In The Hour Before Midnight aka The Sicilian Heritage

across each of her arms.

I held up the Beretta and slipped the safety catch. “It just won’t fire until you do that. Try again.”

I dropped it on her chest, got up and turned my back on her. I lit another cigarette, an ostentatious bit of theatricality and when I turned again she was standing staring at me in bewilderment, the Beretta swinging loosely from one hand and pointing directly into the ground.

“But it still doesn’t make sense,” she said.

She was right – it didn’t. The only thing which filled her true circumstances was that we had been sent to kill her and we had not.

Or had we…?

It was suddenly cold and my throat went dry. No, it wasn’t possible and I tried to push the thought away from me. Burke would never have stood still for a thing like that.

In any case, I wasn’t allowed to take it any further. Someone jumped on my back, an arm clamped around my throat and down I went.

Someone once said that God made some men big and some small and left it to Colonel Colt to even things up. As a philosophy where violence is concerned, it’s always appealed to me and like most relatively small men, I’ve never been much good at the hand-to-hand stuff.

The arm about my throat was doing a nice, efficient job of cutting off the air supply. I was choking, there was a roaring in my ears. Somewhere the girl was shouting and then he made the mistake of moving position and I managed an elbow strike to his privates.

It was only half a target and there wasn’t much zip behind it, but it was enough. I was released with a curse, rolled over twice and fetched up against a holly-oak tree.

Not that it did me much good. My head went back with a crack and the muzzle of a rifle was shoved into the side of my neck.

TWELVE

THE M.I..30 calibre is the semi-automatic rifle that got most American infantrymen through the Second World War, which meant that the one which was about to blow a hole in me now had been around for quite a while. On the other hand, it had obviously been cared for like a lover. The stock was polished, the gunmetal shone with oil and the whole thing looked as lethal as anyone could wish, just like the man who was holding it, Serafino Lentini.

“Serafino, stop!” the girl shouted in Italian. “You mustn’t shoot him – you mustn’t!”

He was wearing an old corduroy suit, leather leggings to his knees and the face beneath the cloth cap was recklessly handsome in spite of the week-old stubble of beard and the dirty black patch over the right eye. A gay lad, this, a bravo straight out of the sixteenth century. I could almost see him in doublet and hose. A kiss for a woman, a blow for a man. I smiled, remembering the old joke. Very funny, except that with this boy you’d probably get a knife in the gut if you got in his way.

The two men behind him were just a blur, it was his face that loomed large for me in all the world at that moment. He grinned wolfishly and pushed off the safety.

“Careful,” I said. “Cursed is the man who spills the blood of his own.”

The old Sicilian proverb had about the same effect as a good stiff hook to the chin. His eye, that one good eye of his, seemed to widen, but most important of all, the barrel of the M.I. was removed from my neck.

“Quick,” he said. “Who are you?”

“Barbaccia’s grandson. We’re kin through my grandmother’s family.”

“Mother of God, but I remember you as a boy.” The safety catch clicked on again, the most reassuring thing to happen for some time. “Once when I was fourteen, my old man went to see the capo on family business. I had to wait at the gate. I saw you walking in the garden playing with a dog. All white with black spots. I forget what they call them.”

“Dalmatians,” I said and remembered old Trudi for the first time in years.

“The capo’s American grandson in his pretty clothes. God, how I hated you that day. I wanted to rub mud in your hair.” He produced a stub of cigar from one pocket, lit it and squatted in front of me. “I heard you and the capo didn’t get on after they got your mother that way.” He spat. “Mafia pigs. Still, from what I hear, he’s almost swept the board clean.”

I wanted to ask him what he meant, but the occasion didn’t seem appropriate. He reached over and fingered my jump suit.

“What’s all this? When I first saw you through the trees I thought they’d brought the troops in again.”

By now I had everything in focus including the girl and the two specimens who were examining the assault rifle with interest. They were in the same unshaven condition as Serafino, the same ragged state. Each of them had a shotgun slung from the shoulder.

I sat up wearily. “I can’t go through all that again. Ask her.”

He didn’t argue, simply turned and went to Joanna Truscott. They moved away a little, talking in low tones, and I got my cigarettes out. As I lit one, the man who was taking a sight along the barrel of the A.K. lowered it and snapped a finger.

I tossed the packet across. There was a definite physical resemblance between them and I said, “You’re the Vivaldi boys, I suppose.”

The one with the rifle nodded. “That’s right. I’m August – he’s Pietro. Don’t expect much from him, though.” He tapped his head. “He has his difficulties and he can’t speak.”

Pietro did a semblance of a jig and his mouth opened, exposing half a dozen black stubs and nothing else. He had a great foolish grin that reminded me strongly of the Cheshire cat. I suppose he had exactly the same smile on his face as he blew someone’s head off.

In fact the head might very well be mine, which was a cheering thought and then Serafino came back and I could tell from the look on his face that everything was going to be all right.

“It’s ironic,” he said. “When I remember how often old Barbaccia has tried to have me put down. But then, we are not of the blood.”

A nice distinction, but sufficient.

“Can I have my weapons back?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that, we could do with them ourselves.” He was obviously unwilling, but decided to make a gesture. “Give him the pop-gun back. Hang on to the others.”

August handed me the Smith and Wesson, looking more than happy, and I pushed it into the spring holster. Had they only known it, at that range I could have given each of them a bullet in the head within the second.

We went down through the trees in a line, Serafino and I together at the rear. Apparently he still had Hoffer’s twenty-five thousand buried in an old biscuit tin somewhere in the area. He thought the whole thing very funny and laughed frequently in the telling.

“So, I’ve killed a few people in my time. That’s life.” He scratched his face vigorously. “I did a couple of jobs for Hoffer when he was having trouble with construction workers on the new road through the mountains. Leaned on one or two and then we dumped some trade unionist down a crevasse. And then he gets in touch with me through a friend and lays out this job concerning the girl.”

“Did you know who she was?”

“Not a hint. He told me she was a blackmailer – that she could ruin him unless she had her mouth closed for keeps. I’d insisted on payment in advance so I had the cash anyway and when I saw her, I liked her.” He grinned ruefully. “Not that I’m half the man I used to be so she’d nothing to worry about there.”

“Yes, I heard about that.”

He laughed uproariously. “Life, it’s a bastard, eh? No, I liked her for the way she stuck out her chin and stood up straight when she thought I was going to shoot her. It put me off, her standing there like some princess from Rome. Then it struck me as how funny it might be to put one over on Hoffer, seeing I already had the cash. He’s a rat and anyway I don’t like Mafia.”

He spat again, I stumbled, put off my stroke to such an extent that I almost lost my balance. I grabbed him by