“I think you’ll find it’s morning, Carmela.”
She didn’t know the voice, or if she did, she couldn’t place it.
“Did you make good money tonight?” he asked.
He not only knew her, but he knew what she did, and she was happy he couldn’t see the color rising in her cheeks.
“Yes, not bad.”
“Oh, but you are, and you know it.”
It wasn’t so much the words as the slow, easy drawl with which they were delivered that set her heart racing.
His small laugh did something to soothe her building apprehension.
“I was only joking.”
He drew long and hard on his cigarette. In the dim glow of burning tobacco, she could just discern that he was wearing khaki battle dress: shirt and shorts. This didn’t help much. All the services had adopted it recently, and she was unable to make out the shoulder flashes.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Ah, now I’m insulted.”
It could have been Harry, or Bernard, or even young Bill, the one they all called “little Willy” (before invariably erupting in laughter). But she didn’t feel like laughing because it could have been almost any one of the officers who passed through the Blue Parrot on a typical night, and this man remained silent, enjoying her confusion, her discomfort, which was cruel and uncalled for.
“I must go.”
He was off the wall and seizing her arm before she had taken two paces.
“What’s the hurry?”
She tried to pull free, but his grip was firm, viselike, painful. She let out a small cry and attempted to twist away. The maneuver failed miserably, and she found herself trapped against him, her back pressed into his chest.
He clamped his free hand over her mouth. “Ssshhhh,” he soothed.
He spat the cigarette away and put his mouth to her ear.
“You want to know who I am? I’m the last living soul you’ll ever set eyes on.”
She didn’t need to know all of the words; she understood their meaning. And now she began to struggle in earnest, her thoughts turning to her home, her parents, her brothers, her dog, all so close, just a short way up the hill.
He repaid her efforts by twisting her left arm up behind her until something gave in her shoulder. The pain ripped through her, carrying her to the brink of unconsciousness, her knees starting to give. In desperation she tried to bite the hand gagging her cries, but he cupped his fingers away from her teeth. His other hand released her now-useless arm and jammed itself between her legs, into the fork of her thighs, pulling her back against him.
His breathing was strangely calm and measured, and there was something in the sound of it that suggested he was smiling.
DAY ONE
“TEA OR COFFEE?”
“Which do you recommend?”
“Well, the first tastes like dishwater, the second like slurry runoff.”
“I’ll try the slurry runoff.”
Max summoned the attention of the waiter hovering nearby. He was new—squat and toadlike—some member of the kitchen staff drafted in to replace Ugo, whose wife had been wounded in a strafing attack over the weekend while out strolling with friends near Rabat. Gratifyingly, the pilot of the Messerschmitt 109 had paid for this outrage with his life, a Spitfire from Ta’ Qali dropping onto his tail moments later and bringing him down in the drink off the Dingli Cliffs.
“How’s Ugo’s wife?” Max inquired of the waiter.
“She dead.”
“Oh.”
In case there was any doubt, the waiter tilted his head to one side and let a fat tongue roll out of his mouth. The eyes remained open, staring.
“Two coffees, please.”
“Two coffee.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Max’s eyes tracked the waiter as he waddled off, but his thoughts were elsewhere, with Ugo, and he wondered how long it would be before he smiled his crooked smile again.
He forced his attention back to the young man sitting across from him. Edward Pemberton was taking in his surroundings—the tall windows, the elaborately painted walls, and the high beamed ceiling—apparently immune to
