by Mark Mills
Or had he? Maybe he had. Maybe Adam was just being paranoid. A quick glance confirmed that he wasn't.
It wasn't exactly a nod, just the merest tilt of the head, but something about it suggested the uncontrollable reflex when the eyes have just made an urgent gesture all of their own. Adam couldn't see Gaetano's eyes, but he could see the two young men in short sleeves get up from the corner booth and follow him toward the back of the room.
Adam fumbled some notes onto the table in settlement of the drinks bill and, cursing himself for the precious moments his manners had cost him, hurried for the main doors. The front terrace was all but deserted, so was the boardwalk across the way. Sunday night was not the night for losing yourself in a crowd.
He turned right, picking up the pace as La Capannina fell behind his shoulder. He turned right again into the first street, heading away from the sea. His mind was racing. It was telling him he should have turned into the second street. The first street was so bloody predictable. He started to run, casting a wild look behind him. His ankle, stiff and sore, had not fully recovered from the fall in the garden. Walking was fine, a sprint something quite different. Fortunately, the safety of the park and its dark pine woods lay no more than a hundred and fifty yards off. He slowed to a walk as he neared the end of the street, checking over his shoulder. All clear behind still. He was safe.
He glanced left and right before crossing the broad street to the park. He was checking for traffic. What he saw was two men in short-sleeved shirts career from the mouth of the adjacent street. They spotted him immediately.
He sprinted across the road and was swallowed up by the shadows.
The ground beneath the trees was uneven, sandy, treacherous, and the broad canopies of the umbrella pines allowed almost no moonlight to filter through to it. He stumbled and fell twice in quick succession. The second time, he pitched forward into a dry ditch, winding himself. He heard his pursuers closing from behind, communicating in urgent tones. They had the advantage over him—this was their home turf.
He changed tack, cutting left, staying low, one hand in his pocket to stop the coins jangling, the other clutching the book on Renaissance sculpture. He thought about abandoning it but decided it might come in handy as a weapon, a last resort, something to hurl at them.
He had always prided himself on never having spent a minute more on a playing field than had been absolutely required by the various schools he'd attended. Staggering around a frozen rugby pitch or having small and very hard balls hurled at you had never been his idea of fun. He had spent much of his youth faking injuries or a staggering ignorance of the rules—anything that might see him ejected from the field of play. Play? That wasn't play. It was mortification of the flesh. He didn't mind tennis, especially doubles, when he could take up a position at the net and swat at anything that came his way. Nothing that involved overexertion or, God forbid, stamina.
All the disparaging comments about sporty types came back to haunt him now. His lungs sucked greedily at the warm night air, blood beat a wild tattoo in his ears, and his legs felt strangely distant. Only the fear drove him on. It was a new kind of fear, one he had never experienced before, except in nightmares. It was the kind that prickled the skin of your thighs and your shoulders. Run or stand and fight, your body seemed to be saying to you: a stark and alarming choice.
At a certain point he had to stop, he could go no farther. He dropped into some shrubs, pressing his face into the sandy soil, his fingers groping in the darkness for a better weapon to wield than a learned tome on Renaissance sculpture. He felt stripped bare, every action base and primitive, inborn. The same body that had let him down now came to his aid, helping him to control his labored breathing, sharpening his hearing.
All he could pick up was the muted drone of distant vehicles. That was good, because the ground was spongy with pine needles and fallen twigs, impossible to move across without generating some kind of noise. He must have given them the slip. He waited five minutes, waited another five for good measure, then he crept from his lair.
Stealth suited his style. It also blunted the blind, headlong panic of before. He moved cautiously, sticking to thick vegetation, stopping every so often to listen for telltale sounds, avoiding any areas where the moonlight cleaved the darkness. When obliged to cross a path, he would halt, wait, checking first that the coast was clear.
He traveled a fair distance like this before reaching the clearing. It was large and ovoid, and through the dense belt of trees just beyond it he could make out the lights of the buildings on the north side of the park. He thought about skirting the open space. If he had, he would have walked straight into the arms of the enemy. Because it was from the tree line off to his left that the man exploded the moment he began padding across the clearing in a low crouch.
"I've got him, he's here, I've got him!"
Adam surprised himself with the burst of speed he put on, the pain in his ankle forgotten. He might even have made it to safety if he hadn't collided with a tree.
He reeled backward, stunned. He was aware of the book falling from his hand, and of the fact that it had cost him four shillings from a dusty shop just off the Charing Cross Road. Then something hurtled into him from behind, driving the air from his lungs and sending him sprawling.
The man wasn't big. He didn't need to be. He was brutal. He kept Adam subdued with a few well-placed kicks until his companion arrived. Together, they hauled him to his feet.
"Who the fuck are you?"
"What?" he said groggily, in English.
He was jerked, spun around and hurled against a tree. He cracked the back of his skull against the trunk, staggered but didn't fall. This meant that they didn't have to pick him up before seizing him by the arms and running him headlong into another tree.
For a moment, the world receded from him. When it flooded back in, he found himself on the ground, clutching his head, his palm sticky with blood.
"Who the fuck are you?" spat one of the shadows looming over him.
He cowered, raising his arms protectively above his head. "No," he said pathetically, tearfully, convinced now that he was pleading for his life, that they would keep piling him into trees until he was nothing but pulp.
He never got to know if that really was their intention.
There was a sound like the snapping of a branch and the shadow on the left pitched forward onto him. By the time he had scrabbled out from beneath the dead weight, it was almost all over for number two. He was on the ground, yelping in pain as blows rained down on him. The assailant had some kind of instrument in his hand, hard to make out in the darkness, and with blood sheeting into his eyes.
Suddenly, there was silence. He heard his rescuer breathing heavily.
"Go," snapped a gruff voice. "Get lost!"
He didn't require any more encouragement; the first man was already beginning to stir.
Stumbling off through the trees, he heard the sound of a couple more blows finding their mark. He also became aware of the dampness between his legs.
SIGNORA OLIVOTTO AT THE PENSIONE RAVIZZA PROVED TO be something of a saint. She took him into her apartment and cleaned and dressed his wounds. When she suggested he remove his trousers so that she could clean them, she mentioned the dirty stains at the knees, not the wet patch around the crotch. She even pretended to believe his story that he'd tackled two men who had tried to pick his pocket.
"Well, you're going to have a scar to remember your bravery by," she said archly.
The cut in his eyebrow was not so long, but it was deep. When it refused to stop bleeding, a doctor was summoned. He shaved one part of the eyebrow, administered three stitches and two aspirin, and then categorically refused payment. Signora Olivotto must already have solicited the doctor's discretion, because he never once asked how Adam had come by his injuries.
The pain in his head and ribs made for a terrible night's sleep. So did the thought of two men lying bludgeoned to death in the park by his mysteriou
s savior. What would have happened if the shadowy stranger hadn't come to his rescue? And who was he? Was it possible that he was connected in some way? Or had he simply stumbled upon the fracas and done the right thing by the weaker party? They were imponderable questions. There was also the matter of his book on Renaissance sculpture, abandoned at the scene, his name scrawled on the flyleaf. A calm and reasoned assessment of his predicament threw up only one solution: Get out of Viareggio as quickly as possible.
Signora Olivotto had washed his trousers and left them out to dry overnight. They were still damp in the morning, although they quickly dried off in the early sunlight. He took breakfast in his room so as to avoid the stares of the other guests, his left eye now badly swollen.
Realizing that he couldn't leave town without knowing for sure, he slipped out of the pensione and hurried to the park.
He wasn't able to identify the exact spot, but he made a thorough sweep of the patch of woodland where the confrontation had occurred. There were no dead bodies and no police cordons sealing off a crime scene. He didn't find his book, but he did feel his spirits lift a little as he limped back to the pensione.
Signora Olivotto ordered a taxi to take him to the station. The moment it pulled away, he redirected the driver to the first stop down the line. He wasn't going to risk boarding the train in Viareggio itself. If Gaetano had any sense, he'd be waiting for him there.
It was a small station, and the train that stopped at it also stopped at every other small station between Viareggio and Florence. This was fine by Adam. It gave him plenty of time to think.
Rattling along through the shimmering heat of the Arno valley, it dawned on him that his one night in Viareggio had changed everything. The search for the truth behind Emilio's death was no longer a private affair, one to be pursued in secret. He had lost the initiative. Gaetano must surely have contacted Maurizio by now. He had to assume, therefore, that they'd worked out exactly who he was and why he'd traveled to Viareggio.
At first he chided himself for the silly slip of the tongue that had led to his exposure. His thinking had changed by the time the train pulled into Santa Maria Novella station.
So what if they knew? What if things had gone according to plan? He would be stepping off the train, his suspicions confirmed, and wondering just what the hell to do next. He had been nai've. Discovering the truth was never going to be enough of an end in itself. There was always going to be a confrontation of some sort with Maurizio. Viareggio had simply hastened the inevitable.
MARIA WAS THE FIRST TO SET EYES ON ADAM. THE moment she did so, her hand shot to her mouth. She took him to the kitchen and listened to his (now embellished) account of the set-to with the pickpockets. She insisted on removing the bandage and examining the wound in his eyebrow. The doctor's needlework was decreed "adequate," although an extra stitch wouldn't have gone amiss. She rested a consoling hand on his arm and asked him if there was anything he wanted. She made him a coffee, then dispatched him upstairs with instructions to have a bath and change his clothes before lunch.
As he stood staring at himself in the bathroom mirror, three thoughts occurred to him in quick succession: he looked truly terrible, dirty and damaged; it was good to be back at Villa Docci; and Maria had shown him more warmth in the last fifteen minutes than she'd managed to muster during his entire stay.
He wasn't surprised to find Maurizio seated at the table on the terrace when he came down to lunch. Maurizio's reaction was no less predictable. It matched his mother's for horror and surprise and furrow-browed sympathy. Adam spent much of the meal trying to reach Maurizio, to extract from him a look, something, anything that suggested they both knew that his story of pickpockets in Arezzo was a ringing lie.
It was a faultless performance by Maurizio. Adam was able to spend much of his time admiring it, because he never doubted for a moment that it was a performance. As the meal wore on, however, he began to worry. Maurizio would have quizzed Gaetano closely; he would know that Gaetano had not let slip Maurizio's name to Adam. All Maurizio had to do was brazen it out, make no reference at all to Viareggio, and Adam would be hamstrung, left with nothing more than a broken chain of circumstantial evidence.
This is what Maurizio should have done, so Adam was surprised when he showed up in the study soon after lunch. He entered from the library, shutting the door behind him. He also closed the French windows leading onto the terrace.
Adam was at the desk, reading. He hadn't absorbed one word of the book. He had been praying for Maurizio to make just such a blunder.
Maurizio lit a cigarette. "Gaetano sends his apologies."
Silence seemed the best tactic.
"Who was the man in the park?"
So that was it. Seeking Adam out wasn't a blunder on Maurizio's part; it was an act of necessity. He needed to know if Adam was working alone. He needed to know just what he was up against.
"I don't know. It was dark, I didn't even see his face."
Maurizio's eyes narrowed, studying him closely. "I believe you." He wandered to the fireplace and flicked some ash into the grate. "I don't know what you think you know, but let me tell you how it is. I know Gaetano, of course I do. We all do. When he left last year, he asked me to help him in his business." He gave a wry smile. "No, he asked to borrow some money. I said no, and then I saw La Capannina and I said yes. I thought it was a good investment. And it is. The arrangement between us is very complicated. I'll be honest, it is not exactly legal. This makes him very sensitive. It makes us both very sensitive. I'm sorry you suffered because of it. But that's all it is—a business arrangement."
He had to hand it to Maurizio, it was a nice try, offering up an explanation that would allow Adam to walk away from the affair with a clean conscience.
But he was beyond that now. He had changed. They had hurt him. They had scared him. No, they had made him piss himself with fear, thinking he was about to die.
"You're lying," he said. "I know you're lying, you know you're lying. You killed Emilio, and when Gaetano saw what you'd done you had to buy his silence. Maybe you're still buying it. Did Gaetano tell you about his plans? He has big plans—money no object—your money, I imagine."
He was surprised it hadn't occurred to him before that the relationship was one of ongoing blackmail, that Gaetano had raised the price on Maurizio with La Capannina. It was a gratifying thought that Maurizio really had been paying for his crime for the past fourteen years.
Maurizio's expression hovered somewhere between pity and amusement. "Is that what you think? That I killed my own brother? Are you mad?"
He tossed his cigarette into the fireplace and approached the desk. He was no longer amused.
"You come here and you tell me this? You dare to tell me this? I was there." He stabbed his finger against his chest. "I was there. I saw that German shoot Emilio. I saw him walk up to him and shoot him again in the head." He made a pistol of his fingers and "fired" at the ground. "And I did nothing. Nothing. I watched. If doing nothing means I killed him, then yes—I killed him."
It wasn't the tears welling in Maurizio's eyes that unsettled Adam, it was the pistol-fingers he had pointed at the ground. That explained the bullet hole in the floor upstairs—a detail of the shooting Chiara had failed to mention to him, and which Adam had blithely taken as proof of Maurizio's hand in his brother's death.
It was the cornerstone of his case—his only piece of hard, physical evidence—and Maurizio had whipped it away with one simple gesture. The whole ramshackle structure of the conspiracy he had built now came crashing down around his ears.
"Well . . . ?"
"I'm sorry," Adam replied quietly.
"You're sorry!?"
"Yes."
Maurizio spun away from the desk, exasperated. "Is that all you can say?"
"I'll leave."
"Yes, you will."
"Now?"
"Tomorrow morning, as you planned. I don't want to make a scene for my mother."
Adam nodd
ed. Maurizio shot him a contemptuous look and stalked out of the room.
He made his way upstairs in a daze, shaky and light-headed. He tried to marshal his thoughts but they scattered off in all directions like a rioting mob, leaving him to poke around in the ruins of his argument.
He found himself in his room, unpacking then repacking the suitcases he'd prepared before leaving for the coast.
Why couldn't he think straight? The close chain of his reasoning was usually the one thing he could rely on. Maybe he was in shock. Yes, that was it. Or concussed. The doctor in Viareggio had warned him he might be.
He was right about one thing: Viareggio had indeed brought matters to a head, forcing a confrontation with Maurizio. He gave a quick and manic laugh. It was about the only thing he had been right about.
At least it was over now, done with. He was in no condition to take the thing any further, even if he had wanted to. Which he didn't. He wanted to leave. He would have phoned for a taxi there and then, but even that seemed like a task too far.
He lowered himself into the overstuffed armchair near the fireplace, wincing as he did so. They had really worked him over beneath the pines in Viareggio. Something was badly wrong with his ribs. There was a sharp and unfamiliar edge to the pain, worrying. And as for the throbbing in his skull, the aspirins barely brushed the surface of it.
He was a wreck, inside and out. He had never been brought this low in all his life. Like Dante, he had finally reached the ninth circle of Hell.
No. It was a false comparison to draw. Because Dante's journey had not ended there, deep in the abyss. He had risen up through Purgatory and on into Paradise, guided by the ghost of his dead love, Beatrice.
He dwelt on this thought for a while, then heaved himself up out of the armchair and made for the door, every step a discomfort.
Something told him to turn back before he got there. It was exactly this—his cockeyed belief in his own spectral guide—that had brought him to his current predicament. Strangely, though, it no longer mattered to him if he was the dupe of his own diseased fancy. He was too far gone to care.