“Bad Man?” Rayne Wilde winked at him. “Don’t worry, I’ve had my share of bad men.”
“They say he’s Mafia,” Phil whispered, pulling a face.
“Yeah?” Rayne’s expression was sceptical. “Who’s ‘they’ then?”
“Don’t take the piss. You don’t wanna end up in the Med in concrete boots!” the other boy warned.
“Do the Mafia still do that kind of thing?” Rayne teased him.
“You don’t wanna find out,” his companion said more solemnly. “Not before I take you down the dunes anyway!”
“Naughty boy,” murmured Rayne with a grin. “You wanna take me down the dunes then?”
“If you fancy. Where you stayin’?” Phil held his eyes; brazened him out.
“With a friend of a friend on a boat in… what’s the marina place called?”
“Ambonne. Anyone I know?” Phil was more cheerful now that the topic had steered away from the mysterious Giovanni.
“Daniel Leland, he’s a film maker.”
Phil’s eyes went quite wide for a moment. “Yeah… I know,” he said at last. “You’re with Dan Leland? Bloody hell… I thought you were hot. That explains it.”
“I’m not ‘with’ him. Like I said, I’m just a friend of a friend,” Rayne wanted to ask more, Daniel clearly had quite a towering reputation on the Cap, but he held his tongue. It could wait.
“I get off at two thirty if you fancy a drink… or a shag,” Phil said boldly.
Rayne managed a smile. “Maybe I’ll see you then, in that case.”
He left the blond a couple of cigarettes and went off in search of the Laguna.
More than one man met his eyes and checked him out on the way up to the beach. The pathway was flanked on one side by the towering Collines apartment block rising in stepped terraces, all fronted by broad balconies on his left. Towels fluttered like the flags of all nations from each balcony railing. To the right was a veritable warren of exotic gardens and single storey villas. People passed and greeted one another in a smorgasbord of different languages. Countless skinny, half-feral cats slunk along the borders, skulking beneath the broad leaves of colourful zinnias and dwarf palms.
He passed a supermarket and a small pizzeria; the aromas drifting out from the latter almost made his mouth water. There was a little arcade of shops in the cool shade beneath a concrete walkway and Rayne strolled by, browsing the windows distractedly until he emerged into the sunlight once more, standing outside a busy restaurant that overlooked the rolling blue of the Mediterranean. For a moment he stood catching his breath, a slender reed in the busy stream of people coming and going from the beach below. Ever so briefly he was a child again; entranced by the surge of the ocean and the endless stretch of golden sand. He had spent his earliest years in a small town on the Kent coast and the long beach of St. Mary’s Bay had been his playground.
Even in the height of summer, the strand at Dymchurch had never been this busy. It seemed that everywhere he looked there were bodies stretched out on the sands, or lounging in deckchairs reading or talking. Children built elaborate castles or chased one another in and out of the rolling sea. Couples played beach tennis or flirted tenderly together. People wandered down to the water’s edge to cool off then returned to their industrious tanning. Sometimes they gathered their towels and decamped to the restaurant or to one of the bars beyond it in search of refreshments. The human traffic to and from the strand was endless. Old and young alike seemed to congregate here, enjoying the blazing sun and the chance to disrobe completely.
As he stood there, looking around like a lost child, his gaze fell upon the colourful blue and gold sign above the entrance to a bar on the walkway that passed over the shopping arcade. There were colourful fish on a turquoise background, swimming happily in and out of letters made from bones and shells and pieces of driftwood, spelling the name of the Laguna. Rayne blinked and wandered back towards it, observing the portly German tourists parked out front on cushioned loungers, sipping tall cocktails and laughing raucously. It hardly looked like a hotbed of Mafia intrigue and dubious drug-dealing but Dan Leland had warned that nothing here was quite what it appeared to be.
He was still contemplating this when a cheerful voice greeted him in pidgin European; “‘Allo, bonjour, guten morgen.”
A Boy Who Came In from the Cold
Rayne half-turned to face a lithe, brown-skinned fellow, possibly in his late thirties. He had dark eyes and hair that hung in oiled black ringlets past his shoulders, framing a handsome, latino face. The smile that split it was too wide and too white. He grinned like a shark scenting prey. Like many of the people who worked here, as opposed to the holidaymakers, he was not naked. Snug, pale blue jeans hugged his hips and he wore a fitted shirt of some purposely crumpled, white linen, open to his breastbone. A gold chain hung in the V of his neckline and he sported expensive looking, dark brown leather shoes.
“Francais?” he asked now, head on one side, looking Rayne up and down shrewdly. “Italiano?”
“No,” Rayne said mildly, returning the look.
“English! Mamma mia!” The fellow pretended shock. He clapped both hands to his breast then lifted them to frame Rayne’s face. “So angelic! You cannot be!”
“Sorry.” The boy was trying not to smile but the corners of his mouth betrayed him.
“You want a drink or you going to stand out there and stare at my nice arse all day?” his inquisitor demanded, rather impudently.
“I’ll ‘ave a beer, yeah,” Rayne said with another little quirk of his lips. “Are you Giovanni?”
The fellow had turned his head and was snapping his fingers, calling instructions in his own tongue or possibly in French, to the tall blond guy in a Hawaiian shirt that was working the bar. He put a hand between Rayne’s shoulder blades now and ushered him firmly to a lounger with a parasol next to it.
“Sit,” he commanded. “Who is asking?”
“I am.” Rayne looked up at him, squinting a little against the sunlight.
The blond, who wore his long hair in a loose ponytail that cascaded down his back, brought two bottled beers and a pair of glasses on a tray. The dark fellow sat opposite Rayne and poured for them both. His sharp, almost colourless eyes flickered back speculatively to meet his customer’s narrowed, curious gaze.
“What is your name little English boy?” he breathed at last, sipping his beer and smacking his lips appreciatively.
“I’m not a little boy. My name’s Rayne.”
“Like in England, it rain all the time,” the man grinned like the Cheshire Cat at his own joke. “What for you look up Giovanni?”
Rayne took a good swallow of his beer. It was sweet and cold and tasted wonderful in the increasing heat of the morning.
“Someone told me that he might be able to sort me out with something I was after,” he said quietly. “Someone told me that Giovanni was the man that could get me some proper gear.”
At once the older fellow leaned towards him, touching a finger to his lips. He shook his head slowly, his smile reduced in wattage ever so slightly.
“We no talk business here,” he explained cheerfully enough. “We drink, we shoot the breeze. Happy people, enjoying happy holidays, si?”