The Blue Ring (20 page)

"I
don't know yet. Somewhere in Italy. I have to join Creasy."

She sat
at the table and asked, "How long will you be away?"

"I
don't know. It could be days or weeks or even longer."

He
turned to look at her, expecting to see petulance on her face. There was none.
She was simply nodding in understanding.

She
looked up at him and asked, "Can't I stay here?"

He slid
the food onto her plate, took it over, put it in front of her and said,
"If you stay here alone, Creasy and I will worry about you. We have enough
to worry about."

Again
she nodded and, before starting to eat, said, "On the day I move in with
Laura and Paul I will make them promise only to speak to me in Maltese. When
you get back I will be a Gozitan." She looked up and said seriously,
"And I'll have three Maltese in each pocket."

He
grinned and went to get his own breakfast.

Creasy
dozed on the flight. He disliked flying, not out of fear, but because he felt
that such journeys held no interest. They stuck you into a tube and delivered
you to a different place, a different culture and often a different climate. It
was like being mailed in a package. He much preferred trains and ships, and would
always use them when he had the time. Due to the usual air traffic controllers'
go-slow over Italy, they had left Brussels an hour late, and that also
irritated him.

He was
not in a good mood when they touched down in Milan, but since he only had an
overnight bag he was spared the wait for customs.

He
quickly found a taxi and, as he ducked into it, said, "The Excelsior
Hotel...near the railway station."

The
driver cursed under his breath. Anyone staying in that fleapit near the station
would not leave a centime of a tip. Italian taxi drivers can be loquacious, but
this one remained silent at least during the early part of the forty-minute
journey. After twenty minutes Creasy leaned back and closed his eyes and dozed
again. The city of Milan had no beauty to keep him awake. Had he not dozed he
would have noted the sudden interest in the taxi driver's eyes as he looked at
Creasy in the rearview mirror. Five minutes later Creasy was woken by the
driver's voice.

"Are
you staying long in Milan?"

Creasy's
eyes opened and he shook his head to clear it.

"Just
a couple of days."

"Business
or pleasure?"

"Just
to look up an old friend." The tone of his voice was curt enough to
indicate that he was not looking for conversation, but the driver was
persistent.

"Are
you from Naples?"

"No.
But I spent some years there."

The
taxi driver nodded. "I can tell it from your accent. It's not a city I
like myself. Neither a taxi driver nor anyone else is safe on the
streets."

Creasy
grunted non-committally. The driver seemed to take the hint, and they completed
the journey in silence.

The
driver did get a tip. A thousand lire note. He looked at it and then at the
back of the man who was walking into the shabby hotel entrance. The driver
engaged the gears, drove around the corner and reached for his mobile phone.
Almost every taxi driver in Milan and many other Italian cities is an informer
of one kind or another. It's a general sideline and the masters are sometimes
the police, sometimes drug pushers, sometimes a pimp and occasionally a local
Mafia capo. This taxi driver was linked to Gino Abrata, one of the two capos
who ran Milan.

Within
two minutes Abrata was on the line, even though it was only seven o'clock in
the morning. Five minutes later Gino Abrata was on the phone to Paolo Grazzini,
the sole capo of Rome.

"Yes,
he's sure. He swears to it...Yes, I know he's supposed to be dead. Of course I
know he's supposed to be dead! I saw his bloody funeral on television...No, the
taxi driver had never seen him before face to face, but he'd seen that
face on television and then full size in the newspapers six years ago. It's a
face you don't forget. Also the taxi driver says he speaks fluent Italian with
a Neapolitan accent...that also fits. My guy's reliable...I'll have a couple of
my men round there within half an hour...OK...OK, I'll send half a dozen of my
best guys...Yes, sure, how could I forget? Sure I'll call you the minute I see
that face myself."

Michael
was reading One Hundred Years of Solitude. At first he found it heavy going,
but Creasy had pushed him to read it, telling him that it was one of the great
works of the century. He was sitting in the shade of a rock at Qala Point.
Occasionally he glanced over to look at Juliet, who lay on her stomach in the
sun. She was studying her Maltese language book, sometimes calling out for a
clarification.

After
an hour they both went to cool off in the sea and then sat in the shade. He
took out a can of beer for himself from the cool box and a Coke for her.

They
sat in companionable silence for a while and then she said, "I want to
talk about it." She was gazing across the flat, dark blue sea to the
island of Comino. He stared at her. Very quietly, she continued, "About what
happened to me in Marseille. I'm better now, physically. All the good food, the
sun and the sea have made me better...I'm starting to put on weight and I feel
stronger every day." She turned to him and then said almost defiantly,
"But I cannot sleep well at night, and sometimes I have nightmares and
sweat a lot...I think it's all in my mind and I think I have to talk about it
to you."

Creasy
had discussed this possibility with Michael, and so he answered, "Juliet,
there are people who are experienced in this kind of thing. Specially trained
doctors and social workers. What's happening to you is a delayed reaction. It's
quite normal. Sometimes people who have been through such a terrible experience
need weeks, months or even years to get over it. It depends on their character
and on their background. The horror for you started when your step father began
abusing you. You should talk to an expert and go back to that time. There's a
very good one in Malta, a woman, trained in England."

The
girl shook her head emphatically. "I don't need a psychiatrist, Michael. I
just need to talk to somebody I trust. It has to be you or Creasy, and you both
might be away for a long time, so it has to be you. Can we do it now and then
forget about it?"

He
drank some beer and then said, "Go ahead."

She
talked for half an hour. She cried twice and each time he put an arm around her
shoulders and waited until she had controlled her tears. At the end of it he
was both thoughtful and puzzled.

"So
your stepfather never actually raped you?"

"No...he
never put his thing inside me. He just stroked me and made me use my hands on
it...maybe it was worse that way. Also he beat me. He liked to do that."

He
nodded and said, "Maybe that's all your mother would let him do."

She
shook her head. "She would have let him do anything. You see, it's why I
ran away. He kept telling me that he would do it on my fourteenth
birthday..." she looked up at him, her eyes filled with tears. "He told me it would be a
special birthday present..."

Michael
was silent. His mind was far away in Germany, and he was thinking that when
this was all over he would make a journey there. He would give a certain man
his last ever birthday present. A present of eternal damnation. He brought his
mind back to the present. "And the same thing happened with those bastards
in Marseille?"

Her
voice was almost inaudible. "Yes, they made me use my hands...and my
mouth. They brought a woman in to show me how to use my mouth...she was a very
beautiful woman with long blonde hair and they used to watch her while she did
things to me...sometimes there were three or four of them...afterwards, they
would make me use my mouth."

She
started to cry again and Michael pulled her close and held her head against his
shoulder. It was a warm day but his body and mind were totally cold. He thought
of the beautiful, blonde woman and said, "Juliet, I don't know if it will
help, but I killed the woman who did that to you."

She
looked up and pulled herself away from him.

"You
killed her...yourself? When...how...?"

He told
her in detail about the cellar under the villa in Marseille.

He told
her how Denise Defers had panicked and run for the steps and how he had shot
her first in the back and then in the head.

He saw
the fierce fascination in the girl's eyes and she asked, "And the man she
was with, the handsome man? The one who always wore shoes made from a snake or
a lizard or something?"

Michael
nodded. "Creasy killed him. He tied him to a crooked policeman who had a
bomb strapped to his back. The bomb was detonated and blew them both into
pieces." Again he saw the satisfaction in her eyes. "Does it
help?" he asked quietly.

"Yes,"
she answered. "You killed her and Creasy killed him...It's just like I
took a warm shower."

She
could see the slight puzzlement in his eyes. "What is it?" she asked.

He
spread his hands. "Well...I can understand that animal of a stepfather
waiting for a few months in anticipation, but I can't understand those bastards
in Marseille waiting. They certainly didn't wait with that poor Danish
girl." A thought struck him. "Juliet...were you...are you...a
virgin?"

"Yes," she said solemnly. "They even had that old woman there check it out...she
seemed to know about those things...she put a finger inside me and said,
"Oui...c'est la...!" I speak French quite well because I went to
an international school."

"That's
it then," he said. "They were probably keeping you a virgin to sell
you to the highest bidder. Beautiful virgins around fourteen or fifteen years
old fetch a huge price in the Middle East or the Far East."

She
shook her head. "I think it was something else."

"Like
what?"

"I'm
not sure," she answered. "But it was something they said. The woman
was there and the man with the snake shoes. There was another man. Of course
they spoke French but they didn't know I understood most of it. Snake-shoes was
polite to the other man...he must have been important. He wanted me but
Snake-shoes said no, I was a virgin. The man became very excited and pushed
Snake-shoes, but still he refused. Then the man said, "Of course you can
get a fortune for a young virgin like that." Then the woman laughed, the
one you killed, and said, "We get more than a fortune for a virgin. We get
a bigger fortune for her virginity, her youth...and her life...all
together." Then Snake-shoes told her to shut up."

Michael
was still puzzled. "Virginity, youth and life..." He shrugged and
stood up. "Let's go. I'll make a barbecue tonight."

They
drove in silence until they had passed through Rabat. Then she said,
"Michael, tonight I think I will sleep."

He
glanced at her and smiled.

"You
will sleep. After a big meal and two or three glasses of good red wine you'll
sleep like a baby."

At the
house he carried the cool box into the kitchen just as the phone rang. She had
gone to her bedroom to shower and change. He slid the cool box under the sink
and picked up the phone. It was Guido from Naples. He told Michael that Creasy
had disappeared that morning. He had arranged to meet Colonel Satta at ten a.m.
but had not turned up or phoned. Satta had checked with the airport and learned
that Creasy had arrived on an Alitalia flight from Brussels at seven a.m. Satta
had then checked with the hotel and been told that Creasy had checked in around
eight a.m. but had left the hotel half an hour later. He had not returned. His
overnight bag was in his room. Meanwhile the Dane, Jens Jensen, had arrived and
was at the hotel, together with a Frenchman whom Guido knew only as The Owl.
Michael responded that maybe Creasy had established a link to 'The Blue Ring'
which he had to follow up without having time to contact Satta. Guido's voice
was dismissive.

"You know Creasy well, Michael, but I know him better. He would have left word somehow."

"You think he's been 'snatched'?"

"I think it's ninety per cent sure."

"'The Blue Ring'?"

"Maybe. Maybe not...He has plenty of enemies in Italy. Satta has got his people on to
it, and I'm leaving for Milan within the hour. I got word to Maxie and he'll be
flying in with Miller and Callard. I tried to get you earlier but you must have
been out, so I booked you on an Alitalia flight at eight tonight. The ticket
will be at the Alitalia desk at the airport."

Michael
looked at his watch and said, "I'll be there."

Half an
hour later he was driving Juliet to the Schembri farmhouse. He had been pleased
by her response to the news and at his having to leave immediately. First she
had wanted to go with him; maybe she could help in some way, but she had seen
the look on his face. So she had packed her bag and begged him to keep her
informed.

At the
farmhouse Laura welcomed her warmly, and pointed upstairs to Creasy's old
bedroom. She told her to unpack. Juliet hugged Michael goodbye and obediently
picked up her bag and went into the house.

Laura
stood with Michael next to the jeep. He saw the concern in her eyes and simply
said, "We have a good team assembling in Milan, a very good team."

Nothing
else needed to be said. As she hugged him, Laura whispered, "Good
luck." and turned away.

"I
did you a favour," Creasy said.

Across
the table, Gino Abrata snorted in derision.

"A
favour!" He looked up at the two bodyguards standing behind Creasy. They
both held submachine-guns, cocked and pointed at the American's back, even
though his arms and legs were bound tightly to the heavy chair. One of them
sneered, but the other never took his narrowed eyes from the back of the head
of the man in front of him.