Annie drew in a breath. It made her rib ache like a bastard, and she pulled the sheet higher – no way did she want him glimpsing the strapping and the bruises around her middle and thinking she was going for the sympathy vote, playing the poor-little-wounded-wifey card.
‘All right. I’ll tell you. Alberto took me up to the Scottish Highlands that first time. It was January 1989. Five years ago. He chartered a private flight out of the heliport. Sometimes we flew straight to the castle . . .’
‘A castle,’ said Max. ‘That bastard never did stint himself, did he.’
Annie went on as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘Sometimes I stayed in a house outside Edinburgh. We had to be careful. We were always watching, making sure no one joined up the dots.’
Max’s eyes were intent on her face. ‘Yeah, me included, right? What was it like, this castle?’
‘The locals called it the Mouth of Hades. It’s an actual castle. It’s got a big tower – battlements, don’t they call them? Yeah, battlements. There’s a courtyard in the centre, and a helipad. Big steep stone sides to the place. On one side, there’s nothing beneath it but sea. Two hundred feet down, a sheer drop to the water. It looks grim.’
‘Go on then. You got there, then what?’
‘The housekeeper met us, Mrs McAllister. Took me up to this room in the tower, through all these old stone passageways with tapestries and suits of armour. And then in the evening . . .’
Annie stopped talking, her eyes on Max’s face.
‘Go the fuck on. What then? You met up with him and fucked his brains out? Yes?’
Annie shook her head. ‘God’s sake, Max, will you listen? Mrs McAllister took me into this dining hall. Alberto had made himself scarce. And yeah, that’s when I saw Constantine. That’s when I knew he was alive.’
Max said nothing. He just sat there, arms folded, face set in angry lines.
‘Five years ago! And you know what? He was pretty much unchanged. Or at least he seemed to be.’ Annie could see Constantine in her mind’s eye. Back then he had still been the Silver Fox, broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped. There was still the mane of startling white hair, those piercing blue eyes. A few more wrinkles around the eyes. No silver-grey Savile Row suit, though: now he wore slacks, and an open-necked shirt.
‘You still fancied him,’ said Max.
‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Bullshit.’
Annie shook her head. ‘All the way there, I’d been wondering how I would feel when I saw him again. And in that instant, I knew.’
‘Knew what?’
‘That it was all gone.’ Annie passed a tired hand over her face. The sheet slipped a bit, and she grabbed it quickly, pulled it back up to her chin. ‘Everything I’d ever felt for him, it was as if it had never been. There was simply nothing left. Nothing at all. He thought we could just pick up where we’d left off. But I lost it, shouted at him that it was all finished, done, all in the past.’
Max puffed out his cheeks like an angry bull and stared at her. ‘Oh, come on. You really think I’m going to swallow that?’
‘It’s the truth, Max. I didn’t feel anything for him . . . except pity.’
‘Pity?’
‘He’d escaped the threat of a hit back in the seventies. He’d given the Feds the slip. But really, do you think he was free, stuck up there in his Highland castle? He wasn’t. He might just as well have been banged up in Fulsom Prison in the States, because he was in prison anyway. He barely went out of the door. And when he did, he was scared to fucking death that someone was going to spot him, recognize him, dob him in.’
‘He changed his name then?’
‘He calls himself David Sangster these days.’
Max stood up, started his nervy pacing around the room again. ‘Does he, by God. And you had a nice little chat, did you, the two of you?’
Ignoring the sarcasm in his voice, Annie said: ‘Oh, we did. I told him in no uncertain terms that it was over, that it had been over for years. He’d bailed out, left me. And I had moved on, I’d survived, what else could I do? And I told him I was leaving, coming home, first thing in the morning.’
‘Yeah?’ Max paused, hands in trouser pockets, and looked at her. ‘And what did he say to that?’
‘He said I wasn’t going anywhere.’ Annie took a gulping breath. ‘He said that, if I left, he would give the order to have you killed.’