The Eden Inheritance (43 page)

‘Thanks again,' she said.

And then she looked out to sea. The sun had begun to dip and quite suddenly the sky and water, clear and blue only minutes ago, were streaked with scarlet, and again Lilli's heart began to pound Scarlet. She hated scarlet. It resurrected memories she wanted only to forget. Memories before Jorge and yet all bound up with him. Even safe in New York the colour could turn her spine to water. Here in the Caribbean the significance was magnified so that it coloured her every emotion with foreboding and the chill of fear.

She turned back and saw that Guy was striding away towards the little hut that comprised the airstrip office. With the scarlet sea still staining her vision Lilli felt totally bereft.

In his small white-roofed office overlooking the airstrip, some two to three hundred yards from the hut that was the headquarters of Air Perpetua, Jorge Sanchez was entertaining Enrique Garcia, the carabinier responsible for Madrepora.

The office was no bigger than the one that housed Air Perpetua but it was far better appointed. Though Jorge conducted most of his business from his house, set high amongst the trees, he also needed a base within easy reach of the airstrip and the marina, and since he had begun to spend more and more time on the island he had made it a priority to equip the office with all the trappings necessary for his comfort. Jorge was used to luxury; raised in a family of wealthy landowners he had grown up not simply expecting the best but spurning anything that fell short of those standards. He drank too much – the slightly raddled look of his dark swarthy face bore witness to that – but he drank only the finest wines and spirits. He smoked only hand-rolled cigars, dark and slim. His shirts were handmade, his suits and the bleached cotton jodphurs he so often wore were tailored by the most expensive establishment in Caracas. Anything less offended his natural arrogance, for it narrowed the great divide which separated his kind – the Venezuelan meritocracy – from the masses, the labourers, the servants and the unemployed who occupied the hillside shanty towns and begged in the streets.

It was also important, Jorge believed, to impress business associates – and Enrique Garcia was numbered amongst those. An officer of the law he might be; his goodwill was vital to ensure the smooth running of Jorge's enterprises. Whenever Garcia called at Madrepora Jorge entertained him with lavish hospitality, greeting him as an old friend and spending as much time as was necessary to create a cordial atmosphere and make the customary handing over of the sweetener more of an arrangement between friends and less of what it really was – a bribe to ensure that the report that went back to Garcia's superiors made no mention of Jorge's business dealings.

Jorge did not like Garcia – he liked very few of those who were in his pay – but he was careful not to let his disdain show. He had spent the last hour yarning with Garcia and plying him with planter's punch, watching the intermittent activity on the airstrip whilst pretending to be utterly absorbed in Garcia's rambling account of how he had caught out the owner of a sevenry-five-foot yacht who had been contravening regulations in the marina on one of the islands under his control. Jorge hoped that no one here on Madrepora would be foolish enough to do anything to draw attention to ‘the Firm's' activities whilst Garcia was actually on the island. Garcia might be aware there were illegal goings-on; not to parade them under his nose was one of the rules of the game.

‘It cost him a lost of money,' Garcia said gleefully. ‘But then, he can afford it. That yacht was the latest thing. Brand new, global-positioning system, every mod con, oh, he could afford it.'

Jorge nodded, concealing his dislike. Garcia had grown rich on the backs of just those whose activities he was employed to police, but that did not stop him from being fat, stupid and uncouth. Jorge hoped he had had enough planter's punch to make him fall in the harbour when he tried to go back aboard his launch. A wetting was no more than he deserved – so long as he didn't drown. It would not suit Jorge's purpose to have to cultivate a new carabinier who might be more scrupulous and less amenable to his inducements.

‘Another drink?' he asked pleasantly.

Garcia belched loudly, patted his chest with a pudgy hand and swung his chair up on to its back legs.

‘Don't mind if I do.'

Jorge rose, a tall, strongly built man with a casual raddled elegance, and crossed to the drinks cabinet. As he was refilling Garcia's glass he heard the purr of twin engines almost overhead and descending; a light aircraft on final approach. He took his own glass over to the window, thrown wide open to the cooling breeze off the sea, and watched it come into view – as he had expected it was the Twin Otter in the livery of Air Perpetua, being flown, no doubt, by the new pilot.

Jorge's eyes narrowed, watching it descend and touch down whilst Garcia burbled on. The new pilot was an expert flier, not a doubt of it, the way he had landed on the tiny difficult strip was proof of that, but all the same Jorge was beginning to have serious doubts about him.

‘He asks too many questions,' Manuel, the senior pilot, whom he trusted implicitly, had said. ‘I think you should keep an eye on him.'

Jorge intended to do just that. He didn't like people who asked too many questions, especially before they had demonstrated their credentials. It smacked of a troublemaker at best and a snooper – perhaps a professional snooper – at worst, and the last thing he wanted was a professional snooper disturbing the smooth running of his operations. He hadn't engaged the new pilot himself, he'd been too busy with other, more important matters, and he'd left what had seemed like a routine appointment to his brother Fabio. Dammit, couldn't the fool get anything right? Had he unwittingly engaged someone who would be a danger to them? Well if he had, the new pilot would come to a sticky end, just as anyone who tried to interfere or get too clever did.

The Twin Otter had come to a stop, the hatches were open and the new pilot was emerging Jorge eyed him up critically, wondering idly who the passenger was this time. A guest for the hotel, he imagined. They flew in from South America like a flock of wild geese – ageing Germans with the sort of war records that had turned South America and its immediate surrounds into a prison as surely as if they had been brought before the courts at Nuremberg and sentenced to a life behind bars for the rest of their days. But they did not concern him. The hotel was simply a sideline. Running it had been Otto's responsibility – let him be the one to look after his compatriots – and now that he was no longer able to do it, overall management would pass to Fabio. Unless he could persuade his father to close it down. There had always been a measure of dissent within the Firm regarding the hotel – Jorge felt it posed an unnecessary security risk, whilst Fernando, his father, believed it provided a useful coyer blind. At present Fernando had his way. He was still head of the Firm. But Otto's illness had reminded Jorge of his own father's mortality. One day in the not-too-distant future, control would pass to him and then he would do as he thought fit.

A smile of satisfaction curved his cruel mouth, then froze. A young woman in a lemon trouser suit was emerging from the Twin Otter, her dark hair blowing in the stiff breeze off the sea.

Lilli.

Though it was four years now since he had seen her, he knew instantly that it was she.

Lilli – the living image of her mother at the same age, slender, graceful, beautiful beyond belief, but with all the freshness of youth that he had seen fade in Magdalene as the passage of the years took their toll.

Lilli. After what had happened he had not expected her to return to Madrepora even again, yet now he realised he should have known that if anything could bring her back it was Otto's illness. Lilli adored her father, worshipped him almost. No disillusion, no heartbreak, could change that. They must have let her know that Otto was dying and she had come back to make her peace with him before it was too late.

Jorge's smile broadened. Somewhere on the periphery of his thoughts he could hear Garcia still burbling on, becoming increasingly garrulous as the planter's punch loosened his tongue, but it had ceased to annoy him much now, a mere pinprick of inconvenience no more or less irritating than the flies buzzing against the hot windowpane.

Lilli was back and the game would recommence. Magdalene had been his and Lilli had been his – and she would be again. Jorge felt the stirring of excitement, the rush of adrenaline in his veins and the first tiny trickle of sweat at the nape of his neck. He moistened his lips, dry from the planter's punch, and followed Lilli's progress across the airstrip towards the waiting car, unaware that he was watching her.

Lilli was back – and he wanted her as much as ever, wanted her with a hunger as sharp as his hunger for all the good things of life, no – sharper. Lilli could not be bought as he bought them, she had to be won, and that made the prize all the richer. But it would not deter him. If anything it only made him the more determined.

Jorge wanted Lilli more than he wanted anything. And Jorge was a man who always got what he wanted.

T
HE VILLA WAS
sleeping in the somnolent heat of the late afternoon. The sun might be dropping now, a ball of fire, into the sea, but the residue remained, radiating in waves from the white stone pathway and imprisoning the perfume of the bougainvillaea and frangipani that lined it on either side.

Lilli felt it burning through the soles of her shoes and longed to exchange them for a pair of rubber-soled flipflops, longed, too, to get out of the cool-wool trousers and into a loose cotton sundress. But the discomfort her unsuitable attire was causing her was nothing compared to the tightness in her throat, the hammering of her heart. She was home and in a few moments she would see her father. It was what she wanted more than anything, her whole reason for being here, and yet now that the meeting was imminent she shrank from it. The circumstances of their parting were very immediate now, the awkwardness exacerbated by the years of estrangement. But it was not only that which made her dread seeing him. It was knowing that very soon she would be face to face with the reality of his illness, seeing with her own eyes, rather than with her imagination, the ravages it had inflicted on him. Then perhaps there would be no room left for even the smallest, nugget of hope, nothing but the need to accept somehow the finality of the situation and the knowledge that inevitably she was about to lose him forever.

The local boy carrying her suitcase was a step or two behind her. Lilli glanced around at him, at the grinning dark-skinned face growing serious as he approached the villa, which somehow seemed to project the aura of impending death into the brightness of the afternoon like a deep invisible shadow, and took a hold on herself. She must not let him see she was afraid. She was Lilli Brandt, daughter of a former officer of the German army, granddaughter of Vicente Cordoba, who had been a politician and landowner. In her blood was mixed the aristocratic heritage of two civilisations. She owed it to them to hide her weakness. She owed it to herself.

She walked up the shallow steps and pushed the door, which stood ajar, fully open.

‘Hello!' she called. ‘I'm here!'

Her voice, firm and level, hung in the air like the heat of the day. And then, suddenly, the beaded curtain which led to the kitchen was brushed aside and Patsy was there, arms outstretched, a smile of welcome which wavered between laughter and tears enveloping her mobile brown face.

‘Miss Lilli! Oh, Miss Lilli! Praise the Lord – it's you!'

‘Patsy!' Lilli hugged her, feeling the ample breasts squash like overripe melons against her own firm body, smelling the indefinable scent of warm brown flesh that whisked her senses back across the years to childhood. ‘It's so good to see you!'

‘And you, Miss Lilli! Oh, I'se so glad, so glad!'

The tears had begun to flow now, roiling down Patsy's face as she held Lilli tightly.

‘Lilli.' The voice with the faint German accent was brisk and slightly disapproving. ‘So, you've arrived safely.'

Lilli gave Patsy one last hug and turned to where Ingrid stood, implacable as ever.

‘Hello, Ingrid,' She kissed her briefly on both cheeks with none of the warmth she had put into her greeting for Patsy, who still hovered, wiping the tears from her face with the corner of her apron.

‘Thank you, Patsy, that will be all,' Ingrid said, dismissing her. And to the boy who stood uncertainly in the doorway: ‘Take Miss Lilli's case upstairs, please, Cammy. You know which room.'

‘My old room?' Lilli was suddenly horribly afraid that Ingrid might have made changes during her absence – she wouldn't put it past her.

‘Of course,' Ingrid replied briskly. ‘Well, Lilli, I expect you are dying for a shower and a change of clothes.'

‘I am – but not before I've seen Daddy. Where is he?'

‘He's in the salon.' Ingrid raised a cautionary hand to stop Lilli, who had already started in that direction. ‘ But I should warn you first – he really is very ill. Please don't say or do anything to upset him.'

‘Of course not!' Lilli replied sharply. ‘As if I would!'

‘It will be a shock …'

Lilli ignored her, brushing past and hurrying into the salon. Then, as she saw him, her step faltered momentarily. For all her apprehension she had thought she was ready for anything but nothing could have prepared her for the shocking, change in his appearance.

Otto was propped up by cushions in his recliner and fully dressed in a silk shirt of saxe blue and a pair of fawn linen slacks, but even sitting as he was his clothes hung on him and it seemed to Lilli that he had shrunk to a mere shadow of his former self. The once strong and handsome face was wasted and drawn with pain, his scar standing out livid and angry against the pallor of his skin.