Old Enemies (33 page)

‘Even if they’re in Trieste, we’ve no idea where to look,’ Sean eventually muttered disconsolately.

‘Then perhaps we’re going to have to persuade them to show us.’

‘And how in the name of God do you hope to do that?’

‘I’ve got an idea,’ Harry ventured. ‘You’ll probably think it half-arsed.’

‘I’ll let you into a little secret, Mr Jones. Such an idea from you would come as no great surprise.’

Sean remained silent after Harry had finished. He didn’t object to what Harry had suggested, but neither did he approve. He simply sat quietly, reflecting, as Harry paid their bill and the woman nodded in gratitude. Sean held his silence, even as they made their way back to the car.

‘Something’s bugging you, Sean. You don’t like the plan?’ Harry asked eventually as, still without a word, Sean started the engine and selected first gear. Sean looked ahead along the steep road that led out of the village.

‘No, it’s not the plan.’

‘Then what?’

‘It’s you.’ The Irishman turned in his seat, his brow creased by doubt. He was staring at Harry curiously, his bright eyes darting, questioning. ‘Your plan is certainly half-arsed, but I’ll not complain at that since I’ve nothing better to offer in its place. Yet it requires you to put your neck very firmly on the line, to take a terrible risk. Oh, that’s not for the first time, I know, Queen and feckin’ country and all that, but I’m sitting here asking myself, why would you be doing that, for my grandson?’ The troubled cast in his eye suggested he’d already tried various possibilities and cared for none of them. He left the question hanging in the air as he slipped the handbrake and they set off.

Harry was drawing breath to reply, something vacuous about kids and friends in need, when he realized Sean wasn’t paying attention any more. Instead he was staring with concentrated ferocity at the road ahead, and pumping savagely at the brake pedal. Yet the car was still accelerating.

Although the Carso is a plateau, it isn’t flat. It has hills for its churches, and inclines, some of which are savage and steep. It was on one of these inclines that the car was now set. The handbrake was useless, but they might have stopped their progress without too much harm by deliberately colliding with the corner of the last house in the village, which they were now rapidly approaching, yet, just as Sean turned the wheel to clip it, a donkey appeared without warning from the alley in front of them, dragging a cart directly into their path. A look of horror from the farmer, a bray of alarm from the beast, and Sean swerved. By then it was too late, they were travelling too quickly.

The first thing Sean struck was a low wall beside a field a little further down the road. Goats scattered in panic. The front bumper dislodged and for a moment became jammed beneath the wheels, slowing them a little, but soon it was flailing like a windmill behind them. Sean clipped the other wing twice taking the next corner, but beyond that was a straight stretch of road that ran between a rock face and a sheer drop on Harry’s side. He could see clay-tile rooftops forty feet below; he tightened his seat belt. They were gaining speed and there was never any possibility they would be able to take the next bend, a sharp left-hander, but at least it took them away from the drop. For a few yards the Fiat scraped along a wall of natural rock, leaving bits of bodywork and a shower of sparks in its wake. The window beside Harry’s face shattered, tearing at his cheek and showering his lap in fragments of glass. And even as Sean struggled in vain to correct their course, the front wheel hit an outcropping boulder and the suspension struts snapped, hurling the car in the air. When once more it landed on the roadway, with a savage jolt that shattered more glass, the Fiat had only three wheels. They careered on, with no hope of control, metal screaming, like a fairground ride, knowing they would hit whatever lay ahead of them at the next corner. Their eyes met in fear.

‘See you in Hell, Mr Jones!’ Sean cried as, with a final sickening twist and shriek of tortured metal, the car left the roadway and hurtled towards the waiting rocks.

The car had finished its journey wedged on its side in a deep rocky ditch. The driver’s airbag had operated, saving Sean from the worst of the impact, but Harry had been left to the less than tender mercies of his seat belt. When eventually he forced open his eyes, he felt as if he’d spent a week in a cement mixer. He thought he might have been knocked out, but had no idea for how long, or even which way was up or down. The roof was six inches lower than the manufacturer’s specification, the windscreen was a crazy pavement of cracks, and there was a nasty smell of burning electricals and petrol. Beside him, Sean was beginning to come round.

‘You OK?’ Harry asked him.

Sean tested his limbs, then nodded. ‘Nothing broken, but I can’t move. And if it’s all the same with you, instead of hanging around here I’d rather be getting ourselves out before whatever’s causing that smell of smoke gets together with the leaking petrol and decides to throw a feckin’ party.’ He started fumbling with his belt.

Harry struggled with the release on his own seat belt, groaning as a wave of pain ran up his right side, then leaned across Sean to push at the driver’s door, which in their new arrangement was now facing the sky, but it had been jammed by the impact and wouldn’t budge. ‘You’re right, Sean. That girl at the car rental? She’s going to be really pissed off with you.’

Sean tried to smile, and winced. ‘The brakes went.’

‘And there was me thinking you were simply in a hurry.’

‘I think it’s not just the car-rental lass who doesn’t like us.’

‘That’s good news, Sean.’

‘Good news?’

‘It means they’re still in Trieste.’

Harry was trying to kick out the windscreen and wondering where the blood on his shirt had come from when he heard sounds of a commotion from above their heads. Shouts. Falling stones bouncing off the bent panelling as people scrambled down. Legs. In uniform. Hands, wrenching at the driver’s door. A face. The police.

‘Praise Mary,’ Sean muttered as the officers began to twist him out of his seat and haul him up. More help. And a final pair of hands to drag him over the edge of the rock cleft to safety. He was surprised to see it was D’Amato.

‘Inspector, I’m grateful to you,’ Sean said as he stumbled into the policeman’s arms.

But a frown came over D’Amato’s face. He wrinkled his nose. What was that he could smell on the Irishman’s breath? ‘Signor Breslin, have you been drinking?’

Ah, the Terrano. ‘Only a couple of small glasses.’

‘Then I regret. You are under arrest.’

They handcuffed Sean, wouldn’t listen to his protests, just put him in the back of a police car and drove him away.

‘Signor Jones, you will come with me, please,’ D’Amato suggested pointedly as they finished dragging Harry to safety. ‘I will take you to the hospital. You need attention for the cuts on your face. And a chance to talk, perhaps.’

It was just the two of them in the car as the inspector drove back down. There was already a hint of dusk, a vague redness washing across the sky from the direction of Venice, and it had begun to rain, a fine mist that turned to fog, clinging to the dark trunks of the trees and adding to the sense of isolation, of being cut off.

‘There is no way he was over the limit,’ Harry said, his tone belligerent.

‘We have to be careful in such matters, you understand. It can all be sorted out at headquarters.’ He sounded reassuring, trying to take the spark from the air between them.

‘The car was sabotaged. When you drag it out, I think you’ll find the brake hoses have been cut.’

‘Perhaps. We shall look.’

‘It’s good of you to take such a personal interest, Inspector. Even better if you did something to help.’

D’Amato sighed. ‘Signor Jones, I regret very much your problems and I will do everything I can to help, on that you have my word. But your presence is not helping here. You will only get in the way of the police investigation.’

‘The presence of kidnappers isn’t wanted, either, but you’ve got them.’

‘Please, I beg you. Do not cause any further trouble.’

‘Someone has just tried to kill us. Add that to a kidnap and two murders. How much more chaos do you want on your quiet streets, Inspector?’ Harry snapped.

‘I understand your anger and upset. Your experience must have been terrible.’ D’Amato was working hard to calm the storm, and already they were pulling up at the hospital on Piazza Osedale. The inspector drew the car to a halt, turned to face Harry, creases of concern playing around the corners of his eyes. ‘Please learn the lesson of your terrible accident. For your own safety, I suggest that you make your arrangements to leave.’

‘Not without my friend.’

‘Signor Jones, if you are right about his drinking, I think you will find he is released, very quickly. In the morning, at the latest. You can both be in your own beds back home by tomorrow evening.’

‘And Ruari?’

‘At the moment he is in God’s hands, not mine.’

‘No, Inspector, he is in someone else’s hands, murdering shit-heads who are here in this city right under your nose. And if you can’t find them, I promise you, I will.’

D’Amato’s fingers drummed against the steering wheel. ‘Signor Jones, please. Leave.’

Harry was opening the door and climbing out when he paused. ‘No, thank you, Inspector. I think I’ll hang on in Trieste.’

The drumming stopped. The policeman gripped the wheel, his knuckles showing white. ‘You do not understand, Signor Jones. I don’t believe I was offering you an option.’

The roast-chestnut seller on Via Oriani offered a grin from behind his stall that was broad enough to persuade Harry to stop. The wind had picked up with the sunset and it was close to freezing; he’d already consumed an entire bar of chocolate to keep up his blood sugar but his system was still screaming for more. The chestnut-seller, a dark-skinned man with a colourful woollen hat and a strong look of the North African coast, tested the nuts by squeezing each one to ensure they remained firm and sweet, then threw a couple of extras into the paper cone for good luck. Harry was glad for the chestnuts, and the smile. It hadn’t been much of a day.

As so often in his life, it was the ordinary foot soldiers rather than the commanding officers who helped Harry make it through – the Polish chambermaid in his room, for instance, where he had returned to shower and change his clothes, and the junior concierge, Karim. Harry needed to discover the parts of Trieste that were off the beaten path, the sort of detail the guidebooks didn’t offer, the immigrant bits, and who better to tell him than immigrants themselves?

There were a couple of thousand Romanians in Trieste, so D’Amato had claimed, but that would be the official figure and thus almost certainly inaccurate. It would make no allowance for the illegals. Yet even if he doubled the number Harry still came up with only four thousand, which suggested a small community, probably tightly knit, and this was a conclusion that both the chambermaid and Karim had confirmed.

But it was the nurse at the Pronto Soccorso or A&E in the chaotic downtown hospital who tended Harry’s injuries who had been particularly helpful. The wounds themselves were superficial, blood but no bone, and as she swabbed them down, muttering in admiration as she did so at the work on his ear, he’d noticed the nametag on her chest. Sabic. Another immigrant, and with passable English. She had told him a lot about an area of town called the Little Balkans. It was precisely what Harry needed.