Richard House - The Kills

‘So how much are you looking for?’ he asked.

The men looked eye to eye.

‘Three hundred euro and we can take you there tonight. You can have a look now.’

Massimiliano took a drag himself, a deep, slow intake. He leaned his head back, wrapped his arm about Finn’s shoulders. Looking up at the sky he held his breath, then slowly, in what seemed to be an infinitely beautiful moment, exhaled with a satisfied hum, a soft guttural roll. He offered the cigarette back to Finn.

‘I like the name. Finn. It’s a good name.’

The two men held on to each other. Massimiliano, inexpressibly big and soft, seemed permeable, his arm still about Finn’s shoulder. ‘You have three hundred euro. It’s nothing. You can afford this.’

‘How do you have the keys?’

‘For the shop. Everyone has keys.’

* * *

Massimiliano opened the small portal door to the courtyard, and as he held it open he warned that there wasn’t a great deal to see (now the money had changed hands), but a trained eye could pick out the right details to get a close picture of what had happened. The two brothers led Finn across the courtyard to an unlocked metal door. Rino followed behind, his hands in his pockets. Finn ducked through the doorway and found to his surprise a steep set of steps carved into the rock to form something like a tunnel, the top of which was rounded, the steps themselves small, steep, and worn with use. A blue electric cable threaded down the steps, and Finn, feeling increasingly more of an interloper, consciously ducked to make himself smaller — still feeling a soft buzzing blur from the reefer (surely something more than just a regular reefer).

The four men came carefully down to the basement. The air, cooler underground, set up the hairs on their arms, a stale reek of mildew made them hold their breaths. At the bottom, Massimiliano pushed forward and indicated a door set into the right side.

The door, small, metal, chipped and battered, had the lock punched out and the handle removed so that it could not lock. Salvatore pointed this out. ‘They took the door handle as evidence,’ he said, smiling. ‘Look, they cut it out.’

The blue cable ran along the corridor into the room, and he could see through the doorway a set of photographers’ lights to the left and the right. Finn had the feeling that the brothers had brought a good number of people into the basement, and the likelihood of it costing three hundred euro to every person was slim. He took in breaths, held them, slowly released, and thought that he would not be able to stay for long because of the overbearing reek of mould.

The room itself was entirely stripped, smaller and cleaner than he had imagined. A strip-light in the corridor shed an oblong of sour yellow into the room. Of all the reports Finn had read, none had given much of a sense of the space and just how tiny it was.

Massimiliano leaned into one of the corners. ‘There are more caves under this,’ he kicked his heel to scuff the stone. Then stamped. ‘Can you hear that?’ A small boom, perhaps nothing. He stamped again. Moments later another faint boom, deep below, possibly imagined. ‘You wouldn’t think that people used to live here. When they built these old palazzos the city introduced a stone tax. You couldn’t bring stone to the city, so most of the palazzos were built from stone dug out from under them. You have buildings five or six floors high which lean against each other and that’s all that holds them up.’

Salvatore held out his hands and shook them, made a rumbling noise and Finn realized he was talking about an earthquake.

Rino, uncomfortable, sweating, bowed his head. He was sorry he said, but he would have to leave. The basement had a bad smell, the room was too confining. Finn felt uneasy as the man scuttled out. The remaining men did not speak as the scuff of Rino’s footsteps tracked back to the courtyard hollow and fast.

Finn realized that he was alone with two men, brothers, in a basement where two men (brothers according to Marek Krawiec) had cut their first victim, another American, to pieces. Salvatore said that he would turn on the electricity for the lights and disappeared after Rino, leaving Finn and Massimiliano to face each other in the basement. Neither speaking. As if a plan were now in action. The light from the corridor fell on the man’s shoulders but not his face, which seemed to Finn to hold a desperate expression. Finn began to compose an excuse in his head. Massimiliano watched him without a word.

With a loud click the basement lights completely failed, both Finn and Massimiliano were swallowed by thick, clothy darkness. This is it. Finn felt himself weaken, become dizzy. He had walked directly into this, and any questions he’d had about how the brothers had enticed the boy to the palazzo were gone. It was that easy. A little curiosity. A little smoke. If he ran there would be Rino and Salvatore to contend with, there would be no escape. His sister, he thought, would be hearing bad news.

A timid apology echoed down from the courtyard, and with a third click both the photographic lights and the corridor lights suddenly brightened. The glare, so instant and so bright, brought Finn and Massimiliano’s arms up to cover their eyes. Finn began to laugh with relief. He was sweating and he could smell himself even above the mould, sour and bitter, and he could taste bile. For the boy, he thought, there had been no such relief.

They lowered their arms slowly, blinked and grinned and grew accustomed to the light. Massimiliano cleared his throat, and, as if obligated, explained that the holes, these holes, were where the plastic sheeting found at Ercolano had been pinned to the stone. Starting at this line here, and ending there, close to the doors. The police had brought two sheets back and rehung them, and found that whoever had prepped the room had taken considerable care to make sure that the sheets were held taut and flat. It would have been a difficult job and it would have taken two people. The tape used to hold the plastic together was cut, sliced, and set at regular intervals to prevent the plastic from sagging. ‘A professional job.’ Massimiliano nodded almost in admiration. The sheets on the roof were stuck with a double row of tape. It would have taken some time to complete. The mattress was taken out of the room before the final attack. It was possible that when they removed the mattress they also disturbed the plastic on the floor, which is how there came to be such a large quantity of blood underneath it. There was, Massimiliano cleared his throat, another possibility. From what they could tell, the American was suspended at the centre of the room with his arms above him, however, it is possible that he was standing. Out in the field they discovered the lengths of tape used to bind him. He was hog-tied, ankles bound to his wrists, and hoisted, belly down. Before this happened he was kept hanging by his arms, possibly for two days. Depending how high and how firmly he was raised he could have disturbed the plastic on the floor, kicking or thrashing. The event itself had probably occurred over three days, two at the very least, as there were three different drying patterns in the blood. They knew one thing for certain: the boy had been bled before the final event, and then slit open.

How the plastic was removed was another story, and it was certainly done in haste. There was evidence that someone had begun to wipe, perhaps mop, but this was only in one small area close to the door and this was started very soon after the killing, thirty-six to forty-two hours. The woman denied cleaning the room, and in truth it was unlikely that she was able or strong enough to tug down the plastic. ‘She’s a dwarf,’ he said, cutting his hands at hip height. ‘It’s just not a possibility.’