Wounds Of Passion
‘I thought I might settle in Italy.’
He felt Rae’s leap of surprise, caught the quick sideways look she gave him. She hadn’t expected that. Well, good. He meant to be unpredictable and unexpected in future; he might as well start now.
They were waved through the border a few minutes later and drove along the autostrada to Bordighera, then turned down the hill from the old town towards the sea. Slowing, Rae leaned out of the car and tapped a security number into a panel beside a high metal gate, operated electronically. The gates swung open and they drove through, down a winding path between cypress trees, olive trees and bougainvillaea.
Patrick stared up at the villa they were approaching; it was enormous, built on a number of levels, a confusion of white walls, red-tiled roofs, dark window-frames and black-painted shutters. A fir tree grew close to the house, dropping pine cones on the paving-stones; geraniums tumbled out of pots, a tortoiseshell cat slept on a stone seat by the front door, and roses and lavender filled the air with fragrance; it was a lovely place.
‘Isn’t it magic?’ asked Rae, observing his reaction with pleasure.
Alex and Susan-Jane Holtner came out to meet them as they parked outside the villa.
‘Hi, there, welcome,’ Alex said, shaking hands warmly, smiling. He was a very tall, thin man of over forty, with reddish hair, a thin moustache, dark glasses and freckles.
‘Hallo. I’m Patrick Ogilvie—it’s very good of you to invite me,’ said Patrick, trying not to stare at the man’s wife too much. It wasn’t easy; she was stunning, in one of the tiniest bikinis he had ever seen.
Tall, sexy, with a ravishing model figure, she was years younger than her husband. Her rich chestnut hair framed her face in a wild tangle of curls, and she had wide blue eyes, a classical nose and a full, generous mouth.
‘Susan-Jane, my wife,’ said Alex Holtner, a gleam of humour in his eye, and Patrick shook hands with her, struggling not to look down at the warm ripeness of the body spilling out of the bikini.
‘Rae never stops talking about what a genius you are; we have been aching to meet you,’ she said, then, mischievously, ‘Alex is quite jealous of you!’
‘I wish I could paint half as well, but all I can do is draw cartoons,’ her husband said complacently, sliding an arm around her and patting her on the bottom.
‘Brilliant cartoons,’ Patrick said, smiling. ‘I’ve followed them ever since they started appearing.’
Alex grinned at him. ‘Why, thank you. Now the compliments are over, Rae will show you your room. If there’s anything you need, just ask. Oh, and we were going to eat lunch on the terrace—just salad and bread. Is that OK with you, Patrick?’
‘Sounds wonderful to me; it’s much too hot to eat much down here, I find,’ Patrick said.
‘And the wine makes you sleepy,’ said Susan-Jane.
‘But it’s such a good excuse for going to bed in the afternoon,’ her husband said wickedly, grinning down at her, and she gave him a little punch.
‘Don’t be naughty!’
Patrick felt a stab of pain at the intimacy between them; that was something else he was going to miss.
The party began before it grew dark that evening; people began arriving in cars or on foot from nearby villas, flocking into the villa gardens which tumbled down to the beach. The barbecue site was just above the beach, and close to the enormous blue-tiled swimming-pool set into a wide terrace, where they could set out chairs and tables around a bar counter from which drinks could be served. Earlier, Patrick had helped carry chairs, knives and forks, trays of glasses and plates down to the terrace, and watched Alex testing the lighting, setting up the music system.
Now there were brightly coloured lights strung through the trees and pop music floated out into the darkening sky. Some guests were swimming in the pool, a few were dancing, some wandered under the trees, and others sat by the bar and talked.
Patrick wandered between the various groups, took a glass of red wine, sipped it as he walked, paused to watch a girl swimming in the pool, strolled on to stare at the dancers, and felt his heart turn over violently as he caught sight of long, pale gold hair, a slender body in a silky white dress which ended at the thighs, and below that, long, elegant legs.
For a moment he thought it really was Laura. He took three hurried steps towards her, barely breathing.
Then the music stopped and the girl and her partner broke apart; she turned and Patrick hungrily stared, but her face was nothing like Laura’s. The thick beating of his heart slowed; he felt a burst of rage, as if the girl had deliberately deceived him.
She was staring straight at him now, as if she had picked up his intense concentration on her, half smiling. Her eyes were blue, not green, he noted dully. She was young, not more than twenty, her face heart-shaped, with a softness in the curve of the cheek and jawline, a fullness in the mouth, that was completely different from the delicacy of Laura’s features.
He turned away, heart-sick, finished his red wine, and put the glass down.
‘Come and dance!’ said a voice beside him, and he swung round, stiffening.
He knew it was her before he saw her; she had a light, young voice with a distinct accent. American, he thought. Some relative of Alex Holtner? He remembered over lunch some talk of a niece, a young art student, coming down that day for the party from Florence, where she was spending the summer studying Renaissance art. He had barely listened, indifferent to everything they said.
‘You do speak English?’ she asked, watching him secretly, her eyes half veiled by long, curling lashes loaded with mascara; shyness mingled with silent invitation in the way the full mouth curved in a smile.
The neckline of the silk dress was low; you could see a lot of golden tanned flesh, the cleft between her small, high breasts.
She moved closer, put out a hand to him; and he was tempted for a moment. He could pretend, just for a little while, hold that slender body in his arms, touch her and pretend she was Laura. It would be so easy.
Her fingers brushed slowly along his bare arm, sending a wave of self-disgust through him.
‘I don’t dance, thanks,’ he said brusquely, and turned and walked away. It would have been madness, like an alcoholic taking just one more drink, kidding himself it wouldn’t be a risk. He would never forget Laura that way, and it would have been unforgivable to use that girl as a puppet in his private fantasies. She was so young, skin like a peach, tiny fair hairs giving her that shimmer, that radiance; and she had had an unconscious sensuality in the swing of her hips, in the rich curve of her mouth.
She had aroused him with her faint resemblance to the woman he loved. He was too restless now to stay around at the party. He walked out of the glare of lights, away from the blare of the music, the laughter and voices, into the shadows of the trees, down through the gardens to the beach, took off his sandals and walked barefoot through the creaming surf. He headed off along the beach with no real idea of where he was going, sat down on the sand to stare out over the sea for half an hour or so, then got up, brushed the sand off his jeans, and walked back up through the gardens to the villa.
Everyone seemed to be down around the pool, eating and drinking; he skirted the lights and managed to slip into the house without running into anyone, went to his room, took off his clothes, dropped them on a chair, and got into bed, naked, because it was so hot.
Outside the party was in full swing, noisier than ever; but Patrick’s shutters were closed and he was so exhausted, emotionally and physically, that he drifted off to sleep.
He woke up some time later when the door burst open with a crash and men poured into the room.
Dazed, blinking, as the room light was switched on, Patrick sat up in the bed, a sheet falling off his smooth brown shoulders.
‘What the devil do you think you’re doing?’
The intruders fanned out around the room, watching him as if expecting him to do something violent. They were wearing uniform. His mind, still half asleep, registered: wasn’t that Carabinieri uniform? Policemen? he thought blankly; what on earth was going on? Had somebody burgled the villa while the party was going on, while he slept?
‘Patrick Ogilvie?’
Patrick’s head jerked round towards the man who had spoken in English, a short, broad man in his forties, black-haired, pugnacious-looking, who needed a shave, his olive skin rough around the jaw.
‘Yes, I’m Patrick Ogilvie. Who are you? What is all this? What are you doing, bursting into my room like this in the middle of the night?’
‘I am Brigadier Saltini of the Carabinieri. Please get dressed; I cannot interview you while you are naked in bed—do you always sleep naked?’ The man’s black eyes focused on Patrick’s clothes, thrown across the back of the chair. ‘Is that what you wore last night? What are those stains on the jeans? Salt water? Sand? You went down to the beach, then?’ He jerked his head, and one of the other men produced a plastic bag, put on transparent white plastic gloves, and began carefully sliding Patrick’s clothes into the bag.
‘Why is he doing that? Why are you taking my clothes away? What’s going on?’ Patrick was feeling chilled, distinctly disturbed now. He didn’t like the way these policemen watched him; there was a coldness in their eyes.
Calmly, Brigadier Saltini said, ‘How long have you been in bed, Mr Ogilvie?’
‘I don’t know—I’ve been asleep.’ Patrick looked at the time shown on his watch, which he had left on the bedside table overnight. ‘Two hours, maybe?’
‘Are you sure? You didn’t come to bed just around an hour ago?’
‘No, longer than that.’
‘Well, will you get up and get dressed, and come down to the station house, please?’ the brigadier asked him.
‘Not until I know what this is all about, and not in front of all these people!’ Patrick said stubbornly.
The brigadier nodded his head towards the door, and the other men filtered out.
‘A girl has been attacked,’ the brigadier said quietly, and Patrick looked at him in shock and disbelief.
‘Rae? Not Rae?’
The brigadier slowly shook his head, and watched him, frowning, as Patrick relaxed again on an unconscious sigh of relief.
‘That was not her name, Signore. She was a guest at this party—an American girl, with blonde hair. You spoke to her, I think. Do you remember talking to her?’
Patrick sat very still. ‘Yes,’ he whispered, sickened. ‘That girl?’
‘You were seen watching her,’ said the brigadier. ‘Staring fixedly at her, some witnesses said.’
‘She looked like...like someone I know...knew.’
Patrick pushed aside memories of Laura, thought of the other girl: her shy, half-veiled eyes, her young, golden skin, the beauty of her slim body, her instinctive, innocent sensuality.
‘She was so young,’ he said, to himself. ‘Barely out of her teens.’ Then he was struck by a new idea and looked sharply at the other man. ‘I hardly even spoke to her! Why do you need to talk to me?’
The brigadier’s hard black eyes watched him closely. ‘Her description of the man fits you exactly.’
CHAPTER TWO
TWO years later, Patrick was still having nightmares about what had happened to him over the hours that followed. Not every night, just whenever he was tense over something, worried, upset. On a night like that he would find himself back there, in that time, dreaming it over and over again, in slow, terrifying sequence.
The brigadier had left one of his younger officers in the room to watch him dress, and Patrick had instinctively hurried, putting on the first clothes that came to hand—clean underwear, clean jeans, a crisp blue T-shirt, socks, and another pair of trainers since the police had removed the sandals he had been wearing last night. He had needed to go to the lavatory urgently, been allowed to do so after the brigadier was consulted, had washed his hands and face and combed his hair, but he had had to leave the bathroom door open, and the officer had stood outside and watched him out of the corner of an eye.
‘Do you have to stand there?’ Patrick had burst out, and the man had nodded.
‘Orders, my orders,’ he said in thick English.
All that had been mere pinpricks; yet already Patrick felt uneasy, off balance; he was sweating, and yet he didn’t know why.
He knew he was innocent, after all. He hadn’t done anything to that girl. Yet his stomach was queasy, he felt his nerves jumping, and his mouth was dry. And his head buzzed with questions.
Why had she given them his description? What was going to happen now? Where were they taking him? What ought he to do?
‘OK, let’s go!’ the young officer said, grabbing his arm as he came out of the bathroom, pushing him towards the stairs. As Patrick stumbled he thought he heard the other man mutter, ‘Mi dispiace molto per lei!’ and only later understood what the officer had said—I’m sorry for you!
Patrick wasn’t sure what he had meant and couldn’t ask, but it had not been a friendly remark. It wasn’t pity or compassion he meant; there was hostility, distaste, in the young man’s eyes. It had been a veiled threat, meaning Patrick was going to be sorry for himself.
Self-pity wasn’t what Patrick was feeling, though. He was worried, he was frightened, but most of all he was angry; blazingly angry.
He hadn’t done anything—so why was this happening to him?
As he was hustled through the villa they passsed one of the main rooms of the house, a huge marble-floored lounge hung with cartoons, modern paintings and mirrors, where Patrick had sat earlier, talking to Rae before the party began, drinking chilled white wine.
It was full of people now—the guests from the party, he imagined—all seated, none of them talking. Faces turned towards the door; he recognised some of them, couldn’t put names to them. They stared at him, and he felt himself go dark red, in spite of knowing he was not guilty. Their eyes made him feel guilty.
That was when he realised they believed he was guilty—and the cold sweat sprang out on his forehead.
Alex Holtner was there, a jacket round his shoulders as if he was cold, sitting on a stool, looking pale and haggard. He stared across the room, and his eyes were full of loathing. He glared, clenched his fists on his knees as if longing to hit Patrick, then half rose as if to cross the room to get him. Susan-Jane Holtner was curled up on the floor next to her husband, leaning on him; she put her hands over Alex’s, whispering something, and Alex looked down at her, subsiding again.
A second later Patrick was past, being rushed towards the open front door. It was night, yet the front of the villa was ablaze with light. The police had set up floodlights; there were police cars parked everywhere; policemen moved to and fro, absorbed in whatever they were doing. But they all looked round as Patrick came out of the front door, froze, staring. He was pushed into the back of a police car just as another drove away, past him; and with a pang of shock he saw Rae in it. Her face was chalk-white, her eyes like bruises in her skin. She saw him at the last moment, turned her head to stare back, her pale lips parting, her eyes urgent, as if trying to say something to him.
Did she, too, believe he was guilty?
She knew him, for God’s sake! Patrick thought. She couldn’t possibly believe he would do something like this, surely? Surely.
He wished he could have talked to her, told her... But would she believe him? She looked so shocked. He felt sick. If even Rae believed he had done it! He was almost coming to believe he had, himself! It was the way people looked at you, the waves of hatred coming from them.
* * *
Years later, dreaming about it, he had the same disorientating impression of being trapped in a living nightmare; he kept hoping he was asleep and dreaming, that this couldn’t really be happening to him.
The difference was, years later, that he did wake up.
At the time, there was no escape for him. He had to go where they took him, helpless in their hands.
As the car drove out of the villa the policeman sitting in the back with him grabbed the back of his neck with one large hand, pushed his head down, and held it there. ‘Paparazzi!’ he grunted in explanation, and Patrick was feeling so dazed that for a moment he didn’t get the point.
Then, as the car slowed to turn out into the road, he heard an outburst of noise: people pressing around the sides of the car, pushing and rocking it, hands banging on the windows. Flash bulbs went off, the car was full of brightness exploding like lightning, people shouted and yelled; then the car shot forward at great speed and he was thrown forward too, and hit his head with a thud on the back of the seat in front. The policeman beside him hauled him up by the slack of his shirt, almost tearing it. Patrick felt dizzy, and his forehead hurt, throbbed. He would have a bruise there tomorrow.
The drive was a short one, and he was forced to go through the same humiliating procedure of crouching down out of sight as the car shot into the police car park, then the officers put a blanket over his head and ran him into the building.
The first person he saw was a man in a white coat who seemed to be a doctor. He told Patrick to strip again, then gave him a medical examination in great detail. To Patrick it felt as if the man was crawling over his body with a microscope; every orifice was examined, every pore in his skin, every hair on his head, it seemed. Samples of his blood, urine, even his perspir ation, were taken.
Swabs were taken, too, from under his nails, in his mouth, and other places, while Patrick suffered it, white-faced and dark-eyed with humiliation.
By the time he reached the brigadier’s office he was even angrier, and he was thinking coherently again. The first shock had worn off; he was fighting back.
‘I want a lawyer,’ he said as soon as he saw the senior officer again. ‘I’m entitled to a lawyer; you can’t refuse to let me see one—an English-speaking one—and I think I’d better speak to the British consul first and ask his advice on who should represent me.’
‘All in good time. It’s your right, of course, but this is only a preliminary interview—we aren’t charging you yet—so first we have to establish that you are going to need a lawyer, surely?’ The black eyes were shrewd, watchful, hard. ‘Or are you admitting your guilt?’
‘No!’ The word exploded. Patrick paused, flushed and tense. ‘No,’ he said more calmly. ‘I haven’t done anything to be guilty about.’
‘Well, then, no need for lawyers and consuls,’ smiled the brigadier bluffly, and Patrick almost began to feel easier, then the man added, ‘Yet!’ and the fear kick-started into life again.
‘Sit down, Mr Ogilvie,’ the brigadier said. ‘I am going to have some coffee—would you like some?’
Patrick nodded.
‘Black? Milk? Sugar?’
‘Black, sugar,’ Patrick said, and the brigadier lifted a phone, gave an order, leaned back in his chair, and tapped a pencil on the desk in front of him.
‘This interview is being recorded...’ he began. ‘Those present are...’
There were two other men, as well as the brigadier, one in uniform, one in civilian clothes. Their names were given; Patrick didn’t ever consciously remember them later. He remembered their faces, most of all their eyes, watching him.
Patrick was to spend hours in that room that night, endlessly going over the same ground. The brigadier was a thorough man, patient and obsessed with detail.
He kept coming back to Patrick’s behaviour at the barbecue, asking him why he had stared at the blonde girl.
‘It was noticed, the way you couldn’t take your eyes off her. We have lots of witnesses.’ He picked up a pile of typed pages; the leaves of paper fluttered as his fingers riffled them.
‘All these people saw you staring fixedly at her. Why were you staring, Mr Ogilvie?’
It was the one point on which Patrick felt any guilt. He was uneasy every time they went back to that. Half sullenly, he muttered, ‘I told you—she reminded me of someone.’
‘Who?’
Patrick’s upper lip was sweating. ‘A girl I know.’
The brigadier watched him relentlessly. ‘Miss Laura Grainger?’
It was like cold water in the face. Patrick sat still, white. ‘I never told you her name. Who told you...?’ Rae, he thought; Rae told him. Did Rae see me staring at that girl? Did Rae pick up that haunting similarity, the shifting, fragmentary likeness to Laura which had deceived him for a moment? One minute it had been there, the next it had gone, dissolving like a reflection when a hand broke the still surface of the water, yet leaving ripples and broken particles where it had been.
What had Rae thought when she saw him staring at the girl? What had she thought when she heard the girl had been attacked, that the girl had given Patrick’s description to the police?
Was that why she had told them about Laura? Did Rae think he was guilty, that he had attacked that girl because she reminded him of Laura?
And that was the core of his uneasiness: that in his mind now he was confusing her with Laura. He had to keep reminding himself that it wasn’t Laura who had been attacked, but some other girl, a stranger, someone he didn’t even know.
He tried to stop muddling them up like that, but as the night wore on and he got more and more tired he kept forgetting. His mind blurred their images; they merged inside in his head—pale, slender girls with long gold hair and lovely bodies. They danced in his mind like candle-flames; dazzling and blinding him, making it even harder to think clearly, to keep his attention on the questions being asked.
‘You were very distressed by the ending of your engagement to Miss Grainger,’ the brigadier softly insinuated. ‘Angry and humiliated. Any man would be—to lose his woman to another man! You must have wanted to kill them both.’
His face tightened, white and bitter. He had. Of course he had. Not Laura! he thought quickly; he would never have hurt Laura. But Kern. He could kill him, and feel no flicker of regret.
‘And then at this party you saw a girl who reminded you of the woman you loved, the woman who had betrayed you, rejected you. How did you feel, Mr Ogilvie? What were you thinking as you stood there staring at her so fixedly?’
He had thought it was Laura; for one crazy, terrible second he had thought she had followed him to Italy, had come to say she had changed her mind, that she had realised she loved him, not Kern, after all.
All that had gone through his head in a flash as he stood there staring, and then she had turned and he had realised his mistake. He had fallen from a great height at that moment: all the way from heaven to hell.
He stared at the brigadier, not really seeing him.
‘You had a strange expression on your face, some witnesses say,’ the policeman said, flicking through the reports again, without taking his eyes off Patrick. ‘You turned away, and then the girl walked over to you—what did she say to you, Mr Ogilvie?’
‘She asked if I wanted to dance,’ Patrick absently said, had already told him a hundred times. Sometimes Patrick almost invented something new to say, simply to break the monotony; but he wasn’t crazy enough, yet, not stupid enough, yet. Once he did that he was lost.
‘Is that all she said?’
Patrick’s temper snapped again; his mouth writhed in a sneer. ‘Surely your observant witnesses have told you that!’
The brigadier gazed stolidly at him. ‘If you would bear with me, Mr Ogilvie. I have to be certain about details. So, Miss Cabot came over to you—’
‘Cabot?’ It was the first time the girl’s name had been mentioned; Patrick couldn’t help the startled question.
The brigadier waited, watching with the patience of a fisherman who thought he might have got a bite on his line.