by L. S. Hilton
‘Understood.’ He rose to his feet, signalling eagerly to the waiter. ‘I’ll have to stop at my office for the keys.’
‘Of course. And naturally I’ll take care of the cab. Please allow me to offer you the drink too. I’m so grateful for your understanding.’
I had bought a beautiful soft leather bag in the medina earlier that afternoon. As I reached inside to extract my purse, I caught a brief glimpse of the handcuffs and the hacksaw, gleaming dully in the soft light of the tiny lanterns.
*
Da Silva was positioned in the café opposite the Price and Henslop office at Grand Socco. Like me, he was dressed in plain dark clothes, and I’d brought a scarf to cover my head for the walk home. As Jonny unlocked the door and I bent forward to the cab driver to ask him to wait, da Silva passed behind me and I handed him the bag like a relay baton. He disappeared into the office behind Jonny and I returned to the back seat. After what felt like only a few moments, da Silva slid in beside me.
‘Route de la plage Mercala, s’il vous plaît.’ I switched to Italian as the car headed uphill towards the Marshan Ridge.
‘That was quick. You didn’t hurt him too much, did you?’
‘I just hit him once and cuffed him to the chair.’
‘Gag?’
‘Used his tie. There’ll be someone along in the morning, he’ll be fine. Here.’ He waved a bunch of keys. We were driving through a quarter of elegant thirties villas, some of them smartly lit up, others romantically neglected. After the hustle of the medina, it felt very quiet. Then out past the terraces of the Hafa, along the coast road, with the wide beaches below us.
‘It’s beautiful,’ remarked da Silva, as though he’d only just noticed.
The homes were sparser now. We passed a camel stable and a bus stop, then a long wall of smooth grey concrete began to the right. I’d already checked the place out on my morning jog – the wall ran for about five hundred metres, encircling the grounds, and ending in a modern steel double gate.
‘This is it. They said they were waiting. Look, there they are.’
I asked the cabbie to stop and we got out. I pulled my scarf around my face to keep off the dust skimming in on the ocean breeze. We waited until the taxi left, then walked to where Abouboukar had parked the van, a battered Ford Transit. We nodded at his two mates, both African like him. I’d offered him forty thousand dirhams – just over three grand – for the job, plus whatever he and his boys took from the place. It was more than I guessed he’d see in a year, but there was no need to be stingy with Raznatovic’s money. I had the notes, withdrawn from four banks on my morning’s shopping trip, wadded in a hair elastic in my bag with the antique saw. Abouboukar had been instructed to bring blankets, a chisel, rope and torches. Our visit would look like a break-in – no one we had met at Poppet’s knew our real names or where we were staying, and by the time old Jonny was found we’d have left on the 6 a.m. flight to Naples. It would have been more straightforward in a sense just to break in, but there were two reasons why I’d figured this way was better. Firstly because we needed a clear point of egress to get the wooden panel out. The views of the house online had shown the façade of Les Orangers was thick-walled, plastered in white, with tiny irregular windows like arrow slits and worn Moorish rinceaux carved on the cornices. Hence the keys, which would let us through the main doors. Secondly because the hoo-ha Jonny’s capture would stir up might distract everyone from what was actually missing. The police might get round to showing our photos at the Miranda, but probably not any time soon.
‘Alors. You can take whatever you can carry, while we’re removing what we need. Then this gentleman will go with you in the van, and Abouboukar and I will go separately back to town.’ I repeated this in English, then tried the first of the bunch of keys at the porter’s door set into the gate.
From the photos of the garden I’d seen in the magazine, I recognised the long driveway lined with palm trees, their leaves flapping at every gust of wind. Another key let us through into the courtyard where the house proper began. It was pretty spectacular – originally a Roman villa extended with a series of white marble and glass Modernist boxes descending towards the sea. The pebble mosaics in the courtyard were supposedly original. I shone my torch over a goggle-faced Jupiter holding an eagle-tipped staff and into the swimming pool, empty now apart from a rank, greasy puddle in which bobbed the tattered remains of a gull. The smell of oranges was everywhere, from the espaliered walk that encircled the courtyard, thick with soft dungheaps of ungathered, rotting fruit. That and the sightless eyes of the gods beneath our feet did make the place seem sinister, malicious in its tropical fetor.
Da Silva and Abouboukar’s boys followed me in silence as I made for the main door, one of three pairs in miro wood, which gave onto a stone atrium backed in glass.
‘No lights!’ I warned. The boys spread out, searching for loot, though I doubted they’d find much as the house had obviously been cleared soon after Balensky’s death. The only signs of the original décor were several Asian statues, perhaps too heavy to move. A large Javanese statue of a god in soapstone reminded me of one of Gauguin’s paintings, Mahana No Atua, which felt like a good sign. The torchlight illuminated the walls, washed in eau-de-Nil, and another set of doors, beautiful Moroccan intarsia work. Not those. A marble staircase led down to a low-ceilinged room with stone couches built into the walls. I had an image of the orgies Balensky had held here, leering old men fondling their boys while they watched the floorshow.
‘Let’s try the other way.’
Back along the courtyard wing, where a row of bedrooms opened onto the orange walk. In one of them, a bottle of Chanel Bleu stood abandoned on the edge of a seventies Jacuzzi tub, its grubby plastic adorned with a pale mollusc of used condom. Those moaning ghosts. A sound of breaking glass from deep in the house. Fucking amateurs. The corner bedroom had a wide terrace giving onto the gardens to our left, wooden pillars set in the smudged glass, two high narrow reddish doors between them. They were fastened with what looked like the mother-of-pearl mount of an antique musket. It was a shame to ruin them, but I told da Silva to get going. He took the hilt of the hacksaw to the hinges and had them smashed in a few blows, then we laid one of the doors upright on its side so I could steady it while he cut out a slice. Miro is a very dense wood and the old saw was small, but the panel would betray us if there was the tiniest trace of modern metal in the grooves of the wood. Da Silva sweated and swore as I tried to keep the door steady, pausing after a few minutes to throw off his sweater. The torchlight played on the muscles of his back as he worked. Every few minutes I glanced anxiously at my watch, but it took a full half-hour of wrestling to cut the panel free. It measured 150 centimetres by 75 – I’d bought a hideous silver-framed mirror exactly that size in the medina that was waiting for us in our room at the Miranda. Finally we carried it flat between us back round the house into the courtyard.
‘Cazzo, that’s heavy.’
‘The remains of it need to go over the cliff. Out at the back.’ At the Café Hafa the day before I had gazed down on huge plesiosaurs of driftwood, thrown up on the beach by the violent Atlantic waves. At this time of year, the beaches were empty; the door would be unrecognisable by the time the warm weather came.
‘Why?’ asked da Silva.
‘We can’t leave it there with a hole cut out of it. It would look weird.’
‘Good point.’
‘OK – hurry though. Round up the boys, get them to drag it down and chuck it over.’
He jogged off in search of Abouboukar.
Once the door was disposed of properly, another fifteen minutes, the lads wrapped the panel in a blanket and loaded it into the van. Whatever swag they had recovered – cutlery, by the sound of it – they slung in afterwards, then da Silva got in behind and they drove slowly away.
I sat down on the edge of the pool and lit a fag. My watch read just after nine; we could hear the last call to prayer, between sunset and midnigh
t, ululating over the city. Abouboukar lowered himself down next to me.
‘So?’
‘So now we wait a bit. Give them time to get back to town.’
‘You got my money, lady?’ He was smiling, his teeth brilliant where they caught the orange glow of my cigarette, but I didn’t like his tone.
‘Sure. But like I said, we should wait a bit. If anyone does come, they’ll be too busy with us to bother with the van.’
‘I want it now, please.’
‘Suit yourself.’ I passed him the bundle of notes, watched as he shoved them inside his black hoodie.
‘That all you’ve got, lady?’ He wasn’t smiling any more. Part of my brain gave a little sigh. Really? He was going to threaten me? All alone, here, in the dark? You have no idea, mate. No idea.
‘None of your business. In fact, I’ve changed my mind. You can leave now, Abouboukar. Thank you. I’ll wait on my own.’
He didn’t move. I smoked in silence for a while.
‘You still here?’
‘I’m waiting, lady.’
‘I’ve paid you. You can fuck off now.’
He was on me in one move, the whole of his weight forcing me onto my back against the lumpy pebbles. I was still holding the burning fag butt, so I stuck it in his neck. He screamed and struck my arm away, coming back with an open-palmed cuff across my face. A couple of dazed seconds before the red pain flared.
‘You’re a fucking bitch. You think you’re a big shot, fucking bitch.’ He spat where he’d hit me. I could smell the nicotine in his saliva, the cooked meat of his burnt flesh. Under that, unwashed clothes, sweat, the adrenalin high. I tried to wriggle back, but my legs swung into space over the pool, I couldn’t get a purchase, and he was big, for all that he was thin, maybe eighty kilos of desperate sinew.
‘You know,’ I hissed viciously, ‘the thing is, I just can’t be scared of you. You smell too fucking poor.’
‘Bitch!’ He hit me again, a hook to the side of the head. His hipbone dug into me as he turned to fumble with his fly.
‘Really?’ I slurred. ‘You’re going to rape me? And what if I liked it? Could you get it up then?’
He pinned his left elbow across my face as he released his dick, wrenched my trousers with his right hand. I heard them tear and bit his arm, but it was pretty useless through the thick sweatshirt. My mouth was full of blood now. I tried to wrench my head to the side to spit it out, but I couldn’t move, it was choking me, I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t fucking breathe. Incredulity that this was actually happening, strangely distant irritation at my own stupidity, mostly no air, no air. And then the weight of him rose off me, I twisted over, coughing blood. Through my one good eye, da Silva in the starlight. He had Abouboukar in a headlock from behind; as I watched he twisted the boy’s right arm back between their two bodies. I thought the crack was something falling in the house before I realised it was the bone. Abouboukar’s mouth opened in a monstrous silent scream, silent because da Silva had smashed his right temple with the hilt of the saw. He must have been dead before he hit the ground.
‘Give me a hand up?’
He set me on my feet as gently as if I was made of porcelain.
‘You came back.’
‘They’re waiting up the road. They’ll want their money.’
‘They can have it. In his pocket. What will we do with that?’
Da Silva was running his hands over the body, passing the notes to me and checking the pockets.
‘No wallet, no ID. He probably didn’t have any papers.’
A refugee, perhaps. Poor stupid sod.
‘But you’re lucky he only hit you.’ Da Silva was opening a wide-bladed clasp knife.
‘OK – burglary, the thieves quarrel, they fight – step back – he’s stabbed, here, I think.’ Da Silva plunged the knife into Abouboukar’s left side, in under the heart, gave it a twist, kicked the body over and held it with his foot while he stooped to withdraw it, keeping the first spurt of blood under the corpse.
‘He falls on his right, blow to the head. They chuck him in the pool, broken arm post mortem, done.’
‘Anyone would think you were a policeman.’
‘We need to let him bleed out a bit. Can you manage the feet?’
‘How bad’s my face?’
‘Pretty bad. But you can cover it with the scarf. If we pay off the guys in the van it’ll be a while before they come looking for this one.’
I took a few deep breaths. My windpipe ached, but not more than my cheekbone or my jaw.
‘I’m ready.’
‘OK. Get him up. Over here. We’re going to swing him. One, two, three.’
Abouboukar thudded down to join the seagull.
‘We need to wipe down the knife.’
Da Silva produced a packet of antiseptic wet wipes from his back pocket. I suppressed my urge to laugh. The clean knife followed its owner.
‘You good to walk?’
‘A bit dizzy.’
‘Here.’ He wrapped his arm under my shoulder to support me. Not a tall man, our mouths were almost level as he wrapped the scarf over the mess. As we left Balensky’s house, my head rested against his heart. It was beating steadily, just like mine.
‘Ready? Keep the scarf over you, stay back. I’ll give them the money and take the panel. Don’t let them see you up close. OK?’
We set off at a jog down the road towards the van, where the first piece of my Gauguin was waiting.
*
At the riad, I made da Silva tape the panel in behind the heavy mirror before he tended to my face. It would look like a souvenir at the airport – faux-antique tourist tat. I looked away while he did it, not too keen on seeing what Abouboukar had done. Then I showered and wrapped up in a bathrobe, still without looking at myself. Da Silva fetched the cone-spouted jug of rosewater from the dresser and bathed the cuts gently, then used a hot flannel and another antiseptic wipe.
‘This needs a stitch.’
‘Will it scar?’
‘Maybe.’ Great.
‘We can’t go to a doctor. Shit.’
‘Got any dental floss? There’s one of those little sewing kits in the bathroom.’
Right next to the shoeshine mitt and the shower cap. Brilliant.
‘It’ll scar for sure if I don’t.’ I couldn’t work out whether there was tenderness or spite in his voice.
‘Is there a minibar? I need a stiff one.’
He found me a brandy, scorched a needle in the candle flame and had it done in a minute. Four quick stabs. I didn’t cry out, though I made a mental note not to buy mint floss next time.
‘Judith? That guy – he didn’t—’
‘No, he didn’t. You arrived in time. How come?’
‘Call it professional instinct.’
For a second I was grateful, but then I remembered Raznatovic, and another dead man squirting blood. It hadn’t been chivalry. Da Silva wasn’t going to let me die, at least not until I’d paid his debt for him.
The alarm was set for 4 a.m. Before we slept, da Silva reached across the space between our beds and took my hand, rubbing his thumb against the palm.
‘In Rome?’
‘What about it?’
‘How did you do it? I mean, Fitzpatrick was a big guy.’
I sat up on one elbow. ‘A woman against a man? You’re only as good as your weapon. Surprise being the best one. OK?’
‘I wanted to know.’
Actually, surprise is the second-best weapon a woman can use. But I wasn’t going to tell da Silva that.
PART TWO
GROUNDING
9
My face aroused no attention at Tangier airport, but the passport official at Naples looked fairly horrified when I obeyed his request to remove the scarf. For a moment I thought he might try to arrest da Silva for trafficking, but a flash of the Guardia badge and a matey explanation got me through. I reckoned once I got to my Eight Hour cream it might not look too bad, perhaps might even l
end a certain piratical air. Dashing. Anyway, I had other things to think about. Now that we had the panel, Li was almost ready to start work on the piece.
In a letter written during his first visit to Tahiti, Gauguin had described ‘a pretty piece of painting’, a severed head whose form he had drawn from the grains and whorls he had seen within a pine board. ‘When marble or wood draws a head for you, it’s very tempting to steal it,’ he had claimed. If I could get the provenances right, I planned that Li’s painting would appear to take its form from the panel. In 1899, just before he left Tahiti for the Marquesas Islands, Gauguin had made what was believed to be his last Tahitian piece, And the Gold of Their Bodies. In 1902, after he had changed location, he had produced Woman with a Fan, a seated, topless girl, modelled by the wife of his cook, holding a white feather fan with the cockade of the French flag in its handle. I was going to posit our piece as a last, ‘lost’ work from Tahiti, with a supposed date of around 1900, cross-referencing the double portrait to produce an earlier version of the fan picture.
I explained the idea to da Silva once we were in the car on the last stage of our journey back to Siderno.
‘So we’ll need to go to Essen.’
‘Christ, don’t you ever stop? Where the hell is Essen?’
‘Germany. The known version of the fan picture is at a museum there. The Folkwang. Has Li got a passport?’
Da Silva banged his head lightly on the steering wheel, a move which only an Italian could have pulled off, since we were doing 140 kilometres per hour on the autostrada.
‘No. Obviously. I can fix him one of those temporary ones. They last a year.’
‘Excellent. Because he needs to come with us to look at a picture.’
‘What’s wrong with – I don’t know – those flowers? The nutter who cut his ear off? Why can’t you get Li to do something like that?’
‘You mean van Gogh?’
‘That’s the one. He’s worth a fortune, isn’t he?’
‘I pity you, Romero. Just keep driving.’
We were skirting the foothills of the Aspromonte, the famous ‘Mafia mountain’, almost the toe tip of Italy. I had heard about the meetings the ’Ndrangheta bosses held there, an ingenious form of torture for soldiers whose loyalty to the clan was suspected. Mutton was the traditional dinner menu. Not to attend meant certain death, instantly proving a man untrustworthy, but attending held out the chance of being garrotted over the boiled sheep.