The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (92 page)

He couldn’t decide which station the student would have taken. If he was a student or a tourist he would have alighted at the Scavi stop. This seemed the most logical. It was always possible, of course, that it was not the victim who took the train in the first place. In which case whoever had committed the crime would have taken the train from the city and brought the clothes with them, and they could have used either stop, Ercolano, or Ercolano Scavi.

As he walked the route, he began to think his logic was wrong. If the student was heading into the city, then why were the clothes found here, outside the city? And supposing the person who committed the crime did travel to Ercolano to dump the clothes, then there was no guarantee that they, like the victim, had taken the train. This walk was a waste of time. He needed to go to the station in Naples to see who came on the trains, and who left. To think about this properly, he needed to be at the station himself.

Later, when he settled into bed beside his sister and lay on his back, he doubted that he would sleep. It didn’t help either that Livia slumbered soundly beside him, out almost before she laid down, mouth open, breath softly chortling; even in sleep she sounded dissatisfied. He longed for the baby to be born, and he longed for her to go.

As he lay in bed he retraced his walks from the wasteland to the station, the night leaning on him as a palpable pressure, thick with possibilities: an American on a train, a woman at the station, clothes on the wasteland, and the hint that this all connected to him. It was likely that the person who killed the American student was also on that train with him that morning.

✩

Mizuki rose early, dressed, sat on the balcony, then fell immediately into a deep, recuperative sleep. At seven thirty she was woken by a call from Lara. She watched the phone vibrate and allowed the call to go to message.

Mizuki took her morning shower then returned to the balcony. She held out her phone to read the screen and saw two missed calls.

‘Mizuki. The police came to the bakery yesterday. They wanted to know if the bakery have ever printed their logo onto any clothing.’ Lara paused, little more than a short intake of breath. ‘I’m talking about the bakery under the school.’ She paused again. ‘The sign, the star sign. Mizuki. Are you there? They were asking about a T-shirt. Call me.’

Star signs? Mizuki didn’t understand. She looked out at a wall of closed shutters and thought about the school and the palazzo, then remembered the small tin star that hung above the portico.

Lara called again, and again Mizuki allowed the call to go directly to message. ‘Mizuki. Have you seen the news? Call me. Have you heard? It’s on the news, right now, on the radio, on the TV.’ Lara carefully explained: a T-shirt with the same design as the bakery logo had been discovered cut and bloodied on wasteland outside the city. But stranger still, someone, a commuter, had come forward convinced that they had seen a tourist, a young boy, wearing this T-shirt at the Circumvesuviana station last Friday morning. Mizuki felt her chest tighten, and was surprised that this was anger, not fear. She had come to Naples to experience something, and here was that something – and she’d missed it.
She wasn’t there.

Lara left a message asking to meet.

‘I’m worried,’ she said, ‘you haven’t called me back. I thought it was you. Did you contact the police? I’ll be at the station before class. I’ll meet you outside the station at eight.’

Mizuki came directly into the city. Once at the station she looked for the brothers, but they were not on the platform, not on the concourse, nor waiting, as before, under the long overhang from the station to the street, nor in the bright sunshine waiting by the taxis. Their absence came as a heavy disappointment, just to see them would offer some kind of solace – but what would she have said that wouldn’t have ended in some kind of disappointment?

Lara waited outside the station. Not ready to talk, Mizuki took the exit through to the main station and walked from Stazione Centrale all the way around, through piazza Garibaldi, back to the Circumvesuviana so that Lara would not see her, but she could see Lara. Her phone sang in her hand.

Mizuki returned to the cafe she where she had spoken with Lara and listened to the message as she watched the station through the window. She had seen the clothes on the news and felt sad that a relative would have to identify them. Until they found the young man these clothes would be the only record of what had happened. The clothes were made in America, this is what they were saying now. But the coincidence about the star was very strange.

‘I thought it was you,’ Lara said, and as Mizuki listened to the message, she saw Lara come into view. ‘The person who came forward. The woman who spoke with the police. I thought this is why I haven’t seen you.’

Lara’s final call came later that night while Mizuki was considering if she should or should not pack. Mizuki accepted the call but did not speak.

‘I know how this is,’ Lara spoke. ‘I know how this feels. My father, when he died – I had to collect his jacket from the police.’ At four thirty one summer afternoon her father had taken off his suit jacket, laid it carefully across the passenger seat, and before he could settle into the car had suffered a heart attack. ‘I brought everything back. Things they had taken from the car, and my mother, the first thing she did was check through the jacket, to empty his pockets as if she didn’t trust him.’

When Lara began to ask what was wrong, why had they not spoken,
She didn’t understand what she’d done
, Mizuki hung up.

She would not pack. She did not need these clothes. She did not want them. Everything that was bought to fuel this character, this failed escape, would be left.

✩

Rafí had spent the night watching the flats while Lila attempted to sleep in the shelter of a small hut, her head resting on the toy bear, her arms locked securely about it. Several times she woke up, immediately alert, and thought she could just walk away, sneak down the hill: to where though, and to what? Woken by the sun and troubled by mosquito bites along her arms and neck, she watched Rafí, who in turn watched the apartment block, eyes fixed on third floor, which he believed to be where Cecco was staying. When he stood up, she stood up. When he walked she followed. Stray dogs, curious at this early activity, followed lamely after. Weak from lack of sleep, Lila ached and was thirsty, and despite the sun she was cold. How strange to have so much money in her arms. She could buy food, she could buy cigarettes, she could buy cola and Sicilian pastries. She could hire a taxi to take her anywhere she could imagine, but she couldn’t find a certain opportunity to escape from Rafí. All this money.

They lingered at the port for an hour, dissatisfied with each other, unspeaking and uncertain. The bear clutched tight in defiance. Rafí sat with his back to her and turned on occasion to give a look of utter disgust. Both were surprised to see Cecco walk immediately by them, close, but so preoccupied he saw nothing but the pavement ahead. Cecco wandered along the promenade, paused to see what the fishermen had caught, then ambled by the ticket office.

Rafí tightened the distance between them. He was learning nothing, he told Lila, this watching and waiting was a waste of time. If he wanted his money he would need to get closer, and when Cecco clambered delicately down to the rocks, Rafí came closer. He signalled Lila to stay back.

Cecco sought out a broad flat rock and settled down, he rolled his shirt high over his stomach and gave himself up to the morning sun. Rafí climbed down and Lila hurried after: if she ran now Rafí would catch her, she wouldn’t even make it off the promenade. Cecco lay with his belly exposed, his hands flat to the rock, defenceless.

‘So this is what you do with yourself.’

Rafí stood with the sun over his shoulder so that Cecco had to squint at him, hand shielding his eyes. Cecco managed a small hello and looked feebly about him. His gestures, his expression were the sure signs of a guilty man.

‘You’re sweating.’

It would be easy to pick up one of the smooth black rocks and belt Rafí while he was preoccupied, and who would stop her? Maybe not to kill him, but leave him useless for the rest of his life, with just enough brains to understand what had happened to him and why.

Rafí squatted beside Cecco, patted his friend on his shoulder and asked where he was staying.

‘So? Pozzuoli?’

Cecco gave a nod and then shrugged. He noticed Lila and appeared momentarily relieved.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘With everything. I thought. You know. Why not? Just.’

‘Just keep your head down.’

Cecco sat up on his elbows and nodded earnestly. ‘I was going to call you today.’

‘That’s funny, because I’ve been trying to call you.’

They looked at each other, stalemate.

‘Where are you staying?’

Cecco pointed up the coast to Lucrino, but looked back at the town. There was a woman, he said, a friend, but it was a small place.

Rafí settled on the rock beside him. ‘I don’t mind,’ he said. Big or small it would suit him fine. He’d had a rough night.

Cecco’s woman was not what Lila expected. Cecco passed her photo about. In the picture Stefania sat beside a man in workman’s overalls, perhaps on the same rocks they’d come from. In another she held a ball, just caught or ready to throw, a posed picture. Ridiculous. Shapely, old, homely and content, with deep black eyes drawn in kohl and dark hair bleached to a brittle gold, the woman had married twice and more or less lost both husbands, Cecco explained. She worked at the
tabaccaio
on via Capasso, and every time he went in he’d spoken with her and got to know her a little.

‘Enough that she looks after you?’

Cecco couldn’t look at Rafí, as if ashamed. He took back the photograph and set it on the small side table. Rafí joked that widows were accommodating, especially the fat ones. He bent down to squint at the photograph and said she looked familiar. The apartment comprised three small rooms, a bedroom, kitchen and a sitting-room cramped with a plump couch and a large television beside a small veranda. There was no evidence of children, and few photographs or certificates.

Rafí sent Lila out to the small hallway. She backed out and watched him scope the room, possibly figuring where Cecco might have concealed the money. The room was busy, unkempt, with small girly keepsakes, china dolls, and soft toys with embroidered clothes that she sold at the shop. On the couch in small boxes were more soft toys with names and hearts sewn onto small jackets, and china ballerinas with real lace skirts. In the kitchen along a small folding table lay lengths of pastel-coloured ribbons cut to the same length with a package of porcelain figurines ready to be assembled and decorated, and she understood that this was how Stefania spent her evenings. Cutting and stitching.

Lila smoked at the veranda doors and took long considered draws. Cecco also smoked, fingers crushing the cigarette. When he caught Lila’s eye he gave a private shrug, a
what is he doing
, and Lila, in response, shrugged back. How odd this was, how interesting, everything Cecco did just made him look like a thief.

‘You have a paper? A newspaper?’ Rafí asked Cecco.

Cecco looked down in deference. He wiped his hands on his shirt.

‘I need a paper. Go,’ he said, ‘get me one. And get some food.’

Cecco nodded, yes, he’d go. There was one thing though, something important he’d forgotten to explain.

Rafí said that he could tell him when he came back.

Cecco shook his head. No, it was important. Her first husband was a security guard at the port.

‘And?’

‘And he’s dead.’

Rafí, lost for words, looked like he might hit Cecco. Exactly why was this a problem?

‘Because her second husband was in the carabinieri, and he isn’t dead.’ She spoke of him as if he was dead, but he wasn’t. The man was violent and she’d finished with him years ago, but, and this was the problem, he was obsessed with her and sometimes watched the house and deliberately caused trouble.

‘Just get a paper and get me some food.’

Cecco backed out of the room to the door. Lila could hear him running down the stairs.

With Cecco out of the apartment Rafí hurtled through the rooms. He swept the ornaments off the table, took a paring knife from the kitchen and searched swiftly through the boxes, first opening them then turning them upside down, emptying the contents onto the hard tiled floor until it was covered with small bites of packing foam and shards of shattered china, tiny painted heads and arms and legs, whiter than sugar. The money was not in the boxes. It was not in the drawers, the side cabinet, the dresser. It wasn’t in the cupboard. Under the couch, under the cushions, under the bed. Neither was it stuffed into the pillows or mattress. Rafí reached over the bedroom cupboard and again found nothing. When he stepped back, hands on hips, he looked to Lila, then beyond her, and Lila followed his glance to see Stefania at the doorway, dark eyes, silent, aghast at the chaos and destruction. In five short minutes Rafí had emptied every container and destroyed everything he touched in his search for the money. Scattered among the broken porcelain were pieces of dried pasta, lentils, and pulses. Stefania cringed as he came quickly after her. With the paring knife pointed at her neck he told her to sit down and keep herself absolutely silent.

Stefania swept aside the brittle shards of figurines and slowly sat on the floor, her back to the veranda door.

‘Tell me where he has hidden my money.’

Stefania shook her head and Lila shook her head to warn her.

‘Where – is – my – money?’

Rafí held back her head to expose her throat and drew his arm full out, ready to swipe.

‘Where?’

Stefania pointed to the television. Behind it was a package containing thirty euro, a measly find compared to the size of his loss.

Lila could see Cecco returning through the tunnel, a newspaper in his hand, an anxious hurry to his step, and in total contradiction, a broad smile – when she pointed, Rafí turned, and for no reason she could understand, his face tightened with fury and he bolted out of the room.