The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (99 page)

Finn checked inside and found Rino waiting at the counter with a pack of disposable diapers in his hand and a queue of assorted women in front and behind. Rino poked his finger into the plastic wrap as he waited and left divots in the packet. The store, with its glass shelves and white boxes, seemed unnervingly antiseptic, at odds with the muddle outside. Behind the counter stood a woman, a girl, and an older man, each dressed in white clinician coats. When Rino reached the front of the queue he allowed the woman behind him to be served. When the girl became free, he again allowed another customer ahead of him, but when the man became free he stepped immediately up. While the man said nothing about this, Finn thought the pharmacist had noticed that Rino wanted to be served by him.

Finn picked through the toothbrushes while he waited, and didn’t become especially aware of any problem until he looked back at the counter and saw the pharmacist pointing at the door and heard him give Rino instructions to leave. Finn came closer to the counter, not quite sure if this was private business or something he needed to be involved in. Rino appeared to be holding his ground.

‘You have a son,’ he said, ‘what if something like this were to happen to him? What would you do if someone was not telling the truth? What would you say to this man?’

The pharmacist, clearly addled, his face white with outrage, as if unused to being challenged. The man shook his head and asked Rino to leave. ‘Go.’

‘No.’

‘Go.’

‘No.’ Rino stood firm, a little petulant but unmovable. ‘I’m not going.’ He pointed at the pack of diapers. ‘I would like to buy these.’

The pharmacist picked up the diapers, looked over his glasses at the price, sharply rang it into the till and asked Rino for the money.

Rino laid the coins one at a time into a small dish. ‘Imagine. You hold on to something for so long. Keep it inside. Is this healthy? Is this advisable? Imagine when something else comes to light, the trouble that this would cause.’ Rino buzzed his fingers at his temples to indicate confusion. ‘Imagine also the kind of father who would set such an example to his son? I have a son, and I wouldn’t want to set such an example.’

The pharmacist pushed the coins back across the counter, took the diapers and placed them behind him. There would be no sale.

‘You think you know what is good for my son, or for my family?’ The pharmacist leaned forward his voice now low and threatening. ‘If you return I will call the police.’

Rino stepped back, gave a small gesture, and lifted his arms lightly from his side as if this were of no account. The police, he seemed to indicate, would possibly also have these questions. Rino caught Finn’s eye as he turned about, then remembered, suddenly, to pick up the money.

The two of them walked out onto the street. Rino, in no apparent hurry despite the pharmacist’s threat, patted his pockets for a cigarette. The pharmacist looked after them as Finn closed the door and made a dismissive gesture to the women as if this were nothing. But the gesture, Finn thought, being too emphatic, and grumpy, seemed disingenuous – and the women, who might be expected to be curious, simply continued with their work as if this had happened before.

‘This man,’ he said, ‘his name is Dr Arturo Lanzetti. The very same Dr Lanzetti that Marek Krawiec claims came with him to the hotel in Castellammare and gave treatment to one of the brothers. Dr Lanzetti says that this did not happen. Marek Krawiec also says that Dr Lanzetti told him about the content of the book,
The Kill
. Dr Lanzetti says that this did not happen, although he has read the book, he says that he read it after Marek Krawiec was taken into custody. He says he knew nothing about the room, and knew Krawiec only in passing as they lived in the same building.’

Finn looked up at the sign, a small outline of a neon cross. The store windows almost empty except for posters for eyewash in which a young woman looked to a blue sky, white letters furred with beams of light as if offering a religious experience.

‘You think he’s lying? Do you believe the story about the brothers?’

‘I’ve no idea. We need to find another
farmacia
. Life will not be worth living if I forget this.’

Rino drove to Ercolano. He pointed out the volcano as they came out of the city and spoke about the earthquake, ‘Nineteen eighty-seven. The city was hit. Many of the buildings were weakened and later condemned, but they weren’t taken down. At the same time all of these factories were closed down, and there was a plan to build here – hotels, places to live, shops. But this never happened. Instead they made them so they could not be used. After they found the body the commune had the doors and windows closed so no one could get in.’

‘This is it?’

‘This is where they found the Second Man.’

He drove over a small crossroads and parked beside the building. When Finn locked the door, he said, ‘Don’t worry, there isn’t anything to see here.’

Finn walked down the small alley, a slip-road to the shoreline. A wall of striated concrete on one side, the factory close on the other, so that path – barely broad enough for a car, became deep. A black railway bridge, and the grey shoreline beyond.

A haze out to sea hid the horizon, hid the sun, so the sky and sea faded one to the other in a glassy bright plain. If they make a film, Finn thought, they should use these locations. The places where it happened. Finn had ambitions he’d yet to formulate properly. He walked along the shoreline, back and forth, stood on the stern grey blocks, smooth, massive and locked together: arms folded he looked back at the factory to imagine the event playing out – not as it might have happened, but as it might be filmed. A crew gathered in the road huddled ready because this would be taken in one long shot, the camera beside the door, a set of tracks for the camera down the alley to the shoreline: and there, the actors playing Krawiec and his accomplice arriving in the Citroën, parking. Krawiec giving instructions: an urgency to his gestures and movement. The Second Man unloads the large bags – unwieldy, tied at the top – and brings them to the shore, while Krawiec smokes with the car door open. Krawiec is the one to manage the body, cut up by this time and sectioned into manageable pieces which are also packed in plastic, blood slipping into the creases. The Second Man manages the sacks, which are full and lighter, and they rustle. Krawiec’s packages are heavier, much smaller, and tape binds round them. The camera will follow Krawiec, because this detail is important. They will want to give themselves options, and the entire scene will need to be shot right from the start (the car arriving) twice, because there are two questions the film will need to answer: 1. Why did they kill, and 2. What happened to the body – and this scene will resolve that issue. They wouldn’t need to specify the victim, well, not the first, because that would undermine the basic mystery. Everybody knows by now that nobody knows who this was, and there’s no point in spoiling this with invention. Instead it would be more interesting to look further into Mr Rabbit and Mr Wolf, now these deserved inventing, fleshing out. These men should be made physical. OK, there was the whole absurdity of it, obviously, it’s a crazy idea, but an appealing idea also, who doesn’t like the idea of two men, tourists, who kill, and take their instructions from a pulp novel. The very randomness of it. They come and go, and no one is ever caught – it’s morbidly satisfying, knowing you’ll never know.

In the film, in this first version – Version Number One – Krawiec unloads all of the packages: these heavy little sawn-up pieces of Victim Number One. He lines them alongside the water, and here the filmmakers will need a calm day so there are no waves, just this dopey lapping, the water coming up and folding over, not even touching the bags, although the stones are wet and there are clouds of tiny black flies. And Krawiec, seen from behind, will crouch and open up the packets, slit them one by one, and dump out the contents – piece by piece until he is done, roll them into the water so that the water clouds with blood, until he closes the knife against his thigh. Trouble is, with this version, if they found the bags, you’ve got to believe they would have found the body.

In Version Number Two, Krawiec will arrive with a small dinghy of some kind. An inflatable. It could even be in its box, bought for the purpose. And this will need to be done carefully so it doesn’t become stupid. Krawiec brings this craft down to the shoreline first, and maybe this isn’t all one shot, because you’re going to want to see him inflate this, and see those details, the nozzle holding the valve; Krawiec working up a sweat because this shouldn’t be too easy. If this is shown to be an effort it’s going to look more plausible. Once the boat is inflated, he’s going to press on it with his foot. He’s going to test it and make sure he’s satisfied, maybe give it a few extra pumps. Only then is he going to unload the backseat of the small packages, and the Second Man is going to be standing at some distance tying his sacks together and making a job of it. Krawiec will load up the dinghy. Piece by piece. A hypnotic back and forth. Done, he’ll tug the boat into the water, then, with his pocket knife he’s going to give the dinghy a little nick, just a small – the smallest – puncture, then push it the final distance. He’ll come back to the shore holding a rope that’s tethered to the dinghy and it’s going to take several attempts, and there’s going to be some tension here, because if that boat deflates too much it’s just not going to make it, because those gentle waves are pushing the boat back alongside the shore, not taking it out. Finally, Krawiec will have to wade, then shove hard, and out it goes, a little slow, a little dreamy. The small craft, obviously weighted down, is picked up by a current and taken out the whole length of the rope.

And maybe here you’ll see the boat up close, the shoreline distant with Krawiec standing, rope in hand, the line leading from the boat all the way to the shore, and further to Krawiec’s right the Second Man is on his knees still working on those larger bags, still busy with his knotting, and water begins to fill the craft, slowly pooling about the black bound packages, trickling in at first, then faster, so that half the dinghy folds under the waterline, half of it submerged, and the packages tip out, and then the whole thing, flaccid, just sinks, then sits softly under the water making bubbles with this blue line of rope going all the way to the shore. That sea reflecting like it’s thick, like sugar syrup.

Back with Krawiec he tugs the dinghy to the shore, hand-overhand, it doesn’t look like much, a more or less empty black bladder that he hauls to the shore, water runs off the rope. Krawiec winds the rope about his arm, the way that fishermen coil lengths of rope. He folds up the dinghy. When he stands up they’re almost done. There’s no need to show what happens with the bags. Everyone knows this part of the story. He will kill the Second Man with one blow, a rock or a hammer. One strike. And it will mean nothing to him, this little piece of business. Or, alternatively he’ll just shove him into the tank like it’s an afterthought, and the man will hit his head as he tumbles. Either way, Krawiec will put little thought into it, but great energy. As the magistrate said, Krawiec is ordinary, he’s not so special, but when he kills the violence comes with extraordinary force.

Finn took photographs from the shore, 360°, a whole revolution. He wanted to see inside the factory, to see the tank, but couldn’t find an entrance. The windows and doors bricked up with some care, small ventilation blocks set up in a row, the holes too small to see through to anything. At first he couldn’t find Rino, and didn’t understand that the pebbles landing at his feet were dropped from the roof. When he looked up he saw Rino on the flat roof.

‘Ready?’

He didn’t want to be hurried, and even while he was paying Rino for his time, he didn’t like to cause delay and had to think through if he wanted to get to the rooftop or not before they called in at the Rione Ini estate (although he had the feeling that Rino wasn’t keen), and wondered if he would he regret not climbing up.

In preparation for Finn’s visit, Rino had kept his eye on Niccolò Scafuti for a week but hadn’t learned much: Niccolò Scafuti no longer worked, remained in the same apartment as before, but was seldom seen outdoors. Much of what he needed was brought to him, and the days when he was feted and celebrated by the Christian Democrats, the charities, the good people of Ercolano, had long since passed. Finn had a collection of photographs of dinners and presentations held in honour of the hero Niccolò Scafuti. All of this before the discovery of the clothes on the wasteland, before he was taken in and charged with murder – which had to be, as the magistrate acknowledged, the worst mistake made by the investigation. Finn wanted to speak with him, to straighten up the story.

They walked from the paint factory, followed the road beside a line of glasshouses up to the estate. Finn asked why Rino wasn’t interested in this, he seemed reserved. Was he reading this right? And Rino said he doubted that Niccolò would want to speak, a good number of reporters had tried, they’d pestered him, and whether or not this was the reason he didn’t appear to ever leave his apartment he didn’t know. You’d have to figure what kind of trauma that would bring for someone normal, you know? Let alone some guy who has had a fistful of brain removed and half of his skull constructed out of steel.

‘I wouldn’t stay.’ Rino plucked a piece of grass, trimmed it down to the stalk. ‘I’d take myself somewhere new and start over. Once you’ve lost your family and your neighbours you have nothing.’ What had happened to Scafuti was criminal, but it was done and there was no way to undo that fact. Rino pointed at the school where Rino’s sister had volunteered one summer to help kids who hadn’t passed their exams, who otherwise wouldn’t move up a grade. ‘Most of those kids have family who’ve spent some time in jail, or were otherwise in trouble, one way or another.’ What made this ironic was that Niccolò Scafuti, once a hero, was now seen as some pervert who’d cut up a body, planted the evidence and ‘discovered’ it, to keep himself in the picture. And nothing backed up these ideas, even the stupid things he came up with, all by himself, about the notebook, about a star. His co-workers had made good money telling his story to the papers. ‘Once it’s in people’s heads, there’s nothing you can do. I feel sorry for him myself.’