The Untouchable (3 page)

Chapter Four

“I-I hadn’t realized he had so much money.” Rosy swallowed, took a big breath and let it out slowly. On the Monday morning following Frederick’s funeral, she sat opposite the lawyer, Henri Albert, at Frederick’s desk, staring unfocussed across the expanse of antique mahogany. Albert, his laptop, gold fountain pen, spectacles, and a slim pile of A4 files blurred to invisibility.

Frederick had left her the house
—
this house
—
and contents, plus a considerable sum of money. A huge sum of money. Massive. And the rights to, and royalties from, his books. Apart from a generous settlement for Lydia, setting her up for life, and something
for Ricky as a thank-you for his care, Rosy had inherited everything that had been Frederick’s
—
even a scrubby ten-acre piece of land in the hills of Skiathos and a vintage Jaguar, in storage. A cat that had to be cared for until its dying day had also been mentioned but, in her daze of amazement, she hadn’t paid much attention to that.

“Why would he leave me anything?” she asked. “We didn’t speak to each other for most of my life.”

“He regretted that.”

Rosy looked away, through the window, at the restful twinkle of the river, and felt her heart resist.

Albert broke the silence. “That’s everything. Are there questions?”

In shock, she sat up straight on the edge of the chair. “Er, what about the funeral? It was a big event. Has everything been paid for?”

“There is nothing outstanding.” Albert picked up his spectacles and put them on. Pen poised, he asked Rosy for her debit card. She found it in the sad assortment of afflicted credit cards in her purse and handed it over, watching, mesmerised as Albert made a short call on his phone. Frederick had wanted her to have an amount of cash up-front, apparently, and here it was, pouring into her account via a few clipped words from the lawyer’s mouth.

“I’d like to know,” she said, when he had finished, “who organized the funeral.”

There’d been Bollinger, and a feast of fabulous food. It must have cost someone quite a few thousand pounds.

Albert pursed his lips, weighing his words. “Actually, Mr. Dallariva. Your neighbour.”

Rosy sat back, frowning. The service had been simple and beautiful, and the function afterwards an informal but generous celebration, unlike anything she would have associated with Frederick. There’d even been cakes: small apple and nut sour cream coffee cakes, and a giant buttermilk plum cake, an absolute masterpiece. She couldn’t have done better herself.

“But Dallariva didn’t attend,” she said.

“No.”

“Did Frederick grant him power of attorney to carry out his wishes?”

“No, but he and your father were friends.” Monsieur Albert closed his laptop and pocketed his pen, indicating the meeting was over.

“Why?”

“They were similar. Both gifted and intelligent.”

“How is motorcycle racing intelligent?”

Albert stood up. “Mr. Dallariva has exceptional talent. He works on the edge, on the very limit of endurance, fearless and passionate. This is no ordinary man. This is a rare man, Miss Hamilton. A living legend. Untouchable.”

“And evidently charitable, but I object to an absent stranger planning and paying for my father’s funeral.”

“Bear in mind you have been the absent stranger.”

Rosy glared. She couldn’t argue. He was right. Way out of line, but right.

“I take exception to what Dallariva did. He had no mandate.” She stood, walking with Albert to the front door. “I’ll make contact and reimburse him.”

“He doesn’t take calls or receive visitors.” Albert bestowed a thin smile. “Lydia works for him too. One of the trusted few. She will tell you the same thing. The media, you see.”

Rosy didn’t see. She opened her mouth to ask more questions, but Albert full-stopped the conversation by putting out a hand she had to shake. “If the media should approach you, Miss Hamilton, on the subject of Mr. Dallariva, I beg you, as a good neighbour, a decent human being, to say nothing.”

“But—”

Albert strode to the black Mercedes parked on the driveway, got in and drove off with a brief salute.

So, Dallariva did not receive calls, or visitors.

She would see about that.

***

Rosy went upstairs to Frederick’s bedroom where Lydia sorted clothes, something in which Rosy had no wish to be involved.

“When do you work for Marco Dallariva?” she asked.

Lydia folded a cardigan and slipped it into a plastic bag. “I go in once a week. It’s an easy job because the place is empty, barely furnished, and he’s hardly there. He never has visitors. I’ll go this evening as soon as I’m finished here, and see what he needs. It’s never much.”

“Is he there now?”

“Yes, he’s on winter break, but doesn’t like people to know.”

“I’d like to go and see him, or at least call him.”

Lydia shook her head. “No.”

“Surely you have his number?”

“I can’t give it to you. Sorry.” She continued folding.

Rosy went downstairs into the study. Several framed photos stood on the bookcase. All were of strangers. There were more on the mantelpiece. She picked one up.

Marco Dallariva, in trademark red and black leathers with a helmet under his arm. She ran her fingertips over the glass, reading the scrawl across the bottom right hand corner.
Frederick, thank you for everything. I am grateful. Marco Dallariva.

She took the photograph to the window to inspect in stronger light. Without doubt, Dallariva was a photogenic specimen. Luke, a Moto GP fan, had told her that the champion riders were small, like jockeys, obsessed with their weight and fitness. Pretty boy Dallariva was likely no different, although he certainly wasn’t small. That aside, he looked like a
prima donna
weighed down by chips on both shoulders. She studied his dark hair and eyebrows, the crooked half-smile, and vivid blue eyes. Surely those were contact lenses? The gemstone blueness had an added sparkle of delight and surprise. And he probably was surprised. Surprised to be alive.

She looked up, catching sight of the rooftops of the Villa Diana, looming above the trees on the other side of the valley. Lydia would be busy upstairs for hours. Ricky, technically still under contract to Frederick until the end of the month, had taken a few days off to visit his girlfriend, Mel, an
au pair
in Cannes.

Rosy made a decision. Dallariva could have his money back, now. Finding her cheque book, she opened it and hesitated. A few thousand pounds would crash-land
her account in overdraft if Henri Albert’s slick transfer hadn’t gone through. Nevertheless, she wrote out a cheque to M. Dallariva and slipped it into an envelope. Then, in the kitchen, not thinking too hard about what she planned to do, she
found Lydia’s bag and fished out a bunch of keys attached to a red gate control with silver buttons. She put on her coat, pocketed the envelope and keys, and left the house.

At the top of the drive, in front of the ominous gate to Dallariva’s property, she rang the bell. She waited, running her fingertips over the large, etched script on a rectangular stone set low into the wall:
Villa Diana.
No answer. She rang again, and after a minute or two, pressed the button on the remote control, holding her breath, hoping there weren’t attack dogs, or burly security guards brandishing guns. The gate rolled open, admitting her
into the lonely silence of vast, deserted gardens run wild.

Rosy followed the drive to the house, climbed the wide steps onto the front terrace, to the tall, double front door, a mess of peeling paint and rampant ivy. There was no bell, only a heavy knocker: a metal ring on a rusted hinge in the shape of a lion’s head. Two thuds produced nothing. She tried a second time. No answer, so she pulled the keys from her pocket.

No, she absolutely couldn’t. Even if no one was home it would be an unforgivable intrusion. What was she
thinking? She knocked again and waited, then walked the length of the terrace in the eerie quiet, looking for another door,
down steps ankle-deep in fallen leaves, around the side of the house to the back, where a door hung open against the stone wall.

“Hello?” she called, but again no answer, just the sound of the hinge squeaking as the door swung to and fro in the cold breeze. She looked inside, into a disused scullery where more dead leaves from lofty plane trees scratched across the worn flagstones and piled themselves in a ragged heap against an old mangle. How could Dallariva live in this desolate ruin? Surely, as a high-profile sportsman he had money to fix up the place? What held him here? What made him stay?

Goosebumps tickled under layers of warm clothing. Overwhelmed by a moment of utter madness, she’d taken a ridiculous risk by intruding. She would slide the cheque under the front door and leave, quickly. About to go, a bright movement beyond the trees in the lower part of the garden caught her eye
—
the glassy blue rectangle of a huge swimming pool lay in the long grass, sparkling in the cold sunshine.

Pausing, a
voyeur
behind the branches, she watched the water move. Someone was cleaning the pool. Perhaps they could tell her if Dallariva was home. She walked down the cracked, mossy steps into the grass and, clear of the trees, stopped. A man was swimming, not cleaning. Oblivious to the biting cold, he sliced through the water like a machine. Rosy had never seen anyone swim like that. Muscles worked in rhythm across his wide brown back and down the length of his powerful arms and legs as he executed stroke after perfect over-arm stroke. At the end of the pool he stopped, stood and lifted himself out in one strong, supple movement. He strode toward her, wiping his face with his hands, water streaming from his body.

Rosy’s recent memory hadn’t served her well. The photograph in Frederick’s study had done nothing to prepare her for the physical impact of Marco Dallariva, undressed. Her eyes shot to his astonishing chest, bounced up to the magnificent eyes that transformed his face from striking to beautiful. The well-shaped
—
if crooked
—
mouth offset the symmetry of his other features. It drew her eye away from the fine, straight nose that made his face so handsome, like its creator had stopped short of absolute perfection by allowing the mouth to disobey the rules. She looked down, at the droplets of icy water clinging to the fine, dark hairs on his chest, barely heaving after prolonged exertion. She heard him breathe, smelt the saline on his chilled skin, saw the strong pulse beating in his neck, in the light stubble below the angle of his jaw. Pressing her lips together to stop her mouth dropping open, she tried a smile.

He didn’t smile back. “What the hell do you want?” he growled, his harsh voice cutting the silence. Rosy had expected a frosty reception, but not an attack.

“I’m Rosy Hamilton, remember? We, um, met on the road the other day. I want to speak to you about something.”

“That does not give you the right to trespass.” He spoke over-perfect English, with the fascinating trace of an Italian accent she’d noticed before. It would have been charming had it not been so hostile.

Finding the dazzle of his eyes too much, she focussed on the settling shimmer of the water behind him. “No, I’m sorry, it doesn’t, and I apologize. I believe you paid for Frederick’s funeral and the function afterwards. Thank you, but there was no need to do that. I’d like to reimburse you.”

“No.”

“There’s no need for you to use your money to pay for things that I—”

“I’ll do what I like with my money!”

Rosy took a deep breath and looked him in the eye. “I’m sure you will, and do. However, I’d like you to accept a cheque. Please.” She held out the envelope.

“No, thank you.” He took the envelope and tore it up, his eyes on hers. “I paid for the funeral as a sign of respect.”

“You didn’t even attend.”

“I don’t do funerals. When are you going back to London?” He tossed the bits onto a rusting garden chair.

Taken aback, she paused. “I don’t know yet.”

“I want to buy Frederick’s house.”

“And if it’s not for sale?”

The left side of his mouth twitched into an almost-smile. “Everything’s for sale.”

“You’re right,” she retorted, after a moment’s thought. “Everything is for sale, just perhaps not to you.”

He watched her, his eyes steady, clear and ruthless. “I warn you. I get what I want.”

Rosy noticed, to her satisfaction, that gooseflesh puckered the skin of his incredible shoulders. Better still, his lips were slightly less attractive tinged blue, agitated by a rising shiver. “You have a big ego, Mr. Dallariva. It could do with a bloody good knock if you ask me.”

“I didn’t.”

She turned and went back the way she had come, hurrying through the long grass, up the steps and around the side of the house.

“How did you get in?”

She swung around, startled. He’d come after her. “I took Lydia’s keys. It was wrong.”