by Hester Rowan
‘Nothing,’ I said with complete conviction, ‘because you wouldn’t know where to start telling him.’
He frowned in disagreement and then suddenly grinned. ‘You could be right. Thank God you’re safe, anyway, Clare.’ Without taking his eyes from the twisting road he lifted one of my hands and for a second held my fingers laced between his. Then he released me to change gear.
‘Owen should be joining us tomorrow evening,’ he said conversationally.
I felt an absurd prickling behind my eyes, a tightness in my chest. ‘That’ll be nice,’ I said, hoping that he couldn’t hear the sudden desolation in my voice.
Caterina was, fortunately, out to lunch and the villa was cool and silent in the afternoon sun. There were no explanations to be made. We looked in the Langs’ rooms and found that, as I suspected, they had left very little; obviously they believed in travelling light.
I made use of the expensive bath oil that Isabel had abandoned, feeling guilty but defiantly justified, and soaked away the terrors of the lake. When I went downstairs again I found that Guy, who had before blandly assured me that no full-blooded Italian male would dream of lifting a finger in the kitchen, had demonstrated his mixed parentage by producing a competent omelette and a pot of very strong coffee.
He looked up accusingly as I entered the kitchen. ‘You’re wearing your pink suit.’
I inspected my grubby ensemble without apology. ‘I’m not spoiling any more of my clothes,’ I said. ‘This is quite good enough for going over to Trevalle in the Haflinger.’
He passed my plate. ‘You are not coming to Trevalle,’ he said flatly.
‘Yes I am. We arranged it last night.’ I felt suddenly ravenous, and attacked the omelette. ‘This is delicious, Guy.’
He was deaf to my compliment. ‘That was before I knew that Lang was a potential murderer. He’s every bit as dangerous as Zecchini – more so as far as you’re concerned. And this evening all of them, Zecchini and Belugi and Lang as well, are likely to be hovering round Trevalle waiting for their chance to get at whatever it is they’re after. I’m certainly not going to take you up there among them.’
It was not a risk that I relished myself. But the sudden realization of the alternative completely took away my appetite.
‘On the other hand,’ I said slowly, ‘suppose you do leave me here alone: Lang left me in the lake for dead, but if he goes back to the hotel and gets your message he’ll know that he didn’t succeed – he’ll have an overwhelming reason for coming here to find me and finishing off the job. If I come to Trevalle I’ll be far safer. There’ll be you and plenty of other people as well. Police, even. You’ll have to take me with you.’
Guy put his fork down. ‘You’re right.’
I nodded, cheerfully victorious, and returned to my omelette. But Guy pushed back his chair.
‘You’re right and the sooner we leave here the better. Come on.’
‘But I haven’t –’
He caught at my hand and pulled me to my feet. ‘We’ve no time to mess about. If Lang did check back at the hotel he won’t be so very far behind us.’
I grabbed for my cup and managed to snatch a gulp of coffee before he yanked me after him. ‘It wasn’t all that good an omelette anyway,’ I grumbled in protest.
‘It’s a lot better than anything Owen will ever cook for you. If you’re coming, for heaven’s sake come on!’
The Haflinger bumped us up and over the mountains towards Trevalle. The middle valley, seen from the height above, was strangely quiet, a dust bowl from which all the diggers and dumpers had withdrawn. But the massive concrete retaining wall was lively with tiny figures as officials and sightseers gathered to take a final look before the valley was drowned.
The Haflinger crawled down the hair-raising mountain track that led to the new road, and then Guy turned in the direction of the town, inching through the traffic that had gathered at the end of the road that ran along the top of the dam. Once in the town he called at the local police headquarters, but emerged looking dissatisfied.
‘I’ve told them all we know,’ he said, ‘but they’re not impressed. Trouble is, they’ve got their hands full with this reservoir business – they’ve got a dazzle of regional dignitaries coming to the inauguration, and a civic banquet this evening, so every available policeman is out on traffic control. They’re concerned about getting the valleys closed after Giorgio and his family are out, but after that I get the impression that they’re not too worried. They’ve never heard that there’s anything of value in the far valley, and I had nothing definite to tell them, so they’ve shrugged it away. As for what happened to Alberto in Venice and to you on the lake, they suggest that we should go away and make depositions to the police in the localities concerned.’
‘Not their pigeon?’
‘Exactly. They’ve got problems of their own. Well, at least we’ve tried … Anyway, now we’re here, let’s go and look at the flat where Giorgio and Maddalena will be living.’
Guy drove on through the narrow streets, arcaded on both sides as a protection from both winter snow and summer sun. The town was crowded, en fête, with banners hanging from windows and a uniformed brass band, every player a field-marshal at least, blowing its heart out to celebrate the construction of the reservoir and the end of the fear of floods.
The new flats were on the outskirts of the town, a group of three-storey concrete blocks opening on to a courtyard where children were playing under a chestnut tree on the dusty grass. The flats were not in the least prepossessing, but as I looked at the clean light rooms, the bath, the sink with hot and cold water, the electric cooker, I could hardly deny that Maddalena would find advantages in the move from the primitive farm. The other flats were already occupied by families who had been moved from the middle valley and there were comfortable domestic sights and smells: meals being cooked, cats twining in and out of doorways, washing strung out of windows, women calling to each other from their small balconies across the inevitable pots of geraniums.
‘Well?’ asked Guy as though he really wanted to know my opinion.
I nodded. ‘Better for Maddalena, once she gets used to it. Much much better for Lisetta. But old Giorgio –’
‘Giorgio will hate it,’ he agreed. ‘Let’s just hope that his friends can get him away from the farm without too much damage to his pride.’
He nosed the Haflinger up towards the dam, past several policemen on traffic duty, and along the new middle valley road. At the pumping station there was an engineers’ van and a policeman leaning somnolently against his motorcycle. An empty lorry stood waiting to take Maddalena’s belongings down to the town. Beside it a youth was about to swing into the driving seat of a canvas-covered truck which vibrated with agitated cluckings. He called a greeting to Guy and from the back of the truck the head of Maddalena’s goat looked out in ill-disposed enquiry as we passed. Coming towards us, scrambling up from the far valley, another boy led a belled sheep while the rest of the thin flop-eared flock pattered and bleated behind.
‘What happens to the livestock?’ I asked as the sheep surged round and past our stationary vehicle.
‘A nephew has some land near the town. Giorgio will be able to go and help him.’ Guy smiled at me warmly. ‘You’re quite concerned about the family, aren’t you?’
‘I feel – involved,’ I admitted.
He put the engine into gear and headed for the far valley. ‘I imagine you do, after everything you’ve been through,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget to send me those cleaning bills, will you?’
It was like a dismissal. ‘All of them,’ I promised lightly, trying to ignore the hurt that was located with such unreasonable accuracy in the region of my heart.
The far valley could never have seen so much activity, nor heard so much noise. Certainly it would never do so again. There seemed to be a dozen or more people helping Maddalena and Giorgio to move and they had obviously come with the intention of enjoying the process.
&nb
sp; With what seemed to me an entirely deplorable division of labour, the women were doing all the work of emptying the farmhouse and barns while the men were engaged in the serious business of drinking. Giorgio was in the middle of them, excited and obstreperous, waving his arms and – as far as I could judge – a long way from the stage where he could be expected to go quietly.
Guy set me down just before we reached the farmhouse. ‘No point in your getting involved,’ he said. ‘You sit under this olive tree while I lend a hand – the sooner I can get things moving the better. You’ll be perfectly safe here. Look,’ he pointed to the head of the valley, a hundred yards away where some men were working at the base of the enclosing mountains, ‘the engineers must be planting the charges that will be blown tomorrow morning to release the water. Even if any of our friends are about, they wouldn’t try anything with so many people in the valley.’
I leaned my back against the twisted grey-green trunk and watched as Guy drove the Haflinger up to the farmhouse, greeted the women and began to load Maddalena’s possessions into the back of the truck. They were few and poor enough, but he treated them with as much reverence as if they had been antiques. He made two journeys to and from the lorry, and then helped the women into the Haflinger. Lisetta, her shyness overcome, had been hopping round in excitement, and now he lifted her, chuckling, high into the air before handing her up to her mother and starting his last journey down the winding track, past the ruined farmhouse and through the gap that led to the middle valley.
The engineers were now walking back from the head of the valley carrying their tool kits, their work done. They stopped to speak to Giorgio and his friends, bottles were passed, there was laughter and back-slapping and then the engineers walked on towards the pumping station.
I looked towards the head of the valley, wondering where the rocks would break under the explosion and how fast the water from the underground river would burst through. Most of the valley was now covered in evening shadow, but there was still some sunlight on the rocky slopes that enclosed us to the north and as I watched I thought I caught the glint of sun on glass or metal.
Something left by the engineers, I told myself. I looked south, towards the gap. Guy was taking far longer than he had done on the previous trips and I felt a sense of unease. I thought – I couldn’t be sure, and anyway it might have been a bird – that I detected a movement from behind the tumble-down walls of the long-abandoned farmhouse. I sensed that the valley was being watched.
I tried to tell myself that it was all in my imagination, but I knew that wasn’t true. Both Zecchini and Lang were interested in the valley. What was more likely than that they were somewhere near, hidden, waiting?
I felt a moment of terrified detachment, a sense of the vivid unreality that comes in bad dreams when you know that you are dreaming but yet you cannot wake. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. I refused to believe that I, Clare Lambert, was really sitting entirely alone under an olive tree in a parched mountain valley God knew where in the Alps, with dusk approaching and the only sounds coming from the drunken revelry of a crowd of Italian peasants; I couldn’t believe that somewhere out there, watching and waiting, were men who were prepared to commit murder. I couldn’t believe that I was really there – and yet the gnarled tree roots under my tense fingers were real enough, the hard green early-fallen olives were real, so was the cracked and dusty earth, the ants that explored my shoes. And so was the Italian who was weaving his way towards me, bottle in hand, a lecherous look on his face.
Chapter Eighteen
I scrambled to my feet, my back pressed against the trunk of the tree, preparing to run. The man called something to me, waved the bottle, stopped to take a swig, staggered and then came purposefully on.
And then, shatteringly loud above the voices and the laughter, came the sound of the Haflinger. It had left the track and was belting towards me across the valley floor, dust rising in clouds behind it as Guy forced the little engine to maintain its top speed. The Italian turned, stared and then, as Guy squealed to a stop and jumped out, staggered forward to catch him in a vinous embrace.
Guy held him off by the lapels of his jacket, speaking to him angrily. The Italian protested, gestured towards me and grinned. For a moment I thought that Guy was going to hit him, but then he calmed down and said something that made the Italian seize him by the hand, pump it up and down vigorously, clap him on the shoulders and look at me with a half-sly, half-apologetic smirk.
‘Sorry about that,’ Guy told me. ‘This is Mario, one of Giorgio’s grandsons.’
In the circumstances, I didn’t bother to acknowledge the introduction. Mario sat down rather suddenly and Guy scowled at him.
‘I’d have liked to punch his head, but there’d be no point in it. He can’t understand that a girl sitting alone isn’t fair game and in his condition it’s no use trying to explain. So I took the easy way out and told him that we were betrothed – that’ll always stop an Italian from so much as looking at another man’s girl. He gives us his best wishes, by the way.’
I avoided his eye. ‘Generous of him,’ I mumbled, and then changed the subject quickly. ‘Will they ever be able to get Giorgio out of the valley, if they’re all in this condition?’
‘Oh, I doubt if they are,’ said Guy, heaving Mario to his feet. ‘This chap is notorious for his weak head. Still, it’s certainly time they were off – I never thought they’d leave it as late as this. The lorry’s gone down to the town with the women and all the belongings. Oh, except Maddalena – she decided that she wanted to see Giorgio safely aboard, so she insists on waiting by the pumping station. If the men start making their way out of the valley now, they should get there by the time the lorry returns to pick them up. I’ll take Mario over to join the others and see if I can chivvy them a bit. You come too, Clare.’
He heaved Mario ungently into the back of the Haflinger and drove to where the men, in a line with their arms across each other’s shoulders, were executing a complicated, shambling dance. Old Giorgio danced among them, head up, defiant. Two of the men came forward to pull Mario out of the truck, hoist him to his feet and lumber away with him. Guy drove on and stopped the Haflinger at the back of the farmhouse, facing towards the rock wall.
‘I wanted to take Giorgio down to the lorry,’ he said, ‘but he’s as tough as they come. They could only have got him in the Haflinger by force, and that would destroy him. But they’re gradually moving him away from the farmhouse in that dance they’re doing, and when his knees do buckle there are enough of them to carry him off. It’s better for them to do it without my interference.’
‘Yes, I can see that. But is there any need to stay if you can’t do anything more?’
He hesitated. ‘I feel that I want to see it through, now the old man’s so nearly on his way. I just want to see him safely out of the valley. Do you mind?’
I did mind. I was still uneasy, even with Guy there; I still sensed the watching eyes. But as I had come to the valley at my own insistence, I shook my head. ‘Of course not.’
‘Good. I parked out of the way round here in case any of the lads took a fancy to our transport. I know most of them by sight and they know me, but if it comes to a drunken punch-up I don’t fancy my chances. Look, why don’t you go and sit on that knoll by the spring, as you did the other day? I’ve just spotted one of Alberto’s cousins, and I’d like a word with him.’
The grass by the spring felt lush and cool after the heat-retaining earth of the valley. I dabbled my fingers in the water, looking at the gaping black holes that formed the windows and doorway in what had been Maddalena’s home; already the farmhouse had an air of desolation.
Guy had drawn one of the men aside and was trying to talk to him seriously. Alberto’s cousin was convivial, greeting him heartily and thrusting a bottle of wine at him. Guy persisted. Eventually the man looked elaborately round as if for eavesdroppers, drew Guy aside and whispered like a conspirator, tapping the side of his nose in
alcoholic wisdom. Guy asked a few questions, nodded, then shook him by the hand and walked with him towards the line of dancers who were making definite progress towards the end of the valley.
Guy came back to join me, folding his long legs down on to the grass, carrying the bottle of wine Alberto’s cousin had given him and two chipped earthenware mugs that he found among the abandoned debris on a bench outside the door of the farmhouse.
‘What was all that about?’ I asked.
He prised the cork out of the bottle, looking at me with a quick smile. ‘That,’ he said, ‘provides us with all our answers. He’d had just enough wine to make him talk and now everything that’s been happening begins to make sense.’
He rinsed the mugs in the spring and poured from the bottle. I sipped, and gasped as the rough red wine sandpapered my throat.
Guy laughed. ‘Guaranteed to kill every known germ this side of the Dolomites, I shouldn’t wonder.’ He took a gulp, shuddered, and went quickly on with his story.
‘I told you that Giorgio’s son, Pietro, went to Rome and got up to no good? Apparently he became involved in this business of looting and smuggling antiquities. That was a brilliant guess of yours, by the way, Clare. It must have shaken Lang. Anyway, according to Alberto’s cousin, Pietro was employed to drive the stuff across the border into Switzerland. He was making a nice little income from it. But then there was the big international scandal that you mentioned and the newspapers revealed just how much the antiquities were worth. Pietro felt that he was getting a poor deal, and he decided to help himself to a few of the really good pieces, worth a small fortune.’
‘And so he came back home,’ I suggested, ‘and hid them in this cave behind the farmhouse?’
‘Right. He did it last summer and as it happened Alberto was hanging about in Trevalle at the time. Pietro let Alberto into the secret – I suppose they planned to share out the spoils. But Pietro got caught in the cave by a rock fall and Alberto went back to Venice – but first he told his story to his cousin.’