The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (109 page)

The newspapers revived the story of the clothes, the assault, the missing Japanese student, Mizuki Katsura, the missing American student, and it all began to assemble itself. At first, Lara refused to answer questions. Everyone had an idea about what had happened, and while the tutor would say nothing the students became busy with speculation.

With some effort she attempted to steer the conversation to easier subjects: toward whatever they might have attempted in Italian on the previous night – but the news of a killing made for a better discussion than food or culture or travel and these students, now roused, became inexplicably fluent and direct in their new language. This was no ordinary Friday. Lara wouldn’t just tell them directly to stop, to shut up, to do exactly what they were asked.

‘She was singled out at the train station. They were waiting for her.’

Then Lara, provoked: ‘There are people who have family – missing family. They come here to make a film, to tell the story about this, but they bring everything with them and have no interest in the city, and no interest in the people who have lost members of their family and who have no idea where they are.’

Tonight there was to be a demonstration. A silent protest, an hour-long vigil organized over mobile phones, devices seeking people from the region, calling them to a specific point at a specific time. They would find the location of the film crew and they would silently materialize and surround them in their hundreds. This, anyway, was the plan.

The second session did not improve. Having answered questions all week about why they’d come to Campania and what they liked best about Naples, students fixed on the subject. What they liked best about Naples today involved killing.

Yee Jan was surprised how uneasy the discussion made him: when he left the building for the coffee break he waited deliberately for a group and struck up a conversation so that someone would escort him across the courtyard and outside.

‘Did you see him?’

‘You know I can’t say I saw him. I mean, the police said he was right at the main door.’

The question was repeated, time and again through the break. Have you seen him? What do you think he wants? What are his intentions? What do you think he is going to do? It was only when they returned to class and came round the corner to see the thin dark alley, the glass of the antique shop window, wet-looking, eye-like, that Yee Jan understood – these people are no better than the people who came to the school and stood outside. Everybody wanted that thrill of proximity. There wasn’t one speck of difference.

Keiko met Yee Jan on the stairs and Yee Jan spelled it out. ‘I have a theory,’ he said, ‘about why people are so curious. There’s only one question, really. What’s it like to watch somebody die?’

He refreshed his face at the end of the day, and when he came out of the toilet he found Lara at the entrance, waiting, somewhat deliberate, he thought. He planned to find the film crew at the Duomo and did not want to be delayed.

Lara sat in a folding chair beside the door, an invigilator, hands clamped between her knees.

‘I thought you’d be here. If you have a moment.’

Lara had not spoken to him in English before and Yee Jan found this slightly alarming. ‘You want to speak?’

‘It’s about what happened last week.’

Yee Jan waited but Lara couldn’t formulate the question. Finally, she gave up and stood up and said it didn’t matter.

‘I know about the police,’ he said. ‘They told me I had my own secret security guard, or something like that. I had no idea. Did you know?’

Lara gave a small nod. ‘They told us last week.’

‘So everyone knew except me?’

‘The other instructors were told.’

‘Did you see them? The police?’

Lara shook her head.

‘I should have been told.’ Yee Jan smiled. ‘Someone should have told me.’ He let the statement stand. ‘Have you seen it?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Did you see the footage?’

Lara nodded. ‘They showed it to all of the instructors last week.’

‘It was two men, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t know. It isn’t clear.’ Lara dismissed the question as she did in class when the answer wasn’t what she wanted.

‘Did you know her? The Japanese student. The woman who disappeared? Were you teaching then?’

Lara made a small gesture which Yee Jan took as a no.

‘Has to be weird. The whole thing. Is there anyone here who knew her?’

‘I was here. I was finishing my teaching placement.’

‘So she was in an advanced class. But you’d know about it.’

‘Everybody here knows about it.’

Yee Jan nodded and thought to leave. ‘It’s just, when something like that happens people treat you differently. If they know you were involved.’ He could sense Lara measuring him.

Yee Jan made one single nod. ‘And people don’t know how to talk to you. Like you’re sticky. A little toxic.’

‘Look.’ Lara dipped her head, eyes closing. ‘This has happens a lot. People come all the time. Even though nothing actually happened here.’

‘They said.’

Lara zipped up her bag. ‘You said this happened to you before?’

So this is what she wanted to know? ‘Not quite like this.’

‘Sorry?’

‘It wasn’t the same.’

Lara looked up and waited.

‘OK, the first time there was a guy in a car. He just drove up and told me to get in.’

‘And you got in?’

‘I recognized him. I knew who he was. I wasn’t sure there was much of a choice. Anyway,
I always do what I’m told
. After I got in the car I changed my mind and he wouldn’t let me out. I managed to get out, but for a moment I didn’t know what was going to happen.’ Yee Jan explained the situation directly and without fuss, his voice gently flattening as if what had happened was a little tedious or had happened to someone else, to a person perhaps that he didn’t like.

‘Did he threaten you?’

‘He didn’t need to.’

‘But he didn’t?’

‘I don’t know. I thought when I got out of the car – that was it. He’d – I don’t know.’ Yee Jan shrugged. ‘I was just scared.’

‘And nothing happened?’

But that wasn’t really nothing.
Yee Jan gave a polite smile. ‘No. I saw him again. He tried the same thing. Told me to get into the car. This time he made threats, said he would tell my family things, make trouble for me at college, at work, and then he started making threats, just general threats. Stuff he’d do to the people I knew.’

‘He knew you?’

‘No. I found out later he didn’t. I’d seen him around. I’d noticed him. But I thought he knew me, or knew of me, and he might know where I lived – and I thought he might do something.’ Yee Jan looked up. ‘It was two men, wasn’t it? Last week. Outside. Not one.’

Again Yee Jan had the sense that he was asking the wrong question.

‘You sound certain?’

‘Do you think they thought I was her, this Mizuki?’

‘I don’t see how. She’s been gone for two years.’

‘Then why were they waiting for me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s because of the way I look.’ A statement of fact.

‘I don’t think it’s that specific. Or clear. The police think you fit a general profile. Being Asian. Something more general.’

Yee Jan didn’t answer. ‘So this has happened to other Asian students?’

Lara shook her head. ‘We’ve had some trouble with younger women, girls – but I think that’s not so unusual. That’s an entirely different thing.’

‘So, I don’t understand. Why are the police interested if this happens all of the time? They have someone don’t they. Isn’t he in prison?’

‘Everybody thinks he’s the wrong man.’

Yee Jan nodded. ‘Even the police?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Did they say anything else?’ Yee Jan was surprised when Lara paused. ‘They did? They said something else?’

‘Not about you. There’s a type of person who gets obsessed with this kind of thing, and there have been lots of people coming by because of what had happened. It’s a problem the school have to do something about. They understand it’s a problem, but they haven’t done anything about it.’

‘I know. They said. But did they say something else?’

‘Not about you.’

A siren careened from the corso behind the school. Yee Jan cleared his throat. ‘I’d like to see the tapes again. One of the men made a gesture.’

‘It’s an ambulance, that’s all.’ Lara stood up.

‘So what else did they say if it wasn’t about me?’

‘It wasn’t about you.’

‘So it was about the men, then?’

‘It was nothing.’

‘They think it was two men, don’t they?’

‘Nobody knows. It’s not so clear. And maybe not so important.’

‘But they have been speaking with people here, so you know what they think. I mean people must have some idea?’ Yee Jan stopped and became more direct. ‘I think you know something.’

‘I don’t. There are so many rumours. Where are you staying?’

‘In Vomero. It’s OK. An apartment. You know. Why?’

‘Are there other people with you?’

‘Why are you asking where I’m staying? Is there something else going on?’

Lara folded the straps of her bag around her arms. ‘There is a rumour,’ she looked directly at Yee Jan, ‘about the tapes. It isn’t anything the police have said directly. But after they spoke with you they were interested in the tapes again and they spent some time looking at them.’

‘So they do think it’s two people.’

Lara shook her head. ‘There’s something else, and I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, because it is a rumour, and it’s only a rumour. But the gesture the man made, they think that he’s saying something.’

Yee Jan waited. Lara slowly ran her tongue over her lips.

‘I did know her. Mizuki. I thought I knew her. She came here to get away from her husband. She told me this. Before. Mizuki wasn’t her real name. She paid for everything in cash, she gave many explanations, to me and to her class, about who she was, and she didn’t seem to be someone who would not be telling the truth. Anyway. She stopped coming.’ Lara’s voice became quiet, the words less than vapour. ‘She was here at the school and then she wasn’t. We don’t know what happened to her.’ Lara cleared her throat and spoke louder, her voice caught in the room. ‘I’ve watched the tapes. I watched them with the police. They think he’s saying something to the camera. The man who followed you is saying something to the camera in the video. There are some gestures, but they think that he is saying something to the camera about a woman. They think this is a reference to Mizuki. They think he is saying that they did not touch her. They didn’t touch the woman. They think the person who was waiting outside was involved, and they think he is saying that there was only one person who was killed and that they did not touch the woman, but it isn’t clear.’

Yee Jan stepped back to the counter. ‘Why were they following me?’

Lara reached forward to calm him. ‘It’s over. The police were watching you. Just in case.’

The film crew took up most of via Duomo in a one-block radius of via Capasso with their vans, stalls, and equipment. Lights raised on stanchions and scaffolding burned sharp into the street, silver caught in the shop windows and along the cornices and ledges. Yee Jan tried to push ahead to see what was happening and found his way blocked by a line of security guards and behind them a row of boards. He caught glimpses of the crew, but had arrived too late to find a good position – and what he could see didn’t interest him. They were filming the murder in the place where the murder occurred: a little bankrupt, he thought, a little unprincipled.

Yee Jan came out of the small street, walked by the palazzo onto via Duomo and found papers taped and pinned to the door – photographs and photocopies – on each sheet a face or a figure in a scratched monotone, and beneath each a date. A familiar kind of memorial. At the bare piazza in front of the Duomo he found a disconsolate group of six or seven protesters each holding a placard with one of the same images from the doors of the palazzo. The protesters, a shabby group, had dressed in black and wore black armbands, and looked, being such a small number, foolish. One of the group approached Yee Jan and offered him a handful of flyers believing him to be one of them. The man’s expression was stern, possibly disappointed, so Yee Jan accepted without saying anything.

DOVE SONO I 41? / Chi sarà il prossimo?

Yee Jan took a piece of paper, on one side a list of names: Pascal Entuarde. Johannes Blume. Emilio Santos. Mizuki Katsura. In two years there were forty-one unaccounted people, forty-one missing.

The film crew divided into two groups. A group busy with the production, and a looser group at the margin, who waited, arms folded, some smoking, a little edgy at what was beginning to develop: as if a group of ten people was something to worry about. Yee Jan also felt that energy, as people began to gather in twos and threes at the Duomo steps. Eight people to start. Thirty people within ten minutes, and in twenty that number had tripled: the day, the fading light, began to hold an expectation.

Yee Jan picked up the flyers scattered across the piazza and added them to his own. And as the Duomo’s bells began to ring a charge ran through the air. From the side streets, via Tribunali, along via Duomo more people arrived, many dressed in black, many with posters and all with unlit candles, the groups gathered without sound, all facing via Capasso and the film crew, so the noise of the gathering became a hustle of bodies and feet. Yee Jan stood in the centre and handed out the sheets. For Pascal. For Johannes. For Emilio. For Michele. For Mizuki. The vigil formed about as the small open square in front of the Duomo stopped with people – when the bells struck midnight the candles were lit and all conversation stopped without any instruction to do so. And there, brightening the darkness, a sea of light.

The men wear baseball hats, one grey the other blue with a black visor. Both men wear lightweight summer jackets, windbreakers, similar to the film crew. Both men wear sunglasses in what seems at first to be an affectation, because approaching midnight on the piazza the only light comes from candles and the floodlights brightening the front of the church and the blank ends of the buildings either side – so in analysis there’s little to distinguish them apart, regardless of how many cameras, how many phones catch them as they push through a crowd too dense to make room. The image loses focus with the candles, the fuzz and blow of light, as an undulating plain speckled soft and obscure, a sudden brightness dazing the image as the two men lug the boy through. The blackness – night sky, gaps between figures, hair – appears liquid.