tell me again why the bloody hell we’re here?’ Archie moaned, pulling his blue overcoat around his neck with a shiver.
Tom hesitated. The truth was that, even now, he wasn’t entirely sure. Partly, it had just seemed like the proper thing to do. The right thing to do. But probably more important was the feeling that his mother would have wanted him to come. Expected it, insisted on it. To him, therefore, this was perhaps less about paying his respects to his grandfather than it was a way of remembering her.
‘You didn’t have to come,’ Tom reminded him sharply.
‘What, and miss the chance to work on my tan?’ Archie winked. ‘Don’t be daft. That’s what mates are for.’
They stood in silence, the priest’s faint voice and the congregation’s murmured responses carrying to them on the damp breeze. Yet even as the service droned mournfully towards its conclusion. ‘Let us Pray’ people lowered their heads, a man stepped out from the crowd and signalled up at them with a snatched half-wave, having been waiting for this opportunity, it seemed. Tom and Archie swapped a puzzled look as he clambered up towards them, his shoes slipping on the wet grass.
‘Mr Kirk?’ he called out hopefully as he approached. ‘Mr Thomas Kirk?’
Short and worryingly overweight, he wore a large pair of tortoiseshell glasses that he was forever pushing back up his blunt nose. Under a Burberry coat that didn’t look as though it had fitted him in years, an expensive Italian suit dangled open on each side of his bloated stomach, like the wings on a flying boat.
‘I recognised you from your photo,’ he huffed as he drew closer, sweat lacquering his thinning blond hair to his head.
‘I don’t think…?’ Tom began, trying to place the man’s sagging face and bleached teeth.
‘Larry Hewson,’ he announced, his tone and eagerly outstretched hand suggesting that he expected them to recognise the name.
Tom swapped another look with Archie and then shrugged.
‘Sorry, but I don’t…’
‘From Ogilvy, Myers and Gray - the Duval family attorneys,’ Hewson explained, almost sounding hurt at having to spell this out. ‘I sent you the invitation.’
‘What do you want?’ Archie challenged him.
‘Meet Archie Connolly,’ Tom introduced him with a smile. ‘My business partner.’
Below them, the chaplain had stepped back from the casket, allowing the senior NCO and seven riflemen to step forward and turn to the half right, their shoulders stained dark blue by the rain, water beading on their mirrored toecaps.
‘Ready,’ he ordered. Each rifleman moved his safety to the fire position.
‘It’s a delicate matter,’ Hewson said in a low voice, throwing Archie a suspicious glance.
‘Archie can hear anything you’ve got to say,’ Tom reassured him.
‘It concerns your grandfather’s will.’
‘Aim,’ the NCO called. The men shouldered their weapons with both hands, the muzzles raised forty-five degrees from the horizontal over the casket.
‘His will?’ Archie asked with a frown. ‘I thought he’d left the lot to Miss 32F down there?’
‘Fire.’
Each man quickly squeezed the trigger and then returned to port arms, the sharp crack of the blank round piercing the gloom, the echo muffled by the rain. Twice more the order to aim and fire came, twice more the shots rang out across the silent cemetery. Hewson waited impatiently for their echo to die down before continuing.
‘The senator did indeed alter his will to ensure that Ms Mills was the principal beneficiary of his estate,’ he confirmed in a disapproving whisper. ‘But at the same time, he identified a small object that he wished to leave to you.’
A bugler had stepped forward and was now playing Taps, the mournful melody swirling momentarily around them before chasing itself into the sky. As the last note faded away, one of the casket party stepped forward and began to carefully fold the flag draped over the coffin, deliberately wrapping the red and white stripes into the blue to form a triangular bundle, before respectfully handing it to the chaplain. The chaplain in turn stepped over to where the main family party was seated and gingerly, almost apologetically it seemed, handed the flag to the senator’s wife. She clutched it, rather dramatically Tom thought, to her bosom.
‘I believe it had been given to him by your mother,’ Hewson added.
‘My mother?’ Tom’s eyes snapped back to Hewson’s, both surprised and curious. ‘What is it?’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know,’ Hewson shrugged as the ceremony ended. The congregation rapidly thinned, most hurrying back to their cars, a few pausing to conclude the business they had come there for in the first place, before they too were herded by secret service agents towards their limousines’ armour-plated comfort. ‘The terms of the will are quite strict. No one is to open the box and I am to hand it to you in person. That’s why…’
‘Tom!’ Archie interrupted, grabbing Tom’s arm. Tom followed his puzzled gaze and saw that a figure had appeared at the crest of the hill above them. It was a woman dressed in a red coat, the headlights of the car parked behind her silhouetting her against the dark sky in an ethereal white glow.
‘That’s why I sent you the invitation,’ Hewson repeated, raising his voice slightly as Tom turned away from him. ‘I’ve taken the liberty of reserving a suite at the George where we can finalise all the paperwork.’
‘Isn’t that…?’ Archie’s eyes narrowed, his tone at once uncertain and incredulous.
‘Otherwise I’m happy to arrange a meeting at our offices in New York tomorrow, if that works better,’ Hewson called out insistently, growing increasingly frustrated, it seemed, at being ignored. ‘Mr Kirk?’
‘Yes…’ Tom returned the woman’s wave, Hewson’s voice barely registering any more. ‘It’s her.’
Via del Gesù, Rome 17th March - 5.44 p.m.
Ignoring her phone’s shrill call, Allegra Damico grabbed the double espresso off the counter, threw down some change and stepped back outside into the fading light. Answering it wouldn’t make her get there any quicker. And if they wanted her to make any sense after the day she’d just had, she needed the caffeine more than they needed her to be on time. Shrugging with a faint hint of indignation, she walked down the Via del Gesù then turned right on to the Corso Vittorio Emanuele, cupping the coffee in both hands and blowing on it, her reflection catching in the shop windows.
She owed her athletic frame to her father, an architect who had met her mother when he was working as a tour guide in Naples and she, a Danish student, was backpacking across Europe. As a result, Allegra had contrived to inherit both his olive skin and quick temper and her mother’s high cheekbones and the sort of curling
