Richard House - The Kills

Finn stood in the concourse and looked up at the grey boards flickering city names and routes above him. Passengers waited on the platforms, some smoking, most sitting, pressed down by the heat, mopping their foreheads and necks as if expressing regret. It was stupid, foolish to trust Rino, to have paid money to the man. A mistake he swore he wouldn’t make again. It was hard to estimate the amount he’d lost, all in all. Now he had twenty euro, just enough to find a place to email his parents and explain the whole stupid episode in some kind of shorthand they would understand. How much would he need to return home, end the summer in Massachusetts? How much would that humiliation cost? He wouldn’t ask his parents, he’d ask his sister. Carolyn would lend him money, and he’d pay her back, as long as she swore to keep this to herself.

What to do? Tired and too sickened to eat, he walked through the platform, and found a bookstore. Feltrinelli. And there, facing the door, a small display of The Kill, a new Italian translation with the introduction restored, as per the ’73 Editiones Mandatore original. The cover: a blood-spattered picture of an Italian palazzo. Finn stood in front of the display completely forlorn. Here it was, a last piece of mockery to rub home his failure. Two days in Naples and he was through. He picked up a copy and walked out of the store without making any effort to disguise the book.

He sat for an hour on the concourse, faced the bookstore entrance, and read the introduction in one sitting.

* * *

Finn called his sister collect, could hear her laughing as she accepted the charges — This is going to be good, bro. He told her quickly about the theft, about the night with Rino and some skinny thug on a scooter, and how, everything done, Rino denied the whole thing.

Carolyn laughed. Couldn’t help herself. Thought this was funny, better than expected. But he was obviously OK, OK? because they were talking. So he’s been stung right? This is what it was. A sting. This Rino had orchestrated the whole thing. Obviously.

Finn couldn’t see the logic.

‘Where did you find him?’

‘Online. The university.’

‘And you know that he goes to the university? You’ve seen him there, met his friends, spoken with his professors?’

‘I’ve spent one day with him. His email address is through the university.’ And then he remembered, it wasn’t. Rino had given an excuse, The university email is sometimes inaccessible. The server is slow and often fails. Use this address.

‘So he could be a student, but he could also not be a student. Doesn’t really matter.’

‘They kidnapped him. Someone kidnapped him and threatened to slit his throat.’

‘Someone said that they’d kidnapped him. Big difference. Do you know anything about him?’

Finn struggled for ideas, of course he knew things about Rino, they had spoken for two months, the man had completed research for him, sent photographs, sat outside the estate at Rione Ini for an entire week and watched Scafuti’s apartment. He knew all of the sites and all of the places relevant to the murders.

‘Sounds like he just got sick of you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Seriously. You can be tiresome. Anyway, it’s not like anything bad has happened. You just got played.’

Finn didn’t like the term and wouldn’t answer.

‘So why have you called? Are you really broke? Have you called me to sulk? It’s just money. It’s just stuff, right? Money and some computers, which were probably holding you back. You’ve bruised your ass, that’s it. I wish my lessons came so easy. There isn’t anything permanent. There isn’t anything to really worry about. You’re OK, and you have yourself a story.’

‘I’m OK? I’ve lost all of my work. All of my equipment.’

‘You’re fine. It’s just some constraint someone’s given you. They’ve taken all of your toys. You just have to work with that. I love you, Finn, but you’re a pain in the ass, and someone has played you. Which, you know, you kind of earned. Now you have to work with that. I’ll get you money, but you can’t come back. You just can’t.’

* * *

Finn spent the day walking. He tucked The Kill into his back pocket and took the funiculare to Vomero, roamed through the grounds of the Villa Floridiana, then followed the roads along the steep scalloped flanks zigzagging down via Falcone, Francesco, Tasso, to Corso Emanuele — the bay, sharp silvers and sparkling blues, to his left then his right — all the time feeling the pressure of the book squeezed into his pocket. As the late morning sank into a placid afternoon he slowed his pace and realized that he’d stamped about the city without looking at what was around him. Coming down to the lungomare he found a place to sit on the seawall and watched joggers and couples pass by. The idea of coming to Naples wasn’t just to write the book, but to gain experience of the city, to prise under its surface and become, chameleon-like, part of the situation, someone tapped into the heat and the bustle, open, as only an outsider can be. How stupid was he? He’d come to Naples one time to test the water, and was startled on a walk to Capodimonte by his first view of the city where he couldn’t believe the sight of one unbroken mass of housing, so busy and detailed, so hectic and impenetrably thick, carpeting the hills and the swoop of the plain all the way to the volcano and further to the distant mountains, and he became certain that here among this fractured chaos something would speak to him. Now he had to admit that he’d penetrated nothing.

He pulled the book from his pocket. It wasn’t only the city he’d misread, he’d also been misled by the book. Without the introduction The Kill was little more than a story about a man who manufactures a crime scene with body parts stolen from a hospital so his neighbours are accused of murder and cannibalism, a strange story, bloody and blunt. But with the introduction it became a story of someone lost in a defeated city, whose actions were prompted by the occupation, a hatred of the occupiers, and a deeper hatred of people he saw as collaborators: his actions, in this context, were justifiably provoked. An entirely different story.

Finn returned to the station feeling less and less happy as he came up the corso. He had to walk by the Questura just to see in daylight the place where he was knocked down, and he began to wonder now how much it would cost him to stay in Europe for the rest of the summer. Six thousand euro? Would that see him clear for the month? He came up via Capasso, and as soon as he caught sight of the palazzo he decided to stay. Maybe losing everything wasn’t actually so bad? Carolyn had a point. He could strip everything down to pen and paper. He took a coffee in the café opposite the palazzo. Looked to the shops, the wedding boutique, the alimentari with Salvatore and his brother Massimiliano, the doorway with that weird imp of a woman, and thought the story here wasn’t the killing, he had this wrong, right from the start he’d had it wrong, the story wasn’t even the city, much like The Kill the story here was about the palazzo, about what was happening immediately around the crime.

* * *

By the evening he’d received the money wired by his sister and rented a room opposite the palazzo on via Capasso — procedures, both, which he expected to be much more laboured. Finn paid for one week and assured the landlord that payment for the month would come in two days, and found him not only amenable but sympathetic. By the time Finn returned to his room sweating and laden with supplies (six-packs of sparkling water, beer, long-life milk, biscuits, and chocolate), his head was busy with new plans.