DAY SIX
IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT BY THE TIME MAX REACHED THE Porte des Bombes on the outskirts of Floriana. The journey seemed to have passed in a flash, eaten up by memories of his conversation with Elliott.
The fellow was unfathomable, impossible to gauge. For a master of irritating circumlocutions, the revelations had come surprisingly thick and fast: the Germans’ aborted invasion plans, the governor’s imminent departure, Field Marshal Kesselring’s standing with Hitler, Rommel’s gifts and failings as a general. Was there nothing Elliott wasn’t privy to? And as for the intimation that the killings were the work of an enemy agent intent on sowing seeds of discord, what was to be made of that? Admittedly, the relationship between the British garrison and the Maltese was more strained than it had ever been, but would the enemy really have hatched such a heinous plan in order to destabilize it further? Rumors abounded of atrocities committed in the name of Hitler’s Reich—and no doubt the British had a few skeletons of their own tucked away in the same closet—but would they really go that far in the name of victory?
Quite possibly. War did that to men. Whether it forced such behavior on them or whether it offered a convenient release for some dark impulse deep within them was a debate he’d shared with Freddie on more than one occasion. Freddie subscribed to the dualist school of thought, that men were essentially good and evil at the same time. It was a view rooted in his experiences as a medical officer. He claimed to have observed it at work in the wards.
It was known that a number of Allied pilots had plummeted to their deaths after baling out, thanks to an enemy fighter making a low pass over their parachutes, collapsing the canopies with the down-draft. By the same token, it was known (though rarely spoken of) that enemy seaplanes clearly marked with red crosses had been shot to pieces while going about their business of recovering downed colleagues from the sea off Malta.
And yet, despite these aberrations, an almost innocent camaraderie prevailed in the hospitals. Injured enemy pilots and crew occupied beds in the same wards as their Allied counterparts. Not only that, they were liable to receive a string of visitors intent on plying them with cigarettes and other creature comforts.
It was true that not all the pilots condoned this practice. To Ralph’s mind, the enemy was the enemy and not to be fraternized with, although he bore the Italians slightly less rancor than he did the Germans. As a keen fan of motor racing, he felt that any nation that had produced Enzo Ferrari and Tazio Nuvolari couldn’t be all bad. He ascribed both the wariness of their bombers and the flamboyant aerobatics of their fighter pilots to the inferior nature of their aircraft. They were simply reacting to circumstances, making the best of a bad thing, as anyone in their right mind would.
He was far more wary of the Germans. This prejudice had first lodged itself in him just before the war, when he’d visited the country as part of a rowing eight cobbled together from a number of Cambridge college crews. He had found their German co-competitors at the regatta cold and high-handed and—sin of sins—obsessed with calisthenics. To cap it all, when the British eight’s engagingly amateurish approach to competition rowing had brought them victory, the home crews had proved remarkably ungracious in defeat. This unfortunate experience had flicked a switch in Ralph’s head. He now saw evidence of the German master plan wherever he looked.
Wagner’s belief in the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art, and Hegel’s concept of the “Absolute Idea,” which amounted to a total philosophy of human culture, were two examples of a Teutonic propensity to extremism. A more plausible prop to Ralph’s theory, maybe, was General Erich Ludendorff’s book, published a few years before the outbreak of hostilities, entitled Total War.
Max had always found Ralph’s ideas as dangerously extreme as those he purported to despise. But maybe Ralph’s instincts were sound. In the grand scheme of things, what did the lives of a few innocent Maltese girls matter to the enemy if they served a greater purpose? The indiscriminate targeting of the islanders had seen a surge in civilian casualties over the past month, but it had also succeeded in stiffening the resolve of the people. So much better for the Germans to be selective about who they killed, and actually achieve something in the process.
Max could see the logic in the thinking. It made sense. But it also raised as many questions as it answered, not least of all: Why had Elliott chosen to share the theory with him when there had been no call to do so? It just wasn’t in Elliott’s nature to let slip something like that.
Max was no closer to determining some invisible agenda by the time he reached the Porte des Bombes, at which point questions of a more immediate kind began jostling for his attention. Would Mitzi still be expecting him to show up, even at this late hour? What if Lionel’s plans had changed and he was now happily tucked up in bed with his wife? It had happened once before, and on that occasion Mitzi had been unable to get word to Max of Lionel’s unexpected return from patrol. Letting himself into the building with the key, Max had crept silently up the staircase to the third floor only to find the door to the flat firmly locked. Thank God he’d conquered the temptation to knock. No excuse, however inspired, could have convincingly explained just what he was doing there in the dead of night.
On this occasion, common sense dictated that he leave the motorcycle outside his flat and walk the rest of the way, but somehow it wasn’t an option. He drove straight to Hastings Gardens, tucking the machine out of sight in a narrow alleyway, leaning it against a wall daubed with the words “BOMB ROME.”
As ever, the lock downstairs resisted the initial advances of the key. And, as ever, he paused to catch his breath on the third-floor landing before placing his palm against the door to the apartment. It was unlocked and swung open without resistance.
A ghostlike apparition stood before him. It was Mitzi, her naked limbs rendered more pale by the dark negligee.
She drew him silently inside, easing the door shut behind him. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”
They stood close, the way they used to stand. And in the deep darkness of the entrance hall he could feel the heat coming off her.
“Where’s Lionel?”
“Gzira. He’s spending the night in one of the officers’ rest flats.”
Gzira sat on the slope right across from the sub base, and ever since the transport infrastructure on the island had all but collapsed, the navy had taken on a number of flats there where officers could overnight.
Max reached into his hip pocket, then placed his hand in hers.
“An egg? I’m lost for words.”
“There are more where that one came from, if you play your cards right.”
“Well, let’s see, shall we?”
He hadn’t meant it that way, and when she dropped to her knees in front of him, her fingers groping for the buttons of his shorts, he protested.
“Mitzi, don’t …”
He heard the egg rolling away across the tiled floor, discarded.
“Mitzi …,” he pleaded.
“Ssshhh …”
“I can’t.”
“If memory serves, you most certainly can.”
The shorts dropped to his ankles, and her long fingers closed around him.
“This isn’t right.”
“Of course it isn’t. That’s the point. It never has been.”
“Mitzi …” He took her by her bare shoulders and raised her to her feet, proud of his resolve. “I don’t want to.”
“So why are you getting harder in my hand?”
Did she really think him so powerless in the face of her desire?
He was on the point of posing the question when she dropped once more to her knees, and all thoughts of resistance were swept aside by the warm embrace of her mouth. His hands went instinctively to her head, his fingers entwining themselves in her soft hair.
It always surprised him that she appeared to derive so much enjoyment from having him in her mouth. Her pleasure seemed almost to equal his own, if the low moans she emitted every so often were anything to go by.
Breaking off, she peered up at him. “You see, that wasn’t so bad, was it?” Rising slowly to her feet, she added, “You don’t have to follow me. I’ll quite understand if you let yourself out.”
With that, she made off down the corridor, a dim form fading into the gloom.
His thoughts turned to Lilian. He imagined her standing there in the darkness beside him, observing him, waiting to see what he did, and yet he still stepped out of the shorts gathered around his ankles, leaving them where they lay.
Mitzi was waiting for him on the bed. He couldn’t see her, but he could hear the faint squeak of the springs as she adjusted her position. He removed his shirt and laid it carefully on the floor, aware of the eggs, two in each of the breast pockets.
“I should warn you, I’m very wet.”
He shed his desert boots and his socks and lay down beside her, naked.
“I’ve been wet for hours, thinking about you.”
She liked to talk, and she liked to take her time, he knew that, just as he knew that her lovemaking with Lionel had always been a rushed and entirely silent affair.
“Are you sure you didn’t start without me?”
“I might have, just a bit,” she admitted coquettishly. Reaching for his wrist, she drew his hand down her body, guiding his fingers between her legs. She could have raised the hem of the negligee, but chose not to, preferring that he first feel her through the material.
“You see? I wasn’t lying.”
He slowly worked a finger inside of her, as far as the restraining tension of the moist satin would permit. Her mouth reached for his, her tongue edging between his lips, mimicking the movement of his finger.
Apart from the first time, when he had gone to her room at the Riviera Hotel and found her naked beneath the sheet on the mattress on the floor, underwear of some kind or another had always played a role in their lovemaking. Underwear lent an illicit frisson to their trysts, a whiff of the forbidden, its flimsy barrier a token gesture to Victorian prudishness.
Max didn’t mind; it cost him nothing to play along. It was also an excuse to draw out their few precious moments alone.
On this occasion, though, Mitzi’s characteristic restraint seemed to desert her suddenly. Straddling him in one swift movement, she guided him into her.
“I’m sorry, I need to feel you inside me. Just for a moment. Just for a moment …”
The moment was heralded by the eldritch scream of the air-raid siren, its sickening cadence somehow all the more ominous for the fact that it had gone unheard for so long.
“Oh God …,” Max breathed.
It wasn’t the siren. For all he cared, two hundred German bombers could have been closing in on Malta with instructions to obliterate Number 18 Windmill Street. They were nothing when set alongside the sensation of Mitzi lowering herself onto him.
“I’ll stop if you want,” she teased. “We probably should.”
He placed his hands on her hips and drew her down the rest of the way. She winced, adjusting her position to accommodate him.
“My God, you’re a good fit. Any more would be too much.”
His hands climbed to her small firm breasts, the nipples hard beneath the satin. She placed her hands over his, holding them there.
“We’ve still got time to make the shelter,” she said, almost drunkenly.
“Oh, I think I’ve already found safe harbor.”
It was a terrible joke, a childish jeu de mots, but she laughed, recognizing it for what it was—a cheap swipe at Lionel and his submariner chums. He already knew from her how they liked to talk in such terms when it came to women. Expressions such as “raising the periscope” and “arming the torpedo” figured large in their schoolboy innuendo.
“Well, as long as you don’t blow the tanks too early.”
That was one he hadn’t heard before, and they giggled like two naughty schoolchildren.
“I can feel it when you laugh,” said Max.
“And when I do this …?”
She started to move, a slow, rhythmic roll of the hips, a reminder that they weren’t in fact welded together, one being.
The distant bark of a heavy battery suggested that the searchlights had picked out the first of the raiders.
“There’s no hurry,” she whispered.
“Tell that to our German friends.”
“Let them do their worst. We’re untouchable.”
“I mean it.”
“So do I. If I’m going to die, I want it to be like this, with you inside me.”
And that’s where he stayed. Long after it had become clear that Valetta was the target, long after the whistle and crump of the first bombs had drowned out the dirge of the siren, he was still there, inside her. And as the heavens outside pitched and rolled in one vast, undying thunderclap of sound, they twisted and turned together on the bed, at one with the holocaust, somehow a part of it, immune to it. Terrific concussions tossed the building, but the tremors seemed only to resonate with the febrile tension of their bodies. And as the raid built in ferocity, so did their own exertions, rising to a crescendo, almost in defiance now, looking to drive back the deadly storm, to outlast it.
This they did, their wild cries of release rending the air as the last of the bombers headed for home, chased back to Sicily by a few hopeful shell bursts.
They lay damp and spent in each other’s arms for a long while, lacquered together in the eerie silence, the acrid smell of cordite leaking into the room through the shutters.
“That was … well, like nothing else I’ve ever known,” said Max.
“Did the earth move for you too?”
They laughed weakly and kissed and held each other tighter.
“I told you they couldn’t touch us.”
“They came pretty damned close.”
An enormous explosion had shaken the building to its foundations during the height of the raid—Brr-ummmph!—probably a parachute mine, picked off by one of the Bofors crews before it could land.
Outside, the “Raiders Passed” siren sounded its single note.
“They’ll be back,” said Max.
They all knew the pattern by now. Kesselring would keep the planes coming, varying his targets throughout the night. It was unlikely that Valetta would suffer another assault, but you couldn’t bank on it.
“Maybe you should go now,” said Mitzi.
“Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I want to know why you summoned me here.”
“You know the reason. I know you know, because Lionel told me this afternoon. Apparently he bumped into you at the submarine base the other day.”
“That’s right.”
“And was a jolly time had by all?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How long have you known? Three days? Four? A week? Longer?”
“Hugh told me at the party.”
“And you didn’t think to share it with me?”
“He only mentioned it later, after you and I had talked.”
Mitzi lay silent for a moment. “I’m sorry. It just seems like I’m the last person to hear that I’m leaving the island.”
“You should be glad. Things aren’t going to get any better here for a long while.”
“Alexandria sounds ghastly.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
He had rather enjoyed his time in Alexandria, although his appreciation of the place might well have had something to do with the fact that he’d arrived there directly from Atbara, a desolate, flyblown corner of the Sudan, where he’d spent a miserable couple of months on an intelligence course.
“The bar at the Windsor Palace is worth a visit,” said Max. “Their cocktails are second to none.”
“My God, a bright future beckons with Baedeker’s.”
“I’m just saying there are worse places to be. At least you won’t be pounded to pieces on a daily basis.”
“Lionel’s convinced Alexandria will fall.”
“Then he should have a word with Elliott.”
“Elliott? What does Elliott know about anything?”
“Considerably more than he likes to let on.”
She kissed him tenderly on the lips. “You’re so sweet and trusting.”
A part of him bristled at her condescending tone, and normally he would have reacted. He didn’t because he wanted to steer the conversation back to the question of her imminent departure, and for reasons that showed him to be neither sweet nor trusting.
“Did Lionel say exactly when he’s leaving?”
“Monday. They’re still making repairs to the Upstanding. She’ll be the last sub to leave.”
Four days was nothing. He was going to have to move fast, push things along.
“He said you’ll be staying on for a bit, maybe moving in with the Reynolds in Saint Julian’s.”
“Not anymore. The sea transport officer has booked me on a seaplane from Kalafrana the next day.”
“So what’s this, then? Goodbye?”
“I suppose. And I couldn’t leave without telling you.”
“Sounds intriguing.”
“Oh, it’s more than that.”
She lapsed into an unnerving silence.
“Mitzi …?”
She took his hand and placed it gently on her belly. The negligee had long since been discarded, and his palm was rough against the soft skin around her navel.
He was about to speak when it dawned on him.
“I’m thinking something.” He twisted onto his side to face her. “Am I wrong?”
“No. It’s yours.”
“Are you sure?”
“It can’t be his.”
“He was away on patrol?”
“Even if he’d been here.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s very simple.”
They had tried and tried to have a child, Mitzi explained, but it hadn’t worked. Leaping to the assumption that she must be to blame for their fruitless efforts, Lionel had dispatched her to a doctor in London just before the war, unaware that she’d already visited two Harley Street specialists, both of whom had given her a clean bill of health. The third was of exactly the same opinion: that everything was in fine working order, and that the fault most likely lay with her husband. She still wasn’t sure why she had lied to Lionel, presumably to protect his over-heightened sense of masculinity, but that’s what she had done, casting herself as the barren wife to spare him the shame.
Conveniently, the war had come along soon after, allowing them to ignore the issue. Neither of them wished to bring a child into a turbulent world. But that, it seemed, was exactly what was about to happen.
“It’s early days still, but it’s the real thing. I know it is.”
Max struggled to find the words. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to have a child, Max.”
“My child? Or any child?”
“It’s probably my only chance.”
“Not if you take another lover.”
“That’s not fair. I didn’t set out to get pregnant by you.”
“An unfortunate slip, then?”
“Rationing.”
“Rationing?” he scoffed.
“Malnutrition. It messes with our menstrual cycles. If you don’t believe me, ask Lilian.”
He had never heard Mitzi mention Lilian’s name before. In fact, he’d had no idea she was even aware of Lilian’s existence.
“From what I hear, you know her well enough to ask,” Mitzi added archly.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means please don’t play the saint with me. For all I know, you were seeing her at the same time as me.”
“Well, I wasn’t. And I’m not ‘seeing her.’”
“Call it what you will, I don’t blame you, not after the way I treated you. I hurt you, I know that, but I was confused.”
“And now?” he asked.
“Now? Now I’m wishing I hadn’t told you.”
“Why not?”
“Because you didn’t need to know.”
He lay beside her in silence, absorbing the meaning of her words.
“I’m not ready to throw my family, my friends, and my reputation to the wind.”
“You might find you have no choice.”
“That depends on you.”
“Mitzi, it’s going to look like me.”
“Not if it’s lucky.”
“I’m being serious. I’m dark. Lionel’s fair, and so are you. Two blonds can only produce a blond child—remember your biology lessons?”
“Yes, I remember my biology lessons.”
“So what happens when it pops out with a mop of black hair?”
“Your father’s fair-haired.”
“My father?”
“You showed me a photo of him once. If he’s fair-haired, then the child can be too.”
It was a moment before he responded. “My God, you’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”
“Of course I’ve thought it through. It’s not the sort of thing to be taken lightly.”
She was getting angry now, and so was he.
“What happened to dying with me inside you?” he asked.
“You know how I talk when I’m aroused.”
“Don’t I have any say in this whatsoever?”
“You do now, but only because I told you when I didn’t have to. And if you have any respect for me, you’ll go along with my wishes. When you’ve thought on it, you may find they’re your wishes too.”
“Don’t count on it,” he said, swinging his legs off the bed.
His shorts were still in the hallway, but he remembered his shirt on the floor only after feeling the soft crunch of eggs underfoot.
“Bloody hell!” he snapped.
Mitzi misinterpreted the expletive. “Okay. I’ll ask Lionel for a divorce and marry you. Is that what you want to hear? Because I don’t think it is.”
He groped around for his socks and desert boots.
“Tell me I’m wrong,” she insisted.
He couldn’t, so he didn’t. He just left the bedroom with his clothes bundled beneath his arm.
Sleep was out of the question. All he could manage was a kind of limbo, a restless tug-of-war between exhaustion and wide-eyed wakefulness, a contest punctuated every half hour or so by another cigarette. He thought back to his student days and the cramped ground-floor flat in Waterloo, when anything less than nine hours of full and proper slumber would have had him snoozing happily on his drawing board come three o’clock in the afternoon.
How simple life had been back then. A morning lecture on Piranesi; half a day given over to tweaking a floor plan or an elevation; the Northern Line home from Tottenham Court Road station; three pints and a slice of pie in the King’s Arms on Roupell Street, followed by a short stagger to his front door. What had his concerns been at the time? They must have existed, but he struggled now to recall them. They certainly couldn’t hold a candle to his current predicament, he ruminated wearily.
The news that he had fathered a child—the very fact that he was capable of doing so—had touched him at some deep, primordial level that defied words. It was as if the lens through which he viewed the world had been shattered and then hastily repaired. He could make out the rough shape of things, but it was a fragmented picture, one of refractions and reflections and unexpected associations—an alien landscape where past, present, and future somehow coexisted.
He saw himself screaming at the top of his newborn lungs in the arms of his dying mother, and for the first time he saw the logic of her sacrifice. He watched it playing out before his eyes, with Mitzi standing in for his mother and the ending rewritten. Try as he might, though, he couldn’t write himself into the scene.
He wasn’t wanted at the bedside, where his father had once stood. Mitzi had made her feelings clear on that score, and he couldn’t see her changing her mind. It was easy to resent her, and more than a little unfair. There was no denying the sudden clutch of fear he’d experienced when she had tested him, confident of his reaction, proposing that she seek a divorce from Lionel and marry him. It just didn’t fit with the future he’d envisaged for himself: the architect, the man about town, looking to leave his mark on the world. He couldn’t find a place for the young child and the disgraced ex–navy wife in his dream. And he thought less of himself for it.
He tried to console himself with the alternatives. He would be the mysterious gentleman watching the Colts’ football match against the rival school, stifling his cheers as his son broke free in the dying seconds of the game to score the winning goal. That didn’t work. Lionel barged his way into the fantasy, sidling toward him along the touchline.
“Hello, old boy. What brings you here?”
“Oh, nothing much. That fine figure of a young man you have always assumed to be your son is in fact the product of a brief but passionate affair I conducted with your dear lady wife during our time on Malta.”
“Well, I say. I didn’t see that one coming.”
“Doubtless, dear fellow, but who can blame you? We were very discreet.”
Somehow all the scenarios he came up with collapsed into absurdity, leaving him lost and floundering in a future world of his own creation.
The past and present offered more of a refuge. He found himself drawing a strange kind of strength from the prospect of fatherhood. Just as his own father was the touchstone by which he tested himself, so it now fell to him to set an example, to light the path for the next generation—a mawkish sentiment, he knew, but at least it gave some small degree of comfort.
It had just passed five o’clock when he heard the knock. His first thought was of Mitzi, but she didn’t have a key to the downstairs door. His second thought was of his neighbor, the young sculptor on the floor below, the one who used to teach at the art school on Old Bakery Street and who now made a living running off devotional plaster models of the Virgin (much in demand), the neighbor who was always cadging a scrap of bread or a smear of jam. Then he remembered that the sculptor was long gone, off to stay with relatives near Zejtun, where the bombs didn’t rain down with such deadly persistence.
He dragged on his shorts and shuffled to the front door.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Busuttil.”
The name meant nothing to him until the low grumble of a voice added, “From Lilian.”
He slipped the latch and opened the door. In the darkness it was hard to make out much of Mr. Busuttil other than that he was short, was rounded in the shoulder, and appeared to have something odd on his head.
It was a straw hat, but only just. Stained and crumpled, it looked like it had been pulled from the rubble of a bombed building. This became clear once they were in the kitchen and Max had lit a candle.
Busuttil glanced around the bare room. It was hard to guess his age, hard to say whether the hat concealed a bald pate or a thick head of hair. His face had a lean hangdog look to it, as if someone had let the air out of it. His eyes, in contrast, were bright, alert, and restless.
“She said no phone, so I come instead.”
“You’re a friend of Lilian’s?” Somehow Max couldn’t see it.
“I know the brother of the cousin of her uncle.”
“And you’re a policeman?”
Max had been very clear about that with Lilian: it had to be someone who knew the ropes, someone with authority. The man in front of him didn’t appear to score highly in either department. He could hardly be held to blame for the large carbuncle on his neck, but there was something essentially disheveled about the fellow that didn’t scream “dependable upholder of the law.”
Busuttil pulled back his dusty jacket and flashed the pistol at his waist. “CID. Inspector for five years.”
Max tried to look suitably impressed.
“Do you have tea?”
“It’s the only thing I do have.”
This wasn’t entirely true. He also had a three-penny bar of chocolate he’d been holding back for a special occasion. He wasn’t sure that this qualified but produced it nonetheless. Busuttil eagerly devoured it all before the water had even come to a boil.
Max had his own contacts within the police department, men with whom he communicated every day over casualty figures, and he was beginning to wish he’d taken the risk and gone with one of them. He started to feel more comfortable only when the tea had brewed and they were sitting at the table.
“I see your eyes,” said Busuttil. “I see you are not happy. So before I ask questions, I tell you about Busuttil.” He paused to take a sip of tea. “I was born 1901 in a small house near Siggiewi. My father, he was a farmer of corn. There were also goats, six goats …”
Oh Christ, thought Max, he’s going to tell me their names.
Without warning, Busuttil erupted in laughter, gripping Max’s forearm as he did so. The laughter accounted for the long furrows flanking his mouth.
“Your face!” Busuttil gasped. Once he’d recovered enough to risk another sip of tea, he added, “It is good for my work that people see me like you see me.”
His work, it turned out, was pretty eye-popping stuff. It was hardly surprising that in a garrison of twenty-six thousand British servicemen there were a few bad apples, but Max was taken aback by the true extent of the rot. Busuttil wasn’t talking about men banged up in the guardroom for “conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline”; he was talking about the genuine article: racketeers, extortionists, rapists, and murderers. He claimed to have cracked a ring of NAAFI men responsible for the theft of five hundred cases of whisky from a convoy back in September. He had also arrested a corporal in the West Kents who’d slit the throat of another soldier in a quarrel over a girl. He reeled off a grim catalogue of other crimes perpetrated by British servicemen that he’d investigated, though not always with success.
On the one hand, Max felt ridiculously naïve, a victim of the sort of propaganda he peddled; on the other, he drew comfort from his ignorance. The fact that he hadn’t got wind of such matters suggested that men such as Busuttil were accustomed to bringing a certain discretion to bear on their work. And that’s exactly what Max required of him.
“Is it possible there’s already an investigation under way?”
Busuttil shook his head. “I would know.”
“Unless Defense Security’s handling it.”
“I would know.”
Lilian had briefed Busuttil thoroughly, but he wanted details, specifics, all of which he recorded meticulously in a scuffed notebook.
He was intrigued by the idea that the killings might be the work of an enemy agent, but was more curious about the mechanics of the meeting in the lieutenant governor’s office. He asked for physical descriptions of all the men present.
His most reassuring question, though, related to the torn shoulder tab discovered in Carmela Cassar’s hand. He wanted to know where someone would go for such a thing if he needed a replacement. Max was able to give him the name of the military outfitters in Valetta favored by the submariners, because Lionel was forever moaning about Griscti’s. Unforgivably, Lionel’s second bar had been on order there since the beginning of the year, as if shipping in his medal to the besieged island were more of a priority than fuel, arms, and essential foodstuffs.
Busuttil made it clear to Max that time was against them and that the chances of success were low.
“You should have come to Busuttil before.”
“There are a lot of things I should have done differently,” said Max. “Look, I don’t know if Lilian said, but I can’t pay you.”
A shade of disappointment darkened Busuttil’s solemn countenance. “And you?” he asked. “Are you doing it for money?”
Max wouldn’t hear from him for twenty-four hours, Busuttil explained. Until then, he was to go about his business as normal. He advised against any contact with Lilian but didn’t forbid it.
As he was leaving, he turned at the door. “There is one thing you can do for me. The Spitfires, are they coming soon?”
“The Spitfires?”
“You are the information officer, no?”
“Believe me, that doesn’t count for much.”
Busuttil accepted the brush-off with a gracious nod and made off down the stairwell.
“Two days,” Max found himself calling into the darkness.
“Two days?”
“The ninth. Lots of them. More than sixty.”
“Ohhhhh,” cooed Busuttil from below. “Ohhhh, that is good.”
“We’ll see.”
“No, they will see. In two days they will see.”
There seemed to be a new lightness to the footfalls as they carried on down the stone steps.
Max took Busuttil at his word, throwing himself into his work, losing himself in a fog of intra-departmental meetings. Generally, he regarded these as an almost complete waste of time. The deadwood had long since been cut out of the rotting ship he’d inherited. His staff was faultless to a man (and woman), their proficiency and dedication beyond reproach. They also worked demanding schedules that left little room for lunch, let alone a series of ultimately pointless get-togethers called by their boss. They didn’t need the distraction. He, however, did. Anything to keep his mind off Mitzi and the revelation she’d sprung on him.
Shortly before midday he returned to his office and was surprised to find Freddie seated in an overstuffed chair near the window, nursing a mug of tea.
“Very good,” he said, raising the mug.
“Maria holds the best stuff back for visitors. We don’t get many.”
“I thought it best to tell you face-to-face. Your face, for what it’s worth, has looked better.”
“I didn’t sleep a wink last night.”
“He’s left-handed.”
It came from nowhere, and Max wasn’t sure if he’d heard right. “He’s what?”
“Left-handed.” Freddie leaned forward in the chair. “I should have realized it before. It occurred to me only when I was in surgery yesterday. The wound in Carmela Cassar’s neck, it was on the right-hand side, her right, which means he used his left hand.”
Max could still picture the long gash, the one inflicted by the bomb splinter that had sliced through her carotid artery. It was an image, he suspected, that would haunt his thoughts for a good long while.
“Unless he was standing behind her.”
“True,” conceded Freddie. “But unlikely.”
Getting to his feet, he took up the ebony letter opener on Max’s desk to demonstrate his point. The carotid artery was set deep in the neck. To penetrate to the required depth demanded considerable thrust, to say nothing of accuracy, neither of which was afforded by taking up a position behind the victim. It was a convincing demonstration, if a little unnerving.
“So, he’s left-handed,” said Max, taking the letter opener back.
“How many left-handers do you know?”
“Not many. We’re a significant minority.”
“Exactly. It narrows the field considerably.”
Max lit a cigarette. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything more to do with this.”
“So did I. It seems I was wrong.”
Freddie moved to the window, peering outside briefly before turning. “I’ve done a lot of thinking since the other day. Maybe it’s the way they treated us, but I don’t care anymore what they do to me. It’ll be their loss if they send me packing.” He hesitated, a flicker of uncertainty clouding his gaze. “Or maybe I’ve just had enough of it all and I’m hoping that’s exactly what they’ll do.”
“You know that’s not true.”
“Isn’t it? I’m tired, Max. I’ve been here too long, seen too much—enough for a lifetime. You have no idea how I spend my days.”
“I can imagine.”
“No you can’t. We ran out of morphine yesterday. It was only for a few hours till they sent some over from Saint Patrick’s, but it was long enough. You wouldn’t believe the screaming—like they were being fed thistles.” He paused briefly. “I learned something new, though. The power of the mind. You can inject a man with saline solution, and if you tell him it’s morphine, his body will believe you.”
“Placebo.”
“I’m impressed.”
Max shrugged. “It’s what I do too—tell them it’s all okay and hope they’ll believe me.”
Freddie gave a weak smile. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
Max had seen Freddie low before, but he’d never heard him admit to it. His quiet and uncomplaining resilience had always marked him out from the rest of them. While Ralph kicked against the incompetence of his superiors and Hugh moaned on ceaselessly about the lack of recognition afforded to the artillery, Freddie had always just got on with the grim business of putting people back together.
“Maybe Elliott was right. Maybe I am a moralist at heart.”
Under other circumstances Max would have sought to buoy up his friend, to make him see sense. Selfishly, the prospect of an accomplice prevailed. It was good to have Freddie back on board. He reached for one of the phones on his desk and asked Maria to hold his calls.
Freddie seemed genuinely shocked by the speed of developments, and not nearly as skeptical as Max had been about Elliott’s hypothesis that the murders might be the work of someone looking to frame the British for the crimes, some spy within their own ranks, or a Maltese fifth columnist.
“It’s possible, I suppose. I can see it. He could have planted the shoulder tab in her hand.”
“Or they. That was another of Elliott’s suggestions.”
“Why’s he being so helpful?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you tell him about this detective …?”
“Busuttil? No, and I don’t plan to until we know which side of the fence Elliott’s really sitting on.”
Not for the first time that day, Josef Busuttil found himself running for shelter. As if the running weren’t bad enough already—a stark reminder of just how rapidly his body was betraying him with age—all that the finish line had to offer was some gloomy ill-ventilated tunnel hacked out of the rock. He hated confined spaces. He hated them more when you had to share them with a swarming mass of humanity.
Fortunately, this shelter was considerably larger than most. At least he wouldn’t have to spend the next hour or so upright, pressed tight with a bunch of strangers, like anchovies in a tin. The tunnel was wide, and judging from the run of paraffin lamps suspended from the vaulted ceiling, it stretched far beneath Valetta. The walls on either side of the central gangway bristled with iron bedsteads and wooden bunks. Here and there, niches had been hollowed out of the walls, some small, some large enough to accommodate a whole tribe of relations. Wherever possible, curtains had been rigged up to offer some degree of privacy.
The smell, as always, hit Josef with the force of a blow, clutching at his throat—a fetid cocktail of paraffin fumes, garlic, sweat, and other human excretions.
For those who had been bombed out of their homes, this was now their permanent residence. They were easy to spot; they were the ones already in place, staring at the plug of newcomers crowding the entrance. Some waved them deeper into the tunnel, welcoming them. Others were more mistrustful, or simply too weary to care. Outside, the bombs started to fall. The noise was met by a low murmur of prayers.
Josef made his way to the far end of the tunnel, closing his mind to the musty pressure of the walls, challenging the fear he had always carried in him. Small children darted about, lost in their games. Old women, beads in hand, said the rosary before ramshackle shrines to the Virgin. Mothers poked at pans on sputtering Primus stoves. This is what we have become, he thought. This is what they have turned us into: a race of cowering cave dwellers.
He found himself staring at a pretty and petite young woman perched on a bed, reading from a book to her two children. The girl was curled up on the lean mattress, head in her mother’s lap. The boy was seated on the hard floor, looking bored, eager to be elsewhere. Josef wondered what their story was, wondered if they would all live to tell it. The woman caught his eye and gestured him over, into their world. He hesitated. What kind of woman would make such an overture to a stranger when her husband was absent? A woman who had lost her husband, it occurred to him. But she was gesturing at the other bed now, and the prospect of taking the weight off his feet won through.
“You look tired.”
“I am tired.”
“Then rest.”
The boy glowered up at him mistrustfully.
“Thank you.”
He removed his shoes and lay down on the bed. There was nothing more he could achieve outside while the raid was on. Why not rest awhile? Besides, things had moved fast that morning and it was an opportunity to stop and take stock of the situation.
His first port of call had been the Blue Parrot. It had a reputation as one of the more upmarket dance halls, although in the harsh light of day it was hard to imagine why. The place looked tired and cramped and dirty, its owner not much better. The owner’s startled reaction to a visit by an inspector from the CID suggested that he was guilty, though not necessarily of murder. Most places were running on black market booze by now.
The man had clearly been suspicious of the questions put to him about Carmela, but he’d known better than to say so. Her tragic death had shocked them all. She had been a great girl, a little on the quiet side at first, but bright and eager to learn. Her earnings had improved steadily in the five months she’d worked there, and she’d twice pocketed half a crown in commission for persuading clients to buy bottles of champagne.
Josef didn’t push it. He knew he’d be back later, after nightfall, when the place came to life. The real questions could wait till then, till the other hostesses were at work. They were the ones he needed to speak to, because his instinct told him that the killer had targeted Carmela right there in the dance hall, which meant that someone had seen him. Before leaving, Josef asked if the “officers only” door policy was strictly enforced. It was.
Major Chadwick had been able to provide him only with the names of the other two girls who had died suspiciously, but within the narrow world of the Gut, it didn’t take Josef long to find out where the girls had worked. Dirty Dick’s and the John Bull were both down at the far end of the Gut, where the narrow street fell away sharply toward the nether regions of Valetta. Their location was significant. It marked them out for what they were: low-grade establishments that catered to “other rankers.” According to the wooden sign nailed to its barred and padlocked doors, Dirty Dick’s was Closed for Renovation—an amusing understatement; the top three floors of the building were missing, reduced to a tumble of rock and rubble and splintered beams.
The John Bull, almost directly opposite, had been spared. It was a cellar bar, with steps leading down from the street to a recessed door set in a carved stone gateway. From here, more steps descended into the gloom. The place was far larger than it appeared from the street, a vaulted labyrinth of passageways and deep alcoves that incorporated the cellars of the two flanking buildings. The bar and the dance floor were at the back, where even at this hour of the day the only light came from a handful of paraffin lamps scattered about the place.
It took Josef’s eye a few moments to adjust to the spectacle. The barman was busying himself with some glasses, feigning disinterest in the couple seated at the counter. The girls huddled at a nearby table were making no such pretence. They watched and whispered among themselves.
The man at the counter was a British serviceman. He sat slumped on his stool, head bowed, sobbing quietly. His companion, a Maltese girl with bleached blond hair, had an arm around his shoulder. She was whispering to him, sweet words of comfort, but every so often she rolled her eyes with boredom for the amusement of her colleagues gathered at the table. They, in turn, struggled to stifle their giggles.
Josef’s instinct was to take the soldier by the arm and lead him out of this den of harpies, but that didn’t fit with his mission. The table of girls eyed him with undisguised indifference as he wandered over to them. Even the lowliest British serviceman had twenty or so shillings a week to spend, which was far more than the average Maltese could muster.
They perked up a little when he asked, “Thirsty?”
He knew better than to order the drinks himself; their commission was what mattered to them. The youngest was dispatched to bring the refreshments, and Josef found a chair pulled up for him. He immediately turned his attention to the oldest, a baggy-eyed specimen in a grubby white frock. Win over the mother hen, and the others would follow.
“What’s the story?” he asked her, nodding at the sobbing man.
“He misses his wife.”
It was a voice coarsened by drink and cigarettes.
“You don’t say? Me too.”
“So why aren’t you crying?”
“You haven’t seen my wife.”
He knew he had them when they laughed.
“Where’s your wedding band?” asked mother hen, more practiced at such matters.
“Sold, so that the poor orphan boys of Saint Joseph’s might eat.”
This set them off again, although they sobered up fast when he raised the subject of Mary Farrugia. A few of them crossed themselves at the mention of their dead colleague. Josef made his play. He said he was Mary’s uncle, and he was there on a sensitive matter. It involved a pair of silver earrings, a gift to Mary from one of her customers just before her death. The family felt that the earrings should be returned to the British serviceman in question, the only trouble being that they had no idea who he was.
This triggered a flurry of speculation around the table. Judging from the number of names bandied about, Mary Farrugia had been a popular girl with the clientele of the John Bull.
“I think he might have been a submariner,” offered Josef, which was met with shrugs and blank faces. “Possibly an officer, unless she was lying.”
“Well, they’re not supposed to come here, but they do.”
“They dress down on purpose.”
“They know where to come for a good time.”
“A much better time.”
“We can show you, if you like,” said one of the younger girls, a frail-looking creature who must once have been pretty.
They were teasing him now, losing interest in his quest. He made one last effort to draw a name from them. When this failed, he made his excuses and left them to their drinks.
Mother hen caught up with him near the entrance.
“Tell me something—if you’re Mary’s uncle, then why weren’t you at her funeral?”
She had him cold.
“Are you a cop?”
“Yes.”
“What’s this about?”
“Nothing that concerns you.”
“It might.”
“You know something?”
“I know I have a nephew in prison.”
Oh, so that was it.
“What’s he in for?”
“Looting.”
Josef despised looters.
“Some would say prison’s the right place for a looter to be.”
“Some would say it’s no place for an eighteen-year-old boy who fell in with the wrong crowd and who’s learned his lesson.”
Josef let the silence linger awhile. “It depends on what you’ve got.”
“Will a name do?”
“Maybe,” he said, trying to contain himself.
She gave a quick glance over her shoulder. “There was a man. I never met him. That lot don’t even know. Mary asked me not to tell. Her ‘special friend,’ that’s what she called him. She also said he was an officer with the submarines.”
Josef could feel his pulse quickening. “Go on.”
“That’s it.”
“His name?”
“Ken.”
“Ken?”
“That’s what she said.”
“No surname?”
“Just Ken.”
It was possible she was lying. At the table he had asked for the name of a submarine officer, and now she had just given him one. He stared into her bloodshot eyes. He prided himself on his ability to ferret out a fiction from a person’s eyes. Bombarding the person with rapid-fire questions also helped.
“She never described him to you?”
“Only that he was tall and handsome.”
“If they didn’t meet here, where did they meet?”
“In the street, I think, out and about.”
“What sort of relationship did they have?”
“What sort …?”
“You know what I mean. Did it demand privacy? Did they go somewhere?”
“She mentioned a flat. She didn’t say where. Gzira maybe, or Sliema.”
“Which? Gzira or Sliema?”
“I can’t remember.”
“Was it his flat?”
“She didn’t say.”
She was growing agitated now, regretting her decision to speak to him.
“Okay,” he said, more gently. “Thanks.”
“And my nephew?”
“If it checks out, I’ll come back and see you.”
“He’s a baby. He shouldn’t be in that place.”
“No, he should be. But that doesn’t mean I can’t help.”
When Lilian had come to his house in Naxxar and told him her tale of dead girls and cover-ups, Josef had agreed to meet Major Chadwick only out of courtesy to her and their mutual acquaintances. As he had seen it, the whole thing was either too preposterous for words or too hot to touch. The major had made Josef see things differently. It wasn’t what he had said so much as how he had carried himself. The quiet conviction of the man had touched Josef. If anyone was playing with fire, it was Major Chadwick. That an officer of his standing was prepared to throw everything away on a point of principle was more than just intriguing; it obliged you to take a long hard look at yourself.
He had decided to help on an impulse, not believing he’d make any real progress in a few short days. And yet, he already had a name: Ken. He ran it over and over in his head, testing it to see if it rang true. Was it too much to ask that the killer had given his real name to Mary Farrugia? Probably. Best to remain skeptical, he told himself, as he lay there on the mattress, the mother reading aloud to her two children the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She read well, fluently and with feeling….
He woke with a start, seizing the hand on his shoulder. The woman didn’t struggle or recoil, allowing him to orientate himself in the half-light, his filmy eyes slowly focusing.
“I’m sorry,” said Josef, releasing her wrist.
He saw that his jacket had fallen open while he was asleep, revealing the gun at his hip.
“I hope it didn’t scare them off.”
He meant her children, who were no longer there.
“I’m a policeman.”
“Where’s your uniform?”
“A detective.”
He swung his legs off the bed and pulled on his shoes. “How long have I been asleep?”
“Two hours, maybe a bit more. It’s easy to lose track of time down here. The all clear’s only just sounded.”
“Some life,” he said.
“It won’t last forever. There are more Spitfires coming.”
She had large, knowing eyes and a level stare.
“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.
“Most of the time,” she replied with a ghost of a grin.
“They’ll be here the day after tomorrow. More than the last time, more than sixty this time.”
Her teeth showed, white and even, when she smiled. “I don’t believe you.”
Josef extended his hand. “I’ll bet you a shilling.”
“I don’t have a shilling.”
“Then I’ll allow you to pay your debt in installments.”
“Okay,” she said after a moment, “but I can’t promise to offer you such generous terms.”
She took his hand, sealing the bet, providing them with the excuse to see each other again.
As he was leaving, she said, “You should put some baking soda on that thing. It’ll bring it to a head.”
She was referring to the carbuncle on his neck.
“Baking soda? I didn’t know that.”
“Well, now you do.”
“Where can I find baking soda?”
“You can’t. It’s all gone, months ago.”
“Well, thanks for the tip anyway.”
“Don’t mention it.”
Outside in the blinding sunshine, Josef paused to fill his lungs with fresh air and get his bearings. He felt invigorated by the sleep, or was it something else, something he hadn’t felt in a long while? He hadn’t even asked her name. That’s how hopeless he had become in his dealings with women.
He rarely stopped to think about how it had crept up on him, this solitary life of his: the small house in Naxxar inherited from his father, the house that would have gone to his older brother, if Karlu hadn’t given himself to God, turning his back on all worldly possessions. Karlu with his undying faith in man’s ability to rise to the challenge set him by the Almighty; he, Josef, the one with the biblical name, mercilessly hunting down those who failed to measure up.
He used to care about the job, he used to think he was serving a purpose, but now he wasn’t so sure. There would always be others to fill his boots, and yet he couldn’t give it up. It was his excuse for the half-life he’d landed himself with.
Strange that a chance encounter in an air-raid shelter could challenge his weary resignation. He smiled at the memory of her words, playfully defiant: I can’t promise to offer you such generous terms.
A pretty woman, and a funny one too, he mused as he pushed open the door to Griscti’s military outfitters.
The wooden counter ran the full width of the shop, and on the felt panels covering the wall behind it were pinned a dizzying array of caps, berets, badges, and buttons. The cabinets lining the side walls had lost their glass and now stood empty. Behind the counter a dapper-looking man with a goatee beard and pince-nez spectacles was berating a shopgirl for something or other to do with a reel of gold braid. He schooled his features into an unconvincing smile as Josef approached.
“May I help you?”
Josef produced his badge and demanded to see the shop ledger. The manager grudgingly handed it over.
There was no record of a sale of a submariner’s shoulder tab in the past ten days, not since Carmela Cassar had been found dead in the street with the remnants of one in her hand. In fact, the ledger recorded barely any sales since the beginning of the month. This wasn’t so surprising; the soldiers, sailors, and airmen on the island had better things to think about right then than the trim of their battle dress. Ken, assuming that was his name, assuming that he had killed Mary Farrugia before going on to murder two more girls, assuming that he existed at all and that mother hen hadn’t been trying to pull a fast one for the sake of her nephew—
“Have you finished?” demanded the manager.
Josef silenced him with a look, irritated by the distraction, irritated by the number of assumptions driving the case. Facts and evidence were what counted.
He flicked back through the ledger—April, March, February, January …
“Do you have a ruler?” asked Josef.
“A ruler?”
Unprompted, the shopgirl pulled one from a drawer and handed it over.
“Thanks,” said Josef with a smile, taking it from her and using it to tear off the relevant pages of the ledger.
The manager looked stunned by this act of desecration.
“Don’t worry. You’ll get them back.”