Fault Line - Retail

by Robert Goddard

  All I could hear was a murmur of subdued voices. I couldn’t make out any actual words. Whatever their discussion amounted to, it wasn’t a shouting match. Then, quite suddenly, a radio or television came on in the room at high volume. An Italian pop song was playing, bass notes booming through the woodwork. I recoiled instinctively. As I did so, I heard a loud crack that wasn’t part of the music and a heavy thump of something hitting the floor. It sounded bad. It sounded very bad.

  A few yards further down the corridor was the fire escape. I ran to the door, opened it and stepped through on to a narrow landing on a concrete staircase. Holding the door ajar, I peered through the gap. I couldn’t hear the music now. It had either been turned down or off completely. As I watched, the door of room 239 opened. Francis emerged, pulled it to behind him, then hurried towards the lift, tottering slightly as he went. A minute or so later, I heard the lift ping, the doors slide open and close again.

  I was tempted to head straight down the fire escape and leave the building as quickly as possible. But I had to know what had happened. I had to find out if Francis had done what I thought he’d done. I stepped back out into the corridor. It was silent and empty. I moved to the door of room 239, hesitated, then pushed the handle down with my elbow and shouldered the door open.

  It was true. It was real. It was there in front of me. Strake lay at the foot of the bed. He was half dressed, in trousers and vest. His feet were bare. There was a neat bullet-hole in his forehead. The back of his head rested in a dark pool of blood that was spreading slowly as it soaked into the rug beneath him. I stared at him for a moment, knowing he was dead, yet somehow struggling to believe it. There’d been no deal, no pay-off, no compromise. Francis had executed him. It was as simple and as brutal and as final as that.

  I pulled the door shut, nervously grasping my sleeve with my fingers to avoid leaving any prints. The precautions seemed important, though I wasn’t quite sure why. I was fighting shock now, but I was thinking hard. What would Francis do? Simply go back to Capri and pretend nothing had happened? I started moving.

  The lift was attending to another call when I reached it, so I took the stairs, narrowly avoiding a collision on the next landing with a chambermaid so laden with laundry she never even saw me. I paused at the bottom to compose myself, then walked unhurriedly across the reception area to the door. There was a man behind the desk, fiddling with paperwork. He didn’t so much as glance up as I left. I sighed with relief. No one was going to describe me to the police. No one was going to remember me at all.

  I turned right outside, for no better reason than it was the direction (as far as I could calculate) of the port. I didn’t know how big a lead on me Francis would have. He might be in a taxi by now, though I couldn’t see any cruising the street. Maybe he’d headed for the nearest rank. I had no way of knowing where that was, but he might know.

  Then I saw him. There was a junction ahead, opening on the far side on to a piazza, with steps leading up from it to a plain-fronted church. At the foot of the steps was an old dry fountain decorated with cherubim. And slumped at the base of the fountain, his back resting against the bowl, was Francis. He was clutching his briefcase tightly in one hand. His other hand was pressed to his chest. His hat lay upside down beside him. His hair was awry, his face unusually pale.

  He didn’t see me coming as I threaded a path through the traffic to reach him. Then, as I crouched at his elbow, he looked up at me, squinting uncertainly. His breathing was fast and shallow. He didn’t look good. I gently jogged his shoulder. ‘Francis?’

  ‘Jonathan,’ he said weakly. ‘What … on earth are you … doing here?’

  ‘I followed you.’

  ‘You did? How very … enterprising of you.’ He fashioned a smile. ‘Do I take it … you know what …’

  ‘Yes. I know.’

  ‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘Oh dear. That rather … tears it. I’d be grateful if you’d … keep it to yourself, my boy. Unless that … offends your conscience, of course.’

  ‘We need to get you away from here.’

  ‘Before the alarm’s raised, you mean? Yes. Good idea.’ He coughed. ‘But I can’t … move, you see. The whole thing … seems to have knocked the stuffing out of me. Not as young … as I was. Ticker playing up, I’m afraid. Damn thing.’

  A shadow fell over us. A large aproned man still clutching one of the chairs he’d been arranging outside a café at the corner of the piazza peered down solicitously at Francis. ‘Va bene, dottore?’

  ‘No.’ Francis grimaced. ‘Io sto … poco bene.’

  ‘Dove le fa male?’

  ‘Qui.’ Francis patted his chest. ‘Qui.’ He was suddenly shorter of breath. ‘Il cuore. Un …dolore terribile.’

  ‘Il cuore?’ The man looked alarmed. ‘É un attacco cardiaco, io penso.’

  ‘Per favore,’ said Francis, ‘chiami … un’ambalanza.’

  ‘Si, si. Un’ambalanza. Subito.’ The man turned and hurried back to the café, absent-mindedly carrying the chair with him as he went.

  By now, two street children had come to see what all the fuss was about. They stood staring solemnly at us as Francis bent his head towards me so that he could whisper in my ear. ‘He’s going to call … an ambulance, Jonathan … They’ll … take me to hospital … I’ll be … all right there … Capable hands … and all that … Now, listen carefully … Take my briefcase … Go back to the villa … Put it in my study … Wait, though, until … Luisa’s gone … I’ll get them to … phone her … from the hospital … Then the coast will be clear … Don’t tell her you were here … with me … or that you know … what brought me here … Will you do that for me, my boy?’

  He was weakening all the time. I felt I had no choice but to do as he asked. ‘Yes, Francis. I’ll see to it.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s … decent of you … There’s … one more thing.’ He pulled some papers out of his jacket pocket and thrust them into my hand. ‘The recipe … and something else … Luisa wrote … a long time ago … Not sure … how Strake got hold of it … I didn’t … bother to ask … If I don’t … make it through … give it … to Margherita.’

  ‘Margherita? Countess Covelli?’

  ‘Yes. She … deserves to know.’

  ‘OK. I’ll give it to her. But—’

  ‘No more questions. Jonathan … Take the case and go … Please … There’s a good fellow … You’ve got a … sharper brain … and a cooler head … than I gave you credit for … I’ll trust you … to use them well … Now, buzz off, will you? I’ll be … tickety-boo … Just you … wait and see.’ He reached out and pressed my hand down round the handle of the briefcase. ‘You really need to scoot.’

  ‘You’re sure about this?’

  He nodded. ‘Sure … and certain.’

  I took the case, thrust the papers into my pocket and headed off. The back streets of Naples were an easy place to get lost in. When the man from the café returned, there’d be no sign of me. Francis would spin some convincing story to account for that if he needed to. He’d be covering his own tracks as much as mine, of course. He’d made me his ally in Strake’s murder. The chilling reality of that crept slowly into my thoughts as I turned on to Via Duomo, a road I recognized from the taxi ride earlier and was confident would lead me to the harbour. I heard an ambulance siren wailing somewhere to my left, growing rapidly louder. Help was on its way. I tightened my grip on the briefcase and quickened my pace.

  NINETEEN

  BY THE TIME I reached the harbour, a flaw in Francis’s plan had occurred to me. If I caught the next ferry to Capri, there was every chance I’d find Luisa, doubtless escorted by Paolo, waiting to board at Marina Grande for the return trip to Naples, after being contacted by the hospital. How would I account for having Francis’s briefcase with me? It would be impossible, short of telling them the awful truth.

  The only solution I could think of was to stow the case in a left-luggage locker at the ferry office, then hang around in the adja
cent café, keeping an eye out for incoming ferries. Settled over a coffee, with a badly needed cigarette on the go, I took a discreet look at the document Francis had given me along with Luisa’s recipe for torta di mele.

  It was a letter, recognizably in her handwriting. It was in Italian, naturally, so made no immediate sense to me. But alarm bells began ringing in my head when I saw the salutation – Egregio Comandante – and, above it, an official stamp with German abbreviations round the rim and an eagle and swastika symbol in the centre. The stamp was dated 4.xi.43. As I scanned the letter, I saw a name I knew: Conte Covelli. There was no signature at the bottom, merely the words da una patriota.

  I pulled out my Italian phrase-book and tried to translate what Luisa had written. I didn’t get beyond odd words, but they told their own story: fugitive; traitor; hiding-place; duty; justice. The purpose and meaning of the letter became ever more obvious. It had been sent to the SS commandant for the Veneto region in November 1943 by an anonymous ‘patriot’, telling him where Count Urbano Covelli was hiding. It was, in effect, the count’s death warrant.

  It was hard to believe, but it couldn’t be denied. Luisa had betrayed Count Covelli to the Germans. Why, I had no idea. But she’d done it. A quarter of a century later, she and the count’s widow were still friends. Yet at the heart of their friendship was a terrible secret, a secret I was holding in my hands.

  ‘If I don’t make it through, give it to Margherita,’ Francis had said. ‘She deserves to know.’ And so she did. But I didn’t want to be the one to tell her. I couldn’t make sense of what Francis had done. Killing Strake was understandable: an old soldier’s instinctive response to blackmail. But to follow that by telling Countess Covelli Luisa had betrayed her husband? Would he really have summoned the strength of will to do such a thing? I could only hope I got the chance to ask him. If not, it would be for me to decide. And it wasn’t a decision I felt equipped to take.

  Movement outside the café alerted me to the arrival of a ferry. My earlier reading of the schedule suggested it should be from Ischia. I hurried out to check, only to realize at once that I was wrong. Luisa and Paolo were among the crowd disembarking. Luisa was walking unsteadily, head bowed, eyes obscured by enormous sunglasses. She appeared entirely oblivious to her surroundings. But Paolo, who was at her elbow, one arm hovering protectively around her waist, was glancing ahead as they went. And he spotted me before there was any chance of retreat.

  All I could do in the circumstances was shake my head and trust he’d take the hint. He responded with the faintest of nods and walked on with Luisa. She didn’t look up. Then a pillar came between us and I moved to keep it there as they headed towards the taxi rank.

  I gave them a minute or so’s start, then cautiously followed. I reached the corner of the ticket office in time to see their taxi pull away. That was my signal to rush into the office, retrieve the briefcase and buy a ticket for the next ferry to Capri.

  Twenty minutes later, as the ferry steamed out into the bay, I opened the briefcase and peered in at the gun, nestling inside Francis’s rolled-up copy of the TLS. It was a revolver: British Eighth Army officer’s issue, I strongly suspected. Strake might not have been the first person Francis had killed with it. But he was probably the last.

  I felt anxious throughout the journey, though oddly more on account of the letter I had in my pocket than the murder weapon I was carrying in the briefcase. From Marina Grande I took a taxi to the Villa Orchis, reasoning that the less time I spent on the street with Francis’s case in my hand the better, even though no one was likely to realize who it belonged to.

  I reached the villa without incident. Patrizia was in the kitchen, preparing a dinner it was unclear anyone would eat. I slipped the briefcase under Francis’s desk in his study before facing her and did my best to appear surprised by the news she had for me. ‘Il Colonnello’ had been taken ill in Naples and was in the Ospedale di Santa Maria di Loreto. He’d suffered ‘un attacco di cuore’. ‘La signora’, escorted by Paolo, had rushed to his bedside. There was nothing to be done but to await word from them. But Patrizia was worried. And so was I. I began to get the feeling Francis’s condition had deteriorated after I’d left him. According to Patrizia, he’d been officially described as ‘precario’. That didn’t sound good. That didn’t sound good at all.

  Patrizia rustled me up a pasta lunch, most of which I couldn’t eat. I washed it down with a couple of beers, sitting on the terrace and wondering why the brilliant sunshine seemed to have lost much of its warmth. Everything had gone wrong. Strake had outwitted me. Vivien had left. Francis was critically ill. And Luisa … I knew too much about some things and too little about others. My confidence that no one had seen me at the Albergo Lustrini was ebbing. My complicity, as the law would see it, in Strake’s murder was looming darkly in my thoughts. I felt fearful and insecure. All I knew for certain was that I was way out of my depth.

  Then Patrizia emerged from the villa and told me Paolo wanted to speak to me on the phone.

  ‘How’s Francis?’ I asked as soon as I picked up the receiver.

  ‘He is very ill, Jonathan,’ Paolo replied, his voice tight with distress. ‘I think … we may lose him.’

  ‘Oh God.’

  ‘What happened to him, Jonathan? I need to know. Where is his briefcase? He left with it this morning. But the hospital say he did not have anything with him when he was put in the ambulance.’

  ‘It’s here. I brought it back with me. I can explain, but … not over the phone. Does Luisa know it’s missing?’

  ‘No. I have not told her.’

  ‘Don’t. Don’t tell anyone. It’s vital this stays between us, Paolo.’

  There was silence at the other end of the line. I sensed him struggling for self-control. Eventually he said, ‘D’accordo. I understand. We will speak later. I will phone as soon as …’ He tailed off with another silence. Then: ‘I will phone again.’

  It was evening before the call came through. I heard the phone ring and Patrizia answer. Then she began sobbing and I knew at once that Francis was dead.

  I took the phone from her and spoke to Paolo. ‘What happened?’ I asked numbly.

  ‘He slipped away. They could not save him.’

  ‘Tell Luisa I’m sorry. This is … terrible.’

  ‘Si. It is. I will tell her.’

  ‘Are you coming back here tonight?’

  ‘No. The last ferry has gone already. We will stay tonight at the Excelsior.’

  ‘OK. I’ll see you tomorrow. We’ll talk then about … what happened.’

  ‘Si. We will talk. But there is something we need to talk about now also. Luisa has asked if you can telephone il Colonnello’s family in … Cornovaglia.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘She is very upset. She cannot do it. You know them. And they must be told.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Will you do it?’

  If I’d had any excuse for refusing, however feeble, I’d have used it. The prospect was hideous. But I couldn’t see a way out. ‘Yes. I’ll do it.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Yes. Tonight.’

  It was only after Paolo had rung off that I realized he’d referred to Luisa by her name, not as ‘la signora’. Even he was forgetting himself under the strain of events.

  I walked into Francis’s study and looked around at the books and the ornaments and furnishings that made it his particular domain. They stood waiting for him, obedient and serviceable as ever. But he would never again fill his fountain pen from the gold-saucered ink bottle, nor prop a cigar in the onyx ashtray, nor slide open the drawers of the mineral cabinet and recall how and where he’d collected each of the samples. My shadow, cast across the Turkish rug by the light from the hall, was not his shadow. His shadow would never be cast again.

  I persuaded Patrizia to drink a little of Francis’s brandy before she went home. We toasted his memory. She cried copiously and enveloped me in several hugs. It seemed to help
her. It didn’t do much for me. I drank some more brandy after she’d gone. But I still felt stone cold sober when I picked up the telephone and dialled for the international operator.

  To my relief Greville Lashley took the call. I’d dreaded having to speak to Muriel or Harriet, especially Muriel. She didn’t know I’d joined Vivien on Capri and certainly wouldn’t be happy about it. But her concerns on that score were about to be eclipsed and a doleful pattern was about to be set. For the second time in less than a year, I had to break the news that a member of their family was dead. First Oliver. Now Francis.

  Lashley reacted with the stoical practicality I’d have expected of him, making nothing of my previously undisclosed presence on the island. ‘I’m sorry to hear this, Jonathan. It’s not altogether a surprise. I believe he’s had a heart condition for some years. But even so … the womenfolk will be upset, of course. I’d better go and tell them. How’s Vivien? Muriel will want to speak to her.’

  I had to explain then why that wouldn’t be possible. I recycled the story about friends from Cambridge met by chance at Pompeii and left him to draw his own conclusions as to why I hadn’t gone with her. What it amounted to, of course, was that Vivien didn’t know Francis was dead. And I had no way of contacting her.

  ‘Are you saying no one knows where she is?’ Lashley asked edgily.

  ‘I’m sure she’ll call again when … her plans are clearer.’

  ‘But meanwhile?’

  ‘We’ll … just have to wait for her to call.’

  Lashley gave a dissatisfied growl. ‘We impressed on her the need to keep us informed and to stay in touch. She never mentioned you’d be there. Now this. She can’t simply …’ He sighed. ‘Francis and Luisa shouldn’t have allowed this to happen. They knew she was ill last year. It’s really …’ Another sigh. ‘Well, recriminations at this stage are pointless. And unfeeling. Poor old Francis. I imagine Luisa’s taken it hard.’

  ‘I imagine so too, sir, though I haven’t actually seen her. She’s still in Naples.’