that his friendship with Freddie wasn’t at stake. Freddie had offered no resistance to his suggestion that he take the shoulder tab with him. If anything, he had seemed eager to rid himself of it. Why was that? One overriding reason presented itself: he was abdicating responsibility to Max. Take this, he was saying, and do with it what you will, because I don’t know what to do with it.
It wasn’t much of a consolation to Max’s conscience, but it would have to do for now. He glanced around him to check that he was alone then tossed the piece of material away. It was lost in the heaped rubble of what used to be 35 Pietro Floriani Street.
He set off at a brisk pace, not wishing to dwell on his actions. At the end of his street, he returned the salutes of the scruffy mob of Maltese boys at their flag station.
‘No worries, Joe!’ they called.
It was about all the English they possessed, that and ‘Speetfire’.
‘Allura,’ Max replied. No worries.
Many of them had older brothers who had been conscripted into the Royal Malta Artillery or the King’s Own Malta Regiment. Eager to emulate their heroes they had rigged a flagstaff from a toppled telegraph pylon. The moment the red ensign appeared above the Castile in Valletta, they hoisted their own scarlet rag for the benefit of their little corner of Floriana. Amazingly, they never abandoned their post, even during an air raid, although they often strayed on to the pitted patch of earth near the bastion wall to play football against the crew of the Bofor gun site—Manchester men who liked the ball at their feet and who weren’t afraid to send a small child sprawling in the dust.
Max’s third-floor apartment at the end of Vilhena Terrace afforded a bird’s-eye view of these contests, and in the evening he would sometimes sit and observe the antics from his balcony, Grand Harbour and the Three Cities providing the backdrop. It was a corner apartment, and the other view, from the bedroom window, was to the north-east, across the open area of ground which separated Floriana from Valletta. Both towns occupied the peninsula and both were well protected from the water by a bewilderment of bastions, but the mighty ditch on the landward side of Valletta proclaimed Floriana’s role as a first line of defence. The Knights of St John had engineered things this way against the possibility of another Turkish invasion of the island and, centuries on, the residents of Floriana were still left with the slightly uneasy feeling that they were disposable, that even in retreat the gates of Valletta, the all-important citadel, might not be thrown open to them. As things had turned out, the Turks never recovered from their first failed assault on Malta—a mere stepping stone to mainland Europe, or so they had assumed—and the impressive fortifications thrown up by the Knights had never been put to the test. Not till now. Now they were useless. What good were soaring battlements against an enemy who assaulted you from the air with bombs? All you could do was cower and pray. The cowering had helped a little, saved a few lives, but the prayers had fallen on deaf ears.
In the past month, German bombs had laid waste to much of what mattered in Valletta, obliging the Governor to flee his palace for his summer residence at Verdala, and causing extensive damage to the Auberge de Castile, the military and administrative hub of the island. The various departments had scattered like chaff before a stiff wind, seeking shelter wherever they could. Max no longer walked to work in Valletta. The Information Office had been relocated twice, from the Museum in the Auberge d’Italie to the old audit offices at the top of the General Post Office building, and then to St Joseph’s, an orphanage for boys in Fleur-de-Lys, up on the hill beyond Hamrun. It was ten minutes inland by motorcycle on a good day, considerably more when the carburettor was clogged with rust from the old petrol tank he’d been forced to scavenge from another machine.
He missed the bustle and activity of Valletta, the snatched lunches with friends at the Union Club or Monico’s, but there were far worse places to work than St Joseph’s. An ancient palace where, according to local lore, Napoleon had stayed during his brief dominion over the island, it had a spacious courtyard at its heart, planted with cypresses, which lent it the calm air of a convent or monastery. The rooms were large and light, the residents welcoming and unobtrusive. To ease their passage into the world, the orphan boys were taught a variety of skills and professions, one of which was printing, and a modern printing press filled a room on the ground floor of the south wing. This was the real reason the Information Office had been assigned to St Joseph’s; it allowed them to run off their daily and weekly bulletins for distribution around the island. The close proximity of the Lieutenant-Governor’s office, which had taken up residence in the Vincenzo Bugeja Conservatory right next door, was an undeniable irritant—snooping and meddling came naturally to the penguins of the LGO—however it was a small price to pay for personal safety. The Luftwaffe might have developed an uncanny knack of divining the exact whereabouts of key military departments, but for now at least St Joseph’s was anything but a first-strike target.
Max glanced at his watch. He should have been at his desk an hour ago, and he could see the papers already piling up in the wire basket on the desk. Maria, his long-suffering secretary, would be fielding the calls and making excuses for his absence. Both would have to wait. There was something else he needed to do first.
His motorcycle was propped against the wall of his apartment building, the foot-stand having rusted away during the hard, wet winter. She was in a temperamental mood this morning, but after much cajoling the engine finally fired. Some of the sweat from his exertions dried off in the wind during the short ride up the hill into Valletta.
Lilian wasn’t in work. Or rather, she had come in early then she had gone out again, chasing up some story or other. Rita couldn’t be more specific, or didn’t wish to be.
Rita manned the front desk at the newspaper offices. She didn’t like Max. This wasn’t paranoia on his part. Lilian, with characteristic candour, had told him that Rita didn’t like him.
‘Well, if you could tell her I dropped by…’
Rita leaned forward, placing her meaty forearms on the desk. ‘Of course,’ she said.
But she didn’t have to.
‘Shouldn’t you be at work?’
It was Lilian, entering from the street. Her long black hair was pinned up in an unruly mess and she was rummaging for something in her shoulder bag.
‘I just wanted to check you got the film.’
‘She got the film,’ said Rita flatly.
Max had dropped the film off with Rita the previous evening, Lilian having already left for the day.
‘How did the photos turn out?’
‘Good. You want to see them?’
‘Have you got time?’
‘Of course. Come.’
When Lilian made for the staircase, Max followed, glancing at Rita as he went. She peered back at him over the top of her spectacles with an impassive expression.
Max trailed Lilian up the narrow stone staircase to the newsroom. She was wearing a short linen skirt, fraying at the hem, which revealed the full glory of her legs. They had an aesthetic dimension, long and slender, tapering to ankles so narrow they looked as though they might break at any moment.
A sudden urge made him reach out a hand and run his fingertips down her left calf.
She gave a small yelp and spun round, glaring down at him.
‘What do you expect if you insist on leading the way?’
