some of the objects he hauled up illicitly from the seabed.
Now, with Lavat’s authority, they were going to break into the apartment. The policeman lifted a crowbar and placed the end of it firmly between the door itself and the jamb, directly above the lock. He heaved but for a few seconds nothing happened, then with a sudden crack the lock gave way and the door swung open.
Lavat peered inside, listening intently. ‘Nico Aristides, this is the police,’ he called out, more in hope than anticipation. He was rewarded only by silence, glanced back at Gravas with a shrug and stepped carefully into the small apartment, keeping well to the centre of the hallway and away from the walls.
He pushed open the second door he encountered with the tip of his crowbar. It proved to be the bedroom, and one glance was all he needed to realize that Nico Aristides would never go out drinking or fishing or anything else, ever again.
The moment Simpson turned away, Richter had seized his opportunity. He’d taken off down the gravel drive, the crunch of his footsteps lost in the shouting that emanated from the men surrounding the villa. He turned left outside the gateway and ran back up the hill towards the waiting cars. He had to get there as quickly as possible, before Simpson or Perini did something to stop him.
The Kevlar vest had been a potentially useful protection during the assault on the villa, but now it was just a liability. Richter undid the straps as he ran, then lifted the jacket over his head and tossed it to one side.
Heart pounding, breath coming in short gasps, Richter ran off the roadway and onto the waste ground. The driver Perini had left to watch over the cars was still standing beside one of them, his head cocked to one side as he listened to some message relayed through his earpiece.
As Richter came into view, the man’s eyes widened on seeing the massive bloodstains down the front of his jeans. The driver first slid his hand up towards his lapel microphone, then thought better of that and reached into the left side of his jacket. Richter had barely two seconds to act, no more. He accelerated his pace as much as he could, reaching the Italian just as the man pulled the Beretta clear of his shoulder holster.
This was no time for finesse, and Richter just kept up his momentum, slamming his right shoulder into the Italian’s chest and knocking the breath from his body. The two men tumbled backwards, crashing into the side of the Alfa Romeo.
The driver was still holding the pistol in his right hand, and Richter knew he must disarm him before he could train the Model 92 and pull the trigger. The Italian chopped Richter in the kidneys with his left hand, but because he was backed up against the car there was little room to swing, and it was thus a weak blow Richter could ignore.
He turned his body to the left, placing his back towards the man’s chest, and reached up and out with both hands, grabbing his arm just above the wrist. Then Richter continued his turn to the left, bent forward at the hips and pulled downwards. The Italian flew over Richter, hitting the ground hard, to fall flat on his back and losing his grip on the pistol.
Richter scooped up the Beretta and hurled it as far as he could, right over a low hedge and into the scrubby field beyond, then turned his attention back to the driver. He was trying to get up, had made it onto his hands and knees. Richter had no quarrel with the man, but he hadn’t got time to mess about.
He stepped across, kicked the Italian hard in the stomach, the impact virtually lifting him off the ground. He began retching, but he was young and strong, and Richter knew he’d recover in seconds, so he closed in again and hit him with a rabbit-punch, hard on the side of the neck. The driver collapsed in an unconscious heap.
Pausing for a second to catch his breath, Richter then removed the keys from the ignition switches of three of the Alfas, locked each one carefully and then lobbed the keys in the same general direction that he’d earlier thrown the Beretta. He climbed into the fourth Alfa and started it up, powering it off the waste ground and up the hill, heading away from the villa.
Richter was off and running, if not for his life then at least for his freedom.
Nico Aristides was very clearly dead, apparently killed by the same unknown pathogen as his uncle. The policeman and doctor stood side by side in the doorway of his bedroom and looked across the small room at the still and silent body lying collapsed beside the bed.
Unlike Spiros, who’d become fairly intoxicated, Nico had had little to drink the previous evening, and perhaps as a result his death had not been easy. There was blood everywhere, trailing across the floor, smeared on the walls and doors, a mute testament to the younger man’s desperate and ultimately futile attempts to find relief from the killer that was destroying him from within.
‘The same?’ Inspector Lavat asked, his voice slightly muffled by the mask he clutched carefully to his face.
‘The same,’ Gravas agreed. ‘We don’t go near him. Seal the door of the apartment, then close all the windows in the rest of this house. Best to put a policeman in the street outside. Nobody should come in here until the American specialists arrive.’
‘Where is he?’ shouted Perini, his face, contorted with rage, only inches from Simpson’s.
The Englishman took a handkerchief out of his pocket to wipe a trace of spittle off his cheek and then shrugged his shoulders. ‘I don’t know, but it’s easy enough to guess. He’ll no doubt try and take one of your cars, then either head for the border or make for some airport, so that he can get out of Italy as soon as possible.’
Perini stepped back and shouted orders to his men. Simpson watched as two of the DCPP officers left their current posts and began running up the hill towards the spot where they’d parked the cars. Then he glared at Simpson. ‘The French border?’ he demanded.
‘Maybe. Richter knows France well.’
Perini shook his head. ‘He’ll never make it. It’s about twelve hundred kilometres up the length of Italy to get to France. I’ll put police checkpoints on the north-bound carriageway of every road in the country, and have a watch on all the airports and ferry terminals within the hour. And, Simpson,’ added Perini, menace in every syllable, ‘he’s
Simpson said nothing, just stared at Perini. The Italian dropped his eyes first, then glanced over his shoulder. Lomas was still alive but in excruciating pain, and weakening steadily from massive blood loss. The towels pressed against his stomach were sodden with blood but helped contain the bleeding. What everyone knew was that the wound was too big and too deep for any such crude effort to stem the flow. Unless Lomas received medical attention within a matter of minutes he was going to die.
Seconds after the attack, Perini had called for an air ambulance. The helicopter was on its way from Bari, but there was no way it could get there for at least fifteen minutes. As far as Perini could see, Andrew Lomas was going to bleed to death here in the garden of the villa, and there was nothing any of them could do about it. And if he did die, then Perini wanted to see Paul Richter standing in front of an Italian judge on a charge of wilful murder.
Simpson walked away a short distance and sat down on a wooden garden seat that was missing two slats. From the moment Richter had run, his priorities had changed. He had been absolutely furious when Richter attacked Lomas, although he could understand the reason for it, and would have done anything to stop him.
But Simpson was a realist. Nothing he could say or do would alter the fact that Lomas lay dying fifteen feet away, and now the most important thing was to ensure that Richter didn’t fall into the hands of either the Italian police or the SISDE. He was simply too valuable to lose, and the last thing Simpson wanted was to see him banged up for years in some Italian prison.
And, despite his comments to Perini, Simpson thought he knew precisely where Richter was heading, and exactly what he was going to do when he got there, because he knew one other important thing about Richter that the Italian didn’t.
Richter was by now nearly two miles down the road, holding the Alfa at a steady hundred and thirty kilometres an hour. But he was heading south, not north.
