Lost (16 page)

Stuart was on the road down to the plain. Wisps of mist were hanging in the trees. The sun was low and merciful and the birds were now singing cockily. Alice had slept; Stuart had watched her, holding his position by the fireplace, aware of the fragility of her sleep, until Gérard had come for the evening shift. The sound of the door opening woke her and Stuart left quickly, suddenly afraid to see her awake.

The image of Alice, asleep in the corner of the room, came to him with an unpleasant rush of adrenaline. He looked at his eyes in the rear-view mirror. They looked angry. He tried to change the expression in them but could only manage surprise. He turned on the radio for noise, then turned it off. He had not changed his shirt for three days. He decided to go home and take a shower before going back for the night.

Stuart took the hairpin bend where Titi’s dog had been killed. She was a mongrel – half-poodle, half-coyote with pointed translucent ears and bowed legs. She followed Titi everywhere. A bearded Englishman on his way to the coast to fish had run her over. He ran straight over her bloated middle. The Englishman picked her up from the middle of the road and stood there, looking helplessly about him. Titi watched from behind a fig tree. His dog lay in the Englishman’s arms, whining softly and staring at the sky. The dog saw the crumpled bars of a bird cage and at the same time felt something swimming about inside her, something that had broken loose. She felt the boy watching her from behind the tree. The man was turning round and round. Then the loose thing escaped. Titi and the Englishman heard the dog make a sound like a long sigh. The Englishman stopped turning. His face was bright red and he looked as though he might cry.
Then he made a decision – perhaps he decided that this was, after all, an island of savages – and he walked to the side of the road. As he was laying the dog in the ditch, Titi came out from behind the fig tree and sneaked round to the far side of the man’s car. Through the open window on the driver’s side he saw a jack-knife with a carved ivory handle. He reached in and took the knife. That afternoon, before he put his dog in the ground, he cut off one of her ears with the knife. He wore it round his neck until it curled and dried like a waxy leaf.

Stuart had not thought of the incident for years. Now it seemed to him to have been curled there at the back of his mind waiting to be discovered like some clue to Titi’s life and so to his own.

He drove through town, past the dark sea, flat as a lake. The barricades from the afternoon’s march were stacked neatly along the side of the road. Otherwise the women had left no trace. They never did. They could weep and scream but the violence would go on. Stuart wondered why they were thus condemned to spectate. Perhaps it was that thing in them he envied, that his sister had and his mother and even Alice Aron, with her grief – an elusive quality, as though they were inoculated against life itself.

Gérard had told him that Liliane Santini had marched. She had been seen at the front with Vico. Stuart smiled. Poor Liliane: Coco would make her pay.

By the time he reached home, the last of the sun was gone. Driving over the humps in his street, he told himself he would get a new car when this was over. When this was over. He drove up the ramp to his garage and his heart sank.

In his flat Stuart moved quickly and efficiently. The place was filled with his own loneliness like a strong smell and he was anxious to get out.

After his shower, which was a thin ribbon at this time of day, he put on a clean shirt and then drank a mini-carton of chocolate milk. He threw away the jar of gherkins in the fridge and washed up the spaghetti saucepan. Then he
made his bed. At the door he stopped. He would give her something. He went to his bed and pulled the box from beneath it. He took the brown-paper bag with his mother’s gun in it and slipped it into his jacket pocket. Then he left the flat hurriedly, as if it were contaminated.

It was dark when Stuart pulled up in front of the Colonna house. He recognised Lopez’s car, a maroon Honda Civic, parked so that the two back tyres bit into the lawn. Stuart walked round the car. He looked at the Basque flag stuck on the rear window. Alone in the dark, Stuart grunted with contempt. Lopez could not claim ethnic persecution. He came from San Sebastian but he was no more Basque than Stuart was. At this thought, Stuart turned and bolted up the steps to the terrace, holding on to his mother’s gun in his pocket.

They were in the kitchen. She had her hair tied up in a ponytail. The change felt like a kind of betrayal. She and Lopez looked up at him as though his entrance were overblown.

‘Hello, Stuart,’ Lopez said.

Stuart flushed and went to the sink to pour himself a glass of water. He faced them and drank.

‘What are you doing here, Lopez?’

‘I’m meeting Madame Aron. Properly. I’ve just given her my card. That’s all. Don’t worry. I’m not importuning her. Actually, I expected to see you here. I’m doing a story on the march. The changing tide.’

‘What changing tide?’

‘Liliane was there.’

‘What march?’ Alice asked.

Stuart looked angrily at Lopez.

‘It was a march for women,’ Stuart told her. ‘A peace march.’

‘Who’s Liliane?’

‘Liliane Santini,’ Lopez said. ‘It’s the first time she has participated in a women’s march. Her husband won’t like it.’ Lopez smiled at Stuart, who stood leaning against the sink.
‘You can read my piece, Stuart. There’s nothing in it to compromise our agreement. It’s very general.’

‘I’ll read it.’

Lopez laid his hands on the table.

‘I’m done.’

‘You can leave then.’

‘I can.’ Lopez did not move but looked up at Alice. ‘Thank you, madame.’

Stuart felt the blood rush to his head. He watched Lopez stand and hold out his hand. Alice took it without rising. ‘You have my card.’

Alice nodded. Stuart watched Lopez until he had closed the door behind him.

‘What did he want?’

‘He wanted me to talk to him first.’

‘He’s a journalist.’

‘Quite.’

Stuart put his hand in his pocket and touched his mother’s gun in its paper bag.

‘Did Santini call?’

‘No.’

‘Did Lopez mention Santini?’

‘No.’

He held the gun. What a ridiculous idea to give her a gun.

Alice looked at her watch.

‘I spoke to Santini four hours ago. Why hasn’t he called back?’

‘He won’t call tonight. He’ll call tomorrow.’

‘Oh God,’ she said, rubbing her face with her hands. ‘Another night.’

Stuart took the gun from his pocket and laid it on the table in front of her. She looked up at him, her long hands on her cheeks.

‘It’s for you.’ He nodded at the brown-paper bag. ‘It’s a woman’s gun. My father gave it to my mother.’

Alice looked at him. He was staring hard at the paper bag.

‘A gun,’ she said, her hands still on her face.

He shrugged without looking at her.

The bag was thin to transparency in places. She pulled out the object. It was small, the size of a manicure kit, but heavy. The brown suede case was unmistakably gun-shaped. She unzipped the case and pulled out the gun. She looked up at Stuart, but he kept watching her hands.

‘It’s all right. It’s not loaded,’ he said. ‘The bullets are in the bag.’

She held the gun on her palm, the barrel resting on her index finger. She gripped the textured butt. The words
Man
ufacture
française
d’armes
et
cycles
de
Saint
Etienne
were engraved along the barrel and the initials ‘MF’ inside a garland. On the other side the words ‘Type Policeman’. She pulled the tiny catch and the barrel sprang open. She looked at the brownish purple of the metal, the colour of bruises.

She returned the object to its little case, zipped it up and put it back into the paper bag. When at last he looked at her, she saw the same expression of hopefulness Sam wore when he gave her a drawing. There was nothing to understand from this gift except that it was a gift.

‘Thank you,’ she said.

The room stank. Through his tobacco-charred nostrils Mickey could smell burned spaghetti sauce. He sat on the floor with his back against the boy’s cupboard and smoked the first beautiful cigarette of the day.

They should have thought of getting a TV. The Scatti brothers were now seriously annoying him. Paolo was petty and Sylvano was stupid. He had asked them for some music. A Walkman was all he wanted, to pass the time, but Paolo had said no, it was too risky to buy anything, and Sylvano had stood there staring at him smugly.

Mickey considered his job much harder than theirs: confined day and night with the boy, who had turned into an animal. It was hard on his nerves. The boy lay curled up on the floor, wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t speak, just whimpered when he opened the door to empty his pisspot. The kid could die from dehydration, the Scatti brothers wouldn’t care. They had killed people, working for the Camora, on an informal basis. Mickey had only hurt people, sometimes badly, always for Coco Santini, and he had never got the recognition he deserved because Coco was a racist. Yes, his job was harder.

Mickey stubbed out his cigarette on the cement floor. He would get the kid to drink something. He would be gentle and coaxing. He could stay calm when he had to. He did not want to have the kid’s death on his conscience. He stood up and his joints cracked. He walked like Jorge Ferreira over to the sink. He smiled to himself, unsure whether his pleasure came from the applause in his head or from the new idea that was lying there, only half-formed, by which he would secure for himself the largest share.

He filled a mustard glass with Coke. Lucky Luke, his favourite character, was printed on the glass. As he approached the door of the cupboard, he felt overcome with love towards the child he had been. How could his mum have resisted him? He had been adorable, more beautiful than this kid. But he hadn’t grown properly. Only his torso had grown and this, he knew, was because he hadn’t had his share of mother-love.

‘The day after tomorrow you’ll be free,’ he told the boy. He crouched in front of the door of the cupboard. ‘I’m going to open up so shield your eyes. I got you some Coke. You’ve got to drink if you want to see your mum.’

Mickey could hear the heavy metal door of the garage opening and the bang it made as the weights came down. The brothers were back. They had no style. They could only buy tinned food and spirits, never wine or cheese or fruit. Sylvano only ate sweet things. They had no idea how to live. He’d wait until they had gone before getting the boy to drink, because they’d only scare him. This place, too, was his find. The whole hit had been planned by him. He prepared to adopt a different attitude towards Paolo. Still crouching, Mickey turned round at the sound of Paolo, who always came first, pushing open the entrance to the hideout.

He saw the face and heard the shot and reached into his boot for his weapon in the time it took to recall Garetta’s name. On the impact, his arm was flung from his side, the glass bounced once on the cement floor and then smashed into hundreds of geometric pieces. Mickey fell back and hit the boy’s wall. He could feel cold air rushing into him, chilling his stomach, which he tried to clutch but his arm wouldn’t come. He knew he would survive this wound to his abdomen and he had time to congratulate himself on his muscular armour before realising that Garetta was going to shoot him again. He was coming towards him and Mickey knew not to meet his eye, that this would be a mistake, so he looked to his right. His vision was sharper than normal. He
took in the thick, white paint that covered the brick wall, the inexplicable dog’s footprints, three of them, in the cement floor, the shiny, tubular metal table legs and the rubber stoppers on the legs of the chairs like the ones in the canteen at school. Garetta was up close and aiming at him. His weapon had a silencer. Mickey had always loved the pristine sound of a silenced shot. He had never possessed a silencer himself. He reached into his boot again, knowing he had no chance. But the shot still didn’t come. He could feel the textured wood of his gun with his fingertips but did not have the strength to grip. The blood seeping out of him felt like the strange but pleasant sensation of a bath emptying around his naked body. ‘Please, Garetta,’ he said, closing both his eyes, good and bad. Garetta read his words as a signal and Mickey saw the scene fold in even before the bullet entered his brain.

Sam floated high up near the breathing holes and watched the big hands pull him out into the light. He saw his own body curled up in a ball in the man’s arms. He saw his own eyes and mouth shut tight, his whole body closed and empty, because he was up here, watching the man with the long black hair, and even though the man was a giant he looked small from here. Then he saw the other man dressed in black lying on the floor. He saw his skinny legs, bent the wrong way like his Pinocchio puppet. And then he saw his head and he began to fall through the air, and as he fell he closed his eyes and said ‘I must not land in the blood. I must not fall there.’

As Garetta pushed the child through into the garage, Paolo knew something was wrong. He had an urge to run, but his brother was stuck in the back of Garetta’s car between two armed men. Paolo tried to help the kid up. But it lay on the ground curled up in a ball, fists closed. It had silver tape over its mouth, and around its hands and feet. Something had scared the kid so badly it had shat itself. Paolo pulled back as
Garetta came through. Garetta picked the child off the ground like a small package and walked towards the car. Paolo considered asking him about Mickey then decided against it. Garetta had appeared on the boat at dawn. He had stood at the end of his bed with one hundred thousand francs in a plastic bag: ‘From the FNL,’ Garetta had said. ‘To cover costs. We’re taking this over.’ Looking at Garetta now as he put the child into the boot of the car, Paolo did not believe he was FNL; there was something wild about him, too wild for obedience.

Paolo looked at the Arab in the back. On the boat that morning he had taken his Baretta from the bedside table. He now prepared his words: ‘I’d like my weapon back; it belonged to my father.’ But Garetta was coming towards him and he had always been intimidated by very tall men.

‘I need you to clean up in there.’

‘Clean up,’ Paolo repeated, his mouth dry.

Garetta turned and signalled to the Arab kid. Paolo’s heart faltered and he took a step back. The Arab got out of the car and Sylvano climbed out after him.

‘You and your brother,’ Garetta said, smiling.

Paolo saw then that the man was a wolf. He had seen such a man once before and he knew he must hold perfectly still. As Sylvano came towards him, Paolo said a Hail Mary in his head. He did not close his eyes but he did not look at the wolf-man either. He followed his orders with slow, careful movements. As he crawled through after Sylvano into the hideout he knew what it was to be the prey and he heard himself whimper.

Paolo stood in the room and looked at Mickey’s body. Sylvano was shaking out his legs to make his trousers fall straight.

Tears of rage burned Paolo’s throat.

‘
Figlio
di
carte!
’ he screamed.

Sylvano glanced incuriously at Mickey’s body, then back at his brother. He plucked at the cuffs of his suit.

Paolo spun round and kicked the small square door in the cement wall, but he already knew without looking that they were trapped there with the dead man, whose blood all around him appeared to be forming a skin.

Philippe Garetta drove through the Cortizzio valley, past the sawmill where he had once worked. He had liked the place, the smell of the pine and the men who worked there, but not the boss, and he had left one winter morning when there was frost on the ground. He had asked for a pair of gloves and the shithead had told him the company didn’t provide gloves.

The child was lying tied up and gagged in the boot, with the provisions for the hideout. Garetta turned on the radio. Denis had tuned into some terrible teenage radio station. A girl was shrieking and swearing at the DJ, who had just told her she had won ten thousand francs. ‘Thank you. Thank you all. Thank you, Radio Heaven. I love you all! Oh my God!’ Garetta looked for the local news channel. Frigari was shooting off about quotas. Garetta shook his head.

‘You’re all finished, you hippie fuckers,’ he said.

Karim and Denis were following on the bike. They would occasionally appear in the rear-view mirror, a black tick on the road, then fall back.

Garetta sat through the sports results. There was nothing about the bombing. He must have missed it.

Coco had given him Karim for his expertise but no equipment. Santini had said there was no one more deft than Karim. The explosion had been considerable, considering. Karim had said that with the junk he had to hand it was the best he could do. It was a pity he wasn’t an islander. Denis came with Karim and he was not an islander either, but from Arles, and he had gypsy in him. Still, Garetta thought, it was early days. And as Santini had pointed out, it was because they were not islanders that he could ask him to get involved in a kidnapping.

‘You can get your group started with this,’ Santini had said.
‘Get a good sum, buy some decent hardware; I might throw in some bazookas.’

Garetta had never liked Santini. He talked about revolution as if he was talking about a real-estate opportunity.

In the end Garetta had accepted Santini’s offer of Karim. When it came to it, he didn’t have much choice. There were few people he could trust with something like this. He’d bring in the others once he’d laid the groundwork. It was a real organisation he wanted, with perfect discipline, like the Red Army Faction or ETA. He’d create links with other groups fighting for the same goals. He’d win back some respect for the island.

He had written the speech for the paper by himself. He had been pleased by its density, by the economic expression of so many ideas and by the images of sickness and decay. He thought with disgust of the Scatti brothers, of their big white vedette moored in the marina, their flash suits. He should have rid the island of them, too. They were a lot worse than Mickey da Cruz.

He searched for some decent music on the radio. He had a weakness for heavy metal, but it was harder and harder to come by and he gave up. He drove down into the valley, over the single-lane bridge that crossed the dry river bed and on to the road towards Castri, home territory. As he drove, he tried to consider the sum of thirty million that Santini had told him to request for the child. He was thrilled, not so much by the sum, which was a little abstract, but by the power his demand would represent. He felt immensely powerful. In fact he had always felt immensely powerful. Now, he thought, it was time to show it.