When the Dead Awaken (32 page)

She held up her spoils in triumph and was rewarded with a small smile.

She poured and they clinked glasses without saying anything.

The cigarettes were perfumed and could only be smoked at a time like this, for want of anything better.

*

At the point when the bottle was three-quarters empty and they had both lit fresh cigarettes, and Sabrina sensed more than actually saw dawn at the horizon of the eastern sky, Giulio Forlani suddenly leaned forwards and started to laugh.

Sabrina was speechless. A couple of times she had seen the hint of a smile in the man's face and taken that to be the upper limit of his ability to express joy. Was he hysterical? Psychotic? She couldn't blame him. Personally she had been on the verge of a nervous breakdown for days. And yet Forlani's laughter sounded completely authentic, but also strangely forced. He tried to drink, but hiccupped instead and the glass clanged against his teeth; he had to put it down again and convulsed in laughter. Highly inappropriate when the lives of his landlady and her son were hanging by a thread. Sabrina could feel her face starting to mimic him. Forlani's laughter was infectious. She bent double in a fit of giggles and had to stuff her arm into her mouth so as not to wake up the whole house.

They couldn't stop laughing.

It was both incredibly liberating and terribly surreal.

Every time they looked at each other, they would laugh even harder. Sabrina was close to wetting herself and held up her hand.

‘Stop it! Stop it at once, Giulio.'

The physicist gasped for breath … and was overpowered by a new fit. A few seconds later Sabrina had to follow suit.

‘Now stop it!' she shouted in desperation with tears rolling down her cheeks.

She pulled out the Walther and pointed the pistol at his head.

‘I mean it! I'll shoot you!'

He looked at her … then at the pistol … and howled with laughter.

Merriment rolled over them in huge waves that eventually subsided and left them like washed-up survivors from a shipwreck on a nameless beach.

They lay on the bed with their feet dangling towards the floor and cognac glasses in their hands. At last she turned to face him. Small laughter hiccups, like aftershocks, rippled through them from time to time.

‘What was all that about?'

‘What?'

‘What were we laughing at, Giulio? I need to know,' she said.

He looked up at the ceiling.

‘The invention. I don't think it ever worked.'

‘What? … What the hell are you talking about?'

She wiped the final tears of laughter from her cheeks.

‘The invention. It … well, I don't know how else to put it. It just didn't work.'

‘Why not?'

She went through her jacket pockets. Found her purse
and held up the date strip. Today the digits were yellow like tiger eyes. And they showed the correct date.

‘Looks all right to me,' she said.

He glanced at the strip without interest. Then he looked sadly back at the ceiling.

He stood up, found his biker jacket and wallet. He rummaged around one of its many compartments and then he tipped a small heap of identical black strips into her hands.

They were nearly all blank. On some of them she could still make out a single number or letter.

‘Jesus, Mary …' she muttered, in shock.

‘Your strip works because it hasn't travelled. It hasn't crossed datelines. They can't travel, Sabrina. And they had to be able to. Max had sent these strips to me in Massachusetts. Only one small test remained outstanding before we could file the patent applications. I had sent a few dozen strips around the world with a freight company. They returned to Nanometric, two days after the attack. It would appear they can't tolerate travelling through timelines. The earth's magnetic background radiation, the radio-activity of the atmosphere … something, I don't know what, killed them. They weren't strong enough.'

He emptied his glass and Sabrina lit another cigarette. She would have to make a second trip downstairs soon.

‘Good grief,' she said, and closed her eyes as the implication of the words started to sink in. ‘But this is terrible, Giulio. It's absolutely awful.'

‘Yes. It is. Everyone has died for nothing.'

‘Do you think that's funny?' she asked him.

Giulio Forlani looked at her with the most brooding expression he had yet worn.

‘No. No, Sabrina, it's not funny. It's tragic. What's funny is that the Camorra are chasing me for no reason. The invention doesn't work, though they would never believe me if I told them. Now that is funny, don't you think?'

‘No, Giulio. I think that part is bloody tragic, too.'

Forlani's mobile rang. He got up and started pacing back and forth again. He mustered a feeble smile and Sabrina offered up silent and heartfelt thanks to Captain Primo Alba. Forlani's smile widened and finally he thanked him profusely and switched off his mobile.

He sat down and grabbed Sabrina's hand. And broke every bone in it. Or at least that was how it felt.

‘Thank you, Sabrina.'

‘Are they okay?'

He nodded with a big new smile. The giant was happy, and Sabrina was given back the remains of her hand.

She herself received a laconic text message signed ‘Primo Alba', filled with words such as ‘airborne' and ‘NATO Aviano Air Force Base', ‘ETA 04.15'.

‘Now what?' Forlani said.

‘More cigarettes and a toast to a successful mission?' she suggested.

‘The bottle is empty.'

‘You're right, Giulio.' Her voice was starting to slur. ‘So it is. But it wasn't alone in its little larder. It had good friends and neighbours. I'm an investigator, Giulio, I see things that other people don't, do you understand? … I've this special ability …'

Her voice was now more than slurred; it was thick.

‘Perhaps I should make the trip downstairs?' Giulio Forlani offered chivalrously.

‘Do you know something, Giulio? I think that's a super idea … super.'

When the physicist returned with a bottle of Calvados and a carton of Camels, he found the young assistant public prosecutor sleeping peacefully in his bed. He put a blanket over her without her even stirring and tiptoed to her room. He left the Calvados and the cigarettes on the bedside table, where they would be the first thing she saw when she woke up. The surprising baronessa would appreciate it.

Ticino, Milan

She groaned softly when Giulio Forlani shook her until she woke up and she lashed out at his hand without hitting it. She didn't open her eyes, but pressed them together hard.

‘Wharra you doin'?'

‘Max is waiting for us. Breakfast is ready.'

Once again his voice was as solemn as the Pope's midnight prayer. The intoxication of the night and its bizarre, abandoned merriment had been forgotten.

‘I'm not hungry.'

The bed keeled over when he sat down on the edge.

She opened one eye and pulled a face.

‘Oh, God.'

Giulio Forlani was in need of a bath, she thought, and wondered what she herself smelt like.

‘We stink,' she said.

‘Do we?'

‘I think I'm going to be sick,' she groaned.

He got up quickly and moved over to the window.

‘I don't think Max would approve, Sabrina. By the way, he's leaving soon. He says he has a collection to finish.'

‘And?'

He fidgeted.

‘Nothing.'

Sabrina managed to get up on one elbow and shielded her eyes with her other hand.

She retched, then belched. She swung her feet down on the floor, and rested her head in her hands and her elbows on her knees. If she sat exactly like this for a very long time, Giulio Forlani and the rest of the world might just have disappeared when she opened her eyes again.

‘Come on,' he said.

‘I can't! Give me a minute, would you … ? Just one minute, for pity's sake …'

The physicist made a small impatient click with his tongue as if she were a horse refusing to move.

‘Do you want me to carry you downstairs?'

‘Leave me alone,' she moaned.

Sabrina sat down at the kitchen table, where she could avoid the morning light pouring in through the small windows. She grabbed a cup of espresso and downed it without breathing.

Alberto sent her a sympathetic smile.

Massimiliano Di Luca said nothing. She watched him over the rim of her cup and she saw it now: the man was wasting away. The disease was melting the flesh off his bones. A little bit every day. What had once been the white of his eyes was now yellow and what had been a fine tremor in his fingertips yesterday was today a shiver.

Alberto poured her another cup.

She shook her head when he offered her the breadbasket.

‘Just coffee, please,' she mumbled.

Massimiliano Di Luca looked from one to the other.

‘If I didn't know any better, I would think that the two of you had … but you haven't, have you? So … what did happen, if you haven't fucked each other's brains out?'

Sabrina glared at the designer in disbelief. Giulio Forlani placed a hand on her arm. The physicist was munching a large slice of bread.

‘Ignore him, Sabrina. The man is an incurable provocateur. Exhausting and unstoppable. I imagine you enjoyed pulling the wings and legs off flies when you were a boy, Max?'

The Venetian's eyes widened with indignation.

‘Me? Never? Certainly not flies.'

‘Cut it out, Max.'

Forlani looked at Sabrina.

‘Any suggestions?'

‘I'm happy to shoot him if you help me bury him,' she said.

He smiled and Di Luca laughed.

‘I would be delighted, but what I meant was, do you have any ideas as to what our next move should be? If we need to make one. Today, I mean.'

Her hangover defied description.

‘Perhaps it would be good if we could stay here for a day,' she said feebly. ‘Gather strength. Think things through.'

They had tacitly agreed not to tell the others anything about last night's rescue operation in Castellarano.

‘Can we stay here, Max?' Giulio Forlani asked.

‘Of course, but I need to warn you that Alberto has locked away all cigarettes, wine and spirits in the cellar, and that he has swallowed the key.'

Sabrina stared at the table.

‘When will you be back?'

‘If we leave now, I imagine we'll be back around five,' Di Luca said.

Alberto nodded.

‘I can shop for a good
branzino al basilica
if you fancy sea bass,' he said helpfully.

‘Lovely,' she said with a queasy smile.

They went outside to say goodbye. Massimiliano Di Luca smiled and waved through the rear window of the Bentley. Alberto smiled to them in the wing mirror.

The car disappeared behind a bend and reappeared. Then it disappeared completely between the conifers.

Sabrina shielded her eyes with her hand.

‘Does he have someone?' she asked. ‘I mean, I've read at least two hundred articles about him and no one has ever identified a woman, a man, a nice dog … nothing.'

Forlani smiled.

‘You're right, everyone has rifled through his private life,' he said.

‘So … does he have someone?'

‘Of course he does, Sabrina. Max is a charming man. They just haven't been looking in the right place.'

Slowly she shook her head.

‘The driver. Alberto. Of course … invisible and right under everyone's nose.'

‘No comment.'

Nor was one necessary.

Outside Brescia

‘It's only a game. Nothing will happen to Mummy. I'm like Hector; I've got nine lives. At least.'

The young woman stood in front of the mirror in the nursery while her daughter, Abrielle, who was still wearing pyjamas, watched her from the bed. It was early morning and the sky was dark. The six-year-old nodded gravely and stroked the cat curled up on the bedspread.

The woman had been busy all night. She had been woken up at midnight by the small alarm bell over the pigeon loft, she had removed the metal cylinder attached to the leg of the pigeon, read the short encoded message and had started her research.

It was almost indecently little time to prepare the assassination. Her employer obviously knew this and he had doubled her usual fee. For the first part of the job. The second part was regarded as routine.

She put on elbow and knee pads, pulled the hip guards
over her head and slammed the palm of her hand against her chest shield.

‘We're Spartans!'

Abrielle laughed out loud and startled Hector, the cat.

‘Spartans!' her daughter echoed.

The woman pulled a pair of tracksuit bottoms over her armour and tied the laces of her running shoes. A loose-fitting sweatshirt and an oversized anorak came next, so that no one would know that she wore padding under her clothes.

She stood by the bed, gave her daughter a look they both understood and Abrielle let go of the cat and jumped down on the floor. The cat licked its back, leapt up on the windowsill and out on to the roof. Its usual route would take it across the ridge of the old cider house, down a trellis and into her husband's studio.

The mother stretched out on the floor and did breathing exercises while the daughter got dressed.

‘I'm ready, Mummy!'

‘Great. Gloves?'

Abrielle waved her hands in front of her mother's face. On the inside she wore latex gloves and on the outside beautifully embroidered cotton gloves. A dark brown velvet dress, white stockings and shiny shoes. Like she was on her way to a dancing lesson or her first day at a new school.

‘Let's go and say goodbye to Daddy,' her mother said. As always when they were alone, they spoke Romanian.