by Jessie Keane
‘Dirty whore,’ he groaned. ‘Dirty fucking whore!’
Maria lay there sobbing as Vittore pulled out of her, zipped his trousers, scrambled to his feet.
‘Basta! Get this place cleaned up, for God’s sake,’ he yelled above her crying, and went off into the bathroom to clean up.
He slammed the door shut after him, still furious, and kicked the white-painted wooden bath panel. It rattled, and one end flopped out of position.
‘Madonna!’ Vittore cursed loudly, and stooped down to see what was happening, had the screw come loose?
But there was no screw there, just the hole where it should be. He looked around on the floor: nothing. He pushed the panel back into place, but it swung out again at the tap end, leaving a gap six inches wide this time. Vittore’s eyes caught a glint of something in the gap – maybe plastic or silver. He reached in, and pulled out a foil packet of pills. Looked at it, and realized.
That bitch.
Maria lay there stunned, wondering why the man she had once thought she loved could only achieve an erection when he beat her, shouted out his hate for her, called her a dirty whore. She sat up slowly, her face burning, her thighs trembling from the force he’d used on her.
I hate him, she thought. I hate him and I hate her, that old bitch. We will never be free of her.
It galled her that Vittore hadn’t had the guts to break away from Mama Bella after they’d married. Maria had envisaged a home of her own, but what had she got? A few rooms inside Mama’s own home, so Bella could keep control of her favourite boy – and of his wife. Bella bullied her mercilessly; nothing Maria ever did was good enough. All it took was a few ‘spasms’ of Bella’s supposedly frail heart (which to Maria’s knowledge had never been proven to be frail) and Vittore caved in, agreeing that he and his new wife would stay under the family roof.
Numbly she sat up, crawled aching and sore to her feet.
She wished – so much – that they had buried Vittore today, not Tito.
Oh yeah – and that fucking old bitch Bella. She wished they’d put her in the ground too. That day couldn’t come soon enough.
21
Naples, 1927
‘The man’s untouchable,’ said Gilberto.
‘You think?’ asked Astorre.
‘For sure.’
Despite the trauma of his father’s death, Astorre was doing well in his business life. He had sussed out Corvetto’s security arrangements and seen how good they were, how thorough. But he would wait. He was of the opinion that everyone was vulnerable, everyone had a weak spot; it was just a matter of finding Corvetto’s, and he had all the time in the world to do that. Revenge truly was a dish best served cold.
Astorre’s home life was troubled. After successfully delivering Tito, who was a strong boy, Bella had a succession of miscarriages and one painful, awful stillbirth – a daughter! – that broke her heart clean in two. Finally, after an eight-year wait, there came another son, a living son, Vittore, and Bella couldn’t believe it; she doted on this unexpected child, lavished all her love on him. Even her husband felt pushed aside by this new, tiny interloper and when their love life resumed after a year or so Astorre still felt unwelcome in his own bed. So he took a mistress, and seldom attended to his marital duties with Bella.
More miscarriages followed Vittore’s birth; but after a twelve-year gap at last the news was good. Bella was pregnant again, and this time it would be the girl she longed for.
‘Look how the baby carries all the way round, not just a little bump at the front,’ she said gleefully to anyone who would listen, when she was huge and in the seventh month of her pregnancy. ‘It’s a girl. A little bambina, at last.’
When she went into labour, there was a ferociously long struggle to bring her daughter into the world. Exhausted, wrung out with the agony and blood loss, Bella gave one final desperate push and then looked down as the child spiralled out of her body. Her triumph turned to ashes in her mouth as she saw squirming there not the girl she had wanted so much but a puny little boy. Her heartbreak at being denied a daughter yet again was compounded by the doctors warning her and Astorre that this should be her last child.
‘But I want a little girl to complete my family,’ she cried when they broke the news.
‘It’s not safe,’ said the doctor, and she was forced to accept that.
But it grieved her, the lack of a daughter. She had Tito. And she had Vittore, her favourite, her own little love. Now she had baby Fabio too, but he was a disappointment, always pushed away. She craved a girl. Longed for one. Without a daughter, her family would never be complete.
22
1975
Someone was knocking at the front door. No, they were hammering on it, in perfect counterpoint to the steady throbbing of Kit’s head.
‘You’d better open this door,’ said a voice. ‘Or else I’m going to get Rob to kick it off its hinges.’
Kit closed his eyes again. Now where was he . . . ? He looked around him with sore eyes. He was in his own living room. He was dressed. He had . . . oh yeah. He’d got out of the shower, got himself all ready to roll, and then he’d come downstairs, sat down on his huge brown leather sofa – and fallen asleep. And there was the bottle, right there beside him, his ever-useful and strictly non-judgemental companion.
He reached for it.
Empty.
Fuck.
‘Kit! Open this bloody door! I know you’re in there!’
Kit groaned and lurched to his feet. Staggered. Thought that he was going to fall straight back down, arse over tit. But no: slowly, the room stopped revolving. He tottered out to the hall, over to the door, and opened it.
Daisy was standing there, Rob at her shoulder. She looked flushed, angry, anxious.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Kit, turning away from the door and going back into the living room. He went to the sofa and flopped down upon it.
Daisy came and stood in front of him. Her eyes took in the state of him, the empty whisky bottle by his side.
‘Just look at you,’ she said in disgust.
Kit got his eyes open again. Stared up at her. ‘Shouldn’t you be stacking a shelf somewhere?’
‘Oh, shut up. Ruby was worried about you, she asked me to come, see you were OK.’
‘And you brought Rob, too. All right, mate?’ Kit raised an unsteady hand.
Rob said nothing.
‘As you can see, I’m perfectly bloody fine,’ said Kit. ‘So the pair of you can fuck off.’
‘We’re not going anywhere. Make some coffee, Rob,’ said Daisy, sitting down on the sofa and tossing the empty bottle aside.
‘Yeah, hurry up and do the business, Robbo old son,’ Kit shouted after Rob as he went out to the kitchen. ‘Do as the boss lady says.’
Daisy’s flush deepened. ‘Don’t be horrible to Rob,’ she snapped. ‘He’d take a bullet for you – don’t you dare make fun of him.’
‘Ah.’ Kit laid his aching head on the sofa and closed his eyes with a smile. ‘You got a crush on him, aintcha? I can tell, Daise.’
Daisy surged to her feet. ‘Will you shut up?’ she yelled. ‘Don’t you realize the trouble you’re in?’
Kit opened his bleary eyes and squinted up at his twin sister – not that they looked alike, apart from the blue eyes. Hers were clear and bright; his, from a brief glance in the bathroom mirror earlier today, looked like two orange-red piss-holes in the snow.
Oh, he knew he was in trouble. He knew that Vittore Danieri was going to be looking to carve a good-sized chunk of meat out of his arse for turning up at the funeral. But somehow he couldn’t get himself to care.
Rob was out in the kitchen, filling the kettle and putting it on to boil, then opening cupboards, rattling cups. All Kit wanted was to close his eyes again, forget it all.
I seek oblivion, he thought with sudden clarity. I seek death.
But there was no eternal peace here, only Daisy pacing back and forth. After a bit Rob came in with a mug of
black coffee in his bear-like paw and placed it on the coffee table, not looking his boss in the eye.
Daisy was still stalking about the room, shooting filthy looks at Kit. ‘Ruby told me what you did. Turning up at the funeral. How the hell could you do something so stupid?’
‘Stupidity comes naturally to me. Didn’t you know?’
‘Oh, do shut up.’
‘Oh, do shut up,’ said Kit, mimicking her.
Daisy blushed bright red. Her eyes turned frosty. He’d hit a nerve. ‘Don’t mock me,’ she ordered, moving in on him. For a moment she looked mad enough to slap the crap out of him.
‘Have some coffee,’ advised Rob, standing over his boss with arms folded.
‘Fuck your coffee,’ said Kit. ‘And fuck you too.’
Rob shook his head. He looked more sad than angry.
‘Mate, you got to stop this,’ he said, ‘or one day Vittore’s going to be on you and you’ll be too pissed to even realize you’re dead.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘You’re such an idiot,’ said Daisy. ‘Ruby told me what Vittore did when you—’
‘And did she tell you that none of the Danieri brothers were responsible for Michael’s death?’ asked Kit. He reached for the coffee, took a sip. Sour. Horrible. He put it back down.
‘She did,’ said Daisy. ‘Yes.’
‘And I’m supposed to believe that?’
‘What reason do you have to disbelieve it?’ asked Daisy, starting her pacing again. ‘Apparently the Danieri boys hold their mother in very high esteem. Something you might find hard to understand, I imagine.’
Kit stiffened. ‘Hey, don’t start on me. Start on her over in Marlow, the great Ruby Darke. I’m not the one who abandoned their kid.’
‘I’m not getting into all that again,’ sighed Daisy. They’d argued about this on more than one occasion, her saying that Ruby had no choice, her family had turned on her when they found out she was pregnant out of wedlock and there was no way she could raise two babies all by herself, not in those days. To which Kit always said bullshit.
‘Good,’ said Kit. ‘Because I don’t fucking well want to hear it, not from you, not from anyone. Got that?’
Daisy and Rob looked at each other.
‘Mate . . .’ started Rob, turning despairing eyes on Kit.
‘Kit,’ said Daisy. ‘You’ve insulted Vittore’s family by doing what you did.’
Kit shrugged and squinted up at her. His sister, his twin. OK, she might have got the glamorous end of it growing up – the pony clubs, the coming-out balls, all that hoity-toity shit, but she was no fool; you didn’t have to draw her any pictures. He had another slug of the coffee. It was still the pits.
Daisy sat down beside Kit. ‘I loved Michael,’ she said quietly.
‘We all did,’ said Rob.
Kit looked at Daisy’s face. Then at Rob’s.
‘So who’s going to say it?’ asked Kit.
‘What?’ asked Daisy.
‘What?’ asked Rob.
‘The bleeding obvious. If those Eyeties didn’t do it, who did?’
‘We all want to know the answer to that question,’ said Daisy. It tormented her, the thought of Michael dying alone in an alley, shot through the head – and she had seen the fallout, the heart-rending grief Ruby had suffered when she lost him. She wanted to find out who did this. Not for revenge. For her own peace of mind. ‘Don’t you want to know? Kit?’
‘Of course I fucking well do,’ he said. Took another swig, finished the coffee. His head still hurt. He still wished he could just sleep, die, anything rather than have to face what he knew he must, this thing that would hound him to the grave if he didn’t hunt it down and wring the truth out of it. It hurt him, destroyed him, that someone had killed Michael, rubbed out his life. And the thing that made it worse? It had happened on his watch.
‘So who the hell did it? If they didn’t?’ he said aloud, and clutched at his head.
‘We don’t know. But for sure we have to find out,’ said Rob.
Rob knew how badly Michael’s passing had hurt Kit. It was as if he’d been locked into a downward spiral ever since, added to which he now had Vittore out for his blood. The way things were going, Kit wouldn’t live long enough to track down Michael’s killer. Kit and Rob had almost grown up together working for Michael. He didn’t want to lose him.
I’ll watch his back, he promised himself. What more can I do?
‘Where do we start?’ asked Kit. ‘We don’t have a fucking clue, do we?’
‘He had enemies,’ shrugged Rob.
‘We all got those.’
‘We have to start thinking,’ said Daisy firmly. ‘And stop drinking.’
23
Fabio was waiting, spying out the land, taking it nice and easy. He had his stake money together, his own money, nothing from the family coffers, nothing that Vittore with his smug superior smirk dealt out to him from petty cash like he was doing him some sort of fucking favour.
He hated Vittore, always had. Tito had been OK, had a bit of life in him, but Vittore was like a wet tea towel over a chip-pan fire: he seemed to extinguish life wherever he went. Yet despite that, Vittore was Mama’s little darling. Not her youngest son, no. He’d been ousted by Bianca, the daughter Mama had always wanted – only she wasn’t a real daughter, just a bought-in one, a ready-made thing – like shop cake.
Feeling the anger rise inside him, Fabio reminded himself that none of that mattered any more. He was his own man. Let Vittore worry about the family, the honour of the Danieris and that shit Kit Miller. Fabio didn’t care. He had other concerns.
As he came downstairs into the hall, he could hear Mama in the kitchen making breakfast. From her sitting room drifted the sounds he’d grown up with, the sounds of old Italy, someone singing ‘Bésame Mucho’. Poor old Mama, clinging on to old ways and old days. Bella’s speech was still heavily accented, but her sons had quickly smoothed out their vowels and now sounded pretty much English.
As he reached the bottom stair, pulling on his jacket, he paused to admire his reflection in the mirror there and was gratified to see that the caramel-coloured flecks of wool in his Donegal tweed jacket exactly matched the lustrous brown of his eyes. Then he saw Maria, wearing a pink silk house robe, come out of the hall door that led into the set of rooms she and Vittore shared. Poor cow, didn’t even have a home of her own. What kind of a man went on living under his mama’s roof after he tied the knot? Yeah, Mama had gone all hysterical when Vittore took Maria for a bride; there’d been tears, heart murmurs, all that crap – but a real man wouldn’t have caved in and thrown her a sop by promising to go on living here with her.
‘Hey, Maria,’ he greeted her, wishing she hadn’t come out at this precise moment. He had lots to do today, and he always found his brother’s wife incredibly dull. He liked vibrant, chatty women, and that wasn’t Maria at all. She was pretty and she had a dynamite body, all hot curves and that great fall of black hair, but she had no conversation whatsoever.
Then he saw her face, the bruise on her cheek, the eye-socket above it turning black. Maria clutched her robe closed at the neck, shrinking back against the door she’d just come through.
‘Wow! What happened to you?’ he asked, half-smiling.
‘Nothing,’ she said, her gaze averted.
‘It don’t look like nothing.’
‘I fell over, it was stupid of me. I hit my face on the fireplace.’
‘Ah. Well, be more careful. You want to put something on that, take down the swelling,’ said Fabio cheerfully, thinking that robe revealed more than it concealed, and he was right: she had a great body.
‘Maria!’ It was Mama, appearing in the kitchen doorway, her voice like the crack of a whip.
Vittore saw Maria literally shrink back.
‘Isn’t it time you got dressed? And what happened to your face?’ asked Bella.
‘She fell over,’ said Fabio, since Maria appeared to have been struck dumb.
‘That was careless.’ Bella made a shooing motion. ‘Go on, Maria, get dressed, I need a hand in here . . .’
As Bella bustled off into the kitchen, Fabio’s eyes met Maria’s. He thought she looked like a whipped dog. But she wasn’t his concern.
‘I’ll catch you later,’ he called over his shoulder as he headed out the front door.
‘Where’s Fabby?’ asked Bella, reappearing in the kitchen doorway a moment later.
‘He went out,’ said Maria.
‘That boy!’ tutted Bella, before turning impatiently to her daughter-in-law. ‘What are you doing, still standing there? Get some clothes on, hurry up.’
Maria retreated to her own small section of the house, closed the door and leaned against it. If only she’d married Fabio instead of Vittore – she wouldn’t be living in this place, that much was certain.
24
Naples, 1946
After baby Fabio’s arrival, the old safe Italy had been blasted into smithereens. The beginning of the end had come last year, when Mussolini, Il Duce, had been captured by the communists, the fucking partisans. Il Duce had been tried, killed and then his corpse strung up in Milan, with his mistress and colleagues hanging at his side.
The war was over now, but the devastation remained. Poverty stalked the streets, a poverty so extreme that even the fish in the aquarium, rare expensive species that had been kept safe for years, were hauled out and eaten. Orphans and scugnizzi – the children who lived in the gutters of Napoli – hustled into restaurants and were thrown hunks of bread if they were lucky, maybe a dollop of the soft cheese they made on Vesuvius, the one with lamb’s intestines added.
