Shout in the Dark (24 page)

The same neighbors told her that Bruno,
the elder of the two who was over sixty now, was always charming
the women. But the relationships never lasted, and as frequently as
two or even three times a year Bruno would be back seeking
consolation. Renata knew the neighbors branded him the
heart-breaker of the piazza, with a specialty for bored housewives,
but they were unable to grasp that it was Bruno's heart that was
broken by the failed romances.

He worked as a press photographer, a man
capable of serious investigative journalism. Unfortunately he only
seemed to be famous for his regular photographs of high profile
figures leaving nightclubs considerably the worse for drink, or in
the company of women who were not their wives. She had heard from
Riccardo Fermi that this led to jokes at work about Bruno putting
so much effort into uncovering other people's sex lives that he had
neglected to work hard enough at nurturing his own.

He was home again now, the ageing Romeo's
affairs getting shorter as the years went by. Why hadn't her son
settled down years ago with a nice ordinary girl and got married?
Renata knew that life could never be that simple, although all her
neighbors' children had done very well for themselves. Bruno was
still a boy, and her boy deserved a nice girl.

The other son had caused nothing but pain.
He was a curse, a reminder of all that had been terrible about the
war. But it need not have been that way. If Enzo had grown up
differently, and if Bruno had been able to accept him better, she
would have tried -- please God she would have tried -- to put the
whole damn war behind her. All she had ever wanted was a home for
the boys: a home where they would bring their girls, and later
their
bambini
.

She knew that Bruno hated Enzo. It had never
been any different since the day the baby was born. It was as
though the little boy had known the reason for her pregnancy.

She loved Enzo and yet at the same time
rejected him. Enzo had come to look more and more like his German
father as the years went on. She had loathed that evil Nazi
officer. She wished she could have been there to kill him in the
building in the Via Tasso, with the long knife. More than once she
had shared this dreadful wish with Bruno.

BRUNO LAY ON his bed in the darkness. The
presence of his half-brother in the apartment was making him sweat.
Enzo frightened him. Enzo was calculating. Why else was he
now calling himself Manfred
Kessel, the name of his rapist father? Enzo was also cruel. Bruno
recalled the time when Enzo had caught a fly in a wine glass and
carefully pulled the wings from its back, before releasing it into
the large web in the corner of the back yard. Enzo laughed to see
the hungry predator slip from its place of hiding to catch the
helpless insect, before wrapping it in silken strands for a later
feast.

Such acts of cruelty were second nature to
his blond brother, but it was to be a portent of his coming death.
One day Enzo, like the fly in the yard, would have his wings
removed one after the other. Otto Bayer and Karl Bretz were the
wings. Both would be plucked off. Then the spider would move in for
the kill.

He'd always despised his brother, and
could never separate him from the overpowering memories of the big
Nazi forcing himself on his Mamma long ago. The German officer
walking those dark corridors and marble stairways; kissing his
Mamma on the high steel bed; putting his hands, and then his body,
all over her bare skin as she tried not to cry out.

Enzo had not only come to Rome with the
skinhead from Düsseldorf in tow, he had now collected Helmut
Bayer's son in Köln. The three Germans had been in and out of that
hotel off the Via Nazionale throughout the day, and they certainly
weren't staying there for a holiday. Perhaps Otto Bayer knew where
to find the relic, in spite of his denials at the photographic
studio in Köln. The sooner the three Germans were dealt with the
safer everyone would be. Riccardo Fermi was right: there was only
one way to deal with Nazis, old and new. It was not just his
brother down there in the room talking to his mother. Part of the
man was the German SS officer. His half-brother looked exactly like
the Nazi monster, evil and infectious. For the good of mankind,
drastic surgery was essential.

Bruno went quietly down the short flight
of stairs into the hall. Seen now through the half open door, the
tall fair-haired Enzo could be the bullying German officer -- the
man who had done wrong things with his Mamma; making her behave in
a way he had not understood until much later, but which he had
sensed was bad. Even here in his own home, a grown man, Bruno felt
sick with fear. Powerless to intervene.

This was his hell, the hell that ruined his
life. All he could ever do with girls were wrong things. While his
friends found sex to be fun, he struggled with memories that
returned repeatedly to spoil his ineffective efforts at
love-making.

He went back up the stairs and flung
himself onto his bed, appalled by his inability to step in and save
his mother. So many plans, so many grand ideas, and always a lack
of power. The animal had returned from the war to haunt them both.
Lying face down, he relived his time in the Gestapo building. From
somewhere in his subconscious came the sound of angry voices. The
German officer was shouting at one of the soldiers. The little boy
clung to his mother's black dress. The voice came again.

"
Monte Sisto!
"

He sat up in the darkened room. For a whole
lifetime he had tried to forget the terrors of the big house in the
Via Tasso. He listened again, realizing that the voice had not come
from his memory at all. It had been real, rising from the hallway
to his room. It was Enzo saying Monte Sisto.

Enzo was by the hall door. "Goodbye,
Mamma, you've been a great help."

"
Come and see your Mamma again soon, Enzo. Maybe you and
your old Mamma can learn to be friends. You be sure you come round
and see me before you go back to Germany. Give your Mamma a nice
big kiss."

In the darkness at the top of the stairs
Bruno closed his eyes and turned his head away. The sound of the
kiss was obscene.

He waited until the door was shut, swept his
fingers through his dyed black hair, and went cautiously down.

"
It was nice to see my boy again," said his
Mamma.

Bruno went to sit on the floor by her
side, allowing her to run fingers of comfort through his thinning
hair. "Enzo asked you something?"

"
Just memories, Bruno. Just memories." His Mamma smiled. "Of
all the things he wanted to know, that was the
stupidest."

"
What was, Mamma?"

"
The day his father first spoke to me in the war he was
shouting at a soldier. They'd been to a monastery and something had
gone wrong. Something about photographs."

Gently Bruno removed the soothing fingers
from his hair and stood up. From a folder on the large walnut
sideboard he took several large black-and-white prints.
"Photographs like these?" He stood in front of her in
excitement.

She shook her head. "I didn't see them.
The two men were just arguing. Come and sit by me again, Bruno. I
like it when you sit by me. You used to let me rub your hair when
you were little, before ... before it all happened."

"
Enzo wanted to know the name of the monastery?"

"
Enzo's father was shouting it."

"
And you told Enzo it was Monte Sisto?"

"
Of course your old Mamma told him. Enzo says he's going
there tomorrow morning with his friends. I wish you had a nice
girl, Bruno."

He put his arms round his mother's neck
and let her run her soft fingers through his hair again. If he and
Riccardo Fermi wanted retribution, there also had to be justice.
Monte Sisto must be where Otto Bayer's father had been involved in
the massacre. He had photographs of the terrified Jews from Otto's
film, and a mass of evidence against the neo-Fascists on his files
that he had chosen to keep secret for now. Justice called for
judgment on the Bayer family.

"
Mamma, the Nazis still have a price to pay for all they did
to you. I am not alone in this. You will have your revenge on the
Nazis yet."

"
Enzo's a good boy now. All I want is peace."

Bruno stood up. Now that Enzo knew the
name of the monastery, he and Riccardo would have to move quickly.
"Mamma, you shall have peace. Very soon now, I promise you
peace."

His mother reached out and took hold of
his hand with her thin fingers. "You're a good boy, Bruno. I know
you're only doing what's best for your Mamma."

Chapter
22

Piazza di Santa Maria Maggiore

MARCO STARED
at his uneaten breakfast and found himself
yearning for Laura's company. But he was painfully aware that he
was a priest, so he could never love her. Not in the way he'd loved
Anna. Deep love and sex were inseparable in his experience -- and
the conflict was already filling him with so much self-condemnation
that he had only told Father Josef about Laura in the vaguest
terms.

The beautiful release of emotions through
sex would never be his again, but he could never forget the joys of
marriage to Anna. It seemed impossible there could be a connection
between Laura and the neo-Nazis. The danger -- if there was any
danger -- was more likely to lie within the Vatican rather than
with this freelance journalist.

But why had Laura decided to come round in
the first place, pervading his apartment with Anna's perfume?
Desire could be very destructive. It might be better if he refused
to see her again. No, that would be an absurd and unnecessary move.
Anyway, he'd already seen one of his college friends and borrowed a
cheap metal detector and a small spade. He needed Laura's car to
get him to Monte Sisto, but he didn't want to seem too keen and
give her the wrong ideas.

His cell phone rang at nine o'clock just
as he was wondering whether to phone Laura Rossetti. It was Laura
and she sounded agitated.

"
Have you got that metal detector yet, Marco? I want to go
to Monte Sisto. My friends don't want me with them today, and they
say I can't even leave Rome."

"
Friends?" he queried.

"
Bruno and Riccardo. They've told me to stay in the city,
but that's crazy. They're up to something, Marco."

"
You're not making sense," he said gently.

"
I want to take you to Monte Sisto, so we can dig up all the
graves."

"
Not all of them," he protested, laughing.

"
Okay, okay, I don't mind what you do as long as you bring a
spade. That relic belonged to
my
father, not Bruno's."

He thought fast. Laura obviously wanted
his company, and the neo-Nazis were never going to make contact
after all this time. "I've got everything ready. When are you
coming for me?"

"
I'm coming straight over," said Laura excitedly.

He smiled to himself. "I'll be ready. I'll
wait outside. I'm a priest. The
custode
here will be suspicious if she sees me getting a
female visitor too often!"

LESS
THAN HALFWAY to Monte Sisto, Laura stopped the car on an
open patch of ground. Marco looked at her inquiringly.

"
It's a good place to wait," she said rather
distantly.

"
Wait for what? I thought we were going to dig for
treasure." He reached into the back and tapped the stem of the
detector. "I've got a feeling we're going to get lucky with this.
I've been reading a book about treasure hunting. You have to move
the search head slowly and..."

Laura wasn't listening. "Do you like it
here, Marco, away from the city?"

He'd already upset her once before, so
he'd pretend to be enjoying himself. "It's wonderful!"

Laura seemed to be jumping around with her
thoughts like a pigeon trying to retrieve a piece of bread from a
hot metal roof. "I'm not sure you mean it," she responded, clearly
lost in some sort of private reverie. She got out of the car and
breathed in deeply. After a few minutes she opened the map and
spread it on the car roof but only glanced at it. She stood as
though listening for something.

"
Are
you
waiting?" he asked. Laura seemed to have a plan, seemed to be
preoccupied.

"
Waiting?" She laughed as if the idea were preposterous. "Of
course I'm not. Come on, there's a village just down the road.
We'll have a coffee there. I just love the countryside in the
summer. It's marvelous."

"
Marvelous." He tried to sound wholehearted, but felt
uncomfortable, threatened even. Something unpleasant seemed to be
in the air.

Laura now drove slowly, and the aircon
struggled to keep them cool. He found her unpredictable. He was
trying not to be distrustful of her actions; all the same he should
have told someone where he was going -- if only so that they would
know where to look for his body.