Tom stares at the phone he’s just turned off.
If Valentina is missing and not traceable by the Carabinieri, then she’s either dead or she’s been abducted by the same people who took Louisa.
She’s smart and tough.
If she’s alive, she’ll buy time for herself, but not much. Guilio is the only one who knows anything about the sect and has any chance of leading him to Valentina, but he’s not going to want to cooperate with the cops, and he’s certainly not going to be helpful if he learns that Anna is dead.
The young eunuch is staring at Tom and gets bored of waiting. ‘What is it? Is Anna all right?’
‘No, no, she’s not. I’m afraid I can’t take you to her.’
Guilio looks shaken. ‘What?’
‘That was Federico Assante, the lieutenant who interviewed you. He’s sitting with members of the Carabinieri’s special operations group and he wants me to go over there and help them find the place you mentioned. The place where Anna and Louisa were held and where they now think Valentina, Captain Morassi, is also being held.’
‘They’ve got her as well? I don’t understand.’
Tom can see he’s confused. Good. He needs him to stay that way for a while. ‘As you know, everything went wrong back there at the church. What matters now is that we tell the Carabinieri how to get inside the place you called “the womb” so they can clean up and save lives.’
Guilio falls silent. His anguish is visible as he tries to work out the consequences. ‘I can’t. If I go anywhere near them, the Carabinieri will arrest me again. My prints are all over that knife.’ He pauses. ‘Whoever it was attacking you, I’m sure I killed him.’
Tom can see that the thought distresses him. ‘They’ll understand. It was self-defence. You were doing what you thought was right and saving me from being killed.’
Guilio paces nervously. ‘I can’t. I can’t go to the cops. I have a long record; they’ll throw the book at me and lock me up for ever. You don’t know what they’re like.’
‘What’s the alternative?’ asks Tom. ‘We can’t just sit here doing nothing. This thing has to end, and we have to end it.’
‘We can do that. I know how we can end things, but you’ll have to help me and you’ll have to promise not to call the cops in. No cops, absolutely no cops. Right?’
Tom nods.
‘ Va bene.’ He bites anxiously at his thumbnail and becomes lost in a fresh worry. ‘What we’re going to have to do is dangerous. You may have to kill to get Valentina back. Kill or be killed. Are you prepared to do that? Because if you’re not, if this woman doesn’t matter that much to you, then you’d best tell me now.’
Tom’s mind flashes back to his life in Compton. To the time he stepped into a late-night street fight and took the lives of two gangbangers who were raping a young woman. Their deaths still haunt him.
He sees the men’s faces in his sleep and often imagines whether they might have straightened out their lives if only he’d used a little less force and managed to get them jailed instead of buried.
‘Yes,’ he says reluctantly. ‘If it’s really necessary, then I’m prepared to take the life of a bad person in order to save that of a good one.’