I dropped to one knee beside my grandfather. ‘Are you all right?’
‘There will be another,’ he said calmly.
‘Hear that, Sean?’ I called.
‘I’ll cover you,’ came the reply in a voice like ice-water. ‘Roust him out.’
Marco came through the french windows in a hurry, the Walther in his hand and a shotgun blasted from the bushes over to my right, too far away to do any damage. You have to be close with those things. Marco dropped from view and I took a running jump into the greenery.
I landed badly, rolled over twice and came up about six feet away from number two. He was clutching a sawn-off shotgun in both hands, the lupara, traditional weapon used in a Mafia ritual killing.
I took one hell of a chance, simply because it seemed like a good idea to keep him in one piece to talk, and
fired as I came up, catching him in the left arm. He screamed and dropped the lupara. Not that it did much good. As he straightened and backed away, Burke shot him between the eyes from the terrace.
He looked about seventeen, a boy trying to make a name for himself, to gain respect-the kind Mafia often used for this kind of work. The other was a different breed, a real pro from the look of him, with hard, bitter eyes fixed in death.
My grandfather pushed the jacket aside with his stick and said to Marco, ‘You told me he could use a gun. Look at that.’
I’d shot him three times in the heart, the holes cover-ing no more than the width of two fingers between them. There was very little blood. I could hear the mastiffs barking and the guards arrived as I reloaded and slipped the Smith and Wesson back into its holster.
‘How did they get in?’
The old man frowned and turned to Marco. ‘How about that? You told me this place was impregnable.’
Marco motioned to the guards without a word and they went off in a hurry, dogs and all. I stirred the man on the ground with my foot.
‘So, they’re still trying?’
‘Not for much longer,’ he said grimly. ‘I can assure you. All bills will be paid. I owe it to your mother.’
I was shaken, but I turned to Burke. ‘That’s Mafia for you. Just one big happy family. Will there be any trouble over these two?’
My grandfather shook his head. ‘I’ll have the police come and take them away.’
‘As simple as that?’
‘But of course. It would, however, be wiser if you were to leave before they get here.’
He called to Marco, who was rooting around out there in the garden somewhere, to send the Mercedes round, then took me by the arm and walked a little way off.
‘If you could play the piano like you can shoot, Stacey…’
‘A shame, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘But my mother was right about one thing. We all have a talent for something.’
He sighed. ‘Go with God, boy. Come and see me when you get back from the Cammarata, eh?’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘I’ll expect you.’ He turned and held out his hand. ‘Colonel, my thanks.’
Later, after we had passed through the gates, Burke lit another cigarette and when the match flared I saw sweat on his face. I wondered if he had been afraid, but that didn’t seem possible.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
At first I thought I wasn’t going to get a reply and then it came, delivered with some bitterness. ‘Christ knows what they did to you in that place you were in, but it must have been bad.’
He was at last facing the fact that I had changed- really changed, which suited me perfectly. I sat there looking out to sea, thinking, not of what had just happened at the villa, but of Karl Hoffer and the Honourable Joanna and Serafino Lentini, the great lover who desired her so much that he insisted on keep-ing her just for himself. Serafino, who had lost his manhood, according to my grandfather, under police torture was incapable of the physical act of love.