Psychomech (23 page)

They made their way between the tables and across the floor, and Koenig spoke to the oldest Borcini, the one seated at the head of the table. The German’s Italian was fair when he asked if he and Garrison might be permitted to sit. Narrow-eyed and swarthy, the man looked them over. Before he could answer, one of his younger brothers asked:

‘Hey, German! Aren’t there enough empty tables, then?’

‘Aha!’ said Koenig. ‘Well, you see, my English friend here is blind, and—’

Garrison touched his arm, silencing him. He could not speak a word of Italian, but he had detected the harshness in the young Borcini brother’s tone and correctly deduced the meaning of his words. ‘I’m sorry,’ he spoke in English. ‘It’s just that I thought I heard a girl’s voice. She spoke Italian but sounded English to me, and—’

‘Of course!’ the eldest of the four finally spoke up, also in English, however coarse and guttural his voice and use of the language. ‘Of course, and not needing to explain. It is nice in the strange places to be speaking to your own kind. Unfortunately,’ he cocked his head to one side and shrugged, ‘we leaving soon. The girl too. Quite. But until then/ he waved one hand laconically, ‘please sit.’

Koenig took a seat directly opposite the girl, and Garrison sat on his left facing the two men. Still under the guise of a semi-invalid, the German nodded politely and smiled at each of the Italians in turn. The oldest of the brothers, and the youngest who was seated on the girl’s far left, nodded grudgingly in return, but the two seated closest to her only scowled. There was an urgency about all four brothers that Koenig did not like at ail, a greasy eagerness. They were like vultures waiting for some injured creature to die. He laid his walking stick along the edge of the table, directly in front of him, his fingers resting lightly upon its polished stock.

Meanwhile, the girl had finished her drink. She called out again to the lone waiter, swaying a little in her seat as she beckoned to him with a rather limp hand. Koenig, smiling at her, knew beyond a doubt that this was Garrison’s Tern. She was quite lovely—or would be if she were sober. Her eyes were large and dark, her mouth small and red, her ears neat and flat and her long hair black as a raven’s shiny wing. Exactly as the blind man had described her. Terri: the T* on Garrison’s horoscope, the girl in the Black Room of the black castle on the black, oily lake. He also knew that she had been pumped full of booze—which explained the tension in the Borcinis. They were the sort who would cut cards to be first.

‘Borcini,’ said Koenig musingly. ‘That’s your family name? A coincidence! There’s a hotel along the seafront called Borcini.’

‘My hotel, yes,’ said the swarthy man. ‘My brothers help me to running it. But how are you knowing we are the Borcinis?’

‘Possibly I saw you earlier—at the hotel,’ Koenig shrugged. ‘And the girl, Terri, she is staying there?’ He smiled again, his enquiry innocent.

‘Tonight she is, anyway!’ One of the younger brothers put his arm around the girl’s shoulders. ‘With us. She owes us, you see?’ He spoke in Italian, a snigger threatening to break through his words.

By now the girl’s head was lolling and the men beside her sat closer, propping her up. She blurted something unintelligible and rolled her eyes. The drink had caught up with her—as doubtless it had been intended to.

Koenig said, ‘Oh, dear!’ the English words sounding strange as his German accent began to thicken out. ‘I do hope the poor creature isn’t going to be ill. Do you think perhaps she has had too much to drink?’

‘She’s tired, that’s all. Needs to get to bed!’ The sniggering man cupped her chin, grinned at the girl through bad teeth. She smiled back at him lopsidedly, a little desperately, her eyes slowly closing.

‘Well,’ said the older brother, making as if to stand up. ‘So you are seeing me earlier at the hotel, eh? And you are also knowing the girl’s name. All very interesting. And now it really is time that we were on our way.’ He nodded, his eyelids drooping to make slits of his eyes. ‘Quite!’

‘Does she owe you money?’ Garrison’s voice was quiet but tight.

‘Not that it is your business, Mr Englishman,’ answered face older Borcini, ‘but yes, she does. In your currency, sixty pounds.’

‘Willy,’ said Garrison, his lenses burning into the faces of the four, ‘pay the man.’

Koenig stood, took out his wallet and counted out three twenty pound notes. Placing the money carefully on the table, he said: ‘Her debt is now paid and you will release her into our care.’ His voice turned cold to match his small eyes. Before they could answer or even move, he leaned forward over the table, caught up the girl by her wrist and waist and dragged her forward and up. He lifted her as if she were a small child. Garrison had meanwhile stood up and pushed his chair to one side. He took the girl out of Koenig’s arms and set her on her own feet, steadying her as she mumblingly shook herself awake.

Caught completely, off guard, the brothers on the far side of the table began to curse and snarl, reaching viciously across to grab at Koenig—but too late. The German had already thought his bad thoughts. In a lightning-fast movement he rammed the table forward, crushing the two against the white wooden rails until they snapped. With cries of outrage and astonishment the two toppled over the edge of the wharf and splashed down into the sea.

The third of the younger brothers had managed to squeeze out from behind the table and now stood with the older man. Crouching, they closed on Koenig menacingly, both of them producing wicked-looking switchblades.

As the sharply pointed blades clicked into view, Koenig went into action. He snatched up his stick and held it in both hands, parallel before him. Seeing his defensive stance—and noting for the first time that he was no invalid, that in fact he was squat and massive and suddenly quite deadly—the brothers paused. That was a serious error, but at the same time it probably saved them from far greater injury.

As they crouched undecided, Koenig lashed out with his stick, catching the younger one under his chin with the crook and sending him sprawling. Then, when the older brother lunged with his knife, Koenig reversed the stick and gripped it with both hands, pointing it at Borcini’s chest. From the brass ferrule a needle blade slid soundlessly, almost magically into view, eight inches long and glittering like ice.

Borcini’s eyes went wide, for Koenig’s weapon was nothing less than a sword! He dropped his knife and backed off, shaking his head and making horizontal waving motions with his hands. ‘No, no!’ he gurgled. Stumbling, he backed up against the broken, dangling rail.

‘Jump,’ said Koenig. He made as if to stab—and Borcini gave a little shriek and jumped. The younger brother was still on all fours, dazedly shaking his head. Koenig turned to him, showed him the stick with its murderous tip.

‘Jump,’ he said again—and the last of the Borcinis gave a despairing cry and toppled from the edge of the quay.

‘A pity it isn’t a cliff,’ the German muttered. He stooped and picked up the three notes from where they had fallen, turned and handed them to the astonished and not little frightened waiter. Curses floated up from the water below the wharf, along with sounds of frantic splashing and gasping. ‘The money is for the damage,’ said Koenig in Italian, his stick a normal walking stick once more. ‘It is more than enough, I’m sure.’

In English, on impulse, Garrison added: ‘And our compliments to the chef!’

‘Marios’ last patrons, three Italian girls seated together at a table close to the wide doors of the kitchen, laughed their delight out loud and spontaneously clapped their pleasure and approval.

Playing up to them, Garrison bowed, then turned to Terri. She was still barely able to stand unsupported. ‘You’re safe now,’ he told her, ‘and you’re coming with us. But we have to go quickly or the Borcinis will be back.’

‘Eh?’ She made an effort to get him into focus. ‘You’re” English? Thank goodness for that!’

She offered no resistance but with their assistance went with them, and they hurriedly made their way back to the motor-yacht. Strangely they were not stopped or questioned or even followed—or perhaps not so strangely. Later they decided it must simply be that the Borcinis were not much loved, as witness the attitudes of the two couples, and, later, those of the three Italian girls. The brothers probably had not even dared to report the affair.

But just to be on the safe side, when morning came they paid the Hotel Borcini a surprise visit—after first going to the police station. Having listened to their tale, the local Sheriff wanted Garrison to prefer charges (the Borcinis were very bad for business) but the blind man had declined the offer. He wanted to be on his way as soon as possible.

They did take with them to the hotel a large member of the constabulary, however, a man who quite obviously hated the Borcinis and was delighted to be of assistance’.

All four brothers were at the hotel, all looking sullen and sheepish; and more so when they saw Garrison, Koenig and the constable. They made no fuss but handed over Tern’s single large suitcase, and no mention at all was made of the girl’s supposed indebtedness.

Then, their business in Arenzano finished, the two returned at once to
La Ligurienne
. By 10.30 A.M. the motor-yacht was on her way again, bound for Naples, and she now carried a young, very shapely and highly hung-over extra passenger…

When finally Terri staggered out on to the deck she was a mixture of gratitude, alarm, self-pity and shame, not necessarily in that order.

But in the end she was quick to accept Garrison’s assurance that she was no longer in any sort of danger. Especially after he had described for her—vividly and leaving no room for doubt—the fix she had been in with the loathsome Italian hotelier and his brothers. Her shame sprang from the fact that she had been stupid enough to walk right into a situation which had smelled decidedly fishy almost from the start, and her self-pity from the dreadful hang-over she was suffering, coupled now with early symptoms of seasickness and a general feeling of disorientation. As for her gratitude: her escape from the Borcinis had been a close thing, and she shuddered at thoughts of the sort of ordeal they might have put her through in her drunken or drugged condition.

Now they sat together on the deck, Garrison with a long Italian drink, Terri drawing deeply on an English cigarette. He had given her sickness pills, had poured black coffee down her until she could hold no more, and, when she had begun to shiver, he finally wrapped her in a fluffy blanket against the fine spray which an unseasonable westerly was whipping up off the small wavecrests.

Beneath the blanket she still wore the red dress (a rather revealing evening-gown perfectly cut to compliment her figure) she had worn last night; but Garrison did not have the equipment to appreciate her looks. In any case, those looks this morning would not have seemed much to appreciate.

‘What a little fool I was,’ she said for what must have been the tenth time. ‘No wonder the Borcinis thought I was easy meat.’ Her tone was sour and Garrison guessed correctly that she scorned herself.

‘You
were
easy meat,’ he told her mercilessly. ‘And that’s how they would have used you—as meat! A pretty piece of un-resisting flesh.’

She shuddered again, and he relented. ‘There must be a story behind all of this?’

‘A story?’ She sat up a little straighten in her chair. ‘Oh, yes, there’s a story. But it would probably bore you to tears.’

‘Try me.’

She shrugged. ‘All right. Here goes:

‘My father is Harry Miller, a nobody who became a somebody when his small electronics firm made him a million pounds in nine years. He’s also a sweetheart and broke again, or very nearly so. And he lost his money in only a quarter of the time it took him to make it.’

‘How?’ Garrison cut in.

‘Oh, I don’t understand business. Too much expansion too fast, maybe? Personally, I think the big companies ganged up on him. His line is micro-electronics. Is that important?’

Garrison shook his head. ‘No. Go on.’

‘My mother is Italian, the daughter of a count. Not that that means anything these days. Members of the so-called Italian nobility are ten-a-penny. But daddy likes the idea, and she is a beautiful woman. Perhaps too beautiful. Her name before they married was Maria Torino. To my way of thinking, a cow from a- long line of cows!’

Garrison wrinkled his nose, unsure that he liked her manner of expression. ‘I take it you don’t much like your mother,’ he said.

‘I used to,’ she was quick to answer, ‘but… she demands too much, spends too much—cheats too much! Everything she does, she goes overboard. Her lovers… I suspect there have been too many of them, too. The last one—a greasy dog not fit to shine my father’s shoes—’ she paused,’—well, he found them together. There was a row, a hellish fight. With everyone accusing everyone else of everything. And she was going to run off with her horrible friend. That would have broken daddy’s heart, so…”

‘Yes?’ Garrison prompted her when she paused. ‘So I told her that her lover had also tried it on with me! He was nothing but a fortune-hunter, after daddy’s money—or the money he thought daddy had. I told her that if she told him the facts, how close daddy was to bankruptcy, he’d simply disappear overnight.’ Again she paused. ‘So she did, and he did.’

‘And you were telling the truth? About this boyfriend of your mother’s trying it on with you, I mean?’

‘Oh, yes! His name is Wyatt. Dr Gareth Wyatt, so-called psychoanalyst—or neuropsychiatrist, whatever that’s supposed to be. What daddy would call a “trick-cyclist”, anyway—and a bigger fraud you’ve yet to discover, I promise you! Wyatt—
hah
’ She was vehement. ‘Wyatt as in Earp. A real pistol!’

Garrison nodded. Terri was still feeling sorry for herself and he could feel that she was close to tears. ‘But none of it did any good,’ he guessed. ‘Your father and mother split up anyway, right?’

She gulped and nodded, turning her face away.

‘No need for that,’ he gently reminded her. ‘I’m blind, remember? I can’t see your tears.’

She turned back again. ‘You have to be the most seeing blind man I’ve ever met,’ she said after a little while, the catch still there in her voice. ‘Just how blind are you?’