Stay Dead - страница 13

He dressed in a cool white linen shirt, cream cords, brown loafers; then he slipped on his gold ring with the lapis lazuli square set into it, added a Rolex and a couple of other items and looked in the mirror, running a hand through his thick, black and slightly too long hair to tame it into shape. He could almost pass for a Sicilian himself; his old mum Queenie had always called him her ‘little Italian’. He was powerfully built and tanned, with a piratical hook of a nose and deep, dark navy-blue eyes.

The heat was climbing and the sun was pouring molten lava down upon his bare head as he walked out into a perfect Sicilian day and got into his car. Max hated hats. He liked the sun in his eyes and the wind at his back. He started the engine and drove up the dusty track to the agreed meeting-place, passing tiny small-windowed white villas, uniform rows of vines, olive groves. Potato-shaped peasant women dressed in black were sitting outside their doors, lemon trees overhanging the walls of their houses, skinny dogs wandering free in the street.

He wound down the window and let the hot air blow through, thinking of Annie, who would probably be asleep right now in their villa up near Prospect on Barbados. It was a peaceful place, set above a thin crescent of white sandy beach, away from the luxury hotel complexes and shaded with palms and manchineel trees. They both loved it there. But this was more important. This would have to be addressed before it drove him stark staring mad.

The suspicions.

Had his wife betrayed him?

Everything had been fine until the woman called the Blue Parrot club in London and talked to Gary Tooley. Gary had relayed the news to him. Max hadn’t asked for any of this. But he had it. And ever since Gary had passed on the woman’s words, he’d been having sleepless nights, tormented days. He thought that it couldn’t be true, could not be possible. But… what if it was?

That nagged at him, wouldn’t let him rest. If it was true and not the ramblings of a drunkard or a fool or a crazed cow off her head on nose candy, then there would be big trouble and he was going to kill some cunt. But he could handle trouble. It was uncertainty that sent him mental.

He drove, trying to clear his mind, determined not to let the fury take hold again, not to let it all pile in on him and fog his brain. He drove past the lines of olive trees heavy with fruit, past thin goats and their kids, past plodding donkeys laden with hay coming back with their owners from the parched yellow fields.

Finally he reached the place she had chosen.

It was a disused amphitheatre, a crumbling old wreck well off the tourist trails, built by the Greeks or the Romans – he didn’t know which and he didn’t care. He got out of the car, hearing nothing but the silence of the hills and the mad chirruping of the crickets, seeing nothing but dust and heat-haze and the purple-sloped hugeness of Etna lowering over the scene. No car here, not yet.

He wasn’t early.

He looked at his watch.

He was on time.

A hard sigh escaped him. She wasn’t going to show today, either. He knew it. Swearing, the dust-swirling wind buffeting him, he strolled off toward the remains of the theatre, entering the sheltered boiler-room heat of the big sand-covered circular arena where once life and death had been played out for real. Max walked out to the centre, under the full super-heated blaze of the Sicilian sun, and looked around.

In the echoing silence he could imagine the ancient crowds up on the stands, howling for blood; huge lions imported from Africa and starved to make them even more ferocious running loose; gladiators in body armour and fearsomely crafted helmets and shields wielding maces and swords, battling it out with the big cats and each other.

That world was gone, but close your eyes and you could see it, taste it, almost hear it. He could still feel danger in this place, and bloodshed, and tragedy. It was so quiet here; eerie.

Good place to get rid of someone, he thought. No one ever came up here. It was the perfect spot to dispose of an enemy, leave them for the crows to dine out on.