A Silent Death by Peter May (top books to read .txt) 📗

‘I hear the ham’s pretty good.’

‘I’ll take that as a recommendation.’

She sighed and turned the key in the ignition again to cut the motor, and swung the driver’s door open. ‘I suppose you can eat with us again.’

‘With an offer like that,’ he said, ‘how could I refuse?’

She laughed. ‘Come on. It’s just two minutes across the square.’ And she jumped down into the car park.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Ana has barely been able to contain herself. Never has she known time to move so slowly. Quite deliberately she has kept her fingers away from the face of her watch. There is nothing quite so frustrating as counting hours that refuse to pass.

She has tried reading, but her concentration is shot, and she has allowed her memories to transport her back through time. She is eternally thankful for her mind’s eye, because it allows her to see Sergio as he was all those years ago, when they were both young and she could still see and hear him. She smiles, picturing his impudent grin, his youthful good looks.

She has never understood what it was he saw in her. At best she had been a plain girl. Her parents had struggled financially to bring up two daughters, and Ana had never worn the designer clothes of her contemporaries, or listened to music on the latest Sony Walkman, or had her hair styled in the fashionable salons of Estepona. But for some reason that Ana still cannot fathom Sergio had fallen for her, and all these years later he has come back into her life like a beacon of hope. If there is a God, perhaps He has been saving her for just this moment.

The buzzer vibrates against her chest, and she feels a charge of electrical excitement fork through her body. He’s back.

Her usually assured touch deserts her for a moment, and she fumbles to find the rocker that will release the catch on the door downstairs.

Now she sits still, trying to calm herself. Eyes closed, waiting for the tread of his feet on the stairs. Then the movement of air in the room that signals the opening of the door. She cannot hear the low growl that emanates from Sandro’s throat in the corner of the room as the old lab struggles on arthritic legs to get to his feet.

And now nothing. No footsteps crossing the floor to greet her, no change of temperature as he nears her. She breathes deeply, aware instantly that something is wrong. This is not the scent of the man who held and kissed her just a few short hours ago. But it is a male scent, made noisome by sweat. And it fills the air around her.

‘Who’s there?’ she asks sharply, the steel in her voice belying the apprehension fluttering in her breast and the fear that has started to crawl in her belly.

*

Cleland stood stock-still in the open doorway, assessing the small middle-aged woman in black sitting beyond the computer screens. He canted his head to one side, mentally stripping away the awful blouse and jog pants, the pudding-bowl haircut, and somehow saw something sensuous in the fullness of her lips, an almost Asian slant in her almond eyes. In another world, he thought, she could perhaps have been beautiful. And maybe once she was. Or perhaps it was just a trick of the light.

The last rays of sunlight lay in lengthening stripes across the whitewashed walls of the square opposite the house, and reflected in a soft pink light falling through the gaps in the shutters. Otherwise the room simmered in late evening gloom, the heat of the day thickening the air so that it was almost tangible.

His eyes flickered towards the guide dog standing watching him cautiously from the far side of the room. No danger, he thought, from that old boy. He returned his gaze to the little lady in the chair by the window. Blind, the girl in the square had said. The eyes that stared at him from across the room lacked any animation and he knew that the child had not been wrong. He sighed.

‘Hello, Ana,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ve probably heard about me.’

Nothing. Not a flicker. He frowned.

‘Ana?’

‘Who’s there?’ she said again, a quiver of barely controlled hysteria in her voice now.

A single clap of his hands resounded in the silence of the room. But it brought not the least response, and he whistled softly to himself. She was deaf, too. Blind and deaf.

Cleland was not accustomed to feelings of empathy. He never placed himself in others’ shoes, wondering what it might be like to be them. But for the first time since a distant childhood that he had long since banished from memory, he recalled standing in the playground being physically and verbally abused by his peers. Closing his eyes and ears to it all, as if somehow that could make it go away. Letting the pain wash over him like water, so that it would pass more quickly. Retreating into himself, a safe place where he was invulnerable, a place where he could hide until it was time to come out again and exact revenge.

Only Ana, he realized as he stared at her, could never come out again. She was trapped in there, locked away for ever. She could never exact revenge. And even if she could, from whom would she seek that retribution? God? Fate? How unfair was that? It occurred to him then, with something almost like shock, that for the first and only time in his life he was feeling sorry for someone else.

Which brought a further sigh. For he knew that no matter what he might feel in this moment it would not stop him from doing what he had come to do.

He took several steps towards her to look at the computer screen that faced him. Then he rounded the desk to peer at the screen