Recoil - Andy McNab [23]
‘Why do you stay and take his crap? Why don’t you just hose down all the whisky and walk out the gate?’
Giuseppe pulled a bag of sliced white bread and a packet of processed cheese from the box. The people at Fortnum & Mason must have cringed. ‘I have my reasons. But I’m going home to Lazio soon, Mr Nick.’ He allowed himself the kind of smile that meant there was a lot more going on in that head of his than his eyes were prepared to give away. ‘Very soon. But, please, do not tell Mr Stefan.’
I peeled off a couple of slices of processed cheese and put them on a slice of dry bread – no butter or spread.
‘Miss Silke seems happier than she’s been for a very long time.’ Giuseppe seemed disgusted by my culinary efforts. ‘And she’s stayed here much longer than usual.’
I opened the Branston and spread a thick layer over the cheese. ‘How long is that?’
He closed his eyes, as if he was doing mental arithmetic – or maybe he didn’t want to see any more food massacres in that kitchen. ‘She comes back maybe once a year, and stays only a week or two. She and Mr Stefan, well – let’s say she’s travelled a lot since her mother died.’
I added another slice of dry bread to the sandwich. ‘How long ago was that?’
I knew Stefan had married her mother in 1976. Silky had been an only child, just two, when her father’s car had wrapped itself round a lamppost in West Berlin. Her mother had moved back to her native Zürich and opened a bookshop. Stefan went in one day to buy a business book – ‘Probably Swimming With Sharks,’ Silky laughed – and came out with her phone number. They had married, and she gave up the bookshop because Stefan couldn’t stand the thought of his wife working. All in all, she’d suffered twenty years of loveless marriage with him in Lugano before she detected a lump in her breast. Two years later, despite the best medical treatment Stefan’s wealth could provide, she was history.
‘It’s like the drapes have been drawn for eight years. Miss Silke travels a lot, as I said, and comes back here in between. She does her charity work, which Mr Stefan sneers at but tolerates, and he is away on business so much that he sees more of Shanghai than he does of Switzerland.’
I lifted the sandwich and held it out for him to admire. ‘Giuseppe, my friend, the great British sarnie. Want to get amongst it? Better than all that fancy gear you conjure up down here.’
He threw up his hands in mock horror and I headed for the stairs.
3
I was squeaking my way back along the hallway as Stefan came out of the large sitting room that led off it. I sometimes wondered if he had the whole place bugged.
‘So, how did you enjoy lunch?’ His accent was German, with a hint of Middle Eastern rug trader – quite a feat for a little Italian guy to pull off. His expression, as ever, was bored, with more than a hint of ‘You still here, you gold-digging, freeloading lump of English shit?’
I followed him back into the large, impersonal sitting room with its floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the lake and two enormous red sofas that faced each other across a wooden coffee-table big enough to sleep two. ‘We didn’t manage to meet up.’
Stefan spent most of his time in this room. Giuseppe spent most of his in the one adjacent, with his ear to the large dividing doors. I wondered if he was there right now.
‘No, I can imagine.’ He turned his back to study the drinks table. ‘I saw her when she left this morning.’
How could I respond to that without admitting we’d had a row? I couldn’t, and he knew it. Everything he ever said to me was designed to put me on the back foot. When we first met he even got my name wrong deliberately. Maybe that was how he’d made it to the top of his shitheap.
He looked back. ‘Where is she now?’
‘Still at work.’ I peered at my watch. Fucking hell, ten to seven. Where had she got to? It wasn’t as if Lugano got gridlocked in the rush-hour. And, anyway, she was on a moped.
He tutted. ‘This volunteering