One doctor went with her. The other, a thick set man with the shoulders of a boxer, stayed behind and asked me a question.
‘Inglese.’ I shook my head. ‘Non parlo italiano.’
‘Sit down,’ he said in English. His accent was thick, his vocabulary tiny, but it was a relief to be able to talk to him at all. He led me into a small white cubicle containing a hard, high narrow bed and a chair. He pointed to the chair and I sat on it. He went away and returned with a nurse carrying some papers.
‘The name of the miss?’
I told him. The nurse wrote it all down, name, address and age, gave me a comforting smile, took the papers away and came back with a trolley of equipment and a message.
She told it to the doctor, and he translated, as it was for me.
‘Telephone from carabinieri. Please go to see them before four.’
I looked at my watch, blank to the time. It was still less than an hour since Gabriella and I had run for the tram. I had lived several ages.
‘I understand,’ I said.
‘Please now, remove the coat,’ the doctor said.
I stood up, took off my jacket and slid my right arm out of my shirt. He put two dressings over the bullet mark, an impregnated gauze one and a slightly padded one with adhesive tape. He pressed the tapes firmly into my skin and stood back. I put my arm back into my shirt sleeve.
‘Don’t you feel it?’ he said. He seemed surprised.
‘No.’
His rugged face softened. ‘E sua moglie?’
I didn’t understand.
‘I am sorry... is she your wife?’
‘I love her,’ I said. The prospect of losing her was past bearing. There were tears suddenly in my eyes and on my cheeks. ‘I love her.’
‘Yes.’ He nodded, sympathetic and unembarrassed, one of a nation who saw no value in stiff upper lips. ‘Wait here. We will tell you...’ He left the sentence unfinished and went away, and I didn’t know whether it was because he didn’t want to tell me she was dying or because he simply didn’t know enough English to say what he meant.
I waited an hour I couldn’t endure again. At the end of it another doctor came, a tall grey haired man with a fine boned face.
‘You wish to know about Signora Barzini?’ His English was perfect, his voice quiet and very precise.
I nodded, unable to ask.
‘We have cleaned and dressed her wound. The bullet passed straight through her lung, breaking a rib on the way out. The lung was collapsed. The air from it, and also a good deal of blood, had passed into the chest cavity. It was necessary to remove the air and blood at once so that the lung would have room to inflate again, and we have done that.’ He was coolly clinical.
‘May I... may I see her?’
‘Later,’ he said, without considering it. ‘She is unconscious from the anaesthetic and she is in the post-operative unit. You may see her later.’
‘And... the future?’
He half smiled. ‘There is always danger in such a case, but with good care she could certainly recover. The bullet itself hit nothing immediately fatal; none of the big blood vessels. If it had, she would have died soon, in the street. The longer she lived, the better were her chances.’
‘She seemed to get worse,’ I said, not daring to believe him.
‘In some ways that was so,’ he explained patiently. ‘Her injury was very painful, she was bleeding internally, and she was suffering from the onset of shock, which as you may know is a physical condition often as dangerous as the original damage.’
I nodded, swallowing.
‘We are dealing with all those things. She is young and healthy, which is good, but there will be more pain and there may be difficulties. I can give you no assurances. It is too soon for that. But hope, yes definitely, there is considerable hope.’
‘Thank you,’ I said dully, ‘for being so honest.’
He gave his small smile again. ‘Your name is Henry?’
I nodded.
‘You have a brave girl,’ he said.
If I couldn’t see her yet, I thought, I would have to go and talk to the police. They had said to be with them by four and it was already twenty past; not that that mattered a jot.
I was so unused to thinking in the terms of the strange half world into which I had stumbled that I failed to take the most elementary precautions. Distraught about Gabriella, it didn’t even cross my mind that if I had been found and shot at in a distant back street I was equally vulnerable outside the hospital.
There was a taxi standing in the forecourt, the driver reading a newspaper. I waved an arm at him, and he folded the paper, started the engine and drove over. I gave him the paper with the address the policeman had written out for me, and he looked at it in a bored sort of way and nodded. I opened the cab door and got in. He waited politely till I was settled, his head half turned, and then drove smoothly out of the hospital gates. Fifty yards away he turned right down a tree-lined secondary road beside the hospital, and fifty yards down there he stopped. From a tree one yard from the curb a lithe figure peeled itself, wrenched open the nearest door, and stepped inside.
He was grinning fiercely, unable to contain his triumph. The gun with the silencer grew in his hand as if born there. I had walked right into his ambush.
Billy the Kid.
‘You took your bloody time, you stinking bastard,’ he said.
I looked at him blankly, trying to keep the shattering dismay from showing. He sat down beside me and shoved his gun into my ribs, just above the line it had already drawn there.
‘Get cracking, Vittorio,’ he said. ‘His effing Lordship is late.’
The taxi rolled smoothly away and gathered speed.
‘Four o’clock we said,’ said Billy, grinning widely. ‘Didn’t you get the message?’
‘The police...’ I said weakly.
‘Hear that, Vittorio?’ Billy laughed. ‘The hospital thought you were the police. Fancy that. How extraordinary.’
I looked away from him, out of the window on my left.
‘You just try it,’ Billy said. ‘You’ll have a bullet through you before you get the door open.’
I looked back at him.
‘Yeah,’ he grinned. ‘Takes a bit of swallowing, don’t it, for you to have to do what I say. Sweet, I call it. And believe me, matey, you’ve hardly bloody started.’
I didn’t answer. It didn’t worry him. He sat sideways, the gloating grin fixed like a rictus.
‘How’s the bird... Miss what’s her name?’ He flicked his fingers. ‘The girl friend.’
I did some belated thinking.
I said stonily, ‘She’s dead.’
‘Well, well,’ said Billy gleefully. ‘How terribly sad. Do you hear that, Vittorio? His Lordship’s bit of skirt has passed on.’
Vittorio’s head nodded. He concentrated on his driving, mostly down side streets, avoiding heavy traffic. I stared numbly at the greasy back of his neck and wondered what chance I had of grabbing Billy’s gun before he pulled the trigger. The answer to that, I decided, feeling its steady pressure against my side, was none.
‘Come on now, come on,’ said Billy. ‘Don’t you think I’m clever.’
I didn’t answer. Out of the corner of my eye I sensed the grin change from triumph to vindictiveness.
‘I’ll wipe that bloody superior look off your face,’ he said. ‘You sodding blue-arsed—’
I said nothing. He jerked the gun hard into my ribs.
‘You just wait, your high and mighty Lordship, you just bloody well wait.’
There didn’t in fact seem to be much else I could do. The taxi bowled steadily on, leaving the city centre behind.
‘Hurry it up, Vittorio,’ said Billy. ‘We’re late.’
Vittorio put his foot down and we drove on away from the town and out into an area of scrubland. The road twisted twice and then ran straight, and I stared in astonishment and disbelief at what lay ahead at the end of it. It was the broad open sweep of Malpensa Airport. We had approached it from the side road leading away from the loading bay, the road the horseboxes sometimes took.