Two hours flying. We must, I thought, have been down near Albenga when we turned, which meant that since then, if we were still going east and the winds were the same as in the morning, we could have been crossing Italy somewhere north of Florence. Ahead lay the Adriatic, beyond that, Yugoslavia, and beyond that, Roumania.
It didn’t matter a damn where we went, the end would be the same.
I shifted wearily, trying to find some ease, and worried for the thousandth time whether Gabriella was winning, back in Milan. The police there, I supposed, wrenching my mind away from her, would be furious I hadn’t turned up. They still had my passport. There might at least be a decent investigation if I never went back for it, and Gabriella knew enough to explain what I’d inadvertently got caught up in. If she lived. If she lived...
The plane banked sharply in a steep turn to the left. I leant against the roll and tried to gauge its extent. Ninety degrees turn, I thought. No; more. It didn’t seem to make much sense. But if... if... we had reached the Adriatic I supposed it was possible we were now going up it, north west, back towards Venice... and Trieste. I admitted gloomily to myself that it was utter guesswork; that I was lost, and in more than one sense.
Ten minutes later the engine note changed and the volume of noise decreased. We had started going down. My heart sank with the plane. Not much time left. Oncoming night and a slow descent, the stuff of death.
There were two rows of what looked like car headlights marking each end of a runway. We circled once so steeply that I caught a glimpse of them through the tipped window, and then we levelled out for the approach and lost speed, and the plane bumped down on to a rough surface. Grass, not tarmac. The plane taxied round a bit, and then stopped. One by one the four engines died. The plane was quiet and dark, and for three long deceptive minutes at my end of it there was peace.
The cabin lights flashed on, bright overhead. The mares behind me kicked the box. Further along, the other pair whinnied restlessly. There was a clatter in the galley, and the noise of people coming back through the plane, stumbling over the chains.
Patrick came first, with Billy after. Billy had screwed the silencer back on his gun.
Patrick went past the flattened box into the small area in front of the two washroom doors. He moved stiffly, as if he couldn’t feel his feet on the floor, as if he were sleep walking.
Billy had stopped near me, on my right.
‘Turn round, pilot,’ he said.
Patrick turned, his body first and his legs untwisting after. He staggered slightly, and stood swaying. If his face had been white before, it was leaden grey now. His eyes were stretched and glazed with shock, and his good-natured mouth trembled.
He stared at me with terrible intensity.
‘He... shot... them,’ he said. ‘Bob... and Mike. Bob and Mike.’ His voice broke on the horror of it.
Billy sniggered quietly.
‘You said... they would kill us all.’ A tremor shook him. ‘I didn’t... believe it.’
His eyes went down to my side. ‘I couldn’t...’ he said. ‘They said they’d go on and on...’
‘Where are we?’ I said sharply.
His eyes came back in a snap, as if I’d kicked his brain.
‘Italy,’ he began automatically. ‘South west of...’
Billy raised his gun, aiming high for the skull.
‘No.’ I yelled at him in rage and horror at the top of my voice. ‘No.’
He jumped slightly, but he didn’t even pause. The gun coughed through the silencer and the bullet hit its target. Patrick got both his hands half-way to his head before the blackness took him. He spun on his collapsing legs and crashed headlong, face down, his long body still and silent, the auburn hair brushing against the washroom door. The soles of his feet were turned mutely up, and one of his shoes needed mending.
Chapter Fourteen
Yardman and John edged round Billy and the flattened box and stood in the rear area, looking down at Patrick’s body.
‘Why did you do it back here?’ John said.
Billy didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on me.
Yardman said mildly, ‘Billy, Mr Rous-Wheeler wants to know why you brought the pilot here to shoot him?’
Billy smiled and spoke to me. ‘I wanted you to watch,’ he said.
John — Rous-Wheeler — said faintly ‘My God,’ and I turned my head and found him staring at my ribs.
‘Pretty good shooting,’ said Billy complacently, following the direction of his eyes and taking his tone as a compliment. ‘There’s no fat on him and the skin over his ribs is thin. See where I’ve got every shot straight along a bone? Neat, that’s what it is. A bit of craftsmanship I’d say. These lines are what I’m talking about,’ he was anxious to make his point, ‘not all that black and red around them. That’s only dried blood and powder burn.’
Rous-Wheeler, to do him justice, looked faintly sick.
‘All right, Billy,’ Yardman said calmly. ‘Finish him off.’
Billy lifted his gun. I had long accepted the inevitability of that moment, and I felt no emotion but regret.
‘He’s not afraid,’ Billy said. He sounded disappointed.
‘What of it?’ Yardman asked.
‘I want him to be afraid.’
Yardman shrugged. ‘I can’t see what difference it makes.’
To Billy it made all the difference in the world. ‘Let me take a little time over him, huh? We’ve got hours to wait.’
Yardman sighed. ‘All right, Billy, if that’s what you want. Do all the other little jobs first, eh? Shut all the curtains on the plane first, we don’t want to advertise ourselves. And then go down and tell Giuseppe to turn those landing lights off, the stupid fool’s left them on. He’ll have ladders and paint waiting for us. He and you and Alf can start straight away on painting out the airline’s name and the plane’s registration letters.’
‘Yeah,’ said Billy. ‘O.K. And while I’m doing it I’ll think of something.’ He put his face close to mine, mocking. ‘Something special for your effing Lordship.’
He put the gun in its holster and the silencer in his pocket, and drew all the curtains in the back part of the plane, before starting forward to do the rest.
Rous-Wheeler stepped over Patrick’s body, sat down in one of the seats, and lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.
‘Why do you let him?’ he said to Yardman. ‘Why do you let him do what he likes?’
‘He is invaluable,’ Yardman sighed. ‘A natural killer. They’re not at all common, you know. That combination of callousness and enjoyment, it’s unbeatable. I let him have his way if I can as a sort of reward, because he’ll kill anyone I tell him to. I couldn’t do what he does. He kills like stepping on a beetle.’
‘He’s so young,’ Rous-Wheeler protested.
‘They’re only any good when they’re young,’ Yardman said. ‘Billy is nineteen. In another seven or eight years, I wouldn’t trust him as I do now. And there’s a risk a killer will turn maudlin any time after thirty.’
‘It sounds,’ Rous-Wheeler cleared his throat, trying to speak as unconcernedly as Yardman, ‘it sounds rather like keeping a pet tiger on a leash.’
He began to cross his legs and his shoes knocked against Patrick’s body. With an expression of distaste he said, ‘Can’t we cover him up?’
Yardman nodded casually and went away up the plane. He came back with a grey blanket from the pile in the luggage bay, opened it out, and spread it over, covering head and all. I spent the short time that he was away watching Rous-Wheeler refuse to meet my eyes and wondering just who he was, and why he was so important that taking him beyond Milan was worth the lives of three totally uninvolved and innocent airmen.