Peter Guttridge - The Thing Itself

Tingley watched them go, wondering where Sant’Antimo was and, more importantly, where it would be safe to sleep tonight.

Tingley drove out of Chiusi on winding roads, watching for any sign of a follower. The abbey church of Sant’ Antimo was in Montalcino, a French Romanesque building plonked down in the middle of Italy. He had been online getting images of its location and its layout. He intended to be there twelve hours before the meeting was due to happen.

He had spent several hours with Google Maps and other online resources getting the lay of the land around Sant’Antimo. He was confident he could avoid any kind of ambush going in. Coming out was something else again.

It took two further hours to reach Sant’Antimo. For most of his journey, Tingley was caught in a convoy of lorries grinding slowly through the hilly landscape. He saw the church from the road in a valley; it was set among low wooded hills a couple of miles below the little village of Castelnuovo dell’ Abate. A tall cypress stood alone beside the square tower, equalling its height.

He pulled over to the side of the road and took out his binoculars. The way he figured, if it was a set-up, Kadire would be somewhere up here or in the church tower. Either way, he would be waiting to shoot him as he approached. He watched the tower for any sign, anything at all.

After half an hour he got back in the car and drove slowly down towards the church. He parked lengthways against the church wall, passenger side out, the church between him and any vantage point on the hill.

He came out of the car between driver’s door and church wall and made the five yards to the entrance in a crouching run. Once inside, he ducked into a corner angle and swept the interior.

There were a dozen or so people scattered around the church. Nearest were a fashionably dressed young Italian couple who were scratching their names with a penknife on to one of the twelfth-century capitals. Aside from that vandalism, nothing untoward that he could see.

The high walls were undecorated, honey-coloured brick but, with the light coming through the plain windows, they seemed luminous. Beams of sunlight fell through those windows like solid slabs, their edges sharply defined.

He knew the layout of the church from the research he’d done online. He moved down the south aisle towards the altar. He looked into a doorway that led through to the sacristy and then up a spiral staircase that he knew from the floor plan led to the matroneum. He passed the altar, ducking his head to look down into the tiny crypt beneath it. He’d read it had formed part of a ninth-century church, supposedly founded by Charlemagne on this site. He walked behind the altar into the north aisle, stopped at the entrance to the bell tower.

He glanced up at the windows to the matroneum in the blank wall opposite. He could see a figure standing in the window recess, although he couldn’t make out the face. He had the impression that the person was studying him. Tingley stared back.

‘Tingley, nice to see you again,’ a voice beside him said. Kadire, his face still a bruised mess, was standing by his shoulder, leaning on a walking stick. Tingley turned.

‘You’re early.’

Kadire smiled — it looked grotesque given his facial injuries — but said nothing. He pointed with his stick across the church to the spiral staircase.

‘Shall we get out of everybody’s way?’

Tingley glanced back at the window. The figure had gone.

Kadire led the way slowly up the spiral staircase, pausing once to catch his breath. At the top of the stairs he stood aside to let Tingley enter the room first. Tingley went by him warily but the room was empty.

‘Did the exterior of the church look familiar, Tingley? Andrei Tarkovsky filmed it for use in his film Nostalgia , you know.’

‘I didn’t know,’ Tingley said, looking around the matroneum. It had been divided into two rooms, both hung with wall paintings and furnished with chairs and wooden sofas. Tingley walked past the enormous fifteenth-century fireplace to look into the next room, then went across to the window recess. He could see the length of the nave below him. He couldn’t see any of the people who had been in the church when he arrived. There was no sign of anyone resembling the figure he had seen in the window.

‘Is Radislav here?’ he said.

Kadire touched his face.

‘That doesn’t really matter,’ he said.

‘It matters to me.’

‘I tried to kill you.’

‘You killed someone I cared about instead. You have to pay for that.’

Kadire looked him up and down.

‘I don’t think your situation is of the best.’

Tingley looked down into the nave. The grey-faced Radislav and two other men were walking along it.

‘You were expecting me?’ Tingley said.

‘The Di Bocci situation is. . difficult. A rock and a hard place.’

‘You know you killed the wrong people in Brighton, don’t you? Hathaway wasn’t involved in the shootings.’

‘Not my people. I am Albanian. Radislav’s people. The pregnant woman in Milldean shot in her bed during the massacre was his sister.’

Tingley had come here to kill Kadire but this was too cold-blooded, the man too defenceless. Kadire seemed to read his thoughts. He released his stick, spreading his arms wide in a gesture of surrender as it clattered to the floor.

Tingley could do it with one blow. He should do it, he knew. He could be out of the room before Kadire realized he was dead. He glanced at the stairs — he could hear Radislav coming up them — and back at Kadire.

Kadire watched him.

Tingley backed into the next room. He turned and ran for the door in the far wall. He thought at first it was locked but after a few moments hurried tugging it came open. He pelted down a flight of narrow stairs, almost colliding with a door at the bottom. It opened on to the gravel car park. A moment later he made a dash round the perimeter of the church to his car.

As he stabbed his key into the ignition, he looked around to see if Radislav and Kadire had any other men with them. No one visible. In a squeal of tyres and a flurry of dust, he sent the car hurtling two hundred yards down the dirt road alongside the church to the main road. Gunning the engine, he dashed towards the vantage point he’d spied earlier.

Tingley lost track of time, lying in the hide, sighting down the sniper’s rifle at the church and the car parked beside it. He wasn’t a crack shot like Kadire, but with the magnification on this scope he didn’t need to be.

His mind wandered, but all the time he had half an ear on his immediate surroundings, alert to anyone creeping up on him. Cicadas rasped. There was an ants’ nest somewhere nearby and tiny red ants swirled over his hands, biting furiously.

Radislav, here in Italy. And an easy target. Tingley had expected to be blasting his way into some remote hilltop compound with some of the weaponry weighing down the boot of his car.

When the minute hand of his watch ticked on to the third hour, he put the rifle down and rubbed at the eye that had been glued to the scope. He realized he was drenched in sweat, though the day was cool.

Tingley pictured that staircase down into the crypt underneath the altar. Realized there must be a secret tunnel by which to leave the church. He wondered where Kadire and Radislav now were. Running from him? Or towards him?

Jimmy Tingley edged the car through the medieval gateway into the small, walled town of Gubbio. He parked and walked up the steep, cobbled streets to stop for a beer at a small bar on a terrace below the gnarled ninth-century church.

There was a service at 7.30, a celebration of a local saint’s day. The saint was actually an Etruscan god who had survived down the centuries by disguising himself as a Christian.