by L. S. Hilton
‘It’s strange, Judith. I have this feeling that we’re alike, you and I.’
‘How so?’
‘We’re . . . loners. We stand outside things.’
Oh please, I thought, not the childhood. What half-buried pain makes us both so special? Ugh. Sharing was not on tonight’s agenda. I retrieved my hand and traced the knuckle pensively along my jawbone.
‘Cameron. We are alike, you and I.’ I paused for one breath. ‘I think you should fuck me.’
‘I’ll get the bill.’
As soon as we were outside the restaurant he pressed me against the wall and kissed me, winding his tongue around mine. It felt good to be enveloped like that, wrapped up against the breadth of his chest. I could hear his blood, pumping strong against my ear. I grabbed his hand and stooped to release the ankle straps on my sandals, tugged at him so that for a few minutes he was running with a barefoot girl through the August streets of Rome. We crossed the bridge at the Castello and picked our way down one of the stairs, kissing again at the bottom, and then walked hand in hand along the quay. One bridge, two. The Tiber is not like the Seine, polished up and gleaming for the tourists. Weeds swayed between the cobbles and piles of refuse were heaped on the banks. Under the second bridge we passed a huddle of winos and I felt Cameron stiffen and straighten his shoulders, but they barely glanced at us.
‘I’m cold.’
‘Have my jacket, darlin’. ’
He draped it round my shoulders and I laughed and began to run again, the warm stone smooth beneath my feet. He lumbered to keep up with me. I wanted him breathless. Under the third bridge I pulled him round towards me, shimmying the jacket off my shoulders, and kissed him urgently, running both hands up his thighs to where his cock was already bulging.
‘I want you, God, I want you, now,’ I murmured. ‘I want you to fuck me right now.’
His back was to the water. I dropped to my knees and took his belt between my teeth. I began to unfasten it, easing it through the buckle and catching the hook with my tongue, flipping it back. It’s a cheap trick, but not difficult and it has the virtue of arresting the attention. His hands were already in my hair.
‘Oh Judith, Jesus.’
I chivvied the head of his cock free from his shorts with quick laps and took it in my mouth. I almost wanted to giggle at the sudden flash of myself singing in the Eden Roc bathroom, of James’s bulk spread-eagled expectantly on the bed. ‘Well, Judith,’ a snide little voice whispered, ‘here we are again.’ Push it down, focus. I closed my eyes. Only the next thing, nothing beyond that.
Cameron didn’t say anything when I opened the flick knife from my pocket and drove it into the hollow in the flesh of his ankle, just above the Achilles tendon. He gasped and toppled sideways like a dropped marionette. I had to follow his trousers down from their open fly to wrench it out. He screamed. The knife had been in my right pocket; I took a sanitary towel from my left, rolled up with the sticky strip torn off and worked it between his teeth, pushing it against his tongue, holding my palm flat against his mouth to stop the gag reflex. There’s a trick to that too, when you’re blowing a guy. You have to open your throat slowly, retract your tonsils. Cameron was a quick learner.
The concentration of nerves in the Achilles means that a wound there will temporarily shut the body down. Cameron wouldn’t be able to react for a few precious seconds. I got to my feet and moved my handbag and discarded shoes neatly out of the way. He was hunched up, sucking in great rasps of air against the pain; there was nothing for him beyond that. Straddling him, I took a handful of his thick hair and twisted his head, turning his face roughly away from me into his shoulder. As I felt for his ear, his eyes flared open. I realised he still thought I was trying to help him.
I guessed those eyes would have been frantic and bulging, but I didn’t look too hard. I pushed the knife straight in just beneath the ear lobe, all the way to the handle. It didn’t quite go in like a watermelon, more the toughness of a pumpkin. I thought of the rabbit we had eaten at lunch. Still no noise, but a second later I saw the dark patch against the glow of his linen shirt and felt a warm wetness across my thigh. His big body was bucking and jerking, then his left arm swung up and caught me a crack across the jaw. The blow sang in my windpipe, driving me back, wrenching for breath. It had been a long time since anyone had hit me like that. Would it bruise? I had no time to worry about that yet; I had to do it now. Hideously lithe, he twisted and hauled himself towards me, head sagging, those powerful hands scrabbling at my legs, reaching for me. I was still dizzy from the punch. I tried to move back, further into the shadow of the bridge, but I was too slow, and the whole of his weight against my knees brought me down again. Cameron was clawing up towards my face. I tried to kick him off but he was too heavy, creeping up my body inch by inch, a rich bubbling surging from his throat. The hands reached my neck and he began to squeeze. I had forgotten how strong men really are. I clawed at the grip, but it was hopeless, I began to gag for air, I couldn’t move my lower body; I was pinned beneath him, trying to twist him off, but he was heavy, so heavy, and there were strange dancing lights in front of my eyes now as his grip tightened, tightened. And then unclenched. He was still. I resisted the impulse to shove him off me, gulped for air, three, four times, until I was breathing again. He lay slumped across me, his arms trailing like dead branches over my breasts. I inhaled again, clenched my muscles tight, then released, twisting my hips to shift his weight, rolling on all fours as he fell to the side.
It was not the most dignified position. I looked up, quickly ran my eyes along either side of the quay. If there was anyone coming I would have to pretend we were making love, but the riverbank was empty. I eased myself from him, my dress rucking up and the cobbles rough against the bare skin of my stomach, until I was stretched out, as far away as I could get, only my fingers on the knife connecting us along my arm, like some horribly inverted umbilical cord. Then I pulled. I didn’t look at the result. I turned away and took the backpack from my tote bag, steadily removing the things I would need and counting Mississippis under my breath. He would need a few minutes. I folded myself up and buried my face in my knees, pixelated with stray gravel. The wheeze of breath from his nostrils became shallower and more rapid. Hypovolemia. If I touched him now he would be getting colder.
I had read something once about soldiers in the First World War who went over the top, then lay down in no man’s land and promptly fell fast asleep. All the warmth in my body had concentrated into my chest, the push of my own breath against my skin lulled me. It wasn’t until I heard the sound of a motor that I came back to myself, shuddering. Shit, shit shit. The white of his shirt . . . I raced through the contingencies. We had been attacked, I had pulled out the knife . . . I rocked back and forth, practising for being traumatised, but when I peeped through my fingers I saw a small boat with a fat prow, tacking upriver like an ungainly shark, a stooped figure in the stern. A fisherman. There were still eels in the Tiber. Only when he had passed and the water was a smooth sheet again did I notice that the panting had stopped.
Now the thumb. He had used his left hand to access his phone. I pressed his open palm onto the stones and splayed the fingers, put the knife to his digit and my knee on top of that, pushed. Once I’d made a deep incision the cigar cutter took care of the bone. I threw the cutter over my shoulder and heard it splash as I slid the thumb into the cigar case. I had been afraid of how difficult it was going to be to get him into the river, and that was before I learned how much that bulk really weighed. I had to put my bare feet in the puddle around him to get hold of his shoulders, but adrenalin gave me strength and I got his torso over the quay in one heave. His left arm jerked again, a zombie’s twitching grab. He arched back, as supple as a gymnast, and the back of his head cracked against the stone of the embankment. That couldn’t hurt. I put my knee on his chest to ease the stuffing from his mouth, then shoved against his thigh to work the body round until it rolled into the water. One
of his loafers came off as I shoved him over the bank. I picked it up and felt the snaffle. Gucci. Sharp. I chucked it after him.
In the silence after the splash, I heard a high-pitched squeak and caught a flash of black fuzz in my peripheral vision. I gave a shrill gasp and stumbled, almost pitching myself into the water after Cameron. A rat, just a rat. But I was gasping and my hands were shaking. I half expected a figure to step out of the shadows, so strongly did I feel I was being watched. Just a rat. Probably attracted by the scent of fresh blood, which was a disgusting thought.
Forcing my breath to come steadily through my teeth I stripped, did a quick clean-up with several wet wipes and a half-bottle of Evian from my bag. I stuffed the wipes through the neck of the bottle and buried it in the weeds in the urine-drenched midden at the back of the bridge. The flimsy navy dress I had been wearing was wadded in another huge sanitary pad and tied up in a sheer plastic bag for later disposal. No dustbin man would be keen on opening that. I removed the black dress from my bag and knotted it around my waist to add bulk, then pulled on the ugly shorts and T-shirt. It seemed to take an age to get the shirt over my head. Hair knotted up, shoes in my handbag and then into the nylon backpack along with the cigar tube and his phone. I went through the pockets of the jacket before it went into the water, putting the room key inside my bra. No passport or wallet would slow down the identification. The darkness was frustrating, but I was grateful for it – no folksy streetlamps to encourage strolling lovers. I waited for the arc lights over the Castello to turn, then watched the glint of the knife as I slowly ran my tongue against each flat of the blade, sucking the ferrous juice between my teeth. Superstitious, but I felt I was licking away my reflection. Then I threw it, watching it curve and fall to a tiny, oily splash.
When the Borgias wanted to make a point, their assassins would bundle their targets, throats slit, into sacks and loose them into the Tiber, where they would drift down to the Castello. Sometimes special reed screens were set to ensure that the bodies would be found. How quickly did the river tide flow? I thought I would have at least an hour, perhaps until morning if I was lucky, before someone noticed him. Earphones in, phone clipped to my collar, I pounded back along the bank, AC/DC shaking me all night long
I was back at the Hassler in fifteen minutes, having taken the Spanish Steps at a run. By the time I panted into the lobby, I could almost believe that I was what I appeared, a tourist running the gelato off those American thighs. I bopped my way to the lift, and no one looked at me. The room had been turned down, curtains drawn and air conditioning humming, chocolate on the pillow, cotton mats spread on either side of the bed. Once inside I splashed water on my face, taking a quick look to see that Cameron’s blow to the jaw hadn’t left a mark. I changed back into the black dress and heels and pulled on the bright coat which was still waiting for me on the chair. If anyone had seen me coming up, they would see an entirely different woman coming down. I quickly checked the folder on the bed in case a maid might have touched it, but the picture was still there.
Now the phone. I grabbed a bathtowel and spread it on the carpet, unscrewed the cigar tube. The thumb fell out, white and grey where it wasn’t bloodied, like an obese maggot. I slid my finger across the screen, held the thumb to the keypad. The display shuddered, and a message popped up: ‘Try Again’. Fuck. What if it was heat sensitive as well? I ran the hot water and rinsed the thumb, tried again. It opened. The thumb rolled across my lap – oh God. I placed it carefully on a corner of the towel. I wanted to read Cameron’s mail and messages, but there was no time. I flicked quickly through the apps until I found the calendar. I hoped Cameron might have noted the meeting with his client there, but there was nothing except the details of his flight back to London from Fiumicino the day after tomorrow. OK. I knew that the meeting must be set for the next day then. What else? Passbook. I needed the codes for wherever he was planning to put the money. British Airways, Heathrow Express, Boots, all banal stuff. HSBC looked promising but the account was in Cameron’s name and, besides, it needed a password and security code. Would he seriously have been planning to stick five million there? Think, Judith, think. The thumb regarded me perkily. Wouldn’t Cameron have had a back-up? Rome was notorious for pickpockets and the phone was almost new. Why keep anything sensitive on it?
As I stood, my knee ruched the towel and the thumb rolled again.
‘You can fuck off,’ I told it. But then I looked. The mangled stub of the joint was pointing towards the luggage. Maybe there was another passbook in there, a paper one? I had to have those codes, all this effort would be pointless without them. I ran my hands through a couple of folded shirts, socks, underwear, a paperback. I flicked through that; perhaps he had hidden a note to himself on the pages. Nothing, though it occurred to me that one feels less guilty about murdering a man who reads Jeffrey Archer for pleasure. There had to be something written down. I couldn’t think about what it would mean if I was wrong. There would be a passbook, there had to be. I checked the pocket and the inside flap for any scraps of paper, then thought of the shaving bag I had seen in the bathroom.
Sure enough, there was a small red Moleskine notebook in the pocket of the toilet bag. The bathtowel had only a small smear of blood, his blood, so I left it on the side of the sink and squirted a bit of shaving foam on the rim for good measure. The thumb I wadded in toilet paper and flushed down the lavatory. I folded the backpack and stuffed my gear into my handbag, picked up the portfolio and after a quick look up and down the corridor I put the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door, a little tribute to old James.
I’ve always believed that hiding things in plain sight is a good maxim. I took the lift back down, hoping my face wasn’t too flushed from the run, crossed the lobby back to the reception desk and asked if Mr Fitzpatrick had left any message for me. No, signora. Could they please call his room? No reply, signora. I thanked the concierge and walked slowly out of the back entrance. I pulled off the coat in a doorway and rolled it tightly into my bag. I walked calmly to the Piazza Navona, disposing of the bloodied dress in one dustbin, the cigar tube in another, kneeling to adjust my ankle strap and losing the passport down a drain grating. I took the cash and credit cards from the wallet, added the notes to my own and deposited the cards in another bin. There were a couple of photos and what looked like a folded letter, dirt in the creases from refolding; I made sure not to look at those. Presumably Holofernes in Artemisia’s painting had had a family, too. The wallet and the phone could go into the river on my way back to my hotel. I chose the café nearest to the Bernini fountain and ordered a cognac and a caffè shakerato, amaro. Then I opened the notebook. I turned the leaves with slow deliberation. Shopping list, reminder to buy a card, the name of a restaurant with a question mark next to it oh come on, come on. On the last written page, I found them. A name and an address, 11 a.m. next to it, underlined. And on the facing page, the numbers. Joy. I drank the iced coffee and sipped the cognac while I smoked three cigarettes, watching the tourists throwing coins and taking pictures. The brandy felt warm as it oozed into me. I touched my hand to my cheek and found the skin of my face was cold, despite the warmth of the evening. I made sure to leave a large tip and exchange a polite goodbye with the waiter, hoping that he would remember me if anyone ever asked, then walked back across the river.
In my room I undressed, placed my clothes neatly in a pile and flipped up the loo seat, and then I vomited until all I could cough up was strings of bile. I took a long shower, as hot as I could stand, wrapped myself in a towel and sat cross-legged on the bed to study the notebook. I called up the account on my laptop, entering the numbers carefully. They had been quite clever, my little duo of art crooks. The account was in the Cook Islands, obviously recently opened as it held $10,000, the international minimum, just as mine in Switzerland did. There was the IBAN, the SWIFT code, the beneficiary name. Not so clever that one, ‘Goodwood Holdings Inc.’, whilst the password, ‘Horse1905’, was just moronic. I shut it down. I g
uessed that Rupert would have access to the account, too, imagined him waiting tensely tomorrow for the numbers to roll through. Tomorrow. The appointment. The name of the person Cameron was meeting was Moncada. Maybe Fitzpatrick had had a date with a snazzy Roman hairdresser, but somehow, I didn’t think so.
My blood was sputtering with weariness; I couldn’t bear to look at the clock. Still, it wouldn’t be the first time I had pulled an all-nighter. I made myself some disgusting instant coffee with the miniature hotel kettle and took a health break at the window, then turned back to the laptop. The name Moncada drew a complete blank. I tried art galleries, smaller dealers, sale reports, guests at art-world parties, curators, journalists – nothing. Then I tried the Roman address, looking first for any art-related businesses nearby, then Google-Earthing images of what appeared to be a fairly grotty suburban neighbourhood. Why would Cameron have been doing a hugely lucrative trade in such a place? Either Moncada was a reclusive private collector or he was dodgy, and I had my money on dodgy.
I checked the index of Money Laundering Through Art: A Criminal Justice Perspective on Google Books. I’d looked at it for my Master’s, but the name Moncada was absent. I tried a few random search terms, and ‘art fraud Italy’ soon got me to the word I had expected. The Mafia had their beaks in the art world, but that didn’t mean much – the Mafia remained as much a fact of life in Italy as half-naked hostesses on TV gameshows. One of the things I love about Italians is that they take culture so seriously. One wouldn’t have thought that art could be too important to the mob, in between corrupting the government and covering the south with tarmac, but the gangs were real professionals. One group had successfully substituted fake Renaissance canvases for twenty real works in one of the smaller Vatican museums here in Rome, and had sold the real pictures underground in order to fund arms-buying for a territory war in Calabria. It had been decades before the fakes were revealed and some of the canvases recovered. More recently, arrests had been made in a money-laundering case involving fake Ancient Greek artifacts supposedly excavated from a tiny islet off the Sicilian coast, Penisola Magnisi, famous for its wildflowers, and for being the site where the nymph Calypso holds Odysseus an erotic prisoner for seven years in Homer’s Odyssey. Those involved in the scam were clearly less than enchanted by their treatment they received from the Roman police force, and responded by blowing up several of them as they enjoyed a cappuccino break at a beachfront café. If Cameron’s man was connected with this sort of thing, it was rather discouraging. Gaudy straplines kept popping up, detailing the fates of those who crossed the gangsters. Concrete and explosives featured prominently, which would have been funny if it wasn’t true. It was the kind of stuff that Dave would have enjoyed.