But I didn’t want to get into that right then. “Let’s book in at Casa Nico for another night,” I said. “We might as well get an early start tomorrow and shoot straight back to Antwerp in a oner,” I said. “We don’t have to eat there,” I added hastily. “Sestri Levante looked like it might have a few decent restaurants.”
Richard scowled. “So why don’t we go the whole hog and book in at a decent hotel too?”
“I’d like to stay up here, keep an eye on the place, see if there are any more comings and goings,” I told him. “You can go down to Sestri and potter round the shops if you want.”
The scowl deepened. “I’m not some bloody bimbo,” he complained. “If you’re waiting here, I’ll keep you company.”
It was a long afternoon. I finished the thriller and Richard started it. We played I Spy. We played Bonaparte. We played “I went to the doctor’s with…” right through the alphabet. The only break was when I nipped back to the Casa Nico to book us a room for the night. I was about to give in to Richard’s pleas to call it a day when there was movement. An Alfa-Romeo sports saloon shot out of the drive heading up the valley. Even at the speed it was traveling, I recognised the bodyguard behind the wheel. “Move it,” I told Richard. He pulled the BMW round in a tight arc and shot after the Alfa.
We didn’t have far to go. A few miles up the road was a bar whose owner could have taught Nico a thing or two. Even from our slow cruise past, it was obvious that Bar Bargonasco made Nico’s look like a funeral parlor. The music was loud and cheerful, the car park didn’t look like an apprentice scrapyard and there were more than six people in there. “Pull up round the corner,” I said.
When the car stopped, I opened the door. “Where are you going?” Richard said, panic in his eyes.
“I’m going to get into that villa one way or another. If I can’t do it Dennis O’Brien style, I’m going to do it Kate Brannigan style. I’m going to chat up the bodyguard.” I shut the car door and took off the shirt I was wearing over the cotton vest that was tucked into my jeans. As I was stuffing the shirt into my handbag, Richard jumped out of the driver’s seat.
“You’re out of your mind,” he yelled at me. “Have you seen the size of that guy?”
“That’s the whole point. He’s obviously been hired for his size, not his brains. He probably keeps them in his trousers, which gives me a head start.”
“You’ll never get his keys off him,” Richard exploded. “For fuck’s sake, Kate. This is madness.”
“I’m not planning on getting his keys off him. I’m planning on getting him to take me home with him,” I said, starting off toward the bar.
Richard caught up with me two steps farther on and grabbed my arm. “No way,” he shouted.
Mistake, really. In one short, sharp move, I freed myself and left Richard white-faced and clutching his wrist. “Never, never grab me like that,” I said softly. “You don’t own me, Richard, and you don’t tell me what to do.”
For a long moment, we stood in a silent Mexican standoff. “I love you, you silly bitch,” Richard finally said. “If you want to go off and get yourself killed, you’ll have to knock me out first.”
“I’ll do it if I have to. You better believe me. This is my job, Richard. I know what I’m doing.”
“You’d fuck that gorilla because you think it’ll help you nail some mafioso?”
I snorted. “Is that what this is about? Sexual jealousy? What do you think I am, Richard? A tart? I never said I was going to fuck the guy. If he thinks that’s on the agenda, that’ll be his first mistake.”
“You think you can sort out a fucking monster like that with a bit of Thai boxing? Brannigan, you’re off your head!” Richard was scarlet by now, his hands bunched into fists by his side.
I was inches away from completely losing control, but I had enough sense left not to flatten him. That would be one move that our relationship wouldn’t survive. “Trust me, Richard,” I said quietly. “I know what I’m doing.”
He laughed bitterly. “Fine,” he spat at me. “Treat me like an idiot. I’m used to it, after all. That’s what you all think I am anyway, isn’t it? Richard the wimp, Richard the pillock, Richard the doormat, Richard the wanker, Richard who lets Kate do his thinking for him, Richard the limp dick who can’t be trusted to do the simplest of jobs without ending up in the nick,” he ranted.
“Nobody thinks you’re a wimp. I don’t think you’re a wanker, or any of the other things,” I shouted back at him. “What happened to you with the car could have happened just as easily to me.”
“Oh no, it couldn’t,” he screamed back at me. “Clever clogs Brannigan would have phoned the police as soon as she found the car. Clever clogs Brannigan would have checked the car to see if there was anything in it there shouldn’t have been. Clever clogs Brannigan and the girls would never have got themselves banged up. Because the girls are smart, and I’m just a fucking stupid arsehole man that gets put up with because he’s marginally more fun than a vibrator.” He stopped suddenly, out of steam.
“I love you, Richard,” I said quietly. It’s not an expression I’m given to, but extreme circumstances demand extreme responses.
“Bollocks,” he shouted. “I’m a fucking convenience. You don’t know what love is. You never let anyone close enough. It’s all a fucking game to you, Brannigan. Like your fucking job. It’s all a game. Nothing ever gets you in here,” he added, thumping his chest like an opera buffa tenor.
He looked so ridiculous, I couldn’t help a smile twitching at the corners of my mouth. “This isn’t the time for this,” I said, trying to make my amusement look like conciliation. “I’d no idea you felt this bad about what happened, and it’s important that we sort it out. But we’re both tired, we’re both under a lot of pressure. Let’s leave it till we get home, okay? Now, let me do what I’ve got to do. I’ll see you back at Casa Nico later, okay?“
Richard shook his head. “You really are a piece of work, Brannigan. You think you can just sweep all this aside like that? Forget it. You can go back to Casa fucking Nico if you want. But I won’t be there.”
He turned on his heel and stormed back to the car. As he opened the door, he said, “You coming?”
I shook my head. He slammed the car door behind him, swung the car round and headed back down the valley. I watched him go, my stomach feeling hollow, my eyes suddenly swimming with tears. Impatiently, I blinked them away. I tried to convince myself that Richard would be back at Casa Nico once he’d calmed down.
In the meantime, I had work to do. Besides, now I needed a lift back down the valley.
18
NO WOMAN IS A HEROINE TO HER DENTIST. ALONG WITH MY phobia about tunnels goes my paralyzing fear of needles and drills. As a result, I knew I wasn’t going to have to rely on anything as crude as physical strength to beat the bodyguard. If Richard hadn’t pissed me off so much, I’d have explained it to him. But Watsons who scream at their Holmeses don’t get the inside track on methodology.
Picking up the bodyguard was a doddle. Any man who spends as much time as he obviously did on keeping his body in peak condition has to have a streak of vanity a mile wide. He fully expected that if an attractive foreign woman walked into a bar where he was drinking, he’d be the one she’d inevitably be drawn to. And in a country where the native women are so sexually constrained by religion, it’s equally inevitable that foreign women who walk into bars alone and with bare shoulders must be whores. My target thought it was his lucky night as soon as I settled on the bar stool next to him and smiled as I ordered a Peroni.
On the short walk to the bar, I’d come up with the cover story that I was a professional photographer, in Italy to take pictures for a coffee-table book of Italian church bell towers.