Bloodline

At breakfast Walther said, ‘I think we should take a holiday. It will be good for us to get away.’

‘But Walther, the children are too young to travel.’

‘I’m talking about the two of us.’

She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t leave them.’

He took her hand and said, ‘I want you to forget about the children.’

‘Forget about the children?’ There was shock in her voice.

He looked into her eyes and said, ‘Anna, remember how wonderful it was between us before you were pregnant? What good times we had? How much joy it was to be together, just the two of us, with no one else around to interfere?’

It was then that she understood. Walther was jealous of the children.

The weeks and months passed swiftly. Walther never went near the children now. On their birthdays Anna bought them lovely presents. Walther always managed to be out of town on business. Anna could not go on deceiving herself for ever. The truth was that Walther had no interest in the children at all. Anna felt that perhaps it was her fault, because she was too interested in them. Obsessed was the word Walther had used. He had asked her to consult a doctor about it, and she had gone only to please Walther. But the doctor was a fool. The moment he had started talking to her, Anna had shut him out, letting her mind drift, until she heard him say, ‘Our time is up, Mrs Gassner. Will I see you next week?’

‘Of course.’

She never returned.

Anna felt that the problem was as much Walther’s as hers. If her fault lay in loving the children too much, then his fault lay in not loving them enough.

Anna learned not to mention the children in Walther’s presence, but she could hardly wait for him to leave for the office, so that she could hurry into the nursery to be with her babies. Except that they were no longer babies. They had had their third birthday, and already Anna could see what they would look like as adults. Peter was tall for his age and his body was strong and athletic like his father’s. Anna would hold him on her lap and croon, ‘Ah, Peter, what are you going to do to the poor fräuleins? Be gentle with them, my darling son. They won’t have a chance.’

And Peter would smile shyly and hug her.

Then Anna would turn to Birgitta. Birgitta grew prettier each day. She looked like neither Anna nor Walther. She had spun-gold hair and skin as delicate as porcelain. Peter had his father’s fiery temper and sometimes it would be necessary for Anna to spank him gently, but Birgitta had the disposition of an angel. When Walther was not around, Anna played records or read to them. Their favourite book was 101 Märchen. They would insist that Anna read them the tales of ogres and goblins and witches over and over again, and at night Anna would put them to bed, singing them a lullaby:

Schlaf, Kindlein, schlaf,Der Vater hüt’t die Schaf …

Anna had prayed that time would soften Walther’s attitude, that he would change. He did change, but for the worse. He hated the children. In the beginning Anna had told herself that it was because Walther wanted all of her love for himself, that he was unwilling to share it with anyone else. But slowly she became aware that it had nothing to do with loving her. It had to do with hating her. Her father had been right. Walther had married her for her money. The children were a threat to him. He wanted to get rid of them. More and more he talked to Anna about selling the stock. ‘Sam has no right to stop us! We could take all that money and go away somewhere. Just the two of us.’

She stared at him. ‘What about the children?’

His eyes were feverish. ‘No. Listen to me. For both our sakes we’ve got to get rid of them. We must.’

It was then that Anna began to realize that he was insane. She was terrified. Walther had fired all the domestic help, and except for a cleaning woman who came in once a week, Anna and the children were alone with him, at his mercy. He needed help. Perhaps it was not too late to cure him. In the fifteenth century they gathered the insane and imprisoned them for ever on houseboats, Narrenschiffe, the ships of fools, but today, with modern medicine, she felt there must be something they could do to help Walther.

Now, on this day in September, Anna sat huddled on the floor in her bedroom, where Walther had locked her, waiting for him to return. She knew what she had to do. For his sake, as well as hers and the children’s. Anna rose unsteadily and walked over to the telephone. She hesitated for only an instant, then picked it up and began to dial 110, the police emergency number.

An alien voice in her ear said, ‘Hallo. Hier ist der Notruf der Polizei. Kann ich Ihnen helfen?’

‘Ja, bitte!’ Her voice was choked. ‘Ich –’

A hand came out of nowhere and tore the receiver from her, and slammed it down into the cradle.

Anna backed away. ‘Oh, please,’ she whimpered, ‘don’t hurt me.’

Walther was moving towards her, his eyes bright, his voice so soft that she could hardly make out the words. ‘Liebchen, I’m not going to hurt you. I love you, don’t you know that?’ He touched her, and she could feel her flesh crawl. ‘It’s just that we don’t want the police coming here, do we?’ She shook her head from side to side, too filled with terror to speak. ‘It’s the children that are causing the trouble, Anna. We’re going to get rid of them. I –’

Downstairs the front doorbell rang. Walther stood there, hesitating. It rang again.

‘Stay here,’ he ordered. ‘I’ll be back.’

Anna watched, petrified, as he walked out of the bedroom door. He slammed it behind him and she could hear the click of the key as he locked it.

I’ll be back, he had said.

Walther Gassner hurried down the stairs, walked to the front door and opened it. A man in a grey messenger’s uniform stood there, holding a sealed manila envelope.

‘I have a special delivery for Mr and Mrs Walther Gassner.’

‘Yes,’ Walther said. ‘I will take it.’

He closed the door, looked at the envelope in his hand, then ripped it open. Slowly, he read the message inside.

DEEPLY REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT SAM ROFFE WAS KILLED IN A CLIMBING ACCIDENT. PLEASE BE IN ZURICH FRIDAY NOON FOR AN EMERGENCY MEETING OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS.

It was signed ‘Rhys Williams’.

Chapter Three (#ulink_a6ead272-4d71-54c8-ac6c-9322a43ab59d)

Rome Monday, September 7 6 p.m.

Ivo Palazzi stood in the middle of his bedroom, the blood streaming down his face. ‘Mamma mia! Mi hai rovinato!’

‘I haven’t begun to ruin you, you miserable figlio di putana!’ Donatella screamed at him.

They were both naked in the large bedroom of their apartment in Via Montemignaio. Donatella had the most sensuous, exciting body Ivo Palazzi had ever seen, and even now, as his life’s blood poured from his face, from the terrible scratches she had inflicted on him, he felt a familiar stirring in his loins. Dio, she was beautiful. There was an innocent decadence about her that drove him wild. She had the face of a leopard, high cheekbones and slant eyes, full ripe lips, that nibbled him and sucked him and – But he must not think of that now. He picked up a white cloth from a chair to staunch the flow of blood, and too late he realized that it was his shirt. Donatella was standing in the middle of their huge double bed, yelling at him. ‘I hope you bleed to death! When I’ve finished with you, you filthy whoremonger, there won’t be enough left for a gattino to shit on!’

For the hundredth time Ivo Palazzi wondered how he had got himself into this impossible situation. He had always prided himself on being the happiest of men, and all his friends had agreed with him. His friends? Everybody! Because Ivo had no enemies. In his bachelor days he had been a happy-go-lucky Roman without a care in the world, a Don Giovanni who was the envy of half the males in Italy. His philosophy was summed up in the phrase Farst onore con una donna – ‘Honour oneself with a woman.’ It kept Ivo very busy. He was a true romantic. He kept falling in love, and each time he used his new love to help him forget his old love. Ivo adored women, and to him they were all beautiful, from the putane who plied their ancient trade along the Via Appia, to the high-fashion models strutting along the Via Condotti. The only girls Ivo did not care for were the Americans. They were too independent for his tastes. Besides, what could one expect of a nation whose language was so unromantic that they would translate the name of Giuseppe Verdi to Joe Green?

Ivo always managed to have a dozen girls in various states of preparation. There were five stages. In stage one were the girls he had just met. They received daily phone calls, flowers, slim volumes of erotic poetry. In stage two were those to whom he sent little gifts of Gucci scarves and porcelain boxes filled with Perugina chocolates. Those in stage three received jewellery and clothes and were taken to dinner at El Toula, or Taverna Flavia. Those in stage four shared Ivo’s bed and enjoyed his formidable skills as a lover. An assignation with Ivo was a production. His beautifully decorated little apartment on the Via Margutta would be filled with flowers, garofani or papaveri, the music would be opera, classical or rock, according to the chosen girl’s taste. Ivo was a superb cook, and one of his specialities, appropriately enough, was pollo alla cacciatora, the hunter’s chicken. After dinner, a bottle of chilled champagne to drink in bed … Ah, yes, Ivo loved stage four.

But stage five was probably the most delicate of them all. It consisted of a heartbreaking farewell speech, a generous parting gift and a tearful arrivederci.

But all that was in the past. Now Ivo Palazzi took a quick glance at his bleeding, scratched face in the mirror over his bed and was horrified. He looked as though he had been attacked by a mad threshing machine.

‘Look at what you’ve done to me!’ he cried. ‘Cara, I know you didn’t mean it.’

He moved over to the bed to take Donatella in his arms. Her soft arms flew around him and as he started to hug her, she buried her long fingernails in his naked back and clawed him like a wild animal. Ivo yelled with pain.

‘Scream!’ Donatella shouted. ‘If I had a knife, I’d cut off your cazzo and ram it down your miserable throat.’

‘Please!’ Ivo begged. ‘The children will hear you.’

‘Let them!’ she shrieked. ‘It’s time they found out what kind of monster their father is.’