Christobel Kent - Dead Season

‘Of course,’ he said, almost pensive, ‘the way it turned out, I didn’t even need to pay it back. Guardia as thick as pig shit, they’ll never track it down. Just looks like Claudio needed it for the bitch.’ He wasn’t sure, though: Roxana heard a note of bravado. But the Guardia weren’t all stupid, and Sandro Cellini wasn’t stupid. She said nothing.

‘Come on,’ he said, and tugged hard, shoved her in front of him, into the dark.

And then something cracked and burst overhead, a deafening bang as though a bomb had gone off and Roxana, who had always been afraid of thunder, stopped stock-still.

‘Move, bitch,’ said Val, and viciously he shoved her.

The thunder died away and the rushing replaced it, then the hard patter of torrential rain. Things began to drip, far off in the building: Roxana couldn’t move, thinking of the building’s warren of rooms. Not pretty, was that what the builder had said?

‘You want to see, or don’t you?’

I don’t , she said silently. I don’t, I don’t . But out of some instinct, she moved, his palm in the small of her back. Against her shoulder she felt her handbag, and pressed it tight against her, trying to make it invisible. Her mobile? He wouldn’t let her touch it.

‘Dumb little shit,’ said Val, almost conversational now. ‘Josef had Claudio’s card, had his numbers, but Josef dialled the bank first, didn’t he? I knew then. You remember, me taking that call Saturday? Thought I recognized the voice, and the way he hung up so fast gave it away: he’d dialled the wrong number. I did callback, and knew it was him. Now why would Josef be calling Claudio on a Saturday morning? Because he’d overheard us, Friday night? I thought he was out with his girl but he must have got back and been hiding there, listening. Blackmailing bastard, thought it had worked once with the flat and would work again this time, only with more information? Like, how I’d managed to shift the money around before the boss was even on the autostrada to the seaside, and it was hardly even illegal.’ He chewed his lip. ‘Or maybe he heard me say how we could just cut the little gypsy loose, now, stop all that pretence about the luxury apartment we’d move him and his girl into.’ He chewed his lip. ‘Of course, I didn’t know all that then. All I knew then was he was trying to get Claudio. So when I finished work Saturday, I got all dressed up in my rowing kit and off I went to find little Josef and set him straight. Only they were both there. Two birds, eh?’

Roxana just concentrated on locating herself. Left, then on. It was not completely dark after all: there was light from somewhere, though she didn’t know where. A room with padded chairs around the side, like a waiting room. It disgusted her, she didn’t know why. A smell. What did people do here?

Valentino chuckled at her shoulder, as if he knew what she was thinking. ‘Go on,’ he said urgently. ‘It’s here.’

And she was on the threshold of another room, a room so small it was inhuman, with a tiny dirty window high in a corner. A lopsided cooker at the end of bed with a rail, and something spattered above it.

A strap hung from the rail. The kind of thing you might use to attach luggage to a car, or a moped. Or a motorbike.

And before she could even let the breath out that she’d been holding, he pushed her, those strong oarsman’s arms propelling her across the room, on to the stinking bed, her bag beneath her, her head striking the wall so she saw stars. And as she tried to steady the spinning behind her eyes, she felt his hands, as hard as iron, felt the strap tightening around her wrists as he yanked them over her head.

‘Honeymoon suite,’ said Valentino.

*

Luisa paced the square metre of floor in front of the door, Beppe watching her.

‘Jesus, she’s taking her time,’ she said again.

Beppe raised his eyebrows; it wasn’t like Luisa to give in to anything like impatience, or profanity. She had her back to the door. ‘You can just go,’ he said. ‘If you need to go.’ She gazed at him: it would be breaking the habit of a lifetime.

‘You’re sure?’ she said, and Beppe nodded.

‘I’m going,’ she said.

*

Soaked to the skin, Giuli had just retraced her steps and reached the steel shutter of the lock-up when the hail started up, startlingly violent, white pellets hurtling from the sky. And then the taxi rounded the corner, creeping along the street, the hail bouncing from its roof with a deafening rattle. It stopped just short of where Giuli stood, hunched under the onslaught, and as she stared, Sandro climbed out.

Then a sound behind her, an awful kind of low grunt, like an animal, made her turn. An animal? She remembered that mewling earlier: had it come from here? The shutter was raised by a metre, maybe a bit more. She kneeled and shoved it up further.

‘Oh, Jesus,’ she said. ‘Oh Jesus, God in heaven.’

Anna Niescu was in there.

Crouching among vegetable crates, like an animal who’d crawled inside somewhere to die. Her face was so white it was luminous, and her eyes were filmed, as though she was looking at them but couldn’t see them. She was leaning forward.

‘I couldn’t — I couldn’t-’ The girl turned her head and gazed at Giuli, pleading, the words came with difficulty. ‘I didn’t know it would be like this. He’s waiting for me, do you know? He’s come back for me, only I–I had to stop.’ Her voice lowered, to an urgent whisper. ‘The baby’s coming. It’s coming. I couldn’t — not in the street. The shutter was up and I–I’m sorry. Am I in trouble?’ And then her face changed, her eyes stared, focused on some terrible inner effort.

Giuli felt Sandro come up beside her, heard him say something under his breath but she didn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything for the rushing in her own ears. As they watched, Anna made that terrible sound again, the sound that had brought them in here, a cow sound, a moan from low down in her throat. She shifted, and with the movement Giuli saw that there was blood on Anna’s skirt.

Anna’s mouth moved, but she didn’t seem to be able to say words.

‘She’s having the baby,’ said Giuli through numb lips, looking into Sandro’s face for help.

Sandro was staring at the blood. ‘I can’t — ’ he said, ‘I don’t know if I can-’ And swayed just enough to galvanize Giuli into something like sense.

‘Get an ambulance,’ she said.

He was still staring. ‘Josef,’ he said. ‘Did Josef come?’

She shook her head. ‘A man and a girl,’ she said impatiently. ‘I saw a man and a girl. That’s all.’

As if hypnotized, Sandro went on staring, then abruptly his eyes came into focus. ‘Ambulance,’ he said.

On her knees, Anna turned her head and her eyes met Giuli’s.

‘All right,’ Giuli said. ‘I’m coming.’ And she took the two steps, three, four, towards the kneeling girl, and the blood. ‘It’s all right, Anna,’ she said. ‘It’s going to be all right.’

‘I always thought I could do it,’ said Valentino, reaching under the bed for something. She heard it scrape. His voice was musing, almost conversational.

‘Of course, with the two of them, I had to be fast. You have to be fast, take them by surprise. They were in here: I let myself in, and I heard them. Got Claudio on the back of the head, before he even turned around.’ He nodded to himself. ‘That little Roma Josef was trickier. I got his phone off him but he was like a pig, fast and slippery. I got him down though. Superior strength and all that. I train, you know?’

She said nothing.

‘Getting Claudio out of here, that was the hard bit.’ He laughed briefly, in admiration of himself, and straightened up, holding what he had retrieved from under the bed in his lap.