Dead Man's Gift and Other Stories

by Simon Kernick

  The problem was I didn’t really have much of a plan. The easiest thing would be to break into his house at night. That way I could question him at leisure, find out if he was the killer and then finish him off. The problem was, according to the dossier, Moretti was married. It was possible the wife was involved. There aren’t that many husband-and-wife serial killers, but there’ve been a few. However, the chances were she was completely innocent, and I didn’t want her death on my conscience, not along with everything else that was already there. The alternative was to wait for Moretti to emerge from his house (assuming he was there, of course), follow him and take him out the moment an opportunity presented itself.

  However, not only was this extremely risky in a crowded city like Venice, but it also meant I would have to move fast and wouldn’t have time to question Moretti. I’d be judge, jury and executioner and, in truth, I wasn’t 100 per cent sure of his guilt. It was true that the dossier was pretty damning, but I didn’t want to be the one who got it wrong. It’s a mistake I’ve made before, and one I always swore I’d never repeat.

  I sat there waiting a long time, scanning the guidebook but always keeping half an eye on Moretti’s front door. This was another of the many logistical problems with this kind of work. It’s not easy killing someone and getting away with it. The whole operation requires endless reserves of patience, as well as cunning and luck, and where luck was concerned, I’d been riding mine for the past seven years, and probably a long time before that too. Eventually it was going to run out. And in that respect, I was glad I had the gun close to me. If it came to it, I’d kill myself, or get shot, rather than be captured by the authorities. I didn’t fear death. Not any more. My life had become too meaningless to cling to, but even so, if I had to go, I wanted it to be at a time and place of my own choosing.

  As darkness fell, lights came on inside Moretti’s place. So someone was there. Tired of sitting, I headed down the stairs to the hotel lobby, where two American couples were milling about talking loudly, as they’re sometimes wont to do. It sounded as if they’d had a good day’s sightseeing, and it made me realize how long it had been since I’d lived a normal life, travelling for pleasure rather than crime, and without having to keep my wits about me the whole time.

  I headed out the hotel’s rear entrance, which led directly onto the alleyway. It was a chilly night and, pulling up the collar of my jacket against the cold, I walked until I was level with Moretti’s front door. The nameplate read Casa Nobile, which I suppose was somewhat ironic given the alleged crimes of the occupant, and there was an illuminated buzzer beneath it, while the front door itself looked like it had been hewn from ancient oak and could have probably withstood a medieval battering ram. It had two locks that could potentially be picked, but it would take time.

  In the end I kept walking, deciding that I’d take the night off and grab a bite to eat, and a couple of glasses of decent wine. For the moment at least, I was in no hurry.

  When it happened, it happened quickly.

  The next day, after hours spent sitting at my hotel-room window while outside the sun shone down from a pure blue sky, I was just about to get up to go for a walk, already wondering whether I was wasting my time here, when Roberto Moretti walked out of his front door. Just like that. It was perfect timing. I recognized him straight away: a smallish silver-haired man, dressed in jeans and a coat that looked too thick for the time of year. He looked younger than he did in the photo and he was wearing a natural half smile as he walked up the cobbled street in my direction, as if all was well in his world.

  It’s a strange feeling, watching someone go about their business, utterly oblivious to the fact they’re being hunted, knowing that if things go according to plan, this will be their last day on earth, and it will be you that decides. It’s a power without responsibility, and it’s a dangerous thing because, like it or not, it’s intoxicating.

  But I didn’t dwell on any of that now. Feeling a burst of adrenalin, I got to my feet, threw on my jacket, zipping it up so the gun wouldn’t show, then hurried out the door. I was on the third floor, so I moved fast, using the emergency staircase and taking the steps two at a time. As a killer, you don’t want to be remembered for anything. The essential thing is never to stand out in a crowd and so, as I came out on the ground floor, I slowed my pace and strolled casually out of the back of the hotel, hanging a digital camera round my neck, which along with the already well-read guidebook and map sticking out of my pocket, made me look like any other tourist here to see the sights of Venice.

  I turned in the direction that Moretti had been going. He was nowhere in sight but that didn’t worry me. Following someone’s not an exact science and, anyway, I had time on my side. I kept walking, glancing casually up the side streets, and saw him entering the square up ahead. It was two-thirty in the afternoon and the streets were busy with tourists. There’d be no opportunity for a quick kill here. This was just an information-gathering exercise.

  Moretti kept walking. He greeted the proprietor of a pavement café who was cleaning a recently vacated table, and received an enthusiastic greeting back. Obviously Señor Moretti was a popular member of the community, and I wondered how people would feel if they knew the seriousness of the allegations that had been made against him.

  I stayed back about thirty yards as he exited the square and continued down a narrow alleyway and over a footbridge that crossed a canal. Here would actually have been a great place to do the deed, but almost immediately a young Chinese couple appeared round the corner, coming the other way.

  Even out of season Venice is a busy city, and as we continued in the approximate direction of St Mark’s Square, the numbers of tourists squeezing through the walkways increased exponentially. Everywhere looked the same too. Narrow alleys with buildings looming up on each side criss-crossed the network of canals, and it struck me that this would be a very easy place to get lost. Even if I somehow found a spot where I could take out Moretti without witnesses, there was no guarantee I’d find my hotel again, let alone get off the main island. I was, I realized, going to have to rethink my plans.

  However, the advantage of the crowds was that I blended right into them. I’d done surveillance before, back in my days in the Met. The key is never to get too close. But it was clear that Moretti wasn’t the suspicious type, either. He didn’t look round once as he made his way through the streets, stopping at a flower shop to buy a big bunch of red roses, and I wondered whether he had a lover somewhere that he was visiting. But if he did, she lived a fair way away, because he kept walking for close to half an hour until he reached a spot by the water that faced directly onto the archipelago of other islands that stretched out across the Venetian Lagoon.

  I hung back as he stopped at one of the city’s water-bus stops and bought a ticket, and watched as he walked onto a covered pontoon to wait for a boat, alongside a group of about twenty other people. Only when he’d sat down with his back to me did I buy myself an all-day travel pass in cash from the ticket vendor, but I stayed well back, wanting to keep as much distance between us as possible.

  It was a good move, as a few minutes later a two-storey boat came into dock and most of the waiting people got on, leaving only Moretti and a couple of others behind. I would have stood out if I’d been up there, and the last thing I needed was for my target to clock me now.

  It was another ten minutes before the next boat came in and, as soon as I saw Moretti stand up, I strode onto the pontoon and followed him onto the boat, watching as he went below decks to sit down. There weren’t many passengers on board, so I stayed up in the fresh air, leaning over the side with my back to the gangway, looking out to sea. As the boat pulled away, I had no idea where we were going, but it didn’t really matter. I could think of a lot worse places in the world than the one I was in now, so I’d sightsee a little, just like everyone else.

  We headed straight out to sea, passing close to a walled, square-shaped island that looked almost man-made
. I was just pulling out the guidebook to find out what it was, when the boat slowed up and the tannoy system announced that we’d arrived in San Michele.

  As we came into dock, I heard the door open behind me. Glancing round as casually as possible, I saw Moretti emerge from below decks, holding the flowers. He was going to get off. This time he did look my way and our eyes met. I gave him a blank, disinterested look and took hold of my camera. If he was getting off, so was I, and there was no way I was going to let him know I was spooked.

  We’d pulled up at what looked like an old deserted church, and whatever this island was, it wasn’t especially popular, because it seemed it was only the two of us disembarking.

  I think I must have fooled Moretti into concluding I was a tourist, because he stepped off without looking back a second time. When I exited after him, I stopped and took a couple of shots of the church, before wandering down the path in the direction he’d taken.

  That was when I found myself in a huge cemetery lined with cypress tress, containing row after row of gleaming white headstones, some of them taller than me. Ahead of me, Moretti was walking further into the cemetery, with a purposefulness to his gait that suggested he knew exactly where he was going. The only person in my line of sight, aside from a couple way off in the distance in front of one of the graves, was a workman sweeping the area in front of a mausoleum the size of a small house. If he hadn’t been there, I’d have been tempted to move in on Moretti straight away. Instead, I stopped and looked around, drinking in the peace and serenity of this place. The cemeteries I remembered from England were mostly dull, unloved and overgrown places, with crumbling grey headstones on which the inscriptions had faded to nothing. Here, it was as if there was a true reverence for the dead. The graves were pristine and looked after. Flowers adorned most of them, and it made me feel a little uneasy that I was in this city to add to their number.

  And yet I also knew this was my best chance to do what I’d come here to do, so I waited until Moretti was a good fifty yards ahead, then started after him. On one side, the cemetery opened out into a huge lawn covered in graves where a handful of people paid their respects, while on the other, there were lines of white marble-fronted memorial walls twelve feet high, filled with the tombs of the dead.

  Moretti turned into a path between two of the walls and disappeared from view. When I passed the same spot, he was already turning another corner.

  I followed the path he’d taken, and I felt my heart beating faster. This was it. The place where I’d find out whether or not he was Erin Darnell’s killer. I increased my pace, my feet crunching on the gravel. Behind me, the lawn of graves disappeared and the silence descended. The walls were like a maze and there was no one else around, so I partially unzipped my jacket so that I could go for my gun fast.

  I turned the next corner and saw him. He was alone in a small, enclosed area, standing in front of a marble headstone, his head bowed. As I watched, he crouched down and laid the flowers against it, before standing back up again. My shoes crunched on the gravel and he turned my way, recognizing me immediately from the boat.

  He knew there was something wrong. How could he not? I was no longer wearing the blank, disinterested look. Now I was the hunter, and I knew it showed on my face.

  There was no way back now and, making my decision, I pulled the gun from the inside of my jacket and strode towards him, pointing it at his head.

  He gasped and put his hands up to defend himself, in that futile way some people do when facing death. ‘Per favore, non farme de male,’ he begged, eyes wide with fear.

  I felt a twinge of humanity then. Some semblance of the man I’d once been when I’d believed in upholding the law. Coupled with the need to know the truth.

  So I stopped three yards away from him, still pointing the gun at his head, and immediately broke one of my cardinal rules. Never get in a conversation with someone you’ve come to kill, especially in a public place. ‘Señor Moretti, you need to answer for the murder of Erin Darnell,’ I told him in English, knowing from the dossier that he spoke it fluently.

  I thought he’d immediately protest his innocence. The guilty usually do, especially when they’re looking down the barrel of the gun, and it would definitely have made my job harder because, close up, Moretti looked much more like an old man, with his white, nicotine-stained beard, deeply lined face and sad watery eyes – not the kind of man it’s easy to kill.

  But he didn’t protest his innocence. Instead he lowered his hands and said: ‘I have already answered for her death.’

  That was when I should have pulled the trigger.

  But I didn’t. ‘How so?’ I asked him.

  ‘Not in the way that you think,’ he said, calmer now. ‘This grave here belongs to my son. I never touched that poor girl. It was he who killed her. His mother and I never knew it at the time.’ He took a deep breath and spoke hurriedly, knowing his life depended on it. ‘She disappeared when we were holidaying in Honduras, but there was no reason to suspect that Paolo was involved. He always seemed a good boy. Even when the girl’s remains were found close to the house we’d been staying in a few years ago, we still didn’t suspect. Why should we have done? It was nothing to do with us.

  ‘But then two years ago another girl went missing close to where we have a home in Como at a time when Paolo was staying there alone, and it finally dawned on his mother and me that perhaps he wasn’t such a good son after all.’ Moretti sighed. ‘We thought long and hard before we confronted him about it and, when we did, he denied everything and accused us of being awful parents for even thinking he could do such a thing.

  ‘We even doubted it ourselves, but then a few weeks later, Paolo took his own life. He left us a note admitting what he’d done, and apologizing for the severity of his crimes. In the letter he said he had urges he couldn’t control, and that now that we, his parents, knew of them, he could no longer live with the shame.’

  I looked down at the marble headstone, where the photograph of a dark-haired young man with a smiling face looked back at me. Beneath it, engraved in the stone, were the words ‘Paolo Gianfranco Moretti. Nato Febbraio 1978. Morto Giugno 2006.’ I remembered from the dossier that the twelve-year-old girl had gone missing in Como in April 2006, so the timing of his son’s death tallied with Moretti’s story.

  The son didn’t look like a murderer. But then he wasn’t going to, was he? As Bob Darnell had pointed out, and as I’d always known, they often don’t.

  And now I was left with a real problem. No one was paying me to kill the man in front of me, and it appeared that he was innocent of any wrongdoing. Erin’s killer might have avoided justice, but he was dead and beyond the reach of anyone. It was over.

  Unless of course Moretti was lying.

  We stared at each other. I kept the gun pointed at him. He remained calm, yet seemingly resigned to whatever fate I decided for him, but I think my eyes must have betrayed my own doubt.

  In the end, I made my decision and lowered the gun. There was no need for any more killings. Even if Moretti had known more about the murders than he’d let on, he’d been punished enough. At least as far as I was concerned.

  His shoulders slumped and he visibly relaxed. ‘Please tell whoever hired you to kill me that they have the wrong person. My son died young, like his victims. He faces divine justice now.’ With that, he walked slowly past me and back the way we’d both come in, his head bowed.

  I watched him go, not sure what, if anything, to do before slipping the gun – useless now – back inside my jacket.

  With a sigh, I turned and looked at the grave of Paolo Moretti, and the dozen red roses resting against it. It seemed an inappropriate way to mourn a child killer, with flowers and a lavish headstone. Something else occurred to me then. The body of the girl who’d disappeared near Como had never been found. So how did Moretti and his wife know that their son had killed her? And why had no attempt been made to alert the authorities to what had happened, so that at l
east there could be some attempt to find her body. It was selfish behaviour at best, and it left me feeling uneasy.

  It was then that I saw it.

  The gravestone next to Paolo’s belonged to Anna Louisa Moretti – Roberto Moretti’s wife. I frowned, looking closer. According to the inscription, she’d died in January 2007, just a few months after her son. Darnell’s dossier was clearly out of date, since it made no mention of either death. More importantly, Moretti had come here and placed flowers on Paolo’s grave, but not hers. It might have been nothing, but something about this didn’t sit right with me, and suddenly I wished I hadn’t let Moretti go so easily.

  I walked back fast through the cemetery, past the field of headstones, looking for any sign of him, but the wily sod had disappeared, and when I got back to the jetty it was empty, and a water bus was just pulling away.

  I saw him then, at the rear of the boat, his silver hair swept by the breeze, looking back at me. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but there was a look of triumph on his face, as if he knew he’d out-witted me.

  And he had.

  Because right then I was absolutely certain he was the man who’d killed Erin Darnell.

  4

  Cursing my decision to let him walk without even taking his phone from him, I waited impatiently for the next boat, knowing how exposed I was out here. The only thing going in my favour was that Moretti had little to gain, and quite a lot to lose, by telling the authorities I’d threatened him with a gun. After all, he wouldn’t want the police probing too deeply into the reasons why. Still, it seemed expedient to ditch the pistol, and I came close to throwing it in the sea there and then, but stopped myself. In the end, I felt safer armed than unarmed.