Jago wondered how long he had sat there, with the full beam in his face, since she had put down the weapon.
He held up his own torch, the bulb and the glass facing the roof of the cave, and switched it on. It would have to compete with the flashlight that was balanced on the stone floor beside her hip. The two of them were at the very back of the cave, close to the old mattress. He thought it would have split years before, its innards used by mice and rats for their nests. He thought he had seen the chain but was sure he had spotted the bucket.
He did it slowly. Jago was not some explorer landing on a beach of what would become a French territory in the Pacific Ocean, an Australasian coast or the edge of any part of the unknown world. He didn’t need to say that he carried no weapon, had only beads and a Bible in his pocket. He thought they would have judged him because the pistol was down. He did it slowly, but with purpose. It was all about bluff. If his were called he would be shot – acceptable risk. The sort of risk that the traders lived with, not the investment analysts. The alternative? Perhaps the civil service – Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or Work and Pensions. Or industry, if he was lucky. He might open a tea room in the Cotswolds or trek off after water sources for the nomads of the sub-Saharan deserts of Africa. The torch edged across the roof of the cave and the wetness glistened. He saw more drips forming after others had fallen. His beam, fainter, came down behind them. They were where the child had been. And there was the ring. The beam wavered as he adjusted it. It caught the old man first.
Nothing special. Rather ordinary. It seemed a pasty face, not the deep colour of old stained wood. There were bags under the eyes, the lips were thin and the stubble was sparse, irregular. There was no indication of wealth and confidence, or of an old man who looked after his appearance, his health, except in the eyes. Jago thought the eyes betrayed him. They were dull. He wondered what would make the man laugh and bring a sparkle to those eyes. He had a long, hard look at the face. If he’d sat next to the man on the U-bahn or a Central Line train in London, he wouldn’t have considered him worth engaging in conversation, giving the spiel of the sales team, dropping a card into his hand. The lack of lustre in the eyes told the truth. The old man, head of his family, wouldn’t have cared if Jago Browne was dead or alive, would have stepped right over him, then forgotten him. The eyes said it.
He shifted the torch beam. She had the pistol in her hand now. Jago didn’t know whether it was cocked, whether the safety was on. She didn’t aim it. His light, poor by comparison with theirs, caught two small blemishes on her skin, one at the centre of her forehead and one on the left side of her chin. He assumed them to be blood spatters, that she had killed someone at close range and that most of the blood had soaked into her clothing, which had been burned. Her face was different from her father’s. There was life in it, and interest. A strong face, with a hint of a mocking smile. She raised the pistol. Two hands on it. He thought the searchers had gone and the helicopter was far away. He switched off his torch and lost sight of her.
Jago didn’t know whether she was playing with him, teasing or taunting him or whether she still had the aim, if a finger was against the trigger and if she had started to squeeze. The torch-light burned his eyes, and he saw nothing. The storm built to a frenzy.
He didn’t know if he would register the flash before the bullet hit him. But Jago dared to hope, and waited to be answered.
After the autumn gales and deluges, it was a hard winter in the Aspromonte. Local people, the elders in the communities, said it was the harshest in living memory. Small villages, towards the peaks, were cut off by blizzards, and several farmers lost pigs because they couldn’t feed them. But, with wonderful inevitability, spring followed the thaw, and wild flowers proved their ability to survive deep frosts. The trees sprouted blossom and foliage, the vines prospered and the olive groves showed promise of a fine harvest.