I was suddenly in a cold sweat of panic. It was as though he were fingering a moustache and making a diagnosis, as though he were saying,’/ think we must operate to-day.’ A hand seemed to touch my leg, caressing it — the leg that wasn’t there. Shirer was dissolving into Sansevino before my eyes. I tried to fight back my sudden panic. This is Shirer, I kept telling myself — Walter Shirer, the man who escaped with Reece. You saw Sansevino dead at his desk with a bullet through his head. I could feel my finger-nails digging into the flesh of my palms and then it was Walter Shirer again and he was coming down the steps. He hadn’t seen me. I tried to go forward to meet him, but somehow I was held rooted to the spot. He vanished behind the bulk of the taxi. ‘Albergo Nazionale.’ The voice was crisp and sibilant and I felt fear catching hold of me again. Shirer hadn’t talked like that surely?
The door of the taxi closed. There was the sound of a gear engaging and then the glossy cellulose-finished metal of it slid away from me and I was staring at a fast-diminishing speck of red.
I passed my hand over my face. It was cold and clammy with sweat. Was I going mad or was I just drunk? Had that only been Shirer or… I shook myself, trying to get a grip on my thoughts. I’d been standing over the exhaust, that was all that had happened. I was tired and I’d breathed in some of the exhaust fumes. My sound leg felt weak at the knee. I was feeling sick and dizzy, too.
I turned and walked slowly down the Corso towards the Piazza Oberdan. The night air gradually cleared my brain. But I couldn’t get rid of the mental picture of Shirer standing at the top of those steps looking down at me, looking down at me and stroking his upper lip with the tips of his fingers. It had been the same gesture. I’d only to think of it to see the blasted little swine leaning over my bed fingering that dirty smudge of a moustache. Of course without that moustache the two would have looked very similar. It was Shirer I’d been introduced to and Shirer who’d come out of Number Twenty-two. It was my damned imagination, that was all.
Reece was waiting for me in the entrance hall when I reached the hotel. I didn’t even notice him until he caught me by the arm at the foot of the stairs. ‘What happened?’ he asked, peering at me.
‘Nothing,’ I snapped and shook his hand off my arm.
He gave me an odd look. I suppose he thought I’d drunk too much. ‘What did Sismondi say?’ he asked. ‘What did you find out?’
‘I didn’t find out anything,’ I answered. ‘I didn’t get a chance to talk to him alone.’
‘Well, what was your impression? Do you think he knows where Tucek is?’
‘I tell you, I didn’t get a chance to talk to him. Now leave me alone. I’m going to bed.’
He caught me by the shoulder then and spun me round. ‘I don’t believe you ever went to Sismondi’s place.’
‘You can believe what you damn’ well like,’ I answered.
I tried to shake myself free, but he had hold of my shoulder in a grip of iron. His eyes were narrowed and angry. ‘Do you realise what that poor kid’s going through?’ he hissed. ‘By God if this wasn’t a hotel I’d thrash the life out of you.’ He let me go then and I stumbled up the stairs to my room.
I didn’t get much sleep that night. Whenever I dozed off the figures of Shirer and Sansevino kept appearing and then merging and changing shape as though in a trick mirror. I’d be running through Milan in a sweat of fear with first one and then the other materialising from the crowd, appearing in the lighted doorways of buildings or seizing hold of my arm in the street. Then I’d be awake in a clammy sweat with my heart racing and I’d begin thinking over the events of the evening until I fell asleep and started dreaming again.
I have a horror of going mad — really mad, not just sent to hospital for treatment. And that night I thought I really was going round the bend. My mind had become a distorting mirror to the retina of my memory and the strange coincidence of that meeting with Shirer became magnified into something so frightening that my hair literally crawled on my scalp when I thought about it.
I got up with the first light of day and had a bath. I felt better then, more relaxed and I propped myself up in bed and read a book. I must have dozed off after a time for the next thing I knew I was being called. My mind felt clear and reasonable. I went down and ate a hearty breakfast. Shafts of warm sunshine streamed through the tall windows. I steered my mind clear of the previous night. I’d obviously been drunk. I concentrated all my energies on the work that had to be done. I could see Sismondi again that evening.
When I had finished my breakfast I went straight up to my room and began a long session of telephoning. I had the window on to the balcony open and the sun lay quite warm across the table at which I was seated. A maid came in and made the bed, managing, like most Italian servants, to make me conscious of her sex as she moved about the room.
I was about halfway through my list of contacts and had just replaced the receiver after completing a call when the clerk at the reception desk came through. ‘A lady to see you, Signer Farrell.’
I thought of the scene with Reece the previous night and my heart sank.
‘Did she give you her name?‘I asked.
‘No, signore. She will not give me her name.’
I suppose she’d been afraid I wouldn’t see her if she said who she was. ‘All right. I’ll come down.’ I replaced the receiver and got to my feet. Her arrival had broken the spell of my concentration on work and I found myself thinking again of the events of the night before. The sunlight seemed suddenly cold. There was a slight breeze blowing on to the table and ruffling the papers that spilled across it from the open mouth of my briefcase. I shut the windows and then went out down the corridor to the main stairs, mentally bracing myself to face Tucek’s daughter.
She wasn’t in the entrance hall and I went over to the reception desk. The clerk gave me an oily smile. ‘She is gone to the bar, Signor Farrell.’ I turned and went up the stairs again.
But it wasn’t Hilda Tucek who was waiting for me in the bar. It was the girl I’d met at Sismondi’s flat — the Contessa Valle. She was dressed in a black coat and skirt with a fur cape draped round her shoulders. Her black hair was drawn tight back from a central parting and it gleamed in the sunlight. Her oval face was pale by comparison and the only spot of colour was a blood-red carnation pinned above her left breast, the colour exactly matching the shade of her lips. She still looked like a painting by one of the early masters, but in the morning sunlight her madonna features seemed to have a touch of the devil in them.
‘Good morning, signore.’ Her voice was soft like a caress. The lazy smile she gave me made me think of a cat that has found a bowl of cream. She gave me her hand. I bent and touched the warm flesh with my lips, and all the time I knew her green eyes were watching me. ‘I hope you do not mind my coming to see you, like this?’
‘I’m delighted,’ I murmured.
‘I wait for you in the bar because I think perhaps you need a drink — after what happen last night.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I could do with a drink. What will you have?’
‘It is a little early for me. But to keep you company I will have a creme de menthe.’