by James Barlow
But he felt the weight of responsibility, as if answerable to her, and was anxious.
Chapter Twenty
After much thought Tornetta decided to use a knife. He bought it in Kowloon on the way to the Macau hydrofoil terminal. It was a beautiful piece of Japanese steel which would certainly penetrate anything Mr. Rossi wore on this hot day. It was a little difficult to know where and how to carry it without it being noticed. He eventually fixed its pigskin sheath somewhere on his left buttock. There would come a moment when he had to either take off his jacket altogether or fumble for whole seconds. It frightened him, but he was not committed. If the circumstances were not propitious he would postpone Rossi’s death until later.
Mr. Rossi had himself suggested the situation for his own obit. They had talked yesterday after breakfast.
‘Where are you going today?’ Tornetta had asked.
‘Business,’ Rossi had told him. ‘Much business today. But tomorrow pleasure.’ He grinned with cunning, his face close to Tornetta. His smile deteriorated his value, metamorphosed him most unexpectedly from the pious front of businessman and good Masonic fellow, orthodox, conservative within the Australian society he had become a particle of, to craftiness. It was as if a bishop had hinted at intended lechery, or as if he, Rossi, was, by facial expression, telling Tornetta: I know you. You are cheap and cunning, in the entertainment business for quick profits. I, too, am some game, but one more lucrative . . . ‘Pleasure with business tomorrow. Why don’t you come?’ Mr. Rossi had suggested.
‘Where to?’
‘Macau, the Portuguese city over the mouth of the Pearl River. There is gambling, not permitted here, and business of a nature not allowed anywhere. Not in quite the same manner, anyway, eh?’ His slyness was vulgar now, and he nudged Tornetta. ‘Gold, Bartolommeo. I have a bagful of the stuff to sell.’
‘Ah!’ signed Tornetta.
‘There is a hydrofoil which comes at unannounced times. Not that the Portuguese care, officially, you understand, but if the day is not known a robbery cannot be organized. I have the word. It goes to Macau tomorrow. Half an hour’s discussion and I am so much richer. Why don’t you come? I cannot, of course, take you where I am going, but afterwards – some gambling, a smile from a girl, a stroll round the place, eh?’
If Rossi undertook gold smuggling it also confirmed that he was Mafia. Torrente was sick in the stomach with fear, but he had already been planning on that basis.
It might be that this was where Rossi intended to kill him. With effort he had ‘considered it’ for two or three seconds. Macau had an attraction: it was thirty-seven miles from Hong Kong. To go there involved effort: a visit to the Portuguese embassy in Hong Kong for a visa; many hours of the two-day stopover. Most passengers of the Areopagus wouldn’t bother when all they had to do was stroll from the ship into the pleasures of Kowloon or to the ferry which took them in five minutes to Victoria.
The Portuguese kept him waiting, smouldering with hot anger and fear. But by the hydrofoil Rossi waited among scores of noisy Chinese on their way for a day’s gambling or to watch the Australian greyhounds at the Macau stadium – another form of betting and racing not permitted in Hong Kong.
Tornetta sat by a window, but sweated in claustrophobia. Alarm was unnecessary. There were a few Europeans aboard, but not from the Areopagus. Most were Portuguese from the colony. The pilot of the hydrofoil was an Australian, but even he, if he saw Tornetta with Rossi, might presume that they too were Portuguese, although a camera hung ostentatiously on Rossi’s chest. He whispered with satisfaction, ‘All the way from Perth I have carried this camera and not taken a photograph yet.’ He tittered. ‘It is loaded, but not with film. I will take your picture. It is beautiful, this place, Macau, do you know?’
Tornetta nodded affirmation, but was shaken, for was not this further proof that Rossi was to kill him. How thorough they were, and how subtle! Get the victim to pose and smile before a camera when the gold had been removed, and show the colour slide back in Perth or Sydney. He could do this in full innocence, in the presence of his family: ‘And this is Macau. Those are banyan trees. That’s my friend.’ And they would know that the right man had been killed.
He looked out of the window at the harsh green mountains and the scores of fishing boats. Two graceful three-masted fishing junks were passing. It was too easy to indulge in smuggling: it always had been in this area – drugs, opium, guns; so why bother with the risk of hydrofoil and Mr. Rossi travelling thousands of miles on a Greek liner?
Macau had no deep-water harbour – which was why Hong Kong had surpassed it – and its shabby but beautiful port was only crowded with a forest of masts of small Chinese vessels, with the sampans and junks of the poor ‘water people.’
Mr. Rossi took a taxi in haste. Tornetta stayed for a while on the waterfront, affecting interest in the fishing junks with their russet sails, honking out these days under the power of a Japanese diesel engine. Passengers about to board the returning hydrofoil considered the purchase of little wicker baskets of crayfish.
After a while he walked into the town and strolled cobbled streets lined with buildings of a Mediterranean style, ornate with balconies and colourful with red pannen tiles. The main avenues were broad and shaded by Banyan trees. It was surprisingly quiet – after the clangor of Kowloon – among the colonial style offices and gracious houses, the statues of forgotten Portuguese and of Marco Polo. The vertical banners and neon signs were in Chinese, and Tornetta felt conspicuous and European.
Rossi met him outside one of the main hotels. They lunched together – it was unavoidable – and Rossi was mot anxious to get on with the gambling. Tornetta had to remind him, ‘Don’t forget the Areopagus sails at ten tonight.’
‘We won’t miss her,’ promised Rossi. ‘Listen. The light is good. Are you tired? No. Then let us stroll a little and afterwards we will burn up some of this money I have earned. There is a floating casino – a weird thing, ornate with balconies and decorated carved wood. There are escalators between decks, and Chinese girls who are obliging. We cannot hope to win. The main game is blackjack, but there are others with dice. It’ll be fun . . . ’
But soon Mr. Rossi’s mood changed became surprisingly nervous. (Was he, too, becoming weak with fear, preparing to kill?) He said, ‘Listen, Bartolommeo. Do you have a good pocket? Will you look after half of this money for me? I might be robbed . . . I’m a good Catholic; I didn’t mean I would bother with a woman. I like to talk, that’s all.’
This suggested to Tornetta that Rossi was merely nervous of women. Given a little alcohol and some encouragement by the girl herself he’d alter, adjust the moral issues involved. A Chinese girl; the thought even warmed Tornetta, but it was useless. There was a killing to be done, then retreat, get out of Macau as fast as possible. He was baffled by Rossi’s request about the money. He did indeed have a pocket with a zipper, and he took the notes which Rossi passed over with such extraordinary trust. He saw that Rossi had only acquired a few hundred dollars.
They climbed the steps to the facade of the ruined St Paul’s Basilica. There were a few people about; too many.
Rossi took a photograph of Tornetta standing by the massive pillars.
The view from up here was considerable: of crumbling gracious houses and streets in the style of Lisbon; office blocks amidst trees; the masts of ships; and across the muddy river the green – possibly of paddy fields – and beyond everything a harsh horizon of row upon row of mountains – ridges, it seemed, of shale.
Tornetta urged, ‘Let’s take the path, go higher. The view will be tremendous.’
‘Is there time?’
‘Three or four hours.’
‘I meant the light. I am hot.’
‘It will be rewarding.’
‘On this cruise I am doing nothing but sweat and bet!’ complained Mr. Rossi lig
htly.
They ascended the dusty path, Tornetta repeating the plea: ‘Just to look over the other side of the hill. The Macau promontory is only a mile wide, so there must be another view.’
There was. Tornetta said breathlessly, ‘If you include that tree you will have a beautiful picture.’
‘The sun is sagging. I must see what the light meter tells me.’
Beyond was water gleaming under a sky beginning to pinken. Darkness, thought Tornetta. In six hours we will be gone. If they find him next week, who is he? I must take the passport and visa.
He touched his buttocks. The knife was there. He took it out clumsily. The click of a stud unfastening was, to him, as noisy as a pistol shot.
Mr. Rossi said, ‘It may not come out? The meter says –’
Tornetta thumped the knife into his back as hard as he could.
The camera leaped out of Rossi’s hands and fell a few yards away, raising its own dust.
Mr. Rossi went on living. ‘Oh, I am hurt,’ he told his friend. ‘ snake –’
He stumbled and began to cough. It was a very disturbing cough even to listen to, and when he saw that he was coughing blood he was very frightened. ‘Oh, my God, Bartolommeo, I am very ill . . . ’
Tornetta was terrified.
Die, you fool, die.
There was no one in sight. The deed was done, in theory and practice, but the fat fool wouldn’t fie.
Very tense and panic-stricken, Tornetta struck again and again. Mr. Rossi fell on his face, but persisted in living, praying, beseeching. Tornetta stabbed him in the head and it was over. There was blood on his shoes – they must go overboard, the police, proof, he’d read it –
He ransacked the victim’s pockets. Passport, visa, two hundred dollars, a letter, a receipt a wallet.
Tornetta rolled the body to the edge of the path. The incline toward the river on this side was of about sixty degrees. Rossi’s body rolled a few yards, stirred dust, and then was halted by small trees and bushes. Tornetta rolled it more and finally had moved it above seventy feet below the path. It might never be discovered.
He kicked dust over the blood on the path and over that on his shoes. He dusted himself down, examined his clothing, breathed deeply to obtain calm and walked to the crown of the hill with terror so great that his arms and legs fluttered. He fully expected to be met by policemen, witnesses, friends of Rossi from the Areopagus.
Half a mile away two people examined the Basilica, but turned and descended the steps.
He felt confidence rise, although he was very brittle and had the terrible sensation of having made a mistake, that Rossi was as innocent as his prayers.
A headache hit him like hot fluid boiling up his neck, as he remembered the camera.
He dithered, paralyzed; it involved so much courage to go back. Whole half minutes passed and then he went to find it. He had covered his tracks so well he couldn’t even tell whereabouts it was that Rossi had fallen. He cursed and ground his teeth and was red in the face with fury, kicking at grass and bushes. Night was coming, mocking him. He saw a tiny particle of broken glass and that guided him. He tore the back of the camera open and ripped the film out. Even now he was too scared to simply throw it away, its evidence surely destroyed by the impact of light. He had a terrible certainty that science would find a way of restoring what light had removed. This piece of celluloid must be dropped in the river or sea . . .
He had to wait forty minutes for the hydrofoil which was to take him back to Hong Kong. He paced about in terror, bit his lips until they cracked and bled, then bit his fingernails. He was able to dispose of the film, dropping it during a ‘stroll’ along the waterfront. He tore Rossi’s visa to pieces and considered throwing away his passport. But he was not sure if this action might not be the worst possible thing to do. The Purser’s Office asked for all passports before departure from any port. Tornetta felt sure they didn’t get them, but he was equally sure that if they were not received and accounted for within a day or two, inquiries would be made. There would first be the general plea over the public address system – ‘Will all passengers who have not yet returned their passports to the Purser’s Office please do so at once’ – followed by the approaches to the two or three individuals who took no notice whatsoever of the ship’s system and regulations.
The hydrofoil thundered through the dusk. It was not as crowded as the one which had brought Tornetta and Rossi to Macau. The sensations of relief and escape were enormous. He at once felt hungry and desperately tired.
In Kowloon the shops were still open. Tornetta bought a pair of shoes. There was discussion about size. With shock he realised that there might be blood on his socks. In panic, therefore, he refused to take off his shoes to try on the new ones. He spent more time explaining that he was in a hurry than he would have done trying the shoes on, but the Chinese trader did not persist, knowing that he was a foreigner and therefore mad. Tornetta stood in the darkness of an entry by a hotel in the Salisbury Road and put on the new shoes. They were hard and uncomfortable. He would have to buy some more in Guam . . . He dropped the old shoes into the harbour near Number 5 pier and strolled back to the Ocean Terminal and the Areopagus.
He saw Pauline walking at a leisurely pace back to the ship with a man, one of the ship’s doctors. He thought about Barbara. Lust stirred faintly amidst his exhaustion.
He saw a barber’s shop, and a Chinese girl manicuring a man’s hand caught his eye. It was irresistible, and Tornetta went inside. He throbbed with weariness and was still afraid; he felt he ought to stay ashore until the last possible moment. A man cut his hair and shaved him: the sensation was that in doing so he chopped and washed away evidence. A girl shoeshined the new brown shoes pointlessly. Another one whose eye he had aught – manicured his nails and talked, aware of his interest: ‘You like Hong Kong?’ – ‘What have you seen?’ – ‘Where do you go next?’ – ‘You’ll come back?’ The smell of her soaps and scents and the inevitable rustle of her clothes against his legs were exhilarating. Her small hands fascinated him. When it was possible he stared with outright lust at her legs or down her throat to the beginnings of her small breasts.
There was still the passport to get rid of. And there was also the terror of guilt, of the face staring into his or the hand on his shoulder, and the voice, British or Chinese, ‘Just a moment. Are you Bartolommeo Tornetta? Where have you been?’ Or even he milder interrogation, the plea for help: ‘Mr. Tornetta, have you seen Mr. Rossi today?’ And his guilt and lies would be identified. But if the ship sailed, the burden of proof became harder for them as each day passed. A man found stabbed to death on a hillside in Macau. Obviously the work of local thieves. There would be a rumour that a hydrofoil had come on what must have been that day, and transactions in gold had taken place.
It only needed the stupid German girl, or Demetropoulos, or his deputy, Eleftheriadis, to say, ‘Ah, you’ve brought Mr. Rossi’s passport, too!’ to form a starting point when the investigations began. ‘But I remember; his friend Mr. Tornetta handed in the passport an hour before we sailed . . . ’ And yet he had to handover that passport. If he did so, it half proved that Rossi had returned to the ship: perhaps he had gone ashore again for half an hour and missed her when she sailed.
The temptation was very great now to drop Rossi’s passport into the water. But above all things, as in Hobart, Tornetta wanted this old ship to sail. It was just possible that if the passport was not handed in it would not sail, or if it wasn’t accounted for within two days radio signals would be sent to the Hong Kong police: ‘We are a passenger short’ – and perhaps by then the body would have been found and the counter-signal would be radioed: ‘We have found an Italian, aged about fifty, whose clothes were bought in Perth . . . ’
No. The little piece of cardboard had to be handed over.
There were traders o
n deck, a bustle of passengers, the hisses and mechanical noises of a ship preparing for departure. A steward was going around with a flashlight shining it on the linen and metal bric-a-brac which was for sale. ‘Five more minutes,’ he shouted, but Tornetta knew it would be two hours before they sailed. This thing never left or arrived on time. The pithering about with ropes and gangways always went on for an unexpected half hour or more.
He went down to Metaxas Deck, just to see what was happening. Metaxas Deck was open on the port side: it was the main exit and entry. The chief purser and his staff were on duty. Other officers were hanging about, and a crowd of Chinese and British officials, talking like people at a cocktail party. Passengers and visitors to the ship were wandering around in excitement, complaining, ‘It’s so hot,’ or boasting, making their usual claims: ‘We got it for thirty dollars’ – or asserting their social superiority: ‘We were taken round the whole place. He’s Embassy so he knows it all. You’ve got to know somebody to get round and really see.’ A tall boy was necking with a girl frantically, leaning against a bulkhead; no one stared, but it would have made no difference if anyone had. These two were racing against time. A few women were already showing off wigs they’d bought; even the mother from Darwin was parading around, a new person, with straight blonde hair . . . Pybus walked through the crowd, in shorts and open-neck shirt, breathing through his teeth with grinding effort, his face set, alone with his own problems.
Tornetta shook with terror, ignored his brain which told him this was good, suitable, an ambience close to confusion.