Richard House - The Kills

Santo held Rem’s head in his hands. ‘I’m taking Geezler back to his house. I’m going to leave him in the basement, and I’m going to shut the door. In nine hours he’s going to revive. Alone. In a room he can’t get out of. You have to live with this. You have to deal with this on your own. We can’t let him continue, we can’t allow him to make more profit from what he has done. We’re all adults, and there are consequences to every action that we take. What happened to Kiprowski wasn’t right, and Pakosta will have to live with that, but Geezler, he doesn’t have to deal with anything, not unless we do this.

‘In fourteen hours you’ll come out of this. You should throw away these clothes, burn this chair, get rid of anything which attaches you to any of us. You will not go to the police. Pakosta is still sore at you. I’ve talked him round and this is the deal. You live with this, like we have to live with this.’

* * *

Rem slipped out of himself, backward and away.

* * *

Picture yourself above a highway, right below you a mess of trucks, cars, motorbikes converging on a slick turn on a rising road. Imagine, right before the scene gets complicated, that you can drop down, right out of the sky, pick someone up, and take them out of harm’s way. Imagine that. The car spinning behind you as you rise. The truck jack-knifing. The bike scudding the rock. Imagine not one person, but every one of them. That you could spirit them away. Every single one.

* * *

Oftentimes, at night, bordering sleep, the same sensation of hovering above a bright and broadening field would overtake Rem — and sometimes this sensation would annihilate him, at others he would hover with expectation that someone else was readying to join him.

Mr Rabbit: He gives them a choice. It’s the same in the film.

Mr Wolf: What kind of choice?

Mr Rabbit: They don’t know. He flips a coin, and they have to choose. Heads or tails.

Mr Wolf: What if they don’t want to?

Mr Rabbit: Not an option. Heads or tails. They have to choose.

Mr Wolf: And this is what you want to do?

Mr Rabbit: They get to decide what happens. Only they don’t know. They have no idea.

Mr Wolf: It’s a place to start.

SUNDAY: DAY A

Early on the last Sunday of July, Amelia Peña, supervisor at via Capasso 29, rented a tiny basement room to Salvatore, who, with his sons, ran a modest grocery and eatery set into the corner of the palazzo.

They met at the small service door on via Tribunali, and Peña escorted the man across an inner courtyard to the basement stairs. The courtyard was cluttered and unswept, and as they walked Salvatore answered Peña’s questions but did not chatter. He spoke quickly and in a soft voice, mellow enough so that much of what he said was lost to her. No, he said, in all these years he hadn’t seen these rooms before. The windows overlooking the courtyard were closed and shuttered. This wasn’t for him. This wasn’t for his business.

The basement, Peña explained, was what remained of an earlier building: small square rooms carved into the tufa with barrel vaults that might have been used as storage for food, oil, wine, nobody really knew, as nobody knew how old they were. Every building abutting the Duomo had similar rooms dug at different levels, each sunk deeper than an ordinary basement. Their layout didn’t conform to the layout of the buildings above and there were signs that they were once linked. Peña took the steps one by one, her hand fast on the side rail, and hoped that this effort wouldn’t be wasted. The temperature dropped as soon as they stepped out of the sun. The walls, rough as pumice, shed a white grit, a kind of static.

The previous tenant had left the room in a poor state: flattened boxes scattered across the slab floor, a stained mattress tied into a roll and tipped against the wall, a stove stripped of fittings turned into the room out of square. A window slit let in a little dull natural light through a shaft carved up to street level. And was that via Tribunali or via Capasso seven or eight metres above them? Salvatore couldn’t quite tell.

Salvatore stood under the window, cocked his head and appeared to listen. In all these years, he admitted, he’d assumed the door led to another apartment, or street-level rooms. Although he knew the city had subterranean vaults and passages, he’d never given it much serious thought. In the war, he said, and nodded. Yes, in the war, Peña supposed, they would have been used for shelter. Salvatore measured the room with strides. No one comes down here? he asked. It’s secure? Peña showed him the key-ring and chain. If he was worried about security, there were only two keys, he would have one and she would have the other. The last time these were used — she had to think back — would be seven or eight years ago. Whatever he wanted to store down here would be safe. Nobody knows about the place to steal from it, she said. Pay the rent in full and on time, and everything will remain secure.

Salvatore took two or three photographs with his mobile phone, although, in truth, there was nothing to show, and he didn’t seem to know what he was looking for. When he was done he snapped the phone shut and said he needed to return to the courtyard to get a signal.

Peña locked the door and laboured back up the steps. Not even halfway she paused for breath and asked if he was or wasn’t interested and the man became flustered. It wasn’t for him, he said. Hadn’t he explained? He was working as an agent, a go-between for his associates. They were brothers, businessmen, French, they didn’t speak Italian, and they were busy, so he’d agreed to check the room for them. Just as soon as he could send the images they would get right back to him.

He pressed ahead, and hurried through the door, and by the time she joined him Salvatore said he’d spoken with the brothers, they’d looked at the photos and they were happy. They’d take the room for one month, but they’d pay for two to cover any inconvenience or deposit. He could pay her now, in advance.

* * *

With money in her fist Peña repeated the terms of the lease. This was for one month, renewable before the end of the month. The first key would open the small door at the main entrance and the door to the basement from the courtyard. The larger brass key was for the room itself. Salvatore and his associates could come and go as they pleased, but they should not disturb the residents. As an afterthought she asked for the brothers’ contact details, just in case, and he wrote a number on the back of a business card. The room would need painting, if she could arrange this, and the men would require a driver.

It was only later, once she was back in her apartment that she looked at the card and read: Room 312, Hotel Grand, CMdS.

MONDAY: DAY B

For six weeks Mizuki Katsura’s clothes, hands, and hair reeked of a sweet vanilla. During the summer the bakery three floors below the language school on via Capasso produced small star-shaped biscuits, dipped in syrup and covered with paper then plastic and left to drip and dry on trays on racks in the courtyard. Throughout the day the sugar attracted a good number of wasps and the perfume rose as a fume and seeped, thick and unwelcome, into the schoolrooms and offices above.