Property of Blood

by Magdalen Nabb

  ‘Do you think there’s any hope?’

  ‘Not much, but if they don’t kill her today when they read this article there’s a faint chance that something might change. The son might be sufficiently frightened by it to come for help. I’m assuming this is the daughter’s handi work, though there was a bit of an attempt to cover her tracks by saying the Contessa instead of my mother.’

  ‘She never does call her mother, she calls her Olivia.’

  ‘Really? Well, unless she’s extremely stupid she must want her dead.’

  “Yes … a bit of both, perhaps. She’s very dangerous. I think, with your permission, Captain, I’d prefer that what she refers to as collaboration should occur in the presence of the Prosecutor. She’s threatening to come round here, you see…’

  ‘No, no, no, absolutely not. Don’t receive her or God knows what we’ll see in the papers next. I’ll warn the Prosecutor. He’s going to work on the Contessa Cavicchioli Zelli. I’m concentrating on the known contacts of the feeder we’ve spotted.’

  ‘Is there anything further I can do?’

  ‘You can only hope that some element in this story changes because otherwise its conclusion can only be that poor woman’s death.’

  Nothing changed. The daughter never did turn up at the Marshal’s office. Once, he spotted her in the street, coming out of a fashion house shop with two beribboned dress bags, but her eyes slid away from his and she walked quickly on. The Captain’s men watched on the hills and scrutinized the Lost and Found columns in the paper, the most common place for the exchange of messages. Nothing likely appeared. All possible informers were contacted with no results but then, as the Captain pointed out, they knew who the kidnapper was but at this stage they couldn’t act on the information since any attempt to search for the hide-out carried the risk of the victim’s being killed if they unknowingly got too near. Their arrival would be spotted at a distance of kilometres in such territory.

  Elettra Cavicchioli Zelli told them she could not let them mark the notes she passed to the Brunamonti family.

  ‘I don’t know what’s best but they made me promise and I did promise so I can’t go back on my word. I know you want to catch these bandits but I just want Olivia home. Do you think she’s still alive?’

  No one knew what to answer. Weeks of silence passed.

  When a change did come it was as unexpected as it was unhelpful. The English detective, Charles Bently, presented himself at the Public Prosecutor’s office and announced that he was dropping the case.

  ‘We had rather thought,’ said Fusarri, ‘that by this time you’d be dropping the Contessa Cavicchioli Zelli’s unmarked ransom payment.’ Just to let him know they weren’t completely in the dark.

  ‘I know my business, Mister Prosecutor,’ Bently said, ‘and I don’t consider it any part of my business to get myself killed.’

  ‘I appreciate that,’ Fusarri said, ‘and Elettra—the Contessa—did warn me that she would be unable to provide the whole amount and no one could expect you to run such an obvious risk to your life. I also appreciate your correctness in coming here to tell us of your decision. If you felt able to tell us what time limit we’re dealing with on this, it might help to avoid an equally great risk to the Contessa Brunamonti’s life.’

  ‘I’m glad to know you appreciate my correctness.’

  The Prosecutor put his hand up. ‘Of course, of course. I can’t expect you to break the confidence of whoever is paying your fee. I beg your pardon.’

  ‘Thank you. And you’re wrong. I only take a fee when I can do the job. Until I make that decision I’m on daily expenses. I can’t do this job without the ransom money. Nevertheless, I will not betray a confidence. The family must decide about the extent they wish to cooperate with you. All I can tell you is that I have myself advised them to collaborate. If they drop a wholly inadequate sum of money, after that article in the paper, she’s dead. As long as they delay and the kidnappers imagine they are trying to scrape together the whole amount, then even if they pass or have passed the deadline, there’s hope. As long as that hope exists, they must keep her alive or get nothing. If they decide to make do with less, cut their losses, they might as well kill her as not. They won’t want to put future jobs at risk. My opinion is, they’ll wait, and if the family collaborates with you, you can use the waiting time for your purposes. It’s only a question of the right informer, I imagine. Your Special Operations people are good, I know that.’

  ‘Oh, indeed they are.’

  ‘So, the right informer then. In our recent talks you told me of an attempt to inculpate an enemy clan. No hope of their knowing something?’

  ‘Every hope of their knowing everything, but not of their telling us about it. They come from Orgosolo, a place where it can take three weeks for an arrested man to admit to—not give—his name. The Orgosolese idea of an effective defence is total silence. You can’t trip him up in a contradiction or a lie if he doesn’t open his mouth. What they say is “Nothing comes from nothing”.

  ‘Sounds like something from Shakespeare. King Lear, if my schoolboy memory doesn’t deceive me.’ The Englishman stood up. ‘But I see their point—and your problem. Well, I must leave you. My plane leaves in little more than an hour. Mr. Prosecutor. Captain.’

  The Captain, who had witnessed this exchange in silence, rose to shake his hand after Fusarri. The Englishman’s cool correctness was impeccable. Only for a moment was it shaken when Marshal Guarnaccia appeared, apparently from nowhere, and offered his hand, too, to this exotic personage.

  ‘Ah! You’re here, too. I beg your pardon. Didn’t notice you in that corner—I mean, thought you were a guard of some sort…’

  ‘Yes.’

  Only a question of the right informer.

  As the door closed, Fusarri dropped back in his chair, took a deep, noisy breath, and then leaned forward to fix the Captain with a bright stare.

  ‘Every Sardinian up there will know where she is, won’t they?’

  'More or less.’

  ‘But more or less won’t meet the case, will it? More or less would kill her. We have to know exactly, don’t we?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fusarri leaned back again and there was a moment’s silence. Then he turned his head slowly to where the Marshal sat, bulky and silent.

  ‘So who will know exactly? Marshal?’

  The Marshal shifted uncomfortably under his stare, looked at his hands, his hat, his shoe. ‘Bini would be the man to ask.’

  ‘Bini? Maestrangelo, who on earth is Bini?’

  'Local force.’

  'Ah…’

  ‘Bini,’ the Marshal said, ‘knows Salis. And his wife. Salis’s wife disapproves of kidnapping.’

  ‘I’m delighted to hear it,’ Fusarri said, still at sea. ‘You’re not telling me she’d turn informer, even on a rival clan?’

  ‘No, no …She wouldn’t do that.’

  ‘I assume she’s from Orgosolo, too?’

  ‘I expect so. Bini would know for sure.’

  ‘Well then, Marshal’—Fusarri tried to catch the Captain’s eye but couldn’t—'you’d better pay a visit to your colleague Bini.’

  ‘I’ll do that,’ the Marshal said. ‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ll do it right away. After that article there might not be much time.’

  Bini had the flu. Either that or the reason for their journey kept him unusually quiet as the jeep’s wheels sprayed up dust and grit along the country lane. The Marshal looked out of the window to his right at the high, dark hills whose flat tops were slowly being obliterated by banks of cloud. A few drops of rain spattered the windscreen but it hadn’t begun to rain in earnest. Every so often Bini sneezed and said, ‘Sorry, this wretched flu.’ Every so often, the Marshal shivered as he looked up at those hills and he said nothing.

  The sliced-up car was gone from the yard when they arrived. The dog kennel was still empty, a dirty bowl overturned near its entrance. Washing hung on the line, motionless in the grey
air. Despite the gloominess of the day, there was no light to be seen through the glass panels of the kitchen door, but its outer shutters were open.

  ‘She’s in.’ Bini got down from the jeep, and the Marshal followed him with a glance towards the sheepfold on the left, where the shepherd boy had slept with his ears cocked for danger like the sheepdog. Now the guilty boy was buried and the dog was still in the morgue fridge. Salis dealt with his problems alone. As yet, he only knew that he had been set up by Puddu, that his land and his people had been subjected to a search. He certainly knew what had been found. The only thing he didn’t know was that by now the trick had been understood by the carabinieri. Bini tapped on the glass and opened the kitchen door.

  ‘May we come in?’

  She didn’t answer, having no words to waste on a foregone conclusion.

  The kitchen stove was lit and she turned her back on them to feed wood into it and drop the cover back into place.

  On the plastic tablecloth lay a pile of sheets of paper-thin Sardinian bread, pale and crisp.

  ‘Can we sit down a minute? You don’t make this bread yourself, do you? It must take hours to get it that thin…’

  ‘You haven’t come here for a cookery lesson, I imagine.’

  ‘No. And we won’t waste your time or ours telling you what you already know. You know what we found on your land. Your husband’s going to have this kidnapping on his file.’

  ‘He didn’t do it’

  ‘So you say. And what difference do you think that’s going to make with his record and the evidence we’ve got?’

  Silence.

  ‘It’s real evidence, you know. That hideout wasn’t faked. She was really there, and we have proof. If you’re interested, she wrote something on the wall of that cave that her son recognized as something only she could have known. What do you say to that?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Whether we find him or not doesn’t matter. He’ll be convicted in his absence.’

  She would probably have gladly seen them both dead but, in accordance with the rules of hospitality, she placed a flask of her own wine and two glasses in front of them. The Marshal’s mouth was dry with fear at what they were doing. The wine was strong and sour. He wished she’d switch the light on. He wished he were at home with his wife and children. The thought invoked Caterina Brunamonti, the article, the pall of cloud settling on the dark hills. He took another sip of wine. He felt the heat of the stove and shivered.

  ‘Of course,’ Bini continued, ‘if we should find out that somebody else did it, he’ll be off the hook, but I’m afraid it could be too late. We think she might already be dead, in which case…’

  Both of them watched her face closely on these words but she looked as little as she said. Bini had no alternative but to carry on.

  ‘We’ve no hope of finding an informer. Puddu’s lot wouldn’t dare, and we have every respect for the Orgosolesi. We just thought your husband should know. We respect him but evidently Puddu doesn’t. Maybe because your husband’s getting on in years Puddu thinks he can—’

  ‘Come back the day after tomorrow.’

  ‘Remember, there isn’t much time. If you’re telling me to come back, I’ll come back, but nobody can guarantee the victim will still be alive the day after—’

  'Come back the day after tomorrow.’

  * * *

  They followed the instructions exactly, driving up a cart track in the jeep, which bounced them every which way as they clutched the overhead handles for safety. At a certain point, very high up, a branch lay across their path. Bini stopped the jeep and they got out. They walked forward from there without speaking. Only once, Bini, stopping to blow his nose, murmured, ‘I’ve got a temperature. I shouldn’t be here…’

  Neither of them should have been there. What was worse, they couldn’t be sure what Salis would decide to do and, whatever it might be, they were responsible. They had put themselves in his hands. Despite the height and the faint cool drizzle, the Marshal’s back was sweating, and he prickled all over at the thought of eyes and rifles maybe being trained on them. Among all his other worries was that of their finding their way back down in the dark. The light was already waning.

  Could it be so far? Had they missed the next signal? No, it was there, not far ahead: a white rag tied to a thorny bush. They took a footpath to the right and walked on for over half an hour until another white rag signalled a turn to the left. This was no longer a path but a way through the brush, sufficiently used to be visible but difficult and thorny. They were dressed in old thick clothing and the brambles tore at it and dragged as they pushed on. Every so often they had to stop and untangle themselves. When at last they reached the clearing which was marked by the fourth and last signal, it was getting very dark. They stood waiting in silence. There was no reason not to talk to each other but they couldn’t manage to do it. They stood until the darkness enveloped them and they could no longer see each other.

  The voice, when it spoke, seemed to be very near but there was no point in looking towards it. They were risking a great deal but not their lives. They could be certain that Salis’s word was his bond but certain, also, that a stupid move, a torch, a third person following, would mean death. They stood still and listened.

  ‘Tomorrow evening, a woman will telephone your station to report the attempted theft of a moped. She’ll tell you it happened right in front of her house. She’ll say a man jumped out in the road, causing the moped to swerve and the boy riding it to skid and stop. She’ll say the rider, who had a shopping bag on his handlebars, was attacked and a long struggle took place. During the struggle she will have seen a second man approach the moped and bend over it as though to take it. He will be there for some time, inserting powdered sleeping pills into the much-used wine flask which the shopping bag always contains, but the woman will say she didn’t notice exactly what he was doing. She’ll say she was watching the fight. When it’s over, the second man will be gone. The boy will break free, get on his moped, and ride away. The next morning at dawn, you can fly over the Monte della Croce and the place where the victim is held will be marked by a white signal. You’ll find her alive. You’ll find the men who are holding her dead.’

  ‘No! My God, Salis, don’t do that! I can’t deal with that!’

  ‘ Please yourself. In that case, you’d better be there before the two who go up at dawn. If they get there before you and find they can’t wake their guards up it won’t matter whether they cotton on to the wine or not. They’ll know the job’s screwed up and they’ll get rid of the woman. The choice is yours. Now go. You needn’t be afraid of not finding your way down. You’re under my protection here.’ The voice stopped. They could hear nothing apart from their own loud breathing. Salis wouldn’t move until they were away. They would not hear one sound from him that he hadn’t decided they should hear, not so much as the cracking of a twig.

  The Marshal felt, rather than heard, a slow, deep intake of breath before Bini decided to speak.

  ‘Have you thought…you could give yourself up. Now that you’ve collaborated with us on this, you’d—’

  ‘I’m not collaborating with you. I’m using you to settle my own business.’

  ‘Of course. I realize that. Even so, it might be the best chance to come your way. You might think about it—’

  ‘So you could stage a big capture scene for the television cameras? How much?’

  ‘I can’t—I’m not authorized to deal. I was only wondering—’

  ‘Forget it. I was curious to know what I’m worth. My family’s well provided for. I can afford to die a free man.’

  ‘No offence meant, you understand…’

  ‘None taken. Now go.’

  They turned and started to feel their way back. Brambles tore at their faces now they could no longer see to avoid them. Only below knee level was the way clear, adapted to men who could move crouched double, invisible below the brambles; impossible for upright people. They kne
w when they had gone wrong because their boots would become entangled in uncut brush. Then a voice would come out of the blackness.

  ‘Turn back. Stop. Go on to your left.’

  It wasn’t always the same voice, and they were too disorientated by the thick, damp blackness to be sure which direction these instructions came from.

  It was a relief when they felt themselves back on the foot path but their relief was short-lived and they were soon stumbling through a void which offered no clues to give them direction or balance.

  ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…!’ gasped Bini in relief as they hit against the friendly solidity of the jeep.

  On the road back to the village, cheered by their own headlights, the sound of the motor, the sight of the first farmhouses, they found their normal voices again, or at least Bini did.

  ‘I heard tell they put Adrenalin in those nose spray things they give you for a cold. Did you notice I haven’t sneezed since we got out of the jeep up there?’ But even then he didn’t tell any jokes. ‘Salis… he’s his own man. Living on the continent hasn’t touched him. I wish I hadn’t said what I did …’

  The Marshal, filled with apprehension about the possible consequences of this night’s business, didn’t speak at all.

  Teresa, when he got home, bathed the stinging scratches on his face to an accompaniment of cross remarks on the lines of, ‘I can’t see why you don’t leave this sort of thing to your young carabinieri who are fitter than you and think nothing of being up half the night.’ But her voice came out more frightened than angry and she didn’t ask him just what ‘this sort of thing’ was.

  His written report to Captain Maestrangelo was brief and contained no mention of the previous night’s activities. It stated that their colleague, Marshal Bini, had referred to him an intimation, presumed to be from an unnamed informer, that an indication of the position of the hide-out, etc…

  Verbally, he referred to the matter of the expected report of a stolen moped and the drugged wine, adding his private worry that the feeder might suspect something.

  ‘We’ve been watching him for weeks. He can’t be more than eleven or twelve. Besides, there’ll be nothing missing. He will only worry about his precious moped. He’s underage for riding it and couldn’t report it stolen. No. Salis knows his business. We need to concentrate on ours. It’s time to get the experts in.’