When the Dead Awaken

by Steffen Jacobsen

  They had boarded the train at Milan’s Porta Garibaldi station. They had the first-class compartment to themselves. Laura kissed him and found a couple of apples in her shoulder bag. She offered him one, but he shook his head. He leaned forwards and looked out of the window. No one on the platform seemed to want to travel north. The few passengers who got off the train made a dash through the rain for the shelter of the canopy. He let himself fall back into the seat when the train pulled out of the station. He did not want to see anyone he knew.

  Laura kissed him again. She tasted of apple as she prised open his mouth with her pink tongue.

  The door to the compartment was opened and the noise from the corridor burst the bubble that surrounds all lovers. Laura pulled away and smiled. The stranger returned her smile, checked his seat number and reservation, and sat down opposite her. He placed a black briefcase between his boots, wedged a long walking stick into the corner and started reading his newspaper. The man was eminently forgettable. The black coat was expensive, but nothing out of the ordinary. The creases of his trousers were sharp and his shirt was white as snow.

  The stranger disappeared behind his newspaper and Laura rested her head on Mazzaferro’s shoulder. She yawned, closed her eyes and dozed off while Mazzaferro played Tetris on his mobile. The professor looked up when he heard voices outside the compartment. Two businessmen had stopped in the corridor. Their broad backs in raincoats blocked the door. He heard a window open and both men took out cigarettes, leaned against the wall in the rattling train and carried on with their conversation. The new arrival looked dry, even though he was not carrying an umbrella. It would seem that he had boarded the train at Porta Garibaldi, but hadn’t found his seat until now. Given that the train was only half full, at best, this surprised Mazzaferro, but he brushed it aside. Perhaps the man had enjoyed a cup of coffee and a grappa in the dining car.

  Mazzaferro looked up from his mobile and discovered that the man opposite was studying him over the top of his newspaper. His gaze shifted to Laura’s peaceful face, her high forehead with the tiny scar above her left eyebrow, her dark curly hair and her smile, like that of a sleeping child. Laura had tiny freckles everywhere and her hair had a deep chestnut glow. All her hair. Her skin was milky white and she never tanned properly, she had told him. Mazzaferro loved the exquisite white skin across her breasts and stomach. It was even whiter against the stripe of her auburn pubic hair. Laura had lips redder than any other woman and right now they were slightly parted. Carlo Mazzaferro saw her eyelids twitch.

  ‘She’s dreaming,’ the man opposite said softly. ‘That’s good.’

  Mazzaferro was about to straighten up but sank back into the seat in order not to wake Laura. The man’s remark was inappropriate. Too intimate. It might have been acceptable to comment on a sleeping child, but not on another man’s woman. He glared at the man without replying and hoped that by doing so he had signalled his indignation.

  The man’s face disappeared behind the newspaper once more. A ticket collector spoke to the men outside before opening the door to the compartment and the stranger folded his newspaper and took out his ticket from the inside pocket of his coat. The man’s movements were precise and economical. Mazzaferro rummaged around in his leather jacket behind Laura’s head and fished out their tickets. The ticket collector looked at them, smiled politely and wished everyone a pleasant journey. He closed the door behind him and squeezed past the businessmen in the corridor.

  The rain pelted the window of the train and the man opposite him checked his watch.

  The train entered the first of many viaducts, which took the line through the low northern hills. The carriage swayed and rattled through a set of points, the compartment darkened and Mazzaferro felt Laura’s head roll on to his shoulder. She twitched like a dreaming puppy, her body tensing briefly. She sighed and he wondered if she was having a nightmare. He had never spent an entire night with her. He stroked her face and smiled at the warm wetness on the back of his hand. Women. Tears of joy. Or perhaps she dribbled a little in her sleep like a baby. He heard the newspaper rustle opposite him. The squeal from wheels echoed against the brickwork of the viaduct and once more they found themselves in the suburbs. Across the roofs Mazzaferro caught a glimpse of a purple sunset sky between black clouds and dark, naked facades. He looked at his hand. His palm was dark in the yellow light and a long tongue, black like his palm, coloured the front of Laura’s white shirt. It reached the belt of her jeans and seeped from a small, still breathing cut to the base of her long, white neck. Carlo Mazzaferro leaned forwards. Laura’s arms hung limply down her sides, her hands lay open in her lap as if she were offering him everything in the whole wide world, looking directly at him. Her fine eyelids with the delicate veins trembled.

  The man opposite lowered his newspaper and smiled at him.

  ‘She’s still alive, Dr Mazzaferro,’ he said in a conversational tone of voice. ‘Just about. If I were you, I would say my goodbyes now.’

  The long walking stick lay across his knees.

  ‘What—’

  Carlo Mazzaferro moved to get up. His mouth opened, but no words came out. He looked at the two men outside. How strange that they hadn’t noticed anything. Their backs still blocked the door to the corridor.

  Mazzaferro never saw the movement, but the pain exploded under his right shoulder joint. He stared at the long steel blade that had grown out of the stick in the stranger’s hand. The blade must have damaged the nerve beneath his collarbone before penetrating the dark blue upholstery of the seat. A burning sensation ran through his arm right down to his fingertips. The blade disappeared into the stick and Laura’s head lolled towards the window. Carlo Mazzaferro looked at the sleeve of his jacket, at Laura’s head, and he started to cry.

  The stranger smiled. A crooked but apologetic smile sparkled in his eyes. They even expressed compassion, solicitude. His hands, which Mazzaferro now noticed were gloved, rested quietly on his walking stick.

  ‘I regret that we have to meet like this, Dr Mazzaferro. I’m sorry – Professore Mazzaferro. Congratulations.’

  The professor’s eyes flitted from his own bloody armpit to Laura’s half-closed eyes.

  ‘I don’t think she felt anything, professore. Apart from surprise, of course. My blade penetrated the lower part of your girlfriend’s throat and severed the spinal cord between the sixth and seventh vertebra. She was paralysed instantly. Not a bad way to go, in my opinion.’

  The pain gripped Mazzaferro’s arm like a vice. He gasped loudly and looked from the man’s face towards the two deaf and blind men in the corridor. The emergency brake was a red handle just above his right arm.

  The stranger followed the direction of Mazzaferro’s eyes.

  ‘They’re my people outside, doctor. I’m sorry. You see, there really is no sudden salvation or miraculous escape.’

  Mazzaferro tried to breathe as slowly as possible, so as not to disturb the severed muscles in his armpit.

  ‘You’re looking at my walking stick,’ the man said. ‘It’s a makila. In the olden days Basque men of a certain standing would carry a stick like this. To protect themselves against robbers, bears and wolves in the mountains. Are you listening to me?’

  The professor nodded.

  ‘The Basques are an interesting people,’ the man said. ‘Their language is one of the oldest in the world and the Basques themselves are genetically different from all other European races. Take the unique distribution of their blood types, for one thing. No one really knows where they came from. From the ruins of Carthage? The last survivors of the massacres by that butcher Scipio Aemilianus?

  Mazzaferro looked as if he might lose consciousness at any moment and the man hurried up.

  ‘What I want to tell you is that there are many types of death. For years I have administered death in every imaginable way and so I really do know what I’m talking about, doctor. As indeed do you – on the other side of the table, as it were. So … did you fake the
death certificate of Giulio Forlani on the fifth of September 2007? I need a quick answer, professore.’

  Saliva bubbled helpfully on the surgeon’s lips, but he was incapable of saying a word. He removed his left hand from the cut under his shoulder and made a helpless gesture with it.

  The stranger sighed. ‘We’ll do this another way. Did you treat Giulio Forlani after the traffic accident on the A7?’

  Mazzaferro nodded. His wet hair flopped into his eyes.

  ‘Did he survive?’

  Mazzaferro’s mouth was moving, but no words came out.

  Eventually he nodded furiously.

  ‘Thank you. My compliments. It was an outstanding achievement. General Agostino D’Avalos asked you to certify him dead?’

  Mazzaferro nodded sickly.

  ‘Do you know where he is now?’

  The doctor shook his head.

  ‘You’re going to kill me,’ he whispered.

  ‘I promise I’m not going to kill you, Professor Mazzaferro. You have my word. So do you know where he is?’

  ‘No, but I know you’re going to kill me.’

  The man shook his head and stood up. He balanced like a dancer against the jerky movements of the train.

  ‘Arrivederci, professore.’

  He opened the door and left. The two men outside came into the compartment.

  The train entered another viaduct, and if anyone had been standing by a window in one of the bleak high-rise buildings and looked over at the Como Express, that person might have wondered at two sudden flashes lighting up one of the compartments.

  The sturdier of the businessmen looked at the doctor on the narrow floor between the seats. He shot him through the head once more, put the pistol in his briefcase, looked at the girl and thought what a pity it was. She really was lovely.

  The man closed the curtains, left the compartment, shut the door behind him and wedged it closed.

  The three men got off the train at the next station, dashed through the rain and reached the kerb at the same time as the dark blue Audi.

  The bigger man got into the passenger seat while the smaller squeezed into the corner in the back next to Savelli.

  The Audi set off. Urs Savelli leaned back, closed his eyes and surrendered to his private meditations.

  Giulio Forlani was alive. Vaffanculo!

  He made a mental note to give Cesare, the truck driver, an extended lesson on how to identify unmistakable signs of death in people he presumed were dead. He would use one of Cesare’s children for demonstration purposes.

  ‘Back to Milan, signore?’ the driver asked.

  ‘What? Yes, let’s go back.’

  CHAPTER 24

  The raindrops tasted of kohl and mascara. Sabrina knew she must look like a wet, tragic clown.

  She was in an alleyway between a patisserie and an ironmonger’s. The bins smelt of cinnamon, chocolate and vanilla, and her stomach churned. She had been standing in the rain for half an hour opposite her mother’s apartment block; freezing, but vigilant. There were only a few people in the street: a girl with a guitar on her back, a man walking a small dog, and a couple of boys engrossed in a conversation intelligible only to other thirteen-year-olds. There were no people in the parked cars, as far as she could see; no suspicious vans with blacked-out windows, no taxis waiting for customers who never came; none of the motorbikes or ordinary saloon cars that usually kept returning to Via Salvatore Barzilai like spurned lovers.

  Sabrina extricated herself from the shadows and crossed the street to the block next to her mother’s, pressed the buzzer for the dermatologist on the third floor, who always automatically opened the door on those evenings he had consultations, and entered. The aged lift in the centre of the stairwell came clanking down to the ground floor as if it suffered from rheumatism. She opened the gated door, pulled it closed and pressed five. The lift seemed to summon up the courage before starting its ascent. Sabrina tilted back her head and looked up through the mesh in the ceiling of the lift. As always, she imagined that she was travelling in a spacecraft: the roofs over the lift shafts were covered with large glass domes. In the summer they glowed opal blue, like the sea under a rock, and she experienced a feeling of weightlessness if she kept staring at the dome as she travelled up. On cloudless September nights, the domes became observatories filled with stars, planets, the navigation lights of passing aeroplanes.

  Tonight they were blacked out by the darkness and the rain.

  She exited the lift and walked up the stairs to the top floor. Two cleaning carts were parked on the landing. Next to the carts a ladder had been bolted to the wall, a hatch at the top provided access to the attic.

  The lift started travelling down. She pressed herself against the wall and held her breath. The lift continued its endless journey down and its old, dry cogs screamed out in protest. At each floor the lift produced a trembling, almost human sigh. Sabrina could hear no voices coming from below. No hard steps across the marble floors. Whoever had called the lift had to be alone and very quiet.

  Her hands were damp on the rungs of the ladder and she couldn’t feel her knees. Still, she pulled herself up by her hands and swore softly when the handle of her pistol clanked against the metal bars. The hinges of the hatch groaned loudly with each degree they moved. She heard the lift start its ascent. Sabrina wriggled through the hatch and on to the dusty attic floor, closed the hatch behind her, resting it on a trembling finger so she could see the top of the staircase through the crack. She eased the Walther out of the shoulder holster and aimed it at the spot at the top of the stairs where the person’s head would appear.

  The lift stopped at one of the middle floors, she heard a front door open and cheerful, everyday voices echoing and winding their way up the spirals of the stairwell.

  She was on the verge of tears and gasped for air. Breathing again required an act of will.

  She knew every square centimetre of the dusty attic corridors. The attic had provided the scenery and setting when Sabrina and her brothers played their deadly serious games. It was crammed full of dark nooks and crannies and she relived the fears of her childhood as she tiptoed through the darkness, convinced that at any moment a black-clad ninja would kick her legs away from under her or throw her to the floor. She had left at least half a pint of blood, some skin, and a couple of teeth up there.

  *

  Earlier that day Sabrina had checked into the five-star Grand Hotel Duomo in Via San Raffaele. She believed it was the last place that anyone would think to look for an emo. The concierge had already prepared a smile of rejection when a soaked Sabrina reached the mahogany counter with a queue of much more desirable opera goers behind her. However, his smile warmed by several degrees when she handed him her MasterCard wrapped in a €100 note.

  The man’s last line of defence was to offer her the bridal suite – ‘the only room available tonight, signorina, I’m afraid’. The emo with the dead stare silently stuck out her hand for the key.

  Sabrina emptied the minibar of crisps, salted almonds, two Cokes and a gin and tonic in a matter of minutes. She found the suite’s bedroom and instantly fell asleep on the white heart-shaped bed.

  And woke up at eight o’clock.

  It took her several long moments to remember where she was. She found the remote control, sat up against the headboard and pressed on without being able to see a television. There was an expensive humming sound before some panels slid aside to reveal a large flat-screen mounted on the wall above a sideboard.

  She channel-hopped until something caught her attention. The towering, platinum-blonde – and frightened – beauty who had relinquished her cubicle to her in the ladies’ lavatory at Dal Pescatore appeared on one of those forgettable talkshows with a fairground set design, this time wearing a green cocktail dress, sprinkled with sequins and with a neckline that went all the way down to her belly button, leaving absolutely nothing to the imagination. She was eagerly sparring with her silver-haired, somewhat shorter male c
o-host in the discipline of excitable nonsense.

  She flicked to a local news channel. Emergency lights, blankets of rain drifting past street lights and flashing cameras. Behind the female reporter, Sabrina could see rail tracks, overhead cables, ambulances, police cars, cordons and railway buildings of a station she failed to identify. She was about to change channels again when the reporter’s breathless words made her sit up.

  ‘The bodies of fifty-seven-year-old surgeon Professor Carlo Mazzaferro and a twenty-five-year-old doctor, Laura Rizzo, were found in a locked first-class compartment on the Como Express. Preliminary investigations suggest that the two Milanese doctors were travelling north on a private visit when they were killed by unknown assailants for reasons yet to be determined.’ The reporter’s face was suitably sober as the nature of the gloomy feature demanded, but her voice lingered seductively over the words ‘twenty-five-year-old’ and ‘private’.

  Sabrina pressed the off button and the flat-screen disappeared.

  She tossed the remote control aside, got up from the bed and started pacing the room in ever decreasing circles until she stopped, bent over with her hands on her knees, the bedroom still spinning behind her eyelids.

  Back in her mother’s flat, a fresh shiver almost made her knees buckle. She rubbed her palms together, blew on them and walked down the passage.

  Something rubbed against her legs and she bent down to scratch the old, half-blind tomcat, Ziggy, behind the ear. The cat pressed its head against her hand and followed her into the kitchen with a miaow.

  That same afternoon she had ordered her mother out of the flat and up to the family’s holiday home by Lake Como. Her mother had asked few questions; forty years of marriage to the general had instilled a set of reliable automatic reflexes in her which Sabrina shamelessly activated.

  ‘One suitcase and you’re leaving now, Mum, do you hear? Take a taxi to the station and don’t speak to anyone. I’ll explain later. A couple of days. I need a couple of days.’