Dead of Winter

Chapter 55

Digger had retired upstairs to his apartment above the club for the evening. He was in a reflective mood. He sat in his old tapestry cloth armchair with his miniature dachshund on his lap. His apartment had not been decorated since the Seventies. Brown swirls went from the carpet to the walls. Above Digger’s head hung a frosted-glass chandelier on spidery black fittings. At the other end of the phone he could hear the sound of breathing and in the background a woman was singing. Digger stroked the dog as he talked on the phone.

‘It seems like just the other day when Maria died. Thirteen years go by in a flash.’ He could feel the resentment coming down the phone but at least the line was still live. At least the person at the other end was still there.

‘I have known you many years and I count you as a friend but you are a hard man to love. You kill everything that shows weakness. You demand submission and you kill those that kneel. You are a Praying Mantis. Ha-ha. . You are a Black Widow spider. Ha-ha. . you weave your web and you eat your prey and then you wonder why you’re alone.’ He listened in hope of an answer, but he got silence. He could no longer hear the woman singing.

‘Listen to me, old friend, let bygones be bygones. You cannot help who you love. Maria was everything to me.’ Digger listened. He heard an exhalation of breath. He heard the sound of someone’s lips move as if to speak, but no words came.

‘I know what you are going to say: she wasn’t mine to love, but I could not help it. She was nothing to you. In the end we both lost her to madness.

‘I know you didn’t want me to see Nikki but I couldn’t resist it, knowing that she is back in this country and she is the nearest thing I have to kin.’ He heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the phone. ‘But things are moving beyond my control. You must save Nikki. Get her away, take the boy, start a new life. The police are watching me and so is he. I am being squeezed. I will do my best to give you time to get away and I suggest you run far and fast. They will be watching all the airfields, all the hospitals now. They are on your tail, old friend. The police and the devil are coming for you.’

Martingale sat in the dark of his drawing room. He closed his eyes and tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair and turned the music back up. A child prodigy was singing Nessun Dorma. Her voice was so rich, so powerful, yet so delicate and beautiful. People marvelled at the little girl’s lungs. Martingale didn’t.

He looked up as she walked down the stairs.

‘Please. .’ Martingale stood and beckoned her forward as he held out his arms to her. She turned her head from him but she didn’t move away. ‘Come, my little one. .’ She allowed him closer. ‘That’s it. .’ He took her in his arms and kissed her head and smoothed his hand down her back, over her hair that was like silk to his touch. He breathed her smell and closed his eyes as he hummed Brahms’ lullaby. He didn’t need to pull back to know that she had closed her eyes and was smiling. ‘It won’t be long now for you and then we’ll be free of all this forever.’ When he lifted his hand from her hair, whole strands of loose hair were stuck to it.

As she felt the warmth of her father, Nikki remembered the last time she had been this close to someone, felt the heartbeat of another. Hart was on her mind. He filled her every sense. He was inside her. She had never felt so close to another and never felt so vulnerable.