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‘That’s her name?’ Patrick asked.
‘Antonia Cabot,’ the brigadier told him, and there was a strange echo inside Patrick’s head, as if he had heard the name before; and maybe he had, from Rae, or the Holtners, when they had spoken about Alex’s niece, the art student, coming from Florence.
‘Antonia Cabot,’ he said huskily, aloud, and shivered. It was a beautiful name and she was lovely—what had happened to her last night?
The brigadier watched him shiver, his eyes narrowing.
‘A beautiful girl,’ he said softly. ‘Young, blonde, desirable...’
Patrick thought of her as he had first seen her, dancing with another man, her body moving sensually, lightly, with gaiety.
She had come over to him, smiled at him, with that shy, unconscious invitation; and he had been bitterly angry because she looked so much like Laura, but wasn’t Laura, and because...
He swallowed, feeling sick, perspiration on his face.
‘You wanted her,’ the brigadier said, and the words echoed what he had almost thought just now, what he wished he could pretend he had never thought.
He almost screamed, Yes! because it was true, although he wished it weren’t. Yes, he had wanted her. He had looked at that lovely face, that lovely body, and wanted her, but she wasn’t Laura, and he wasn’t interested in a one-night stand with some unknown girl just because she looked like Laura, so he had turned his back and walked away.
Why had she told the police that the man who had attacked her looked like him?
Or was him? Had she actually said it was him? Why would she say that? Had she lied? Or simply been confused? The questions ran round and round inside his head.
‘Why won’t you tell me exactly what happened?’ he broke out. ‘You keep asking me questions, but you never answer mine. Was the girl attacked at the party? In the gardens? In the house? Didn’t anybody see, hear, anything? There were all those people around; surely somebody must have seen something?’
‘They saw you, Mr Ogilvie,’ the brigadier said, ‘walking down through the gardens, to the beach. They saw you. She saw you go, too, the girl, Antonia Cabot. She was sorry for you. She thought you looked unhappy, and her uncle later told her about your broken engagement. So she followed you, down to the beach, with some idea, I suppose, of talking to you, comforting you. She saw the trail of your footsteps along the sand and followed them, fitting her own feet into them, she said; it was some sort of game, I gathered.’ The brigadier looked faintly indulgent. ‘She is very young. And then suddenly someone jumped out at her from behind a boat; she caught a brief impression by moonlight of a face, light brown hair, a T-shirt, jeans. She thought it was you, playing a trick on her; she began to laugh.’
‘It wasn’t me; I never saw her on the beach!’ Patrick said.
The brigadier just watched him, then went on, ‘Then something hit her on the head, and she lost consciousness. She doesn’t know how long she was out, but when she came round she had been gagged with sticky tape; she couldn’t scream, and her attacker had taped her eyes, too, so she couldn’t see him, but he spoke to her, she said. In English; it was an English accent. She said it sounded like your voice.’
‘I only spoke to her once; I said one sentence to her! How could she possibly know what I sound like from that?’
‘You were on the beach, Mr Ogilvie?’
‘Yes, but—’
‘Your clothes were covered in sand and salt water.’
‘I sat down on the sand for a long time, but I didn’t see that girl, and I did not attack her!’
‘Tell me again why you went down to the beach, Mr Ogilvie,’ the brigadier began again, and Patrick felt as if his head was going to explode.
‘I’m tired; I need sleep,’ he said wearily. ‘You can’t keep me here all this time without letting me see a lawyer. I insist you let me make a phone call to the British consul.’
‘We have telephoned a lawyer on your behalf and he will be coming to see you quite soon,’ the brigadier promised. ‘And the British consul will see you in the morning. After the identity parade.’
Patrick froze. ‘Identity parade?’
‘Miss Cabot is in hospital tonight, but I’m told she is prepared to see if she can identify you in a line-up tomorrow. She is a very brave girl.’
* * *
Patrick saw an Italian lawyer, small, thin, dark, and red-eyed from being woken up in the middle of the night, who had a thick summer cold, which made him sneeze constantly and depressed him.
‘The girl’s evidence is bad news, Signor Ogilvie. She identifies you almost certainly, by sight, and by sound, places you on the spot at that time, as do a number of other witnesses, and you yourself admit you were there on the beach at that time. Nobody else from the party was down there on that part of the beach. They all have alibis; they were all with other people at the relevant time. And you had recently broken up with your fiancée, which makes the police feel they can prove motive as well as opportunity.’
‘I didn’t do it!’ Patrick hoarsely said.
‘Of course,’ the lawyer said, smiling indifferently. ‘They haven’t yet got the forensic results—the various tests on you and the girl. They will come in tomorrow or the next day. The problem is...the attacker was scared off before he actually raped the girl; apparently he heard voices, people coming towards them, and ran off, and then the girl ripped off the tape on her mouth and eyes, and crawled into the sea—’
‘Why on earth did she do that?’
The lawyer looked coolly at him. ‘Common behaviour pattern in these cases. She felt dirty; she wanted to wash herself clean; the sea was the nearest place. She says she swam for some time. She may have been feeling suicidal, of course. The police didn’t mention that, but I’d say it was on her mind.’
Patrick leaned forward, feeling sick, dropping his head into his hands. ‘And I thought I had problems,’ he muttered. ‘God, what a mess.’
His lawyer said quietly, ‘Unfortunately, she practically wiped out most of the forensic evidence—which would be good, if you were guilty, because it would mean they couldn’t prove it, but as it is our case that you are innocent it makes our job harder as we can’t prove you didn’t!’
‘Are you saying it’s hopeless?’ asked Patrick, and the lawyer shook his head.
‘Of course not. No, but let’s hope she doesn’t pick you out at the identity parade.’
‘She will,’ Patrick said with grim certainty.
‘Be careful—that sounds like a confession,’ his lawyer quickly said.
‘I can’t help what it sounds like—I can only keep telling you, I didn’t do it. But she thinks I did. I told you what happened at the party. I wouldn’t dance with her; I turned my back on her and walked away. She’ll pick me out.’
The lawyer looked shocked. ‘Are you saying that she lied to the police? That she knows it was not you, but has accused you of it, deliberately, just because you wouldn’t dance with her? I find that very hard to believe, Mr Ogilvie, and so will the police.’
‘Women do unbelievable things,’ said Patrick bitterly. ‘You can’t trust them or rely on them. She’ll pick me out, you’ll see.’
She did.
Patrick stood in a line of other men of roughly his build and height and colouring, staring straight ahead. First of all, the girl must have looked at them through a two-way mirror on the wall opposite—then after a few moments some policemen and two policewomen came out of a door, and she was with them, walking slowly, unsteadily.
Partrick kept his eyes ahead, as he had been ordered to do; she walked along the line and looked at the men one by one. Patrick’s heart began to beat hard and thickly as she came nearer, then she was in front of him and he looked straight at her.
She was deathly pale, her gold hair tied back starkly from her face, dark glasses on her nose, hiding her eyes. But he saw the evidence of what had been done to her, and his stomach clenched in sickness. There were bruises like blue stains on her cheekbones, under her eyes, around her puffy, discoloured lips, and bite-marks on her neck above the high-collared cotton sweater she wore.
There was a heavy silence; the policemen all looked at Patrick. She looked at him, too, her eyes hidden by the dark glass shielding them.
Then she put out a hand that shook visibly, almost touched his shoulder, then turned away so fast that she almost fell over. A policewoman put an arm around her and helped her out, her body limp and trembling.
‘I didn’t do it!’ Patrick called out after her; but he was grabbed, hustled back to the cells, and locked in until the brigadier was ready to talk to him again.
Patrick spent another day in custody, of relentless questioning, while they waited for the forensic evidence to be analysed. Halfway through the long, long evening, when his eyes were drooping and he was shaking with exhaustion, the brigadier was called out to take a phone call.
He came back looking shaken. He stood in front of Patrick, staring at him, very pale, while Patrick, even paler with nervous dread by then, stared back at him.
‘What?’ he broke out. ‘What’s happened now?’
The brigadier took a deep breath and said rather stiffly, ‘Mr Ogilvie, it is my duty to offer you a most sincere apology on behalf of myself and this company of Carabinieri. We accept your innocence of the charge, and you are entirely free to leave.’
Patrick was so tired that for a minute he didn’t understand. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You are free to go, Mr Ogilvie,’ repeated the brigadier. ‘The man who attacked Miss Cabot is in custody in San Remo—he raped another girl, there, last night, and was caught, and, during interrogation, confessed to having tried to rape Miss Cabot. When his hotel room was searched certain objects were found, which had been taken from Miss Cabot during the attack; a ring and some underwear. There is no doubt—he was the man.’
Patrick sat as if turned to stone. ‘Was he English?’
The brigadier nodded. ‘I gather he does have a superficial resemblance to you, too. The same colouring, build, height. That must have been what deceived Miss Cabot into believing it was you.’
Patrick did not believe that. She had described him to the police because she had resented the way he walked away from her after she asked him to dance. Oh, it might have been an unconscious response; but Patrick did not believe it was pure coincidence.
‘We will be happy to drive you back to the villa in a police car, right away,’ the brigadier said.
Patrick shook his head. ‘Am I free to leave Italy? I would rather return to my hotel in Nice immediately, if that is OK with you. I don’t want to go back to the Holtner villa. Could my belongings left there be sent on to me? Could you arrange that? I don’t want to see any of those people again. If you need my evidence later, of course, I’ll come back, any time.’
The brigadier was eager to cooperate, to do as he wished. A car took Patrick over the border that night, back to his hotel in Nice. He stayed there a few more days, mostly alone in his room, lying on his bed, sleeping and waking, obsessed with the events of those days and nights.
They never did call him to give evidence; Patrick read about the case later, in the Italian papers, and discovered that the arrested man had been convicted of a series of rapes along that coast that summer. Antonia Cabot’s name was only one among many and she had not even been called to give evidence.
Rae came to see Patrick in Nice a few days later. She had rung first, found him out, and left a message to say she was coming. He was waiting.
They went for a walk through the narrow, labyrinthine streets of the old town, with its medieval houses and street markets, crumbling plaster on walls, geraniums tumbling down from pots on balconies and ancient shutters with cracked and blistered paint, and made their way up alleys and through tiny cobbled squares.
‘I don’t know what to say; it’s been terrible. It must have been a nightmare for you,’ Rae told him, giving him uncertain, nervous sideways looks.
‘Yes,’ said Patrick grimly, unsmiling.
‘They questioned me about you for hours,’ Rae said.
He had guessed that, guessed where the brigadier was getting all his inside information from, who was giving them clues about his mental condition, his possible motive for attacking a woman. There was only one person who knew all about Laura, all about Patrick’s moods since his engagement was broken off.
Rae stared at his hard profile, burst out, ‘Oh, Patrick, I’m sorry. I feel so badly about this. I never thought you did it; I know you better than that! But...but...they seemed so sure; they said she had identified you, and you were in such a strange mood, you were angry over Laura, you were upset—I didn’t know what to think.’
He stopped, his hands driven deep into the pockets of a black linen jacket he was wearing over black jeans, and stared broodingly over the steep streets of old Nice falling away below them.
‘What do you want me to say, Rae? That I understand? That I forgive you for believing I could have tried to rape a young girl?’
‘I didn’t believe it, Patrick!’
He turned and looked at her directly, his face bleak. ‘Oh, yes, you did, Rae. I saw your face when they were driving you away. That girl identified me, God knows why. You believed her, although you’ve known me pretty well for a long time, and you fed the police with the sort of evidence they needed to convince them I had a motive, too. If it wasn’t for sheer damned luck I might be waiting trial now, on that charge, with very little hope of getting off. So if you’re expecting me to say I forgive you and it doesn’t matter that you believed I was a vicious rapist, I’m afraid you’re out of luck.’
She bit her lip, very pale. ‘Of course I know how you must feel—’
‘I doubt it! A month ago I would have described myself as a very happy man—I was about to marry the woman I loved, I was doing work I found exciting, I had friends I thought liked me, cared about me. And then it all fell apart. I found myself in a police cell, my engagement off, Laura gone, being accused of attempted rape, and finding myself suddenly without any friends, not even you, Rae. No, I don’t believe you have a clue how I feel.’
Rae looked uneasily at him. ‘You’ll get over this; work is what you need to help you forget. Maybe you should start work on the next set of illustrations sooner than we planned?’
‘No,’ Patrick said with force. ‘I’m not working with you any more, Rae.’
‘Don’t be too hasty about this; you’ll feel differently when you’ve had a few weeks to get over the shock.’ Rae was still trying to tell him what he felt, what he thought.
He looked coolly at her. ‘No, Rae. I have made up my mind.’
She went red then, angry and flustered. ‘You can’t break our contract, Patrick! The publishers wouldn’t let you walk away. You have a legally binding contract for this series, remember!’
‘If I had gone to prison for attempted rape, would you still have wanted me to illustrate your books?’ he bit out. ‘Would the publishers talk about legally binding contracts? Or would you all get the best possible lawyers to find a way of breaking our contract?’
Rae stared at him without answering. She didn’t need to reply; they both knew what would have happened if he had been convicted.
‘Goodbye, Rae.’
He turned and walked away, down the alleys and winding streets of Old Nice, towards the blinding blue of the Baie des Anges. He didn’t know what he would do now. His future was utterly empty—without a job, without Laura, without any clear idea of what he wanted to do. All he knew was that he was angry; very angry. With Laura, with Rae, with fate, but most of all with that girl, Antonia Cabot.
He hoped he would never see her again, because if he did he wouldn’t be responsible for his actions, and, just though he felt his rage to be, the girl had been through a terrible ordeal, too. Whatever her reasons for accusing him, whether it had been conscious resentment or unconscious hostility, she had suffered enough; he had to walk away and just shrug off his anger with her, which did not make it any easier to bear.
Bottled up and suppressed, his rage simmered inside him for the next two years, fed by his nightmares, by his new realisation of just how fragile was the identity, how easy to break.
He drew on the savings he had, studied art in Rome for a year, and then moved on to Florence to study there, living in the cheapest student accommodation, eating bread and cheese and fruit, drinking rough cheap wine, and earning some money at weekends by working in a bar at night, painting portraits of tourists in the streets by day.
One of his tutors got him a job each summer, during the vacations, in Venice, as a courier with an international holiday company, shepherding tourists around the city, helping them find postcards, and presents to take home, finding them when they got lost, and getting them where they had to be each day.
And then one day as summer ended, before art classes began again, he was on a vaporetto crossing the Grand Canal, from St Mark’s square to the Accademia, where he meant to sit for an hour in front of the work of Giovanni Bellini, the artist he was concentrating on that week. He had his sketchpad under his arm, pencils, charcoal and crayons in his pockets; his mind was full of his favourite Bellini, the Virgin and child.
There was a little huddle of people on the riva, waiting for the vaporetto to arrive. Patrick idly glanced at them and then went rigid, staring.
Among them was Antonia Cabot.
There was no doubt about it, although she had changed. She didn’t look so young any more; she didn’t dazzle like a candle-flame. She was subdued, snuffed out, in a dark blue dress, cotton, a simple sleeveless tunic, and over that a short black cotton jacket.
Her pale gold hair had been cut very short, giving her the head of a boy; she had lost a lot of weight, was skinny, almost fleshless, and although this was a very hot summer she was pale, as if she rarely went out.
She was staring at the reflections on the water—the shimmering dancing images of churches, palaces, houses, rose-pink, aquamarine, cream.
As the vaporetto chugged slowly into place she stiffened, staring down at the reflection of it swimming towards her, the reflections of the faces of passengers. Of Patrick. Slowly, Antonia Cabot looked up, straight into Patrick’s brooding eyes.
He grimly watched the last vestige of colour drain from her face, the stricken look come into it, the darkening of her sea-coloured eyes, the trembling of her generous mouth.
Then she turned and fled, away from the Accademia, up a side-street, her small black shadow running ahead of her on the painted walls.
Patrick had to wait until the vaporetto had docked and the barrier had been raised before he could jump ashore and set off after her.
CHAPTER THREE
ANTONIA CABOT thought for a moment that she was seeing things. She stared down at the canal, watching his face quiver on the surface of the water.
It was the face she had seen so many times in nightmares, the face which had haunted her for the past two years. For a long time she had been afraid to go to sleep. She had sat up all night, heavy-eyed, white-faced, because she was afraid of meeting that face in her dreams.
Even now, although it happened less and less often, she still woke up shaking from one of those dreams every so often; and even when she was awake she wasn’t safe; something would trigger a memory and she would catch herself thinking about him.
Frozen, she had stared at the reflection, expecting it to disappear any minute. But it hadn’t. It had merely come closer, grown clearer.
Taking a deep breath, she had slowly looked up at last, and the hairs had risen on the back of her neck.
It wasn’t her imagination. He was there, a few feet away, staring back.
She hadn’t forgotten a detail of his face: the smooth brown hair, the threat of the brows over cold blue eyes, the strong nose, the mouth...
It was looking at that hard, angry mouth that ended her paralysis. She fled, bolted for home, like a hunted animal, getting curious looks from everyone she passed. It was rare to see anyone running in Venice. Tourists wandered along, staring; local people took their time too in that sultry summer heat. Antonia ran all out, hurled herself round the next corner, shot down an alley, through a shadowy court, across a bridge.
It was easy to lose yourself in Venice; there were so many ways to weave in and out between the blank-walled rear of buildings which faced the canals. It was a maze. Antonia already knew her way round it.
Instinctively as she ran she kept listening for the sound of following footsteps. Sound was magnified by high walls, by water; you could hear a whisper on a quiet day.
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