by Val McDermid
I pulled Richard into a tight embrace as Turner and the bodyguard went on board, just in case Turner was looking. When they’d disappeared below, we carried on strolling past the Petronella Azura III. I can’t say I was surprised to see that the expensive motor cruiser was registered out of Palermo.
“Fucking hell,” Richard murmured as we passed the boat. “It’s the Mafia. Brannigan, this is no place for us to be,” he said, casting a nervous look back over his shoulder.
“They don’t know we’re here,” I pointed out. “Let’s keep it that way, huh?” At the end of the quay, we stared out to sea for a few minutes.
“We’re going to pull out now, aren’t we?” Richard demanded. “I mean, it’s time to bring in the big battalions, isn’t it?”
“Who did you have in mind?” I asked pointedly. “This isn’t Manchester. I don’t know the good cops from the bad cops. From what I’ve heard of Italian corruption, I could walk into the nearest police station and find myself talking to this mob’s tame copper. Can you think of a better short cut to a concrete bathing suit?”
Richard looked hurt. “I was only trying to be helpful,” he said.
“Well, don’t. When I want help, I’ll ask for it.” I can’t help myself. The more scared I get, the more I bite lumps out of the nearest body. Besides, I didn’t figure I was obliged to feel guilty. As far as I was concerned, Richard had drawn the short straw from choice.
I got to my feet and started to stroll back down the quay. After a moment, Richard caught up with me. We were just in time to see the chauffeur and a young lad in shorts and a striped T-shirt trot down the gangplank and start unloading suitcases from the boot of the limo. They ferried half a dozen bags on board, not even giving us a second glance. We walked back to my car and stared at the receiver in a moody silence neither of us felt like breaking.
After about half an hour, Turner and the bodyguard came off the yacht and got in the car. “You want to follow them?” I asked Richard. “I’ll stay here and watch the boat.”
“No heroics,” he bargained.
“No heroics,” I agreed.
He just caught the lights at the end of the road where the limo had turned right. It looked like the chauffeur was taking Turner back to the villa. And judging by the screen, the buckle was now aboard the yacht. One of two things was going to happen now. Either the yacht was going to take off, complete with buckle, or some third party was going to come to the yacht and get the buckle. My money was on the former, but I felt duty-bound to sit it out. The phone rang about twenty minutes later. “They’re back at the villa,” Richard reported. “Do you want me to wait and see if Turner takes off?”
“Please,” I said. “Thanks, Richard. Sorry I bit your head off earlier.”
“So you should be. You’re lucky to have me.” He ended the call before I could find a retort.
Suddenly the receiver screen went blank. I sat bolt upright. I pulled the connector out of the cigarette-lighter socket where I’d been recharging the batteries and slid the power compartment cover off. I broke one of my nails getting the batteries out in a hurry, and stuffed replacements in. But when I switched on again, the screen was still blank. Given that it wasn’t the batteries and
Ten minutes later, the lad in the shorts was back on the quayside, casting off. Within twenty minutes, the Petronella Azura III had disappeared round the point. Pondering my next step, I drove back up the valley and found Richard sitting in the BMW a couple of hundred yards up the road from the turn-off to the drive. I parked my Merc at Casa Nico and walked up to join him. I filled him in on the latest turn of events. It didn’t take long.
“So do we go home now?” he asked plaintively.
“I suppose so,” I said reluctantly. “I’d like to get inside that villa, though.”
“You said yourself it was impregnable,” he pointed out.
“I know, but I never could resist a challenge.”
Richard took a deep breath. “Brannigan, you know I never try to come between you and your job. But this time, you’ve got to back off. Go home, tell the police what you’ve got so far. They can pick up Turner and they can talk to the good cops over here and get them to look at the villa and the boat. There’s nothing more you can do here. Besides, you’ve got another investigation you’re supposed to be working on, in case you’d forgotten.”
Part of me knew he was right. But there is another part of me that responds to being told what to do by doing just the opposite. It overrides all my common sense, and it’s one of the reasons why I prefer to work alone. Besides, I knew that all we had was an address and the name of a boat. That wouldn’t necessarily take the authorities anywhere at all. I wanted more. But I didn’t want to get into that right then. “Let’s book in at Casa Nico for another night,” I said. “We might as well get an early start tomorrow and shoot straight back to Antwerp in a oner,” I said. “We don’t have to eat there,” I added hastily. “Sestri Levante looked like it might have a few decent restaurants.”
Richard scowled. “So why don’t we go the whole hog and book in at a decent hotel too?”
“I’d like to stay up here, keep an eye on the place, see if there
The scowl deepened. “I’m not some bloody bimbo,” he complained. “If you’re waiting here, I’ll keep you company.”
It was a long afternoon. I finished the thriller and Richard started it. We played I-Spy. We played Bonaparte. We played “I went to the doctor’s with …” right through the alphabet. The only break was when I nipped back to the Casa Nico to book us a room for the night. I was about to give in to Richard’s pleas to call it a day when there was movement. An Alfa Romeo sports saloon shot out of the drive heading up the valley. Even at the speed it was travelling, I recognized the bodyguard behind the wheel. “Move it,” I told Richard. He pulled the BMW round in a tight arc and shot after the Alfa.
We didn’t have far to go. A few miles up the road was a bar whose owner could have taught Nico a thing or two. Even from our slow cruise past, it was obvious that Bar Bargonasco made Nico’s look like a funeral parlor. The music was loud and cheerful, the car park didn’t look like an apprentice scrapyard and there were more than six people in there. “Pull up round the corner,” I said.
When the car stopped, I opened the door. “Where are you going?” Richard said, panic in his eyes.
“I’m going to get into that villa one way or another. If I can’t do it Dennis O’Brien style, I’m going to do it Kate Brannigan style. I’m going to chat up the bodyguard.” I shut the door and took off the shirt I was wearing over the cotton vest that was tucked into my jeans. As I was stuffing the shirt into my handbag, Richard jumped out of the driver’s seat.
“You’re out of your mind,” he yelled at me. “Have you seen the size of that guy?”
“That’s the whole point. He’s obviously been hired for his size, not his brains. He probably keeps them in his trousers, which gives me a head start.”
“You’ll never get his keys off him,” Richard exploded. “For fuck’s sake, Kate. This is madness.”
“I’m not planning on getting his keys off him. I’m planning on
Richard caught up with me two steps further on and grabbed my arm. “No way,” he shouted.
Mistake, really. In one short, sharp move, I freed myself and left Richard white-faced and clutching his wrist. “Never, never grab me like that,” I said softly. “You don’t own me, Richard, and you don’t tell me what to do.”
For a long moment we stood in a silent standoff. “I love you, you silly bitch,” Richard finally said. “If you want to go off and get yourself killed, you’ll have to knock me out first.”
“I’ll do it if I have to. You better believe me. This is my job, Richard. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’d fuck that gorilla because you think it’ll help you nail some mafioso?”
I snorted. “Is that what this is about? Sexual jealousy? What do you think I am, Richard? A tart? I never said I was goi
ng to fuck the guy. If he thinks that’s on the agenda, that’ll be his first mistake.”
“You think you can sort out a fucking monster like that with a bit of Thai boxing? Brannigan, you’re off your head!” Richard was scarlet by now, his hands bunched into fists by his side.
I was inches away from completely losing control, but I had enough sense left not to flatten him. That would be one move that our relationship wouldn’t survive. “Trust me, Richard,” I said quietly. “I know what I’m doing.”
He laughed bitterly. “Fine,” he spat at me. “Treat me like an idiot. I’m used to it, after all. That’s what you all think I am anyway, isn’t it? Richard the wimp, Richard the pillock, Richard the doormat, Richard the wanker, Richard who lets Kate do his thinking for him, Richard the limp dick who can’t be trusted to do the simplest of jobs without ending up in the nick,” he ranted.
“Nobody thinks you’re a wimp. I don’t think you’re a wanker, or any of the other things,” I shouted back at him. “What happened to you with the car could have happened just as easily to me.”
“Oh no, it couldn’t,” he screamed back at me. “Clever clogs Brannigan would have phoned the police as soon as she found the car. Clever clogs Brannigan would have checked the car to see if man who gets put up with because he’s marginally more fun than a vibrator.” He stopped suddenly, out of steam.
“I love you, Richard,” I said quietly. It’s not an expression I’m given to, but extreme circumstances demand extreme responses.
“Bollocks,” he shouted. “I’m a fucking convenience. You don’t know what love is. You never let anyone close enough. It’s all a fucking game to you, Brannigan. Like your fucking job. It’s all a game. Nothing ever gets you in here,” he added, thumping his chest like an opera buffa tenor.
He looked so ridiculous, I couldn’t help a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth. “This isn’t the time for this,” I said, trying to make my amusement look like conciliation. “I’d no idea you felt this bad about what happened, and it’s important that we sort it out. But we’re both tired, we’re both under a lot of pressure. Let’s leave it till we get home, OK? Now, let me do what I’ve got to do. I’ll see you back at Casa Nico later, OK?”
Richard shook his head. “You really are a piece of work, Brannigan. You think you can just sweep all this aside like that? Forget it. You can go back to Casa fucking Nico if you want. But I won’t be there.”
He turned on his heel and stormed back to the car. As he opened the door, he said, “You coming?”
I shook my head. He slammed the car door behind him, swung the car round and headed back down the valley. I watched him go, my stomach feeling hollow, my eyes suddenly swimming with tears. Impatiently, I blinked them away. I tried to convince myself that Richard would be back at Casa Nico once he’d calmed down.
In the meantime, I had work to do. Besides, now I needed a lift back down the valley.
Chapter 18
No woman is a heroine to her dentist. Along with my phobia about tunnels goes my paralyzing fear of needles and drills. As a result, I knew I wasn’t going to have to rely on anything as crude as physical strength to beat the bodyguard. If Richard hadn’t pissed me off so much, I’d have explained it to him. But Watsons who scream at their Holmeses don’t get the inside track on methodology.
Picking up the bodyguard was a doddle. Any man who spends as much time as he obviously did on keeping his body in peak condition has to have a streak of vanity a mile wide. He fully expected that if an attractive foreign woman walked into a bar where he was drinking, he’d be the one she’d inevitably be drawn to. And in a country where the native women are so sexually constrained by religion, it’s equally inevitable that foreign women who walk into bars alone and with bare shoulders must be whores. My target thought it was his lucky night as soon as I settled on the bar stool next to him and smiled as I ordered a Peroni.
On the short walk to the bar, I’d come up with the cover story that I was a professional photographer, in Italy to take pictures for a coffee-table book of Italian church bell towers. Gianni the bodyguard and his drinking companions fell for it hook, line and sinker, with much nudging in the ribs about women who liked big ones. I suppose they thought my Italian wasn’t up to mucky innuendo. By the time I’d finished my first beer, they were competing over who was going to buy the next one. By the time I’d finished my second, his heavy, muscular arm was draped over my naked shoulders and his equally heavy cologne had invaded my nostrils. The hardest part of the whole production number was hiding my revulsion. If there’s one thing I hate it’s hairy men, and this guy was covered
I was on my fourth beer when I casually let slip that I was staying at Casa Nico and that I’d left my car down there while I walked up the valley. Immediately, Gianni volunteered to drive me back down. Then, of course, he suddenly remembered how terrible the cooking was at Casa Nico. Cue for nods of agreement from his buddies, coupled with nudges and winks acknowledging the cleverness of Gianni’s moves. Why, he asked innocently, didn’t I come back to the villa with him for some genuine Italian home cooking. His boss was away, and he was a dab hand with the spaghetti sauce. We could eat on the terrace like the rich folks do, and then, later, he could run me back down to the pensione.
I looked up adoringly at him and said how delightful it was to meet such hospitable people. We left a couple of minutes later, accompanied by whoops and grunts from his cronies. In the car, he put a proprietary paw on my knee between gear changes. I fought the urge to lean over and grip his balls so tight his eyes would pop from their sockets like shelled peas. He was the driver, after all, and I didn’t want to end up on the river bed looking like spaghetti sauce.
As we approached the villa, he pulled a little black electronic box out of his tight jeans and punched a button. The gates swung open, the Alfa shot through and I got my first full frontal view of the Villa San Pietro. It was magnificent. A modern villa in the style of the traditional houses that front every fashionable resort in Italy. Immaculate pink stucco, green louvred shutters. And a satellite dish the size of a kid’s paddling pool. “Molto elegante,” I said softly.
“Good, huh?” Gianni said proudly, as if it were all his. The drive swung round the side of the house, past a tennis court and swimming pool and over to a separate, single-story building. As we drew near, Gianni hit the button on the box again and an up-and-over garage door opened before us. Inside the garage was the stretch limo, Turner’s Merc and a small green Fiat van. At the sight of Turner’s car, I started to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. Gianni had said we’d have the place to ourselves. But Turner had come back to the villa with him in the afternoon, and his car was
We got out of the car and Gianni folded me into a bear hug, his tongue thrusting between my teeth. It felt like my tonsils were being raped. “What happened to dinner?” I asked as soon as I could get my mouth clear. “I don’t know about you, but I can’t think about having fun when I’m hungry.”
Gianni chuckled. “OK, OK. First the food, then the fun.” He leered and gestured with his thumb towards a door at the side of the garage. “That’s my apartment over there. But we’ll go over to the house to eat. My boss has better food and drink than me.”
We walked over to the house, his arm heavy across my shoulders. We crossed a marble patio, complete with built-in barbecue and pizza oven, and entered the kitchen through tall French windows. It was like a temple to the culinary arts. There was a free-standing butcher’s block in the middle of the floor, complete with a set of Sabatier knives in their slots. Above it hung a batterie de cuisine. On the blond wooden worktops, there was every conceivable kitchen machine from ice-cream maker to a full-sized Gaggia espresso machine. Bunches of dried herbs hung from the walls, while pots of fresh basil, coriander and parsley lined a deep windowsill to the side. “He likes to cook,” Gianni said. “He likes me to cook too, when we have guests.”
“Nice one,” I said. “Where’s the drink?”
> He nodded towards a door. “Through there. There’s a wet bar in the dining room. It’s got everything. There’s white wine in the fridge, and red wine in the cupboard here. Why don’t you help yourself?” He moved towards me again and clutched me close, his huge hands cupping my buttocks. “Mmm, gorgeous,” he growled.
I reached round and let my fingers stray up and down his back. That way I stopped myself thrusting my thumbs into his eyeballs. “Tell you what,” I whispered, “I’ll fix us some cocktails. I might not be much good in the kitchen, but I’m terrific with a cocktail shaker.”
He released me and leered again. “I can’t wait to experience your wrist action.”
I giggled. “You won’t be disappointed, I promise you.”
I left him staring into a big larder fridge. He hadn’t lied about the wet bar. It did have everything. The first thing I did was dredge my phial of Valium out of the bottom of my bag. I’m pretty hostile to pharmaceuticals in general, but without the Valium, I’d have blackened stumps where my teeth should be. I tipped the tablets out. There were six. I hoped that would be enough on an empty stomach to knock Gianni out before I had to test whether I really did have the skills to stop a man in his tracks. I spotted a sharp knife by a basket of lemons and oranges, and quickly crushed the tablets with the blade. Then I took a quick inventory of the bar. What I needed was a cocktail that was strong and bittersweet.
I found the measure and the shaker sitting on a shelf behind me. A small fridge contained a variety of fruit juices, and a couple of bags of ice. I settled on a Florida. Into a cocktail shaker I put three measures of gin, six measures of grapefruit juice, three measures of Galliano, and one and a half measures of Campari. I tossed in a couple of ice cubes, closed the shaker and did a quick salsa round the bar with the shaker providing the beat. “Sounds good,” Gianni shouted from the kitchen.