The Few (17 page)

‘When the man swam away from her, what direction did he take?'

‘He went around the rocks at the end of the beach.' He paused. ‘To the left of where the family was sitting.

‘So he went out of sight?'

‘Yes.'

‘And did you see him again after that?'

‘No, that was it. And not long after that, the mother started to scream.'

‘How long after?'

‘No more than half an hour, I'd say.'

28

ON THE BEACH
at Fetovaia, a man was selling sarongs. They were all colours of the rainbow, and he had them laid out across a wooden rail that he carried over his left arm. Scamarcio imagined that it must be heavy, that it would bear down on his neck and shoulders after a while. The heat was intense, and he watched the man wipe his brow with a handkerchief that he kept in his pocket. He took it out every minute or so, then stuffed it away again while he hitched the rail higher up his arm. No one seemed to be buying from him, and after a while he walked to the back of the beach and rested the rail against the wall. From behind a stone he retrieved a battered bottle of water and sank down beneath a meagre scrap of shade thrown by several mangy palms.

Genovesi and his officers had returned to the station to follow up the remaining witnesses, leaving Scamarcio to track down the ice-cream seller. This was how he wanted it; he could work better alone. They'd got him a hire car, the latest Cinquecento, a boxy little thing that he'd parked above the bay. He was making the steep descent towards the beach by foot now, his jacket draped carefully over one arm. The sarong man noticed him walking towards him, looked to his right and then behind him to see whether Scamarcio might be heading for anyone else, realised he wasn't, and shifted uncomfortably, making as if to move. But it was too late — Scamarcio had him in his sights. No doubt he was working without a permit. They all worked without permits now; it was the only way to survive. Scamarcio drew up alongside him, taking a seat to his right beneath the shade.

‘How are you doing?' he said, trying to make eye contact. On closer inspection, the man seemed more like a teenager. His skin was perfectly smooth, although his young eyes had a deadness behind them, as though he'd seen too much of life already.

‘Are you going to arrest me?' said the man/boy.

‘Arrest you? For what?'

He said nothing for a moment, and then: ‘You're a cop, aren't you?'

‘Might be.'

‘What do you want?'

‘Information.'

The boy's features relaxed slightly, and then the suspicion returned: ‘What kind of information?'

‘I'm looking for a guy who was selling ice-cream here on the beach yesterday. Tall guy, long robes.'

‘Is he in trouble?'

‘I don't know yet. I just need to speak to him.'

The boy gazed out across the sea. It seemed as though he was trying to find something out there.

‘If I help you, what will you give me?'

Scamarcio could have come on all aggressive, blackmailing him with the permit, threatening to send him home. But he saw something in the boy's eyes that stopped him — made him feel that he didn't deserve the usual low-life treatment.

‘I can help you with your permit, if that's what you need. Try to get things cleaned up for you.'

The boy nodded slowly, and studied the sand beneath his feet awhile. ‘I think I know who you mean. That's Billy. He works this beach, and he would have been around yesterday.'

‘Where's he from?'

‘The Congo. Djibouti.'

‘Where's he staying now?'

‘Where we all stay — the flats behind the port.'

Scamarcio took his wallet from his pocket, pulled out a crisp 50-euro note, and handed it to the boy. He looked uneasy, unsure whether to touch it.

‘If I give you this, will you take me to the flats, show me where he lives?'

The boy accepted the note gingerly, as if afraid the paper would disintegrate on contact with his skin. ‘Deal.'

It was a grey concrete block, washed out and dilapidated. The windows were tiny slits, like the hollowed-out eyes on a corpse, thought Scamarcio. Washing was strung between the rusting balconies, and a group of barefoot children were playing out front on a burnt-out strip of grass. There was nothing to suggest that they were in walking distance of a prime tourist destination.

Scamarcio followed the boy inside. An overwhelming blend of smells hit him: cooking, dirty nappies, sweat, urine, and something else — something old and musty that he couldn't quite place, like the week-old odour of wet dog.

The boy didn't bother with the elevator and headed straight for the stairs, hoisting the rail onto his shoulder as he made the climb. When they reached the second floor he turned and told Scamarcio to wait while he unlocked a door to his left and carried the rail inside. Within seconds he was back, heading for the stairwell again. They climbed two more flights, the smell intensifying. The boy marched down the corridor before stopping in front of a door halfway down on his left.

‘Here,' he whispered. ‘But don't tell him I brought you. Let me leave first.'

Scamarcio nodded, and the boy ran back down the corridor, heading for the stairs again. Scamarcio leaned against the wall for a moment, the hum of cicadas rising up from the bushes below. He wondered again about the smell. How could people breathe this in, day after day? Maybe, after a while, you stopped noticing.

He went to knock, but before he did so the door moved back to reveal a tall, black man bending down, trying to shift a box of some kind out into the hallway. He spotted Scamarcio standing there, and looked up.

‘What do you want?' The accent was thick and French.

‘I'm looking for Billy.'

Scamarcio saw the brilliant whites of his eyes, saw fear — maybe smelt it, too. The man did not respond.

‘I guess that would be you.'

The man straightened to his full height. He was well over 6ft 4, taller than Scamarcio. His skin was pure ebony, almost polished. His features were strong, with deep lines beneath the eyes and circling a full mouth. He was wearing a long blue-and-black robe with a matching kufi hat, and Scamarcio noticed tight rings of clear beads wound around his left wrist.

‘Were you on the beach at Fetovaia yesterday?'

The man scratched his forehead and scanned the corridor in both directions, maybe looking for somewhere to run. He looked back at Scamarcio as if he was hoping he would just disappear.

‘Is this about my permit?'

It was a clever response, but exactly what Scamarcio had expected. ‘No, it's not.'

‘You're a policeman though?'

He said nothing, hoping to draw him out with the silence. Eventually, the man said: ‘I was there. Why does it matter?'

Scamarcio leaned back against the wall again, and yawned. It had been too early a start. ‘A little girl went missing from Fetovaia yesterday afternoon: blonde, American, seven years old.'

The man seemed genuinely surprised, a dark cloud passing across his features, and then he just shook his head slowly, sadly. It was a solid performance, decently convincing, but Scamarcio had seen some great amateur dramatics in his time: he had observed widows hammering on the chests of their murdered husbands, crying and wailing in outpourings of grief so intense and protracted that they took your breath away, only to then watch the same widows give the finger to the judges when they were later sent down for poisoning. He'd also seen sons shaking, speechless and destroyed beside the battered corpses of their avenged fathers, only to find said sons' prints all over the murder weapon.

‘You know the girl I'm talking about?'

The man waited a few moments before replying: ‘I sold her an ice-cream. Then I saw her later, swimming on her own. Her parents were both asleep.'

‘What time was this?'

‘I don't know. I think around 3.30, or maybe 4.00pm.'

‘Where was she swimming?'

‘Near her parents, by the rocks.'

‘And what were you doing?'

‘I was swimming, too. It was hot and I hadn't had a break, so I just got in the water. I left my stuff on the beach for a second, and then I jumped in.'

‘Is that what you normally do? Get in the water when you're working?'

The man was unperturbed. ‘I don't usually, but yesterday was real hot — over 34 degrees. I couldn't stand it any longer. I needed to cool down if I was going to get through the rest of the afternoon.'

Fair enough, thought Scamarcio. ‘But you chose to go in the water at the very moment the little girl was having a swim …'

The man frowned, and shook his head at Scamarcio. ‘But that little girl was in the water all afternoon. She was never
out
of the water — only when they came to buy an ice-cream.' Fair enough again.

The man sank down suddenly, his back sliding against the wall, his robes fanning out across the filthy floor. He rested his head in his hands.

‘Am I going to be arrested? Are you going to send me to jail? I know what you Italians think of men like me: you hate us, suspect us, want us gone. Is that what's going to happen — you're going to send me to jail?' The man was breathing deeply now, breathing faster, altogether too fast.

Scamarcio felt a spike of compassion; he needed to calm him down.

‘No one is sending you to jail. I'm just asking you if you saw anything that day — anything at all that could help us find this little girl?'

He didn't seem to have heard. ‘I was a doctor in the Congo, studied hard for all my qualifications, tried my best to make it. But you know there are some places you will never make it. I had to leave my son and daughter behind, had to come here with nothing, had to live in this hole — just to sell ice-cream. Imagine if your best chance of making it in life was to sell ice-cream, Detective?'

That explained the flawless Italian. Scamarcio wasn't used to hearing word-perfect Italian spoken by immigrants from Africa. It wasn't common to hear them master the tenses, let alone the subjunctive — hell, there were millions of Italians who still hadn't managed that one.

The man was in full flow now. ‘I feel sorry for those parents. I understand their pain. But I promise you I didn't touch their little girl, and I didn't see anything.' He paused a moment. ‘All I saw was those two parents asleep — the whole time.'

‘How long asleep?'

‘All the time she was in the water after eating the ice-cream.'

Scamarcio crouched down so they were at eye level. ‘So you just got out of the water and left the little girl swimming?'

‘She wasn't my responsibility.' The man sighed. ‘Yes, I got out of the water, got my stuff, and left. I'd done Fetovaia. I wanted to move to the next beach along.'

Scamarcio pulled out a card from his jacket pocket. ‘If you remember anything, anything at all, could you give me a call?'

The man took the card, and turned it over. He seemed ashamed for a moment. ‘I don't have a phone.'

‘Find a pay phone and reverse the charges. We can run to that in the police department — just.'

The man finally looked up and met his eyes. He seemed to have aged since the beginning of their encounter. Quietly, he said: ‘I'll tell you one thing. I wouldn't have left my little girl alone like that. I wouldn't have fallen asleep while she was in the water. It was as if they didn't care.'

29

SCAMARCIO STEPPED OUT BLINKING
into the harsh sunlight. The children had gone from the strip of grass, and now he spied a couple of cats lounging by the bushes, lazily licking their paws. The air was less than fresh, but it was still a relief to be out of the apartment block.

The new mobile that Garramone had given him buzzed, and he pulled it reluctantly from his pocket. The caller ID was blocked. He sighed, held it to his ear, pressed ‘answer', but said nothing.

‘He's dead.'

‘What?'

‘He's dead.' It was Garramone.

‘What are you talking about?'

‘The other guy in the photo with Arthur, the one we traced to Florence. He's dead. He's been found hanging in an apartment.'

Scamarcio felt his insides flip over. ‘Fuck.' Then: ‘How did you find out?'

‘A photo posted on the national system by Florence police. I was scanning the day's stiffs. I don't know why — call it a bad feeling. I rang them, and they said they weren't quite convinced it was suicide, but they didn't have an ID for him yet — they couldn't find any documents with the body or in the flat where he was found.'

‘And they didn't make the connection with the pictures in the papers?'

‘It seems not.'

They both fell silent for several moments. Eventually, Scamarcio said: ‘What does your friend say?'