around the ground floor looking for a way in but there was none.
You had to go up the steps and enter from the first level.
The stairs were sparkled with frost so I gripped the hand rail and took them cautiously.
The deck had sliding French doors, large plate-glass wraparound windows and a view to the south-west of Lake Como and to the north, between two mountains, the 4000 metre-tall Piz Bernina.
The view, the mountains, the chalet, Freddie and his scary pals — the whole thing had a Berchtesgaden vibe circa 1939.
At the top of the steps I took out the knife and the cap gun. I weighed the two options. “Aye, let’s try the bluff, Freddie will appreciate that,” I said to myself.
I pulled on a pair of leather gloves and reshouldered the backpack.
I walked round the deck, looked in through the glass windows and saw Freddie standing there in front of a large TV set. He had videoed an Inter Milan match on his Betamax and he was fast forwarding through the game in search of goals.
I took a step backwards and retraced my steps around the deck until I came to a door.
I had brought my lock-pick kit but when I turned the handle and pushed, the door opened.
I stepped cautiously inside.
I took off the rucksack and set it down on a tiled floor. I removed the note I had written on the plane and looked again at the cap gun. Was it convincing? We’d soon see.
I walked through a large, modern kitchen illuminated by night lights.
I pushed the kitchen door and tiptoed my way along a hardwood corridor until I made it to the enormous living room.
Freddie was sitting now, watching and rewatching a beautiful goal by a blond-haired Inter player.
“Lovely stuff,” Freddie kept repeating to himself.
I slipped behind Freddie’s reclining leather chair.
The knife would have done just as well.
I shoved the cap gun against Freddie’s ear.
“What the-” he began.
I put my finger to my lips and still keeping the cap gun in his ear, handed him the note.
He looked at me and read the note. It said: “Turn off all the recording equipment and make no sound until you do so.”
Freddie was reassured by this. It told him that I was a reasonable, forward-thinking young man, not a nutcase bent on some vendetta.
He nodded. I took one step backwards keeping the cap gun pointing at him and letting the sleeve of my jacket droop over it so that he wouldn’t get a good look at it.
He got to his feet and pointed to a door at the end of the living room. I gave him the OK sign.
We walked into his study and he turned on the light.
There was no tremble in his gait and he didn’t look frightened in the least. I didn’t like that and it put me on my guard.
The study was small, with a desk and a few metal filing cabinets.
There were signed pictures on the wall.
Freddie with Vanessa Redgrave. Freddie with Senator Ted Kennedy.
He pointed at the desk and began walking towards it. I shoved the gun in his back and he froze. I pushed him to the ground, stepped over him and opened the desk drawer.
The gun in the drawer was a Beretta 9mm.
I checked that it was loaded and put the cap pistol back in my pocket.
Freddie sighed.
“Can we speak now? There’s no tape going. It’s not turned on, is it? I mean, what’s the point? It’s just me here,” Freddie said.
“Show me,” I said.
He got to his feet and looked ruefully at the gun barrel of his own pistol aimed at his chest. He pulled open the top drawer of one of the filing cabinets.
“Look in there,” he said. “If it was recording, the spools would be going round, wouldn’t they?”
I looked in the filing cabinet.
Two enormous spools of tape on an expensive looking recording device.
The thing was evidently turned off and the spools were not going round.
Of course there could have been a back-up somewhere in the house.
“Is there a back-up? The truth now, Freddie,” I whispered to him.
“Back-up? That one cost two grand. Those cheap bastards are not going to install a bloody back-up, are they?” he said with an attempt at levity.
I tried to impart the seriousness of my question with a waggle of the Beretta.
“No! There’s no back-up. This is it.”
I believed him.
We returned to the living room.
I switched off the TV.
I motioned him to sit down in the leather recliner and I sat on the glass coffee table opposite him.
“Talk,” I said.
“About what?”
“Tell me everything.”
24: THE WILDERNESS OF MIRRORS
That sleekit handsome hatchet-face broke into a grin. “What do you wanna know?”
“What happened on Christmas Eve, 1980?” I asked.
“With Lucy, you mean?” he asked.
“Aye. With Lucy. The train. The aborted abortion.”
“You know about that?” he asked, surprised.
“You got her pregnant and there was only one way out of it. The abortion special. Ferry to Larne, train to Glasgow. One night in the hospital. Back for Christmas Day.”
His left cheek twitched, the first minute chink in that force field of confidence. We’re all projecting multiple images of ourselves all the time but for Freddie it must be so much harder to maintain the likeness …
“Her mum decided to get the Belfast train and she was looking for Lucy at the Barn Halt but she didn’t see her because Lucy was on the other platform, wasn’t she? The Larne side. She was going to Larne,” I said.
“She was. Lucy saw her mother stick her big bonce out the train window and the poor girl almost had a heart attack.”
“What did she do? Hide in the shelter?”
“She hid in the shelter until the train left. But that was where it all fell apart. Seeing her mother really spooked her. We’d arranged to go to Scotland together on the boat train. I got off the train at Barn Halt but of course she wasn’t bloody there. She was supposed to meet me on the platform but she’d got cold feet. I knew she’d bottled it. She finally came to see me and I suppose I should have ended it there and then but she was bawling her eyes out and I felt sorry for her.”
“How long had you been seeing her?”
“A few months. It wasn’t that serious. She was very beautiful but there was no way I could ever get heavy with a comrade’s wife. Even an ex-wife. The powers that be wouldn’t allow it. They’re very conservative. And of course then she got pregnant …”
“And refused to get the abortion.”
“Quite the dilemma, eh?”
“So what did that big brain of yours cook up, Freddie?”
