spread to her fingertips-the bowel-loosening sense of excited relief he was now beginning to feel was qualified by this small persistent undertone of worry. There was an irredeemable vanity about Sieverance, his every utterance and mannerism testified to it, and it would be very typical of the man to want to order his wife the most splendid casket in Manila, and to organise a funeral of ostentatious grief and circumstance. He was not the sort of man to nurse his sorrow silently or with solitary dignity.
'How do you feel?' he said to Delphine, cupping her sweet face with his hands. 'Any better?'
'Very strange…' she said. 'Sort of distant… and groggy.'
She sat in a chair in the operating theatre dressed in the clothes she had given him days earlier-a simple dark blue dress with high collar. She had a bonnet on her lap with a deep low brim that would shadow her face.
'Can you manage?'
'Yes.' She had not asked him one question about Sieverance and how he had taken the news of her death. 'I think so.'
She looked up at him, still a little vague. 'How was it, I mean… Did Jepson-'
'It went perfectly. Not a moment's doubt.'
'Good,' she said, in a small neutral voice. She might have been responding to some news about the weather holding fair for the next twenty-four hours. 'Good.'
He looked at his watch: it was nearly 4. He helped Delphine to her feet and led her down a passage to a rear door that gave on to the hospital garden. There was a moon, enough to provide a faint grey-washed light. The air was warm and moist and the sound of the crickets in the bushes was shrill. They hurried along a path, through the dark shadow-thronged garden, to a back gate that opened on to the Calle Francisco.
Carriscant took the key from his pocket, unlocked the gate – the hinges were stiff and they groaned as the door swung open – and peered out. The carriage he had ordered was waiting by the church fifty yards away. They slipped out of the door and walked quickly and silently down the street towards it. The horse snickered and the sleepy driver looked round as they approached. He would have no idea they had come from the hospital, Carriscant was glad to observe. He gave the address of the destination to him.
'Axel will be waiting for you,' he said to her in a whisper. 'He'll take you to the boat. I'll be there shortly after six.'
She gripped his hands. 'I can't believe this has actually happened,' she said. 'He really believes, I mean he has no doubt I'm -'
'Completely. I saw him, comforted him. He saw you dead with his own eyes.'
'So we're free – really, truly?'
'Yes, my darling.'
He could not hold back, he drew her slightly behind the coach and slipped his arms around her. He kissed her lips and pressed himself against her. Then his lips were on her neck and her hands were on his back, and he smelt her smell. Rosewater. She must have put on some scent. Carried some scent with her. He felt the warmth of her strong firm body down the length of his. Suddenly, strangely, he wished he were a bigger, taller man, as if a greater physical presence were a better guarantee of the protection he could give her, of the care he could afford. He had an image of her turning to this more imposing, bulkier Salvador Carriscant, snuggling into him, sheltering in the lee of his big frame. He was suddenly light-headed with fatigue and accumulated tension. His longing for her ached like a tumour behind his breastbone, a small hot coin of pain. The thought of their life together beckoned him on like a vision, a white arm of road through a verdant and sunlit country.
He helped her into the carriage. She blew him a kiss and did not take her eyes from his until the carriage turned the corner on to Calle Palacio. He stood there alone for some moments listening to the sound of the horses' hooves die away as they travelled through the dark narrow streets of Intramuros towards the San Domingo gate and the north quays of the Pasig, where Axel was waiting and where their new life would truly begin.
Back at his house he could not even think of sleeping. He sat on a cane chair on the azotea watching the lemony dawn light slowly expose the dew-drenched trees and shrubs of his garden. At 5.45 he went through to the bedroom and woke Annaliese. She propped herself on her elbows and stared at him stupidly.
'Are you going already?'
'Yes.' He quelled his impatience. It all had to be handled correctly. 'I want to make an early start. The roads are always bad in the rains.'
She rolled over and hunched into her pillow, closing her eyes.
'Oh, well, if you want to. Say hello to your mother.'
'I will. Goodbye.'
He closed the main door and walked down the worn stone steps to the entresuelos. He walked quietly to the front gate, there was no sign of Constancio or the other servants, the only sound the snort and shifting of the ponies in their stalls. He stepped through the double doors on to the street. Only at this time of the day was there a true coolness in the air, the day's humidity had not had time to build. He felt a slight fresh breeze on his face and neck which made him shiver. He took a deep breath. The rest of his life was about to commence and he savoured the sweetness of the moment in the fresh coolness of the morning.
Around the corner from the Palacio end of the street strode three men, walking not fast but purposefully all the same, the watery citron sun illuminating the brass buttons on their uniforms, making them wink and flash prettily.
' Salvador Carriscant.'
He turned to see Paton Bobby and two other men walking down the street from the other direction. He wondered what was happening and why Bobby referred to him by his full name. He soon had his answer.
Bobby's square honest face could conceal neither his embarrassment nor his intense sadness.
' Salvador Carriscant -'
'What's happening, Paton? What's going on?'
Bobby could not hold his gaze and looked away as he spoke.
'Why did you do it, Salvador?'
'Do what?'
'Kill him.'
'Kill? Kill who, for God's sake? Are you completely -'
'Sieverance.'
'Sieverance…?'
'Shot dead while he was sleeping. Two bullets in his brain.'
Carriscant could say nothing, now.
Bobby turned to face him and seized his arm.
'Paton, you can't possibly think I -'
' Salvador Carriscant – ' His voice was shaky and he had to clear his throat. 'Salvador Carriscant, I arrest you for the wilful murder of Colonel Jepson George Sieverance.'
LISBON, 1936
WEDNESDAY, 3RD MAY
My first view of the city was a solitary one. Carriscant said he was feeling unwell and stayed below as the SS Herzog steamed slowly up the Tagus towards the docks. There was a fine rain falling and the sky was full of heavy mouse-grey clouds. The buildings of the city rose up from the dull sheen of the estuary stacked on their undulating hills, hunched and nondescript in the murky crepuscular light, the stepped facades and rooftops punctuated here and there by a spire or cupola, the baroque dome of a church or the squared teeth of a castellated rampart.
We docked opposite a building that said Posta do Desin-faccao and the gangplank was lowered. I saw customs sheds and warehouses, railway lines, and along the north shore a great fritter of ships. Then the vast sweep of
