Lost (18 page)

‘Sam,’ she whispered.

The sound of the weakness in her voice appalled her. She tilted back her head and banged her forehead as hard as she
could against the edge of the shutters. For a moment she was numb. Then she felt hands gripping her shoulders and she heard a moan that was not hers, and she fell back and the room turned.

The pain in her head was considerable. She smiled in deference to it and closed her eyes.

‘You made a promise,’ she said.

Stuart did not answer. He sat cupping her head in his lap, hunched low over her.

Her voice was strangled: ‘You should have woken me up.’

Stuart nodded, laying a hand on her cheek.

‘Santini knew who had Sam,’ she said. ‘You didn’t. Now someone else has got him. You don’t know who it is. You don’t know. Do you?’

He was searching her face.

‘You don’t know where he is,’ she said again.

‘Are you in pain?’ he asked.

Alice touched her forehead, running her fingers back and forth over the lump.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

He took her hand and held it, keeping his eyes on her.

‘Someone went in and shot the person who was holding Sam. His name was Mickey da Cruz. He worked for Santini.’

Alice listened. Hot tears ran down her temples into her hair.

‘Mickey had two or three accomplices. They weren’t killed. They were shut in but they got out. It looks like they were Italians. Their boat was seen in the marina. Whoever took Sam left these men alive. They took the risk that they might be caught and interrogated.’

She swallowed, closing her eyes against the pain in her head. ‘Sam was here. In the middle of Massaccio.’ She smiled. ‘I had the money. I was going to give them what they wanted and get him back. Now he’s gone. No one knows where.’ She paused again, her mouth trembling. ‘Whoever took him is a killer.’

Stuart squeezed her hand harder.

‘Santini knows who took him.’

She closed her eyes again.

‘What was it like?’ she asked. ‘The place where they kept him?’

‘He had a mattress and a duvet,’ he said.

‘What was it like?’

‘It was like a little flat with a kitchen unit.’

‘What, was he on a mattress in the corner or something? Was he tied up?’

‘No. They made a separate place for him, a small space, just big enough for his mattress. He wasn’t tied up.’

‘Was he in the dark?’

Stuart hesitated.

‘Did they have him in the dark?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

She stared at him, her mouth open.

He reached under her shoulders and lifted her towards him.

‘I’ll find him,’ he said, talking into her neck.

He was holding her against his chest. She could feel a bone pressing into her left breast, otherwise nothing. She rested her chin on his shoulder and stared at a brown smear on the white wall.

‘I’ll find him,’ he said again.

Alice wondered if the stain was blood.

He was telling her that he would drive her back to the village. She could feel his voice reverberating in her chest. She had no wish to move: all movement seemed futile.

The lights in the car park hurt her head and she closed her eyes. He led her to his car. She rested her head against the seat and closed her eyes. She listened to the car door slamming, the ignition, the gates opening. As they moved further away from the compound, the darkness deepened. The pain in her head was now a tight crown. She opened her eyes and looked out of her window at the same road they had taken
the day Sam had disappeared: the waterfront with the containers like floating skyscrapers, the strip of shabby urban coastline, the road up into the hills. The recurring scene filled her with despair.

As if he could feel it, he pulled over. They were in a lay-by. He turned off the engine and sat staring ahead of him at a whitewashed tree trunk in his headlights.

‘I can’t help you.’ He reached for the key in the ignition and held it a moment. Then he let go and leaned back against his door. ‘I can’t pretend I can help you.’ He gave her a sad smile.

She found it hard to breathe. She held her mouth open, waiting to breathe like Sam’s fish. She looked at his hand gripping the handbrake. She was afraid to speak. That he might take his hand from the handbrake filled her with an inexplicable anxiety. She held still, breathing shallowly now; very careful.

He let go of the handbrake and reached for the key.

‘Please.’ He looked at her. She watched his hand on the key. ‘Please help me, Stuart.’

He took his hand from the key and looked out at the tree.

‘Your husband hated this place?’

She nodded.

‘I do too,’ he said. The quick smile came again. ‘I’ve spent my whole life trying to be at home here or trying to turn it into a place where I can be at home.’ He let go of the key. ‘I wanted to leave but I couldn’t. I found out there was nowhere else to go. Even though I hate it here, I can’t survive anywhere else.’

She watched his hands moving as he spoke. There were three gestures that recurred like a code.

‘There was someone I admired as a child,’ he said. ‘He was a kind of hero for people here. They still talk about him. His name was Titi Ciccioni and he was from Santarosa. He was the one who started the movement for independence. Santini had him killed and took over. He brought in his people and it became his mafia. The whole place became corrupted by his
system.’ He rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger and put his hand back on the key.

‘Tell me,’ she said.

He looked at her.

‘You’re kind,’ he said.

‘I’m not.’

He smiled.

‘No.’

He took his hand from the key and folded his arms, clasping his chest closely for protection, trapping his hands.

‘Go on,’ she said. She could feel his mind selecting the words and rejecting them. She had practice at mind-reading. But he shook his head. She rested her head against the seat back, staring at the blanched tree trunk in his headlights.

‘I’ve forgotten what he looks like,’ she said. ‘After three years I can’t picture him any more. I think that’s why I kept coming back here. I could feel him here. It’s strange that this was what he left me.’

‘He left you the boys. Dan looks like him.’

He was still trapping his hands as though they might betray him if he let go of them.

‘How do you know he looks like him?’

‘I remember him.’

‘Who?’

‘Your husband.’ He paused, but did not face her. ‘His aunt used to give tea parties for the village children. I went a few times.’ At last he looked at her. ‘I was older than him by about five years.’

He looked happy, suddenly, and Alice smiled in marvel.

‘You can help me, Stuart.’

His hand flew to the key again. The ease had vanished. Again she could feel the inner shuffling as he searched for the words.

‘What is it?’

He folded his arms.

‘When I was about Sam’s age something happened. I did
something I can’t forgive myself for.’ There was an urgency in his tone, as though he feared she might stop him. ‘My mother had died. About two years before. Me and my sister were very close. She followed me everywhere. There was this place we used to go after school, this man’s place in the hills behind the village.’ He passed his palm over his mouth.

Alice was suddenly afraid to hear what he had to say. The windows were up and it was too hot, but she held still.

‘We’d go up to this man’s place. Lucien, his name was. He made knives, good ones in layered steel. People came up from Massaccio to buy them. We’d go and watch him in his workshop, slicing the steel thin as paper, folding it.’ He freed his hands, resuming his code. ‘He had wood, different essences for the handles, and he let us make things. Beatrice was only small but she could carve. So he let us use his tools. Anyway, it was one Sunday, after Mass.’ He paused again, pressing his thumb and forefinger into his eye sockets. Alice watched, hardly daring to move. ‘Me and Beatrice were round the back of the workshop. Lucien was inside and I remember the sound of the machinery. He asked me to chop some cherry logs. I did it all the time. I don’t know how it happened. All I remember is raising the axe and letting it fall and suddenly Beatrice’s hand was there. I remember looking at her and then looking at her bloody fingers lying on the block. I remember thinking they looked like giblets from a bird. I didn’t understand at first because she wasn’t making a sound. Her mouth was open for a scream but she was silent. I was screaming.’

Alice watched him swallow, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. She held still. He rubbed his eyes then began using his hands again.

‘After that she fainted. Lucien carried her down to the village and I ran behind. He had her two fingers in a handkerchief. I heard him tell my dad not to be too hard on me. He said it was punishment enough what I’d done to her. But my dad shut me in the dark until the first day of school.
It was the beginning of summer, so it was almost three months alone in the dark.’ He nodded his head as if he were congratulating his father for his rigour. ‘Anyway, when I saw Beatrice again, everything was different. It’s never been the same between us since. Not so much because of the accident but because she wasn’t allowed to be attached to me after that.’

He looked out at the tree in his headlights. Alice studied his profile, traced it in her mind, learned it, like an object of value, worthy of respect.

‘It was these two,’ he said, moving his hand back and forth like a gentle knife over his index and middle fingers. ‘I’ve never mentioned it to anyone before.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t know why.’

Alice looked at his hands, now quiet in his lap.

‘You’re telling me because of Sam. You know what it’s like for him.’

He shook his head.

‘I can’t say that. It’s not the same. I’m telling you because … I don’t know why I’m telling you.’

Without raising her head she held out her hand, palm upwards. He put his hand on hers and she closed her fingers. She sat still, looking down at his hand in hers.

‘It’s not the same,’ he said. ‘Sam’s done nothing wrong.’

‘Nor had you.’

She was not prepared for the look of gratitude he gave her and she let go of his hand. He seemed to return to himself in an instant. He turned on the ignition and drove. She looked at his hand on the gear lever, at the smooth dark skin, the swollen veins. She looked at his face, slashed with lines, and recognised what she felt as pity.

When Coco hit her, Liliane believed it was proof that the edifice was crumbling. His ring struck her molar through her cheek and made the inside of her mouth bleed. The taste of blood had always made her sick and she went into the bathroom to throw up. She knew that if she had stayed in bed, he would not have struck her. But she had stepped in his way as he paced up and down in the bedroom and he had seen her smallness and her ugliness, and it had just made him angrier. When she still denied knowing where Nathalie was, he gave up. He had always overestimated his effect on her, in every matter, even sexual.

Liliane spat the last of her vomit into the toilet and flushed. The process that she had set in motion when she had joined the marching women was even darker and more threatening than she had imagined. She looked at her face in the bathroom mirror and give herself a ghastly smile, then went back into the bedroom and climbed into bed.

Coco was dialling Georges Rocca again. On the dressing table, which had belonged to her mother, were a lace doily under a pane of glass and several framed photographs of Nathalie, none of their son. Coco had destroyed them all. He used to like saying, ‘I’m not a violent man.’ He had said it so often in the beginning that he and everyone else came to believe it. Liliane had always known how violent he could be. He only delegated the violence as a way of not falling prey to it.

From the look on his face, she saw that Georges was telling him what everyone else knew. It was a look of disgust. Coco looked at her while he listened to the details of his daughter’s liaison. Liliane held his stare. His instructions were calm and addressed to her.

‘Get him, Georges,’ he said. ‘Deal with him as soon as you can. Give him what he wants. Use the strong stuff. You know where it is.’ Then he looked at the telephone and hung up. ‘You’, he said jabbing his finger at her, ‘are an unfit mother. You knew about this.’

Liliane touched the ragged edge of her sliced cheek with her tongue. She knew not to answer him. She could see the weakness in him, flickering there. All her being told her to stay quiet, to protect her daughter.

‘Liliane.’

‘Yes, Claude.’

He gestured vaguely towards his face.

‘Your mouth …’ He jerked his head up. ‘There’s some blood.’ Liliane wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘You know where they are,’ he said.

‘I don’t.’

She faced him. She knew how he saw her: her face, round and pale and flaccid, with black pebbles for eyes, too ugly for dishonesty.

‘I’m going to punish her,’ he said. ‘She has to be punished, otherwise we’ll lose her. You understand that, don’t you?’

Liliane looked down at her neat hands, smeared with blood, resting on the bedclothes.

‘You understand that, Liliane!’ he shouted.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I understand.’

But there was still a little tremor inside her, left over from the march, and she lay back and cupped her bosom beneath the covers, as if she were cupping a flame in the wind.

In a small, bare room that smelled of paint on the fifteenth floor of Les Mimosas, Nathalie Santini lay beneath Raymond, listening to the sound of his breathing. She stroked his back with the tips of her fingers. He was her man, she told herself. Whatever happened. He was heavier now that he was fast asleep, and he was breathing into her hair. She wanted to laugh. This was the feeling she had been waiting for all her life. She closed her eyes and asked God to let her die now.

He had called her from the police station. He was crying. ‘I’m sick,’ he told her. She knew how sick he was and she understood his wish to destroy himself. It was a part of him and she respected it. He had told her he had no money to score with. ‘I lie to everyone,’ he said. ‘I can’t lie to you.’

‘Raymond needs me,’ she had told her mother. She had taken the bus into town. He was waiting for her outside the gates of the police station. She had thought he was dying. His skin was grey and he was sweating. He could hardly walk, he was so out of breath, but he had smiled at her. ‘My angel,’ he had said. She had given him her communion necklace, which was gold with pearls and more than enough, and they had walked to his dealer’s house. She had waited for him outside. ‘I’ll be five minutes,’ he had said and he had taken an hour at least, but even the waiting was a kind of bliss.

She turned her head and looked towards the window. A beautiful blue light was coming through the net curtains. She had given her body; that had been easy. He had not even needed to ask. There had been such a silence between them – in the hall of Les Mimosas and in the lift – there had been no room for words. The feeling was so strong, she had found it hard to breathe.

He had undressed her carefully, as though he needed to concentrate. When she was naked he had knelt down, as if he worshipped her, and she had knelt down too. She had not made a sound, even when it hurt. He had wiped the tears away and kissed her without consoling her. There was no need. Her lips and face still hurt from his kisses. Before he fell asleep, he told her again that she was his angel and that she could save him. He had spoken with great seriousness and she believed she could.

She wanted to leave Raymond while he slept. She didn’t want to say goodbye. She slid carefully from under him. He sighed and turned on to his side. She sat on the edge of the mattress and looked at the smooth curve of his back and the dark gully that ran down the middle. She wanted to touch him but she stopped herself, believing that love required great discipline. She thought of her mother, who had only ever wanted her happiness. She would be waiting up for her, would pretend that she had slept and ask no questions. This thought made Nathalie rise, gather her clothes and quietly leave the room.

Downstairs in the utility room, Georges Rocca held his sleeve to his nostrils to block out the sickly smell that was emanating from two community dustbins. He had a good view of the entrance to the building and could not be seen. He had just told Coco that he had found them. ‘Call me,’ he had said. ‘Day or night.’ When Nathalie Santini came through the glass door, Georges was scrutinising his tie, just back from the cleaners, noting with irritation that the pale mark was indeed a stain and not part of the bright, diagonal
brushstroke
motif as the Vietnamese woman had insisted. When he looked up the girl was halfway across the courtyard. In her walk she was still a child. For Georges, eliminating Raymond posed no problem whatsoever. He didn’t have a daughter himself but his sympathies were right behind Coco.

When she had gone, Georges picked up the leather attaché
case from between his feet and emerged from the utility room. The case contained three hypodermic needles, a very large dose of uncut heroin, a pair of miniature brass scales, a copy of
Penthouse
, twenty-three parking tickets in an envelope addressed to ‘the care and attention of Lieutenant Capelli’, a packet of four fluorescent markers, a gold fountain pen, a description sheet with interior and exterior photographs of a property for sale in The Hesperides beach complex, a packet of Lexomil and a box of fifty .38 ‘special’ bullets.

He made his way towards the building, his metal heels striking the concrete and echoing all around him. One leg was slightly shorter than the other and so his gait was distinctive, a little unsettling, he felt. The two skinheads were on either side of him before he reached the door. They were a whole head taller than him but this in no way diminished his authority. He’d told them Raymond was an Arab, to incite enthusiasm. They wouldn’t know the difference.

‘This is easy,’ he said, as they stepped into the lift. ‘Too easy for you two,’ he said, winking at them. The boys grinned eagerly at him. He could see them both trying to avoid looking at the growth on his nose. One of the boys had a left ear that looked as if it had been gnawed by a dog. Otherwise you could hardly tell them apart. They were wearing exactly the same clothes: black bomber jackets, white T-shirts, jackboots, pale jeans, even the belts with the New Order symbol for a buckle.

‘He’ll still be stoned,’ Georges told them. ‘So let’s try to do it without waking him up, shall we?’ The boys nodded earnestly. ‘I want neatness and precision. I want no adrenaline in the blood. Right? You hold him down while I shoot him up. Couldn’t be easier. If you’re disciplined I’ll use you again. Is that clear?’

The skinheads nodded.

With the nonchalance of a TV cable sales team, the three of them stepped out of the lift and walked down the freshly painted corridor.