Rebecca Lim - Fury

As we walk along the pebbled roadway towards the villa, we can still hear the faint howling of the dogs. I know they will continue until they are hoarse from screaming, or can no longer sense me. Ryan’s dogs had reacted to me in exactly the same way. It must be my essential inhumanity that they discern, my utter alien-ness.

‘I bet they’re jumpy from the fires,’ Ryan says hastily, but Tomaso doesn’t even turn his head to look at us. Just keeps walking swiftly, almost silently.

It’s almost second nature to me now to try to tune out any trace of mortal energy around me, and little by little I’m getting better at it — I can choose to accept what I wish to accept and discount the rest. But I let myself see, for a moment, how this man must see us. I get no sense of alarm, no curiosity as to why the dogs are behaving so out of character for their breed. He believes we are what we appear to be — troublesome young foreigners on some frivolous errand — and I relax a little as I take in my surroundings.

The villa is set on a steep hill above a vast garden that runs down in immaculately maintained tiers to the lake’s shore far below. The level below the forecourt features a formal parterre garden built around a series of small circular ponds. Below that, there’s a grove of miniature citrus trees scattered with curved stone benches. Below that again, a classical statuary garden filled with the frozen forms of nymphs and satyrs. Running water features cascade down either side of the wide central staircase that leads to the portico of the main house and bisect the top three tiers of the formal garden. There’s also a cleverly concealed winding driveway that connects the main house to a much smaller, sleekly modern one-storey guesthouse of glass and steel at the foot of the hill. A high stone wall with another pair of tall, black, wrought-iron gates set into it separates the property from a narrow street that runs along its lowest boundary.

‘Holy crap!’ Ryan mouths again, looking around. He points out a long, narrow jetty jutting into the lake opposite the lower gates of the property. A large cruiser and a couple of smaller motorised runabouts are moored to it. The jetty had caught my interest, too, almost immediately.

‘Worth checking out,’ I mouth at him behind Tomaso’s broad back.

He nods to show he’s understood, reflected light glinting off the lenses of his fake glasses.

As we step onto the large, complicated, Renaissance-style symbol picked out in polished black and white stones just below the front portico, a slight woman in a long-sleeved white dress and white bib-fronted apron, with curly, jaw-length blonde hair and ruddy cheeks, opens the tall, heavily carved front door to the house. When she sees us, a smile lightens the anxious expression on her thin face. She walks towards us, hands outspread in welcome.

‘Thank goodness you’ve reached us safely,’ she says in her lilting voice. ‘When Signora Agnelli-Re’s office called to let us know you were already on your way, well, I …’ A shadow crosses her face before she adds brightly, ‘Now let me take those from you, you must be exhausted.’

Ryan and I exchange glances. I hoist the hangers in my left hand a little higher.

‘I’m sorry …’ I begin, and pause. ‘Clara,’ the woman says. ‘How rude of me. Clara O’Manley.’

‘Clara,’ I continue smoothly, ‘but I have strict instructions to deliver these personally to Bianca St Alban. Mrs AgnelliRe was quite adamant. As you will be aware, a value cannot be placed on them now. They are museum pieces, you understand.’

Clara’s expressive face cycles through surprise, sorrow, comprehension, then a studied neutrality. ‘Tomaso,’ she says to the silent hulk standing to one side of us, ‘have Gregory call down to the dépendance to see if Signorina Bianca is available to receive …’ Now it’s her turn to pause.

‘Ryan Daley,’ Ryan says immediately, his manners impeccable, holding out his right hand. ‘And Mercy.’

‘I have one of those impossible names,’ I add quickly, shaking her hand, too, which feels calloused, cool and dry. ‘Just Mercy will do.’

Tomaso moves around us silently, entering the villa through its open front door. Neither name will ring any bells with Bianca St Alban. She’s never met Ryan, and when she met me I was the notorious Irina Zhivanevskaya. But she’s staying in the guesthouse at the foot of the estate, near the lake, and that’s where I want to be. All I have to go on is that terrible dream in which I somehow saw inside Luc’s mind, was him as he pursued Nuriel across the dark waters of Lake Como. I need to look at the shoreline from the perspective of the lake itself and maybe then it will become clear what happened to her.

My voice is deliberately casual as I say, ‘We’d be happy to walk the dresses down to Bianca ourselves. We spoke only a few days ago, in fact, at Atelier Re, just before the couture show. That’s the guesthouse, the dépendance , down there, I take it?’

Clara nods. ‘You’re friends of hers? She’s been something of a recluse lately …’

I nod. ‘When Juliana told me she needed to get the gowns to Bianca, and we were already headed this way, well, it made sense to stop by. All that business with Félix de Haviland …’ I frown. ‘So shocking, and so, so sad .’

Ryan blinks for a moment, struggling to recall where he’s heard the name before.

‘You know, darling,’ I purr, turning to him and putting a hand lightly on his arm. ‘You and Justine were talking about it only the other day, remember?’

Ryan’s face clears. ‘Félix always was an idiot,’ he says disapprovingly.

‘Félix broke her heart,’ Clara murmurs, gazing down at the guesthouse. Light spills from its floor-to-ceiling windows onto the lawns, casting shadows in pretty patterns. ‘She’ll be so happy to see some familiar, friendly faces. Her parents are travelling between board meetings, like they always do this time of year. She was already feeling under siege, so alone, you know? And then all this happened …’

She touches the back of my hand and, for a moment, I get a clear sensation of her terror when she’d woken that night to see strange lights in the sky. The estate had become a kind of island, marooned by a fire that had seemed somehow to be alive . She’d watched from her upper-storey bedroom, scarcely able to breathe, as trees and buildings had burst into flame all around the shoreline. Lines of fire had appeared across the surface of the lake, like holy writing, though she hadn’t been able to make out any source. She’d seen the main street of the town burning in the distance and had recited the words of every prayer she’d ever been taught as a child, because she hadn’t known what else to do.

I shake off her touch lightly, knowing it’s imperative I get down to the lake.

‘We’re visiting other friends in the area,’ I say, ‘just to see how they’re getting on. We’ll duck in and have a quick chat with Bianca, drop the dresses, and be on our way.’

‘We’ll be gone before you know it,’ Ryan adds warmly, and he’s so solid and reassuring and boy-next-door handsome in his kooky get-up that Clara can’t help twinkling up at him.

‘Oh, go on,’ she says with a shooing motion. ‘I expect she’ll be glad of the distraction. Head past the little folly to my left there, and you’ll find the start of the driveway that will take you down.’

She waves at us before re-entering the house. As she shuts the door behind her, I hear her call out, ‘Tomaso? Tell Gregory —’

‘For an honest guy, you make a convincing liar,’ I tease Ryan in a low voice as we walk towards the marble and wrought-iron folly — like a miniature rotunda — set on the far edge of the property.