I dunno, I didn’t really understand it. But that suddenly got worse, so they took her to hospital, and that’s . . . that’s where . . .’
Abruptly, he hurled the telephone at the wall. It shattered. The maid shrieked in fright, then fled as Eddie grabbed the chair and flung it across the room. It hit a small table, wood flying as both pieces of furniture smashed. ‘Fuck!’ he roared, running after the chair and stamping on its remains in a fury.
‘Eddie, stop!’ Nina cried, hurrying to him. ‘Please, stop! Please!’
He dropped to his knees amongst the wreckage. ‘Oh, God!’ he gasped, voice trembling. Tears rolled down his cheeks.
Nina crouched, putting her arms round him. ‘I’m here, I’m here. It’s okay. Everything’s going to be okay . . .’
‘No it’s not – it’s not going to be fucking okay!’ He pulled away from her and stood, kicking away debris. ‘You know what one of the last things Nan said was? Just before she died? She asked where I was. She wanted to know why I wasn’t there with the rest of her family. I should have been there – I could have been there if it hadn’t been for your fucking statues!’
Nina recoiled, shocked, as his rage was turned on her – then stiffened as the injustice of the accusation stoked her own suppressed anger. ‘That’s not fair.’
‘Isn’t it? If you hadn’t been looking for them, Mac wouldn’t have come to South America, and I would have been able to stay in England with Nan.’
‘We had to find them. That’s part of the IHA’s job – making sure things like that don’t fall into the wrong hands.’
‘And Stikes is the right fucking hands?’ he yelled. ‘If we’d just left everything alone, things would have been fine! We had two of them, Callas didn’t give a shit about the first piece, and nobody would ever have found the second one! What’s all this got us, except for people killed?’
She struggled to keep her temper under control, knowing that he was under immense emotional pressure. ‘We’ve been here before, Eddie. When Mitzi died, while we were looking for Excalibur. Remember?’
‘Course I fucking remember. And you know who got me through it? Mac! Who’s going to get me through this?’
‘I will!’
‘But it’s your fucking fault!’
Nina felt as though she had been slapped. ‘I can’t believe you said that.’
It looked for a moment as if even he knew he had gone too far . . . but then his gaze snapped to something behind her. ‘What?’ he demanded.
Nina turned to see the maid waiting almost fearfully in the doorway, clutching a replacement telephone handset. ‘I’m sorry, but . . . another telephone call. For Dr Wilde.’
‘Tell ’em to fuck off,’ Eddie snarled.
‘No, but . . . it is the president of Peru!’
‘And? Tell him to fuck off!’
The young woman seemed on the verge of tears. Nina shot Eddie a furious look, then went to her. ‘I’ll take it,’ she said.
‘Work always comes first with you, doesn’t it?’ Eddie said bitterly. Nina held in an angry reply as she took the phone.
The call was short, but straight to the point. ‘I have to go,’ she told Eddie with reluctance. ‘The President wants to see me.’
‘Now?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You should have said no.’
‘I can’t face having two arguments at once.’ She returned the handset to the maid, who made as rapid an exit as etiquette would allow. ‘They’re sending a car. I’ll be back as soon as I can. We can talk then. If you’ve calmed down.’
‘Never been calmer,’ rumbled Eddie, tapping a piece of the broken chair with his foot as she left.
The sky over Lima had darkened, the city coming alive with sparkling pinpoints. But Eddie now had his back to the view, sitting on a couch in the fading half-light. The smashed furniture was still strewn across the floor, the maid not having dared return to clean it up.
He heard footsteps and raised his eyes to see Macy at the doorway. ‘Eddie? Why are you in the dark – jeez!’ She saw the wreckage. ‘What happened?’
‘I had words with the chair,’ Eddie said drily. He had managed to recover his composure since Nina’s departure, but was still simmering inside, grief and anger and confusion all swirling in a toxic mix.
‘Uh-huh . . . ’ Macy entered cautiously. ‘Where’s Nina?’
‘Busy.’ He said the word with a caustic sourness. ‘She went to talk to the President.’
Her eyebrows shot up. ‘Of America?’
‘Of Peru.’
They fell again, considerably less impressed.