The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (97 page)

‘But there are connections between them?’

‘Unfortunately, there are general connections, yes. But it has been a year since I read it. Without the book this is not such an interesting case. Without the novel nothing distinguishes itself above other such events. It’s possible that this aspect of the case, which has been greatly speculated over, has meant a certain kind of concentration, an inclination toward the more sensational elements, which has, in turn, distracted us from asking the proper questions.’

The magistrate folded his hands together and smiled, closing the discussion about the book.

‘Why did the evidence point only to one killing?’

He looked directly at Finn. ‘Because we found only one crime scene. They wouldn’t have risked committing a second crime in the same place. The evidence from via Capasso indicated only that the American had been killed there. Although this was considerably degraded. It might be possible that two people were killed there, although only one dismemberment took place.’

‘And you believe Marek Krawiec to be the main instigator?’

‘I do. Krawiec’s skill, if this is the right word, is in his “everydayness”. The issue – let me give you my experience – is that wickedness is not as interesting as you might hope. Krawiec appears normal, a neighbour, someone who can be trusted, because, for most of the time, this is exactly who he is. In most circumstances he is entirely ordinary. There is nothing exotic about him, and nothing immediately apparent in his personality that would show him capable of such violence. If you want to understand him you should speak with the people in the palazzo who were familiar with him. They also were convinced by him, and managed to draw them into his version of the world. This is typical of someone who is dissociative. They will insist on a reinterpretation of events, and they will draw people into their schemes and ideas. I don’t think Krawiec was the sole perpetrator, but I consider him to be the sole author.’

The magistrate had one last thing to say: ‘People come here believing all kinds of things about the city – I’m sure you have your own ideas – that it is violent, corrupt. It is hard to refute the facts. The city has its problems. There are many issues. But it does seem, and this is perhaps truer when speaking about Naples than any other city, that stories are written and ideas are decided long before anyone has actually arrived. Do you understand? It is a problem to be spoken about only in one way, to have one kind of discussion, or one common language. To believe in occult signs and coincidences is to lose sight of the facts, and to indulge fanciful ideas. We have enough problems without this becoming more mysterious than it already is, especially because it involves two missing visitors. We still don’t have many answers at this point about what happened. At the moment there is very little truth, what we take to be truth is based on rumours and lies.’

As Finn walked the magistrate to his car, the man’s driver straightened up and opened the door. Finn’s last questions involved Mizuki Katsura.

‘Nothing was found in Tokyo. I even hired someone and they found nothing.’ Mizuki Katsura did not exist. Had the magistrate ever considered this?

The magistrate paused before ducking into the car. ‘We don’t have her name. But that doesn’t mean she didn’t exist. Clearly someone under this name attended classes at the language school, and someone under this name has disappeared. In Europe we should be especially careful of such an idea. Many people who fall victim to crime are undocumented, or have chosen or have no choice but to exist in ways which remain officially off the record.’

‘So you believe that there were two victims.’

‘There are three, remember. The man at the paint factory is a victim as well as a culprit.’

Finn nodded in agreement.

The magistrate lowered himself slowly into the car, then fixed Finn with a gaze, cold eyes, grey, white-rimmed and a little clouded. ‘I will give you the ending of your book,’ he said, with just an edge of a wry small smile. ‘Consider how smoothly this was achieved. I do not believe that this is the work of a novice. It is possible that Marek Krawiec and the man found at the paint factory had a criminal career which involved the disappearance of considerably more than two people. Krawiec also might have had experience prior to his arrival here. What better place to disguise himself? What you must write about, if there is any need for clarity, is the history of Niccolò Scafuti, and the damage done to the city.’

Finn watched the car draw away then looked with satisfaction at the boutiques along via Crispi. A profitable meeting, which provided both a beginning and the end. As soon as he was on the metro Finn checked his mini-recorder. Nothing you could broadcast, not in terms of quality, but still useable.

Hotel Grimaldi – between Corso Umberto and via Nuova Marina – was close to the palazzo on via Capasso, and cheap (Finn wasn’t being irresponsible with his money, and didn’t want to make the mistake of being too remote from his subject, just comfortable enough for a good, critical distance). The room held a wardrobe, a dresser, a bed, a sink; the shutters for the window could not be folded back as they hit the side of the bed. Finn left a voicemail for his sister, and then typed.
They have beds here like school beds.
And thought as the message slowly fed its way through, a dial turning on the screen, that this was the beginning of her day, the end of his. She wouldn’t yet be in New York, the message would arrive before her. Out in the bay a ferry rounded the jetty, the sea soaked blue.

While he unpacked he began to consider the month ahead. He would find his meals close by, eat during the day with Rino. He would write for four hours in the morning, arrange his interviews and site visits in the afternoon, write late into the night. There would be no evenings out, no time wasted. With twenty thousand words already written – the first three chapters had secured the contract – he had a foundation for the project; although he already guessed this would need to be refigured. Unlike his fellow students, Finn had discipline. He could organize himself, and he could focus. By the end of the month he would transform the notes and the research into a complete and serviceable draft: something in the region of seventy to eighty thousand words. Which meant three thousand words a day. Not a problem. He could achieve this. Having secured a book, Finn had his mind on a larger target, film, and while his mother could advise on publishing and help with contacts, with filmmaking he was completely on his own.

Finn, still busy unpacking when Rino arrived, asked the clerk to let him up. He’d advertised for a researcher at two universities, and picked Rino Carrafiglio, a Ph.D. student at the Orientale. He’d formed an idea of the man from their correspondence, and thought of him as someone in his early twenties with whom he would have easy and intense conversations. He’d pictured himself in bars, cafés, trattorias, which only Rino with his detailed understanding of the city would know, either planning or unpacking their interviews, tapping into the core of the crime and the city itself, stripping back, in long and late discussions, the artifice and the deceptions to discover what was really happening. In reality Rino looked like a taxi driver, end-of-shift bags under his eyes, unshaven, and miserable, with thinning hair, short stature, and a wrinkled shirt; he looked like a dirty old basset-hound. A few hairs stuck over the back of his collar. He could be twenty-something, thirty, late forties even, Finn couldn’t tell. Finn did little to hide his disappointment, and regretted sending money in advance to secure assistance (money he could have used on a ticket to Amsterdam, London, or his return to Boston). He had a certain expectation of Italians – which the magistrate had not disappointed. The magistrate looked the part: a long grey face, thin and graceful, a man who appeared cultured, whose knowledge seemed to be reflected in his owlish and groomed manner. Where the magistrate held authority, Rino, on the other hand, just looked worn and sad. It didn’t seem right after all of the work he’d committed to the project – two weeks in Naples, two weeks in Rome, two (crushingly disappointing) weeks in Struga, Poland, chasing up a mother who was dead, and a brother who could repeat one phrase in English (‘He didn’t do it’), visits obsessively described in little black notebooks. He’d already over-sold Rino’s abilities to his agent and editor, and determined now that he would take no photographs which included the man.

Finn took a while to hide his valuables while Rino waited. The cash on top of the wardrobe. The traveller’s cheques in their envelope under blankets inside the dresser. His passport under the mattress. The laptop inside its soft case slid under the wardrobe. The portable hard-drive in the bottom drawer of the dresser, among dirty laundry. The spare USB sticks which contained copies of all of the drafts of the book and correspondence were easily concealed, one in his wash-bag alongside the shaving cream and toothpaste, the other in the interior side pocket of his soft hold-all. He’d also bought a bottle of rye and he placed that beside the bed.

Rino stood by the door with his hands in his pockets and licked his lips.

On that first evening, for a small additional fee, Rino brought Finn to the Bar Fazzini. As they passed the palazzo on via Capasso, Rino pointed out the carriage doors but didn’t say until they were inside the bar that this was the place, you know, that’s where it all happened.

Immediately into the bar Rino picked two men and told Finn to keep an eye on them. ‘Here,’ he’d said, ‘are the people you need to speak with.’ Finn couldn’t guess why he’d singled them out. The men, evidently brothers, had dressed for the meeting; both wore suit trousers and long-sleeve shirts, both combed their hair straight back, and both were clean-shaven with light skin and small wet black eyes. The younger brother, slight, reed-thin, pinched his forefinger and thumb at his crotch as he spoke. The older brother, larger and more solid, was the man to do business with and Rino paid him all of his attention. With broad shoulders and massive hands, the man looked like a chef and was a chef. He looked out of proportion, as if he had built himself, choosing a thick body out of mismatched parts.

‘Salvatore and Massimiliano.’ Rino grandly swept out his hand. These, he said, were the brothers Marek Krawiec had based his alibi on. From these two men he had invented the French brothers. Massimiliano worked at the
alimentari
, the small kitchen and food shop under the palazzo on via Capasso. His brother Salvatore worked as an accountant but was often at the store.

Finn asked when the brothers had first met Krawiec and the men shook their heads. It hadn’t worked like that. Salvatore had only recently moved up from Bari. He’d never met Marek Krawiec.

Rino, thoughtfully, began to explain. ‘But there were photos in the
alimentari
of them together when they were younger. Lots of photographs.’

‘So he knew you?’ Finn spoke directly to the older brother, Massimiliano.

The man shook his head. At that time he also was not living in Naples. ‘But in the store there are photographs of us that the man would have seen. It is unbelievable that he would do this.’

Rino nodded. It was true, there were pictures. Their father, who ran the store until last summer, had pictures of his family everywhere.

‘It’s like that film.’ Massimiliano leaned forward, confident about his information. ‘Where the man makes up stories from what is around him. He sees something and he includes it in his lies.’ He nodded, sincere, eyes closed. ‘This way, everything sounds true because everything comes from somewhere. Everything sounds reasonable.’

‘So your father ran the store?’

Alimentari.
The brothers nodded. They served and sold food and wine. Salvatore wanted to get back into property again, just as soon as he had his licence.

‘And would it be possible to speak with him about Marek Krawiec?’

Their father, much to their regret, was no longer with them. The family hadn’t managed the shop for very long, four years. ‘Do you know what it takes to run a business like this?’ The whole fuss with the palazzo last year hadn’t helped.

‘So what’s your father’s name?’

Salvatore answered, ‘
Salvatore.
’

Massimiliano answered, ‘
Graffa
,’ at the same time. ‘After the sweet – you know, the pastry with the sugar. Because he’s fat.’

‘Because he sells them.’

‘So he’s alive?’

‘He’s back in Bari.’

‘Can I speak with him?’

The men shook their heads. He wouldn’t talk. He had nothing to say. They wouldn’t want to burden him.

The interview was going nowhere. The brothers knew nothing about the affair. Not one thing you couldn’t find in the newspaper or discover on the internet. Even so, this could still be useful. News isn’t news, after all, without colour and detail. Information requires the inflection of experience. Finn understood exactly what he had going. What he didn’t understand is why no other journalist had jumped onto this. So he asked details about the city, about the Italian south, about what they knew of the crimes. Throughout the discussion Rino kept nodding, and gave his own little affirmations,
yeah, right, OK, like I told you. Exactly.

The small bar remained busy through the evening. At some point the ceiling fans were turned to the highest setting and the doors that made up the full front were lodged open, all without effect. The sticky night air, honey-sweet, became acrid with sweat. Finn stood at the counter beside the brothers, and while they spoke he took notes in a small black notebook, keeping it as discreet as he could manage, the book held low, at his hip. He wrote about the meeting, small clues and reminders, alongside what he was recording, so that when he had time he could fill out the episode with more detail.

‘Is this all you wanted to know?’ The older brother, Massimiliano, tipped his finger on the notebook. He spoke in English and set his arm about Finn’s shoulder.

‘I don’t know. What else do you know?’ Not his best question, but still.

‘What’s this?’ The man’s finger ran down the spine.