The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (100 page)

Rino had a way of making Finn feel responsible. Finn couldn’t figure out how he managed it and whether it was deliberate, something in his delivery, the way he spoke without expecting a response, or if it was something Finn felt anyhow but didn’t yet understand. It didn’t matter because, after less than one full day together, he was tired of the man’s company.

Finn rang the number. Took a photo of the lobby door while he waited. Rang again. Buzzed another number to be let in. Photographed the side of the building, had Rino point out exactly which apartment Scafuti lived in (from the right: four along, one down), rang the buzzer, took another photo and then stood back in the street with his arms folded. The buildings, mirror copies of each other, had clothes and plants out on other balconies. Not shambolic and not quite messy, but disorganized, like the people who lived here didn’t have much time to consider what was around them, or bother about their clothes being in their neighbours’ view. A few people hung about, women at balconies, a small group of boys at the head of the wasteland who stopped to look for a moment and then continued with their game.

‘We should go.’ Rino encouraged Finn to leave. The two of them walked to the wasteland, as Finn wanted to see exactly where the clothes were discovered, because this at least needed to be fixed in his mind when he was writing. They lingered for a while. The scrubland was dry and tawny with long grasses bent over, paths worn through, some scattered empty water bottles, but not much of interest. He took some pictures, and took pictures of the apartments from the wasteland, but didn’t think he’d use them. It didn’t look like much, even with the side of the volcano in view behind the shoulder of the school buildings, broody and slightly improbable – a purple slope where there should be sky. He couldn’t think of anywhere less prepossessing, only the presence of the mountain gave it any kind of dark mood.

Finn wanted to understand Scafuti. In many ways the man was key. Here you have someone who is celebrated in his community, who has this whole other life going on. Rino didn’t follow. What other life? Niccolò Scafuti barely had his life together, two years ago he was just out of rehab for a head injury. Two years before that he was just an ordinary man running security up on the mountain. This man didn’t have another life.

‘So what about the cats?’

‘What about them?’

‘The cats he killed. He killed all those cats. Dumped them in the tank.’

‘So he didn’t like cats.’

‘With a slingshot.’

‘They were strays. Nobody missed them.’

‘But you don’t kill cats. That’s not normal.’

Rino shrugged. ‘Cats are cats.’

Finn didn’t want to leave the question alone. ‘But it isn’t normal.’

‘Who knows? They piss everywhere. They shit and breed. They need to be controlled.’

A figure stood out on Scafuti’s balcony, leaning on the railing, but when they approached the figure slipped back inside, and no amount of ringing would draw him out.

On the return drive Finn asked questions about Rino’s family, but Rino remained reserved and delivered answers as plain facts (My son is nine months old. Portici. All my life. She works for the commune and teaches adult literacy), as if he disapproved of what they were doing. Two weeks before while emailing these facts had come out easier, more conversational (My son keeps us awake, when he sleeps he sleeps for two hours, three sometimes, he has his mother’s lungs. How he can cry!), but one week spent waiting outside Scafuti’s apartment had soured him, and the visit revived this dislike.

Finn would rewrite the start of his book. It needed a statement, something to set it up, about how, years after, the crime still held purchase in the community: the magistrate who won’t be named, a suspect who won’t answer his door. He’d start the story properly with the cats. A man killing cats. He wouldn’t start at the basement. This image would set Scafuti up as a creep, the villain, but he’d slowly recover the man’s dignity, work against type, until, by the end, you would feel the injustice deeply. They’d have to make a film of it.

Finn called his sister, ran through some of the issues. The two-killer theory had its problems. First, how did Krawiec and the Second Man know each other? He just didn’t see it. If it was all Krawiec’s idea, how he would find another person and then get them involved. Krawiec’s theory that there were two other people, the famous brother hypothesis, had its attractions and smoothed out all of the problems, but it just wasn’t plausible and there wasn’t any evidence to it. If there were two brothers, and if they were following the narrative from
The Kill
, then key elements were missing. This is a story about a man, a fascist, who won’t accept his country’s defeat and humiliation, who punishes the people living in his building, his palazzo, for collaborating with the Americans by making it look like they are murderers and cannibals, like their acceptance of the occupation is only skin deep; after starving for years, the army is seen as meat. The book is about revenge. It’s about creating havoc.

Finn read out the opening of the book, translated it to English for his sister and couldn’t be certain if she was or wasn’t listening. ‘I am not a cruel man. I’m not stupid or vicious. I’m not wicked. I am not an animal. You must not believe what you have read. There are many facts about me you do not know and would not easily guess: I am a sentimental man; I like to help when I can help. I prefer not to interfere in other people’s business, and keep where possible to myself and trouble no one. I am a private man.’

Couldn’t she see it? This was all about someone being provoked. Had Krawiec been provoked in some way? Was Krawiec following the narrative? ‘I am a sentimental man.’

Other structural elements did not stand up, the room, the blood evidence, the organs, the teeth and tongue. The book was about the building. It’s all about the palazzo.

And then the magistrate had said something interesting, something he probably should have picked up a long time ago. There were two versions of
The Kill
. There was the version which read as a crime novel, and then there was the earlier version, which had an introduction, which was marketed as a confession, a testimony. The publisher of the second edition had cut the introduction because they felt it didn’t work with the main story.

Did she see the difference, he asked? Could she see how different this was?

He could tell she wasn’t listening. Finn spoke to his sister about a killing, figured out details, gave her information because he couldn’t otherwise talk to her. When she needed money, he asked for it from their father, because she didn’t want them to know it was for her.

Finn curled up in bed, couldn’t quite fit the frame, the bed slightly too short, so he either slept on his side with his feet curled (uncomfortable after a while), or he stuck his feet between the bars which meant that he couldn’t turn over and had to wake in order to pull his feet out and then slide them back once he’d found a new position. It didn’t work, this sleeping in shifts.

He finally lay diagonally across the bed, flat on his stomach, arms folded under his forehead, and legs out in the air, and woke twenty minutes later splayed out, superman. At one o’clock the air-conditioner began to squeak so he found his earplugs, which seemed, all things considered, a sensible solution. At midnight he was woken by a small tremble, a vibration – his phone, which he’d tucked under the pillow, as always.

Finn struggled to read the number and found the ID withheld. He answered with a more timid hello than he would have liked, and was surprised to find himself speaking with a woman.

‘Where’s Rino?’ the woman demanded – as if midnight was an acceptable time to call a stranger and ask for someone’s whereabouts.

Finn had to think before he understood what he was being asked for: Rino? ‘Who is this?’

‘This is his wife. Where is he? He’s supposed to be home.’ She sounded more irritated than worried, her voice an outright demand, as if he had some special knowledge, or was the cause, of Rino’s delay.

He told the woman that he’d sent Rino home early, like, really early. He lowered the phone to cancel the call and then couldn’t help from asking one last question.

‘How did you get this number?’

After a hesitation the woman answered crisply. ‘Rino gave it to me.’

Finn thought he could hear laughter in the background – something close to a donkey bray.

‘He gave you this number?’

More braying laughter.

‘But he has his own phone?’

‘He isn’t answering,
culo
. That’s why I called you.’

Finn bridled at being called an asshole and at the hee-haw laughter behind this. ‘Just don’t call this number, all right. Never call this number again.’

As he hung up he could hear more hefty chuckles above the donkey-laugh which seemed to choke on itself, a laugh that was also a haughty gulp.

He should have turned the phone off. Right off. Instead he checked his messages and email, and felt that the glow from the small screen, blue and just bright enough to pick out the white sheet, the edge of the pillow, as if sensing and measuring the rising humidity, which now, thanks to the air-conditioner, closed in, a kind of seepage, the air quickly thickening. Finn lay on his stomach, felt sweat bristle in the small of his back and he thought again about the student and wondered if Krawiec had stayed in the room the whole time, watched him strung up, ankles to wrists, and taunted him, or left him alone at times. This information mattered, he wanted to know if the student was toyed with, tortured. He felt the dimensions of the room, could sense exactly where and how he was located, the distance of the walls and floor, the pitch and angle of his body. He could sense it all. The boy had suffered, and it mattered that no one properly knew how much, and that no one knew his name.

The second call came forty minutes after the first. The number, again, withheld.

‘If that whoreson isn’t home in five minutes you can tell him not to come home at all. You tell him—’ and this time the woman’s voice tumbled into laughter and she couldn’t quite complete her sentence. Once again a donkey-like laugh buckled through from the background like this whole thing was a dare. He hadn’t heard Rino laugh. She hung up, then called back immediately.

‘I think he’s been kidnapped.’ Again, that laugh, a little more distant but a little more explosive.

‘I’m tracing the call,’ Finn lied. ‘It just takes a second but I can do it. There. I’ve got it. I’m passing this on to the police.’

‘
Culo
, you’ll do no such thing.’ The voice sounded angry now, she hung up herself.

The phone rang again. Stopped. Then rang again. Nearly two o’clock.

He resisted answering, allowed the call to go to message, managed not to check the message, until – with the phone under the pillow, his arms supporting his head he realized he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

The message started with a string of expletives:
culo
,
pezzo di merda
,
frocio
,
succhiatore
,
pompinaio
,
leccacazzi
,
affanculo
. ‘You come here and you think you know who we are.’

The phone rang regularly after this at intervals which cut shorter over the hour. Every fifteen minutes, every ten, every five. Finn switched off the ring, turned off the vibrate, but the small screen still lit up each time a call came through and each time a message was stored, and he fought against the urge to check the messages. Finally, when he decided to switch it off he was surprised to see that the calls had come from Rino’s phone.

He checked the messages and heard Rino, at first apologetic: ‘I’m in a situation,’ he said. His voice a little bashful, hushed, and a noise about him, which Finn identified after replaying the message, as a number of men quietly pushing over some discussion. ‘I need money. Badly. I can pay you back.’

The second and third calls reiterated the demand with a little more emphasis. ‘Pick up. Answer. Come on. I know you’re there.’ Finn couldn’t tell if this was frustration at receiving no answer or desperation because he really was in trouble.

The phone rang in his hand. Finn didn’t intend to answer but his thumb hit the keyboard.

‘Hey, hey. Are you there?’ Rino sounded indignant. ‘I need a little help. It isn’t much, I can pay you back.’

Finn didn’t respond, and waited for some explanation.

‘I need seven hundred euro. I swear I can pay you back as soon as the banks open.’

The phone crackled and another voice cut in gruffly and demanding, ‘Just get the money. Do exactly as he tells you.’

Then Rino – ‘I need the money tonight. I know you can do this.’

The call cut off and Finn switched on the bedside light and sat upright and blinked, really unsure what was going on.

Minutes later the phone beeped. An SMS, again from an unmarked number, with the simple instruction that Finn should walk to the piazza Nicola Amore, right where Corso Umberto crosses via Duomo, and wait.
Portico, Café Flavia, 20 minutes. €800.

He arranged his clothes ready to dress, picked the socks out of his trainers, half-hurrying, then paused because he was working up a sweat and something about this whole thing just didn’t convince him. He sat on the bed, looked about the room for his clothes, and wondered what he was doing. A demand for money for no reason, coming in the middle of the night: why would he answer this? Rino didn’t sound drunk and didn’t sound particularly under pressure, and Finn had paid him, transferred a good deal more than this already, in advance. He had no obligation to go out.

€1,000.
A new demand.

And how safe would this be? Walking the streets with a thousand euro.

Ten minutes later another message.
You’d better be on your way.
A definite threat.

Minutes after:
Room 32, Hotel Grimaldi. Your light is on.
His hotel, his room.

Then finally:
Bring €2,000. Mr Rabbit & Mr Wolf.

Finn re-dressed, tucked his shirt into his pants. Two thousand euro? Rino wasn’t worth two thousand euro. One, maybe, at a stretch. But two thousand? Not a chance. A meeting with Mr Rabbit and Mr Wolf would be worth much more than two thousand.