David Hewson - The Villa of Mysteries

A figure blundered down the corridor, too scared to hit the lights. Martelli had the remote control the social work people had given him. You had to work your advantages when you were a cripple. He waited for the figure in the shadows to get close to the door then he hit the corridor light. Three big bulbs running the length of the long passageway came on in tandem. Mickey Neri stood there, dressed in black, hands empty, waving stupidly in front of him.

“I got a gun, asshole,” Martelli grunted from the pool of darkness in the corner of the living room. “I got a big shotgun. You want to see me use it?”

Mickey turned round, ready to run. Martelli pumped the twelve-bore noisily, ramming one of the four remaining cartridges he owned into the chamber.

“Sit down, sonny,” he bawled. “Let me take a good look at you.”

Mickey Neri moved cautiously into the room and fell into the chair Martelli had nodded towards.

“Mickey,” Martelli sighed. “Your old man sent you? That right?”

“Yeah.” There was a pathetic snarl beneath the fear. “We met before?”

“A long time ago. When we were all up to things we hoped were dead and buried. I’m offended you don’t remember. I seem to think—” Martelli started coughing, couldn’t help it, and the fit went on and on until he fought back the phlegm. When it was over, he said, simply, “I seem to recall that, when I gave my daughter up for you and your pop, not quite knowing what was on the cards, you were one of those who got to taste the goods.”

“Like you said,” Mickey grumbled, face screwed up, looking as if it were a struggle to remember. “It was a long time ago. Lots of people got confused memories about what happened then.”

“Not me.”

Mickey nodded. He was staring frankly at Martelli, who knew exactly what he was wondering. How sick was this frail old man really? “Also,” he added, “I don’t recall you pulling out of what you got, Mr . Martelli. I seem to think you had your fun too. All you old guys… You just wanted to get into something fresh and young. You were as greedy as the rest of them.”

Martelli waved the barrel then coughed again, not quite so bad this time. “You kids are all the same. No respect.”

Then he jerked the barrel and fired. The shotgun exploded a metre or so to the right of the terrified Mickey Neri, blowing a huge tear in the dining room table. And Toni Martelli started counting. This was an apartment block. Someone would hear. Someone would call the cops.

“You fucking madman!” Mickey whined. “You—”

“Shut up. We got a deal, your old man and me. Not that he told you, naturally. If you walk out of here alive, then everything’s square with you. If you’re a piece of meat on the floor by the time the cops come, then I’m just sweet. I killed some creep who was trying to rob my apartment. I got Emilio Neri in my debt. And I took his scummy little kid out too. What d’ya think, Mickey? Is your old man pissed off with you or what? Where’s your money going?”

“You believe that?” Mickey yelled, bright eyes bulging, terrified. “Are you telling the truth? ”Cos if you are we’re both dead, mister.“

“I’m dead already, moron.” Martelli coughed. And coughed some more. Then it was as if something had come alive inside him, as if the cancer had got scared by all this noise and violence too. A big, black pain rose up from inside his guts, freezing what little sensation remained in his spine, making his mind go blank with the agony.

“ Eeeeeeeeeeeee—” Toni Martelli screeched, rocking from side to side in the chair, trying to keep hold of the shotgun in his arms, which had a life of its own now, wanted to call time on this craziness and go for a walk somewhere else.

There was morphine somewhere. Barbara kept it safe for him. He’d not needed it since she died. Something seemed to kill the needling agony the sickness inflicted on him from time to time. Now it was back, with a vengeance, clouding his vision, dimming his thoughts.

Martelli couldn’t stand it any longer. He let go of the rifle, let it fall on his lap, and, with his free hand, started spinning the wheelchair, as hard and as fast as he could, fumbling for where he left the ammunition. Two cartridges made their way into the chamber, and for the life of him he couldn’t remember willing them there. Two explosions rocked the room. The first blew out the big window looking onto the courtyard. Through the shattered glass came the sound of the football match, a wild, insane roar, blaring out of the neighbouring sitting rooms, where another noise, the lowing, frightened murmur of people, was growing too.

The second went in the opposite direction, somewhere towards the figure of Mickey Neri, who’d now thrown himself off the chair, trying to find cover.

Martelli’s head cleared a little and the pain diminished. The chair stopped going round and round. The stupid screeching noise died in his throat. And at that moment Toni Martelli knew this was the end, one way or another. Neri’s offer was meaningless. A bigger, blacker fate was rising up to grip him now, and all the hoodlums in the world couldn’t keep it from his throat.

Mickey Neri was writhing around on the floor. Martelli heard his desperate shrieks, wondered how badly he’d hit the kid, and shook his head.

“Listen to the little rabbit,” he croaked. “What makes him squeal? The pain? Or knowing what’s gonna end it? You got no balls, boy?”

“You crazy old fucker,” Mickey whispered from somewhere beyond Martelli’s receding vision. “I could give you something. We could both walk out of this.”

“You got nothing for me,” Martelli said simply. “No one’s got a damn thing I can use anymore.” He raised the gun, knowing there was just the one cartridge left and this had to count, because if it didn’t Mickey Neri would somehow walk out of this place alive, and that, surely, was a crime.

Then he coughed some more, coughed and coughed, until the sound of his own breathing entered his ears, grew and grew.

Toni Martelli was choking on his own blood, wondering where this had come from, why the doctors never told him it would end this way. The shotgun still lay on his lap but he hadn’t the strength to touch it. And Mickey Neri had stopped wriggling around on the ground. He was half out in the open now, looking up, a little hope in his eyes. The little jerk wasn’t even hurt.

“What the fuck—” Martelli tried to mumble, but it all came out wrong because his mouth was full of stuff, his head was all over the place.

And the pain…

Different this time.

He looked down at the gun. It was covered in blood. His own. It came out of his chest somehow, poured down the front of his shirt.

He wanted to get angry. He wanted to kill someone.

A woman walked into view from the door. A skinny woman with red hair and a face that made him feel fear.

“Who the fu—?” Toni Martelli began to say.

She had a gun in her hand. She held the weapon purposefully, the way you were supposed to.

Mickey Neri crawled to his knees and looked up as if the light of God was shining out of her bright, glittering eyes.

The woman shook her head, disappointed. The red hair moved slowly in the light of the old apartment.

“You do it like this,” she said, then walked up to Toni Martelli, smiled briefly, coldly into his face, and put a bullet into his brain.

THERE WAS ONLY SO MUCH a man could do with his hands. Brick and glass and rubble tore at Peroni’s fingertips. The coarse, choking dust filled his mouth, solidified in his eyes. Every time he and Falcone tried to snatch something away from Rachele D’Amato’s torn, unconscious body, another piece of debris seemed to fall around them to fill its place. Neri’s house was losing its solidity, just like the world itself. The ancient structure was on the point of collapse, a huge hole rent in its belly. There was so little time. Falcone was grappling with an ancient timber beam that had shattered like an overlong, rotten tooth and now lay across her chest. It refused to move and it occurred to Peroni that maybe this was for the best. In the dark it was impossible to see what part of the wrecked building depended on the rest for support. If they shifted the wrong thing, the fragile remnants of wall around them could so easily topple down too.