The Names of the Dead

by Wignall, Kevin

  He looked at her and smiled. “You know why I have to go there, right?”

  “Because your son is there.”

  He nodded. His son was in Milan. A son he hadn’t even known about until a few weeks ago, but still his. And once more he wished that he could speak to her, to tell her she didn’t need to worry, that he got it now, that he finally understood.

  Forty

  Wes took the elevator up the side of the Duomo, then joined the rest of the tourists as they filed along the open-air walkways and climbed the steps amid ornately carved pinnacles and flying buttresses. Finally he emerged onto the roof itself, the main spire clad in scaffolding at the far end, tourists walking about or sitting on the two sides sloping down gently from the apex.

  He was there for a couple of minutes, looking out across the city and down at the square far below, before he realized Alina Manzoni was already there. She approached him and kissed him on both cheeks before standing back.

  “Hello, Wes. I’m so sorry about everything that’s happened.”

  “So am I.”

  She was ridiculously glamorous, ridiculously beautiful. She was dressed casually in jeans and sneakers and a striped T-shirt, her long hair catching in the slight breeze, and yet she still looked like a model in a photoshoot.

  She looked around. “It’s a beautiful place, isn’t it?”

  Wes nodded. It struck him as funny, that Mia had asked him a few times if he wanted to visit various churches and cathedrals with her, and here he was at last, albeit on his own.

  “You know there’s a rumor that this cathedral was dedicated to the devil?”

  She smiled but didn’t respond. She was Milanese, after all, so she probably knew more about it than Wes did.

  “How did you know to look for me?”

  “When you met with Rachel, wherever it was, you brought her a postcard of this place. It was among the belongings left in her hotel room safe in Granada. I wondered if she’d left it there as a message, but I doubt it somehow.”

  Alina nodded. “We met in Barcelona. She took the train with Ethan. I flew in, but took the train home. We had the paperwork ready—you know Roberto’s a lawyer—so it was actually quite easy. And it was the way she wanted.”

  “She knew they were gonna kill her?”

  “No, I don’t think so. She feared that might be the case. She knew she was getting close to the truth about what happened to you. She had one person she needed to meet, the final piece of the puzzle. The idea was to leave Ethan with us for a few weeks, and seeing the way she was in Barcelona, I think she honestly believed she would come back for him.”

  He couldn’t imagine the pain Rachel would have experienced if she hadn’t believed that. How could she have handed over the son she’d so desperately wanted, believing she’d never see him again?

  “But you said she completed the paperwork.”

  “A precaution, just in case, like writing a will. She knew we couldn’t have children of our own, so it was easy for us—he’s such a sweet boy.”

  “Well, I’m sure I wasn’t a monster from the beginning either.”

  She laughed, but then saw he was being serious and said, “You’re not a monster, Wes. It’s true, there’s something . . . detached in you. She often talked about it, but she also said it was just part of the work you did, the way you were trained.”

  Wes had thought that himself in the past, but he knew now that it wasn’t true—the things he’d heard in the last few days had been enough to remove the scales from his eyes. Maybe Patrice had been made into the man he’d become, but Wes had been born with it already inside of him.

  He shook his head. “She was being diplomatic, or she was lying. And I’m mad that she put herself in danger like that. I wasn’t worth it.”

  “She thought so.”

  “Not enough to entrust our son to me. He is my son?”

  “Of course.” She smiled, full of love for the child. “He looks so much like you. It worried her at times, but he’s really so sweet-natured, so loving . . .” She stopped, perhaps seeing the implications of what she was saying. “It wasn’t that she didn’t trust you to . . . You know, she thought you would be in prison for another two years, and even then, she couldn’t be sure.”

  It hadn’t been that, and Wes knew it. Rachel had loved him—it was the only explanation for why she’d tried so hard to clear his name. He’d loved her too once, as much as he knew how to love anyone, and it still troubled him that he’d so easily learned not to love her during his time in prison.

  She had loved him, but she’d loved her son more, as was only natural, and in the event of her own death, she’d wanted to protect that sweetness of character she saw in Ethan. Ironically, Rachel, too, had been possessed of some of the same cold detachment as Wes, just enough to analyze her options with a cool gaze. She’d known exactly what she was doing.

  “How safe are you at the moment, Wes?” He looked at her questioningly. For the first time, he noticed that Alina was nervous. Not scared like the people he’d encountered these last weeks, but fearful in a different way. “I mean, I know legally your sentence was cut, but you think they killed Rachel, so, I just wonder—”

  “Alina, I’m not gonna take him from you. I don’t know how safe I am, but that has nothing to do with it. I want him to be Rachel’s son, not mine—I’m not . . . Well, she knew what she was doing, that’s all there is to it. She knew.”

  It was only now that he could see how much this meant to her. She started to cry and he held her for a minute while she sobbed and thanked him again and again. Even after these few weeks, she’d been so afraid of losing Ethan, and it was amazing for him to experience her relief. He’d thought of Mia as being alien, and yet he felt that way himself now, like someone who didn’t fully understand normal human emotions, a sensation that only reinforced that he’d made the right decision.

  And, unexpectedly, he thought again of sitting many years ago on that hillside in rural Georgia, the pale and stony landscape stretching out before him, the car lying on its roof and the little girl screaming and screaming. He didn’t feel like he was that person anymore, but in truth, he couldn’t be sure. Maybe that person would always be within him.

  Alina broke away but held onto his hands.

  “But we can keep in touch, yes?”

  “Of course. And if you ever decide you can’t . . .”

  He stopped, because looking at her face, so suffused with love, he knew she’d never change her mind about this arrangement, about the gift her best and oldest friend had bestowed upon her. She turned now, looking across the rooftop, and waved at someone she saw there.

  Wes looked too, and saw a young woman at the far end of the cathedral roof, up on the sloped surface with a very small boy. He didn’t know why it had never occurred to him, that she might bring Ethan along.

  “Is that him?”

  He looked at the little figure, pointing something out to the woman, presumably a nanny. And Wes couldn’t see him clearly from that distance but he was instantly overcome, emotion swelling up inside him, full of curiosity and nerves and longing—

  “You want to meet him?”

  She was about to raise her hand again, but Wes was quick to say, “No! No.” He smiled at her. “I guess I’m a little human after all. I’ll be able to walk away from here, Alina, because I know it’s what Rachel wanted me to do, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that if I know what I’m walking away from. Not yet. It’s better this way.”

  “I understand.”

  She hugged him again, pulling tight, but then he broke away and stepped back, once, then again, and avoided looking toward the other end of the roof.

  “Thanks, Alina.”

  She looked quizzically. “You’re thanking me?”

  “Yeah. I’m thanking you, for being there for her, for being a friend.” He took another step away. “Take care.”

  “You too. Bye, Wes.”

  He turned and walked away, and when h
e found a line of people waiting for the elevator, he descended by the steps instead, wanting to remove himself as quickly as possible from the temptation of ruining other people’s lives.

  And he didn’t look back at the cathedral as he walked away from it, even as he wondered if they were still up there on the roof, if Alina might be holding Ethan close and pointing to the square far below and the tiny people coming and going.

  He was struggling even now against an urge to turn back. He thought he’d done the best thing for his son’s future, but he couldn’t be sure. Would Ethan grow up bitter and resentful knowing that Wes had left him? Maybe, but what chance would he ever have with Wes? Rachel had answered that question—it was why she’d made the decision for him, and why he had to stick with it and keep walking.

  He walked all the way back to the hotel and into the ornate lobby lounge, where tea was being served. It was full of highly maintained Italians and Russians, stylishly dressed, many of them surrounded by shopping bags from the expensive stores nearby.

  Then he saw Mia and he instantly felt more at peace with himself. A tiered afternoon tea was sitting on the table in front of her, untouched. She smiled when she saw him, and as he sat down she picked up the teapot.

  “Shall I pour?”

  “Sure.”

  The idea of pouring tea seemed to entertain her somehow, and she was smiling to herself as she said, “Did you see your ex-wife’s friend and your son?”

  “Yes, I did. He’ll be staying with them.”

  “Sugar?”

  “No, thanks.”

  She placed his teacup in front of him. “Where shall we go now?”

  He idly took one of the dainty sandwiches and placed it on a plate. He didn’t feel much like eating but he didn’t want Mia to have an excuse to abstain. And it pleased him when she, too, took a sandwich.

  “I have to go to Switzerland, just to visit the bank. It’s actually not far from here. But after that, I’m not sure.”

  “I liked the black people.”

  He couldn’t help but laugh a little.

  “You mean Patrice’s friends, in Lisbon?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. So maybe after Switzerland we can go back to Lisbon.”

  “Really?”

  “Why not. We have to be somewhere.”

  She smiled broadly. For a moment he thought she was going to hug him, but of course, she didn’t. Instead, she took a bite from her sandwich, still smiling, and then she reached out with her other hand and pushed the bible along the banquette toward him.

  He pulled the bookmark, opening the bible there on the seat rather than picking it up. He read the words that had been underlined and nodded to himself.

  Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

  Yes, maybe there was some truth in that—life was full of unexpected turns. He had no idea what the future held, just as he had no way of predicting whether he’d made the right decision for Ethan, so maybe it was pointless even to think about it.

  A month or so back, a random assortment of people had stopped by a quiet café on a peaceful sunny morning. A mother and her child, a college couple, a young man with dreams of becoming a spy, a woman writing postcards to herself. They had all stopped there and they had died as a result. There was no planning for that.

  He guessed all anyone could ever do was make the right choice in the moment. And in this moment, Wes believed he’d made the right choice. So they would finish their tea, and tomorrow they would make for Switzerland and then Lisbon, and they would keep going like that, for as long as the road opened up before them.

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks, as ever, to my agent, Deborah Schneider, and everyone at Gelfman Schneider/ICM Partners. Thanks also to Laura Deacon and the superb team at Thomas & Mercer. And thanks, finally, to my readers, old and new, who make all of this possible—I dedicate this book to you.

  About the Author

  Kevin Wignall is a British writer, born in Brussels in 1967. He spent many years as an army child in different parts of Europe and went on to study politics and international relations at Lancaster University. He became a full-time writer after the publication of his first book, People Die (2001). His other novels are Among the Dead (2002); Who is Conrad Hirst? (2007), shortlisted for the Edgar Award and the Barry Award; Dark Flag (2010); The Hunter’s Prayer (2015, originally titled For the Dogs in the USA), which was made into a film directed by Jonathan Mostow and starring Sam Worthington and Odeya Rush; A Death in Sweden (2016); The Traitor’s Story (2016); A Fragile Thing (2017); and To Die in Vienna (2018).