And Then You Die

by Michael Dibdin

  Zen remained silent for another minute or so, then shifted in his seat to reach his cigarettes.

  ‘My new job,’ he said, lighting up and opening the window slightly.

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I couldn’t understand why they had bothered to go to all that trouble, supposedly setting up this new division and making me the “founder member”. They could easily have pressured me into early retirement if they’d wanted to, even produced a fake report from some doctor which diagnosed me as unfit for active service. But that didn’t suit them, because someone suspected, just as Lessi did, that I knew more than I was letting on. And once I left the service, they would have no further hold over me. I could sell my story to the newspapers, even write a book about it.’

  He laughed.

  ‘As it is, they’ll never let me retire! At least not until the whole cast has changed and no one cares any more.’

  ‘Cares about what?’

  Zen finished his cigarette and let the butt slide into the slipstream, then closed the window.

  ‘That bomb attack in Sicily, the one which almost killed me? Until this evening, I thought the Mafia were responsible. I honestly did. I couldn’t remember anything much about the events leading up to it. One of the doctors told me that memory loss about events preceding an incident like that is quite normal. Apparently survivors of severe car crashes usually have no idea how they happened. Mind that truck.’

  ‘Leave the driving to me, please.’

  ‘Sorry. Anyway, I accepted the official line about the bomb. And so did everyone else, as far as I knew. But we now know that there was at least one exception.’

  ‘Our friend in the back.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘But someone else must have known, too. Someone higher up the hierarchy, with enough clout to have me moved to a position where I would be safely out of the way, but still under control.’

  They drove on in silence for a while.

  ‘In which case, this person might also know that Lessi was planning to kill you.’

  Zen shook his head decisively.

  ‘No, no. The person I mean operates at a different level. He’s probably someone quite high up in the carabinieri or the Defence Ministry. His only thought was to protect the reputation of his force. They dumped Lessi, knowing he wouldn’t talk, but they weren’t so sure about me.’

  ‘So won’t they get curious when Lessi mysteriously vanishes?’

  ‘I think it’ll be a relief, quite frankly. Anyway, Lessi’s murderous little plot was quite clearly a personal matter. He wanted to get even, both for what had happened to his career and also for what happened to Alfredo Ferraro, who may have been his partner in more than just a professional sense. No, he’ll have kept his private vendetta to himself, I’m sure of that.’

  In reality, he was a lot less sure than he sounded.

  At Magra, just before the turn-off for La Spezia, they stopped for a coffee. While Gemma bought some salami, cheese and rolls to see them through the rest of the morning, Zen lifted the garbage bags containing Lessi’s personal effects out of the car and carried them round to the rear of the service station. He opened one of the big dumpsters and tossed the bags inside. A broken pallet was leaning against the wall. He pulled off one of the lateral slats and used it to push the bags down, then to collapse a mound of stinking rubbish over the top of them.

  Gemma returned to the car with the plastic bag of provisions. She looked flustered.

  ‘You’re never going to believe this, but I just ran into someone I used to know!’ she blurted out, spinning the car round in reverse and heading off to rejoin the main highway.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Oh, an old boyfriend. He came up while I was waiting at the cash register. Wanted to chat.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I gave him the story we agreed earlier, about going to see my sister. I couldn’t think of anything else on the spur of the moment.’

  To his surprise, Zen found himself more jealous than worried.

  ‘How old?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The boyfriend.’

  Gemma laughed harshly as the headlights devoured the darkness before them.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake! But he knows.’

  ‘Knows what?’

  ‘That I was here, in the middle of the night.’

  ‘Going to see your sister.’

  ‘But I’m not.’

  Zen patted her knee in a reassuring rather than erotic way.

  ‘Don’t worry. It doesn’t matter. Your ex-boyfriend doesn’t matter. Neither does your husband, who’ll find out sooner or later that we used his boat. None of them matters as long as we keep our wits about us and our mouths shut. The only people who can betray us are us. The rest is just hearsay.’

  They ran into the roadblock the other side of La Spezia, rounding a sharp bend on a minor strada statale high above the glimmering sea to their left. A blue carabinieri jeep was parked beside the road and a uniformed officer stood on the median line waving a wand with a reflective red circular tip.

  Zen swore loudly. Gemma braked to a halt. The officer approached the driver’s window while his colleague watched from the car, speaking rapidly on the radio.

  ‘Your documents, please.’

  Zen handed over his personal identity card, Gemma her driving licence. The officer stepped back and scanned them by the light of his torch.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he demanded.

  ‘To Portunciulla,’ Gemma replied.

  ‘Why so late?’

  ‘We have a boat at the marina there. We’re off to Corsica for a few days and we want to make an early start.’

  The officer shone his torch into the interior of the car.

  ‘What’s that in the back?’

  ‘Just stuff we need for our cruise,’ said Gemma.

  ‘Open it up.’

  Gemma gave Zen a panicked look as she pulled a latch under the dashboard. Zen got out and walked back on the opposite side of the car from the carabiniere, who opened the hatchback and shone his torch inside. He swept aside the coats covering the bundled form of Roberto Lessi’s corpse.

  ‘What’s that?’ he demanded.

  ‘Spars,’ Zen replied. ‘And a new mizzen sail. What’s all this about, if you don’t mind my asking?’

  The officer stared suspiciously at Zen’s linen suit, then slammed the hatchback shut again.

  ‘Bank robbery in La Spezia. We’re checking all the roads out of town. What’s a mizzen sail?’

  Zen smiled the smile of a man who is glad to have been asked that.

  ‘It’s the small triangular sail set aft on a ketch. Very much like a jib, only mounted on a boom. Its main function is to increase stability when sailing dose to the wind, particularly when …’

  The officer handed him back their documents.

  ‘All right all right,’ he said wearily. ‘You can go.’

  As if by mutual agreement, they drove off in total silence until they had rounded the next hairpin bend. Then Gemma let out a long, almost silent scream.

  ‘I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’

  ‘Plenty. You’re as tough as an ox. Besides, there was no real danger. Those lads were just bored. We were probably the first vehicle to come along for an hour. I’ve done roadblocks myself, many years ago. It’s a hell of a job. Either the car you stop is not the one you’re looking for, in which case the whole thing is a waste of time, or it is, in which case you stand a good chance of getting run over or shot.’

  ‘How do you know all those nautical words you dazzled him with?’

  ‘I told you, I’m from Venice. It’s in our blood. We drink it in with our mother’s milk.’

  Twenty minutes later, they reached the village of Portunciulla. Judging by what Zen could make out from the car, it had once been a small fishing port, but had now been taken over by holiday lets, second homes and the pleasure-boat business. The marina was situated on
the northern side of the original harbour, a series of floating docks lit by overhead floodlights and protected by an artificial breakwater. Gemma stopped at the gate and identified herself to a scruffy youth with a gormless expression. He nodded slowly and vaguely, as though remembering some incident from a previous life. Then he went inside the concrete hut he had emerged from and returned with a set of keys.

  ‘You’ll be needing a hand with your stuff,’ he said, pointing to the rear of the car.

  ‘No thanks, we can manage,’ Gemma replied crisply, slipping him a ten-thousand-lire note. ‘Did you refuel the boat?’

  ‘All taken care of,’ the youth replied listlessly.

  Gemma drove through the car park to the landward end of one of the docks, then turned and parked so that the car was in shadow. They both got out. The youth was standing at the door of his hut, watching them.

  ‘You stay here and mind the luggage,’ Gemma told Zen. ‘I’ll take the groceries and open up the boat, then come back with a cart for our friend in the back.’

  She turned away into the shadows leading down to the dock. Zen lit a cigarette and watched her walk along the pier and board one of the motor cruisers moored there. What a piece of luck, he thought. What an incredible piece of luck! Whoever would have thought it?

  ‘Look at the moon!’ said a voice behind him. ‘Quant’è bella!’

  He turned to find the scruffy youth gazing at him with an ecstatic expression. Zen did not reply.

  ‘It’s always beautiful,’ the youth went on earnestly, ‘but we can’t always see it.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And even when we can, half the time we don’t.’

  ‘How very true.’

  The youth strode up to him and grasped his right arm tightly.

  ‘Just imagine if the moon only came out every fifty years, like an eclipse of the sun. People all over the world would stay up all night to look at it, dancing and singing and weeping for joy!’

  ‘Quite possibly.’

  The rapt expression vanished from the youth’s face like a patch of condensation off glass.

  ‘But it’s there all the time,’ he continued in a voice drained of all emotion. ‘It’s staring us in the face, so we take it for granted.’

  Zen threw away his spent cigarette.

  ‘An interesting thought,’ he said.

  The youth was now gazing in through the rear window of the car. The shrouded body seemed to glow in the moonlight.

  ‘It’s right there in front of us, so we don’t even see it,’ he murmured in the same affectless tone.

  ‘Mmm.’

  He turned to Zen with a piercingly intense stare.

  ‘Maybe that’s why we don’t see God either.’

  Zen heard a rumbling sound. Gemma was wheeling a small handcart along the dock. He peeled off some money and handed it to the youth.

  ‘Listen, I’ve just realized that we forgot to bring any matches with us. Stupid mistake, but it’s the kind of little thing that can ruin your holiday. Do you think you could find us some? Or a lighter. Keep the change.’

  The youth nodded dolefully and headed back to his hut as Gemma emerged from the shadows.

  ‘I forgot to tell you about Piero,’ she said. ‘He’s a bit odd.’

  ‘He’s a lunatic, in the literal sense of the word, and he’ll be back any moment. Let’s get the stiff on the cart, then I’ll take it down while you deal with him. Tell him you’re Astarte. He’ll obey your every command.’

  He opened the hatchback and hauled Lessi’s body half out of the car, then lifted it on to the trolley. Piero was already on his way back. Zen grabbed the handles and started to make his way down the path to the dock. Unfortunately the baggage cart, although built to carry heavy loads, was not designed to accommodate anything long and unstable. Halfway down the slope, one of the wheels hit a rock, the body slewed to one side and the whole thing overturned.

  Before Zen could react, the youth had bounded up and started to lift Lessi’s feet.

  ‘Turn the cart over,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you load it back on.’

  ‘That’s all right, we can manage.’

  ‘No, no! It’s nothing.’

  Zen set the cart back on its wheels, then lifted Lessi’s head. Together they set the bundle back in place.

  ‘Whew, that’s heavy,’ said Piero.

  Zen nodded distractedly.

  ‘What’s inside?’ the youth enquired.

  ‘A human corpse. My late brother-in-law. We’re going to take him out to sea and throw him overboard. Saves a fortune on the funeral expenses.’

  Piero gazed at Zen with a look of growing anger.

  ‘You think I’m crazy, don’t you?’

  ‘No, I think you’re brilliantly sane, but who cares what I think?’

  Gemma materialized between them and turned the youth away, her arm around his shoulders.

  ‘I’m sorry, Piero,’ Zen heard her say. ‘We’ve both had a long hard day planning this trip and we haven’t slept. It was very kind of you to prepare the boat and give us the keys, and I’ll tell the management what a good job you did when I …’

  As she led Piero back towards his hut, Zen hefted the handles of the cart and continued down the path and on to the dock, where Gemma rejoined him.

  ‘Are you out of your mind?’ she hissed in a hoarse whisper.

  ‘Probably we both are. It’s just that you’re handling it better.’

  ‘If he tells anyone what you said, we’re each facing a life sentence.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I just snapped. But don’t worry, no one’s going to pay any attention to what Piero tells them.’

  ‘They’d better not.’

  ‘Of course they won’t.’

  Once again, he was a lot less sure than he sounded.

  Gemma didn’t reply, and for a while Zen thought that she was furious with him, or understandably scared at the magnitude of what she had got herself into. But when she did speak, it was in a mild, relaxed tone.

  ‘This one,’ she said, nodding towards a huge teak motor cruiser bristling with chrome and brass fittings. Zen pushed the cart along the dock, stopping beside a short set of metal steps leading up to the afterdeck.

  ‘Ready?’ he said.

  Gemma nodded. Together they lugged the increasingly stiff body of Roberto Lessi off the cart and up to the steps. Gemma went aboard while Zen lifted the cadaver so that it was vertical, then hoisted it up by the feet while Gemma hauled it over the side. They had just succeeded in getting the centre of gravity inboard when the sound of splashing water drew their attention to the yacht in the next berth, where a man dressed only in a nautical cap, a blue blazer with brass buttons, and the lower half of a woman’s bikini was urinating off the stern.

  ‘What you got there?’ he asked in a slurred voice.

  ‘Freshly killed meat,’ Zen replied.

  He heard Gemma’s intake of breath, and glanced quickly up at her as he raised himself up on the first of the steps and heaved the bundle over the side. He turned back to their neighbour with a broad smile.

  ‘A whole porchetta. Some friends of ours are having a party at their villa up the coast and this is our contribution. Slaughtered a couple of days ago and then slow-roasted over a wood fire by a real artisan up in the mountains.’

  The man adjusted the bikini bottom and sniffed loudly.

  ‘Mmm! I can smell the stuffing from here. Wish I had friends like that. All mine have passed out, one of them on the lavatory. Hence the public display. Care for a drink?’

  ‘No thanks, Arnaldo,’ Gemma replied. ‘We want to make an early start.’

  ‘Suit yourselves.’

  He pointed an admonitory finger at Zen.

  ‘She tends to slew to one side a bit when the revs are low. Can make getting in and out tricky. Get all lined up and then give her all you’ve got. A word to the wise. Buon viaggio.’

  He staggered down the companionway and disappeared.

  Zen climbed aboa
rd and looked at Lessi’s body lying collapsed on the deck.

  ‘Let’s get this stowed inside,’ he said.

  Gemma opened the doors to the main saloon. They carried the body through and laid it out on a row of bench seating. Zen placed Lessi’s pistol in a knife drawer in the galley, and they returned to the afterdeck.

  ‘All right,’ said Zen. ‘Time to go. Tell me when to cast off.’

  Gemma regarded him with a puzzled expression.

  ‘Me? I told you I don’t know how to drive this thing. Tommaso always did that, when he did it at all. He would never let me near any of the little knobs and levers.’

  Zen gave a world-weary smile.

  ‘Wonderful,’ he said.

  Gemma leant over and kissed him on the cheek.

  ‘Never mind! You’ll do just fine. You’re from Venice, remember? It’s in your blood. You drank it in with your mother’s milk.’

  Zen glared at her.

  ‘Give me the keys and let go the mooring ropes.’

  In the end, handling the boat turned out to be quite simple. All the controls in the cockpit mounted above the aft deck were marked with large metal plates clearly designed with the sort of people who bought these floating mobile homes in mind. Zen turned on the navigation lights and then the engine, which started immediately and settled into a low, reassuring growl. Gemma threw the lines on board and then scampered up the ladder, hauling it up after her. Once they were clear of the dock, Zen applied just enough reverse thrust and port wheel to bring the bow round, then engaged forward gear and minimal throttle while they glided slowly down the twin lines of moored boats. Once they were in the channel beyond, he brought the vessel round and revved up slightly. He didn’t notice any tendency to slew to either side. Or had Arnaldo been referring to something else?

  He steered past the end of the breakwater and out into the open sea beyond. The darkness was suddenly immense.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Gemma, appearing in the cockpit beside him and lighting a cigarette.

  ‘Somewhere the water’s deep. I don’t suppose there’s such a thing as a chart aboard.’

  Gemma clicked her fingers decisively.

  ‘Ah! Now that I do know about. Tommaso got it a few months before we split up. In fact I think it may well have been one of the reasons why. You know, those little niggly details that suddenly make you realize what you’ve known all along, namely that you’re living with a complete jerk.’