‘Life,’ I said. ‘One big joke.’
I pushed her on her back and kissed her. She lay there staring up at me, her face smooth, the eyes quite blank, making no move to stop me as I unbuttoned her blouse and slipped a hand inside and cupped it around a breast. The nipple blossomed beneath my thumb and I noticed tiny beads of sweat on her brow.
I kissed them away and laughed. ‘There can be no doubt whatsoever that the trouser suit has been the greatest protector of a woman’s virtue since the chas-tity belt. Almost an impossible problem.’
‘But not quite,’ she said.
‘No, not quite.’
I kissed her again and this time her arms slid around my neck, pulling me close. She was really very desir-able, but so untrustworthy.
We came down to the village a different way on our return and I got a look into the walled garden at the rear of the wineshop from a couple of hundred feet up. A red Alfa Romeo was parked in the barn and two men were talking in the entrance. When I got the bino-culars out, I discovered it was Cerda and Marco Gagini.
Rosa had walked on ahead some little way, picking wild flowers. I didn’t say anything to her, or indeed to Cerda when we returned to the wineshop. Burke was on his feet again by then, looking and acting pretty foul. I put him into the rear seat for the return trip and Rosa sat beside me.
He controlled his temper for at least a hundred yards and then exploded. ‘Well, aren’t you going to tell me, for Christ’s sake? What did you find?’
‘Where Serafino hangs out.’
‘And we can get at him?’
‘I think so. Remember the mission at Lagona?’
‘Where we parachuted in for the nuns?’ He frowned. ‘That’s what you’re suggesting now?’
‘It’s the only way,’ I said. ‘Can you get the gear to-gether?’
He nodded. ‘No difficulty there. I’ll have it flown in tomorrow from Crete. Look, are you sure about this?’
‘I’ll give it to you word by word when we get back,’ I told him. ‘Now why don’t you try to get some more sleep?’
He laughed sourly. ‘Sleep? I’ll never sleep again.’
He subsided into the corner and I swung the Fiat into the first bend and came out in a cloud of dust. When I glanced into the mirror I was smiling.
We reached Palermo just before evening and there was one more thing to be done before we returned to the villa as I reminded Burke. We called at Hoffer’s bank, presented his cheque and had it converted to a bill of exchange to be drawn upon a firm of Swiss mer-chant bankers I designated. We left it on deposit in the, bank vault from which it could be retrieved on presen-tation of a key they gave us plus his signature.
Burke wasn’t pleased at all, mainly because I’d pushed him into it and he never liked that. The clerk gave me a large manilla envelope to put the bill of ex-change in and I let Burke seal it which seemed to make him feel a little better. I told him he could hang on to the key and he put it carefully away in his wallet.
For some reason he still didn’t look really happy. I was rather pleased about that.
NINE
when we reached the villa, Hoffer hadn’t returned. Rosa disappeared to take a bath which was exactly what I wanted to do, but Burke seemed to come to life again.
‘You’d better have some coffee and a shower before Hoffer comes back,’ I told him. ‘If he sees you like this he’ll start worrying about his investment.’
It had an effect of sorts. ‘To hell with Hoffer. He needs me and he bloody well knows it. Now let’s have words. I want to know what you found up there today.’
I humoured him to the extent of following him out through the lounge to the terrace. Piet and Legrande were sitting at a table playing cards, a bottle of some-thing between them.
Piet jumped to his feet at once as Burke arrived, that inner glow on his face again. ‘Thank God!’ Legrande said. ‘It’s been as lively as a graveyard around here today. When do we see some action?’