Richard House - The Kills

Other structural elements did not stand up, the room, the blood evidence, the organs, the teeth and tongue. The book was about the building. It’s all about the palazzo.

And then the magistrate had said something interesting, something he probably should have picked up a long time ago. There were two versions of The Kill. There was the version which read as a crime novel, and then there was the earlier version, which had an introduction, which was marketed as a confession, a testimony. The publisher of the second edition had cut the introduction because they felt it didn’t work with the main story.

Did she see the difference, he asked? Could she see how different this was?

He could tell she wasn’t listening. Finn spoke to his sister about a killing, figured out details, gave her information because he couldn’t otherwise talk to her. When she needed money, he asked for it from their father, because she didn’t want them to know it was for her.

* * *

Finn curled up in bed, couldn’t quite fit the frame, the bed slightly too short, so he either slept on his side with his feet curled (uncomfortable after a while), or he stuck his feet between the bars which meant that he couldn’t turn over and had to wake in order to pull his feet out and then slide them back once he’d found a new position. It didn’t work, this sleeping in shifts.

He finally lay diagonally across the bed, flat on his stomach, arms folded under his forehead, and legs out in the air, and woke twenty minutes later splayed out, superman. At one o’clock the air-conditioner began to squeak so he found his earplugs, which seemed, all things considered, a sensible solution. At midnight he was woken by a small tremble, a vibration — his phone, which he’d tucked under the pillow, as always.

Finn struggled to read the number and found the ID withheld. He answered with a more timid hello than he would have liked, and was surprised to find himself speaking with a woman.

‘Where’s Rino?’ the woman demanded — as if midnight was an acceptable time to call a stranger and ask for someone’s whereabouts.

Finn had to think before he understood what he was being asked for: Rino? ‘Who is this?’

‘This is his wife. Where is he? He’s supposed to be home.’ She sounded more irritated than worried, her voice an outright demand, as if he had some special knowledge, or was the cause, of Rino’s delay.

He told the woman that he’d sent Rino home early, like, really early. He lowered the phone to cancel the call and then couldn’t help from asking one last question.

‘How did you get this number?’

After a hesitation the woman answered crisply. ‘Rino gave it to me.’

Finn thought he could hear laughter in the background — something close to a donkey bray.

‘He gave you this number?’

More braying laughter.

‘But he has his own phone?’

‘He isn’t answering, culo. That’s why I called you.’

Finn bridled at being called an asshole and at the hee-haw laughter behind this. ‘Just don’t call this number, all right. Never call this number again.’

As he hung up he could hear more hefty chuckles above the donkey-laugh which seemed to choke on itself, a laugh that was also a haughty gulp.

* * *

He should have turned the phone off. Right off. Instead he checked his messages and email, and felt that the glow from the small screen, blue and just bright enough to pick out the white sheet, the edge of the pillow, as if sensing and measuring the rising humidity, which now, thanks to the air-conditioner, closed in, a kind of seepage, the air quickly thickening. Finn lay on his stomach, felt sweat bristle in the small of his back and he thought again about the student and wondered if Krawiec had stayed in the room the whole time, watched him strung up, ankles to wrists, and taunted him, or left him alone at times. This information mattered, he wanted to know if the student was toyed with, tortured. He felt the dimensions of the room, could sense exactly where and how he was located, the distance of the walls and floor, the pitch and angle of his body. He could sense it all. The boy had suffered, and it mattered that no one properly knew how much, and that no one knew his name.

The second call came forty minutes after the first. The number, again, withheld.

‘If that whoreson isn’t home in five minutes you can tell him not to come home at all. You tell him—’ and this time the woman’s voice tumbled into laughter and she couldn’t quite complete her sentence. Once again a donkey-like laugh buckled through from the background like this whole thing was a dare. He hadn’t heard Rino laugh. She hung up, then called back immediately.

‘I think he’s been kidnapped.’ Again, that laugh, a little more distant but a little more explosive.

‘I’m tracing the call,’ Finn lied. ‘It just takes a second but I can do it. There. I’ve got it. I’m passing this on to the police.’

‘ Culo, you’ll do no such thing.’ The voice sounded angry now, she hung up herself.

The phone rang again. Stopped. Then rang again. Nearly two o’clock.

He resisted answering, allowed the call to go to message, managed not to check the message, until — with the phone under the pillow, his arms supporting his head he realized he wouldn’t be able to sleep.

The message started with a string of expletives: culo, pezzo di merda, frocio, succhiatore, pompinaio, leccacazzi, affanculo. ‘You come here and you think you know who we are.’

* * *

The phone rang regularly after this at intervals which cut shorter over the hour. Every fifteen minutes, every ten, every five. Finn switched off the ring, turned off the vibrate, but the small screen still lit up each time a call came through and each time a message was stored, and he fought against the urge to check the messages. Finally, when he decided to switch it off he was surprised to see that the calls had come from Rino’s phone.

He checked the messages and heard Rino, at first apologetic: ‘I’m in a situation,’ he said. His voice a little bashful, hushed, and a noise about him, which Finn identified after replaying the message, as a number of men quietly pushing over some discussion. ‘I need money. Badly. I can pay you back.’

The second and third calls reiterated the demand with a little more emphasis. ‘Pick up. Answer. Come on. I know you’re there.’ Finn couldn’t tell if this was frustration at receiving no answer or desperation because he really was in trouble.

The phone rang in his hand. Finn didn’t intend to answer but his thumb hit the keyboard.

‘Hey, hey. Are you there?’ Rino sounded indignant. ‘I need a little help. It isn’t much, I can pay you back.’

Finn didn’t respond, and waited for some explanation.

‘I need seven hundred euro. I swear I can pay you back as soon as the banks open.’

The phone crackled and another voice cut in gruffly and demanding, ‘Just get the money. Do exactly as he tells you.’

Then Rino — ‘I need the money tonight. I know you can do this.’

The call cut off and Finn switched on the bedside light and sat upright and blinked, really unsure what was going on.

Minutes later the phone beeped. An SMS, again from an unmarked number, with the simple instruction that Finn should walk to the piazza Nicola Amore, right where Corso Umberto crosses via Duomo, and wait. Portico, Café Flavia, 20 minutes. €800.