I had shutters like these when I lived in Grasse. Now if they’re just the same…
I run to the front of the house and grab a rusting bar of metal; then I jog back and peer through between the louvered slats.
I force the bar into place. If I’m right, then there’s a retaining clip, somewhere… here! The bar pops up with a clang. “Yes,” I exclaim as I swing the shutters open.
Yellow Provencal curtains glare back at me. I run back to the front of the house and grab an empty crate.
With it propped against the wall I can just see through the tiny gap at the top where the curtains meet. I lift a hand to shade my eyes from the sunlight.
Everything is vague and yellow in the filtered light. I make out Dante’s bed, unmade but empty. I lean to the left and on the right-hand side of the room I can see a chair covered in clothes.
I hear the banging again, so I lean to the right to try and check out the other side, but I lose my balance and have to jump down.
“What if they come home,” I think. “How are you going to explain climbing crates, peering through gaps in curtains?”
I move the crate to the right, and climb up again. Now I can see the bookcase on the left-hand wall and the radiator. And at the base of the radiator, a shape – a pile of sheets, no, a blanket… I cup my hands and strain to see but it’s so hard – the sun is right against the side of my face.
And then the thing moves. It jumps and jerks, and as it does so it makes the clanking noise. For an instant I think it’s…
“Dante!” I mutter, ducking out of sight.
But my shadow is all over the window. My silhouette is printed across the curtains like a big Mark was here sign. So I straighten, take a deep breath and brazenly knock on the window.
“Is anyone in there?” I shout.
The clanking repeats, but there is no other reply, so I peer in again.
It takes a while for my eyes to readjust, but this time I make out a profile – a head. There is someone in there; I can see him now, straining and trying to turn to face me. I blink hard and lean further. I bash my forehead hard against the window.
At the sound or maybe at the sight of me, the shape becomes frantic, jerking around in a mad clanking bundle.
I chew the inside of my mouth. I’m not quite sure what I’m seeing yet, but it’s fucked up. It’s not a normal thing.
“Hello?” I shout. “If you can hear me…”
My voice fades away. The shape, a jerking, jumping mess, moves strangely, like a cat in a sack, or a tethered pig or…
And only then do I get it.
It has taken far longer than it should have for me to understand what I’m seeing. As it finally dawns on me, my words are just the sound of my breath.
“Oh God!” I whisper.
With my mouth still open in awe, I whack the flat of my hand against the window, and jump down from the crate.
I grab a soil-coated brick, and making a guess at the height of the clasp, I shield my eyes and smash the corresponding pane of glass. In the silence of mid-day, the sound of the falling glass is out of all proportion to the size of the pane I have broken. I knock the jagged corners away, and carefully reach through to release the lock.
The two halves of the window swing inwards, straining against the curtains. Sunlight streams into the room.
I jump down, crunching on the fallen glass. The room smells fetid, almost sewer-like. I pull the curtains fully open, and I turn nervously to the left.
Though I brace myself for it, the reality of the vision that confronts me still takes my breath away.
He looks up at me, his eyes sad, dog-like. His cheeks are glistening with tears. I shake my head, momentarily unable to believe my eyes.
His ankles and hands are chained to the base of the radiator; silver gaffer tape covers his mouth. He’s entirely naked.
I move to his side and start to clumsily fiddle with the tape around his head. Tears are welling up, blurring my vision.
“Tom,” I say gently. “What on earth…” I can see the spasms of Tom’s distraught breathing and he nods, eyes wide, egging me on. I wince and pull at the tape – it’s stuck to his hair, to his skin, to his ears. With a yank, I rip it from his face.
He gulps for air. He sounds like he’s hyperventilating. “My nose,” he pants. “It’s blocked… I couldn’t breathe.”
I finger the handcuffs restraining him and sigh desperately. “Who did this?” I say. “Dante?”
“Be quick,” Tom says, his voice cracking. “Please, get me out of here before they get back.”
“But how did you…?”
“Later,” Tom begs. “Please?”
I wipe the tears from my eyes and stare at the metal handcuffs. “Sure babe,” I say. “But how? There’s an axe out front, could I bust them?”
Tom shakes his head. “They’re Paolo’s, I think they’re strong,” he says.
The smell is overpowering and I gag and have to turn away for an instant, then I lean back over Tom’s trembling body and finger the chains.
“Yeah, they need a bolt cutter or something,” I say.
Tom starts to shiver. He looks like he’s losing it.
“Tom, don’t,” I say, my voice uneven. “I’ll fix it.”
“But if they get back…” Tom says.
“They?” I say. “What about the key, did you see what they did with the key?”
Tom shakes his head.
“Fuck,” I breathe.
“I could call the pol…” I shake my head. “These are Paolo’s, right?”
Tom nods and desperately twists his wrists. I notice that they are starting to bleed. I finger the handcuffs and look skyward. “Please,” I think. “Just one idea.”
The second I look back down at the radiator, it’s obvious. “I know Tom,” I say. “Don’t move.”
Despite everything, Tom manages to roll his eyes at the crassness of the statement.
The bedroom door is locked, so I climb back out through the window and run round to the van for a pipe wrench.
The nuts at the base of the radiator have fifty years’ paint on them and it’s impossible to get a grip. I open the wrench and position it again, and again. My shaking hands aren’t helping either.
“Oh, come on,” Tom whispers.
“It will work,” I tell him. I look up at the ceiling again. “It will work!” I insist.
And suddenly the nut moves. Only a millimetre or so, but it moves. Tom sees it. “Yes!” he says.
I can only get about a quarter of a turn before I have to reposition the wrench, so progress is terrifyingly slow, but water starts to drip from the base of the radiator. As I manage another half-turn it turns to a trickle, and finally, in a gurgling gush of rusty water, the nut spins free.
I sit in the puddle, and brace one foot against the wall, ready to struggle with the pipe but it’s lead and bends easily away.
Tom slides the bracelets over the end. His right foot and hand still have handcuffs on them, but the ends now dangle free.
He moves onto one knee. “My leg’s gone to sleep,” he says, stretching his arm and then using his mouth to move the bracelet away from the red welt on his wrist.
“God that smell,” I say, screwing up my face. “What is that?”
Tom looks up at me. It’s not just that he’s forced to sit on the floor – he looks smaller than usual; he looks as though he has shrunk.
“I shit myself,” he says quietly.
My eyes flick downwards and see that it’s true. “Jesus,” I say.
I don’t know what’s going on here, but with such an undeniable proof of Tom’s terror, with such convincing evidence of imminent danger, I too start to tremble.
And the second nut won’t budge at all. “Fucking, bloody, plumbing!” I gasp as I heave on the wrench.
Every time it slips the nut becomes a little more rounded. Every time the wrench spins off and hits the wall, it becomes a little more impossible to undo.
I throw the wrench down and look around the room in search of inspiration. Tom has started to shiver again. “You mustn’t let them catch you here…” he says quietly.
“Tom!” I say. “I can do it, just hang on…”
“Yeah, but if you can’t… you mustn’t let them catch you here.”
“Shut it Tom!” I say. “Just let me think here.”
“Lead pipes,” I mutter.
I jump up and position my feet squarely in front of the radiator. I grasp the two top corners, brace myself, and pull.
In fact the radiator is just resting on the wall bracket. It slides easily towards me, too easily. It’s so heavy I nearly fall over in surprise.
“Cast iron…” I say breathily, laying the free corner on the flagstones.
I start to slide it back and forth.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Tom asks. “You don’t think it’s gonna snap do you?”
It scrapes and screams against the floor as I push it forwards, then tug it backwards.
“It’s lead,” I say.
“It’s just bending,” Tom says.
“It’s lead, it’ll snap eventually. It’s soft.”
“Can’t we cut it?” Tom says. “Can’t we cut it with the axe?”
“Yes!” I say. “Yes, that’ll work.”
I vault back out the window and run to the front of the house, grab the axe and sprint back.
“Okay, get as far back as you can,” I say, positioning my back to the wall, and raising the axe. A bead of sweat stings my eye.
It cuts through the lead pipe like a knife through butter. It’s incredible. The remaining water spews out. Tom reaches with his free hand and twists the pipe forward releasing the ends of the second two sets of handcuffs.
He jumps to his feet, but then wobbles and collapses back against Dante’s bed. “My legs are fucked,” he says.
I hook his arm over my shoulder and help him onto a chair and out of the window, and then round the side of the house. We look like a shot from a war zone. We look like something from Guantanamo Bay.
“Put me in the back,” Tom shouts, reaching for the door, a swinging handcuff banging against the side of the van.
I help him in, and slam the door then run to the front. I start the engine, and with one glance back at Tom – he’s on all fours on the floor behind me – I rev the engine and start to move forwards.
“So I just drive, yeah?” I say.
“Yeah, be quick about it,” Tom spits. “If we bump into them on the track we’re dead.”
The van lurches through the ruts and out of the gate. I can see the entrance to the lane in the distance.
“Faster,” Tom says, peering over my shoulder.
“I’ll break the axles if I go faster,” I say.
At the end of the track, I hesitate.
“Left!” Tom shouts behind me.
“Home is right though,” I say.
“LEFT!” he shouts.
I slam my foot to the floor. The van lurches out onto the main road. “Where are we going?”
“They’ll think we’ve gone right,” Tom says.
“Okay, but where are we going?” I say.
Tom doesn’t answer. The air cooled engine of the van resounds and bounces against the hillside as I thrash it through the gears.
“Discreet getaway car,” Tom says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Orange too!”
As I round the corner a moped looms – I almost run into it. The fat rider has cages of chickens haphazardly piled and strapped across his luggage rack.
“Overtake,” Tom says.
“Tom!” I shout. “Look at the road, will you? I can’t.”
Tom looks behind him. “Overtake!” he says. “Do it!”
“It’s a blind bend,” I say. “We’ll die.”
“We’ll die if you don’t,” Tom says solemnly.
I swallow and ram the gearbox into second. The engine roars like a biplane. “Here goes,” I say. “Pray.”
But just at the instant I start to put my foot down, just at the moment the van lurches towards the other lane, the farmer, terrified by the noise of the huge orange van, pulls over onto the hard shoulder.
The VW thunders past him, round the corner, up a hill, down to the next town, and then up again into the hills.
I glance back at Tom. He’s cleaning himself with a beach-towel. He looks up at me pale faced. “Dante said that hole is my grave,” he says.
His voice is so quiet I doubt what I have heard. “What hole?”
Tom shakes his head. “The one at the bottom of the garden,” Tom says. “I thought it was a joke.”
I shake my head. There’s so much I can’t figure out; I’m not even beginning to understand what has happened here. I don’t even know where to start.
I glance back at Tom who is alternating between peering out the rear window and inspecting his foot. “Fucking glass in my foot too,” he says. He sounds amazingly together. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” he adds.
I shake my head. “Not round these bends,” I say. “Not without rolling.”
“I wish I had a gun,” he says.
I frown. “Tom, what exactly are we running away from?”
I swing around a roundabout a little fast and the van tyres screech, and I’m aware of Tom stumbling against the bench seat. As the road straightens I glance back at him in the rear-view mirror. He’s pulling a blanket around himself.
“I don’t understand what’s happened here,” I say. More to the point I don’t understand how the Tom that I know, that I thought I knew, could get to this point. It makes no sense to me.
Tom runs a hand across his mouth, the handcuff dangling. “Later,” he says.
I turn and look back at him. “What do you mean later?”
“I don’t really know,” he says, his voice aquiver. “I don’t know what to say.”
“That’s not enough,” I say. “I need to know what’s…”
“Dante and Paolo … They’re in it together.”
“In what together?”
“I don’t know!” Tom shouts. “Jesus, Mark! The road!” he shrieks.
I jerk my head back to face the road, and inelegantly correct our lane position.
“I just heard random words,” Tom continues.
I sigh and shake my head. “What words?” I say, my irritation leaking out. “And which way here? Motorway?”
“Yeah, the Autostrada and then north,” Tom says. “They’ll never expect that.”
“But don’t you want to get back to France?” I say. “Wouldn’t we be safer in France?”
“Not yet,” Tom says. “GO!”
I point the van towards the Autostrada, and slam my foot to the floor. “You overheard what?” I ask again.
Tom moves forward and leans on the back of my seat. “They said, uccidete quello per prima,” he says quietly. “It means kill that one first.”
I glance at him and look back at the road.
“Uccidete quello per prima,” he repeats. “Kill that one first …”
*
As we pound along the Italian Autostrada, the relief of putting physical distance between ourselves and the danger – known and unknown, stated and still unsaid – is ecstatic. For a while it feels obvious that this is just a reprieve, that in a glimpse of a mirror or the wail of a siren, our escape will be over, that our hunters – whoever they are and whatever they want – will catch up with us. But as time goes by, as the minutes and kilometres pass, my brain starts to accept the idea that it is just possible that this is where the chapter ends.
Tom is silent and watchful, but an hour into the journey when I see that he has stopped watching the traffic through the rear window, I realise that he too is adjusting to the possibility of escape.
The only conversation between us happens near a town called Pontrenolli, when I try again to convince Tom that we should swing homeward. His response is hysterical, and in deference to his justifiably jangled ne
rves more than any feeling that he may be right (I am actually convinced that he is wrong), I shut up and continue northwards.
Just after six, as the heat of the day starts to fade, I come to a major fork and have to decide whether to head west towards Alessandria or still further north to Milano.
I ask Tom what to do, but when no response comes I frown and glance behind me. He’s fast asleep, nestled, despite the temperature, in a mound of sleeping bags.
As I approach the point where the motorways split, the sight of a police car on the hard shoulder makes me shiver. How on earth would we explain Tom’s police issue handcuffs to an Italian officer, I wonder.
I quickly compute two possible futures. Staying in Italy involves finding a hotel, smuggling a chained Tom in, or sleeping with him – unwashed – in the van. It involves the constant stress that someone will notice something, that the police will pull us over, that a man on a campsite or in a hotel lobby will phone the cops, and what would that entail? And it means yours truly is going to have to find cutting or grinding equipment in Italian, in Italy in order to deal with the handcuffs.
Heading back, on the other hand, merely involves ignoring Tom’s will, maybe arguing with him about the risks when/if he awakens, and ultimately taking responsibility for my decision if something goes wrong.
I glance at the road atlas on the seat beside me and I glimpse the name Cuneo, on the map.
Cuneo, where I once went with the bike club. Cuneo, up over the mountains, over the beautiful hairpin bends of the Arriere Pays Nicoise. With the realisation that I know a route over the mountains that neither Dante nor Paolo could ever hope to think of, my hesitation is over. With a half-guilty glance at Tom, I push my foot back to the floor and head west.
Tom sleeps like a man who has been drugged – the adrenalin comedown I presume. Occasionally I can even hear him snoring over the sound of the engine. Thankfully though he stirs, he never wakens, so we thunder west past Alessandra, then on past Alba, and then on around Cuneo and finally up towards the range of the southern Alps separating Italy from home.
I’m shattered myself – my eyes feel as though they have been flattened with a hammer and polished, maybe with grit – but I know that once I get into the hills the road will be familiar; I know that I can do this.
My mind wanders and I wonder if Tom will be angry when he wakes up, and then I wonder if the trauma of this event will leave any sequel on him, on us, on me.
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