The Armada Legacy

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Her mind reeling so much she could hardly walk straight, Brooke crossed the room to stare at the painting more closely. It seemed incredible, impossible.

And yet it seemed true. The woman had her face, her hair. The dress in the picture was the exact same one that she was wearing. The jewels were the ones that Serrato had given her at dinner. Brooke couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

It was only when she got right up close and stared hard at the detail of the picture that she began to make out subtle differences and realised that the painting was of someone else. The eyes were a slightly different shade, and slightly closer together than hers. The shape of the nose, the ears, the chin. But nonetheless the resemblance was unsettling.

Brooke ran her hand along the bottom of the painting’s ornate frame and her fingers found something. She looked at it: a small rectangular plaque sculpted into the golden wood. A plaque that bore, in tiny black script, the name ‘Alicia’.

Her thoughts were racing as she left the room and ran up the passage in the opposite direction that the guards had gone, searching left and right for an exit as she went, the marble floor hard and cold under her bare soles. The notion of trying to escape now, dressed as she was, barefoot, totally vulnerable and lost, was insane – it was against everything she’d ever learned or taught. But none of her training or knowledge were of any use to her now. She was no normal hostage; and this Ramon Serrato, whoever the hell he was, was certainly no normal kidnapper.

Alicia. Did Serrato truly believe that Brooke was Alicia? It was hard to grasp what was happening to her. She almost wished he was holding her for ransom in a dank cellar, hooded and chained up. Anything was better than this bizarre, fetishistic kind of slavery. She had to get out of here.

Doors; more doors. They passed in a flurry as she ran on, gathering up the hem of the dress to keep it from tangling up her legs. Nothing that looked like an exit, and there could have been a bunch of guards standing right behind any of them. She’d never been inside such a huge house before – it seemed to go on forever and now she was starting to panic, her breath coming in gasps as she thought about what would happen when Serrato returned to the dining room to find it empty. A whole army of his men would go storming through the whole place searching for her. She couldn’t possibly evade them for long.

A glimpse of a window as she tore down a passage and went hurrying down a narrow flight of steps told her night had fallen. This part of the house was workmanlike and plain, dimly lit with bare walls and rough concrete floors that chafed on her bare feet as she ran. She hurried round a corner and had to fling herself into a shady alcove for cover as a set of doors swung open and she almost ran right into two men dressed in catering aprons. The place they’d emerged from was a kitchen, but from the pungent aroma of grease, fried beans, tomato and chilli that wafted out of the doors she guessed it catered for Serrato’s troops rather than meeting the elevated gastronomic tastes of the man himself. She waited hidden, holding her breath, for the cooks to pass by, then ran on.

She was quite lost now, and becoming more panic-stricken by the second. The passage she was heading down was getting narrower and seemed to be leading nowhere. Brooke was on the verge of turning round to head back the way she’d come or find another route through the house, when she suddenly stopped dead.

She’d heard something. And as she stood there tensed up in the gloomy passage, she heard it again. The sound of a woman’s voice not far away. She cocked her head, listening in alarm. No, there were two distinct voices – two women.

And they were both screaming in fear.

Brooke moved along more slowly now, wondering where the terrible keening sound was coming from. She paused at a door, gave it a tentative shove and peered inside as it creaked open. It was a laundry room, with a row of large, squat washing machines along one wall and stacks of laundry baskets along another. Near the ceiling above the machines was a window, thick with dirt and cobwebs. She realised she’d wandered into a basement.

Her escape attempt was forgotten for the moment as she felt herself drawn to the source of the awful, continuous screaming that she now realised was coming from through that high window. A bright white light, like a floodlamp from outside, was glaring through the dirty glass.

Despite the awkward dress Brooke managed to clamber up onto one of the washing machines, so that the window ledge was about eight inches above her head. She reached up to the ledge with both hands and hauled her chin level with the window sill, scrabbling with her bare toes to get a purchase on the wall, then peered through the dirty glass.

The window was a few inches above the ground level of a brightly-lit concrete yard, about ten metres square and surrounded by a whitewashed block wall. There were six men standing in the yard, one of them just inches from where Brooke was straining to peer through the window, so that the leg of his combat trousers half-blocked the view. But she could see enough.

At the opposite side of the yard, the two guards who’d brought her from her quarters earlier, the muscular ponytailed one and the one with the damaged ear, were violently dragging and shoving the Brazilian maidservants against the wall. Presentacion was clinging desperately to her mother and sobbing hysterically in the glare of the floodlights. Consuela let out another high-pitched scream as the ponytailed guard ripped her daughter away from her and sent her sprawling to the concrete.

Brooke wanted to scream ‘Stop it! Leave them alone!’ But all she could do was hang there from her fingertips and stare in horror as she realised what was about to happen.

A tall figure in a cream suit stepped into view. He had his back to the basement window, but she knew Serrato well enough now to recognise him instantly even from behind. He appeared quite unfazed by the frantic screams of the two women as he walked over to them. Consuela tore herself from the grip of the guard holding her and threw herself at his feet, clutching at his trouser legs, her face covered in tears, pleading with him in her native Portuguese. Brooke understood every plaintive, sobbing word.

‘Don’t harm my child, I beg you! I’m to blame, I swear. Punish me, but please don’t hurt my baby! Please!’

Serrato’s reply was too quiet for Brooke to catch through the glass, but she didn’t need to hear to understand. He shook his head, brusquely pushed the weeping mother away with his foot, and took three slow steps back. He reached out his hand. One of the guards unholstered an automatic pistol and passed it to him, butt-first. In no hurry, Serrato checked the weapon over and then aimed it down at Consuela’s bowed head.

Presentacion let out a wailing, inhuman shriek. Brooke almost screamed, too. He was going to slaughter the Brazilian maids just the way he’d slaughtered Sam and her employer, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

The gunshot reverberated sharply round the walled yard. Consuela gave a lurch and then slumped over on her side. There was a spatter of blood up the white wall behind her.

Then Serrato turned the pistol on Presentacion. The ponytailed guard who’d been tightly gripping the screaming girl’s arm now let go. Presentacion had nowhere at all to run, but in her desperation she raced for the far wall and almost reached it before the pistol cracked a second time in Serrato’s hand.

The shot caught her in the back. She collapsed on her face in a tangle of arms and legs, but she wasn’t dead. Brooke went on watching in anguish as the young girl tried to drag herself across the concrete yard. Serrato calmly walked up to her and fired another shot into the back of her head. The blood sprayed a foot across the ground. This time Presentacion stopped moving.

Serrato returned the pistol to his man. ‘Dump the bodies in the jungle,’ Brooke heard him order the guards in Spanish. Her heart was pounding. She felt numb, barely conscious of the pain in her fingers clinging to the window ledge.

Serrato turned round to walk away from the two dead women. There was nothing in his expression. As he moved closer to Brooke’s window she could see the flecks of blood on his suit. He paused to dab at them with a handkerchief, tutted irritably and walked on out of sight, followed by all but two of the men, who stayed behind to take care of the corpses.

Wanting to throw up, Brooke lowered herself back to the floor. She knew that if Serrato returned to the dining room and found her missing, there might be a third woman’s body thrown out for the jungle scavengers that night.

She staggered for the door, threw it open and started running frantically back the way she’d come. By a miracle she didn’t meet anyone as she retraced her steps; by an even bigger miracle she managed to find the dining room without getting lost in the maze of passageways. Her heart was in her mouth as she opened the dining room door, fully expecting Serrato to be there already waiting for her with a pistol in his hand. But the room was empty. Brooke hurried across to the table, sat down at her place and tried to control the emotions that were making her hands shake.

A few minutes later, Serrato returned. He’d changed out of the cream-coloured suit and into a pair of chinos and a navy blazer. ‘I hope you will forgive me for so rudely interrupting our dinner,’ he said with a smile. ‘I suddenly remembered a matter of business that simply could not wait, not even for you.’ He glanced downwards and his smile faded into a frown. ‘You have taken off your shoes?’

Brooke had completely forgotten the sandals she’d slipped off and left under the table. ‘They’re a little tight on me,’ she said, thinking fast. She managed to control the tremor in her voice.

‘No matter. I will have new ones made to fit,’ he replied. ‘Now, shall we eat?’