The Malaspiga Exit (34 page)

‘No,' Katharine said, looking up at him. ‘He wasn't. He had nothing to do with it. I know that.'

‘How can you know?' That was Carpenter, taking up the questioning.

‘Because he told me and I believe him. He had no reason to risk everything by saving me. And Driver himself said he was innocent.'

‘What?' Raphael swung round on her. ‘What is this?'

She hadn't prepared the lie; it just came out. She felt very calm, and she folded her hands on her lap to steady them. No jury in the world would acquit Alessandro when Raphael had presented his case. There was too much circumstantial evidence. He had been over-optimistic. It wasn't enough to defend him, to maintain his innocence. She had to lie, or tell the truth and break her promise. Expose him, not as a racketeer in drugs, but as a dealer in forgeries, employing a master craftsman to fake works of art. He would never admit to it himself; he would take the chance of an acquittal, which she could see now was non-existent.

‘What did Driver say to you? What story is this?'

She didn't hesitate. ‘When he found me in the store-room. He said, “You thought it was Alessandro, didn't you? But he knows nothing about it. The arrogant bastard thinks he owns me—but I've fooled him. We've been making millions behind his back and he never suspected anything.” Those are his exact words. He hadn't any reason to lie. He was boasting about how clever he'd been.' It was a trick of memory that recalled every word Driver had spoken. It made the lie she inserted seem completely real.

‘You never mentioned this before,' Carpenter said. ‘When you told us what had happened at the Castle you never said anything about it …'

‘Of course she didn't,' Raphael snapped. ‘She's only just invented it! Don't you see she's lying? Now, listen to me, whatever your reasons. Whether you're in love with him, or trying to protect your family—I don't know and I don't care why you've made up this lie, but don't think you're deceiving either of us. Don't think you'll get away with it!'

‘It's the truth,' Katharine said.

Raphael stood over her, his face was ugly with rage and contempt. ‘It's a lie, a deliberate lie. Why didn't you tell us this before?'

‘I thought I had,' she said. ‘I was very shocked; I must have been confused and forgotten. But that's what Driver said to me and that's what I shall say in my evidence.' The Italian swung away from her, she heard him swear blasphemously.

‘Kate,' Carpenter pleaded. ‘Kate, don't do this. Malaspiga is guilty as hell. Okay, you have a reason for doing this. Maybe Raphael's right; you want to protect your family …' He hesitated and then went on. ‘Or you're in love with him. But he's a murderer. Okay, the old man said the others killed Firelli.
He
says Driver admitted it. But what about your brother—what about the addicts back home, dying of heroin? He's killed thousands of innocent people and got rich on it. For Christ's sake, you can't protect a man like that!'

‘If he was guilty I wouldn't protect him,' she said quietly. ‘But I know he isn't. He had nothing to do with the drugs. Driver said so.' She had grasped tightly on to the lie, and she kept on repeating it.

Driver had said nothing to exonerate Alessandro. Until he showed her the fake Giorgione, she had believed him to be the head of the organization. It distressed her to be to Carpenter and see him turn away from her, bewildered and disgusted. But the lie was only an extension of the fundamental truth. She held fast to that too, and kept her courage.

Raphael came back to her. He stuck both hands in his pockets and rocked slightly on his heels. ‘I wonder how long you'll maintain this fairy story in a court,' he said. ‘I think a good prosecuting counsel would expose you very quickly.'

‘If I give evidence at the trial,' Katharine said, ‘I shall say the same there as I've said now. I know you want my cousin convicted; I know you believe he's guilty, but I promise you, you're wrong.'

‘You are a Malaspiga!' he spat back at her. ‘You don't know the meaning of right or wrong! You're just the same as all your kind. This is useless,' he said to Carpenter. ‘She has been completely corrupted. It is hopeless to bring a case against him while an agent of the Narcotics Bureau insists on telling this pack of lies. I have no hope of getting him convicted! He would come out of the trial as a hero!'

There was silence for some moments. Katharine didn't move. Raphael went and sat behind his desk. He lit a cigarette.

‘Take her away,' he said. ‘Get her out of my office.' Katharine stood up, and Carpenter nodded towards the door. They went down in the lift and got into his car. He drove through the slow traffic, looking ahead, as if she wasn't there.

‘Well,' he said, as they approached the hotel, ‘I wish I could say I understood what you've done, but I don't. You've got him off the hook; there's nothing Raphael can do to him now. And that's what you wanted.'

‘There is a reason,' Katharine said; ‘but I can't tell you what it is. He is innocent; I promise you that.'

‘You lied,' Carpenter said. He didn't appear to have heard what she said. ‘I wouldn't have believed it. He got out on bail this afternoon; there was a smart lawyer waiting. As Raphael said, if he'd been an ordinary Italian citizen, he'd have stuck in jail for months and nobody would have given a damn. But there was so much political muscle being flexed about that bastard, Raphael couldn't hold him. He's out, so you can go right to him if you feel like it. Tell him what you've done.'

‘I shan't see him again,' Katharine said. ‘It wouldn't work. I'm going home; I'll see if I can get a flight tomorrow.'

The car stopped outside the hotel entrance.

‘I was going to ask you to marry me,' Carpenter said.

‘That wouldn't have worked either,' Katharine said. ‘But thank you, anyway.'

‘Don't thank me.' He turned and looked at her. His eyes were cold. ‘I had a different picture of you. I'll send a full report to Ben back home. From the Bureau's point of view, I suppose it's been a very successful operation. We've cleaned it up in New York and it's finished over here. But I'm sorry; I don't feel like pinning any medals on you.'

He leaned across and opened the door for her. She got out.

‘Goodbye, Frank.' He drove away without answering or looking back.

There was a flight from Pisa to Milan that connected with Paris. From Paris she could get a seat on a 727 to New York. It was a gruelling journey, but as the clerk in the ticket agency explained, it was a very busy season and all the direct flights from Rome to the States were fully booked. If she liked to wait a few days, he could find something better for her. But she didn't want to wait. She had left the hotel early that morning after a night when she woke several times to find she had been crying in her sleep. Alessandro was safe; a thought, so truly Italian that it surprised her, suggested that she had paid a debt of love.

When she told Carpenter that she was going home she knew it was the only thing to do. There was no future for her with Alessandro; he lived by a code where family pride transcended ordinary moral values. Having sacrificed her integrity to save him, she realized that this alone made it inevitable that they should separate.

She left the ticket agency with the flight tickets in her bag and began to walk, without purpose except to waste time. It was a magnificent morning, promising considerable heat later on; the sky was brilliant and cloudless. She found herself at the end of the Via Vecchio, and glanced up at the building where Raphael had his office. It all seemed to have taken place a long time ago; she looked at her hand, at the little gold signet ring on her finger, with the wreath and the spike, surmounted by the ducal coronet, and remembered how her childhood fears had made her hate it. It was a part of her which she had been unable to deny. But it had no place in the world to which she was returning. The real world, where she had been born and spent her life; the last weeks had been part of a dream, regressing into the past. She came out into the Piazza del Duomo; the great twelfth-century Cathedral reared up over the buildings in the square, above the crowds that thronged around it; its multicoloured marble and the rosetiled dome were brilliant in the sunshine. For six hundred years people had been sitting on its steps. There was a timeless quality in the scene which made her feel suspended.

This too was a dream, like the silver olive groves and the marble mountains at Carrara, the Castle of her ancestors standing guard over the town of Malaspiga. He had cheated and robbed without a scruple, to restore and preserve what progress had tried to take from him. She knew herself well enough to recognize that she could never live with that and keep her love for him or her respect for herself. She would love Malaspiga for the rest of her life, but she would never see him again.

A group of tourists, tall Scandinavians, shepherded by a woman, surged past her, festooned with cameras and hurrying toward the Cathedral. Katharine turned away and began to walk back; she didn't want to linger in the city. She had grown to love it, and the parting caused an extra pain.

She walked to her hotel, and as she came into the foyer there was a disquieting sense of
déja vu;
the clerk looked up at her and smiled and it was like the morning she received the Duchess Isabella's letter.

He waited for her expectantly, and she reminded herself that it was only to present the bill. He leaned towards her, and the smile was the same as on that other morning. ‘This was delivered for you,' he said. It was a long package wrapped in paper and sealed securely.

‘Is there a message?'

‘Nothing, signorina.'

‘Is my bill ready?'

‘I sent it upstairs to your room.'

In the lift she pulled at the tapes and began unwrapping the parcel. It was half undone when she reached her room and opened the door. Alessandro was sitting in the chair. He got up, but he didn't move towards her.

‘They told me you were leaving today,' he said.

‘Yes,' Katharine answered. ‘This afternoon. Please, Alessandro—I don't want to say goodbye.'

‘I thought you would do something silly like this,' he said. ‘Don't be angry with the reception clerk, I bribed him to let me in. The charge against me was formally withdrawn this morning. I understand that you were responsible. Why are you running away from me?'

‘I can't explain it,' she said. ‘You wouldn't understand.'

‘I understand everything about you,' he said quietly. ‘You're a part of myself. I knew what had happened at the Castle when I told you the truth. One should always tell lies to women; please finish opening your parcel.'

The wrapping came away and the parcel unrolled itself and hung down, the end curling over on the ground. The Giorgione Madonna nursed the Christ child at her breast, serene and majestic, guarded by a kneeling saint.

There were two big slashes right across the canvas.

‘I hope,' he said, ‘that you will accept it as a wedding present. I have decided to sell the real one.'

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1974 by Anthony Enterprises Ltd

Cover design by Mauricio Diaz

ISBN: 978-1-5040-3258-2

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