The Company of Saints (20 page)

Davina looked up in surprise. ‘You're going to try a direct approach?'

‘Why not? Investigating her hasn't turned up anything. And SEDECE are damned good. I'll see what the personal approach digs up.' He pulled the identifying photographs out of their cellophane slip. ‘Not bad looking – but why do girls have that awful butch haircut? She'd be quite pretty if she let if grow. I'm glad you haven't cropped yours.'

‘I don't have time to worry about hairstyles these days.'

He leaned back, crossing one leg over the other. He no longer wore the faded jeans that had irritated her when they first met. But then he was out of the Service. He was a respectable director of a security firm. Somehow he looked odd in the dark suit.

‘Do you want to tell me about lover boy?' he said.

‘No,' Davina replied. ‘And don't keep calling him that. It sounds childish.'

Lomax laughed out loud. ‘I am childish. I pick up a catchphrase and I can't stop saying it. What do you suggest I call him? Tony? Mr Walden? I can think of other names.'

‘Colin, I don't think this is a good idea. You're just in a bloody-minded mood and having a go. Things were going wrong with us before he came into my life. We would have broken up anyway.'

‘I'm not denying that,' he answered. ‘What I don't like is the sneaky way the bastard winkled his way in. He had the money and the style.'

She felt her face burn. ‘How dare you say it had anything to do with money!'

‘What was it then? Sex?'

Davina stood up. ‘I'm going,' she said. ‘I know you when you're like this. You want to pick a fight, and I'm not playing. I'll wait to hear from you in Paris. Where's my coat?'

‘I hung it up outside,' Lomax said. He didn't move to get it for her. ‘I'll have to work fast,' he remarked. ‘I can't leave my outfit for more than a fortnight.'

Davina stopped by the door. ‘Don't be ridiculous!' she said. ‘You can't put a time limit on a thing like this!'

‘I have,' he remarked. ‘Two weeks, darling. That's all. I'll be in touch. You can see yourself out, unless you want to sit down and be civilized.'

‘With you,' she snapped, ‘I'm afraid it's just not possible. I haven't started sniping at you over your private life. And whoever arranged those roses should go and take a course!'

‘She's not very good at it,' Lomax agreed. ‘But she's a simple girl, not very high-powered. You wouldn't have much in common.'

Suddenly Davina's anger drained away. ‘No,' she said. ‘I don't suppose we would. If you're honest with yourself, Colin, you'll stop blaming Tony Walden. It was my job that really came between us. Not him.' She opened the flat door and let herself out.

Lomax flew into Charles de Gaulle airport the next morning. He had booked himself into a modest pension on the Left Bank. He carried a minimum of luggage and a draft for £1000 drawn on the Crédit Lyonnais. All expenses paid. He spent the afternoon wandering round the city, getting his bearings. He didn't feel comfortable in Paris; it was too artificial, too cold hearted in its symmetrical beauty to appeal to him. London was shabby and meandering and unplanned. He preferred it. He preferred the Highlands of his native Scotland or the rainswept bleakness of Northern Ireland to any city.

He located the Lycée where Hélène Blond studied, walked past it several times, noted the students coming out at the end of the day. He didn't attempt to identify the girl. He had to fix the timetable in his mind first. She could have been among the throng of young men and women who streamed out into the evening sunlight and made their way home. He took a cab to the unfashionable suburb where the girl's aunt lived.

He cruised past the apartment block, and then told the cab to return to the centre of Paris. He treated himself to dinner at a restaurant recommended by Fraser. Superb food, French prices and no tourists. He sat on drinking coffee and ordered an Armagnac. The Service was paying.

Davina kept coming into his mind. He sipped at his brandy and let the memories flicker back. The first time he saw her, in the grand Wiltshire manor house, labradors to order, ancestors on the walls, he had disliked her on sight. An uppity, bossy woman, oversure of herself in a professional role. But not sure of herself as a woman. He had detected that very quickly. And she was easy to needle, quick to rise when goaded. A brave lassie, but oversharp, his father would have described her. God, Lomax thought, finishing his drink, how much I loved her. We started out in the worst way, and ended in the best. Or so it seemed until that last assignment. Davina had set out to find the traitor who was operating within the top level of the SIS. Success had wrecked her sister Charlie's marriage, caused a break with her father that hadn't been mended before he died, and brought another man into Davina's life at the crucial psychological moment.

And Lomax had fallen out of love with her. The disillusionment had been bitter; he had stopped trusting her because his instincts detected a change. She was slipping away from him, borne by the current of dedication to her job. The man who took her away from him didn't present a challenge, he could see that now. He made no demands, offered no competition. He was another hungry tiger, prowling his world in search of money and success. He had offered freedom to Davina, where Lomax wanted strings. Permanent strings, like a home and a wedding ring and all the old-fashioned things like children that went with it. He sighed. Hitting out at her was futile, and even unfair. But human. He didn't love her any more. He had remade his life, formed his relationships and kept the whole thing under control. Now here he was in Paris, getting involved in the squalid world of the SIS which he had grown to despise. Because she'd asked him.

He paid the bill and walked slowly back to his pension. He fell asleep wondering what kind of girl Hélène Blond would turn out to be. The next day he'd make his first move towards finding out.

The wardress made a lot of noise when she unlocked the cell. Elsa Valdorini sat on the edge of the hard chair and waited. She saw the wardress on duty when her breakfast was pushed inside on a metal tray, and again when she was taken for half an hour's exercise round a deserted inner yard, the silent guardian a few paces behind her. She had begun by refusing to walk at the prescribed pace. Now she didn't defy authority any more. She exercised as she was told, ate the food, cleaned the spartan cell to their satisfaction, and lay through the endless nights on the iron-hard bed, sometimes sleeping, often awake in her despair. Nothing had happened for so long. She had no watch, no radio, no books, no newspapers. Nobody was cruel: if the rules were broken, she didn't get her food and the lights were left on, glaring down on her all night, with constant supervision through the observation hole in the door. Her nerves frayed, but nobody took any notice when she screamed abuse and obscenities. If they were listening, there was no reaction. She might as well have been an animal, snarling defiance at captors who didn't understand and didn't care.

The sense of deprivation, of monotony without end was the worst. She was prepared for interrogation, for conflict. But there was nobody to challenge her. Just a system which ordered her life and went on regardless if she chose to disobey. She had lost count of time. She had stopped wondering whether her parents were trying to help her, get a lawyer, or insist on a trial. She had hated the thought of them, despised them for so many years; but for a long time now she had hoped they might help her. That hope had withered too. She cried a lot, sniffling and weeping, denied even the comfort of a handkerchief, so that her sleeves were wet and slimed from wiping her running nose. She had no looking glass, no make-up. Only a blunt-edged comb, a cake of harsh soap and a towel. She had forgotten how she used to look.

When the door to her cell opened she was suddenly shaking with fear. The routine had been broken.

Franco Modena stood looking at her. The big uniformed figure of the woman guard loomed behind him, making him look shorter and slighter than he really was. He advanced a few steps inside. ‘How are you, Elsa?'

She paused for a moment, focusing on him. She had a tiger's heart and it came to her rescue then. ‘What the fuck do you want?' Suddenly she felt better. Energy returned and her sallow face flooded with colour.

Modena said mildly, ‘I've come to take you out of here. We're going to take a trip.'

He spoke softly to the woman behind him. She came in with Elsa's jacket in her hand. ‘Put this on,' she said.

The girl didn't argue. She struggled into the coat which hung loosely on her.

‘Come on.'

Obediently, Elsa followed the guard outside. Fear and hope competed. A trip … to court? A trial? No. No, an interrogation. She didn't mind that. She didn't mind being asked questions. It would be a relief if they hit her or hurt her.

She thought suddenly, they've got him! They've got that arrogant shit who did the killing and wouldn't sleep with me.

‘Hurry up,' the wardress said and gave her a slight push in the small of the back. She increased her pace.

They travelled by car. She could see out of the windows: normal life bustling past her, people jay-walking through the Rome traffic, the sun beating down, dust, smells of food and refuse in the air, the glimpse of landmarks that mocked her, reminding her of freedom.

‘It's not Venice,' Modena remarked. ‘But Rome is just as beautiful. Have you been here before?'

‘Yes,' she muttered, not meaning to answer. ‘Twice.'

‘With your family?'

She nodded. The word was emotive. She hated her parents. She hated everything they stood for. But the word ‘family' made her eyes sting.

They had been driving for almost an hour. She could tell, because she could see the watch on his wrist. They were leaving the city behind them, travelling along the sweep of the Appian Way. No trial. No interrogation either. Out into the countryside. But where? What was at the end of it for her? She said, ‘Open the window, I feel sick.'

The wardress was on the other side of her. She looked at Modena. He said, ‘You're only sick because you're afraid. We're nearly there.'

They had left the main highway. The road was bumpy, the countryside flat and desolate, with a few sparse vineyards that looked untended. And then she saw the place. There was a road leading up to it. It had been built a long time ago, when the thickness of the walls could withstand the siege engines of the Renaissance.

As the car approached, a massive door opened and they were inside the fortress. Modena got out. Elsa Valdorini stayed huddled tightly into the seat, her body refusing to move.

‘You've got to get out here,' he said.

The powerful woman gripped her and she was lifted out and set down on the ground. The walls rose round her like a cliff. There was no sign of life.

Modena said, ‘You don't know about this place, do you, Elsa?'

She didn't answer, but continued to stare around her.

‘It was built by the Sforza in 1480. They controlled the countryside round here for hundreds of miles. This was their headquarters when they went campaigning against the Borgias.'

‘Thanks for the history lesson,' she managed to jeer, but it wasn't convincing.

‘It was where they held their hostages,' Modena continued. ‘And their important prisoners. Nobody ever came out alive who was shut up here. And now it's been put to use again. This way.'

She followed him with the woman behind her. They went in through a side entrance. It was an amazing transformation. The inside of the shell had been made into a honeycomb of stairs leading to one landing of cells after another. The stair wells were heavily protected by steel mesh, fierce lights played overhead, and uniformed guards patrolled the landings.

Modena paused, spoke gently to her. ‘We'll go to the women's section. There are only half a dozen women in here.'

They climbed down a flight of steps. An official joined them and gave the girl a searching look, a look so coldly calculating that she shivered. And she heard him say in a quiet voice to Modena, ‘Is she coming to us, Signore?'

She didn't hear the answer. They were still going down. Down into the bowels of the dreadful place, with its reinforced walls painted a steely grey and the unblinking lights overhead. Franco Modena stopped in front of a row of metal doors. The upper part was a square of unbreakable glass. ‘Prisoners are observed all the time here,' he remarked. ‘The cameras are never switched off. And the guards keep a watch through the glass. They aren't allowed to speak to the prisoners or have any contact. They serve the food through that flap. Open the door, please.'

The man in uniform stepped forward, pressed an unseen mechanism and the door swung open.

Modena put his hand on her arm. ‘I want you to take a good look inside,' he said. ‘I want you to see for yourself.'

There was a canvas cot and a canvas chair. A small table was bolted to the floor. There was no window, only an extractor fan and ventilator. The light glared overhead in a protective steel cage. The walls were padded.

She couldn't move. Her limbs felt paralysed, and a scream was welling up and threatening to tear her to pieces. She felt his hand on her arm again, urging her to cross the threshhold into the cell. ‘No! No!' She thought she was shouting but it was a whimpering cry.

Modena drew her away from the open door. ‘Calm yourself,' he said quietly. ‘You're not going in there.'

She needed the woman's support to get her up the stairs and back onto the main floor. Modena showed her into a room that was simply furnished, with a table, several chairs, and a religious print on the wall. ‘Sit down, Elsa.' He stretched a little, and wandered round the room. She sat watching him, hands clenched on her shaking knees. He lit a cigarette, hesitated, and then offered her one. The wardress stood with her back leaning against the door.