Read Online Deep and Silent Waters by Charlotte Lamb - Free Book Online Page B

in her hand. A shock of joy hit him. She was so lovely. That gilded hair, that face, its serene, smooth beauty, a Madonna’s face, pure and innocent – and below it a sensuous body that denied everything in the face, as Clea’s had. As his mother’s body had? Were all women the same?
    You could never believe what you thought you saw. The eye is easily tricked, any film-maker would tell you that. Looking through the camera lense you could deliberately confuse the real with the illusory.
    He stood, watching Laura, in the heavy, hot, somnolent Venetian afternoon. Flies droned past, footsteps echoed on the pavement, there was a dank odour from the canal. The smell of death.
    All these years he had not wanted to return to Venice because he had known that death would haunt it for him. He had always had this uneasy feeling whenever he thought of the city: a brooding premonition as if doom awaited him there.
    At times he had believed that he, too, would die here, that it was death that waited for him. How strange that he should find Laura again here, in this place. Even stranger that she looked as if she belonged here, had always been here, in this square, shade flickering over her face, her red-gold hair moving softly as she wrote postcards, bending over the table.
    Sebastian began to walk towards her, his eyes fixed on her, but when he was a few feet from her table a hand grabbed his arm.
    ‘
Signore
! Signor Ferrese!
Scusi, – mi displace
…’ a rough, hoarse voice husked in his ear. Sebastian glanced round in surprise.
    An old man, wearing the oil-stained navy blue jersey and ancient trousers of someone used to working on boats, stared back at him, smiling with a mouth half full of blackened teeth. Nearly bald, his skin wrinkled and weather-worn, the old man’s face had that slyness and secrecy which usually suggests a lack of any sense of right or wrong.
    Sebastian gave him a wary, polite but distant nod. ‘
Signore
?’ He looked around, too, in case others were close to him; gangs of pickpockets operated in most tourist centres and he would not have been surprised to find that this man was part of one such gang and was trying to distract him until the others made their move.
    Still in Italian, the old man said, the Venetian dialect salting his words, ‘You don’t remember me, Signor Ferrese? Look harder. It’s a while since we met, but you do know me, and I know all about you. I just want to warn you …’
    Laura finished writing her postcards and pushed them into her handbag; the hotel would post them for her. Where was that waiter? When she had paid the bill she would have to rush, Melanie would be waiting.
    Then, she heard Sebastian’s voice. At first she believed it was inside her head, an echo from the past, until another voice answered in low, muttered Italian.
    They were a few feet from her, standing close together, Sebastian in pale blue jeans and a thin white cotton T-shirt talking to an old man, who looked like a tramp.
    A few scraps of their conversation reached her, but her grasp of Italian was not good enough for her to understand much. Just a few words leapt out at her.
    ‘
Morte
…’ That word she did know: it meant death. ‘
Morte violente
…’ A violent death. She shivered. The old man must be talking about Clea. What was he saying? Her eyes riveted on Sebastian. She saw all trace of colour leave his face, his mouth harden, his face become a skull-like rigid mask.
    ‘
Assassinio
,’ the old man hissed, nodding insistently at Sebastian. ‘
Si, si, assassinio
!’ Biting her lower lip so hard that she tasted blood, Laura thought he must be accusing Sebastian of murder.
    Sebastian snapped back at him and the old man jerked away.
    ‘
Non vada in collera
!’
    She knew those words – Don’t lose your temper, the old man was saying, and he looked frightened.
    Laura stood up and dropped money on the table, without taking her eyes from Sebastian.
    He leaned towards the old man, his lips