time I've stopped all day.”

  “Sure it is. Look at these glasses. Is this where they live, huh, on the counter top?”

  Riccardo went back behind the bar and started slamming glasses around. Gino winked at Simone. He loved to play the big man in front of his customers, especially the female ones. But she was not in the mood for the by-play today. She finished her espresso and left. “Ciao, Riccardo,” she said as she walked out.

  He stared after her. “Ciao, Simone,” he said, softly. He watched her until she had disappeared inside her apartment. “I'm going to kill myself,” he said.

  “Not on my time. You want to kill yourself, do it out of work hours.”

  “Mazza, che e buona!’

  “I don't know why you torment yourself. You don't have a hope. Now are you going to stand there with that moon face all afternoon or can we have some cloths on the tables out there?”

  ***

  It was all Angeli could do, as he went into his study, to keep from s
lamming the door behind him. Such a childish display would not do. He sat down at his desk, took deep breaths to control himself, bunched his fists in his lap. His knuckles were white.

  An associate in London had just rung about this Luke Barrington. This stronzo was writing an article about him, naming him as a fascist and an illegal arms dealer. He knew the prick had been talking to Maldini, asking all kinds of questions about him.

  This after he had invited him into his home, after he had no doubt slept with his daughter. He had even stolen a photograph from Simone's apartment. Oh, she didn't tell him about that, she didn't have the nerve, but Francesca did.

  He does all this and thinks he can get away with it. He must think he’s so fucking smart. He had taken advantage of Simone's gentle nature for his own purposes.

  He took another deep breath then picked up the telephone. He made five calls, three long distance and two local, and when he finally hung up the telephone everything was arranged. He felt much calmer. He even allowed himself a tight smile.

  Chapter 71

  Farringdon Road, EC1

  London

  The rumble of a train leaving the nearby underground station shook the bare wooden boards in the Betsy Trotwood. Martin Harris chewed his Cumberland sausage standing up at the bar, washed it down with a long draught of Bishop's Finger. He was a big man, with a fleshy face. The cloying smell of beer and nicotine clung to his well worn three piece suit. “So where's this big story you were promising me?” he brayed at Luke.

  “It's just not going to hang together.”

  “Jesus farkin Ker-ist.” A piece of chewed sausage landed on the polished bar. “What the fark you tryin’ to do to me?”

  Luke shrugged his shoulders.

  “What was this big farkin story you were chasin’ in Rome? A bit of rumpy pumpy, was it? A bit of foreign?”

  “I couldn't get the research together. The story's too thin. There's too many libels.”

  “Let me be the farkin judge of that.”

  “I haven't written it.”

  “What about your farkin notes then?” When Luke still didn't answer him Martin finished his pint and ordered two more. “Look. You told me your spotter over there had given you the farkin inside on arms dealing and money laundering in the Vatican. That's what you told me.”

  “That's what I thought I had.”

  “Look, my son, you write a farkin story like that, you get bylines, you get bonuses and before know it you’re sat in the editor’s chair. Know what I mean? No one gives a flying fark about the next Pope until this one's pushin’ up the daisies. You wiv me, son? Only the Sunday readers. The farkers who watch BBC-2. Scandal is what gets you your own office. You want a career, my son, you're going to have to finish off someone else's.”

  “Martin, I told you, I tried, I don’t have enough for a story.”

  Martin drew on his pint. “Well, fark me,” he said. “That's not what you farkin said on the blower. You remember? When you was in Rome? All that desperate farkin urgency.”

  Luke thought about Simone; he thought about his father's hands shaking as he stared at the photographs, his mother choking up her grief through the bathroom door. It was a lie, he had at least enough, from Maldini and from Fox.

  Martin was right. This was the kind of story that got you noticed upstairs, that had the news channels calling for interviews. The game changer he’d been looking for.

  But he couldn’t do it; not to his family, and not to Simone.

  Yes, he could write the story but what would it do to his family? What would it do to Simone? “Just dead ends I’m afraid.”

  Martin drank half his pint in one swallow, without taking his eyes off Luke. “You’re not holding out on me, old son?”

  Luke shook his head.

  “Better not be. I stuck my farkin neck right out for you. The guvnor’s going to be nice and happy when he finds out we've come up a blank on this.”

  “The article on the Vatican was pretty good, wasn't it?”

  “Very professional. Very interesting. Very Channel Four. But that was the first week you were there. You stayed on four more days.”

  “At my own expense.”

  “I was short a farkin writer for a whole farkin week. I let you stay because you promised me a big farkin story, my old mate.”

  “I’m sorry., I told you. It just didn't pan out.”

  Martin finished his sausages and took out a packet of cigarettes. “Well. Fark.”

  Luke finished his beer. “I'd better be getting home.”

  “Dunno how I'm going to square this away with the guvnor.”

  “I'm sorry, Martin. I'll make it up to you.”

  “I don't see how.”

  It was raining on Farringdon Road. Luke turned up his collar against the rain. Summer in England. What a joke. He started across the road.

  ***

  A splash of light on the wet pavement, a moment's swelling of noise as the pub door swung open and a man ran across the road, his jacket held over his head to keep off the worst of the rain.

  He did not see the car that hit him; he was a little careless because of the rain and besides, its headlights were off. It accelerated quickly, struck him from the left side, the force of the impact breaking both his legs just above the knee. He flipped over the bonnet and landed on the bluemetal, fracturing his skull just above the right temple, avulsing a large flap of skin from his scalp.

  The driver of the car did not stop. He sped north up Farringdon Road.

  The drinkers in the bar of the Betsy Trotwood heard the squeal of tyres and the bang as Luke's body hit the bonnet. Martin reacted surprisingly quickly for a big man, was out of the door before anyone else had moved.

  Luke was still breathing, but blood was spurting out of his head and his left leg was at a bizarre angle from his body.

  Martin knelt down in the rain. “Oh, Christ, oh Christ!’ He looked up at the knot of bystanders who had followed him out of the saloon bar. “Somebody call the farkin ambulance!'

  Chapter 72

  STEPHEN STOOD WATCHING the rain weep down the window pane, leaving a trail of grime. He had always thought himself as an overly emotional man, and the fact that he felt nothing so calm and so very numb while his only son lay fighting for his life surprised him.

  “We are being punished,” he said.

  Mercedes looked up. She was perched on a hard plastic seat on the other side of the corridor twisting a handkerchief between her fingers.

  “Punished?”

  “That time in Buenos Aires. We should have told that man the truth. You remember him? He said he was her brother. We dissembled. Diana is not ours, by law or by right, and now we are being punished. Through Luca.”

  Mercedes twisted the handkerchief into even tighter knots in her lap. “You mean God is doing this? Is that what you believe?”

  “I don't know. Perhaps it's a sort of wild justice.”

  “We did nothing wrong. We gave shelter to an abandoned child.”

  “We hid her from her family.”

  “That man did not want her. He practically said as much. If he had wanted her he would not have gone away.”

  “Perhaps we intimidated him.”

  Mercedes was silent for a long time. “I still think we did nothing wrong.”

  Stephen turned back to the solace of the grey and indifferent heaven. Please, God, don't let him die.

  But even as he prayed another part of him thought: This is what you deserved.

  They heard footsteps along the corridor.

  They both looked up and saw Luke's doctors, a neurological surgeon called Caldow. Stephen steeled himself for bad news. Mercedes got slowly to her feet, reached for Stephen's hand.

  “Is he going to be all right?” Stephen said.

  ***

  There were four mismatched chairs, a coffee machine, a crucifix high on the wall. Diana cradled the polystyrene cup in both hands, staring blankly at the dull heavy-duty carpet. Waiting room coffee,
muddy and foul. The door opened.

  “Pa,” she said. She stood up and he took her in his arms and held her. They stayed that way for a long time.

  “I've just seen the doctor, pudding,” he said. His voice sounded as if it was about to break.

  “Is he going to be all right?”

  “We will have to be brave.”

  They collapsed onto the chairs and sat for a long time in silence, listening to the hospital sounds; the clatter of a drugs trolley in the corridor outside, the beep of a doctor's belt pager.

  Diana was the first to break the silence. “I got down from Cambridge as soon as I could.”

  “I know.”

  “How did it happen?”

  “The car was stolen. The police found it abandoned about two miles away. Just kids, they think.”

  “Where's ma?”

  “The doctors gave her something to help her sleep.”

  Diana felt the strength go out of her. She leaned against his shoulder, buried her face in the rough wool of his jacket. “He won't die, will he?”

  “No,” Stephen said, without conviction. “He won't die.”

  Chapter 73

  THE RENTED BMW turned into the driveway of the old house, the tyres crunching on the gravel. Jeremy turned off the ignition and sat for a time staring at the imposing gables of the house and stables. There were no other cars in the courtyard. He wondered if the Barringtons were out.

  He looked in the rear vision mirror. In the far distance he could make out the spire of the village church in Market Dene. Peaceful here.

  The curtains moved at the front of the house. Well, someone was home. He got out of the car, walked across the yard and rapped twice on the kitchen door.

  ***

  Mercedes Barrington looked sunken. She was still in her dressing gown, though it was after three in the afternoon. Her hair was unkempt, and long strands of dark hair with long grey roots straggled around her cheeks.