by R P Nathan
“It’s only water.” I pulled his hand back to me and examined it under the light. For a moment before it filled again with blood I could see the wound clearly. It was deep and ran the width of his palm and looked clean enough. But it was bleeding heavily.
“Look Julius we’re going to have to put something on that. There’s a first aid kit in the scooter. I’ll go and get it. But you’ve got to stop it bleeding.”
“How?” he yelped in irritation, his hand clenched, the blood dripping freely from it.
“Hold it against yourself.” I took his hand again, clenched it, and pressed the fist into his opposite armpit against the white cotton of his T-shirt. “Just keep it there. Tight. I’ll be back in five.”
I returned with the small green box of the first aid kit. By now the blood had seeped under his hand and into a large scarlet patch which spread from his armpit across his chest. I took his hand gently, cleaned it with an antiseptic wipe which made him wince, but silently; and then dressed it with a piece of sticking plaster, wrapping the whole thing round and round with a length of crepe bandage. “There,” I said finally, allowing him to take back his hand.
He reclined on the sand opposite me and gingerly flexed and unflexed his hand, then nodded. “Not bad,” he said approvingly. “Not leaking any more anyway. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said smiling at him briefly before putting the first aid kit away in its box. “Will you still be able to dig?”
“Left hand,” he said. “Should be fine.”
“Good. Well, let’s have ten minutes rest and then start again. I reckon there’s another hour’s digging max.”
He nodded and reached for some bread and cheese. He ate them hungrily whilst I just sat there sipping my water. After a while he said, “John?”
“Yes?”
“Why is it you dislike me so intensely?”
I caught my breath; he was immediately apologetic.
“I’m sorry, John. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable. It was just an observation, that’s all. Your antipathy has surprised me. And I’m not certain of the reason. After all we got on well enough on that holiday.”
I spluttered into my bottle. “Which holiday do you remember? We were at each other’s throats the whole time.”
“Well maybe there were a few fights—”
“It was constant warfare. You kept calling me a geek.”
“You were a geek.”
“I was a geek. But that was no reason to call me one.” I frowned at him, at myself, at my suddenly pumping heart and hot face as I felt all the old injustices come flooding back. “You know I hated it. You did it on purpose.”
“Did I?” He sounded surprised, though then he nodded sagely like I had revealed a great truth to him. “You’re right of course. But John, we were all a bit rough around the edges back then. It was ten years ago after all. Yet when we met up again at Patrick’s, it wasn’t just a few old scores: you hated me.”
I felt myself blush. “Well,” I said awkwardly. “You’d taken Polidoro’s journal.”
“Oh it was worse than that. You were hostile before you even knew I had it. Was it because you thought Patrick liked me better than you? Because he doesn’t—”
“No, it was nothing to do with that.” I looked across at him, his face half illuminated by the torch and sighed. “It was because you went out with Sarah and I never did.”
Julius’s eyes widened and then he raised his head in thought and let it fall into a nod. “I see. You liked Sarah too.”
“I was there in Rome when we met her, remember? I thought she was wonderful. But she ended up going out with you.”
“She was young and had a crush on me.” He shrugged. “And there was a moment after you and Patrick had gone. That’s all.”
“But you went out for ages.”
“No, only a year. I was in Cambridge and she was in Manchester and it started to fizzle almost immediately. Then she went off on her year abroad and met the new man of her dreams; some silly frog called François. Bâtard. I was devastated.”
“You were?”
He looked quite affronted. “Is it so difficult to believe that I might have actually felt something?”
“Sorry, Julius.”
He looked away down the beach. “I felt that I can tell you. I was so in love with her.”
“Really?”
“You’ve got to at least try and keep the surprise out of your voice,” he said throwing a handful of sand at me. “I’m not completely cold you know. Anyway this is all ancient history. What about you? Sounds like you’re quite keen on our Sarah?”
“Was keen.”
“Surely you must still be otherwise you wouldn’t bear a grudge against me?”
That was logic hard to argue with, so I said nothing.
“And does she like you as well?”
“She thinks I’m weird,” I said flatly.
“You are weird.”
“That’s a bit harsh.”
“Well you’re here aren’t you?”
I opened my mouth to protest but then nodded. “You’re right.” I sighed.
“But… Despite your undeniable strangeness, you’re a nice guy. And she goes for guys like you these days.”
“You think so?” I said in spite of myself. I eyed him suspiciously, but he seemed sincere enough. So I said, “And how about you, Julius? Do you still like her?”
“Of course. But in the final analysis not even my mother would consider me a nice guy so I’m not really in the frame.”
I shrugged. Again it was difficult to argue with.
“Not jumping to my defence? No, fair enough. I can be pretty unlikeable. I really need to change. At the moment I’m awful: sexist; borderline racist too I reckon.”
“Way over the border I’d say… Homophobic?”
He considered. “No. Not actually homophobic.”
“Well, there we are then. Something to build on.”
He caught my eye, and suddenly it seemed very funny. I tried to keep a straight face but began to giggle; and then he started to laugh as well.
“Come on,” he said getting to his feet. “Let’s get on with it.” He put out his good hand and, after just an moment’s hesitation, I took it and he helped me up.
We grabbed our shovels and began to dig once more. As we got deeper the base of the hole grew smaller and more awkward for both of us to be in there at the same time. So one of us stood in the bottom of the hole and shovelled out to the other standing three feet higher and to one side. This one on the higher ground would move the sand completely clear of the hole. We took turns doing the deeper digging as this area was more confined and proved much harder work. But even so after only half an hour we had deepened the hole to six feet. We rested for a moment on our shovels.
“Polidoro didn’t say how deep,” I panted. “But it can’t be more than a man’s height down.”
“Well, that’s where we are now. And there’s no sign of anything.”
“What do you think?”
“Well our hole is only three foot across at the bottom,” said Julius standing in it, putting out his arms. “We could be above the wrong spot. Maybe we should widen the area. Out to at least six by six? That way we’ve definitely got it covered.”
I looked at my watch. “It’s three o’clock Julius. The sun’ll be coming up at six. And we’re going to be getting tired soon. If we widen the dig area that much we could still be digging come morning.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Well... it’s been in there four hundred years, right? The level of the sand on the beach could well have risen in that time. Maybe we just need to dig deeper.”
“Fine. But how much deeper? Three foot? Six foot?”
“I don’t know.” I looked into the hole, my spirits sinking. I sighed. “Look, we can only do what we can do. I say we dig down another three feet. If we don’t find it we widen the hole. The cross was buried in a box four feet b
y two so we ought to stand a chance of hitting a corner of it at least.”
“And if we still don’t find it?”
“Then we fill in the hole again. It’ll take us an hour to refill it. So that means we have to stop by five o’clock.”
“So we just give up?”
“No way. We’ll come back tomorrow with a metal detector and rip the place apart.”
He shrugged. “OK.”
We swapped places so I was in the main hole and Julius was on clearing duty. My back and shoulders were aching constantly by now and my arms and wrists were sore. But I kept going. Concentrating each time simply on the next spadeful of sand. In, lift and throw. Then again. And again. And above me I could hear Julius wearily doing the same. We had no choice. We were running out of time.
“John.”
I looked up and Julius was crouching down, a finger on his lips. He had killed his torch and I immediately did the same and was left blinking in the deeper blackness.
“I thought I heard something,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I’m not sure. It sounded like an engine.”
“Well can you see anything?”
He raised himself on his haunches so his head was just above the line of the outer hole, silhouetted against the stars. “There’s nothing there.”
“Maybe you imagined it.”
“No, I definitely heard something.”
“But if there’s nothing there... Come on Julius, we’re wasting time. We need to get on—”
“Shh. There it is again.”
This time I heard it as well, the low rumble of an engine and the scrunch of sand under tyres; then a metallic sigh from brakes as a car came to a halt. In the hole I had no idea where it was, how far away from us. All I could see was Julius’s outline above me, peering out.
“What do you think?” I whispered.
He ducked down so that his face was close to mine. “It’s a jeep, stopped about twenty feet from us. It’s facing in our direction.”
“Could it be Loredan?”
“He would have driven right up, wouldn’t he? It’s probably just a couple looking for somewhere to get passionate. At least they haven’t got their lights on, so they can’t have seen us.”
“So what do we do?”
“We’ll have to sit it out.”
“Well what happens if they stay there till it gets light? We should at least get out of the hole and hide over by the rocks.”
He made a soft clicking sound with his tongue, weighing up the options. “Fine. You’re right. Let’s go. Quietly.” He helped me out of the lower hole and then leaving our shovels where they were we climbed cautiously up to beach level.
“I need to get my bag,” he hissed. “It’s got Polidoro’s journal in it.” Keeping low he started to move across to his satchel when the night exploded. The dark sky disappeared and was replaced with searing white. I gasped and covered my face, green and red retinal burn torching the black of my closed eyes.
“Police! Halt!” A megaphoned shout came to us across the beach. I wanted to run but I couldn’t see a thing.
“Stay where you are!”
Squinting into the headlights from the jeep, I could just make out two policemen in black trousers and short sleeved blue shirts advancing on us across the sand. I looked over to Julius five feet away from me. “Shit. Shit,” he fumed. I caught his eye but there was no time to talk, no chance to get our story straight.
“What are you doing here?” the taller of the two asked us, looking from me to Julius and then back again. “Why are you here?”
Neither of us answered.
“You have been digging. Why?”
I looked down at the sand.
“Answer me! Why are you digging? You are planting explosives, yes?”
“No.” I looked up in alarm but at the same instant the policemen’s hands went to their sides and they both pulled out their pistols and pointed them at us.
“Put you hands up.”
“Oh shit,” said Julius looking very pale in the headlights. “Look, there’s no need for any of this—”
“Hands up.”
“Fine, fine,” he muttered, doing as he was told. “But let me just explain—”
A pistol was brandished in his face.
“There’s no need for this.” He took a step forwards and then everything happened at once. The nearest policeman shouted, then lurched at him, bringing his gun down on the side of Julius’s head. He crumpled to the ground.
“Julius!” I ran at the officer who had hit him. We struggled, his gun pointing in the air. It fired once, harmlessly into the sky, the noise of it sudden and loud in the night, surprising us both, and then I got my leg round his and tripped him onto his back. The other cop came at me but suddenly, almost inexplicably, he was on the ground as well. I kicked one gun away into the hole, picked up the other, and then I was standing there pistol in hand pointing it at the two policemen sprawled on the sand in front of me.
I looked to my left and Julius was lying there face up, his head to one side, a red mark on his temple where the policeman had struck him.
“Fuck.” I spoke it aloud, breathing hard, looking back at the police. This was madness. I gave my head a shake to get it clear. “Get up,” I said to them. “Get up.” They hurriedly stood up.
“Look.” I pointed the gun at them. “Look, I’m going to give this back to you.” I waggled the pistol. “You understand? There’s been a mix-up here. We haven’t done anything wrong.” They stared at me blankly.
“I’m going to give this back to you now. And then I’m going to check my friend is OK.”
They made no movement, and no sound to indicate whether they had understood me or not. My heart was thumping in my chest and I felt nauseous. I extended my hand holding the pistol, just wanting to return it to them. Just wanting this all to end. But there was a shout from the steps over to my left and I spun round.
“Julius!”
For a moment I didn’t understand what was happening: other players had appeared in a tableau that to my mind was already too crowded. A further distraction when all I wanted to do was to give them the gun back. Get its cold black hardness out of my hand where it surely did not belong. Give it back. And then wake Julius up and get us the hell off this beach.
“Julius!”
The scene snapped into clarity. Sarah was standing at the top of the steps screaming down. Patrick was standing behind her. Yet still I didn’t understand. How had they got there? And could Sarah not recognise me in the darkness? Was that why she was shouting for Julius?
The policemen started shouting back at her. I wanted them to stop. I wanted everyone to stop shouting so I could think. So I could work this out for all of us. And then I realised the police weren’t shouting to Sarah at all. They were shouting beyond her and Patrick because running along the cliff line towards them was another figure, tall, moving fast. He was heading straight for them. I was about to call out, to warn them but she beat me to it.
“How could you? Would you have killed us for the treasure too?”
I looked over at Julius lying there in his blood-soaked T-shirt. Suddenly I saw what she saw and I understood; but it was too late. On the ridge the third policeman had almost reached them. Against the starlight I could see he had drawn a baton and raised it ready to strike.
There was no time to explain to her, no time for anything. I raised the pistol and fired a warning shot above the ridge, above their heads. But it was too late and the policeman brought his baton onto Sarah’s head and she went down and even as I screamed and Patrick screamed he was hit too and disappeared from sight.
I ran towards them, to get to the steps, to reach them, but the two policemen on the beach rushed me, knocking the gun from my hand and I sank to the sand under a flurry of blows.
Chapter 46
A fire had been lit and a man was crouching in front of it. It had been a warm night but now, an hour before dawn, the
temperature had dropped right down and the man was on his haunches close to the flames. Unlike his colleagues he wore plain clothes, dressed all in black, but his face shone pale yellow in the firelight.
He was leafing through Polidoro’s journal, his head nodding while he turned the pages as though reacquainting himself with a once familiar text. His long fingers caressed the paper but apart from that his body was still. In the ten minutes I’d been watching him he had barely moved at all; only once did he look over in our direction, blink, and then turn back to the book.
It was Loredan.
To the right I could see one of his men standing by the side of the hole, pistol in hand, looking desultorily out to sea. The other was in the hole and digging. The one at the top occasionally kicked at the sand landing by his feet but otherwise made no effort to assist.
I felt curiously removed from the scene yet I was seated only yards away from them. My wrists were tied to my ankles, my legs bent up before me and there was a painful stiffness in every joint of my body. And I was tired. So tired.
I rested my face forward onto my knees and then hastily took it back again. My cheeks were tender and puffy and my mouth salty with blood. If I moved my head to the right, I could see that all four of us were there in a line – Sarah next to me, then Julius, then Patrick – all tied up in the same way. And, on my left, if I forced my aching neck to look that way, was the sea.
I sat there shivering, content to do nothing more than watch the activity on the beach while my tongue investigated the swollen surface of my lower lip. The sound of the water was rhythmic and strong, the rush onto the sand and inevitable retreat, and I felt my eyes closing again, lulled by its soothing cycle.
After a while I became aware of whispered voices coming from my right, the hissed words blending with the sea sounds; but staccato, not the lilting beat of the waves on the shore. With an effort I opened my eyes again and cautiously turned my head. Patrick was speaking.
“It’s definitely him.”
“You’re right,” said Sarah. “I can see him better now.”
“But why are the police with him?” Julius hissed.