Collected Stories by Ruth Rendell

Author:Ruth Rendell [Ruth Rendell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-02-01T00:00:00+00:00

Achilles Heel

THE WALLS OF the city afforded on one side a view of the blue Adriatic, on the other, massed roofs, tiled in weathered terracotta, and cataracts of stone streets descending to the cathedral and the Stradun Placa. It was very hot on the walls, the sun hard and the air dry and clear. Among the red-brown roofs and the complexities of ramparts and stairs, different colours shimmered, the purple of the bougainvillaea, the sky blue of the plumbago, and the flame flash of the orange trumpet flower.

‘Lovely,’ said Dora Wexford. ‘Breathtaking. Aren’t you glad now I made you come up here?’

‘It’s all right for you dark-skinned people,’ grumbled her husband. ‘My nose is beginning to feel like a fried egg.’

‘We’ll go down at the next lot of steps and you can administer some more sun cream over a glass of beer.’

It was noon, the date Saturday, i8 June. The full heat of the day had kept the Yugoslavs, but not the tourists, off the walls. Germans went by with cameras or stood murmuring, ‘Wunderschön!’ Vivacious Italians chattered, unaffected by the midsummer sun. But some of the snatches of talk which reached Wexford were in languages not only incomprehensible but unidentifiable. It was a surprise to hear English spoken.

‘Don’t keep on about it, Iris!’

At first they couldn’t see the speaker. But now, as they came out of the narrow defile and emerged on to one of the broad jutting courts made by a buttress top, they came face to face with the Englishman. A tall, fair young man, he was standing in the furthest angle of the court, and with him was a dark-haired girl. Her back was to the Wexfords. She was staring out to sea. From her clothes, she looked as if she would have been more at home in the South of France than on the walls of Dubrovnik. She wore a jade-green halter top that left her deeply tanned midriff bare, and a calf-length silk skirt in green and blue with parabolas on it of flamingo pink. Her sandals were pink, the strings criss-crossed up her legs, the wedge heels high. But perhaps the most striking thing about her was her hair. Raven black and very short, it was cut at the nape in three sharp Vs.

She must have replied to her companion, though Wexford hadn’t heard the words. But now, without turning round, she stamped her foot and the man said:

‘How can you go to the bloody place, Iris, when we can’t find anyone to take us? There’s nowhere to land. I wish to God you’d give it a rest.’

Dora took her husband’s arm, hastening him along. He could read her thoughts, not to eavesdrop on someone else’s quarrel.

‘You’re so nosy, darling,’ she said when they had reached the steps and were out of earshot. ‘I suppose it’s what comes of being a policeman.’

Wexford laughed. ‘I’m glad you realize that’s the reason. Any other man’s wife would accuse him of looking at that girl.’

‘She was beautiful, wasn’t she?’ said Dora wistfully, conscious of her age.

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