It’s OK, it’s OK, he told himself. Another hallucination. To be expected. ‘It’s OK,’ he told the girl. ‘I know, now.’
Chapter 31
He switched off the headlamps 50 metres before the gate to the villa, leaving the car on the side of the road. He got out, not forgetting the keys and scissor jacks, and flashlight in hand, made the rest of his way on foot.
He slipped in the entrance. No cars, the lodge dark. He kept his footsteps as quiet as possible as he moved across the gravel. Ignoring paths that wanted to him to follow a winding route to the villa, he ploughed his own direct path, which meant he had to push through bushes and trample down flowers. He almost stepped into a pond, so still and covered in fleshy water lilies that, bathed in the strange light of the supermoon, it resembled a patch of lawn. He skirted its edges.
He heard a scream.
He stopped dead, and crouched down. The scream came again, louder and closer, but from a different direction. Whoever was screaming was moving.
Cautiously, he moved onto a white path at the end of which loomed the villa. A streak of red leapt from one side of the path to the other, and he only had time to register what he had seen when the fox or vixen, untroubled by his presence, stepped daintily back the way it had come, and stood its ground no more than 20 paces from where he was standing. A small animal was wedged sideways in her mouth, surely too small to have been the source of the scream? As if to answer him, the vixen emitted a piercing bark that sounded for all the world like a woman in fear. Then she lifted her tail and streaked off towards the villa.
He stepped under the faded piece of red-and-white barricade tape. He swept the beam of the torch along the base of the wall, looking for any basement windows, steps leading down. Nothing, but that did not matter, because he was circling round to the rear to where he had been on that first day, which now seemed so long ago, with Silvana. That would be the place. The night seemed to grow darker, and he looked upwards. A black cloud was rolling across the immense face of the moon.
Death came hurtling down towards his upturned face. An instinctive and efficient part of his brain imparted instructions to his feet, and he had sprung backwards, arching his back like a high jumper clearing the bar, before his mind was able to articulate what was happening. A mass of bricks, rubble, and wood landed at his feet with a thud that sounded all the more weighty and deadly for the way the grass absorbed the noise. He rose from the ground and shone the torch up at the building. An entire ledge and half a lintel had crumbled, taking the shutter with it. The gap looked like a ragged mouth grinning at him. He kept the beam trained on the section of collapsed window, trying to resolve the fleeting image he thought he had spotted as he fell backwards.
He allowed himself a few minutes to recover, then followed the contours of the building from a wider berth until he reached the rear. He passed through the archway into the back courtyard, now containing the overgrown vegetable garden. To his immediate left was an old shed, ruining the symmetry of the enclosing wall. Farther on were Silvana’s unused guest quarters.
He turned his attention to the shed, the door of which was secured with a chain linking two hasps, thick enough to look at, but embedded in soft wet wood. It took a single, almost noiseless blow of the scissor jacks to detach the hasp from the wood – almost a waste of effort carting the jack this far. He felt he could have prised the metal anchor out of the rotting wood with his fingers, like pulling a rusty nail from butter.
Using the torch, he looked around. Greco had kept an organized and well-stocked shed. He registered a blue crowbar leaning in the corner, but chose a pair of bolt cutters and a hammer instead.
He pushed the wooden door closed, and walked into the middle of the yard where, in the sunlight, so long ago it now seemed, the killer had pointed him to a herb that tasted of carrot and had almost had the effect of hemlock. The smell of damp was so strong and the soil beneath his feet so soft that he imagined he might be about to step into a swamp. But beneath the soil, he knew, were solid flagstones, and at the far end of the courtyard, as the plan had shown him, would be a narrow staircase leading down to the bowels of the building.
For the last time, he saw a flitting shadow with a reddish halo in front of him, once again, hovering near the steps; she seemed to like steps. His unease was tinged with a growing fondness now, and he almost waved to her. Or it might have been the fox. He walked down a set of seven steps, counting as he went, opening and closing the jaws of the bolt cutter. Part of him felt like whistling, another part felt sad.
When he arrived at the cellar door, he switched on the fluorescent tubes and set the torch on the ground. The door was secured by a heart-shaped padlock that passed through two thick iron hooks, one on the edge of the door, the other on the frame. It seemed as if time had driven them deeper and deeper into the wood, and rust had sealed them there forever. The shackle of the heavy padlock united them and seemed to redouble their strength.
Before trying the keys, he pulled the padlock upwards, cupped it delicately in the palm of his hand, and examined where the shackle curved its way through the hooks. It scraped as he moved it, and a few tiny particles of rust rose into the air. He could not be sure, but it seemed that there might be a little less rust than might be expected, as if it had been opened recently. He took out Silvana’s ring of keys, but he could see at a glance that none fitted the padlock. Even so, he tried one or two. He wondered if Silvana had thrown this key away after she removed it from the ring, or whether she kept it on her person.
Now he took out the rusty keys from the princess’s house, and started trying in order of likelihood. The fifth one fitted. The padlock fell rather than sprang open. The door pushed outwards so that he had to push it shut with his shoulder to align the hooks and extract the padlock. He knew he was making a mess of potential evidence, but he also knew the door had been opened sometime in the recent past.
He did not want to contaminate the evidence further by placing the padlock on the ground, so he let it hang from the eye of the bolt. He stepped into the darkness behind the door, accidentally kicking in a pebble that resounded inside the dark chamber like an echo waiting to escape.
The smell told him all he needed to know. Automatically, his tonsils seemed to retract and his breathing became narrower, more cautious, and shallower as he tried to keep as much of the funk of rot from filling his lungs. But the body was not there in the small room in front of him, essentially a concrete bunker that looked like it had burst out of the side of the house like a carbuncle.
A gust of wind banged the door shut behind him, but the stab of fear had hardly reached his heart when the wind, just as casually slammed the door open again, then closed, open, and then closed, as if trying to air the room of its stench. Finally, the door and the wind tired of their game.
Blume stood for moment listening to the reassuring whisper and clicking of insects, then picked up the torch from the floor and shone it into the small chamber behind the door. A second door and nothing else. He was in a sort of airlock with a door behind and a door in front. Cement on the walls, floor, and ceiling. Thick black strings of webs in the corner. The door before him had an old-fashioned mortise lock, and above that a brand-new shining padlock holding together two bright new stainless steel clasps, inexpertly hammered into the door and its frame. Now there was premeditation.
He pushed up the iron lip covering the ancient keyhole. It took him several tries, but eventually one of the princess’s keys slotted neatly in, and turned, stiffly, but easily. He left the key in the door. Then he bent down and pulled out the bolt cutters. The wind started playing with the door behind him, but he ignored it. He was certain no one was coming, just as he was certain about what was behind the door.
He had seen dead bodies in various states of decomposition, but had never got used to the violence of death’s insult to the human form. Even a natural death became as unspeakably gruesome as a multiple homicide. All it took was time and heat.
Here, however, he was disturbed by the rank moisture and overpowering taste not only of death, but of mushrooms. A rotting cadaver he could deal with and almost looked forward to since it usually proved his thesis, but the idea of breathing in millions of tainted spores was making his stomach heave and his nose prickle. His arms and chest started itching, but he knew no pill would make it stop.
He recalled the princess’s story of her mad uncle forcing plants in the dark: white chicory, turning radicchio red, plots of rhubarb with poisonous leaves, spikes of pale asparagus. The padlock snapped like gingerbread under the force of the bolt cutters and fell on the ground, and the door swung outwards, releasing a foul breath of vegetable sweat and sick sweet death.
He lifted up the torch and pointed it in. Its diffuse light illuminated a forest of mushrooms, some flat-headed, others puffy, some powdery, others slimy. They were white, black, and brown, gilled, web-throated, stalked and unstalked; and they were everywhere. From zinc pails, washbasins, two ceramic tubs, and what looked like it had once been a wooden lab desk, the mushrooms poked shyly upwards or soared upwards like spongy trees. Some popped as he put his foot on the earthen floor, others leached out juicy liquids, and he had to stop himself from slipping.
It was as if they were all shying away from him, the intruder. They were all pointing, like the tentacles of a sea anemone, towards the deep back of the room. Now his beam picked up a few trails through the foetid broken stems, slimy paths cut through the room, at the far end of which the previous pathmaker, now a black, motionless shape, lay. He gazed down at her. He pulled his shirt up till it covered his mouth and nose.
‘Hello, Alina,’ he whispered into his own chest.
Her face was bloated, black, and livid, the largest fungus in the room. The body shimmered with insects, though the blowflies seemed to have gone. Her face seemed to glow, and Blume turned off the torch and stood there. Just as he was concluding that the blackness was absolute, he noticed the faintest gleam, there and not there, coming from above the far wall. The remnants of a white moonbeam produced a hint of a dark grey in the blackness. Perhaps when the sun came up, the grey grew a little lighter. It came from some sort of aperture, and possible exit, but not big enough for poor Alina to get through. That’s why all the mushroom heads were looking in the same direction, why all the stems seemed to be twisting away from him. They, like Alina, had instinctively leaned towards the feeble light.
Chapter 32
Perhaps it was the slight change in pressure, a deepening of the surrounding darkness, or a tiny noise, but as he turned round, he heard the clicks of the door close and the key turning.
Taking care not to slip on the slimy floor but being merciless with the fungus in his path, he rushed back to the door and hit it as hard as he could with his shoulder. It would not budge. Just as it had not budged for Alina. The difference was Alina had had no idea, whereas he was guilty of wilful stupidity for leaving the key outside. It had felt heavy in his hand, another encumberance, and he was tired. The heavy torch was as much as he could handle.
He knew she was there. He could not hear her, but he could sense her presence. He suspected she wanted to be addressed before she left and closed the second door and condemned him to the same fate as Alina.
‘Silvana! Silvana, I know it’s you. Don’t do this.’
He fancied he could hear her breathing, though the door was too thick. Had she already left the airlock and closed the second door and returned to the surface?
‘Silvana? You’re just making it worse.’
‘How could it be worse?’ Her voice was muffled but distinct, and he sank down on the ground in thankfulness. He might be able to negotiate his way out.
‘They know I am down here.’
‘Well then, they’ll find you, and if you are bluffing, they won’t. It’s worth the risk.’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Of course it is. I’d receive a charge of attempted murder on top of one of murder. To me it makes no difference. And who knows you’re down here? I don’t believe you.’
He pressed his ear to the door. Maybe she had already left him? He needed to keep the conversation going.
‘Silvana?’
Nothing.
‘Have you seen your father? I think he poisoned himself.’
‘That murdering bastard is dead.’
‘He poisoned himself,’ said Blume.
‘If you say so. I found him with a hole in his head, and Niki’s stupid little pistol in his hand.’
So Greco had been armed all the while. He had missed the pistol when searching the old man. ‘Why did he kill himself, Silvana?’
‘You. All because of you, Blume. You see, it never occurred to him that I might know anything about my mother and what happened, and I didn’t, not for a long time. But I found out several years ago. Then you arrived and forced him to activate some old contacts to find out who you were and how much you knew. That’s when he discovered something about me he didn’t know.’
‘What?’
‘You’re the detective, work it out.’
‘What was in those drinks you gave me?’
‘Datura stramonium, a few magic mushrooms. Some acacia seeds, root of pomegranate. Passion fruit, columbine, belladonna, silver berry, nutmeg, morning glory, and yellow hornpoppy. I put a lot of love into it. You must have the constitution of an ox, or you’re immune to poisons. You shouldn’t even be upright, you oversized bastard. Maybe you feed on poison. You gave me the idea, eating that conium. Back then I had no idea you would be so much trouble. I did fancy you a bit, by the way. Not as much as you fancied me.’
‘More than you fancy Niki?’
‘Little Niki. Poor little Niki. He’s loaded, you know. Even more than you’d think.’
‘And Alina? What did she do?’
‘She was going to run off with Niki and his money. I had other plans. I still do. But I wouldn’t mind knowing where Niki has gone. I don’t suppose you have any idea, Alec?’
‘I might. But I can’t think of one good reason for telling you, Silvana. Unless you’re thinking of letting me out of here.’
‘I can’t do that, sorry,’ she said. ‘How long do you think you could survive in there?’
‘About as long as Alina.’
‘I’m worried Niki might say something, you see. He knows, of course. He worked it out the other day. That was the fight you saw.’
Which, thought Blume, is why he took Alina’s passport and almost immediately turned against the investigation he had just asked for.
‘I can tell you where he is.’
‘No, on second thoughts, it doesn’t matter now.’
He heard the outside door close and the scrape of the bolt against the brackets.
The stool from which Alina had fallen, perhaps mercifully, killing herself with a single blow to the back of the head, was still against the wall, and he climbed up to see what she had been investigating. From above, the stench of the corpse was almost overpowering, but he could not climb, balance, search, and cover his mouth and nose all at once. Alina had been a small girl, and whatever she was looking for, he might be able to reach. He aimed the beam upwards, and realized that there was an aperture high up on the wall. It seemed to be the end of a chute, perhaps used for coal or wood once, or a flue of some sort. But it sloped back and then upwards, and was narrow. His body was never going through there. Perhaps his voice would carry, and someone walking above might hear. But he was not going to start shouting, not yet, not at night, and not while Silvana was still about.
Without warning, without even dimming, the light went out. He lowered his arm carefully, feeling the stood below him wobble. If he fell backwards now, he would land right on top of Alina behind him. He banged the torch against the wall, and the two fluorescent tubes lit up again. At least that was something.
Then they went out again.
It might be possible to construct something long, a stick with a rag, and shove it up until it poked abo
ve the ground, and then hope that someone would recognize it for what it was. That is probably what Alina was thinking. He stretched his neck upwards trying to inhale the air coming down rather than the odour rising from below. The scent coming down was powerful, too, off-putting, harsh. Nothing as bad as what was below, but unnerving in a different way. He felt around with his hand, looking for a metal grille or something that might stop an object from being pushed through.
The touch was completely unexpected. A split second afterwards, he realized that it had been preceded by something warm, a wet breath. He yanked his hand out before the warm breath turned into a bite. He dropped the torch, which hit the ground and went off. He was falling backwards, as Alina had fallen backwards, to the same spot where she lay. At the last moment, he managed to push out his legs, and his feet hit the ground, one on either side of the body, before the momentum carried him backwards and crashing through the mush of fungus and stalks. He got up and retrieved the light, shook it. One tube flickered into life. He made his way back to the door, sat down, pulled his knees up, and decided to relax. They would find him eventually. Niki’s car would tell them he was here. Unless Silvana was sly enough to remove it, but she would need the keys for that. Would she have the keys to Niki’s car? She might. In fact, she would probably drive it away to wherever she was going. He pushed his forehead against his knees, and dismissed the thought.
Chapter 33
‘Hey, that’s my car,’ said Niki from the back seat. ‘There, halfway into the ditch.’
Caterina braked to a halt, and then reversed. The Carabinieri patrol car following them did likewise. ‘Take a good look. Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘That’s the one that Blume borrowed?’
‘Call it borrowing,’ said Niki.
Caterina reached over and touched Nadia’s knee, seeking confirmation. Nadia nodded.
‘Why did he park it there?’ said Niki. ‘If you can call that parking. He has no respect.’
Bitter Remedy: An Alec Blume Case Page 24