Murderous, David Hickson [most read book in the world .TXT] 📗

dears,” said Mrs Hutchins, and she gave me a smile. Robyn was rewarded with another anxious glance, and Mrs Hutchins retreated into her apartment.

“You know I love you,” said Robyn, and my heart dropped to the floor and broke. “I mean really love you,” she said.

I had showered and changed out of my drenched clothes to discover that Robyn had packed her belongings into a suitcase that was standing at the front door. We were having coffee now at the breakfast counter, and I was trying not to acknowledge that the world was ending. Robyn had explained that she was losing her battle with addiction and refused to drag me down with her. It was something she needed to do on her own. She had smiled and used the back of her hand to wipe away her tears. The rain beat steadily against the balcony door. The sun had abandoned us forever.

“We cannot be together, Ben,” said Robyn. “We have always known it.”

“We have had several good weeks,” I said.

“More than we deserved. Neither of us is normal.”

There was certainly not much about Robyn that could be described as normal. She caused people to stop in their tracks and turn back to look again. It was not her beauty, of which I thought there was no shortage, although others might not have agreed. It was her style, her vulnerability which lay hidden behind an outer shell that was inviolable. She needed no one, and yet she needed everyone. She was an angel of innocence, and yet she was a convicted felon.

“And don’t blame Brian. Not for this.”

Brian Starck had been a friend of mine. And he had been engaged to marry Robyn. When Brian first introduced me to Robyn I knew I was in trouble. The build-up to our meeting had been extensive. An entire tour on the mines in Uganda with Brian clutching at me and explaining in a voice with too little breath how he had been bewitched by a girl who had spent three years in a state prison. How would he ever be able to explain that to his elderly parents back home in Yorkshire? The defence lawyers said she had been duped by a boy who was killed in the shootout when they left the bank. But that was no more than a bucket of horse shit. She could no more be duped than the Pope could have children. She was no fool, Brian said, I would see that when I met her. And I did see it. That and a lot more.

Brian and I had served together in the British Special Forces for years, and we were the best of friends. More than that, we each owed our life to the other for the countless times we had covered one another, held the other back or pushed them away from danger. In Afghanistan, Iran, Uganda. But after meeting Brian’s ‘witch of a felon’ I started avoiding him on the breaks from our tours of duty on the mines in Uganda. I left parties early, turned around and walked out of bars when I saw him, made up excuses, declared quarantine on imaginary illnesses, spent days and nights of our leave on my own. All to avoid being struck dumb in Robyn’s presence. To avoid lying awake at night trying to rid my mind of thoughts of my best friend’s partner; the ghosts of the smiles, the moments of downcast eyes, the regretful shrugs.

But Brian insisted I become their third wheel and share in every moment of triumph and failure in their relationship. I was the friend they called upon at three in the morning to share the champagne, and the friend who told Brian in his darkest moments on the Ugandan gold mine that it would all work out. That Robyn loved him. That I could see it. Because I could: she did love him.

But then Brian stepped on a land mine in the Kivu region of the Congo and spattered bits of bone and blood over our captain and me. I lost my best friend and Robyn lost her fiancé. Our lives changed, and we drifted apart. It took another eighteen months for our paths to entwine again, and for me to discover that I had not been the only one with inappropriate feelings.

“Don’t blame Brian,” said Robyn again, bringing me back to the present with a bump, “and don’t blame your Sandy either.”

“She’s not my Sandy,” I said, but I was just playing for time, and Robyn knew it. She finished her coffee and placed the empty mug on the counter as if we had to be careful not to make any noise. She stood up and waited for me to embrace her, which I did. Her shoulders were like the frail wings of a bird. She wheeled her suitcase to the front door and put on her Audrey Hepburn sunglasses to hide the tears.

After she had left, I stood at the balcony door and watched my sliver of sea dance beneath the trails of rain on the glass. It looked as if the rain was settling in. It looked as if it might keep raining forever. I allowed myself ten minutes of staring out to sea, and then I sat down to make a long overdue phone call.

Four

Giovanni’s is a small Italian place down the road from my apartment, where a table at the window provides a better view of the sea than from my balcony, and where Aldo doesn’t count the glasses he pours. He poured me another because I was alone and this bothered Aldo. He was a man of mismatched sizes. Huge hands, narrow shoulders, a bulbous nose and a large stomach that he carried before him with pride. His name should have been Giovanni or the restaurant should have been called Aldo’s, but that would have sounded Portuguese, he told me, and he wouldn’t have wanted that. He was Italian. He stood by my