The Memory Man

by Steven Savile

  He could kill.

  He knew that much about himself.

  A single barista worked the counter. Half a dozen customers were hunched over cups of coffee. It was far too late to be drinking caffeine, but that didn’t stop them. ‘I’ll get them, shall I? Least I can do,’ the man said as Danilo slid onto one of the bench seats. ‘Due caffé,’ he told the barista, who turned away and started to grind the beans.

  A couple of minutes later the man who had killed Jonas Anglemark brought two small single shots to the table and took his place on the other side.

  ‘So, what do I call you?’ Danilo asked.

  ‘Call me?’

  ‘You know, a name? It feels wrong. You obviously know me.’

  ‘You can call me Michael.’

  ‘Michael? Is that your real name?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what my name is if you can’t remember me, does it?’

  ‘I suppose not.’

  ‘You still don’t know who your hero really is, do you?’

  Danilo looked at Michael, then reached into his pocket for a packet of cigarillos. He tapped one out and lit up. ‘I still have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You should trust me,’ Michael said and took a sip of his coffee. ‘I’m the only one who won’t lie to you.’

  Danilo chose not to respond. Instead he drew on the cigarillo, blowing out a thin stream of smoke that rose between them like a curtain. ‘So, you wanted to talk? About what?’

  ‘The past.’

  ‘That covers a multitude of sins. Do you want to be more specific?’

  ‘The time when you were running the Romanian orphanage.’

  ‘Now that is ancient history.’

  ‘Not for me. It’s like it was only yesterday.’

  ‘You were there?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here.’

  He looked at the man properly, into his eyes, trying to read them as he took another sucking drag on the cigarillo. ‘Were you one of the orphans?’

  ‘I was one of the unfortunate kids abandoned there.’

  Danilo nodded. He half-smiled, like he was glad to see the boy all grown up and making his way in the world. ‘Your English is very good for someone who came through that system.’ That system. He knew that he was condemning himself with every word that came out of his mouth, every syllable a reminder, an accusation of the things he had been involved with back then.

  ‘I guess I have you to thank for that.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Weren’t you the one who insisted we all learned to speak English? You said it would be the global language, that the world was changing and that without it we would be left behind.’

  ‘And look at you now,’ he said, feeling stupid, like he was praising a serial killer because he had good grammar. He barely held in the nervous laughter that accompanied that thought.

  ‘I’m not stupid, Pietro. The only reason you wanted us to learn English was that it made us more valuable. All of the visitors spoke English.’

  ‘Visitors?’

  The man sighed, tiring of the game. ‘We’re both men of the world, there’s very little to be gained from keeping up the pretence. You know what I’m talking about. We both know what kind of people visited the house. People like Jonas Anglemark.’

  ‘I don’t know who you thought Anglemark was,’ Danilo said, ‘but he worked with the foundation that ran the orphanage. He was a good man.’

  ‘A good man? I am not sure those are the words I would have picked. Good men didn’t come to visit us. We both know that. They came for a particular kind of pleasure. I have the names of some. You are going to tell me the names of others.’

  Danilo nodded. ‘I could do that. If you think it would help you? But do you really want to go back there, if it was so bad?’

  Michael reached into his pocket. He took out a single piece of paper. He unfolded it and laid it out flat on the table between them.

  Danilo looked at the list of names.

  He recognized them all, each and every last one of them. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t thought about them in decades, or that he wouldn’t have known them from Adam if they met. One notable name was missing. ‘I don’t see Maffrici’s name here.’

  ‘The judge? Indeed not. But that is because his crime is a very different one.’

  ‘Ah,’ Danilo said, as if that made perfect sense.

  ‘There is still a price for him to pay.’

  He continued to read through the names, and realized there were two or three more he could remember that weren’t on the list.

  It took him a moment more to realize his own name was missing.

  But there was one name that should have been at the top of the list, scrawled out in a mad spidery scratch of large letters, underlined, that was nowhere to be seen: the child who didn’t keep his promises.

  Remember.

  He did.

  He remembered it all, vividly. It was there, inside him. It lived under his skin.

  He remembered all of it.

  And until today thought that he had at least made peace with it.

  He remembered Bonn.

  ‘There’s a lot of familiar names on there,’ he said. ‘I can’t think of anyone you’ve missed. Though, I’ll be honest, it’s a relief not to see my name.’

  ‘Why would your name be there? You were a witness. You did not add to our pain.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said.

  Michael nodded. ‘Can you think of anyone else? Anyone I’ve missed? It’s so hard, sometimes, to let my mind go back there, but it feels like there is a dark shadow I’m missing. Another name.’

  It was a trap. Michael knew what name was missing.

  He wanted him to say it aloud, as though speaking it would conjure up the devil himself.

  He left the name unspoken.

  ‘I think we’re done here, Michael,’ he said. ‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’ Danilo stubbed his cigarillo out, as though to signify their little chat was over.

  FIFTY-ONE

  Ash gave up and headed back to his hotel.

  He’d driven around in circles for the best part of two hours looking for the racing-green Renault. It was a pointless exercise but he felt like he needed to be doing something. There was plenty of traffic, most of it comprising taxis and scooters, their drivers weaving in and out of each other’s paths with suicidal abandon. He saw lovers walking hand in hand down the streets eating gelato, and fighters brawling as they spilled out of the bars. What he didn’t see was the damned car.

  There was a message on his room’s voicemail. It was Donatti asking for an update.

  He had nothing to tell the Vatican’s fixer. What was he supposed to say? ‘Oh, I convinced our best hope of finding the killer to hang out in a gay sex club, and lost him’? He looked at himself in the mirror above the desk. He looked like shit. He looked like a man who had just been told he had a week to live, and the bad news was they should have given him his results a week ago. He scratched at the stubble there. There was a good three days’ worth of shadow now.

  He was dog tired and just wanted to sleep.

  He was so conflicted about Donatti. They were friends. Had been friends. Would be friends again. Probably. But the trust was damaged, and the lines between the good guys and the bad had blurred to the point he really didn’t know on which side Donatti was operating this time. And until he knew his only option was to leave the Vatican man in the dark. At least until he proved he was working on the side of the angels.

  If he was working on the side of the angels.

  He packed his bag before he took a shower, and stayed in there nearly forty-five minutes, hands pressed against the wall, letting the heating flense his skin in a ritual flagellation. He was utterly spent when he final collapsed naked on the bed. He didn’t even bother climbing beneath the covers.

  His knees ached from where he’d fallen onto them. He was getting too old for the abuse the job put his body through, but he’d
been so close to catching the killer. He’d seen him. Or his silhouette, at least. That was so much more than they’d managed until now. Frankie Varg had said the noose was closing around him. But he’d missed him. Was that it, their one shot?

  Maybe.

  He didn’t want to think that way, but what were the chances of the guy screwing up again, or them getting the jump on him before he picked off his next victim? And what if Pietro Danilo was it, the bottom of the list, the last name? Because he wasn’t a mass-murderer, he was a grudge-killer. He was exacting retribution. It was about vengeance. But when he was done, then that was it. He wouldn’t be out looking for a fresh victim, he would simply disappear into the ether.

  Maybe.

  As in maybe they’d get lucky and Laura would be able to pull up a usable CCTV shot of the killer. It was only a couple of years since Rome had embraced the whole Big Brother thing, installing hundreds of cameras across the city, and on all of the famous landmarks, in an attempt to combat the escalating drug crisis they faced, and to deter prostitution. But the system was still new, and he had no idea if she’d be able to use it the same way she could use London’s, following the Renault’s route across the cameras, or if she’d have to comb through every camera’s footage in search of the car, and then have to play a game of time stamps and a process of elimination to piece together a route. That wasn’t his problem, but he wasn’t holding out much hope, either.

  He lay awake staring at the ceiling fan as it turned lazily above his head, wondering if he should just get a flight home first thing in the morning and regroup.

  Every time it felt like they were getting somewhere something happened to set them back, and they found themselves without a suspect pool to trawl. By rights, by now, they should have been able to identify at least a small group of suspects, not just Lev Yashin.

  The fan had a slight wobble to its rotation on every third revolution. It must have been a loose washer or something. It gave the blades a faint creak.

  He couldn’t close his eyes.

  What did they know?

  The EuropaChild Foundation funded orphanages in Eastern Europe. Danilo ran one in Romania. Tournard, Ramirez, and the other victims all had spent time volunteering in the EuropaChild orphanages, and Anglemark was some sort of patron of the foundation.

  The foundation had to be the point around which all else pivoted, but how did Bonn fit in? Neither incarnation of the charity had any business in Germany, Maffrici claimed he’d never visited the city.

  Any investigation was like building a house of cards, as piece by piece the foundations to support it were put into place, taking the weight, until finally it was there, complete. But all it ever took was one misstep and the whole thing came tumbling down. Bonn was that card that didn’t fit, and it undermined the integrity of everything else they thought about what was happening.

  But, discount Bonn for a second, that could be something as simple as a conference, something that took them out of the orphanage and into the city, if it was all connected, then it was connected to the orphanage Danilo managed, wasn’t it? Romania in the time of Nicolae Ceauşescu was a strange, strange place. The was no way of knowing the kind of horrors hidden beneath that regime.

  The ceiling fan wobbled again.

  He stood naked on the bed and pulled the plastic chain that sent it revolving in the other direction.

  Coming at it from the other direction, if the victims were linked to that Romanian orphanage, then the killer was linked to it, too.

  And that meant his name had to be on the list Laura had compiled when she was cross-referencing the victims for a link. A vast number of people had been employed by the foundation, and record-keeping wasn’t great, much of the paperwork had seemingly been destroyed in the revolution. Even so, the Ceauşescu regime had fallen in ’89, meaning thirty years ago. Anyone working at the orphanage then would almost certainly be retired now, and anyone in their forties or fifties at the time would almost certainly be dead by now, in prison, or getting on for ninety and far too old to fit the profile of an intercontinental serial killer. Even someone in the thirties would be retired by now. Reducing that by another decade whittled down the numbers, but it didn’t add up. To do what he was doing, they had to be looking for someone who had been a child. They didn’t have to be a long-term resident, just someone who had been there for a few weeks or months, it was enough. And that list included hundreds upon hundreds of undocumented and vulnerable souls.

  And how did you go about ruling them out?

  One at a time was the answer, but without the proper paperwork surviving it was impossible.

  Ash lay awake for half the night, turning it over in his head and getting nowhere. Every now and then he used the voice recorder on his phone to record his thoughts for Laura and Frankie.

  The process of talking it through helped clarify his thoughts, even if there wasn’t an actual answer there to be found. But that was just it, wasn’t it? The answer had to be in there somewhere, hiding in plain sight.

  The one thing he kept coming back to, as the hours moved from one to two to three, was that along with Maffrici, Danilo had to be up to his neck in it. And Maffrici was connected to Donatti. And Donatti was connected to Tournard. And the ankle bone connected to the shin bone and the shin bone connected to the knee bone – only as he said it he called it in a sing-song voice into the recording, the sin bone, and realized that was more apt than anything he’d said all night.

  At five he decided that he’d added as much to the recording as he could, and probably more than he should have, but with his mind purged of the thoughts that had been fighting for his attention he finally closed his eyes and sank back into the pillow, dreaming of a couple of hours’ sleep.

  FIFTY-TWO

  Danilo felt queasy as they emerged from the all-night cafe, but put the weirdness down to the cool night air and the coffee. He reached out for the support of an iron railing and then as he seemed to stumble from one side of the street to the other, the roof of a parked car. He struggled to keep his wits about him, but even as the thought surfaced it was gone, lost in the oncoming daze. He felt nauseous. Michael had dosed him with something; he was sure of it. But how, he hadn’t let his drink out of his sight. Caligula’s, he realized, his eyelids drooping. He forced himself upright.

  He hadn’t been on the list.

  He was safe.

  But what about the missing man?

  ‘I should go,’ he said, or slurred. The words sounded elongated inside his head.

  Michael held out a steadying hand as they walked to the car. The streetlights blurred like rain across the street as his vision lost clarity and sharpness. The people and cars took on a peculiar haze, losing definition as he tried to focus on them. He blinked back what he thought were tears but couldn’t understand why he’d be crying.

  He reached into his pocket for his car keys and fumbled them. They hit the road, a timpani chorus in his own tragedy.

  ‘Are you all right?’ Michael asked, full of concern. The younger man let Danilo lean on him, support his weight. All the strength seemed to have fled his legs. All he wanted to do was sit. To go down. His mind cackled manically at the double entendre. He didn’t find it funny at all. The only sober part of Pietro Danilo’s mind was locked in horror, battling for control of his body against whatever had laid siege to his system.

  ‘I’m … no … it’s … OK … fine.’ He tried to say the words but all that emerged was an incoherent mumble.

  ‘Why don’t I drive? I don’t mind. You look like you need to sit. We can open the windows. Maybe the fresh air will help? Here,’ he knelt to gather the fallen keys, ‘let me help you. Let’s get you somewhere you can sleep it off.’

  Danilo managed another mumble, trying to protest as Michael steered him around to the passenger side. The other man opened the door. He slumped inside, fumbling at the seatbelt. He hands wouldn’t obey him. Michael leaned over him and clicked the belt into place. ‘Don’t worry. I’v
e got you,’ he said.

  Michael got into the driver’s seat beside him, and fired up the engine. They moved away from the kerb, driving well within the speed limit as they left the cafe behind.

  That locked-in part of Danilo’s consciousness knew what was happening around him but was helpless to exert any sort of control on the rest of his mind. All he wanted to do was close his eyes. There was no plan now. He couldn’t run.

  Michael talked, but he couldn’t concentrate on his words. The dissociative fog filled him mind. He felt the blood in his veins. He felt the hairs along the backs of his arms. His was horribly aware of the churning tumble-dryer nausea churning up his guts. He had no strength to fight whatever was happening to him.

  And then he was gone.

  FIFTY-THREE

  When he came to, all sense of movement had stopped. His eyes were gummed shut. His bones felt impossibly heavy.

  ‘Welcome back, Pietro.’

  He grunted. It was barely a sound.

  ‘Don’t worry, your head should start to clear soon, though it will hurt for a while. I’m told it feels like a hangover.’ It was Michael’s voice … wasn’t it? No. Yes. No. He tried to claw on to what little sense he could find, but he was sure suddenly he was listening to a ghost.

  The words of the past.

  No.

  A voice of from the past.

  The accent had changed, but there was something within it that couldn’t change. Something that refused to be abandoned, that clung on tenaciously.

  He tried to say something, but his lips felt bloated and numb.

  ‘Drink?’ he managed, though he could have been asking if the drink had been drugged or if he could have precious water now.

  His captor smiled. ‘Ah, Pietro, far too trusting, too gullible. It was no fun at all. You thought you’d kill me? Really? Would you really go that far to keep your dirty little secret?’ Michael laughed, bitterly. The sound echoed around him.

  It wasn’t until that moment that Danilo realized he couldn’t move his arms or legs. At first he thought it was some residual effect of the drugs in his blood, but then he saw that he was restrained.