The Ben Hope Collection: 6 BOOK SET. Scott Mariani
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back with a fistful of her hair.
‘The information the Englishman was after,’ he whispered. ‘Give it to me. And I might let you live.’ He calmly held the knife against her cheek.
She managed to speak. Her voice sounded tiny. ‘What Englishman?’
She felt the coldness of the steel, and then she screamed in agony as he pressed the blade into her flesh. He took the knife away, looking at the three-inch gash. Blood streamed down her face. She shook her head from side to side, struggling against his grip. He held the knife against her throat. ‘Tell me what he wanted from you,’ he repeated in his rasping undertone. ‘Or I will slice you into small pieces.’
Her mind raced. ‘I gave him nothing,’ she insisted, blood trickling between her lips.
Bozza smiled. ‘Tell me the truth.’
‘I am,’ she protested. ‘He was looking for a document–an ancient script.’
Bozza nodded. This was what he’d been told. ‘Where is it?’ he whispered.
She paused, thinking hard. He pointed the knife at her eye and looked at her enquiringly. ‘Over the fireplace,’ she whimpered. ‘I-in the frame.’
His cold eyes looked into hers for a moment, as though assessing whether she was telling the truth. With deliberate movements he wiped the blade clean on the carpet and laid the knife down on the floor beside her head. Then he drew back his fist and smashed it into her face. Anna’s head lolled to the side.
Bozza left her lying on the stairs, sheathing his knife as he went down to the living-room. He ripped the frame down from the wall, broke the glass against the corner of the mantelpiece and shook the fragments out. He pulled the medieval script away from its mounting, rolled it up into a tight cylinder and slipped it into the deep inside pocket of his jacket.
So Manzini hadn’t given anything to the Englishman. Usberti would be pleased with him. He’d found the woman quickly and efficiently, and he had found what his boss had sent him to bring back.
Now he’d bring the woman round and enjoy her for a while. He loved the looks on their faces when they realized he wouldn’t let them live after all. That terror in their eyes, that delicious moment when they were so powerless in his grasp. It was even better than the slow torture and the screaming climax that came afterwards.
He stepped back into the hallway and his eyes narrowed. The woman was gone.
Anna staggered into her study. She could hear the sound of breaking glass downstairs as the frame was torn apart. Blood was dripping down her throat from her gashed cheek, the front of her blouse sticky and warm with it. Her head was spinning but she managed to focus on the desk. Her outstretched hand dripped spots of blood across her research notes. Her fingers closed around the notebook in its plastic wrapping. Clutching it tightly, half-blind with pain and nausea, she staggered back along the corridor towards the bedroom.
From the foot of the stairs Bozza saw the bedroom door close. He followed, climbing the stairs in his easy, unhurried walk. As he approached the bedroom door he was reaching for the plastic pouch on his belt.
The woman’s bedroom was empty. On the far side of the room was another door. Bozza tried the handle. It was bolted from inside.
Locked in her bathroom, Anna jabbed panic-stricken at her phone, smearing the plastic with bloody fingerprints. With a sick lurch she remembered it was out of credits. She dropped the phone, giddy with horror. She knew this madman wasn’t going to let her live. She was going to die horribly. Could she kill herself before he got to her? The window wasn’t high enough. She would only be crippled and he’d soon catch her again.
The door flew open with a crackle of splintering wood. Bozza strode across the room and slapped her to the floor. Her head cracked against the tiles and she passed out.
Her outflung hand was clutching something. He uncurled her bloody fingers, took it away from her and studied it.
‘Trying to hide this, were you?’ he whispered at her inert body. ‘Brave girl.’ He slipped the plastic-wrapped notebook into the pocket of his jacket, then took it off and hung it neatly over the back of a bathroom chair. Underneath he was wearing a double-sided shoulder holster, a small semi-automatic and spare clips under his left armpit and the sheathed knife under the right. First drawing out the knife and laying it down on the edge of the sink, he unzipped the pouch on his belt and took out the tightly folded overall. He pulled the rustling plastic garment over his head and smoothed it down carefully as he always did.
Then he picked up the knife up from the sink with a clink of steel against ceramic, and walked slowly over to Anna Manzini. He nudged her body with his foot. She groaned, stirring painfully. Her eyes half-opened. Then widened in horror as she saw him looming over her.
He smiled. The knife glittered, and so did his eyes.
‘Now the pain will begin,’ he whispered.
Ben turned the Renault into Anna’s driveway, its worn tyres crunching on the gravel and its headlights sweeping the front of the villa.
‘Look, she’s got visitors,’ said Roberta, noticing the shiny black Lexus GS parked in front of the house. ‘I told you we should have phoned first. It’s awfully rude, you know, just landing on people like this.’
He was out of the car, not listening. He’d noticed something lying on the ground, sticking out from the shadow of the Lexus. He realized with shock that it was an arm. A man’s dead arm, the hand clawed, bloody.
He ran round the side of the car, scenarios flashing through his mind. He crouched down beside the body and ran his eye over the gaping wound in the man’s throat. He’d seen enough cut throats in his life to recognize the work of a professional. He touched the skin; it still had some warmth left in it.
‘What is it, Ben?’ she asked, coming up behind him.
He rose up quickly and took her by the shoulders, turning her away. ‘Best not to look.’ But Roberta had seen it. She pressed her hands to her mouth, trying not to gag.
‘Stay close to me,’ he whispered. He raced to the villa, leaping up the steps. The front door was locked. He ran around the side of the house, Roberta following, and found the french window open. He slipped into the house, drawing the Browning. Roberta caught up with him, ashen-faced, and he motioned to her to stay still and quiet.
He stepped over the twitching, broken body of a canary in its death throes, its yellow feathers stained red. A small statue lay on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He could see light from upstairs, music playing. His face hardened. He took the steps three at a time, flipping off the Browning’s safety.
Anna’s bedroom was empty, but the bathroom door was ajar. He burst in, bringing the gun up to aim, not knowing what he was going to find inside.
Franco Bozza had been enjoying himself. He had spent the last five minutes slowly slicing the buttons off her blouse one at a time, slapping her back down into the puddle of her blood when she struggled. A glistening crimson rivulet trickled down the valley between her breasts. He ran the flat of the blade down her skin to her quivering stomach, hooked the razor point behind the next button and was about to slice it off when the sudden sound of running footsteps startled him out of his trance.
He whipped round, saliva on his chin. He was a big, heavy man but his reactions were fast. He grabbed the woman by the hair and yanked her screaming to her feet as he leapt up, twisting her body round in front of him as the door swung open with a juddering crash.
Ben’s horror at the scene in front of him slowed him down half a second too long. Anna’s eyes met his, wide and white in a mask of blood. The powerful grey-haired man had his arm around her throat, using her as a shield.
Ben’s finger was on the trigger. You can’t shoot. His sights wavered, the target uncertain.