CHAPTER NINE

She hurried up the stairs to the bedroom she had been allocated the night before. Inside her head she was seething, sure that he was exaggerating the danger. The visitor was in all probabilities perfectly innocent. She listened at her bedroom door for the visitor to knock and Jack to answer.

Several minutes passed and still there was no sound. What was going on? She crossed to the window but it was hopeless. She could see nothing for the fog. Back at the door, she could hear voices talking. A door closed and the voices faded.

Angela left the room and crossed the landing to Jack’s room at the front of the house. He was standing outside by a four wheel drive talking to a woman, giving her directions by the look of it. Angela rested back against the bed and counted to ten.

The memory of why she was here rushed back at her and she jumped with guilt. Jack was buying Hugo time and giving herself an opportunity to try and unravel her stepfather’s warning. Her hand went instinctively to her locket. She went back to her own room and took the locket from around her neck, laying it on the bed beside her.

Of good-quality gold and oval in shape the front was covered in fine scroll, the back plain and the size little more than a thumb nail. She picked it up and turned it over as she had done many times before. No crack or hinge was visible, no thumb or nail indentation that might suggest the locket opened. She examined the scroll on the front but as far as she could see it was purely decorative.

Jack was calling to her from the bottom of the stairs. She picked up the locket and, carrying it in her hand, made her way back down the stairs. Jack was in the living-room, replacing the rifle in the cabinet.

‘How did your lost tourist react being met with a gun?’ Angela asked in a light-hearted way.

Jack was not smiling as he turned back into the room.

‘Sit down. I want to talk to you.’

Angela took one look at his stern expression and sat down on the sofa. Outside, the fog was beginning to thin and she could see the open pasture and the cattle that grazed there through the window. Jack sat down in a wooden armchair by the fire.

‘Until the jewellery is found one way or another both your life and Hugo’s hang in the balance. I told you I couldn’t arrest Rosini and his gang until a crime had been committed. We know of many crimes he has been involved in but have never been able to prove it. Always witnesses disappear, judges and lawyers are bribed, evidence goes missing.’

He shrugged.

‘We know he wants this jewellery himself, not for Hugo or the country, but to sell. Giorgio Rosini is an art smuggler. He already has a buyer for this jewellery among other things. His cargo is ready to be shipped and he waits only for this final item to make the contract complete. My job is to catch him with it. We know where and when he will dispatch these goods and even now the police are watching his every move.’

‘So Hugo and I are your bait.’

There was a catch in her voice as she spoke but her expression gave no hint of the turmoil inside her.

‘You can help us put this villain away for years. He has tortured and killed anyone who has come up against him.’

Angela gave a slightly hysterical laugh.

‘Please share the joke,’ he snapped.

Tears balanced on her lashes as she said. ‘You, you’re the joke. Claudia expects you to stand up to her father when you marry.’

His eyes flashed angrily from beneath a heavy frown. His face took on a sudden warmth as he spoke.

‘You’re talking rubbish. Now, please, pay attention. I would like you to help me find the jewellery.’

‘I don’t know where it is.’

‘Hugo never mentioned it?’

‘No, never.’

He rose to his feet and scowled down at her as though wondering whether to believe her or not. Silence descended as Jack moved to the fireplace and added logs to the already blazing fire. The heat from the fire had her hitching along to the far end of the sofa, and the locket fell from her hand. She bent forward to pick it up when Jack’s larger hand covered hers and took the locket from her.

‘Has it broken?’ he asked running his finger up the chain.

‘No, I took it off to look at it.’

His eyebrows rose.

‘You don’t already know what it looks like?’

‘Of course. I simply wanted a closer inspection.’

‘Why?’

He flipped it over in his hand.

‘Never mind,’ she said, holding out her hand for its return.

He sat down beside her.

‘Turn around. I’ll put it back around your neck.’

She did as he said but wasn’t happy at their close proximity. His breath disturbed the tiny hairs on the back of her neck and she jumped when his fingers touched her skin. What was the matter with her, she scolded herself, forcing her body to be still until he had finished.

She thought about Jack’s need for help in finding the jewellery all that afternoon as she sat in an old deckchair on the veranda and tried to read a thriller she had found among a stack of other books on a shelf in the livingroom. Her hand was idly running the locket back and forth along the chain. There was no way she was going to solve the mystery of its hiding place by herself.

Why hadn’t Hugo simply told her where the jewellery was? Did he even know himself where it was? Rosini obviously thought he did. Questions, always questions, never any answers. She would have to tell Jack about the locket. Could she trust him, when he was so close to Claudia?

She shook her head. This was getting her nowhere. Laying the book to one side she rose from the deckchair and went in search of Jack. She found him in the kitchen preparing their dinner.

‘There’s something I have to tell you.’

She paused as he turned from the table where he was dicing meat taken from the freezer the night before.

‘Hugo whispered something to me as he left the house on the night you rescued me. I haven’t been able to understand what it was he wanted me to do. I thought perhaps you might have some idea.’

She glanced sideways at him as he lay down the knife.

‘Well, hadn’t you better tell me what it was?’

‘He told me to take the locket and go. I’ve worn the locket since the day he gave it to me. He knows that I never take it off. And go where? Back to the apartment, go home, where? Besides, until you came I was a prisoner. He must have known that even though we were treated like guests. How could he have expected me to go anywhere?’

All the time she was talking Jack didn’t move a finger from the chopping board where the meat lay. When she stopped she thought he was ignoring her. Suddenly he extended his hand.

‘The locket, please.’

Taken aback by this sudden request she raised her hands to the nape of her neck and unfastened the catch on the chain. The locket fell into her palm and she handed it over to him.

‘It doesn’t open. I’ve tried everything I could think of.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me of this before now?’

‘It’s been difficult knowing whom to trust.’

She spoke without thinking then realised how ungrateful it must sound to the man who had tried so hard to protect her, from the moment Hugo had arrived. He had rescued her from her own folly when she had sent that note to Hugo’s hotel, and he was guarding her still, even if it was for his own ends.

That night she had a nightmare. She was back in the morgue, looking down at a man, only this time it wasn’t the man who had followed her but Hugo who stared back at her, his eyes wide with some terrible knowledge. Sweat was coating her upper lip when she woke. The fear was easing, fading into the forgetfulness of reality. Now she was aware of close bodily warmth, of security and the gentle comfort of a rocking motion.

She eased away and turned to look at the man who held her. She tried to say thank you, but it came out in a hoarse jumble of whispered words.

‘You were crying,’ he said. ‘I came to see what was wrong.’

She felt the stiffness of dried tears on her cheeks. Only the moonlight through the fine curtains lit the room but she could see his face clearly. There was no pressure from the hands that held her as he lowered his face to hers and touched his warm, dry lips to her own.

‘Try to sleep again. It’s early yet.’

He stood up as he spoke before tucking the duvet around her and leaving the room.

Angela did as he said and in the morning she had convinced herself it was all a dream. He was nowhere to be seen when she went down to the kitchen. Her place was set at the table and her breakfast keeping warm on the stove top. She had missed her locket when she was showering and remembered that Jack still had it. She must ask for it back when he returned from wherever it was that he had gone.

He didn’t return until lunch time and she had begun to worry. She had washed the dishes, tidied the little kitchen and washed odd items of clothing she found lying around. She was just coming in from hanging these clothes on a line out the back when a car door slammed. They met up in the passageway.

‘Our unknown “tourist” from yesterday has reported back to Rosini. His men will be here shortly.’

Angela gaped unbelievingly.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said, following him into the living-room.

‘We pack up and leave. They might guess you’re with me but they don’t know for sure. When they arrive it will just look as though I have gone back to work.’

‘That woman was a spy for Rosini?’

She could barely grasp what he was saying she was so surprised at Rosini’s power.

‘Where will we go?’

‘That will depend.’

‘On what?’

‘On what I can make from this.’

He had crossed to a desk in the corner of the room standing beneath the shelf of books. He put his hand in his pocket and pulled out an envelope which he opened. From it he took her locket and a tiny scrap of yellow cloth.

‘What’s that?’

Angela sprang forward as he held out a hand with the locket in his palm.

‘Take it,’ he said, then pulled out a seat and sat down.

She moved over to stand alongside him as he took a magnifying glass from the desk and held it over the scrap of yellowing material.

‘It’s very old parchment found inside your locket. A jeweller friend of mine finally succeeded in opening the locket and this is what he found. Don’t worry, he can be trusted. He has worked for the police on many occasions.’

‘I didn’t mean . . .what does it say?’

‘We think it’s the name of a monastery. Now go and pack your things and leave nothing behind.’