“Wait, signora!”
She reaches down inside her bag and pulls out a sealed brown envelope.
“You ask me to keep this safe for you? Perhaps you forget?”
She hands me the envelope.
“Oh, yes, of course. Thank you, Emilia.”
What’s inside? I rip it open: two plane tickets to London dated Thursday, 27 August, 9 a.m. That’s the morning after Beth died. One ticket is for Alvina Knightly, the other one’s for Ernesto. I check in the envelope, but that was everything. There’s no ticket for poor old Salvatore. No ticket for me as Elizabeth Caruso (no wonder that she insisted we switch passports). No ticket for Ambrogio. Well, I guess that explains that. I tuck the tickets back into the envelope. My sister had it all figured out. Though I don’t know how she’d get away with it. My corpse would’ve given her a head start, but it wouldn’t have bought her that much time. Still, desperate times call for desperate measures; even I know that by now.
“Thank you, Emilia. That’s very helpful.”
I look down at the baby for one last time. A lump in my throat. I don’t want to leave him. I never did take him to the beach. Perhaps we could keep him. . . . But then I remember the Lamborghini: I really fucking love that car.
Emilia picks up the baby and carrier and I walk with them down the drive to the road. The rain has stopped, but there’s still a fine drizzle. The cold mist chills my sunburnt skin.
“It’s OK, signora, I don’t say anything.” She puts her finger to her lips and says, “Shh.”
I watch Emilia’s back disappear as she and the baby walk off down the road. I get the feeling Emilia knows everything. She knows who I am. She knows Salvo is dead. I suppose I should kill her, but do you know what? I really don’t want to. She’s good with the kid. I feel I can trust her. I think she’ll keep quiet. It’s quicker and easier just to get out of town. I’ll come back for Ernie when this is all over. I’ll come back for him when it’s safe.
I close the front door of the villa behind me. It’s suddenly silent. Far too quiet. I miss my little son already. His chubby cheeks, his cheeky smile . . . I check Beth’s iPhone. No new messages. What about my mother? Isn’t she coming? She’s on the plane now on her way here from Oz. Oh God, this could be fucking disastrous. She could always tell me and Beth apart. Perhaps I should warn her? This is a war zone. But what would I say? It’s just like in Goodfellas. It’s just like in The Sopranos. She’d have no idea; all she watches is fucking Bake Off. She wouldn’t know what I was talking about. I don’t want to speak to her, never mind see her. But if I don’t stop her, she’ll show up at the villa and it’s all my fault if she’s shot in the head. . . .
I pace the hallway up and down. Up and down. Down and up again. This is a very important decision. She could be here in a minute, an hour. It might be useful to have her out of the way. I have to warn her. Shall I? Shan’t I? Perhaps I should just flip a coin?
Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t kill her?
Because she’s my mum?
I have to warn her, it’s the right thing to do.
On second thought, perhaps not . . .
I push through the doors and back into the living room. Nino’s frantic, looking for something, behind sofas, under tables, behind curtains. . . .
“Where is it?” he says.
“What? The painting?”
Oh, not this again. I can’t take much more. He stops and stands with his hand on his hip. Panting. Waiting. Angry frown. He does not look amused, like Queen Victoria.
“Betta. What the fuck? What have you done with it?”
“It was fake so I burned it. We can’t take it with us. We can’t leave it here.”
I watch Nino’s face turn murder-red.
“You fucking what?”
He grabs me by the throat and slams me up against the wall. The back of my head knocks against plaster. I feel his breath hot and wet on my face. He’s squeezing my neck, his body pressing into me. Then he grabs his gun and shoves it against the soft part of my throat, by my jaw.
“Say it again, what the fuck did you do?”
“I-I-I don’t know, Nino, please! Let me go.”
“The painting?” he says.
“No . . . no!” I shake my head. My skin begins to prickle with sweat. My legs begin to quiver. Shit.
Cold metal digs into my throat. My head pounds, my temples throb.
“Nino! Nino! Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!”
“Where is it?” he says. I screw up my eyes.
“It’s a fake . . . the priest said . . .”
“Is it fucking on fire?”
“It’s . . . in the garden.”
“Twenty million dollars, and it’s fucking on fire?”
Nino jabs his gun farther up in my throat, forcing the metal against my jaw. Then he suddenly releases me. He turns and runs toward the garden.
“It’s a fucking fake!” I call after.
I drop down to the floor and catch my breath. Rub my throat. Nino is hot when he’s angry.
◆
“Shit! What’s that?” I say, slamming on the brakes. I don’t like this van. If I write it off, we can go get the Lambo.
The car skids, swerves, and crashes into a tree. Nino and I fly toward the windscreen, but then our seat belts throw us back. Something shatters. The sound of smashed glass. I’ve busted the headlight, at least. The cases with the bodies thud in the trunk, and the suitcase with the money, Beth’s diamonds, and our clothes flies off the back seat.
“What the fuck?” says Nino, holding his arm with his good hand.
I rub my neck. I think I have whiplash. I must have been driving pretty fast.
“There on the road, I saw something moving.”
“That black thing?”
“That black thing.”
“It’s a fucking snake.”
“I thought so! Gross!” I say.
Nino looks at me. If looks could kill . . .
“You crashed my car because of a snake?”
“A snake in the road. I didn’t crash. It was a bump. That’s what bumpers are for.”
“You realize we’re in a hurry?”
“Is it poisonous?”
“There are men with guns who want to find us and kill us.”
“What kind of snake is it?”
“Are you listening to me?”
“What kind of snake is it?”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“OK, fine! I’m just curious. I’ve never seen a snake in the wild before. Is it poisonous?”
“Why the fuck do you care? You’re in a car.”
“All right. OK.”
“I’m fucking poisonous.”
“Fine.”
“Just drive.”
“OK.”
“You’re gonna drive? Really?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t want to get out and make friends with the snake?”
“No. I’ll just run it over. Let’s go.”
I reverse back from the tree trunk and drive down the road and over the snake. Urgh, I’ve got whiplash. I can’t move my head to the left or the right. (I might have crashed a little too convincingly.) Nino’s knuckles whiten as he grips onto his chair with his good hand.
“And watch where you’re going. Cristo!” he says. “In this country, we drive on the right.”
DAY SEVEN
Pride
“Sex, Drugs, and Murder:
What’s Not to Like?”
@Alvinaknightly69
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was Beth’s fault about the accident.
When I was little, I changed my name to Matilda. You know, Matilda, the girl in that book by Roald Dahl? She has magic powers. I didn’t change it officially, not by dee
d poll or anything like that, just at school, in the playground; I got some of the kids to call me Matilda.
It all started on our seventh birthday.
Beth had left her new scooter on the pavement outside our house and I hadn’t been able to resist. I didn’t have one of my own, you see. It was a birthday present to Beth, from Mum, and drop-dead gorgeous, shiny and red, just sitting there, waiting, begging me to take it for a spin.
I jumped on the scooter and raced down the road. Beth was standing on the pavement with a group of some kids from our school. Her friends. The popular crew. “Faster, faster!” they all shouted. So faster I went: gravel spitting, wheels shrieking, cheeks flapping and warping in the wind. It was the first time in my life that I’d ever felt free, whizzing, flying maybe thirty miles an hour? I’m good at this, I thought, I’m truly spectacular. I must be a natural. . . . “Stop!” shouted Beth “Come back, Alvie! Mum’s going to kill you! There are cars!” She was just jealous because it was her scooter. She didn’t want me to have a go. I almost made it to the end of our road, but then what?
The curb?
I don’t know.
I flipped right over the handlebars and smacked my head on the pavement, split it open at the top on the right.
WHACK!
And then nothing.
I awoke to the taste of iron and the sound of my own screams. I was only a child; I didn’t understand when the doctors talked. I didn’t know what the “prefrontal cortex” was. It didn’t make sense. All I wanted was to rip off my head and fling it somewhere far, far away so I could get some sleep.
The pain was incredible. Unbearable: a drill bearing down into my brain, day and night, night and day, day and night again. I was in the hospital for weeks, vomiting, crying, tearing my hair out, hooked up onto something that must have been morphine, glaring at the glow-in-the-dark stars some schmuck had stuck up on the ceiling. Mum went crazy, of course she did. Said it wasn’t my scooter, I was going too fast, it was all my own fault, blah, blah, blah. Elizabeth would never have been so stupid. Then she bought my sister a helmet.
When I got back to school over a month later, I told all the kids I was magic. They asked where I’d been and what had happened, so I made something up. I didn’t want to tell them I’d been lying in bed, staring at stars with tubes coming out of me. So bite me; I lied. The scar on my skull was where they’d put in the potion, where they’d done the spells. I had magic powers, like Matilda in that book; I was special. I could make pencils stand on end on the desk just by looking at them, get chalk to fly and write on the board. I didn’t have to prove it; I just said it and it was true.
Everyone forgot about it after a while, but the scar’s still there somewhere under my hair. It’s my Harry Potter lightning bolt. My own Superman S. I’m just like Samson before Delilah. The source of my powers: my unique strength. The serial killer Fred West had one just like it! Perhaps that’s the reason I am how I am? Why things have never worked out? Is that why I’m the bad one? What if it’s that and not the hearts? Perhaps if Beth had banged her head, then she’d have woken up and been me? She’d have had my miserable life? And I would have had hers?
But I do have hers!
And she was bad!
It wasn’t as black-and-white as I thought, more Fifty Shades of Grey. Beth wasn’t an angel and I’m not the devil. I’m actually quite sweet once you get to know me. Not that anyone bothers. My fingers feel beneath my hair and find the scar. Yup, it’s still there. There’s a dent in the cranium and a funny, lumpy, raised bit of skin.
You can touch it if you like, if you call me Matilda.
◆
Sunday, 30th August 2015, 5 a.m.
Taormina, Sicily
“We’ll need more than that or they won’t sink.”
“For fuck’s sake, the sun’s almost up; someone will see.”
“We can’t throw them in like that. They will float.”
“We can’t stand here in broad daylight with a bag of dead priest. Why did we come here?”
Nino and I are standing on a beach, filling the suitcases with pebbles. There aren’t any big rocks, so we’re flinging in fistfuls of stones. There isn’t much room, but Nino says we need to weigh down the cases. When bodies get old, they get kind of gassy and then they float. Apparently. The stones are cool and damp from the night before. It’s taking forever. I grab a handful of smooth, round pebbles and throw them into a bag. They make a loud clunk as they land. I scan the beach in case someone has heard us, but there’s nobody here. Nino zips up the second case and then helps me fill the last. I stand with my hands on my hips and catch my breath. Looking out to sea, I notice a tiny island attached to the land by a narrow path.
“What’s that?” I ask, pointing at the black mass looming up from the water.
“Isola Bella. What am I? A fucking tour guide? Betta, how do you not know that by now? Did you never leave that villa?” He nods at the case. I think he wants me to help. He still thinks I’m Beth. Come on, Alvie: be more Beth.
The island is probably beautiful in daylight, but at this hour, the hour before dawn, it looks like an enormous sea monster, rising up from the depths. The sun is beginning to edge over the horizon, casting a long, black shadow from the island toward where we’re standing on the beach. I light a cigarette and breathe smoke out toward the sea, studying the view.
“Beth! COME ON.”
I think he wants me to hurry up.
I bend over and grab more stones, chuck them in the suitcase so he can see that I’m helping, making myself useful.
I look up over Nino’s shoulder and draw a sharp breath. The silhouette of a man is running along the shore where the beach meets the sea. He’s getting closer and closer. Shit. I grab the lid of the suitcase and zip it closed.
“Nino,” I say, gesturing behind him, “we’ve got company.”
A dog runs up to us barking and wagging its tail. It’s a grubby-looking mongrel with straggly gray hair; it’s been for a swim in the sea. The dog is very interested by what’s in our suitcase. It’s going crazy, barking and sniffing and scratching at the lid. Its master runs closer.
“Silvio! No! Scusa mi,” says the jogger. The dog whimpers, hesitates with one paw in the air, then runs in a circle chasing its tail. “Silvio!” It scurries off. “Scusa mi. Buongiorno.”
“Buongiorno,” says Nino, with a half-hearted wave.
I stand and glare, smoking my cigarette. The man and the mongrel jog off along the beach. They get smaller and smaller. I look at Nino.
“Give me your gun.”
“What? No.”
“Give it to me. My gun’s out of bullets.”
“No way,” Nino says.
“We should kill him. Quick! He’s getting away!”
“He didn’t see anything,” says Nino.
“It looks fucking dodgy. . . .”
“We’re not killing any more people today.”
“Shame.”
“Unless they’re about to kill us.”
“OK. Fine. Whatever. We could at least have killed the dog?”
I flick my cigarette butt out toward the sea. Nino grabs another armful of rocks and throws them in the suitcase.
“We’re geologists collecting samples,” he says.
“At five o’clock in the morning?”
I should have just grabbed it and shot him myself. He saw us. He saw me. He got a good look at my face. . . .
When the suitcases are packed full of pebbles, I zip them up and together we lug the priest along the beach toward the people carrier. He’s fucking heavy. Even heavier than Ambrogio. We keep having to put the case down on the sand to catch our breath. Nino’s no help with only one arm. Useless. Really, it would be quicker to do it myself. Then, with a superhuman effort, we load the suitcase into the trunk and then run back down the beach for the oth
er two. I’m exhausted. This definitely counts as exercise. It’s like Olympic weight lifting. I’m burning more calories than running or swimming, or fucking Pilates. We haul the cases on top of the priest and then Nino sees the car.
“What the fuck did you do?”
The front of the car hangs off at an angle. The license plate has cracked. The headlights are all smashed up. It looks pretty bad. Result!
“Oh. It was just a little bump. . . .”
“It’s totally fucked, we can’t drive it like that. The police will stop us.” He pulls what’s left of the broken bumper off the car and throws it onto the backseat. Awesome.
“Oh, what a shame. We’ll have to go get the Lambo. . . .”
“Betta. Madonna! You’re driving me crazy!”
We get back in the car. I try not to look smug.
◆
“I know a place where we can dump them,” Nino says. “Take a left.”
I swerve around a sharp corner; we’re thrown by the force. Nino crashes into the door. He clutches his arm where he’s been shot and shoots me a dirty look. My driving’s like a ride at Alton Towers: Nemesis, Oblivion, or the Runway Mine Train. People pay good money to be scared on those roller coasters. Really, what is his problem? My Yves Saint Laurent tourniquet is drenched. Blood’s seeping through and dripping down his side. The car smells like a butcher’s.
“Argh!” Nino says. He pulls the shirt off his arm.
“What are you taking that thing off for? You’re going to bleed everywhere,” I say. “I don’t want that on me. I’ve only just got changed. This is Versace. Now where?”
“Straight ahead. Pass me that top,” Nino says, pointing to a scrunched-up T-shirt with his good hand. He’d pulled it off one of the guys before chopping them up. I’m impressed by his foresight.
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