Traitor's Blood by Reginald Hill

Author:Reginald Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: MysteriousPress.com/Open Road
Published: 2019-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

17

… a matching pair …

Waking was like coming out of one of the cellar dives in downtown Caracas. My head seemed full of noise and smoke, my belly awash with rotten liquor, and at first even this dim light and musty air hit me like a squirt of caustic. I’d have rolled back into the dive if I could, except that black memories were now stirring, like recollections of having been taken for every bolivar in your wallet.

I sat upright, regretted it, collapsed again, but the memories had been shaken loose. It wasn’t money I’d lost, but everything. Now he’d taken everything from me. He was up there with Angelica, holding her, comforting her, persuading her that I’d broken into the villa to harm her …

Up there. I opened my eyes again. Above my head a single bulb, grime-encrusted to near opacity, spilled just enough light to paint shapes. It was sufficient. My subconscious had been right. I recognized where I was. Far from emerging from a cellar dive, I was actually languishing in a cellar, the wine-cellar of the Villa Colonna. Here I’d come as a boy, fascinated and frightened by this cave of cool darkness carved in the rock behind the bright sunlit house, moving among the racks of bottles peeping like cannons from their ports, broadside upon broadside at the ready.

I sat upright again, slowly this time, and let my eyes grow accustomed to the light. I was lying on an old mattress, thin, lumpy and stained with God knows what, but at least it indicated some slight concern for my comfort, which was hopeful. I touched my right ear and winced. It felt big enough for Dumbo. Perhaps if I belted the other one equally hard, I could fly out of here. My head ached, but that apart, I suppose I didn’t feel too bad for a dying forty-year-old.

I got to my feet and tried a few steps. It felt like a novel form of locomotion and I didn’t reckon it would catch on, so I sat down again and resumed my examination of the cellar. It seemed to have weathered the years as badly as I had. The racks were still there but the only bottles in sight were a pile of empties in a corner. Odd bits of broken furniture littered the floor. It had degenerated to a junk-room. I should have felt at home but all I wanted to do was get out. I stood up once more and found I was beginning to master the new fashion. This time I made it to the door.

Why I bothered, I didn’t know. They weren’t going to dump me in here and leave the door open. Still, I had to try it before I started digging my tunnel through about half a mile of solid rock.

I tried it. It was locked. Disappointment has nothing to do with expectation. I was disappointed. I had decided to postpone my excavations for a while and return to my mattress for a ponder when I heard a key being turned in the lock.

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