When the Dead Awaken (21 page)

He checked his watch: 2.51 a.m. The hour when the defences of the human body were at their weakest and vigilance at its lowest.

He crossed Via San Raffaele and headed for the hotel entrance.

In his highly polished shoes, well-fitting suit, white shirt, neutral tie and respectable black coat he looked like just another guest returning to his room, and the night porter's eyebrow didn't even twitch. He walked through the lobby and called the lift. Earlier that evening he had called the hotel and asked to be put through to Signorina D'Avalos in room 608.

The receptionist had automatically corrected him and said room 712 – the bridal suite – which made him smile before he hung up.

He stood without moving for several minutes in the empty hotel corridor outside the bridal suite.

Then he knocked and waited.

Nothing.

He knocked slightly harder with the same result and frowned. He looked at the door handle and the lock. Grand Hotel Duomo had retained the old hotel keys with brass tags rather than replacing them with electronic key cards, presumably in order to emphasize the elegance of the establishment. He took a step back and made sure he was undisturbed. In his inside coat pocket he found a small leather case containing slim steel instruments.

It took him thirty seconds to pick the lock.

He could see her in the bed. Sabrina D'Avalos was lying on her back on a ridiculous heart-shaped double bed, the duvet reaching halfway up her chest, her arms resting peacefully on top. Carefully he took one noiseless step and then another. Whispered her name. Hesitated. There was no movement in the bed. Raindrops rolled in golden trails down the windowpane. Her eye sockets were black pools and he could see the sharp, bow-shaped shadow under her upper lip. It looked as if she were smiling in quiet ecstasy though he could see no reason for her to smile. He could say something, of course, but he was scared that she might scream. He took a few more steps and looked down at her face. The black hair was spread across the pillow … and … he blinked in alarm … he noticed the thin white cables leading to her earphones.

And then he saw the whites of her eyes.

The assistant public prosecutor stared right up at him, but didn't move a muscle. His right hand had almost reached her chin.

When his hand got there, Sabrina D'Avalos was gone. She had rolled out from under the duvet, fluid and forceful, and she was now somewhere diagonally behind him. He was about to straighten up when her knee hit the side of his chest with a dry crack. The air left his lungs and everything went black behind his eyelids. He had time to roll with the kick and felt the air pressure from her clenched fist as it passed over his scalp.

Why didn't she scream?

He opened his eyes and was about to say his name when he received a blow to his temple. The assistant public prosecutor would appear to favour strike combinations. He grunted furiously and warded off a kick to his stomach. Sabrina D'Avalos was a flickering, liquid silhouette in the dark. He tried a circular kick to the top of the form. If it had hit home as he had hoped, the assistant public prosecutor would have been unconscious before she hit the floor, but it hit nothing and he knew – even before he had finished the movement – that (1) she had ducked under his foot, and (2) he had fatally exposed himself.

He didn't know which came first: that thought or the indescribable pain when Sabrina D'Avalos's fist precisely and with full force landed in his solar plexus.

His old close-combat instructors would have hung their heads in shame.

It took an act of will not to roar out loud. He resisted the natural reflex to clutch his stomach with both hands and hobble to a distant place where he could mourn his wounded vanity. His superhuman composure seemed to surprise Sabrina D'Avalos because she remained standing with her arms dangling along her sides to assess the impact of her blow.

Instead he landed a lucky punch on her forehead. Triumphantly he saw her stagger and he took a step forwards to end her resistance with a decisive blow to her throat or chin. But she ducked under his arm and continued towards a chair by the wall. On the back of the chair he could see a black leather holster. Sabrina D'Avalos was heading for her weapon with terrible speed.

He reached her just in time by flinging himself through the bedroom and across the bed. With one hand he grabbed the neckline of her T-shirt and closed the other around a warm bare breast. Together they fell to the floor and he heard Sabrina D'Avalos whisper in his ear.

He froze at the sound.

It was hard to believe that a human being could make such a noise. He hesitated, even though it might prove fatal. It was too much … too uncivilized … bestial. She was a young lady from a good family. One of the oldest and finest in Italy. One of her ancestors had been La
Gioconda, the Mona Lisa model, for God's sake! He landed on top of her and knew that her knee was aiming for his groin, an unbearable prospect, or towards his stomach, which didn't bear thinking of either. The pain brought tears to his eyes. Her probing fingernails were scurrying across his head and face like lobsters feeding off the seabed, undoubtedly with the aim of digging out his eyes when they found them; and his nose and throat were filled with a disturbing smell of sweat and woman.

He quietened her down with a quick, sharp headbutt and heard her teeth slam shut with a bang.

It brought him a brief respite and he tried to get to his feet, to get away.

Her warm breast again. No matter where he put his hands they enclosed a soft warm breast.

Sabrina's attacker wasn't a particularly repressed man, but there was something forbidden, something crude about groping a woman's breasts, even if you hated her, even if she was your opponent and even if she was trying her level best to cripple you.

So he lay down on top of her with all his weight so that his wet cheek touched hers.

For several long seconds the only sound was their rasping breathing.

‘Stop,' he whispered. ‘Stop it! It's me … Nestore!'

Slowly Sabrina D'Avalos turned her face to his and her lips and tongue tasted salty. She kissed him hungrily, then
softly all over his face, then hungrily again. And again his hand found a breast and his other hand found a stripe of soft hair and all the heat and moisture between her legs that he could wish for.

They made love without saying a word. When her cheeks grew wet with tears, and he paused and asked her if she wanted him to stop, she said no, no, for God's sake, don't.

At last she let him roll on to his back. He looked up at the ceiling at the pale grey fan pattern from the window and the strange shadows cast by the curtain pelmet.

‘All you had to do was call,' she said later.

‘I did.'

‘I threw away my mobile,' she said. ‘You told me to, remember. I bought a new one.'

‘Perhaps it wouldn't kill you to use a phone more than once,' he said, sounding tired.

‘You could have knocked.'

‘I did. I guess you were listening to Jawbreaker or some other emo band.'

‘David Bowie. I've stopped being an emo, Nestore.'

‘Somehow I'm strangely pleased to hear that,' he said.

‘How did you get in?' she asked – or the assistant public prosecutor in her did.

‘My upbringing wasn't privileged, Sabrina. But I learned some useful skills in the slums of Turin. I stole my first car when I was twelve.'

‘Could you reach the pedals?'

He laughed.

‘Yes, but I couldn't see out of the windscreen at the same time. I hit a lamp post after thirty metres.'

‘I knew it was you, Nestore.'

‘Really?'

He got up on one elbow and watched her grave, battered face.

‘I could smell you from the moment you entered,' she said.

‘I smell?'

She found one of his hands and kissed his fingertips, one by one.

‘Only of good things.'

He lay down on his back again, but let her keep his hand.

‘Then what the hell was all this for, woman?' he exclaimed gesturing at the ceiling. ‘Fighting like lunatics?'

‘I didn't want you to think I was easy,' she replied.

Bliss, doubt and champagne bubbles in the blood and … yes, churning suspicion.

‘I don't think I'll ever be able to breathe again,' he said gently massaging his sore stomach.

‘It's just a sign of affection, Nestore. How did you find me?'

‘You're a woman. You use your MasterCard at least once an hour.'

‘It's as simple as that?'

‘It's what I do, Sabrina. I work with banks and bank accounts. I told you.'

Gingerly he turned to face her.

‘Giulio Forlani's doctor, Carlo Mazzaferro, was killed on the Como Express,' he said. ‘Someone shot him. A twenty-five-year-old woman sitting next to him was killed with a blade through her neck. Urs Savelli would appear to have arrived in Milan and I presume he's here to talk to you.'

‘I saw it on the news.'

She pulled the duvet down off the bed and covered them with it.

‘What could Mazzaferro tell Savelli?' he asked.

‘That Giulio Forlani is alive,' she suggested. ‘That Dr Mazzaferro faked his death certificate at my father's request. That Forlani was spirited out of the country once he was well enough to travel. Something like that. It has to be. He must be alive.'

She sat up with her back to the bed, pulled up her knees and hugged them.

‘Do you know where Forlani is?' she said.

‘I've no idea.'

And you wouldn't dream of telling me if you did, she thought. Could you be in love with a man you didn't trust? she asked herself, and dismissed the question instantly. Of course you could. Perhaps it was the rule rather than the exception.

‘Because you're just an ordinary civil servant working for the public prosecutor?'

‘I'm sorry, but that's all I am,' he said.

‘But you have contacts everywhere. In the GIS, for example.'

‘A few old friends, Sabrina.'

‘So you say. By the way, it was my father,' she said.

‘Your father?'

‘Who entered the lift with Lucia and Salvatore Forlani. In Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II three years ago.'

‘Are you sure?'

He looked at her.

‘Yes.'

‘How can you be sure? Did he leave a message … a letter … ?'

‘The thought would never have crossed his mind,' she said.

She pointed to her shoulder bag in the corner: ‘I have a DVD with a recording from a surveillance camera. It shows a man entering the lift with a woman and a boy. You see only his back, but I know it was him. I recognized his clothes from a photo in my mother's apartment.'

Nestore dragged himself over to her and kissed her shoulder.

‘Where did you learn to fight like that?' he asked. ‘I used to think I was quite good.'

Her eyes widened.

‘I could tell you, but then I would have to kill you afterwards,' she said.

‘A forgotten temple in Tibet? A secret brotherhood?'

‘You could say that. I grew up with three brothers,' she said. ‘They liked to pretend to be ninjas. And I was the target. I call it the “Little Miss Girl Dragon versus the Three Brothers from Hell” technique.'

He laughed even though it hurt.

‘Is it true that you're an aristocrat?'

‘Yes. We have a coat of arms and have been blessed with the appropriate mix of industrious generations interspersed with degenerate wastrels and syphilitic charlatans.
Accumulators and squanderers. Just your ordinary family. Why do you ask? If you're hoping for castles, horse-drawn carriages and a life of leisure you can forget about it right now. I have €1,500 in my bank account and my flat is rented.'

‘I'm very disappointed,' he said.

‘What did my father do with Lucia and Salvatore Forlani?' she said.

‘Took them to the mountains. To the motel,' Nestore Raspallo replied.

‘Is that something you think or something you know?'

‘He must have done,' he said.

‘They found no trace of them,' she said.

‘They found no trace of anything, Sabrina.' He winced as he changed position. ‘Christ, it's what the Mafia do. As far as I know they've made almost four thousand people disappear in the last four decades. They're not short of experience.'

‘Have you heard of an assassin called L'Artista?'

‘Yes, she has a remarkably high degree of success. Incidentally, your father was the most resourceful man I've ever met,' Nestore said. ‘He always knew what to do; he had a plan within a plan within a plan.'

‘But still he didn't save them.'

She started to cry.

‘But he tried. And perhaps he saved Giulio Forlani,' he said.

She closed her eyes.

‘I want you to go now,' she said.

‘I don't think I can move,' he said. ‘And it's raining. I'll get wet and catch pneumonia and then you'll be sorry. I think I had better stay here. Recover. Look after you.'

‘You couldn't look after a stuffed panda. Goodbye, Nestore.'

She started to push him away.

‘What are you going to do?' he asked as he hobbled across the floor. ‘Did you manage to speak to Massimiliano Di Luca?'

She looked at him.

‘You're having me followed,' she said with the same feeling of betrayal she had felt when she sat in her mother's apartment with the hunting photograph.

He was putting on his trousers and she could not see his face.

‘Not at all,' he said, and she knew that he was lying. ‘It just seemed logical to me.'

‘I spoke to Signor Di Luca earlier today. Yesterday, rather,' she said. ‘So your logic cannot be faulted.'

‘And?'

‘Nothing. He and my father co-financed Nanometric and they would appear to have known each other well. Very well. He wasn't what I expected. I found him very likeable and straightforward. He reacted with what I think was genuine grief when I told him that the bodies of Lucia and
Salvatore Forlani had been identified in Naples.'