by Tobias Jones
But now that I was driving back there I began to wonder whether he might know more than he had let on . . . whether he knew something about Anna Sartori’s disappearance, even had something to do with it. That’s the strange fascination of my job: watching people you think are insignificant suddenly transforming into lead actors. It is as if they step out of the smoke and come to the front, surprising you with their cruelty. Over the years, the job has taught me never to underestimate anyone, never to underestimate the potential horrors that an ordinary person can commit. It has forced me to take everyone seriously, but I still find myself surprised by who steps out of that smoke.
I began to wonder whether the hotelier, after years of seeing young girls cavorting with older men, had suddenly decided it was his turn. Confronted with a vulnerable young girl on her own, he had taken advantage of her and then had done worse. It was just an idea, but it began to solidify as I meandered towards Ostia. Vespa had said he had arranged to meet Anna there and she didn’t show; perhaps the old soak had got to her first.
There was a space outside the foyer but I parked on the other side of the road so that I could watch without being obtrusive. The place still looked dead. No one going in or out. Even the sign for the hotel was lopsided, the top screw having come out of the masonry so that it looked like it was about to fall on passers-by. There was a bin liner on the steps of the place that had been ripped open, and the contents were now falling across the entrance.
I got out of the car and walked up the soiled steps to the revolving doors. The place looked like it hadn’t been cleaned for a year or two. There was a newspaper yellowing in the sun, a dirty coffee cup on top of it. I walked up to the front desk and bumped my palm onto the nipple of the bell. It sounded tinny, as if it wouldn’t even wake a cat. I hit it again, but got no response.
The steps leading to the corridor and the lift were sticky as I walked up them. As I lifted my soles off the surface, it sounded like parcel tape being unwound. I looked at the same photographs I had seen a few days ago. Pictures of beautiful women smiling at the camera like they were having the time of their life. Some of the snaps were autographed. There were pictures of yachts, of people reclining on deckchairs. Others were in crowded bars: half a dozen faces squeezing into the shot, all smiling and laughing. If you didn’t know better, you would have yearned to be alongside them.
The sound of furniture being dragged across a floor drew me away from that fantasy world. I listened again and it had stopped. Then I heard it again, as if someone were shunting a desk across the marble, then pausing for breath, then going again. I walked down the corridor slowly, listening at each door. When I got to where the noise was coming from, I realised what it was: the sound of someone snoring.
The door wasn’t locked. I walked in and saw the old receptionist asleep on his bed. He was only in his underpants, one thin sheet half-covering his legs. His huge back was hairy, covered in grey curls that rose and fell as the loud snoring continued. On the floor by his bed I could see, on its side, an empty clear-glass bottle.
I picked it up, filled it with cold water from the bathroom and poured it over his head. It still smelt vaguely of alcohol as it splashed over his large, unshaven face. He woke up quickly, propped himself up on his elbow and screwed up his face to focus on me.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he asked angrily.
‘Waking you up.’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘You’re the private dick who was in here the other day.’
‘Very good. Get dressed.’
‘I don’t take orders from you in my own home.’
‘I thought this was a hotel.’
‘Yeah, in my own hotel.’
‘Got many guests?’
He stood up and walked towards the bathroom, swearing under his breath. I heard him pissing and splashing water on his face. He came back into the room and pulled on his trousers. His hair was matted and he had the incongruous appearance of a tramp with a hotel to himself. He stood up, his large stomach bulging towards me as he put each arm into the sleeves of a dirty shirt. He buttoned it up, and combed his hair briefly so that he now looked like someone who was pretending not to be sleeping rough.
‘Tell me, how does this place keep going if you haven’t got any guests?’
‘We get guests,’ he said, not looking at me. ‘We get people here occasionally. Enough.’
‘Why would they come here?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s cheap. It’s out of the way.’
‘I thought hotels weren’t supposed to be out of the way. They’re not supposed to be off the beaten track.’
He turned round and headed out the door. ‘Depends who uses them. The sort of people who come here are the kind that are looking for some place out of the way, if you know what I mean. Married men, married women. This is where people come for a bit of passion.’ He looked over his shoulder as he said it and grinned, showing me his brown teeth.
I dragged a finger through the deep grey dust of a picture frame. ‘I guess they’re more interested in each other than the cleanliness of the place.’
‘No one ever complains. They come, they do whatever they do, they pay and they leave. Suits me and it suits them.’
‘Sounds very romantic.’
‘That’s what this place has always been. That’s what most hotels are.’ He shuffled behind the reception desk, picked up some pieces of paper and bounced them, end on, on the desk.
‘What about back in the nineties? What was it then?’
‘The nineties?’ He smiled and shook his head, the way some people do when they talk about the sixties. ‘The nineties? It was party time. This was the place where everyone came. We had a band three nights a week. A queue outside the door that snaked all the way round the block.’ He looked up at the ceiling, showing me the grey stubble of his chin. ‘That was the heyday of this place. That was when everyone came here. Film stars, politicians, sports stars.’
‘Anna Sartori?’
‘Who’s that?’
‘Anna Sartori. One of Di Angelo’s wannabes.’ I watched his face. He was trying too hard to look confused, frowning too obviously. It was a surprise he didn’t scratch his head as well. ‘You know who I’m talking about. The girl that went missing.’
‘Rings a bell,’ he said, looking at me with nasty cunning. ‘Yeah, rings a bell,’ he said again, apparently enjoying himself.
‘What happened when she rolled up here? She was supposed to meet Tony Vespa but he says she never showed.’
‘Tony Vespa? That’s a name from the past. He still running the girls is he?’
‘He had just hired a new one, last I saw.’
‘Yeah, that sounds like Tony. He could persuade them to do anything. Haven’t seen him for years.’
‘The girl.’ I tried to bring him back to the subject. ‘What happened while she was waiting for him?’
‘That’s what that other guy asked me.’
‘What other guy?’
‘The one you were looking for last time you were here. The one with the young girl.’
‘Mori?’
He shrugged like he couldn’t remember the name. ‘He wanted to know about that same girl. Asked what time she had got here, who she was with, all that sort of stuff.’
‘And?’
‘I never even saw her. Tony Vespa came round here that day, expecting to find her. And ever since then people have been coming round here asking me where she was. As if I knew.’ He put his hands together as if praying, rocking the tops of his fingers backwards and forwards.
‘You never saw her?’
‘Saw her plenty that summer. She was always round here at those parties. But the time you’re talking about, the day she went missing, I never saw her. She just didn’t show.’
‘You didn’t see her at all that day?’
He shook his head. ‘Vespa had a go at me. He assumed I must have seen her. Or that I hadn’t let her in. He hung around for an hour or so and then left. An
d that was it. I didn’t think any more about it until I heard she had gone missing a few days later.’
‘You’re absolutely sure she didn’t show up? You never saw her?’
‘I told you,’ he leant closer and stared at me, ‘she never came in here. Ever since then everyone has been asking me the same question. The police, journalists, Vespa, Mori, you. Everyone thinks she was here but I told you, she never showed.’
His voice was full of anger now, as if I had accused him of something. I looked at his face: it was puffy and creased at the same time, the face of someone who had lived fast and was dying slow. He was trying to appear indignant but lacked the energy to pull it off and he ended up looking pained. I found it hard to think of him as the wronged party. He had been the host of the late-night antics and now that the carnival had moved elsewhere he was still here, trying to party by himself. He was a lonely boozer but at least he was still alive.
There was no point asking the question again. He had answered it twice. He hadn’t seen Anna Sartori, that’s what he said.
‘So what’s your theory, then?’
He screwed up his face. ‘Eh?’
‘What happened to the girl?’
‘You’re asking the wrong person.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because I’m still living under Di Angelo’s roof.’
‘And you can’t dish the dirt on your landlord?’
He shrugged. ‘Depends who I dish it to.’ He stared at me down the barrel of his swollen nose. ‘From what I heard, that girl had been around his operation long enough to know a few secrets. That’s all I’m saying.’
‘So why would he send Vespa round here if he had already dealt with her?’
‘The guy’s smart. It persuades everyone that she slipped through his grasp. That’s what everyone’s always thought, that she ran away before he could get to her. That maybe she was living abroad or in hiding somewhere.’
‘What was Vespa like when he was here? Was he just hanging around for appearances?’
‘Vespa?’ The man laughed. ‘He’s not the sort to be kept waiting. He was swearing, making phone calls, standing up, sitting down, looking at his watch, looking out of the window. He was expecting her, I’m sure of that. He wasn’t there just to have an alibi. He was like a cat on ice.’
I looked around the foyer one last time. It looked forlorn, like a room that was frozen in time. It reminded me somehow of Anna’s bedroom back in the countryside: a place that had been kept exactly as it was, all the incidental positionings lovingly preserved. Only here there wasn’t that love, only abandon. It had been left as it was out of laziness. As I was looking around, I began thinking about Anna’s mother out in the sticks, about that sad little house by the side of the mountain road.
‘And when he came here,’ I said, looking at the dishevelled receptionist, ‘Mori asked you to pass a message to Di Angelo, right?’
‘He asked me to pass a message up the chain of command, sure.’
‘What message?’
‘He wanted to let them know that he had evidence. He paused. ‘That Teleshare was bent in our favour.’ It was strange the way he said ‘our’ like he, too, was part of a glamorous organisation.
‘Did he ask for money?’
The man shook his head. ‘He wanted to set up a meeting.’
‘And you passed on the message?’
‘Sure.’
‘Who to?’
‘To Di Angelo’s people.’
‘Who exactly?’
‘To the accountant who does the books here.’
I nodded at the man at the desk and walked out.
An hour later I was sitting in one of the main squares, enjoying a beer. I had done the job, found the girl and brought her in. I gulped the cool liquid and became conscious of my head swimming with everything that had happened in the past few days, with all the secrets that had come to the surface. But I felt strangely dissatisfied, like I hadn’t done my job properly. There was still one, heavy secret that was buried. There was something about the Anna Sartori disappearance that stopped me relaxing and going home. Her fate was part of the same story and I knew I wasn’t done.
Through an alley that led from one corner of the square I could hear the sound of an amplified voice. It was an irritating chatter, full of false joviality. I sank the rest of the drink, threw some coins on the table and walked over to where the noise was coming from.
There was another, smaller square that was packed with people. At the far end was a stage made of scaffolding and across the top of it, on a horizontal pole, were half a dozen large black lights looking like beetles on a thread. They were blazing down onto two dozen girls who were twisting their bare shoulders left and right as a man with a mike taped to his cheek strutted around the stage. There was a crowd of about a hundred standing in front of the stage, applauding and shouting encouragement.
‘What’s going on?’ I asked a woman standing off to the side.
‘They’re choosing the finalists.’
‘For what?’
‘For the competition to be the new weathergirl on TV Sogni.’ She didn’t take her eyes off the stage as she spoke to me. She was clapping her hands silently, more in delight than to create applause. ‘That’s my daughter there, the one third from the right in the front row.’
I looked over towards the stage. I could only just see the girls through a forest of arms that were holding aloft mobile phones. There, third from the right, was a girl in a sequinned bra and a very short skirt. She was smiling, putting her head first on one shoulder then the other.
The woman next to me took out her phone. I heard her telling someone that they were just about to eliminate another six girls from the stage. She hung up and put her hands over her mouth and nose, as if she were praying. The man with the mike was still walking backwards and forwards, coming out with mawkish phrases about the beauty of these magnificent girls.
‘Please, please,’ I heard the mother whispering to herself. She leant towards me slightly, taking her left hand from over her mouth. ‘She’s dreamt of this for years. It’s her guiding ambition. She’s even done correspondence courses in meteorology in order to make the grade. Look at her, poor thing, she looks so nervous.’
‘And you’re happy for her to do this?’ I asked.
‘Happy?’ She looked at me now. ‘Of course I’m happy. I’ll be ecstatic if she makes the final. It’s televised tomorrow. She’ll be on national TV. Not just a local channel. She’ll be famous.’
‘Why would you want that?’
She looked at me and just frowned.
The man on stage started announcing the girls who had been eliminated. He left pauses between each name, long pauses that were supposed to increase the dramatic tension but that were so long that any tension was replaced by boredom. As he said each name the eliminated girls would walk along the two lines, hugging each of the other girls as she went. I watched as one recently eliminated waif wrapped her thin, tanned arms around each surviving contestant. She then walked towards the compère, wiping a tear from her eye with the back of her hand.
‘Antonella,’ he said softly, ‘we’re very sorry to see you leave.’ He passed her a microphone.
‘I would just like to say,’ she sobbed slightly, ‘how proud I am of all the girls here. They are all worthy to win the prize. All of them. They feel like friends already after only one day. Beautiful friends.’ She held a hand to her face again, and the compère rescued the microphone as she slipped offstage.
The scene was repeated again and again, as the man left a long, deadly silence before announcing another failed contestant who would then hug everyone and say some dull comments before weeping and being escorted out of the limelight. When the last elimination took place, the woman next to me realised that her daughter had survived the cull and jumped up and down, clapping her hands with her wrists together like some kind of performing seal. Then she turned to me and hugged me.
‘She’s thr
ough, she’s through.’
She pulled out her phone again to inform someone about the progress of her talented daughter.
The girls on stage were now hugging again. People in the crowds were hugging each other too. Many were crying. It was a surreal spectacle. The public seemed to be responding to a true tragedy, or real achievement, rather than a daft beauty pageant. I could see one woman in the crowd bashing the palms of her hands onto her forehead as if suffering some terrible grief. Slowly the crowd began to disperse, some moving to the left where the losers were emerging from behind the stage in designer tracksuits. Others were moving stage right to congratulate their daughters and girlfriends and sisters on their progress through to the next round.
I moved away a few paces and watched the spectacle: the girls hugging their mothers, and the fathers cutting deals with the producer. After a few minutes the two groups seemed to move together, so that the girls were all hugging and kissing their fathers and the producer, as if to thank them for buying another rung on the showgirl’s career ladder.
I saw a large coach entering the square through one of the old arches. It had the insignia of the TV channel written obliquely down the side. Its arrival caused great excitement to the girls, who squealed with delight. There was spontaneous applause as the coach came to a halt in front of the small crowd. The eliminated girls looked on mournfully.
‘Where are they off to?’ I asked one of the excited parents next to me.
‘To prepare for the grand final. It’s on TV tomorrow. They’re all staying in some secret hotel, there’s going to be a big party and VIPs and famous people, and then tomorrow we’re all invited to the gala event.’
‘VIPs and famous people?’ I asked with sarcasm. ‘Sounds amazing.’
I knew exactly the kind of party they were going to. Every room would have a casting couch. Just like it did twenty years ago when Anna and Chiara were the young lambs in the lion’s den. It amazed me how little had changed. If anything, things had got worse. Back then, a few girls would have done anything to get on TV; now, it seemed, it was more than a few girls. It seemed to be the ambition of all good-looking girls: to smile and flirt and flash their way to the promised land of celebrity. They didn’t seem to realise they were no more than steaks served up to portly politicians who controlled the personnel departments of the TV stations. They thought they were entering the world of glamour but were actually descending the steps to degradation. I could understand the naïve teenagers longing to get into that world, but I couldn’t understand why their parents colluded in encouraging their ambitions. Why would a mother or father send their daughter into that world? After decades of warnings, they still thought they were helping their loved ones into a different social sphere, into another world where the stardust would be shared round like champagne at a wedding. Even the adults seemed blinded or hypnotised by that world of wobbly cardboard sets, false smiles and fake tans.
