The Spider Dance

by Nick Setchfield

  Salvatore opened his hand, revealing the caplets again to Benedetta. ‘But I like your dancing, princess of the streets. I want you to dance some more in the sun. Please the people. So I give you a gift, just this once. Get me the money by next week. And I give you more of these.’

  He let the pills drop into her mouth. She gulped them down, nearly choking.

  Winter looked away. His eyes fell on a framed photograph, mounted on a side table. A family portrait in hand-tinted colour. Benedetta, her parents, a grandmother and two younger children, all rather serious. A thought occurred to him then. A girl her age wouldn’t live alone, not in this city.

  He remembered the child’s handprint on the mirror. The one that looked as though it had been torn away.

  Salvatore had also seen the photograph. A smile had just broken on his face and it was one the bastard clearly relished.

  ‘Shall we look upstairs, signore?’

  In the small, quiet house the clock in the hall persisted.

  * * *

  The days that followed paid well but needed to be rinsed off each night with a fierce shower. The money was an improvement on Jack Creadley’s wages – a fat packet of virgin lira rather than a wrinkled roll of ten-shilling notes – but the work left Winter feeling just as stained beneath the skin as his time in the London underworld.

  In Santa Lucia he had stood there as Salvatore repeatedly put a fist to the face of a hotel manager, persuading him of the benefits of insurance. Winter had watched as blood hit the wall, grateful that his presence, and the simple threat of doubling the violence, was enough. The next day, in Vomero, an elderly café owner greeted them with too many teeth. He kept smiling even as he emptied his own till with shaking hands. The espressos were on the house. Winter had sipped his coffee as the voice of Tony Bennett drifted from the wall-mounted speaker, reminding them that this was ‘The Good Life’.

  Salvatore walked the city with an easy confidence, opening any door he wished. The women of the brothel on Via Terracina were clearly terrified of him, even as he danced with them across the cracked tiles of their kitchen, forcing sweet wine to their mouths until it ran down their dresses. Beneath the underpass of Via Emanuele Gianturco he dispensed American cigarettes to a giggling swarm of boys. They raced behind him, thrilled and fascinated by his lack of a shadow. Vampiro! Vampiro! I Senz’Ombr!

  In a harbourside bar in Centro Storico Winter had found himself adding muscle to a territorial dispute with representatives of the Camorra. Salvatore had flung one of the men against a jukebox, cracking the glass and sending the needle screeching across the vinyl. Then he had plunged his teeth into the man’s face, wrenching ribbons of skin from the cheek until a chink of bone was exposed. Somehow the fine suit he wore made Salvatore seem even more feral as he reared over the Camorrista, a wet mess of blood on his lips. He had smiled then, sated and triumphant, as if this truly was ‘The Good Life’.

  Each night Winter returned to his hotel and exorcised himself beneath the showerhead until his flesh stung and steam filled the tiny bathroom.

  Some nights, as the bay glittered, he would practise magic into the early hours. He felt the itch of it and he was curious to see what he might be capable of. So far he had failed to replicate the stunt with the glass – maybe he was trying too hard, he imagined; it had just happened before, like the physics of a dream, the ones you never questioned – but one night a liquid very like ink had dripped from his fingers, trembling through the pores until it spattered yesterday’s newspaper. As it soaked through the newsprint pages it pierced them, like the tip of a knife.

  He had felt a rush in his blood as he watched that happen.

  Don Zerbinati was another, more insistent itch. Yes, Winter had embedded himself in Naples, in the heart of Zerbinati’s empire, but for all he was winning the trust of his men he may as well have been back in Camden. Was the man he hunted even in this city? Winter began to wonder if Zerbinati was no more than a name, a myth wielded by the Shadowless to keep their power intact. The Erovores were convinced he existed – convinced enough to pay a million to end that existence – but if Don Zerbinati were real, and not just a higher class of bogeyman, he remained profoundly out of reach.

  It wasn’t until the last week of August that Winter found himself closing in on the man he had come to kill.

  ‘We’re going to the house,’ said Salvatore, as if there was only one house in Naples.

  ‘The house?’

  ‘Villa Tramonto.’

  They were stood outside La Salamandra, the bonnet of Salvatore’s Alfa Romeo a dazzle of metal in the morning sun. Salvatore passed a package to Winter, one he had just collected from Cesare. It was roughly the size of a football.

  ‘Keep this in your hands at all times.’

  ‘What is this?’ asked Winter.

  ‘The head of a saint.’

  Winter nodded, staring at the brown paper bundle. ‘Right. The head of a saint.’ He looked up, nonplussed. ‘An actual saint’s head?’

  ‘Yes. Eleventh century. It’s rare. So don’t be a pene and drop it.’

  ‘Who wants the head of a saint?’

  Salvatore’s patience was already exhausted. ‘Don Zerbinati. Get in the car.’

  Winter tried not to let the name’s significance register on his face.

  ‘What the hell does he want with it?’

  ‘He collects them. It’s his passion. The remains of Christian martyrs. Now get in the car. We don’t keep a man like him waiting.’

  Winter settled himself in the passenger seat, the sun-warmed leather already sticky to the touch. The Alfa Romeo took them out of Chiaia and into the hills, heading west at speed. They climbed the coastal road to the green and rocky promontory of Posillipo. It was a moneyed, exclusive quarter of Naples, peppered with villas that commanded envious views of the bay. The sun pounded the headland, playing over the sprawl of coves and caves and private docks, picking at a sea that was diamond bright. Winter winched down the window, breathing in hot road and bougainvillea.

  ‘So this is Don Zerbinati’s place we’re going to?’ He made the question as casual as he could.

  Salvatore grunted, lowering his sun-shield against the shining blue of the bay. He cast no reflection in the small, rectangular mirror.

  Winter decided to chance another question. ‘So it doesn’t bother you? Any of you? The sun, I mean. The Italian coast is the last place I’d expect to find your kind.’

  ‘My kind?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘You can call us by what we are. It’s not an insult.’

  ‘Vampiri, then.’

  Salvatore adjusted the gear stick as the road rose, ever steeper. ‘One thing you need to respect. And I will tell you this now, so you don’t end up losing your life through your stupid mouth. There are many castes of vampiri. Some tremble at the cross, some turn to dust in the sun. These are vermin, no more than common filth. We of the Shadowless are the highest of the undead.’

  ‘So I gather.’

  ‘We walk in the light. We step on sacred ground. We eat, we drink, just as you do. Your folklore is inadequate, insulting. Compare my brothers to the lower orders and one of us with even more temper than me will most certainly kill you.’

  Winter nodded. ‘Consider me briefed.’ He glanced again at the mirror in the sun-shield. ‘So even the highest order of vampires has no reflection?’

  Salvatore laughed. ‘Mirrors are for those who look for imperfections. Why the hell would we need mirrors, man?’

  Winter returned a wry smile, mainly to himself. ‘You should have met Tommy the Face.’

  Villa Tramonto rose against the cloudless sky. It perched at the very edge of the headland and made a monumental silhouette, a solid black outline imposed on a seamless blue horizon. Sunlight flared around its edges, so blindingly that at first the house appeared to be built entirely from an absence of light. Only as the car neared the gate did the details reveal themselves: cool, sand-coloured walls, shut
tered windows, a gracefully angled terracotta roof.

  The more Winter saw of the finer touches the more incongruous the villa seemed in the Italian countryside. There was a disparate mix of influences at work, something Persian or Moorish in the glazed tiles and gleaming mosaics that dotted the sides of the building. He found himself wondering how long Don Zerbinati had lived – and just where in the world he had walked through those centuries.

  The intercom on the gate granted them entry. The Alfa Romeo curved into the driveway, purring over concrete and sliding to a halt next to a gleaming Maserati Berlinetta. Salvatore cut the engine and took the package from Winter. ‘Stay here,’ he instructed.

  ‘I’m not coming in?’

  ‘That’s what I mean by stay here.’

  Winter watched Salvatore cross the driveway and step into the house, met by a maid. Then he opened the car door and got out, lighting a cigarette as an excuse. He propped his elbows on the Alfa Romeo’s roof, determined to absorb every detail of Villa Tramonto’s geography in the minutes available to him.

  So this was where his target was concealed. Here, in an elegant eyrie at the edge of a cliff, gazing down on the city he ruled. It made sense. He should have realised there was no way a man like Don Zerbinati would have lived among the hot chaos of the streets. The king of the vampires required a castle. He wouldn’t slum it with the peasants.

  Winter calculated opportunities and trajectories, the breeze from the bay cooling his skin.

  A perimeter wall enclosed the house and surrounding gardens. Made of concrete, it was around ten feet high – tall enough to block the view from the road, smooth enough to prevent climbing – and topped with wire that had been knotted into vicious spools. There was no evidence of closed-circuit cameras. That was lucky, at least.

  Beyond the walls stood a squat throng of olive trees, part of an orchard. The highest of them offered a potential angle on the house, though the foliage was thin and would make a risky place of concealment. God alone knew what kind of vantage point it might provide. It was hard to see much of the rear of the residence from the driveway, though an undulating shimmer of light between the edge of a wall and an outbuilding suggested the presence of a pool.

  One bullet. One chance. It demanded a clean, clear shot.

  Winter clocked a motion to his left. One of Zerbinati’s men was emerging from the shadows of the olive trees. There was an assault rifle slung over his shoulder, hanging from a strap. Winter noted the way his feet moved, halfway between a march and a trudge. He was patrolling the perimeter, on a circuit that was just long and repetitive enough to make his duty a bit of a bore. He kept his gaze ahead of him, ignoring the branches above.

  Winter factored this in too, adding it to the walls and the wire, the trees and the pool. All that was missing from the equation was the target himself. Don Zerbinati; the bloody great blank at the heart of everything.

  He nodded to the guard. The man regarded him in return, sunlight bouncing on the lenses of his horn-rimmed Wayfarers. No words were exchanged and the guard continued his patrol as Winter exhaled smoke between his teeth.

  Salvatore stepped from the house and began to walk to the car, the head of the saint delivered to its new owner. Winter tossed the stub of his cigarette to the ground. It sparked against the wheels of the Alfa Romeo.

  He would come back to this place. He would come back and he would take that shot. And the bullet – the only bullet like it in the world – would find the undead heart of Don Zerbinati.

  21

  Winter wiped a smear of sweat from his forehead. It had been pooling for a while, threatening to trickle into his line of sight.

  He screwed his right eye to the scope again, feeling the tiny rubber cup press against the socket. The telescopic lens was fixed on the rear of Villa Tramonto, as it had been since just after dawn. Winter let the cross hairs prowl, moving over whitewashed tiles and elegant outdoor furniture and the bright, chemical blue of the pool. And then he paused, lingering on the cover of a magazine, a copy of Tempo left on a sun lounger. For a moment Brigitte Bardot was framed in his sights, her face coming into focus, incandescent as a frame of celluloid. He chose to let her live, but then he had always liked her smile.

  The morning light played through the silver-green leaves of the olive tree, dappling his hands as he held the gun. He had placed himself on a thick, serpentine branch that twisted out of the trunk, rising at an angle that gave a degree of concealment from the perimeter path below. The air was tart and woody, scented by the bitter fruit that hung from the limbs of the tree. The smaller of the branches swayed around him, stirred by the breeze from the headland.

  He had risen at three o’clock, short of sleep but focused. Shaving at that hour had felt strangely ritualistic, an act of calm, steady preparation and not just a blade scraping across stubble. The car he had hired was waiting outside the hotel. A drab Fiat 500 that was usefully anonymous. He had abandoned it along the coastal road, on the winding climb to Posillipo. Grateful for the moonless, leather-black sky, he had cut through the trees that led to the villa, edging between the great gnarled trunks, hugging their shadows, the rifle weighing on his shoulder.

  He had watched the house for hours now, through the last of the dark and the red bruise of sunrise and into the new day. At first a handful of lights had burned against the night, and he had found himself wondering if Don Zerbinati was awake and pacing the hallways of the villa. Did creatures like that actually sleep? Or was it just another myth that they retreated to their tombs and their crypts and their coffins, snuggling into the ancestral soil?

  At shortly after six o’clock a maid had stepped from the doors that flanked the pool. She had enjoyed a brief cigarette, her eyes on the ripening sky, her thoughts unknown. And then she had brushed ash from her pinafore and returned inside, all the time unaware of the sights that had tracked her every movement, monitored the trail of smoke from her cigarette.

  The first patrol came at seven o’clock. Winter had glimpsed the approaching guard from a distance, counting himself lucky that his eye wasn’t pressed to the scope at that moment. He had shouldered the gun and edged back against the bark, holding his breath as Zerbinati’s man passed below, close enough for Winter to see the shine of perspiration above his shirt collar. The guard had stepped past the tree, oblivious. There was a walkie-talkie clipped to his jacket pocket, a casually slung rifle rumpling the cut of his suit.

  The patrol was on a half-hour cycle, and Winter soon learned its rhythm, sensing when to lean back into the branches. If there was to be any chance of a shot at Don Zerbinati, any chance at all, it had to come when the guard was on the other side of the grounds. And that, he knew, might be too neat a piece of timing to wish for.

  The hours passed in heat and stillness, the monotony tripwired with anticipation. By eleven o’clock Winter was parched but he only allowed himself the briefest of sips from the flask of tepid water in his pocket. He was already aching for a slash, and there was no possibility of that.

  The breeze moved on the surface of the pool, rippling the water. It was the only motion to be seen and it was strangely lulling. Winter had to blink to keep his concentration crisp.

  And then, shortly after noon, his target was there, filling the sights like a promise fulfilled.

  At first Winter saw only a flash of light, the glass of the poolside doors catching the sun as they swung open. Someone stepped from the villa then, casting no shadow on the whitewashed tiles. Winter lifted the scope, moving from the shoes to the suit to the head. The face was tilted away from the lens but the snowy crest of hair and the high temples were unmistakable. The man carried himself like a king.

  Don Zerbinati.

  Winter felt a flood of adrenalin. It sharpened the moment, shut out the past and the future, locked the world into present tense.

  He kept the rifle absolutely steady. The cross hairs clung to Zerbinati, binding the gun to its mark. The mounted lens stalked the man as he strode to the edge of th
e pool. The regal head remained fixed in the centre of the scope.

  Winter slid a finger inside the trigger-guard, closing around the curl of steel that would free the bullet. The shot was waiting, simply a squeeze away. His mouth tasted like dust at the thought.

  But Don Zerbinati was not alone. Someone had joined him in the sunlight.

  Winter moved the lens a fraction to the left, hesitant to leave the target but too curious to ignore the new figure that had also stepped from the villa.

  He knew this man, he realised.

  Soviet Intelligence. High-ranking. They had crossed paths twice before, the first time in Dortmund in the spring of ’61. Winter had left him beneath a railway bridge, struggling to hold together the bullet-smashed brains of a fellow KGB operative. The next encounter had been in Vienna, less than two years ago, at that fateful party at das Krabbehaus, mansion of the late occultist Emil Harzner. Now the name came back to him. Kulganek. Arkadi Kulganek. What was it the Russian had said that night? ‘We waltz with devils.’ And here the bastard was in Naples, still dancing.

  Winter returned the cross hairs to Zerbinati. They settled on the chest, framing the heart. Yes, that felt right. Not a head shot. Not this one. It had to be the heart.

  He hesitated even as his finger tightened around the trigger.

  The KGB had found Zerbinati. What terms had they offered? What deal would they make? What intelligence would they take away?

  Take the shot, he told himself. Ignore the questions. This was London in his head, and he wasn’t London, not anymore. He had another obligation now, a contract to fulfil.

  Then he caught sight of a third figure, following Zerbinati and Kulganek to the pool. Winter nudged the scope sideways, tweaking the focus until the tall, nebulous shape resolved itself.