The Thing Itself (12 page)

He walked back down the street. The men made a ragged line. Two in the middle parted and Renaldo di Bocci stepped from behind them. Tingley halted ten yards away.

Di Bocci was flushed and angry.

‘You insult my hospitality,' he said.

‘Oh, please,' Tingley said. ‘Spare me all that “my house is your house” rubbish. You would have no compunction about drowning me in the bath if that's what was required.'

Di Bocci frowned as he struggled to comprehend. The man next to Di Bocci whispered in his ear. Di Bocci scowled at Tingley.

‘You are not what I expected,' he said.

‘Whereas you are exactly what I expected.'

Di Bocci looked from Tingley's face to the Gatling gun.

‘Kadire will be at Sant'Antimo at eleven in the morning, the day after tomorrow. He has a meeting with some colleagues of mine.'

‘How many colleagues?'

‘Sant'Antimo,' Di Bocci said, turning away and signalling his men to follow.

Tingley watched them go, wondering where Sant'Antimo was and, more importantly, where it would be safe to sleep tonight.

T
ingley drove out of Chiusi on winding roads, watching for any sign of a follower. The abbey church of Sant' Antimo was in Montalcino, a French Romanesque building plonked down in the middle of Italy. He had been online getting images of its location and its layout. He intended to be there twelve hours before the meeting was due to happen.

He had spent several hours with Google Maps and other online resources getting the lay of the land around Sant'Antimo. He was confident he could avoid any kind of ambush going in. Coming out was something else again.

It took two further hours to reach Sant'Antimo. For most of his journey, Tingley was caught in a convoy of lorries grinding slowly through the hilly landscape. He saw the church from the road in a valley; it was set among low wooded hills a couple of miles below the little village of Castelnuovo dell' Abate. A tall cypress stood alone beside the square tower, equalling its height.

He pulled over to the side of the road and took out his binoculars. The way he figured, if it was a set-up, Kadire would be somewhere up here or in the church tower. Either way, he would be waiting to shoot him as he approached. He watched the tower for any sign, anything at all.

After half an hour he got back in the car and drove slowly down towards the church. He parked lengthways against the church wall, passenger side out, the church between him and any vantage point on the hill.

He came out of the car between driver's door and church wall and made the five yards to the entrance in a crouching run. Once inside, he ducked into a corner angle and swept the interior.

There were a dozen or so people scattered around the church. Nearest were a fashionably dressed young Italian couple who were scratching their names with a penknife on to one of the twelfth-century capitals. Aside from that vandalism, nothing untoward that he could see.

The high walls were undecorated, honey-coloured brick but, with the light coming through the plain windows, they seemed luminous. Beams of sunlight fell through those windows like solid slabs, their edges sharply defined.

He knew the layout of the church from the research he'd done online. He moved down the south aisle towards the altar. He looked into a doorway that led through to the sacristy and then up a spiral staircase that he knew from the floor plan led to the matroneum. He passed the altar, ducking his head to look down into the tiny crypt beneath it. He'd read it had formed part of a ninth-century church, supposedly founded by Charlemagne on this site. He walked behind the altar into the north aisle, stopped at the entrance to the bell tower.

He glanced up at the windows to the matroneum in the blank wall opposite. He could see a figure standing in the window recess, although he couldn't make out the face. He had the impression that the person was studying him. Tingley stared back.

‘Tingley, nice to see you again,' a voice beside him said. Kadire, his face still a bruised mess, was standing by his shoulder, leaning on a walking stick. Tingley turned.

‘You're early.'

Kadire smiled – it looked grotesque given his facial injuries – but said nothing. He pointed with his stick across the church to the spiral staircase.

‘Shall we get out of everybody's way?'

Tingley glanced back at the window. The figure had gone.

Kadire led the way slowly up the spiral staircase, pausing once to catch his breath. At the top of the stairs he stood aside to let Tingley enter the room first. Tingley went by him warily but the room was empty.

‘Did the exterior of the church look familiar, Tingley? Andrei Tarkovsky filmed it for use in his film
Nostalgia
, you know.'

‘I didn't know,' Tingley said, looking around the matroneum. It had been divided into two rooms, both hung with wall paintings and furnished with chairs and wooden sofas. Tingley walked past the enormous fifteenth-century fireplace to look into the next room, then went across to the window recess. He could see the length of the nave below him. He couldn't see any of the people who had been in the church when he arrived. There was no sign of anyone resembling the figure he had seen in the window.

‘Is Radislav here?' he said.

Kadire touched his face.

‘That doesn't really matter,' he said.

‘It matters to me.'

‘I tried to kill you.'

‘You killed someone I cared about instead. You have to pay for that.'

Kadire looked him up and down.

‘I don't think your situation is of the best.'

Tingley looked down into the nave. The grey-faced Radislav and two other men were walking along it.

‘You were expecting me?' Tingley said.

‘The Di Bocci situation is . . . difficult. A rock and a hard place.'

‘You know you killed the wrong people in Brighton, don't you? Hathaway wasn't involved in the shootings.'

‘Not my people. I am Albanian. Radislav's people. The pregnant woman in Milldean shot in her bed during the massacre was his sister.'

Tingley had come here to kill Kadire but this was too cold-blooded, the man too defenceless. Kadire seemed to read his thoughts. He released his stick, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of surrender as it clattered to the floor.

Tingley could do it with one blow. He should do it, he knew. He could be out of the room before Kadire realized he was dead. He glanced at the stairs – he could hear Radislav coming up them – and back at Kadire.

Kadire watched him.

Tingley backed into the next room. He turned and ran for the door in the far wall. He thought at first it was locked but after a few moments hurried tugging it came open. He pelted down a flight of narrow stairs, almost colliding with a door at the bottom. It opened on to the gravel car park. A moment later he made a dash round the perimeter of the church to his car.

As he stabbed his key into the ignition, he looked around to see if Radislav and Kadire had any other men with them. No one visible. In a squeal of tyres and a flurry of dust, he sent the car hurtling two hundred yards down the dirt road alongside the church to the main road. Gunning the engine, he dashed towards the vantage point he'd spied earlier.

T
ingley lost track of time, lying in the hide, sighting down the sniper's rifle at the church and the car parked beside it. He wasn't a crack shot like Kadire, but with the magnification on this scope he didn't need to be.

His mind wandered, but all the time he had half an ear on his immediate surroundings, alert to anyone creeping up on him. Cicadas rasped. There was an ants' nest somewhere nearby and tiny red ants swirled over his hands, biting furiously.

Radislav, here in Italy. And an easy target. Tingley had expected to be blasting his way into some remote hilltop compound with some of the weaponry weighing down the boot of his car.

When the minute hand of his watch ticked on to the third hour, he put the rifle down and rubbed at the eye that had been glued to the scope. He realized he was drenched in sweat, though the day was cool.

Tingley pictured that staircase down into the crypt underneath the altar. Realized there must be a secret tunnel by which to leave the church. He wondered where Kadire and Radislav now were. Running from him? Or towards him?

Jimmy Tingley edged the car through the medieval gateway into the small, walled town of Gubbio. He parked and walked up the steep, cobbled streets to stop for a beer at a small bar on a terrace below the gnarled ninth-century church.

There was a service at 7.30, a celebration of a local saint's day. The saint was actually an Etruscan god who had survived down the centuries by disguising himself as a Christian.

He joined a short line of people dipping their fingers in the water in the font at the back of the church to bless themselves. When it was his turn, he had barely touched the surface of the water before he withdrew his finger sharply. The water was scalding.

He moved on and glanced back. The woman behind him dipped and made the sign of the cross with her finger on her forehead. He looked down at his burning hand. It was an engorged purple-red.

He raised an eyebrow. Ant-bites from the hide, not God's judgement.

As he was sitting in a pew, the snake bit, doubling him over. Bile rose in his throat but he held it down, his jaw clenched tight. Maybe this was God having his say.

The two musicians were elderly peasants dressed up in their Sunday suits. The church was lit entirely by candles. Shadows pressed down on him. The service lasted an hour. Tingley wept at the beauty of it. He bowed his head when Renaldo di Bocci stepped from the front pew and walked down the aisle past him.

Di Bocci was without bodyguards. Tingley fell in step behind him, and as the church exit filled with people and progress slowed to a shuffle, he put his hands on Di Bocci's arms and guided him a few yards off to one side. Di Bocci didn't resist at first, though he tried to turn his head to see who was pushing him.

A couple of yards away from the rest of the congregation, Tingley stepped beside him and thrust his pistol into his side. Di Bocci half-turned his head and his eyes widened.

‘I need to know where Kadire and Radislav are,' Tingley hissed.

‘I told you,' Di Bocci said quietly. ‘Kadire will be in Sant'Antimo tomorrow. Radislav – I do not know.'

‘You told me that when you were lying to me. Now you will tell me the truth.'

As Tingley said this, he gripped Di Bocci tightly by the elbow, pinching the nerves, and moved him to the door behind the font. He released his grip, opened the door and pushed Di Bocci through. Di Bocci stumbled on to the marble steps at the other side of the door and fell to his knees, gasping as his shins banged against the lip of the marble.

Tingley closed and bolted the door behind him.

‘My men are waiting for me outside,' Di Bocci said.

Tingley shook his head.

‘No one is waiting for you. Except your mistress. And she was not expecting you for another half an hour. And now she is not expecting you at all.'

Di Bocci turned awkwardly, rubbing his shin.

‘How—?'

‘—do I know all this? In betraying me, you have betrayed your cousin in Orvieto. He is not pleased.'

When Tingley had left Sant'Antimo, he had found a quiet place to pull over and telephoned Crespo's family in Orvieto. He had told them what had happened. He had also told them he guessed that Charlie Laker had given them permission to help him and, having done so, would not be pleased that things had gone awry.

‘How do you know he did not change his mind?' Crespo had said quietly.

Tingley had thought for a moment.

‘Not likely. But had I realized you had no control over your cousin, I would have done things differently.'

Crespo had been silent for a moment.

‘Let me call you back.'

Tingley had stayed in the car, the windows wound down, feeling the snake shift, listening to the birdsong and the cicadas, until his phone had rung again.

‘Go to Gubbio.' It was Maria's voice. ‘Renaldo has a mistress there. He thinks nobody knows.'

She gave him the details.

‘You would betray family? In Italy?'

She paused before replying.

‘That side of our family . . . our cousin we do not regard as family.'

Now Tingley said: ‘I want to know where both Kadire and Radislav are staying and where they will be over the next couple of days.'

Di Bocci looked up at him, his dead eyes only lightly tinged with alarm.

‘You think I will tell you?'

Tingley felt the stirring. He could only nod.