‘So you would then get a taxi to the airport later?’ Matt says. His tone is neutral, his face impassive, but his words are incisive, like a firm, gripping handshake that won’t let go. Joe is drowning in these logical words. Of course he wouldn’t have taken the hire car back ordinarily.
‘Exactly,’ Joe says.
‘To save money?’ the prosecutor says with a wry smile.
‘Yes.’
‘And so last night, before you took the car back?’ Matt says. He upends the pen again.
Joe tries to turn his mind to the story he agreed with Frannie, but he’s no good under pressure. It’s why he prefers surgery to consulting. Surgery, for him, is stress-free. The patient unconscious, not looking at him, no expectant owners. He is alone. He is the hero, the father-figure, the God.
‘Yes, I …’ Joe says. The clicking of Matt’s pen. The ticking of the clock. He reaches for his water and sips it, the ice cubes bobbing against his lips.
Either Matt knows, or everybody is a suspect, Joe is thinking, as he looks at Matt’s even features. Large eyes. A high forehead. Hair swept back like a Gillette advert. But he can’t know. Wouldn’t he arrest them if he did?
Sweat prickles under the neckline of Joe’s top. He narrows his eyes as they meet Matt’s. ‘Last night?’ he says, stalling.
‘Yes – what did you … do?’
‘The usual, you know, holiday stuff,’ Joe says. God, why can’t he think? Barbecue. They said a barbecue. But all Joe is thinking about is how he is choking. How he can’t seem to find any air. What time did the barbecue start? He can’t remember, and Matt will ask him. His mind is empty.
Matt lets a little laugh out of the side of his mouth. It’s contemptuous. ‘Can you be a little more specific?’ he says.
‘I was with my family.’
‘… yes.’
Joe can’t breathe for just a second. His throat seems to catch as he tries. Is there enough air in this room? His eyes dart to the closed window, the door that has a blue jacket hanging from it. He takes a stifled breath, moves his t-shirt’s neck away from his skin. Will’s dead eyes. His curled grey hands. The smell of the earth. Frannie, Frannie, Frannie. His littlest sister, who bought him a stone statue of his old cat Peanut that sits on his back-garden patio. Who buys the exact wine he likes for their Friday-night drinks, who sends him a photo of the bottle on the checkout in Sainsbury’s when she shops on Thursdays.
‘We do not have all day …’ Matt says.
Joe’s jaw twitches. ‘Amazingly enough, neither do I,’ he says tensely. Anxiety so easily converts to anger for him.
‘Why don’t you want to answer the question?’
‘I do,’ Joe says tightly. ‘I had a barbecue with my sisters. Pretty late.’ He surreptitiously tries to wipe the sweat off his upper lip with his finger. His stubble scratches against his skin. What if Matt knows everything about the document William had on him? Is waiting for Joe to say?
‘A barbecue,’ Matt says. ‘No wife? Girlfriend?’
‘She wanted an early night.’
‘Where did you have this barbecue?’
‘A little way from the villa.’
‘I see. Nice food? Wine?’
‘Yeah, all that.’
‘See anyone else?’
‘No. We had a salad-type meal, around five, with my sister’s baby, Paul. Then –’
‘Is this Catherine or Francesca?’
Joe freezes. So he knows his siblings.
‘Frannie,’ Joe says. And now it’s his turn to blush. There it is. He has spoken the name of the killer.
‘I am looking forward to interviewing her. So – your barbecue was after your dinner, yes? A second meal?’ That neutral expression again as he unpicks Joe’s lies as easily as pulling at a loose thread. Oh, you think you’re so fucking clever …
‘Yes. We just had some – we had some sausages later … none of us could sleep.’
‘I see. So you – you texted each other?’
‘No! We were just – we had a bit of alcohol and then decided to cook.’
‘I see. So not trying to sleep, then.’
‘Oh, do you know what?’ Joe says. He pushes the table away from him and towards Matteo, then stops himself, stops himself from telling this lawyer to go fuck himself.
Matt cocks his head to the side. ‘What?’
‘We weren’t tired,’ Joe says, backtracking, trying to recover it. God, he is a bad liar.
‘So nobody else came to your barbecue, didn’t see anything unusual?’
‘No. Nothing.’
‘What time did it go on until?’
‘Early hours.’
‘One? Two?’
‘Something like that. I had a lot of beer,’ Joe says, letting out a fixed smile.
Matt waits, quite what for Joe isn’t sure, then scrapes his chair back, tosses the pen on to the table like he is disappointed and reaches to shake Joe’s hand in his huge one. ‘Again,’ he says, ‘if you think of anything you might’ve missed. If you hear anything about Will. You will let us know?’
‘I will,’ Joe says. ‘Are we done now?’ He places his fingertips on the edge of the table, ready to go. He is sure he sees Matt’s eyes flick to his brittle, dirty nails, just momentarily, but it could have been a blink. It could have been anything.
‘Yes, done,’ Matt says. As he rises, Joe sees that he’s thick-set. A face like a Roman bust, so perfect in its proportions, but a wide stomach that swells as he stands. Matt catches him looking and avoids his gaze for a second.
He asks for Joe’s number, and he gives it.
As he has his hand on the panel of the door which in the UK would say PUSH but here says SPINGERE, Matt speaks again. ‘Where did you hire the car from, again?’
Joe’s body stills. That again is a lie. Falsely casual. ‘Holiday Rent Now,’ he says, not looking back at Matt, not trusting himself to.
‘No problems,’ Matt says.
Joe leaves. Outside, he looks up into the sky. There are two clouds floating next to each other. They’re round, like somebody has blown smoke rings into the sky. His mind is spinning, spinning, spinning. As he walks off, free, to buy a packet of cigarettes – finally – he still feels like he’s in there. Still captive and claustrophobic. Still under watch.
23.
Cathy
Cathy has been sitting on the second-to-bottom step where Joe left her, thinking about the millions of paths they could and should have taken last night. They could have collectively blamed it on another, unidentifiable car. Said William was drunk, and weaving in the road. Maybe the police wouldn’t have remembered what had happened with Frannie at the market. Maybe they were too hasty, led by Joe’s cynicism and Frannie’s fear. And now it’s too late, it’s too late, it’s too late.
She has been thinking too about why an Italian policeman was walking alone on a Verona road, towards their villa, carrying a warrant with their surname on it. For the first time, Cathy sees a different perspective. What if there’s much more to this than meets the eye? What if William was coming to find them? What if he knew something about a member of her family? Joe? Frannie? Lydia? Cathy herself?
But, just as she thinks it, the perspective disappears, and she can’t quite catch it again, no matter how hard she tries.
The police station is nothing like anything in the UK. There is evidence everywhere that Italy is old, and old school. From the outside, it looks like an ancient ruin. Brown-stone, blocky. Dirty in that charming way of old buildings, marred with centuries of people’s living. The fawn-coloured stone is water-stained, a huge blemish above the door that looks like coppery old blood.
A man in a black stab vest with POLIZIA written on it greets her at reception. She is led into a room that smells of newspapers and coffee. As she stares at an evidence bag in the corner of the room, she thinks of Will’s skin, bluish in the moonlight. His fingernails dirty with grime by the time they got him into the earth. The way, in the end, because of the depth of
the hole, they had to throw him in like a rag doll.
A prosecutor sits opposite her. He is clean-shaven, not handsome exactly but perhaps interesting to look at.
‘We are interviewing anyone who might have seen something connected to Will,’ he says to her in perfect English. His name is Matt. ‘Last night between eleven o’clock and noon today.’
‘Okay,’ she says, trying to sound normal.
Will. Such a simple piece of knowledge but meaningful too. He preferred Will over William. The same way she prefers the shortened version of her name too. Maybe his parents were – like hers – stuffy and traditional. Catherine, Francesca and Joseph and Rosemary. So formal.
‘Eleven o’clock?’ she says, stalling for time. That must be the time he was last seen by anybody. Except them, of course.
The prosecutor is holding a biro, his grip loose. He checks his watch and writes the time along the top of the lined pad. Cathy is good at reading people, and, in her opinion, there is nothing to suggest that this man knows what’s going on.
Matt seems, to Cathy, to be running through an entirely routine list of questions.
‘So your siblings and you were – up late?’
‘Yes, that’s right – we stayed up having a few drinks outside.’
‘And the drinks became a barbecue?’ His tone is mild but his brown eyes are watchful, flicking across her like she is in a scanner. His gaze on her eyes, then her hands, her fingertips, her legs drumming rhythmically underneath the table. It causes a slight tremor, and she knows he’s noticed. Perverting the course of justice, she is thinking. Right now, right this second, she is committing another crime.
Briefly – only briefly – she imagines telling the truth. Sailing Frannie up the river to save herself. But she could never do it. She loves her too much. Frannie would never do it to her. Is that right? Cathy hopes so, but sometimes thinking about her place in the family is too raw, since what happened with Rosie.
‘Yes.’
Matt hasn’t written a single other thing on the pad. He is just waiting for more detail. When she doesn’t give it, he asks, ‘Where exactly were you?’ He breaks to sip a black coffee.
‘A little away from the villa. We didn’t want to wake Joe’s wife.’
‘Lydia.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did you do anything else? Take a walk?’
She stops for a second. What if the police check their phones? They were tracking their locations, most probably, in the woods. There will be a record, somewhere, of Frannie’s phone call to Cathy, even though they have deleted their call logs. ‘No, I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Er – things are a bit hazy. We were drinking.’ She tries not to feel shame. Tries to live the lie, getting so close to it that she becomes it, like taking on somebody’s accent or stealing their body language. It’s fine to drink on holiday. To stay up late. There was no body. No accident. Only alcohol, her siblings, the crickets, the moonlight. The elements of it that she chooses to keep.
‘That is what your brother said,’ Matt says, and Cathy picks up the subtext immediately, like a gun in the small of her back.
‘No idea of anything else?’ he adds.
‘Hmm. I haven’t had much sleep.’
She isn’t thinking as strategically as she should be. They didn’t think this through. The certainty that they’ve made a mistake flashes up and down her body. Her armpits become damp. She takes a sip of water from the white cup, but her hand is shaking. It’s all so obvious.
‘Okay,’ Matt says, his tone sceptical. ‘And then – and then what?’
‘Then we went to bed,’ she says.
‘At …’ She can hear the trailed-off sentence. The t comes right at the end of the word, a soft click of his tongue, a full stop.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘Same as Joseph,’ he remarks. Don’t respond to it, Cathy thinks. Don’t think like a guilty person. Don’t be on the defensive. ‘You were drinking … lots, yes?’ he says, inclining his head. A lock of his dark hair falls forwards, stiff with gel.
‘Yes.’
‘Anything can happen,’ he says softly. Cathy looks up at him sharply, but tries to keep her features impassive.
She says nothing. She is the Cathy who never answered the phone call. A different person entirely.
‘You all right?’ Matt says dispassionately. He glances to her armpits. ‘You’re hot?’
‘I’m fine.’
‘And on this night when you were drinking – you saw nothing, you heard nothing? Nothing unusual?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know this man – the missing man?’ Matt says. He holds up a printed sheet containing a photograph of the man whose body Cathy buried last night. He is not exactly how she remembers from the market. He is bigger here, has especially red cheeks. Two round, perfect circles, like a cartoon boy. ‘You seen him anywhere?’
Cathy takes the print-out between her fingers, looking into Will’s eyes. Why did you have a warrant with our surname on it? she asks him silently. She glances up at Matt, wondering if he knows the answer.
She looks down again at Will. She’s got to be honest about the market. There will be CCTV, witnesses. It is only his killing she must erase from history.
‘Maybe,’ she says carefully. ‘I think my sister might have spoken to him.’
‘Your sister?’
‘At a market. He was smoking – she asked him not to. One of your colleagues was there too,’ she says. ‘Well, the police.’
Matt nods. His face remains closed. If Cathy had to guess, she would say that he already knew this information. Nobody’s poker face is that good. Suddenly she’s no longer hot, she’s freezing.
He picks up his pen. ‘When was this?’
‘Friday,’ she says. ‘About two.’
‘Okay, so this man was smoking …’ he prompts, and Cathy explains what happened while Matt writes it down.
‘It might not be him, I don’t know. They look a little alike,’ she finishes. ‘We went home afterwards.’
‘You and Frannie.’
‘And Joe.’
‘I see,’ Matt says, his face blank again. ‘All of you, your sister, your brother, were there.’
‘That’s right.’
Matt says nothing for a beat. ‘And you – your family, you’re going home the day after tomorrow?’ he eventually asks.
‘Yes,’ she says, raising her head, her eyes meeting his.
‘You have enjoyed Verona, yes?’
‘Definitely,’ Cathy says, her shoulders beginning to relax. She shifts her chair back, just slightly.
‘You will take the hire car back on your way to the airport, I am guessing?’ His body language is completely still, like somebody peacefully watching something unfold in the distance.
‘It’s been taken back already,’ she says.
‘Already? By … family?’
‘Yes.’
‘But the airport and the hire-car place are right next to each other,’ Matt says to her. His expression isn’t suspicious. It’s open-hearted, as though he’s waiting for her to clarify, sure that she will.
Cathy shrugs. There’s nothing else she can say or do, except hope.
‘Okay,’ Matt says, like a disappointed teacher. ‘Free to go.’
When she gets back, she finds Frannie and Paul by the pool. She offers to have Paul while Frannie goes for her interview, a team involved in a grotesque relay.
She sits with Paul on the sun-lounger, resting the side of her head against the top of his, breathing in his biscuity smell, thinking how she hopes he never has to go through something like this.
He turns to her and their eyes meet. ‘You’ll never know what we did for you,’ Cathy says to him, knowing he won’t understand, won’t take it in. ‘We did it because we love you.’
Paul catches the last couple of words and recognition flares his eyes with light. ‘Same!’ he half shouts, which makes Cathy laugh through her tears.
24.
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br /> Joe
Last night Joe dreamt he was arrested. A sympathetic arresting officer, who said off the record that he would’ve done the same thing for his sister. The cold slice of the handcuffs against his wrists. A stone cell with an arrow-slit window that let in a slice of sun that blinded him unless he moved around to avoid it.
He heard two phantom knocks in the night, checked outside the window twice, waking Lydia, but there was nobody there. Nobody who stayed around anyway.
The heat of the summer is always there every time Joe opens the door. It never goes away, not even overnight. He can feel his legs burning as he walks to the breakfast room. It’s the second morning, almost thirty-six hours afterwards.
The breakfast hall is a large, double-height room with floor-to-ceiling mullioned windows, made fashionable with the black frames everybody is choosing lately. Two wooden doors are propped open either side of them, letting in sunbeams. A dog roams around the stone floor, a German shepherd who is maybe one or two kilograms overweight. A spiral staircase in the corner of the large, sunlit room leads up to living quarters. It smells of fried butter, croissants, coffee and sun-cream.
Lydia helps herself to a juice, getting Joe one too, even though he needs something soothing, not acidic. She goes to look at the buffet. He rakes a hand through his hair. He’s so fucking tired. He kept thinking of things they’d forgotten last night, but he became tangled up in the thoughts. There were too many of them, overlapping and entwining together, and he was too nervous to write anything down, to make a record of it. Did Frannie get every last drop of blood? Did she clean the shovels? Will a forensic team be able to trace skin cells Will left behind on the road? Is the fire they set actually a warning sign to the police, a semaphore signal they have sent up into the night? Here is where something was covered up, they have inadvertently said. What are they going to do with Will’s wallet and the warrant? It traces him to them; they need to keep it with them, hidden, but they can’t take it through fucking airport security, can they? Joe starts sweating again as he thinks of it, sipping at his too-sweet orange juice.
That Night Page 10
