Daggers and Men's Smiles (33 page)

“I know,” said the calm, detached voice at the other end. “Bella just told me.” There was a click as the line went dead. She may not have been sure a minute earlier, but now she had her answer. Hands trembling, Sydney made another call, this time to Giulia's castello, leaving a message on the answer-phone.

“Giulia, it's Sydney. I'm on my way to your place. Ed Moretti just phoned and asked questions about Monty Lord. It's Monty, Giulia — Monty killed Gil and Toni. I just phoned him, told him what I knew, and that I would stop him. But I'll be safe at your place. Be careful, Giulia. Be careful.”

Sydney hung up and made one more call.

“Taxi — yes, right away. To the tower on Icart point.” She told the driver where she was, and went to wait by the door.

Monty Lord looked at the body of Bella Alfieri, lying on the floor of the trailer.
So much for complete devotion
, he mused. Without him, her life would have been nothing, and yet she came bursting in the door, pleading with him to give himself up! “They are talking to Mario now. It's gone too far, Monty — I'm scared.” The sight of her crying disgusted him, but he wouldn't have touched her if she hadn't turned back to the door and said, “I'm going to them, Monty, telling them how I helped you. I'm doing it for your sake, just like I helped you, for your sake.”

It gave him no choice but to stop her. He got up and went around his desk, smiling, his arms extended, and she walked right into them. Holding her close — she was so tiny against him — he removed the knife from his pocket and she never felt a thing, of that he was sure. Not like Ensor — who would have thought that bloated lecher would have so much fight in him!

Pity about Toni, because anyone who made the Vannonis suffer was a prince in his books. But Donatella was being difficult: first of all, he had no desire to sleep with her, and second of all, she was asking questions. It was time to deal with her because she was beginning to make noises about the script changes, and who should he bump into on the terrace but Toni, the tomcat. He'd pulled his knife, and Toni had taken fright and switched on one of the film lights. “What the hell are you doing, Monty?” he asked, relieved, all sunshine and smiles, and then he'd seen the knife, and that was it. Too much of a risk. Couldn't have him saying over rolls and coffee the next morning, “Guess who I bumped into on the terrace last night carrying a knife?”

Monty Lord checked out of the window of the trailer, stepped outside and locked the door behind him. This was the tricky part, crossing the open space between the trailer and the motorbike he kept among all the other motorbikes and bicycles in the courtyard behind the manor. He'd dealt with the problem of security guards in the area by making a quick call, telling the head of security to move all his men to the front of the manor.

Walking unhurriedly, as though he hadn't a care in the world, Monty Lord made his way through the bikes to his Moto Guzzi. There was no sign of any security guards, and fortunately, no sign of actors or crew. No one was standing around in the drizzle for a chat or a smoke.

Not that it mattered now.
Almost over, Stefano, almost over
, he told himself. Just stop this crazy red-headed babe from derailing
Rastrellamento
, and then off to the airport, and on to Florence. He'd have to settle for one Vannoni, instead of two.

Rastrellamento
was
his
masterpiece, not Ensor's, his show and tell. What did Ensor's wife care about that abusive son of a bitch of a husband, anyway? This was probably more about money than anything else, but he couldn't risk it. It wasn't about love — not that he'd ever felt love himself. But then, he'd never looked for it, not after learning the truth. Not after learning the price paid by Sylvia and Stefan.

Monty Lord opened the throttle on his Moto Guzzi and let it rip, almost immediately cutting it back again. No need to rush — it wasn't far. Nothing was far on this island. He knew where she'd be holed up — hell, it was so obvious she might as well have told him. The cop had no idea where he was headed, so it was unlikely there'd be a reception committee waiting for him. Ideally, the marchese should have been his first target, anyway, and it now looked as if he was going to have his wish.

His physical skills had been useful when setting up his alibi for what was intended to be his first strike, Donatella's death. He could move through dense traffic like a shark cutting a shoal in heavy seas, travelling at speeds no car could maintain in similar circumstances. That was how he'd moved between Rome and Florence, using the skill and nerve required in his career as a stuntman. Yet many of the stunts he used to perform required limited skills, relying more on nerves of ice and what the Latins called
cojones
. He had both, and they had come in very useful, even when he transferred to a more respectable area of the profession. Anyone involved with the financing of movies was well advised to have both guts and balls.

Guts and balls: he'd done some stunt flying in his early days, and landing on the darkened runway was not as difficult as he'd feared. Besides, there were always some lights still on, and he'd made careful note of their position on previous trips. With the airport closed there was no danger of collision with other planes, and he had the place to himself. You needed
cojones
, but you also needed luck, and whoever left the keys in the door of the storage room for the safety jackets added that ingredient to his undertaking. On an earlier visit he was waiting for the arrival of the new actor taking the role of the priest, went to the toilets, and there they were. He was in and out before you could say
vendetta
, the jacket's fluorescent lime green concealed under his own jacket.

And he had needed it. The only hairy moment had been when he saw someone — presumably airport security — in the doorway of the building closest to where the small private planes were parked. With a confidence born of the years following his quest for the truth, he waved and sauntered on toward the club building, round the corner, and out of sight. Then he ran across the field beyond the airport property, cutting across through a garage and into the car park of the Happy Landings Hotel, where he had left his Moto Guzzi. The manor was only about five minutes away, and the roads were deserted at that hour.

A fine plan it had been, using legitimate business as cover, only to be thwarted by Toni Albarosa's latest amatory exploit. He had returned to the airport, which was part of his original plan, left his bike again at the hotel, cut across to where he had left his plane, dumped the jacket, re-entered, and checked in through customs as soon as the airport opened. Only the flight tower would know he had not landed when he said, and here again he had been lucky. At nine o'clock the air was full of Trislanders and Britton-Normans and sexy little private jets jostling for a landing slot.

So she was going to be where she was safe, was she. Silly bitch. The world was going to see
Rastrellamento
, and nothing was going to stop
Il Ragno
now.

The rain was coming down steadily by the time Sydney arrived at Icart Point. She paid the cab driver, pulled the hood of her anorak over her head, and jumped the gate. Running across the rough open field, heart pounding, she reached the door, unlocked it without difficulty, and locked it behind her.

Safe as houses. Safe as you could possibly be in this fortress. She awoke the vibrant colours of Giulia's castello with a flick of the switch by the door, and pulled off her wet jacket. Across the room the answer-phone's light was flashing. She picked it up and heard her own voice, telling Giulia to be careful.

“What now?” she asked out loud.

“A good question. Want the answer?”

Sydney thought her already-shaky legs would give way beneath her. The breath left her body as though she had been punched.

Monty Lord was standing on the iron staircase. When she made a move toward the door he was on her in a flash, his hand like a vice on her arm.

“Oh my God. How did you get in?” she found the breath to stammer out.

“I climbed the wall, Rapunzel. Not up your pretty hair, but you'd be surprised how many footholds you can find on even a Martello tower, if you're good at that kind of thing. And I am. And then in the window I came, ready to greet you.”

Sydney looked at Monty Lord in horror. She had forgotten the width of the windows on the upper floor, never imagined for a moment that this man could even scale the sides of a Martello tower. With his customary black he was wearing a watch cap over his shaved head that altered his appearance entirely, making his eyes seem paler and more intense than usual. The eyes of a madman was the chilling thought that crossed Sydney's mind.

“You killed Gil.”

“Yes. With a different knife, because he wasn't family.”

“Why throw a dagger on to the patio?”

“Waste of one of my special daggers, I know, but I was hoping it would shut him up, even persuade him to leave the island. It didn't.”

Sydney moved slightly and his grip tightened on her arm.

“Don't try anything, Sydney. I have one dagger left, and I can have it out and into your beautiful bod before you know what's hit you.”

“Try what?” Anger was giving her courage. “
I
don't have a concealed weapon.”

“Don't you want to know what this is all about?”

“You're going to tell me.”

“I think you should know — I want you to know — hell, I want someone to know. I'm in no mood for sweet talk or listening to reason. Reason and I parted company a long time ago. Sit down, honey and don't try to tell me to give myself up and all that shit. Like Bella did.”

“Bella? Oh, dear God, not Bella.”

“Yes. Such a pity, stupid broad. But hey, Syd, anyone who stands in my way!”

At that moment the telephone rang. Sydney started, and in a flash Monty Lord had a dagger in his free hand and against her throat.

“Don't move.”

Across the room she heard the sound of the machine clicking as it recorded the message, and then she heard Ed Moretti's voice as it was played back.

“Pick up the phone next time it rings, Mr. Lord. We have to talk.”

“Ed!” She called out his name and Monty Lord lowered the knife from her throat.

“Ed? You're on first-name terms with the cop?”

“He's my lover. He'll be going crazy.” It was worth a try, and she had very little else at her disposal.

“You're a fast worker, baby — and I thought it might be Giulia! Revenge against that
bastardo
you married — I can understand that. Perhaps we could do a deal. When the phone goes, answer it.”

It rang again. Moving cautiously, Sydney walked over to the phone and picked it up.

“Ed, it's me.”

“Are you okay?”

“I'm okay. Ed, he's got a knife.”

“Put this on speaker-phone, Sydney, so Mr. Lord can hear me.”

She found the button on the phone, pressed it, and Ed Moretti's disembodied voice filled the room.

“Mr. Lord,
Rastrellamento
is almost finished, and I know Ms. Tremaine will not stand in the way of its release when she hears your story. You have done what you set out to do in making it and, in the end, even if you get away from here, you will be caught. Why not give yourself up now?”

“That, of course, is a possibility.” Monty Lord spoke coolly, as though he were giving serious thought to the matter. “Only one problem, Moretti. It's the logical thing to do, and I have lived without logic all my life. As an ending, it does not appeal to me. It lacks the grand gesture.”

“Then let Ms. Tremaine go. She's not part of your storyline.”

“Hey, don't blame me for that.” He sounded angry now. “She wrote herself into the script, and I don't like bit players directing the action. I must have control — what my parents did not have in their brief lives. I've got to hand it to you, you managed to find out in a short time what it took me years to discover. Just how much do you know?”

Sydney Tremaine listened in silence while Ed Moretti explained, as engrossed in the narrative as her captor.

“I know that your mother was Sylvia Vannoni, the eldest daughter of the family, and that your father was a Slovene schoolteacher in the village of San Jacopo, where the Vannonis lived for centuries. That they fell in love, and used Sylvia's comings and goings to look after a British prisoner of war on their property to carry on their love affair, and that they were betrayed by the priest. That the Vannoni family set the schoolteacher up to be killed by the partisans, who also killed the Briton, who, presumably, happened to be on the scene. That Sylvia gave birth to you in secret, guarded and midwived by the family housekeeper, Luisa Scarpa. And that your mother set fire to the church where she had been betrayed, and killed herself there. That the Vannonis then left the area, to settle in Fiesole and Florence, taking many of the family retainers with them. What I don't know is how the Vannonis managed to get you out of Italy and into the States, completely hushing up that part of the story.”