The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (89 page)

They searched the entire building. Room by room. Insistent that there was money somewhere, that the boy had stowed away the rents. How frugally he lived. By the time the men came to Lila they were irritated and tired.

‘And you,’ one asked, ‘know nothing?’

Lila would not move, and the man drew up the blind to take a good look at her, to get light into the room for the search.

‘Did he do that to you?’

Lila drew her hair forward and shook her head. While the men searched the room she sat on the floor, and when they left the man who had spoken to her said that they would be back. ‘Why,’ he asked, ‘are you still here?’

Alone, Lila waited at the window, the day already a shape she did not recognize. She waited expecting Rafí to return or Cecco to appear, knowing it was unsafe to stay. Clearly, this would all be her fault. She counted the pins that fastened the hotel’s name to the wall, she noted how they were corroded through, and how people coming out of the station squinted up at the building as they came into the sunlight, and how, tethered to the flat roof two floors below, Rafí’s dog lunged at the length of its chain as if to choke itself.

It was impossible now to look at the room without seeing it for what it was, chaotic and dirty. She could smell Rafí on her hands, a stink of sour bedding and stale clothes and his sweet and peppery aftershave.

Rafí’s keys lay on the landing with his shirt. Further down, almost to the wall, she found his lighter and cigarettes and a silver mobile phone. Her scalp stung, and she carefully straightened her hair and drew out loose strands. It was shit that he was caught, shit that he was so stupid or unlucky or both, shit that she knew no one better to be with and no better way to live, shit that there was no food and only three cigarettes, shit that there was no money, shit that she would have to wait for him, and it was shit that she could not find his drugs. The pills, which should have been in a hole behind the light switch, were not there. The dog’s bark cut through to unsettle her; hard and loud, its whole body concentrated on the task.

She returned to the upper windows overlooking the piazza and watched the station. She stood with the sun in her face and made noises to the dog to gain its attention.

The dog sat down and looked up, suddenly placid.

Determined to do something about the dog, Lila made her way down to Rafí’s room.

An old wood-framed bed dominated the small room. The sheets rucked back. The pillows bunched together. Rafí’s clothes and shoes were scattered in loose heaps across the floor. His shirts hung on hangers on nails above the bed. Kicked from under the bed were cartons of cigarettes, contraband with Greek markings that he sold in clubs. The small sink was ringed with stains, above it a set of scents and colognes on a glass shelf. There were newspapers on the floor, kept as wrapping.

As Lila took stock, the dog tugged on his chain, followed as she moved through the room, paused when she paused, peered through the window as if intelligent. As she sat on the bed and summoned the courage to deal with the dog, it lunged forward, the chain snapped tight and slumped behind him, striking the roof with the sound of dropped coins.

Now the idea seemed foolish: it would be impossible to loosen the animal’s collar without being mauled.

Under the window she found a patterned blanket, little more than a rag. She’d watched Rafí thrash the dog, whip it with the blanket until it cowered, thin-ribbed and panting, as far as its chain would allow. Lila braced herself, stood up, and opened the window.

The instant she opened the window the dog cowered back, shivering, haunches flinching. She held out the blanket and the dog slunk off, tail tucked tight away, ears back.

There was little out on the roof, a cardboard box of a kennel, an upturned water bowl, the dog’s chain and the pole it was attached to. Padlocked to itself the chain wrapped about the pole and the pole lodged into the stub of a vent that butted out of the roof. Unless she could lift the entire pole out of its socket she would not be able to release the dog. The idea wasn’t going to work. As the dog circled wide of her the pole jolted in its housing, and when the dog stopped tugging the chain slackened and the pole straightened up. Once the chain was slack Lila found that the pole could be twisted with ease. A small plastic wedge poked through the lip of the stub and kept the pole upright. With this removed the pole slid out of its housing, and as she hoisted it up the chain rode down and slipped free. Unaware, the dog lunged forward for the blanket and hurtled over the lintel into Rafí’s bedroom, the chain snaking after.

Money poked out of the empty socket.

A single twenty-euro note.

Lila laid the pole down and picked up the note in disbelief. Pulling out one note, another came with it, and with that note came another, and another. She sat down to look at the money, checking either side to make sure that it was real. She was not lucky. Never this lucky.

She reached into the hole and unthreaded more notes until she held in her hands more money than she could count. Deeper still the hole was stopped with a scrunched plastic bag. Lila knelt down and tugged out the bag then reached further into the pipe, finding another bag containing yet more money, tight rolls of ten-, twenty-, and fifty-euro notes. The pole itself was also stoppered with plastic, and still deeper were tucked more rolls of money. Gathering the notes together Lila stuffed her sleeves full, then left the plastic and the pole out on the roof.

Back in Rafí’s room the dog leapt onto the bed and turned first on the shirts, tugging them off their hangers and worrying them. Spoilt for options the dog began to nip and tear at the sheets, then the mattress, and wrenched out hanks of stuffing until it could squeeze its head into the holes. Done, the dog sat on the bed and looked back at the roof, the mattress now ragged, with hollowed-out pockets. Thick drifts of polyester, a fine white fibre, settled about the room.

Lila held the blanket up, ready to throw it over the dog’s head. She crept cautiously back through the window. The door was closed and the dog watched her edge slowly about the side of the room, her back to the wall, and he growled with rising threat. When she opened the door, just wide enough to squeeze through, the dog sprang to its feet and began to bark.

Safely in the stairwell she leaned her head against the door, and thanked the dog. It was impossible to know how much she had taken, as it was impossible to guess where the money had come from – in such a quantity – or why it was stored on the roof. The only certainty was that the money was either Rafí’s or belonged to one of his associates, and Rafí, the little shit, had done nothing, less than nothing, to earn it. What Lila had not earned she deserved.

Lila made her way directly to the Stazione Centrale. Dressed in Rafí’s shirt and trousers and a pair of plastic sandals – the toy panda clenched in her arms – she walked out the door taking a simple A to B route, off the pavement, between the bollards. She headed across the road, under the station awning into the darker concourse to the ticket booth to the first free window. She walked in a daze with a crisp fifty-euro note pinched ready in her fist. She’d tucked money into clothes, arms and pants, before remembering the toy. The toy panda, misshapen, stuffed with money (loose, scrunched, wadded, rolled and folded) appeared more forlorn than before. Heat bloomed from the blacktop. And in making that walk Lila understood that she was breaking something which could not be fixed. She would never be able to return, she would not see Rafí again, if she did, she was certain he would kill her.

Once at the booth she stood blinking, sunspots in her eyes, thinking ‘oh’ to herself, ‘oh’ at her alarm to be standing exactly where she intended, ‘oh’, to have completed the simple walk without interruption. To her left the police lounged in a glass-walled office. To her right the carabinieri loitered in pairs, some on motorized carts scooping through the terminal in predatory arcs. Youths, boys she recognized, hung about the automatic ticket machines and lazily scanned the station, the groups, the people waiting, the small queue forming behind her. Lila kept the toy clutched to her chest.

She looked square at the man behind the glass, his hair slicked back in one smooth hood, dwarfed by his computer and the broad desk on which he leaned. Feeling queasy with the heat, Lila kept her composure.

The teller leaned toward the glass.

‘Rome,’ she said. ‘No, Milan. No. Yes. Milan,’ then, to be certain, ‘Milan.’

He twisted his head to hear her. He tried Italian. English. French. Then returned to Italian.

‘
Dove?
’

‘
Milano.
’

‘
Che giorno?
’

‘
Si.
’

‘
Oggi? Stamatina?
’

Lila pushed the money through the tray before he asked, before the details were decided. It was an effort to stand still, to not shout at the people behind her that they needed to back off. She picked the first of every option.

‘
InterCity
—’

‘
Si.
’

‘
Diretto?
’

‘
Si.
’

The man looked at the money. ‘
Eurostar?
’

‘
Si.
’

‘
Andata e ritorno?
’

‘
Si.
’

‘
Andata?
’

‘
Si.
’

‘
A che ora? Adesso?
’

‘
Adesso?
’ with some exasperation.

‘
Prima o secunda? Prima?
’

‘
Si. Prima.
’

She held her breath as she watched him type.

‘Fifty-four euro.’

Lila leaned into the glass.

‘You need four more euro.’ The man held up the fifty-euro note and four fingers. Lila’s stomach tightened, she couldn’t see the problem until the man pointed at the price. Jittery at the realization that she would have to open the small pocket in the panda’s stomach in the middle of the station, Lila wasn’t sure what she should do.

The clerk twitched the fifty-euro note between his finger and thumb, and before her eyes the note divided into two.

The teller, equally surprised, saw that he now held two fifty-euro notes. ‘Together!’

‘Oh?’

‘
Cento euro?
’

‘
Si . . .
’

‘
Cento.
’ The clerk slipped the money away and drew out her change. After counting her notes and change he slid the ticket and the reservation stub into the tray then wiped his fingers on his cuffs.

Lila walked by the police and caught her reflection in the long smoky stretch of glass. She began to lose confidence, and doubted that she had properly thought through what she should do. A skinny ghost of the person who had arrived at the same station five months earlier, she doubted that she could manage without Rafí and Arianna.

With the ticket in her hand, Lila found the exit and stood facing the security cameras mounted over the automatic doors, defenceless in the station’s broad angular forecourt.

The concourse and forecourt were now full and people moved slowly through the muggy air. Among them a young girl, slack and dead-eyed, hand feebly held out for money. Lila recognized her. The women who were out of favour, untrustworthy, or most likely sick were sent to the station to beg and steal. Lila watched the girl and felt again an extreme urgency that she should leave. Police waited by the barriers checking tickets. Above her, with infinite slowness, the clock ticked up to the hour.

Forty minutes after the train should have departed it was still at the station, delayed without announcement or explanation. The air-conditioning struggled against open windows and open doors. Lila sat beside the window with Rafí’s silver phone tucked under her leg and the panda safely stowed on the rack within view. Three other women sat in the same compartment, one with her feet curled onto the seat, a large suitcase wedged between them so that Lila was obliged to sit upright. She wore sunglasses with a small diamante cut into the frame.

‘I’m going to miss my flight,’ she complained to the other two women in the compartment. She made the calculation, totting hours on her fingers. If it took two hours to get to Rome, one hour to get to the airport, plus, because you never know, another forty-five minutes waiting for the bus outside Termini station, then she was already running late, and you were supposed to be there two hours ahead of time. She would be in trouble if she missed the flight.

The other two women, students, sat with heavy textbooks open on their laps. One of the students’ arms was bound in a sling and her friend tended to her, opened a drink, and asked if she was hungry. They stretched out side by side, shoes slipped off, bare feet on the seats, blocking the exit.

Lila sat on her hands to stop them shaking. It occurred to her to switch to another train, but none were leaving the station.

The longer they waited the more likely it would be that Rafí would return to the Stromboli, in which case he would find the dog loose, his room destroyed, and he would know to check for his money. Lila looked up at the toy, she couldn’t remember if she had set the pole back in its slot.

Indifferent to the delay the two students tried to sleep, and the woman opposite Lila stared out of the window, arms folded, clearly angry. Passengers loitered on the platform, resigned. Some talked on their mobiles and others leaned out of the windows, smoking and watching the station, buying iced water from the vendors, everyone loose in the heat. Lila kept her eye on the panda and began to believe that she would never leave the city.

When the first announcement came the passengers on the platform applauded. The next train to leave was bound for Messina. The trains were running again and surely the train for Milan would be next?

Rafí’s phone gave a sharp trill and vibrated against her thigh. Lila jolted.

The woman opposite pushed back her sunglasses and pretended not to watch.

Lila listened for an announcement, a sign that they would soon be gone. If the train started now she swore she would never return, this was a final warning to underscore how urgently she needed to leave. Once they were out of the city she would talk with the women and ask what they knew about Milan.