The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (85 page)

She sat on the stairs and waited and listened, but could hear nothing inside. When she knocked there came no reply. The door was unlocked, and opening it she found Cecco asleep in Rafí’s room. She’d never slept in Rafí’s bed.

Amelia Peña returned on the Sunday morning, and found the basement door ajar and a white plastic shopping bag tucked inside. The bag was heavy and the sides scuffed with what she took to be brown paint. Inside she found a hammer, a pair of pliers, and a saw-tooth blade on top of a bundle of damp rags. The rags were wet and sticky, and looked like clothes. When she looked at her fingertips, she recognized that this was not paint or thinners, but blood. Beside the clothes curled to the plastic lay a piece of meat, pink and mottled and dry, and beside the meat a single tooth with long white double roots. The tooth, perfectly formed and specked with red pith, convinced her that this was real and not some kind of fakery. It took her a moment to realize that the meat, with its velvet upper surface and slick underside with a single ridge, was, as far as she could tell, a human tongue.

✩

Marek’s problems started when he checked out of the room. While the brothers had paid, they’d also left a package at the desk for him: a box containing a pair of latex gloves (large), a disposable white suit (large), covers for shoes (size 42 to 50), what looked like a shower cap (medium), a pair of industrial goggles (one size, adjustable), and a two-litre bottle of bleach. Paola stood by the windows to the patio, her back to the desk, her bag between her legs. Marek asked when the package had been left and the clerk replied, on Friday, when the gentlemen checked out.

‘And there was no note?’

‘Just the box.’

‘Why didn’t you just give it to me when I arrived?’

The clerk pointed to a note which stated, quite clearly, that the package should be presented to Marek Krawiec when he checked out on Sunday.

Marek asked when they would be back, and the clerk looked blankly back at him.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘What time do they get back? Do you know what time they return?’

The clerk logged on to the computer, found the reservation and said no. The room was booked for another couple for the entire week. They had no reservation for Mr Wolf and Mr Rabbit. He smiled as he read the names. Funny that. Funny names.

Marek said no. Those aren’t the names. ‘Check for Marc and Paul.’

‘Last names?’ The receptionist looked from Marek to the screen.

‘It will be the same last name. First names: Marc and Paul.’

‘No,’ the clerk adjusted the monitor. ‘These are your names. Marek and Paola.’ He made a creditable stab at pronouncing Marek’s last name. ‘Car-wee-ack.’ No one could pronounce his name.

‘No, no. I said Marc and Paul. Not Marek. Not Paola.’ Marek spelled out the brothers’ first names and the clerk still couldn’t find them. First or last.

They’d paid in cash on Friday morning (everything in cash from Mr Wolf and Mr Rabbit), and there was no further booking, no apparent intention to return.

Marek didn’t want to talk this through with Paola. Mr Wolf and Mr Rabbit? There were people with nouns for last names across the globe. Everything in English sounded funny: Mr Vest and Mr Trowzer (lawyers in Gdansk), Mr Grass (his French teacher years before in Lvov), Mr and Mrs Shyte (Pennsylvania, backpackers he’d met in a London hostel, unremarkable except for their last name); it didn’t even have to be translated into English: Frau Frau (a nurse in Dusseldorf). In New Zealand a town pronounced Papa-fukah. Not quite right, but there it was. Wolf and Rabbit were probably spelled some other way (Wulffe? Wapett?). Although, weren’t they brothers, Marc and Paul? They hadn’t said they were brothers, because, being obvious, it hadn’t needed saying. Marek had just assumed that this was fact. Wolfe and Rabbit was some joke between them, another example of their humour which he just didn’t get. If Wolf and Rabbit was a joke then what about Marc and Paul, apostles both?

His telephone began to ring on the train back. Ring and cut off. When he checked his messages he found five calls, all from the supervisor Amelia Peña. Peña’s messages were incoherent. The situation wasn’t helped by a poor connection. Something terrible had happened and if she could not reach him she would have to call the police. When Marek called back the line was busy. As the train came into Torre Annunziata he made another attempt, and when Peña answered she spoke in a rapid staccato, repeating herself and the exact words from her last message. She was sorry, she said, sorry she couldn’t reach him. She had called many times. She was sorry, the basement door, she said, a bag. Something about a bag? Salvatore wasn’t around, she said, he wasn’t even in Naples right now, and she didn’t know who else to call.

Marek didn’t understand her urgency or why it was necessary to call the police. Whatever her problem he had plans for the day. As far as he knew everything at the palazzo should be in good order. Paola spent the journey looking out of the window, head turned so that he couldn’t see her face, not even in reflection. This gesture, if that’s what it was, summed up the weekend, where she had participated but was barely present.

Mr Wolf and Mr Rabbit.

He would be back, he said, he would not be long.

At this Peña’s voice became fearful and brittle.

She had found a plastic bag in the entrance. A shopping bag. There was blood smeared inside the bag, and worse, much worse, something so bad she didn’t dare say. She hadn’t dared go down to the basement. Couldn’t.

They walked from the station to the palazzo and found the door locked. She’s made this up, Marek told himself, Peña has concocted some plan or she’s stupid, or maybe crazy.

He rang Peña’s bell and her face appeared briefly at the bottom of the grille in a small square peephole cut into the door, her eyes wide and red, glassy and fearful. She had locked herself inside and in her anxiety she could not draw back the bolt. Paola drew an impatient breath, and said more to herself than Marek that Peña was a drunk dwarf. She wasn’t even the proper supervisor; no one paid her. It’s not official. ‘And now she’s locking us out of our home.’

When the door finally opened Peña stepped away in a doped slowness and slipped back to the whitewashed wall.

Paola pushed through, and used her overnight bag as a block between her and the supervisor. She gave Marek a look as if Peña was drunk, as if this really was all too much.

‘I’m going up.’

She was sorry, Peña said, hardly acknowledging Paola as she walked away. She reached vaguely to Marek, feebly caught his arm, her voice fragile and diminishing, and whispered, sorry. So sorry.

Impatient with these apologies Marek asked what was she sorry about. What was this exactly? What did she want?

Peña pointed to courtyard, to the basement door, to a white plastic shopping bag. Even at this distance, Marek could see the blue lettering that served as a logo for
Salvatore Alimentari.
The bag looked fat, the sides folded over as if tucked, as if waiting to be collected, the sides scuffed with muck.

Marek walked directly to the bag and gruffly pulled it toward him and was surprised at the weight. Inside, he found a hammer and a sawtooth blade, a pair of pliers, some shorts, and a T-shirt sopped with something like oil, sticky and dirty. He opened the T-shirt with his fingertips, still not thinking, a little repelled at the feel of the material, but just not thinking, and out skittered two teeth, two human teeth, with long white double roots. At the base of the bag a piece of meat, impossible – a tongue. He dropped the clothes. ‘
What is this?
’ Wiped his hands down his shirt, looked to Peña and said he didn’t understand. What was this? Blood? Real blood. Teeth. A tongue?

Peña held out the keys and said that he should go to the basement, she would not go, and Marek said she was crazy, why had she waited, this was a matter for the police?

Except.

It wasn’t a matter for the police.

Not at all.

When he returned to the courtyard Marek came quickly out through the service entrance onto via Tribunali. Certain that he was going to be sick, he leaned forward and regulated his breathing. The room’s heavy stink followed him out, and the effort not to retch brought tears to his eyes. Marek curled up in the doorway and hugged himself hard.

It was impossible that this could happen. Impossible to accept what he had seen, a room fouled with thick gouts of blood, a pool of it misshapen with skids and slides, the colour bright-edged and black-centred, wet and crusting.

He had bought the plastic.

He had prepared the room, painted it, left it white, layered with plastic, not draped, but taped and nailed and dressed, and what he returned to was far beyond his understanding, a room so thick with blood that someone had dragged and swum through it, soaked themselves and left their imprint.

Plenty of people would have seen him coming and going over the past week.

He called the brothers, could hardly hold the phone with shaking, but let it ring and found no answer. He called again, and again, and thought he heard a sound from the bag – and there, in fact, was the phone, set to vibrate, beside the tongue.

Outside, distant, he could hear sirens and car horns. The traffic on via Duomo stopped and began to stall along via Capasso.

Sensing Peña behind him he spat on the pavement.

Had she called the police?

She could not remember.

‘You must remember. Have you called the police? Have you spoken with anyone else?’

Peña shook her head, no she had not called anyone else.

‘Nobody has seen this?’ He pointed to the bag. ‘And the room? Has anyone seen the room?’ A T-shirt with a star.

Again Peña shook her head.

Marek shook his head. ‘You haven’t been down there?’

Peña gave another quick shake. No, no she hadn’t looked. What was down there?

‘Nothing.’ Marek shook his head. ‘Nothing.’

They shook their heads together, willing this to be true.

‘There’s nothing down there.’ He held up the keys. ‘Let me keep these for now.’

Peña nodded, eager to be rid of any responsibility.

‘Has anyone come in or out? Anyone from the palazzo? Has anyone seen or looked into the bag?’

Once more she shook her head, and Marek again felt hopeful.

‘Did you see anyone go down into the basement this weekend? What about the brothers? Has anyone seen Marc or Paul?’

She didn’t understand him. She hadn’t met the men.

‘The men who rented the room? You haven’t met them?’

‘Salvatore,’ she said, but according to his sons he had returned to Bari, for his health. They knew nothing about a basement room, and nothing about two businessmen.

Lanzetti. Marek decided he should speak with Lanzetti.

What was he going to do about the bag? Peña pointed back to the courtyard. Marek followed after. He picked up the T-shirt, returned it to the bag and again took note of the pattern, badly stained: a white star in a white circle.

One of the brothers had killed the other, he was certain of it. He pinched the keys hard into his fist. A white star. A white circle. The same star and circle as the bakery. The bakery and the language school. A far worse idea occurred to him. They had murdered the Japanese girl. This was why they had asked him to find someone. This was why they had paid him so well. The clothes in the bag were not clothes likely to be worn by either of the brothers, but neither were they women’s clothes.

Marek had painted the room. Bought the materials. Dressed the room in plastic. He’d helped them search for a woman. He began to understand his part in this, the realization yawned open, the bleach, the gloves, the package at the hotel. An expectation that he would clean up. And the tongue? An emphatic demand that he should shut his mouth.

He told Peña that it was a joke. The tongue, the blood, were fake. The clothes were real enough, of course, but everything else was some kind of elaborate joke. Peña appeared to accept the answer, although the idea produced no change in how she appeared.

Paola, seated at the sewing machine, leaned through and gave a hi, as if the weekend had not been awkward, as if nothing had happened, which was in many ways the problem. Nothing had happened: no arguments, but no agreements either. She’d tolerated the weekend, suffered through it as if this were something he’d especially wanted to do, and just this one time they’d do it, right, but it wouldn’t become a habit, OK, it wouldn’t be anything she’d care to repeat. Paola leaned from her chair, hands holding a T-shirt steady under the needle, to peep into the room with an apologetic hi, as if she realized now just how childish she could be sometimes. ‘What’s that on your shirt?’

Marek answered
paint.
He’d wiped his hands down his shirtfront. Two smears that looked nothing like paint.

Paola slipped back into work, and left him alone while he sat at the toilet, tried to control his breathing, tried to hold down his retching or keep it to the moments when she was sewing, when the machine peckered through the material and the sound stammered through the walls. His eyes were watering from the effort to regulate his breathing, he didn’t know if he was crying.

She asked if he was OK, what was keeping him?

‘I think, I don’t know, maybe I’ve picked up something. The steam room.’

‘The chicken,’ she said, ‘undercooked. Oh god, we both had it. I’m feeling a little that way too.’

He’d never thought of her as superficial, but now it struck him. If he was feeling sick, she had to be sick too, or sicker. The idea of Paola came to him, entirely apparent. As ridiculous as a small dog. It wasn’t stitching clothes she hated, not in itself, it was the dread that this was the limit of her expertise, that she wasn’t any better than any other peasant who stitched and sewed. Italian through and through, she felt she deserved better. She hated him, treated him with contempt. This was clear. Because he was Polish, because he earned his living when and where he could. They weren’t a couple. They were two people making do.