The Partisan Heart

by Gordon Kerr

  She managed to get the last seat on a flight at nine-thirty and, two hours later, found herself in a cab driving past the Colosseum. She smiled at how ridiculous it all was and thought about phoning Michael, but as she had that thought, the taxi turned into a narrow side street and pulled up in front of a dark shop-front. Above the blacked-out window was printed the legend, ‘Alberto Espagni, Sarto.’

  She slid along the seat and climbed out of the taxi, paying the driver and then standing, blinking in the bright sunlight. It was noticeably warmer in the capital and she regretted the thick pullover and puffer jacket she had thrown on in the cold, northern early morning.

  ‘Buongiorno, signorina,’ said an elderly man standing in what was effectively a workshop, as she opened the door and stepped in.

  ‘Good morning,’ she replied, attempting to adjust to the gloom of the room. ‘Signore, do you speak English?’ She had, of course, neglected to consider what would happen if no one in Alberto Espagni, Sarto, spoke English.

  ‘Ah, I … speak … ay leedle beet,’ he replied.

  She began to take the jacket out of the bag.

  ‘I’d like to know who this jacket was made for.’

  He looked at her as if she had just stepped out of an alien space ship.

  ‘Dees giacca? … Who? Per chi?’

  He shook his head and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth, muttering something in Italian under his breath.

  ‘Signor Espagni,’ he came out from behind the desk at which he had been standing. ‘Signor Espagni … bar … Parla … inglese.’ Nodding constantly, he took her by the arm and led her to the door, opening it and pointing down the street to a bar on the opposite side.

  ‘Ah, grazie, grazie,’ she said, smiling and putting the jacket back into the bag.

  She walked out into the street again, the traffic noises once more filling the air and, looking back and smiling at the elderly tailor who still stood nodding in the doorway, walked in the direction of the bar.

  It was an ancient, dark establishment that had, in all likelihood, not changed in many years, if not many decades. A television flickered silently in the corner, being watched by a bar empty of people except for one elderly man staring at a newspaper, a tiny cup of steaming coffee in front of him.

  ‘Signor Espagni?’ she asked politely, for she presumed it must be him.

  He looked up slowly, pushing his small, rimless glasses down his nose, the better to see who was standing in front of him.

  ‘Chi vuol sapere?’ His eyes were small and narrowed by years of stitching. His back was hunched, presumably through bending over the same stitches that had narrowed his eyes.

  ‘You speak English, I am told, signore,’ she asked, not daring to sit down until asked, but feeling distinctly uncomfortable looking down on him.

  ‘Yes, English. I speak a bit.’ His accent was still laced with an Italian inflection, but she was relieved to hear that he obviously spoke and understood English pretty well. ‘How may I help you?’

  ‘I am trying to find the owner of a jacket.’ She indicated the bag. ‘May I sit down, please.’

  ‘I am sorry. How rude of me. Yes please, take a seat.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, pulling the seat out, sitting down and placing the bag on the table.

  ‘Alfredo!’ He waved his arm in the direction of the bar. And then to her, ‘What will you have to drink, my dear?’

  ‘Oh, a mineral water would be good,’ she said as an elderly barman with a bored look on his face approached.

  ‘Acqua, Alfredo, e un altro caffè,’ he threw in the general direction of the barman without even looking at him. Years of familiarity had obviously bred extreme contempt. The barman turned on his heels and shuffled back to his domain behind the bar where he busied himself with the order, staring all the while at the silent TV.

  ‘I do love finding an opportunity to exercise my English,’ he said, leaning forward across the table. ‘I lived in England for many years, you know. I worked in Saville Row in London, as a tailor, of course, and take every opportunity I can get to remind myself of the Queen’s English.’ He laughed.

  ‘You speak it very well, if I may say so. The Queen would be very proud of you!’ Helen replied, smiling, but impatient to show him the jacket.

  ‘Thank you,’ he answered, bowing ever so slightly. ‘But you say something about a jacket?’

  ‘Yes, signore,’ she said, taking the checked jacket from the bag. ‘This jacket. Would you be able to tell me for whom it was made?’

  ‘I might, signorina,’ he said, leaning back on his chair, spreading his hands out in front of him, and then removing his glasses, ‘but why should I? I do not know why you need this information. I made this jacket for a client, and, believe me, my clients are my lifeblood. I would not wish to divulge – divulge …’ he pushed the word around his mouth carefully, ‘that is the right word isn’t it …?’ She nodded and he continued. ‘… divulge information about any of my clients to the wrong people, if you understand what I am saying.’ He picked up his coffee and threw it back in one swallow, grimacing as he noisily placed the tiny cup back on its saucer.

  ‘Oh, signor Espagni. I don’t know how to explain this. It is very embarrassing.’ Where, she thought, had she found this capacity to make up lies – no, entire histories – on the spot? She heard herself saying it just before she said it, but had no idea where it came from. ‘Look, I am a student here in Italy. I am studying art and I met this man in a club a few nights ago. He was very handsome and, well, I liked him a lot. Well, one thing, as they say, led to another …’ she looked down at the table as coyly as she could, ‘… and he spent the night at my place.’ She felt his eyes upon her, the eyes of another generation, jealous of the freedoms of the generations that have followed it. ‘But we fought the next morning.’ She cast her eyes down at the table again and attempted to look as sad as possible. ‘It was stupid. I threw him out, not realising in my anger that he had left his jacket behind. He banged on the door for ages but I hid in the bathroom until he went away.’ She affected a sniffle as if she was crying, taking a tissue from her pocket and holding it to her nose. The trouble is,’ she blew her nose, noisily. ‘The trouble is … I think I … I am in love with him. And I don’t even know his name.’ She amazed herself by spontaneously bursting into floods of tears. ‘I think I am in love with him and I want to find him again.’ She looked up imploringly. ‘Please help me find him.’

  He reached across the table and took her hand.

  ‘Ah, signorina, The madness of youth. I understand. Don’t worry. In these circumstances, of course I will help you. Let me see this jacket.’ She handed it to him and he held it up. ‘Ah, we made a good job of this one. There are not many made of this material. Come with me back to the shop and I will check my records.’

  They stood up and he led her with exaggerated courtesy from the bar back to the dingy light of his shop where his colleague smiled beatifically at her as she preceded signor Espagni through the door.

  Michael had lain in bed for an hour longer than he needed to, conscious that there must be no noise in the room while Helen was gone. He got up and read a few chapters of a book to pass the time until mid-morning and then decided to switch on the television, keeping the volume as low as possible, while still being able to hear what was being said.

  Italian newsreaders are impossibly glamorous compared to their English equivalents and this morning’s version was no exception to the rule. Her hair radiated from her head in a golden halo and her clothes looked like they were from one of the more expensive fashion emporia.

  Her words dismayed Michael. Claudio Scatti’s body, with its gaping, smiling neck had, at last, been discovered and, as Michael had anticipated, the police had learned from Claudio’s brother and from the old man at the bar who had given him directions, that he had gone to see the dead man. His face filled the screen, looking out of a photograph taken some time ago for an Evening Post brochure. He lay bac
k against a pillow as the item ended. What must Renzo and Giovanna be thinking of all this? he wondered.

  An all-pervading feeling of hopelessness overtook him. He rolled over onto his side and pulled Helen’s pillow towards him, clasping it tightly, pulling his legs up to his chest like a child, his eyes screwed shut, keeping the world out. He had to solve this mystery now. Going to the police would only stop him from digging deeper. But, at the end of it all, he would have one hell of a story to tell. He smiled as he thought about that part of it.

  Opening his eyes again, from where he was lying he could just make out something on the floor behind the chest of drawers – a large brown envelope. He slid across the bed and swung his feet onto the floor, bending down to pull the envelope out from behind the chest.

  He recognised it. It was the one from John that contained Rosa’s last batch of photos. It had been taken from his hotel room by Pedrini and his henchman and had then been picked up by Helen as she had rescued Michael from the house by the lake. She had obviously thrown it onto the chest of drawers when they had come back to her room that morning and it must have slipped down behind it. They had then forgotten all about it.

  He unpeeled the flap of the envelope – it had stuck itself down again. Inside were half a dozen contact sheets, each containing a couple of dozen shots. He pulled them out, feeling a pang of sadness at the thought that these were probably the last photographs Rosa had taken. He sat on the bed, spreading them out in front of him. They mostly depicted landscapes and buildings – ramshackle, old Valtellina hovels, made of irregularly shaped stones and clinging perilously to the sides of the mountains. They were very beautiful, but why was Pedrini so keen to have them that he had broken into his room?

  In the middle of the fourth contact sheet, however, the reason for Pedrini’s interest became suddenly apparent.

  Michael threw the sheets down and walked to the window. It was getting dark and still there was no sign of Helen. But why endanger her further? He pulled on his shoes and threw his jacket on, pulling a baseball cap down as low as he could on his forehead in order to hide his face. He scribbled a quick note for Helen, leaving it on top of the television, folded the contact sheet and put it in his inside pocket. He then opened a drawer and took out the gun that Helen had stolen from Pedrini and his gorilla. He examined it carefully, not really knowing what to do with it should the occasion arise and then put it in his pocket, where its weight sat uncomfortably. Carefully he opened the door, looking up and down the corridor in both directions before stepping out. The desk clerk was in the middle of a telephone conversation with someone and was staring at a computer terminal in his office, probably making a booking and Michael was able to slip the few yards across the foyer to the door of the hotel without being noticed.

  Outside it was getting chilly and a strong breeze was rippling the palm fronds and pulling at the sacking that cloaked the giant palm tree on the promenade. He pulled the collar of his jacket tightly round his neck, zipping it to the top so that very little could be seen of his face. He turned and with hunched shoulders walked into the teeth of the wind.

  *

  Helen returned to the hotel at around nine o’clock. Luck had not been with her and she had to wait a couple of hours to get a seat. The plane she was booked on then developed a fault on the runway and they sat there for an hour before it was ready for take-off. The inevitable wait for a slot followed and by the time she turned the key in the lock and opened the door to her room, she was exhausted.

  ‘Michael?’ She looked in the bathroom and found no sign of him. She immediately thought the worst – Pedrini had found him, or the police – but her eyes caught sight of the note on top of the television and she snatched it up.

  POPPED OUT. WON’T BE LONG. DONT WORR Y!

  LOVE M.

  ‘Michael, you idiot!’ she muttered to herself, sitting on the bed and beginning what she knew would be an agonising wait for his return.

  The chill wind had driven the inhabitants of the small lake-side town indoors. The streets were quiet, a quiet interrupted only occasionally by the muttering of a television behind a pair of shutters. Anyone who was out was concentrating on staying warm as they bent into the wind.

  Michael climbed the sloping streets, walking away from the lake towards the outskirts of Beldoro, where the mountain began to rise ever more steeply and on whose slopes building must be ever more difficult.

  He walked past the entrance to Palazzo Ronconi, its gates shut fast against the outside world and the red roof of the palazzo just showing beyond the rise of the driveway. Walking on for a further thirty yards or so, he stepped off the road and down a bank to the foot of the eight-foot-high brick wall that protected the property from prying eyes. A tree grew just beside the wall at this point and Michael quickly glanced along the road in either direction before leaping up high enough to grab a branch about six-and-a-half feet up the tree. He swung his legs round onto some small branches that acted as steps and was soon seated on the branch, looking down on the top of the wall and the beautiful, sloping parkland that stretched beyond it. There was broken glass embedded in the concrete at the top of the wall, and so he carefully removed his jacket and dropped it down on top of the glass. Gingerly, he slid along the bough until he felt it would be unsafe to venture further. He then lowered himself slowly onto the jacket. He could feel the glass against his legs under the jacket, but it was not penetrating the thick wool. He then leapt from the wall, grabbing his jacket as he did so and tumbling onto his back as he fell. He rolled onto his front and stayed still, listening for any evidence that his entry had been seen. He had no idea if there were closed circuit cameras or sensors or anything else to detect intruders. These guys were, after all, seriously rich and anything was possible.

  He lay there for a couple of minutes, his heart pumping against the wall of his chest, but there was silence all around.

  Slowly he raised his body into a crouch and began to creep towards the house, wondering exactly what he was going to do when he got there.

  Arriving safely at the side wall of the building, he flattened himself against it in order to regain his composure. He felt safer now, as bushes were placed intermittently around the building, affording him some shelter.

  What now? He could not very well ring the doorbell and demand to see Antonio Ronconi. Perhaps, at least, he could find Antonio’s office. That would be a start. He slid along the wall and round the corner to the rear of the house. Most of the rooms were lit and passing the windows was, consequently, a difficult process. However, every window he passed showed a room beyond, empty of people. He rounded the back and there in front of him was the large glass extension that contained Teresa Ronconi’s butterflies.

  Suddenly, just in front of him, a door swung open and the white-coated figure of a woman emerged. She left the door open, walked off into the landscaped garden and leaned against a tree, taking a packet of cigarettes from her pocket and lighting one. She then turned and looked, away from where Michael was standing, down towards the lake where the lights of Menaggio could be seen, twinkling dimly in the distance. She inhaled deeply and breathed out, the wind immediately tearing the smoke away.

  Michael slipped silently along the wall to the door and crept inside.

  It was a double door. The interior door led straight into the butterfly house. He gripped the handle, turned it and opened it, feeling sweat prickle the back of his neck as the damp heat of the interior struck his skin. Inside was very dimly lit, but he immediately caught sight of another white-coated figure working at a bench about fifteen feet away. He stopped for a second, crouching behind some large shrubs, getting his bearings. Around him he could hear the rustle of thousands of wings and every now and then a wing would brush against his face and then take its owner off on a desperate flight of panicked escape. In this crouching posture, he made his way towards the end of the line of shrubs he was using as cover.

  The door to the interior of the house was now only ten fe
et away. He crossed the path and, hidden by another group of shrubs, reached it. Slowly, he turned the handle and left the conservatory. He opened the other door and gratefully left behind the sweltering heat.

  He was now in the house, in a corridor very close to Antonio Ronconi’s ground floor office, if his memory served him well from his one visit here.

  Voices. He heard them around a bend in the corridor. He flattened himself against the cold wall and listened. It was a voice he recognised – that woman, Ronconi’s assistant – the one with the distinctive American accent.

  He stretched his neck around the corner of the corridor and there she was, standing at the door of Antonio’s office. The conversation was quiet and he could not make out any of it, but the woman said ‘Buonanotte,’ and walked away towards the grand staircase, closing the door behind her. He heard her footsteps mount the carpeted stairs and fade away towards the top.

  Michael put his hand in his pocket, touching the cold steel of the pistol that lay there. He shuddered as his fingers ran down the barrel in search of the butt. He pulled it out, blinked at it, held it out in front of him and stepped out into the corridor, edging towards the door to Ronconi’s office.

  He pressed himself against it, listening, and then looked around before turning the handle and quickly opening it.

  Antonio Ronconi was so startled he almost blew away several million lire’s worth of cocaine that lay in a thin white line on the desk in front of him. A fifty thousand lire bill was stuck in his nose and his face was a mask of concentration and anticipation. Michael was unsure who was more surprised – he with the sight that lay before him, or Antonio Ronconi, seeing the English journalist that half of Italy was looking for, standing before him with a gun in his hand.

  Staring at Michael, Ronconi removed the banknote from his nose absently, as if he were taking a cigarette from his mouth.

  ‘Easy … now!’ hissed Michael, looking round the room to ensure no one else was in there.