The Kills: Sutler, the Massive, the Kill, and the Hit (86 page)

He thought that he should like her more. That he should want to hold her, be close, feel someone living, just to feel loved. But he just felt sick. He thought he should be able to tell her exactly what he’d seen and she would know – without pause – to offer comfort. But she would blame him, she would tell him:
nothing is free.
Didn’t you see what you were doing? Didn’t you ask yourself:
what is this for
? Did you have no understanding, no perspective? She would tell him nothing that he did not know.

He stayed in the bathroom, lodged his foot against the door just in case she had the bright idea to check on him. He always knew what to do, in every situation, he always knew the answer. He’d speak to his brother. Lemi would know. And then he realized his brother couldn’t begin to calculate the complications or the dimension of it. Every way he looked at this he was in trouble. He would be held responsible. Culpable. To the end of his life.

The room would have to be cleared. Either him, the police, or someone else would have to tear down the plastic, pack it in bags, take it elsewhere. It would not stay like this. It could not.

*

Marek kept the basement keys in his pocket, where he could feel them digging into his leg. He closed the shutters, lay on the bed, tried to sleep so that he didn’t have to explain himself, but didn’t want to close his eyes because the room stayed with him. He told himself it wasn’t real. It couldn’t be, he’d taken it wrong. They’d butchered an animal, that’s all, some dog picked off the street. That’s all this was. Not a joke but a prank, although how could this in any shape be seen as something funny. A tongue in a bag. Teeth. A room drenched in blood.

At five o’clock he heard a knock at the door, and felt his heart stop then quicken. This would be the police and they would take him now. They would want to know why he was asking at the school about the Japanese woman. Why had he bought those materials? Whoever were these people, Mr Wolf and Mr Rabbit?

He heard Lanzetti’s voice and rose immediately. Paola at the door – uncommonly nice, even welcoming. She held the door open and invited the pharmacist in, explained that Marek wasn’t feeling well, a stomach bug from a short trip, but here he is.

‘Ah, the hotel.’ Lanzetti smiled and looked to Marek then Paola. ‘How was it?’

Paola nodded, too eager, surely she knew she didn’t need to play it this way. ‘He’s picked up something. Stomach.’

‘Have you been sick?’

Marek shrugged. It wasn’t much of anything. A little rest and he’d be fine.

‘Water,’ Lanzetti smiled. ‘Make sure he drinks lots of water. He’s sweating. People dehydrate quickly. You have no idea how quickly, it’s so hot. If he isn’t well in the morning come by and I’ll give you something for it. Some salts. Something also for the stomach if it doesn’t go.’ Lanzetti held the brothers’ book in his hand. ‘I came to return this.’ He offered the book to Marek.

Paola stood at the door, looked hard at the book, and Marek felt that he needed to explain himself but couldn’t think of anything.

‘It’s . . .’ Lanzetti paused, turned the book in his hands, his expression showing some distaste. ‘It isn’t nice.’

‘Nice?’ Paola gave a short scoff.

‘It’s hard to say,’ Lanzetti looked like he would rather explain this to Marek alone. He held the book out. ‘It isn’t what I would usually read.’

Marek didn’t want to touch the book. He turned and Lanzetti stepped into the apartment. Paola asked if he would like a drink, and Lanzetti appeared relieved. He asked for water, if that would be all right. It was hot this afternoon.

Once Paola was in the kitchen Lanzetti asked Marek if he knew what the book was about.

‘The subject is – it’s a little strange.’ Lanzetti looked quickly to the kitchen. ‘It’s about a building, a palazzo such as this, a place where a lot of people live, and how the main character takes revenge on them because they didn’t stop an event from happening, an event which involves his sister. He has a room, a basement room . . . and he turns this room into a slaughterhouse.’

And now Marek was paying attention.

‘He prepares this room . . .’

Paola returned with the water, ice clinking in the glass. ‘I have to work.’

Lanzetti accepted the glass with a smile. He gave a small and formal bow and apologized for stopping her. He stood and Marek stood as if in a confrontation, then they both walked to the kitchen.

‘I’m not sure I understand. But there are elements from the book that are familiar.’

‘Elements?’

‘A word was scratched on the door, on the main door. This word was painted on the doors of collaborators at the end of the war. It’s mentioned in the book. I think your friends, although this doesn’t make sense, believe that this is the same palazzo as the place described in the book.’

‘And the room?’

‘The room. The room is where a killing takes place. Only it’s staged. It isn’t real. He wants the people in the building to be punished. So he pours blood onto the walls and floor and makes it look like a slaughterhouse. He makes it look like the people in the building have been killing American soldiers and selling them as meat.’

‘It isn’t real?’

‘No. It’s staged. It isn’t real. The man uses blood he’s stolen from a field hospital. He uses body parts. A tongue. A hand. A foot. All taken from the hospital. He leaves these where they will be found to incriminate a doctor, a lawyer, a magistrate, because he blames them for something that has happened to his sister.’

Marek accepted the book.

‘It’s not even a good book.’

Paola slept beside him, uncommonly affectionate, first spooning, then, because of the heat, lying separate but keeping a hand at the small of his back. Marek lay awake, now confused. So they had a book, a story, a script to follow, and what had they done? He knew blood, he knew the smell, but had no way to know if this was real. If this was animal blood, how could such a quantity be stored? A human has seven litres of blood. This they had taught him in the army. Seven litres, which, with an arterial cut will vent a fountain two or three metres, and take three to four minutes to bleed out. There were ropes hanging from the ceiling with tethers made from duct tape, and spatter on the ceiling and the wall. An elaborate hoax if it was a hoax. He wanted to ask Lanzetti about the mechanics of the hoax, the similarities with the book. He wanted to know the ending.

It was clear that Marek needed to return to the room and remove anything that would identify or connect him, and then he would leave the city. Take his money and go.

Marek spent the day in bed, turned to the wall, the same thoughts racketing endlessly without result and couldn’t sleep. In the late afternoon he rose, and decided he had no choice. Before he returned to the basement he contacted English Tony and asked for a car. It didn’t have to be the Citroën, but he needed a car as soon as possible. Tony said that he could take the Citroën and Marek asked for something different. Anything would do, it was just to move Paola’s bags, and he didn’t want to spill anything in the Citroën. Already he was explaining too much.

‘Take the Citroën,’ English Tony insisted. If something happened he could clean it. Just take a little care and fill it up. It’s only shirts, right? This is what she does, she stitches shirts?

Marek drove back through piazza Garibaldi, passed by every kind of police imaginable, municipal, state, carabinieri, finance, firemen and paramedics, you name it. Every one of them idling at the piazza.

Back in the basement he waited at the door, dressed slowly in the white suit, the slip-on booties, the hairnet, the goggles, the latex gloves, stared at the door, a heavy door like something from a ship, painted and repainted so the surface had a roundness, a way of appearing smooth when in reality it was deeply scratched and picked. He couldn’t enter the room, couldn’t make himself touch the door handle, and found himself stuck.

One week ago – was it? – the argument with Paola, a joke of hers about him being gullible. It wasn’t that he was stupid, that wasn’t what she was trying to say. Maybe it was the military training, or something, but he always did what she told him, always. She just had to speak in a certain way and he’d jump to it. He couldn’t remember the comment but she’d said it was almost the same thing – doing what you’re told and being stupid. Almost the same.

How could he not have thought of this?

A room covered in plastic.

How could it not occur to him?

He made the decision, physically leaned into the door until he had no choice but to step forward and touch it. Once inside he walked about the perimeter, his nose and mouth buried in the crook of his arm as he tugged the plastic sheets free from the walls. He shielded his face as the plastic slipped down, and trod carefully, because whatever this was, it wasn’t only blood. Although he had carefully covered the walls and double taped the seams, the sheeting had separated on the floor and a large pool of blood had settled underneath, and there were bare footprints, already dry, tracked across the concrete. Marek attempted to fold the sheets without coming into contact with the blood. With only one side torn down, he looked about the room and understood that what he was doing was unwise.

Behind the door, set beside what remained of the roll of plastic, he uncovered a shoulder-bag. Under the bag, placed tidily next to the wall, he found a pair of brown trainers and socks, left side by side as if someone had undressed there. None of this seemed fake to him, the hairs caught in the tape strapping, the pattern and pooling of the blood, the hanging tether – but he told himself that none of this was real.

He packed the plastic into six black disposal bags, slopped bleach onto the floor and left it as it was.

Back on the street he found Cecco leaning nonchalantly against a parked car, happy with himself. Marek checked the street and when he saw that it was clear, he came out with two of the bags. Cecco watched, then offered to help him load them into the car. Marek signalled a gracious no.

‘If you need a hand,’ Cecco offered, ‘I could drive.’

Marek opened the car door and began to load the bags onto the back seat, and wedged them behind the seats with his foot. Straightening as he backed out of the car, he smiled back at the boy and wished that he would leave. It was the car he was after. This is what held his interest.

Marek parked the car on via Consolo. He washed his arms and neck in a fountain in a piazzetta with boys playing football around him who knew better than to pay attention. He rinsed out his shirt then he checked himself in a shop window and was surprised by his expression, stern, sober, and pale. Inside the shop the owner sat in a chair fanning herself and avoiding eye contact.

Out on Corso Garibaldi the police attended to the traffic. A cat-call of sirens, close and threatening, ran down Corso Emanuele. Marek walked the long way round to via Capasso avoiding the groups of police, mindful not to appear suspicious; he had never seen so many police before, but realized that he must have, he’d just never had a reason to fear them.

He waited in his apartment, certain the police would come, told Paola that he was still feeling unwell. He waited curled on the bed, arms wrapped tight about his chest, and stared hard at the wall, convinced that the police were playing a game. His fingerprints would be all over the room, all over the car, and he didn’t doubt that they would soon come after him. The police would trace the car, contact Tony, then they would come for him.

After midnight he began to feel hopeful. It was possible, just possible, that they hadn’t discovered the car. Parked alongside other cars one road away from the palazzo it would not be so obvious. What was there to notice? Even if they did find the car, how would they know to come to him? Fingerprints would take a while to process, by which time he would be out of the city. No. A new problem struck him. The car and its contents combined were less of a worry than Peña. The woman was so stupid that if the police came to speak to her information would pour out of her, unstoppable, and she would tell them everything about the bag, about Marek preparing the room, and once they associated Marek with the room, they would quickly piece together what they needed. And Salvatore? What was the deal with Salvatore?

At two o’clock Marek decided to return to the car. He came carefully down the stairs and checked the courtyard to see if there were police in the building, and was surprised to see the entrance as it usually was at night, the hefty wood doors closed, windows and shutters open on the upper floors, only one or two lights showing in the front of the building.

The car was still on the bridge, undisturbed. He walked by it, not looking at the car, but looking up the street for any sign that something was not right. Satisfied, he turned about, and hurried back with the keys in his hand.

The late afternoon heat had drawn out a fatty stench from the clothes. Marek wound the window down. The car started on the third attempt with a rough choke. Marek drove with his head toward what draught there was, a buffet of hot air with the soft feel of cloth.

He took the smaller roads following the coast south toward Ercolano and sensed, for the first time, the possibility of success. The headlights broke across concrete walls and glasshouses, on one side were simple townhouses and workshops, on another a broken line of warehouses which appeared largely abandoned. Turning a narrow corner he was forced to an abrupt stop, in the middle of the road an abandoned dumpster, so solid, he thought of it at first as some kind of creature, something ancient. Marek laughed, tension broken, he turned left and headed inland and soon he was back among housing. He drove now with the lights off, aware that the car would draw attention to itself. He turned again and headed for an unlit area and found himself on a pumice track with stark concrete high-rises on either side. The road came to a halt at a dry sloping scrubby field.

Marek stopped the car, turned on the headlights: from what he could see he was far enough away from the housing estate and into a wasteland. He could burn the clothes and bags here. This, he thought, was too easy, as if he had some natural talent. The idea disturbed him.