by Bill Cariad
‘Mother of God, she is stunning,’ thought Sabbatini. Trying, and failing, to reconcile the image before him with his three damaged attackers. He cleared his throat, but still heard himself croak the words. “A simple thank you seems woefully inadequate.”
Maria shrugged her shoulders and silently dealt with the overflow of adrenalin still coursing through her body. A part of her was still replaying in her mind the moves she had just made, automatically thinking of how she might have gained vital seconds had she performed them differently. Another part of her was trying to ignore her throbbing left heel and torn stockings, and the scuff marks on her sweater, and the fact that she didn’t at all mind the way in which the handsome carabiniere officer was looking at her breasts as she drew deep breaths and willed her muscles to relax.
“A simple thank you is fine,” she replied.
“Perhaps...,” he began, halting abruptly as Maria saw his body language change and his dark eyes bored into her own with a I know it can never be look, and in that strangely regrettable instant she had confirmation of the fact that he knew who her father was.
“Perhaps,” she picked up on his word, sensing that he knew she was letting him off the hook, “I can retrieve my footwear and continue my shopping.” She then added the challenge with a smile. “I don’t imagine you will need to, detain me any longer?”
“No, that won’t be necessary,” he responded quietly. “Arrividerci, Maria Orsinni.”
“Arrividerci, Sergio Sabbatini.”
Maria felt his eyes on her as she slipped back into her high heels and gathered up her shopping bag. She was trembling slightly, but told herself it was the familiar reaction to a burst of high speed action and nothing to do with the handsome man with smouldering eyes and a sad looking smile. She didn’t look back as she walked away.
Sergio Sabbatini watched Maria Orsinni move out of sight as carabiniere files on the Sicilian Mafia were opening in his mind. One particular file, several pages thick, had been dedicated to Giovanni Orsinni and Sergio calculated that the consigliere’s daughter, Maria, must be about nineteen now. Had he not just witnessed her in action he would have questioned the absence of bodyguards, but clearly her father had well-founded confidence in her ability to take care of herself. To have detained her would have roused a Mafia lawyer and the Press, and would have been less than she deserved for saving him from certain physical harm. Nevertheless every bone in his body was screaming the feeling that he should go after her. He had sensed a connection between them, and wondered if she had also felt it. There had been something in her eyes when she had looked at him, something in her smile which had taken his breath away, something which had sparked... but common sense kicked in, overruling these thoughts and emotions, and he moved now to assist his colleagues. The man with a broken nose was carefully bundled into the van, joining companions who were broken in spirit and had nothing to say to him. When the gathering of witness statements was completed, Sergio told the sergeant he would follow the police van in his own car and meet them at the station.
Sergio Sabbatini began the walk to his car with a rueful smile on his face. He was thinking about the fickle finger of fate. He had sworn a solemn oath to serve the carabiniere and knew that he was destined to do so for the rest of his life. Part of that life, probably the greater part, would be spent on bringing to justice people like the father of the girl who ironically might even have just saved that life.
Oxfordshire, England, March 1983
He knew of course it was dangerous, but the pent-up desire was currently overwhelming his natural caution. He drew on the special gloves, and carefully clipped on over his shoes the distorting rubber soles as he glanced around the scene. The conditions were almost perfect, the sighting blinding him to the fact that normally ‘almost perfect’ wouldn’t be good enough.
But how could he resist? he silently questioned.
Why should he resist? was the equally silent answer.
An early evening stroll had suddenly presented him with a golden opportunity. Literally golden, he thought now with a smile, because the blonde hair shone against the pale olive complexioned skin of her neck. Attracting and arousing him immediately. The woman was beautiful also, but quite superfluous to requirements. She represented a risk factor which simply heightened his excitement.
He picked up one of the heavy rocks bordering a floral display, its clumsy weight quite unlike the precision tools he normally handled, as the annoying thought occurred that he would have to deny himself the pleasure of listening to the screams and gasps. He would be unable to allow them on this impromptu occasion, and his choice of words caused him to suppress the giggle which threatened to rob him of the element of surprise.
Moving quickly now he struck the woman with a heavy blow to the back of her head and clamped a gloved hand over the mouth of the little one, who looked at him through blue eyes widened by shock. ‘Oh my word, such a pretty one,’ he thought, ‘my Italian friends would just kill to have you,’ and he allowed himself the giggle now. Then the blue eyes rolled upwards and the firm young body became limp in his grasp and his annoyance returned as he realized she had passed out sooner than he would have preferred.
He withdrew his instrument and angrily, savagely, began his work.
Chapter Two
A Glimpse of Darkness
Shrivenham Village, Oxfordshire, England, April 1983, Beckett estate grounds of the Royal Military College of Science
It was late and all of the part-time workforce, and most of the permanent staff, had already left. So the middle-aged man wearing the distinctive hat was quietly seized in the car-park as he unlocked his car. The man’s hat, car-keys and car, now had a new owner who calmly donned the headwear as he keyed the engine and followed the other car containing the now unconscious victim. The small convoy passed through the security gate without incident and the entire exercise had used only seven of their pre-planned ten minutes.
Inside the Royal Military College of Science, the man was alone in the room which served as his private office. He was seated at his desk, deep in thought. On top of the desk was a glass-fronted picture frame. Behind the glass which might have been expected to protect a family portrait, or a certificate denoting an attained qualification, was a page of text which read:
Extract from the 1967 psychiatric research report produced by the Dept of Psychiatry, Yale University, USA.
‘Man’s Intervention in Inter-Cerebral Functions’
In animals, and in man, the inside of the brain is like an ocean through which we can navigate without visibility. Cerebral maps have been compiled and oriented according to stereotaxic co-ordinates which permits the blind placement of electronics within any desired structure. Communication with the depths of the brain makes it possible to send and receive information to and from the brain. We can start, stop, or modify a variety of autonomic somatic behavioural and mental manifestations. We can experiment with inter-cerebral mechanisms responsible for the onset and maintenance of specific behavioural and mental functions. As no batteries are used, the life of the transmitter is indefinite. Power and information are supplied by radio frequencies.
Chapter Three
A State of Mind
Oxfordshire, England, April 1983
Blasting through the village of Shrivenham’s nature reserve with complete disregard for nesting wildlife, the fierce wind had carried on to swirl around the picturesque area called Tuckmill Meadows. Normally accessed by what was known to local lovers as the ‘kissing gate’, ‘The Meadows’ was generally acknowledged by families to be an ideal picnic spot. It had been here that the unconscious mother had been found, beside her seven-year-old child’s sexually abused and mutilated body.
3,000 souls currently made up the Shrivenham village population, and, figuratively speaking, many of these were regularly called to arms each morning. Some of them had to leave
earlier these days, to allow for delays caused by construction of the new bypass, and used the A420 for the short northward journey to the nearby village of Watchfield. Upon arrival, they would then drive past various forms of military accommodation to reach the security gates and car-parks of their own chosen ‘battle stations’. Performing a variety of specialist roles, their working days would be spent within buildings housing either the Joint Services Command and Staff College (JSCSC) or the Conflict Studies Research Centre (CSRC).
Some of the early morning work-bound journeys from rural Shrivenham homes were shorter, their required destination taking them no further than the locally situated grounds of the Beckett estate which housed the Royal Military College of Science (RMCS). So people in uniform was not an uncommon sight in this south-west corner of Oxfordshire and the two men standing outside Shrivenham’s St Andrew’s Church, dressed in tailored uniforms declaring one of them to be a Major and the other a Sergeant in the British army’s Special Investigation Branch (SIB), returned in kind the polite smiles of early morning worshippers leaving the ancient church.
The SIB’s Major Jones and Sergeant Harper were discreetly observing the cemetery adjoining the church, and in particular the man with whom until recently Jones had shared an officer’s mess. Dressed now in civilian suiting, David Foster, his former comrade, stood beside the man they had been tasked to escort to the railway station for his London-bound train and linking Heathrow airport flight back to Rome. The man they knew to be Foster’s brother-in-law was a young looking and sturdily built individual with a handsome olive-skinned face, and he currently wore a uniform identifying him as a Lieutenant of Italy’s Carabiniere. Both Foster and his relative stood with their heads bowed before two clearly new and side-by-side headstones and, achingly evident, one of the headstones was smaller than its companion.
“We’ve lost a bloody good man,” declared Harper, the younger of the SIB contingent.
“And London’s police have gained one,” responded Jones, “but the only real losers are those two standing over the graves of a sister and niece to one, and a wife and daughter to the other.”
“I never thought Sophia would have topped herself,” muttered Harper, “Never imagined she would have left Foster on his own.”
“She became a mother first and a wife second,” said the older, wiser soldier, “and I would imagine,” he added softly, “she just couldn’t live with the thought of what had been done to her only child.”
The SIB Major conjured a mental picture of Foster’s Italian wife at the child’s funeral, seeing the beautiful and broken Sophia Foster nee Sabbatini, her head still bandaged as a result of the blow which had felled her. Leaving the girl unprotected and herself burdened with the thought that she should somehow have prevented her daughter’s terrible end. Breaking his reverie, the wind threw an empty plastic bag against what he now knew, thanks to a talkative vicar, was the 15th century tower around which the church had been built in 1700. ‘Towers of strength, that’s what David Foster and Sergio Sabbatini need to be now,’ thought the sympathetic Jones.
“Bastard paedophile,” growled Harper, “I’d tear his balls off if I got my hands on him.”
“No doubt David and Sergio over there feel the same,” responded Jones, “But he has to be caught first, and, if I know men, young Harper, we’re now watching two who will dedicate themselves to finding the person you so eloquently describe.”
“Bit bloody hard,” retorted Harper, “to see how either of them will manage that. The peacock in the fancy uniform looks no older than me, and he’s hot-footing it back to Italy, and the other’s going to be bogged down trying to find his feet in London’s Scotland Yard.”
“You’ve only been with our unit a short time,” responded Jones, “but have already recognized that we’re losing a good man. However you’re new enough not to know that David Foster’s success rate as an investigator was second to none. The only way our CO could keep him was not to put him up for promotion, and David was happy to go along with the arrangement while his daughter was growing. So he’s not the type to get bogged down unless he wants to. Mark my words, Harper, he’ll quickly rise and shine within the ranks of Scotland Yard’s finest. David has also told me a thing or two about his Italian relative who looks no older than you, and I personally reckon either of them would prove to be formidable investigators from wherever they’re based.”
The perceptive Major instantly noted the sceptical expression on his Sergeant’s face and decided to remove it with some well chosen words. “Remember your training, Harper, and don’t make the mistake of forming a judgement based solely on surface appearances. Variations of that fancy uniform have been worn by men who gave their lives in two world wars. My own father lost a leg in an African hell-hole in November 1941. He told me he would have lost his life, had it not been for the mobilized carabiniere battalion who pulled him and his mates out.”
Jones could see he had Harper’s attention now as he quietly continued, “It may sound daft to someone of your generation, lad, but my dear old dad kept a copy of a supreme command war despatch numbered 539. He used to read it to me whenever he was gearing up to attend the annual remembrance ceremony in London. I’ve never forgotten the words, Harper, which I quote, In the great conflict they gloriously distinguished themselves. A symbol of courage from national detachments, The Battalion of The Royal Carabiniere, even when their ammunition was depleted, continued their furious counter-attacks to the very end. Almost all of them were lost in action”.
Jones now held the Sergeant’s eyes with his own as he went on speaking, “During the second world war, Harper, over four and a half thousand of the carabiniere were killed in action, over fifteen thousand of them were injured and hundreds were lost in action. Approximately half these numbers were killed or injured fighting for the Resistance against the Germans. So in any soldier’s army, Harper, that uniform is one to be respected.”
Pleased to see that Harper’s facial expression had changed, and warming to his theme, Jones calmly pressed on, “For your further information, young Harper, on the back of brilliant academic achievements that man wearing the uniform, the man you called a peacock, was spring-boarded into the carabiniere when he was twenty. He immediately did a two year WO course split between Florence and Velletri in Rome and attained a degree in addition to becoming one of the carabiniere’s youngest ever Warrant Officers.”
Harper’s attention fully engaged now, the Major delivered the verbal coup de grace. “He immediately followed that up by passing a public entry exam which enabled him to successfully complete another one year course, which gained him the rank of Lieutenant and puts him inside one of the carabiniere’s special criminology branches.”
Jones placed a hand on the Sergeant’s shoulder as he gently twisted the verbal knife. “Now just remind me, young Harper, apart from those three stripes adorning your tunic, what have you achieved during the past three years of your life?”
“Well,” responded Harper, huffily, whilst failing to conceal his concessionary glance of respect towards the uniformed Italian, “compared to that, not much at all, I guess. But,” he stubbornly continued, “my point still stands. The paedophile who killed that child has to be somewhere in this community, which both Foster and Sabbatini are preparing to leave as we speak.”
Reluctant to concede that Harper’s point was a valid one, Jones chose not to reply. His own witnessed scenes from yesterday’s conflict suddenly reprised themselves in his mind. From the outset, Chief Inspector Duggan, the Oxford policeman leading the hunt for Marina’s killer, had been obviously resentful of David and Sergio’s combined knowledge of police procedures. Their insistence upon being kept fully informed of developments, and their suggestions as to how the investigation should be handled, had not gone down well with the clearly irascible policeman. Yesterday, having already failed to act quickly on Foster’s pointer towards RMCS laboratories
, Duggan had refused to allow the two experienced men to accompany him inside the building housing The Royal Military College of Science. His later emergence from the complex to report that military security had not been entirely helpful, had infuriated Sabbatini. Then when Foster had expressed the opinion that he could have dealt more effectively with an obstructive military presence, heated words had been exchanged before the angry Duggan had stormed off.
‘So maybe young Harper is not so far off the mark,’ thought the Major as he noticed now that the subjects of his thoughts were in conversation with one another. Perhaps exchanging words, thought the Major, which would give them both the strength to turn away from the headstones and begin to make their way towards the waiting jeep. Even from a distance he could see that the faces of both men were displaying the gaunt looking and hollow-eyed expressions of sleep-deprived men who had been operating under extreme stress.
‘I don’t think Duggan will catch this sicko. So, with both of you out of the picture, who will?’
The Major sighed at the prospect of his questioning thought never being answered.
Standing alongside Sergio Sabbatini, the 30-year-old bowed head of David Foster was filled with emotional thoughts of yester-year and the tomorrows still to come. A state of mind which had the now ex-SIB captain bitterly reflecting that in the eight wonderful years of life with Sophia he had gone from loner to lover, from husband to family man, and back again to loner. A thrown glance to the man by his side instantly served to correct the evaluation of his current status. He was not entirely alone, not while he had a man like Sergio Sabbatini at his shoulder.
He had stood shoulder to shoulder with the Italian only twice before today. In stark contrast to today’s experience, both previous encounters had taken place under an Italian sun-kissed sky and had occurred during joyous occasions. The first of those when the eighteen-year-old Sergio and his mother had attended Sophia’s wedding, and the traditional ritual of photographs had put groom and teenage brother-in-law together. The second time had occurred when mother and son had been present for the christening of Marina. When a new father and the equally new but still teenage uncle, had both held the infant whilst proudly standing together. Since then and up until Marina’s death, which had brought the adult Sergio to his side within 24 hours of his being informed, the relationship between the two of them had mainly been conducted through conversations squeezed into the regular phone calls from a loving brother to an adoring sister, and latterly a doting uncle to a bantering niece.