by Tim Parks
‘By the way, you haven’t changed at all,’ he whispered to Mimi. He had got exactly the glance in her eye.
‘I want to stay beautiful for you, Morris.’
‘I wish you’d still call me Morrees. I loved that.’
‘Silly, it’s one thing staying beautiful, another staying ignorant.’ She hesitated. ‘Everybody speaks English up here, you know. It’s the lingua franca.’
‘Naive, cara, you were naive, not ignorant.’
‘Oh Mo-rrees,’ she indulged. ‘Mo-rrees. Baci, baci.’
He chuckled. After a few minutes he mused: ‘I would never be able to draw Volpi like this.’
Massimina was silent.
‘Despite the fact that he looked like a picture ready-made.’
He was drawing her lips now, but they wouldn’t assent.
‘I suppose that’s because I didn’t do it,’ he added.
Still she said nothing.
‘Though I rather wish I had, in a way. He deserved it. And the scene-setting was fantastic. I mean, if the museum had any commercial sense they’d have had him stuffed like that and put in the show.’
Pencil between his lips Morris sat up on his bunk, the small pad of paper on his knee. From along the corridor came a clanging of doors and echo of voices. Finally, right beside him, he heard the girl sigh rather heavily.
‘Are you sure, Morris?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That you didn’t.’
Morris laughed. ‘You should know, Mimi, where you are.’ He added: ‘I mean, if I couldn’t do for poor old Stan in the most favourable of circumstances, it’s hardly likely I could have pulled off a masterpiece like that.’
Again there was a long silence.
‘How long do you think they can keep me here?’ he asked Bobo, ‘Without even a hearing or official charge, without visits or news or anything?’
It was the kind of thing a practical fellow like Bobo might know.
‘Indefinitely,’ was Bobo’s discouraging opinion.
Morris looked at his sketch. The difficult thing with Bobo was combining a snub nose with chinlessness, then making the whole thing sufficiently sullen and grumpy.
‘The magistrates can do anything they want. You know that.’
‘I suppose I could ask to see the British consul,’ Morris reflected.
‘They’ll make you pay if you do.’
‘You’re right. I wouldn’t want to give them an excuse for treating me as an outsider.’
Paola giggled: ‘Povero Mo, such a paranoid.’
Morris shifted his gaze to contemplate her laughing face. With Paola it was a question of delivering symmetry and neatness, but bereft of Mimi’s pathos. Paola was a pin-up.
‘Always thinking them-and-us,’ she mocked. ‘Or rather them and poor Mo. You’d have killed dumb Stan for nothing. See it made no difference at all him going to the police.’
‘Might have been fun to have some company,’ Forbes cut in.
‘Though I suppose poor Stan didn’t really deserve it the way Volpi did.’
‘It’s not about deserving,’ Mimi interrupted shrilly, ‘but being chosen. If you haven’t understood that, Michael, you haven’t understood anything.’
Massimina grew restless when the others tried to take centre stage.
‘That may very well be, carissima,’ Forbes condescended, ‘I was merely observing that on this occasion Morris has no cause to feel guilty. Volpi was an obscenely obese, arrogant man, and had clearly abused his position of power as museum director to bring his incompetent innamorato, Princess Zolla, into a senior position he wasn’t equal to, just so they could go on arsing around among the antiques.’
‘You saw the video he was watching?’ Giacomo laughed rather unpleasantly.
‘Hmmm,’ Paola simpered. ‘Whips!’
Morris concentrated on putting the dimple in her smile.
‘Minatur innocentibus qui parcit nocentibus.’
‘Beg your pardon?’ Bobo asked.
‘He threatens the innocent who spares the guilty,’ Forbes intoned.
‘Fair enough,’ Morris acknowledged, emphasising the pointiness of the Old Etonian’s nose. ‘Except that I didn’t do it, folks. I really didn’t.’
Again there was an uncanny silence.
‘The fact is you all want me to have done it!’ Morris protested. ‘Rather than helping me find out who did. You’re supposed to be on my side!’
‘Zolla, Boss,’ Kwame offered. Morris rubbed his thumb on the black cheeks to give them a shine. ‘Got to be Zolla. A raving closet queen. I bet those tears that day were about Volpi threatening to out him in front of his own mamma. Or the fat freak had found a new lover boy. So Zolla sticks him with the giant blade.’
‘Reminds me of Jabba the Hut,’ Sandra chuckled unhelpfully.
‘What about the other guy in the room?’ Paola mused. ‘The one with the sexily sinister laugh. Could have been him.’
Morris looked up from his pencil.
‘If I’d done it, surely he’d be here now. Right? One of us. I’d be drawing him.’
‘Too soon,’ Paola muttered.
Forbes assented. ‘Too soon, Morris. Death takes a while to metabolise, you know.’
Morris lay back on the bed and closed his eyes. For a while no one spoke. But even when they held their peace, he knew the dead were all there, beneath his lids. Then he remembered.
‘Does anyone know where Massimina is?’
They would know he meant his daughter. Every time he tried to draw her face, she refused to come out. Or rather, it was always the old Massimina he drew, not the living one. But what if Massimina were dead? Morris sat up.
‘Don’t any of you know where she is?’
As he spoke the judas hole slid rapidly back and forth, a key clunked in a lock.
‘Talking to ourselves?’ the guard asked.
‘Since no one’s popped in for elevenses,’ Morris smiled.
A minute later he was swallowing lukewarm polenta. They had melted some cheap white cheese on it which had congealed into something like damp flesh. There were mad murderers who ate their victims, of course. He’d read about that. There were even would-be victims who sought to contact people willing to eat them, on the Internet. Imagine! Volpi, for example. Eat me! Was that why the body was stripped? In preparation for a royal feast. Morris thrust the plate away from him.
On the tray underneath was a piece of paper.
At first he thought it must be an extra napkin. But no, it was notepaper, there were lines. Someone had written on it.
Morris hesitated. Should he read?
‘Why on earth not?’ Mimi asked.
The guard’s footsteps were returning; Morris slipped the paper into his back pocket. The door opened; apparently in a hurry, the guard removed the tray without looking for eye contact. He must know the paper had been there, Morris thought. Perhaps he was expecting the prisoner to have written a response. In any event the guard was gone now; immediately afterwards two others came to march him off for his postprandial exercise, right when he might have liked to snooze.
First there was the short corridor of the solitary cells, then the longer walkway of regular inmates who could rattle their doors and insult him as he passed.
‘Hey, inglesino, can’t you kill a few more southerners for us?’
‘Tired of waiting for the old fatty to get it up, were you?’
Obviously these people were not deprived of newspapers and their lurid gossip. But Morris was learning to enjoy his walk down the corridor between his stalwart guards. He concentrated on staying erect, head up, chest thrust out. He even slowed his pace a little so the animals in their crowded cells could appreciate his solitary dignity. Then a door was unlocked and he was free in the yard, for fifteen minutes, albeit with the two guards leaning against the wall, smoking and watching.
Morris walked at a brisk pace, clockwise, anticlockwise, figures of eight. Who did he want the note to be from, he wond
ered? Antonella, Mauro, Samira, Tarik? Or even Zolla. Or Stan. Stan who he just hadn’t been able to kill. And what did he want it to say? ‘I love you.’ ‘We will blow a hole in the wall of your cell at 6 p.m. precisely.’ ‘The name of the murderer is . . .’
Morris frowned. What exactly had happened that Saturday afternoon and evening? With Samira? With both of them? It was so unlike Morris to lose control, yet evidently he had on that occasion. Had he fainted again at some point? He’d lost pretty much an hour when he’d fainted with Stan, it seemed. But one hour wasn’t twelve. Not for the first time he was bound to reflect that the Arab couple might have drugged him. But if that was the case, he couldn’t recall when or how. He couldn’t recall eating or drinking anything. What did he remember, then? The strangeness of Samira starting to make love in her brother’s presence. That really was very weird, but it hadn’t seemed so at the time. Why not? Was it something he himself had already been fantasising?
Morris shook his head. If he had wanted that, he had certainly never been aware of it. Or rather, his being aware of how handsome a young man was, how fine his arms and legs, how attractive and loose-limbed his movements and posture, how intelligent and fierce his eyes, was not the same as desiring him. Was it?
And afterwards?
Morris couldn’t remember anything!
Then, despite the two guards lounging against the wall watching him, Morris was so confused, so unhappy, so impatient, he simply pulled the scrap of paper from his pocket, unfolded it and stopped still to decipher the spidery handwriting.
‘Dottor Duckworth, we can tell you things that will be useful for your defence. We are all so grateful for what you have done. M.’
Morris put the note back in his pocket and resumed his walking. M must be Mariella, he thought. The only other Ms he knew were Mauro and Massimina. But why would Zolla’s secretary make an effort like this—was she married to a prison guard?—an effort that was hardly even on his behalf since she seemed to share the general aberration that he had done it? Nor did she actually give him the info she claimed to have. It was a trap.
Or could it be, Morris wondered then, that he had done something else that had made them—the people in the office—grateful? So grateful they wanted to express their gratitude by helping him with his defence. Like what? The fact was that with a twelve-hour hole in your memory it wasn’t easy to make much sense of anything. How can these things happen? How was Morris going to fill that gap? Hypnotism? Not with a police doctor for sure. Had he perhaps done something so absolutely awful that his mind had blotted it out? Some major psycho thing? But what could be more awful than the seven murders Morris Arthur Duckworth had committed in the past?
Chapter Fourteen
BACK IN HIS CELL Morris assembled his helpers again and asked them if perhaps he was being set up. Could the note be some sophisticated Italian trick to encourage him to confess by getting him excited about mitigating circumstances?
Lying on his side as he waited for a response, he flicked through page after page of his sketchbook: there were Kwame and Paola embracing, one big black hand on one even bigger breast. There was Bobo looking up from his open desk drawer, his fingers pulling out a blackmail letter Morris had mailed years before. There was Forbes beside his easel, paintbrush hovering over the defenestrated Jezebel. Finally someone spoke.
‘That magistrate, what’s her name?’ It was Paola’s voice.
‘Grimaldi.’ Morris turned and lay on his back, holding the notebook in the air.
‘Right. She didn’t tell you the others had already confessed, did she?’
‘What others?’
‘The Arab bitch,’ Massimina said in a bored voice.
‘But . . .’
‘That would be the usual trick, wouldn’t it? They say your accomplices have confessed so you cave in and tell the truth.’
‘But I didn’t do it!’ Morris frowned. He hesitated. ‘Were Samira and Tarik involved? Is there something you know?’
Again there was silence.
‘Go over the whole weekend again,’ Paola said coolly.
‘Do I have to?’ Morris protested.
The dead waited. Morris sighed.
‘So, Saturday morning there was the nth argument with Massimina. I objected to her locking herself in her bedroom all day, said she should be helping her mother who was trying to put the winter clothes in mothballs and bring out the summer stuff. She slammed the door in my face and said if I kept bothering her she knew things about me she could tell her mother.’
‘Nice,’ Kwame said.
‘Why do you think I always preferred to live alone?’ Forbes asked.
‘I then spent some time in The Art Room, moving around the paintings on the virtual exhibition I’ve set up on the Mac. The real problem is to get the balance between an intellectual or thematic arrangement and an aesthetic organisation that suits the space and the light. For example, to my mind the Gentileschi Holofernes would go well with any of the Poussins, but they’re not thematically linked.’
This interesting reflection was met with complete silence.
‘Tell us about the afternoon,’ Forbes said.
‘Had lunch around one or one-thirty, I suppose, I mean, that’s when I always have lunch on Saturday.’
Morris Duckworth’s legal team waited.
‘Then a snooze with Antonella. She’s been having trouble with her knee recently and—’
‘Morris!’ Paola snapped. ‘Get to the point! Around five o’clock you set off to see your dusky little whore.’
‘First I dropped in at Trevisan Wines to make sure there would be a van available for the following morning. To pick up San Bartolomeo. I also took a little time to read Mauro’s report on ways to speed things up at the old Quinzano bottle factory. I was honestly surprised how practical and clear-sighted it was, especially the bit about allowing the Moslem workers—’
‘Morris, for Christ’s sake!’ Forbes objected.
‘It isn’t enough to kill us,’ Paola observed drily, ‘now he has to bore us to death.’
‘OK, so then I went to see Samira.’
There was a brief silence.
‘Was she expecting you?’
‘No.’
‘So why did you go? Or why didn’t you call ahead?’ It was Paola conducting the interrogation.
‘I like to surprise her.’
‘You like to act the boss. You like to check up on her. It’s sick.’
‘The truth is,’ Morris conceded, ‘I wanted to find out exactly what their relationship with Volpi was. I was uncomfortable about him knowing them so well. I hate it when people I know know each other.’
Silence. It was strange, Morris thought, how the dead questioned him in little flurries, then backed off, as if there were somewhere he wasn’t supposed to go.
‘Anyway, I rang and they buzzed me up at once.’
‘Without asking who it was?’
Morris hadn’t thought of this. ‘Right. You’re right. As if they were expecting me. Though they weren’t, because then they were surprised.’
‘Tell the truth, Morris.’
‘They were both naked.’
‘Ah.’ The narrow prison cell was alive with sighs.
‘Tarik answered naked?’
‘Starkers.’
‘And you didn’t wonder who they might have been expecting if not you?’
‘They were high. Maybe they weren’t expecting anyone. No one else arrived.’
‘High on what?’
‘They offered me a smoke.’
‘Hadn’t you said you never would again?’ Mimi asked.
‘The flesh is weak,’ Morris acknowledged.
‘The spirit is non-existent,’ Paola added.
‘Perhaps they sent a text message warning whoever it was not to come,’ Bobo suggested. ‘Do you remember them texting?’
‘I can’t recall.’
‘Boss,’ Kwame chirped in cheerfully, ‘why not just describe the whole thing a
nd we’ll sit back and listen.’
Morris sighed deeply. He didn’t want to, but sooner or later he would have to go over this. Eyes closed on the narrow bunk he began to tell the story out loud in a muttered monotone. So . . . when he had arrived he had seen at once that the apartment was not in its usual state. All the windows were wide open. It had been the first warm spring evening. Mild air was drifting into the smoky room. The bright cushions Samira liked to keep on bed and sofa were scattered over the living-room floor together with discarded clothes, yoga mats, bowls, plates, glasses and playing cards. A half-eaten cake had been on the table. There were glasses and bottles. Music was playing on YouTube. Modern Arab music, jingly, festive and repetitive. There was a laptop on a chair. Arab babes dancing in jeans and jowly youngsters smarming round the mike. Tarik, usually so sullen and reserved, had burst out laughing when Morris appeared at the door. ‘Welcome to Nineveh, Meester Duckworth,’ he had shouted. ‘Wanna play Sardanapalus?’
‘Oh Morrees,’ Mimi shook her head.
‘Makes me life-sick,’ Paola muttered.
‘And I just thought, well, the hell with it!’ Morris told them.
‘Damn right,’ Kwame agreed.
‘Snoozes with Antonella had that effect on me too,’ Bobo acknowledged.
Anyway, he had asked the two of them what all the celebration was about.
‘We got good news!’ Samira had laughed.
‘From Libya,’ Tarik added quickly.
Their favourite uncle’s faction had prevailed, it seemed, in some complex negotiation in Benghazi.
‘And for that they had to get naked?’ Giacomo enquired.
Morris remembered feeling at the time that the story had sounded rather improvised: something about a feud in the souk between different suppliers of essential commodities. They had been laughing throughout. Meantime, he had found himself in his underwear on an orange cushion, sucking on a fat joint, something he always promised himself he would never do again.