And Then You Die

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘That ought to hold him.’

  ‘Should we say something?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘Say what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Isn’t there some service for a burial at sea? “We commit thy body to the waves and thy soul to Almighty God.” Something like that.’

  Zen grimaced.

  ‘Let’s just take care of the body part. You roll it over, I’ll lift the anchor.’

  They worked the bundle to the very edge of the platform, where Zen laid the anchor gently on top of it like a wreath.

  ‘Right,’ he said with a sigh of relief. ‘One, two, three …’

  The resulting splash was almost derisibly insignificant. For a few moments they were able to make out the white form spiralling down through the water, gradually shrinking and losing substance until it disappeared altogether. Gemma crossed herself.

  ‘What about the gun?’ she asked.

  Zen clicked his fingers.

  ‘Good point.’

  They climbed back up the ladder to the afterdeck. Zen went into the saloon, removed Lessi’s pistol from the drawer where he had stowed it, returned on deck and threw it overboard. Gemma emerged from the bathroom, where she had been washing her hands.

  ‘What do we do now?’ she asked.

  Zen looked at her standing there in the sunlight with her sturdy, expectant expression. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, but it didn’t seem the moment, particularly since he had not washed his hands. Then he had an idea so totally crazy that he knew at once he would have to do it.

  ‘Let’s have lunch,’ he said.

  Gemma wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Motorway cheese and salami? I don’t think I’m that hungry.’

  ‘I have other plans.’

  He went back up to the cockpit and consulted the chart. Yes, there it was. He clicked around, set the new course and engaged the engine. The boat nosed about towards the south-east and set about its business of showing the waves who was boss.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Gemma.

  ‘I’m going to sleep. Keep an eye out for other shipping, and wake me in plenty of time if anything is getting too close.’

  ‘All right, but where are we going?’

  Zen smiled mysteriously.

  ‘To prison.’

  ‘Prison?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Like in that board game. “Go to jail. Go directly to jail”’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  Being born is confusing. Dying may well prove to be even more so. Even waking up is pretty damn confusing. Such were Aurelio Zen’s initial thoughts on emerging from a seamless, dreamless sleep. Why me? Why here? Why now?

  The answer to these questions, when it popped up, seemed incontrovertible. In his mindless exhaustion, he had lain down on the very spot where Roberto Lessi’s body had been lying for all those hours. This surely meant bad luck. Even monks and nuns were threatening enough, their presence demanding a discreet jiggle of the testicles as an antidote against that other world of chastity. But there was no gesto di scongiuro effective against death, and he had been rubbing up against it for hours, and asleep, to make it worse.

  But was Lessi’s spirit a threat, he wondered, still lying in the shallow depression which he and his victim’s corpse had made in the leather cushions. His mother had spoken to him in the apartment in Rome, but that had come as no surprise. He had always known that she had the power to get in touch with him at any time she wanted. But Lessi? ‘We commit thy body to the waves and thy soul to Almighty God.’ No, Lessi didn’t have that kind of power, of that Zen felt certain. Maybe his friends did, though.

  ‘They don’t put the bottles in the box, they wrap the box around the bottles.’ That teasing phrase was clear enough now. He had been telling himself that there was more than one solution to a problem. His mind had always worked like that, in a facetious, allusive way, but its insights usually turned out to have been correct. Too bad he hadn’t understood them at the time. And what had his mother told him? ‘Just don’t ever turn your back on them, that’s all. Don’t look them in the eye and never turn your back.’ She’d been right, as always. He’d got away with it this time, but as he stood up he vowed never to turn his back on anyone ever again.

  It was only once he was vertical that he realized the real reason why he had woken in the first place. The boat was completely still and silent. His first thought was that the motor must have failed again, but that wouldn’t explain the lack of motion. Really disturbed now, he ran out on to the afterdeck. A pile of woman’s clothing lay strewn on the planking. He looked about him. The first thing he saw was land, some kind of rocky shoreline. They must have run aground, he thought guiltily. He’d fallen asleep and Gemma had somehow stranded the boat.

  But where was Gemma? No sign of her in the cockpit or on deck, apart from her discarded clothing. He called her name loudly several times. No answer. God, no! Had she fallen overboard, as he himself so nearly had?

  ‘Ciao, caro!’

  The voice came from behind him, from the land. He turned and beheld through the midday heat haze the figure of Gemma waving to him from a sandy beach. Zen looked about in puzzlement. The boat appeared to be securely moored at anchor in a few metres of water in a small bay protected from such wind as there was by a low headland. The land behind the beach rose steeply in a jumble of shrubs, bushes and stunted trees. There was no sign of any paths down to the water, and no other boats in sight.

  ‘It’s lovely here,’ called Gemma. ‘Come on over.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Swim! I did.’

  ‘I don’t have my costume.’

  ‘Neither do I. This is underwear.’

  Zen gestured vaguely. There didn’t seem to be any way out. He returned to the saloon and stripped off, then ventured back out on deck. Feeling as embarrassed as a schoolboy, he climbed down the ladder to the bathing deck again, then dived in and swam ashore. The water was warm and silkily salty. He shook himself off and walked up to where Gemma was lying, then threw himself down beside her on the hot sand.

  ‘Where on earth are we?’ he demanded.

  ‘It’s called Gorgona. I noticed it coming up on the left and it just looked so gorgeous I drove over to take a closer look. Then I saw this bay, and came in and parked.’

  ‘You should have woken me! There might have been rocks under water at the entrance. You could have wrecked the boat!’

  ‘Well, I didn’t. And isn’t it wonderful? No one here, and not a single sign that anyone ever has been. It’s paradise! Much nicer than wherever you were planning to take us.’

  ‘This is where I was planning to take us.’

  ‘But you said we were going to prison.’

  ‘Gorgona is a prison island. That’s why there’s no one here.’

  Gemma looked at him in alarm.

  ‘Oh my God, I suppose they’ll be round with guns any moment to arrest us for trespassing!’

  ‘I doubt it. The prison is for inner-city juvenile riff-raff. Not the sort who have friends who might organize a getaway in a power boat. Security’s pretty minimal.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘This is where they took me after I disappeared that evening in Versilia. I thought then how wonderful it would be to come back here with you some day, but of course I never thought it would be possible.’

  Gemma smiled at him.

  ‘I didn’t know you were thinking of me then.’

  ‘Well, I was. And now I’m thinking of lunch. I bought this fish …’

  ‘I found it in the fridge. How did you get it?’

  ‘Oh, I hailed a passing fishing boat.’

  She laughed.

  ‘Like hailing a taxi?’

  ‘Sort of. Anyway, it should be fabulous. What are we going to do with it?’

  Gemma sat up and brushed the sand off her stomach. Her dark, prominent nipples showed through the wet brassiere.

 
‘All taken care of,’ she said. ‘I cleaned and scaled it and set it to marinade in oil and lemon juice. It should be ready by now. Fifteen minutes or so under the grill and we can eat.’

  Zen got up and walked across the beach to the bottom of the rocky slope. The soil here was blisteringly hot. He took a few painful steps, inspecting the shrubbery and rubbing the leaves occasionally, then tore off two branches and skipped back to the sand, burying his seared soles for a moment in the cooler layer beneath the surface. When he could walk normally again, he returned to Gemma and handed her the branches.

  ‘For you,’ he said with a mock bow.

  She inspected the gift.

  ‘Wild thyme and rosemary. Perfect! But it’ll get ruined in the water.’

  ‘I’ll look after it. Come on, I’m starving.’

  They swam back to the boat, Zen doing a back crawl with his legs alone, holding the herbs high above the water with one hand. Gemma took them from him on the bathing deck and went to shower in the impressively equipped bathroom. She reappeared wearing, judging by various subtle signs, only her outer layer of clothing.

  Gemma laid a table on the afterdeck under a canvas canopy that Zen cranked down on her instructions. Then they brought out the food and some white wine which Gemma had placed in the fridge earlier. The dining space was cool, airy and delightful. They ate ravenously, mouthfuls of succulent fish and crusty bread washed down with the tart, prickly wine.

  ‘God, this place is gorgeous!’ Gemma exclaimed. ‘Hard to believe that it’s a prison.’

  Zen nodded.

  ‘It is, though. And we’re prisoners.’

  She frowned.

  ‘You mean we can’t leave? That’s all right with me.’

  ‘No, we don’t have to stay here. We’re prisoners on parole, free to come and go as we wish, up to a point. But prisoners just the same.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Aurelio?’

  It was the first time she had called him that. Zen laid his plate aside and lit a cigarette.

  ‘I can’t count how many cases I’ve dealt with that would never have been solved if one of the parties involved hadn’t decided, for one reason or another, to cooperate with the police. Well, it’s the same here. I’ve killed a man and you’ve helped me dispose of the body. There’s a very good chance that we’ll get away with it, I think, but only as long as we keep faith with one another. And I don’t just mean now, in the heat of the moment, here in this paradise. I mean back there in the real world, and for ever. That’s what I meant when I said that we’re prisoners. Not of the state, but of each other.’

  Gemma smiled mysteriously. She seemed to be considering various possible answers.

  ‘Well, you’ll just have to make sure always to be very nice to me,’ she said at length.

  ‘And vice versa.’

  ‘But you’ve got more to lose. You actually shot him after all. I was tied up at the time, remember? A helpless female in peril. Anyway, the key thing is that we’ll obviously have to stay closely in touch, so that we can keep an eye on each other and check that the other person isn’t getting any dangerous ideas. In fact it would probably be best if you were to move in with me, for the time being at least. Otherwise I might lie awake worrying about what you were up to. I hate sleepless nights. Unless there’s something better to do, of course.’

  They looked at each other for a very long time. Then Gemma yawned loudly and stood up.

  ‘All that food and wine’s made me sleepy. I’m going to lie down for a bit. Come and join me, if you want.’

  She went into the saloon and through into the forward cabin, where she removed her clothes and lay down on the bed. Zen remained where he was for a moment, staring up at the sky. A skein of high cloud was drifting in from the west. The weather was changing, and not for the better. They’d need to leave soon. He tossed his cigarette into the clear blue water and followed Gemma inside.

  About the Author

  Michael Dibdin was born in 1947, and attended schools in Scotland and Ireland and universities in England and Canada. He is the author of the internationally bestselling Aurelio Zen series, which includes Medusa, Back to Bologna and End Games. He died in 2007.

  Copyright

  First published in 2002

  by Faber and Faber Limited

  3 Queen Square London WC1N 3AU

  This ebook edition first published in 2008

  All rights reserved

  © Michael Dibdin, 2002

  The right of Michael Dibdin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  ISBN 978–0–571–24862–9 [epub edition]