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The attendant is leaning over a woman whose diamond earrings drop all the way to her shoulders, offering a tin of hairspray. She glances up, sees Robin, goes back to where the money is.
‘There’s a girl, in one of the stalls,’ calls Robin, ‘I think she’s sick,’ and she hurries away, partly to avoid questions, but mostly because the cloying atmosphere and the sight she’s just seen have left her gasping for air.
Back out in the club, she hurries past the bar to the terrace overlooking the sea. The moon is up, and she can see a beautiful river of silver. If she can get there in time, she might be able to avoid throwing up.
The terrace is a lawn. The last thing she’d expected in a place where most of the women are in stilettos. But it’s rather lovely. It soaks up the bass and leaves only the music behind. She can walk it easily in her Birkenstocks, and the sea is almost within reach.
A false horizon, of course. The land drops where she had thought it ended, and she sees that on the very edge of the cliff is a horseshoe of seating around a half-moon table. And, elegantly concealed from hoi polloi, the duke and a handful of companions watch the silver moonlight glitter on the water. She sees only the backs of their heads at first, until he turns to look for their hovering waiter.
She recognises him immediately. She’s seen that noble profile in glossy magazines for decades. He is still exceptionally handsome, for a seventy-year-old. A long, angular face that could be frescoed on a wall in ancient Carthage. The Phoenician diaspora writ large.
He concludes his business and the waiter walks away. Someone says something that makes him laugh, and she sees that one of his molars is made from gold. He looks like a duke, she thinks. Like a prince in an ancient text, a man you’d absolutely believe to be what aristocrats looked like if you hadn’t seen the Habsburgs.
She hovers in the shadow of a pillar and watches.
It’s a nice face, she thinks. Benign. The sort of face you’d trust in a crisis and fear in battle. No wonder they love him so, here.
She cannot hesitate. If she hesitates, she’ll lose her nerve. She steps quickly down the slope and walks boldly to where he sits.
‘Sinjor,’ she says, loudly. Thinks again. How do you address a duke? What’s the word?
‘Gracioso,’ she tries. That can’t be far off, can it? Your Grace?
The table falls silent. One by one, his companions turn to stare. She realises that that horrible British consul is among them and her heart sinks.
She feels drab and foolish in her travelling clothes.
The duke turns last of all, and his face is blank.
‘I need your help,’ she tells him. Looks into his shiny dark eyes and feels nothing come back.
‘Giancarlo … ’ says a woman uneasily. He raises a hand to quiet her.
She can sense movement behind her. Bodies emerging from the shadows. I have to hurry. I have no time to spare,
‘Gracioso, I’m looking for my daughter. She disappeared in England last year and I got … information that she was coming to La Kastellana this week. I’ve tried and tried, but your police won’t help me, and this man … ’ she points at Benedict Herbert ‘ … doesn’t want to know.’
‘Mrs Hanson—’ Herbert begins, and she holds up her hand, the way her quarry did.
‘Please, gracioso,’ she says. ‘I know now’s not the time. But I don’t know when would be the time. Can I come and see you tomorrow, maybe, when you have a moment? Please? I know a word from you will make all the difference … ’
The dark eyes glance over her shoulder. An almost imperceptible nod. She feels hands grip her arms and start to pull her away.
‘Please!’ She raises her voice to make herself heard. ‘Sir! You have to help me! She’s only seventeen! I know you can help. If you’d just … ’
The hands feel like pincers as they close around her biceps. Robin starts moving backwards, despite every effort she makes to stay still. She drops her glass and it shatters on the stony ground. Freezing droplets splash her feet.
‘Please!’ she cries again.
The duke turns back to look at the sea.
‘Graci-OH-so!’ says Benedict Herbert in his tight little voice as the bouncers drag her away, and her head fills with the sound of their mocking laughter.
