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In the stand she could see Olivia, staring sullenly at her; Guido and Piero at her side, and behind them others whom she did not recognise, but Nico's face was not among them. Fear and panic began to build up inside her. Where was he?
The questions continued to come, and she forced herself to answer them as best she could, always without implicating Nico, her tension growing second by second as she searched the courtroom for him. Had he escaped? There had been nothing in the papers.
At one point where she was forced to disclose how Guido had attacked her, the room started to spin hazily round her and her voice became husky and strained. The judge was kind and fatherly. A glass of watered wine was brought to her and she was offered a chair.
'And at this point you were saved by another member of the gang?' the judge questioned, reading from the statement Saffron had given just after she was rescued. 'This man ... is he here with the others?'
Someone walked over to the judge and whispered something in his ear. He nodded slowly. 'Ah yes,' he smiled at Saffron, 'I was forgetting—the man in question was shot during the fighting when you were rescued and is now beyond human justice.'
The courtroom swayed and tilted, spinning crazily round her. Nico was dead ... dead ... Sound encroached and receded in heavy waves; someone at the back of the courtroom was shouting; the man who had travelled with her on the plane was running towards her, a gun in his hand. Suddenly violence erupted in the small courtroom. Someone screamed and Saffron was pushed to the floor, just
as a knife whistled past her ear. Shots rang out, and when at last Saffron raised her head, all she could see was Guido's sprawled, motionless body, and Olivia's contorted bitter face.
Just for a moment the scene changed and it was Nico's body lying where Guido was; Nico's arms outflung, body devoid of life, and the searing intensity of her loss outweighed every other emotion.
Over her head she heard her S.A.S. guard curse; and then he was turning to her, asking if she was all right. 'Dom warned me to expect something like this,' he muttered, but the remark had no meaning for Saffron. Nico was dead.
But she couldn't leave it there. After what had happened to her there was no question of her giving further evidence, but she refused to leave the court until she had learned the full circumstances surrounding Nico's death.
There was pity and compassion in her guard's eyes, when she told him that he would have to carry her out bodily and that she wasn't leaving until she knew everything. There was another emotion she couldn't give a name to as well, an almost guilty look.
She saw it again when she eventually managed to talk to one of the officials, a dapper, grim-faced Italian who spoke perfect English and who apologised profusely for what had so nearly happened. 'Bastardi! These animals are not fit to live,' he said bitterly. 'They want to tear down the very fabric of civilisation, even to the extent of murdering His Holiness. They do not deserve to live.'
A pleading glance at her guard had him interrupting the man's monologue to ask the questions Saffron found she could not now frame.
'Miss Wykeham is concerned about the man Nico. He was shot and killed, I believe, during her rescue.'
Was it her imagination or did some silent message pass between the two men?
After the merest hesitation, the Italian agreed, 'Yes, that is so.'
'He died at the farmhouse?' Something was driving her to learn the truth, no matter how painful. She had to know—she must know how Nico had died.
'Yes. He was shot by one of your rescuers -'
'One of his own gang.'
The two explanations came simultaneously, and a frown touched Saffron's forehead, but before she could query the apparent discrepancy in their explanations the Italian apologised smoothly, 'Yes, of course, you are right—I am mistaken, he was shot by one of your rescuers.'
Nico dead! She could not take it in. He had been so magnificently alive, so inviolate and armoured in his strength of will. Hysterical sobs shook her body. Her S.A.S. guard looked uncomfortable, as did the Italian.
'Signorina, please .. .'
'What happened to his body?'
Silence.
'He ... he has been buried.'
'And his grave?'
'Unmarked, as befits such a criminal,' the Italian told her, and it seemed to be the final blow. Nico was gone as though he had never been and there wasn't even a grave to mark his time on earth.
The S.A.S. man seemed anxious to get her away from the court, and she had the distinct impression that he was anxious for her not to ask any more questions, almost as though something were being hidden from her, but what?
Her father was waiting for her when their plane touched down at Heathrow, but when he saw her remote, shuttered face, and the way she moved, slowly and painfully as though she were about to shatter into a million tiny fragments, he made no move to touch her. Without giving her the opportunity to protest he arranged for them to go down to Surrey. Saffron couldn't remember the last time they had spent time together in the country, but although she tried to force herself to respond to her father's mood, it was impossible.
Nico haunted her. Only in losing him did she realise the intensity of her love for him; so much so that every conscious minute without him was a physical pain, and worse than everything else, the fact that she didn't know where his body lay; that she couldn't go there and find some comfort in being there.
