The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (91 page)

Safe inside, Niccolò no longer felt the urgency he’d felt in the apartment. In the first room, cut into the floor, was a square metal tank with a round mouth, in which he dumped objects he no longer wanted. The animals he’d caught on the scrubland, cats mostly, stunned or dead, things he’d found, items he didn’t need. Niccolò walked about the hole, scuffed a half-brick to the rim and tapped it over. The drop could only be a couple of metres, three at the most and the water would not be deep. Now disturbed, the water stank. He thought of the things he’d dropped into the water – the cats, the cans, the playing cards – as things which passed through a mirror to an inverted world: from his hands to someone else’s.

He sat close to the hole, then carefully laid out the contents of the bag along the edge. After considering them for a moment, he divided the objects into two groups.

In the first line he laid out the blue notebook, a charger for a mobile phone, a black and white postcard of the port at Palermo, a wallet containing only receipts.

The second line, closer to the edge, included a receipt for the Hotel Meridian in Palermo, a mini-audio player with a crack in the plastic face, a small bottle of medication for insect bites, an open pack of chewing gum, a soap packet, a razor with a used blade, a novel with the cover torn off, a pocket-sized Italian–English dictionary.

In one last pass he looked through the items again and selected only the small blue notebook, which he returned to the sack. Its pages were greasy with oil, the ink smudged, and the paper translucent. Written in a small slanted hand that he couldn’t read or in any case understand.

With one gesture he swept everything else into the tank.

The two other members of the B-4 security guard at the Persano-Mecuri chemical dye plant, Federico Taducci and ‘Stiki’ Bashana, met late on Saturday afternoons and occasionally in the evenings before work to play cards, sometimes at Bar Settebello in Ercolano, and sometimes at Federico’s small apartment on the outskirts of town, less occasionally at a place closer to Stiki in Torre del Greco. Two years ago the shifts were managed with only one guard, but after the theft and assault, two men now monitored the facility during the night and one maintained security at the gate during the morning and through the afternoon.

Federico, a widower, always failed to invite Niccolò – not that Niccolò especially wanted to play Scopa or Sette e Mezzo – but he did want to be invited, and besides, Niccolò was the closer neighbour. Stiki lived in a single room in one of the larger blocks overlooking the train station at Torre del Greco. Younger than Niccolò by only two years, Stiki seemed much younger. He studied engineering, and worked nights to subsidize his studies. Always obliging, he smiled frequently but seldom laughed, and Niccolò mistook Stiki’s poor and formal Italian as a sign that he was uninterested. At night Stiki slept while Fede played cards solo or taught himself English. Fede bought one American newspaper a week and made a show of completing a word puzzle. Niccolò often looked at the paper, but could make no sense out of it.

On this morning Federico stopped to speak with Niccolò. Fede greeted Niccolò warmly and asked for news about the investigation, they had both seen the news before the start of their shift and followed the reports on the radio. This is why he was late, no? The police had business with him? Stiki, ready to leave, loitered for a while, his backpack slung across his shoulder.

Niccolò bowed his head modestly and confessed that both the police and journalists were gone.

‘Gone? Already?’ It was mysterious, he said, very strange, they had listened to the news through the night. ‘Are you sure?’ Fede narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re not hiding anything, right? If there was something you’d tell me?’

Niccolò opened the windows and started a small fan. The booth carried a stale smell of sleep that Niccolò found unpleasant, but he could smell something else, as if the stink from the paint factory had clung to him, stuck to his hands or clothes.

‘Don’t you think it’s strange?’ Fede gave a reasoning shrug. ‘They leave after one night? One night. Think about it. It’s suspicious.’

Stiki agreed. It was suspicious.

Niccolò recognized that the two men were not entirely serious and said he didn’t see how.

‘It makes you think, though? No? Something is going on,’ Fede considered. ‘I’m telling you, there’ll be more news tomorrow and they’ll come back. This isn’t over yet. You’ll see.’

The men laughed as they walked away, an earlier conversation continuing between them. Niccolò completed the discussion: ‘So you’re helping with the investigation?’ He looked at his reflection in the glass, ran his hand through his hair, ran his finger along a crease that started at the crown and circled round to his left temple in a perfect groove. If he tapped his head he could hear the difference, seriously, a completely different sound because it wasn’t bone underneath the skin.

‘Yes, I’m helping with the investigation.’ He answered himself in a shy mumble. ‘There are very many details to consider. It will take some time.’

Niccolò spoke to himself now, where before he used to sing. During the night he used to stand in the stairwell in the empty offices of B-19, call his wife and sing to her while his voice, hollow and lovely, drew strength from the darkened halls.

*

Once Fede and Stiki were gone Niccolò settled down to read the notebook. The wind carried sage and the slight scorched scent of fire. He lit a cigarette although they were not permitted to smoke in the booth and the memory of sweeping the evidence into the cistern came back to him. This gesture, a simple and decisive swipe, dismissive, was not in his language. A gesture borrowed from his sister. The thought, once solid, unsettled him. He took the notebook out of his bag, swept it off his desk, picked it up, and swept it off again. No, this was not his gesture. He sniffed at his fingers, and it became immediately obvious that the cover of the notebook, saturated with fat, was the source of the smell.

Livia returned home as the evening news concluded. She sat heavily on the side of the bed and twisted off her shoes, her mouth set in a tight line as she smoothed her hand over her shoulders.

‘They stand at the entrance,’ she said, ‘those boys, right by the door so you have to push past them. How old are they? I don’t like it. Always a group of them. My neck,’ she complained, ‘and my back, all day. There’s something bad in the kitchen. I could smell it as I came in.’ Livia made a face. ‘What is that smell? Something smells bad. What is it?’

Niccolò leaned into the doorway with his arms folded and said that he was careful now to smoke outside and lean over the balcony so that the smoke did not enter the apartment. Afterward he washed his hands and brushed his teeth as she didn’t like the stink of cigarettes on him. The bother of it meant that he was smoking more at work and less at home.

‘I’m not talking about cigarettes.’ She screwed up her face. ‘Can’t you smell it? It’s like something has died.’

For an hour Niccolò indulged his sister, he moved the furniture around, checked behind and under the fridge while she sprayed with disinfectant, but the source of the smell could not be discovered.

‘Men are so dirty,’ she said. Which was not true as Niccolò kept his rooms clean and in order. Livia’s clothes, her cups and plates, her shoes and papers littered the small apartment.

She asked him to sit down and said they needed to talk about the upcoming assessment. ‘They will want to know how you’ve managed,’ she said, ‘they’ll ask you questions, they’ll try to trip you up, and you know not to tell them that I have been here. They won’t want to know that I was here. You know not to say anything about that. You also shouldn’t say that you’ve been using the scooter. Not right away. They’ll want to know that everything is fine, that you are coping well. Tell them about work. Tell them that you cook and clean for yourself. Just tell them what they want to hear.’

Niccolò said he understood, this didn’t need talking through – he didn’t say, although he hoped that this was true, that once the first assessment had occurred that she would also leave. She hadn’t come to look after him so much as to punish her husband.

As Niccolò steered his scooter around the barrier Fede came out of the booth, a little swagger to his walk, the
Cronache
folded in his hand. Stiki slumped in the booth, asleep, with his head to his chest. On a single-ring stove beside him was a pot of noodles.

‘I imagine you haven’t seen this?’ Fede thrust the newspaper forward.

Niccolò set the scooter on its stand then brushed his hand over his hair. He took the paper out of Fede’s hands.

‘He was American. The man who was stabbed. A student or a tourist. Have they told you this?’

Niccolò shook his head as he read.

‘And . . . there’s a witness. Someone at the Circumvesuviana station on Friday morning – that’s five days before you found the clothes.’ Fede squeezed Niccolò’s shoulder. ‘What did I tell you? Didn’t I say there would be news today? It says that a woman has come forward who recognized the star on the T-shirt. She saw someone at the station wearing the clothes you found. On Friday. In Naples. The T-shirt comes from America, it’s unlikely there are more like it in the country. It’s exactly as I told you.’

Niccolò looked hard at Fede and saw that he was serious. He didn’t remember Fede telling him any of this but didn’t want to openly disagree. Fede’s face being creased and rubbery, was the hardest of faces to read.

‘The police are certain it’s the same person. They’re looking at videotape from the security cameras to see which station he came from. It also says the person is almost certainly dead.’ Fede pointed to the article. ‘Here. Wounds to the lower stomach, chest, upper . . .’ he ran a finger across his neck, ‘. . . within four minutes.’

The two men sat side by side on the concrete step beside the security booth.

Niccolò opened the newspaper across his lap and focused on where the hillside dropped to a smooth blue plate of sky. Aquamarine. The tips of the city’s towers visible at the edge in a tawny haze.

‘I know,’ Fede interrupted his thoughts. ‘It’s a bad world.’ He slapped the paper with the back of his hand. ‘But you know what. Everything moves forward.’ The man stood up and looked down at Niccolò. ‘Some family is going to thank you for finding the clothes. If it wasn’t for you this might not have been discovered. When they sort this out some family is going to be grateful. I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some kind of recognition, some kind of a reward.’

Niccolò slowly re-read the article. Please, no more rewards, no more meals / speeches / flowers and plaques, no more interviews, no more presentations. He studied the two articles with care and re-read sections that were unclear to him until they began to make sense. The police wanted to hear from anyone who’d travelled on the six thirty Trento express or the six thirty-five Circumvesuviana into Naples on the previous Friday, or anyone who was in or around the station from seven fifteen in the morning until eight thirty. An image of the five-pointed star was reprinted, bold, white on black, accompanied with a map of the Circumvesuviana line marking all stops to Naples. An editorial called for witnesses to come forward, and an appeal was made to hoteliers asking them to report unfilled or cancelled bookings and ensure that all visitors were properly recorded as required. He began to count.

‘I know,’ Fede sucked in his breath, ‘four minutes is a long time.’

Niccolò took the night report and logbook to the main office and waited a little while in the entrance, knowing that Fede would not be able to linger. When he returned he sat with the small blue notebook on his lap and kept it concealed under the counter. Happy to be alone he studied the tidy, sloping handwriting, his eye ran over words he couldn’t understand. A fan blew warm air into the booth. On the first page, written in capitals he found an address and what he thought to be a name and serial number. N. CLARK, -0626.

The police had said that they would get back to him if they needed help, and given this new witness he was certain that they would need more information once they understood a little more about the situation. He wouldn’t wait for the call, he would make his own investigation. It was almost two days now since his discovery, and during those two days Niccolò had been walking in a different world, breathing different air, separate and expectant. In the long hours sat monitoring cars and staff in and out of the dye plant, he nursed the idea that he was being tested and observed, as if the event itself, the murder of this student, was some kind of creature.

Closing the book Niccolò decided that he would conduct his own investigation, then he would contact the police and hand the notebook over to them along with his findings. He would say that someone left the little book outside his door, or that he had found it in a part of the field that they had not searched, or perhaps that he had found it a place that they had searched just to make a point of their uselessness.

Disappointed with the day Niccolò re-read the articles in Fede’s newspaper and could not shake the idea that whatever had happened was predetermined, that all of these people and coincidences combined to make the event not only inevitable, but possible. As if the event itself had some kind of intelligence, an ability to decide what would happen and who would be involved.

The evening was slow and Livia contrary, whatever mood he was in was bothersome to her, and she had no interest in speaking about the investigation, nor in hearing his ideas.

‘Stop,’ she told him. ‘Don’t make this into something it isn’t. Just stop. Take a walk.’

Avoiding confrontation Niccolò did exactly as Livia asked and took a walk and returned to the wasteland and the line of empty factories with his slingshot in his pocket to smoke and think a little about Livia and the baby, but more about how he would start his investigation. When he reached the factory the stink was now so foul that he couldn’t enter. And then it occurred to him. If the clothes were dumped on the wasteland, and the person wearing the clothes had been seen on the Circumvesuviana train, then they must have walked from the station to the wasteland.