by Tim Parks
‘You have to say you were kidnapped and they’ve just released you.’
‘What?’
‘Say you were kidnapped and make out they’ve just released you,’ he repeated.
‘But Morrees, you’re crazy, we can’t do …’
‘Look, we go back to the mainland directly, tomorrow morning; and as soon as you’re in Rome you go straight to a police station, or better still you go out to the outskirts of the city near the autostrada and you phone the police and tell them the kidnappers have just let you out of their car and dumped you there.’
She was silent for a minute. It really would be tremendous if they could do it, Morris was thinking, ‘You tell them you were kept blindfold the whole time in a cupboard or something and you never even heard them talk except when they brought you food and then you thought they had Neapolitan accents. You can do it. Then after a month or so, I come back to Verona just around your birthday and you’ll be of age so we can marry without your mother’s consent if necessary.’
‘And what happens then if they find this man who asked for the money?’ she asked.
“They won’t,’ Morris said with conviction.
‘But …’
‘It’s the only way that I can see. Otherwise I’m in it up to my neck, and most probably you too and we’ll never be together.’
‘And the baby, Leonardo?’
He hadn’t thought of that.
‘It’ll be born six or seven months after we’re married at maximum and everybody will know it must have been conceived in this period now.’
‘But you’re not even sure you’re pregnant yet, don’t jump the gun for God’s sake, it’d be pretty bad luck if you were and we’ve got enough problems on our hands for the moment.’
‘I am sure.’
‘How? You can’t be.’
‘A woman knows,’ she said.
‘Oh claptrap. You can’t be sure untill …’
‘But I am sure.’
‘Well then you’ll have to say you were raped, for Christ’s sake,’ he snapped. He was losing his patience now. She was pushing him to the limit. ‘You’ll have to say that was what the delay was all about after the ransom was paid. They wouldn’t let you go untill they’d had sex with you. You resisted for a couple of days and then gave in. That way cara Mamma will even be happy I’m marrying you because she’ll be thinking no one else ever would.’
‘Oh I hate you,’ Massimina spat back at him, thrusting him away, eyes wild.
But Morris didn’t touch her. He still stayed cool as cool: all aplomb, Morris Duckworth. He was sorry he had offended her, he said, his eyes finding hers, his voice straining for sincerity, intensity: honestly, it was just the desperation of the situation, she must see that. What they should do now was to go to bed and sleep on it, not do anything rash after all the wine they’d drunk, then decide in the morning. And he turned to draw the blinds.
They lay in bed, Massimina trying to whimper herself to sleep, Morris caressing her lightly. The sheets were hot and sticky and crickets trilled incessantly from the garden behind the house. He really did want to believe it could work, in spite of all the obstacles that would have to be overcome. She was a hell of a girl and she had a lot of courage and the idea was so clever. Then from the purely financial point of view, he had been thinking, it was by no means certain that 800 million was really going to be enough. A handsome sum, yes, but maybe not enough for a lifetime. Not the kind of life lived to the full that he intended to have. There was no doubt he would be much better off being married to the rest of her money. Of which there was a great deal more than a piddling 800 million when all was said and done.
There were drawbacks though. It meant a whole lifetime lived in the fear that something might come out. It meant continual dependence on the girl. She might even try a little emotional blackmail every now and then. ‘If you’re not a nice Morris I’ll tell.’ Or she might blurt something out getting drunk at a party, because she was showing rather more of a propensity for getting drunk than he had at first imagined. But Morris felt he could handle all this. He had got so used to being near her. The only time in his life. And the thought of being without …
So he would risk it. They would be married and she would give him respectability and a family (the pregnancy test was all set up there in the lavatory with little bottles and chemicals that were supposed to form rings and things). They would have enough cash for a life of leisure with nurse and nanny and plenty of business and cultural interests. He watched her curved back.
‘Mimi, are you asleep?’ Nothing. ‘Mimi?’ Nothing.
He could let himself doze a little then. Not that he was likely actually to fall asleep in this oppressive thundery heat and for that he was thankful. He felt it could be important to stay awake tonight. He settled down to listen to whirring crickets and the distant thunder that rumbled on the very edge of the auditory horizon.
The next thing Morris knew he was waking in the black dark. Forcing himself awake, groping his way out of sleep with tremendous urgency. The bed beside him was empty. His hand, moving to touch her, grabbed at the empty sheets. He had bounced out of bed before his mind had even fought its way out of the dark cave of sleep. His fingers felt for the light. Where was it, God damn! His ears picked up the sound of dialling though. Morris’s trusty ears. He blundered through to the corridor and then the living room where she was standing in the almost complete dark, so that it was only the white of her skin that led him to her.
‘Mamma, oh Mamma I'm safe, I…’
He had the phone out of her hands and slammed it down.
‘You promised, you promised not to phone her till you were back on the mainland.’
‘I didn’t promise anything. I said I’d sleep on it.’
'But why this? Phone her now, they trace it and we’re done. They may already have traced it. They find out we were here for the last week and we’re done.’
‘You always have your little plan, don’t you,’ she said coldly. She was stark naked, the big breasts lifting and trembling in the dark in front of her. She was panting with anger. 'I've been thinking about it. Everything that happens. This, that, the other. You always have your devious little plan to sort things out.’
‘But Mimi …’ God knew it was her life he was pleading for. He turned and switched on the light.
Those phone calls you pretended to make, the letters you had me write and then never sent, the address in the mountains. God! How can I …’
‘But cara, I did it for your …’
‘What you don’t seem to realize is that my mother is suffering at the other end of that telephone and has been for some time and all I have to do to help her is to lift it and dial.’
.’But …’
‘You think too much of yourself,’ she said determinedly and picked up the receiver. ‘You’re selfish, egotistical and vain.’
‘So you’re giving me up,’ Morris said self-piteously and leaned back against the door. He was surprised to find how much he really did feel hurt. She wasn’t willing to go through with this for him. Although in another way her words were just what he had been waiting for.
She held the receiver, pouting. ‘No, I’m not giving you up. I'm just saying, let’s face the truth, tell the truth and get through it. They won’t put you in prison. You haven’t actually done anything. And then maybe they can set about finding the …’
‘But Mimi,’ he was almost whining now and hating himself for it. ‘Mimi, they’re bound to…’
‘I'm not having everybody thinking my child’s father is some kind of awful kidnapper who raped me.’ Her fingers were on the dial.
Morris was exasperated beyond patience. His body was trembling and prickling with heat. ‘But you don’t even know you’re damn well pregnant yet. Shit and fuck!’ He paused, but she wouldn’t even look at him now. ‘Don’t dial, Mimi. If you love me, don’t dial, for God’s sake.’
She scratched a breast and turned a finger in the di
al. ‘I don’t love you. And I won’t ever love you again if you go on shouting like that.’
She hadn’t even looked at him. She didn’t love him.
It was only three paces to Gregorio’s room and there was the sitting room light to guide him now. He reached across the desk behind the door, found the paperweight, felt its heaviness in his hand and was already moving back through the passage while her fingers were still dialling.
‘Mimi, please don’t, we’ll never be able to be together ever again, I'm telling you.’
She glanced up, must have seen the paperweight with its twisted-pink bubble, but didn’t connect.
‘Oh shutup.’
Her fingers went back to the dial for the last number, and so he hit her. He hit her just above and behind the left ear, raising his arm high above his head to get the full strength, (There was even a moment’s huge shadow of that arm thrown up against the wall, but she didn’t see.) He gritted his teeth and the glass ball came down with tremendous fury. She slumped backwards, naked on the tiled floor, banging her head hard. Not even a scream, though it wouldn’t have mattered. And then it was the work of a moment to have her, over on her stomach and one of the Ferroni family’s red silk cushions under her face. His fingers jammed in her hair and he pressed and pressed, knowing that really there was no need. The single blow had been more than enough.
Morris sat in the dark again. He turned out the light for safety and sat in the dark, watching the faint white of her body. He felt different this time. Sicker. Stranger. His face was wet with tears. Mimi! Why couldn’t this cup at least have been spared him? Why couldn’t she have been more sensible? It was her fault.
Perhaps he was going to go to pieces completely this time. He could feel it. He closed his eyes and great areas of dark gathered and pressed against throbbing burning brilliant lights inside his skull. Bright blues and reds were squeezed and crushed into darkness by the encroaching black. When he opened his eyes there was just that pale indefinite, lifeless shape, floating upwards from the shadows. It wasn’t his fault life was so fragile, that you could solve all your problems with a single blow. And then he’d never planned to kill her, had he? He’d wanted it the other way (he should have recorded the conversation), and it was pure bad luck that… but he had to stand up and hurry to the bathroom to throw up in the sink.
For a moment, coming back across the corridor, he had the idea she might somehow still be alive and he ran the last few steps into the sitting room, ready to roll her over and breathe life into that pouting little mouth. But beside the body he stopped and turned away. Her nakedness frightened him. No, he had to get rid of her and do it fast. He had to get the body a hundred miles from here and perfectly hidden. If possible destroyed. How, he didn’t know. But these were the kind of problems that would help him get himself back together again. If he just sat down and looked at her he was done.
It was five o’clock. Outside there would be the first grey light. Morris dressed quickly, went out of the front door, round the side of the house to the right and opened the door of a small garden shed, forlorn on the edge of an unkempt rockery. He had sniffed about inside here before and noticed some big plastic sacks full of fertilizer. Potassium something or other. There was one empty sack laid over a lawnmower and three full ones against the wall. He took a full one, dragged it into the pale light outside the shed, split open the top and emptied the stuff. A stream of blue crystals piled themselves into a heap. He took the empty sack, plus the one in the garden shed and went back into the house. The electric light was still needed here because he hadn’t lifted the blinds and had no intention of doing so. At the door he wiped his feet carefully and then went back across the tiles through to the dining room and the corpse.
There would be no need to turn her over and see her face, nor even to touch her much with any luck. Just jerk out the cushion from under the head, then slip the first sack over her as far as it would go. And if she was alive? If she gasped, turned, looked? She wasn’t alive. Morris bent down over the naked girl, drew a deep breath and then did it. It was clumsy, the arms wouldn’t go in, then the breasts caught and for a moment he thought they were going to be too big, she was too wide for the sack, but no, they went in, a little pressure and they went. He worked the sack down, lifting her and pulling the thing untill it was right at her waist. No further. Looking at her then, or what was visible, he felt a surge of affection, a desire to bend down and kiss the soft round bottom. But he held firm. He mustn’t get into stuff like that. Absolutely. He picked up the other sack and had worked it up as far as her knees when the telephone rang.
The bell hit Morris like a physical blow or a bullet. He felt dazed. The phone, at six o’clock on a Thursday morning? They had traced the call she’d made and phoned back perhaps. Bet you didn’t phone back when you traced a call like that. You sent round ten cars fell of police tout de suite. Still, it would be better not to answer, nerves too shaky. After ten rings or so the thing stopped.
He worked feverishly now. The ringing phone had impressed him with a senserf flight, a closing net, given him that hunted animal feeling he seemed to have lived with all his life and had learnt in a rather curious way to enjoy. He moved very quickly and efficiently, getting the second sack up to overlap with the first, then back into the bedroom to tidy.
He gathered all her clothes, everything, knickers, bras, swimming costume, slip, and then the dirty things she’d left in the bathroom, plus her handbag of course, where was her handbag? Here. Every single possession, he got them all together, took them back, into the sitting room and stuffed them up inside the sacks. Which was when he remembered the St Christopher. Shouldn’t he get it off her? If they ever found the body, for example, then identified the thing, what then? They must have appreciated that it had been stolen along with Giacomo’s wallet, mustn’t they? No, he was just getting paranoid. Forget it. He wasn’t taking the sack off her body again anyway. Under any circumstances.
With all her clothes, belongings and shoes stuffed in now, he rolled the body over so it would be face upwards, lifted the feet end so that they pressed down on the face, held them there with his own foot while he undid his belt, and then slipped the belt round head and feet and tightened it, hard. Done. Coming adrift a bit at the middle but he could see to that later. The first thing was to have her out of the house and clean the place up. He took the two sack ends where they met at her bent waist and dragged the package down the corridor, down the two stone steps outside the front door, wincing as the head cracked on the second step, and then out behind the garden shed.
Oh what the hell was he going to do with that fertilizer, sitting there in a damn great shining blue pile? Nothing. Shovel it behind the shed and leave it there. Nobody would notice. Certainly not Gregorio anyway, and his parents wouldn’t be coming again this year if the father had had an operation. Next year if anybody came across it, it would just be one of those little domestic mysteries of which life offered examples enough for heaven’s sake - a big pile of dust behind the bathroom door, an ornament you’ve never seen before wrapped in tissue at the back of the visitor’s bedroom wardrobe - these things were fairly normal You didn’t have to suspect murder just because there was a pile of fertilizer unaccountably dumped behind your garden shed. He shovelled the blue crystals round there, swept the path with a twig broom, then dragged the corpse behind the shed too. Just a temporary arrangement. The thing to concentrate on now was the house.
He went back over the bedroom, cleaning meticulously. Every sign of her must go. He had overlooked a nail varnish bottle, a box of Tampax, a tissue on the bedside table with toe-nail parings (after telling her to let the things grow!). And then there was the pregnancy test. How on earth could he have forgotten it? Morris stopped a moment to read through the instructions on the box, but it was too complicated, he didn’t have time. And who cared anyway? He swept the thing into a plastic bag with the other odds and ends, carried them outside and pushed them inside the open mouths of the fert
ilizer sacks. He would have to tie those up later. Keep his eye open for a good piece of rope.
Towards eight thirty Morris was giving the sitting room floor a last careful wipe with warm water and alcohol, whistling now because he was almost through, singing sometimes - Through the night of doubt and sorrow. 'Onward goes the pilgrim band’ - when his voice was suddenly drowned by the sound of a car racing up the drive. A squeal of brakes, scrunching wheels on gravel, a slamming door, running feet.
Still wearing Signora Perroni’s apron that he’d put on to clean, Morris blundered towards the door, the confession already forming on his lips. What was the point of denying it? If only they’d come an hour or two earlier to stop him. Morris felt close to tears and suddenly desperately lonely. Dear Mimi. If only they’d come earlier.
‘Ciao, Morris! So you are here. Why didn’t you answer the phone earlier? It did ring, didn’t it?’
Gregorio ran up the steps. He was in shorts and his long athletic legs had a strong brown healthy look to them. Likewise his face under a mop of dark curls. Oh he was so terriically glad to be back! And he’d just got his exam results, he said. He’d done it, passed, would you believe it? And he burst out laughing. Morris stared, backing away into the darkened house. Did he have to kill Gregorio too?
‘Buono, in English. Buono! Mamma nearly fainted.’
‘Congratulations,’ Morris croaked.
A moment later he was helping the boy bring his bags in.
‘I know it was early but you might have answered, you lazy bastard. I came on the night boat and was hoping you’d get me some breakfast ready.’
‘You’re back earlier than you said.’ Morris was almost accusing.
'Yes, they let Papa out of hospital early and I. What on earth have you been doing in the sitting room; washing the floor at eight in …’
‘I was about to go,’ Morris said, looking for a voice with something natural about it, and putting down the suitcase he’d brought in, he moved quickly to lift the shutters so as to dispel that air of covertness. And the smell? Did the room smell, it suddenly occurred to him? Only of cleaning alcohol surely.