Maestra

by L. S. Hilton

  In Zara I found a plain linen dress, a short A-line with deep pockets. Close up, it was easy to see it was poorly made, but it was simple enough that with good accessories it looked expensive. I took two, one in black and one in navy. In a sports store I bought a pair of shorts, two sizes too big, and a pair of chunky white trainers. I added an “I Heart Rome” from a tourist booth on a nearby corner. I paid visits to two more tacky souvenir shops, then at the bottom of the Via Veneto I found a lightweight Kenzo raincoat in a bright fuchsia-and-white print. It looked quite striking. In a smart tabacchaio, the kind that sold silver photo frames and humidors, I bought a heavy cigar cutter and one of the fat leather pocket tubes that the guys back on the boat had used to transport their Cohibas. I also picked up a black nylon backpack, loose enough to slip my own leather tote inside, and called at a farmacia for a pack of maxi-size sanitary pads and some wet wipes. By the time I had finished, it was after six. I felt a moment of regret for the Pinturicchios at the Vatican. I wouldn’t get to see them now, but I wanted to take the time to bathe and blow out my hair for my date with Cameron.

  I rejoined him at the Hassler at around eight. He was waiting for me in the lobby and suggested a drink, but I said I’d love one later. On the way to the third floor in the lift I dropped a few unsubtle hints about how eager I was to work for a private gallerist when I returned to London. The dei Grecis, conveniently, were dining with relatives that evening. As soon as we entered his room I slowly slipped off the new Kenzo coat and dropped it over the back of the chair. I could feel his eyes moving slowly up my legs, and I let him feel me feeling it and flashed him a smile under lowered eyes. The room felt too intimate, as hotel rooms always do. Behind elaborate triple curtains the window was open onto a scruffy ventilation shaft. A small wheeled suitcase lay unzipped on the luggage stand and a pile of papers and keys occupied a corner of the desk. On the bed lay a cheap black plastic case, the kind art students use, but when Cameron bent to unfasten it I saw that it was expertly padded and lined. Reverently, he lifted out the picture in a plain metal frame.

  “You didn’t crate it?”

  “Too much fuss—Italian bureaucracy.” So no one knew he had brought it in, except Rupert and the client.

  There it was, the duke and duchess at their eternal picnic, the trio of horses thundering over the gallops. It looked gaudier in the bluish twilight of Rome—perhaps the Chinese appreciated a nice shiny varnish. He stood behind my shoulder as he looked, but he was no Colonel Morris. He would wait for his pudding.

  “So,” I said, “I’m very impressed by the business part. Now, d’you fancy yourself as Marcello Mastroianni?”

  “La Dolce Vita at your command, signorina.”

  I told him I’d found the restaurant in my guidebook, though it was one I had known when I had been studying in the city. It was very old-fashioned, off the Piazza Cavour opposite Castello Sant’Angelo, on the piano nobile, with a covered loggia where one could eat outside. The Gstaad Club had given me plenty of practice at seeming to drink without swallowing much, and by the time we had finished the stuffed courgette flowers and the grilled fish, Cameron was ordering a third bottle. I might have been chewing straw, it was so difficult to force anything past the bolus of tension in my throat. Cameron was not an easy man to read—sure, he’d give you the stars from the Oirish sky to pin on your jacket if you asked him, but beneath the charm I was seeking what it was that he longed for, the little switch that, if I pressed it just right, would deliver him to me. It’s there in all men, and the trick is simply finding it and then, if you care to, making yourself into whatever it is they can’t quite admit to themselves that they want you to be. As the falling light turned the remains of the wine in the bottle from dull jade to viridian, Cameron took my hand across the table. I turned my wrist and he brought it to his lips.

  “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 toward 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 chivied 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 pad 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 and into his shoulder. As I felt for his ear, his eyes flared open. I realized 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 earlobe, 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 l
inen 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 toward 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, farther 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 toward 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, and 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 rolled 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, and 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, practicing for being traumatized, 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 adrenaline 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, the base of his skull 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 steady through my teeth, I stripped, did a quick cleanup 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. Earbuds 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 to be, 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 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 bath towel and spread it on the carpet, unscrewed the cigar tube. The thumb fell out, white and gray 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. Okay. 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 passwor
d 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 backup? 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 toward 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 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 bath towel 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.