Albatross (44 page)

‘It's not proved yet,' he countered. ‘And besides, it was an exceptional circumstance, because of Poland. Borisov may have given it a tentative blessing, but they usually make certain of their victims. I've never known a KGB target recover, have you?'

Davina shrugged. ‘Maybe it was prayer,' she suggested. ‘There was enough flying around.'

James White gave a little chuckle of contempt. ‘If you believe in things like that, my dear, you disappoint me. Damn, there's the telephone. Oh, Mary's answered it.'

The call was for Davina. It was Tim Johnson. ‘I've been trying to contact you since yesterday evening,' he said. ‘I've being going up the wall.'

‘Well, you've found me.' Davina was brisk. ‘What's the panic?'

‘They've picked up Franklyn's killer. The news came through from Rome yesterday. Nothing official, but they've got her.'

Davina said slowly, ‘You did say “her”, didn't you?'

‘Yes – it's a girl. She must be a real blossom. Rome isn't issuing any invitations, but you could bring pressure to bear if you want someone to sit in.' She could tell by his tone of voice that he was hoping to go himself.

‘I'll think about it,' she said. ‘I'll be in the office by four. Get Humphrey along too. Sorry about your Sunday.'

‘Can't be helped.' He didn't sound as if he minded. ‘See you at four.'

‘A woman – how appalling!' Mary White exclaimed. ‘A woman planted a bomb and killed all those people?'

‘Women are just as violent as men,' her husband countered. ‘They haven't got the physical strength but they've got the will if you give them the weapons. I haven't had any illusions about your sex for many years.'

‘You haven't had any illusions about anyone, Chief,' Davina said. ‘You'll forgive me if I rush back after lunch?'

‘Of course. They haven't got the name of the organization, I suppose?'

‘Johnson didn't say. But they'll get it. The Italians can play very rough.'

‘I hope they do,' Mary White said. ‘She'd jolly well tell if I got my hands on her!'

Sir James raised his sherry glass. ‘To the gentle sex,' he said, and laughed his mirthless laugh.

‘You can stuff yourself!'

Alfredo Modena wasn't troubled by insults. The prisoner could spit at him as she'd done at his colleagues but, unlike the less experienced, he wouldn't have hit her. She had a cut and swollen lip. ‘You're being very stupid, Elsa,' he said calmly. ‘We know you threw that bomb. You were seen. We've got witnesses.'

‘You're lying,' the girl shouted. She wasn't frightened – she was defiant and sustained by anger. He knew the type; he also knew how hard they were to break. And the women were often tougher than the men. ‘You haven't got a witness. I was nowhere near the Grand Canal that day!'

Modena didn't look at her. His office was air-conditioned, but he'd taken off his coat and loosened his tie, making himself comfortable. He had iced water on his desk and a supply of cigarettes. He didn't offer anything to Elsa Valdorini. She was standing, because after she spat at the first interrogator, they'd removed the chair. She stood with legs apart, arms akimbo, glaring at him. She had been in detention for forty-eight hours, without food or sleep, and with only a few sips of water.

Very tough, Modena decided. But I have all the time in the world and she knows it. She would be more than capable of killing. ‘You took a boat,' he said. ‘You hired one of the little taxi boats, and as you passed the launch Franklyn was travelling in, you threw the bomb. Did you see his daughter? She was only nineteen. Didn't you mind killing her?'

‘I didn't kill her,' she sneered back at him. ‘But it wouldn't bother me if I had!'

‘Any more than murdering the boatman afterwards?' Her flash of surprise was his first breakthrough. She hadn't known about that. Which he had gambled on. He leaned a little towards her. ‘You broke his neck, the poor bastard,' he said slowly. ‘Just a poor working man, hiring his boat out on the Grand Canal, and you murdered him. What kind of socialist revolutionary are you?'

She recovered her nerve, and managed a chilling smile on her swollen mouth. ‘Too bad about him,' she said. ‘I'm going to piss on your floor.'

Modena pressed a buzzer on his desk. The door opened immediately. ‘Take Valdorini to the lavatory,' he said. The man caught her arm and dragged her out. Modena poured himself some water. She hadn't killed the boatman. The blow needed a man's strength. She hadn't thrown the bomb, either, but she had sheltered the man who did. And that was the pearl he intended to prise out of this particular oyster. Even if he had to crack the shell to pieces. He was smoking when she came back. ‘Feeling better?'

‘Fuck off,' came the reply.

He thought of her parents, respectable Venetian traders, the mother weeping, the father's stricken face when his daughter was arrested. How do we breed them, these children of violence, he wondered? How can a pretty girl like this one become a merciless little savage? He put the question aside. ‘After you murdered the boatman, you sank his boat and swam ashore.'

She glared at him in triumph. ‘I can't swim,' she said. ‘You'll have to think of another lie.'

‘I can think of any lie I like,' he remarked. ‘I say you took the vaporetto, threw the bomb, killed the boatman, and swam ashore. I can prove it.'

‘Then go ahead,' she snarled at him. ‘Charge me. Just let me get into court and I'll prove every word you say is a lie! I've got witnesses who'll swear I never left the house that morning!'

‘They won't be believed,' Modena answered. ‘But my witnesses will swear to anything I tell them.' She stared at him. ‘You look surprised, Elsa. Did you think you and your friends had the monopoly on violence? I won't do violence to you, and I'll reprimand the officer who hit you. But I'll kill the truth as surely as those unfortunates in the launch were killed. There are many kinds of violence, not just physical. I'll charge you with the crime, and I'll see that you're convicted. Although I know for certain that you didn't do it.'

She hissed a long Venetian obscenity at him. And for the first time he sensed that she was afraid. ‘I know you're not guilty, and you know that when you go to the Isola Santa Maddalena, it will be for the rest of your life, for something you didn't do. I think it'll send you mad, Elsa, after a few years.'

‘You,' she said, ‘I can't think of a word for you –'

‘Pig? Swine? Policeman? I'm indifferent to insults. Haven't you realized that? Jews are insulted from the time they're born. I don't care what you call me. I'm only concerned with one thing. Who stayed at your house after the assassination?'

‘Nobody,' she shouted back. ‘Nobody.'

That was her first mistake, he thought, and decided to goad her with it. ‘There were traces of a man,' he reminded her. ‘He used a disposable razor – you forgot about that. Your mother found it. You changed the bed sheets and forgot to empty the wastebasket in the bathroom. Very careless of you. Why didn't you just say it was a lover? Why did you lie and pretend nobody was in the house?'

‘All right then,' she jeered back at him, ‘it was a boyfriend.'

‘Then all you have to do is tell me his name,' Modena suggested gently.

Tim Johnson arrived on the afternoon flight. He was met and driven direct to Modena's office. The Italian was cordial and much more relaxed than at their first meeting in Venice. He's got a suspect, Johnson thought; that always makes them happy. He wondered whether he'd be allowed to see her.

‘I don't think it's advisable,' Modena explained. ‘It'll only make her feel important. At the moment she's on a kind of high, a sort of exaltation, like a martyr. About to die for the cause, you understand what I mean? It's necessary to bring her down to earth. To make her feel that she's forgotten, that nobody knows or cares.'

‘Have you established that she's part of an organization? How much has she actually admitted?'

Modena shrugged. ‘Nothing,' he said. ‘And it's the organization that's important. It will take time, I'm afraid, but we'll break through in the end.'

‘But how much time have we got?' Johnson asked curtly. ‘What happens if these people hit again and we don't know anything about them? I don't think you can treat this with kid gloves, Commissioner.'

Modena gave him a look of smooth dislike. ‘I don't wear gloves,' he said. ‘Valdorini will tell us what we want to know. I have had experience of these terrorist types; I don't think you have, as yet. Ordinary pressures don't affect them. They like nothing better than a challenge – they actually welcome violence. I shall get my information by a different method, and when I do, you can be sure it will be the truth.'

Johnson looked at him. ‘And this girl blew up the boat?'

‘Yes,' he said. ‘Until she tells us what we want to know, that will be the charge against her. How is Signorina Graham?'

‘She's fine,' Johnson said. He didn't mention Washington. Langley had people already doing their own investigation in Italy. One of their best men was in Venice, poaching delicately upon Modena's preserve. Modena could play his cat-and-mouse game with the girl, but his allies weren't going to sit around waiting for the outcome. Johnson decided to round off the interview. If he wasn't going to see Valdorini, let alone sit in on the interrogations, he might as well take a trip round Rome and catch an evening flight back.

‘I've got two kids,' he said. ‘I wish I knew what makes them turn out like the girl you've got. Middle-class background, good education, enough money – what the hell makes them want to tear society to pieces?'

‘If we knew that,' Modena answered, ‘we wouldn't have the problem.' He wanted the Englishman to go; he had no intention of expressing his own opinions and encouraging a discussion. He didn't like the Anglo-Saxon type. He liked the American equivalent even less. What did they call themselves – Wasps? White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. He was a Jew by race and an Italian Catholic since his grandmother converted. If he did discuss his views on the moral vacuum in modern society, a man like Johnson wouldn't understand them.

He shook hands and rang for his car. It would be at Johnson's disposal until he caught his plane back to London.

‘Davina? Darling, it's me. I've been trying to reach you since Sunday morning – where have you been?'

The phone had been ringing when she got into the flat. She knew who was calling because she'd avoided the last two attempts to reach her at Anne's Yard. Mr Walden on the line from Sydney. ‘I'm not taking any personal calls, tell him I'm not in the office and can't be reached.' Her voice had sounded so cool and impersonal when she gave those instructions to the switchboard, no one could have guessed what it cost her. There were times in those three days since she had come back from the Whites' house when Davina was tempted to pick up the phone and call Sydney.

If he was lying, then she wanted to know for certain and to be able to face up to it. If he wasn't – she hadn't dared think that far ahead, because since she had come back from Kent the doubt about Walden had become almost a certainty. His story wasn't true; there was another motive, a far subder trap being set for her. All she had to establish was whether he was a willing party to it. Afterwards she could decide what to do.

In the early hours when she woke, and the dawn hadn't even touched the windows, Davina thanked God for the escape she found in her work. Johnson had come back from Rome. His visit had established nothing but the existence of Elsa Valdorini, buried in the headquarters of the Italian Anti-Terrorist Squad. According to Modena, she wasn't believed guilty of direct assassination. And all they talked of was time. As Johnson said, they didn't have any to spare.

When the phone rang it was one in the morning. She picked it up, knowing she'd hear his voice. It was so close and so damnably familiar that she winced. It hurt like a blow when he called her darling, and she didn't know how to answer.

‘I was away,' she said. God, let me keep my voice normal, don't let the feeling show. And, ‘Yes, yes, I'm fine, just tired that's all. You know how I hate travelling.'

‘So do I.' Walden's answer was quick. ‘Especially when it keeps me away from you. I know we can't talk about anything, but I've been going crazy worrying. You do still love me, don't you? You haven't had second thoughts while I've been away?'

She felt her throat constrict; it took several seconds before she could say, ‘I love you, Tony, you can be sure of that.' And the hell was that she meant it. The lie followed afterwards. ‘I've thought of a way out. No darling, I can't. It'll have to wait until you get back. I think you'll agree it's the best solution. For both of us. Yes. Yes, I think so. Of course I miss you.… How's your trip?'

‘Bloody lonely.' Lonely for me too, she thought, with the worm of suspicion burrowing into my guts. Yes, his voice went on, it was very successful, he'd tied up a big contract and he was on his way to Melbourne. ‘I've decided to cut it short,' he said. ‘I've cancelled the trip to Perth.' Part of her wanted him home, longed for an end to the uncertainty; part dreaded the discovery that he was lying, and wanted to put it off as long as possible. ‘I want to get back to you. Darling, you've got me sick with worry now. What the hell is this solution? It sounds so bloody clear-cut. Can't you give me
any
hint?'

‘No, Tony, I can't. I told you, you'll be pleased. So there's nothing to worry about, is there? You'll be back when?'

‘Friday, the 24th. We'll have a weekend together – I'll fix it, somewhere nice.'

‘Not Paris,' Davina said. ‘I don't think I want to go there for a long time.'