She had been determined not to see him again, and she certainly hadn’t intended to let him make love to her, yet last night he had had a walkover. She had been easy. How he must have laughed. ‘Don’t touch me,’ she had said one minute, and the next she had been burning up underneath him, out of her head with pleasure.
She crumpled up the note and threw it across the room. No, that was stupid, she must keep it, it was evidence. She had always laughed at people who threw away menacing letters without showing them to the police. She wasn’t going to make that mistake.
She scrambled out of bed and picked it up, smoothed it out and hid it in a drawer in an antique table by the window, under a little pile of paperback books she had put in there when she unpacked.
Now that she was up she might as well stay up, she thought, so she picked up her crumpled nightdress and put it out to be washed by the hotel, then walked into the bathroom. The window was open and she stood beside it, naked, gazing at the crenellations of the roof in black shadow on the lawns, breathing in the salty air, glad of the cool of morning.
People were already on the beach and in the distance she saw heads bobbing in the water, early-morning swimmers. Laura leant over to watch them and felt dizzy. She clung giddily to the window-sill. For a second she had almost fallen, had wanted to let go, to give herself up to the emptiness of space and death.
That was what Sebastian had done to her: he had made her yearn for death as an escape from the pain of loving him and fearing him, swinging helplessly between the two agonising extremes.
Had Clea ended her life because she couldn’t bear the pain of loving Sebastian any more?
Chapter Five
Nico d’Angeli had never cared much for the Hotel Excelsior. Like many of his friends, he had made fun of it as a young man, sneered that it was far too over the top, camp, an extravagant film set dreamt up by Hollywood – all of which made it the perfect place for the film festival headquarters. Every year they flooded into Venice: actors, directors, producers, camera men and sound men, set and costume designers, the accountants and executives of film companies – and they loved the Excelsior. It was their idea of high style, and as it had been built at the start of this century to Americans it was an antique, they thought it classy.
Nico hadn’t been there for some time and found himself quite looking forward to seeing the place again as he came over on his own launch from Ca’ d’Angeli. He was beset by memories of the hotel: summer days when he and his friends, or girls he was dating, had come over to play golf or tennis after lunch in the splendid dining room, or to swim off the private beach with its Moorish beach huts, so luxuriously furnished that you would have been happy to spend the day down there without ever going up to the hotel itself – except that the food was so marvellous that you couldn’t miss the chance to sample it. Nico found the sediment of years stirring, resurrecting his own past, making him feel distinctly middle-aged.
&n
bsp; As he arrived the doorman stopped him, judging him by his wind-blown black hair and well-washed old clothes.
Most of the time Nico barely noticed what he was wearing, and that morning he had simply put on the nearest clean clothes – pale beige cotton pants and a dark green shirt, clearly neither designer style nor expensive, and worn with grubby trainers. The doorman needed to take only one glance to place him as a workman. Nico was muscular, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, and his body bore the badge of his work: healed scars on his hands and face where he had been caught by flying chips of marble, rough skin on his palms, a toughness about him that spoke of manual labour.
‘Where do you think you’re going? Back door for trade.’
Nico grinned. ‘I’m meeting one of your guests. I’m Count Niccolo d’Angeli.’
‘Yeah, and I’m Michael Jackson,’ the doorman said. ‘Ma va là, amico! Round the back!’
Without shifting an inch, Nico said, in the deep-accented Italian of the streets, ‘Sta attento, amico! Just watch yourself, my friend. You’re making a mistake. The manager is a friend of mine – ask him to come down and identify me.’
The man’s eyes flickered uncertainly, but he wouldn’t back down. ‘And get myself sacked for wasting his time? Oh, yeah, I’ll do that.’
Nico looked past the man’s broad shoulder. ‘There he is now!’ He waved, and the hotel manager came over to greet him warmly.
‘Come sta, Nico? It’s a long time since we saw you over here. What are you doing here so early in the morning? Playing golf?’
The doorman had paled, his face tense. Nico met his pleading eyes and shrugged. He decided not to bother to complain: he would feel guilty if the man lost his job.
‘No, I’m not here for golf. I’m having breakfast with Sebastian in his suite.’
The manager’s face changed. ‘Of course, I’d forgotten, he’s … His mother was …’ He paused, looking self-conscious, asked, ‘Have you seen him yet? Has he been over to Ca’ d’Angeli?’
Nico nodded. ‘Yesterday.’
The other man seethed visibly with curiosity but was too discreet to ask direct questions. ‘He had dinner here last night, with his crew. Of course, we’re packed at the moment, full to the rafters. The festival brings in so much business. And tonight we have the prize-giving – the biggest event of our year! Everyone who is anyone in the film world will be here. My staff are buzzing with excitement.’
‘Good business for you, and this is the perfect hotel for the festival,’ Nico said, as he walked towards the lift.
‘Wonderful business, and it spreads our name, worldwide, with all the TV and other media people here. The hotel is on the news in a lot of countries every year, great free publicity. You should visit us more often, Nico – we haven’t seen you for a long time. Don’t you play golf any more? You used to come over to our course every week.’
‘Too busy for golf these days, I’m afraid.’ The truth was, he had lost interest; if you permitted it, golf could take over your life and although Nico was a good player he had better things to do with his time than tramp around a golf course following a little ball.
‘A pity. You’re good, and you’ll lose your handicap if you don’t play.’
‘That won’t keep me awake at night.’