In the Hour Before Midnight by Jack Higgins

was as impressive as ever, thewalls lined with books, most of which he had read. A log fire crackled cheerfully, loud in the silence, and my mother gazed down at me from the oil painting above that he’d commissioned from some English artist one year, I think when I was fourteen. And I was there, too, in framed photos that documented every stage of growth.
    The piano was in the same place by the window, the Bechstein concert grand he’d imported especially from Germany. Only the best. I stood looking down at the keyboard and picked out a note or two.
    The door clicked open behind and closed again. When I turned he was watching me. We stood there looking at each other across the room and I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single thing to say.
    And again, with that enormous perception of his, he knew and smiled. “Play something, Stacey, it’s in tune. I have a man out from Palermo regularly.”
    â€œA long time,” I said. “The places I’ve been didn’t have pianos like this.”
    He stayed where he was, waiting, and I sat down, paused for a moment and started to play. Ravel— Pavane on the death of an Infanta . I only realised what it was half-way through, by some trick of memory or association, the last piece I hadplayed in this house on the night before my mother’s funeral—her special favourite.
    I faltered and his voice broke in harshly, “Go on—go on!”
    The music took possession of me then as real music always did, flowing like water over stones, never-ending. I forgot where I was, forgot everything but the music, and carried straight on into a Schubert impromptu.
    I finished, the last note died and when I looked up, he was standing looking up at the portrait. He turned and nodded gravely. “It’s still there, Stacey, after all this time. She would have been pleased.”
    â€œI’d never have made the concert platform, you know that,” I said. “I think you always knew, but she didn’t.”
    â€œIs it so bad for a mother to have hopes for her son?” He smiled up at the portrait again. “She used to say everybody had a talent for something.”
    â€œWhat was yours?”
    The words were out before I could bite them back and instantly regretted. His head swung sharply, the chin tilted, but there was no eruption. He took a fresh cigar from a silver box and sank into a wing back chair beside the fire.
    â€œA brandy, Stacey, for both of us. You look like a man who drinks now. Then we talk.”
    I moved to the cabinet on the other side of the room where the crystal goblets and decanter stood on a silver tray.
    â€œI read about you, boy, a couple of years back.”
    â€œOh yes.” I was surprised, but tried not to show it.
    â€œA French magazine— Paris Match . They did a feature on mercenaries in the Congo—mainly about your friend, but you were there standing just behind him. It said you were a captain.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    I carefully poured the brandy and he went on. “Then there was a report in one of the Rome newspapers about how you were all chased out with your tails between your legs.”
    I refused to be drawn. “That would be about two years ago now.”
    â€œWhat have you been up to since?”
    â€œThis and that.” I went towards him, a goblet in each hand. “As a matter of fact I’m just out of prison. The Egyptian variety. Nothing like as pleasant as the Ucciardone in Palermo or doesn’t the Mafia control it any more?”
    The ebony stick stabbed out, sweeping back my coat, exposing the Smith and Wesson in its holster. “So, Marco was right and I wouldn’t believe him. This is what you have become, eh? Sicario —hired killer. My grandson.”
    Strange the anger in his voice, the disgust, but then no real mafioso ever thought of himself as a criminal. Everything was for the cause, for the Society.
    I handed