Mimi's Ghost

by Tim Parks

  But Morris had other ideas. ‘You see . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Well, you see, there’s something I remembered while I was in prison, only I don’t know if it can really be corroborated, so I don’t know if there’s any point in mentioning it.’

  Was Marangoni’s voice a trifle weary as he said: 'Tell me’? Morris decided that it was.

  ‘Forget it,’ he said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’

  ‘Signor Duckworth, if you . . .’

  That was better. ‘No, I just wondered if, when you did your forensic tests on the office, you might have found, er . . .’

  But at this precise moment, without even knocking, his wife put her head round the door. It was something that was definitely going to have to stop.

  ‘What?’ Marangoni enquired, clearly getting interested.

  ‘Guests for you,’ Paola said, but then stayed to listen. When the art of marriage, surely, was learning to give your partner the kind of breathing space even a saint would need.

  ‘Yes, whether you’d found,’ Morris continued, ‘er, any particular kind of cigarette ash in the room.’

  There was a brief pause. ‘Signor Duckworth, even if you were not yourself in a difficult position in this case, it would hardly be professional of me to reveal details of our forensic investigations to you, would it? Now why don’t you just tell me what you have to tell me.’

  ‘It’s precisely because people insist on considering me a suspect,’ Morris came back, ‘that I didn’t wish to appear to be too forward.’

  His wife, he saw, was shaking her head, a smile at once intrigued and sardonic playing over painted lips. One could only hope, once again, that imminent motherhood would give her something else to think about.

  Morris knitted his brow: ‘The fact is that when I walked into the office, you know, that morning, and found everything turned upside down like it was, I remember there was a strong smell of cheroots. You know, that really acrid sort of cigar tobacco. I mean, it was only later that I remembered it. I thought it might be worth checking whether one of these two immigrants you’ve arrested smokes that kind of thing. Though of course if you don’t have any forensic evidence to corroborate the fact. . .’

  Inspector Marangoni said he would look into the matter. Any information was always useful. So long as it really was information.

  ‘Definitely a smell of cheroots,’ Morris confirmed, and in a mixture of nervousness and euphoria got the phone down.

  Paola was still shaking her head. 'Don’t you think it would be better to leave well alone?’

  Morris was blandly quizzical. ‘How do you mean? I’m only trying to get this horrible business behind me. The more I can tell them, the more likely they are to settle the thing. Now, who are these guests?’

  Forbes and Kwame were standing in the hallway amidst the antique furniture and the smell of wax. The bespectacled Englishman was small and shabby beside the splendid stature of the black. Kwame was clearly flourishing, a brilliant set of teeth blossoming in a great white smile between fleshy lips.

  ‘Quod bonutn, felix, faustumque sir,’ announced Forbes in the same accent public-school masters no doubt used to say grace at Eton and Harrow. Turning to the wall he picked up a large flat parcel wrapped in brown paper. ‘A small token of my affection, Morris. When I discovered they wouldn’t let me visit I decided to prepare something for your return.’

  While Forbes was speaking, Kwame stepped forward and embraced Morris tightly, kissing him on both cheeks.

  ‘I is so glad the boss is back,’ he said.

  In a low voice, though he was perfectly aware that Paola was watching, Morris whispered: Thanks for not running for it. We must talk.’

  The black was still hugging him quite fiercely and with genuine joy. ‘You is the best, boss, everything going to be all right now.’

  Paola’s eyes had opened wide indeed. This would show her, Morris thought - his body filling with a pleasant warmth and sense of security - this would show her the kind of affection her husband was capable of inspiring in those he had helped. Then disengaging from the black’s embrace, he found he was looking directly at Massimina.

  He froze. These moments of sudden and complete disorientation were so frightening! But it really was her: her face, her hair, her faintly wry, rosy-lipped, lightly freckled smile. And wearing, as in his dream, the blue-and-red robe of the Vergine incoronata. What had she come to tell him? Was it a warning? Did he have to kill somebody?

  Two weeks’ work,’ Forbes smiled. ‘As you requested. Remember? A token of my thanks. By the way, I’ve had a contractor in to get a quote for the renovation work at the villa.’

  Morris had turned to paper.

  ‘Mo!’ Paola said.

  Darkness looded the brain. He almost passed out, then with an immense effort somehow forced the shadows back. From being her living face in flesh and blood, the image receded to indifferently painted canvas.

  ‘Hey, boss!’ Kwame’s hand was round his shoulders.

  Morris managed a weak smile. ‘Sorry, it’s nothing. Just a bit overwhelmed,’ he murmured, ‘by all your kindness. Can’t tell you how glad I am to be back. We’ll hang it in the bedroom.’

  Where, later on that evening, Paola protested that just because he claimed to be converted there was no reason for them not to use a condom. Morris reminded her that since she was pregnant there was hardly any point. Paola shook her head. How could she be pregnant if they’d always used something? Where was he getting all these crazy ideas? When was her last period? Morris asked. Oh, but she frequently skipped a cycle or two, he knew that,

  She stared at him. She was wearing the suspender belt and extravagant underwear she sometimes masturbated in, in front of the mirror.

  ‘Perhaps you should buy a test,’ he suggested. He had never felt less excited, at least sexually.

  This bed will have to go,’ she said. ‘It’s too old-fashioned and soggy. It turns me off. We’ll bring the other one over from Montorio.’

  Over my dead body, Morris thought, exchanging glances with Mimi over her shoulder. Looking at the picture more calmly now, he noticed that the face was rather more boyish than in the original. The effect was not unlike that of his androgynous Christ crucified that had so impressed the prison psychiatrist.

  Paola said: ‘A proposito, don’t you think it’s a bit extravagant giving that big black boy the flat?’

  ‘I saw it as a gesture of kindness.’

  ‘So why not give it to one of the others? Or to all of them. That would really piss the builder off.’

  Morris was silent. Surely the thing about a wife was that she was supposed to trust you without requiring explanations. Paola sat cross-legged on the bed, clearly trying to impress her physical presence upon him, one hand resting lightly on her furriness. When Morris still showed no interest, she said: ‘You know, if you did do in Bobo, this religious conversion thing is not such a great idea. People tend to convert when they feel guilty.’

  ‘What do you mean, if I did in Bobo!’ Morris sat bolt upright.

  She laughed. ‘Just testing.’ At the same time she was shaking her head. ‘There’s something so weird about you, Mo. I sense it. So many odd things you’ve done lately. It’s scary. Anyway, what did happen to Bobo?’

  ‘The obvious explanation is that those immigrants did him in.’

  But Morris was reaching the conclusion that, like it or not, he was going to have to distract the woman, the only way he knew how. So to resolve the difference of opinion over contraceptives, since he didn’t want to go back on having sworn not to use them, he lured her into their first anal adventure, and to his surprise found the procedure not ungratifying.

  25

  The following morning was a Sunday. Morris rose bright and early, just registering the predictable swell of superiority one got from seeing someone else, and particularly one’s wife, still clinging on to sloth. What everybody else seemed to lack was a proper sense of purpose. In this respec
t- and the thought came as a surprise to him - he couldn’t help feeling a certain affinity with the odious but undeniably purposeful Fendtsteig. Which was interesting. Then the mere fact that he had thought this new thought cheered Morris up. He pulled on an Armani silk dressing-gown, crossed himself briefly in front of Massimina and explained in a loud voice, just in case either of the two women present were listening, that he had things to look over at the company, after which he planned to go to Mass. As indeed he would every morning of his life from now on. Like the present Prime Minister, Andreotti. Morris smiled, because he recalled having read somewhere that Andreotti had been accused of more or less everything, from embezzlement, to associazione rnafiosa, to murder. And never been caught. Never, never, never been caught. Italy, it was heartening to think, was that kind of place.

  Stepping through to the bathroom, Morris washed and shaved, reflecting that in due time the dated ceramics here might profitably be replaced with a good white marble. And though he would never be seen dead with mixers or gold-and-ivory taps, something would have to be done about the fittings, which had that public-lavatory feel of the kind of unfortunate renovations people used to make in the mid and late fifties.

  He had wiped his face and was unlocking the door when something occurred to him: a tip a rather pleasant young man had given him in prison and that he had promised he would act upon just as soon as he had the opportunity. Turning back into the bathroom, he picked up a small yellow sponge on the ledge over the tub, wrung it dry and slipped it into his pocket. Downstairs, he removed a plastic bag from the roll in the kitchen and spent all of five minutes trying to get the damn thing open. Or was he fiddling with the wrong end? So much for modern convenience. Looking in the fridge, he pushed the yellow sponge into a pool of greasy juice swirling about the remains of yesterday’s celebratory roast beef (not so much an unusual culinary effort on Paola’s part, as the work of Signora Trevisan’s old donna di servizio, who appeared, most acceptably to Morris’s mind, to have come with the house). As soon as the sponge had gained a bit of weight and turned suitably brown and meat-like and sticky, Morris slipped it into the plastic bag, tied a knot at the top and put it in his jacket pocket. This was going to be fun! Quite apart from throwing another red herring into the already muddy water. Feeling light-hearted for the first time in weeks, he found his coat and stepped out into an air that smelt appropriately spring-like.

  It was around eight and there was already a brisk stream of traffic heading off for some last Easter skiing in Fendtsteig country. Morris drove carefully, relishing his freedom, the extraordinary wide whiteness of the landscape with its snow-peaked mountains to the north and the sun-bright haze of city and plain to the south. After a brief chat with Massimina on the subject of Paola’s pregnancy, which she again assured him was for real and at least two months on, Morris stopped and bought the local newspaper, where yet another pleasant surprise awaited him. Among the usual trivial tales of officials accepting bribes, babes tossed in bins and drug addicts meat-axing their parsimonious parents, was the marvellously uninspired headline: MAROCCHINO AND EGYPTIAN CHARGED WITH MURDER OF LOCAL INDUSTRIALIST.

  Morris went back into the newsagents, bought himself a bar of Swiss chocolate, then relaxed into the leather seat of the Mercedes to read at leisure. Perhaps he would call Father again if it was really promising.

  The charge, admitted the newspaper had been made despite the absence of a body. Thank heaven. But a pocket-knife had been found in the possession of the marocchino with traces of blood of the same group as that of the missing Posenato. How very interesting! His young accomplice, on the other hand, was carrying an expensive silver paperweight which was known to have been on Posenato’s desk (though Morris could remember no such thing), while both men were in possession of a modest quantity of banknotes which were found to have serial numbers similar to those in one of the company’s safes. The immigrants’ improbable story, that they had returned to Verona to file a petition for illegal dismissal and knew nothing of Bobo’s disappearance, was not felt by the polizia to carry any conviction. On the contrary, it was thought that the real reason for their return was to recover items they had hidden during their flight, perhaps even the industrialist’s Audi 100, which remained as yet undiscovered and could well contain the body. Given the seriousness of the crime, both the marocchino and his Egyptian accomplice would be tried per direttissima. That is, as soon as possible.

  Morris swallowed his chocolate and wiped his hands carefully on a handkerchief. He was at once delighted and perplexed. What, for example, was he supposed to make of ‘one of the company’s safes’? Clearly this was not the one behind the fuse box, which he had emptied himself, leaving the police nothing to match the banknotes with. While the main safe notoriously never had any money in it at all. The only explanation was thus that Bobo had given the two men some small pay-off (how unexpectedly generous of him!) from yet another safe, about which he, Morris, knew nothing at all, but which someone, presumably Antonella, had been able to tell the police about, otherwise how would they have found the notes in there? Apart from the confirmation if any was required, of the low esteem in which Bobo had held him and the extent to which the boy had been determined to hang on to all the power in the company (how many things were there Morris still didn’t know?), there was now the further problem that the police might believe that he himself had been witholding evidence from them, if nothing else, about the extent of the company’s illicit operations. And how could they believe that Azedine and Farouk would have taken only some of the money in the safe? That was ludicrous.

  Still, on the whole, it had to be excellent news, particularly the blood on the penknife. Indeed, it was news that more or less set Morris up for life, turned him into a successful man with his hands on the springs of wealth and his heart set to use that wealth wisely and generously. But then: ‘All things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.’ It was merely a question of having faith. In a sudden swelling of innocent excitement, Morris picked up the phone to share his enthusiasm first with Massimina, then in some more indirect way with Father. Forgetting that he hadn’t dialled her paradiso number for the routine call he always gave her on getting in the car, he simply pressed, for authenticity’s sake, the repeat button, and was already expressing his gratitude for the guardian angel role she was so effectively playing, when somewhere a phone began to ring.

  In heaven?

  Morris hesitated, trying to remember whether he had actually dialled any numbers on this phone himself since getting out of prison yesterday. He thought not. Then a deep voice, which was clearly not Massimina’s, yet at the same time immediately recognisable, said: ‘ Pronto.’

  Morris was taken aback.

  ‘Pronto?’ the voice repeated into what was a particularly disturbed line.

  ‘Kwame!’ Morris said. ‘Yes, look, I’m on my way over to pick you up. We’ve got stuff to do.’

  Oddly, it was as if he’d never meant to phone anybody else.

  Ten minutes later, parking in Via dei Gelsomini, Morris was pleased to see fresh graffiti on the garden wall of his old condominium, fora i neri dal veneto, it said in metre-high letters, blacks out. A neighbour coming down the short path from the main door scowled at his buon giorno, Morris smiled almost too broadly. When he got upstairs, Kwame showed him a letter that had been pushed, unsealed, under the door a week or so before.

  Egregio Signor Duckworth,

  My most sincere condolences on the loss of your mother-in-law. I hope that the unhappy event has not been too painful and upsetting for you and your wife.

  I gather from other members of your condominium that you have decided to leave Via dei Gelsomini to live in your wife’s family house. Since this is the case, I wonder if, rather than installing a tenant, which is never a welcome development in a condominium of owner-occupiers, you mightn’t perhaps find it more convenient to sell your flat back to me at whatever price you feel is fair.<
br />
  Infede,

  SILVANO CASTELLANI

  Got him! Morris was on cloud nine. Especially when he saw that Kwame was not turning the place into a pigsty at all! On the contrary, he seemed to have a far greater sense of tidiness than Paola had ever had. The rugs were all square to the wall, the spines of Morris’s precious books were perfectly flush in the shelves, and there seemed to be none of the flotsam and jetsam drifting about that one had had to get used to living with Paola: odd shoes kicked in corners, nail-file cards between the sofa cushions, etc. No, the boy was treating the place like a museum. And if it smelt faintly different than it had when he and Paola lived there, then that was simply because blacks did smell a bit different, and cooked different food and probably liked different-smelling products, cleaning agents, perfumes, shampoos and the like. The way they apparently (incredibly) liked menthol cigarettes. But then wasn’t difference the spice of life in the end? What were the neighbours so worried about? Why had the Trevisan family worried so much about him? No, there could be no doubt about who was being inhuman here! Morris himself had never shown prejudice, nor indeed done harm to anyone who dealt with him reasonably. He embraced Kwame and slapped him hard on that huge back. Presumably Paola had phoned the boy to deal with some practical issue over moving houses.

  Kwame wore a fashionable pale-blue tracksuit and a good cashmere coat, a sign that he wasn’t squandering his wages on booze and cigarettes. It occurred to Morris that, of all the people he had ever known, this big black, strangely enough, was probably the closest to himself in psyche and behaviour: an outcast who in the end was more civilised than the society which he aspired to enter, and which constantly rejected him.

  Kwame showed where somebody had thrown a stone against a shutter. Morris promised he would talk to the police about the matter. Walking back out to the car, he made a point of taking Kwame’s arm and leading him off the path for a stroll around the big condominium garden where spring flowers were just peeping through the dewy grass. Show the boy around, show the others that he had Morris’s full support. Sure enough, turning suddenly, he saw a curtain twitch. Lucia in number three. Spying. Excellent!