by Tony Salter
'Surely that's not so unusual, is it?' I said. 'It's the classic evil mother-in-law syndrome. There's a reason why so many stand-up comedians love it.'
'Maybe,' she said. 'But anyway, for us, it had become difficult even before she started having her problems. Everything I did was wrong. If I offered to help, I knew Fabiola thought I was interfering and being critical, but I didn't mean to be.'
I had already decided I wasn't going to mention the diaries and kept my lips firmly pressed together.
'When she started to have difficulties, it became much worse. We were all worried about you, but she hated the idea that she might not be capable of looking after you properly on her own. That was, of course, understandable, but you were so little and vulnerable and I felt you had to come first, no matter what.
'That night, that terrible night, I think she overheard me talking about my concerns with your father and I think it may have been that which pushed her over the edge.'
'I don't think you ...'
'... Let me finish, please,' she said. 'It was bad enough when I was certain she was mentally unstable. But now. Now we've learned that she probably wasn't ill at all, I'm struggling. I can't help thinking, "what if she hadn't heard us talking that night?", "what if I'd minded my own business in the first place?".
'Oh Granny. Poor you,' I said, knowing she was telling me the truth – at least the truth from her perspective. 'You can't blame yourself. You didn't know what was going on and you were trying to make the best of a bad situation.' I could hear the sound of Dad clumping down the stairs. 'Let's not allow Jax to do any more harm than she already has. We have to remember who's really to blame for what happened to Mum.'
'Thank you darling,' she said, sagging down into her chair. 'I'm sorry to burden you with this, especially now, but I do feel better for telling you.'
'What happens now?' said Dad.
'Now we wait for the system,' said Liz. 'It'll take its own time and you can't do anything to make it move any faster.'
'But you must have an idea?' I said. 'You've seen this sort of thing before?'
'Nothing quite like this,' she said. 'But I can take a guess. I wouldn't expect anything much to happen for at least three or four months.'
'Three or four months!' said my dad. 'That's ridiculous.'
'Not really. They'll be working on an international arrest warrant now which will kick things off, but some countries will process it faster than others and, if she's left the UK, we have no idea where she is.'
'She'll have left all right.' I said. 'Somewhere sunny.'
We were sitting on the terrace in Granny's garden. For some inexplicable reason, Daz and Granny had become good friends over the years and they'd been in the kitchen chatting. He strolled out carrying a bamboo tray laden with a teapot, cups and what looked to be a lemon cake, glistening with stickiness.
'Got it all sorted, have you?' he said, putting the tray on the table.
'Apparently, nothing's going to happen for months,' said Dad, still oozing disappointment. 'We need to wait for the system.'
'Might as well have a cup of tea while we wait,' said Daz. 'Cake looks good too.' He busied himself pouring tea and slicing cake, pretending he wasn't interested in the conversation.
'What about the tracker?' I said to Liz. 'I'm sure she'll have kept the purse. Can't someone trace her with that?'
Liz smiled. 'If only it were so simple. Something that small can't exactly broadcast a signal around the world. It needs to be within a few miles of a tracking station and the tracking station needs to be specifically looking for it.'
'I get that,' I said. 'But there must be some sort of process to make it happen.'
'There is. First you need the warrant. Then Interpol needs to notify all of its members. They then need to prepare proper paperwork to comply with local laws as well as circulating the identification codes for the tracker. Then she needs to come within range of one of the monitoring stations. All of that takes time and remember the evidence they have that she was actually the one who threw the ammonia is not the best. If the victim hadn't been a policeman, I don't think they'd be bothering at all.'
Daz and Liz took their tea and wandered off to admire Granny's roses, leaving me and Dad on our own at the table.
'What's up with Uncle Daz?' I said. 'It's like he's not interested in what happens now.'
'He's having a hard time,' said my dad. 'He hates that he allowed you to get into such a dangerous situation, and he can't forgive himself for letting Julie trap him into letting her go. I think he believes he's let your mum down all over again.'
'But that's rubbish,' I said. 'He saved my life.'
'I know that, but it's going to take him a while to get there.'
'How can that vile woman go on fucking up people's lives and get away with it untouched?'
'It's not over yet,' he said. 'But I still can't understand why she's not going to be prosecuted for Fabiola's murder as well.'
'Yeah. I've been trying to get my head around that too,' I said. 'It seems as though the phone proves Jax was tracking Mum and that she was responsible for at least some of the emails but not much more.'
'But surely that would be enough to convict her? The phone was registered in her name.'
'It might be,' I said. 'But convict her of what? Sending a few malicious emails? Using Mum's Facebook account to create a fake group? You'd struggle to get a court interested if it happened last month.'
'But Fabiola died,' he said, tears in his eyes. 'This is different.'
'Yes, Mum died,' I said. 'But Jax didn't kill her. It was her fault, but she didn't actually do it.'
'I know that, but it's still wrong. Don't you want to get back at her for what she did to your mother?'
'Of course I bloody do, Dad. Why do you think I've been doing this? Taking her company away from her will have hurt her badly. It's something, but not enough.'
'Then everything you went through to get that phone was a waste of time?'
'No. That's not true. Liz told me the phone has traces of deleted emails and texts which might be enough to prove that she planned the ammonia bulb attack. Without them, there wouldn't be enough evidence for an arrest warrant.'
'But even if they find her and prosecute her for that attack, you won't actually be getting revenge for your mother.'
'I think I will. If we can take her down, destroy her life completely, I don't really care how.'
'I don't know,' he said, shaking his head. 'It might have been better if I'd burned the diaries and thrown the phone away. We could have got on with our lives. You'd have split up with her sooner or later.'
'Maybe you're right, but we can't turn back the clock. I actually wonder if she'd have ever let me go – thinking about how she must've deliberately targeted me in the first place terrifies me.' I twisted round and stared out into the garden, the dream taste of sand and salt suddenly overwhelming.
I could see Daz and Liz strolling back across the lawn, arm-in-arm like an old married couple.
I turned back to my dad and smiled. 'Look at that,' I said. 'What do you reckon?'
All Roads Lead to Rome
The woman in the blue dress sat at the metal table, sipping her coffee. It was still early and the air was cool under the canvas awning. Her broad, white hat and oversized Chanel sunglasses whispered 'film star' in the ears of passers by and most of the men couldn't resist a second, sly stare.
It was her favourite time of day. The May nights were still cool enough to chill down the stones and a gentle breeze picked up a fine mist from the fountain and carried it over to the restaurant.
All too soon the oppressive heat would reach out into every corner of the square, through each window and spread its invisible fingers into every room of every house. By midday, it would already be unbearable.
The only solution was air conditioning, which she hated, or to leave for the coast, which she was about to do. She'd bought a cliff top villa in Peschici and the renovations were now fini
shed. A month overdue, but still in time to escape the unbearable heat of a Rome summer.
The sun blazed even more strongly in Puglia but the forests and the sea breeze would make a huge difference. Her new villa was three hundred years old and had belonged to twelve generations of the same wealthy merchant family. They'd known exactly where and how to build. Old stone, thick clay tiles and the whole thing planted into the hillside by local knowledge. She knew it would be perfect all year round.
The previous year hadn't been her best year. It wasn't because of worries about being found; her new identity was bulletproof and there were no links at all to her former selves. She also had more money than she could ever need, stashed in numerous, untraceable accounts and safety deposit boxes.
Nor was it because Sam had survived. If he'd died, she would probably have regretted her petulant malice in any case. He was all that was left of Fabiola and she knew she would see him again one day.
Fear and regrets weren't what had almost destroyed her – it was the feeling of having been defeated and outsmarted. She hadn't felt like that since she was a child – not even close. She knew she'd made some small errors of judgement but that didn't explain everything.
She'd made her escape – again. She'd proven who was smartest – again. She'd won – again. So why did the victory taste so sour and bitter?
Her problem was that she knew the real root cause of her pain and could do nothing about it. It was already too late. Powerlessly observing what had happened to Pulsar after she'd left had driven her almost insane with rage and frustration and she would never be able to fix it.
Pulsar had been hugely successful. She'd built the business from nothing to become one of the world's top ten companies and had taken great care to put in place structures – legal, financial and managerial – which would make it impregnable even if she wasn't around.
Pulsar was her legacy, her Taj Mahal built from the grief, despair and fury which had engulfed her after Fabiola died. Pulsar was supposed to stand for ever as a monument to their perfect love. How could it have crumbled into ruins in six short months?
Dave Bukowski had driven the wrecking ball but she didn't understand why. For whatever reason, he'd turned overnight from being the saviour of her legacy to its nemesis. It wasn't only business. He was on some sort of evangelistic crusade.
She'd made the mistake of sharing too much of her vision with him and given him the tools to use against her. Why had she done that?
Within days of her sudden departure, Pulsar's largest competitor, MySafe, had announced their partnership with Bukowski and outlined radical, visionary plans for the future of digital security. Based on the professor's unique nano-genetics research and approved patents, they would be the only company able to provide the radical solutions which were urgently needed.
It was time for a new kid on the block and they would now save the world from technological Armageddon as Pulsar had done twenty years earlier. The chief executive of MySafe even had the patronising audacity to thank Julie Martin and Pulsar for their contribution to the industry. 'On the shoulders of giants ...' or some such drivel.
The story made extremely convincing reading – it was her strategy after all – and Pulsar's share price dropped by forty per cent almost overnight.
The treacherous professor wasn't finished and his next step was to approach the Pulsar board with a hostile takeover bid. They'd laughed him out of the building the first time, but he was well funded and his PR machine was working overtime. Pulsar was Julie Martin and she'd disappeared. There were tabloids full of scandalous rumours, and the global media smelled blood.
It only took three more takeover offers and four months before those lily-livered puppets crumbled and accepted the bid. Six months later, Pulsar was no more.
That was in January and she'd barely stepped out of her flat for six weeks afterwards.
She'd always had a cause, a project, a focus to keep her tied down. All at once, she found herself floating, untethered and at the mercy of every capricious puff of air. She had no idea how to stop it, how to take back control and, perversely, she began to unravel.
A few threads at first, then more and more until she could see her fraying outline blurring in the mirror and she understood that she would soon be completely lost. Everything which she'd once been would be pulled apart and wafted away. Meaningless strands scattered and lost forever.
She was over that now, but it had been a close call.
In her more coherent moments, she would buy every newspaper she could find and read them all, back-to-back, word-by-word, looking for answers. Looking for salvation.
It was in one of the Italian papers that she found it. In a glossy Sunday supplement. There was an article called 'Una tragedia pugliese' and it was Fabiola's family story. Some enterprising journalist had linked Fabiola's suicide to the post-war workers' exodus and told the tale of three generations of Puglians, their ups and downs, the death of Fabiola's parents, and the ultimate tragic ending.
She'd stared at the picture of Fabiola for hours. It must have been taken when they were together. She looked young, strong and immortal. That was how she remembered her. On the facing page was a beautiful photo of Peschici showing the Carlantino's hometown nestling into the cliffs and there, overlooking the harbour and the beach, was the villa.
It was as though she had an old-fashioned circuit breaker in her head and someone had suddenly pulled down the lever with a clunk of springs and violet-blue sparks. The faint and bitter smell of ozone was left hanging in the air, but she was back. She'd known exactly what to do next.
'Il conto per favore.' Her Italian was flawless. If there was any accent, it might have been German, or maybe something Eastern European.
'Sì signora, subito.' The waiter made a short half-bow and disappeared inside.
As she waited for the bill, she smiled at the hundreds of pigeons mobbing a little old grandmother dressed head-to-toe in black. La Signora dei Piccioni came here at the same time every day with a big bag of breadcrumbs. Her friends were always waiting, dirty town-grey plumage blending into the stone flags and sharp beaks eager for their breakfast. Rome had its own charm and she would make sure to spend a few weeks here every winter.
'Ecco qui, signora.' The small plastic tray with her bill materialised in front of her and she turned to the waiter.
'Grazie mille,' she said, with a gleaming smile.
The waiter walked away feeling a little taller, a little stronger, a little more 'male'. She hadn't lost her touch.
The lady in blue took a twenty-euro note out of her worn leather purse, tucked it under her coffee cup and stood up, carefully smoothing her dress. It was time to move on. She'd never allowed regrets to rule her and the disappointments of the past year were already fading.
Her ability to airbrush history to match her preferred version was a wonderful talent. She could never make a mistake that endured because she would simply change the narrative; everything that happened, happened because she wanted it to happen. She was always in control.
Except for Fabiola. Try as she might, she couldn't make that right.
When he saw the lady in the white hat ask for the bill, the tall man standing in the corner of the square held his right hand to his cheek and spoke quietly to himself. One of the two young men standing by a scooter next to the fountain nodded almost imperceptibly and looked up stretching his shoulders and neck.
She walked across the square towards the tall man and the narrow street which led to her apartment. She shivered despite the strong sun. Something was out of place. Why was the man walking towards her? Who was he?
'Buongiorno, signora,' said the tall man. 'My name is Capitano Roberto de Alfaro of the Guardia di Finanza. I have a warrant for your arrest. Would you come with me please.' He reached into his suit pocket and took out a plastic wallet which appeared to be some sort of ID.
'There must be some mistake,' she said, turning and looking behind her, eyes flicking from side
to side, trying to understand what was happening. The two men from the scooter were closer now, spaced apart and watching her. She turned back to the tall man.
'Signora Martin. I must insist that you come with me.' He waved some folded sheets of paper in front of her. 'I can assure you that the paperwork is all in order. It would be best not to create a scene.'
He knew who she was? How was it possible? How had they found her? No point in asking any of these men and there was no hope of immediate escape. She would have to wait until she had spoken to her lawyer.
'As I said, Capitano, there must be some mistake but, if you insist, please lead the way.'
She sat in the cold, square interview room wrapped in a borrowed blanket and stared at the pale green paint peeling away from the walls. She was on her own. They had tried asking her questions but she'd insisted on waiting for her lawyer. He was the top defence lawyer in Rome and would clear up this mess soon enough.
She still didn't understand why she'd been arrested or how they'd found her. The Italian police had an English detective with them, so it must relate to something that had happened in the UK. They couldn't have any real evidence. She was certain of that.
The only thing which could have caused a few problems was her old phone, but she'd thrown it in the canal straight after she'd left Sam. It had been weak and sentimental to keep the phone in the first place, but it was gone now.
The English detective had brought an older woman with him as an observer; she was apparently a former colleague, recently retired. That was strange in itself, but there was something more, something about the way that the woman had looked at her. Intense anger, hatred, bitterness – who was she?