Mimi's Ghost (28 page)

It was around eight and there was already a brisk stream of traffic heading off for some last Easter skiing in Fendtsteig country. Morris drove carefully, relishing his freedom, the extraordinary wide whiteness of the landscape with its snow-peaked mountains to the north and the sun-bright haze of city and plain to the south. After a brief chat with Massimina on the subject of Paola's pregnancy, which she again assured him was for real and at least two months on, Morris stopped and bought the local newspaper, where yet another pleasant surprise awaited him. Among the usual trivial tales of officials accepting bribes, babes tossed in bins and drug addicts meat-axing their parsimonious parents, was the marvellously uninspired headline:
MAROCCHINO
AND EGYPTIAN CHARGED WITH MURDER OF LOCAL INDUSTRIALIST.

Morris went back into the newsagents, bought himself a bar of Swiss chocolate, then relaxed into the leather seat of the Mercedes to read at leisure. Perhaps he would call Father again if it was really promising.

The charge, admitted the newspaper had been made despite the absence of a body. Thank heaven. But a pocket-knife had been found in the possession of the
marocchino
with traces of blood of the same group as that of the missing Posenato. How very interesting! His young accomplice, on the other hand, was carrying an expensive silver paperweight which was known to have been on Posenato's desk (though Morris could remember no such thing), while both men were in possession of a modest quantity of banknotes which were found to have serial numbers similar to those in one of the company's safes. The immigrants' improbable story, that they had returned to Verona to file a petition for illegal dismissal and knew nothing of Bobo's disappearance, was not felt by the polizia to carry any conviction. On the contrary, it was thought that the real reason for their return was to recover items they had hidden during their flight, perhaps even the industrialist's Audi 100, which remained as yet undiscovered and could well contain the body. Given the seriousness of the crime, both the
marocchino
and his Egyptian accomplice would be tried
per direttissima.
That is, as soon as possible.

Morris swallowed his chocolate and wiped his hands carefully on a handkerchief. He was at once delighted and perplexed. What, for example, was he supposed to make of ‘one of the company's safes'? Clearly this was not the one behind the fuse box, which he had emptied himself, leaving the police nothing to match the banknotes with. While the main safe notoriously never had any money in it at all. The only explanation was thus that Bobo had given the two men some small pay-off (how unexpectedly generous of him!) from yet another safe, about which he, Morris, knew nothing at all, but which someone, presumably Antonella, had been able to tell the police about, otherwise how would they have found the notes in there? Apart from the confirmation if any was required, of the low esteem in which Bobo had held him and the extent to which the boy had been determined to hang on to all the power in the company (how many things were there Morris still didn't know?), there was now the further problem that the police might believe that he himself had been witholding evidence from them, if nothing else, about the extent of the company's illicit operations. And how could they believe that Azedine and Farouk would have taken only
some
of the money in the safe? That was ludicrous.

Still, on the whole, it had to be excellent news, particularly the blood on the penknife. Indeed, it was news that more or less set Morris up for life, turned him into a successful man with his hands on the springs of wealth and his heart set to use that wealth wisely and generously. But then: ‘All things work together for good to them that love God, to those who are called according to his purpose.' It was merely a question of having faith. In a sudden swelling of innocent excitement, Morris picked up the phone to share his enthusiasm first with Massimina, then in some more indirect way with Father. Forgetting that he hadn't dialled her
paradiso
number for the routine call he always gave her on getting in the car, he simply pressed, for authenticity's sake, the repeat button, and was already expressing his gratitude for the guardian angel role she was so effectively playing, when somewhere a phone began to ring.

In heaven?

Morris hesitated, trying to remember whether he had actually dialled any numbers on this phone himself since getting out of prison yesterday. He thought not. Then a deep voice, which was clearly not Massimina's, yet at the same time immediately recognisable, said: ‘
Pronto.'

Morris was taken aback.

‘Pronto?'
the voice repeated into what was a particularly disturbed line.

‘Kwame!' Morris said. ‘Yes, look, I'm on my way over to pick you up. We've got stuff to do.'

Oddly, it was as if he'd never meant to phone anybody else.

Ten minutes later, parking in Via dei Gelsomini, Morris was pleased to see fresh graffiti on the garden wall of his old condominium,
fora i neri dal veneto,
it said in metre-high letters, blacks out. A neighbour coming down the short path from the main door scowled at his
buon giorno,
Morris smiled almost too broadly. When he got upstairs, Kwame showed him a letter that had been pushed, unsealed, under the door a week or so before.

Got him! Morris was on cloud nine. Especially when he saw that Kwame was
not
turning the place into a pigsty at all! On the contrary, he seemed to have a far greater sense of tidiness than Paola had ever had. The rugs were all square to the wall, the spines of Morris's precious books were perfectly flush in the shelves, and there seemed to be none of the flotsam and jetsam drifting about that one had had to get used to living with Paola: odd shoes kicked in corners, nail-file cards between the sofa cushions, etc. No, the boy was treating the place like a museum. And if it smelt faintly different than it had when he and Paola lived there, then that was simply because blacks did smell a bit different, and cooked different food and probably liked different-smelling products, cleaning agents, perfumes, shampoos and the like. The way they apparently (incredibly) liked menthol cigarettes. But then wasn't difference the spice of life in the end? What were the neighbours so worried about? Why had the Trevisan family worried so much about
him?
No, there could be no doubt about who was being inhuman here! Morris himself had
never shown prejudice,
nor indeed done harm to anyone who dealt with him reasonably. He embraced Kwame and slapped him hard on that huge back. Presumably Paola had phoned the boy to deal with some practical issue over moving houses.

Kwame wore a fashionable pale-blue tracksuit and a good cashmere coat, a sign that he wasn't squandering his wages on booze and cigarettes. It occurred to Morris that, of all the people he had ever known, this big black, strangely enough, was probably the closest to himself in psyche and behaviour: an outcast who in the end was more civilised than the society which he aspired to enter, and which constantly rejected him.

Kwame showed where somebody had thrown a stone against a shutter. Morris promised he would talk to the police about the matter. Walking back out to the car, he made a point of taking Kwame's arm and leading him off the path for a stroll around the big condominium garden where spring flowers were just peeping through the dewy grass. Show the boy around, show the others that he had Morris's full support. Sure enough, turning suddenly, he saw a curtain twitch. Lucia in number three. Spying. Excellent!

They climbed into the Mercedes and once more Morris gave Kwame the keys. ‘From now on,' he said, ‘you keep the car. Just make sure that you arrive at our house in Quinzano no later than seven-thirty every morning. You then remain in my company or parked outside whatever building I am in until I go to bed in the evening.'

‘Yes, boss.'

‘You don't have trouble waking up, I hope. I hate people arriving late.'

‘No, boss.'

‘OK, so now straight to Trevisan Wines, then Villa Caritas, then church.'

Morris shut his eyes as Kwame overtook at a leisurely pace on a completely blind bend. But he admired the boy's aplomb, and he admired the amazing reticence he showed
vis-à-vis
the crime they had committed together, the way he asked nothing about what Morris might have said during questioning, offered nothing about what he himself had said, as if entirely unconcerned about his fate. Or rather, entirely trustful that Morris had everything under control.

In the way, Morris thought that Massimina had been entirely trustful. It was so fascinating comparing people, contrasting them. For about two minutes, perhaps, he felt immensely gratified.

‘By the way,' he said, ‘they've charged Azedine and Farouk. They're going to be tried quite soon.'

Kwame only nodded, driving too close to a three-wheel van piled high with scrap metal. A small dog sitting on a swaying heap of rusty bed springs looked as if it might leap onto their smooth white bonnet. Which had Morris thinking of the sponge in his pocket again. It was going to be quite a morning. First the builder, then the dog.

‘I don't think they'll ever really be able to nail them on the evidence they've got. What do you think? But it does rather take the pressure off us.'

Kwame, however, seemed entirely unconcerned. And this was perhaps a little callous of him. For Morris was perfectly aware that there was a moral issue here. Somebody else was suffering for what they had done.

They've probably both got Aids anyway, poor guys, with what they were up to.'

The black took a sharp corner, in third.

‘Don't you think?'

Finally Kwame grinned. ‘Is a pity about that big Audi, boss,' he said. ‘Man, I like that big, big car.'

Morris promised: ‘All in good time and I'll get you one.'

Clearly he was not going to get much change out of Kwame when it came to weighing up moral issues.

When they arrived at Trevisan Wines, the Dobermann was as hostile as ever, snapping and slavering about the car door. Presumably one of the workers was under instruction to let the thing off its chain at weekends. Now he had his paws on the car window, black lips drawn back on a well-fed snarl. Morris found the plastic bag in his pocket, pulled out the meat-soaked sponge with two fingers, ordered Kwame to buzz down the window a snout and pushed it into the brute's maw. Thus demonstrating how incredibly naive it was to keep animals as guards, for the dog immediately set about gobbling the thing up, letting them by to unlock the office door.

An agonisingly slow death, the veterinary student turned pederast had explained.

Time would tell.

And how curious, Morris thought, as he stepped through the door, to be back in this squalid office, just four or five months after that other holiday morning
(i l giorno dei morti
of all days!) when he and Bobo had so ominously clashed. He glanced around, checking that nothing had changed: the desk, the filing cabinet, the safe, the fuse box, the crucifix . . . nothing. Except that the girl, who had been suggestively licking around the top of a Fratelli Ruffoli bottle in early February, now in mid-March appeared to be trying to open two of them at once with nothing more than both gloriously hard, dark nipples. Morris stepped briskly across the room, removed the calendar and was going to put it in the bin where it belonged, when it occurred to him that he might, quite charitably, and without offending either Mimi or the sad crucifix over the door, offer it to Kwame. After all, one could hardly expect everybody to convert at exactly the same moment.

The black grinned appreciatively and flicked through the thing, rather oddly turning it this way and that, as if the vertical was not a position that inspired him. And while Morris was now pulling open the drawer with the fatal Massimina file inside, his accomplice's deep voice chuckled and said: ‘You know where I stick dis ‘ere bottle, man?'

Quickly folding the various letters and papers, Morris hardly needed to ask.

Kwame was laughing. ‘I stick it right up her sweet white fanny, that's where.'

Although this was the kind of conversation he had spent most of his life trying to avoid, Morris felt it would be churlish to criticise, having just been responsible for giving the boy the miserable thing. Anyhow, if it kept him out of more serious sin, there was a lot to be said for it. Better the hand than the gland, so to speak.

Fearing the waste bin was too risky, he slipped the offending papers into his inside coat pocket and turned to go. ‘We haven't got time now,' he explained, ‘but over the next few days, I want you to go through all the files in the cabinet, paper by paper, so as to get to know the company. And if you find any notes in handwriting, or anything obviously personal, I want you to get in touch with me right away. OK?'

Outside, the dog was coming to terms with the fact that the sponge was not exactly what he had expected. Throat stretched upwards, he was opening and snapping shut his all too impressive teeth. For the last time, Morris hoped. In any event, occupied as the creature was with swallowing the unswallow-able, there was plenty of time for them to walk the few muddy paces to the Mercedes undisturbed.

‘Drive,' he told Kwame.

Nobody was up on their arrival at Villa Caritas. At nine-thirty now. It made Morris wonder how Forbes would fare when he had to run a school and have the boys at their lessons or other activities in reasonable time. But he was pleased to see that the big house was being kept quite tidily with spring flowers (narcissi) on the big table in the dining-room-cum-lecture-room and some drawings, clearly attempted by the immigrants under Forbes's instruction, pinned up on the wall. There were some rather rough sketches of the garden with its pergola and pomegranate tree, one or two of the surrounding hills to the north, a frank set of life drawings of a young man sprawled on a couch, and then a remarkably delicate production of a young Slavic face, features almost melting into the soft pillow he lay on. Morris recognised Ramiz. Forbes's work presumably. Very impressive.