Vengeance in the Sun (19 page)

“Steve?”

“He made a hash of it the first time round at the Devesas. Then our second plan, that of fostering his relationship with you so that he would be spending time in the villa and would be able to take Danielle easily when the time came, that wasn't such a great success either.”

“Why?”

She surveyed my face critically. “ I find that hard to understand myself. You're not a beauty, are you? But Steve fell for you. Had romantic dreams of taking his cash and sending for you so that you could join him in some private Eden, unsullied by his regrettable deeds of the past.”

“He was a bloody nuisance about her!” Bradley said suddenly, his voice cold with contempt. “Thank God the idiot's dead. He was nothing but a risk from beginning to end, and in case you've forgotten,” he turned to me. “
You
killed Steve Patterson. Not me.”

It wasn't something I needed reminding of.

“And now? What happens now?”

“We go back to the Devesas. The Fiat is fathoms deep, its doors flung wide, the sea empty of bodies. We simply rectify it.” He turned to Leonie. “Go get the kid, we've wasted enough time already.”

As he glanced away from me I snatched a look at Mario. His mouth gaped open, the cup beside him drained. Mine, down at the foot of my chair, was only half empty. Tentatively I tried to move my fingers and felt them respond. The drug was beginning to wear off. If I could delay him a little longer.…

“How did Leonie know you were still alive?”

“She didn't. Not till she heard me enter the villa. After all, she knew it couldn't be the police. She'd never telephoned them in the first place. I stayed in one of the rear rooms while she fobbed you off with the story of a cat and then made the coffee and drugged it. I cut the telephone wires, knowing full well that your brainless world champion would go haring off to Palma like the twelfth cavalry, and waited for the drug to take effect.”

There were movements from the bedrooms. I said: “How did you get here?”

His pale blue eyes held mine, filled with anticipation and pleasurable cruelty.

“When the car crashed I was flung clear and unconscious. It was very dark and you must have been stunned. Leastways you couldn't have looked for me. If you had, it would have been an easy enough task to have helped me over the edge. Assuming you could have done such a thing.”

“Don't worry,” I said fervently. “ I'd have had a jolly good try!”

“When I regained consciousness both cars had gone and Steve was dead. I dragged him into the undergrowth to delay any police activity, and began to walk. I stole a car, empty while its occupants went for a moonlight stroll in the woods, drove here, parked it in the darkness at the foot of the drive so that no-one leaving the villa would see it, and made my entrance. None of it improved my temper. All the time, the thought that kept me going was the thought of finding you again!” He moved closer to me, his shadow falling across me. “
Of making you pay!
”

There was spittle at the corner of his mouth and his eyes were glazed. I could feel the beads of perspiration break out on my forehead.

“People get mutilated in accidents. Horribly mutilated.” He ripped the makeshift bandage from my leg. The cut had congealed, the flesh on either side swollen and raw. “We could start here. Not very big, is it? We could make it a lot bigger. Say from here,” his index finger touched my kneecap, “to here.” He drew a line to my ankle. “ Scream as much as you like. It won't bring help from Leonie.”

From his inside pocket he drew a short, sharp knife. I sucked in my breath and as it quivered in his hand, saw that he was smiling. He held it high, the knife gleaming in the light, the rapier point poised exactly over my kneecap, his grip on it one that would slice my leg open as easily as a butcher cleaving meat. Then he laughed and the knife plunged downwards. I closed my eyes and screamed.

“
If you so much as nick her skin I'll cut your throat from side to side!
”

Bradley whirled round, the knife still held in his hand. Max filled the doorway, his shoulders tense, his hands clenched into fists.

“To do that,” Bradley said breathlessly, “You need a knife.”

“Yes,” Max said with certainty. “Yours.”

They stood measuring each other up and then Bradley laughed.

“You'll never get it! I'm going to give you the pleasure of seeing your girlfriend die in the most painful way I can devise. Drowning is too good for her. And you.”

With sudden momentum he rushed towards Max, the knife held high, its point piercing downwards towards Max's heart. Struggling to move I saw Max side step, but not soon enough. The knife missed, but Bradley's body lunged into his, sending them both crashing across the salon, coffee tables and object d'art scattering in their wake. Max hit out with his fist, catching Bradley on the chin, sending him sprawling, the knife still gripped in his hand. As Max hurled himself upon him, Bradley forced the knife blade upwards. Max had both hands on Bradley's wrist forcing the wavering tip aside, while Bradley's muscles strained to their utmost to keep his grip firm, the knife unyielding.

Helplessly I watched, pushing up with all my might to stand. To do something. Anything.

Grunting and cursing Bradley kicked Max off him, sending him sprawling, only to be knocked half senseless as Max leapt back, seizing the knife and forcing Bradley's arm back till the knife fell in a silver crescent to the floor. He had no chance to reach it himself.

They were locked in a bloody, swaying fist fight. The cut on Bradley's temple had re-opened, blood pouring down his face, and blood gushed from Max's lip, smearing the walls, the carpet, as they lurched and swayed about the room, only inches from Mario's inert body, and feet from where I sat, my breath hurting my chest, screams rising in my throat.

Both of them were panting, their clothes torn and ripped, and then Max kneed Bradley in the groin and as Bradley's hold on him slackened and he groaned with pain, Max thrust his arm forward with a sharp right to the chin, and then another and another. Reeling, Bradley fell back against the wall and then, his face a mask of blood, he seized the whisky decanter, hurling it into Max's face, lunging down on top of him.

My eyes were fixed on the knife lying near the open doorway, still out of Bradley's reach. If I could only force myself to move, to crawl round and get it myself … but though feeling and movement had returned to my arms, my legs would still not support my body and I sat useless and helpless as Bradley rained blows down on Max's head, forcing him onto his back, reaching for his throat. I could see the expression on Bradley's face. The blazing triumph beneath the blood and sweat.

Then Max gouged viciously at his eyes and Bradley's grip loosened for the fraction necessary for Max to twist away, and as both men stumbled to their knees, Max sent Bradley flying backwards with a hard punch just below the heart. Bradley lay where he fell, his breath rasping, saliva running from his mouth and as Max tensed for one last spring, Leonie said silkily: “ Very entertaining. Would you like to see the little surprise I've got?”

Danielle's eyes were glazed and uncomprehending. I remember thinking thankfully. She's drugged. She doesn't realise. Leonie stood behind her, her left arm reaching across Danielle's body and grasping Danielle's right wrist. In her right hand she held the knife. It's tip rested unwaveringly at Danielle's throat.

Max took one look at the expression on Leonie's face and froze. Dazedly Bradley heaved himself first to his elbows, then to his feet, gasping lungfuls of air.

“Out to the cars,” he gasped painfully, clutching his chest, kicking viciously at my legs.

“I can't move,” I lied, aware of feeling easing down my veins, spreading in tingling warmth.

“Then stay here and be burnt with the villa and the rest of them!” he said, still struggling for breath. “Do as you're told Wyndham or we'll kill Danielle here and now before you all!”

Danielle began to cry. Slowly Max turned to me. My eyes flickered, sending an unspoken message across the room in a way we had done for the past fifteen years when speech had been impossible. Then, it had been the harmless understanding of Uncle Alistair and Aunt Katherine we had sought to avoid. Now our lives depended on that unspoken oneness of minds.

He turned from me, his body sagging as if in defeat, stumbling across to the open door, Bradley only feet behind him. Danielle stood in her nightdress, her eyes wide and frightened. Leonie, svelte and confident, still held the knife at her throat with tapering, well manicured nails. Bradley's narrow shoulders as he walked away from me, were those of a victor. Every movement he made betraying the triumph he felt.

As Max reached the doorway and Danielle, I summoned up all my strength and with a prayer on my lips, sprang from my chair, leaping for the light switch, plunging the room into darkness.

There were screams and cries and the sound of fist meeting bone, and I was running wildly to where I had last seen Danielle. A silk clad body reeled past me in the blackness and I could feel Leonie's long fingers clutching desperately for something to break her fall. My skirt rent and I was screaming, “
Danny! Danny!
” and then she had hurtled into my arms and I was clasping her to me and sobbing, and now it was Leonie who was screaming, and in the dark the two men lurched and swayed and I caught the deadly flash of steel held high but could not see whose grip it was held in. Feverishly I ran my hands over the blood-smeared walls. The light switch! Dear God! The light switch!”

Leonie's hysterical screams tore the darkness as the men grunted and gasped for control of the knife. Briefly, as they fell against the windows, I glimpsed Bradley's face, the blatant murder in his eyes, the knife in his grasp as he tried to force it down into Max's chest, and Max, his wrists grasped round Bradley's, forcing it away, his face and neck distorted with strain. Then they were in the dark centre of the room again and there was the sound of falling furniture as they fell to the floor. Then a brief gasp. Then nothing.

Sobbing, my fingers closed on the switch, plunging the room into garish brilliance.

Bradley lay on the carpet, face down, impaled by the weight of his body on the knife he had held. Blood seeped from beneath him, soaking into the carpet, spreading in ever widening circles.

Leonie was a woman transformed. White and haggard she huddled in a corner, staring with transfixed eyes at the body of her husband, making no movement towards him. Making no movement at all.

Max walked wearily across to her, leading her unprotesting from the room. She stood in the shadowed hallway, gazing from one to the other of us, saying like a frightened child: “ Can I go? Please let me go?” her voice a mere whisper.

Max nodded, letting his hand fall from her arm. With one last, glazed look at the closed doors behind which her husband lay dead, she fled down the darkened corridors and out of the villa.

“She won't be able to get away, will she?” I asked Max, as his bloodied arm closed round my shoulder.

“No. The police will pick her up tomorrow. And the air here, will be a little purer tonight.”

I said hesitantly: “ The night she spent away from the villa … were you … was she.…”

“Lucy, Lucy,” his voice was thick with love. “No, she wasn't. My only reason for even passing the time of day with Leonie was the chance it gave me to see you. To know what you were doing.”

“And she told you nothing but lies.”

“Leonie would have been incapable of anything else. God knows what will happen to her now.”

I remembered the knife tip at Danielle's throat. “Whatever it is, she'll deserve it,” I said, feeling no compassion for her at all. My arms closed round the shivering Danielle. “What happens now?”

“First you put Danny back to bed and then,” he grinned at me grotesquely through a sea of blood, “then I really
do
go for the police!”

With Danielle finally asleep beside the still drugged Peggy, we had hauled Mario out of the carnage of the main salon and onto a chair on the terrace, covering him with a blanket. Then, while Max had taken a much needed shower I had made coffee and now, two hours later, we were sat in the peace and stillness of Helena Van de Naude's study.

“What made you come back?” I asked, feeling the hot liquid steadying my overwrought nerves, relaxing after what seemed an eternity of fear and tension.

“I never left, Brat. I knew Bradley was still alive.”

“How? I'd
told
you he was dead. I was
sure
he was dead.”

“And you were sure Steve's body was still lying in the road.”

“Yes.…”

“Which was very strange,” Max said, ruffling my hair. “Because when I drove round the Devesas a short time later there was no body at all. Not a thing I would be likely to miss.”

“Bradley had already moved it?”

“Yes. He was probably still legging it up the road when I drove past.”

“So you knew. All along you knew!”

“I guessed.”

“And the bit about going to Palma for the police was all bluff?”

He nodded. “ I was damn sure it wasn't coincidence that the telephone wasn't working, and when Leonie came back into the room her eyes gave her away. I knew Bradley was there. Just waiting for me to make my exit before he showed himself.”

“Well, I wished you'd let me know!” I said feelingly. Another second and I would have been a cripple for life!”

“My timing,” Max said firmly, “ is always perfect.” And proceeded to prove it.

Much later he said huskily: “I love you, Brat. I've always loved you. I always will love you.”

My arms tightened around his neck. “I've been a fool, Max. But I never stopped loving you. Not for so much as a second!”