her superior wisdom and apologizing for his mean-spiritedness.
And so it continued, just as he had planned it: he, the troubled young soul in search of guidance; she, rising to the role of guide. She was less sure-footed when he turned the conversation to her, her life, her husband. He tried to show interest while listening to her tales of love and marriage and a happiness born in heaven—lies that invigorated him, entitling him to proceed.
When she rose to fill their glasses, he followed her to the larder and told her that he had never met anyone like her. She handed him his glass and told him not to be silly. When he took her hand and raised it to his lips, she snatched it away before he could kiss it. He was tall for his age, more man than boy, and she seemed to sense this now. Pushing past him out of the larder, she said that she had to get back to her weeding before the rain came, and suggested that he hurry home to avoid a drenching. He didn’t reply; he just looked at her. When she asked him firmly to leave, he asked her about the bald man.
The color drained from her face, but she recovered quickly, pleading no knowledge of a bald man. When forced to concede that he did exist, she claimed that he was her brother. When he inquired if she thought it normal for a woman to spend two hours in a darkened bedroom with her brother every Tuesday afternoon, she began to grasp the hopelessness of her situation. She tried to wriggle off the hook a couple more times, first appealing to his conscience, then defiantly ordering him to go ahead and do his worst. But they both knew that they were edging inexorably toward a trade. She asked him what he wanted for his silence. Something I’ve never had before, he replied.
He might not have known what he was doing, but he was big, and he assumed that counted for something. He knew he was big because he had seen the other boys in the showers at school after games, as they had seen him, and they had remarked respectfully on his size.
It didn’t seem to give Mrs. Beckett much pleasure. But he wasn’t thinking of her; he was thinking of himself, watching himself moving in and out of her and wondering if this was what all the fuss was about. Looking to improve on the experience, he maneuvered her into a number of different positions, which helped a bit. Her passivity gave him no satisfaction, but neither did it hamper his performance. He did what he had come to do, then he got dressed and left. He turned at the bedroom door and reassured her that her secret was safe with him. He wanted her to know that he was a man of his word. She was sobbing quietly into a pillow and didn’t look up.
The storm broke as he was crossing the meadow. Lightning scythed the sky, thunder echoed off the hills, and the rain sheeted down in warm torrents, soaking him to the skin. And yet he remained strangely immune to this assault on his senses, caught up in dark thoughts, wondering what he would have to do, just how far he would have to go before he finally felt something stir in him.
He wasn’t to know it at the time, but the answer lay only a little way off, in Bad Reichenhall.
DAY THREE
MAX WAS AT HIS DESK, TAKING A RED PEN TO A NEWS item, when the phone rang. He snatched up the receiver distractedly, irritably.
“Yes?”
“I know the feeling.”
“Freddie.”
“Bad morning?”
“That new chap we took on, you met him at the party …”
“Pemberton.”
“Turns out he thinks he’s Shakespeare.”
“He’ll learn. You did.”
“Thanks for that.”
“Listen, Max, I know who she is.”
Max’s smile died on his lips. “The girl?”
“She has a name now. Carmela Cassar. Her father was here earlier and identified the body. It’s as we thought, another sherry queen.”
“You spoke to him?”
“Don’t worry. I was very discreet.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Yes, it is. Have you got a pen?”
Max scribbled down everything Freddie had gleaned, both from the official paperwork at the mortuary and from his conversation with the father. Carmela had lived with her parents in the family home on the hillside near Paola, just up the slope from Santa Maria Addolorata Cemetery. She always got back from work late, between one and two in the morning, but in