The Penalty

by Mal Peet

  Prima reached out and gripped Bakula’s shoulder. “Pai! Please!”

  Mateo said, “Aw, Prima, girl. C’mon now. Leave it.”

  She lifted her face to him. There was so much pain and ferocity in her eyes that he shrugged and looked away.

  Bakula turned his head towards Prima. His eyes sought and found focus, and he smiled. It was a smile of enormous gentleness. His teeth were outlined in red. He said something that Faustino could not catch. Blood gathered inside his lower lip and spilled out where it was notched, running down the scar. Prima closed her eyes and nodded; it seemed she had heard what she wanted to hear. Bakula was trembling violently now, but reached forward and took hold of Ricardo’s shoulders, pulling him close, and kissed the boy on both cheeks, leaving a daub of red on each. Then he fell sideways against Prima. She struggled to bear his weight. His legs went flat on the floor and his head slid down onto her lap.

  Mateo kneeled, tearing open the front of Bakula’s shirt.

  “Jesus,” Lucas murmured.

  Faustino caught sight of the exit wound and looked away, trying not to retch; but not before he’d glimpsed a raised pink cross, the welt of a healed burn, on the front of the man’s shoulder.

  Mateo leaned closer. “Edson? Edson, can you hear me, man? There anything you wan’ us to do?”

  But Bakula’s eyes were going out; they were already semi-opaque, like lightly frosted glass. It surprised Faustino that the pai had the strength to speak, but he did: a few words in some dead or distant language. He raised his hands slightly, cupping the fingers, touching some imaginary face, perhaps. His chin was bearded in blood. The last word was a cry that was harsh yet joyous, a fierce benediction.

  “Blessing!”

  The silence that followed was more profound than it should have been. It took Faustino a few seconds to realize that the hiss from the television set had ceased and the screen was a blank grey rectangle.

  He walked away between the guttering candles, fumbling in his pocket for the creased cigarette packet. He paused in the doorway and looked back. Dimly illuminated, framed by the timbers of the shrine, the scene was a familiar one. The dead man slumped in the woman’s lap, the dishevelled white garments, the displayed wound, the dark huddle of grieving Apostles. He’d seen it many times, hung on many walls, during his priest-haunted childhood. Had turned his back on it, repelled and unbelieving. Had fled from it through the rooms and years and pages of his life.

  He stood studying it for a moment or two, then lit up.

  Epilogue: Faustino’s Cross

  PAUL FAUSTINO WAS trekking across the glossily tiled lobby of the Hotel San Francesco (wondering yet again why a hotel lobby needed a grand piano) when the woman at the desk called his name.

  “Signore Faustino? Scusi, Signore. Telefono.”

  She held the phone in the air and pointed at it, perhaps imagining that it was an unfamiliar object to a South American.

  “Grazie.” It was one of the nine Italian words that Faustino knew.

  “Paul. It’s Carmen. How’s Rome?”

  “Old, and very expensive.”

  “I imagine you must blend in perfectly, then.”

  It was the first time in his life he’d heard his boss make anything resembling a joke. He was so startled that he missed the beginning of her next sentence.

  “Sorry, what? There’s a delay on the line.”

  “I said, excellent news. After six weeks of hassling by our lawyers, the San Juan Prosecutor’s Office has agreed to let us publish your account of the Brujito business. We got them on the public interest angle, in the end. It’s likely to be four months or more before Varga and co. come to trial.”

  “Ah. Okay. That’s good.”

  “Good? It’s a damn sight better than good, Paul. We’ve bust a gut on this thing. Are you all right?”

  Faustino cleared his throat, brisked himself up a bit. “Yes. Sorry. I guess I just feel a bit outside of the loop. No, that’s great, Carmen.”

  “Yes, it is. Your friend Sergeant – sorry – Lieutenant Artur Fillol has been very helpful, by the way.”

  “Yeah. I imagine he must enjoy having us to talk to. It must get lonely, being a straight cop in San Juan. I’m glad he got a promotion, though.”

  “He didn’t,” Carmen said. “He was already a lieutenant. In the Federal Office of Investigation. He was planted in Varga’s branch of the SJDP almost a year ago. Seems there was already a bad smell coming from there.”

  “Well, well, well. Any other news? How’s Prima de Barros?”

  “The girl? She’s okay, so far as I know. Fillol’s still got two of his men up there in Santo Whatsit. Witness protection, but it also keeps the competition away. Incidentally, did you know that the phoney priest guy, the one Bakula strangled, was her uncle? Her aunt’s brother? Paul? Are you still there?”

  “Yes, sorry. No, I didn’t know that. She didn’t tell me that.”

  “It’s a great angle, isn’t it? We’re making it into a pretty strong background story to the main piece. Get some family tragedy into the mix.”

  “Carmen, I don’t… I think we should discuss this.”

  But she wasn’t listening. She’d put her hand over the phone. Faustino could hear muffled conversation; she was talking to someone else.

  “Carmen?”

  “Paul, sorry. This will interest you, I think. The squad for the friendly against Brazil has just been announced. Ricardo de Barros is in it.”

  “Ah. Good. That’s very good.”

  “And perfect timing for us. I’ve always said that God is a Nación reader. Now, what’s your schedule?”

  “Well, I’m having dinner with Luiz Falcao, who was assistant manager at Unita during Gato’s time here, then—”

  “No, no. What I meant, Paul, is when are you coming back?”

  Here it comes, Faustino thought.

  “Um, Madrid Sunday, home Monday. Late. Why?”

  “We’re putting the story out as a twelve-page special supplement the weekend after next. I’ve had a couple of people doing the background stuff, but the meat of it is the transcript of your tape. However, there are some gaps, and one or two things we don’t really understand.”

  Faustino almost laughed. “You and me both, Carmen.”

  There was a short icy silence which had nothing to do with the time it takes words to bounce off a satellite.

  “Yes, well. Frankly, Paul, a good deal of it seems… Never mind. We can discuss it when you come into the office on Tuesday.”

  “What? Hell’s teeth, Carmen. I’ll be shattered. Jet-lagged. Come on.”

  “It doesn’t have to be early. Nine thirty will do.”

  Faustino sighed and leaned back against the reception desk. The door onto the street opened and the San Francesco’s doorman guided a smartly dressed blind man towards the grand piano.

  “Paul?”

  “Yeah, Carmen. May I tell you something? Sometimes, just sometimes, you are the last person I want to hear from.”

  “It breaks my heart to hear you say that, Paul. See you on Tuesday. And Paul? Take care. You don’t seem your old self.”

  Faustino’s lack of a sense of direction was legendary among his colleagues. He could get lost in a barrel, they’d say, after he’d been found once again wandering the bland labyrinth of the Nación building, bemoaning the inhumanity of modern architects. So it was not surprising – even to Faustino himself – that within thirty minutes of leaving the hotel he had no idea where he was. He could have taken a taxi, but he had been told that strolling through Rome on a summer evening was one of life’s great pleasures. He had a street map in his pocket, but refused to look at it; he didn’t want to be mistaken for a mere tourist. For the same reason, he refused to ask for directions. Not that he would know how. Then there was the problem that, to his New World eyes, all those damn great Renaissance buildings looked the same. So the upshot was that he’d got his bridges muddled up, crossed the Tevere at the wrong place, and ended up in
a piazza far from the one he’d been aiming for.

  All at once he was overwhelmed by just how lost, how alone, he was. He’d experienced the same thing a number of times in the last few weeks. It was like a swift gathering, an inrush, of shadows; shadows that were almost memories. Of a little boy finding a doctor and a priest talking quietly outside his mother’s bedroom. Of looking up from play and finding everybody gone, the garden silent and inexplicably enormous. Of understanding for the first time the vast and terrible perspective of the stars. Lost was a poor word for such a feeling. Rather, it was as if all directions had been obliterated, the agreed limits of the world abolished. It made him want to beg like a dog for consolation.

  It occurred to him that he might be looking a little peculiar. And yes, a young couple – so beautiful, both of them – watched him as they passed. For a dreadful moment it seemed they might stop and ask him if he was all right. If he needed help. He tugged the map from his pocket and fumbled it open. Useless. It was badly printed, blurry. Or could it be that he needed glasses suddenly? Anyway, maps were pointless if you didn’t know where you were in the first place. He was pretty sure he could find his way back to the river; if he walked straight on for a bit and took a right he would come to it and get his bearings.

  He would have gone past the church – wouldn’t even have noticed that it was yet another church – if it hadn’t been for the interesting pair of human skulls that flanked its doorway. They were not particularly scary, as skulls go. The sculptor had carved them with open mouths and immense eye sockets so that, in this evening light, they looked like two shocked old ladies wearing sunglasses. Oddly, they sprouted uplifted wings resembling torn palm leaves, and dangling things rather like neckties made of flowers and small clusters of fruit. As a result, they struck Faustino as being both morbid and luxuriantly tropical. Perhaps he experienced a moment of homesickness; but for whatever reason, after the slightest of hesitations, he went inside.

  The gloom was a welcome relief from the hot amber and ochre of the outside world. His eyes liked it. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought the place was empty. There was a flickering glow ahead and to the right of him, and he headed for that, trying not to bump into anything sacred.

  The uncertain light came from three narrow metal shelves hung with swags and stalactites of stiffened wax. Nine small flames burned among many white stubs with drowned and blackened wicks. He stared at them for a whole minute, then looked around until he found the box of short cheap candles and the slot for cash. He took a five-euro note from his pocket and wasted a few seconds trying to work out what that was in real money. Enough, probably. He put the note into the slot and took a candle. For Max Salez, the godless jerk. Our jerk. He lit it with his cigarette lighter and pressed it down onto one of the dead candles on the middle shelf. Then, why the hell not, he helped himself to a second one. For Edson Bakula. He stood watching the flames until they steadied. After a while he started to feel conspicuous, so he kneeled.

  He had absolutely no idea how to pray. He had only a few half-remembered phrases that had somehow survived the process of forgetting, of erasure. Besides, prayer was not an act; it was a place. It was the place his mother had retreated to, leaving him behind because he didn’t know the way. He’d watched her go, out of the corner of his eye. He’d waited for her to come back, and she did. Until the day she didn’t.

  Well, that was that. He was about to get to his feet, when he realized he was not alone.

  A very old lady was kneeling not far from him. Her eyes were closed and she was speaking silently in a fast peaceful rhythm that was somehow like the way marathon runners run when they’ve hit the right pace for the distance. Now and again she paused and crossed herself: high, low, left, right. He watched her; then suddenly she was watching him. She smiled. She had a gold tooth in the upper right jaw. She nodded encouragement, and because nothing else would do Faustino crossed himself: high, low, right, left. Then he got to his feet and made his way out into the pulverizing light of Rome.

  At that same moment, several hours earlier (on account of the way we mark the slow ruthless turning of the world), on the Deportivo San Juan practice pitch, El Brujito tried to dummy Braca, his team captain, failed, and fell on his arse.

  Braca took the ball on for a few metres and then put his foot on it. He looked back at the boy, worried. After what had happened, you couldn’t tell how he’d react. The newsflash of the kid getting out of the helicopter into the glare of the TV lights, still covered in blood. The hell that broke loose. How do you get over that? How do you begin to forget?

  But look at the Little Sorcerer sitting there, face up to the clouds and laughing. Laughing, praise God.

  Four miles away from the pitch, at the top of the Pillory, a white-haired man wearing an England football shirt stood shackled to a wall. The exposed parts of his body were the colour of broiled lobster. He was sporting, though; he adopted appropriately tortured poses while other members of the tour group (including his wife) took photographs.

  The guide waited. He was a slightly built, medium-skinned man whose hair was showing early hints of grey. He wore sunglasses with rather snazzy red and black mottled frames. His neat moustache and beard were perhaps intended to disguise, but only accentuated, the scar that ran down from the notch in his lower lip. When the photographers had finished he continued his spiel.

  “The terrace we are standing on is called the Old Slave Market. However, the truth is slightly more complicated.”

  Author’s Note

  I’VE HEARD IT SAID, and seen it written, that the Paul Faustino novels are “set in Brazil”. This isn’t true. They are set in an imaginary South American country. I’m happy to confess that when I wrote the first one, Keeper, I’d never been to South America. So I had no choice but to imagine. I did no real research. The only source book I used was called something like Rainforests of the World. It had lots of really useful photographs in it. I never got round to reading the text.

  When I started work on The Penalty, I was intending to go about things in much the same way. That is, I was going to make it all up. Then my wife, Ellie, started to mention—about five times a day – that she’d always wanted to go to South America. So there was nothing for it but to go. As a result of that month-long trip, the setting of The Penalty is, I guess, a little more “authentic” than in Keeper. Yes, there are bits of Brazil in this book; there are bits of other places too. But Faustino’s country, El Brujito’s country, exists only in my imagination – and in yours, perhaps.

  One of the things that impressed and fascinated me about South America was the way that African culture – the culture of millions of victims of the barbaric slave trade – continues to survive and flourish in certain areas. In particular, religions that originated in western Africa remain powerful and influential. Learning about these changed the book I was writing. (Originally, Paracleto was just a ghostly voice whispering through the text. Then he started to grow and develop in ways that surprised me.) But, just as the country in The Penalty is fictitious, so is the religion that I call “Veneration”. I have taken underlying ideas from religions such as Bahian Candomblé, but the symbols, rituals and names of spirits in Veneration are my inventions. I hope.

  M.P.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are

  either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously.

  First published 2006 by Walker Books Ltd

  87 Vauxhall Walk, London SE11 5HJ

  Text © 2006 Mal Peet

  Cover illustration © 2006 Phil Schramm

  The right of Mal Peet to be identified as author of this work has been asserted

  by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted

  or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means,

  graphic, electronic or mechanical, includ
ing photocopying, taping

  and recording, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

  a catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library

  ISBN 978-1-4063-3678-8 (ePub)

  ISBN 978-1-4063-3705-1 (e-PDF)

  www.walkerbooks.co.uk