An excerpt taken from my latest book: Summer Girl. Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle Store, WHSmith, Kobo, Agenda and all good book retailers.
Rita Caruana takes the same way home every night from Charlotte’s Bar. The crooked dog leg alleys of Valletta rise and fall against the grid-formation streets: from the top of Nix Mangiari Steps to the Triq Il-Mediterran. Dark and winding, the streets are ominous with the houses leering over Rita like oblong giants as she navigates her route home. The uneven verge of crude grey stones poke out of the ground, like a Venus flytrap lying still and waiting for its prey. Each stone laid in good faith and each stone broken from the constant pounding of heavy vehicles and seasonal flooding on non-irrigated ground. The gentle footfall of a slight mousy woman in her early thirties dressed in black leggings and a black t-shirt with an old red stitched logo: Charlotte’s, looking unintentionally retro; diagonally ascending across her right breast. Though sensible footwear was a must for anyone working in a bar, it didn’t help Rita as her ankle twists between two jagged kerb stones. She trips and falls crying out into the night, clutching the flimsy leather burlap bag containing her entire life and the week’s takings.
Looking up from the ground she sees me.
He’s Swedish, that’s her first thought, Scandinavian. Blond, tall and slim: my skin reflects the yellow streetlamps that mark the Marsamxett waterfront making me look somehow paler, if that’s possible. It doesn’t matter how I got here, but I’m scaring her. I change my posture and look at her so she can see me; my eyes are the darkest blue: she knows she’d recognise me anywhere if the Pulizija[1] ask for a description of her attacker. Scared she looks down at the ground, she breathes erratically, the fear releasing a wildfire of adrenalin forcing fresh blood through her body.
A cockroach scuttles across the road clicking its legs yet hardly touching the shale and pebbles kicked against the side of the road. Startled by the vermin, she gets up.
‘Are you ok?’ I query.
‘Yes. Please. I’m fine.’
‘Let me see that you get home safe Madame.’
‘No, thank you. Please, ħallini[2].’
She gestures at me as I hold her forearm gently. She repeats the word, swelling the volume to alert any passers-by. There are none.
‘Ħallini!’
Rita leaves me standing on the road and walks faster, though limping slightly. Just a few more metres, she thinks, I’ll be home.
Soon, a solitary car travels up the road slowly drawing Rita into view of its headlights. It’s 3am. No one drives up here at this time of night, save for the odd taxi driver looking for a sanctuary from the one-way system of the tiny city. The car idles and two men get out; Rita starts to run, shouting as she does. This Valletta night is no place for a woman. They grab her and force her to the floor.
I give it another few seconds before arriving, watching. After all, she said she was fine.
‘Nooooooo! No! Noooo!’ She cries kicking and punching the men as they pin her to the ground trying to remove her leggings.
The men don’t see me approach. One is clearly confident that he will violate her whilst the other man focuses on the contents of her bag, resting a firm foot on the back of her neck.
‘Close your eyes Madame,’ I tell her.
She does. It must have been the fear at being overpowered by the men, or the knowing that I could be identified that made her trust me; but when she opens her eyes again, the men are gone, and I’m, well, just glad that she is ok. It would be less to explain later.
The car continues turning over, humming in a perfunctory meter. I knew that the Pulizija would find it before the sun rose but I won’t be there, and Rita? Well, she will wake up in her bed as if nothing has happened. It is the perfect crime. Crime, someone once told me, is not in the act but in not being found out. And I, I would not be found out because Malta is the last place on earth you’d find a vampire.
Especially one that works for the Pulizija.
[1] The Pulizija is Malta’s police force.
[2] Ħallini means ‘leave me alone’ in Maltese.
