Mimi's Ghost (23 page)

The cell was whitewashed concrete with a barred window. There were two bunk-beds, one of them occupied by a corpulent figure with tousled hair who didn't so much snore as sigh heavily with every drawn breath of dry, centrally heated air. Over the iron door with its Judas window hung the inevitable crucifix, which, curiously, Morris noted, when they turned out the light, must be of some luminous plastic material as it appeared to glow in the dark. Sleepless, self-pitying, Morris gazed at it: that pathetic twisted figure, at once put to death and master of the universe, that figure worshipped and prayed to by the two people who had meant most to him in his life: his mother, Massimina. But this thought only provoked another less pleasant. Did the carabinieri know something about Massimina too? What had they found out? For a while, Morris's mind churned over the details of the last two hectic days. What concrete piece of evidence could they have? What motive had they unearthed? What were they going to present him with tomorrow morning? Had they already found the body in old Trevisan's coffin, lying there under the tarpaulin, or had they followed Kwame and him up into the hills where they'd dumped the car?

And what alibi could he possibly give for the evening without first consulting Paola? How stupid, how hatefully stupid he had been just to rely on her sleeping through his absence, on getting back unnoticed!

Morris loathed himself when he was stupid. He deserved prison!

The other occupant of the cell sighed heavily in his sleep and groaned.

Or had Massimina told him to kill Bobo precisely so he could be arrested and punished for her death too? Could the whole thing simply have been a ghostly trap?

Footsteps passed along the corridor and for a moment it seemed their heavy, even tread must stretch away to the utmost limits of Morris's existence.

‘Mimi,' he breathed out loud. ‘You are all I ever cared for. Mimi?'

There was no answer of course, but, as if in compensation, the small crucifix over the door seemed to glow a little brighter. Morris stared at it. There was the head fallen to one side, the studied contortion of the body, the crown of thorns. The figure seemed to be inviting him to forget his worries in a shared gesture of resignation. ‘Are you weak and heavy laden, burdened with a load of care . . .' Mother had always sung that over the dishes. Morris stared at the little crucifix, and for the first time in his life - in a carabinieri cell at four in the morning -he became lucidly aware of the possibility of the religious option as a real solution to his problems: complete sacrifice of miserable self to a greater truth and good, sense of one's allotted and humble place in a divine pattern, redemption not through works - that was beyond him now - but through faith.

He made a pact: ‘Mimi,' he prayed, ‘Mimi, if you get me out of this, I will give my heart to God, I promise.' The words coming from he knew not where, he added: ‘I will be born again in Christ.'

Thus conscious that he had reached a major turning-point in his life, Morris Duckworth at last fell asleep on this his first night in captivity.

They came for him at six. He was forced to dress in front of them under hard fluorescent light, scrambling on his trousers, getting shirt-buttons mixed up. A deliberate humiliation. With the fluorescent Messiah still in mind, Morris wouldn't have been surprised had they jammed a crown of thorns on his head. Only when he sat back on his bed to pull on his shoes did he notice that the cell's other occupant had already gone. And there was a crumb of satisfaction here in reflecting that he must at some point during the night have slept through a disturbance similar to the one he was now experiencing. For a dazed moment, with the carabinieri standing over him and a stale smell of morning breath and dusty concrete, he thought he was going to make some remark of the variety: The clear conscience sleeps sound.' But no sooner had he opened his mouth than he realised how pathetic this would seem. He must not appear to be clutching at straws. He must not allow himself to be either brutalised or intimidated. On the contrary, he must aim for that perfect combination of dignity and indignation.

So in the interrogation room with its ludicrous poster -'Hands Linked across the World for a Better Future' - he sat down in front of a tall, thin, bespectacled man and immediately told him: ‘I do hope you appreciate how ridiculous all this is. Why wasn't I given some opportunity to explain myself last night and go home?'

Attack would be the best form of defence. He would create his own luck. At the back of his mind he heard his own voice whisper: ‘Mimi!'

And he had a new reason for getting through now. He would become a Christian. He would undertake a mission.

The colonnello could have been no more than forty and had the unhealthy, thin-nosed pallor of the diligent. Slowly twining long fingers together, he looked at Morris for no more than a second through glinting lenses. His eyes were large and disturbingly colourless.
‘Allora,
Signor Duckworth,' he said in a voice that was surprisingly clipped, ‘explain away. Before you begin, though, could you just say who you are and give date and place of birth and address of present residence.'

They were sitting either side of an undistinguished desk where a rather bulky out-of-date tape-recorder on top of a pile of local newspapers had already been switched on. The room was institutional prefab, white walls and posters showing uniformed men embracing children and helping pensioners. The lighting was fluorescent.

Morris said: ‘I believe it is my right to insist on having a lawyer here with me.'

‘It is indeed, Signor Duckworth' - the carabiniere neither smiled nor looked up from his notes - ‘under clause 223, section 2 of the
codice penale
you are entitled to have a lawyer present at all police interrogations. However, if you wish to call one and then arrange a time that suits both him and me, you can hardly complain about us keeping you until such an appointment is possible.'

Morris pulled a frowning face, apparently reflecting on this, whereas in fact he was merely registering how much more at home he had always felt with Marangoni There had always been an atmosphere of banter and amicable challenge with the police inspector, as if they were acting out the kind of story that couldn't really end too badly. Here, however, the genre seemed of quite a different variety.

‘Ask away then,' Morris said. ‘I've nothing to hide.'

‘If you could just begin by stating your particulars,' the pale man asked, again without so much as looking up.

‘My name,' Morris said resentfully, ‘is Morris Albert Duckworth, born 19/12/1960, Acton, London, Gran Bretagna, at present officially resident at Via dei Gelsomini 6, Montorio, Verona, though I am in the process of moving into my wife's family home in Quinzano, Verona. I am not guilty of any crime and am ready to answer any reasonable questions I am asked.'

‘Grazie.'
The colonnello was silent for a moment, during which time Morris was pleased to notice two rather ugly mole formations beneath his mushroom-white left ear. Cancerous? Either way, anybody truly intelligent would have had a blemish like that removed some good long time ago, as he himself had recently had a wart burnt out of the back of his hand, at not inconsiderable pain and expense. Then he heard the man say: ‘I don't really have any questions, Signor Duckworth. All we need is a statement of confirmation or denial of the facts as we see them: that is, the manner in which and the time at which you murdered Signor Posenato.'

Morris froze. Certainly Marangoni had never talked like this, even when things had been very sticky indeed. There was an extremely unprepossessing efficiency about the young man with the death-white complexion, moles and spectacles, and something fearfully Teutonic in his voice. He pronounced the ‘w' in Duckworth with a strong German ‘V,' while the ‘th' was almost an V.

But Morris was determined not to confess till he at least knew how much they knew. He would not be thrown by a simple accusation. That was child's play. Probably they accused everybody who walked in here of something awful just to see how they reacted. You never knew your luck. With a calm he wouldn't have imagined possible in such circumstances, he asked: ‘You're not from around these parts, are you?'

The carabiniere frowned at something on his desk.

‘I was trying to place the accent,' Morris said amiably.

‘I'm from the South Tyrol,' the colonnello said half under his breath, intent on turning a page of his notebook.

‘Ah, of course, Alto Adige. And your name?'

At last the man looked up. Morris experienced a flicker of triumph. Now he could work on him with his eyes, his big frank blue eyes.

‘Signor Duckworth, I don't think we need . . .'

‘Oh, as you will, as you will. Just that it does seem to me to be common courtesy to let another person know who they are talking to. But of course if it's a question of official secrecy, I. . .'

‘Fendtsteig,' the man said evenly.

‘Ah,' Morris smiled frankly, full of sympathy. ‘Yes, the South Tyrol. Fendtsteig. Almost as bad as Duckworth really. Don't you find that with names like ours one can never really feel at home in Italy? There's always a gap between us and the others.'

Instead of warming to him, the man's colourless eyes were unmistakably gelid now. The lips, too, were pressed almost white. A sparse prickling showed he hadn't shaved yet, perhaps had been up all night. Morris went on quickly: ‘I mean, do you ever wonder if people's characters aren't influenced by their names? I remember when I was younger . . .'

‘Signor Duckvorse,' Fendtsteig cut in, and his Italian seemed to be growing more German by the minute, ‘I have no intention of having a pleasant chat with someone I believe to be a murderer. I shall now present you with the facts as we see them. You will then deny or confirm those facts, or refuse to do either as you wish, adding any extra particulars you feel should be taken into consideration. Our interview will then be over.
Capito?'

‘Of course, Colonnello,' Morris said in pantomime obedience; then just as the other was opening his mouth to read from a notebook, he put in: The fact is, I suppose, that for some of us the social graces die hard.'

But the pale man had already started to read, impervious, Morris realised, to either charm or shame; and as he read, his voice was completely flat, and as sure of itself as a recorded message.

‘On the morning of Wednesday, February 28th, you left your house at seven-thirty to proceed to work as was your normal habit.'

Morris pushed back his seat, crossed his legs, propped his right elbow on his knee and took the knuckle of a forefinger between his teeth. His brow knitted in concentration. His left hand grasped his right foot. The pose he had once assumed in university lectures.

‘During the journey your wife, Paola Trevisan-in-Duckvorse, phoned and alerted you to the fact that her mother had died. She asked you to drive immediately to your mother-in-law's house, where you arrived at seven-fifty. You spoke to the nurse, then immediately went downstairs, saying you needed to make a phone call. You were then discovered by your sister-in-law, Antonella Trevisan-in-Posenato, searching through her mother's belongings and spent ten minutes with her asking questions about the inheritance.'

Morris was on the point of interrupting here. Clearly words like ‘discovered' and ‘searching' were heavily loaded, as if he had already been doing something wrong. It wasn't fair. It was like L'
Étranger,
where the poor fellow was accused of having smoked a cigarette at his mother's wake, as though this in some way demonstrated that he was guilty of shooting the Arab. But even as Morris opened his mouth to object, he was unnerved by the reflection that actually it
was
outrageous for a man to smoke a cigarette at his mother's wake. It was terrible. Certainly Morris never would. Though it was frankly unkind of the caretaker who had given him the cigarette to present it to the police so negatively. As perhaps it had been unkind of Antonella to tell the police that he had asked her about the inheritance. Unless she was simply being candid and didn't realise that a fact like that could be used to smear his character. But now he had lost the thread of what Fendtsteig was saying.

‘I'm sorry, could you go back a bit. I lost you at the inheritance business.'

Like a tape-recorder wound back, Fendtsteig repeated in exactly the same monotone: ‘. . . asked questions about the inheritance. You then drove off to the family company's headquarters outside Quinto, where you had an argument with your brother-in-law, Signor Posenato, with whom you have long had a difficult, not to say stormy, relationship.'

‘Stormy', Morris thought, was far too attractive and passionate a word to describe his dull exchanges with the miserable chicken magnate, but he let it pass.

The argument of the morning in question presumably had to do with the Trevisan inheritance and a will apparently in Signor Posenato's possession. The argument became heated, on which you fell to blows and killed him - no, please, Signor Duckvorse, can you save your comments until I have finished reading this account.'