‘Well, at least Signora gets out!’ Jean’s angry mutter alerted Mr Grubshaw to three mature ladies with smart carrier bags. ‘Do you think she knows he’s two-timing her?’
‘Yes; here comes the chauffeur with the prints of Signor and his trophy friend.’
‘Signora looks such a nice woman.’
‘Mafia mommas have a reputation. I wouldn’t cross her.’
‘I wonder if they have children?’
‘Probably.’ But how many were dead in the drug wars?
‘He must have strayed before,’ snarled Jean, with fellow-feeling, as the elderly woman took the stiff envelope her driver had brought and opened it calmly. She half pulled the photos out, glancing at them as if what she found was only what she expected. One of her friends was stirring her cup; the other gathered herself for a trip to the Ladies. They had hardly acknowledged the chauffeur’s arrival, but Grubby thought they both knew what he had brought. ‘Plenty of times!’ Jean was still harping on.
Grubby remembered the businessman’s girlfriend, with her strong walk and her air of having life before her. ‘This particular young lady wants it all,’ he decided.
‘Oh, a Fiona!’ Jean went into a bitter reverie. ‘She wasn’t as young as she’d like men to think.’
‘So she’s a worse threat.’
Viewing the evidence, Signora looked as though she wasn’t finished yet. Kept separate from her husband’s work, no doubt, she probably knew a lot about it even so. In their early years together she would have helped his struggle to establish himself. Grubby sniggered. ‘If Signora decides she wants it all too, do you think that includes the chauffeur?’
Jean considered, though not for long. ‘He’s nothing special.’
The other two mature ladies chatted to the waiting driver, informally; they knew him of old. Signora tapped the photo set back into its envelope, which she dropped into her large designer bag. She dismissed the chauffeur with a nod. All three ladies appeared to continue their previous conversation.
‘Catholics,’ whispered Jean. ‘No divorce.’
‘I expect the priest will give him a good talking to.’ That would not have deterred Clive, when tackled by a determined finance assistant who wanted his baby and his bonds.
‘No divorce – but plenty of retribution, Grubby!’
The husband might anticipate the retribution and want to deflect it. Grubby felt chilled.
He considered warning the private detectives that their bourgeois female client, now eating coffee-iced torte, could be the subject of Renzo’s ‘special job’. But if she were his client, he would frostily refuse any discussion with an outsider. Maybe it was all right. The detective had photographed Renzo; that was significant. If Signor had plans, Signora was ahead of him.
Another chill caused Grubby to call time and return to the hotel so they were ready to greet Tracey when the coach brought her back.
‘Well, that was real interior design! It was like, well, themed.’ Tracey had enjoyed Poppaea’s Villa, a two-thousand-year-old masterpiece of décor. ‘There were hundreds of rooms and some had, like, spooky masks painted, but the best bit was the outdoor swimming pool. You could hold a wicked barbecue—’
‘I expect they did,’ said Grubby drily.
‘What has been your favourite site, Perdita?’ The teacher in Jean relied on constant evaluation. (How sad, therefore, that she had spent so little time evaluating Clive …)
‘Oh Mum. If you had to call me after somebody in Shakespeare, I wish you’d chosen someone with some style.’
‘Goneril?’ suggested Jean waspishly, immediately regretting it.
‘Great!’ Tracey was now Goneril. ‘The brothel at Pompeii was quite good.’ Jean and Grubby exchanged a surreptitious glance. They had not even found the brothel, let alone negotiated an entry price with its legendary smarmy key-holder. ‘Capri was gross; you could really imagine terrible old Tiberius hurling his enemies off the crag—’ Jean nodded, newly eager to hear of men being cast to their deaths unpleasantly. ‘The best was Vesuvius and the hot springs at the Phlegraian Fields. A vulcanologist explained how Naples is doomed. Every year that Vesuvius fails to erupt now, means a bigger explosion when it next blows its top. Millions of people are going to be trapped …’
Mr Grubshaw wondered if people who lived in the shadow of a recognised future disaster might be more prone to violence. He discarded the theory. The only difference between Naples and Deptford was that the villains in Deptford were multi-cultural, while the rival clans in Naples came from one gene pool. Presumably it went all the way back to the peasants who were buried in pumice or molten mud in Pliny’s day.
That made him think. Renzo would be a foreigner here. Someone commissioning a special job, a job that broke even the rules of this tight-knit community – deleting a wife and mother, say, the matriarch of a clan – might well bring in an outside agent. A Sardinian could have the expertise without the local sensitivity. He could settle a domestic issue without causing decades of Neapolitan blood-feud, and afterwards he could fly off back where he came from.
But Renzo, with his vacant manner and so inefficient he had failed to set his watch to local time, was a bad choice. He might share a criminal background and very dangerous skills, but his stubble darkened the wrong-shaped chin. His dialect probably sounded as thick here as it did in Deptford. Word of his presence would whiz around. The women with neatly pressed tweed jackets and straight skirts who toyed with limoncelli in smart cafés possessed just as effective networks as their men. And they probably had their own agents of destruction too.
Whether Signor realised he was rumbled would depend on him. The mouthy young woman in the leather coat must be doing her best to undermine Signora’s importance in his eyes. An arrogant man, easily flattered by a feisty mistress, might forget that, although Signora had staff at home these days and no longer toiled over osso bucco on a hot stove, she still knew the recipe.
That evening Mr Grubshaw rationalised his own position. ‘Woody, I could report my suspicions to the police and be laughed at. I could drop a wink at the detective agency and be seen off as a batty menace. I’ve no proof of anything, and if challenged, Renzo will claim he’s on holiday, just like me.’
The woodlouse said nothing, but did it sympathetically.
To give him an airing, Grubby carried the matchbox out into the balcony. Its concrete was unwelcoming to a creature who lived on rotten wood in damp places, but together the two friends gazed at the ocean. A perfect moon had risen above the Castel d’Ovo. Lights from a cruise ship slowly moved out towards Capri in the darkness. To the right of the causeway, a small boat could just be discerned where lethargic fishermen tended lobsterpots every morning in tethered ranks between the shore and the hydrofoil routes.
‘We’re dreaming, Woody. We come out to Naples, conditioned by fear of its streetcrime. Perdita and her friends are warned to carry their mobiles and money under their sweatshirts – but that would make sense back in London. Jean and I stare up a back alley hung with washing-lines, and we think we’re in the nostalgia scenes of The Godfather. If we hadn’t scurried away, I still think we could have found the right loo handle for her bathroom – there was a promising shop full of chromeware, just before she decided people were giving us the evil eye …’
Though keen on the cavities behind lavatory tanks, Woody had no views on fitments. Mr Grubshaw enticed him back into the matchbox, for it was dinnertime.
Perhaps because Grubby thought he saw a limousine turning onto the causeway, they ate out below the Castel d’Ovo, where there were several good-class pizzerias. It was their last night, which they spent in happy talk of archaeology and food, while dodging the attentions of musicians. ‘For the bambina!’ leered a waiter, placing pasta before Jean, who blushed. Grubby walked outside ‘to make a phonecall to the office’; flirting with an Italian waiter was just what Jean needed at this stage.
He stayed in sight in case she panicked, leaning on a short harbour wall. A grou
p of town dogs assembled around him, not begging, but sitting on their haunches in a circle as if they recognised a crony. People came and went in couples or groups. Then, oddly, a man alone walked up the shadowed cobbled street; he was short, chunky, had a mobile phone clamped to his ear. He looked like Renzo. A second figure followed him on lighter feet: peak-capped and blazered. Mr Grubshaw would have tailed them, but now Jean was gesticulating. Time to return to the restaurant.
They ate, settled up, bemoaned the end of their holiday. They took a turn around the little square and the dark quays at the foot of the fortress. Among the parked cars were none Grubby recognised, nor did he spot anyone familiar eating outside. Not that he expected to; they had observed that regulars were greeted specially by smiling maitre d’s and wafted indoors to private rooms. ‘With menus at half-price,’ said Jean.
‘Same the world over,’ replied Grubby.
‘These locals behave as if they own the joint.’
‘Maybe they do, Jean.’
He slept badly, anxious to ensure they caught their flight. Rising early, he booked out, left his suitcase in the lobby where Jean and his niece would see it, then took a last constitutional along the esplanade. Braving traffic, he crossed the frantic Via Partenope to the shore. Joggers and anglers had gathered in a knot. Normally the fishermen sat on the great slabs of concrete that thrust skywards, as if heaved by volcanic upheaval. They formed a breakwater. There was no beach; the waves lapped imperceptibly against these jagged, jumbled chunks from which hopefuls cast rods every few yards.
Not today. On one of the massive slabs lay a body.
With his conscience pricking, Mr Grubshaw ascertained that it was male. All he could see was dark clothing; he thought of Renzo, habitually in black jeans and a zipped black bomber jacket. ‘A vagrant?’ he queried discreetly, as the joggers and anglers stared and waited for the police.
‘Most likely,’ a man explained to him a little too carefully, ‘someone who drank too much—’ He mimed it. ‘And fell from a cruise liner.’
‘Not local, then!’ said Grubby. His tone was wry.
A police car drew up and switched on its siren. Two officers clambered to the corpse while colleagues joked with bystanders. Soon the body was turned over. From the pavement, it was still impossible to identify the man or see how he died. The nearest policeman straightened up and began serious phoning on his mobile. An angler and a jogger exchanged glances. Mr Grubshaw decided to return to his hotel.
Perhaps troubled by what he had seen, his feet took him too far. He pulled up, outside the grander establishment beyond. A limousine was parked, its chauffeur in a blue blazer leaning on one door, picking his teeth. The man gave him a courteous ‘Good morning’ nod. On a whim, Grubby entered the hotel and was directed to its restaurant. At the window table a mature woman breakfasted alone. Waiters hovered near her, but she ignored them, mopping her mouth with a napkin as she gazed down outside, watching the kerfuffle on the shore. No expression showed on her face.
Mr Grubshaw glanced at his watch, made his excuses, and returned to his own hotel. Police activity had increased, an ambulance was now in attendance, and a senior officer was looking taut. There was no attempt to halt the traffic, but after he found his companions, getting cases into a taxi was safer than normal as drivers slowed down of their own accord to gape at the crime scene.
‘She fixed him, then!’
‘Now, Jean; you don’t know that.’
At the airport, Mr Grubshaw craned for sightings of Renzo, without result.
All the following week, he checked the barber’s shop, but it remained shuttered. He tackled Cursing Khaleed. ‘Renzo gone away?’
‘Effing Italy.’
‘Business?’
‘’Oliday, he say. Was arrested at the effing airport for carrying a knife.’
‘Bloody hell!’ Khaleed looked offended by Mr Grubshaw’s language. ‘How d’you know, Khaleed?’
‘Rang me on his mobile. I had to shift some stuff for him in case the effing cops search the shop.’
‘What – he went over his allowance for duty-free aftershave?’ White powder, more likely, Grubby thought.
‘Somebody stitched him up, he say.’
‘I was afraid somebody had done him in.’
‘Just effing deported … Try Mario’s, up Greenwich,’ Khaleed advised, fingering his own sinister shaved head. ‘Does an effing swanky cut. You going away? My cousin’s got a nice apartment in Bodrum. Do you an effing good price.’
‘Can’t get away. Too many family commitments …’ Clive was terrified of what Jean might have planned for him financially, and Jean was scaring herself with her hardened attitude. Even his niece, despite her insouciance, was starting to look pinched with worry. ‘Thanks,’ answered Grubby, ‘but I think I’ll stay at home this year.’
BETWEEN THE LINES
Colin Dexter
17 Bridgnorth Street
Kidderminster
10th August
Dear Ronald,
I was sittin’ only a coupla feet away on the night Big Jimmy was shot through his underachieving brain …
That’s my opening gambit. No – that was my opening gambit.
Remember how our guru gave us those three guidelines? First, grab ’em all with that first sentence of yours. Second, don’t get too worried if you find yourself writing a load of crap. Third (this is it!), if you want a short cut to ‘ideas’, just take any situation you’ve experienced recently, doesn’t matter how pedestrian and trite, write it up as quickly as you can, and then just change one of the incidents in it, just the one, and see how your story suddenly leaps into life.
So please read my entry (enclosed) for our competition. How I need that prize-money! There’s not much ‘grab’ about the new opening, but plenty of ‘crap’ in the rest. I’m not bothered. It was that third guideline that stuck in my underachievin’ brain, and you’ll soon spot that one fictitious incident in the story. Forgive me! Here goes.
The Theft
There were twenty-three of us on that trip, with me the youngest but one. Mistakenly, I’d never expected things to live up to the brochure’s promise: ‘Ten days amid the cultural delight of Prague, Vienna and Budapest, with a unique mix of travel, guided tours and group seminars in creating writing. Travel is by rail, coach and boat. Each of our experienced guides is fluent in English. The leader of the seminar is himself a published author with four acclaimed novels to his name.’
I fell for him a bit from day one, and once or twice I thought he might be vaguely attracted to a single woman about ten years younger than he was. So I was disappointed when it was another man in the group who came to sit beside me as we travelled on the long train journey from Prague to Vienna. It happened like this.
The first-class carriage into which the group was booked was already uncomfortably full when the porter finally lugged my large, over-packed case up from the platform and told me it would have to be stowed away in the next carriage. No problem really. Since I was determined not to let my precious case out of my sight, I decided to leave the rest of the group and move along into the next carriage myself; and in truth I almost welcomed the thought of being alone and of concentrating my mind on that glittering short-story prize. I had already taken my seat and was reconsidering my opening sentence …
But I got no further.
‘Mind if I join you?’ (Did I?) ‘I thought you’d probably be a bit lonely and—’
But before Ernest Roland, one of our group, had any chance of continuing, the automatic doors opened and two latish-middle-aged women made their way breathlessly into our comparatively empty carriage, each dragging a vast, wheeled case behind them. For a few seconds they stood beside us, glancing indecisively around, before pushing the two cases into the empty space on the carriage floor across the aisle, and finally settling down into the vacant twin-seats immediately in front of us, their backs towards us. From the window seat she had taken, it was the larger of the two ladies who spok
e first: ‘Well, we made it, Emily!’
Emily was a much slimmer, smaller-boned woman with a rather nervous-looking face – a face I could see quite clearly slantwise, for a slightly curious reason. Throughout the carriage the backs of the seats were designed in such a way that an opening was left running down the middle, fairly narrow at the top and the bottom, but with a bulbous swelling in the centre, some four to five inches wide, the whole gap shaped like an old-fashioned oil-lamp. From my seat therefore, also by the window, my view of her was pretty well unrestricted, as was the view of the broad adjustable arm-rest in black leather which separated the blue-upholstered seats. The whole design was light and airy: a comfortable arrangement for passengers’ comfort, if not for passengers’ privacy. Indeed, we could follow the newcomers’ conversation quite clearly since each spoke English, albeit with an odd transatlantic twang that almost sounded un-American. Very soon we learned that the window-seated widow (?) was named Marion; and it was Ernest who turned to me, eyebrows lifted, as he pointed to Marion’s chubby right hand on the arm-rest, the middle finger displaying one of the largest solitaire diamonds I have ever seen. And I was wondering what beautiful brilliants bedecked her other hand when the connecting doors opened behind us. ‘Listek, prosim.’ Then with a change of gear to a moderate semblance of English, ‘Teekits, please.’
Ernest managed to explain that we were both members of the … he pointed back over his shoulder.
The ticket collector nodded and moved a pace forward. ‘You English also as well?’
‘No,’ said Marion, ‘we – are – from – Quebec – in Canada. You understand?’
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