Death of a Showgirl

by Tobias Jones

  I drove the short distance towards the sea with the windows down. The rich smell of salt and seaweed led me towards a wild sandy beach. Strong grasses were growing in the dunes and I parked up on a gravel clearing by a single lifebelt hanging from a wooden post. I reclined the seat and closed my eyes. The sound of the waves breaking on the sand was blissful. Even the squawk of the gulls was somehow soothing, a reminder of raw nature after a night in the city of ancient stones and asphalt. I fell asleep almost immediately. A deep, dreamless sleep.

  By the time I woke up it was already hot. It was only eight, but the heat was close. I was sweating. There was a dog barking somewhere on the beach, repeatedly yapping as if it had found something interesting and wanted to let the world know about it. I put my hand to the side of the seat and pulled up the lever, bringing the seat back up to vertical. I looked out at the sea, at the gentle waves as they caressed the sand. There were birds skipping along the shore trying to find food, others gliding on the morning breeze above them. I got out of the car and walked towards the sea, watching my long shadow as it bounced over the dunes and towards the birds. I could see the dog now, digging furiously at something in the sand. The air was reminiscent of those long summers I used to have with my grandparents years ago on the Adriatic: seaweed and salt and damp sand. I stood there for five minutes, thinking about everything and nothing.

  Then I turned round, got back in the car and headed towards Viterbo.

  It was a slow drive. The Rome rush hour was just starting and I sat in loud, slow traffic as I tried to head north. I put on the radio and listened to some station that was taking calls about a controversial derby match between Lazio and Roma. I couldn’t remember a derby that didn’t have controversy. Callers were offering each other colourful, raucous insults as they defended their partisan interpretations of last night’s game.

  Once I was off the ring-road I sped towards Viterbo. If Mori was there, I didn’t want to miss him. On the outskirts of town, I stopped at a bar and sank a coffee.

  ‘Via della Salute?’ The barman stared at the ceiling, shaking his head. He took out a local directory and found it in the index. ‘Ecco,’ he said, finding the right page and passing it over the counter.

  I got back in the car and found the place easily enough. It was a sad sort of street, lined on both sides by tall blocks from the 1960s. I couldn’t see any vegetation other than the weeds growing up through the cracked pavements. The odd balcony had plants and flowers, but there was mostly concrete as far as the eye could see. On all the rooftops there were aerials like bleak silhouetted saplings in winter. Some of the aerials had fallen over and become entangled in the rest of the forest while others looked like old scars, with short lines perpendicular to the main central vane.

  Number 34 was towards the far end. There was a rectangle with fifty or sixty surnames. I found Mori’s name and held his buzzer. I looked at my watch. It was just after nine.

  ‘Who is it?’ a voice said over the intercom.

  ‘My name’s Castagnetti. I’m looking for Massimo Mori.’

  ‘That’s me. What do you want?’

  It felt all too easy. ‘I’m looking for a young girl. Simona Biondi. You were staying in a hotel on the outskirts of Rome with her last night.’

  ‘You must have the wrong person.’

  ‘May I come in?’

  ‘You’ve got the wrong person,’ he repeated.

  I thought there was a hint of doubt in his voice. ‘Can we talk face to face?’ I asked.

  He hesitated and then buzzed the gate open. ‘Ninth floor,’ he said.

  I walked through the concrete courtyard and into the main foyer. I waited for the lift with a young woman carrying a baby.

  ‘Do you know Massimo Mori?’ I asked her. ‘He lives on the ninth floor.’

  She shrugged and shook her head. ‘Don’t know any of the neighbours,’ she said.

  We got in the lift together and the narrow box creaked up to the ninth floor. When the lift doors opened I saw a short man standing in a doorway. He looked the same as the man from the passport: he was the wrong side of middle age with short silver hair, a face lined by the sun and, judging by the smell, cigarettes. His chin had given up the fight against gravity and was covering the top of his jumper. I knew instinctively that he wasn’t the man I was looking for. He was in slippers and had something about him that suggested he didn’t often get out of them.

  ‘I’m Mori,’ he said, holding out a hand.

  ‘Castagnetti.’

  ‘Prego,’ he said politely, holding open his door and inviting me inside. ‘What’s this about?’

  We stood facing each other in the corridor. A woman came and stood beside him: she had the same sort of figure and looked, as much as I could tell, like a kindly grandmother: her grey hair was in a bun and she had heirloom glasses balancing on her thin nose.

  I pulled the copy of his passport from my pocket and passed it over to him. ‘You checked out of the Hotel del Fiume yesterday.’

  His glasses were hanging on a chain around his neck and he put them on, looking down his nose at the sheet of paper. He shook his head. ‘I’ve been here all week. Haven’t been to Rome at all.’

  ‘May I see your passport?’

  He frowned, pulling off his glasses. He raised his white eyebrows as if he suddenly understood what was happening. He was still looking at me when he shut his eyes and shook his head, smiling wryly.

  ‘Where’s your passport?’

  ‘I lent it to my brother,’ he said. ‘Our mother died recently. Well, quite a few months ago now. We’ve spent a very long time trying to do probate, trying to organise everything. You know what it’s like.’

  I did, sort of. My parents had checked out when I was still a kid. I hadn’t had to deal with the paperwork, but I had dealt with all the rest.

  ‘Endless forms,’ he shook his head, ‘and documents. Dealing with lawyers and banks and notaries. It’s taken a long time.’ He looked at me with a sad, mournful face. ‘My brother and I have been slowly going through it all and quite often we’ve needed ID for this or that. I lent him my passport a month or so ago. I didn’t need it after all. The furthest we go nowadays is to the supermarket.’

  ‘What’s your brother called?’

  ‘Fabrizio. Fabrizio Mori.’

  ‘And where does he live?’

  ‘South of Rome.’

  The three of us stared at each other.

  ‘Can I offer you a coffee?’ the old woman asked.

  I said I would be grateful and she shuffled off down the corridor.

  ‘Prego, prego,’ the man said, leading me into a sitting room. ‘Prego,’ he said again, motioning towards a low sofa that was upholstered with the thick brown cloth that was fashionable in the 1970s.

  ‘Tell me about your brother,’ I said quietly.

  He sighed wearily. ‘He’s always been . . . ’ He stopped and stared at the small rectangles of parquet flooring. ‘He’s always been in trouble. Always.’

  ‘What kind of trouble?’

  He shrugged. ‘Money trouble. Women trouble. Career trouble. Trouble seems to follow him around as surely as his shadow. Even when we were at school he would get into scrapes. I was nine when he was born so I remember it all. He kept us up all night when he was a baby and he’s kept us up ever since.’

  I was surprised how respectable the man looked, how formal he seemed. He looked an unlikely sibling of a kidnapper. He looked up at me as if he had read my thoughts and shrugged.

  ‘We may look alike, but we had different fathers. After she was widowed my mother was briefly married to a man. I knew he was a thug. My mother found out pretty fast too, but by then she was pregnant with Fabrizio. The man left before he was even born, which is why he ended up with the same surname as me. Mother tried to wipe the man from her memory, but every time Fabrizio got into trouble she was reminded of her mistake.’

  ‘What kind of scrapes?’

  He snorted, a sort of regretful la
ugh. ‘It would have been easier to keep a cat in a pool than keep Fabrizio in a classroom. Every day the school would phone up to say he was absent. “But I took him into the classroom myself,” my mother would say. But he had gone to the loo and not come back. Or had gone to a bar and not returned. In the end the school forgot about him and the authorities started taking an interest. He was shoplifting, drinking. You know, the normal alternatives to education.’

  The wife came in, bring a tray of small cups and a plate of thin biscuits.

  ‘What’s his line of work?’ I asked as I spooned sugar into the coffee.

  The woman rocked her head to one side, as if to suggest it was an optimistic question.

  ‘He calls himself a photographer.’ The man did a slow-motion blink as though he didn’t believe it.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘He’s self-employed. More self than employed.’

  ‘So how does he earn money?’

  The wife was being quiet, clearly not wanting to insult her brother’s family, but her disdainful expression was eloquent enough.

  ‘He doesn’t,’ the older brother said. ‘He gets by doing wedding snaps, doing portraits of kids, that sort of stuff. But hardly anything. I would say he gets a commission once a month, if that. And his reputation unfortunately goes before him: that he takes the money and runs. Or that he will only get round to producing the photos when the happy couple already have three children.’

  ‘You said he sometimes does kids’ portraits. Has he ever been in trouble with children?’

  ‘How do you mean?’ The man’s honest eyes looked beady.

  ‘The girl who has gone missing is a very young woman. I don’t understand the motive for her abduction as yet, but I’m looking at all the options.’

  The man was still staring at me. I could see his wife out of the corner of my eye shaking her head.

  ‘Fabrizio,’ he said wearily, ‘is lazy, naïve, greedy, even dishonest. That’s all true.’ The brother was holding his coffee cup at an angle to peer at the remains. ‘But he’s not that sort. He’s never been in trouble with children.’

  I nodded, letting him know I trusted his word. ‘So what kind of trouble has he been in? And I’m not talking truancy.’

  ‘It would be quicker to say what trouble hasn’t he been in.’ He gave me a long list of petty offences. It all made Fabrizio Mori sound small fry, the sort of person who didn’t have the will or the head to go straight, but didn’t have the guile or skill to avoid arrest. He was, like most I had met, in that large middle ground occupied by incompetent crooks.

  As Massimo, the older brother, was talking I slowly realised how Fabrizio’s troubles had hurt him. Not just the money borrowed and never returned, or the trust betrayed, or the night-time phone calls from various tight spots or holding cells. It was as if having Fabrizio as his younger brother had prevented Massimo from ever entirely being the respectable citizen he craved to be. He was forever associated with his hapless, dishonest half-brother. And because he was only a half-brother, he constantly reminded Massimo of his own father’s absence. And now, worst of all, his mourning for his mother was interrupted by the revelation that Fabrizio, rather than sorting out her estate, was involved in the abduction of a young girl.

  ‘So I suppose his name’s been in the papers?’ I asked.

  ‘Not really. His name only got in the papers when he tried to put other people’s in there.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘Fabrizio went through a phase when he thought he was a paparazzo. You know, a showbiz snapper, a telephoto snooper. It kind of brought his talents, such as they were, together. He would hang out in fashionable clubs and bars in Rome, stay up all night for one shot of a politician’s girlfriend, that sort of nonsense. But he stuck at it. He was good at it. It was the one phase of his life he seemed proud of what he was doing.’

  ‘He used to come round here,’ the wife said brightly, relieved to have the chance to speak well of her brother-in-law, ‘and show us his photographs. The published versions, I mean. He would bring round a copy of this or that magazine for us. You know, the kind you find at the hairdresser’s. And there, in a corner of the page, would be his credit, his name. I’ll never forget the first time he showed me one. His name was written so small I could barely see it. It wasn’t much, but he was proud of his little achievements and he was desperate for us to share his pride. And we did. It wasn’t exactly heroic work, but it was honest and that, by then, was a relief.’

  She paused, looking wistfully at the tray of empty coffee cups.

  They both seemed reluctant to go on.

  ‘So?’

  The husband closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Fabrizio realised he could make more money from people who didn’t want to appear in gossip magazines than from those who did.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Say what you like about Fabrizio, he always saw an opening. After a few months of snapping these semi-celebrities, he realised he was boosting their careers more than his. The magazine he worked for only bought the flattering shots, the ones where their make-up was perfect, where they were smiling and cheerful.’

  The man was hedging around what had happened, not wanting to recall or share his brother’s scam.

  ‘So Fabrizio started a collection of more compromising shots. Not just ones where these people looked less glamorous, but photographs in which they were . . .’ He paused, lost for words, ‘indulging their vices.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  He looked at the ceiling briefly, like something up there could give him strength. ‘It was private stuff. Private moments that these people didn’t want made public. Fabrizio maybe saw a celebrity out on the town with a lover and would snap all evening. Maybe see a sportsman taking drugs and . . .’ He lowered his index finger like someone snapping away and pulled a disdainful grimace. ‘He would find the daughter of a famous industrialist getting passionate in a car and get his shots. I don’t know how he even knew where to look. Fabrizio was effectively blackmailing them. I don’t think he ever realised that’s what he was doing. He said he was just offering his photographs to the highest bidder. Only, of course, the highest bidder was always the compromised person. He started making a lot of money. Significant amounts of money. He stopped coming round here to show us his tiny credits in cheap magazines. In fact, the magazines weren’t even publishing his photos any more. He had found a better way to make money.’

  The wife sighed and stood up, taking the tray of empty coffee cups back into the kitchen. Mori looked at me and rocked his head slowly, looking at me to make sure it had all sunk in.

  ‘How did he get found out?’

  ‘One of his victims denounced him. Fabrizio was put on trial, convicted of extortion.’

  ‘How long ago was this?’

  ‘Twenty years ago maybe. I can’t remember. He spent a few months in prison and then sort of spiralled downhill from there. He had made a lot of money from his little racket but that all disappeared quickly enough. With his reputation, he couldn’t get a proper job and, even if he had, he wouldn’t have been able to hold it down. At least before he had some energy and charisma, such as it was. For the last few years he’s . . .’ Mori shrugged as he left the sentence unfinished.

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘Campeggio del Sole. It’s one of those campsites to the south of the capital. He lives in a static caravan out there. Lot 37 South.’

  ‘You got a phone number?’

  I dialled as he said the numbers. There was no reply. I let it ring on as I turned back towards Massimo Mori.

  ‘A young girl is missing and it seems certain she’s with your brother. I need to understand what sort of threat he poses. Is he likely to harm her?’

  Mori closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘Presumably you didn’t think he would steal or extort either?’

  He stared at me. ‘You’re wrong. I’m afraid I wasn’t even surprised
when he was arrested for this or that. Not surprised. But he wouldn’t, wouldn’t ever . . .’ He trailed off again, staring at the wall behind me as he shook his head.

  ‘Does the name Simona Biondi mean anything to you?’

  He shook his head again. ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘The girl. Fabrizio’s never been connected with anyone called Biondi?’

  ‘Not that I know.’

  ‘Have you got a photograph of him?’

  ‘Of Fabrizio?’

  I nodded and he stood up, groaning slightly with the effort as he pushed himself up by leaning on the arm of his chair. He came back a minute later, holding a framed photograph. He passed it over and I looked at the two brothers, arms around each other’s shoulders. Fabrizio’s face looked longer than his older brother’s. He was staring at the camera as if it had insulted him and he looked surly, his eyelids low over his dark, shrewd eyes.

  ‘Nothing more recent?’ I asked. The photo I was looking at must have been from twenty years ago.

  He shook his head. ‘We haven’t exactly met up much recently. And even when we do, we don’t take snaps for the family album.’

  ‘Mind if I take this?’ I asked.

  He shrugged as if it were all the same to him. I opened up the back of the frame and slipped out the photo. I tried to imagine him with grey hair in a ponytail.

  I gave the man a card and told him to call me if he heard from his brother. He looked at it wearily, like he had been told something similar many times before. He walked me to the door and shook my hand. He looked sheepish, as if he were to blame for his brother’s conduct.

  ‘When you find him, tell him to give me my passport back.’

  I nodded, thanked him for the coffee, and headed down the nine flights of stairs.

  By now the sun was high and hot. The car felt like a sauna as I got in, a gust of dense air hitting me as I bent into the scalding seat. I wound down the windows and drove as fast as I could to get some cool air coming in.