by Mark Dawson
Instead of landing between her shoulder blades, the point of the knife sliced into the woman’s right shoulder. It was sharp, piercing the black fabric of her polo neck, the downward swipe cutting into the top of the deltoid and scoring a line all the way down the triceps.
The woman didn’t flinch or exclaim or give any indication that the knifing had caused her an ounce of discomfort. It was as if it was a minor inconvenience. Instead, she took a quarter step so that she was parallel with the wall, pivoted at the waist so that her trunk was facing away from Isabella, and lashed out with an upward kick. She led with the ball of the foot, striking Isabella flush in the sternum. Isabella was knocked off her feet, the back of her head cracking against the tiles as she slid across the floor.
Isabella had bought Pope a moment and he took advantage of it. He surged ahead, closing the three steps to the woman, encircling her with both arms and locking the fingers of his right hand around his left wrist. He hauled her off her feet, ready to throw her into the wall, but she stretched out her right foot and locked it around the back of his right knee. She was slender, but he found, to his shock, that she was prodigiously strong. Pope outweighed her by at least sixty pounds, yet he couldn’t throw her. Instead, she flexed her shoulders and broke his grip as if he were no more than a child.
Pope managed to latch the fingers of his right hand underneath the shoulder holster and yanked her back toward him, but she hopped up on her left leg and lashed the flat of her right foot against his chin. He felt as if he had been struck by a trip hammer. He managed to retain his grip on the leather strap; it was only by hanging onto it that he was able to prevent himself from falling to his knees.
He reacted on instinct: he put his shoulder down and bull-rushed her. He thumped into her midriff and drove backwards, wrapping his arms around her waist and hoisting her off the floor. They stumbled through the arch together, crashed through the wooden balustrade that guarded the drop onto the stairs and fell into space. They slammed down onto the stairs together, the impact expelling all the air from Pope’s lungs. He bounced down the last few treads until he was sprawled out across the living room floor.
Pope was dazed, his head thick as if jammed full of sawdust, and there was a buzzing whine in his ears. He was on his back, covered with pieces of debris from the balusters and the handrail. He raised his head, sending the whine up by an octave, and looked for the woman.
She was on her feet, one of the broken balusters in her hand. She reached him and swung the baluster down at his head. He rolled to the side as the wooden shaft struck the tile and splintered. She raised what was left of it and swung it down again; Pope rolled out of the way for a second time, managing to get to his hands and knees as she swung the baluster for a third time. He ducked his head and raised his arm and the shaft crashed against his shoulder. A starburst of pain blasted out across the right side of his body as he scrambled to his feet.
She dropped the broken baluster and stepped up to him. He had a longer reach than she did, and he was able to fire out two stiff jabs as she came on. The first blow landed on her cheekbone and the second on her mouth, but neither stopped her. The second jab pressed her lips against her teeth and drew blood, but she let it run down to her chin without any concern. He backed away, noting one small mercy: his pistol had been jarred loose from her holster during her fall. The polo neck had been slashed open by Isabella’s knife, the rent torn even wider during their struggle, and Pope could see the blood that was welling in the long, jagged wound. She came on, and before he could think about looking for where his pistol might have fallen, she fired out a left-handed jab that landed square on the point of his jaw. Pope assumed that she was right-handed but, even so, her left still carried some weight. It was a stinging blow and he took a clumsy step back, instinctively raising his guard.
She followed Pope across the room, moving easily on the balls of her feet. He backed against the edge of the table and held up his guard as she kicked up at him, her right shin thudding into his upper arm, and then, with an easy distribution of weight that did not disturb her balance, she kicked out with her left, aiming lower, into his unprotected ribs. He gasped, a mixture of surprise and pain, automatically dropping his left arm to cover his torso. She kept her balance on her right foot, drew back her left foot again and aimed higher. The top of her foot pounded into the side of his head and he staggered away. A deep and welcoming darkness swirled around him, and for a moment, all he wanted to do was throw himself into it.
He resisted, stumbling away from the woman until he was in the small kitchen. The woman stalked him. There was a knife block on the island; one of the knives was missing—Isabella had taken it—but there were three others. The woman reached out for one of them and closed in on him again.
Chapter Sixty-One
It took Isabella a moment to work out where she was. She was staring up at a ceiling, laid out flat on a cool tiled floor. Her head was ringing and there was a tight ball of pain right in the centre of her chest. Her arms were at her sides, and when she pressed down so that she could raise herself up onto her elbows, the pain burst across her chest. She remembered: the woman had struck her there, right on her sternum. She pressed her fingers against it and was rewarded with a fizz of pain that scorched up to her brain. Broken ribs?
She heard a crash from the landing at the end of the corridor and gingerly sat up. There was the sound of two heavy impacts, one immediately after the other, and then the clatter of debris. She put her hand down on the floor and pressed down, getting her leg beneath her and pushing until she was back on her feet. Her head throbbed with pain, and she had to put a hand out against the wall until she was a little less dizzy.
There was another crash from downstairs, the sound of splintering wood and then another crash.
Isabella went to the landing. The balustrade had been destroyed, with several balusters and the handrail no longer there. She saw the wreckage on the stairs below and realised what had happened.
Pope’s Beretta M9 was on a tread halfway down the stairs.
There came the sound of a meaty impact and a gasp of breath.
Isabella descended the stairs, her balance affected by the blow to her head and the lack of a handrail to help her. She managed it, knelt down and picked up the pistol.
Pope and the woman were behind her in the kitchen area. The woman was facing Pope, her back to Isabella. She had a knife in her left hand. Her polo neck was ripped on the right shoulder and down the arm, with a livid wound visible beneath. Pope, his face bloodied and unsteady on his feet, was trying to maintain the distance between them. His focus was on the knife, but as Isabella raised the pistol and aimed, he was unable to stop the quicksilver flash of the blade that ended in his right triceps. The blade cut into his flesh; Pope punched with his left hand and the woman danced back, leaving the blade stuck there.
“Get away from him,” Isabella called out.
The woman turned to face her.
Isabella felt another buffeting well of giddiness. She steadied herself on the table with her left hand and aimed with her right.
Pope put out his left hand, braced it on a kitchen chair, and clambered to his feet.
The woman backed up to the open doors to the balcony.
“Mr Pope?” Isabella said, her eyes staying on the woman.
“I’m all right.”
The woman was at the door now. “Stay where you are,” Isabella warned.
The woman glanced over her shoulder to the balcony and the drop on the other side of the parapet. Isabella knew they were on the fourth floor of the building. It was around twelve metres to the cobbles of the piazza. Much too far to jump.
“Where are my family?” Pope said.
The woman must have been able to see how high up they were, yet she took another step toward the open door.
“Stop,” Isabella warned her again. “I’ll shoot.”
The woman stepped back again, still facing Pope but reaching out with her left hand
and pushing the door so that it opened all the way. She turned to Isabella. “I’m sorry about your mother,” she said.
The wooziness swelled and she tried to blink it away. “What?”
“She was an impressive woman.”
Before Pope could say anything else, and before Isabella could shoot her, the woman took two quick sideways steps through the door and onto the balcony. She launched herself up and over the parapet, clearing it easily, and fell out of sight.
Isabella lurched across to the balcony and looked down. She expected to see the woman laid out on the cobbles below, but she wasn’t there. There was an elderly pair of tourists facing toward the Duomo. Isabella looked that way, too, and saw the woman. She was limping, her right leg dragging, but she was still moving quickly. She reached the corner of the building and disappeared around it.
The elderly couple looked up at the balcony with incredulous expressions on their faces; Isabella pulled back so that she was out of sight.
“Isabella,” Pope said. His voice was tight with pain.
The knife was still stuck in his arm.
“We have to get out of here,” he said.
She looked down at his arm. “We need to sort that out first. Is there a first aid cabinet?”
He shook his head. “We’ll have to improvise.”
He told her what they would need: a tube of superglue and a roll of duct tape from a DIY kit. Isabella went upstairs to the storeroom and collected them.
Pope sat down and rested his arm on the arm of the chair so that Isabella could see it.
“What does it look like?”
The wound was unpleasant: the knife was embedded almost halfway to the hilt with perhaps three inches of the blade still inside his arm. The blade had been dragged down to tear open a gash that was two inches wide from top to bottom. “Quite deep. It’s bleeding a bit.”
“Okay. Wash your hands.”
“There wasn’t any disinfectant.”
“Soap is fine.”
There was a bottle of hand wash behind the kitchen sink. She poured out a little of the liquid and scrubbed her fingers until they were clean.
“Good,” Pope said. “You’re going to have to pull the knife out, clean the wound and then dress it.”
“How do I clean it?”
He angled his head back to the kitchen. “There’s some salt in the cupboard. Mix a tablespoon in a cup of warm water and use that.”
She found the salt, prepared the solution and brought it back to the table.
“Take the knife out. Do it slowly. If it’s nicked an artery, there’s going to be a lot of blood. If there is, you’ll need to get me to a doctor.”
She took a breath, took a firm hold of the handle and slowly pulled the knife out of his arm. Pope shut his eyes and gritted his teeth.
“Sorry,” she said.
“You’re doing fine.”
The last inch came free and more blood bubbled up to the surface. She inspected it. “Not too much,” she said.
“I might’ve got lucky. Might just have gone into the muscle.” He lifted his arm up above his heart, grunting with the pain, and the flow of blood slowed. “All right. Clean it out.”
Isabella poured the solution into the wound, rinsing the blood away and revealing the clean edges of the incision. Pope grimaced with discomfort.
“Well done. You need to close it now. I’m going to apply pressure around it, hold it together, and I think the bleeding will stop. Put a layer of glue over the top. That should hold it closed. Then we can dress it.”
He reached across with his left hand and pinched his arm so that the edges of the incision pressed together. Isabella took the tube of superglue and emptied it, squeezing it and then spreading out the glue so that it covered the wound in a thin layer. Pope checked it, nodded that it was satisfactory, and held his hand in place until the glue had cured. Then, at his direction, Isabella folded a clean tea towel around his arm and secured it with duct tape.
Isabella looked at her handiwork: it was a haphazard job, but Pope seemed content with it.
“We’ve been here too long already,” Pope said. “We need to hurry.”
He told Isabella to go upstairs and collect the other things that they would need: a small suitcase and fresh clothes for them both. She found the case underneath the bed in the main bedroom and two changes of clothes for Pope from the wardrobe. He told her that she should go into the bedroom that was being used by his older daughter and pick out fresh clothes for herself from the wardrobe. She selected a pair of jeans and two shirts, holding them up against her body and concluding that she was of similar height and build to Pope’s girl. She put them in the case, too, and dragged it down the stairs.
Pope took one of the clean shirts and put it on, carefully sliding his injured arm into the sleeve. Then he went to a drawer in the kitchen, collected two passports and laid them on the table. Isabella took them and shuffled from one to the other: the first was of Pope, although the name on the detail page was Edward Hughes; the second was for Pope’s elder daughter. Isabella looked at the photograph. They both had blonde hair, although the girl’s was longer than Isabella’s was. They both had blue eyes and they were both of a similar age.
“Immigration never checks them properly,” Pope said. “You’ll be with me. They’ll glance at it and assume you’re my daughter. It’ll be fine.”
“So what are we doing?”
“We can’t stay here. Whoever that was will come back with reinforcements.”
“Where are we going?”
“We need somewhere to hide out. I need to think.”
“Italy?”
“No. Farther than that. Come on.”
Pope stopped at the door and went back into the living room. There was a framed photograph on the table of him, his wife and his two girls. He took it, opened the suitcase and pushed it inside. He tried to lift the case, but the effort caused him to wince in pain. Isabella took the handle from him and they left the apartment, descended to the piazza and set off.
PART FIVE
Palolem
Chapter Sixty-Two
Isabella stopped at the local store and bought the things that she had come into town to get. She paid the woman behind the till with a one-hundred-rupee note and took the change. The woman had looked at Isabella with suspicion as she rang up the goods on Isabella’s first few visits, but those occasions were a week ago and now she greeted her warmly. Isabella had taught herself a few words of Konkani, the local dialect, and her initial butcherings of simple sentences about the weather or how delicious she found the old woman’s rice were met with amused laughter, and then patient correction.
“How are you?” the woman said.
“I’m very good,” she said, concentrating on her accent. “Thank you for these.”
“My pleasure, Daisy.” She paused, holding her finger up as if to say that she had remembered something, and then told her to wait. She went into the room behind the counter and came out again with a delicate white flower that was veined with purple. She held it up for Isabella to see. She recognised it as a Saint Anton flower, a sweet-scented bloom that appeared after the start of the monsoons in June. The woman beckoned with her fingers that Isabella should lean forward. She did and ducked her head a little more so that the woman could slide the stem of the flower behind her ear.
“Beautiful,” the woman said, beaming a grin so wide that her missing teeth were revealed.
Isabella nodded and smiled as she said goodbye and walked out of the store. It was the middle of the day and blisteringly hot. She crossed the road to her scooter. She had been in Palolem for eight days and had become fond of it. The town showed all the signs of rapid growth fuelled by the tourist industry. The old woman had patiently explained over several visits that the town had once been a small fishing village, and Isabella saw that the original shacks and huts were still visible in the older parts of town. The woman explained that it had become a popular destination for tour
ists thirty years ago when it had first been featured in Western guidebooks and brochures. It was an easy sell: an unspoiled tropical paradise, where no one wore shoes and fresh coconuts could be had from the daily spoil that fell from the trees. Isabella looked around now and saw the effects of that rapid growth: some of the local fishermen had given up their boats to rent out rooms to visitors who wanted to wake up to the sound of the ocean; ugly brick constructions, at odds with the traditional local architecture, had been built to accommodate restaurants with bland food and clubs that played music until the early hours of the morning. There were laundry wallahs, vendors in search of dupes who stalked unwary tourists, and massage parlours where a variety of services, not all of them legal, were available. Fishing skiffs were converted so that they could take travellers out to sea in the hope of seeing turtles and dolphins.
Isabella put the bag into the scooter’s pannier, stepped astride it and started the engine. The main street was busy, with tuk-tuks buzzing to and fro, a bus delivering a fresh collection of tourists and private cars bulling their way through the pedestrians who strayed onto the dusty road.
She set off.
Chapter Sixty-Three
Isabella rode the scooter along the coast road and, after two miles, arrived at the steps that led down to the beach. She took the bag of provisions, put the scooter’s keys in her pocket and climbed down. The surroundings were stunning. The sea was smooth, a mirror of deep blue that stretched as far as she could see. The seabed sloped down at a very gentle camber and the waters here did not have the riptides that could be found farther down the coast; it was ideal for swimming. The beach itself was a mile long and shaped like a sickle, and Isabella could see all of it from her vantage point. The two points of the sickle comprised rocky outcrops, clad with green and brown vegetation, that jutted out into the sea. The sand was so bleached by the sun that it was almost white, and the beach was unspoiled.