Sign of the Cross Read Online Free PDF Page B

Sant’Orsla.
    A red British phone box stood guard on the street corner. The cobblestones fell away: Valletta’s limestone promontory was kinked in the middle, weighed down by its residential cargo, like a beast of burden with a buckled spine. The pavements at the sides of the road were notched with steps.
    At each cross street, Spike looked up at the omnipresent statuary: saints slaying dragons, madonnas cradling babies, Jesus lugging his cross. He found himself pining for the mildewed concrete of Gibraltar.
    At last he saw the palazzo, dominating the entire corner of Triq it-Teatru l-Antiq – Old Theatre Street, presumably. After walking beneath its protruding, covered balcony, he stopped outside his uncle and aunt’s front door.
    A window further down was boarded up. As Spike manoeuvred the iron keys from his pocket, he caught a twitch of movement to the left. He looked up, but the windows of the palazzo were dark, the curtains still. The wind whistled through the empty street behind as he slotted the first key into the lock.
    The smell of disinfectant hit him as soon as he opened the door. The decor looked unchanged since his last visit: Japanese paper shade in the hallway, dark-spotted mirror above the mantelpiece. Spike had yet to read the Mifsud wills but the beneficiaries were unlikely to be retiring to Monaco.
    After gathering the utility bills from the mat – they would need to be settled by the estate – he headed into the kitchen. Everything seemed tidy: chairs tucked neatly against the table, blistered Le Creuset pots hanging from a rack, green and yellow sponges left on the work surface – accidental spoor of the industrial cleaner.
    Gradually the photos Spike had seen at the Depot began to superimpose themselves on the room. He imagined drunken yells, Teresa attacking Mifsud with a bottle before he threw her onto the kitchen table and ran a knife across her gullet. The knife turned on himself . . . His Uncle David? Really?
    The far wall was covered with a gloss of fresh paint. He checked for bloodstains on the terracotta tiles: nothing. Next door, a dated-looking ball gown had been laid out on the bed. Feeling a sudden sting of sadness, he moved to the sitting room.
    The same collection of oils in their chipped giltwood frames, the same low, round table, fanned now with documents relating to the Mission of St John Hospitaller, the NGO his aunt had worked for: teaching aids, flyers requesting donations. On the desk sat a silver photo frame: David and Teresa on their honeymoon, he already middle-aged and bearded, she with jet-black hair and a toothy smile, standing proudly in front of a ruined temple as though they’d been the first to discover it.
    A dampness came to Spike’s eyes. He blinked it away, then reached for the desk drawer, feeling the tremor in his hands once again. Inside lay an address book and a pile of academic diaries. The top diary was for the current year; as he started to flick through, seeing the entries in his uncle’s fine italic writing, he heard a knock. He waited, motionless, until the knock came again. Slipping the diary into his pocket, he turned out the lights and returned to the hallway.
    5
    There was no spyhole in the door, so Spike cautiously undid the latch, pushing the heavy oak frame outwards. Nothing but dark, empty street. He stuck his head out further. An old man was standing a few yards away on the cobbles.
    The man’s tailored blue shirt was tucked into pressed charcoal slacks. Filaments of faded blond hair were teased back over his head. A clipped, almost military moustache retained the darker shade the rest of his hair had lost. ‘Is that . . . Spike?’ he said.
    Spike stared back.
    ‘My good God, it is.’ The man lowered a bulky mobile phone and slid it into the pocket of his trousers. ‘I heard a noise downstairs,’ he said in an educated, faintly European accent. ‘I was about to call the police. It’s Michael, Michael Malaspina. Don’t you