Bitter Remedy (6 page)

She had returned with a degree a year ago, then set about using his money to prove that she was perfectly capable of running her own business. A business that failed before it opened. But that was fine. He would subsidize her all her life, if needs be.

‘Domenico!’ he called, not hiding the irritation in his voice. He was always formal with Silvana’s father, paying the old man more respect than was his due. Domenico Greco was his name, Signor Greco, when he first knew him.
Qualsiasi cosa che volete voi, Signor Greco. Proprio qualsiasi
. That was then. Now he liked to undermine it by also using the old man’s diminutive, Mimmo.

‘Mimmo!’ It was like calling a dog. Only one that did not come. He waited, his temper rising, as all he heard was the sound of hundreds of birds chattering and insects humming. He called again, and got no answer. The old man had a mobile phone but only answered it if his daughter called. If Niki needed to speak to him, he had to call Silvana who would call him, or come down to the garden and shout.

He set off across the garden, forced to double the actual distance by the playful path that wended in and out around bushes too thick or thorny to push through, even when they only came up to his waist. Besides, he didn’t want to mess up his trousers, which had a thin chalk-stripe motif so subtle as to be invisible, yet emphasized, he felt, the length and slimness of his legs.

He found the old man bent over some scrabbly soil, scraping with a hoe around some weird plant with blue leaves. He glanced up as Niki arrived, then continued with his work, clearly finding the vegetable more interesting than his potential son-in-law.

‘You’re sweating, Niki. Another attack?’

As always when he was close to the old man, Niki felt slightly impeded. He could be contemptuous at a distance, but up close it became harder. ‘They are not “attacks”.’

Domenico put aside his hoe. ‘Whatever you want to call them, you are very white.’

Niki stared back. Anyone would look white compared with the old man, shrunken and brown as a chestnut, constantly caked in soil. ‘Where’s Silvana?’

‘She went to Madonna della Misericordia,’ said Domenico. ‘You just missed her.’

‘The clinic? Why? What’s wrong with her?’

‘Nothing wrong with her. She’s visiting a person.’

‘Who’s this person?’

‘Someone from her course who fell ill.’

‘Her delusional flower course? I thought she had cancelled it.’

‘Some fools turned up nevertheless,’ said Mimmo. ‘And this particular one seems to have eaten some conium seeds. That’s my guess.’

‘When was all this?’

‘Yesterday, around this time.’

‘Why am I only hearing about this now? Why didn’t you say anything last night?’

Mimmo resumed his hoeing. ‘Last night we were talking about your Romanian. I didn’t see the relevance. But now I am beginning to wonder.’

‘Wait, Silvana is visiting this
stronzo
? Is that his car I saw leaving?’

‘Yes . . .’ Mimmo gave a vicious neat twist to the handle and the blade of the hoe bit into the roots of a delicate-looking plant. ‘Ground ivy. And yes, that’s his car.’

Niki pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose, though it was dry. In fact, he was suddenly very thirsty. ‘So who the fuck does this guy think he is? And why is Silvana not answering my calls?’

Mimmo spread his grimy hands. ‘You know how it is. She thinks mobile phones damage the brain. She leaves it at home or in the store.’

‘Runs in the family.’

Mimmo stopped gardening and pushed his hands into the small of his back. ‘Here’s the thing. The man lying in the hospital bed is a cop.’

Niki searched the hard brown face for meaning, but got none.

‘And here’s another thing, he was pretending not to be.’

‘Undercover?’

Mimmo shrugged. ‘Not very deep undercover. Dr Bernardini found out simply by checking his medical records.’

‘And how do you know?’

‘Were you listening, Niki? I just said Dr Bernardini. Bruno Bernardini. You know the individual to whom I am referring. By now the whole town will know all about it.’ ‘So,’ continued Domenico, ‘my assumption is that the man was simply looking for a break from his identity. After all, it must be quite a burden waking up every morning and knowing you’re a cop. And that is all I know, really. Unless you have something to add?’

‘Why would I have anything to add? I am only finding out about this now, for God’s sake,’ said Niki. ‘It’s just a coincidence.’

Domenico forked a leaf between two fingers and examined its underside, and shook his head at what he saw there. ‘A coincidence requires the occurrence of two events. So what is the other?’

‘There
is
no other event. It was just an expression.’

‘But there is another event, Niki, isn’t there?’ Domenico ripped the leaf from its stem and massaged it into his palms. ‘That girl that’s vanished from your club. I was thinking of that. The Romanian girl.’

A look of pain passed across Niki’s face. ‘You think I’d call in a policeman from Rome for that?’

‘You reported it to the Carabinieri here.’

‘I had to. I was covering my ass in case she turns up dead somewhere.’

‘Will she?’

‘Jesus, I hope not.’

‘You liked this girl, Alina.’ It was a statement or a challenge, rather than a question.

‘Maybe you’ve been standing in the sun too long, Mimmo.’

‘Mind how you talk to me, Niki.’

‘Think about it. When did this cop book his course? Months ago? Alina went missing three weeks ago as of Friday. And “missing” is probably not the term. She upped and went.’

‘What about her friend, Nadia: could she have called in the police?’

The sun was behind the old man’s head, putting Niki at a disadvantage. He could not see the expression on the face in front of him, but he knew his own registered stupid surprise. ‘You think because I’m in this garden all day I don’t know about the goings-on in your club? Remember who got you started. You’re my business, Niki. Your business is my business.’

‘All I am saying is that this policeman must have booked before Alina went missing.’

‘Alina. Listen to yourself. Alina. Little Romanian whore, fucks off somewhere, and you’re still sweating and slithering around my daughter. Alina. Of course I checked. This cop booked on 17 April. The same day, as it happens, that you reported Alina missing. That was the coincidence you could have been referring to, if you were so stupid as not to check.’

‘Why would I have called up a policeman in Rome – me?’

‘What about that other bitch, Nadia? Maybe she got worried about her little friend.’

‘How would Nadia know about a policeman in Rome, Mimmo?’ Niki tipped light cologne into a handkerchief, and dabbed at his throat and neck.

‘Sweating, Niki. Have you had your insulin?’

‘I hate this garden. All the plants use up all the air.’

‘That’s not how plants work, Niki.’

‘It’s how your plants do.’ He folded away his handkerchief. ‘This is a stupid conversation. Neither you nor I called in the policeman.’

‘I know I didn’t,’ said Domenico. ‘I can’t imagine you did either. Unless you were thinking of events from far longer ago than the disappearance of your latest piece of fluff.’

The two men eyed each other steadily. When Niki spoke, his voice was a whisper. ‘One of the agreements was that we would never talk about that.’

‘Exactly. So have you kept your word?’

‘Of course. Why would I ever say anything? And who would I tell?’

‘One of your whores, maybe, when you’re high?’ said Domenico.

Niki retrieved his handkerchief and dabbed spittle off his lips. ‘If I want to get high,’ he said, ‘I just forget to inject insulin.’ He balled the handkerchief and stuck it into a pocket on his trousers.‘You don’t own me any more.’

‘You’re supposed to marry Silvana, isn’t that the idea? Frankly, I’d like to get a better son-in-law than you, but seeing as this is how we’re doing things, why don’t you just hurry up and get it over with?’

‘I don’t think she’s ready. She still sees me as too old.’

‘So your strategy is to wait several more years until you’re younger?’

‘Until she’s older. Until I’m less of an uncle to her,’ said Niki.

Domenico placed his leathery hand on the younger man’s shoulder. ‘We mustn’t argue. I just have a bad feeling about this. I’m going to check out that policeman. You check out that Nadia at the club and anyone else. Just in case.’

‘There is only one other person who could know anything about back then,’ said Niki.

‘Silvana? She knows nothing. She was a child.’

‘She has had a long time to think about it.’

‘Hurry up and marry her, we can close the circle for good.’

‘She doesn’t want me. We should never have let her do that course in Rome. She came back changed.’

‘She’ll have met younger and more handsome men than you, Niki. Almost everyone she met, probably. But don’t worry. I know how to bring her round, and I’ve taught her the value of money. She’ll see you as a good catch, if a safe one.’

‘I think she met someone in Rome.’

Domenico laughed. It sounded genuine. He followed it up with a hard squeeze on Niki’s shoulder. ‘Silvana is no fool. She knows what she wants. So maybe you give her a bit of room, just like she gives you room. Meanwhile, do what you need to do with this policeman.’

Niki frowned to show he wasn’t following.

‘When you have a rotten tooth in your mouth, Niki, you can do one of two things. Either you pull it out, or you fill it with gold.’ Domenico shouldered his hoe. ‘I’m going back to the lodge. I suggest you go to the clinic, talk to Silvana. Maybe take a look at the visitor, who’ll probably be gone tomorrow.’ When Niki didn’t follow immediately, he added, ‘Are you coming?’

‘In a moment,’ said Niki, pulling out a phone.

Mimmo nodded and left. Niki waited till he was out of sight, then put his phone back in his pocket, unzipped his fly, and aimed a stream of piss at the blue cabbage, a little act of sacrilege he would have enjoyed more if he had not been alarmed by the Coca-Cola colour of his urine dripping from the leaf.

Chapter 6

Silvana clutched a child’s exercise book with a flower motif against her breast. ‘You think I am foolish,’ she said.

He thought that the way she had pulled her auburn hair back into a ponytail suited her extremely well, and he thought she was young, and he thought she was very kind to be visiting him in hospital, and kinder still to have driven up his car and brought his suitcase all the way into the room where he now lay. ‘Not at all. I was willing to let you become my teacher, remember?’

‘You hadn’t met me.’ She looked at him appraisingly. ‘You don’t seem the type who’d go in for Bach Flowers therapy.’

‘No. I am not. But it was either that or yoga or religion. And I am not flexible enough for the other two. But thank you for the suitcase. Where did you get my car keys?’

‘From the doctor. He came down with them and asked me to drive it up, so you could have your suitcase too. Wasn’t that kind of him?’

‘It was kind of you,’ Blume conceded.

‘The keys are in your suitcase now. Your car is almost as dilapidated as my father’s Fiat.’

‘I like my car.’

‘It does not look loved.’

‘It’s complicated,’ said Blume. ‘We have had a long-term relationship.’

Silvana laid the exercise book at the foot of the bed, then made to sit down next to it. ‘Do you mind?’

Blume magnanimously waved at his own feet, and she sat down on the bed, ignoring the chair next to him.

‘I’m not sure about remembering how to love,’ said Blume as he felt the toes of his left foot sink almost imperceptibly a millimetre beneath the weight of her leg. She probably did not even realize that was his foot down there. ‘More remembering how to talk, drive, and tie my shoelaces.’ Now he was being self-pitying. And confessional. And gruffly facetious. It was impossible to talk to a woman so young and . . .

Silvana blushed, leaned forward, and laid her hand on his knee for a moment. ‘You poor man. Why is no one visiting you?’ As she sat back, his foot beneath the blankets became a little more pleasantly trapped beneath her weight.

‘You are,’ he gave her leg a gentle nudge with his foot as he said ‘you’.

‘I mean others. Even a colleague from work?’

‘I would have to tell them first. Anyhow, I’ll be out the day after tomorrow.’

‘We’ll ask Doctor Bernardini if it’s OK for you to take an infusion of agrimony and perhaps some crab apple. I am sure he’ll say yes. I can make them up for you.’

‘What do they do?’

‘Agrimony is a
lovely
yellow flower. Its yellow is . . . oh, it’s difficult to describe the exact hue and tone, delicate, pale, yet deep and strong and pronounced. Yellow like . . .’

‘A banana?’ offered Blume.