Secrets of the Dead

The eyes narrowed. His bloodless lips stretched tight. He trained the gun back at her and flipped a catch on the side. She heard the guard behind her take a step sideways.

‘Are you going to shoot me?’ Get on with it! she wanted to scream. End this now! ‘Why did you bring me here?’

‘To answer my questions,’ he snapped. The gun didn’t move. The chrome barrel threw starbursts of reflected light on the walls. ‘Like, for example, why you aren’t dead already?’

‘I don’t –’

‘You should have died in Kotor Bay. I sent a man – his name was Sloba. I want to know why didn’t he kill you?’

‘I don’t remember.’ It came out as a croak. She was desperate for water, desperate to sit down before she fainted. ‘He shot me.’

‘He never came back.’

‘I don’t know what happened to him.’

‘No one does. You will say, perhaps he ran away.’ He held up the gun, as if he were addressing it and not her. ‘Impossibility. My men do not run away. If they try, I always find them. And him I cannot find.’

Abby rubbed her eyes, hoping she’d wake up and find this was all a nightmare. ‘He killed Michael. I saw him.’

‘If I cannot find Sloba, it means he is dead.’ Dragovic swung lazily in his chair, like a boat swaying on its anchor. ‘Let me give you some facts, Miss Cormac. Sloba came to the villa in a car. When the police arrived, this car was still there.’

Look at the man, not at the gun. That’s what they’d taught in her Hostile Environment training, years ago. Looking at the gun makes it more likely he’ll use it. That didn’t make it any easier.

‘You were lying on the floor with Sloba’s bullets in you. In your shoulder, but not in your heart or brain. Why? Sloba was not a careless or a sentimental man. If he let you live, it means he was dead.’

Look at the man. ‘I didn’t kill him, if that’s what you want to know.’

‘Who else was there?’

‘No one. Just Michael and me.’

But was that true? She thought back to something they’d said in hospital. Somebody rang the police. Her memories were so scrambled it was hard to be sure of anything, but she didn’t think it had been her. It rang false.

So who else was there?

Dragovic rolled back on his chair and stood. He sauntered over to the wall and examined one of the stone plaques. This one was painted, not carved, the colours washed out but still clear. A mummified man, wrapped in bandages, stretched out a hand from a stone sarcophagus, while a bearded Christ reached to stand him up. A dog played at his feet.

‘Here is another fact. Sloba died and Lascaris died. But I have seen the police reports. They found only one body.’

He spun around and fixed his gaze on Abby. She took a half-step backwards, though immediately a hand pressed against her back to stop her getting any ideas.

‘Did your man have an accomplice?’

‘Sloba worked alone.’ Dragovic moved on to a marble statue, a female nude with upturned breasts and no arms. He stroked a finger across her throat. ‘Two deaths, one body. How do you explain this?’

‘I don’t know.’

And suddenly Dragovic was right in front of her, crossing the room so fast she barely saw him move. The guard behind her pinned her arms and almost lifted her off the floor. Cold metal pressed on her jaw as Dragovic jammed the pistol against her face. The dead smell of lilies stifled her.

‘Understand this, Miss Cormac. You are already dead. If I decide someone will die, they die. If I keep you living a little longer, it is only because I need you to tell me some things. But I can kill you now and throw you in the Tiber, and no one will care. They will not even recognise you, when I am finished.’

His face was so close to hers his bristles scraped her cheek. Tears ran down her face and soaked into his beard. The intimacy felt like a violation.

‘I don’t know,’ she pleaded. She heard herself repeating it again and again, caught in a stuttering loop she couldn’t escape. Dragovic stepped away in disgust. The guard behind her loosened his grip, so she sagged limply into him. She felt him move against her, rubbing himself on her like a dog.

‘Enough.’ Dragovic snapped his fingers; the guard let go. Abby fell forward on the floor, crouched on all fours.

‘Your lover Lascaris was meant to give me something. That is why he came to my house.’

‘A briefcase,’ Abby mumbled – too clumsy for them to understand. The guard stepped forward, grabbed her hair and pulled her head back so she was looking up at Dragovic. The mouth of the gun yawned open above her, and this time there was nothing she could do but look at it.

‘Michael had a briefcase. I saw it.’

‘It was not there when the police arrived. What happened to it?’

‘I don’t know.’