Maestra

by L. S. Hilton

  “Put the things in your handbag. Quickly, all of it. Take the computer too. Take the picture. Do it.”

  I obeyed mutely. Stuffed the laptop and the papers into my bag, zipped the flat carrying case. Renaud was stuffing the thing back into his pocket. When I found my voice, it came out high-pitched like a wind-up doll.

  “Renaud!” I coughed, breathed, hissed. “Renaud. This is crazy. I don’t understand.”

  “The police will be here in ten minutes. Do as I say. I’ll explain later.”

  “But, fingerprints?” There was the beginning of a hysterical scream in my question.

  “I told you, it’s taken care of. Move!”

  My bag was overflowing, I couldn’t fasten it. I took off my scarf and did my best to hide the contents.

  “Take the picture. Go. Take a cab to the flat. I’ll be there soon. Go.”

  “He-he had a briefcase.” I pointed. My body was a stream. I couldn’t seem to find any purchase on the floor.

  “Take that too. Now. Get. The fuck. Out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  WAITING AGAIN. The sofa and my escritoire were wrapped in plastic sheeting, so I sat on the floor among the packing cases, my back to the wall. I drew my knees under my chin and closed my eyes. Some bit of my brain was reflecting that watching a murder was oddly more shocking than committing it. I didn’t even feel like smoking. Again, the buzz of the street door; again, the weight of his tread on the stairs. I lifted my head wearily; my eyes felt as though they should be black, desolate as a shark’s. It was only when Renaud turned on the light that I realized I had been sitting in the dark. He looked jaunty, though perhaps that’s normal for someone who’s just strangled a notorious Mafioso.

  “This had better be good.”

  He came and sat beside me, put an arm around me. I didn’t shake him off—I can’t bear those female theatrics.

  “I’m sorry, Judith. It was the only way. It was him or me.”

  “But your client. How are you supposed to get the money for his wretched Rothko now?”

  “Moncada knew who I was. He was looking for me. He was prepared to kill; you saw the gun.”

  “But he had no idea you were in Paris.”

  “Exactly. As I said, it was a matter of time. Which of us found the other first. You don’t need to worry about the police. I have my friend at the prefecture, remember?”

  I didn’t smile.

  “I tipped him off,” he continued. “They know what Moncada was into, they’ll see he was armed, and they’ll clear it up. You did them a favor, think of it that way.”

  “And your client?”

  “I’ll be in touch with Moncada’s associates. They’ll see this as the warning it is. I’ll get my money.”

  “Hurray for you.”

  “Don’t be like that. Look.”

  He took a folded brown envelope from inside his jacket and passed it to me. I had it in my hand before I remembered it would have been sitting next to the garrote. There was the photo from the Metro at Saint Michel in a spanking-new passport, a driving license, even a carte de séjour.

  “Leanne? That’s low, Renaud.”

  “A twenty-seven-year-old Englishwoman, recently deceased? It seemed too good to pass up. Anyway, it’ll remind you to keep your nose clean.”

  “How did you do it?”

  “The prefecture contacted your consulate. A poor young lady who had been attacked and robbed, recovering now in hospital. Her parents anxious to take her home. You skip through as her. It’s clean.”

  “Pretty impressive contact you’ve got there. The gendarmes seem remarkably accommodating.”

  “It’s a quid pro quo.”

  I gave him a long look.

  “Don’t feel bad.”

  “I do feel fucking bad. Do I look like a Leanne to you?”

  We sat there for a while, both our heads resting against the wall. After a while I asked him, “So the Rothko, what was it, anyway? I mean, which picture?”

  “Dunno. I mean, they’re all the same, aren’t they? Big reddish squares, I think.”

  If there’s anything I’ve learned, it’s that talking yourself into low expectations never works. You tell yourself to expect nothing, but when you get it, you still feel a tiny bit of irrational disappointment. I’d wanted to give him one more chance. I really had. He could have told me the truth and given me a head start, at least. I let my cheek fall against his shoulder.

  “So,” I said. “Job done.”

  “Oui. I brought something. In the bag by the door.” I hauled it toward me.

  “Cristal. My favorite. I’ll open it.” In unison, our four eyes swiveled to my own bag on the floor, lying next to Moncada’s briefcase and a million-pound painting. In it his things, the gun.

  “No, I’ll open it,” Renaud said quickly.

  He caught my eye and we laughed, a real laugh, complicit.

  “How about I hold the bottle and you get the glasses? They’re in one of those boxes.”

  I stood up so he could see me. “Look. No sudden moves.”

  A tiny, anamorphic moment. Slanted another way, we were doubled for a second, he and I, and I saw how things could have been. I went over to the window. God, I was going to miss this flat, I was going to miss the night sky over Paris.

  “Can’t find them.”

  “Maybe in the other one? You’ll have to peel the tape off.”

  Still holding the bottle aloft in my right hand, I flicked the catch on the hidden drawer at the back of my writing desk. The silencer was already fitted to the barrel of the Glock 26.

  “Here they are.”

  Renaud stood with a coupe in either hand. He just had time to look surprised before I pulled the trigger.

  • • •

  ACCORDING TO Women Serial Killers of America, the 26 is the ideal lady’s gun. In the same way that crimes in the movies can be solved only by a detective on suspension, the silencer is much misrepresented. The only one that really works is the Ruger Mark II, but it’s more than a foot long and weighs a kilo, not exactly handbag-friendly. And then there’s the trade-off. The quieter the shot, the less powerful the round that can be used; the less powerful the round, the shorter distance the bullet travels and the less damage it causes. The Glock is half the weight of the Ruger, and apparently a sexy little number, if you like that sort of thing. It’s amazing what you can fit into a hollowed-out catalog if you try hard enough. A supersonic bullet has a loud crack that no silencer will do much about; a subsonic, on the other hand, is quiet, but the shot has to be to the head, otherwise there’s no guarantee the target will go down. Dave’s army contacts had kindly provided me with six subsonic bullets in a Wispa wrapper, and since the nearest I’d ever got to a gun outside Southport funfair was hauling Rupert’s Berettas to his Range Rover on a Friday afternoon, Dave had also enclosed a postcard of Boucher’s Madame de Pompadour with “5 meters” written on the back. Luckily my drawing room wasn’t particularly large.

  I wove through the packing cases and put two more bullets in Renaud’s head point-blank, just to be sure. The silencer made a pretty loud whooshing suck, but even with the windows closed all I could hear outside was the concierge’s blessed, eternal telenovela. And in cities, at least in good neighborhoods, people don’t hear shots. Or, rather, they hear them, and think, That’s funny. Sounded like a gun, and go back to watching Britain’s Got Talent. I opened the Cristal and took a spluttering swig out of the neck of the bottle. It was a bit warm. I put it in the fridge, which was splattered with Renaud’s brains, like an angry Pollock.

  There was a knock at the door.

  “Mademoiselle? Tout se passe bien?”

  Fuck. The downstairs neighbor. Fucking Left Bank intellectuals. Why couldn’t they be watching telly? He was a lawyer, I’d seen from the mailbox, older guy, maybe widowed. We’d e
xchanged greetings in the courtyard. I retrieved the bottle, took it with me toward the door, opened it a crack, and inserted myself onto the landing.

  “Just a minute.”

  “Bonsoir, mademoiselle. Is everything all right? I heard a noise—”

  I waved the bottle gaily. “Just a little celebration. I’m moving out, you see.”

  He wore glasses and a green cashmere cardigan over a work shirt and tie. In his left hand was a napkin. Quite the gent, using a napkin even when dining alone.

  “I’m sorry if we disturbed you.” I had my hand behind my back, clutching the door handle to keep it from swinging wide. “Would you care to join us?”

  “Thank you, but I was in the middle of dinner. If you’re sure that everything’s fine?”

  “Quite fine. I do apologize.”

  Part of me felt like asking him in, just for the hell of it. Well, it felt sexy.

  “Alors, bonsoir, mademoiselle.”

  “Bonsoir, monsieur.”

  Renaud might have looked at me reproachfully as I propped myself against the door and sucked down a gasper, but he didn’t have a face left. I dropped the fag end into the fizz, then I found the packing case labeled Cuisine and searched for the Japanese cleaver and a small toolkit I’d bought in the Arab convenience store. I took the plastic sheeting off the sofa, spread it on the floor, and rolled the body onto it, removing the phone and wallet from the pocket of the ghastly jacket. Before I pulled on my gloves I gave a bit of thought to a musical accompaniment. Mozart again, the Requiem this time. Cheap shot, but then he’d been prepared to land me with “Leanne” for the forseeable. I dimmed the lights and found a candle under the sink for atmosphere. Then I set to work.

  • • •

  AFTER HER REVOLUTIONARY Judith Slaying Holofernes, Artemisia Gentileschi left Rome for Florence, where she painted a more conventional version of the subject. Giuditta con la sua ancella, Judith with her Maid, hangs in the Pitti Palace. Initially, there’s nothing violent about it. It’s a picture of two women tidying up. The maid is in the foreground, her back to the viewer, her yellow dress protected by an apron, her hair twisted in a practical rag. Her mistress is in profile behind the maid’s extended left arm, looking behind her to see if they are being followed, hoping they can get the job done in time. Her hair is carefully arranged, her dark, velvetlike dress richly brocaded. Over her shoulder she carries a sword; beneath its hilt the eye is drawn to the basket crooked in the maid’s arm. Which contains Holofernes’s head, bundled in muslin like a Christmas pudding. The women are poised in a moment of deadly tension, but the picture sings their silence. They are anxious but unhurried, pausing deliberately to see if they are pursued before getting down to what they have to do. There is weight in the painting, the drag of the heavy sword hilt on Judith’s shoulder, the solidity of the severed head in the basket supported on the maid’s hip. This, for them, is the next thing.

  Using the plastic sheeting for leverage, I dragged the body over the parquet to the bathroom. My shoulders and the muscles of my abdomen strained, I had to pause several times, but I got it in there. I’d always liked the luxury of a walk-in shower. I stripped to my knickers, bundled my jeans and sweater into the tub, then went back and filled the kitchen sink. I gave the whole place a good squirt of Monsieur Propre and started to swab it down, wringing the cloth until it turned from crimson to pinkish gray, running more and more hot water. The waste trap filled with viscous lumps. I gathered a wincing handful and flushed them down the lavatory. When the drawing room was clean I swilled water and bleach along the floor to the bathroom, everything immaculate for the next tenant.

  I expected to cringe at the first cut, but it turned out that I’d seen worse when I worked at the Chinese takeaway. With the shower running, the eight pints of blood contained in the human body streamed tidily enough down the drain in a few minutes. The neck gave a froglike belch as I hit the carotid artery, but there were no spouts of gore, just puddles and ooze and a surprisingly clean layer of whitish fat, like a ham sandwich. I left the head under the water while I dragged in the extra packing case I’d ordered. I cut off the blood-soaked clothes with another of the Japanese knives and chucked them into the bath. I unrolled a towel and shoved the body onto it, then spent some time drying it off with my hair dryer. I didn’t want the box to leak. Two rubbish bags, top and tail, then a padded holder from the dry cleaner, special jumbo size. The kind used to preserve wedding dresses. I padded back to the front door and collected Moncada’s wallet and briefcase, laid them on the bottom of the packing case and rolled the body in sideways, braced myself against the sink with my hands under the lip of the case, and hauled it upright. I turned Mozart up loud while I hammered down the lid. Finally I gaffer-taped all the seams several times, and attached some of the helpful stickers the moving company had given me—Heavy, This way up. Renaud was ready to go to Vincennes. What was left of him, anyway.

  First, I wrapped the head in cling film, then popped it in a Casino supermarket bag, tied the handles together, then put that into a snap-close Decathlon sports carrier, along with Moncada’s gun and the manky Nikes Renaud had used to plod after me round the Luxembourg. I gave it an exploratory kick—no telltale drippage. I cleaned my way around the flat once more, using a toothbrush dipped in bleach for the insides of the taps and the bath plug, bundling the plastic sheeting together with our clothes and stuffing all that in another bag, backtracking to the shower to sluice myself down. Then I sat wetly on the floor and lit a fag. In front of me was a black bin liner of bloodied rubbish, the leather getaway holdall, the sports carrier, and the black case containing the Richter. I could put the clothes and tools down the incinerator chute behind the concierge’s broom cupboard off the courtyard. I packed the bag containing the head like a grisly picnic into the straw basket Renaud and I used to take to the market. I took track pants, sports bra, trainers, and a sweatshirt from the holdall, shoved on a cashmere beanie, and trotted out into the night. I made it to the river in under ten minutes, pretty good, tracing the same route to the one when I’d played cat and mouse with Renaud.

  Like most portentous moments in life, our good-bye descended into bathos. I had given some thought to our final farewell, the Pont Neuf, the lovers’ bridge to Île de la Cité, but even at this hour there were couples entwined in the bays, watching the lumen-drenched currents of the Seine. I took the stone staircase down to the scraggy garden at the tip of the island, freezing as two patroling gendarmes paused at the foot to allow me past. They said “Bonsoir” politely, but I could feel them watching me as I walked over to the statue of Henri IV, the basket cradled under my arm. I didn’t dare risk a splash, so after a while I passed them again and crossed over to the quai, keeping my eye out for sleeping tramps. I sat with my feet dangling toward the icy water and lowered the bag by the handles until it was submerged, the current tugging at my fingers. Gently, I let it go.

  • • •

  WHEN I WAS FINISHED, finally, it was dawn. I thought that was the time I’d remember Paris best, in the end, the littoral moments between night and day when the city shifts on its axis, between the stripped-retina shame of the party’s end and the clean-aproned bustle of the morning. The white time, the negative space, the gap between desire and lack. Renaud had always slept through the dawn, with a tiny bit of help, of course. All those cozy suppers, none lacking my special secret ingredient. Nothing heavy, just something to take the edge off, just to make sure he was out for the hour or so after we’d made love when I could retrieve the spare laptop I kept hidden behind the bookshelf and go hunting.

  Exceeding the mark can sometimes be just as much a mistake as missing it. I’d been fooled, I admit, by Cameron Fitzpatrick’s knack with the blarney, but one word had shown me that Renaud was not what he said. Certo. Of course. The roll of the r too precise, the tiny lifted inflection at the end of the word. The real thing. That and the osso buco.

  Plus, the cas
ual drop of da Silva’s name. The car in which da Silva had arrived last summer in Como, to begin his investigation, was a Guardia di Finanza vehicle. The Italian police force is split into many divisions, and oddly, Mafia investigations are not dealt with by the carabinieri, the sexy poster boys in their tight uniforms who set the gap-year girls’ hearts aflutter, but by the more prosaically titled Financial Guards. I had guessed Moncada was Mafia in Rome, known it when I saw the car.

  Da Silva. Facebook friends never had been my style, but they were certainly Signora da Silva’s. Franci, short for Francesca, couldn’t seem to throw a pot of spaghetti on the stove without uploading the latest detail of her thrilling life. With more than eight hundred friends, I figured one more random acquaintance wouldn’t make a difference to Franci, and a random snap culled from a local paper, with a suitable name amalgamated from the Roman phone directory made me a new friend. I eagerly posted a picture of my new sofa, and a cute little Kinder hippopotamus with coconut frosting—“Naughty!”—and then sat back to scroll through the details of Franci’s existence in a Roman suburb. Christmas, Easter, a Prada purse her husband had given her for her birthday, a family holiday in Sardinia, a new dishwasher. Franci was certainly living the dream. The da Silvas had two children, Giulia, four, and baby Giovanni, who must have been photographed more than the Beckham brats. And there, at Giovanni’s christening, in the corner of a shot, next to the proud mama trying to disguise her baby weight in an unfortunate red suit with a peplum, and Papa, neat and fit in suit and tie, was a familiar soft swell of paunch, and on the paunch, when I’d magnified it and spun it, and looked again and again, a monogram. R. C. Renato, Ronaldo? It didn’t matter. A simple online search found a Chiotasso, Sarto, listed in the business section of the Italian phone book in the same suburb where Franci da Silva filmed the ongoing documentary of her life. Sarto—tailor. He’d told me that his father was a tailor, still carrying on the business in that doughty Italian way, and the initials fit. So they’d grown up together, Renaud and da Silva, stayed true to the old neighborhood. They were friends, not professional acquaintances. A real pair of wiseguys.