Lost
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���He offered cash?��� Stuart asked.
Fausto hesitated. He looked down at his hat, then at Paul, then at Stuart.
���Things are difficult for me. I done two bathrooms and a patio last month without getting paid. I had to lay off my nephew. There���s no work and when there���s work they don���t pay you.���
���You���d never seen him before?���
The man shook his head.
���He was young. I thought he was a bit young to have so much cash. But this island is full of kids loaded with cash. I don���t have to tell you that.���
���You said you didn���t think he was an islander. Why?���
Fausto looked hurt.
���He said he was on holiday. When I met him he was������ He stroked his cheek with the back of his fingers.
���What?��� Paul said.
���He was coloured.���
���Black.���
���No, not quite black. Tanned. Very tanned. He spoke very bad Portuguese.���
Stuart turned to the boy from La Rochelle.
���Take him back to the office, will you? Someone will take your statement, Monsieur Ribeira.���
Fausto followed the youth up the ramp into the sunlight, keeping a respectful two paces behind.
���Let���s have a look,��� Stuart said.
Stuart listened to Paul Fizzi���s explanations. There was a workbench two and a half metres long and fifty centimetres wide, running the full length of what looked like the wall of the garage but was in fact a breeze-block screen built by the kidnappers. The workbench had been pulled back to reveal a heavy wooden panel low down in the screen wall. The panel, about seventy centimetres square, had served as a door. It now hung open on its hinges. On the inside, there was a plaster wall, thirteen millimetres thick. They had shot away an area of plaster and uncovered the metal case containing the electric locking mechanism. There were four .38 bullets, two lodged in the cement wall and two, found on the floor of the hideout, that had been compressed by the impact on the metal case. One of the compressed bullets must have triggered the locking device, enabling their escape. Paul had counted five impacts. If the shots were fired with a Smith and Wesson .38, as he suspected, then the kidnappers had been extremely lucky: only one bullet had remained in the chamber when the door had clicked open.
When Paul had finished he stood there awkwardly, scratching his eyebrow. It was sad that the more conscientious Paul tried to be, the more Stuart was aware that he would never make a good policeman. He turned away and crouched down in front of the entrance to the hideout.
There was a strong smell in the room, like unwashed feet. As he stood up, Stuart realised it was the corpse. The hideout, which was about two metres by three, was already overcrowded; there was Fabrice with his cameras, G��rard, the dead Portuguese and now himself and Paul.
Fabrice made for the exit.
���I���ve finished,��� he said. ���I shot a roll. I think there���s plenty.���
The others did not acknowledge his departure. Everything about Fabrice ��� the red spectacles, the grey, curly hair, the biro on a string round his neck ��� was in keeping with the dogged, disapproving behaviour of the militant unionist, and yet Stuart had come to like him.
Stuart stepped towards the body. Broken glass crunched beneath his feet. He bent down and touched the spilled liquid, still sticky. It looked like Coca-Cola.
G��rard and Paul stood and watched him as he peered at the body, keeping his shoes outside the limits of the congealed blood. From the look of the man���s clothes and his small, smooth hands, he was young. He had been shot twice. The bullet in his lower abdomen had caused abundant bleeding, which suggested a hollow bullet. The one in the back of the head had caused instant death. He had not been shot with the same weapon that had been used to open the door. He must have fallen forward on to what was left of his face and then been turned over.
���To get the keys to the cupboard,��� Stuart said out loud.
���He���s got a holster in his boot,��� Paul said. ���They took his weapon.���
���After they shot him,��� Stuart said. ���They shot him first, in the stomach, from there.��� He pointed to the entrance. ���He was holding a glass so he was taken by surprise. He must have trusted them.���
���They had a key,��� G��rard said.
Stuart looked up at the sound of his voice, slightly effeminate, theatrical.
���We think it was an accomplice,��� Paul said.
Stuart nodded.
���Who had to shoot their way out,��� he said.
���They open the door, shoot the person guarding the kid, take the kid and leave the other member of their gang shut in with the dead man.��� Paul paused, looking perplexed. ���And they leave him a gun.���
���They took the weapon from the dead man,��� Stuart said. ���From the holster. It���s the right size for an S and W.���
Stuart stepped carefully around the body. He peered into the cupboard and was struck by the smell of urine. He thought of Alice waking up to discover that he had left without her. As he had driven through the gates he had imagined her watching him from the window. Now he was relieved that she had not had to see this place. There was no light for the child and no ventilation except for a few holes high up in the partition wall. There was a desiccated piece of ravioli on the thin foam mattress. If the boy had had a blanket, they had taken it with them.
���Maybe somebody lost it,��� Paul said.
���It���s either a sudden, very stupid fight, or it���s a second group who came in and took over,��� Stuart said.
���How many people are there on this island ready to do a kidnapping?��� G��rard asked.
Stuart nodded at the corpse.
���What did the doctor say? How long had he been dead for?���
���Six to eight hours,��� G��rard said.
���When is the autopsy?���
���Three,��� G��rard said. ���I���ll go.���
Stuart looked at G��rard and then at Paul.
���You know who it is, don���t you?��� he said.
���Who?��� G��rard said.
���Mickey da Cruz,��� Stuart said. The three of them looked at the dead youth. ���Look at the boots,��� Stuart said. ���And the legs. Look.���
G��rard and Paul looked down at the corpse with its bowed legs and its gory head, their faces full of respect now that it had a name.
���What got into him?��� Paul said.
���Funny,��� G��rard said. ���I always thought Mickey was an Arab.���
���He always dressed like Lucky Luke,��� Paul said.
The words sounded like a kind of homage. They stood still for a moment, the three of them bound together by the ugliness of all the things they had seen. For a moment none of them was in a hurry to leave the stinking room and the dead Portuguese boy and go back to the surface where they were despised, in part for what they saw. Stuart welcomed back the familiar sensation of detachment. He was free, for a moment, from the terrible longing that had been growing inside him over the past few days. It was a pain that he recognised, not as something he had experienced before but as something that had been lying there all along, waiting to declare itself. Stuart realised that he missed Alice all the time, even when he was with her.
Now Paul and G��rard were watching him and he scanned the room for something with which to cover the boy���s ruined head. He fetched a checked tea towel from by the sink and laid it over the head, but it only lent a more cartoo
n appearance to the legs.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Alice walked down the narrow alley to the main square. She was light-headed with lack of food and sleep. It had been three days since she had dragged Dan behind her up this street. She now looked at her surroundings: at the golden light of evening cutting long shadows on the walls, at the cobbles and the weeds growing between them, at the telephone wires, running back and forth in slack lines and at the swallows far above. Like a convalescent who has long had to do without it, she felt the beauty of the object world and its irrelevance. The alley steepened and she slowed her pace. Santini was waiting for her. He had the money: nine million in the correct notes. Her heart beat faster at the thought of it.
She had been woken that morning by her heartbeat, chill with panic. She had run downstairs in her nightdress and met Babette in the hall. She was carrying a tray. The inappropriateness of the tray, the guilt at having slept, if only for a few hours, and the knowledge, even as she asked, that Stuart had gone, made her burst into tears. A policeman she had not seen before, crossing the hall, had looked up and seen her sitting on the stairs, weeping. Babette had made her some coffee, which she had drunk in silence in the kitchen, Dan on her knee. Stuart���s empty cup was still unwashed on the table. She had stared at it as if it were a fetish, willing him to call her. She had waited all morning, playing Pelmanism with Dan on the kitchen table, then noughts and crosses in spilled salt. This he enjoyed and he had wanted to play again and again. The policeman had sat hunched over Paul���s crossword magazine, raising his head occasionally to give Dan a wink and a smile. Babette stood at the sink, scrubbing mussels in a deep pot: God only knew who they were for. When the policeman had left the room to go and piss, Alice had jumped up, pushing Dan too brutally from her lap and knocking over her chair. Babette and Dan had watched while she called Santini. His wife���s voice was full of kindness and Alice had felt herself weaken. She had delivered her message quickly and hung up.
At six, Babette had taken Dan for a walk and she had shut herself in the study to watch the kidnappers��� video and wait. While she sat there watching, the images of her son had begun to take on the colour of archive. Santini and Stuart had both disappeared. Sam may have been found but something had gone wrong. When the call came at last and it was Santini, she took it as a sign: she would cut herself off from Stuart. As the eight o���clock news began, she had turned the TV on loud and climbed out of the study window.
She emerged from the narrow alley into the main square. Three old women were sitting on folding chairs, their backs against the wall of the mairie, facing the orange sun. She felt them watching her as she walked towards the chestnut trees. She passed quickly beneath the trees, steeling herself against the sound of the breeze in their leaves.
She had taken Sam���s rucksack instead of her handbag, which her mother had bought for her in Rome on their last trip. The bag suddenly seemed like an ugly object from someone else���s past. Inside the rucksack she had put Stuart���s gun. She could feel it hitting the small of her back as she walked.
He had let her down. The kidnappers had made their request. All that mattered was that they got their money in time.
���It won���t help you to give them the money,��� Stuart had told her. His remark now struck her as morbid, cruel even.
She found the entrance to the four flights of stone steps, a narrow gap in a wall covered with ivy, angry with starlings. She could not see the birds but she could hear their screeching. She made her way down the steps, weaving through ten or fifteen cats, some warming themselves on the stone, others gliding back and forth, taking no account of her. At the bottom of the steps there was a low wall on the other side of which was a steep drop to the brown sluggish stream below. Santini���s house was to the left, at the end of an alley. There was a smell of open drains and the sound of a radio coming from somewhere above her head: the news jingle as it ended. She passed under a bridge linking two houses and stopped in front of the wrought-iron gate. The bell rang inside the house and she heard a door open and soft shoes slapping the ground. An old woman stood before her, holding the gate open. Behind her was a courtyard full of chickens. The woman said good morning and stood aside to let her pass, betraying no curiosity. Alice followed her across the courtyard and up three steps to the front door. They stepped into a dark hall.
���He���s in the kitchen,��� the woman said. She sounded out of breath. ���Through here.���
They passed along a narrow, very brightly lit corridor. The woman halted in front of a door and looked at her.
���I���m sorry about your son,��� she said. Alice recognised the gentleness from the phone call. The woman���s dark eyes shone. ���I���d do anything to help you.��� She found Alice���s hand and gripped it hard. ���Anything,��� she said. Then she let go and threw open the door to the kitchen, standing aside to let her pass.
Santini was sitting at the head of the table. He was wearing a short-sleeved shirt with a tropical motif. He ran his fingertips up and down his forearm, folded across his chest, as though he were nursing himself. He did not stand up but let his wife pull out the chair to his right. She lifted it carefully so that it did not scrape the floor. Alice took off Sam���s rucksack, clutching it on her knee, and sat down. Santini put his hands, palms down, on the table, looking at them while he spoke.
���I was right. Your son was in town ������
���What do you mean was?��� He was not looking at her. He would not be interrupted. ���Where is he?��� She shouted: ���Where is he now? Tell me!���
Santini looked calmly at her.
���He was being held in a hideout in Massaccio by a group of three.��� He spoke without altering his tone, slowly and quietly, his deep voice reverberating in the small room. ���The boy who organised it was shot this morning. They shot him and took your son.���
���Who did? Where did they take him?��� Alice felt the room was listing. She reached out and gripped Santini���s arm. ���Do you know who it was?���
He looked at her coldly. His eyes were like two yellow fishes.
���No,��� he said, placing a hand over hers. ���But we���ll find out.���
���Take me there,��� she said, standing up. She was weak and dizzy and she could feel herself swaying. She fixed on his blue beard that floated above the dense jungle of his shirt. ���Take me there.���
���I can���t.���
���Why not?���
���Stuart���s there.���
���So what? Take me there.��� Alice felt the floor was rising up to meet her. Someone was beside her, holding her elbow. ���Please,��� she said.
���Will you drink something? Sirop de menthe?��� His wife was helping her back into the chair. Alice heard her slippers on the floor as she moved about the kitchen and her voice, continual and soothing. ���You have to take something, you���re very weak; you can see in your face, you haven���t had enough to eat, you need sugar. Then we can help you. You���ve got to get your strength up, hasn���t she, Claude?���
Alice looked into the glass of green liquid that was placed before her on the table. There were clouds on the surface. She picked up the glass and took a sip. The drink was ice-cold and sweet. She put the glass down.
���Please take me there.���
���Where do you want to go, dear?���
Santini���s wife sat down beside her. Alice faced Coco.
���Please������ she said.
���Where does she want to go?��� his wife asked again.
Coco glanced at her, then back at Alice.
���How do you know they took Sam? I want to see where they had him
. I want to see.���
���No. Stuart���s still there.���
���What does it matter?���
���You could drop her off, Claude,��� the woman said. ���My husband wants to help you. It���s just that Stuart���s always hounding him, isn���t he, Claude? He���d hold Claude responsible for your son if he could. That���s why he has to be careful; but he will help you, won���t you, Claude?��� Santini looked at Alice, ignoring his wife. ���You could drop her off a little way away.���
Santini rose to his feet. He walked past his wife and stopped at the entrance to the kitchen.
���I���ll take you to the Old Port. It���s a ten-minute walk from there. You meet me an hour later in the post office on the main square. If you���re late you make your own way back. But you should prepare yourself. They won���t let you through.���
Alice stood up and let Santini���s wife feed her arms into the rucksack.
���Please eat something before you go.��� But Santini was out of the room and Alice followed him.
In Santini���s car on the road down to the coast, Alice looked out of the window at the hills, slipping into the distance in varying degrees of purple. The sky above the sea was red. She closed her eyes against the breeze.
She saw Sam���s skinny frame running towards her, up a sandy slope, the sea shining behind him. He was standing over her, grinning, with sand on his face.
���Stay out of the water, will you? There are big boys in there with harpoons.���
���Why?���
���They could be dangerous.���
���The boys?���
���The harpoons.���
���Okay.���
He could fight her long and hard and then suddenly relent like that, as though he were showing her that he could yield and was her superior because of it. Something inside her that she did not care to look at made her want to dominate him. So often she thought she could feel his spirit fighting hers, resisting her, and she admired him for it. She saw his little legs kicking up the sand as he ran towards the sea and his pointed head on his frail neck.