Shout in the Dark

by Christopher Wright

  *

  Monte Sisto

  KESSEL EXAMINED the map again. It marked the site as a ruin, but he'd been hoping to discover that the monks still maintained some sort of presence. Quite clearly the place was uninhabited. There was only the one pathway shown that would take them all the way to the top.

  "Karl, make sure we're on our own." He extended the aerial on the radio handset. Otto's communication equipment would be useful from now. Even if he and Karl bought themselves expensive cell phones, in places like this there would be no signal. Karl was behaving like an excited boy with a fresh plaything as he clutched one of the radios.

  "Karl, go to the other side of the hill and let me know if the place is clear. If you can't get through on the radio, come back round until you can hear me. Got it?"

  He instructed Otto to stay with the Audi and report any approaching vehicle. He himself would be positioned on the top of the hill to direct the operation. In spite of the oppressive heat he felt pleased. This was the real thing: not a training exercise. Apart from Karl's botched raid on TV Roma, this was the first time in his life he had been in command of an operation. His father must have stood here on this path commanding members of the Sicherheitsdienst. The attendant at the garage a few miles back, where they stopped for fuel, thought that a SS Nazi raiding party from Rome had blown the place apart in 1943 or '44, which tied in perfectly with the account given by old Helmut Bayer in Köln.

  .As Kessel reached the top of the narrow track, standing breathlessly under the blazing sun, he could see that the main building looked surprisingly small for a monastery. The monastic order that once occupied this place must have been a minor one.

  Brambles and bamboo overgrew the hilltop making progress difficult. Fire had once raged through the stone structure, leaving it roofless and open to the elements. Perhaps the monks had destroyed it in an attempt to thwart the Germans.

  Picnickers had left their usual litter -- empty plastic mineral water bottles and brightly colored wrappers scattered amongst the ruins. His people would never treat landmarks of German history so casually. The Italians had no respect for the past. A slight breeze shook the clusters of canes growing round the monastery walls, making a sound like running water.

  "Can either of you hear me?" He asked the question quickly, seeking the reassurance of a German voice in this Hinterwäldler place.

  The radio hissed and the broken speech told him that Karl was close, although Otto remained silent.

  "Try and get more out into the open, Karl, then stay there. And don't forget you're acting as lookout while I search around."

  Kessel moved his position constantly as he tried to receive a signal from Karl or Otto, his finger poised over the speech button. Then Karl's voice on the radio made him jump. The reception was clearer now.

  "No one round this side, Herr Kessel."

  Kessel hid his concern. "Then come up to the top and stay with me."

  Ten minutes later Karl had not shown up and the radio only hissed with static. Otto still failed to respond, although the greater distance to the car made this more understandable. The photographer's radios were no better than toys from the market place.

  The huge doorway to the main building was empty, the wooden door having long since been taken away, along with anything else visitors could lay their hands on. The monastery had been raped. He found it extraordinary that he should find himself identifying with these monks.

  Nearly thirty minutes passed before Karl appeared at the top of the hill, breathless and sweating. "Something bothering you, Herr Kessel?"

  "I have a feeling we're not alone." He suppressed his worry. "And where have you been? You didn't answer my radio."

  As Karl shrugged his broad shoulders, Kessel could see dark bands of sweat showing in patches on the youth's black T-shirt. The large sticking plaster that covered the Gypsy's knife wound was now dirty and peeling at the edges.

  "What's the matter, Herr Kessel? Did you want me to look round or not?"

  He let the lack of manners pass. Karl was useful, so the matter would not be mentioned again. He ordered Karl to go down into the darkness and search the cellars while he looked around up above.

  The library, stripped of the wood paneling, might have been a former barn rather than a place of sacred learning and study. Only the dark lines on the plastered wall, where rows of shelves had once been fixed, gave away its original function.

  "Herr Kessel, come down." Karl's voice echoed up from the cellars.

  The uneven steps disappeared into the blackness. He stumbled his way down. The only light reaching the main cellar came from a ventilation shaft high in the wall, and it took him a minute or so to identify the objects on the floor.

  "Clothes," said Karl unnecessarily. "Someone might be camping here."

  "Damn! We need a flashlight, Karl. Go back to Otto. I know he has one in the glove box."

  Karl had only just got to the top of the steps when he turned in alarm. "Someone's coming, Herr Kessel."

  "We'd better get down the hill and find Otto. Damn his pathetic radios!"

  MO WAS SIXTEEN, unwanted and rejected. He had learned his name from the jeering children in the village. "Scemo Bambino!" they would call whenever he appeared. He knew himself by no other name than his own corruption of Scemo, the foolish one -- the village fool. It was one of the few words his misshapen mouth could utter.

  Many years ago he had believed his name was Pietro. But that was before he tried to play with the other children in the village and join in their games. Now he was Mo, the only part of his name he could say easily.

  Mo had never known the love of a mother, for it was his mother who had rejected her illegitimate son, seen as a punishment from the devil for her fun and games with the boys. With an unidentifiable father and an uncaring mother, he had found shelter with a farmer's family until his early teens.

  The problem for Mo in a superstitious backward community, reared for generations on old wives' tales, was that he was unable to communicate in the conventional sense. The occasional garbled utterance was all he could manage, and to the villagers he appeared to be so mentally retarded that no one had imagined there was a possibility of teaching him to write. And even if there was a possibility, such a gesture would be pointless because he could not move his limbs in co-ordination, so there was little chance of his fingers grasping the pencil he had never been offered.

  The Scemo Bambino had been tossed aside, an embarrassment both to his mother and the small community. The words he knew, but which he could not communicate aloud, had been learned from the farm children who accepted him for what he was, and gave him the occasional hug when he managed to say a word correctly.

  The farmer eventually grew suspicious of Mo. The boy's voice, the voice that could say few words apart from his name, became deeper as the hair on the upper lip grew thicker. The farmer's daughters were getting older and he felt that in some way they were at risk. They were certainly at risk from the able bodied youths in the village of Monte Sisto.

  Mo now lived in the ruined monastery, sleeping in the cellar while seeking shelter from the sun in the summer and the cold in the winter. The farmer's wife still provided food, without her husband's knowledge, for which he made the demanding trek down the steep path every two or three days.

  He knew when the children would be home. He could sit with them as long as their father was out in the fields. The bad village was the place he was told he must never visit. The mother he could hardly remember was married now, and as far as she was concerned he was some dreadful, forgettable, part of her past. Her one horror was that some day the devil's child might reappear and cast a blight on her virtuous life.

  Mo had noticed the smart red station wagon arrive. Trippers like these were cattivo -- bad. Everything and everybody strange were cattivo. He could pronounce the first syllable strongly, mouthing the other two with an inward groan. The people with the car were bad. Cattivo. The people in the village were bad.


  But strangers were very bad.

  Mo waited until the two men went up the hill, then his curiosity became too strong to resist. Just one man sat in the big car now. If he was careful he could go close to the red car and still be safe. And if the bad man did see him he knew exactly what to do.

  LAURA PARKED her Alfa under some trees near a small track that ran across the fields to the houses in the village.

  "Let's not climb the hill yet," she suggested. "Leave the detector in the car. We'll cut across the fields and ask in the village if anyone knew Canon Levi. He may have discussed the relic with someone there. It's not far. I can see the houses."

  Marco felt isolated as they walked down the track. The small village of Monte Sisto seemed to be officially closed for the day when they reached it. Unofficially it had probably been closed to visitors for centuries. He wondered how the local priest in the war had felt after his act of betrayal of the Brothers and Jews to the Nazis. He must be dead by now. Had he died penitent? The place pervaded an air of despair. The little church looked disused.

  The barman behind the counter of the village bar stared at them suspiciously. The few men at the unwashed tables watched them in a way that deterred Marco from asking questions.

  They examined the graves outside the village church. Most were plain and simple, but a few had been constructed as elaborate works of art in the form of Lilliputian buildings. There was no way of looking inside these, and at the old manse Marco was told that a neighboring parish priest now served the village. As a welcoming tourist resort Monte Sisto scored a definite zero -- even in the high season.

  KESSEL HAD ALREADY fallen twice on the steep path back to the car. Each time he fell he sat on a rock to recover, still trying to contact Otto on the radio. The man was probably asleep, or listening to one of Karl's noisy tapes on the car stereo.

  Karl reached the bottom of the path first. He disappeared for nearly half an hour before running back anxiously. "Herr Kessel, Otto's gone! And the Audi!"

  Kessel had always known the boy was a fool. Obviously he'd been looking in the wrong place. "The station wagon's in the small quarry by the road. You've missed it, that's all."

  "I'm telling you, Herr Kessel, Otto's gone. So has the Audi."

  Kessel sighed. "He's probably driven to the village to get chocolate or cigarettes. Give him five minutes and I'll try him again on the radio."

  Ten minutes passed, then twenty, during which Karl roamed around looking for what he called clues. He returned with the news that he had discovered a silver Alfa with a black stripe, parked further round the hill. The engine was still warm and there were some tools on the back seat.

  "There's no sign of the driver. I could get in and start it, Herr Kessel!"

  "So?"

  "So we could both go back to Rome and give Otto a fright. He deserves it."

  Kessel tilted his head back and laughed. "You are right, Karl. We have waited for Otto Bayer long enough. Come, we will do it straight away."

  "ARE YOU SURE we parked it here?"

  The resignation in Laura's voice revealed that she knew perfectly well they had. She tried her cell phone but was unable to get a signal. Marco found the same problem -- obviously a major drawback of living out here in this place.

  "Stay here, Laura. Let's hide the detector and spade in the bushes here, and I'll run back to the village to phone the carabinieri. I saw a phone in the bar. I'll be as quick as I can."

  He had not gone far down the track across the fields when he heard the sound of car tires turning on the gravel. Concerned for Laura's safety, he hurried back.

  He was surprised to find Laura talking to the driver of an old green Lancia with dented doors. Both the Lancia and the driver were familiar. He tried to recall where he had seen them before. The driver, a man of about sixty, had black hair that looked dyed. Laura behaved as if she knew him.

  As he reached the car Marco glanced down inside. Now he remembered. This man had collected Laura outside his apartment on the first evening.

  "Ciao," Marco said, trying to sound sociable. "Laura's Alfa has been taken. I was going to Monte Sisto to phone the carabinieri."

  "No! I've just been telling Laura: whatever you do, don't report it. I'll take you both back to Rome. It's not safe for either of you here. Anyway, what the hell are you two doing?" He had an unpleasant edge to his voice. "I told Laura to stay away from Monte Sisto today."

  "Sorry," said an embarrassed Laura. "This is Marco Sartini."

  Marco would have shaken hands but the driver kept a firm grip on the wheel, looking straight ahead.

  "I asked Marco to come with me," Laura explained.

  "And which of Laura's friends are you?" asked Marco, trying to put on a brave face in this embarrassing situation.

  "I'm Bruno." The man wouldn't turn his head as he spoke. "Bruno Bastiani."