Through Every Human Heart Read online

  ‘Shouldn’t we stay together? What if Miss Arbanisi’s already inside?’

  ‘I don’t think she is. The cars mean nothing to the girl. And we’re early. Relax. It’s going to be ok. When Miss Arbanisi comes, the girl will come out and wait with you. But you don’t even need to speak to her.’

  ‘What if the police come with her? I’d rather we stayed together. I don’t feel . . .’

  ‘No, you’re the lookout. You were always my lookout man, ok?’

  He held out his hand. Lazslo clasped it in the old way.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Apart from his own so very smooth hypocrisy . . .

  Lazslo was looking back toward the entrance, shading his eyes against the sun. ‘That lane’s too narrow. I was sure there was another one. I’m positive there was on the map. I’ve a bad feeling about this.’

  ‘Relax. We’re only the messengers, right? Twenty-four hours from now we’ll be on the plane home.’

  How impressive and sincere he sounded. Lazslo fell for it, managed a faint smile as he pushed his hair out of his eyes. His tongue showed between his lips. Another old familiar sign of anxiety. Would it all happen so easily? The British police were not fools. Miss Arbanisi might indeed be bringing them with her, despite her promises not to.

  ‘Come on, pretend you’re a tourist. Go sit at one of those benches and have a smoke. Count the hairs on the sparrows.’

  It was a joke from the old days, advice given by anyone to anyone else who was worried about anything, a confusion of bible verses about sparrows being valuable and the hairs on one’s head being numbered. Lazslo remembered, and smiled again.

  His own smile fading, Feliks watched him walk away towards the trees. What happened to you? he wondered. Damn Janek to hell for whatever he did to you.

  Despite his instructions, the girl had got out of the car. She was looking up at the ancient towers. There was a low parapet around the top of the nearest one, at least sixty feet above the ground. No guard rail.

  ‘Come, we’ll go inside,’ he said. ‘Lazslo is going to sit in the sun and have a quiet smoke till Miss Arbanisi arrives. Perhaps you could smile,’ he added. ‘The woman at the door is looking at us with great curiosity.’

  ‘Why do we have to go in?’

  He was so tempted to say, in a deep, menacing voice, ‘So that I may lure you to your death, and Miss Arbanisi also.’ But really, she had been through enough, and none of it her fault. In her world, so completely unlike Janek’s, moral choices still existed, with moral consequences. Quite possibly she had never even questioned this.

  ‘I am going to make her very rich and happy,’ he said. It was still possible. And the police might not come. Anything was possible.

  The custodian was a buxom woman with white hair struggling to free itself from a chignon. She told them they were just in time for the next tour, so they followed her broad rear up a narrow winding stair into a large empty room with high, mesh-covered windows. A group was waiting for them. Two men, two women, three bored-looking teenagers. One of the men was filming the wooden beams of the ceiling.

  The guide began her talk. Feliks watched the girl beside him. She was looking intently at the other people. Was she thinking of speaking to them?

  ‘Miss MacLeod. Dina,’ he said softly, ‘please trust me for one more hour. This is nearly over for you. All will be well.’

  ‘You wouldn’t let me go yesterday in case I told the police about you. What’s different now?’

  ‘When I have spoken to Miss Arbanisi, what happens to me is not so important. I have to give her something.’

  The guide was still talking, and the others followed her over to the far wall to examine something of interest.

  ‘So I can go straight to the police and tell them everything?’

  ‘If you want to. If you waited for just a few hours, that would be kind. You might consider that we did believe those men were hurting you, and that Lazslo wounded his assailant in self-defence.’

  Like a coiled toy from a box, the questions shot out again. Workmen? If not, who were they? Sent by whom? No one was supposed to know why he and Lazslo were here. Boris trusted no one, wanted no records, nothing written or taped. Nobody was meant to know.

  Leave it he told himself. There was no time now for this. All depended on the next half hour. All the Arbanisi woman had to do was make one phone call to the number he would give her. She would surely do that. She had nothing to lose. One simple message would then wing its way to Boris.

  He stared at an immense cobweb on the dusty stone window ledge. Am I the fly? Who is the spider?

  The guide and her followers were disappearing through a low doorway in the far corner of the room. He looked at the world outside. Long-legged sheep with blue paint on their rumps were feeding on lush grass. Small birds sat on the electricity wires. On the main road, a white car slowly turned into the lane.

  He crossed to the window at the other side of the room. There was a red BMW beside the other cars. He couldn’t see if there was anyone inside. Nor could he see Lazslo.

  ‘I suppose you have diplomatic immunity,’ the girl said.

  Did he? He wasn’t at all sure. He wasn’t sure of anything. Should he go out? Stay put? She turned away, as if to follow the tourists. He caught her by the wrist.

  ‘Let go of me.’

  ‘No, stay with me. Your friend is here, I think. A white Lexus, right?’

  ‘Irene?’ Her face suffused with relief.

  ‘We will go down now to meet her. Once you confirm to me that it is her, you do whatever you wish.’

  They waited in the small entrance way for a few minutes. At last there came the sound of a woman’s high heels clicking on the flagstones.

  ‘Irene! Oh, thank God!’

  The woman opened her arms to meet the hurtling figure. Feliks felt tension drain from him like grain from a sack. This was surely the real thing. Beautifully dressed, with a slender figure, hair the colour of first wheat. He let the embrace and the conversation go on for a time, delighted to hear Dina confirm what he’d told this woman, that he was no burglar, that he was in fact some kind of rescuer, but when she began to elaborate on events he interrupted.

  ‘Miss Arbanisi, as I said last night, my name is Feliks Albescu. First I’m instructed to give you something to establish that what I say is trustworthy.’

  He took a small brown leather box out of his pocket.

  ‘What’s this?

  ‘Please.’

  The woman stared at its contents.

  ‘How did you get this?’

  ‘You recognise it?’

  ‘Of course.’ She slipped the ring onto her finger. The huge emerald seemed to flash fire even in the dim light inside the entrance room. Her fingernails, he noted, were beautifully manicured.

  ‘Is that real?’

  ‘If it’s what I think it is,’ she held out her hand for Dina to see. ‘How did you get this? Where did it come from?’ she asked him.

  ‘Miss Arbanisi, I am here to offer you your proper inheritance. There is much at home that is rightfully yours if you are willing to claim it.’

  It sounded like something memorised, which it exactly was.

  ‘My inheritance?’

  He went on with his script, ‘Miss Arbanisi, you will be aware that our country has almost four years ago rejected Communism. The president and people now wish to offer your family those titles and lands which your great-grandfather was forced to renounce. The Archduchess Annamaria’s ring is a token of goodwill. You are to keep it, whatever you . . .’

  He broke off.

  ‘Hey, what’re you . . .’ the girl protested as he pushed her behind him.

  Miss Arbanisi turned to address the approaching figure, ‘Charles, I was right. Look at this! He is from the Old Country . . .’

  ‘Stop there!’ Feliks raised one hand, kept the other behind him to keep the girl back.

  ‘Oh, this is a friend of Dina’s,’ Miss Arbanisi said.

  �
��Look here, old boy, calm down. I’m harmless,’ the man said at the same time, taking a step backwards.

  Feliks looked from one to the other.

  ‘What?’ the girl was squeaking behind him.

  ‘This man is your friend?’ he turned to her.

  ‘Irene, what on earth are you . . .?’

  ‘But this is the man who attacked you.’

  ‘Well, not exactly,’ she began, ‘You sort of attacked him.’

  She was crazy. They were all crazy. He needed Lazslo to back him up. ‘Lazslo!’ he shouted. Again, louder. Nothing.

  ‘You. Whoever you are.’ He faced the blond man, ‘Tell Miss Arbanisi what happened yesterday. Tell her.’

  The man smiled, as if the whole situation simply amused him.

  ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s necessary, do you? People might get hurt. You don’t want that.’

  The world shifted, as smoothly as a piece of music changing key. It was the look in the fellow’s eyes, not the words, not even the tone of his voice. It seemed to Feliks that he had met this man not once before but many times. In a uniform or plain clothes, on the side of the powerful, against the side of righteousness, he was the man who didn’t care. The man who always had the last word, who would sleep soundly at night no matter what he had done. Reading Shakespeare, in his student days, Feliks had considered the playwright mistaken. In his experience, it was quite possible to read the heart in the face.

  ‘Irene, would you and Dina wait for us in the garden? Feliks and I need to have a little talk,’ the man said.

  Irene looked up from her hand. ‘Oh Charles, don’t be silly. Dina’s fine. She’s not hurt at all. He came to meet me, and I want to talk to him now.’

  ‘We can talk later, Miss Arbanisi,’ Feliks said. ‘Please do as he asks.’

  He studied the man’s clothing for a bulge, saw none. There might be a gun, nevertheless. Dina was staring at him. ‘Go,’ he implored her silently. ‘Don’t argue. Do what I say. Go.’

  He saw she was baffled, hesitant, as if waiting for the older woman to tell her what to do. He shaped the word, ‘Please’, begging her to trust him without a reason, to be sensible for once, to recognise that something important was happening.

  ‘Irene, let’s go. Let them have their talk,’ she said.

  Outnumbered, Miss Arbanisi went reluctantly out with her into the sunlight.

  ‘You’re not actually a friend of hers?’ Feliks said.

  ‘Of course not.’

  He was relieved. But who was he then, and where the hell was Lazslo?

  ‘Who are you working for?’ he asked.

  ‘Who do you think?’ the blond man smiled again.

  Clearly a man who liked to show off his fine white teeth. American? The Americans were famous for their fine dentistry. He sounded English. He could be anything. He could be the devil incarnate.

  ‘There are people above,’ Feliks said. ‘If we remain here, they may easily descend and interrupt us.’

  ‘Oh well, we can’t have that, can we? We’d better find ourselves a nice private corner.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Dina looked round the courtyard. One car that hadn’t been there before. The driver was leaning against the boot, talking on his phone, paying no attention to them at all.

  ‘Irene? Who is that? He told me he was fixing the washing machine. How do you know him?’

  Irene was holding the ring up to the light. It sparkled magnificently.

  ‘Irene, who is he?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘And why on earth did you say he was a friend of mine?’

  ‘Well, I didn’t know it was meant to be a secret. He was very worried about you. I think this is genuine. It’s much bigger in real life than it looks in the painting. It’s almost indecent.’

  ‘What painting?’

  ‘You know, sweetie, you might have mentioned him before now. Where did you find him?’

  ‘I didn’t. He was in the flat when . . .’

  ‘Don’t worry, I’m not jealous. He’s very concerned about you, you lucky girl. I suspect he’s giving that horrid man a real talking-to. I just hope that’s all he does.’

  ‘Irene,’ Dina began, through gritted teeth, repressing the desire to scream, ‘You’re not listening. I’ve only seen him once in my life. And it was a real fight, Irene, the other man got stabbed – ’

  ‘Oh, don’t flap, Dina. The police told me about it. I know it was an accident. He told me all about it on the phone last night. But he didn’t mention this.’

  The ring, the whole ring, nothing but the bloody ring! She wanted to snatch it off Irene’s hand. Which he? What phone call? It was too much. The sun was in her face, high and blinding.

  ‘I know, it’s very beautiful, Irene, but something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong here. I think we . . . could we just get in your car and – ’

  ‘Don’t paw at me, Dina. You don’t understand. I’ve dreamed all my life about going back. My father died talking about it. Now it’s all starting to come true.’ She held up her hand. ‘Look at it, sweetie. It’s the Sisi Emerald. It was a gift from the young Empress Elizabeth to the Archduchess. It’s absolutely priceless.’ Her eyes narrowed as she looked back at the tower. ‘This is ridiculous. I know he was upset, especially at the idea that you might have been involved in the burglary, but they should have finished their little squabble by now.’

  Dina watched Irene check the back of her hair, then step carefully across the grass towards the entrance door. Involved? What was she talking about? Not one word of apology, or sympathy, or concern. She didn’t know whether to weep, laugh, scream or all three.

  Something glinted in the grass beneath her feet. Car keys. Bending down she recognised the tag. These keys belonged to Lazlso’s car. She looked around. It was still where it had been. Irene had parked the Lexus at the far side where there was some shade under the beech trees. No sign of Lazslo.

  The car was less than twenty feet away. She had the keys. She didn’t have to stay a minute longer, didn’t have to be here in the middle of all this insanity. It was nothing to do with her any more. Hadn’t the ugly one said so himself? Why should she care what happened to him?

  ‘Why is he so rude all the time?’ she’d asked Lazslo. They were in the queue in the chemist’s, and Lazslo was looking at his watch,

  ‘He hates everyone,’ Lazslo had answered. ‘Women especially.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘A woman ruined his life.’

  He paid for her purchases and they went outside. She asked to go into another shop to buy underwear and a new blouse. He stood beside her as she searched the rails, trying to make suggestions as to what she might like.

  ‘What did she do to him, this woman?’ she asked, trying to sound casual.

  ‘Nothing. She died because of him. He knew it was his fault. So then he got drunk, always the big drinker, you know? But this time he crashed the car. He was broken everywhere,’ Lazslo gestured up and down his own body. ‘The face, you see that yourself. We thought he was dead, but in fact he ran away. In fact, he’s a complete kastrat.’

  ‘A what?’

  His face went pink.

  ‘I mean, he went to be a priest.’

  She didn’t think that was what the word meant. But maybe it didn’t mean what she thought it meant. She stared at the display of silver bangles and rings in a locked glass cabinet. When the bangles lost their excitement, she turned her attention to the shoes next to them. Expensive brands and not her style, but there were some sandals, reduced. She grasped the first pair of size fours, tried them and held them up for approval. He made no objection. Again he paid for everything, in cash.

  But even if that part of his story was true . . . he might be wrong about the hatred thing. He’d been all right when they were drinking tea during the night. He had stepped in front of her, when the blond man arrived, as if he wanted to protect her. And such intensity when he’d pleaded silently to her to leave. None of th
at felt like hatred.

  Not that she cared what happened to any of them, but just thinking objectively, she decided, it probably wasn’t as simple as Lazslo thought It was more like self-hatred, with a lot of misery mixed in. She’d seen some of her father’s patients react that way – farm workers with injuries from machinery, or lobster fishermen out on their own who’d been careless in bad weather. In Aberdeen she’d nursed one young man who’d hurt himself badly, lost all his left-hand fingers on a rig in Angola. Of course it turned out he’d been left-handed. He’d cursed all day, but he’d been seen crying in the night.

  The two German families were coming out of the tower. Down at the end of the lane, more cars were arriving. A woman driving the first one, with a man on the passenger side. And behind it, unmistakeably, a police car.

  Walking, running, Dina reached and crossed the entrance room, saw no one on the first floor and ran up the first spiral staircase, only to be blocked by Irene.

  ‘Oh Dina, get out of the way . . .’

  ‘The police are here!’

  ‘The police? How the hell did they . . .? Oh, do move over, Dina!’

  She pushed past.

  Dina leaned against the wall for a moment or two, recognised that she had no clue why she was doing this, decided to go on, and climbed up the next short flight. There was no one on the second floor either. Was there another way out? The next set of stairs was narrower and longer. She ducked through a low doorway, finding herself on the parapet.

  The wall was waist high. No handrail. She edged cautiously round the corner.

  Feliks and the other man were fighting, locked together.

  ‘The police are here!’ she yelled. ‘Stop it!’

  But they had heard, for the knot untangled, and they fell apart. Flushed, dishevelled, Feliks turned.

  ‘They’re here! The police!’ she shouted at him.

  He didn’t seem to understand. But the fair-haired man did. He ducked, swung at Feliks and pushed past towards her. Feliks lunged, trying to pull him back.

  Move, her brain said, but there was nowhere to go. Whirl, rush, tumbling, and something hard smacking the breath out of her, she was off her feet, sliding down something rigid and hot, pain in the back of her head, scrabbling for something to hold. At last her shoes caught, held against something . . .