by Lucy Wadham
Alice looked at her watch.
���I spoke to Santini four hours ago. Why hasn���t he called back?���
���He won���t call tonight. He���ll call tomorrow.���
���Oh God,��� she said, rubbing her face with her hands. ���Another night.���
Stuart took the gun from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of her. She looked up at him, her long hands on her cheeks.
���It���s for you.��� He nodded at the brown-paper bag. ���It���s a woman���s gun. My father gave it to my mother.���
Alice looked at him. He was staring hard at the paper bag.
���A gun,��� she said, her hands still on her face.
He shrugged without looking at her.
The bag was thin to transparency in places. She pulled out the object. It was small, the size of a manicure kit, but heavy. The brown suede case was unmistakably gun-shaped. She unzipped the case and pulled out the gun. She looked up at Stuart, but he kept watching her hands.
���It���s all right. It���s not loaded,��� he said. ���The bullets are in the bag.���
She held the gun on her palm, the barrel resting on her index finger. She gripped the textured butt. The words Manufacture fran��aise d���armes et cycles de Saint Etienne were engraved along the barrel and the initials ���MF��� inside a garland. On the other side the words ���Type Policeman���. She pulled the tiny catch and the barrel sprang open. She looked at the brownish purple of the metal, the colour of bruises.
She returned the object to its little case, zipped it up and put it back into the paper bag. When at last he looked at her, she saw the same expression of hopefulness Sam wore when he gave her a drawing. There was nothing to understand from this gift except that it was a gift.
���Thank you,��� she said.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The room stank. Through his tobacco-charred nostrils Mickey could smell burned spaghetti sauce. He sat on the floor with his back against the boy���s cupboard and smoked the first beautiful cigarette of the day.
They should have thought of getting a TV. The Scatti brothers were now seriously annoying him. Paolo was petty and Sylvano was stupid. He had asked them for some music. A Walkman was all he wanted, to pass the time, but Paolo had said no, it was too risky to buy anything, and Sylvano had stood there staring at him smugly.
Mickey considered his job much harder than theirs: confined day and night with the boy, who had turned into an animal. It was hard on his nerves. The boy lay curled up on the floor, wouldn���t eat, wouldn���t speak, just whimpered when he opened the door to empty his pisspot. The kid could die from dehydration, the Scatti brothers wouldn���t care. They had killed people, working for the Camora, on an informal basis. Mickey had only hurt people, sometimes badly, always for Coco Santini, and he had never got the recognition he deserved because Coco was a racist. Yes, his job was harder.
Mickey stubbed out his cigarette on the cement floor. He would get the kid to drink something. He would be gentle and coaxing. He could stay calm when he had to. He did not want to have the kid���s death on his conscience. He stood up and his joints cracked. He walked like Jorge Ferreira over to the sink. He smiled to himself, unsure whether his pleasure came from the applause in his head or from the new idea that was lying there, only half-formed, by which he would secure for himself the largest share.
He filled a mustard glass with Coke. Lucky Luke, his favourite character, was printed on the glass. As he approached the door of the cupboard, he felt overcome with love towards the child he had been. How could his mum have resisted him? He had been adorable, more beautiful than this kid. But he hadn���t grown properly. Only his torso had grown and this, he knew, was because he hadn���t had his share of mother-love.
���The day after tomorrow you���ll be free,��� he told the boy. He crouched in front of the door of the cupboard. ���I���m going to open up so shield your eyes. I got you some Coke. You���ve got to drink if you want to see your mum.���
Mickey could hear the heavy metal door of the garage opening and the bang it made as the weights came down. The brothers were back. They had no style. They could only buy tinned food and spirits, never wine or cheese or fruit. Sylvano only ate sweet things. They had no idea how to live. He���d wait until they had gone before getting the boy to drink, because they���d only scare him. This place, too, was his find. The whole hit had been planned by him. He prepared to adopt a different attitude towards Paolo. Still crouching, Mickey turned round at the sound of Paolo, who always came first, pushing open the entrance to the hideout.
He saw the face and heard the shot and reached into his boot for his weapon in the time it took to recall Garetta���s name. On the impact, his arm was flung from his side, the glass bounced once on the cement floor and then smashed into hundreds of geometric pieces. Mickey fell back and hit the boy���s wall. He could feel cold air rushing into him, chilling his stomach, which he tried to clutch but his arm wouldn���t come. He knew he would survive this wound to his abdomen and he had time to congratulate himself on his muscular armour before realising that Garetta was going to shoot him again. He was coming towards him and Mickey knew not to meet his eye, that this would be a mistake, so he looked to his right. His vision was sharper than normal. He took in the thick, white paint that covered the brick wall, the inexplicable dog���s footprints, three of them, in the cement floor, the shiny, tubular metal table legs and the rubber stoppers on the legs of the chairs like the ones in the canteen at school. Garetta was up close and aiming at him. His weapon had a silencer. Mickey had always loved the pristine sound of a silenced shot. He had never possessed a silencer himself. He reached into his boot again, knowing he had no chance. But the shot still didn���t come. He could feel the textured wood of his gun with his fingertips but did not have the strength to grip. The blood seeping out of him felt like the strange but pleasant sensation of a bath emptying around his naked body. ���Please, Garetta,��� he said, closing both his eyes, good and bad. Garetta read his words as a signal and Mickey saw the scene fold in even before the bullet entered his brain.
*
Sam floated high up near the breathing holes and watched the big hands pull him out into the light. He saw his own body curled up in a ball in the man���s arms. He saw his own eyes and mouth shut tight, his whole body closed and empty, because he was up here, watching the man with the long black hair, and even though the man was a giant he looked small from here. Then he saw the other man dressed in black lying on the floor. He saw his skinny legs, bent the wrong way like his Pinocchio puppet. And then he saw his head and he began to fall through the air, and as he fell he closed his eyes and said ���I must not land in the blood. I must not fall there.���
*
As Garetta pushed the child through into the garage, Paolo knew something was wrong. He had an urge to run, but his brother was stuck in the back of Garetta���s car between two armed men. Paolo tried to help the kid up. But it lay on the ground curled up in a ball, fists closed. It had silver tape over its mouth, and around its hands and feet. Something had scared the kid so badly it had shat itself. Paolo pulled back as Garetta came through. Garetta picked the child off the ground like a small package and walked towards the car. Paolo considered asking him about Mickey then decided against it. Garetta had appeared on the boat at dawn. He had stood at the end of his bed with one hundred thousand francs in a plastic bag: ���From the FNL,��� Garetta had said. ���To cover costs. We���re taking this over.��� Looking at Garetta now as he put the child into the boot of the car, Paolo did not believe he was FNL; there was something wild about him, too wild for obedience.
Paolo looked at the Arab in the back. On the boat that morning he had taken his
Baretta from the bedside table. He now prepared his words: ���I���d like my weapon back; it belonged to my father.��� But Garetta was coming towards him and he had always been intimidated by very tall men.
���I need you to clean up in there.���
���Clean up,��� Paolo repeated, his mouth dry.
Garetta turned and signalled to the Arab kid. Paolo���s heart faltered and he took a step back. The Arab got out of the car and Sylvano climbed out after him.
���You and your brother,��� Garetta said, smiling.
Paolo saw then that the man was a wolf. He had seen such a man once before and he knew he must hold perfectly still. As Sylvano came towards him, Paolo said a Hail Mary in his head. He did not close his eyes but he did not look at the wolf-man either. He followed his orders with slow, careful movements. As he crawled through after Sylvano into the hideout he knew what it was to be the prey and he heard himself whimper.
Paolo stood in the room and looked at Mickey���s body. Sylvano was shaking out his legs to make his trousers fall straight.
Tears of rage burned Paolo���s throat.
���Figlio di carte!��� he screamed.
Sylvano glanced incuriously at Mickey���s body, then back at his brother. He plucked at the cuffs of his suit.
Paolo spun round and kicked the small square door in the cement wall, but he already knew without looking that they were trapped there with the dead man, whose blood all around him appeared to be forming a skin.
*
Philippe Garetta drove through the Cortizzio valley, past the sawmill where he had once worked. He had liked the place, the smell of the pine and the men who worked there, but not the boss, and he had left one winter morning when there was frost on the ground. He had asked for a pair of gloves and the shithead had told him the company didn���t provide gloves.
The child was lying tied up and gagged in the boot, with the provisions for the hideout. Garetta turned on the radio. Denis had tuned into some terrible teenage radio station. A girl was shrieking and swearing at the DJ, who had just told her she had won ten thousand francs. ���Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Radio Heaven. I love you all! Oh my God!��� Garetta looked for the local news channel. Frigari was shooting off about quotas. Garetta shook his head.
���You���re all finished, you hippie fuckers,��� he said.
Karim and Denis were following on the bike. They would occasionally appear in the rear-view mirror, a black tick on the road, then fall back.
Garetta sat through the sports results. There was nothing about the bombing. He must have missed it.
Coco had given him Karim for his expertise but no equipment. Santini had said there was no one more deft than Karim. The explosion had been considerable, considering. Karim had said that with the junk he had to hand it was the best he could do. It was a pity he wasn���t an islander. Denis came with Karim and he was not an islander either, but from Arles, and he had gypsy in him. Still, Garetta thought, it was early days. And as Santini had pointed out, it was because they were not islanders that he could ask him to get involved in a kidnapping.
���You can get your group started with this,��� Santini had said. ���Get a good sum, buy some decent hardware; I might throw in some bazookas.���
Garetta had never liked Santini. He talked about revolution as if he was talking about a real-estate opportunity.
In the end Garetta had accepted Santini���s offer of Karim. When it came to it, he didn���t have much choice. There were few people he could trust with something like this. He���d bring in the others once he���d laid the groundwork. It was a real organisation he wanted, with perfect discipline, like the Red Army Faction or ETA. He���d create links with other groups fighting for the same goals. He���d win back some respect for the island.
He had written the speech for the paper by himself. He had been pleased by its density, by the economic expression of so many ideas and by the images of sickness and decay. He thought with disgust of the Scatti brothers, of their big white vedette moored in the marina, their flash suits. He should have rid the island of them, too. They were a lot worse than Mickey da Cruz.
He searched for some decent music on the radio. He had a weakness for heavy metal, but it was harder and harder to come by and he gave up. He drove down into the valley, over the single-lane bridge that crossed the dry river bed and on to the road towards Castri, home territory. As he drove, he tried to consider the sum of thirty million that Santini had told him to request for the child. He was thrilled, not so much by the sum, which was a little abstract, but by the power his demand would represent. He felt immensely powerful. In fact he had always felt immensely powerful. Now, he thought, it was time to show it.
Wednesday
Chapter Twenty-Four
Stuart walked quickly along the wide market street that led from the Old Port to the Fritz Bar. Stunted palms giving no shade sprang from the hot granite pavements. There was an unpleasant smell in the air of burned rubber and rotting vegetables. He had thought the street deserted; now he noticed a silent audience of old women standing, alone or in pairs, on the rectangular pedestal of shade offered by their doorsteps. He stepped into the road to avoid passing too close to them and trod on a slice of pineapple fermenting in the gutter. He scraped his shoe clean, aware of the women���s scrutiny. They were looking at his fluorescent orange arm band with ���Police��� printed in black, hovering between their desire for a little entertainment and their lifelong habit of obstruction. On the island there were different codes for men and women. The women never talked and never signed their statements, while for the men there was nothing that couldn���t be discussed at the right price. It was this combination of the women���s silence and the men���s loquacity that made his work so hard.
Paul���s call had come when Alice was still asleep. Stuart had taken it in the kitchen in front of Babette. The hideout had been found and an as yet unidentified body, but the child had gone. In the background Stuart listened to Babette noisily preparing a tray for Alice. Perhaps it had been the sight of Babette pushing through the swing doors with the tray for her ��� he did not know ��� but he had left without telling her.
He now turned into the narrow street that ran behind the Fritz Bar. A jagged line divided the street between sun and shade. People leaned out of the windows high up in the decrepit fa��ades on either side of him and he knew he was nearing the site. Someone shouted out something he didn���t hear and there was female laughter. He looked up and saw a middle-aged man in a vest, leaning from the third floor of the H��tel Majestic. The shutters of the ochre building opened upwards, casting rhomboid shadows on the wall. The man in the Majestic was smoking a cheroot. He waved it in the air as he shouted.
���You���re too late! You���re always too late. How can you ever expect any order on this island? They���re a bunch of kids but they run rings round you.��� The man had an Italian accent. ���How old are you, anyway? You should have retired!��� he yelled.
As he turned the corner, Stuart smiled.
The street was barricaded. A CRS nodded at his ID and stepped aside to let him pass. Romano���s Pizza was at the end. The sapeurs��� red van shielded the entrance from view. He had told Paul to wait for him; he wanted to look at the body. He could now see Romano, a fat man with a grey ponytail, red shirt and black trousers, standing with his back to him, smoking with a raised elbow. Stuart walked past the proprietor without greeting him: the man was a big-mouth. A couple of teenagers in aprons stood beside him, their hands bleached with flour, looking impressed.
Two uniformed policemen were standing beside their vehicle not far from the entrance to the garage. Stuart recognised one of them, a blond youth with a crew-cut and a red face, whose uniform always looked too small for him. His face lit up when
he saw Stuart.
���How are you, Commissaire?��� he said, holding out his hand.
Stuart took it, patting him on the shoulder.
���Good to see you.��� He held out his hand to the other cop who saluted with great austerity. Stuart nodded and smiled and turned back to the blond youth. ���Not fed up yet?��� he asked him, moving away towards the garage door.
���No, no, I love it here,��� he said, breathing in the freshness that was a figment of his imagination.
The boy came from La Rochelle. He was always enthusiastic when he saw Stuart, who was ashamed that he could not remember his name. The boy followed him to the entrance of the garage.
���Is it a reprisal killing?��� he asked.
Stuart looked down the slope into the cool, dark interior. The garage was deep and narrow, wide enough for one car. There was a smell of diesel.
���No,��� he said. ���I don���t think so. I don���t know what it is.��� He moved down the ramp towards Paul, who was standing at the far end with a small man in a suit.
���Fausto Ribeira,��� Paul told him as he approached. ���He owns the garage.���
Fausto had an exaggeratedly worried expression on his face and he stood there fingering the brim of the cane trilby in his hands. His moustache was the two pencil-thin strokes favoured by the Portuguese of his generation.
He pleaded with Stuart. ���I have told everything to your colleague. I didn���t want to let the garage. It was for sale. I put an ad in ���Person to Person���. He called because he saw by my name I was Portuguese. I said okay. He seemed a nice boy on the phone; he was respectful. He said he was from Lisbon. I���m from Braga but, as I said, he sounded nice.���
���What name did he give?���
���Santos.��� Fausto looked consolingly at them. ���It���s a very common name. He said he was only staying on the island for the summer. He had a sweetheart. He said he wanted somewhere to keep his bike, just for the summer. He had plenty of money.���
